Sleep Archives | Jim Kwik

Reduce symptoms of depression

The benefits of gratitude have long shown the same results: practicing gratitude in your daily life reduces the symptoms of anxiety and depression. Your brain is primarily a filtration device, and you direct where your attention and focus goes. When you focus on everything you don’t have, that’s what you notice all around you. But when you redirect your thoughts to focus on the positive aspects of your life through appreciation and gratitude, your brain will shift to notice more of those elements in your daily life.

Go into the holiday’s with a list of everything you’re grateful for and update it as you move through the season. Find something to be thankful for every day and notice how taking a moment to acknowledge that gratitude changes your mood and outlook. Wish people a happy holiday, hold doors open, smile at strangers, and take a moment to pay kindness forward by helping others in whatever small way you can.

Improve relationships

It’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of life. Work demands take precedent, school projects and after-school activities eat up the evening hours, and weekends are spent catching up on everything you didn’t quite have time for during the week. The holiday’s are often the one time of year when visiting friends and family is finally a priority. While this can sometimes lead to increased stress, studies show being around people you love can actually improve how your brain functions.

When you express gratitude for the people in your life, you strengthen both the social and familial bonds. It redirects the focus away from negative irritations or past hurts, and helps you appreciate the positive aspects of how they impact your life. This helps reduce stress, can lower symptoms of depression, and leads to feeling more supported in your daily life.

Feel better

Multiple studies show the link between subjective well-being and gratitude. One of the primary reasons for this is when you focus your attention on positive emotions and events, you promote and encourage more positive emotions. Instead of feeling like things go wrong, you start to believe that things can go right. It builds your emotional resilience, which allows you to bounce back from unexpected obstacles and difficulties faster and with more confidence.

This becomes even more important during times of stress. And while the holiday’s can bring a lot of reasons for positive emotions, it can sometimes highlight negative ones, too. It’s important to continue building your positive frame of mind. Set healthy boundaries, make sure you have a plan to help mitigate stress, and don’t forget to do things that recharge your emotional spirit. When you embrace gratitude, you not only feel better about yourself, you increase your self-esteem, find your purpose, continue your personal growth, and gain clearer perspective about what’s most important to you and how you can hold onto it.

Lower stress

One of the most commonly touted benefits of gratitude is that it lowers stress. But it does more than that. When you practice gratitude, studies show you not only lower stress levels, but you actually decrease your overall stress response. That means you’re less likely to succumb to increased stress when faced with difficult or unforeseen problems in the future.

While being grateful during the holiday’s may come easier than other times of the year, taking the time to celebrate the wins and appreciate the small moments throughout the year is just as important. You can practice during the holiday season by focusing on the tiny moments or actions instead of the bigger, more obvious ones. By shifting your focus away from the main events, you train yourself to recognize the quiet space in between, and that’s much easier to carry throughout the year.

Get quality sleep

It should come as no surprise that practicing gratitude improves your sleep. With lower cortisol levels, your brain can produce more melatonin, promoting your body to adapt to your natural circadian rhythm. A study out of the University of Manchester found that this improved quality of sleep happened regardless of personality types or individual differences.

Quality sleep leads to better cognitive functionality, improved mood, and better health—many of the same benefits a daily gratitude practice provides. When you exercise gratitude daily, your physical and mental health both improve. This means you can be more present, show up more fully for the people in your life, and enjoy your time with them in a deeper, more meaningful way.

Conclusion

The holiday season is a mixture of both being thankful and celebrating. And both have a positive impact on your brain. As you move through this holiday season, take a moment to find reasons to be thankful. You’ll laugh more, sleep better, and feel happier. Remember, what you appreciate, appreciates. So, find reasons to embrace gratitude in your holiday celebrations in both big and small ways. Your brain—and your loved ones—will thank you.

If you want more Kwik Tips on how to make gratitude part of your daily routine, check out this video:

What if you could change your daily habits and get better sleep? On average, you’ll spend approximately 26 years asleep. That’s over 9,000 days or almost 230,000 hours. It’s an essential part of your life and is vital to your overall health, particularly your brain health.

Your body needs an average of seven to ten hours of sleep a night. However, busy lifestyles, stress, and even changes in sleep patterns as you age can chip away at how much sleep you end up getting. Because sleep is such a vital part of your existence, developing healthy sleep habits is one thing you can do to take better care of your body and brain.

