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Lie still in bed

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Re: Lie still in bed

#121

Post by ironborn123 »

While willpower may work for some people, what actually works for me (and i believe the majority of people) is self-deception or distraction.

To sleep, use white noise/rhythmic music/soothing voice

To climb a mountain, tell yourself that my next goal is to just reach that particular rock about 100 metres higher

In the gym, make a friend and chat and joke with them while doing your exercises

While sprinting, divide 32 by 13 to many decimal places, as Joey from Friends once suggested.

Re: Lie still in bed

#122

Post by dagurp »

lamontcg wrote: post #111
haswell wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty high on the neurotic scale. Two things that have helped me immensely: 1) I turn on an audio book that I love and know well with a 30 minute sleep timer. Recently this is the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It doesn’t keep me awake because I already know the story well. But it keeps my mind occupied enough to avoid the rumination. Podcasts don’t work for me because it’s new material. 2) Guided Yoga Nidra…

I use soccer podcasts. Not American pundits who like to argue with each other loudly, but brits who don't raise their voices, yapping about teams I don't have any particular emotional connection to, with nothing particularly insightful to say about them...

I heard they are good during vasectomies as well

Re: Lie still in bed

#124

Post by Swordfish12345 »

toddmorey wrote: post #51
nerdchum wrote: post #25

This may work for non-neurotic people but laying still in bed is when the demons in my mind come out to play and remind me of all of my problems.

Podcasts have been a godsend for me. I can’t lay in silence, either, because then my mind just races. But with a podcast you can just close your eyes and listen. It almost takes me back to my parents reading to me. Science / nature podcasts work really well. I avoid true crime, social issues, politics, tech, or work topics. The Ologies podcast is amazing. There’s even a podcast called Nothing Really Happens designed…

> Podcasts

I used to be the same. But I find it just keeps me up more because there is so much potential for it to become interesting...even the most boring pods. Now I remove my bed from the bedroom and if anything I use a Calm sleep story.

Re: Lie still in bed

#125

Post by InSteady »

Swordfish12345 wrote: post #116

The biggest problem of our modern age is the removal of agency. We are being pathologized by pseudo-science all around us. When people mention "willpower", everyone today is looking for a diagnosis as an excuse instead. Some things really are as simple as articles like this. The failing is education. People don't understand the way they have re-shaped their brains from pretty much everything spawning from the interne…

>When people mention "willpower", everyone today is looking for a diagnosis as an excuse instead.

>People don't understand the way they have re-shaped their brains from pretty much everything spawning from the internet and tv.

Sounds like people are looking to understand, but maybe according to you they are looking in the wrong places?

Also, who is everyone? I think a ton of Westerners and especially Americans have been conditioned into believing various convenient lies that advertisers and cultural mythology tells, along the lines of "you can have everything you want without doing hardly anything at all as long as you belong to the right groups and spend your money 'correctly.'" As I think you correctly identify, this is further exacerbated by modern tech which treats attention span as a commodity and tries (often very successfully) to hack and hijack it for the benefit of advertisers and data miners.

It seems to me the above is far more damaging to everyone's ability to execute plans involving willpower than any increasing awareness and expanding diagnostic criteria for various physical and mental health disorders.

What diagnoses are we talking about here exactly that everyone is looking for that are totally bunk and pseudo-science? Depression? ADHD? Autism? Anxiety disorders? It's true that as awareness spreads there will be more people who incorrectly think "maybe this is totally me, and it's why I haven't been able to achieve what I want..." But identifying this as the reason people don't have any willpower, I think puts the cart before the horse. People already didn't have much willpower (and also don't know how to use what they have effectively)... so they are looking for reasons for that and end up looking in the wrong places.

Also, just because something can be explained in simple terms does not mean it is simple for everyone nor that it is easy. If it is easy for you, great. You're probably lucky in more ways than you realize.

