Just about everyone goes through patches of insomnia now and again. Whether caused by stress, illness, or just too many scary movies, we’ve all had nights of tossing around in bed, staring at the clock, and trying to find a cool spot on the pillow. Some people just can’t get to sleep at all, while others fall asleep for a while, but wake up at 1, 2, or 3am unable to get back to sleep before the alarm.

It’s no fun at all, right? Instead of having sweet dreams and waking up ready to take on the day, you stress yourself out all night and are bleary eyed and exhausted when the alarm goes off. You get up and have no choice but to gulp down a huge mug of coffee so you can drive to work without nodding off. Then you drink more coffee to get through the day, knowing that you’re just going to have the same problem the next night!

I’ve been going through this issue myself for the past couple of weeks, so I decided to do a little research on ways that we can all fall asleep faster, sleep through the night, and (if all else fails) at least use our sleepless time to do something useful.

Before we get started, the necessary disclaimer: This is NOT medical advice. I’m not a doctor. I faint at the sight of needles. I can’t even give blood without passing out. If you can’t sleep for several days in a row and you’re starting to become a danger to yourself and others, go to the doctor!

7 Tips to Prevent Minimize Insomnia

There are many things you can do to set yourself up for a better night’s sleep. Scientists call this sleep hygiene, but you can just call it common sense. Some of these steps are difficult, but the worse you’re sleeping, the more important they become.

1. Limit caffeine intake. Yes, this is hard to do, especially when you’re feeling sleep deprived, but caffeine will just make insomnia worse. If you have to have something to stay awake, drink a bit a green tea, which doesn’t give quite the jolt.
2. Get some exercise. A decent amount of physical activity tires out your body and helps you sleep better. 30 minutes or more a day is ideal, but even a 10 minute walk after dinner will help.
3. Avoid a late meal. Eating a big, heavy meal after 7 or 8pm can cause digestive problems and keep you up. Either eat dinner early, or eat a bigger meal at lunch and a light meal for dinner. Salad is your friend.
4. Limit screen time. The longer you spend looking at computers and televisions, the more likely you are to have insomnia (source). Turn off both a couple of hours before you go to bed. Even though I love television, I know that it interferes with my sleep, so I’m careful about when I watch.
5. Create a sleep routine. Try to do the same routine every night before you go to bed. It can be as simple as brushing your teeth, washing your face, and putting on your bunny slippers. Just be consistent and train your brain to recognize that when you do certain actions, it’s sleepy time.
6. Take a warm shower or bath before bed. Warm water relaxes your muscles and your brain. If you have time to take a nice bubble bath, great. If not, at least try to take a quick shower. As a bonus, it feels great to go to bed all squeaky clean.
7. Not too hot, not too cold. Make sure that you’re comfortable in your bed. You don’t want to be sweating buckets, but you also don’t want to freeze. If you’re turning the thermostat down to save energy at night, compensate with warmer blankets or pajamas.

4 Things To NOT Do When You Can’t Sleep

Now, let’s say that despite your best efforts, you still have insomnia. The following things will only make your situation worse, so avoid them.

1. Tossing and turning. Everyone has had some very long nights where we can’t sleep and instead just lay in bed turning over every 15 seconds. It’s no fun, it builds up your anxiety level and it certainly doesn’t help you sleep.
2. Staring at screens. (see above) I know it’s tempting to flip open the laptop or turn on the TV when you can’t sleep, but resist the urge! Studies show that electronic screens trigger a part of our brain that keeps us awake. Plus, watching television at 3am will just lead to bad infomercial purchases!
3. Eating all the potato chips and chocolate in the house. Sometimes I get hungry in the middle of night and my instinct is to wander over the ol’ Frigidaire and have at it. This is a bad strategy because a full stomach will keep you awake longer, plus a few repeats of this will really start to pack on the pounds.
4. Looking at the clock. Yes, it’s frustrating to see how much time has gone by since you’ve been awake. It’s even worse to think about how little time remains before the alarm goes off! Staring at the clock will only make you more tense, and keep you up longer.

