‘Can’t sleep due to worry? May I suggest the posts “Sleep Your Way to Happiness” and “Worry Efficiently“?
Here’s a new technique, instead of laying there, worrying: count your blessings!
This employs a number of techniques:
First, you are interrupting your negative downward spiral by actively occupying your mind with positives. Contemplating the positives in your life have proven to reverse the direction of negative thoughts into an upward spiral (Martin Seligman, Emmons & McCullough). Seligman also says that just by writing down three positives before bedtime can help you sleep better.
Second, it uses the coping technique of DISTRACT, deliberately interrupting your negative thoughts. ( Sonja Lyubomirsky, in her book The How of Happiness) identifies the cessation of worrying as one of the Happiness Habits. Distract is one of the key components of this technique. Another is that if you find it necessary to worry, worry efficiently.
Third, by thinking about the positives, you are pumping up your positive muscles. The stronger your positive mind is, the easier it is to ward off negative thoughts and see the positive side of life. Or as Marci Shimoff writes in her book, Happy for No Reason, “What you appreciate, appreciates.”
There are many, many ways to count your blessings. SO many, in fact, that when I originally listed them in this article, I realized that it could be its own separate article. Here you can find EIGHT different styles to count your blessings.
Now, all that said, your objective is to go to sleep, not whip your mind up TOO much by thinking positive. Just pick a flavor of positivity, gaze upon it languidly until you fall into a nice, happy slumber.
Sweet dreams
Frank Clayton
Licensed Professional Counselor
read it — will work on it thanks Nadine