Sleep For Life

Start Sleeping
Better Now
Accompanying Transcript for 'The
Sleep For Life' Online Course
MODULE 1: Getting Started
Part 1: You Are Not Alone
Sasha Stephens

Dear insomniac, alone in the night, misunderstood, hopeless, exhausted,

frightened… for you, I am here … now. I am not a doctor, nor do I pretend to be.
But I can offer something different from every doctor you have come across …

You see… I know how it is to be you , and I know how to make you better. Let me
speak to you, perhaps like no one has ever spoken to you. Let me be your angel for
the day. Let me help.

You don’t need to tell me how bad your problem is, because I know. I feel your
pain like no doctor or therapist, or well-meaning family member has ever done, I
feel your pain like only a fellow insomniac can. Because I have experienced the
agony of chronic, long-term insomnia.

I know the way that insomnia feels like a curse, a disease, an affliction that infects
every part of your life. I know that it can take over your life, ruin your life, and
ultimately be your life. I know the desperate, panicky, desolate, pitiful loneliness of
lying awake at night and the living hell of going through day after day of work and
social activities without sleeping. I have wept, prayed, begged, raged, broken down,
given up, and been left numb by insomnia.

Because I know how you have suffered, and how you still suffer, I want nothing
more than to help you. It breaks my heart to hear about the appalling advice given
to insomniacs, and the insensitive and downright negligent way in which they are
sometimes treated by the medical profession; treatments which bring with them a
whole plethora of new problems and which, unbelievably, often make insomnia
worse.

Insomnia is often cited as a symptom of depression. I was convinced, perhaps like

you, that far from being caused by depression, insomnia has been the cause of my
depression. In fact, it may feel like insomnia is the only thing standing between you
and a great life.

But stand in the way it does.

It stands in the way of fun, career advancement, relationships, light-heartedness,
freedom, social life, starting a family, self-development, spiritual growth … no
wonder people describe insomnia as a monster, as a curse. Insomnia may seem
almost to have a life of its own, an autonomous persona, or a self-sabotaging part
of you over which you have no control; a monster, a possessing demon which
taunts you by day and tortures you by night. This cruel tormentor judges you
unworthy, undeserving of sleep and punishes you, over and over and over, night
after night after night. A sadist, a bully: insomnia is ruthless…and relentless.

In the deafening, screaming blackness of the sleepless night, I have discovered that
the fundamental state of the insomniac is one of profound loneliness. I know how
lonely, how separate, how isolated you feel because I have been there. By night,
insomnia separates you from the gently slumbering world of normal sleepers. By
day it isolates you from the bustling world of active, happy people. Locked in a
bubble of misery, the day of the sleep-deprived person is a semi-real nightmare – a
half-life, a non-life.

As insomniacs we have two choices when it comes to normal, everyday work and
social activities: we either complain to a largely non-understanding and sometimes
unsympathetic social circle, I didn’t sleep well, I can’t stay long, I don’t think I’m up
to that, sorry I’m not on top form today. Or we learn to ‘fake it’ – to smile through
the misery, to hide the secret truth I feel like death, I don’t want to be here, if you
knew how tired I feel, why can’t I feel like you do, why can’t I enjoy life? What’s
wrong with me?

Speaking to friends, no one seems to get it: ‘If you’re tired, why don’t you just
sleep?’ they ask. Or they very helpfully say, ‘You probably do sleep; you just can’t
remember it.’

No one gets it; not therapists, friends or relatives. In fact, not even the doctor
seems to get it. Even the sleep doctor doesn’t get it! What on Earth is wrong with
you?

Where did your life go?

I’m going to tell you. And I’m going to help you get it back.

Because now, my friend, it stops here! Your battle with insomnia is over. I am
about to give you your life back. It is time to share with you, the gold – the
treasure that took a decade and a half to discover.

Using exactly the methods laid out in this program I kicked my 15 year chronic
insomnia problem and now sleep better than I did even as a child. Follow this
program, and you can turn your back on insomnia for good.

Allow me properly to introduce myself: My name is Sasha Stephens, I’m an

ordinary 46 year old British woman. And I suffered a full fifteen years with
crippling insomnia before a chance event enabled me to see the problem from a
completely new perspective. I went on to make a complete recovery and I now
sleep bettter than I've ever done.

I now run a successful sleep consultation practice over in the UK and have written
three books on the subject of sleep including the bestselling Effortless Sleep
Method, which has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide, and has been translated
into three different languages. I have spent the last ten years writing about sleep. I
probably have a million words written on the subject.

But I know you don’t want to hear a million words!

You don’t want to plough through 600 pages of scientific explanation and
lengthy instruction
You don’t want hundreds of complicated techniques
You don’t want the same old sleep advice to cut out coffee and relax
You don’t want any more sleep medications or over-the-counter remedies that
leave you drowsy and grouchy
You want to be able just to go to bed and sleep…like normal people.
You want to be able to get natural sleep, like you did as a child.
You want something natural, you want something permanent, and above all…
You want something easy!

So…

Just sit back, listen, let me talk to you, soothe you, reassure you.

Because in this program I have concentrated all I know about treating insomnia
down into a precise set of lessons. And in doing so I have formed the easiest, most
powerful and effective sleep training program ever created.

I’m not peddling a gimmick, a trick or an instant snake oil ‘remedy’. I’m offering you
something better – I’m offering the chance to learn how to sleep again from
scratch.

I’m offering you an easy to follow system that enables you to become a great
sleeper by rekindling your innate ability to sleep, normally and naturally. To do this,
I’m going to take you back to basics, to the beginning, back to that place deep
inside that knows how to sleep perfectly, without even thinking about it.

This is a step-by-step foundation program in sleeping.

Whether you have just a mild sleeping problem, or a chronic, long-term case of
insomnia, in these 5 lessons, I will take you on a journey from first beginnings… to
perfect sleep.

However, I know your patience is wearing thin. I know your energy supplies are
approaching zero. I know your motivation is low. I know you’re all out of hope. So
the last thing I want to do is give you a long and complicated waffling course full of
hundreds of steps and all sorts of weird techniques to try.

So, I have done all I can to make this program as simple as I possibly can. And the
next four lessons will show you the quickest and easiest way to squeeze sleep back
into your life. However… you can’t just listen to the lessons. The way to better
sleep is not by reading or listening, it’s by sleeping better! Listening is only the
beginning, knowing what to do is only the beginning. It is not by listening to this
program, but by experiencing the truth of it that you will overcome insomnia. No
matter how good an understanding you have, the only way my words will help you
is if you take action on them, live them, and start getting a feel for their truth.

You know, over the years, my experience has led me to believe that it is only those
who have suffered themselves who can really understand the particular psychology
of insomnia. I maintain that only one who has suffered this affliction really has an
insight into the problem – one who knows the intricacies of how it works, how it
gets worse, and critically, what makes it better .

I make a big deal over the fact that I know how it feels to be you, that I know how
it is to suffer with insomnia. I do this because I think this fact is very important to
the efficacy of this program and to your ability to trust, fully. I need you to trust
that I know what I’m talking about, and that I can help you.

So before I start teaching you how to get your life back, in the next part I’m going
to tell you a little story – the story of my own sleeping problem. Sorry if I appear to
talk about nothing but myself for a little while. There is a reason for it.

I do not tell this story in order that we can commiserate with each other; I do this
so that you will believe that no matter how bad your problem is, you can get better.
Hearing about the experience of a fellow sufferer will prove to you that what you
feel, I have felt, what you suffer, I have suffered. So, while you listen to my story of
woe in the next part, hold this exciting thought in mind: this person is now sleeping
perfectly, effortlessly, every night!
Part 2: You CAN Get Out of
This Nightmare

For twenty three years I had never really thought about sleep. Although even as a
child I always took a fair while (up to an hour) to fall asleep, this fact had never
really bothered me. Sleeping was something which happened every night, just
another part of my life like breathing or walking, something I didn’t question or
wonder about. Even in a strange bed, on a floor or in a tent, it might take some
time, but eventually, I would always drop off.

At the age of 23 I was finally going away to university to study Philosophy. And oh
my goodness, what a time of exciting change this was. I’d come from a sleepy
English village that shut down at 11 o’clock at night. But at University, I found a
whole new exciting world. This was a world of parties til dawn, late mornings and
numerous ‘free study days’.

Before university I had spent most of my life getting up around 6.30am. But now,
everything changed. At university, there were many days where I had no
compulsion to get out of bed at all! And just like the typical student, if I had no
classes in the morning, I just didn’t get up. I found myself often lying around in bed
until noon or 1pm, or even longer.

The second big factor in the development of my problem came from my social life.
I just loved getting ready for parties, planning my outfit and make-up. And before
the night of a party or a social event, I would sometimes go to bed extra early, just
to give myself a really long time sleeping. Just so I’d look and feel really great the
next day. The problem was that I might have lain in bed ‘til noon that day, so was
going to bed only nine hours after getting up! Not being remotely sleepy when I
went to bed, combined with anticipation and excitement about the next day meant
that I was taking hours and hours to fall asleep.

Well, before long, I had developed an annoying habit of not sleeping well before
big parties. This habit then started to spread to other sorts of fun events like
weddings. As you can imagine, I began to worry about this, because the lack of
sleep was really affecting my ability to enjoy myself. Instead of looking forward to
fun things, I became anxious about future events and their effect on my sleep.

Then came the fateful night. I had gone to bed on an ordinary, not a special night. I
was lying there when a thought flitted across my mind. What if I didn’t sleep well
tonight even though there was nothing to get up for? Ooh, what a horrible
thought. In fact, what if I didn’t sleep at all tonight? This distressing idea actually
began to wake me up. The idea turned to fear, and the further away sleep became.
And that was the first time I noticed that simply worrying about not sleeping had
the power to keep me awake.

I still remember that night now, even though it was all those years ago.

Because this was my very first night without any sleep at all.

I lay in bed next morning until late, just dozing, before getting up, exhausted and
irritable. I went through the whole day thinking about nothing but how much I was
longing for some sleep. I tried having a nap in the afternoon, but to no avail.

That night, I lay down extra early, so looking forward to catching up on all my
missed sleep. I got into bed, closed my eyes and tried really hard to fall asleep. But
it didn’t work. It seemed that the harder I tried to sleep, the more awake I became!
And so I missed another night, and another, and another!

That is when the panic began to set in. What… was… wrong with me?

I came up with what I thought was a really good plan. I resolved to go to bed really
early, and just stay there until I slept. If I lay in bed long enough, all night and all
day, perhaps, I would have to sleep eventually, wouldn’t I?

Well…that was a disaster. I ended up just lying there all night and all day, becoming
more and more tense and anxious. Eventually, it became ridiculous. I may have
been exhausted but sleep was still miles away.. For weeks I kept up this terrible
pattern – going to bed early, lying in bed for as long as possible and trying as hard
as I could to fall asleep.

I was desperate. I needed help. And it was at this point that I made my first big
mistake. I did what everyone advises us to do. I did what we are supposed to do. I
went to see my doctor.

Knowing what I know today, I still sometimes feel a little bitter about the advice
given on that day. Sadly, I know that the same terrible advice given to me all those
years ago is still being dished out every day to hundreds of ‘fledgling insomniacs’. I
now know that at such an early stage, with a few simple modifications to my
behavior I could have broken that silly pattern, stopping this problem in its tracks,
and 15 years of suffering could have been avoided.

So, do you think simple behavior modification was what my doctor recommended?
No, of course it wasn’t. She did what doctors do best – she gave me pills.

The thing is, I knew sleeping pills were supposed to be bad for me. But I was just so
happy that finally, I was getting some help. I mean, let’s face it, I needed them,
didn’t I. They were made for people like me, weren’t they? This was a proper,
doctor-prescribed pharmaceutical drug and I honestly thought all my problems
were over. Tonight I would be getting some real sleep for the first time in weeks.

So that night, I excitedly took my temazepam, a benzodiazepine also known as

Restoril. And I fell asleep almost immediately. Hooray!

But the relief was short-lived. I didn’t wake up feeling refreshed and ready to go at
all. I felt groggy and thick-headed. I was experiencing my first ever sleeping pill
hangover. The next night was kind of the same. I got up in the morning feeling no
better than when I had missed a night’s sleep, and it was difficult to work out
whether I preferred the feeling of sleep deprivation or the hangover from the
medication. Then, suddenly, the drug stopped working. I was able to stay awake
right through the effect, and I was back to just dozing all night.

And this is when I first experienced the worst part of having insomnia, the part no
doctor or drug company ever tells you about… lots of people will tell you about a
sleeping pill hangover. And people will talk about how bad it feels to have had no
sleep. But no one tells you just how awful it feels when both of those things
happen. When you take a pill, and you still miss a night’s sleep. As you may well
know, lack of sleep combined with sleeping pill hangover is horrific, desperate, and
worse than anything that insomnia alone can make a person feel. Why do the
doctors, drug companies and medical advertisements never tell you about that
one?

Back to the doctor to explain my strange reaction to Restoril. No problem, she

reported. There were plenty more drugs to try. Nitrazepam was next. Well, this was
like being hit with a sledgehammer – I was out cold all night. I took the nitrazepam
for about two weeks when the same thing happened. I started to stay awake all
night right through the sleeping pills. I needed a higher dose, which I took, and
which worked.
I had had to increase my dosage after two weeks! I realised immediately that this
drug had the potential to be horribly addictive and stopped taking it. I was one of
the lucky ones. If I had not had the presence of mind and the good fortune to stop
taking the nitrazepam of my own accord, I might have had a very different story to
tell – and it might not have been a recovery story!

Back to the doctor. This time she had a different suggestion. A new wonder drug
had recently come out and was in all the news. This was the time of Prozac.

Insomnia is a symptom of depression , the doctor told me, take Prozac and your
sleep will improve.

Well, this was a bit of a shock. I had never considered myself a depressed person.
But at this point, I still trusted the doctors. Prozac is supposed to make you feel
happier by balancing serotonin levels. But as I almost certainly never had a
serotonin imbalance in the first place, I was not destined to be one of those whose
life was improved by Prozac. It induced what can only be described as a gradually
increasing paranoia and sense of dread, an underlying feeling that ‘something was
always very wrong’. It is not an exaggeration to say that my general mental state
and my sleeping actually deteriorated!

I’d had enough of pills for now. So I changed doctors. The new doctor took my
problem very seriously and suggested a different tack. He referred me to a
psychiatrist. I WAS impressed.

But there would be a very long wait on the British National Health Service. After
six months of appalling sleep, I finally got my psychiatrist’s appointment.

I visited this expert full of hope, sure that now my problems would all be over. Well,
it turned out this psychiatrist knew as much about sleep problems as I did about
particle physics, perhaps less. He seemed utterly bewildered by my problem, as if
he had never heard anything like it in his life.

He also offered drugs, which were refused, offered psychoanalysis, although he

freely told me it was unlikely to work, and then told me he basically couldn’t help.
At least he was honest, I suppose. But I was devastated. It was as if I had tried all
that the medical profession had to offer and nothing could help. I had nowhere to
go and no hope. It was at this point that I started to form an inconceivably
destructive (but completely untrue) belief, one that would be with me for many
years: There was something different, something worse about my particular type of
insomnia. And this was why nothing was working for me. I was different. I was
incurable.

And so my insomnia remained and life went on, if you could call it living …

Then in 1996 something monumental happened which was to dominate and

control my sleeping behavior for the next ten years. I got access to the internet for
the first time and the whole world with all its sleep remedies was now at my
fingertips.

I started looking into alternative sleep treatments, pouring money into all manner
of sleep remedies, including hypnosis, meditation, acupuncture and a myriad of
herbs, gadgets and potions. But nothing ever seemed to make any difference.
Every remedy I tried was supposed to improve sleep, but not mine, it seemed. It
was as if my body was automatically rejecting anything that was supposed to help
me sleep. Any herb or pill I would fight, any relaxation technique would wake me
up.

As I tested each new thing and rejected it, one belief kept on growing.

My problem is different .

Is this starting to sound familiar..?

But when I got access to the internet, not only did I discover that there were
literally thousands of new remedies to try, I also discovered a worldwide
community of insomniacs like myself. How wonderful to find a whole new
community of sympathetic, empathetic, well-meaning friends who could
understand exactly what I was going through. We would write to each other by
email and on forum sites. We would converse and commiserate, tell our tales,
suggest remedies and offer sympathy when they didn’t work. I was no longer alone!
There were insomniacs like me all over the world, millions of them, all suffering just
like me, just like you!

Every day I would get up and go to the sleep forums, just like people do now with
Facebook, and look for any new posts, any new ideas. But a strange thing started
to happen… rather than be encouraged by the few success stories, or comforted
that in comparison my problem was not so bad, I instead found myself completely
identifying with these people and their terrible situations. And all I could think was
that my future had the same horror in store. Their fears soon became my fears,
and before long, their problems became mine too. I began to take on their
obsessions. I began to copy them! These online sleep forums weren’t making me
better, they were making me worse!
You know, I still couldn’t quite shake off the idea that there might still be a pill that
would work for me. I now had a young and lively new doctor and when she told
me about a fantastic new range of sleeping pills, that came without side-effects or
addictive qualities, I trusted her completely. These drugs were called non-
benzodiazepines. My first non-benzo was zopiclone, also known as Zimovane or
Lunesta. I was so excited to take it. But what a shock. The hangover from this drug
was just awful and I’m not just talking about the physical symptoms of thick-
headedness and lethargy. – I felt depressed, hopeless, despairing. I only took it one
more time before throwing it out – I’d rather have no sleep than black depression
and despair.

Finally, it was the non-benzodiazepines that led me to my big decision. I would

never again take a sleeping pill, ever! I had had years of experimentation and had
not found a single drug that had given anything like refreshing sleep. Most of those
nights had left me feeling worse than a night with no sleep because the sleep I did
get was nothing like proper sleep.

The rule for me seemed to be no sleep is better than drugged sleep .

My entire life was now ruled by sleep, the lack of it, or by doing things to try and
improve it. Every tiny decision I made - Getting up, eating, drinking, exercising,
socialising, even the sort of films I watched at night – all these had to take into
account the possible effect on my sleep. I had a kind of mental filter that every
little thing had to pass – will it affect my sleep? Should I take a drowsy
antihistamine? But what if it doesn’t work? Should I read in bed, or should I try to
go straight off to sleep? Should I get a bit drunk? But what if it makes me wake
early, needing the toilet? Should I, should I, should I? My life was a series of
impossible questions and dilemmas, all in my quest to find a way to sleep.

My social life was a mess because I was too afraid to make plans. I made tons of
excuses not to attend parties and weddings. Even planning to meet a friend for
coffee was fraught with danger. I didn’t have a vacation for years.

Just occasionally, I would get a really good night, tantalising me with the sheer joy
of a life with proper sleep – Ohhhhh how good that felt! But this was very rare.
Most nights were still spent getting nothing but a light sort of half-sleep, a sort of
angry dozing – just enough to keep me alive. And of course, on those special
nights, when I had something important to get up for, I would get no sleep at all.

My life had now changed beyond all recognition. All I wanted was to be normal.
Sometimes I would pray. I would cry and rage, scream at
myself, scream at God, scream at my husband who had dared to arrange a

dinner party at the weekend. I was completely obsessed. At the height of

my problem, every part of my life, every decision I ever made was in

some way related to sleep, or the lack of it.

Night-time had now become nothing to do with sleep. It was about panic, fear,
phobia even. It was about loneliness, desperation, tears. It was at night time that I
would make silent pleas to God. I offered up deals to the universe to exchange
everything I own for the ability to sleep. I would have taken heroin if I thought it
would make me sleep. I would have sold my soul to the devil if he had asked.

Insomnia didn’t just rule my life. Insomnia was my life …

So you see, I really do know.

And in the part that follows you’ll hear how I miraculously turned this life around.

But before you listen any further, I need you to do something. You need to stop
the tape, and complete Worksheet 1. It’s best if you can print it out before filling it
in. But if you don’t have a printer, you can complete it online. It should only take
you a few minutes to do. Stop the recording now because it is essential that you do
this before we carry on.

Don’t move on to the next part until you have done this.

Okay, done that? Now keep that sheet in a safe place. You’re going to need it later.
Part 3: The Turning Point
Sasha Stephens

It was a purely chance event in 2005 that enabled me to start to turn the whole
thing around. I had been convinced to go away on a two-week adventure vacation
with a friend – something that had caused me huge anxiety and I had spent the
days leading up to it in fearful anticipation. So I packed all manner of sleep aids, my
special pillow, earplugs and eyeshades, and an mp3 player chock full of relaxation
recordings.

But during that vacation something amazing happened. I would never have been
able to predict the totally unexpected effect it would have on my sleep.

Every day was spent doing all manner of outdoor activities, climbing, canoeing,
walking, and whittling wood, which meant I was utterly physically exhausted when
I got into bed. We had to get up early and go to bed late, all of us, no matter what.
There was no time for naps and certainly no lying in bed in the morning. I was
taken right out of my normal life, my crazy routines, and my weird rituals. And most
of all, I was totally distracted from thinking about my problem and had no audience
for my constant complaining about sleep. I wasn’t allowed to be special, different,
to engage in insomnia-reinforcing behaviors. I began to forget about my sleep
problem, about my tiredness and to just let go and enjoy being part of the group. In
this home away from home I was not a broken, insomniac invalid, I was just one of
the crowd. We were all equal; all treated the same way, all doing the same thing.

It was like I had been taken back to the beginning, back to a time before my
problem even started, to a time when my life wasn’t ruled by this monster, almost
back to childhood. And like a child, I learned how to sleep all over again.

I slept well for ten full days. This was the longest stretch of good sleep in fifteen
years.

On the way home from this hugely enjoyable vacation, I reflected on what had
caused this incredible turnaround.

Almost in a flash, I could see it. It was like I had new eyes with which to see the
whole picture afresh. I could see that there was nothing broken or damaged about
me. There was really nothing wrong with me at all; this vacation had proved it. I
had actually slept well for ten days. And if I could sleep for ten days, any ten days,
then I could do it again.

But I knew I couldn’t let things go back to the way they were. I had to make
changes.

Having put a few of these changes in place, I watched in wonder as my insomnia

began to drop away immediately.

I started writing things down, any new insight or observation. As an academic, I

wanted to know more, I wanted to know everything there was to know about
actually overcoming insomnia, not from doctors in labs, or from dry scientific
articles, paid for by drug companies, but from actual people who had actually
suffered and come through it. And so I embarked on a plan of dedicated research.

And so my knowledge and understanding of the right way to overcome insomnia

grew. And rapidly, my sleeping improved, often surprising me in circumstances
where I once would never have expected to sleep.

And so I began sharing my knowledge with people as best I could. My nights were
now taken up writing motivational emails to my insomniac friends. I had no medical
training whatsoever, and yet the advice I was able to offer was gratefully received,
even by those who had attended the most elite sleep clinics. I had unwittingly
become a sleep therapist! Time and time again, I was begged to write a book about
my recovery, putting all my good advice down in one place. And so I began to
formulate a set of rules, guidelines and advice which was eventually to become my
first book, The Effortless Sleep Method.

And now, after a further six years of research, and having carried out hundreds of
sleep therapy consultations with people just like you, I now present the Sleep For
Life program, the most advanced material I have ever created.

Over the years since my initial recovery, my sleep has continued to improve to a
level I never thought possible. I now often fall asleep within seconds. I usually sleep
right through the night, without waking once. These are both things I never did in
childhood, not ever. And I wake up, after eight and a half hours of peaceful sleep,
with no alarm needed, sharp as a tack. I literally bounce out of bed and am fully
alert and ready for anything one minute after getting up. I’m 46 and I have the
energy of a 20 year old. I’m almost never ill and I haven’t seen a doctor in years.
My bed was once a place of fear, loneliness, anxiety and sleepless terror. But now
it is my sanctuary, my haven. I look forward to bed every night, to my gorgeous
cotton sheets and my crunchy feather quilt, safe in the absolute knowledge that
good sleep is inevitable for me.

