At some point, I was reading about people trying to stick to eating plans, and one interesting bit of research was that people generally were more likely to stick to the plan if they framed it as something positive rather than negative. Positive not in the toxic positivity kind of way, but just as an affirmative thing?
I’m not explaining this well, but for an example, say you’re at a dinner party and people are passing around some delicious-looking cheese thing and you’re seriously lactose-intolerant, you will apparently do better staying off the cheese if you think “I don’t do dairy.” As opposed to “I can’t have dairy.” It’s a subtle difference, but it makes it more of your choice, mentally, rather than a restriction, and is weirdly effective, or so this research claimed.
Anyway, I was thinking about this because I’ve gotten pretty good at getting off my phone at 11, which I was struggling with for a while, and I think one thing that really helped was that I wouldn’t just put the phone away and try not to look at it — I would put it on the website, Rainy Mood, and set my sleepy time rain sounds going, and that’s nice, I like those sounds, rain is good, it makes me happy. So starting that going feels like a positive, and as a result, is easier for me to do.
And then I do let myself use my Kindle Paperwhite (which doesn’t do the blue light thing), and usually within 5-15 minutes of reading on that, I’m falling asleep.
I offer you all this, in case it’s at all helpful. Sleep is everything.
G’night!