On Purpose with Jay Shetty - 6 Simple and Effective Habits To Do Before Bed to Deepen Your Sleep & Thrive Productively During the Day

Episode Date: March 5, 2021

You know and love this podcast. Jay’s exclusive Genius workshops and meditations take your well-being to the next level. Try them today at https://shetty.cc/OnPurposeGenius Pause. Put your phone down. Take a deep breath. It’s time for bed! On this episode of On Purpose with Jay Shetty, Jay Shetty describes simple habits to build into your bedtime routine to improve your sleep and thrive 24 hours a day. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Eva Longoria. And I'm Maite Gomes-Rajon. We're so excited to introduce you to our new podcast, Hungry For History! On every episode, we're exploring some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, beverages from our Mexican culture. We'll share personal memories and family stories, decode culinary customs, and even provide a recipe or two

for you to try at home. Listen to Hungry For History on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on I Heart. I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions.

Like, can we create new senses for humans? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Intercosmos with David Eugelman on the IHART Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The one you feed explores how to build a fulfilling life admits the challenges we face.

We share manageable steps to living with more joy and less fear through guidance on emotional resilience, transformational habits, and personal growth. I'm your host, Eric Zimmer, and I speak with experts ranging from psychologists to spiritual teachers, offering powerful lessons to apply daily. Create the life you want now.

Listen to the one you feed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How are you feeling today? Are you resting and feeling energized? Or are you dragging a bit? Or maybe a lot? The fact is, most of us aren't getting enough sleep. Or the sleep we're getting isn't restorative. I'm sure that's not a surprise to you. So here's what I'm not going to do today. I'm not going to share with you data points about how under-slept we are and I'm not going to go into the litany of health and other issues that not getting enough sleep can lead to because chances are you know all this. The real question is for most of us, how can I get more sleep or how can I get better

and deeper sleep? Sleep that leaves me feeling truly rested. That's what we're going to talk about today because we know lack of sleep is a problem for most of us so today we're focusing on real practical solutions. I guarantee that you're going to hear something new today, something that could be an absolute game changer when it comes to setting you up for more and better sleep. According to the sleep expert Matthew Walker who is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley and the author of the New York Times best seller why we sleep, one out of three of us is chronically underslept. Okay, so I did sneak in one bit of day to there, but the point is

you're not alone. Lack of sleep is a modern epidemic, even more so in this current age of the pandemic when we're stretched in so many directions and stress levels can feel so high. But let's focus on the positive, instead of focusing on the problem. Let's focus on what we can do to address it. First, let's go through things that are actually interfering with the amount or quality of our sleep, the things we need to stop doing. Then I'm going to share some things we want to start doing so we can sleep better. The first thing we can do is to stop artificially extending our day. This has a few components, so let's break them down. You know how it goes. You're working all day. You've got deadlines to meet and projects to complete. Periodically,

for a break, you switch over and check email or social media, you grab some lunch and scroll through the news headlines, or maybe even eat while you're working, then it's evening and dinner time, and before you know it, you look at the clock and realize you should be going to bed. But you don't. Just a little bit more. You say to yourself or your partner as you click on that next episode of the good place or Ozark or you keep scrolling through your Instagram or TikTok feed before you know it. It's midnight or 1am. Finally you brush your teeth, put on your sleep clothes and crash.

The next morning as the alarm goes off, you can't believe how quickly the night's gone by. You're still tired, you make a vow. Tonight, I really am going to bed earlier. But I don't have to tell you what happens. I am absolutely not judging this behavior. I do it sometimes too. I know how hard it can be to get yourself to bed so you can get that full night of sleep. We know we need rest and yet when it's time to turn in, something just keeps us up. My wife, Rady, is so much better than me at getting to bed at a healthy time. She'll tell you that sometimes I even try to talk her into staying up late with me to watch a movie and she's really good at turning me down when she has to be up early.