I want you to experience this same joy. I want you to have that same inevitability to
your sleep, to know that you can just lie down and sleep without having to do
anything at all.

I want to teach you how to have a life where you never feel exhausted from lack of
sleep. Where you never suffer with that awful sleeping pill hangover.

I want to teach you how to have a life where all of these are things of the past.

The program you have purchased is the one I wanted someone to have written for
me. During those 15 years I searched and scoured the world for a program like the
one I have created. I searched for a person who really ‘gets it’, not some pompous
doctor or dubious therapist, but someone who had been where I had been, had
those thoughts, and who could tell me how to escape it.

That person has come into your life. That person is me.

I’ll be honest with you… my motivation for helping you is partly selfish. I had to go
through agonies like yours for 15 years to get this knowledge. And now the only
way I can make sense of what happened to my life during those terrible years is to
turn this around: to use that experience to help people like me, like you, to be that
person I had searched for. Without this, I would be left with a bitter resentment of
my lost life. I have to help people like you, for my own sake.

Because, you see, I KNOW. I know how it is to be you. And I know the way out of
the darkness.

Now it’s your turn.

In the lessons that follow, I want to take you back to the beginning and gently
restart your body’s basic sleep response, your innate ability to sleep, normally and
naturally. I’m going to take you back to the child inside you that sleeps effortlessly,
without thinking or worrying or stressing. This is not a quick-fix, designed to help
you for a few nights, and then stop working. I’m offering you something real and
something permanent that not only allows you to become a better sleeper, it
teaches you to become a great sleeper.
And there’s a optional part to this program, only for those who need it. And only to
be listened to once the entire program of lessons 1-5 are completed.

After all, you want sleep for life. And to do that, some of you may want to turn to
the section of this program I call Safety Blanket.

I created the Safety Blanket for those times when you may happen to get a bad
night, or you are feeling worried or panicky and don’t know where to turn. This is
the one part of the program that you may listen to in the middle of the night, if you
want to. It’s designed to be like a comforting hug when you need it the most with
just the right words to get you back on track.

Many of you may never need the Safety Blanket at all. Many of you will sleep
better from tonight and turn everything around immediately. So I recommend you
only turn to it IF you need it. It won’t make anything worse to listen when your
sleep is good, it just might have more impact if you keep it saved in case of a bad
time. But even if you feel worried right now, please don’t turn to th Safety Blanket
until you have listened to the entire rest of the program.

And you can rest assured, if you do happen to get a less than perfect night, you
won’t be left alone. I will be here waiting for you with the Safety Blanket, with just
the right help and encouragement when you need it the most.

I want to remind you of the importance of listening to the entire course, in full
before making any changes to your life. The program will not be completed until
you have listened through to the very end of lesson 5, where I reveal some very
important information.

While creating Sleep for Life, I used certain psychological devices throughout to
make the program especially effective. This means that just by listening, subtle
changes will be happening deep inside, without your even noticing it. But if you
miss any part of the program, you run the risk of missing out one of these vital
psychological effects and you could damage the effectiveness of the whole
process. So please do listen to every part of the 5 lessons, in order, to the end,
without missing anything out. Do this, and you will get the full effect of the power
of the Sleep for Life program.

So, we’re coming to the end of this first lesson.

Do ensure you have completed worksheet 1. If you have, you can move on and
start Lesson 2. Lesson 2 is going to be a real eye-opener because you’re going to
hear all about what has caused this problem in the first place. Forget about all
those hidden mystery causes, you’re about to find out, once and for all, what is
actually causing your sleep problem.

Why did this happen to you? You’re about to find out.

MODULE 2: Why Did This
Happen To You?
Part 1: Why Did This happen
To You?
Sasha Stephens

This is one of the longest lessons of the program. It contains some really eye-
opening material. And if you really want this program to have the best possible
effect, you’re going to need to listen to every word. So go and get yourself a cup of
coffee or tea and settle down for the next 45 minutes or so. You’re likely to learn a
lot!

In this lesson we are going to answer that niggling little question that might well
have been at the front of your mind for some time …

Why?

Why did this happen to you? What’s causing your sleep problem. What went
wrong? What broke?

Because, let’s face it, everyone misses a night from time to time. Probably every
human being on this planet has experienced a bad night. But what about when it’s
not just the occasional night? Why is it that for some people, the bad nights go on
and on and develop into a more serious problem?

That’s the question I intend to answer now. In this lesson I’m going to give you an
insight into just why insomnia occurs in the first place, and why it gets so much
worse in some people.

But I want to get one thing out of the way first…

Do you have a niggling feeling that there is something a bit different about your
insomnia?

I know this feeling so well. Because sleeping pills and other remedies don’t always
help, it’s natural that you begin to believe that there is something different,
something broken, something ‘not quite right’ about you. I can remember believing
all sorts of things about my problem that I was sure made it far worse than any
normal insomnia. I was convinced there had to be a mystery hidden cause that was
stopping me from sleeping.

One thing which contributes to this feeling of ‘different-ness’ is that unlike some
other ailments, insomnia doesn’t seem to be a very clearly defined condition. Some
people can’t fall asleep. Some fall asleep easily, but can’t stay asleep. Some have a
problem with relaxation. Some with a pounding heart or twitching limbs, others
with racing thoughts. Some people never feel sleepy. Some always feel tired no
matter how much they sleep.

But added to this, no one seems to understand what you are going through, not
therapists, not even doctors. I despair hearing stories of sleep therapists and
doctors suggesting wild and outlandish reasons for a person’s insomnia. Or worse,
experts often express disbelief, confusion or complete bewilderment, as if yours
were the severest, most abnormal case of insomnia they had ever come across. I
know from bitter personal experience just how detrimental an effect these
reactions can have.

I remember seeing a top sleep therapist in London’s prestigious Harley Street. This
specialist came with a two-month waiting list and at a cost of thousands of pounds.
He told me, I should ‘just stop panicking’ . And his advice about how to do this?
Relax more by petting my cat!

And, if the very best the country has to offer can’t help us, then we imagine we
must be really broken, really different, really severe … incurable. And we begin to
imagine there must be some hidden mystery cause for our particular problem. And
we embark on a wild goose chase as we attempt to discover that hidden cause,
sure that if we could only discover the precise mystery reason for our particular
problem, we could then treat it.

Before you tell me that you have a special kind of insomnia, that your problem is
different, that you have an undiagnosed food intolerance, a repressed traumatic
memory, or that your sleep mechanism must be broken, stop . What you probably
don’t realise is that almost all insomniacs believe that there is something about
their particular problem that makes them different, more severe, or incurable. But it
may surprise you to know that almost invariably, none of them is ever true.

Because just think about this for a moment. According to a 2012 article published
in the Lancet, there are at least thirty million insomnia sufferers in the USA alone.
Now, if every one of these people is thinking their insomnia is different, this means
there must be at least 30 million different types of insomnia just in this one
country, each one distinct from all the others.

How likely is that?

Yes, there are subtle differences between individual problems. But don’t imagine
for one second, that just because pills don’t work, doctors have given up on you
and that nothing has worked for you so far, that you are different . If you find that
lots of sleep aids haven’t worked, please don’t think there is something wrong with
you. In fact, join the club! I must have tried over 100 different sleep aids during my
15 sleepless years.

So believe me when I tell you, on this program, you’re in company with people just
like you. Whatever your problem, the chances are I have probably seen it and
beaten it.

Now, I’m laboring this point for a reason: because if you just have normal insomnia,
like the majority of the other 30 million sufferers in this country, this means you
can get better easily and relatively quickly.

And the truth is, even if there were some trigger, some deficiency or undiagnosed
intolerance, something special, broken or different, that is making your sleep
worse, you would still be able to make huge positive changes to your sleep by
following this program. And if, as I suspect, there is no actual hidden mystery
culprit, then just like the majority of other people who come to me for help, you’ll
overcome your sleep problems completely and permanently.

Getting over your insomnia is not going to happen when someone invents a new
remedy, gadget or wonder drug. It’s not going to happen when you discover the
ideal, perfect therapist or relaxation technique. And surprisingly, it’s not going to
happen when you finally discover the deep-seated, hidden reason behind your
insomnia.

And it’s not going to happen just because you do what I say. It’s going to happen
when you truly grasp and understand the mechanics of insomnia, sleep and your
own problem. Because, like many things, when it comes to insomnia, understanding
is power!

Insomnia is almost never about hidden triggers, mystery causes or undiagnosed

physical disorders. Insomnia is far less mysterious than that.

So bearing this in mind, we’re not going to waste any time trying to work out the
specific, secret key or trigger event that is responsible for your problem. Because,
quite honestly, that knowledge is not going to help one jot when it comes to getting
better.

So what IS going to help?

In the following lesson I’m going to introduce you to a set of 10 ordinary, everyday
seemingly innocuous actions and behaviours. Each one of these can play merry hell
with your sleep. And when these simple, behavioral mistakes are multiplied
together, they are perfectly capable of creating a really severe insomnia problem.

Now, I can be pretty certain that you have allowed a few of these behaviors to
enter your life at some point. I can also be sure that some of them are present in
your life now. Because if you had none of these in your life, it’s highly unlikely
you’d have a problem sleeping.

On the face of it, they may sound harmless, but even just one of these mistakes can
effectively kill your chances of good sleep. And if you have two, three or all of
these present in your life, we need look no further for the cause of your insomnia.

I call these mistakes – sleep killers.

But before we go on, I want you to stop the recording now and complete
Worksheet 2. If you're following the program online, you'll see the link called
'Worksheet 2' above the main text on the webpage for this lesson part. You can
print it out or just complete it online. It should only take you a few minutes to do. It
is essential that you do this before we carry on. So stop the recording and do it
now.

Done that? Ok, good. Now you can move on to the next part of this lesson and
learn all about what is actually killing your sleep.
Part 2: The Top 4 Sleep
Killers
Sasha Stephens

The first four sleep Killers are all concerned with something we sleep therapists call
poor sleep hygiene. When one has ‘poor sleep hygiene’ it doesn’t mean you have
dirty sheets! I’m talking about your going to bed routine, and your going to bed and
being in-bed behaviors.

Poor sleep hygiene really just means your bedtime habits themselves are less than
ideal. It’s interesting that students, the self-employed and unemployed people all
frequently will have very poor sleep hygiene. And it’s often times like this that
insomnia first kicks in.

Ok, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty…

Sleep killer number 1 is,

LACK OF ROUTINE.

It seems too simple. But many, many sleep problems kick in during a time when
you have very little routine in your sleeping habits. Going to bed at 10pm one night,
3am another night, getting up sometimes at 6am, sometimes at 11am, all of these
things can play havoc with sleep patterns and set off a little spell of insomnia. And
the lack of routine needn’t be as extreme as I have just described. Even those who
get up at different times at the weekends, compared compared to their normal
workdays, can find their sleep really badly affected by this.

But why?

Well, just think about it. In going to bed at different times on different days, you
give your body different messages every day about when it is supposed to be
sleeping. With no set routine, your internal body clock ends up all over the place. It
gets confused, and your poor body ends up with no idea of when it actually should
be asleep.

So the result of a poor routine, is that you end up lying in bed completely wide
awake, because your body thinks that’s what you want it to do .

Ok sleep killer 2 is,

SPENDING TOO LONG IN BED.

Of course, the delicious joy of sleeping in at the weekend is something many

people have become accustomed to. Without the stress of having to get up for
work, many people find that they tend to sleep much better on Friday and
Saturday nights and may sleep in for hours in the morning, until 10 or 11am,
sleeping, dozing, or just enjoying lying about in bed.

Spending a bit longer in bed is also the obvious natural response to a short bout of
insomnia; if you haven’t slept well the night before, of course you want to catch up
on a bit of sleep in the morning. After all, you’re only human. But… here’s the
unfortunate thing: I know it’s unfair but no matter how tempting it may seem, after
a terrible night of sleep, the very worst thing you can do is to lie in bed in the
morning. It’s even worse if you lie in bed in the morning not even sleeping, but just
dozing.

In addition to lying in bed in the morning, very often after a bad night of sleep
there’s a temptation to spend even more time in bed in the form of an afternoon
nap. When the afternoon sleepies come over you, it can be so tempting just to lie
down and try and snatch half an hour in bed, in the car or on the couch.

But what’s so very wrong with either naps or sleeping late in the morning? After all,
the longer you spend in bed, the greater your chances of getting enough sleep,
right?

Wrong.

First of all, by lying in bed not sleeping but just dozing you start to create unwanted
mental associations – your bed starts to become associated with ‘lying-in-bed-and-
not-sleeping’. So when you lie down, your body no longer expects to sleep.

In addition to this, spending too long in bed in the morning, or taking afternoon
naps, tends to make you less sleepy when you lie down at night and hence
weakens your night time ‘falling asleep response’. You may be tired, yes maybe, but
not really very sleepy. Even good sleepers will often find that when they go to bed
the night after sleeping late, they find it takes longer to drop off. This is the reason
for so called ‘Sunday night insomnia’ that sometimes occurs when you have had
two late mornings on Saturday and Sunday. If you find it hard to sleep only on
Sunday nights, you are probably someone who tends to sleep late on Sunday
morning, yes?

But there is a third, vital reason that spending too long in bed in the morning is
such a bad idea, although no one seems to talk about it. If your problem is not with
the amount but with the quality of your sleep you should pay special attention at
this point. To explain this I need to get a little bit scientific. But don’t worry, it’s
going to be very simple.

Ok, you may already know that there are at least three distinct stages of sleep and
in a normal night we spend varying amounts of time in each of them.

There is stage 1 sleep,

REM or R.E.M sleep, and

Delta sleep.

You have probably heard of REM or R.E.M sleep in which you dream a lot and your
eyelids twitch.

But the most refreshing sleep of all is deep, dreamless Delta sleep – that really
delicious sleep that leaves you feeling great in the morning.

But let’s go back and look at the first one – stage 1 sleep. Stage 1 is that half awake
drowsy state where you might dream very readily but are still really easy to wake.
Stage 1 sleep is so light, I sometimes think it would be better described as ‘non-
sleep’. If your partner tells you off for snoring, when you didn’t even know you
were asleep, you were probably just in stage one. Now, a normal sleeper will often
only spend a few minutes in the very light Stage 1 sleep before going into the
deeper stages.

The thing is, I have discovered that it’s possible to spend the entire night in Stage 1
– in that shallow, half sleep, that unsatisfying non-sleep.. It appears to be possible
to go days, perhaps even weeks, getting only this type of sleep. Insomniacs learn to
survive on this tiny ration of poor sleep in the same way that a famine victim may
survive for years in a state of near-starvation. So, when you report ‘I haven’t slept a
wink for two weeks’, this is actually unlikely to be true. Your sleep has probably just
been made up almost entirely of stage 1 and you just mistook it for normal
consciousness. The same is true of those nights where you wake up tense, anxious,
feeling like you’re not entirely sure whether you slept at all – this is the joy of a
night of stage 1 sleep.

Now while it may be possible to survive physically on Stage 1 sleep, the quality of
life one has while getting only this type of sleep is wretched. In order to feel good
in the morning you must spend a reasonable proportion of the night in the third
stage – deep, delicious Delta sleep. This is why you can spend 12, 13, 14 hours in
bed and feel worse than a night when you were only asleep for four hours. If those
four hours included plenty of delta sleep, then they would have been far more
beneficial than any number of Stage 1 hours.

And let’s get back to the point now. What does all this have to do with spending
too long in bed? Well, when we spend too long in bed, we tend to spend a lot more
time in Stage 1, and a lot less time in the refreshing delta sleep. Thus the overall
quality of our sleep suffers. Spending too long in bed reduces the quality of your
sleep by causing it to ‘thin out’, often leaving you feeling less refreshed than a
shorter time in bed.

Summing this up: the longer you spend in bed the less chance you have of getting
that deep sleep you really need. But shortening the time spent in bed increases the
chances of getting that desperately needed and so delightful deep delta sleep.

Spending too long in bed – the easiest mistake is one of the deadliest for sleep.

Sleep killer 3 is:

LOOKING AT THE CLOCK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

Do you often look at the clock while lying in bed, just to check how long you have
been awake, or how early you have woken? Have you also noticed that looking at
the clock, will often cause you to become really stressed and tense, thinking you
should be asleep by now, that it’s only three hours 'til you have to get up, that
there’s no chance you’ll fall asleep at this hour, and so on.

Now, unlike some therapists, I am NOT a big fan of keeping sleep diaries where
every detail of one’s sleeping and waking hours is recorded in terms of hours and
minutes. In my experience, this sort of clock-watching just creates a horrible
obsession with time – time spent asleep, time spent awake, time spent trying to fall
asleep and so on. Many people end up feeling tense and anxious in the morning,
not because of sleep deprivation, but because of worries about the number of
hours they have spent asleep. I get so many people come to me for help, simply
because they’ve read somewhere, that getting less than eight hours sleep a night
results in instant death or some other such nonsense!

I’ll tell you what isn’t good for your health – stressing about getting the exactly
right number of hours of sleep.

I want you to forget all about the number of hours you have slept. Pay no attention
to that. Because, to be honest, the number of hours slept don’t really matter, as
long as you feel good. We have all had perfectly happy and productive days in the
past after only a few hours’ sleep. Obsessing about the number of hours we ought
to be sleeping makes the possibility of these carefree days much more unlikely.

Sleep Killer 4 is what I call,

HAVING AN ALL-PURPOSE BED.

(What this really means is doing things in bed other than sleeping.)

This sleep killer seems like the most innocuous of all…

If you have a busy life, your bed may well have become your ‘chill out’ place. It’s
the place to go at the end of a long day and read, play on your laptop or iPad,
Facebook on your phone, watch TV, or chat with your partner. Others find the bed
a comfortable place to work or study. But… using your bed for purposes other than
sleeping can really mess things up for you, and if your bed is currently serving as
cinema, library and office, this is almost undoubtedly affecting your sleeping
patterns.

Using screens such as laptops and tablets in bed at night is particularly harmful.
Because there’s increasing evidence that the blue light they produce can interfere
badly with sleep.

If you do things in bed at night, it’s doubly dangerous. Because when you do finally
turn off the light and settle down to sleep, it’s quite difficult to suddenly switch off
immediately after doing all these wakeful activities.

So instead of a strong association of bed and sleep, your bed is now associated
with reading, work worries, exciting film plots, Facebook anger, and generally being
wide awake. Your bed now seems to have nothing to do with sleep. And it goes
from being a sanctuary of peace and escape, to a place of worry and sleepless
anxiety.

By doing all sorts of things in bed, you in effect, give your body no idea what it’s
supposed to be doing. Is it supposed to be asleep, or wide awake working? Is it
supposed to be getting drowsy, or stressing about Facebook? Without clear
instructions, your body just doesn’t know what it’s supposed to do. When sleep is
only one of many things that take place in your bed, your body is as likely to try to
keep you awake as it is to send you off to sleep. Because that’s what you’ve taught
it to do.

In short, a nything you do in bed other than sleep weakens the bed – sleep
association and reinforces the bed – awake association. So every single hour you
spend in bed doing anything other than sleeping will be weakening your association
of sleep and bed and strengthening your association of bed and being awake!
Making it harder and harder to fall asleep quickly and stay asleep.

And you may not be aware just how powerful mental association really is . So think
on this: it is a strong positive association that allows the good sleeper to drop off
within minutes of lying down. And that’s exactly what we are going to create on
this program.

Lack of routine, spending too long in bed, watching the clock and having an all-
purpose bed are the four sleep hygiene sleep killers. These perfectly ordinary
behaviors really are often responsible for the beginnings of a bad sleep problem.
Part 3: Sleep Killer Number 5
Sasha Stephens

But let’s move on. It’s not always poor sleep hygiene that causes insomnia to kick
in. Very often, sleep problems start during a time of particular stress.

So sleep killer 5 is,

UNCHECKED STRESS.

Of course, we all know that stress, anxiety, worry and physical tension can affect
sleep. A really bad patch of stress will almost always have a negative effect on
sleep even in the best, most reliable of sleepers. But I’m not talking about the odd
missed night if your child is in the hospital, you lose your job or crash your car.
Those missed nights are a perfectly normal and natural reaction to an extreme
situation and shouldn’t really be viewed as insomnia at all.

I’m more concerned about those people for whom stress has become almost a way
of life. So many of us are under stress that it is often seen as an expected, even an
inevitable part of life. Most of us have just learned to live with it. We don’t take it
seriously. It’s just another part of modern life – unfortunate but unavoidable. Is it
any wonder then, when our sleep starts to suffer? Because when we are stressed,
tense and anxious our heart beats faster, our adrenaline flows more and our minds
are active. In this state, sleep feels almost impossible to find. And the tension we
have while stressed is what makes us feel physically stiff and uncomfortable when
we get up after a bad night.

Just to add insult to injury, the thing we are often most stressed about is the fact
that we are not sleeping, and the whole thing becomes a vicious circle.

Some particular stressful event or some sudden anxiety is responsible for many
cases of sleep-maintenance insomnia. This is the infuriating habit of being able to
fall asleep really quite rapidly, only to wake a few hours later, and find yourself
completely unable to get back to sleep. This happens because your body is simply
trying to protect you. It allows you to get just enough sleep to survive, just enough,
then it wakes you with a start to deal with the terrible danger it thinks is present. If
you started suffering sleep-maintenance insomnia at the same time as the
appearance of a particular or new anxiety in your life, your background stress levels
may well be the culprit.

Even quite low levels of anxiety and tension will also affect your sleep cycle. When
very tense or anxious, your body will not allow you to fall deeply asleep and this
often leads to your getting large amounts of light Stage 1 sleep, and not much of
anything else. And as I said earlier, if you’re not also getting decent amounts of
deep Delta sleep, you aren’t going to feel good in the morning, no matter how
much time you spend in bed.

To make matters worse, an obvious natural response to a little run of poor sleep is
to spend your days sitting or lying around, lethargic and grumpy. In other words,
doing less exercise than you normally would. And it’s hardly surprising. I mean, who
has the energy to go to the gym after a sleepless night.

But let’s look at this: If you are someone who normally exercises regularly, your
body has become used to expending energy and tension through that physical
exertion. So if you deny your body that stress outlet, this is a real recipe for
disaster. Because that tension has still gotta come out somewhere. And it might
just be coming out at bedtime.

And if you never normally exercise, and have a sedentary job, don’t be surprised if
you also have high tension or anxiety levels, and an associated problem with
sleeping.

If you’re going to bed tense and waking up achy, the first place to look is at your
activity levels.

Getting no exercise may not always cause a problem for you. But if you find
yourself under sudden stress, that lack of exercise may make it more difficult to
cope.

Exercise is a great way to ‘get out of your head’ – to forget about the trials and
tribulations of daily life. So by not exercising, and doing less generally, especially
when you’re going through a bad patch, you just give yourself more time to mope
about, fret and ruminate about your tiredness and the fact you haven’t slept well.
Fear starts to take root and thoughts about sleep start to dominate your life.

Some people may try a nice relaxation method, technique or recording to use in
bed. But while some find these really helpful, others find none of them ever seems
to help one jot. Some find that relaxation methods not only don’t work, but that
sometimes they make matters worse by interfering with their normal falling asleep
response.

If you are suffering from stress related insomnia and you try to counter it just by
attempting to use relaxation methods in bed, you are unlikely to be successful.
When extremely stressed, a night time relaxation method is often a case of too
little too late.

And when stress is really bad, the final resort is usually medication – either sleeping
pills or anti-anxiety meds. But can you see that if you are very stressed or are
plagued by racing thoughts at bedtime, insomnia is only the symptom. Attempting
to force yourself to sleep with medication, on a background of stress, is never
going to work well.

In many ways, asking the doctor for sleeping pills when you are stressed about
something in your life is like asking the doctor for something to stop bleeding when
there’s a knife sticking out of your chest!

Deal with the knife, not the bleeding.

