The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Midnight Meditations: Calm Your Thoughts, Still Your Body, and Return to Sleep by Courtney E. Ackerman

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

Midnight Meditations: Calm Your Thoughts, Still Your Body, and Return to Sleep by Courtney E. Ackerman Stop chasing sleep and start welcoming rest with these 150 peaceful, nighttime meditations to make falling back to sleep easier than ever. There’s nothing worse than waking up in the middle of the night and being unable to fall back asleep. Now with Midnight Meditations, you can be gently guided back to sleep faster than ever. These 150 peaceful, soothing meditations help you welcome and embrace the rest, relaxation, and restorative sleep every night has to offer. With these simple, guided meditations you can tune out distractions that hinder your rest and tap into the tranquility of the night. In Midnight Meditations, you will discover how to calm your racing thoughts, stop chasing sleep, and start receiving an undisturbed night’s rest so you can make the most of your days.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this boss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast oh my gosh who saw that coming be sure you go and listen to all the podcasts that are on the chris voss show it's approaching about a the podcasts that are on the Chris Foss Show.

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lineup of dax and audio enhancement devices at ifi-audio.com her new book that's coming out midnight meditations calm your thoughts still Body, and Return to Sleep. This book is going to be coming out on June. If I can get my computer to work with me. Or June 8th. Courtney E. Ackerman is her name. She's the author who's going to be talking to us today about her beautiful book.

And also, guess what? She is the author of several books on positive psychology topics, including My Pocket Meditations for Self-Compassion, My Pocket Positivity, The Illustrated Book of Mindful Meditations for Mindless Moments. Her early travels sparked her interest in learning about human nature at a young age. This interest led her to Claremont Graduate University, where she earned her master's degree in positive psychology and program evaluation. She works as a researcher and survey consultant in California. She enjoys traveling, spending times with her dogs, sampling beer at nearby breweries, and playing board games or video

games to de-stress. And what would you know, she's on the show with us today. Welcome to the show, Courtney. How are you? I'm great. Thank you for that wonderful introduction. We gave it as much buildup as we possibly could. I like the part of your bio, sampling beer at nearby breweries. Yes, I'm a big craft beer drinker.

I'm kind of a beer snob, I'm sorry to say. Yeah. I do love big craft beer drinker. I'm kind of a beer snob. I'm sorry to say. Yeah. I do love a good beer though. I used to like the days when I used to sample vodka from various bottles, but that's another story. So anyway, let's talk about you. Give us your plugs so people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah. Well, you can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on the Simon & Schuster page. I've got my author page there if you want to learn more about my books. And I recently started an Instagram account. I'm really late on the whole

Instagram thing. It's not my strong suit. So I had to sort of figure out what I was doing first. But you can find me there at Courtney E. Ackerman. There you go. There you go. So you've written this book. How many books total have you written? Seven. Seven. There you go. And what would you say motivates you want to write this seventh one? Well, this actually isn't even the seventh one. I just wrapped up my seventh one, which is about patience.

So maybe I'll come back and talk to you about that book. Yeah, yeah. So this is the sixth one? This is the sixth one, yeah. You're just so prolific. We can't go on. I don't know. Will you have another one written? Will there be an eighth one by the end of the show?

Most likely. Yeah, probably in the next hour or so. Kick out another one. But this one in particular, I mean, I think we all have had those really, really frustrating moments where you wake up in the middle of the night and you can't get back to sleep. No matter what you do, you just can't get back to sleep. And then the more you think about it, you know, the longer you're awake. And it sucks.

Everyone has this happen to them at least once or twice. Some people more than that. And actually, my dad had sort of been struggling with waking up at, you know, 2, 3 in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep. And he's like, you know, Courtney, what can I do? Like, you're the positive psych person. You're the exercises and techniques and meditation person. Like, what can I do?