Breaking down this scenario, there are actually a few key things we've done not just through the night, but through the whole day that are making it harder for us to get to bed at night. So let's hit rewind and see what we can do differently to encourage an earlier bedtime. Let's start back during your work day. Maybe you've got tons of work done. You were super focused for chunks of time that helped you be productive. It wasn't how you spent those hours, but how you spent the minutes in between that may have been keeping you up at night. For starters, most of us work indoors,

and because of that, we're exposed to only limited amount of daylight, and the lack of exposure to natural light during the day can disrupt our sleep clock. As it turns out, humans are built to take our cues from nature when it comes to our sleep timing. Part of this is our circadian rhythm, which is a term you've probably heard before. It's the internal process that regulates our sleep and wakefulness cycle. It turns our bodies systems up and down throughout the day, making us alert during the day and sleep here at night. We all have a slightly different circadian rhythm, which is why some of the monks I used to live with had no trouble rising at 4 a.m. every day. Incidentally, even back then, I had to turn to those monks for a little help getting me up in the

morning. I'm not naturally an early riser, at least not that early. I wake up at 6 a.m., and that's fine, but any earlier than that was really difficult. We all naturally fall somewhere in those ranges, but regardless, the way your brain communicates to your body about sleep and waitfulness time is through a hormone called melatonin.

When melatonin increases, it kick stars our sleep processes, and our production of melatonin is regulated by our exposure to daylight. Now here's the takeaway. Too little exposure to natural light in the day can lead to decreased production of melatonin, and that can make it harder to get into our sleep cycle at night. In a moment, we'll talk about how to resolve that.

For now, let's move on to the next issue that may have been disrupting your sleep. Have you ever been talking to someone and they say something and you're tracking them and then they say something else totally unrelated and you're like, wait, what? It's so confusing when there's no transition. Our bodies feel the same way.

Remember how, in the scenario I described, you stayed up until you just couldn't stay awake anymore, then crashed into sleep. There was no transition. Aside from maybe brushing your teeth and putting on your sleep clothes, you didn't prepare your body for sleep. And as a result, it can take a while to catch up and make the transition. That can look like getting in bed and not actually being able to fall asleep even though you're tired, or it can

look like being so overtired that you fall asleep right away, but your sleep isn't restorative. So we've got to work on our sleep transitions. And the last element I want to zero in on in our scenario is something that's called revenge bedtime procrastination. Now, that's an evocative and provocative name, right? Here's what happens. All day long, demands are made on our time. Maybe by work, maybe by our kids, our extended family or our friends. Wherever we turn, someone needs something. They need a spreadsheet or a report or our help or attention or dinner. By the time it's evening, we just want to relax. And if we're working late, or we have kids who need to

be bathed and read to and put to bed, and then got on a glass of water and put back to bed, and then sung to and then put back to bed yet again, by the time we have time for ourselves, it might be close to or even after our own ideal bedtime. So what do we do? We stay awake. I know so many people who tell me, J, it's the only time I have. I know I should go to bed, but I just need some time to relax and not have any demands on me. It makes absolute sense that we behave this way. We're trying to carve out time for ourselves. That's a totally legitimate need. But unfortunately, trying to meet it in this way puts us into a sleep deficit. Especially if the way we stay awake is by scrolling

on our feeds or watching television. Not only does blue light from screens keep us awake, but we're probably also getting stimulating information. Either we're watching something really dramatic or scary or we're reading equally scary headlines or taking a negativity. None of this is conducive to sleep. Combined with waiting until you're exhausted to go to bed and not getting enough daylight during the day, it's a recipe for exhaustion. Here are some things we can do differently, so we sleep more and better. First, during the day, get more sunlight.

When you take your brakes instead of staying on the computer, look out the window. Or better yet, step outside for a few minutes. Let your eyes take in the daylight, so that your body can later produce that melatonin that helps to kickstart your sleep cycle when it's time for bed. And look out the window, or going outside has another benefit.

