😴 Constant Curiosity - Sleepy Edition | #8

Candles, Sleep Products, How to Lucid Dream & Curing Jet Lag

Greetings!

It took me at least an hour to fall asleep for years. However, I’ve learned to love to sleep thanks to some helpful tools and changes in my routine. I share my favorite sleep tips below.

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🕯️ Ready by Candlelight

My favorite "hack" for getting a great night's sleep is to get ready for bed by candlelight. Starting about 2 hours before going to bed, I turn off all the lights in the house, save a single candle in my bathroom. I always use the same lavender candle, so I associate that smell with bedtime. The relaxing flicker of the flame is a soothing reminder that now it is time for bed.

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💤 Best products for sleeping

• 🦝 Sleep Mask: Bucky Sleep Mask - if you have trouble sleeping and don’t wear a sleep mask, this is the best $13 purchase you could ever make.

• 👂 Ear Plugs: Mack’s Ear Plugs - I sleep with ear plugs every night, but they are especially useful for sleeping on planes or in noisy hotel rooms.

• 💤 Melatonin: Onnit Melatonin Spray - I use melatonin to help reset my circadian rhythm, and it’s beneficial for overcoming jet-lag.

• 🕯️ Relaxing Candle: Meyer’s Lavender Calendar - this is my favorite candle to light before bed.

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🦄 How to lucid dream

Lucid Dreaming is a phenomenon where you become fully conscious during a dream and control your dream world. It’s delightful, and anyone can do it.

Learning to lucid dream is very simple, but it takes lots of dedication. Below is the “dream routine” I adopt whenever I want to start regularly lucid dreaming.

Dream Routine

• Start a dream journal. Every morning when you wake up, immediately write down all of the dreams you can remember.

• Every night before you go to bed, visualize that first thing in the morning, you will vividly recall your dreams and will write them down in your dream journal.

• Throughout the day, periodically ask yourself, “Am I dreaming?”. As you do this, look around you and see if anything you are experiencing is strange or impossible. Things in dreams tend not to make sense when viewed rationally, so you should quickly be able to tell if you are in a dream.

  Tip: An easy way to remember to ask this question draw a dot on the back of your hand with a marker. This serves as a visual reminder to ask yourself if you are dreaming whenever you see it.

• Repeat this process consistently. I can reliably start getting lucid dreams to occur after following this routine for 15-30 days.

Sounds like a lot of work, right? Well, it is, but trust me, it’s worth it. While lucid dreaming, you can take control of your dreams and experience what it is like to fly, go on fantastical adventures, or anything else you can imagine.

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✈️ The Antidote to Jet Lag

Before COVID-19, I traveled extensively for work. For example, I’ve taken a 14-hour flight from LA to Taipei, arrived at 5 am, then gone directly into the office by 9 am. I did this without experiencing any jet lag. Here's how.

Before the flight

• Use the TimeShifter App. All you have to do is input your flight info. This app then generates a sleep routine to follow for the week leading up to the flight and the week after landing. It tells you exactly how to adjust your sleep schedule when to drink caffeine, take melatonin, and when to sleep on the plane.

On the plane

• Never drink alcohol on the plane. Even if alcohol puts you to sleep, the quality of your sleep will suffer, and you will experience less of the regenerative benefits of sleep.

• Wear noise-canceling headphones and your sleep mask while sleeping on the plane. These will make a huge difference in allowing you to fall asleep more comfortably.

• Dress comfortably on the flight. I like to wear athletic fabric clothing and have multiple layers to never be too hot or cold.

At your destination

• Force yourself to wake up at the scheduled time determined by the TimeShifter app. Set multiple alarms, and place your phone/alarm away from the bed, so you have to physically get up to turn it off.

• Get outside right away after waking up, and go for a long walk. Get plenty of sunlight on your skin.

• Get rid of as many light sources in the hotel as possible. Unplug the coffee machine, cover up the status light on the TV, and obstruct any light sources that will “trick” your body into thinking it is still daytime.

• Stay hydrated. Drink more water than you need to for the first few days of the trip. It’s really easy to get dehydrated while traveling, especially after long flights.

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Thanks for reading and talk to you next time.

Sleep well,

Isaac