5 Ways to Be Productive and Have Fun With Insomnia

If it’s 2am an you’re wide awake, you have limited options for activity. Unless you have friends on the other side of the world, you probably shouldn’t call anyone. You probably live with or near other people, so you can’t start practicing your drums. However, there are a lot of things you can do to make good use of the time, and hopefully get back to sleep before the night is over.

1. Get out of bed and go to another room. The first thing you should do is get out of bed. I know it’s cold out there, but by moving you avoid building an association between your bed and sleepless nights. Go sit on the couch or in your big fluffy chair.
2. Read a book. Make it a boring book Seriously, reading a book will engage your alpha brainwaves and help you relax. You might find yourself nodding off before you finish a chapter. Just be sure to choose material that won’t upset or excite you, like reading Michael Moore if you’re a conservative!
3. Drink something warm. It turns out that Mom was right, again. Drinking warm milk really does help you sleep. So does herbal tea like chamomile. Have a nice cuppa and you might be snoozing soon.
4. Meditate. If you’ve been meaning to start meditating, this is the perfect opportunity! Doing certain types of meditation might help you relax enough to get to sleep, and you don’t have to sit in the lotus position and contemplate your naval. Why not try listening to some meditation audio like Quantum Mind Power?
5. Work on the idea that’s keeping you up. If you’re like me, your insomnia is mostly caused by too much stuff racing around in your head. If you have an idea, hope, dream, or fear keeping you up, take some action on it. I’ve found just the smallest thing, like creating a quick action plan, or drafting 2 pages of writing, is often enough to give my brain a rest.

Wow. I’m getting a little tired now. Maybe I’ll just shut my eyes for a minute…

Anyway, talk amongst yourself in the comm…..ZZZZZZ

Photos by babblingdweeb, EasyPickle, and bcmom.

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Long time readers of this site know that for many months I’ve been singing the praises of IWantSandy, an online personal information management program that featured an adorable, anthropomorphized character named “Sandy.” Unfortunately, the company behind Sandy, Values of N, is about to shut it doors and Sandy – and the equally popular Stikkit – will be going offline on December 19. This left me with a problem, because I’ve come to rely pretty heavily on Sandy.

You see, Sandy was more than just a calendar, to do list tracker, or contacts list manager (although she did all of these things very well). The genius of Sandy was that you could talk her like a human. Her pretty good natural language recognition meant that you could send her an email with the subject line, “Remind me to buy my mother some flowers in 3 days,” and she would send you an email at 7am on Thursday telling you to buy your mother some flowers. She interfaced very well with Jott, could be contacted by and send text messages, and was even on Twitter. (Angry note: Twitter actually bought Sandy’s code and has decided to shut down the service rather than keep it going. Booo Twitter!!)

After just a few minutes of getting used to her, I found that Sandy just worked in a way that most software can only dream of!

Now all of that is going away, and after a few days of gnashing of my teeth and beating my breast, I realized that it was time for me to move on and make new cyber-relationships.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a true replacement for Sandy – isn’t that the way is always is with a truly great assistant? – but there are tons and tons and tons of alternatives.

But I Don’t Drink Milk

In a quest to find the next Sandy (maybe named Mandy?), I kept finding one service recommended above all others: Remember the Milk. Like Sandy, RTM is a robust PIM that can handle calendars, tasks, contacts and a whole lot more. It’s used extensively by the Getting Things Done crowd and is actually feature-rich enough to be used as a team project management application.

I spent a couple of days trying RTM out, and I have to say that the results left me a bit cold. The website is much more complex than Sandy and offers a lot more functionality than I need – or want to deal with! RTM works with Jott (which I use enough to pay the Premium membership for) so I can call it up and add tasks. However, the voice recognition is different and I’m still learning the syntax to be able to use it properly.

I was just about to give up on RTM when I discovered that it has plug-ins that work with GMail and Google Calendar (GCal). As you can see here:

I have the plugin set up on my Google Calendar and it adds a row of check marks to the display, just above the timeline. From this interface, I can add and manage tasks in RTM without ever having to visit the website! This simplifies the process a ton and makes me much happier!