1- Set a sleep schedule

Of all the things you can do in order to ensure you get healthy sleep, going to bed and waking up at the same time every day is the most important. One common misconception is that you can catch up on sleep. Unfortunately, it takes up to four days to recover from one hour of lost sleep. Maintaining a consistent sleep schedule keeps your brain happy and healthy.

2- Exercise daily

It may seem counterintuitive, but staying active throughout the day is a fantastic way to keep your sleep on track. Being active for 30 minutes a day improves sleep quality for myriad reasons. It releases endorphins and lowers cortisol levels in your brain, which work to keep your brain awake. It also stabilizes your sleep-wake cycle so you can not only fall asleep at consistent times but fall into a deeper, higher quality sleep, as well.

3- Be aware of lighting

Your circadian rhythm largely drives your sleep-wake cycle. And this rhythm is directly affected by light—specifically blue light. Sunlight is made up of an array of light, but the one that impacts your circadian rhythm directly are the blue rays. These are strongest in the morning, which is why getting sunlight right when you wake up can help you feel invigorated and energized. These rays lower as the sun sets, allowing your brain to release melatonin and prepare for sleep. Unfortunately, many of the devices in modern-day life, such as televisions, computers, and phones, also have blue light in them. Using blue light glasses at night or avoiding screens for at least one hour before going to bed can help reduce the effect blue light has on your brain and help you fall asleep faster.

4- Eat healthy food

Food plays a crucial role in how well you sleep. A diet consisting of high fiber and low sugar helps you fall asleep faster and can increase the amount of deep, slow-wave sleep you get each night. Sugar and caffeine can not just keep you awake but wake you up throughout the night as well. And because they stay in your system for several hours, you want to avoid them at least eight hours before going to bed. Spicy foods can lead to heartburn or acid reflux, so minimizing those before bed will lead to better quality sleep as well. And foods rich in magnesium and vitamin B boost and balance your melatonin levels, the neurochemical vital to healthy sleep.

5- Create a sleep-friendly environment

Paying attention to where you sleep is an important step in getting quality sleep every night. You get your best sleep in rooms that are cool, dark, quiet, and have minimal clutter in them. If you live near bright street lights, using blackout curtains or a sleep mask can help keep the light out. Earbuds or earplugs designed for sleep can help minimize noise. Ideally, minimize screen time by avoiding watching television or scrolling social media in bed. But a healthy sleep environment also extends to making sure you have a comfortable and supportive mattress, bedding, and pillows. And you want to only use your bed and bedroom for sleep, keeping work or other daytime activities in other areas of your home whenever possible.

6- Meditate

Meditation has significant health benefits, one of which is healthier sleep. Studies in biopsychology, the study of behavior on the brain, has shown that meditation can reduce insomnia by reducing and managing extreme emotions like anger, anxiety, stress, and depression. Meditating before bed can help your body and mind relax so you can fall asleep faster and experience deeper sleep. And meditating during the day can help keep your sleep cycles on track. If you’re feeling tired or fatigued, ten minutes of meditation is equivalent to roughly forty minutes of sleep, so meditating instead of napping can give you the energy boost you need without disrupting your sleep-wake cycle.

7- Know when to nap

Naps can be a secret weapon to daytime productivity but there’s a trick to napping without sacrificing your sleep cycle. First, aim for naps that are ten to twenty minutes long, never going over thirty minutes if you can help it. Second, don’t sleep past 3 pm so that you aren’t disrupting your natural sleep rhythms. Drinking a small cup of coffee before starting your nap can also help you wake up within the allotted time, as caffeine takes roughly twenty to thirty minutes to take effect.

8- Read a Book

One habit that can help develop healthy sleep and reduce screen time before bed is reading a book. In 2009, University of Sussex researchers found that reading a book for at least six minutes before bed lowered stress by 68%. Reading fiction has been found to be as relaxing as meditation, in that it takes your mind out of your worries and allows you to fall into different thought patterns. By clearing your minds, you ease into a relaxed state that helps you fall asleep. Keep in mind, while some e-readers are designed to have low levels of blue light, tablets or phones won’t have the same effect. Actual books are ideal.

Conclusion

Making small changes to your daily routines can make a world of difference when it comes to healthy sleep. If you implement healthy sleep habits and still find yourself struggling, we always recommend seeing a medical professional. Getting quality sleep is one of the most important facets to ensuring your body and mind perform at optimal levels, unlocking your limitless potential.

For more on how to develop better sleep habits, watch this video:

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