My wife doesn’t sleep well.
I sympathize with her, but unfortunately, I don’t and, I suppose, can’t empathize with her. Does that make me a bad husband? Well, that might not make me a bad husband, but I’m sure there are other things I do that put me in that category.
One of the things I do that might make me a bad husband is not closing the kitchen cabinets after I have found what I am looking for. I don’t do it on purpose, but if you have read this far and if you know me, then you would not be surprised that if I am doing a mundane task in the kitchen that I have done many times before, then my conscious mind is somewhere other than remembering to close the cabinet.
The reason this might make me a bad husband is that she has told me repeatedly to do this. The reason it is so important to her is that she has banged her head into the corner of the opened cabinet door a few times. That hurts! In that, I can empathize with her, not just sympathize. I have done it too and I can connect with her over the pain and discomfort.
This brings us back to trouble sleeping. It’s not that I don’t want to empathize with her sleeping difficulties. It’s that I can’t. I have always been lucky enough to be a good sleeper. So, I have trouble empathizing with something I don’t understand. In fact, in my family – including the in-laws and cousins, there is something known as the ‘Swope gene.’ It is the ability and the penchant to nap and to quickly fall asleep. As I have mentioned before and will do so again in The Creativity Algorithm, when you have a lot to do, get the nap done first. I say that only half-jokingly because there is convincing evidence that naps aid communication between your unconscious with assembles good ideas and your conscious mind which recognizes them and acts on them.
But this chapter isn’t about the value of naps. It is about the difficulty of falling asleep. This is quite common. I don’t presume to be a sleep expert and I certainly am not offering medical, clinical, or therapeutic advice. Instead, I am simply exploring a thought and sharing that exploration here.
In quite a few chapters so far, I have suggested that we cannot demand that a good idea appear any more than we can demand that a smart, skittish puppy fetch a thrown stick. The more we chase that puppy, the less likely it will play and return the stick. Of course, the more we chase after a good idea, the less likely our subconscious mind will assemble it and deliver it to us.
Just like that skittish puppy who kind of wants to play but will only retrieve that stick when we are not focused on it, your subconscious mind usually delivers ideas when your conscious mind is relaxed, distracted, and engaged with another task. That mental state has been called alpha state, the zone, and the flow state.
Back to problems with sleeping, can I gently suggest that when a person cannot fall asleep or get back to sleep, they should not try to get back to sleep? I stress ‘gently’ because my previous sentence is similar to telling a panicked person to relax or telling a poor person that the way to get rich is to save more money. Again, this is a thought experiment, not clinical advice.
Let’s go back to the puppy metaphor. Dogs might not be smart, but they can be wily. They can read body language. They know when we are only pretending to not pay attention to them. And, our unconscious knows when we are only pretending to not try to fall asleep. For those people who find themselves counting sheep, practicing breathing, or other techniques to fall asleep, the inherent flaw, is that they are trying to fall asleep. It’s like trying to sneak up on a skittish puppy.
If you want a puppy to play with you and bring you the stick of a good idea, the best way is to start playing another game – without the intention of ‘getting’ the puppy. Play the new game because it is interesting. Play it with your full attention. Then, maybe, just maybe the puppy will want to see what is so interesting. That is how good ideas often come to us and it just might be a way to invite sleep.
The title of this chapter came to me as I was lying awake one morning. Well, sort of awake. I had woken up, went to the bathroom, and eagerly got back into bed. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t fall back into deep sleep, and I didn’t want to. I wanted to hang out in that half-awake, half-asleep, state where the brain produces lots of alpha waves.
But, I couldn’t get there. Maybe it was the over-eager expectation of getting there. Maybe it was trying to enter that state. So, then I thought about how our unconscious mind is like a slow-moving river and that our conscious mind is like a paddle boarder on that river. While the paddle boarder has some ability to move on the river, sometimes, as hard as they paddle, they can’t get to where they think they should be.