Two Emails are Worse Than One

After figuring out that I can ask Google Calendar to email a daily schedule to me (yes, I’m a bit slow to catch on), I’ve come up with a two email solution for my day. RTM sends me a list of my daily tasks, which looks a bit like this:

And Google Calendar sends me a daily schedule, which follows this format:

I can ask either service to remind me of an appointment via text message (I do this for haircuts, which I tend to forget a lot!).

The result is that I can keep track of my day about as well as when Sandy and I were working together at our most efficient, but the solutions available seem to lack a bit of soul. Sure, Gcal’s email is efficient and the layout is classic Google, but where is the panache? Yes, Remember the Milk keeps track of my tasks and has a nice notes feature for expanding on each item with helpful information, but where is the chipper greeting every morning?

The Quest Is Just Beginning

Although my current setup seems to be working, I doubt that it’s going to last forever (or even a year). As you’ve probably figured out, I not thrilled with it, even though it is effective. There are so many alternatives in this space, that I’m sure I’ll find a solution that is more intuitive than Remember the Milk. Some possibilities include:

• KeepUp. I’ve started experimenting with this site for scheduling recurring tasks and annual events like holidays and birthdays. Sure, Gcal and RTM both do this, but I like the community aspect of KeepUp, and it can be used with groups. In the end though, I may dump this one.
• PingMe. This looks like a potentially good solution because I relied on Sandy most for future hard-scheduled tasks. In other words, Sandy remembered what I had to do in the future so that I didn’t have to. PingMe seems to do similar things, and they’ve even written a guide for people switching from Sandy.
• Just Gcal. With Jott integration and SMS notification, it’s possible to use Google Calendar for everything I need. I could just add tasks as all day events (If anyone has a more elegant solution for this, PLEASE let me know!). I just find it so… sterile. Sigh.
• Sandy’s Back. A group of disgruntled programmers have gotten together to create an open source replacement for Sandy. As soon as they start soliciting donations, I’m going to send them $20, but it looks like it will be a long time before anything comes of the project.

So, as you can see, I’m still on the rebound from my recent breakup with Sandy. I can keep hoping that she’ll come back to me – I’d even pay to keep her, just as I do with Jott – but I have to face the facts that she may be gone forever.

Have you found better solutions in the quest for the perfect, truly Virtual Assistant? Please help me and other grieving souls recover the loss of a steady companion. Suggest alternative services in the comments section below!

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If you know a personal development junkie, you know that they can’t ever learn enough, do enough, or improve enough. I have read/listened to/used all of these products myself over the years and found them extremely helpful in my own journey. I hope that they are helpful to you and your loved ones as well.

Books

There are literally thousands of self-help and self improvement books in print right now. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all of the choices, especially when so many of them are pretty low quality. Lucky for you, I have suffered through a lot of the craptacular stuff to find the good offerings in the market. Here are a few that I have found especially good.

The Art of Happiness. When the Dalai Lama decided to write a book, I usually pay attention. This one, which was actually written by Howard Cutler based on a series of interviews with His Holiness, contains many valuable insights on achieving greater happiness in your life. What I like most about it are the really practical meditations and other exercises designed to increase the happiness you feel on a daily basis. Also available as an audio book.

A Complaint Free World. This book challenges you to change your language and eliminate complaining. I tried the challenge for a weekend (listen to my before and after posts), and found out that I really need this book! Chances are, you need it too! Also available as an audio book.

Change Without Pain. Change management is a broad and varied topic, and I’ve read tons of books about it. This is one of the best. Author Eric Abrahamson uses real world examples from his work with actual companies to discover ways that companies (and individuals) can make major changes with the smallest possible disruptions and pain. If you or your organization are in a transition right now, this is a great read.

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. We all want to be able to get more done with less effort and enjoy ourselves in the process. Flow is a great book for helping you discover the conditions under which you can achieve peak states, where you feel the most creative, get the most work done, and enjoy yourself the most. It’s a concept I’ve been experimenting with lately and I’m finding it extremely helpful in doing all of the writing that I put out here and in other places.

