S3:E23 | Ready for a September reset?

Are you ready for a September reset? Do you want to get some good routines in place to take you through the next few months? I’m certainly in this headspace. If you are too then today's episode is for you. 

Hello and welcome back to the Sleep Seekers Podcast, I’m your host, Emma Ashford. 

So I wanted to do an episode based around having a September reset because I feel really ready for one and I think this is often true for a lot of people at this time of year. 

Summer holidays have finished, the kids have gone back to school and you are maybe feeling ready for a bit more routine and a bit more structure in your life. 

The summer is often a time of living more flexibly, later nights, holidays, making the most of the weather and a break from routine. And in the UK we have just had a week of surprise warm weather and of course we want to make the most of that. 

And when it comes to sleep, the summer often means later nights because it is light later or because you are doing something nice. Lots of people find they wake earlier in the summer with the lighter mornings - so combine that with going to bed later and you have less sleep overall. When it’s warm, or maybe when you’re on holiday in an unfamiliar environment it’s normal for sleep to be more disturbed, perhaps with more waking or less deep sleep. So, with all this considered, it’s very common to not really be getting enough sleep or your ideal sleep over the summer. Which is fine for a season, for a period of time but maybe you feel like you are ready to prioritise your sleep more as part of your September reset. 

The seasons are changing, we are moving into Autumn and again this can naturally bring with it the need or the desire for a reset and a new start. It is the perfect time. I think September is like another new year but maybe even better because it comes without all the pressure and the new years resolutions. Instead you can just quietly go about resetting your priorities and creating the structures around you to support that. 

I am always much more routined over the Autumn and Winter than I am in the Spring and Summer. And I don’t know about you but I always find it’s the routines and the structure that allow me to achieve goals and live a more healthy and intentional life, especially with health, exercise and general wellbeing and of course sleep is a big part of that. September is a time for routines to see you through until Christmas

So, lets talk a bit about how you might go about thinking about resetting this month. How do you go about having a fresh start that is effective?

The first step is to think about your priorities. What is important to you over the next few months? What do you want to work on? What do you want to improve? 

It might be a good idea to revisit any goals or plans you had in January - maybe like most people they might need a bit of a kickstart for September. 

Some of the most common desires at this time of year are to get back into exercise or to lose weight, or maybe to eat more healthily.

To make progress on a work project or studying or maybe wanting to learn something new.

And of course to get more sleep or get better sleep - and that might just be for you or that might be for your whole household including children. 

So you need to be clear on what you want to be different or what you want to make happen. 

Then you have to be clear on how you can make it happen - usually this comes down to planning and routines. So, when will you fit in the exercise, when will you work on the work project, how will you plan your meals?

How will you make sure you prioritise sleep?

What needs to be different to make sure these things can happen?

A huge amount of the time, it is your evening routine and your morning routine that will define the success of your day and all the other goals you want to achieve.

If you have a good evening routine it will help you to relax, help your brain to disconnect and help you to get a good quality, restoring nights sleep. This makes it easier to get up in the morning feeling ready for the day. A good morning routine means you are preparing for the day ahead, nor rushing and setting yourself up for a great day. Everything is easier to achieve when you have these two things in place.

So think about your morning and evening routines. What needs to change to make these more effective or perhaps to establish them in the first place?

And then think about what else you need or what would help you? What do you need to learn? What system can you have in place to make it as easy for yourself as possible? How can you set yourself up for success? 

So for example, when I want to get back into exercise, I need a plan. Whether it be using a structure like the couch to 5K running plan, whether it be planning exercise classes into my diary or working out a plan for the gym ahead of time. This structure means I know what to do and I don’t waste time in indecision, procrastination or confusion. I am a million times more likely to be effective if I just have to show up and obey the plan as opposed to try to work it out in the moment every time. 

You need a plan or a structure to follow. You need to utilise tools designed to help you succeed. 

It’s the same with sleep. If you want to sleep better, you have to think about how you are going to set yourself up for success with this. As I always say, this starts with your wind down time - that magical time before bed where you can prepare your body and mind for a great nights sleep. But, you need to have a plan for how you will go about this, how you will make your wind down routine effective. If you don’t have a plan, life just takes over, you end up doing the same things you have always done and nothing really changes. 

I designed the Wind Down Journal to be like the couch to 5k programme but for sleep instead of running. You just have to show up and do it and the rest takes care of itself. It has all the science backed strategies for you to implement in your evening routine on one simple page so there is no overwhelm and no confusion. One simple page a day to prompt you to implement everything you need.

And if you are serious about improving your evening routine and your sleep, when you combine the journal with the Wind Down Course, you can learn how to design your wind down time to be perfect for you and set yourself up with the habits that will serve you in all the seasons of life.   

To help you with your reset, for the whole of September I am offering a discount on the Course and Journal Bundle - so when you buy the wind down course, you are effectively getting the wind down journal for free. That’s everything you need to really master your wind down time to improve your sleep. The course is not long or time consuming - you can just do it in little bite sized chunks and build your wind down time up over a week, a month, however long you decide to take to go through the course.

You can take advantage of this big bundle discount by going to sleepseekers.academy/store. It runs right up to the end of September but I would encourage you to make the most of this new start September energy and get moving on it sooner rather than later.

And then finally I would say, just get started. Make a start, even if that is imperfect or a tiny change to start with. You can adjust and improve along the way but you will make more progress by starting than you ever could by just thinking about it. Small progress in the right direction is still progress.

So there you have it - September is a perfect time for a reset.

Get clear on what you want to change or what you want to make happen.

How will you make it happen? What planning do you need to do? What routines do you need to implement - definitely think about your evening and your morning routines here.

And then think about how you can set yourself up for success. What resources or tools could you use to help you? What do you need to learn or what structures would make it easy for you?

Make sure to take advantage of the September offer on the Wind Down Course and Journal Bundle and really use this opportunity to master your evening routine and prioritise your sleep and all the wellbeing benefits that good sleep brings.

I hope you can have a really successful September and feel really good about moving into this final stretch of the year, taking really good care of yourself.

I hope you enjoyed this episode and it got you thinking about your September reset.

THAT'S ALL FOR TODAY. DON'T FORGET TO SUBSCRIBE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS AN EPISODE. I WILL SEE YOU NEXT TIME ON THE SLEEP SEEKERS PODCAST AND UNTIL THEN, I WISH YOU GREAT SLEEP.

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