And so I was like, well, you can meditate. And so I thought, you know, a bunch of people could probably benefit from, from learning about how meditation can help you get back to sleep. Definitely. Definitely. So give us an overarching thing about the, the book and what, what sort of details do you go in and teach us in there? Yeah. So the book, um, is it's a, it's a guidebook, you know, it's a book of resources. There's 150 different exercises based in meditation that you can use to get yourself back to sleep. So it's designed to be something that like, you know, you wake up, you look over, you see it's 2.30 in the morning and you're like, oh God, oh no. Well, you can grab this book, you can flip to just about any page, you know, and, and you'll find a, an exercise you can try,

you know, or you can use the, the different sections. There's five different sections to like pick one that you think might be better for you. Right. If you want to do like a real breath focused one, you can pick a breath focused meditation. If you want to like calm your body down, you can pick a body focused meditation. So yeah, you can use it at random or you can pick out one that sounds like it might work for you best in that moment and follow along. It'll guide you through it and hopefully get you back to sleep. There you go. I sometimes have trouble sleeping where I'll wake up in the middle of the night and someone's usually screaming at me like, get out of my house. This isn't your house. And I hate it when that happens. Yeah, that's usually, at me like, get out of my house. This isn't your house.

I hate it when that happens. Yeah, that's usually after one of those Friday nights where you've had just a little too much. Vodka, huh? Back to the vodka. It's the callback joke today. Vodka callback joke. But anyway, so this is really interesting. A lot of people, I imagine, probably in your research,

I'm just assuming your research, but one thing that's happened to a lot of people last year and a half with COVID is that people haven't been sleeping well, at least that's what I read. Is that true? Absolutely. Yeah. I think everybody has been struggling with shutting their brain off, right? It's constantly going, it's constantly working. It always wants to latch on to whatever thing is worrying or giving us anxiety lately. And the last year and a half, it doesn't have to look far. Yeah. Yeah.

It doesn't. It's like the news. Ah, the phone! Put it down. Get away. So, yeah, I mean, fortunately, it seems to be getting a little bit better. But, you know, I think so many people live through so much anxiety and different things and all that good stuff.

So, one thing you, some things you talk about in the book, is it normal to wake up in the middle of night and struggle to fall back to sleep? Or am I insane? No. Well, those are separate questions, right? Sure. Yeah. Well, there's a third one there. Could be both.

It could be. Yeah, it could be. That might be out of your purview. Yes. I'm not a clinical psychologist, so we can't get too far into the insanity discussion. That or you'd have to charge me for this hour. Ah, interesting idea. No, it's completely normal.

Yeah, it happens to everybody. Like I said, some people struggle with that more often. Some people struggle with that on almost a nightly basis. But everyone, I think, has dealt with that at some point in their life, right? So it's nothing to panic about. It's nothing to run out and get a sleeping pill for or worry about. It's something that most of us can handle on our own with just a little bit of effort and attention paid to our mind. And when I say a little bit, I mean, five to 10 minutes, you know, it doesn't take much once you learn the techniques. So really we, we've got to kind of put ourselves back into that phase. One of the bad things I have, and I know it is I'll wake up in the middle

of the night and I have dogs and I'm old. So, you know, there's a lot of back and forth to the restroom and, you know, my dogs will move around and, you know, they're, lot of back and forth to the restroom. And, you know, my dogs will move around. And, you know, I've got two big huskies. So they're moving around, you know, doing their thing and sleeping and rolling around. I'm rolling around. So, you know, there's always something that will wake me sometime in the middle of the night. And I know that I have this really bad habit. You're just like, you know, maybe if I look at some news or I read Facebook and look at my phone, that maybe I'll fall back asleep. And as soon as

that blue light hits your eyes, you're just like screwed. You're just like, oh, for the rest of the night. Yeah. That is a, that's definitely where our minds go. It's still mine. Now, if I wake up in the middle of the night, I'm like, maybe I'll just pop on Facebook and see what, no, nope, nope, nope. I have to remind myself that I know that's not going to work, right? Of all people, I should know, but I still get that urge to look at the phone. And I try really hard now to just not even touch it, right? Just leave it where it is. And yeah, speaking of blue light, I have that blue light filter on after like 10 PM. So it filters it out, but still, the answer is not in the phone

for sure. Does that help those blue light filters to try and, you know, get the brain turned down? Because I know as soon as I see that, that blue light goes off and my brain's like, we're awake over here. We're awake. Yeah. Coffee, please. We're not going back to sleep. You're screwed. Yep. No way. Can't can't go back to to sleep after that. I, you know, it seems like it does. I think sort of anecdotally for me, it's, it's definitely helped. So it's also sort of like an alarm clock for me now. Right. Cause right at 10 o'clock, if I'm looking at my phone, I see that blue light filter come on and it looks kind of, kind of mellow, kind of darker. And I'm like, Oh yeah. Okay. I, my mind needs to start, you know, calming down. I need to get ready for sleep. You know,