When you're in deep focusfocus mode at work, your brain is releasing neurochemicals to help you stay focused. But you can reach a point where you've got so many of these chemicals in your system that after a time, it gets harder and harder to focus, until you have to quit. Neuroscientists say that when you step outside or look through the window at a landscape

that expanding of your eye gaze to a wider scene actually helps to reset some of those brain chemicals so that when you go back to work, it's easier to focus again. Now, if you're in an urban area, you might be looking at a building out your window. So instead, try and look up towards the sky to get the same effect. You don't have to be looking at something specific in the distance. In fact, it's better to just soften your gaze. Think of it as switching from a close-up lens to a wide-angle lens on a camera

or to a panoramic mode. Just take it all in without looking in at the detail in something in particular. So that's what we can do during the daytime. Let's look at what you can do at nighttime which is to create a new sleep routine. I say a new sleep routine because the thing is most of us already have some bad habits around sleep that we developed unintentionally. We've created a sort of negative sleep routine by default. So now we're going to create an intentional one. Some of you parents will be familiar with this idea because you have a sleep routine for your kids.

Maybe they go to bath and some songs a few minutes of silly play to get some energy out, whatever it is. That routine repeated night after night helps to cue them that it's soon time for sleep. Grownups need these cues too. When you think about creating your sleep routine, I'll give you a hint. You're going to want to start it probably way earlier than you think. Ideally, your sleep routine starts as it's getting dark out, so the timing will change a bit with the seasons. What you're going to do first is to welcome the darkness. Remember the circadian rhythm?

When it gets dark out, our bodies know to start making that melatonin that initiates the sleep cycle. But if we go home and we've got all the lights on, then we just flip them off and expect to go to sleep, we're setting ourselves up for failure. I'm a huge fan of designing your environment, and there's scientific evidence to support its impact. One way we can do this is to keep the lights low at night. Now, I'm not saying you have to do everything by candlelight, right?

That's probably not going to work out so well. But maybe you have only some lights on. You can change the dimming of the light bulbs to a softer light. Or you use a mixture of candlelight and some artificial light. So that's part of your sleep routine. Try and maintain a sense of evening with your lighting. Another element we can blend into our sleep routine

that does double duty is a sleep transition period. Here's where the double duty comes in. We already talked about how revenge bedtime procrastination is where we stay up just so we can get some time to ourselves. But the problem is we don't use that time wisely. Watching dramatic shows or scrolling through social media doesn't actually relax us. In fact, it can increase our stress. So as part of our sleep routine, you're still going to get some U time, but you're going to engage in an activity that also helps to release some of that stress.

For example, you can make time to journal preferably by hand, so you're not getting more screen time just before bed. You can meditate by simply sitting in a comfortable position with your spine straight and taking long deep breaths in through your nose, then breathing out through your mouth. You can do gentle yoga, such as Yin yoga, which is very slow moments or held poses or yoga-nidra, which is like a deep body meditation. Get creative! One of my friends was really frustrated because by the time her second child was finally asleep, there was no time for her to relax before bed. She realized that during 20-30 minutes, it took her daughter to fall asleep, she could get

on the floor next to her daughter's bed and do some gentle stretching as part of her own preparation for sleep. You can also read a book. Incidentally, research shows that when you read a fiction book before bed, preferably not anything scary, otherwise stressful, it actually boosts your overall creativity. Plus, it helps to transition your brain out of work mode. Or you can take a tip from Oprah. Every night before bed, she takes a relaxing warm bath.

Now Oprah may or may not know this, but there's some signs that support taking a warm bath or shower before bed as it can help to prepare us for sleep. You know how it can be hard to get out of a nice hot bath or shower because when you get out you could catch a chill. Interestingly, it's actually that drop in body temperature after the bath or shower that prepares us for sleep. At night, our body temperature drops and this is part of our sleep cycle. Cooling off your body in this way after a warm bath or shower or turning down the dial

on the thermostat a few degrees in your bedroom can support your sleep. This is what it sounds like inside the box car. I'm journalist Ann Almorton in my podcast City of the Rails. I plung into the dark world of America's railroads searching for my daughter Ruby who ran off to hop train. I'm just like stuck on this train, not now. It's where I'm going to end up. And I jump.

Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters, living outside society, off the grid, and on the edge. I was in love with a lifestyle and the freedom this community. No one understands who we truly are. The Rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood, history, and the thing we call the American Dream. It's the last vestige of American freedom. Everything about it is extreme.

