The Sticky Tab Solution for INSOMNIA

A SIMPLE WAY TO TURN OFF AN OVERACTIVE MIND

Is it hard for you to turn your mind off at night?  Do you keep looking at the clock wondering when you are going to finally fall asleep.  I bet that you didn’t realize that Staples and other office supply stores sell products that outperform prescription sleeping pills like Ambien.  All you have to do is get a pack of sticky tabs and take 1 at bedtime along with a good novel.  Here is a 7-step plan that has helped many of my clients to stop the habit of years of bad sleep and finally get a good night’s rest.

1. Get 2 novels that you really want to read and a sticky tab or small post-it note (if you are using a Kindle or other e-book you can use the bookmarking and highlighting functions).
2. Read the first novel to go to sleep and if you wake up during the night. This must be a novel and not a nonfiction book.  When you read a novel you have to use your the left side of your brain to read with (your left brain is the only part with language) and your right brain to create an internal movie of what is happening (your right brain visualizes).  Thus novels help to clear your entire brain while nonfiction books just clear your left brain.
3. Continue reading until you start yawning, miss sentences, nod or feel your eyes start to close.
4. Then immediately put the sticky tab at the exact place you stopped reading, put the book down and try to go to sleep.  Do not try to finish the chapter, or the section or even the paragraph.  Good books make you want to go on to the next chapter, really good books make you want to go on to the next paragraph and great books make you want to go on to the next sentence.  However, you have a small window of a few minutes when your brain can fall asleep.  If you push past that window because you want to finish the chapter you will get a ‘second wind’ and not be able to fall asleep for another hour or hour and a half.
5. If you don’t go to sleep in 10 or 15 minutes then sit up and read again.
6. Continue reading even if you have to read for hours.  If you finish the first book then just go on to the second.
7. Wake up at your regular time no matter how much sleep you got the night before.  If you keep your regular schedule and resist the temptation to sleep-in then whenever you have a bad night with little sleep you will have an easier time sleeping the next night.