sleep hygiene is, is important. And it's something that with phones and laptops and everything in the bedroom now, it's, it's, it's hard to, to remember to, to do that, to have like a cutoff, right? It doesn't necessarily need to be a real hard cutoff. I cannot look at my phone after this, but it pays to be mindful about it. Do you want to talk a little bit about sleep hygiene? I've never heard that term before, but. Yeah. Yeah. Sleep hygiene is just, it's, it's the things that you do, cause it's a terrible definition. It's the things that you do, right. To help you sleep. So it's, it's, it has to do with where your mind goes before bed, what you do right before you get into bed, whether you have a ritual, you know, whether you use any sort of sleep aids, whether it's like a prescription or a melatonin, whether you have a ritual, whether you use any sort of sleep aids,

whether it's like a prescription or a melatonin or whether you meditate beforehand. A lot of people just sort of hop into bed and turn out the light and then scroll Facebook or Instagram or something for half an hour. And I've been guilty of that too. That's bad sleep hygiene. Bad, bad hygiene. Bad sleep hygiene. And we all do it, but yeah. So, so good sleep hygiene is things like having a ritual to help you kind of prepare yourself, right? You know, you get into the pajamas and you brush the teeth. And I like to meditate a lot right before bed. That really helps me. I love the Headspace app for meditation. I don't know

if you've tried that before. Headspace is great. And they have some sleep-focused meditations that'll kind of guide you through like progressive body relaxation or a number of different ways to kind of help you get your mind prepared for sleep. And that's what a lot of the exercises in my book can do too. And actually, I don't know, I don't think I mentioned this, but it's going to be made into an audio book as well. Oh, that should be good. Yeah. So people can just hop on and well, I guess they'll have to look at their phones a little bit, right? To open up the book, but then they can, you know, shut the eyes down and pop on some headphones and be just guided right, right back to sleep.

I, when, when I think when the, when the coronavirus has started, I somehow I discovered Tik TOK and I'm one of those people where I'm just like, just one, just one more swipe of the video. Just, just one more little, it's just a minute, just, just one more. And then you'll go to sleep, you'll turn it off. And then like four hours later, it's like the sun's coming up and you're like, what the hell? Stop it. So a lot of your books, a lot of your books are about meditation and how important is this. So why is meditation really good for us? Why is it better than, you know, either drinking ourselves or taking a little yellow pill to knock ourselves out? Why is meditation in your mind, the best thing for us? Meditation to me is sort of the answer for not everything but um for most things really it's

hang on i gotta write this down vodka is not the answer for everything not for everything no time to stop okay all right and meditation is is reconnecting with ourselves meditation is coming back to ourselves into the present and And that's something that this world that we live in today is designed to keep us from doing. We're so focused on either looking back at the past or about what's coming ahead, what's next for us, about what we want, about what we hope for, about things we want to buy and places we want to go and people we want to see. And we just spend so little time being truly present. We're not present when we're scrolling through social media. We're not present when we're checking our emails or when we're binging the new Netflix series.

And none of those are bad things, but meditation is sort of to provide some balance to that, is to check back in with yourself in the moment, be present. And it naturally just leads to more gratitude, which is sort of a foundational practice as well. That's pretty awesome. You know, I got familiar with being present with Eckhart Tolle because I was having a really hard problem, you know, being present. And so, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I didn't really, I should probably think about that when I'm trying to sleep more and meditate about being present. Sometimes I'm really lucky and I can kind of be in some sort of peaceful

state where I guess maybe I'm just really tired. But a lot of times, like, especially in winter, my dogs will curl up against me or if they know I'm kind of worried or stressed about something, my dogs will curl up against me and I'll just pet them until I fall asleep. And it's really, there's something just relaxing about that. And that's usually when I achieve my best being present. And so maybe you just have to look for things like that to just try and be in the moment, I guess. Absolutely. Yeah. We're real good at not being in the moment and not appreci, what we're doing when we're doing it. And it's often the little things, you know, I have a dog as well and she's just, she's my best friend.

