There is an inner dialogue going on inside you all the time. When it’s about preoccupations of the day, this can keep you awake at night. This is a mind trap. Applying mental mastery tools can help you let go of the thinking pattern and fall asleep.

Your inner dialogue keeps you from going to be when you intend to. It keeps you up fretting about what happened the day before. It wakes you up too early as you worry about what might happen tomorrow. The inner dialogue is a mind trap – but it can be avoided.

Sleep deprivation and erratic sleep can be caused by simple indulgences that can become addictive. These can include addiction to eating at night and addiction to social media. Erratic sleep leads to sleep deprivation. Get the rest you need and overcome these everyday addictions.

When you wake up in the night, do you experience those moments of confusion, where you can’t remember who or where you are? Find out why that happens and what you can do about it.

It is refusing to "know what we know" that keeps us stuck in fear. We may try to avoid this part of us, but it is in touch with a reality greater than our own selves and our pedestrian preferences. Fear lives in the darkness where we refuse to go.

These fears can follow us into the night and keep us awake.

I write this post on the longest day of the year, the summer solstice. It is a time when evening extends on and on, offering a long slow quietening through the extended dusk. Then comes the lovely warm cover of night, a perfect time for romantic walks, star gazing, or sitting on the deck with friends and family. A time for just contemplating life, wrapped in the protective darkness of a summer night.