Keep a Nighttime Gratitude Journal

Trying to get to sleep with your mind full of the day's events and thoughts of tomorrow can often be a losing battle. So it would help if you found a way to clear your mind and relax.

One way is to keep a nighttime gratitude journal. Being grateful for the day's positive events has a way of calming the soul. In turn, journaling your thoughts of gratitude will calm your mind and body.

To ensure that your nighttime journaling works for you, you'll want to follow these tips.

• Keep it Old School – Since you should shut down electronics three hours before bed, journaling at night with paper and pen is the best way to accomplish this task without upsetting your circadian rhythm with technology and blue light.

• Try Bullets Points Instead of Sentences – As you enter information into your journal, you don't have to write a novel. Instead, make it easy by simply writing words that mean something to you. For example, you will know what it means if you write "great meeting." No one else needs to know what that means.

• Try Describing Your Gratefulness in Words – You can also work on exploring your feelings of gratitude within the journal by writing out full descriptive sentences about how that thing you're grateful for made you feel.

• Think of Your Day – You bumped into an old friend or enjoyed a wonderful dinner. Maybe you drank all your water today. Perhaps someone gave you a gift you weren't expecting. Maybe you simply made it through the day, or you finally learned that new skill you were trying. It doesn't need to be overly profound for you to show your gratitude.

• Feel – I know, many of us don't like the "F" word. But whether we like it or not, we feel. Even when unaware, our body reacts to our emotions. These bodily responses are why we have tightness in the shoulders and neck, headaches, even difficulty sleeping. So, as you write in your journal, don't just do it in an unemotional way. Instead, feel the feelings fully as you write down what you're grateful for. Allow the feelings to wash over you because this is the motivation to guide your day tomorrow.

• Focus on the Extraordinary – Sometimes, it's good to try to find things that happened in your day that were unexpected and different to be thankful for. For example, did something happen today that was new and interesting? 

• Focus on the Ordinary – Some days are just repeats of the day before, but that is perfectly okay. If you have an organized, drama-free life, you'll end up sleeping better, so don't mistake that for boring. It may be ordinary, but it's still amazing for you if it makes you feel happy and satisfied with your life.

Finally, you don't need to write in your journal every single night for it to work. It's not homework. But you will get out of it what you put into it. Try for two or three times a week, especially when you are feeling anxious at bedtime. Keep it on your bedside table so you can use it to help wind down and put a positive perspective on your day so that you can sleep more soundly.