The Mind Map Book. Author Tony Buzan is widely credited with being the father of mind-mapping, a powerful tool for brainstorming, organizing ideas, and even doing a weekly review. This book is the bible of mind mapping, teaching you how to use simple paper and pencil to explore the visual side of your brain and tap into previously unknown levels of creativity.

The Joy Diet: 10 Daily Practices for a Happier Life. Martha Beck may have sold out to Oprah, and she’s probably a bit too touchy-feely for some of you, but I have to admit that I *love* this book. The Joy Diet is a really simple series of practices that will help you take a deep breath, focus in yourself for a few minutes a day, de-stress, and ultimately become a better friend, partner, parent, and worker. I highly recommend it for people who are feeling overwhelmed by life right now. Also available as an audio book.

Electronic Products

Let’s say you’re a bit of a procrastinator and you’re not reading this guide until 11:59 on December 24. Or perhaps your the eco-friendly type and you don’t want to give out a bunch of dead trees and plastic. If so, there are many great electronic resources available for self improvement. In fact, there are so many that it’s pretty hard to figure out what is garbage (most of it, frankly) and what is genuinely helpful. For the most part, I try to stick with trusted names from either the blogosphere or the self development space in general when choosing products. Here is a sampling of items that I have found most helpful.

• Zen to Done. Blogger Leo Babauta of Zen Habits has developed his own productivity system and I’m a huge fan. It’s more streamlined than the uber-popular Getting Things Done and focuses more on execution. This ebook sells for a very reasonable $9.95.
• Anything from Web Warrior Tools. This site is a collection of high quality, low priced ebooks dealing with several self improvement products. They have ebooks that focus on finances, others that help you get organized or work more efficiently, and still others that help you get healthy. Anything they put out is great and cheap!
• Never Procrastinate Again. Another very popular blogger, Dave Navarro of Rock Your Day (love that name) has a great audio/video/text coaching course that helps you fend off procrastination when it strikes. Dave can be *very* motivating and he’s sure to deliver the swift kick in the butt that you or your loved one needs to get going. The entire course is a mere $37.
• Quantum Mind Power. I have been using the Quantum Mind Power meditation tracks for over a year now and continue to find them valuable. Essentially, this product is a package of audio tracks that put your mind into a meditative state without having to go through the years of training that Zen monks and others go through to train their minds. If you’re interested in learning more about the system, I encourage you to read my review. There are two versions of this product, the regular versions which sells for $147 or a premium package with 2 additional tracks (I don’t have these, so I haven’t reviewed them) for $197. It’s a bit expensive (and you have to suffer through a cheesy sales letter to order!), but I think it is well worth the price considering how much you can spend on meditation books, classes, and audio tracks. Also, I’m told that the system is now available as a physical product with real CDs.

Free Stuff

I know that money is tight for many people this holiday season, but that doesn’t have to get in the way of giving meaningful gifts to people who want to improve themselves. With so many excellent free resources available, it’s very simple to download some high quality free ebooks, print them out on some nice paper and put them into a binder. Or, you can download some podcasts and burn them to a CD. Here are a few high quality, free ebooks that you or your loved ones might appreciate. Note that some of these require a newsletter sign-up. Don’t sign anyone up without their permission, but I am subscribed to all of these newsletters and I love them, so don’t hesitate to sign yourself up.

• A Year of Change. As a change blogger, you can’t blame me for loving The Change Blog. Blog author Peter Clements has bundled some of his best posts into this fabulous looking and very interesting ebook.
• How to Practice the Art of Life Balance. We could all use some tips for improving the balance in our lives, and this ebook has plenty of them. This ebook is the result of the Life Balance Group Writing Project at the Create a Balance blog. Many great bloggers contributed to it – including me – and I thank blogger Stacey Weckstein for hosting it.
• Secrets to Creating More Inner Peace. Okay, I had to pimp my own stuff here a bit. But seriously, I think this is a pretty good quality free ebook all on the theme of increasing your inner peace. At this hectic time of the year, I know that I need to follow my own advice a little more closely!

