What is the best way to fall asleep fast?

Sleepy Fox On A Stump

Do you have trouble falling asleep?  Like, no matter how hard you try, you often just can’t seem to fall asleep?  In this post, I’ll tell you about the best way I’ve found to fall asleep fast almost 100% of the time, regardless of what’s happening in my life.

There’s a great quote from Conversations With God: “What you resist persists”.  The quote goes on to say “What you look at disappears”.  If you think deeply about the quote, you realize it’s truth, and it’s almost universal applicability.  For a number of years now, I’ve been applying the concept to use it as a tactic to fall asleep fast.

Here’s what I did.  I turned falling asleep into a game of opposites.  No counting sheep, counting breaths, counting down, or anything of the sort.  We’ve probably all been there; counting something in the hope of falling asleep because we know we have to get up early in the morning.  But because we’re so stressed or so excited, we just can’t seem to turn off our brain and mentally relax enough to be able to fall asleep.

Here’s the key: STOP TRYING TO FALL ASLEEP!  Seriously.  Stop. Trying.  Right now, you’re probably getting ready to hit that back button in your browser, thinking you’ve wasted your time spent reading this thus far.  WAIT!  Give me a chance here, please 🙂  Read on for details, and please try this method for yourself before you just write it off.  Not only is this method simple, it’s actually also easy.

Okay, enough messing around.  Here’s the method I use to fall asleep, in detail.  Much of the time, when I lay down to go to sleep, I found that if I close my eyes, it somehow revs up my brain, generating thoughts like crazy!  Thoughts about what happened today, what’s going to happen tomorrow, what I did wrong, what went right, on and on and on.  The more I try to fall asleep, the more awake I become.  One night, the idea of “what you resist persists” came to me while trying to fall asleep.  I thought, why not try falling asleep by not trying to fall asleep?  Yeah, yeah, I know, I said enough messing around.  So here it is…

When you go to bed, instead of closing your eyes to fall asleep, approach falling asleep like a game of opposittes.  Here’s what I mean:

  1. Lay down, keep your eyes open.
  2. think whatever thoughts you want- don’t try to control what you’re thinking about
  3. Just stare.  Stare at the ceiling or the wall, or whatever.  Make sure your room is as dark as possible.
  4. Let your thoughts drift wherever they want.
  5. Here’s the game part: Instead of trying to fall asleep, try to stay awake!  See how long you can keep your eyes open.  If you feel your eyes starting to close, pop them open.  If you realize your eyes have already closed the whole way, pop them back open!

I know it may seem very counter-intuitive, but give this method a try.  If you’re anything like me, you may be very pleasantly surprised by how well this method works!  By not resisting or fighting being awake, and by playfully resisting falling asleep, you lay the groundwork for relaxation, which leads to sleep.

I would love to hear how this works for you, or if you have an unusual method that you use to fall asleep.  Please leave a comment below to share your experiences with me and other readers!



Last Updated: March 6, 2024

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