Are You Forcing Your Body to Sleep?

What if it's not that you can't sleep? What if it's that you're wearing the wrong size shoes? Bear with me. Okay, so if you've got size 7 feet and you're trying to squash them into size 6 shoes, you're perhaps going to be able to do that, but it's not going to be pleasant. What happens if you are trying to squash your normal sleep cycle into an abnormal sleep pattern for you? i.e. what happens if you're a night person being forced to work the day shift, as it were? That's not going to be optimal. You can survive, but it's not going to be great. I have always thought of myself as a bit of a night owl, and I've explained that as to why I don't sleep as well when I've got to set my alarm to get up early in the morning. And if I know what my chronotype is, I can actually try to adjust my bedtime routine for what should be the case with my body, and hopefully I can try and then survive in my job. There's something called the MEQ questionnaire you can do online, the Morning Evening Questionnaire. It's not a bright name. 19 questions that should help you determine what sort of person you are. Are you a morning person, a night person, whatever? I've done that, and it's told me that I'm an intermediate person, which doesn't really help anybody. There is a different way that you could do it. You could go live on a desert island and not be distracted by technology, not have to get up to go to work, and literally just see what happens to your body. I'm actually one of the rare individuals who's done that, and it's very important because, as I say, I think of myself as a night owl. When I was living on a beach with nothing to distract me or nothing to wake me up other than the sun, I was finding that I was getting really tired and sleepy about half an hour to 45 minutes after the sunset, and I was good and raring to go first thing in the morning after sunrise. I'm actually a morning person, but I've just previously worked with university and things like that as a night owl. As a result of that, I've tried to shift my bedtime pattern earlier in the evening. Now, it's not great, you know, particularly if there's something on TV I want to watch or go to the cinema, etc. However, if I'm trying to go to bed between 8 and 9 o'clock in the evening rather than at 11 o'clock at midnight, not only do I sleep better, but I'm much happier and more alert in the mornings. Have a look what your chronotype is, what your body wants to do naturally, and see what you could do with regard to your sleep schedules to perhaps lean into that and see if that can improve the quality of your life and maybe mean that you don't need to rely in the same way on sleep aids as perhaps you did do. Something to have a look at, certainly. Take care, and I'll see you in the next one. Cheerio.