Sleep

So many people have difficulties sleeping, and that can lead to so many issues. While most of them are easy to cope with, it doesn't mean it's not frustrating. I used to struggle a lot with getting to sleep and staying asleep. I wouldn't sleep until 3am, and I would wake up many times in the night, finally waking up at about 7am and being unable to get back to sleep again. Although I have improved both the quality and the length of my sleep, I still wake up occasionally in the night, but no way near as often anymore. I've tried many different things, and I'll share the best few that have worked for me.

• Firstly, exercise. It may seem like I think exercise is the cure to everything, but I just think that it gives us so much more than we can imagine. Exercising can help to improve sleep in many ways. It can help you to sleep for longer, or have a less disturbed rest. If you don't already, try exercising to help you to sleep. I'm not asking you to suddenly become a professional athlete, try something basic like exercising for 30 minutes, three or four times per week. Do that for a month, and you may start to notice improvements.
• If exercise is not your thing, and you prefer to try to relax, the next time you're going to sleep, instead of having a light on until you're ready to rest, use a candle. The light from a candle is less harsh on your eyes, and because it's no way near as strong as a light, it means that the room will be darker overall. Because there is less light, there is less to focus on around the room, and this can actually help you to drift off to sleep in a more natural way. If you do try this, do not forget to blow out the candle!!!
• Reading can be a very good way of helping you to get to sleep, unless you're the type of person who feels the need to continue reading until 5am just so they can find out what happens next! But if you're the type of person who can happily read two or three chapters and leave it at that, then maybe reading before bed would be useful for you. 
• A sleeping tip that I have heard so many times before is to avoid screens for a while before you try to sleep, this includes your phone, laptop, tv, etc. In all honesty, I've never actually tried this because I find that I get sleepy quickly even if I'm on my phone, but for some people it does work.
• Sometimes when I can't sleep, I try to imagine myself in a peaceful place where I can relax. It always goes the same way. I walk through some palm trees and find a beach, I lie down and fall asleep hearing the sea. I've been told that's a form of meditation but I'm not completely sure whether that's correct, but I just find that doing something like that helps me. I've been doing that for a few years now and each time I do it, it helps me at least a bit. 
• Occasionally, when I wake up randomly at 4am and can't get back to sleep, I listen to the radio. I find the most boring sounding station and just put it on. Usually it helps me to get to sleep within half an hour, however, sometimes I'm still awake two hours later with a lot more knowledge in my mind. I've learned about literature, sociological explanations for various aspects of our lives, animals and their life cycles. I never knew such dull, but immensely interesting things were spoken about at 4am. I'll even go as far to say that I prefer the radio at 4am than in the day. Anyway, that may be helpful for some of you, you can download apps for the radio on your phone if you don't have a radio feature already built into it.
• The final suggestion I have is one that has helped me a lot over the last few weeks. It's a free app called Muji to Sleep. It's a very simple idea, you open the app, choose the sound you want to listen to, and the length of time you want it to play for (30/60/90mins). The sounds you can choose from are: the sea (gentle waves crashing), birds in a forest, fire, a river, trees swaying in the wind and a waterfall. The app says to listen to the sounds through headphones, but I just let it come out of my phone's speakers, but have it on a low volume. I tend to listen to the sea noise as I find that the most relaxing, and I leave the timer on 30 minutes. I have never been awake long enough to hear the sound ending after 30 minutes, however it does stop. I'm not sure whether it is draining on your battery as I leave my phone on charge at night, but if that is a problem for you, give it a test run in the day and see how it does.

If you gave any further questions, sleeping tips for others, or anything that you have done which has really helped you to have a better quality of sleep, please do share them by leaving a comment.