You're either going to die, or you can have this incredible rebirth, and really understand who you are. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the city of the rails. Listen to city of the rails on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Or cityoftherails.com. In the 1680s, a feisty opera singer burned down a nunnery and stole away with her secret lover. In 1810, a pirate queen negotiated her cruiseway to total freedom, with all their loot.

During World War II, a flirtatious gambling double agent helped keep D-Day a secret from the Germans. What are these stories having common? They're all about real women who were left out of your history books. If you're tired of missing out, check out the Womanica podcast, a daily women's history podcast highlighting women you may not have heard of, but definitely should know about. I'm your host Jenny Kaplan, and for me, diving into these stories is the best part of my day.

I learned something new about women from around the world and leaf-healing amazed, inspired, and sometimes shocked. Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Eva Longoria. I'm Maite Degel-Mr. Hone. We're so excited to introduce you to our new podcast, Hungry for History! On every episode, we're exploring some of our favorite dishes ingredients beverages from our Mexican culture We'll share personal memories and family stories decode culinary customs and even provide a

Recipe here too for you to try at home corner flower both. Oh, you can't decide. I can't decide. I love both You know, I'm a flower tortilla flower your team flower. I'm team flower. I need a shirt Team flower team core Join us as we explore surprising and lesser known corners of Latinx culinary history and traditions. I mean, these are these legends, right? Apparently this guy Juan Mendes. He was making these tacos wrapped in these huge tortilla to keep it warm and he was transporting them in a burro, hence the name the burritos. Listen to Hungary for history with Ivalongoria and Maite Gomez Rejón as part of the Michael

Tura podcast network available on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I also wanted to share with you a few celebrity sleep habits. According to Best Health magazine, writer Stephen King has a quirky one. Before bed, he has to make sure that the open side of his pillowcase is facing the center of the bed. He can't explain why, but he swears it helps him sleep. Reportedly, actor Tom Cruise is such a heavy snorer that he actually had a sound proof, or I guess snore proof from, built in his house so he wouldn't wake anyone.

And rapper Eminem reportedly covers the windows in his bedroom with aluminium foil to block out all light when he's trying to sleep, even when he's traveling and staying in hotels. Whatever you come up with, a sleep ritual that's truly relaxing and includes keeping lights and sound low will help you get more and better sleep. And guess what, your better sleep routine started even earlier than you realized. When you started taking those nature-based breaks during your work day, you're taking some time to de-stress for yourself. So not only is it restoring your ability to focus

and getting you that great natural sunlight that will help your body make melatonin, it's also you time. That's probably actually the critical element to stopping revenge, sleep procrastination, finding more time for yourself during the day so you don't feel jammed up and overtaxed at night. Maybe it's taking 30 minutes in the morning or over lunch to exercise or go for a walk or listen to a podcast. Whatever it is that supports you, you've got to find that time, even if it's just a little and claim it for yourself.

Okay, so here's another sleep strategy that's failing you and that you're going to need to stop doing if you want to get more and better sleep. Stop catching up on sleep on the weekends. But Jay, you might be saying, that's when I can get sleep. Here's the problem with that approach. If we're only getting maybe five or six hours of sleep a night during the week and then trying to get seven or eight on the weekend, it's creating something sleep researchers called social jet lag. You know, when you fly to a new time zone, it takes

for a while for your body to adjust. Like, I don't want to fly back to London, especially now that I'm flying all the way from California and flying less, it takes me a week to adjust a London time. Scientists say it takes about a day per hour of time to change to adjust to the new time. When we binge on sleep on the weekends, we're actually creating a similar time distortion in our bodies. If we're used to going to bed at 11pm and waking up at 6am during the week and on the weekend, we're staying up until 1am and not waking up until 8am or 9am, our body gets