So those moments when she, you know, rare moments when she curls up on my lap, I just, I really, I stop what I'm doing and I just check in and I just enjoy it because, you know, especially with dogs, like the great tragedy is that they don't live as long as us. So it is such a short time that we're able to have their friendship. So I try to just cherish every moment that I get with her. She's 12 now. So it's like becoming more and more important all the time, like to just soak it in and to be present and to sit in that love, that unconditional love that they give us. Yeah. I mean, they're just, they're just so amazing. And, and yeah, it's, it's, it's so

important. Now, what do you, what do you do? Because asking for a friend who has a lot of girlfriends that have complained about him, if you're a snorer. Oh boy, that's a tough question. How do you meditate through that? You know, I'm going to have to go back and say this is one of those few things that meditation isn't necessarily the answer for. I don't think vodka is either, though. Yeah, well, that's clear. I'm not sure what vodka is good for other than, I don't know.

Celebration. Oh, yeah, in small amounts. In small. So no meditation principles for heavy snorers then? Not that I know of. Maybe that'll be my next book, Meditation for Snorers. I find that sometimes just putting a pillow over their face and holding it there until they stop snoring, that might be, I don't know. I haven't tried it yet.

I mean, there's some inherent risk to that one, but I can see it working. Is it for me or for them? Both, I think. Both? More immediately for them. for them? Both, I think. More immediately for them. It depends on if you get caught. That's why I'm asking for a friend. There's nothing buried in my backyard. I just want to make sure.

I think if anything, people want to put me in the yard because of the snoring. I snore in a beautiful way. It's kind of funny. I actually had one girlfriend whose father used to snore like a bear, like the whole house would shake when her father snored. And so actually when she met me,

she was in heaven because there was some sort of meditative quality to her father being in the house. She just got used to it. So that's what I used to do. I just add that to my Tinder profile and it'll be fun. See, I think that's just an indicator of how good humans are at acclim used to it. So that's what I usually do. I just need to add that to my Tinder profile and it'll be fine. See, I think that's just an indicator of how good humans are at acclimating to things. Yeah, so there's that.

Maybe that's what I'll tell my girlfriends. I'll be like, just think of it as meditation. There's a pattern there of snoring. Yeah, in-breath, out-breath. Yeah, and they usually tell me, well, I'll meditate here or I'll meditate back at my house and you meditate here. And what's the misconception about meditation that it's just thinking about nothing? Tell us about what that's about. Yeah, that's a big misconception. And I hear it so often is like, oh man, I can't sit and think about nothing. I especially hear that from women, you know, cause that's sort of the big joke is that men are able to think about nothing.

But it's not sitting and thinking about nothing. It's just returning to the present. It's just focusing in, right? It's not sitting and having a completely blank mind and, you know, all black. It's taking those thoughts as they come. And instead of becoming attached and following them, it's letting them go. Right. So one of the exercises is, is basically letting your mind be the sky and the thoughts are clouds. And so what you're doing is cloud watching, right? You're not trying to like,

not see any of the clouds and pretend that there's no clouds. You're seeing the clouds as they come and you're going, Oh, look, a cloud. And it's the same for, for that meditation practice. It's like, practice it's like oh look there's a thought you know and then you let it go by instead of grabbing onto it and following it and and getting anxious or looking to the future or thinking about this or you know what do i have to do tomorrow it's just going huh that's a thought letting it go and then like hey another one will pop up oh that's that's another thought. And then you let it go. I'm picturing that in my head. Yeah. It's thoughts as things that happen to us, but are not us. We are not our thoughts, right? We're the person experiencing our thoughts. So we don't need to let them consume us, let them overtake us. That's what meditation is all about is separating yourself and being able to

just sort of sit and watch your thoughts go by. Sometimes I scream at them. Hey, where's that thought going? Get it back here. No, I'm just kidding. But I mean, if you're really trying to think about nothing, isn't that thinking about something, which is nothing? Absolutely. Which is why trying to think about nothing is not what meditation is really about. And that's, I think, why beginners sometimes get frustrated and go, forget this. I'm going to think about nothing really hard. Can you be bad at meditation? No, 100%.

No, you cannot. You can't be bad at it because it's a practice. You know, it's something that you choose to do. It's not something that like you know oh i'm very skilled at this you know we don't have olympics for meditating like no one else knows what's happening in your own mind when you're meditating it's not about whether you're good or bad at it it's just about the practice it's just about doing it on a regular basis now this is another question i'm asking for a friend what if you have multiple voices in your

head and you're trying to get them all to meditate at once? Do you have to get all of them or just can just one person do it? Maybe you should turn them into clouds. Turn them all into clouds. That's good. That's good. Pick which alter ego you want to meditate, you know, and then just turn the rest into clouds. The main problem I have is the one who always screams, kill me, kill me, kill me, and he never stops.

