How to Fix Your Sleep

How have you been sleeping lately?

Summertime throws off our schedules, and then the rude awakening of school returning throws us into a whole new routine. It’s one we may have missed to some degree, but the casualty in all of this change is often one of the most important aspects of life: SLEEP.

Sleep can be fixed, but it takes true effort and devotion, which I’ll outline in this article.

Sleep is a tricky subject for me to address because I’m chronically terrible at it, which is exactly why I’m so excited to share my recent findings and success. A little background: I have suffered from insomnia since I was in elementary school, with an overactive brain filled with creativity that simply would not allow me to sleep or recover at night.

In high school, I survived on 3–4 hours of sleep per night while handling leadership responsibilities, friendship and relationship counseling, keeping my grades up, and averaging about eight hours of homework each evening after school. In my 20s, I eventually gave up trying to sleep altogether. I pulled all-nighters multiple times per week, started successful businesses, wrote books, created music and albums, and got a lot of work done all night long. I was productive, but I also set myself up for some terrible habits by not sleeping well.

Now, in my late 40s, the receipts are due!

I Finally Decided to Learn How to Sleep

Just as not caring for your health over decades can eventually damage your insides, decades of not making sleep a routine or an important focus of my life have now sent me into every variation of experimentation possible to succeed at this elusive practice.

I have made it my great challenge and goal to learn how to sleep.

This post may not resonate with those like my wife, Tami, who is a professional sleeper and can sleep through earthquakes, sirens, fire alarms, and screaming babies. But for anyone struggling with sleep, looking to make it a priority, and willing to work on it, I have found a few game-changing practices and tools that have transformed mine. I’m also very interested in your take on this subject, so please share in the comments what has worked for you.

For the last few years, I have been working on this whole sleep thing with almost no success, perhaps because I was so deeply entrenched in decades of bad habits. I have tried natural products like melatonin and essential oils, medications prescribed by doctors, all of which somehow make me sleep worse and chase blue butterflies around the room, as well as herbs, oils, creams, and gummies. All to no avail.

We purchased a sauna to use before bed, and it has been helpful, if I remember to use it. I have meditation practices and methods, yoga, and stretches that I don’t like to do. And yes, even a subscription to Matthew McConaughey reading me bedtime stories. I mean, how embarrassing is that? I need a famous actor to try and lull me to sleep? All I can think as he reads the stories is, “When is he gonna say, ‘Alright, alright, alright...and goodnight!’”

The Sleep Apnea Test That Changed My Thinking

Recently, I attempted an at-home, multi-night sleep apnea test. It was horrific. The first night, I woke up around 3 AM and ripped it off my face in a daze of half-sleep and discomfort, having trouble breathing because of the very apparatus that was supposed to be monitoring my breathing!

I also have a watch that tells me my levels of sleep every morning, and mostly gives me helpful information like, “Hey, last night wasn’t good!” My watch even warns me, “Good luck today. On such poor sleep, it’s going to be a rough one!” When your watch becomes a comedian and your biggest morning critic, that’s a brutal reality.

Sadly, none of these things solved the problem.

What finally shifted my thinking was meeting with the sleep apnea doctor, who said,

“My friend, you are healthy as can be. You in no way have sleep apnea. What’s happening is it’s your MIND that won’t allow you to sleep. What do you do during the day to help yourself get to sleep?”

I had rarely thought of that before.

I had spent years perfecting the craft of turning my mind ON once 11 PM hit and my second wind kicked in, allowing me to push far into the morning hours. Oftentimes, 3 AM was a usual bedtime for me, and then I’d be up again at 6 or 7, groggy as a hibernating bear awakened mid-winter.

What Am I Doing During the Day?

So I started looking at what I was doing during the day.

I used to work out late at night, and now I work out during the day. That may seem obvious, but for me it was a major shift. I don’t particularly like pushing weights in the morning, but it’s better for me than doing it at 10 PM. Daily walking matters for a good night’s sleep, too. Movement, getting some sunshine, and standing up every hour between phone calls and meetings have all become part of the process.

