7 Essential Steps to a Good Night's Sleep!

Refreshing sleep significantly affects the quality of your thinking, perceiving and experiencing. Research studies have repeatedly supported the far-reaching effects of solid, restful sleep.

Enjoying a good night's sleep requires you to have -- and use -- the ability to direct your mind to work for you! After all, it is your mind. If you have not already been doing so, it is now time to treat this mind as yours!

The following steps are designed to help you create a good night's sleep as your habit:

Step #1. If You Need to Spend Time Thinking, Do So ... before going to your bedroom. Make a focused time for thinking a part of your pre-bedtime routine.

Step #2. Leave Any/All Cares in the Kitchen Freezer. Use your imagination for this one. Imagine that you take all cares, problems, worries, and concerns and deposit them for the night in the freezer. Then, firmly close the door ... and leave them there.

Step #3. Establish a Bedtime Routine. Select the same time of night and the same relaxing tasks -- e.g., take a hot bath, read a restful book, meditate. Make this bedtime routine a habit -- each and every night, engage in relaxing in these routine ways.

Step #4. Turn Your Mind to Restful Thoughts. Fill your mind with the most-relaxing ideas, thoughts and memories that you can think of.

Step #5. Relax and Lie Down and Relax some More. Start with your feet and progressively relax every muscle of your body up to your head.

Step #6. Begin to Breathe Deeply and Slowly. As you do so, relax even more -- from the inside, out.

Step #7. Imagine Yourself in a Relaxed, Repetitive Setting. Once you have yourself in a place of relaxation -- e.g., on the beach, listening to the waves -- count down slowly from 50.

I invite you to use these ideas over and over to create a good night's sleep for yourself ... night after night after night!