Ok, maybe this is an odd one. And maybe this is not even worth writing, because everybody has already figured this out or this is so obvious that no one should ever feel like it would be a good idea to put this into words, but:
I had trouble sleeping for quite some time.
I had trouble falling asleep at night. And when I was finally asleep, I had nightmares regularly. And I kept waking up from hearing the slightest noise. And then in addition to all of the above my neighbors moved and my new neighbors are annoyingly loud at night on a semi-regular basis. They listen to music loud enough that I can hear the bass. They talk loudly. And worst of it all, they have the very annoying habit of moving chairs at night without lifting them off the floor. This makes annoying noises at daytime, but at nighttime it is a sleep-killer. 😬
Ok, somehow this turned into a rant about my "new" neighbors. Back to the topic of sleep problems of any kind. I think that I finally found the solution:
If you keep waking up at night, get some good earplugs. It will not only prevent you from waking up frequently, it will also improve your quality of sleep. If you keep waking up from noises all the time, chances are that you keep hearing these noises while you are asleep. That will make your sleep less restorative. The earplugs reduce the noises significantly and you will experience better sleep by hearing less.
Put on relaxing music*. For a good night's sleep, it is important that your mind and your body relax. That was one of the main issues why I couldn't fall asleep. My mind was racing. My body was tense. I did not even notice that until I started listening to relaxing music when trying to fall asleep. Without the music I was not very relaxed. Only once I started listening to relaxing music, I noticed the difference: The difference in relaxation. And the difference in sleep quality.
Adjust the volume so that you can barely hear the music and then maybe go one or two steps above that threshold. For me, that's the perfect volume. You don't want the music to be too loud, but you also don't want to struggle to hear the music.
That's it. Three steps only. But we are not quite done yet.
Where can I find relaxing music for sleeping?
Good question. And the answer to all questions I will ever raise in this blog series is "YouTube/Google/the internet" in that specific order. (After all, this is called "Internet Gold" -- where else would I find my topics to write about?)
So let's try YouTube -- and yes, you will find plenty of sleep music there. And very different kinds of sleep music, as well. I tried music for lucid dreaming first. And while I was able to fall asleep more easily than without it, the next day, I did not feel very refreshed. After a couple of days I noticed why. While the music helped me to fall asleep, because it is actually quite relaxing, an annoyingly loud gong sound kept being played every once in a while -- which almost woke me up every time it occurred.
A feature, not a bug
Once you know what lucid dreaming is, the problem becomes obvious. In lucid dreams you gain consciousness while you are dreaming. The idea is that you can then try to control your dreams. Okay, great idea, but not what I needed. So on to other kinds of sleep music.
Music for resolving problems
Yeah, that worked pretty well. And I might actually have resolved some inner conflict in that night. I was dreaming about a female friend who I had a crush on at some point in time and I ended up disliking her for some reason or another. After that dream, the negative feelings seemed to have disappeared.
In summary, I can recommend this every once in a while, but not for every night. It kept waking me up from time to time.
And that was generally an issue with many different "sleep" music playlists. They prevented me from entering deep sleep or kept waking me up.
The best sleep music
That kept happening -- until I found these playlists. I accepted the challenge the thumbnail proposed: Try to stay awake for three minutes while listening to the music at nighttime in bed. I failed. Pretty much every single time. Which is a good thing, because it meant that I fell asleep easily. And the music does not wake me up. I can highly recommend it!
If you have any trouble sleeping, do yourself a favor and try it! And do me a favor and let me know in the comments whether it improved your sleep or whether it didn't help you.
There are actually many more of these playlists. If one of them doesn't work for you, try another one. Maybe this one for instance:
Footnote:
*I believe you can replace step 2 and 3 with various breathing exercises and get a similar effect. But if technology can do the work for me, you know what I choose. 😅
...and you will also help the author collect more tips.
this is my problem almost every night .It is really hard . and also a result of sleeping late in night.