really confused. It confuses us circadian rhythm, because remember that our circadian rhythm is trying to sink us up with the natural cycles of daylight and dark. And the result is chronic fatigue. Unfortunately, researchers just say you really can't bank or catch up on sleep. It's best to stick to as regular sleep schedule as possible. Now here's great news for you parents out there. My friends with children often complain that when it comes to talk about sleep, it's just depressing. So many times, especially when their kids are young, they just don't have the luxury or control over their schedules, especially now

during the pandemic. It's hard to create time for themselves during the day or a reliable sleep routine and getting 7-8 hours of sleep per night feels like the distant dream. On the bright side, lots of you parents of kids have that routine of getting up at the same time even on weekends built in. You've got a little human alarm clock who doesn't care what the week is it. That might actually help to regulate your sleep cycle by preventing social jet lag. But again, it only works if you're not staying up super late the night before. But here's the second good piece of news, and I'll tell you, this was really surprising to me.

Researchers took groups of study participants and had them either get regular but decreased sleep, such as only 5 to 6 hours per night. Then the night before an exam, they had one group get the regular short shortened amount of sleep, and they had the other get a full night sleep. Then the next day, they administered an exam to both groups. Guess who performed better? It was the routine sleepers. Those who got less sleep. Those who suddenly got a longer night of sleep actually did worse. The scientists concluded that it's actually better performance-wise to get a regular interval of sleep than to bounce all over and get lots of sleep one night and then go back to less sleep.

Now obviously it's better for your overall health if your routine is to sleep. That's 7 to 9 hours that most of us need. But for everyone else, when it's not possible, know that if you can get that shorter amount of sleep on a consistent basis, at least in the shorter term, your body has a surprising ability to adapt. Okay, so lots of us know that caffeine and alcohol aren't great for this sleep. The caffeine gives us an artificial boost of energy that lets us down later. What's actually happening there, according to Matthew Walker, is that throughout the

day, your brain releases a chemical called adenosine. And as this accumulates in your body, you start to get tired. Sleep flushes the adenosine from your system, so you start over the next day. When we drink caffeine, it blocks the adenosine receptors in our brains. But that adenosine doesn't go away. It accumulates. So when the caffeine finally dissipates, there's all that adenosine that's built up, waiting for us, and we get that big drop of tiredness.

So, as you've probably heard, if you're going to drink coffee, it's best to limit it to one to two cups and to drink it in the morning before lunchtime so that adenosine has a chance to build up and get you nice and sleepy for bedtime. You've probably also heard that while various sleep aids can be effective in helping us get to sleep, they can disrupt the quality of our sleep, or our bodies can start to become dependent on them. But here's a really surprising way to build up healthy sleep chemicals in our brain. Cuddle. Yes, you heard that correctly. I said cuddle, snuggle, give and get nice long hugs, hold hands, strike up a meaningful

conversation with a friend, or another loved one. Take the walk in nature or look out the window and what's the birds or sit by a body of water. Do a gratitude meditation or cuddle your dog. What all these things do is to help you build up a brain chemical called serotonin. You can think of it as the contentment chemical. Serotonin is associated with feelings of connection

and calm. The only really important effect it has on your sleep is this. Remember when I talked about how your body uses a chemical called melatonin to communicate about when it's time to go to sleep and wake up? Melatonin is synthesized from serotonin. It's made from serotonin. Now incidentally, this can be a reason why it's hard to sleep when you're depressed and upset.

If your brain isn't making or processing much serotonin, it impacts how much melatonin you can make. So foster that sense of connection, pet your dog or cat, write our card to a loved one, have a loving heart to heart chat with your partner or a friend. It will actually ease your brain and your body into a bed or night sleep. And you want to know what else increases serotonin? Exercise. Now, everything in J. I'd rather do cuddling.

I'm with you, though, have grown to appreciate and enjoy exercise, thanks in large part to the influence of my wife. Still, studies consistently show that regular exercise leads to better sleep. But here's something interesting. Results from a health survey of more than 23,000 people in Germany showed that not only did exercise positively impact sleep, but specifically strength training had a positive effect.

