New Year's Resolutions (Like Sleep Training) Made Easier: Part One. Change Your Thoughts.

Do you have a New Year's Resolution for yourself and your family? Does it involve better sleep?

Want some help with that? 

I'm not talking about sleep coaching, but about "thought work. "

Six months ago, I started listening to The Life Coach School podcasts. Not long after, I joined Self Coaching Scholars. The thought model they teach has changed my life.

When we change our thoughts, it's a lot easier to change our feelings, and thus our behavior, which changes our results. Let me show you how. 

Unintentional Thought Model About Sleep Training

Circumstance: My baby wakes up crying every two hours at night. I nurse her back to sleep.
Thought: I hate listening to her cry. Sleep training will be too hard. I won't be able to stand it.
Emotion: dread, fear, frustration
Action: I do nothing to change her sleep.
Result: Her sleep continues to be disrupted. She is overtired and cranky and so am I.

Now look what happens if I change my thinking, even without changing my circumstance. 

Intentional Thought Model About Sleep Training
Circumstance: My baby wakes up crying every two hours at night. I nurse her back to sleep.
Thought: The poor thing is crying because she's overtired. Just like me. I am strong enough to endure some crying to help her get the sleep she so desperately needs. (Note: sleep training doesn't necessarily have to involve crying.)
Emotion: resolve, determination
Action: I take steps to ensure that I have support with sleep training. I make a plan. And then I dig deep and sleep train my baby.
Result: My baby is sleeping so much better and so am I. We are so much happier and enjoying our time together so much more!

You can see clearly how sleep training would be so much easier with the second model. Changing our thinking is amazingly powerful!

It's important, though, to recognize and empathize with the thoughts and feelings of the first model before changing thoughts to create the second model. Your thoughts and feelings and fears are still completely valid and worth recognizing.

Lest you think I am oversimplifying or making this all sound so easy, let me share my own thought model from today. They really work! I've made so many amazing changes in my life as a result of them.

Circumstance: There are rolls and desserts served with dinner at our resort. 
Thought: I deserve the rolls and desserts because I successfully fasted today. (I practice intermittent fasting each day. I love it! Usually.)
Feeling: justified
Action: I eat the rolls and the dessert. A lot of them.
Result: I have a stomach ache during the night. I have a harder time fasting the next day because all those processed carbohydrates make me more hungry.

Here's my intentional thought model for today: 

Circumstance: There are rolls and desserts served with dinner at our resort. 
Thought: My body will feel so much better if I abstain. I'll be so proud of myself tomorrow. And my fast will be easier. I can do hard things, like avoid processed carbohydrates!
Feeling: determined
Action: I abstain from processed carbohydrates.
Result: I don't have a stomach ache tonight. I feel proud of myself. My body doesn't hurt. I like how my body looks.

Here's one I did yesterday. I got coached on this one by a coach at the Life Coach School. You can see that I'm not perfect at bedtime, either!

Circumstance: It's bedtime and the kids are dawdling.
Thought: I am DONE. I need them in bed NOW. 
Feeling: impatience, frustration, irritability
Action: I snap at the kids.
Result: An unpleasant bedtime experience for everyone.

versus

Circumstance: It's bedtime and the kids are dawdling.
Thought: It's only natural that the kids are delaying bedtime. They are having a great time and don't want to stop having fun. We are so lucky to have lives we love.
Feeling: sympathetic
Action: kind but firm limits are enforced without anger
Result: children are in bed and I am not frazzled and frustrated. 

I do a thought download every single day. I like to do them first thing each morning, to set the stage for a great day, each and every day. I encourage you to do the same.

Next week, I'll talk about some of the nuts and bolts of creating your New Year's Resolutions to change your family's sleep for the better.