Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1904 — How to Sleep. [ARTICLE]

How to Sleep.

It is not uncommon to hear people say “I was too tired to sleep”—but It is not generally known how great a help It is at such times not to try to sleep, but to go to work deliberately to get rested in preparation for it In nine cases out of ten it Is the unwillingness to lie awake that kegps us awake. W’e toss and turn and wish we could sleep. We fret and fume, and worry, because we do not sleep. We think of all we have to do on the following day and are oppressed with the thought that we cannot do it if we do not sleep. First, we try one experiment to see if it will not make us sleep, and when it fails, we try another and perhaps another. In each experiment we are watching to see if It will work. There are many things to do, any one of which might help us to sleep, but the watching to see if they will work keeps us awake. When we are kept awake from our fatigue, the first thing to do is to say over and over to ourselves that we do not care whether we sleep or not, in order to imbue ourselves with a healthy indifference about it It will help toward gaining this wholesome indifference to say “I am too tired ’to sleep, and therefore, the first thing for me to do is to get rested in order to prepare for sleep. When my brain is well rested, it will go to sleep; it cannot help it. When it is well rested, It will sleep just as naturally as my lungs breathe, or as my heart beats.”—Leslie’s Monthly.