Do you ever wake up in the morning feeling like you need more sleep? Like it can’t be morning already, right? Well, if you have been there and done that, this episode is for you.

What if there were some simple tweaks that you could do that would help you to sleep better? Would you wanna hear about it? I used to be a sound sleeper, but when I had kids I began sleeping very lightly. If the baby would wake up, I would be up right away to go feed the baby or see what they needed, and that kind of continued on with the kids into toddlerhood and beyond. I never really went back to being a sound sleeper.

We used to live in a smaller town, but then we moved into Rochester, and Rochester isn’t huge, but it has over 100,000 people, so you hear more noise in a larger community, obviously. There’s a train not that far from our house, and it sometimes blows its whistle in the night. I might also wake up from someone in the house getting up to use the bathroom or just opening and closing a door. Being a light sleeper like that, I haven’t realized how much it has actually affected my quality of sleep. So I had this lightning bolt thought a few weeks ago: why don’t I get some earplugs and try sleeping with them? And you know what? And so I got some in the mail and have been sleeping with those every night since then, and it has had a profound effect on my sleep. I’m definitely waking up more replenished. I’m not waking up in the night anywhere near like I had been before. And so obviously I’m getting deeper sleep and more sound sleep.

Now I wouldn’t do this if my kids were little because obviously I would want to be able to hear really well if they needed me in the night, but if your kids are a little bit older or if you don’t have children I would definitely encourage you to give this a try. I thought it would be uncomfortable having something in my ears, but it actually hasn’t bothered me at all.

You know, I was reading recently on MIT Health an interview with Dr. Zan Barry, a doctor who specializes in stress management and sleep health, and she was talking about three necessities in your sleep environment for the body to truly replenish and rest well. She recommended that it be cool, dark, and quiet. Let’s just talk about those three things really quickly.

Number one is a cool room. I remember about a year ago when our air conditioner went out, and wouldn’t you know, it happened right on one of the hottest days of the summer, which made it extremely difficult to sleep. Adjust your temperature before you go to bed. If you’re not sleeping well, get up and adjust your thermostat to a cooler temperature, even in the night if you need to, just so you can sleep all the rest of the night or maybe try sleeping with a fan.

Second, you need a dark room. You know, if you’re in a rental place that you can’t buy room darkening shades, maybe try using a sleep mask or something like that that would help to just darken it because people can definitely wake up from light in the night. That was another thing with the place that we currently live. Our bedroom does not have a room darkening shade. It has a shade, but it doesn’t make it real dark. And I don’t know why, but I just haven’t bothered to have a different shade put up. And it’s kind of funny because there’s a road quite a ways away from where a window is where cars often turn, and sometimes in the middle of the night we’ll get a big flash of bright light from a car turning in the direction of our window, which will sometimes wake me up. So I have not started sleeping with a sleep mask. I maybe need to do that or finally get a room darkening shade for myself.

I know that scientifically speaking, when they study people in their sleep, they definitely do sleep better in dark rooms. Although I will say some people struggle with fear at night and they feel like they need to sleep with a nightlight or something in the room. So if you feel like you sleep better with a nightlight in the room, that’s totally fine.

The third thing is a quiet room. Like I mentioned before, the earplugs have been a game changer for me, and I would encourage you to do the same if you wake up from noises at all in the night. One other thing that Dr. Zan Barry recommended was that when you get more sunlight during the day, especially in the morning, it will give you better sleep at night. She said, if you can possibly have your breakfast sitting by a window or get some type of light in the morning, it will actually help your body to sleep better at night.

We live in Minnesota and the winters can be very cloudy and very dark. If you happen to live in an area like that that one thing that I had a doctor once recommend to me was to buy a box light. They’re very inexpensive, so we’ve purchased a couple of those for our house, and it is amazing how much that will wake you up in the morning and make you feel better. So in the winter time I often will take my little round box light and set it out in front of me in the morning when I’m doing work. So if you don’t have a box light, you might want to try getting one of those and using them in the morning.

I hope these ideas help you like they’ve been helping me. I want to close today giving you just a couple of thoughts on sleep. One is an old Irish proverb that says, “a good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.”

The other is from Proverbs 3:24 (a scripture that I love), which says, “when you lie down, you will not be afraid.” If you do struggle with fear at nighttime or thinking about things that make you worried, I would encourage you to meditate that scripture as you go to sleep. When you lie down, you will not be afraid. Yes, you will lie down and your sleep will be sweet. Just keep meditating that thought over and over as you go to sleep and you’ll find peace coming in your heart.

I hope this helped you today, my friend. And until next time, I declare God’s grace, favor and peaceful rest over your week. I’ll talk to you soon.