Re: Lie still in bed

#126

Post by solumunus »

Swordfish12345 wrote: post #117
Androider wrote: post #76

The most negative influence on my sleep by far is from using my phone in bed, as I suspect it is for many others. Not only when falling asleep, but also when waking up reaching for the phone is too easy and robs me of any chance of falling asleep again. The only trick I've found that works quite consistently for me, is removing the phone from the room entirely. This makes my laziness work for me for once, as getting…

> removing the phone from the room entirely. 100%. Started this recently. It works perfectly if you can withstand the withdrawals! The moment you start doing this, is the moment you have to confront how incredibly addicted you actually are to your phone and the internet. It will feel like you are being tortured. And it's very easy to give in because the immediate consequences are quite tame (getting to sleep a bit la…

If you’re that addicted you’ve got real problems and you should absolutely be following through with this and other things to break that addiction. I question how many people would really react like that. I use my phone in bed at times I shouldn’t but it’s a complete non issue to not have it in bed.

Re: Lie still in bed

#127

Post by Barrin92 »

Swordfish12345 wrote: post #118
Barrin92 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

willpower is a vacuous self-help concept as you have as little control over your 'willpower' as you have over your sleep. To pick OPs example, people with ADHD often have executive dysfunction. They're unable to follow these kinds of routines because their brains don't work like this. And ordinary people too just vary in their conscientiousness (which unlike willpower is a real, measurable trait), and that is going t…

> people with ADHD...because their brains don't work like this. You might be surprised to find out that there is actually no proof of this. The biggest thing impacting people with ADHD symptoms is the diagnosis. It implies they have a brain disorder, and cuts short any exploration into environmental causes of their symptoms. And an environmental cause may in fact be, simply not trying some simple advice from this art…

I would be very surprised because that's complete nonsense. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder with changes in both neurochemistry and structural development of the brain [1]. This is why drugs like Adderall are highly effective in treating the symptoms of ADHD. You cannot cure disorders of the brain by reading blogs on the internet, and it is this kind of ignorance that has given people with neurological issues a lot of grief and shame in the past.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2894421/

Re: Lie still in bed

#128

Post by lubesGordi »

ironborn123 wrote: post #121

While willpower may work for some people, what actually works for me (and i believe the majority of people) is self-deception or distraction. To sleep, use white noise/rhythmic music/soothing voice To climb a mountain, tell yourself that my next goal is to just reach that particular rock about 100 metres higher In the gym, make a friend and chat and joke with them while doing your exercises While sprinting, divide 32…

For me, to get good sleep, I need to have a surprising amount of exercise during the day and have tried hard at something so that I'm mentally tired. That plus not eating any calories at all for the 4 hours before bed and I'm pretty guaranteed to get good sleep.

Re: Lie still in bed

#129

Post by sureglymop »

Pooge wrote: post #88

I used to be really bad at falling asleep. I'm not talking 30 minutes or 45 minutes, but sometimes 3 whole hours without being able to get 1 second of sleep. I didn't even touch my phone once while in bed. I also had a lot of trouble finding the right position in which to sleep to feel comfortable (not even talking about finding the right mattress/pillow combination). Somehow, I trained myself at sleeping on my back…

Will try this! Sounds like a good strategy to roll over to 200 once you reach 0. In the past when I tried the "endless counting" strategy that was still too much brain activity.

Re: Lie still in bed

#130

Post by callalex »

solumunus wrote: post #126
Swordfish12345 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> removing the phone from the room entirely. 100%. Started this recently. It works perfectly if you can withstand the withdrawals! The moment you start doing this, is the moment you have to confront how incredibly addicted you actually are to your phone and the internet. It will feel like you are being tortured. And it's very easy to give in because the immediate consequences are quite tame (getting to sleep a bit la…

If you’re that addicted you’ve got real problems and you should absolutely be following through with this and other things to break that addiction. I question how many people would really react like that. I use my phone in bed at times I shouldn’t but it’s a complete non issue to not have it in bed.

I thought the same thing until I tried it ;)
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