Day 300 - Correcting Sleep Patterns

For as long as I can remember, I've spent the majority of my nights in a silent fight with myself. The basic idea was to postpone falling asleep as long as I can, to make full use of my time at night. Why was the nighttime special to me? It was time I had to myself.

Primarily in a family setting when this habit formed, I enjoyed social interaction during the day, but when the late evening arrived and everyone is doing their own thing, I would go into learning and work mode. It seemed the best way to use my time, and through this I developed an emphasized value on the late hours of the day. The results: Many late nights due to saving / delaying my work until the night & I utilized these late nights for self growth and understanding. It was opposite of how I perceived my peers and family to be. This inflated my ego superiority through "I am investing my free time into understanding whatever I am curious about." In college, most of my free (night) time to myself disappeared, and I doubled up on social time. This caused me to react and subtly define social time negatively as "social distraction." Now, I am for the most part free of obligated time structure, so I have full responsibility of my schedule. For the first time, I get to observe myself spending time throughout the entire day without anything to blame but me.

What have I found? I haven't made the changes I want to see with any amount of consistency.

What do I want? To spend my day time effectively and start respecting my sleep cycle.

How? Through self-corrected living application of course!

Why? Because fighting sleep usually means unpleasant mornings that can put  my whole day in a slump.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I do not need to sleep very much and thus can afford to postpone sleeping.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not realize the connection between how/when I fall asleep and how/when I wake up.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to think "I'll sleep when I die."

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I am special because I can get by with less sleep than others.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I am cool and special because I can stay up the latest and rise the earliest.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to compare myself to others.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to value the nighttime hours more than other daytime hours.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not take ownership of and be responsible for how I spend my time in every moment, through blaming others for my daytime social preoccupation.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to tell myself that I utilize the night hours best in being the most productive then, when the reality is that I am not always productive in the nighttime.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to limit myself by maintaining a routine of mental alertness and increased work ethic only at nighttime.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to reserve only the nighttime for self-introspection and self-growth.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that it's too difficult to blog during the day because I am not forced to do it just yet. This is a subtle delay justification that I'm not very conscious of, but nonetheless, has a powerful effect. This one point of delay justification has been defining me too heavily and I will not continue to allow it to dictate how I do what when!

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not investigate my sleeping habits until now.

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I commit myself to begin watching when/how I fall asleep and when/how my wake up commences.

When and as I see myself postponing my blog/work until nighttime because "I don't have to do it yet," I stop I breathe. I realize that I am compromising myself, my process, and so the entire process of the human race, in that one single moment of "I don't have to do it yet." I commit myself to assist and support myself to no longer utilize this excuse design of putting off work and abdicating self-responsibility in each and every moment.

When and as I see myself fighting with myself to stay awake longer, I stop I breathe. I realize that sleeping might be whats best for all, for providing myself adequate time to rest will allow me to be fully ready to walk an effective day tomorrow. I commit myself to embodying the realization of continuity between days and respecting the sleep cycle as an equal and one value of time spent. Till here no further do I hide the connection of my tomorrow from my today. No more do I allow myself to distract myself instead of going to bed.

From here forward, I will be mindful of my sleeping habits, and I commit myself to on the fly correction when and as I see myself abusing my nighttime.

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