Wowza!

I just received this in an email…

“…According to the National Science Foundation, an average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 80% are negative and 95% are repetitive thoughts. Wowza! That’s a whole lot of gloomy broken records happening across the globe on a daily basis…” —Melyssa Griffin

Wowza is right. No wonder my brain keeps on going when I am ready to go to bed. This begs the question, “How do I turn off my brain?” or better yet, “How do I access the power button to shut down my brain?” As a result of my “always-on” brain, my sleep is restless and erratic. Some nights I am asleep by 10:30 and don’t get out of bed until 9 AM and other nights I can’t fall asleep until 1 AM and am up at 5:30 or some combination of the two. For a while, I tried Melatonin supplements and they sort-of worked in the sense that I was a tired person with a running brain when I was headed to bed. Also, I looked into acupressure bracelets for sleep (like the ones for motion sickness). However, I feel it will be the same result as the Melatonin. So I am back to my questions from above. I journal every night (just about) and do a brain dump. I call these “brain aches” because it was a way to explain what I was doing to Sylvie when she was younger and have her understand it since she knew about headaches. The idea behind a brain dump is to write down everything on your mind on a single piece of paper. The result is that your mind is clear and calm, or it should be. Afterward, my mind isn’t calm. Could seeing the words on the page restart my brain? Could it be that my brain dump is only a portion so I need to dump more? In any case, I now understand that my sleep issues are due to the fact that my brain doesn’t shut off when I am on my way to bed. So here’s my wacky idea…I will do the brain dump in the morning when I journal, that way I can add to my to-do list from what I have written. By the days, end I will have accomplished some items on my brain dump, and then maybe my brain will be calmer at bedtime…leading to better and more restful sleep.