What runs through your mind five minutes before sleep?  I used to be in the “can’t stop my mind from racing so I can’t sleep” club and am very relieved to have stepped down as a member many years ago.  Even if you don’t have a problem falling asleep at night your thought pattern right before sleep is affecting your waking life more than you may have realized.  Sleep is the time where our subconscious mind reigns.  We go back to the spacious ether from whence we came for regeneration, and emerge with fresh life force energy each morning.

I recently finished reading Dr. Wayne Dyer’s Wishes Fulfilled, which I cannot recommend enough, where he talks about the ways in which we train our subconscious mind with the thoughts we have right before sleep.  The subconscious mind is the deep end of the mind, which contains all that we have learned and programmed ourselves to know automatically, like driving a car, riding a bike, or answering “Well, and you?” when someone asks how we are.  The subconscious mind acts through us without us having to vocalize the instructions with thoughts.  The actions prompted by the subconscious mind creates the majority of our experience. Dr. Dyer calls it our “automatic pilot.”

So what is important about the five small minutes before falling asleep?  According to Dr. Dyer, “In this brief portion of your day, you are going to tell your subconscious mind how you feel and what wishes God (the universal one subconscious mind) is to fulfill upon awakening from your deep slumber.  This five-minute segment of time in your bed, about to enter into your subconscious and marinate for the next eight hours or so, is the most crucial segment of your entire 24-hour day,” (Dyer 136).

I am not taking Dr. Dyer’s word for it.  I’m going to embark on a 30 day before-bed challenge, in which I use the last five minutes of my waking day to imagine my wildest dreams and assume the feelings of those dreams as if they were already my reality.  Will this change what my subconscious mind manifests throughout my days?  Will those positive emotions merely cause pleasant dreams, or will they permeate my waking experience?  

I encourage you to join with me on this 30 day before-bed challenge, and see how five minutes can change your whole reality.  It may be helpful to make a list of the thoughts and emotions you will fill your mind with before bed, and recite them to yourself each night right before sleep.  If nothing else, this nightly ritual will surely help those of you still in the “can’t stop my mind from racing so I can’t sleep” club to resign your membership and embark on your new journey in the “wishes fulfilled” cohort!