How to Wind Down

Welcome to the Charged life. This is Brendon Burchall. Hey, it's Brendan. Have you ever had difficulty winding down at the end of a busy day and you feel like, gosh, I can't sleep because of it, or you're not getting great sleep, or you just feel, like, constantly frazzled at the end of the day that you just wish you could have some sense of peace amidst all the chaos of the day? Well, what are you going to do? I got four ideas for you today. The first one is just you must, you must, must, must set up a discipline, a routine that you do every night if you're ever going to make it any better. The hopes that one day we're just going to, you know, wander into a perfect evening where everything's, you know, flowers and calm and meditation practice and everything's a perfect yoga studio around the house. That's not gonna happen unless you have a distinct setup intention that every night you're gonna follow a routine. You know, you talk to parents and you talk about, you know, their kids, and one of their favorite parts of their childhood is when the kids finally got on a routine. And when they got a routine, the parents finally felt like, oh, at least we can plan a dinner, or at least we know when we're gonna go to bed. It's like, as soon as you establish routines in your life, you start to be able to feel better. Well, the same thing goes with your evenings. Your evening shouldn't be a hot mess of like, oh, we watched a show, and now let me go check Facebook and let me do some Instagram, and now let me go do this, and, oh, random. It's like if it's a bunch of random things at the end of the night, what you're doing is firing off the dopamine molecule and hormone in your brain that says, I like novelty. And all these new things are firing up your brain, not winding it down. So the more randomness you have, and at the end of the night, the less likely you'll sleep well, the more likely your brain will be activated and want to do more things. It'll be more difficult to chill out. So make sure you have some type of routine. Here's what I recommend. The first point, transition from the busy day, you need to have your transitions. For some people, that is, you come home, you get in the house, you go to the gym, you work out, then you come back home. Now, now there's a break from work versus home. Other people, they drive to their house, they get into the house, they meditate for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 10 minutes, whatever it takes. Other people take a quick nap, whatever it is, or even some other people just take a walk around the house a couple times and just focus on releasing their thoughts and the stress from the day. Other people stretch and move, whatever it is. You gotta have that transition routine. So what is it? You need to have something that says, I finished the work of the day, I'm going to wind down now, and you must activate a habit. For me, it's meditation and a walk that keeps me sane. So when I get home from a day's work, even if I'm working from home, but I know I'm done now, I meditate, I walk around the block, and I'm in a good place. It's just something I immediately do. And I highly recommend it to you as well. Next idea, big idea. Don't get stuck in social media. Don't get stuck in front of screens. If you want to wind down again, the way to do that is to avoid randomness and novelty. Lots of new things. So watching, you know, three seasons of a show is not going to chill you out. It's going to create a little bit of anxiety and dopamine where you're just like activated. You want to avoid looking a bunch of social media. I just tell people if you really want to chill out, you really and like, wind down. Maybe one show, that's okay. Cool. But then read a book or go for that walk or do something that removes you from all the, like, the crazy stuff going on, especially, you know, tweets or Instagrams or scrolling through news feeds. All that's only firing you up, not winding you down. Third big idea is make sure you have something that you do for gratitude practice. You know, one great way to increase your happiness, but also help you calm down is gratitude. So do you have a gratitude journal you can do at the end of the night? Do you have a moment where you can just take and just write down a few things you were happy for from the day? Maybe a few things you learned. And some people, if you just can write down a few things you got to do the next day just to get them off your mind so you're not laying in bed going, what am I supposed to do tomorrow? And then you activate all the things you're supposed to do. Get that on a piece of paper somewhere. Get it off your brain, put it away. And now you don't have to deal with it anymore. Last idea. Use the environment of your home to wind you down Dim the lights, put on the house music. That's calming music. Light those candles. If you got the candles, drop the temperature down to 68 or 69 degrees so your body gets ready for bed. When you get into bed, have your moment of gratitude where you thank and complete the day. Where you say, this was a good day. This day is now over. I did my best. Everything today did pass. There's nothing more I can do to influence this day. This one is done. It is complete. Good job. I'm thankful for it. I'm ready for bed. Just tell yourself that, like, let your brain go, the day is done. It releases all this expectation that your mind wants to have to keep thinking at night. So in bed, it's very important. Have that moment where you go, the day is done. I did a good job. Be grateful. Go to bed. If you can have that temperature set down. Make sure the room is dark. Make sure you don't have any of those, you know, big alarm clocks that are casting light into the room. I mean, go for a pitch black dark room at night. It's been proven in every sleep study to improve your sleep and the depth of your sleep and rejuvenation. So make sure, pitch black room, no lights, no sound. If you think you need that ambient white noise, then there's plenty of ways you can do that. But make sure there's no screen casting light. As you do that, drop that temperature 68, 69 degrees. Enter your sleep from a moment of gratitude. You'll feel a lot better tomorrow. You'll feel rejuvenated, you'll feel ready to go. Because if you can wind down well at the end of the day, then the next day when you wake up, you'll be like, I'm ready for the charged life. Hey, it's Brendan again. Did you notice something in today's episode? Yep. No ads, no sponsors, just a positive message to improve your day. How do I do it? How is it that you listen to all those other podcasts and they have minutes and minutes worth of lame ads for underwear or other websites they're promoting? Hey, I don't judge them, but I choose to focus on you in this podcast. And personally, when I listen to other shows, I just skip those long winded sponsor pitches. And anyway, I can only do this because you share my podcast with so many other people and enough folks end up looking me up online and buying my books or taking my online courses that I can self fund this entire effort. And you know how hard it is to do all this and that's why I appreciate you guys so much. I heard that you even helped me break a record too. The longest running top 10 self help show without a single sponsor or product, pitch or ad. So if you like this podcast ad free and sponsor free. Do me a favor. Tell a friend today you know you should listen to the Charged Life Brendon Burchard's podcast. Just help spread the word, share why you like my show, or tell people to go to podcast.brendon.com it would sure help and I'd appreciate it. And I'm sure our community would too. I look forward to talking with you again soon, my friend. Until then, go out there every single day of your life. Live fully, love openly, and make your difference. Today.