Science of Sleeping - The Tip of the Iceberg

Feel free to say "Duh!", but the best way to eliminate unwanted chatter in the mind, improve focus and concentration, banish anxiety and nervousness of an origin you can't work out, reduce the disabling effects of feeling overly self-conscious and over-analysis of everything which leads to you limiting yourself, improve the clarity and quality of your thoughts, increase your conviction and confidence in any decisions that you make, reduce the rattling bodily tensions and tightness in the chest which has no obvious psychological reason to be there, improve the quality of spontaneous ideas which just come to you without having to try, increase your willingness to accept and respond in the moment to the chaotic randomness of daily life...etc etc etc...

The best way to achieve all this in one fell swoop, for FREE TOO! - is by getting 8 hours of blissful deep sleep. I know. Duh!!!

Whenever I'm fortunate enough to have such a rejuvenating gift bestowed upon me I praise and give thanks to Hypnos as soon as I arise - The God of Sleep. Mate! You da real MVP!!!

But in addition to my belief that a fictitious Greek deity is responsible for my peaceful slumber, there must be a science, or at least, concrete measures I can take to maximise the chances of sleeping well. 3 things that were different about last night's sleep which I'll be trying again tonight to see if it wasn't just a fluke were:

1. Using a sleeping mask to block out all light. I don't want the sun to wake me "naturally" thanks. I'd rather have some more quality Zzzzzzzzz... instead. The actual truth which led to this revelation that everyone apart from me already knows was that I fell asleep with my virtual reality headset on again. This is something I unintentionally do often, and friends who have photographed me in this dystopian state have been compelled to create albums with these images because it looks so weird.

2. Bed is set at a slight decline to utilise gravity. Two notches of wood of around 1/2 inch were placed underneath the legs connected to the headboard. Not noticeable enough to feel like I was kipping on a slope, but enough to encourage bodily fluids to continue on their natural paths and not to remain stagnant as they normally would do on a perfectly horizontal mattress.

3. Pillow height and shape was fashioned to fit the space in between my shoulder and head perfectly, so that both head, but more importantly, my neck, felt wonderfully cradled when sleeping on my side.

Again, these mundane insights are probably what many people do anyway, but I think there are also a lot of people who just jump into bed and hope for the best, who see sleep as a game of Russian Roulette for their mind and body. Sleep is where your day starts before it starts so it's crucial this period is as high a quality as you can make it. I feel the same way about the importance of comfortable footwear and the use of insoles to correct one's gait, but can't be arsed going into that right now.

Dont Allow Others To Determine Your Mental Health

With today being world mental health day (Oct 10th), I'm reminded by how much of a colossal struggle just finding the right path towards a healthy mind can be.

School can be an absolutely brutal place. Witnessing the naive and often unjust ways alpha girls and boys would exercise their power on the more vulnerable kids in the playground was a constant reminder that school was first and foremost a place you had to survive in order to then learn.

As the only black kid throughout junior school, and one of perhaps three in secondary, it was important for me not to become fixated upon how I differed from other kids, and instead, look for the things we had in common and could enjoy together. I figured that having friends in various different playground cliques meant there should be less chance of me being seen as an outsider who couldn't fit in, and so kids should have less of a reason to find beef with me.

The more I was accepted into peer groups, the more it confirmed that I was similar to them after all, which led to a sense of belonging and safety, a feeling that seemed important to have in order to get the most out of being in a learning environment. Acceptance from fellow pupils became a source of validation and self-esteem, which in turn led to having more confidence and a general contentedness.

As I grew older and my sense of who I was became more defined, problems started arising. Particular groups I wanted be a part of, and thought had things in common with, wouldn't allow me to join and often gave no reason why. The decision to yay or nay my requests resting in the hands of the more domineering kids in the group for whom passing judgement in this way was fun, but for those unfairly condemned it could be a soul crushing experience.

There was an obvious flaw in the soundness of my high school survival strategy. Was it wise for my sense of well-being and self-worth to be at the mercy and whims of the other kids? My mental health felt like a commodity on the stock market whose value rose and fell with each acceptance or rejection, reinforcing a hunch the world was just this indifferent and cold arena that rewarded the strong and dominant with the most freedoms.

Why should membership to desirable peer groups have such a powerful impact on my mental health?

I remember being 18, standing awkwardly in the garden of my friend's parents one bonfire evening. One of 10 blokes who, without any prior conferring, had assembled into a perfect man circle on the lawn; the work colleagues of my friend's dad, plus myself. I was shooting the breeze with real men of the world. We were getting to know each other through the mutual exchange of our vast life experience as we flaunted our checked shirts, held cans of Fosters to our chests like they were trophies, occasionally glancing behind to scoff at the poor excuse for a fire while we shooed away any giddy child that asked us to play with them.

By donning the correct costume, performing the appropriate gestures I'd seen other blokes perform, as well as regurgitating stock answers to most of the common ice-breaking questions a bloke will ask another fellow bloke he doesn't yet know, I could tell I was on the verge of entering blokedom proper, and was a hair's breadth away from assuming my position as a functioning member of the privileged patriarchy.

After about half an hour or so of trying to assimilate with these learned elders, I noticed there was one main bloke who did the majority of the speaking, and was the default focal point if you didn't know what to do with yourself; like stand properly, or hold your can of beer with a convincing level of manliness. Despite his irritating braggadocio, he was a welcome diversion that deflected group attention away from my poor quality man acting. Occasionally he would look over to another bloke, who I concluded was his deputy, for those moments when he needed his more audacious claims backing up.

An hour had past, the Fosters was flowing and I'd gained the ability to hear things beyond the cacophony of anxieties in my head. I felt at ease. I could focus on the actual content of what us guys were sharing with each other, and could think about how I'd be able to shoehorn myself into the conversation. So I listened eagerly for an opening in order that I could make my mark.

What I heard was a series of banal accomplishments, mainly home improvement based, presented to the group as though they were scientific breakthroughs. Disdain was being flung at nearly everyone and everything, designed it seemed, to exemplify their own strengths. Their incompetent work colleagues, their illogical and irrational wives they couldn't understand and regretted marrying, their children who were unaware of what good music was, the idiotic tactics the manager of the football team they supported would use. The weather. Modern life. Vegetarians. It just went on and on... The best I could manage was a couple double-entendres and an innuendo that brought a ripple of chuckles, but it felt completely contrived. I was being a fraud, ticking boxes to gain status. I did consider the possibility that everything they were saying was valid, but for some reason I didn't feel like I was in the presence of 9 Nobel laureates.

At a certain point during the exchange I felt a bit off. Waves of disenchantment about what the hell I was doing and what being a man actually involved began swirling around inside. Then one of the guys began regaling us all with the time he heroically got out of his car to give a lollipop man a piece of his mind for walking into the road too abruptly...

"Nah, this is shit!" I said out loud, fetched my bike and rode home.