Deal with the stress, not the sleep.

Remove the cause and the symptom will slip away all on its own.

In the next part you’re going to hear all about the most unexpected sleep killers of
all. Because many of these are things designed to help you sleep.
Part 4: Sleep Killers 6 & 7
Sasha Stephens

This set of two sleep killers is concerned with the external remedies we use to deal
with sleep problems. Either to make us sleep in the first place, or to help us cope
when we haven’t slept well.

The first sleep killer in this set is perhaps the most surprising of all. And while it is
not usually an initial cause of insomnia, it certainly helps to make sure it sticks
around.

Sleep killer 6 is,

TAKING SLEEPING PILLS.

Yep, you heard that correctly – sleeping pills make insomnia worse. They can even
cause it in some cases. Don’t believe me? Then just look at the list of side-effects
on any sleep medication instruction leaflet. You will find a whole list of horrible
side-effects including anxiety, depression and insomnia!

There are so many negative side-effects of sleeping medications I could spend the
entire program talking about it.

But let’s just quickly summarise a few of the worst effects: if you take a prescribed
sleeping medication, you run the risk of developing addiction and physical and
emotional problems. You are more likely to crash your car, have accidents at work,
and your work and relationships may suffer. You may become depressed, anxious
or even suicidal. As a man, your risk of suicide is increased dramatically. You even
increase the possibility of developing serious illness such as cancer. Even your
overall mortality risk is increased.

Yep, that means you are more likely to die.

But let me be clear: I’m not down on pills because of some New Age self-righteous
idea about ‘naturalness’ or purity, or because drugs are inherently ‘bad’ or sinful in
some way, or even because of all those horrible side effects I have just listed. Once
upon a time, I’d have taken just about anything if I thought it would make me sleep
well. No, I’m down on sleeping meds because they don’t work. Not only do they
not work, they actually make insomnia worse.

Sleeping pills do not make you sleep, not properly. What they do is one of two
things:

1. They knock you unconscious – not causing real sleep, made up of all the right
stages. They just give you a sort of drugged black nothingness. And because
drugged sleep is not genuine, natural sleep, you almost always feel lousy and
unrefreshed in the morning.

2. The second effect they have is to give you faith and trust, which relaxes you
enough to actually fall asleep. This is why some people, finding themselves awake
in the early hours, are able to fall asleep within seconds of taking a pill. Similarly,
those who take a tiny crumb of pill per night and find it effective are also likely to
be relying on the trust that taking a pill gives them.

Now, some research suggests that sleeping pills can help restore normal sleeping
patterns if used for a short period of time, and perhaps they can in some cases. But
are these few alleged successes really worth the countless horror stories of side-
effects and addiction? The experiences of those who have come to me for help
leads me to believe that the prescribing of sleeping pills for anyone is risky, at best.
At worst, it is irresponsible verging on negligent. I can point you to a study showing
that over 80% of sleeping pills in the US are prescribed to those who have been
taking them for over five years. In other words, to addicts. These figures are
indisputable: sleeping pills are not helping people to overcome a short term
problem – they are giving them a long term one.

Many people won’t touch pills but prefer to self-medicate using alcohol. Because
alcohol has a relaxing effect on the body it can help you to nod off. But alcohol also
dehydrates and depresses. If you find yourself waking too early with a full bladder,
an adrenaline rush and a pounding heart after drinking alcohol, join the club. I’m
just the same. This happens when the chemicals are leaving your bloodstream.

Because there is almost always some degree of hangover when you wake after
drinking alcohol it really makes it unacceptable as a sleeping remedy.
There are also countless over-the-counter ‘natural’ remedies. Antihistamines like
Nytol and Stilnox, and herbs such as Valerian and Hops. But just like prescribed
medication, the only ones that have any effect will almost always leave you with
some degree of drowsiness or hangover in the morning.

But… there is a far more insidious and dangerous problem with taking any form of
external medication for sleep, even apparently harmless herbal remedies. When
insomnia goes on for some time, you start to form negative beliefs about your
ability to sleep. And this makes the problem so much worse. You may already have
discovered that negative thoughts and beliefs about not sleeping, are often enough
to keep you awake, all on their own! Now when you take a pill for insomnia, you
send three negative messages to your subconscious, you start to form three
beliefs:

There is something wrong with me.

There is something external that can make me better.
I cannot do it on my own.

It’s quite simple: when you swallow a pill, you effectively say to yourself ‘I can’t
sleep on my own’, while at the same time investing that little tablet with the power
to make you sleep. This means that if you do sleep, that success in sleeping is
attributed not to you, but to the pills. In basic terms, your belief is not in yourself,
but in the medication. Thus your belief in your own ability to sleep is diminished
every time you take a pill. This negative reinforcement is one reason why, besides
any physical addiction, sleeping medications are so powerfully psychologically
addictive.

Every time you take a pill you deal another blow to your trust and expectation of
being able to sleep. In effect, you move further and further away from the beliefs
you want – I’m a great sleeper, I can sleep on my own, I am getting better , and
move closer to and reinforce those rotten beliefs – I’m an insomniac, I can’t sleep
on my own, I’ll never get better. Sleeping pills thus leave you with an absolute lack
of belief in your own ability to sleep unaided, stripping you of that wonderful,
childlike faith that allows the normal sleeper to drop off without thought or effort.

Can you see how every time you take a prescribed sleeping pill, or self-medicate
with ‘natural’ remedies or alcohol, whether it works or not, you just end up
sabotaging your natural sleeping capacity. When you go to bed, instead of trusting
in yourself, you, in effect, hand over ‘responsibility’ to the drug. Your belief in your
own ability to sleep is diminished every time you take any artificial remedy. This is
why, even though they may help on the odd night, artificial sleeping aids in the
long run always make insomnia worse.

And remember, while sleep is relatively fragile, your mind on the other hand is
strong. It is strong enough, sometimes, to keep you awake even when utterly
exhausted, sometimes even through effects of the strongest sleeping pills. Have
you ever had this happen? Has your mind fought the pills and kept you awake all
night? Horrible, isn’t it? If you don’t learn to sleep naturally without pills, there will
always be the danger that your mind will jump in to sabotage and start to fight any
new drug. While your own trust in yourself remains so low, it is only a matter of
time before the treatment stops working and you are cast adrift with no
expectation of being able to sleep at all, with or without medication. As you may
know, this is an extremely frightening place to find yourself.

No matter how tempting it seems, no matter how different you believe a pill will
be. Taking pills leads to ruin.

If I had my way, sleeping pills would be renamed ‘insomnia pills’, because they do
not make you sleep, and they cause more sleeping problems than they solve. I’ve
said it before and I’ll say it again: sleeping pills make insomnia worse!

You know, just starting down the road of looking for sleep aids, taking pills, and
trying out the ‘one weird trick’ remedies, is a slippery slope. Some long term
insomniacs will have tried, and failed, with hundreds of remedies and pills. They
may have spent thousands of dollars on so-called miracle cures. Sleep problems are
big business with countless companies attempting to cash in on the desperation of
the insomniac.

But the problem goes a lot deeper than just wasting your money...

Every time you send off for another ineffectual remedy or take the latest pill, you
reinforce the idea that something is wrong with you. When the remedy fails to
work, you imagine the fault lies with you, not the medication. You imagine the
failure must be because of the uniqueness or seriousness of your particular
problem. This is why the effect of useless sleep ‘remedies is literally worse than
nothing! They add to that horribly destructive belief - that your problem is special,
chronic, different, incurable.
Sometimes, we end up trying so many pills, potions and gadgets that life becomes
like a sort of science project where we conduct constant experiments into our own
sleeping problem. Do you use each night to try a different combination of
remedies, routines or gadgets? “Let’s try two Ambien, let’s try that new herbal
thing, let’s try cough syrup, let’s try two Valerian and a glass of Scotch? Shall I have
three large vodkas, two Ambien, a valerian tea, wear earplugs, socks and a hat,
exercise just the right time before bed, try the new relaxation CD etc., etc., etc…?”
These are the sorts of thoughts that run through the mind of the chronic insomniac
every day.

And do you think this sort of behavior is actually good preparation for sleep? When
bedtime arrives after such a mental tussle, are you likely to be in an ideal state for
sleeping? Of course not. The fact is, the more things you do at bedtime to try to
force yourself to sleep, the less chance you have of sleeping.

In desperation some insomniacs will even take large, dangerous doses of

medication combined with alcohol, risking irreparable damage to their internal
organs. But even these dangerous combinations are still often ineffective. Why?
Because we typically only do such stupid things when we are utterly desperate for
sleep. And that sort of desperation is not remotely conducive to sleeping.

I’m going to make sure you never feel that sort of awful desperation again.

Ok sleep killer 7 is,

USING COFFEE, COLA AND ENERGY DRINKS TO GET THROUGH THE DAY.

I have to admit, I am a real coffee lover. My morning coffee is one of my great

simple pleasures in life. So I know what it’s like to feel the pull of caffeine in getting
you going in the morning. But while these drinks work well first thing in the
morning, there is a very fine line between taking enough to be a helpful energy
kick and taking enough to interfere with sleep.

If you are drinking MORE caffeine since your sleeping problem started, look no
further. This most definitely needs attention.
And you should know that caffeine sensitivity can kick in at any time, even if it
hasn’t caused a problem in the past. One of my very good friends has recently
developed caffeine sensitivity after a lifetime of coffee drinking. He can now only
drink decaf, poor soul! So the point is, you may not even be aware of just how
much an effect your coffee or cola intake is having on your sleep.

But what is it that makes insomnia endure? What makes it go on and on for days
and weeks? In the next chapter we are going to move on to the final set of sleep
killers. And these are a bit different. The final four sleep killers are the more
psychologically based mistakes. Just like sleeping pills, in themselves they don’t
necessarily cause insomnia – they just make sure it stays firmly part of your life.
Part 5: Sleep Killers 8 to 10
Sasha Stephens

This set of sleep killers is perhaps the most destructive of all. These are the more
psychologically-based mistakes, the ones that cause the very worst problems for
your thinking about sleep, causing you to worry, obsess, and form negative beliefs,
and keeping this problem firmly and prominently wedged in your life.

Sleep Killer 8 is,

TALKING ABOUT INSOMNIA.

It’s when the problem has been going on for a little while, and is becoming a real
cause for worry, that the most powerful and devastating sleep killer kicks in –
talking about your insomnia. I CANNOT EMPHASISE THIS ENOUGH. Talking
constantly about your problem makes it so much worse. This is going to be a key
factor in your recovery, so do listen and try to accept it.

You may already have noticed that you have begun to form a number of negative
beliefs about your sleeping problem. Perhaps you believe you can’t sleep before
important events, that remedies don’t work on you, that there’s something
different about your problem, that your problem is worse than the others you hear
about, that your insomnia is getting worse, that it will never get better…and so on
and so on… By talking constantly about sleep and insomnia, either with friends and
family or even with doctors and therapists, you reinforce all those unhelpful beliefs
and thoughts you have about your problem. When those beliefs become very
strong and entrenched, the problem escalates.

It is usually negative beliefs that are largely responsible for insomnia going on for a
long time. Why is this? It’s because negative beliefs about sleep create fear about
not sleeping, and fear about not sleeping stops you sleeping, and not sleeping just
reinforces the negative belief and we end up with another vicious circle. Insomnia
is made so much worse by negative fearful beliefs – feed it with fear and it just
grows bigger. We need to create a new belief – one that allows you to trust, and so
lie down and just sleep like a normal person without thinking about it, without
stopping to worry or stress ….

But how are you ever going to form this nice new positive belief if all the time you
are talking about how bad your sleep is?

So think about it… Do you talk frequently with your family or friends about your
sleep issues? Do you often report on how well or badly you have slept? Do you
tend to tell new people about your insomnia within a short time of meeting them?
Are you using your insomnia as a way of describing yourself – ‘letting someone
know a bit more about yourself’? Perhaps you feel you need to tell people about
your problem so that they can understand the troubles you face. You want them to
know how serious the problem is. It might even feel dishonest if you don’t tell
them.

Of course, I’m not saying you should bottle up your problems and never speak
about the fact that you are having difficulty sleeping. When talking to a person
who might genuinely help you, it is clearly very relevant to the conversation. But
when it becomes a real habit - just a topic of light conversation, something to
mention as small talk or to someone you have just met at a party, that’s asking for
trouble.

Of course, you might never talk to others about sleep. But you are still likely to be
talking to yourself about your problem. What’s going on in your internal narrative?
What are the stories you tell yourself?

Do you refer to yourself as ‘an insomniac’?

‘I’m an insomniac.’

I want to really hammer home just how destructive this innocent seeming little
phrase is. By labelling yourself with this term, you in effect, create an identity for
yourself as an insomniac, describing your very being, in terms of a problem. Friends
start conversations by asking ‘how’s your insomnia?’ So there’s a constant
reinforcement of the message that you are ill, broken; that you are, essentially, an
insomniac. Your insomnia has now become a fundamental part of who you are.
It is this label ‘insomniac’ that adds to the sense that one is suffering with a clearly
defined disease or condition. When we slap a label ‘insomnia’ on what is going on
in our lives we create and make real a separate entity – insomnia. And so we begin
to believe we have a clearly defined condition, one that requires medical attention,
which must be ‘treated’ by the application of the correct medication. Nothing could
be further from the truth.

It’s a weird thing, but people with problems sleeping also often, sometimes
unwittingly, exaggerate their problem. They might embellish the problem when
talking to others, even boasting about their worst night ever or the longest time
they ever spent awake.

I remember often repeating these two exaggerations.

1) I once went nine days without any sleep at all, and

2) I would give up everything I own to overcome my insomnia.

Now, I’m not sure either of these was strictly true, but I remember repeating them
all the time. Of course, it didn’t feel like exaggeration. I just wanted to make people
realise that I didn’t have any normal, simple sleep problem. I wanted them to know
it was serious! It’s not that I had any intention of lying, or misleading anyone, it’s
just that a little exaggeration can be a very good way of making the seriousness of
the situation apparent.

The hitch here is that the boast eventually becomes reality, as the problem slowly
begins to fit the exaggeration! At which point, a new bigger boast is needed –
perhaps you now once went ten days without sleep. So be careful with this. Every
time you ‘talk up’ how bad your sleeping is you create a new possibility for
yourself. You give yourself something to live up to – a new goal to achieve, a new
level of insomnia to work towards! No wonder sleep problems remain persistent.
You may only have had a problem for a few weeks, but you may already be going
around calling yourself ‘an insomniac’, and talking about your problem at every
opportunity. How are you ever going to change your beliefs about sleep if you are
continually describing yourself as an insomniac and explaining in great detail about
just how bad your problem is?

If you don’t do any of these things, great! Be happy that you have less to change!
But keep an eye and ear out for this tendency in yourself. Even if you aren’t guilty
of boasting to others, you may still play up the problem ‘to yourself’. Perhaps
focusing on those few really bad nights, while ignoring the number of good nights
of sleep you may have had.

Bottom line is, the more you talk about, boast about, exaggerate, or identify with
your problem, the worse it will become!

In short, as I am so very fond of saying: the story you tell about your sleep will
come true.

Sleep killer 11 is,

RESEARCHING INSOMNIA IN BOOKS, MAGAZINES AND ONLINE.

Most medium to long-term insomniacs will have tried many, many different sleep
products in an attempt to overcome their problem. They may spend large amounts
of their spare time looking for cures online and in newspapers and magazines. And
it may not be obvious that there is anything remotely wrong with this. After all, you
wouldn’t have found this program if you hadn’t been looking.

If you trawl the online sleep discussion boards, Facebook insomnia pages, and
insomnia forum sites, you will discover thousands of people looking for remedies,
or trying one sleeping pill after another, some of them suffering for decades! Why
is it that none of them has ever found a sleep aid, pill or remedy which has worked.
The answer is simple: they are all looking in the wrong place .

This is not a criticism of the people who run these sites, or their intentions or
motivations. I have met some of the kindest people ever on internet forums. And
your first insomnia forum or a friendly Facebook page may well seem like a
Godsend. You will find a worldwide community of well-meaning, caring individuals
all with the same or a similar problem to your own, all talking, sharing, empathising,
sympathising. There are insomniacs like you all over the world, millions of them, all
suffering, none with an answer and all of them constantly reinforcing each others’
problems!

Because here’s the thing… insomnia forum sites, Facebook pages and chat rooms
are generally full of people looking for an answer to their problem, not with people
offering a solution to a problem. With very few exceptions, recovered insomniacs
do not tend to hang around insomnia forums because they have usually worked out
just how much this activity contributes to the problem. Most often, people come to
the support site because they too, are looking for help because something else has
failed. Never realising that just by visiting the site they are making matters worse.

On internet forums you will also hear from people with real horror stories, much
worse than your own. Such stories can terrify a new insomniac. We hear of a
person with a situation that is worse than our own and we immediately begin
identifying with them. Then, before long this terrible self-fulfilling prophecy comes
to be. Before long, their problems become our problems.

One woman wrote to me reporting that she thought that certain types of insomnia
were ‘catching’. She explained to me that she had never in her life experienced a
particular problem with having the cat on the bed. But she had read that pets
should be kept out of the bedroom as their fidgeting can disturb sleep. Within no
time, this problem had become her own. She was now shooing the cat out of the
room and being disturbed by his crying at the door after 13 years of having him
sleep peacefully on the end of her bed!

Overcoming insomnia is not like searching for a remedy for dry skin, or dandruff.
Insomnia is a problem that assumes a life of its own. Feed it with attention and it
grows. Constant researching of remedies is sustenance to the monster of insomnia.
Every time that you search for another remedy you are saying to yourself ‘I have a
problem’, ‘I don’t believe I can sleep on my own’, ‘the answer lies in an external
remedy’. So long-term sufferers only add to their problem every time they search.

At some point they just have to stop and change the direction of their focus.
Because until they are willing to look within, at themselves, at their thoughts and
their behavior, until they can square up to the suggestion that they are making
their insomnia worse by their constant searching, nothing will change for them,
ever.

If you are searching online for miracle treatments you are looking in the wrong
place. You know, I often say that going on online chat-sites and Facebook pages in
order to help a sleep problem is a little like watching Jaws to get over your shark
phobia.
Internet forums are less ‘insomnia support sites’ and more akin to ‘insomnia
reinforcement sites’.

Sleep killer 12: it doesn’t get any worse than this.

The final sleep killer is

REARRANGING YOUR LIFE AROUND YOUR INSOMNIA

How has your lack of sleep been affecting the normal conduct of your life? Has
your insomnia led you to make unusual compromises to take account of the
problem? Have you allowed it to lessen your enjoyment of life rather than risk
missing sleep? If so, then you need to take action … now.

Think about it …. Are you are already making small changes that impact upon the
normal running of your life. Such behaviors may include special routines, avoiding
vacations or spending nights away from home, never staying out late, avoiding
making plans, demanding special behaviors from your spouse or partner, or any
other behavior or special action (and this is the important bit) intended only for the
purposes of helping you sleep. Many people even change their jobs in order to fit in
with a sleeping problem. I, like many people became self-employed, under the
mistaken impression, that the greater freedom and flexibility of working hours
would improve my chances of sleeping.

What a mistake! All that lack of structure and routine just feeds a sleep problem.

The social life of the insomniac often goes to pot because of the tendency to start
avoiding social events and gatherings. This problem is particularly pernicious if you
have ‘special event’ insomnia like I had so chronically. I became terrified of making
plans. I never invited friends around, or organised any social events. I stopped
going on vacation and never, never stayed overnight at a friend’s house. I’d rather
walk miles home in the dark than get into a strange bed. And when someone
invited me to an event I remember answering in the most disinterested way. ‘I’m
not sure what I’m doing yet’, I would nonchalantly reply; ‘can I let you know on the
day?’ A cast-iron plan was simply too frightening and by not committing myself to
anything, I thought I had a better chance of sleeping. To my close friends and
family I even gave a rule: if you want to plan anything with me tell me about it on
that morning. Don’t tell me beforehand or you’ll just condemn me to a missed night
of sleep. Any occasional breach of the rules would result in an angry response from
me. I couldn’t see it then, but every time I avoided making a plan, every time I
feigned indifference to a social invitation, every time I demanded people follow my
rules, and every time I reacted badly when they didn’t, I was holding my problem
firmly in place.

Have you started refusing to attend social occasions or important events if you
haven’t slept? Have you begun missing out on all the good things in life? Are you
frequently canceling or postponing engagements because you are too tired? Are
you putting off marriage, a family, getting a great new job or starting your own
business? Are you beginning to compromise your normal life in order to avoid any
danger of a sleepless night?

Can you see how destructive this sort of behavior is? You are literally privileging
the problem over your enjoyment of life.

Now it seems as if you are avoiding insomnia by doing this. But here’s the horrible
irony… You are actually making your sleep worse. Because there is no greater way
to feed, grow and keep your insomnia monster healthy than by letting it dictate
and affect your normal everyday activities. When you start rearranging your life for
insomnia, insomnia has become your life.

And there, my dear friend, you have the TEN sleep killers.
Part 6: Summary & Results of
Your Worksheet
Sasha Stephens

Ok, let’s recap what we’ve learned.

We’ve seen the way that ordinary everyday activities can work effectively as sleep
killers.

We’ve seen that the following things individually or in concert can act to ruin your
chances of sleeping well.

Poor sleep routine.

Spending too long in bed.

Looking at the clock in the middle of the night.

Having an all-purpose bed.

Having unchecked stress.

Taking sleeping pills, remedies and potions.

Using caffeine and energy drinks to get through the day.

Talking about your problem.

Researching insomnia online and in books and magazines.

Rearranging your life around insomnia.

But what about if your problem isn’t caused by one of these sleep killers? Some of
you may still have the suspicion that your insomnia has some other biological,
physical or chemical cause. So how do you tell? How do you determine whether
your condition is genuinely based on a physical ailment? How do you know you
aren’t one of that tiny number that have a mystery ailment, a hidden cause or that
there really is something completely different about your problem?

Well, that’s easy. Turn to your completed worksheet 2. You’ll see that each of the
yes/no questions on the sheet are all variations of one of these sleep killers.

Now, count up the number of boxes where you have checked ‘Yes’.

If you have answered ‘yes’ to even one of these questions: good! Excellent, in fact.
Because these are all very much indicators of a psychological or behavioral
condition, just like every other ‘normal’ insomniac. If the answer to even one of
these questions is yes, then at least part of your problem is to do with ordinary
causes, just like everyone else. End of story.

Now, I know that you have checked quite a few yeses. I know this because those
who don’t make these mistakes are very unlikely to have a problem sleeping.

Can you see now the way that all these things come together to create a major
problem? Can you now begin to understand that something as simple as spending
too long in bed, followed by a few sleeping pills, followed by a bit of over-attention
to the problem can set off a chain of events that ends with full blown, severe long
term insomnia? It really is that easy to create a massive problem.

In fact, the more yeses there are on your sheet, the easier the insomnia is going to
be to overcome. The more you are doing wrong, the easier it is to put things right
and the more monumental the effect that changing them will have.

One yes, three yeses, twenty yeses. This is all good news. This means I can help
you; this means you can recover, just like any ordinary insomniac.

And we’re coming to the end of this lesson now. Having spent a whole lesson
dedicated to getting everything WRONG, let’s now turn to something a little more
positive.

If you want to have the very best chance of this program working to its full effect,
do remember to listen to every single part, in the right order. And don't miss
anything out.

If you want to take a break before carrying on, do so. And give yourself plenty of
time to listen to this next lesson. I think you’re going to like it.
MODULE 3: Putting Things
Right
Part 1: There is Nothing
Wrong With You
Sasha Stephens

Enough of the negativity! Let’s step things up a bit and turn to the fun stuff! Let’s
start to make you better.

I’m next going to say something strange and not just a little controversial.

There is no such thing as insomnia .

What I mean by this is that insomniacs do not ‘have’ a disease. They don’t have a
clearly defined condition or any type of illness.