If there are other resources (especially free ones!) you can recommend as high quality personal development gifts, please share them below in the comments! Happy shopping, everyone.

Full Disclosure: This post is blatantly self promotional and designed to make a little extra holiday cash for Never the Same River Twice. I earn a (very) small amount of money per sale for most of these items. However, I never promote anything on this site that I haven’t used myself and don’t stand behind completely. If you have a bad experience with any of these products, send an email to maria (at) neverthesamerivertwice (dot) com explaining the problem and I’ll reconsider my endorsement.

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Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States. It is the one day a year that everyone in the country is supposed to list a few things that he or she is grateful for – and then promptly eat themselves sick!

I have to admit that I did not appreciate Thanksgiving until pretty recently. It struck me as having all of the hassle of Christmas, without any of the presents. In the past few years, however, I’ve been closely looking at the practice of gratitude and I’ve become convinced that it’s a good thing to engage in far more often that one time per year.

Why Does Gratitude Take Practice?

Have you ever noticed how much of our daily conversations revolve around complaining of some type? I recently tried to go 48 hours without complaining, and I wasn’t very successful! Unfortunately, our brains seem to be wired to notice negative things more than we notice the positive. Turning this around takes some daily practice and habit formation.

Buddhist monks and other spiritual types make the daily practice of gratitude a part of their spiritual development. They keep a daily gratitude list, give thanks to others for very small things, and generally try to embody gratitude as a way of life. You may not have to go that far, but I think there is a lot to be gained from practicing gratitude regularly.

What Do I Get From Being Grateful?

According to one study, excessive complaining and “venting” of frustrations can lead to depression. We often think that “letting it all out” will make us feel better, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, the opposite often happens and we end up feeling worse, or coaxing our friends into telling us just how bad we have it.

Wallowing in self pity only hampers personal development. We can get demotivated, feel like a victim, and convince ourselves that there is nothing good to build upon in our lives if we get too far into complaining. By intentionally practicing gratitude you can open up your vision to all of the good things you have going for you (hint: there are probably a lot). When you know what you have available, you can see more possibilities for the future and start develop those things, making your life even better. It’s a positive spiral that feels really great when you really get cranking.

A Challenge For You

As part of your Thanksgiving holiday, think of at least 2 things that you are grateful for. Write them down, share them in the comments, or do the easy thing and share them at the What’s Right With You? post at Creating a Better Life. Here is my contribution:

Many things are right in my life at this moment. I have many, many options for the future and I’m excited about taking different paths in the next year. I have enough money to sustain me for quite a while. I have great friends who live in great place, and I have an awesome partner who is smart AND good looking! All in all, I live a pretty charmed life.

For extra credit, take someone aside before dinner tomorrow and let them know how grateful you are to have him or her in your life.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Photo by eekim.

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No, I promise I haven’t gone nuts, run away to Sedona, Arizona and started meditating with my crystals for days on end! What I HAVE done is realized that, at least for me, some of this nutty sounding stuff seems to work. Read along and I’ll tell you my story.

What is Tapping?

Tapping, or Emotional Freedom Techniques, is a way of manipulating energy flows in your body by tapping on pressure points. It is similar to acupuncture, but without the needles. The basic technique of tapping is to identify a negative emotion that you are having, and where you feel it in your body (I feel just about everything in my stomach!). Then you go through a goofy-looking sequence of tapping various points on your body. Really, the whole thing is much easier demonstrated through video, so watch at least the first 5 minutes of this video to see what I’m talking about. [Note: if you're reading this in a feed reader, you may have to click through to see the video.]

Introduction to Tapping Video

Did you watch? If not, at least take a couple of minutes to skim my post: What is Tapping and How Can It Help You? I give a more thorough explanation there. Tapping can be used to deal with many different types of issues, ranging from anxiety and depression to physical pain. No one really understands why it works. To be honest, it could all be a placebo effect, or the benefits could from the fact that you focus your mind on the belief that you will fix the problem you’re tapping on. As I explained in my initial post, I was pretty skeptical about this stuff, but I decided that, aside from poking yourself in the eye, it can’t hurt! The only way to decide if it had any effect on me was to try it, which is exactly what I did.

