Developing Good Sleeping Habits

As I talked to Dad that afternoon, I told him that the emotions of food, sex and sleep are the most difficult to control. I am sure Dad must have felt embarrassed to hear me mention the word "sex", for it has been a taboo to talk about it in our family. But that was the problem with me - whenever I was excited and in a talkative mood, I tended to shamelessly talk about such sensitive things as sex.
Anyway, I still believe in what I told Dad: that the emotions of food, sex and sleep are the most difficult to control. Why? Because they are pleasant and can lead to disastrous consequences if overdone. For today, allow me to tell you about my struggles with the emotion of sleep.
I used to have disciplined sleeping habits in the first eighteen years of my life. Back then when I was a child and a teen, I used to go to bed on time and wake up the following morning, mostly to attend school. I think the strict school rules are what effected the disciplined sleeping habits that I had.
But in 2007 when I matriculated at the university in JKUAT where nobody monitored me, I began to change my sleeping habits by going for a whole night without sleeping. Then in 2008 while still at JKUAT, I started having trouble with sleep by oversleeping in the morning and late into the day. Since then, I have struggled with the emotion of sleep much in the same way a baby struggles with walking.
In the year 2010 when I went back home after dropping out of JKUAT, Mum used to have me wake up early in the morning to milk cows, a duty I disliked. It used to bother me at having to wake up so early to milk cows in a muddy cowshed. With time, I devised the following trick of making me fill fulfilled, at least for while: I would set my phone alarm to ring at about 1.00am so that when it rang, I would feel happy that I still had about three more hours to sleep. That spoke so much of how I struggled with the emotion of sleep.
Then earlier on in this decade, I developed another sleeping abnormality: I would have nights during which I would be unable to sleep due to too much excitement. I would spend the nights thinking, reading, writing as well as listening to music and speeches on a computer.
Later on after figuring out that going for a whole night without sleep affected my vitality the following day, I thought the solution was to take sleeping pills to cure the insomnia I had in the nights I felt too excited. So I visited a pharmacy in my hometown of Kiserian with the intention of buying sleeping pills but the pharmacist asked me to produce a doctor's note. Fortunately, I didn't have one; he therefore didn't sell them to me.
I have said it was fortunate that the pharmacist didn't sell me sleeping pills because eventually, I came to realize that the best cure for insomnia is working hard during the day. A wonderful book I own titled Glencoe Health: A Guide to Wellness, says that physical exercises improve the quality of sleep at night.
A few years ago, I developed yet another sleeping abnormality: I would wake up while it was still dark with a feeling I had had enough sleep only to find out from my watch that it was in the middle of the night. I didn't like that. My idea of a good morning is waking up effortlessly at 5.30am, not 1.00am!
And I came to discover that the secret of waking up effortlessly in the morning is going to bed a happy man. So, in addition to doing physical exercises, I am thinking that I should develop the habit of reading something inspiring before going to bed at night so that I turn in as a happy man.
As you can see, I have really struggled with the emotion of sleep since my days at JKUAT. But I believe, with God's help, I will overcome and again develop the good sleeping habits I had in the first eighteen years of my life when I was a nice, obedient boy.
In his book Top 200 Secrets of Success & the Pillars of Self-mastery, Robin Sharma advises us to sleep less in order to make our lives more productive and rewarding. He says that we do not need more than six hours of sleep to maintain an excellent state of health. He also says that it is the quality of sleep that matters, not quantity. I will strive to follow that advice. So help me God.
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