Thinking About Happy Memories Can Help You Fall Asleep

The goal is to recreate the "positive emotional state of the experience" in your mind.

If you have trouble falling asleep, listen up! Research shows that thinking back on a happy memory might help. It’s called “savoring.” The goal is to recreate the “positive emotional state of the experience” in your mind. It can be any happy memory. You have to close your eyes and imagine yourself back there. So, if the memory is sitting on a beach in Aruba, try to feel the sun on your face, hear the sound of waves crashing and smell the ocean breeze. If you do it right, it reduces activity in your sympathetic nervous system to help you de-stress and it ups the activity in your parasympathetic nervous system, which keeps you calm.