I do talk about ‘insomnia’ and ‘insomniacs’ because it’s difficult to make myself
understood without these labels. But I really wish it were possible to eliminate
these words completely from my writing. Because, in a very REAL sense, you do
not have insomnia; you are not an insomniac. This ‘condition’ does not exist in its
own right. It’s just a word we give to some nights where we didn’t sleep very well.

Can you see that?

I get many, many letters and emails from people who are convinced they have a
real, physical problem. A chemical imbalance, or a ‘biological’ or ‘medical’ reason for
their insomnia.

But I want to point out how emphatically I disagree with the medicalization of
insomnia.

Why?

It’s because, when you are diagnosed ‘with insomnia’ by a doctor, this can often
make matters worse. This is not a crazy idea I have made up. Because doctors are
now well aware of the nocebo effect. This is the negative effect of a diagnosis or
treatment. It is the complete opposite of the placebo effect.
When a doctor diagnoses you with insomnia, you become convinced that you are
suffering with a clearly defined, medical condition. It cements, solidifies and makes
your spate of insomnia utterly real. You ‘have’ something, a real condition, and this
is why you can’t sleep. In fact, you have something a bit like a disease! And what do
we do with diseases? Well, there are usually only two things: we cut people up or
we give them drugs.

So…stop right now and listen to me because this is important. I need you to accept
something, perhaps just on faith for now.

I need you to just trust what I am about to say.

There is nothing wrong with you. You are not broken. You don’t have a medical
condition called insomnia that stops you from sleeping. You don’t have anything at
all. In fact, your ability to sleep is as intact as the day you were born.

Can you just take that in for a moment?

Sleeping is a normal, natural, innate ability. We are born with this power, with this
capacity for great sleep. And that ability to sleep perfectly is still inside you.
Somewhere, fully ready and complete, waiting for the chance to show itself again,
waiting for the chance to come rushing back into your life.

And it will do so , when the conditions are right.

Now, if you can follow the easy instructions I am going to give you, you will get
those conditions pretty darn near perfect. And when those conditions are near
perfect, sleep will enter your life again. End of story.

So let’s give your story that perfect new ending, the same ending that so many
others have given to their sleep stories.

Listen, follow instructions and trust. Be free and open to every suggestion, follow
every step. Like an eager kid on their first day atschool – prick up your ears, listen
and learn. When you do this, you’re going to do more than take control of your
sleeping patterns; you’re going to retake control of your life. Sleep will become
irresistible.

So right here now, let’s forget for a moment about how long your problem has
gone on. There is no point in dwelling on the past. We’re not going to talk about
how long you’ve suffered or what your particular flavor of insomnia is. We’re not
even going to talk about how many ticks you had on your last worksheet. None of
that matters any more. All that matters is what we do from this point on.

Tomorrow is a new day, and you are going to get to decide how it turns out, no
matter what has happened before. Because from this moment on, we are all
starting at the bottom. We are all at ground zero. All of us. All equal, all
inexperienced, all ripe for learning… like babies.

And for this, we need to go right back to the beginning…

Ready? Good. Now let’s begin.

Part 2: Breaking The Habit
Sasha Stephens

You know, having insomnia is very much like having a bad habit. When you suffer
for some time with insomnia, this means you have simply become stuck, in a
habitual negative pattern of not sleeping well. And many of us have some
experience of overcoming a bad habit, perhaps smoking, drinking, overeating, too
much coffee or chocolate, nail biting or thumb sucking. Now, this process of
breaking a habit is often very difficult. But with enough will-power, determination
and strength of character, it is at least possible even for a person to give up a drug
as powerful as heroin. This means that such habits are (at least in principle) under
our control.

And, many of us take a similar attitude to beating insomnia. We use willpower in an

attempt to sleep.

For example you are probably very concerned with what to do on those nights
when you can’t sleep. You perhaps try to overcome the insomnia while you are
lying right there in bed. You find you can’t sleep so you start doing things to try and
force the sleep to happen. Either by taking pills, using multiple sleep aids, or by
‘trying really hard to relax’.

But have you noticed that when you try hard to fall asleep you rarely succeed? In
fact, the harder you try to fall asleep, the further away sleep becomes.

Because think about it: trying implies effort and unsuccessful effort implies
frustration and tension, neither of which is conducive to falling asleep. What do
natural good sleepers do to make themselves sleep? The answer is that, good
sleepers don’t really do anything. Think back to a time when you did fall asleep
easily. What did you do? You probably didn’t do anything either. It might be more
accurate to describe falling asleep as something you do not do.

I was always looking for something to do, to make me fall asleep on those nights
when sleep eluded me – recordings, magnets, breathing and focusing techniques,
having a whole armory in place ready, in case tonight turned out to be a ‘bad night’.
After all, I reasoned, if I managed to sleep on those really bad nights, the good
nights would take care of themselves. Thus, I spent most of my time as an
insomniac focusing on working out what I should be doing on those bad nights.
Perhaps you’re doing something similar.

What I didn’t realise at the time is that good or bad sleep is the result of a much
longer chain of events, just as we learned in the previous lesson. It’s not about the
ideal night-time relaxation or sleep aid, and not about giving you one word,
technique, or bit of information or knowledge that will make you sleep on those
bad nights.

So waiting until bedtime to do something about insomnia is almost always a case of

leaving things too late.

Because: good sleep is not something we make happen while lying in bed.

Good sleep is something that will occur naturally and effortlessly when the
circumstances are right. And those circumstances do not just concern what we do
in bed. The circumstances that lead to good sleep also concern all those other
things we do in our everyday lives.

In basic terms, rather than focusing on the bad night itself, we actually need to be
more concerned with everything that has led up to it.

So, on this program, I am not just giving you things to do in bed ‘when you can’t
sleep’. If we only did that, the positive effect would be a big fat zero.

Look at it this way: rather than fixing the bad nights when they happen, we are
going to prevent those nights from happening in the first place. And to do that,
we’re not just going to focus on bedtime. No, we’re going to work on making the
circumstances as conducive to sleep as possible before we get anywhere near the
bedroom. Sleep will then happen automatically, naturally, and without having to do
anything at all. We’re not going to try and force it, or make it happen, not by
drugging you, not by attaching you to magnets or by wearing special hats, but by
allowing sleep. Real, natural sleep.

I do have a few little relaxation tricks and techniques and some recordings you can
use on those really bad nights, and I will explain those later. But they are not the
real meat of this program. They are not what ‘makes the sleep happen’. The
bedtime techniques I will give you are just an optional extra for those of you who
like something to do in bed. And even these bedtime techniques will work so much
better if the foundations are in place before you get anywhere near the bed.
Okay, how are we going to do this?

In many ways, learning to sleep well is a lot like acquiring fitness or a skill. Good
sleep is a habit. Like all habits, it gets reinforced the more you do it. It is something
that builds. It is like an ability, like a muscle that gets stronger the more you use it.

Let me just repeat this because it’s an important point: good sleep is an ability that
grows.

This is why it is literally impossible to overcome insomnia instantly and in one night.
And it’s also why good sleep could never come from a pill. Insomnia is not
something you can possibly overcome overnight with one pill, trick or technique.
Overnight miracle cures simply do not exist . They cannot exist. Because good,
solid, permanent sleep is not just about last night or tonight. One swallow does not
make a summer; one bad night does not equal insomnia… and one good night of
sleep does not mean complete recovery.

Really good sleep every night comes when you have a firmly established habit in
place. And you can’t create a firmly established habit in one night or with one pill.

Let’s go back to the fitness analogy. Let’s say you want to run an 8 minute mile or
lift a certain weight. You might want to get into a full lotus position in your yoga
class or jump a certain height. Now, would you go looking for a pill, trick or instant
remedy that would enable you to lift a massive weight or force yourself instantly
into that extreme yoga position? If you did you’d only damage yourself and any
success would certainly be temporary – a one-off.

So yeah, you could take some sort of stimulant or steroid that would force your
body to be able to lift a massive weight on one particular occasion (in the same way
that you might take a sleeping pill to knock you out for one night). You could take
drugs, or you could train properly.

Which would you rather do?

The way to real, genuine, tip-top fitness, bench pressing a certain weight or doing a
full lotus position, or running an 8 minute mile, is to train slowly, steadily, learning,
getting your body used to the new way of doing things, getting stronger and more
confident all the time.

It’s just the same with sleep.

Now, as I’ve said before, we are going to make the ideal most perfect conditions
for sleep to slip back into your life. But that’s just the beginning. Because we then
have to keep those conditions right for long enough for your new habit to grow
strong and for your confidence to increase.

When we come to see that good sleep is a habit, this is a really important change in
the way we view our problem. This is a real milestone in recovery. Because, if
insomnia is largely just a habit, this means there is no such thing as someone who is
‘just a bad sleeper’ or ‘naturally an insomniac’. Because anyone can forge a great
new habit, anyone can train and get stronger and more confident. Anyone can
become a better sleeper, a great sleeper.

You heard my miserable tale of woe in the first lesson. I was a crazy sleepless
wreck for fifteen years. And now, at the age of 46, I sleep better than I did as a tiny
child. When I was very young, I was one of those who always took at least an hour
to fall asleep. And I always woke 2-3 times in the night. Now, neither of these
things is true.

I remember sending an email to some of my readers in which I wrote ‘I have just

woken from the best sleep of my life’. I was telling the truth. I had fallen asleep
very quickly and slept right through the night, to wake up with a big smile on my
face. I can’t put into words just how deep and delicious that sleep was. Since then,
I have had many, many similar experiences. And it’s not just me. I regularly get
letters from people in their 60s and 70s who have had a lifetime of sleep problems,
reporting that they are sleeping better than they have ever done, after following
the instructions I am about to give you.

Now, I’m not saying this to rub your nose in the success of others. I’m doing it to
try to prove to you, that being a bad sleeper is not set in stone. A bad sleeper can
become a really great sleeper. This is the sort of turnaround that can happen, to
anyone, even someone with as chronic a problem as mine was.

And all I did to achieve this turnaround will soon be revealed to you.

So how do we do this? How do we counter all the mistakes we found we were

making in the previous lesson. How do we start again from scratch to create the
ideal sleep conditions? It sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? Haha, it really isn’t.

In basic terms, we need to address three main areas.

First, we deal with your going to bed habits (in other words, sleep hygiene).

Next we address your stress levels (including worry, anxiety, and physical tension) .
And finally we look at your thinking (including beliefs, expectation and the
association of bed and sleep).

Now, when even just one of these is widely off the mark (for example, if stress
levels are far too high, or sleep hygiene is less than ideal, or thinking is very
negative and fearful) sleep will be hard to come by. Even in ordinary good sleepers,
bad sleep can occur when one of these is out of balance.

So, to learn to sleep again properly, we are going to do the following…

First of all, we’re going to lay a foundation of excellent sleep hygiene, to create a
really great routine, improve the quality of your sleep, make sure your tiredness is
at an ideal level, and start to build a rock solid, cast iron association of bed and
sleep.

…next… we’re going to take simple steps to slightly reduce stress, anxiety and
tension levels.

…finally… we’re going to make a revolutionary change in your thinking.

…and we’re going to keep practising until it’s habit.

Because… when these three areas are in perfect balance, sleep will occur, end of
story. And it will occur naturally, without any need for external aids, pills or even
techniques.

And as the next three parts of this lesson will show you, this is going to be far, far
easier than it sounds.
Part 3: Sleep Hygiene
Sasha Stephens

So let’s have a closer look at that first area of concern: sleep hygiene. In the
previous lesson you heard about all the ways we get our sleep hygiene wrong:
spending too long in bed, sleeping in in the morning, using our bedroom as office
and cinema, and so on. Unsurprisingly, we are going to start out, countering all
those mistakes by tightening up our sleep hygiene.

But how does it work? Well, there are three main benefits to good sleep hygiene.

Well, first, it ensures that your tiredness is at an ideal level.

And before you tell me that your tiredness couldn’t get any stronger, thank you
very much… Let me explain: By ‘tiredness’ I don’t just mean the ever-present
feeling of anxious exhaustion that relentlessly permeates your life. I am talking
about actual sleepiness , the feeling of being able to fall asleep at any moment . And
here’s the first wonderful effect of tightening up your sleep hygiene. Because it
works to slightly increase the sleepiness when you lie down, this move alone will
often push you into easy sleep.

The second reason that sleep hygiene is so important is that Sleep hygiene creates
a strong association of bed and sleep, causing your body to learn to sleep all over
again.

If you use your bed as study, cinema, library and office, or if you have spent a lot of
time in bed not sleeping, you may find everything is magically transformed once
there is a bit of sleep hygiene in place. By lying in bed not sleeping, or by using your
bed for all sorts of reasons other than sleep, you have effectively taught your body
to associate going to bed with being awake.

Instead, we are going to teach your body a new lesson – a new association – that
bed is all about sleep and sleep is all about bed. If we can make this association
strong enough, it can overcome all manner of other problems with stress, fearful
thinking and any other things that may come along to disrupt things. Eventually,
you can make this association so strong that just the thought of your lovely warm
soft bed is enough to make you feel sleepy. It is this sort of association that will
eventually give you that wonderful experience of falling asleep as soon as your
head hits the pillow.

So follow the sleep hygiene instructions in the next lesson even if you have tried
them before and let’s get that association of bed and sleep rock solid, cast iron and
set in stone.

And finally, the last reason for sleep hygiene is that by forcing it into a tighter
space, you improve the quality and depth of your sleep. It’s almost like you’re
increasing its density.

So you’ll have a greater chance of falling into that deep delicious delta sleep. And
even after just a few hours you can feel refreshed and ready for the day.

But you still may not be convinced about the relevance of sleep hygiene to you.
After all, before your problem started, you were probably able to sleep in on
weekends, watch TV in bed, take an afternoon nap and still sleep fine. Plus, loads
of people sleep in on Sundays and watch TV in bed, and they don’t have a problem!

And here we come to a big reason that a lot of people dismiss sleep hygiene or
think it isn’t relevant to them. They remember a time when they had a horrible
routine and still slept well. Or they point to someone else they know, who sleeps
well, even though this other person apparently indulges in all these bad behaviors.
And so some people assume sleep hygiene is just not relevant to their particular
problem.

If you are a long-term chronic insomniac, you may well be very familiar with sleep
hygiene rules. But please don’t make the mistake I did. I thought that something so
trivial seeming was irrelevant to a problem as long term and chronic as mine. I
rejected sleep hygiene for over a decade, sure that my problem was far too severe
to be helped by something so simple. I also convinced myself that strict sleep
hygiene would only add to my obsession with sleep and so make things worse.

I was wrong.

When I finally introduced sleep hygiene, and more importantly, when I stuck to it
(not just for a day or two, but for a period of time), it had a huge effect on my
sleeping habits, even after 15 years of chronic insomnia.

If your problem is new or you have never tried it before, you may well be
astonished by the speed at which these little changes can make a difference,
especially when combined with the other advice in this program. And implementing
good sleep hygiene at an early point will almost always stop a problem from
becoming chronic.

Good sleep hygiene isn’t just a remedial measure to put right all the harm done by
making silly mistakes. It’s really powerful in itself . This means that even if you
weren’t guilty of many of those going to bed mistakes I talked of in the last lesson,
it will still help. And even if you used to be able to indulge in all these unhelpful
sleep behaviors, it will still help. And even if you think your problem is too severe
to be helped by something so simple, it will still help.

No matter what your history, slightly better sleep hygiene will always have a really
beneficial effect on sleep.
But… sleep hygiene isn’t always enough. In the next part of this lesson we are now
going to move onto the second main player in the world of insomnia recovery –
dealing with stress
Part 4: Getting Control of
Stress
Sasha Stephens

In the last part, we saw the way that tightening up sleep hygiene can really help to
improve sleep.

But if anxiety and stress levels are very high, sorting out your going to bed habits
with sleep hygiene won’t always be enough.

Constant, unchecked stress really can sometimes play havoc with sleep.

And if we continue to just put up and shut up and accept stress as a normal part of
life, we are going to have to put up with lousy sleep too. And I think that’s
unacceptable.

On this program, we take stress reduction very seriously indeed.

Now, as I mentioned previously, many people find night time relaxation techniques
don’t help. You may even find yourself unwittingly fighting any ‘in-bed’ technique
or a relaxation recording, particularly if it is new and unfamiliar. If you’re a ‘fighter’
you may have found bedtime CDs, mp3s and relaxation techniques useless.

So what do we do? Well, for a start, we don’t try to force sleep to happen on a
background of stress. Instead, we work to remove the stress (or at least alleviate it)
and watch as the sleep slips back in naturally.

How do we do that? Well, as you may have guessed… We don’t leave relaxation till
bedtime! We are so used to thinking relaxation is something that needs to be done
in bed, when it really is so much easier and SO much more effective to focus on
reducing your general background stress during the day.

Why is this? Well, for a start, daytime de-stressing activities tend to work better,
because there is no pressure to actually fall asleep. Without the extra pressure of
needing to fall asleep at the end of it, the relaxation itself will be far easier and you
will relax better and deeper.

This reduction in tension and anxiety will stay with you throughout the day, making
your general background stress levels low and your wellbeing higher.

And then we come on to the best reason of all for daytime de-stressing – if you
work on reducing stress throughout the day, there may well be no need to use a
technique at all when bedtime comes. That means sleep can be much closer to the
automatic, inevitable sleep we really want.

So when you get into bed, you will know there is nothing to try and think, nothing
to try to ‘do’, nothing to get right. All that needs to be done has been done earlier
on in the day. There is no point in any fretting, any wondering, any doing. Thus
tension will be lower, expectation of sleep will be higher, thoughts are dreamier
and sleep comes so much more easily. Do this well enough and sleep will be
automatic!

And if you do enjoy using a night-time technique, it will be so much more effective
if daytime de-stressing means you are already half-way there.

I just want to quickly mention sleep maintenance insomnia again, that infuriating
habit of being able to fall asleep rapidly, only to wake a few hours later, completely
unable to get back to sleep. Because this type of problem is usually about
background or sudden stress levels, it can often be completely overcome by
instilling a regular program of daytime relaxation or de-stressing.

But, having extolled the virtues of regular daily relaxation, I have to be realistic
here. If I told everyone to meditate for two hours a day, do an hour of yoga,
followed by a nice aromatherapy massage, I know full well that almost none of you
would or could follow these instructions. I know de-stressing needs to be easy,
needs to be simple, needs to be quick, doable and to fit in with your life. With this
in mind, I have made the de-stressing instructions in the next lesson as quick and
easy as possible.

And I want to assure you of something. Even if you are one of those who currently
reacts very badly to stress, even if you are someone who tends to sleep really badly
when things are going wrong, or suffers sleep maintenance insomnia at the first
sign of stress, please don’t imagine it always has to be this way. Poor sleep does
not necessarily result from stress.

I say this because I now actually sleep better when stressed. I now sleep so well
that my bed has become my sanctuary, my place to retreat at the end of a stressful
day, switch off and forget about my problems, even if just for those few hours. My
bed is my happy place, my safe little cocoon where day-to-day stresses cannot
enter. I can hardly believe how this has changed for me. Follow this program
properly and you could soon be reacting in a similarly healthy way to stress.

The part that follows is one of the most powerful pieces of the whole program.
Don’t miss it.
Part 5: New Ways of
Thinking
Sasha Stephens

The first steps in combatting insomnia are always to attend to these two aspects –
First, instilling a great going to bed routine with some sleep hygiene… and second,
dealing with anxiety, stress and tension . Get these things right first.

Because this, may well be all you need to overcome insomnia, particularly if your
problem is recent.

So having put sleep hygiene and de-stressing into place, your insomnia really is on
shaky ground now. And your body and mind are beginning to learn some great new
habits. We have reduced stress, just a little bit, we have made you a little bit
sleepier at bedtime and we have begun to create a strong association of bed and
sleep. Just these small teachings to your body and mind are nudging you closer and
closer to really great sleep. And even if this were all we did, almost every one of
you would see a real upturn in your sleeping habits.

But that’s not all we do. Because we have even more in our armory. We have a
third weapon so powerful it will undermine, dissolve and eventually obliterate
insomnia, sending it back where it belongs, into the depths of history. This is the
nail in the coffin, the icing on the cake, the thing that will turbo-power your
recovery, even once your sleep hygiene and stress levels are back on track.

Because we are going to change the whole way you think about sleep, insomnia,
and your entire problem.

So, let’s say you already have worked hard on the first two aspects. You may have
increased your tiredness with good sleep hygiene. You have some effective de-
stressing activities in place to deal with tension and anxiety, and your body is well
on the way to learning a really positive new habit.

But… if your thoughts remain full of fear and negativity, expectation of sleep will
stay low, and insomnia could continue to plague you. When insomnia hits, going to
bed and being in bed fast become associated with anxious thoughts. Even
someone with a brand new problem can already be feeling fearful and negative
about the prospect of going to bed. And as you may have discovered, fear and
worry about not sleeping can do a very good job of keeping you awake.

I’m going to show you how to take control of these thoughts and start learning a
new way of thinking. As soon as you have seen this work even just a tiny bit, a lot
of the fear will vanish.

But … you can’t go changing beliefs instantly, from one moment to another. They
need room and time to grow, to settle and to become habitual. Increasing belief,
trust and expectation must be allowed to take some time. This is why I call this a
sleep training program. Training takes time. Learning takes experience.

And because I know your patience is likely to be in short supply, in this program I
will be showing you the very best things you can do to speed up this process.

With this in mind, all the things I am going to suggest to change your thinking are
super-duper easy.

And I’ve found that it is usually the simplest things that work the best, and
changing negative thinking is no exception. There is no need to make things
difficult. Just a few easy steps will get your thoughts pushing in a completely new
and positive direction, and eventually you’ll start to form really positive and
powerful new beliefs about yourself and your own ability to sleep.

Before we go on, I want to show you the basic way that learning a new belief
actually works. This may sound like a diversion but it’s going to help you
understand the reasons for the advice I will give you in the next lesson.

It may reassure you scientific types to know that I do not currently believe in a
mystical ‘law of attraction’. Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with
believing that thoughts affect reality. I just don’t believe there’s anything law-like
going on. But I do know there is a very strong tendency to get more of what you
focus on. And this is certainly true with insomnia.

When you have a thought, feeling or experience of a certain belief, your brain fires
in a certain pattern. The more you repeat this same thought, feeling or experience,
the stronger that pattern of brain firing becomes. Eventually, that brain firing and
the associated thought pattern becomes automatic – and we have a fully formed
belief.
For argument’s sake, let’s say there is one basic brain pattern for the belief ‘I’m an
insomniac’. Now, of course, this pattern is triggered every time you don’t sleep
well.

But… the same pattern will also be fired by other things, such as:

saying ‘I’m not a good sleeper’.

calling yourself an insomniac.
taking sleeping pills .
researching cures.
complaining about sleep, and so on.
So as you can see, it is not just sleeping badly that triggers the brain pattern for ‘I’m
an insomniac’. Sleeping badly is just one trigger, but it’s not the only trigger.

If you are still taking pills, telling everyone about your insomnia, and spending all
your spare time on insomnia Facebook pages, then all these things will conspire to
fire the old ‘I’m an insomniac’ pattern even when you sleep well . This explains why
the thinking so often remains negative even when the sleep has picked up.

If you keep up all these other negative behaviors, there is very little chance of one
or two good nights canceling out the old belief. A few good nights of sleep are not
usually enough to override all the other negative behaviors contributing to the ‘I’m
an insomniac’ brain pattern. So the belief ‘I’m just a bad sleeper’ remains even
when you get a great night of sleep.

So as we can now see, continually focusing on insomnia by thinking about it, talking
about it, worrying about it, trying to work it out, or researching it just reinforces
that same habitual brain pattern and so results in more insomnia even if you do get
the odd night of good sleep.

If all of this has become a bit complicated for you, let me just explain things in
completely simple terms.

