How To Relax A Busy Brain Before Bed

Picture this; it's 9pm, your baby just settled down for the third time for the night and you know you probably have two or three hours until he'll wake up again. That's valuable sleeping time. So what does your brain do? Go into overdrive of course. In this situation when I say 'you' or 'your' I suppose I'm actually talking to myself, but your brain not being able to switch off is definitely not exclusive to people with babies and certainly applied to me before I did.

I've always been an overthinker; if I'm not planning some sort of creative project in my head then I'm probably thinking about what I might wear or eat the next day or maybe analysing a conversation that happened three days ago. It's even worse since I've had a baby. Little room for thoughts during the day aside from 'is my baby hungry?' or 'is my baby warm enough?' means that as soon as my head hits that pillow at night my brain goes HELLO TIME TO THINK.

And now more than ever it's quite important that I don't. I really need to shut it down so I can get at least a couple of hours sleep in order to be a semi functioning human. So what have I learnt about how to quieten that busy brain of mine? 

Keep a notebook handy // My brain is always fizzing with ideas at the most inconvenient times so I keep a notebook by my bed, in the living room and in my bag so if inspiration strikes I have somewhere to brain dump my thoughts so I don't have to, well, think them. If I don't do this then I worry I'll forget said idea and I'll overthink it hoping it'll stick. 

No bedmin // This rule was actually set by Matthew because it was me who was guilty of bringing all the admin to bed. We often don't get chance to speak properly during the day when he's at work and I'm looking after Bobby so often as soon as we get in bed I'll throw lots of life admin questions his way hoping we can be productive. It's not exactly a good way to wind down for bed though. So from now on, no admin before bed. 

Take five minutes // Rather than pressuring myself to immediately get to sleep as soon as the opportunity presents itself I make sure I take five minutes (at least) just to do something for myself. This is usually something like making sure I do my proper skincare routine before bed, jotting some creative thoughts down or popping downstairs for a snack in preparation for lots of nighttime wake ups.

Think about something trivial // I can't not think, but what I can try to do is control what I think about. So instead of trying to answer life's big questions or plan my next career move as I'm trying to drift off, I think about something trivial or boring and (I'm not sure if this makes sense) I think about it slowly. Yes, I'll often find my thoughts drifting to something more important, but it's a work in progress!