That's exercise using some kind of resistance such as weights or your body weight like push-ups or pull-ups. Cardio training, like running or cycling or for me tennis or hiking, still has a positive effect in sleep duration and quality, but strength training may have more of an impact. Okay, I know I shed a lot of information with you, so I'm going to give you a quick rep cap. For starters, in the morning, try and get up about the same time each day. I personally don't drink caffeine, but if you choose to limit the amount and timing to

you're not drinking it after lunch time. And if you can get that exercise in first thing in the morning or even lunch, or maybe even late afternoon, not only will that be plenty of time for your body to cool back down and release melatonin for bed, you'll also have already done something for yourself. So that will reduce that urge to feel you have to stay up later just to get some me time. During the day, remember to not just take breaks but to try and take nature-based breaks, at least some of the time. Towards evening, as it starts to get dark, try and keep lighting around the house low

and especially as bedtime nears the sounds down and soothing. Sleep is one of the best, most impactful gifts you can give yourself, and I like to think of it as a way to love myself and to maximize my impact during the day. And I want to share with you my final five tips on an ideal night routine. And it comes in the form of an acronym called night

N-I-G-H-T. N means no phone one hour before bed. I mean set your intentions the night before for the next day so, heal through writing, anything that's troubled you write it down journaling. And T, set an exact time for sleep and plan for it. Getting deeper and better sleep is actually one of my goals for the year. So let's do it together. Drop me a note in the comments on Instagram, tag me in your post while you're post listening to this. And I can't wait for you to hear our next episode. Thanks for listening. Hey guys, this is Jay again, just a few more quick things before you leave. I know we try to focus on the good every day and I want to make that easier for you. Would you like to get a short email from me every week that gives you an extra dose of positivity? Weekly wisdom is my newsletter where I jot down whatever's

on my mind that I think may uplift your week. Basically little bits of goodness that are going to improve your well-being. The short newsletters all about growth and sending positivity straight to your inbox. Read it with a cup of tea, forward it to a friend, and let these words brighten your day. To sign up, just go to jshatty.me and drop your email in the pop-up. If you have trouble finding it, just scroll to the very bottom of the page, and you'll see the sign up. Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy my weekly wisdom newsletter.

This podcast was produced by Dust Light Productions. Our executive producer from Dust Light is Misha Yusuf. Our senior producer is Juliana Bradley. Our associate producer is Jacqueline Castillo. Valentino Rivera is our engineer. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions and special thanks to Rachel Garcia, the Dust Light Development and Operations Coordinator. and special thanks to Rachel Garcia, the dust-like development in operations coordinated.

What do a flirtatious gambling double agent in World War II? An opera singer who burned down an honorary to kidnap her lover, and a pirate queen who walked free with all of her spoils, haven't comment. They're all real women who were left out of your history books. You can hear these stories and more on the Womanica podcast. Check it out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. When my daughter ran off to hop trains, I was terrified I'd never see her again, so I followed her into the train yard.

This is what it sounds like inside the box car. And into the city of the rails, there I found a surprising world, so brutal and beautiful that it changed me, but the rails do that to everyone. There is another world out there, and if you want to play with the devil, you're gonna find them down in the rail yard. Undenail Morton, come with me to find out what waits for us in the city of the rails. Listen to city of the rails, on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Or, cityoftherails.com. Regardless of the progress you've made in life, I believe we could all benefit from wisdom on handling common problems, making life seem more manageable, now more than ever. I'm Eric Zimmer, host of the One-Dee Feed Podcast, where I interview thought-provoking guests who offer practical wisdom that you can use to create the life you want. 25 years ago, I was homeless and addicted to heroin. I've made my way through addiction recovery, learned to navigate my clinical depression, and figured out how to build a fulfilling life. The one you feed has over 30 million downloads

and was named one of the best podcasts by Apple Podcasts. Oprah Magazine named this is one of 22 podcasts to help you live your best life. You always have the chance to begin again and feed the best of yourself. The trap is the person often thinks they'll act once they feel better. It's actually the other way around. I have had over 500 conversations with world-renowned experts and yet I'm still striving to be better. Join me on this journey. Listen to the one you feed on the iHeart Radio App Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

Listen to the one you feed on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.