Because all you really need to know is the following:

The more you complain about your sleep, the worse it gets.

The more attention you give to insomnia, the longer it lasts.

But here’s the WONDERFUL flipside.

The more attention you give to the good nights, the more good nights you get.
The more you focus on the fact you are getting better, the better you become!

In this program, we are going to take a very, very simple approach to changing your
negative thinking and learning a positive new habit. To illustrate how this works.
Think about the following commonplace situation…

You are in a café, chatting with your friends having a jolly conversation. It is
someone’s birthday and the atmosphere is light and happy. But then conversation
inadvertently turns to a horribly negative subject – perhaps an infuriating piece of
political scandal, a natural disaster where hundreds of people have died, or a child
abduction. Everyone feels the mood drop while you all think of the new and
distressing subject. If you all continued to talk about that subject, you would
probably all go home quite depressed. But what happens instead is that, sooner or
later, you’ll usually hear someone say ‘anyway, we don’t want to talk about that
today, do we? Shall we change the subject?’ And the conversation will turn back to
a happier subject and the jolly event continues. No depression, no worry, no mood
drop. And all that’s happened is that these people have refused to engage with the
negative thought because it wasn’t appropriate at that time.

That’s exactly what we are going to do with thoughts about insomnia.

Because thinking negative thoughts about insomnia is never appropriate.

Changing your thinking sounds like a terribly difficult thing to do and the whole
business is often made too complicated, in my opinion. My approach is this…when
it comes to negative thinking, we don’t analyse, engage or fight, we just cut it dead.
This same mechanism by which insomnia is created can be used to destroy it.
Instead of giving it attention with thought, we give it no attention at all.

The beauty of this approach is that no effort is required. No need to find a better
thought. You just have to catch yourself whenever your mind turns to worry, or
when a bad thought pops in and stop it. It works so well, it puts other therapies to
shame.

And… having effectively refused to engage with negative thoughts, we then begin
to replace our tale of woe with a positive new story. Creating our own future with
the story we tell.

You know, there was a time when my mother would phone every day to ask how
well I slept. Every day we would have a detailed conversation about the previous
night, and what I should do in the future. This went on for years. These were
caring, loving, thoughtful conversations and I really appreciated them, but they
were doing me no good at all!

All these conversations did was to remind me, keeping the enormity of this huge
problem, this monster, this entity, this thing in my life, and in hers. I realised that
talking to my mother about insomnia was not part of my new positive sleep story;
it was part of the old, negative story. Eventually, I had to ask my mother kindly to
stop calling me. I told her to stop asking ‘how’s your sleep these days’. I told her
not to mention sleep unless I did so first.

These days, she obviously never asks me at all.

Imagine now, that instead of telling your friends, family and everyone you have met
over the years about your bad nights of sleep, you instead had only talked about
the good nights. Can you see what would have happened if you had focused on the
opposite, on the good times? Are you starting to have an inkling of the way you
have created your own problem, your own reality? By changing your focus, now,
you can create a whole new sleep world for yourself. And that’s what I’m going to
show you how to do in the next lesson.

People who sleep badly often boast and exaggerate about how bad their sleep
really is, just to make sure everyone understands the severity of their problem. But
people with positive ideas about their ability to sleep boast and exaggerate about
how well they can sleep. You know those annoying people who say things like – ‘I
can sleep through any alarm’, ‘Oh, I can fall asleep anywhere’, ‘I could sleep in the
middle of the road, ‘I need six alarm clocks to wake me’ ‘I could sleep in a cage full
of tigers,’ you know the ones!

How they annoy us … and how we envy them! Well, the truth is, you are only a
short way from becoming one of them!

And I’ll be giving you the full instructions on how to do this in the next lesson. But
for now, turn to the final part in this lesson, it’s a good one.
Part 6: Going to Bed
Conditions
MODULE 4: The Twelve
Promises
Part 1: Introduction to the
Twelve Promises
Sasha Stephens

OK, are you ready? In the last lesson I explained in general terms the way that we
overcome sleep problems, and begin to learn a habit of sleeping well every night.
But I didn’t really tell you anything about how to do this. So we are now coming to
the one formal lesson of the program.

In this lesson I’m going to give you the precise instructions that will enable all those
wonderful changes to take place.

We are now going to begin tackling the sleeping problem head on, with the precise
behavioral steps necessary to create a new great sleeping habit.

Rest assured, you are not going to have to work hard or study. You don’t really
even need to understand what is going on. I do go on and on about having to
understand the problem. But the fact is, even if you haven’t really understood a
single word of what I have said so far, the instructions in this particular lesson are
still going to work… to bring sleep back into your life, fast. And they will make sure
it sticks around.

The essence of this program is a set of 12 promises, 12 commitments, 12

agreements, 12 pledges if you like, to getting your life back. Some of these may
sound familiar, but others will be quite unlike anything you have heard before. And
all are going to have an incredible effect on your sleep.

Ok. Let’s create the absolutely ideal, tip-top, perfect going to bed conditions.
Part 2: Promises 1 to 6

PROMISE 1 is to.

SPEND LESS TIME IN BED.

Yep, that’s right. It might seem counterintuitive, but spending less time in bed is a
recommendation I give to almost everyone who comes to me for help. Because this
promise has three fantastically beneficial effects on sleep.

First, by reducing the time you spend in bed, you slightly increase your sleepiness
levels and so make sleep that much easier to come by. So spending just a little bit
less time in bed can have a big effect on your ability to drop off in the first place.

Second, the less time you spend in bed, the less time you’ll spend lying in bed
awake. So you won’t be strengthening that mental association of being in bed with
being awake. In fact, by spending less time in bed, you will weaken the expectation
of being unable to sleep in bed.

And the third great effect is that if you are spending too long in bed, you are likely
to doze, or get very light sleep without going into the deepest, and most
refreshing, delta sleep. This results in your sleep ‘thinning out’ and so decreasing in
depth and quality. By reducing your time spent in bed, you ‘squash’ the sleep into a
tighter space, meaning the sleep you do get will be of better quality. If you are
currently getting lots of sleep but are still feeling lousy all day, spending less time in
bed may well be all you need to improve this.

Note that this is not the same as sleep restriction therapy that you may have heard
about. Sleep restriction therapy involves your reducing the time in bed to as little
as 4 or 5 hours in an attempt to force sleep to happen. And that’s certainly not
what we are doing here. We are not trying to make you desperate for sleep. We
are just giving the sleepiness a little boost.

But how much should you cut down by?

So, we are looking for the right number of hours of sleep that means there is still a
bit of resistance to getting up when the alarm goes off. You are still going to want
to press the snooze button! But once you’re up and ready, you should feel fine for
the rest of the day. Your mood should be good and you will be unlikely to nod off
in the afternoon through exhaustion. However, at bedtime you should be so ready
to drop off that there is little chance of your lying awake for ages.

So, think back to before the problem started. How many hours sleep did you
usually need to wake refreshed and feel good all day? I’m not talking about those
days you slept in for twelve hours on a Sunday morning, I’m talking about the
nights you slept well, got up for work and went about your day without being
utterly exhausted. For most people, this seems to be between six and eight hours.
But there is no point in overdoing it. Don’t decide you need nine hours of sleep if
you know full well you can feel really good on 7. That will just be
counterproductive. And pay no attention to news articles telling you you’re risking
your life by getting less than eight hours!

Now, once you have decided on the right number of hours, subtract half an hour
from that time . So, if you normally need seven and a half hours, from now on, you
only get 7. This is usually all the sleep restriction you need. From now on, these
‘bedtime hours’ must be the maximum time and the only time you spend in bed,
whether you sleep well or not. Of course, this is not an absolute science and you
may need to experiment a little to find your own ideal bedtime hours. A good rule
of thumb is, that if you don’t see an improvement in your sleep within a week, cut
the time spent in bed by another half hour.

If you see an improvement in the time taken to fall asleep, but are finding yourself
unbearably sleepy during the day, increase the time by half an hour.

This is often an unpopular promise but my goodness, it’s a good one! It might also
encourage you to know that a lot of people find that just by reducing the time they
spend in bed, they have found themselves able to sleep solidly through the night,
without waking, for the first time in their lives.

Promise 2 is to get,

NO NAPS.

I know there are many schools of thought teaching that napping is good for you.
And I’m sure a nap is good for you, if you live in southern Italy, have a leisurely
paced life working in the sunshine, have a long history of taking afternoon siestas
and don’t have any sleeping issues. If that describes your life, great. Take naps. But
that is not who you are, is it? You are listening to this program because you have
an issue with insomnia, and things are slightly different for you; at least they will be
in the beginning.

If napping in the day has become a habit for you, it is almost undoubtedly at the
expense of a proper full night’s sleep. Even a 20-minute nap will mean that when
you finally get to bed at night, you will be less sleepy than you would have been
without it, making it more difficult to drop off. So if you are one of those who nods
off in front of the TV after dinner, you shouldn’t be surprised that proper sleep is
hard to come by a few hours later when you go to bed.

Added to this, of course, taking a nap on the bus or office or couch, or anywhere
other than bed reinforces your night-time insomnia by decreasing expectation of
being able to sleep in bed.

So, just to spell that out, avoiding naps has two distinctly positive effects –

1) it increases your association of bed, bedtime and sleep and

2) it helps you to feel good and sleepy when you lie down at night.

So, if the afternoon sleepies come over you, don’t lounge on the couch. Get up, go
for a walk, have a shower, anything at all that will prevent you from falling asleep.
That sleepiness will pass.

And if you do accidentally drop off to sleep in a really boring meeting or on the
couch in front of the television, don’t beat yourself up over it. Instead, use it as a
reason to give yourself a little pep-talk to bolster your confidence. ‘Look how well I
slept on the couch!’ tell yourself, ‘I used never to be able to sleep like that!’, ‘I must
be getting better’, ‘I should be able to sleep like that tonight too!’

But don’t let the naps become the norm or they will begin to affect your chances
of sleeping at night.

And if you are consistently finding it truly impossible to stay awake in the
afternoon or early evening, despite sleeping okay at night, don’t nap. Just lengthen
your time in bed by half an hour and see if this helps.
PROMISE 3.
GET UP AT THE SAME TIME
EVERY DAY.

Ok, the next little promise is a really great one. For the next 30 days you are going
to start getting up at the same time, every day, weekdays and weekends. I know it
may seem harsh not to allow sleeping in on Sunday morning, especially if the
weekends are the only time you currently get any decent sleep. But at least in the
beginning, it’s very important to impose a moderately strict routine on your body.
By sleeping in one morning a week, you could be sabotaging the other six nights.
It’s just not worth it. And I promise you, before long, getting up at the same time at
weekends will no longer bother you one jot. And when you begin to notice the
effect that getting up at the same time every day has on your sleeping patterns, it
will no longer be a hardship.

‘But,’ you may say, ‘I’m naturally a “night owl”. This means I find it really hard to get
up early, especially when I don’t have work in the morning.’

This is exactly how I used to be. I was once exactly the same, hence my belief that I
was not a morning person. I actually avoided doing ‘proper’ jobs for years just so
that I could avoid getting out of bed in the morning on someone else’s orders.

I can’t believe how all this has changed. Now I love getting out of bed early.

The key here is consistency. The more you do something, the easier it becomes,
and it doesn’t take many repetitions before it begins to feel like the norm. Commit
to getting up at the same time every day for 30 days. You will probably find that
after only about two weeks, it will have become close to a habit. And with a firm
foundation of a really regular getting up time, all the other promises will be much
more effective. And when this is combined with promise 1, ‘spend less time in bed’,
and promise 2, ‘no napping’ the three create a powerful foundation for all other
sleep promises. It is these three which lay the most important condition for sleep
to occur – that your body knows exactly when it’s supposed to be asleep!

Besides this, the psychological effect of knowing that you didn’t sleep late in bed in
the morning will provide reassurance and increase your motivation to stick to the
program. It won’t be long before you will begin to enjoy getting up at a good hour
on the weekends. You will have more of the weekend to enjoy. Plus you will get a
really positive boost , because you got up at a good hour, there is every chance
that you will sleep well again the next night.
Good sleep loves routine. Keep to yours and good sleep will become a habit.

But, what about when you are lying in bed at night and sleep just doesn’t come?

Promise 4 is this,
IF YOU’RE WIDE AWAKE AND STRESSING in bed, GET UP.

I am not saying, like some other programs do, that you should jump out of bed after
20 minutes of being awake, or after half an hour, or any such thing. Who ever
decided that if we aren’t asleep within 20 minutes there must be something terribly
wrong?

No, the only promise you must make is that you get up and out of bed once you
are wide awake.

But what exactly does this mean? Exactly when should you get up? Well, the time
is not important. In fact, if you have lain there for an hour, but still feel nice and
drowsy and sleepy, like you could still fall asleep, it is probably better to stay where
you are – sleep may still come yet. But if you are becoming more and more awake,
or are wide awake, get up. The idea is that you avoid lying in bed in a stressed
state.

Remember, every minute that you lie in bed wide awake and anxious, you are
strengthening the association of your bed with being wide awake and anxious. You
want the very act of getting into bed to make you start to fall asleep. This is how
some people claim to ‘fall asleep as soon as their head hits the pillow’ – the only
difference between them and you is an incredibly strong association between bed
and sleep. Now you can create just such a trigger, but not if you lie around in bed
not sleeping.

Plus, the fact is, you are usually more likely to fall asleep very shortly after getting
into bed, when the ‘sleepy feeling’ often appears. If you lie awake once that feeling
has come and gone, it can take a very long time lying there for it to return. In some
cases it simply will not return until you get up and change your surroundings. If
you get out of bed, you can start the whole falling asleep process all over again.

But what to do when you do get up? Usually, any change in focus is enough,
whether it’s having a hot bath or shower, doing some housework, reading a book or
taking the dog out for a walk. Get yourself out of the drowsy, stressed ‘I’ve-just-
got-up state’, and do something else. Whatever you decide to do, it should be a job
that can be finished in between 20 minutes to an hour. But try not to look at the
clock.

Your focus should be on the activity, not on whether it has been 20 minutes since
you got up. It needs to be just long enough so that when you get back into bed, it
feels relaxing and fresh, and that you can start the ‘falling asleep’ process all over
again. Then the sleepy feeling will come over you anew, and you will have a much
better chance of falling asleep this time.

The only type of activity I don’t recommend is getting up and surfing the net or
Facebooking. This is far too stimulating and does nothing to tell your body it’s time
to sleep. As I said earlier, you really should try to stay away from computer and
phone screens late at night. There is very good evidence that they disturb sleep.
But whatever you do, don’t stress about the fact that you are out of bed. You
shouldn’t be focused on getting back into bed as soon as possible. Don’t worry
about the sleep you are missing in being out of bed; after all, you know that just
one hour of really good deep sleep can be more refreshing than three or four hours
of light sleep. By getting out of bed, you have a greater chance of getting a few
hours of really deep sleep that will make you feel really good in the morning.
Remind yourself of that next time you find yourself having to get out of bed, and
you may find yourself much more relaxed about the whole thing.

Before you lie down to sleep, it can be a good idea to have worked out what you
will do should you wake up. This will make it much easier to drag yourself out of
the warmth and comfort of your bed. Going to bed with a plan for what you will do
if you need to get up can also lessen your anxieties because the pressure to sleep is
less: if you sleep – great! If you don’t – you’ll do the ironing. Simple as that.

If you find you are often lying in bed stressing and you really can’t face getting out
of bed and beginning an activity, there is a compromise move you can try, although
it is probably not a good idea if you are elderly or have circulation problems.
Instead of carrying out an activity, get out of bed and lie on the cold hard floor in
your bedroom or in another room. Do not snuggle up with a blanket. The idea is
not to be comfortable enough to fall asleep. Lie there for at least 20 minutes and
then go back to bed. Again, don’t look at the clock. Instead, just try counting to 60
on each of your ten fingers, twice. This is particularly effective if you have a
partner or an electric blanket to return to. Your bed will seem so warm and inviting
and you will naturally begin to relax rapidly. Sleep will then be much easier to find.
And please be reassured … a time will soon come when you will no longer need to
get out of bed, even if you wake up in the middle of the night. These days, if I take
a long time to fall asleep or wake in the night, I don’t get up, because I no longer lie
there stressing and getting anxious. I just use the awake time as an excuse to enjoy
my lovely comfy bed. You’ll soon be able to do the same.

This promise is designed to break a negative association; it is not an insomnia

treatment in itself. So if it doesn’t seem to work immediately it doesn’t mean it’s
not relevant to you. Because its eventual effect is to work further to create that
cast-iron association of bed and sleep.

Remember: it’s just for 30 days.

Promise 5, is to
DO NOTHING IN BED BUT SLEEP
OR MAKE LOVE.

For the time being at least, I want you to engage in no activities in bed other than
sleeping or having sex. No reading, no TV, no laptop, no iPad and definitely no late
night Facebooking. At least in the early days, avoid doing anything in bed other
than sleeping or making love. From now on these are the only two activities that
are to take place in your bed.

‘But,’ you may ask, ‘surely reading in bed is fine? Before my problem started I
would always read to get me off to sleep.’

Reading in bed is a funny one. I can’t pretend that reading in bed is harmful for
every single person. Some people find reading in bed really settles them down.
However, like many of these promises, even if reading in bed never caused a
problem in the past, avoiding it now could still help .

In the beginning, we need to give you the very best chance of sleeping quickly and
automatically. The main reason for all sleep hygiene rules is to create such a strong
connection between bed and sleep that just the act of getting into bed and lying
down triggers the falling asleep process. The idea is to create an association that is
so strong, it will overcome all the stresses and fears you may have that are
preventing you from sleeping. That association will eventually become so powerful
that there will be no time for reading; you will be starting to nod off almost before
you put your head on the pillow. That sleepy feeling will come over you at the very
thought of your soft, warm, comfortable bed. And when that happens, your bed
means sleep – simple as that.

But it’s very difficult to create this association if you are doing all sorts of things in
bed other than sleeping. Every time you do something else in bed, even reading,
you are weakening that association of bed and sleep.

So why is sex OK? For a start, sex releases endorphins, giving you a happy, warm
and glowing feeling when you lie down to sleep. But more importantly, unlike other
activities, sex is unique in that it is a relaxing, de-stressing activity that often
happens in bed, just before falling asleep. When it is over, it is time to sleep. Thus it
already has an inbuilt association with sleep.

It is for all these reasons that some people find sex can almost instantly send them
to sleep (and hence why women often complain that ‘he just rolls over and falls
asleep afterwards’!)

PROMISE 6 is to,

FORGET ABOUT THE CLOCK.

From now on, I want you to pay no attention to the number of hours of sleep you
get. Work out how many hours you need, set your getting up time and from then
on, forget about time. Turn the clock away from you or put it on the other side of
the room. If you use a cellphone to wake you, do not look at it in the time between
lying down and when it goes off in the morning.

‘But how are you going to know how well you’ve slept if you don’t look at the
clock? How will you know you’re making progress?’

Now, as I said earlier in the course, one difference between mine and some other
sleep programs is that I do not advocate using sleep diaries. I know that some
people apparently find them helpful. But as far as I can see, for those who are
trying to stop obsessing about sleep, keeping a diary just reinforces that obsession.
The number of hours one has been unconscious are really not relevant. All that
matters is how well one feels and functions in the daytime. So don’t use the clock
to judge progress.
This promise is particularly important for sleep-maintenance insomniacs. Those are
the people whose problem is not with falling asleep, but with staying asleep.

I just want to say something to those of you with this particular problem. If you
regularly wake in the night after just a few hours, on no account should you look at
the clock. By watching the clock you become acutely aware of the time you wake
each night. And in doing this, you create strong ‘wake-up anchors’ in your mind.
Remember, your mind and body already have a very strong sense of what time it is
(this is what some people call your ‘internal clock’). Now, if you look at the clock
when you wake and find it is usually around 2am, for example, this pattern
becomes reinforced. Eventually, the thought ‘I always wake at 2am’ becomes close
to a fact in your mind. This makes the pattern very hard to break. Waking at 2am is
your type of insomnia, this is your problem, this is your story . Now, by taking away
all knowledge of when you have woken up, immediately that story loses some of its
power; it becomes less convincing, less factual. The belief that you ‘wake every
night at around 2am’ has already been weakened, just by the one small move of
avoiding looking at the clock.

So from now on, whatever your particular flavor of insomnia, I want you to have no
idea how many hours you slept last night, how long it took you to fall asleep, or
how early you woke in the morning. All that matters is how you feel during the day.

Because it’s quality of sleep, not quantity, that counts.

Okay, we’re nearly half way through the promises already. Now we’re going to
move away from sleep hygiene and into the rest of your life.
Part 3: Promises 7 & 8
Sasha Stephens

Promise 7 is to

Stop or reduce your intake of coffee, tea and energy drinks.

When I wrote the Effortless Sleep Method I didn’t include this as an actual
promise. I thought I would be insulting my readers’ intelligence to suggest that too
much coffee may be part of their insomnia problem. But since then I have
discovered that many people haven’t made the connection between consumption
of caffeine and sleep issues. So, if you drink coffee, tea, energy drinks or cola after
about 2pm, try cutting that out for the duration of this program. Certainly try to
stick to no more than one or two cups of coffee in the morning.

And if you use high-energy drinks like Red Bull or Monster, please stop using them.
I know they give a lovely boost when energy is flagging, but they are almost
certainly having a detrimental effect on your night time sleep.

Promise 8 is to,
REDUCE OR ELIMINATE THE PILLS.

The aim of this program is to rediscover and rekindle your own, natural ability to
sleep unaided and the taking of sleeping pills is in direct opposition to this
approach. So for this program to have a chance of working, it is essential that you
are actively taking steps to reduce your medication in order to avoid sending
contradictory and confusing messages to your body and mind.

But first of all, I need to read you an important disclaimer. You must get proper
medical advice before starting any drug withdrawal program. If you currently take a
sleeping pill every night, particularly if it is a benzodiazepine or a non-
benzodiazepine then you must speak to your doctor first about giving it up. I may
know about the psychology of insomnia but I have little professional or personal
knowledge about the chemical and physical side-effects of withdrawing from your
particular drug. This can be dangerous. Don’t take a risk, get advice.

So if you take a prescribed sleeping medication, make an appointment to speak to

your doctor about reducing your dosage. Now, asking your doctor for help doesn’t
always get a very supportive response. Doctors can sometimes be remarkably
unwilling to agree with your decision to give up medication. But this is your body,
and if you want to give up, it is your right to do so. Stick to your guns and demand
support. And resist all pressure to ‘try a new drug’. This is a common trick that
never works in the long run.

Similarly, if you are regularly self-medicating using alcohol, you will need to take
steps to reduce your consumption with a view to giving up altogether. This does
not mean that you can never again touch a drop of alcohol. I still love a glass of
wine. No, the rule is that you do not use alcohol in order to help you sleep. This
move is essential in order to instil the ability to attain natural, delicious sleep,
without hangover or come-down.

You can cut down as slowly as you like. Just cut down by a quarter of a tablet, or a
tiny fraction of alcohol, or by a crumb of sleeping pill per week if you like.

Remember, as long as you are continuing to cut down, you are still making
progress. Kicking sleeping pills is tough, and that means every night on reduced
medication is to be viewed as a triumph, even if you do not sleep .

And soon, you’ll get a night of good sleep with slightly reduced medication. And
this will be real success, proof that you are on the road to recovery. Every night
that you sleep with reduced medication, you send a powerful message to your
brain; I am getting better!

As your recovery progresses, you will quickly reap the benefits of this promise.

This program is designed to give you something far more trustworthy and powerful
than any pill. I am aiming to strengthen your belief in yourself, rediscovering your
own inborn ability to sleep. Quite frankly, anything less is unacceptable. Being able
to sleep naturally and unaided, waking refreshed in the morning is the dream of
every insomniac. This is true recovery from insomnia. This is what I can give you.
No pill can ever give you this.

