6 Ways You Can Create a Realistic Bedtime Routine

To live a successful life that makes you feel fulfilled and happy, create realistic schedules for everything you want to and need to do to live a happy, healthy, and financially secure life. But, unfortunately, sometimes in the quest for greatness, we forget one of the most important human life components: nutrition, hydration, and sleep.

• Know Your Goals and Objectives – Whatever you want to accomplish in life, whether working in a high-powered accounting firm, being an author, a first responder, or being a stay-at-home homeschooling parent, requires certain actions for success. Then follow your plan.

• Use Your Calendar – It may seem odd but scheduling everything realistically that you want to do in your calendar and making a daily to-do list that is realistically followed is the best way to ensure you can get things done, including sleeping. If you know sleeping 7 to 9 hours every night is essential to good health and high productivity, you must prioritize it by scheduling appropriately.

• Be Mindful – Don't do things mindlessly. Make it a priority to be with your family when you're with them. If you're going to listen to music, do that. If you're going to write your novel, do that. If you want to sleep, make sure you're ready for bed and have lived a full life today by eating right, moving enough, and getting comfortable so you can sleep.

• Stay on Schedule – While you shouldn't be a clock watcher, if you can avoid it, you want to try to stay on schedule when you are first learning to sleep better. For example, if you know that it takes you thirty minutes to fall to sleep, you need to get ready for bed before you lay down in your bed in the dark thirty minutes before the time you want to fall asleep.

• Make a Bedroom Designed for Sleeping – If your bedroom is too busy, whether it's clutter, style, or noise, it will be harder to get to sleep fast. Your room should be designed for sleeping and sex only.

• Ritualize Your Evening – Place importance of your evening and the entire winding down process. For example, if you need to cut electronics three hours before bed, what will you do during those three hours? You might as well make it something you look forward to, such as gentle stretching, bathing, journaling, and relaxing.

Your bedtime routine should include all the things you need to live your best life. It's amazing that often when we engage in what we call "self-care," we forget that basic daily activities for life are also important such as eating right, exercising, and sleeping soundly every night. None of that will happen without a good plan set up in a mindful way that considers your real life and real needs.