Can EFT Cure Seasonal Affective Disorder?

Even though I was skeptical about tapping’s effectiveness, I decided to give it a try. One day I was feeling a lot of anxiety about a tough project at work, so I watched the intro video above and started my first round of tapping. I was pretty astonished by how effective it was at helping me ease my anxiety and get back to work. After that initial success, I started using tapping whenever I felt some stress or distress.

Wanting to know more about the process, I began working my way through the videos at Tapping.com. I read Tap Yourself Free (Read my review here. If you decide to buy the book through my link your purchase will help support the site.) and started working my way through some of the exercises. However, most of my tapping was reactive. I would feel something unpleasant, tap on it, and it would lessen or disappear entirely.

Gradually, I began to realize that I could tap proactively to deal with unhelpful thinking and emotional baggage I’ve been carrying around for a long time. One of the areas that I really worked on is my struggle with Seasonal Affective Disorder.

I’ve been dealing with S.A.D. since I was a college student in Chicago. Unfortunately, I live in an area that gets less sunshine than Seattle, Washington, and the “winter blues” effect everyone to some extent, but I really suffered. Every year in early autumn I would begin to feel depressed and start to dread the coming fall and winter. Those negative feelings would soon be joined by all of the physical symptoms: low energy, no desire to exercise, no libido, and carbohydrate cravings. My symptoms got so bad that for the past 4 years I’ve taken anti-depressant medication for about 6 months out of the year to handle them.

When I realized how effective tapping is for me, I decided to do a lot of work on my S.A.D. I did a lot of tapping on the emotional aspects of the condition using phrases like, “Even though I dread winter, I deeply and completely accept myself.” I really tried to feel the feelings that I go through during the winter and tap those feelings away. Then, I waited for autumn to come and for the feelings of dread and depression to follow.

It didn’t happen.

All of September and October, I was symptom free. I didn’t develop the emotional baggage that I have carried around every winter for nearly ten years. Now it is late November and it’s been cloudy for about six days straight. I still have the physical symptoms of S.A.D., namely my energy is quite low and I want to eat every potato chip within a 20 mile radius! But I don’t feel depressed. I don’t feel dread. I don’t feel like the sun will never come out again.

And I haven’t taken a pill since last spring. I just have not felt the need.

Getting Started With EFT

Now, please don’t stop taking your medication just because I said that I’m feeling better than I was a year ago. As I said above, no one really knows why or even if EFT works. It may not work for you. However, it definitely will not hurt you to try it. If you’re at all curious about EFT or the tapping process, I recommend you try out the following resources:

• Tapping.com. This site is owned by Magnus, who has been a great resource on my journey in EFT. I have watched the videos here, participated in the forums, and exchanged email and IM communications with Magnus. He’s truly committed to helping people learn these skills and make improvements in their lives. Most of the resources on the site are completely free.
• Tap Yourself Free. If you’re ready to go a bit deeper than the free videos and resources, I definitely recommend Magnus’ ebook. It includes worksheets to help you tap through many different types of emotional issues and explains some the nuances of using tapping for different types of issues such as forgiveness. You can read my review for more details.
• Try it On Everything. Click through to watch the trailer to this amazing film. It shows the process of people working through many types of issues, both physical and emotional, and getting incredible results in a short period of time. If you purchase the film soon you will get a huge number of bonuses from some expert EFT teachers. (Plus, you’ll help support this site!)

I hope that by sharing my story, I’ve inspired you to explore EFT, or to at least think about ways that you can deal with some issues in your life. I felt trapped by S.A.D. for a long time, and I’m sure you have areas in your life where you feel stuck. Begin to think creatively about those issues. Are there ways of dealing with them that you haven’t tried?

If there are any problems that you need help with, please let me know in the comments, or through a confidential email to maria@neverthesamerivertwice.com, and I’ll do my best to help you out.

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