And the first night that you sleep right through the night without any pills will be
SUCH a milestone. An absolute and utter triumph! You will have proved to yourself
that you can sleep, on your own, unaided and without the help of drugs . And if you
can do it once, you can do it again.

At some point in the future, perhaps when you are no longer taking a nightly pill,
you can make the following commitment: I will never again rely on sleep
medication. Now, making a commitment like this is a hugely empowering act.

Because when you make a commitment like this, your insomnia is no longer
running the show. You are back in control, of your insomnia and of your life.
Part 4: Promise 9
Sasha Stephens

PROMISE 9, IS TO GIVE YOURSELF,

30 MINUTES A DAY OF CHILL-OUT TIME.

In an ideal world, everyone would meditate for half an hour, morning and evening
and for five minutes before bed. They would also do 20 minutes of cardio exercise
every day and an hour of yoga. Do that, and you’d be very unlikely to have a
problem sleeping! But I live in the real world, just like you. And I want to make this
easy for you. I want to give you, not just a plan that works, but a plan you can stick
to. There’s no point in me recommending something you will do for a few days and
then stop.

So all I need you to do, is to commit to 30 minutes a day. Because everyone has 30
minutes. This is your time, ‘me time’, time to let go, recharge and release just a bit
of the day to day stresses and tensions that scupper our attempts to sleep well.

So what to do in these 30 minutes?

Well, if you are someone who spends all day sitting, I recommend you fill your 30
minutes with exercise. Going to bed at the end of a long tiring day should be a
reward, not a hardship and if your muscles are tired and soft, then just getting into
bed can be quite heavenly. If you spend your working life hunched up in front of a
computer screen or sitting at a desk, even though you may be tired when you go to
bed, your body will still be tense and your muscles will be stiff and achy from
sitting in the same position for so long. This means it will take you much longer to
relax sufficiently to fall asleep. Tiring those muscles out with exercise is the
answer.

Just a daily walk will usually do. Buy a cheap little pedometer from Amazon and
keep a count of your daily steps. You can start slow and try to build up to 10,000
steps every day outdoors. What a double-hit on your insomnia that would be – An
hour’s exercise in the open air and a big dose of sunshine vitamin D! And all you
have to do is get off your bottom and walk! It will boost your mood, immunity and
your sleep.

If you are very anxious and suffer badly with stress, do check with your doctor
first, but think about trying some hard cardio.You could try running, boxing or
spinning classes. Really pounding that excess energy out can work wonders for my
anxiety and stress. Weights-based exercise makes my body physically tired, but
doesn’t seem to get rid of that ‘bursting energy’, as I like to call it. Cardio exercise is
also a fantastic anti-depressant and general mood-lifter. Did you know that
exercise combined with meditation has an effect on sleep, anxiety and depression
so good it blows the results for antidepressants out of the water? (And it makes
you look good too!) And you know, I don’t know how relevant this is, but I have
never had a single person come to me for sleep help who has a manual or outside
job! In many ways exercise is the easiest, and most effective de-stressing method
of all.

But if you already work on your feet all day, you might want to pick a more sedate
relaxation activity. I highly recommend any type of daily meditation. A lovely way
to achieve a deep meditation is to listen to my Stress Relief tool and to follow the
instructions for a very simple mantra or breath meditation. Combine these two and
you’ll find you can achieve a very deep and delicious meditation very quickly
indeed. (You’ll find both of these in the Relaxation Central section of the website).

You could also do yoga, breathing exercises, dancing, tai chi, or a particular therapy
or technique you enjoy that calms you down and makes you feel relaxed.

But let’s get one thing straight: Facebooking, watching TV, surfing the net, reading
the newspaper or playing computer games do not count as a de-stressing activity!

If you really don’t know where to start, don’t worry. I have all sorts of tools,
relaxations and meditations for you to try in the section of this program called
‘Relaxation Central’.

Think you don’t have time for exercise or relaxation? Then consider the following
saying from an ancient Tibetan yogi.

You should meditate for 30 minutes a day, unless you don’t have time.

In that case, you should meditate for an hour.

The point being that if you really don’t have time in the day for 30 minutes of
exercise or chill out time, then you, of all people, need that time. Not just for the
sake of your sleep, but for your life and health in general.
And the real beauty of doing this little bit of regular de-stressing during the day,
either by exercising or by more sedate activities, means that when bedtime comes
you have very little left to do. Just go to bed, and sleep.

And before we leave this part of the lesson I want to say something about night
time relaxation. I have encouraged you to get your relaxation and de-stressing
done and out of the way in the day time so that there is nothing left to do at night.

BUT… Sometimes you will get to bedtime and find yourself panicking, and
completely unable to fall asleep. And what you almost certainly want to know is
how to deal with this sort of problem when it happens, in bed, at night. And I also
know full well that many of you like to have something comforting to listen to or a
relaxation method to do in bed.

The good news is I have created a whole section for those of you who want
something to do when you lie down in bed. For this, once again turn to the section
of this program called ‘Relaxation Central’ to learn all about the best techniques for
night time relaxation. I also have plenty of recordings and tools for you to
experiment with to find the ideal one for you.

I even have a bed time tool for those of you who don’t normally like listening to
things in bed. So I highly recommend everyone give Relaxation Central some
attention.
Part 5: Promises 10 to 12
Sasha Stephens

The final set of promises are all a bit different. We have sorted out your ideal going
to bed conditions with sleep hygiene. We have lowered your stress levels and
made it easier for you to relax in bed. Now, we move onto the big one. We are now
going to work on your thinking. I am going to make you think less like an insomniac
and more like a normal good sleeper. And I’m going to make this more simple and
straightforward than you ever thought possible.

Promise 10 is,

NO COMPLAINING ABOUT SLEEP FOR 30 DAYS.

For the next 30 days, I want you never to complain about your insomnia. I mean it.
You are not allowed, for 30 days to say anything negative about your sleep, not at
all, not to yourself or to others.

Do it!

You will be amazed at the results. The effect of this promise will be truly
astonishing.

But, let’s say you’re not complaining about your sleep one little bit. But it feels like
your mind has other ideas. Sometimes negative thoughts just won’t leave you
alone, and keep popping in at inopportune moments, just to catch you out and
remind you of your problem.

So what do you do… when your negative thoughts keep complaining for you?

After all, everyone’s individual negative thoughts are different. How are we
possibly going to counter all of these?

We’re not. We’re not going to do anything with them at all.

I’m not going to give you an intellectual analysis, or a particular way to reframe
your thoughts. I want you to pay no attention to the content of your negative
thoughts at all… We are going to do this, not by analysing the thoughts, or trying to
work out where they came from or what they mean or why they keep plaguing you.
No, we are going to do this by refusing to engage with them at all.

I have for you a wonderfully effective and ridiculously simple way of dealing with
the problem of unwanted negative thoughts. I’m now going to introduce you to my
absolute favourite psychological technique, the one I think is the most powerful
tool in your arsenal.

I call it Find Another Thought.

So. When a negative thought pops into your head, perhaps, ‘Oh no, I have an
important meeting tomorrow. I’m never going to sleep tonight!’ you need to do the
following. Gently but immediately, start thinking about something else. Think about
… what to have for lunch, what’s on television tonight, that person at work you
fancy, that person at work you hate, you must phone your mother, you need to buy
some tea bags, where you want to go on vacation, the meaning of life, a prayer to
God, anything! You need to do this as soon as a negative thought or fear decides to
pop in.

Now, this won’t work straight away because the negative thought will carry on
trying to show itself and take your attention. Just ignore it and keep thinking of
other things. Eventually, one of these other things will take your attention, fill your
mind and set off a new train of thought. And then that original negative thought
will be forgotten and it grows weaker.

Some people use the same technique, but instead of thinking a different thought,
they distract themselves with a physical activity. You could try going for a nice
walk, or even something not so nice, like clearing out an old drawer or putting in a
load of washing. Every time you do this, that habitual thought pattern becomes
weakened, and thus becomes less habitual, less automatic. Do this enough and the
brain will give up firing in this way, and the negative thoughts won’t occur at all.

According to some schools of thought, blocking or suppressing negative thoughts

and feelings is not advisable. So it may not be a good idea to use this technique for
lifelong issues, such as traumatic memories. But we are not talking about deep-
seated traumatic memories, we are talking about pointless, troublesome thoughts
such as ‘If I don’t sleep tonight, I’ll feel terrible tomorrow.’ Plus, I am not talking
about blocking or suppressing. I am talking about moving your mind away from that
troublesome, pointless thought, onto a different subject.

If you stop giving it attention it will eventually wither and die.

No complaining aloud and no complaining in your head. Before long you’ll forget
you even had a problem in the first place!

PROMISE 11 IS TO,
STOP RESEARCHING SLEEP AND NEW REMEDIES.

Can you accept that the search for an external remedy or miracle sleep aid for
insomnia is over? Because, if you can let go of your search for the perfect remedy,
you let go of one of the main culprits that keeps you wedded to your problem.

Why?

Well, think about it: You need to start believing you can sleep again. And you need
to start believing that you are getting better. Without that confidence that you’re
getting better, the fear and anxiety of not sleeping will continue to keep you
awake. Confidence and positive belief are the key here.

But how can you believe you are getting over your problem, how can you believe
you are getting better, if you are still dedicating so much time to looking for
remedies? Every time that you search online for another sleep aid or try the latest
sleeping pill, or read all the latest research into insomnia, you are saying to
yourself, ‘I have a problem’, ‘I fear insomnia’, ‘I don’t believe I can sleep’ and so you
push that recovery further and further away.

So you must stop searching for remedies in magazines and in books and on the
Internet. Tell any online forum friends that you are taking a break.

Have you ‘liked’ a load of insomnia Facebook pages? Unlike them. For goodness
sake, unlike them.

You can even throw out all your ineffective remedies, potions and gadgets. You
know, the ones that don’t work and have never worked?

If you stick to this program, at some point in the future, be it a week, a month or a
year, you will be sleeping naturally, effortlessly, like a baby. You are on a program
that works, and as long as you stick to it, you will get better. Soon, you will know
with great certainty that this is true.
One morning you will wake up surprised that you have slept so well. And the
realisation that you are genuinely, indisputably regaining your natural ability to
sleep is worth all the money you could ever spend on nonsense remedies and so
called miracle sleep aids.

PROMISE 12 is to
TELL A NEW STORY.

Ok, and I’ve saved the best till last. For anyone with other than a very short-term
problem, this could well be the most important part of the program. One of the
little mottos I love to repeat is this:

The story you tell about your sleep will come true.

‘What is the right story,’ you ask? That’s easy … the right story is the one you
would like to be true. Because I promise you this:

The more you talk about how good your sleeping is,
the better it will become.

This goes beyond the previous promise not to complain about your sleep. The
story you tell includes every last little thing you say about sleep to friends, family,
therapists and even silently to yourself.

What you need to remember is that every time you talk to other people or silently
to yourself about your problem, it will have a bad effect on your sleep, solidifying
and making real your problem, keeping it in the forefront of your mind where it is
free to work its terrible damage.

But the good news is that the opposite is also true. When you talk in a positive way
about your sleep it will eventually start to have a tremendously beneficial effect.
Think about it – you can actually improve your sleep just by talking about it – as
long as you are talking in the right way!

So from today, I want you to banish the following phrases from your vocabulary:
‘I’m a terrible sleeper’, ‘I’m an insomniac’, I’m so tired today’, ‘I wish I had slept last
night’.

In place of these negative statements, I want you to find only positive things to say
about your sleep. Of course, in the beginning this is all going to sound like a
whopping lie. But I’m not suggesting you leap straight in with ‘I’m the best sleeper
in the whole universe’ or ‘my sleep is perfect.’ Instead, begin congratulating
yourself for the little wins. ‘I slept quite well last night’, ‘I actually feel pretty good
today’, ‘I think I’m getting better’ – that sort of thing.

The next time you have a good night’s sleep, or even a slightly better night’s sleep,
make a point of telling someone ‘I had such a good sleep last night’, ‘I slept like a
log last night’. Notice how good it feels to say this, even if it doesn’t sound quite
true. Isn’t it empowering? It makes you feel like one of the ‘normal’ people. Can you
see what has happened when you do this? You have joined the rest of the world.
You have actually become one of the people who boasts about how good their
sleep is!

Don’t be a victim of this tragedy any longer. Choose the story you would like to be
true, and start telling it!

So that’s it. That’s the program. Those are the 12 promises that are going to bring
that lovely sleep back into your life. All you need do is stick to them for 30 days.

Let’s just recap those 12 promises, shall we?

Spend less time in bed.

No naps.
Get up at the same time every day.
Get up when you can’t sleep.
Nothing in bed but sleep or sex.
Forget the clock.
Kick the pills.
Cut out coffee, tea and energy drinks.
30 minutes de-stressing per day.
NO COMPLAINING ABOUT SLEEP FOR 30 DAYS.
Let go of the search for a miracle remedy.
Tell a new story.
And keep it up for 30 days. We all do all the steps. It doesn’t matter that you have
always lain in bed until 11 on Sundays, or that you have always watched TV in bed
or that you have never taken exercise. Even if those things have never caused a
problem in the past, you still need to follow all the steps. You’ve heard how they
are going to work. All you need to do now is to keep to these promises for 30 days
and watch for the results!
I highly recommend you download and print out the sheet called ‘The 12 Promises’
that you’ll find toward the top of the webpage for this lesson. Print this sheet out
and stick it somewhere you can see it, possibly on the front of your fridge or on a
noticeboard. It will keep you on track and remind you of the promises as you go
through the next few weeks.

You can listen to this lesson whenever, and as many times as you like, but it’s
actually following through on these promises that is going to work the real magic.

I’ve shown you how to invite sleep back into your life with the twelve promises
and you’re probably itching to get started.

But wait… There’s a step you have to take first. So please now turn to Lesson 5,
where I will reveal to you the final piece in the jigsaw. This is a lesson you must not
miss out if you want the best chance of starting your new life in the most powerful
way possible. Lesson 5 is quite a short lesson but the efficacy of the whole
program depends upon it. So please don’t start working on the promises until you
have listened to this program all the way to the end of Lesson 5.

Because I’m not just going to show you how to become a better sleeper, but to
become a great sleeper. I’m going to make sure that recovery of yours is
permanent.

So go to Lesson 5 now, and take the first big step on the road to permanent
recovery from insomnia.
MODULE 5: The Final Piece
in the Jigsaw
Part 1: Adjusting to Your
New Routine
Sasha Stephens

So let’s recap the Sleep For Life program. It’s really so simple.

1. Make a commitment and a decision to get your sleep back.

2. Immediately implement the 12 promises of the last lesson.
3. And just keep it up for 30 days.
So that’s it? That’s too simple, surely?

It may be simple but I turned my back on fifteen years of chronic insomnia by doing
just this. And so have thousands of others. If all of us can overcome severe
insomnia with just these instructions, then so can you.

Because… there really is no great mystery to overcoming insomnia and learning

how to sleep well again. All that has gone wrong for you is that a few parts of your
life have become unbalanced, out of whack. Your body has then become
accustomed to that unbalanced state. Insomnia has become the norm because your
body and mind have just got used to that way of doing things, that way of being.
Insomnia has become a learned response. We just need you to relearn a better one.

You know, I think your body wants sleep back. It wants it to return. It’s like the
natural order of things. It’s like a healing response. It’s just waiting for the
circumstances to be right. And here’s the great thing – you are completely in
control of creating those circumstances. Those circumstances that will begin the
healing process!

All we ever need to do to trigger that falling asleep response is to make those
circumstances right, to create that balance again. And we do this with the precisely
engineered set of promises of the last lesson.

Because when you keep to the 12 promises, here’s what will happen…

First. By getting slightly less time in bed you make yourself sleepier at bedtime and
squash the sleep into a tighter space, making it deeper and better quality.

Next. By getting up at the same time on weekends you will get your body used to a
fixed routine, so that it starts to learn when it should be asleep.

By avoiding naps you will ensure you are good and tired when you lie down to
sleep.

These three actions will create a rock-solid association of bed and sleep triggering
the falling asleep response as soon as you get into bed.

Also, by reducing your medication you will begin to get real, natural sleep.

Your 30 minutes of chill out time will give you a general sense of wellbeing and
make you feel calm as bedtime approaches.

By telling a new story you will begin to instil a solid, true belief in yourself and in
your ability to sleep.

All of these things will begin to create a really, really strong expectation of sleeping
well, making sleep automatic, effortless, inevitable.

And as a result, you will feel more empowered, positive, and begin to reclaim your
life again.

Because, here’s the thing.

When you are tired.

And you are relaxed.

And you have positive thoughts and a strong expectation of sleeping well.

You will sleep, period, end of story. It’s simply not possible to stay awake in these
circumstances. So all we are doing is creating those circumstances where you are
tired, you are relaxed and you have positive thoughts of sleeping well! THAT is
what this entire program is about!

If you followed these promises individually and in isolation, some of them wouldn’t
make much of a dent in your problem. But when they are all done together they
become greater than the sum of their parts. They work in concert, reinforcing and
strengthening each other.

So you see, by keeping to the 12 promises of the program, you make those sleep
conditions as pretty darned near perfect as it is possible to be. Keep the conditions
right for enough time, and you make the chances for sleepless nights more and
more difficult, while the good nights start to increase and increase. Sleep becomes
easier and easier to get as it becomes harder and harder to stay awake. It’s just not
possible to have night after night of no sleep when these circumstances remain so
right for so long.

Sleep eventually becomes irresistible.

And so your body learns a new response. It becomes completely retrained in

sleeping normally and naturally, learning a brilliantly solid new habit of sleeping
every night.

‘But how long is all of this going to take?’ you may ask.

Well, you may well see an immediate positive response. You might well sleep
better from tonight. A lot of people do. Some will see an almost overnight and
complete recovery. Some will take a little longer. And everyone will see some
improvement within 30 days. But it’s really important to give your recovery the
time that it needs. So the answer to the question of how long it will take is … it will
take as long as it takes.

Now don’t be put off. I am not saying your recovery is going to take a long time.

I’m saying that if you don’t fuss about how long recovery is taking, it doesn’t take
so long. How can this be? Well, it’s because to fully recover you need to push this
insomnia business into the background, to afford it less importance, to give it less
attention. And that’s not so easy to do if you are still acutely focused on the speed
of your recovery. It’s a horrible irony but the less you focus on how long recovery
is taking, the sooner that recovery will come.

For now just keep plugging away with the promises, even if it sometimes feels like
not much is happening. Things will start to change, the fear will lessen. And you
know, it’s often only when we look back after a few months that we realise just
how massively far we’ve come, and how much better our sleep is now… even
though it may not have felt like anything much was happening at the time.

Let me assure you, wherever you are now, you can become a brilliant, natural,
effortless sleeper, as long as you are willing to give it a bit of time and commitment.
I believe this absolutely because I am now becoming a greater and greater sleeper
all the time. I … who was once convinced I had an incurable physical disease, who
thought I was broken, different, for whom nothing ever worked. Who had aches,
pains, ‘heart jumps’, tummy flips, rushes of adrenaline, moments of terror and panic,
days and nights of desolate misery in a pit of black despair …

I have been where you are now, or worse. And it was by following this same advice
that I now sleep better than almost everyone I know. The only people I know who
sleep as well as I do are those who have followed my sleep methods.

‘So,’ you may well ask, ‘even chronic, long-term, severe insomnia really can be
overcome in just this way?’

Not only that. But in fact, following a program very like this one is the only way to
overcome chronic, long-term, severe insomnia!

Just stick to the promises, give it at least 30 days no matter what happens, longer,
if you like, and just watch in wonder as the sleep begins to inch its way back into
your life. Real, natural, effortless, delicious sleep.
Part 2: The Positive Circle of
Sleep
Sasha Stephens

Okay, let’s speed things up a bit. If you really want to turbo-charge your recovery,
you should take the advice in these next parts of this lesson very seriously. In doing
so you will really put this insomnia business behind you very quickly indeed.

This final stage is all about how to move past the whole sorry memory of insomnia.
You can listen to this lesson and get a really good idea of what’s still to come.
Because it’s just going to get better and better…

At some point, you need to take the final step towards being a great sleeper, not
just an ‘okay’ sleeper. Not ‘much better’ but ‘completely better’.

So how do we move beyond? How do we get to a stage where we are no longer ‘a

recovering insomniac’, but rather ‘an ex-insomniac’?

Let me explain…. This program is underpinned by 15 years of crippling insomnia,

followed by my recovery, further research to formalise this knowledge into a
program, and then years of sleep therapy consultations, where I got to hear all the
questions that were still bothering people.

However, there is even more to it than that. In my own search for a solution, I read
pretty much every self-help book out there. These books probably saved my life.
But until I wrote The Effortless Sleep Method , there seemed few really good self-
help books written specifically about insomnia.

As a result of my self-help addiction, I came up with my own little set of mottos,

partly as a result of my own thinking and insights, and partly distilled from all the
best wisdom out there, as I saw it.

When I learned how to overcome my insomnia, I didn’t just improve my sleep. I

improved my whole life. I did this by coming to see that the underlying principles of
my sleep methods can be applied to everyday life.
Now look at the picture below. I remember a period of time when I would have the
following initials drawn on the back of my hand at all times.

Anyone who knew me at the time will remember the felt-tip scrawlings that always
adorned my left hand. Anyway, these stand for:

1. Expect The Best.

2. Let Everything Be ‘Okay’. By this, I mean being okay with every little thing that
happens, never judging any event or situation as bad or disastrous.

And the final one stood for Bring It On! And by bring it on, I mean you grasp life by
the horns, and go for it, seize the day fully as if it were your last.

These three attitudes tend to feed each other, so that we end up with a positive
circle of thinking.

First we expect the best. This leads to our letting everything be okay. And we
naturally start to have a more bring it on attitude to life. So we begin expecting the
best even more, and naturally letting everything be okay, and so on.

The Positive Circle of Thinking

This circle represents the general attitude I cultivated in getting over my insomnia
and it is how I try to continue to live my life now. It’s quite amazing how my life
seems to lift and become freer whenever I remind myself of these words. If you,
we, all of us, could learn to live our lives by these mottos, it would change the
quality of our experience in profound and mind-blowing ways. I highly recommend
you download and print out the sheet called ‘The positive circle of sleep’. Stick it on
the fridge alongside your 12 promises and you’ll have a daily reminder to keep your
focus in the right positive direction.

My experience of dealing with insomniacs reveals a different picture to the positive

circle of thinking; the opposite, in fact. I have found that most insomniacs:

Don’t expect the best at all but instead focus on all the things that could go
wrong with their sleep.
stress terribly when things go even slightly wrong rather than letting it all be
okay.
 And far from having a ‘bring it on’ attitude, they instead tend to compromise
their lives by hiding away from all that scares them or could affect their sleep.
These three attitudes then tend to feed each other so that we instead end up stuck
in a negative feedback loop.

Please now look at the second diagram where you’ll find the negative circle of
sleep. When we take a trip around the negative circle of sleep we tend to focus on
things going wrong, which leads to our stressing when they do, which in turn leads
to our hiding from all that scares us, which leads back to our focussing on all that
could go wrong. And we end up going around and around this negative circle.

The Negative Circle of Sleep

You are probably still giving far too much attention to the negative aspects of your
sleep; you may be reacting extremely badly to a less-than-perfect night, panicking
or perhaps wondering and fretting about why they are still happening. And you are
very likely still making lots of compromises ‘because you have insomnia’.
The way out of this vicious circular pattern, to break out of the insomniac identity,
is to do nothing less than to reinvent yourself … as a good sleeper!

In the next part I’m going to show you how to do this.

Part 3: Reinventing Yourself
Sasha Stephens

As we have heard in the previous part, to really move out of the insomniac identity,
we need you to reinvent yourself as normal good sleeper, to begin acting and
thinking just as a normal good sleeper does.

And the way to reinvent yourself as a good sleeper is to take a big, bold step into
the positive circle and stay there.

