t all starts with falling asleep, naturally. As with anything, if you fail to prepare, prepare to fail. To wake up and not feel tired you must first lay the foundations for a good night’s sleep. This includes winding down before you go to sleep, allowing all distractions to be out of sight and out of mind. Then once you’ve woken from your ideal slumber, you must start the day straight away to allow for the natural tiredness of waking up to disappear. 

A bedtime routine for a restful night’s sleep 

The best bedtime routine you can give yourself will depend on you as an individual, the time you fall asleep and how much sleep you need. The average person needs 8 hours of sleep and goes to sleep somewhen between 10pm and 12pm. Your bedtime routine should start around 1-2 hours before you go to sleep, in this time it’s best to do minimal activities to slow your pace of thinking and movement ready to fall asleep more easily. 

Reduce your blue light intake for a more comfortable night of sleep 

If you work using a computer screen, laptop or mobile phone throughout your day you will be absorbing blue light from these devices. With short sessions, this is fine and won’t have any lasting effect on your eyes. However if this is something of an everyday occurrence, for prolonged periods of time, you may want to invest in a blue light filter desktop screen, glasses or simply turning the screen to a ‘warm’ setting. This and using your phone also contributes to strain on your eyes, resulting in headaches, sore eyes, and blurred vision. These symptoms can wreak havoc before bed and keep you up at night, or not allow you to fully fall into the deep sleep your body needs. So you don’t wake up and feel tired, don’t go on your phone 2 hours before bed if you can help it, or set your screen to a warm setting.

Use your nighttime routine for gentle activities 

If you’re not on your phone consuming umpteen amounts of content then you will have a mind free to enjoy simple, calming activities that require minimal brainpower, but just enough to make you a little sleepy. This is the best time to read a book, work on a puzzle or try your hand at an adult coloring book or journaling. These activities are also great ways to take your mind off stressful or worrying thoughts that have crept into your consciousness throughout the day. This is also the ideal time to introduce aromatherapy into your routine. The benefits of aromatherapy on calming your mind before bed and releasing tension have been proven to help with falling asleep faster and a deeper sleep. Our aromatherapy collection includes a Sleep Well scent of lavender and chamomile in the form of a candle and a balm. Use these before bed as part of your nightly ritual, take in the scent through controlled breathing and relax into a calmer state. 

If you struggle to fall asleep use this in your nighttime routine

Sometimes it’s hard to let our worries and stresses of the day go, and we spend a lot of our valuable sleeping time, staring at the ceiling wondering and thinking, not letting our mind rest. A good tip to make sure you wake up feeling refreshed and not groggy from tossing and turning is writing your problems down in a notebook before bed. Leave this by the side of your bed for thoughts and worries as they come up during your wind down, and once safely written down you can allow your mind to forget, safe in the knowledge they are written down and will be dealt with tomorrow. You can even turn this into a tick list if you want to be extra productive with your day, however, don’t worry if you can’t tick everything off all at once, some of life's worries tend to be more permanent than others. It’s how we deal with them that matters. 

A few other tips for a good night’s sleep 

Have you ever tried meditation or yoga before bed? Stretching and breathing can relax your body and mind at the same time, giving you a whole-body feeling of content. Some people like to listen to relaxing sounds of crashing waves or rainfall, or music before they fall asleep. This can be done through an app on your phone or playing a CD if you don’t want to use your phone. Listening to something can keep your mind occupied and distracted from racing thoughts, so you can fall asleep easier. 

 

A morning routine to keep you from feeling tired all-day 

Once you’ve woken up, regardless of how your night’s sleep fared, it’s important to get up and get moving. This can be the most challenging part of your day but once you’ve done it you will feel so much better and the tiredness will reside until it’s time to be tired again. If you lay in you your body could be fooled into an unusual routine that can confuse your body’s immune system, digestive system and the releasing of chemicals. Set your alarm and wake up first time, try to make a habit of this and not pressing snooze to get your body into a routine. 

Fill your body with fuel to reduce tiredness

To start the day right and not feel tired throughout the morning you need to give yourself energy. Start by drinking a whole glass of water as soon as you wake up, this will run through your entire digestive system waking everything up and kicking it into action ready for your first meal of the day. Breakfast, as you may have heard, is the most important meal of the day. You need an energy-filled meal, not too big or too small. Fruit and porridge is usually an easy and readily available option that gives you energy, fiber, and nutrients from the get-go.