That's the cloud guy we need to get on the cloud that's the toughest one that's the toughest one that's always and so everyone can meditate there's nobody who can't do this right no everyone can meditate absolutely so there's no excuses there's no excuses people no excuses go meditate damn it go meditate you're only cheating yourself if you don't meditate anyway don't talk to me i'm meditating right now you should get a sign that says that and wear a real angry face while doing it you know do not disturb meditating i'm gonna go to yoga class i'm gonna get a shirt that says i'm fucking meditating right now leave Leave me alone.

I'm just going to sit there and people in the yoga classroom put him in. I would buy that shirt. I'll just be sitting there going, I'm fine. What's wrong with you people? I can't get a shirt out of my mind. I can't meditate with this guy in here with this fucking shirt.

That would be fun. I can't meditate with this guy in here with this fucking shirt. That would be fucking meditating. I'm like, I'm fucking meditating right now. Anything we haven't covered about your book, Courtney, that's, uh, that's, uh, that's, we should be talking about. Well, I just, just the main idea is that it's just a bunch of ways to help you to kind of shut the mind down, to turn off that thinking mind and just tune into being, right? Just be. It's learning how to just be. And that's a much calmer and more peaceful state of mind to be in, especially when you're trying to get back to sleep. There you go. There you go. Do you want to give a shout out to your other books so

people can take a look at them too? Yeah, absolutely. And so you can go to my Simon and Schuster author page and you can see all of them. I've got, as you mentioned earlier, the illustrated book of mindful meditations for mindless moments. I really love that one. It's adorable. Each of the little, you know, mindful meditations is paired with an illustration that's just really cute, really fun. And that's a good one for people who are new to it or for kids. That's a really good choice. I also have my pocket meditations for self-compassion.

That one's all about cultivating more compassion for yourself. My pocket gratitude, which is all about cultivating a gratitude practice and becoming more grateful just in your day-to-day life. Five Minute Bliss is about finding joy in everyday life in just five minutes. And my very first book was My Pocket Positivity. And so that one actually covers a lot of different positive psych related topics. So if you wanted to learn a little bit about gratitude and a little bit about compassion, a little bit about joy, you know, you can go to My Pocket Positivity and find a bunch of different exercises and techniques there. That sounds awesome. Everyone should check that out.

Do you ever think about having maybe Bobcat Goldthwait or maybe Sam Kinison, rest in peace, do the audio book for this? Ooh, that would be an interesting idea. No one's fall asleep to that. So there you go. Maybe Gilbert Gottfried. That might be. Gilbert Gottfried. Sit in a relaxing position.

This one time. Anyway, it's been wonderful to have you on the show, Courtney, and definitely funny. Give us your plugs so people can order the book and learn more about you. Yeah, well, you can jump on that Simon & Schuster author page and find me there. My book is sold at Amazon, Barnes & Noble. I think Target and Walmart, you can get them online. There's a bunch of different places you can find them. And as I mentioned earlier, you can find me on LinkedIn.

You can follow me on Instagram, Courtney E. Ackerman. I'll be promoting the books. I'll be probably doing a giveaway at some point if someone wants to try to snag one for free. Yeah. So there's a few different ways to find me. There you go. There you go, guys. Well, Courtney, it's been wonderful having the show and a lot of fun too. We had some fun with the whole concept of meditation and hopefully people go get the book. So thank you for spending time with us today and giving us some peace. Yeah, thank you so much. It was great to be here.

Thank you very much. And go and grab her book so you can sleep better. I definitely will because I need to sleep better and I need to quit looking at that darn TikTok. Go to YouTube.com, Forged as Chris Voss. Not when you're trying to sleep, though, because the blue light will help you, but I got to be honest with you. Watching some of my videos will put people to sleep, but

not so... It's like Chris Voss. Anyway, check that out. Go to my Instagram groups, Facebook groups, all those sort of good stuff. You can find them all over the webs and goodreads.com for just as Chris Voss. Thanks for tuning in. Be sure to stay safe, be good to each other, and we'll see you guys

next time.