Can't Sleep?

For the times when the mind just won't shut up...

It’s 3 in the morning, and you still can’t sleep. You tried everything. Sleeping on your back. Sleeping on your stomach. Sleeping on both sides. Scrolled for a few minutes. Started yawning. Thought… this time you will.

Still couldn’t.

Tossed and turned. Tried moving the pillow. Focused on your breath. Counted back to hundred. Still no sleep. And you know what will happen tomorrow if you don’t. You’re going to be groggy and lazy all day. Irritated and tired. That thought opens another tab in the mind. So now you’re thinking about you really need to sleep.

And out of the blue you start thinking about something someone said three weeks ago. You start a mental argument. Coming up with all the reasons why they were wrong and how stupid your reply was. I shouldn’t have said that, you think. Instead…

Oops… I need to sleep. Let’s sleep. What am I doing???

And a few seconds later… the mind comes up with another thought and another and another after that. And you pick up your phone again, frustrated. And if you’re a highly sensitive person, this may happen almost everyday.

Now, there are many methods out there on “how to engineer perfect sleep”. This one here was particularly good. Environmental factors do play a role in priming us for sleep. Yellow lights in the evening. Dark room. Temperature between 65 and 70 F. A warm relaxing shower before bed. All these work.

But what do you do when they don’t?

External calm will have no effect on you when your mind just won’t shut up. It’s like going to the mountains for some peace and calm and you spend the whole weekend thinking about the spreadsheet you need to turn in on Tuesday.

If you’re thinking I’m going to ask you to meditate and watch your thoughts, the answer would be no. They work, but again, sometimes… they don’t.

I’m just going to share with you the truth. The truth of why you can’t sleep. A simple truth I’ve personally experienced. And it’s your choice what you do with it.

I have seen people sleep on railway stations. Train announcements, people rushing, babies crying, trains coming and leaving. It had zero effect on them. That proved to me that environment had very little to do with sleep.

I saw the same pattern again. I watched a documentary on YouTube about an African tribe called Hadzabe. They are the last true nomadic hunter-gatherer societies on earth. They live in northern Tanzania. The people of the tribe go hunting early in the morning, catch a small prey like a squirrel, or a mongoose. Have it for breakfast. And keep walking the forest until they find something big enough to feed the whole tribe. In the evening, they cooked, ate, sang and danced around the fire. And then… dropped to sleep.

Literally dropped on the ground and slept within 2 seconds.

They didn’t “try” to sleep. They didn’t do focus exercises to sleep. They didn’t have a warm relaxing bath. They didn’t have an AC set between 65 and 70 F. They didn’t have a 8 inch mattress and 10 pillows. They dropped on the ground and slept.

The truth is: The mind follows the body.

When you’re too drunk, the body sleeps. When you’re too tired to walk, the body sits. The body is intelligent. And it knows when to turn off.

The thing is… we have surrounded ourselves with so much luxury and comfort that our bodies have forgotten what physical tiredness even feels like. In my childhood, I never had trouble sleeping. I played football or cricket for 6 hours non-stop. And then when I came back, I just ate and dropped dead on the bed.

I cannot stress this enough but the most important thing for sleep is physical tiredness. The kind of tiredness that even moving your hand feels impossible. Do you remember when was the last time you felt that?

And trust me, when you’re that tired, you won’t even feel like picking up your phone. Forget scrolling. Thoughts have no place in an exhausted body. Thinking requires energy. And if your mind won’t shut up at night, it means you have not used that energy.

And I’ll leave you with just one suggestion here… if you want to sleep well, tire yourself up. Play, run, walks, jog, swim, do Yoga. Anything that creates real physical tiredness in the body.

Physically exhaust your body to quiet your mind. You will sleep like a baby.

– Karun

P.S: I wrote a free book called “Depth Over Noise”. It’s a book about building a life that aligns with who you truly are. The chapter on ‘Routine’ explains the above in more depth. Get it here.

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