Today was a pretty busy day but the most interesting insight actually came from the previous day.
Yesterday I wrote:
“I awoke at 3:00 a.m. and could not fall asleep again. I remembered a tip for such a situation: get up and busy yourself with some useful activity for 30-40 minutes; your brain will protest and force you to sleep.
I got up and opened a textbook on English grammar. I studied for half an hour and went back to bed. Then I quickly fell asleep! The tip works!”
Today I realized that I was not as anxious about insomnia as I often am. I hate to sleep poorly, it hampers productivity and ruins the joy of life. That’s why the probability of a bad night usually bothers me a lot. Of course, it only makes things worse: the more you worry about sleeping, the harder it is to doze off.
But the last time I was not bothered. I was almost pleased to have an opportunity to test out the advice. It seems that curiosity and anxiety just could not coexist.
So, the next time I start to worry about something, I will not try to fight the anxiety. I will find the most interesting question in the situation and switch to explorer mode. We all did that when we were children, and back then we did not worry about a thousand things.