So, there I was, back in bed, early in the morning, and a ‘supposed expert’ on creativity and an experienced mental practitioner. I wasn’t getting into an alpha state. I was thinking about paddle boarding. Until… Duh. I was in the alpha state. I just didn’t recognize it. In a multi-layered mental construct, I was in an alpha state, imagining that I was a paddle boarder on the river of my unconscious while trying to figure out why I couldn’t paddle my way across the river to the alpha state.
What in the name of going-with-the-flow does this have to do with helping a sales manager help his team increase sales. If you are a manager you have to manage the whole person, not just the employee. There is behavior and personality. Trying to change an employee’s behavior through incentives alone is like trying to paddle against the current of their personality. However, once you get a feel for the employee’s personality, needs, and quirks, you can work with them. If you can do this with sales professionals on your team, then maybe you can teach them to do it with clients. You can’t force a client anymore than you can make yourself fall asleep. But you can go with their flow and see where they will lead you.
Maybe, just maybe this might apply to someone who has trouble falling asleep. They are trying to paddle in a direction that the river does not want them to go just yet. It is a biological fact, that a person will fall asleep. Don’t believe me? Try to stay awake. (Note: this is not a dare.) But realistically, after enough time, you will fall asleep. I don’t advocate pushing that limit. Similar to breathing, try to hold your breath. The biological need will eventually outweigh the psychological element of trying. Trust in that. Trust yourself.
So, if we know that we will fall asleep or, if metaphorically we know that we will end up on the other side of the river eventually and that paddling (trying to sleep) will not get us there, then what is left to do?
Stop paddling. I know, I know. Easier said than done. It’s like trying to not pay attention to that puppy that you really, really want to come to you. Especially if you find yourself mentally standing on a paddle board that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. You either want to paddle and try to get to sleep or you think that paddleboarding at that moment isn’t fun and you want to get off (get out of bed and stop trying.)
So, what are we to do? Stop paddling and start drifting. Even if it is moving slowly, a river is always moving. William James, the founder of American Psychology Association coined the term stream of consciousness. Surfers rarely paddle hard. They don’t try to hurry the waves along. There is a time to paddle and a time to drift. Don’t try to get to the other side. Allow yourself to float down the river. Let yourself see what is downstream.
The sophism in this chapter is to consciously help your unconscious get started. Sometimes our unconscious doesn’t know how we want to play with it.
Consciously imagine that you are floating down a river on a paddleboard, kayak or whatever makes you comfortable. What you would like to find on the banks of the river as you drift down it. Maybe even make a mental list of a few things. Like pushing a kayak off the bank, it should only take a gentle nudge from your unconscious to start you floating. If it takes more than a nudge, maybe more than a few repeated nudges, that’s OK too. Eventually, you’ll start floating. Who knows what you’ll find?
TakeAway for this Week: Borrow from one of the themes of the previous chapter. We become good at what we practice. So, make time to practice this. Practice imagining what a perfect day, floating on the river would be like. Really push yourself to imagine the scene, smell, feel, sound of your time on the river. Practice enjoying the journey and not worrying about the destination. Maybe just a minute or two at your desk. Maybe even instead of getting frustrated while waiting at a stop light, you might think of what you would want to see when you try floating. Get good at drifting on the river of your unconscious. Eventually, you might learn to steer to where you want to be, but for now, enjoy just floating. Everything else, including sleep, will come when your unconscious thinks it’s time.
Spreading the Thoughts: Ask a coworker if they ever have trouble sleeping. You probably will not have to look far. Ask them what they do to try to fall asleep. Then gently suggest that nobody can try to do something and fall asleep. If they are confused, share this chapter or podcast.
For more information on how to help yourself and people in your organization learn how to access solutions more regularly, please go to:
Website: joeswope-publicspeaker.com
Youtube: youtube.com/@joeswope-publicspeaker
Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/joe-swope
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/joe-swope-speaker
References
Bhaskar, S., Hemavathy, D., & Prasad, S. (2016). Prevalence of chronic insomnia in adult patients and its correlation with medical comorbidities. Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, 5(4), 780-784.
The Creativity Algorithm 
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