And here’s how you do it:

First. You expect the best and recognise success with sleep when it happens.

Next. You let everything be ‘okay’. In other words, you do not panic and go to
pieces when you get the odd rough night.

And finally, you get on with your life and stop making compromises for the sake of
sleep. In other words, you say 'bring it on'.

Every time you go round the circle, it gets stronger. And the effect is cumulative.
You only have to go around a few times to see results … and then you’re on your
way!

So from now on, with regard to your sleep, you need to expect the best . Now,
expecting the best does not mean ‘sleeping five hours a night’, it does not mean
‘getting off pills’ although all of these are great and worthy stages along the way.

No, I want you to expect the best, the very best . I want you to expect to become a
great sleeper, a champion sleeper. Choose the outcome you would like to
experience. I know that at the moment this seems like an impossibility, ridiculous
even. But stay with me.

First, simply by raising your expectations by several notches, you will already be
focusing on a higher goal, expecting good things, probably way better than you
currently do. And this alone will have a positive effect on your thoughts and
attitudes.
But there is a different reason that aiming so high is important specifically to
insomnia. If you focus on a really magnificent future goal, perhaps to become a
brilliant, inspirational sleeper, you will be less bothered by a single missed night, or
a wayward negative thought.

These things will seem trivial, will bother you less. And so, you will naturally begin
to lighten up, to let go of the obsessing.

Okay, that’s ‘expecting the best’ taken care of. Now let’s move to the next part of
the positive circle.

The next thing you need to do is to let everything, and I mean everything be ‘okay’.
Be okay with your sleep, however it is, however much you get or don’t get – it’s
just fine. It’s ‘okay’. I want you to ignore the bad times, and ‘big up’ the good times
to the extent that you are almost ‘in denial’ about the existence of any remaining
problems.

Think of the way in which a doting mother can only see the good in her child. We
all know mothers like this (and I’m sure I’m one of them). A child can be selfish, or
very lazy or behave like a little monster. But the child’s mother would simply say
her child is wonderfully driven, too independent to help anyone else out, and any
bad behavior is a result of lack of stimulation because the child is too intelligent.
And so, her child remains perfect in her eyes.

Can you adopt a similar attitude to your sleep? Whatever happens, report it as
positively as possible, even if you have to fake it a bit!

So, paradoxical though it may seem, once you are sleeping well most nights, I want
you to stop focusing on any little aspects of your sleep that aren’t quite perfect. In
fact, do you want to hear the best advice for what to do about tying up loose ends?

Do nothing. Nothing at all.

By trying to sort out ‘these last loose ends’, there will always be last loose ends . By
trying to sort out all those little bits that aren’t perfect, your sleep will remain
imperfect. While you are still focused on these remaining bits of your problem, you
will still have remaining bits of a problem.

I want you to focus on the good, while completely, wilfully ignoring the bad . From
now on ‘you sleep great’. Full stop.

So, if a difficult night comes along, either ignore it or blame it on something else.
Blame it on anything other than your long-standing insomnia problem. Blame it on
the time of the month, the Moon in Sagittarius, or on the fact that the dinner gave
you indigestion; it’s the fault of the sheets, or the air conditioning, or the
neighbours, or some funny food you ate, or anything, or nothing at all. But it is
never, ever because ‘you have insomnia’. It is never, ever because ‘you have last
niggling problems with sleep’. Because, insomnia is in the past now. You need to
bury it, really bury it. You are now ‘a great sleeper’. So there must be another
explanation for why it didn’t happen this time.

Then let it go completely, forget it, don’t give it another moment’s attention, and
get on with your day. This is exactly the way a normal good sleeper would act. This
is the way you must now act.

So do your best to let everything be okay. It will change your life in fantastic ways.

Now let’s move on to the third part of the positive circle – the business of getting
on with your life - or what I call ‘bringing it on’.

You know, one thing that makes insomnia endure for such a long time is that we
inadvertently begin making all sorts of compromises and changes to our lives in
order to take account of our sleep difficulties.

I used to call this my ‘sleep filter’. If I thought that some event or action, or eating
some food or doing some activity might affect my sleep, it didn’t pass my sleep
filter. And if it didn’t pass the filter, I didn’t do it, even if I really wanted to. I made
massive compromises to my life for years just to avoid any possibility of disturbing
my sleep.

What sort of compromises have you begun to make? I’m not talking about the
compromise of avoiding coffee at bedtime, or the compromise of getting up at a
good hour. I’m talking about avoiding normal life – the things you would usually
enjoy. The things that make life worth living. Like going on vacation, family
weddings, staying overnight with friends or even starting a family?

You need a new attitude. You need to look life square in the eye and say ‘bring it
on!’

Don’t waste another day waiting for your life to start. At some point you have to
take the plunge, you have to start saying ‘yes’ to invitations, you have to start
making plans, you have to start doing all those things you have been avoiding
because of insomnia.
Life is now – start living it.

It won’t be long before the message gets through: You are now in control of your
life, you get to decide exactly how to spend your time, not your insomnia!

And you know, you cannot truly, permanently be over your insomnia until you stop
making compromises for it. So from now on, you will do exactly as you please and
to heck with your insomnia!

Do this, and before long, all those things that would once have struck fear into
your heart will no longer bother you one jot. You will start making plans again,
holding parties, going on vacation, organising breakfast meetings, camping trips and
doing all those things you have been putting off. You can start that business, make
that job change, get that new girlfriend, propose to that girlfriend, get married, get
pregnant, have a baby, LIVE just like the rest of the world.

The complete path from insomnia to champion sleeper goes like this:

Keep to the promises

Expect the best and recognise success when it happens
Do your best not to let a bad night get you down. In other words, let everything be
'okay'
As soon as you've made some real progress and your confidence has increased,
you need to get on with your life and stop making any compromises for the sake of
sleep. You need to say 'bring it on' to life.

That's it!

Do this, and I can guarantee you... soon, the good nights will become the norm.
Believe me, it feels wonderful to say 'I slept brilliantly last night' and really mean it.
When there is no longer any doubt that your'e recovering. When it's a fact, and not
mere wishful thinking, your recovery will accelerate through the roof and your life
will change forever.

Of course, there is a bit of a contradiction here. If you spotted it, well done!
Because, on the one hand I’m telling you not to make any compromises to insomnia
and to just get on with your life as normal, and on the other I’m giving you a whole
list of things you have to do. In fact, I have given you a whole list of promises to
stick to. Some of which (such as not reading in bed and getting up early at
weekends) could certainly be viewed as compromises. In fact, most of the promises
of the Sleep for Life program are a small compromise for the sake of sleep.
So what’s the deal? After all, you want to sleep like a normal person. And normal
people sleep in at weekends. Normal people read in bed. Normal people sometimes
go days without exercise. And this is where you want to be. Not spending the rest
of your life following a bunch of sleep promises. You want sleep to be effortless,
automatic, inevitable, the furthest thing from your mind. But how can that happen
if you’re following all these promises every day.

So what do we do?

Well… we don’t want to try and run before we can walk. The 12 promises are
necessary at the beginning. They are essential to provide the structure, the
discipline, the routine that invites sleep back in your life. If you’re just starting out,
you need to keep the training wheels on. You need the safety harness attached.

So you need the promises. For now…

But they won’t be necessary forever.

I say this now because I think it’s important you know that even better is to come. I
want you to realise that absolute normality is possible. This program is about
gradually moving away from seeing insomnia as an incurable disease, as a
condition, as a monster. This program is about gradually moving towards a time
when seeing yourself as broken, or ill, and thinking about sleep is a thing of the
past. A life without a second thought to sleep is coming. And I’m going to take you
there.

Once you are in a habit of great sleep, it’s a bit like ‘muscle memory’, and nothing
can disturb it. This means that once your sleep is really great, you can let go of the
reins a bit. Now, I’m not suggesting you get to the end of 30 days, drop every
promise like a stone and go back to bad behaviors. Some of you may even decide
to carry on with another 30 days, just to really cement the new habits. This is
particularly a good idea for those of you who have suffered for over a year or
more.

But for all of you, the time is coming when you will occasionally be able to let go of
the odd promise. Let me be clear, you should always try to avoid complaining about
insomnia. You should continue to tell a positive story of sleep, you should continue
to avoid researching sleep remedies, and you should remain committed to not
taking medication.

But as some point, just now and again, you WILL be able to have a lovely late
morning on a Sunday without fear of not sleeping that night. Sometimes you will
have a lazy day and watch television in bed. You might not exercise for a couple of
weeks. You might even have the odd nap in the afternoon, just because you
deserve it! And here’s the wonderful thing, once your new sleeping habit is really,
really solid and established, you will be able to do all these things again and still
sleep great!

And if at any point you overdo the napping, or the sleeping in, or whatever, and
your sleep starts to suffer getting back on track is easy; just immediately recommit
to the promises and you’ll be back on track in no time.
Part 4: Knowing When The
Time Has Come
Sasha Stephens

In the last part I explained that once your sleep has improved sufficiently, you will
be able to let go of some of the sleep hygiene promises. But how will you know
when that time has come?

Well, first of all, you’ll be sleeping really, really well almost all the time. Second, it
will be at least 30 days from when you start the program. But there is a bit more to
it than that. There is also an element of choice involved.

When you finally decide to say to yourself, ‘I will take whatever comes my way, be
it sleep, or lack of it’, in other words, when you can really ‘let everything be okay’
with your sleep, then you have made that choice !

When you can do this, insomnia doesn’t really ever come back; at least, not in its
previous virulent form. And at this point , you can start letting go of the reins, you
can let go of the sleep hygiene, just a little. And with no more fear of missing sleep,
you will now be standing up to the prospect of a sleepless night, looking it full in
the face and saying, ‘You know what? I’m not scared of you any more! Do your
worst. You don’t frighten me one bit.’

Once the corner has been turned, once you have decided to take control and show
your lack of fear, insomnia will never again get a stranglehold. I now sometimes
challenge myself to be able to sleep in circumstances where once it would have
been impossible – on the kitchen floor, in the open air, or sitting bolt upright. So,
you see, I have turned the fear on its head. This is true recovery.

You can do the same.

But, I have to be honest, I got to my powerful happy place through a constant, but
fairly slow improvement. It didn’t happen overnight for me. It took some months.
Once I had made the initial breakthrough, I simply focused on the good and
completely ignored the bad. I did keep my sleep hygiene tight for the first few
months but other than that, I put my life first and tried to live as much like a normal
sleeper as I could. That was basically it. I paid no attention to the specific aspects
of my remaining problem. I did a lot of pretending, a lot of faking, a lot of jollying
myself up, until I didn’t need to fake it any more. It had become my reality.

By cultivating this same way of thinking, you can just as easily join me in this happy
place. You can become one of the Good Sleepers, one of the Great Sleepers. Take
back your control, of your mind, your sleep and your life. You are far more
powerful and able to do this than you realise.

So refuse to be a victim any longer. You are not ‘different’, nor are you afflicted
with a disease. You are perfect. You have simply developed some unhelpful habits,
that’s all. And all habits can be broken.

At some future point, you’ll look back and realise that you haven’t even thought
about your sleep problem lately, that you didn’t even remember to fuss about
sleeping on a high-pressure night, that you couldn’t even stay awake for an hour in
bed if you wanted to. And eventually, the time will come when you suddenly
realise you cannot even remember the last time you missed a night’s sleep.

And then, you will have resigned insomnia to history – as some problem you once
had.

This program gives you real confidence, not the sort of ‘contrived’ confidence that
never lasts. You will be safe in the knowledge that basically, you can sleep – on
your own, without drugs or external crutches. Nothing will touch this thought,
nothing will undermine this belief because you will have proved it to yourself.

You now have all you need to go about making huge positive changes to your sleep
and to your life. Just follow the promises, listen to these recordings as often as you
like, and you can become a truly great sleeper.

But there is just one more thing you will need to do.

You know, the philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, once talked of needing to throw
away the ladder once you have climbed up to a new understanding.

The ladder analogy is quite pertinent here. Because at some point, having followed
the rules, having made the promises, we must throw them away; we must forget.
To move beyond insomnia, we need to get away from all self-consciousness about
sleep. We must move away from ‘rule following’. We must move on. Remember,
once sleep hygiene and de-stressing are taken care of, it is largely attention to
insomnia that makes it grow and keeps it in place. That means all attention. Even
talking to me counts as attention to the problem!

And with this in mind, I’m now going to reveal to you the final step to overcoming
insomnia and becoming a truly great sleeper: Having climbed up. You must throw
away the ladder.

At some point, in six months or a year, you need to throw this program away. Some
time down the line, once your sleep has improved substantially, once you have
really put insomnia in the past, once you can’t even remember the last time you
had a bad night, I want you to stop looking at this program. I want you to stop
listening to it. Take it to the thrift shop or pass it on to someone else who needs it.
Or burn it if you like! Delete it from your computer. If you have a piece of paper
with the 12 promises stuck on your fridge, take it down! Put me totally out of your
mind. Don’t buy any more sleep books I may write. Unsubscribe from my emails.
After all, why would a normal good sleeper subscribe to an insomnia mailing list?
You’re not going to be following this program forever. You’re going to get your life
back, back to normal. There is going to come a time when you can just forget about
sleep, forget about insomnia, forget about this program, throw away the ladder,
and get on with your life .

But for now, and for the next 30 days, we need the promises in your life.

You have now listened to the entirety of the Sleep for Life program. We just have a
couple of minutes left. Well done. You did it.

Now, before I leave you to begin getting your sleep back, I want you to do
something. It's the first giant stride onto the path of your new life. This is VERY
important. Stop the recording now and go and get your Worksheet 1 where you
wrote down all the negative ways in which insomnia is affecting your life. Stop the
recording, go and get it and come back here.

Got it?

Now, I want you to shred it. Or burn it. Or rip it up into little pieces. Or just
scrunch it all up and throw it in the recycling. The act of destroying this worksheet
is more powerful if you can do it in the flesh, so to speak. But if you didn’t have
access to a printer and only filled it in online, no problem. Just delete it,
permanently.

Because all that negativity about sleep is in the past now. That is the last time you
are ever going to focus so intently on how bad your problem is. That’s it. The
complaining about your sleep is over. As you burn it or shred the worksheet, say to
yourself ‘I let go of the past. I leave insomnia to the flames. I commit to creating my
own future.’ Or you can use your own similar words. Make them dramatic. Make
them heartfelt. Your mind loves this sort of symbolic act.

And having done that, take Worksheet 3. You can print it out or just fill it in online.
You are now going to write down something different. You are going to write a
new commitment.

So I ask you now, here, this day, this moment in time, to make a declaration.
Commit to following the instructions in the next lesson for 30 days. Write down
your declaration on Worksheet 3. Date it. Write the time. It is on this day, at this
time, that your life is about to change. You are about to create a new vision for
your life. You are about to step onto a different path – the path to perfect sleep.

It will help if you do this now. Or immediately after this lesson. If you cannot
complete your written commitment immediately, make sure it's completed before
you start working on the promises.

I also invite you to make a formal commitment by emailing me at the following

address promises@sleepforlife.com. I cannot give personal replies, but I promise to
read every one.

The moment you do this, your new life has begun. One fateful day, weeks, months
or years ago, you started having a problem sleeping. It stands to reason that if you
were to recover, that recovery would begin one day too. Well how would you like
that day to start right now?

Because you know, your recovery will truly begin from the moment you make the
commitment to embark on the Sleep for Life promises. This is such a momentous
reclaiming of power that simply making this decision may well improve your sleep
from tonight.

You now stand at the fork in the road. One path is new and unfamiliar. It perhaps
appears quite indistinct, and you may be a little unsure about where it leads. But it
is the road which many others have travelled along, and those who have stayed on
it have found something wonderful at the end – they have found deep, effortless
sleep.

The other path is sure and familiar. It leads clearly off in exactly the same direction
in which you have been travelling. If you continue along this path, you will continue
doing exactly what you are doing, and you will continue to get exactly what you
are getting.

The question now is: what will you now do?

Will you trust me? Will you join me? Will you write to me?

I am waiting for you.

Frequently Asked Questions
Sasha Stephens

FAQs

This section is not to be missed. You should read each and every question, even if
it seems it doesn’t apply to you. Some of the best advice I have ever given was in
response to actual questions from insomniacs and you never know which little
snippet of advice will make the difference for you. This section will really deepen
and cement your understanding. It will allay any fears and answer all your
questions.

Ok, let’s start with a nice easy one. The first question

Q: I accidentally slept in/had a nap/took a sleeping pill. I feel such a failure. Have I
ruined everything?

This question usually comes with a big dose of guilt. The sufferer makes a mistake
and then loses all hope through the thought that they have sabotaged their
recovery. Usually this has happened because of a bad night when perhaps out of
desperation, they take a pill, or lie in. This means that lack of sleep is added to the
feelings of failure. They generally then beat themselves up and their confidence
sinks low. Often, they will then write to me, tearful penitent and even apologetic.

Ok, remember, normal sleep happens through a combination of these two things:
the physical conditions conducive to sleep, and a healthy dose of self-belief. The
vital difference between this and many other sleep remedies including Sleep
Restriction, is that the 12 promises are not what 'make' the sleep happen . They do
not force sleep, they allow sleep. This means that a small mistake does not mean
the plan is ruined, or that insomnia need return. The worst that might happen is
that you will get a rough night's sleep. If this happens, just go straight back to the
program. One lapse is really no worse than eating fish and chips while on Weight-
watchers. As long as you go back to the diet the next day, there is little harm done.
But make a habit of it, and you will be in trouble.

And remember, the commitment to being positive about your sleep is just as
important, no, it’s more important than bedtime habits or avoiding sleeping pills. So
if you do make a mistake, don’t add to it by falling into negativity about your
situation. Just get back on the horse and relax in the knowledge that everyone
makes mistakes while on this program.

Q: I have only had insomnia for a few weeks, but you tell me that for some people
it goes on for 30 years. How do you know it won't take me 30 years to get over it
too?

If your sleeping problem is a relatively recent occurrence, don’t imagine that you
will have to turn into one of those 20 or 30 year insomniacs that you may come
across on the online forums. You just need to make sure that you don't make the
same mistake that they do.

Look closely: there is something which keeps lifelong insomniacs in their miserable
state. It is not just insomnia that unites those lifelong insomniacs – it is their search!
The sad fact is: that quest for an external ‘remedy’ ensures that they will always be
looking in the wrong place, and so they continue to suffer. This search for remedies
constantly sends the signal to their conscious and unconscious mind that ‘there is
something wrong with me', and while that message is being sent, there will indeed,
continue to be 'something wrong with them'.

When you direct your focus in a positive, optimistic direction, and decide to
commit to doing something about your insomnia, you instantly separate from all of
those chronic long-termers, and set yourself on a completely different path to them
–you’re on the path to recovery.

Q: I've missed a night's sleep, but it's an important day and I feel terrible. What
shall I do?

The answer to this is, in short, to resolve, as best you can, to go about your life
paying no attention to the fact that you have slept badly the night before.
Think about it: we all have friends who seem not to suffer when they miss a night's
sleep. Do you know people who think nothing of going to work after an all-night
party, or who stay awake all night through choice? Why is it that some people seem
not to be affected by lack of sleep, even though they must be exhausted? The
answer is that because they don’t consider themselves to be insomniacs, they do
not add worry to the feeling of exhaustion. You may find it hard, but believe me,
much of the discomfort associated with missing sleep is due to the tension and
worry about how bad it feels. You probably don’t believe me yet, but I promise you
this is true.

You may already have noticed that if you have nothing particularly important to do
the actual feeling of sleep deprivation seems to be much less severe. But on a day
when you feel you really 'need' sleep, all you feel is intolerable misery. This
happens because when you feel you really need the sleep, you are adding worry
and tension to tiredness. Can you remember a time when you were completely
exhausted but still happy and productive? If you can, you can feel like that again.

After a bad night, practice allowing that tired feeling to 'be there', without
focussing on it, worrying about it, judging it, or fretting about it. To do this
successfully will take a bit of practice, but it will be worth the effort. First,
acknowledge the feeling. Where is it? Really allow yourself to feel it, without fight
or resistance, without thinking of how best to get rid of the feeling, or of what you
can do to make it better. Think to yourself “I feel really tired today, and that's OK. ”
Just accept that today it's OK to feel tired. Let that thought in. Then let it go, and
get on with your day.

Sleep deprivation is much more bearable if you do not worry about it

Q: ‘You haven’t spoken about my particular type of insomnia and I don’t know
what to do.’

Unlike other ailments, which often fit into neat categories, insomnia doesn’t seem
to have clearly defined borders. It is a very fuzzy concept. Some people can’t fall
asleep, some can’t stay asleep, some sleep better away from home, some can never
sleep away from home. Some find pills, potions, sleep aids, relaxation, hypnosis
helpful; some find none of these seems to work.

This often leads to the feeling that ‘my problem is different’, ‘special’, ‘never seen
before’. Somehow, the insomniac feels that because their particular problem
involves some particular circumstance, that the usual advice doesn’t apply. They
listen to the promises, but they are just waiting for me to mention their particular
‘brand of insomnia’. So before even starting the program they are writing to me
with questions. Such questions might be

“My problem is I never feel sleepy. What shall I do?”

“My mind is always full of racing thoughts. What is your advice?”
“I sleep fine for a few days and then can’t sleep for no reason at all. Is this normal?”
“My insomnia runs in families. Will your program help me?”
“My insomnia started when I hit menopause. Do your methods work for people like
me?”
“My insomnia is stress-related. How can I stop stressing?”
“My insomnia has nothing to do with thoughts and beliefs, I’m sure mine is actually
a medical condition. You aren’t a doctor so how can you help me?”
“My insomnia is not stress-related. Why do you think I can’t sleep?”
and so on and so on.

They might also ‘diagnose’ themselves with some particular special form of
insomnia. For example, ‘I have genetic insomnia’, ‘I have psychophysiological
insomnia’, ‘I have exercise-induced insomnia’, I have depression-induced insomnia’,
‘I have insomnia-induced depression’ Often they can write to me quite indignantly
to inform me that their particular form of insomnia is not mentioned the program!

Before you tell me that you have a special kind of insomnia, that your problem is
different, or that your sleep mechanism is broken, stop . At some point, I thought all
of these things. It may surprise you to know that pretty much everyone with a
chronic problem thinks one or other of these things. It may also surprise you to
know that none of them is ever true!

Because insomnia can feel so lonely, and so much like no one understands what
you are going through (even doctors). And because sleeping pills and other
remedies haven’t helped, it is hardly surprising that you begin to believe that there
is something different, something broken, something ‘not quite right’ about you.
Bear in mind: I was convinced

1. My insomnia was worse than anyone else’s

2. My sleep mechanism was broken
3. My insomnia was somehow ‘different’
4. My ‘sleep switch’ had got stuck in the wrong position
5. I would never get better

Here’s the truth

1. There were (and still are) millions of people with insomnia just as bad as mine
2. There’s no such thing as a sleep mechanism
3. My insomnia was just the same as any other old insomnia 4. There’s no such
thing as a sleep switch
5. I absolutely did get better

Q: If only I could do, get over, master this that or the other, I could sleep

Very often, the insomniac focuses acutely on one particular aspect of the problem
which they believe to be the absolute crux, the key to curing their insomnia. This
may be a particular mind or relaxation state, one particular belief or a physical
issue.

“I can’t stop this fuzzy/achy/wobbly/weird feeling, if I could, I know I could sleep.”

“I am almost falling asleep and then something wakes me with a start. I just need to
find out what that thing is that wakes me, then I’ll be able to sleep.”
“I am sabotaging or punishing myself. I need to find out why that is before I can
sleep.”
“I used to read and it would help me sleep. Now it wakes me up. I must find out
why I can’t sleep after reading. Then I’ll be able to sleep.”
“I get this strange situation where I am really relaxed and almost fall asleep but
never quite lose consciousness. That is what I need your help with.”
“I have control issues. I need to learn to relinquish control before I can sleep.”

