What to Say to Yourself When Falling Asleep
How we end our day is just as important as how we start it, because our minds don’t totally sleep on the last things they think.
I just celebrated my 30th high school reunion.
We graduated in “the 1900s,” as my kids like to say. 1995.
That year, a new hit show was in its second season and had taken over the nine o’clock spot in NBC’s Thursday Night “Must See TV” lineup. It was a medical drama called ER, starring Goose from Top Gun—Anthony Edwards—and a rising young star named Noah Wyle. Now, thirty years later, Noah Wyle is the lead in a new HBO medical drama called The Pitt.
In the fourth episode, Dr. Robinavitch—aka, Dr. Robby, played by Wyle—is guiding two adult siblings through the inevitable passing of their father in a Pittsburgh emergency room. The brother wants to honor his father’s wishes not to be resuscitated. The sister wants to override her father’s wishes using their healthcare power of attorney. Dr. Robby knows they’ll only be painfully and briefly prolonging the man’s life.
Finally, the sister surrenders while lamenting tearfully, “I don’t think that I can go through this.”
Dr. Robby says, “I had a teacher who told me about a Hawaiian ritual called ho’oponopono—or, the four things that matter most. It’s basically just a few key things that we can say when we’re saying goodbye to a loved one that can really help at the early stages of loss. I love you. Thank you. I forgive you. Please forgive me.”
“That’s it?” the brother asks.
“Yep, I told you it was simple,” replies Dr. Robby.
It made me think about how every night when we go to sleep it’s a little rehearsal of our mortality, as we surrender our consciousness and release control of our survival instinct until the morning. I wondered what it would be like if, on the threshold of that nightly passage, I said to myself and to my people and to humanity and to existence:
I love you.
Thank you.
I forgive you.
Please forgive me.
A few weeks in I can tell you this: some nights it brings sadness, some nights it brings joy. And some nights, it’s hard to tell the difference.
That’s where this post originally ended.
It was a Crowdsourcing post, in which I encouraged you to share your nighttime rituals in the comments. The response was mostly crickets which was, ironically, a pretty appropriate response to a post about falling asleep.
However, the younger part of me that is always terrified of people losing interesting in me and leaving me alone got triggered by the silence. It started to fret about the future of my writing and my leadership of this community and pretty much anything that could end in personal catastrophe. I love that part of me now, though, and loving it calms it down. Once I was calm, I could see the truth:
My prompt wasn’t fair to you.
Prior to watching that show, I didn’t have a bedtime ritual, so why would you?
Typically, when I’m at my best, I read a novel until I start to nod off, and then I call it a night.
When I’m not at my best, I watch TV until I know that staying up any later will impair me the following morning.
And at my worst, I scroll news feeds until I’m so worked up I want to fall asleep to stop thinking about it all.
Not exactly an intentional bedtime routine.
What we say to ourselves at bedtime is important, though, because our brain doesn’t stop thinking about it while we sleep.
So, for the first time ever, I’ve revised a post after publishing it. And instead of asking you to share what you say to yourself before you sleep, I want to encourage you to be more intentional about it. What is it that the little one in you needs to hear before drifting off? What is it that your soul says in the silence that you could say back to it?
For some reason, when I ask myself that question, I recall a quote from the 1988 Brazilian Portuguese book “O tabuleiro de damas” by Fernando Sabino. Roughly translated, the saying goes:
Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.
Life is stressful, and you don’t have to deny that stress to cultivate calmness in your mind, body, and soul at bedtime. You can begin by listening to what you need to hear, and then saying it to yourself, over and over again.
So your whole being will keep saying it while you sleep.
I love this, thank you Kelly! I have a little mantra I say when falling asleep when I’m feeling anxious that helps. (I should probably do a version of this every night). The hypnagogic state is a powerful one for suggestion!
I am safe.
I am loved.
And everything is going to be ok.
This is lovely, like a sharing of lullabys. My husband has a friend in his late 80’s who talks to God as he falls asleep. He says: Ok, God, if you have something for me to do tomorrow, wake me up in the morning. I love this. But mostly I talk to my self doubt buy silently chanting: I deeply and completely love and accept myself. .