Five Minutes

If you wake up as weary as you were when you went to bed the night before, try to recall what you were thinking about during the last five minutes before you went to sleep. What you think about in that five minutes impacts how well you sleep, which determines what kind of day the following day will be.

When you sleep, your conscious mind is at rest, but your subconscious mind remains active. Psychologists call the subconscious the “assistant manager of life.” When the conscious mind is “off duty”, the subconscious mind takes over. The subconscious carries out the orders that are given to it even though you are not aware of it. For example, if the last minutes before going to sleep are spent worrying, the subconscious records and categorizes that as fear and acts as if the fear is reality. Thus muscles remain tense, nerves are on edge, and the body’s organs are upset which means the body is not really at rest. However, if those last five minutes are spent contemplating some great idea, an inspiring verse, or a calm and reassuring thought, it will signal to the nervous system, “All is well” and then put the entire body in a relaxed, peaceful state. Many of the days that begin badly started out that way because of the night before, during those critical last five minutes of conscious thought.

You can input positive healthy thoughts into your conscious mind and pave the way for quiet, restful sleep by simply meditating on God’s Word as you drop off to sleep. For example, Psalm 91:1-2(NKJV): He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress; my God, in Him I will trust.”