I’ve also become much more intentional about drinking water throughout the day without drinking too much after 8 PM. Then there’s caffeine. Lessening it, or giving it up altogether, can make a difference. At the very least, I try to get it in before noon so my body has time to recover before bedtime. Again, something I had never really thought about before.

So now I keep coming back to the question my doctor asked me:

What do you do during the day to help yourself get to sleep?

10 Sleep Fixes That Are Working for Me

1. Make sleep a priority. A TOP priority.
   Sleep used to not even make my Top 20 list. Now I treat it as something that deserves to be protected.
2. Track it.
   Whether it’s with a watch, an Oura Ring, which I haven’t purchased yet but will, or another method, tracking my sleep has made a difference because it forces me to pay attention to patterns I used to ignore.
3. Consider what you’re doing in the final hours before bed.
   Stress levels, conversations, emails, texts, doomscrolling...all of this has contributed to my poor sleep habits. I was always checking my phone and working right up until “sleep time,” and then wondering why my brain couldn’t immediately shut off.
4. Try earplugs.
   My wife suggested them, and I began using them a few months ago. I started with the foam ones and eventually graduated to the wax ones. As a dad of young kids, and because my wife could sleep through any baby crying, I was always on high alert for every noise. I can be awakened by the sound of a door about to be opened, not just when it opens. I sleep anticipating it and can hear it anywhere in the house. I have bat-level hearing, and it has ruined my sleep. Earplugs have helped.
5. Consider your mattress.
   We bought a new bed after realizing our mattress was more than 20 years old. There were actual divots where we slept on our expensive Stearns & Foster king mattress, yet somehow we never thought we needed a new bed! Our daughter was selling mattresses during a summer internship in Alaska, so we supported her and bought one. The result? This bed has changed my sleep life. It is a Cariloha mattress with Cariloha sheets, and for me, it has been game-changing.
6. Try sleep technology that gives you useful information.
   My friend recently turned me on to OZLO Sleepbuds. I am not making money telling you about any of these companies. I can just easily say this one has changed my life. Seeing what the Sleepbuds track compared with what my watch tracks has been fascinating and insightful.
7. Be consistent with the time you go to sleep.
   For most of my life, going to sleep before 1 AM felt like I was wasting perfectly good work and creativity hours. Now I’m shooting for somewhere between 10–11 PM, which at first felt insane and now feels essential.
8. Be consistent with the time you wake up.
   Before, I was all over the place. Now I try to wake up within about half an hour of my goal each day. And yes, I just wrote “sleep goal.” That’s how far I’ve come and how seriously I’m treating this.
9. Get bloodwork and labs done.
   We have invested a good chunk of income and time over the last eight months finding out what our bodies actually have to say rather than relying only on what we see in the mirror. It has given us powerful insights into getting our levels right, hormones in check, and supplementing with nutrients that may contribute to better overall health and sleep. Men and women over 40, have you checked your hormone levels lately? You may be surprised by what you learn.
10. Pay attention to blood flow and overall cardiovascular health.
    Supporting healthy circulation and nitric oxide production is another part of my personal routine. Cardio Miracle has become an essential daily habit for me, and I notice a difference in how I feel when I forget to drink it. For me, it is one more piece of the larger puzzle as I work on better sleep, recovery, movement, and overall health.

Make Better Sleep a Daily Promise

Putting all of these things into practice has made all the difference in my sleep. I’m truly passionate about this subject now and continuing to learn every day.

I hope this article is helpful to your own sleep journey. I’m sure I’ve missed plenty of other ideas and practices that successful sleepers employ, so please share below what has worked for you!

My best to you on fixing your sleep. This is how I’m proactively fixing mine, and it has become a daily Promise to stick to the process of finally getting a good night’s sleep.

Every night.