Do you feel there is one specific reason for your insomnia, or one ‘thing’ you need
to beat, learn or deal with? Do you visit doctors, therapists just trying to sort out
this one issue? Did you skim through this program, just looking for reference to
‘your’ particular issue?

These problems we think are the absolute crux of our problem usually turn out to
be utterly irrelevant.

I speak often about the danger of looking for the root cause of your insomnia. Do
this, and the mind will just run riot, making up theories, then arguing with those
theories, twisting itself in knots trying to make sense of things. When in fact is
there usually is no sense to be made regarding these things.

1. First of all: All this focussing on one specific aspect creates a nice strong point to
which to anchor the obsession! ‘Aha!’ thinks the insomniac, ‘It’s all about this! Now,
all I need to do is work out how to conquer this.” But trying to stop doing this is a
little like trying not to think of a white bear. An obsession requires attention to
keep it locked in, and this sort of attention is ideal for that purpose

2. And secondly, if the sufferer does overcome this ‘one key thing’ there is always
another just waiting to jump into the prime spot. Because this ‘one key thing’ never
was what was causing the insomnia in the first place.

3. Forget about the ‘one key thing’ and there will cease to be ‘one key thing’ at all!

For example, at one point I became afraid to fall asleep. I was convinced that it was
an actual fear of falling asleep which was my problem. And if only I could get over
this fear… and the awful thing was, the more I focused on that fear, the worse it
became. I spent a lot of money on therapy trying to find out what the fear was
about. Most therapists seemed to latch onto the early death of my father, and
suggest that it was an unconscious fear of death that was keeping me awake!
Another suggested, that I had a control-disorder which was causing my body to
fight my mind. What utter nonsense! It only took me a few weeks of ignoring the
fear, for it to disappear. I didn't need to control it, or treat it, or analyse it, I just
needed to ignore it. Of course, I didn't fully understand my problem at that point,
so something else immediately jumped into the prime spot, to become the new
object of my obsession

This is just an example of the way the mind tries to make sense of things, create
theories and reasons for the way things are the way they are. The mind likes to be
definite. It likes to know things. However, it is more important to the mind to be
definite, than it is to be right. So don’t get stuck in definiteness. Plump instead for
not knowing, not caring. Who cares whether there is an actual specific cause for
your insomnia. Surely what matters is that you can beat it.

Q: The program makes sense but I haven’t stuck to it. Why isn’t it working?

Sounds like a joke, doesn’t it? Many, many questions come from people who have
read the book or bought the program, followed whichever bits they find the easiest
and then write to me to ask why it hasn’t worked.

For example
“I can’t stop taking a nap in the afternoon because it’s the only time I get any real
sleep”
“I have to drink coffee at night because I work until 1am and I’d be too drowsy
without it”
“I try to relax but I can’t”
“I tried being positive but it didn’t work”
“I can’t reduce the sleeping pills because I can’t sleep without them”

And my favorite, “I’m not surprised it didn’t work: My sleep might be the worst
you’ve ever heard of. Let me tell you all about how bad it really is…”

Now I know that everyone thinks their problem is a little different, a little more
severe. I suspect you are worried that 'perhaps it won't work for me'. Well, I have
many letters from people who have suffered for over 30 years but who have made
a complete recovery using my methods. This advice works...but only if you follow
it!

Many people make the mistake of starting the program and then letting it all go
once they start to sleep. This is a huge mistake. You need to keep up all the
commitments until the whole thing becomes a habit. Then you won't even need to
think about your sleep any more.

Q: I am having trouble ‘telling a new story’. Can you give me more help in
changing my negative beliefs?

For most of my life, I had thought that belief was wholly mysterious. An intangible,
inexplicable state of being which was immune to the effects of reason, even in the
face of apparent facts.

I found this whole subject utterly fascinating, mainly because it appeared to me

that belief was so elusive, so impossible to define, and so difficult to change.

But during my recovery from insomnia, I discovered to both my relief and

disappointment, that belief is not mysterious at all. Belief can be changed to
whatever you choose.

And I am now going to share a potentially life-changing secret with you…

A belief is just a repeated thought

I’ll just repeat that…

A belief is just a repeated thought

So, what is the easiest way to change a belief? Just pick a thought and repeat it.
THAT’S ALL THERE IS TO IT!

Is the significance of this already beginning to dawn on you? If you want to have a
new and more helpful belief, all you have to do is start thinking it. Thinking it,
saying it, repeating it, and acting according to it. Over and over, to yourself, to
others, on its own and within the new and positive story that you must now start
telling about your sleep.

In The Effortless Sleep Method I advise people to use positive affirmations in order
to help change beliefs. Yes , they do sound silly and contrived. But do you have the
discipline to always remember to keep your sleep talk positive? It is easy to fall into
negative thinking and speaking. And affirmations provide a disciplined way to make
sure that for at least part of the day, your sleep talk is in the right direction. If you’d
like to try them out, just do the following:

Pick something you would like to be true, the belief that you think a really good
sleeper would have. A belief that would allow you to sleep. Perhaps ‘I’m always SO
sleepy and relaxed at bedtime’ or similar. It can help to start with affirming a belief
which is not too far from your current thinking. So, don't start with 'I am the best
sleeper in the whole world', start with 'I seem to be sleeping a lot better these days'
or my favourite 'I think I am actually getting a bit better'. These can slowly be
upped in 'intensity' until you really do believe you are a world champion sleeper

Make sure your affirmation is framed in the positive (no ‘nots’, no ‘don’t’s) Stick it
on a post it all over the house, and begin to repeat it out loud. When you say it, say
it with feeling, really feel the meaning of the words. Just mere repetition is
pointless, you must try to feel it, believe it. Sometimes, put the accent on different
parts of the sentence “I always feel so sleepy and relaxed at bedtime” or'I’m always
so relaxed and sleepy at bedtim'. Try saying it to yourself in the mirror –this is
really tough but is extra-effective. There is some evidence from NLP that looking
down and to the right can help the affirmation to sink in. Say your affirmation(s)
about ten times, at least six times a day. You cannot do this too much. A funny
thing will very quickly happen: your mind will start looking for things to make it
true and focusing on them. Soon, it won’t sound like a lie any more, and before you
know it it will be true. Believe me, this is how all beliefs are formed –repeated
thought.

I have never smoked. But I know ex-smokers get a real kick out of saying ‘I don’t
smoke’. And notice that they very often say this two or three days after they have
given up! They don’t wait until they have got to the stage of no longer craving, of
no longer thinking about cigarettes. And neither should you with your sleep.
Notice, that you don’t have to wait until it’s true to start boasting. One of the
reasons I think it felt exciting for me to boast was that it wasn’t quite true. People
would ask: 'how’s your sleep?' And I’d reply: 'It’s perfect now, completely cured'
Even though inside I wasn’t really so sure and still had doubts.

I remember how almost ‘exciting’ it felt when I started boasting about my sleep –
like I had joined a special club. Almost like it gave me a special status. I mean, I
can’t say things like this! I am the one who always complains about sleep! Believe
me, it feels wonderful.

You can also incorporate positive ideas and statements into your daily life. Catch
yourself every time you say something negative about your sleep, find something
in that moment which is positive to say about your sleep. Try to pick something
that is actually true, for example ‘I slept a lot better last night, I must be getting
better’ or ‘I didn’t wake up as many times as I usually do last night, this must be
working’

And try to put a positive slant on any setback. Don't say to yourself 'Oh no, I have
rebound insomnia from lowering my dosage of Ambien, it's all gone wrong'. Instead
think 'I probably came off the Ambien a bit quickly, so I'll just take half the dosage
tonight to make things easier. I'll take this slowly and all will be well'. These little,
subtle differences make sucha difference over the course of the day.

Bombard your mind enough with positive pictures, thoughts, words, feelings and
emotions about sleep and it will have to find a way to make them true… and that
means it will make you sleep.

Is it not working? Then you haven’t been repeating the thoughts and feelings often
enough or for long enough. This is not going to happen overnight. Be patient!

I am now using 'positive thinking' to overcome and change all sorts of things in my
life, both emotional and physical. These days, when I want to change something, I
don't do anything practical such as sitting down and making plans, or getting advice
or therapy...I just start telling a new story... It may be all nonsense to begin with,
but pretty soon I start believing ...and then the story inevitably comes true! ('fake it
till you make it' could be my new philosophy!)

You may think you have a particular problem with negative beliefs. But believing in
one’s own ability to sleep, having confidence in their sleeping is the key to
EVERYONE's insomnia.

But belief doesn't change overnight. After so many years of negative thinking,
tension and anxiety surrounding sleep, it is going to take more than a few days of
good sleep to break through to a positive new belief. But it can be done....

The fact that you don't believe the affirmations yet is exactly as it should be. The
fact that it’s hard and feels wrong is exactly as it should be! We are looking for a
new belief, not an old one. That means a new repeated thought, not an old one!
And of course a new thought is going to feel strange, different, silly or untrue at
first.

The old ones weren’t serving you well, so let’s replace them. Now, the idea is to
start thinking the new positive thought as often as you can, until it stops sounding
wrong, starts to 'stick', and you begin to really 'believe' it. Belief change can happen
through external circumstances (such as actually sleeping better) but it can also be
affected directly, by actively repeating a new thought as often as you possibly can.
Eventually, this has to have the effect of changing your belief. It is just how the
human mind works.

Q: I can’t sleep before important occasions. This means I am just too scared to
organise or go to social events until my sleep improves

This was the one problem which seemed to linger around for me for ages, even
after the rest of my sleep had massively improved. I often felt like I was doomed to
lead a boring, flat life. When I had nothing interesting to do, I slept fine. But as
soon as something fun came along, I wouldn’t sleep, ruining my chances of enjoying
myself.

Doctors, therapists and family members were always quick to pounce on this,
diagnosing it with an overly-psychological cause –'you are clearly punishing
yourself because of low self-esteem', 'you unconsciously think you don’t deserve to
have fun', 'this is because your father died when you were a child and you are too
afraid to have fun again in case someone else dies.' Seriously, what a load of tosh!

The reason why you cannot sleep before important events is simply because of the
heightened state of arousal/excitement which occurs when you are looking
forward to, or are apprehensive about a future event. Now, the normal sleeper is
not disturbed by this kind of thing, but the insomniac doesn’t yet have strong
enough sleep to allow this. But it WILL change.

As your sleep improves, those things which once disturbed you will slowly drop
away and cease to be an issue. If you are anything like me, this ‘sleeping before
events’ will be the last part of your problem to disappear.

The key here is NOT to focus on the high-pressure nights to do something about
insomnia, and certainly don’t use those nights to experiment with a new technique.
This was my mistake. Instead, try to get to a point when your sleeping on ordinary
nights is really good. This is why you need to stick to all the aspects of the
program, to get your sleeping to be great on all other nights. Keep this up and
eventually, this confidence will spill over into those high pressure nights.

Should you cancel a particular big plan or postpone an event until you are better?
For example, people often write and ask 'Should I go to a family wedding?' or
'Should I cancel my 40th birthday party?' I maintain that you should never
compromise your life for your sleep –this is a slippery slope. If you have an issue
with this, go back and listen to promise 12, where I tell you to stop compromising
your life for insomnia, and to start acting as if you are a normal sleeper. At some
point you need to take the risk. Not taking risks, and avoiding potentially stressful
situations is one of the worst insomnia-reinforcing behaviours you can have.

By avoiding the event, you may avoid insomnia for one night,

and reinforce insomnia as a life-long problem

However, you must look at it like this...this party/event might affect your sleep, it
might not. What you need to do is foster a way of not caring whether you sleep or
not. I know this is very hard and it may feel impossible at first, but this ability will
come, I promise. What you may not have experienced yet is that you also need to
foster a ‘not caring about sleep attitude’ on those terrible days when you haven't
slept a wink the previous night. Because, it is the worry and tension which feels
worse than the tiredness, I PROMISE you.

This problem is a good one to tackle with the Sedona Method or my ‘ultimate
technique’. If you can really learn to stop running from the fear, to face it head on,
really allow yourself to feel it rather than running from it or fighting it. It will
quickly dissolve. Think to yourself 'I'm going to the party tomorrow, and I'm going
to have a good time. I might sleep, I might not sleep, and I don't care either way.'
That way there is little chance of it setting off another period of bad sleep. And
now you know, these periods of bad sleep always come to an end.
At the end of the day, you need to make the decision yourself of whether to attend
a particular scary event. But perhaps think of it this way: haven’t you lost enough
life to this thing already?

Q:I work irregular hours/do shift work

It’s true that shift workers may find it near enough impossible to stick to getting up
at the same time every day.

If you do shift work, you may need to do a little experimentation and be a more
flexible with your sleep patterns. For example, If 7 and a half hours is a good sleep
time for you, then making sure you only ever spend this time in bed will probably
do. In other words, if you go to bed at 12, then get up at 7.30. If you go to bed at
2am, get up at 9.30.

It is not absolutely essential to get up at exactly the same time every morning.
What IS essential is that you are tired when you lie down to sleep. So just try to
make sure you don't have more than 7 and a half hours in bed on any night. And if
that means getting up a little later, that is fine. As you have probably gathered, I
think it is important not to be too rigid with these guidelines, or they can become
an obsession and a crutch. Certainly, be a little flexible. The idea is to get just the
right amount of time in bed to make sure you are nice and tired when you lie down
to sleep, while still being fresh and not unbearably tired during the day.

Shift-workers also have sleep issues that are specific to their situation. For one,
they tend to use cola, coffee and energy drinks to keep them going, perhaps even
just a few hours before bed. If this is your tendency, it needs to stop.

Another common problem is finding it difficult to switch off when in bed. I hear
shift-workers complain of this more than anyone. It seems the reason is simply
this: after a nightshift, a worker often returns home exhausted, has a quick shower
or bite to eat and goes straight to bed. But their mind is still completely wired and
awake after work, even though physically their body is exhausted. Thus they are
tired but not remotely sleepy. After a nightshift, or when going to bed at an ‘odd’
time, they don’t have the usual winding-down routine and so don’t give the normal
signals to the brain and body that it’s time to sleep. A worker will go to bed
‘because it’s time’, but not follow the usual ‘going to bed routine’ that a normal
night-time sleeper does. Think about it: a person working nine to five wouldn’t
dream of coming straight home and going to bed. They would come in, make some
food, perhaps have a bath, watch a few hours of television or read, or even go out
and see friends and watch a film, and then go to bed. All these simple things ‘tell’
the mind that it’s getting toward bedtime. That way, the mind begins to wind down
naturally and when bedtime comes, thoughts are fewer and the mind is calm.

So, the answer is always to try to stick to a normal winding-down and going-to-bed
routine, no matter what the time is. This will prepare your mind nicely so that it
‘knows’ to expect bed and sleep. Try to do the same, peaceful enjoyable things
every day before you go to bed, like reading, watching television, or something
similar. Don’t take a quick shower – take a long bath (if you have one), with
bubbles! These activities should take up at least two hours of your time, to give the
mind a chance to switch off.

Q: I AM DESPERATE and have no hope. Please help me

Many if not most people, contact me at the point when they are absolutely
desperate, looking for a magic bullet, for the one amazing piece of advice or
technique which will lead them out of their hell. These poor souls use terms such as

I don’t know how much more I can take

I think I’m going mad

I’m reaching breaking point

I’m on the edge of the abyss

I’m in my own personal hell

Good news, desperate ones! I’ve been there too, and have come out the other side
unscathed. The really sad thing is that most people turn to help only when they are
feeling at their most desperate. They wait until a really bad night has happened,
then make an appointment with a doctor or therapist… or they email me.

I remember doing the same. I would spill my appalling story out to the poor doctor
or therapist, making sure they knew just how terrible was my suffering. Desperate
people will give the best, most vivid and flamboyant descriptions of how terrible
they feel. In other words, they couldn’t really be less positive about their sleep.
Please, don’t think I am being unsympathetic because I am. But I am not here to
give sympathy, I am here to help you sleep. Sympathising with your terrible
emotional state may make you feel comforted for a few minutes, but won’t deal
with the problem in hand.
So, let’s deal with the problem in hand… 'Now, be reasonable', you say. “How on
Earth does one who is in this appalling state, in this ‘dark night of the soul’ not feel
and speak incredibly negatively?” The answer is, you don’t. You can’t. You can’t do
anything when you are in this state. Of course, all you can focus on is sleep, and
how much you want it. That is why it is so tempting to take a pill at this time, or to
take a nice big cocktail of the damned things, all washed down with a large
whiskey. You go to the doctor and say ‘I just need some sleep’, and the doctor
gives you something ‘to make you sleep’. Or rather, s/he gives you something to
make you unconscious. There is a big difference and this difference is important.
Because, the truth is, when you are this desperate, nothing will make you sleep, no
matter what you do or take. Your tension is so high and your belief so low that
your body is fighting desperately to keep you awake. All a pill will do now is knock
you unconscious until it wears off, at which point your body will wake you with a
start, without having had anything like refreshing sleep.

So, what on earth can we do? Well, the fact is that you can’t do anything much
when you are in this state. I have been there, many, many times. Take it from me,
from this position, it is near-impossible to have any belief or hope. So stop beating
yourself up, and accept that, for a while at least, you are going to feel a bit rough.
Just be kind to yourself. Sometimes, this is all the positivity you need:

I feel really rough today, but that’s okay. I’m just going to be extra kind and gentle
to myself today.

And try to let this be a comforting thought: There is nothing to do, nothing to
tussle over, nothing to try or test. Be as a child and stop trying to get it right. For
now, just relax and stop trying to do anything. This horror will pass . You will get to
a better place soon, and it is only from this better place, that you can be back in a
position of power and start building hope and belief.

Well, in a sense, you need to get a bit better before you get a bit better, and this is
why the 12 promises are so important. When you stick to the promises, sooner or
later there always comes a better night’s sleep. I know it’s hard to believe this
when you are feeling so low, but sooner or later, there is always a better night,
maybe two. And this is when the recovery can really start. This is when you
celebrate your little success, turn your thoughts to the positive, start really getting
into the affirmations, the visualisations (really do them), and stop all negative talk
about sleep. From this new positive place finding good things to think and say will
be much easier.
Q: I fall asleep quite easily but I wake up after a few hours and then cannot get
back to sleep. What can i do?

I get lot of emails from people suffering with Sleep Maintenance Insomnia. This
refers to the problem of waking too early, often after just a couple of hours sleep.
Many people find it relatively easy to fall asleep, but then have the frustration of
waking at 2, 3, 4am and find themselves unable to get back to sleep.

If this is your problem, take a look at your general daytime stress levels. When
someone complains of sleep maintenance insomnia it is usually due to general
background stress and tension levels. Insomnia is, in part, a simple reaction to
things which are going on in your life (which may also be worry about sleep itself).
Your body is trying to protect you from danger by keeping you alert, letting you get
just the bare minimum of sleep necessary to keep you alive. Your body reacts as if
there is a terrible danger imminent and it is its job to keep you alert in order to deal
with it. 'Sleep can come later,' thinks your unconscious, 'right now we have to deal
with this terrible danger.' So just when you have had the bare minimum necessary
to live, you wake up!

The answer to this problem is to up the stress relieving activities or increase your
exercise levels. This simple move will often kill sleep maintenance insomnia stone
dead. In addition, make sure your new story is in keeping with the belief you want.
DON’T go around talking about the ‘fact’ that you wake up every night at 2am and
can’t get back to sleep. Whenever you do manage to sleep a little longer, let this
become your new fact. Focus on it, think about it, talk about it. Tell people you
seem to be sleeping longer and longer now. Tell people you slept much better last
night. Banish the term ‘sleep maintenance insomnia’ from your vocabulary!

It may interest you to know that as I was creating this course a new bit of research
was published. This article suggests that sleeping in one 8 hour block without
waking in the night is nothing more than a recent ‘invention’. For most of human
history, perhaps up until 150 years ago, we slept in two distinct chunks of around
2-4 hours each, interspersed with a period of waking of around 1 or 2 hours.
History is full of references to ‘first’ and ‘second’ sleep and some cultures even
today still naturally break their night’s sleep into two parts, with activities in
between. So, rather than having a problem, those people who wake after two
hours and find themselves unable to go back to sleep are not suffering from sleep
maintenance insomnia, they are merely exhibiting a much more natural sleep
pattern than the rest of us!

And remember, And, if you wake up and become absolutely wide awake then GET
UP.

Q: I am completely addicted to sleeping pills

Well, this is one area where I am afraid I must tell you to seek further help
elsewhere. I can help alongside with the insomnia that may result from giving up,
but you will need to seek professional advice from your doctor

Sleeping pill addiction is a seriously nasty business and it can take many months or
even years to fully get over them.

The truth is, I was never even remotely addicted to sleeping pills. When I stopped
any medication, I always did it suddenly without any complications other than
rebound insomnia. Because of this, I cannot give the sort of intensely detailed
advice that I do with insomnia, and legally I am simply not allowed to advise you. All
I see is the fallout, the victims.

I can help support along the way, but you will need proper professional medical
supervision. The problem with this is that asking your doctor for help doesn’t
always get a very supportive response. Doctors can be remarkably unwilling to
agree with your decision to give up. But this is your body, and if you want to give
up, it is your all pressure to ‘try a new drug’. This is a common trick which NEVER
works in the long run.

If you have chronic insomnia, there is not a single drug available which will cure
you

Believe it.

For more specific support, visit www.benzobuddies.com While I do not advise

visiting insomnia support forums, this one is a little different. The members there
are really very helpful, are all dedicated to giving up the drugs, and they can help
you through the dark times.

Q: Nothing else has ever worked, why should I believe that this solution will be
any different?

Because insomniacs have often had years of disappointment, and been told so
much nonsense by so many so-called experts, they often have an automatic
sceptical voice that pops in and tries to find the flaw in what they are hearing. It is
a kind of ‘nonsense-detector’. The only problem is that in insomniacs it is often set
way too high, giving nothing a chance. This is why, when they buy a new product,
the first thing they do is to ‘test’ it. The thought is that because their insomnia is so
severe and so predictable, they can very quickly and easily tell whether something
works. So within a few days they can be sending the product back and asking for a
refund. Or, more likely, that they simply put it away in some cupboard under the
stairs –another reject, another failed insomnia cure.

Now I know that your mind is clever, very clever: it can and will search out and find
any chink, any flaw in any remedy or cure. It will then exploit that weakness, focus
on it and exaggerate it until the cure begins to stop working. But try to find a chink
in theSleep for Life program. Your mind will not find one. There is none. This
program gives you real confidence, not the sort of ‘contrived’ confidence which
never lasts. You will be safe in the knowledge that basically, you can sleep –on
your own, without drugs or plans or external crutches. Nothing will touch this
thought, nothing will undermine this belief because you will have proved it to
yourself. You may initially not like the method, but after a modicum of success you
will stop looking for flaws. When you have real trust in your own ability to sleep,
your mind will never again worry about trying to find chinks in the armour of this
method. You will have better things to do.
Final words

If you really want to recover fast, you can’t wait for the sleep to pick up to stop
worrying. You have to stop worrying before the sleep will pick up. Can you see this
vital, vital difference? If you are waiting for your insomnia to be cured before you
can start to feel positive, then you will have a very long wait. Because I promise
you this: your insomnia will NEVER be cured UNTIL you start feeling positive.

So let’s start the positive thinking now. You need to try this: you need to get one
step ahead of your insomnia. So if you can, get ahead of the sleep, the success, put
the cart before the horse, wrong-foot your insomnia, destabilise it, catch it from
behind, unawares, before it’s ready and has time to react. If you sleep tonight,
hooray! If you don’t, so what? You aren’t going to let this silly little word destroy
your life any longer. So stop playing by insomnia’s rules. Don’t wait for it to decide
when you get to enjoy your life and feel positive. Set your own rules. Start feeling
positive, and getting on with your life FIRST. Without the sustenance of your fear,
insomnia will starve to death.