It is needless to say that if insomnia is a result of bad or irregular habits, the victim must first of all change his habits before he can expect any relief.
Man is a bundle of habits. We perform most of our life functions with greater or less regularity, so that they become practically automatic. Regularity, system, order are imperative for our health, our success and our happiness. This is especially true in regard to sleep. We must keep regular hours, be systematic in our habits, or our sleep is likely to suffer.
If you play as hard as you work, refresh and rejuvenate yourself by pleasant recreation and a jolly good time when your work is done, and then at a regular hour every night prepare your mind for sleep, just as you would prepare your body, give it a mental bath and clothe it in beautiful thoughts, you will in a short time establish the habit of sound, peaceful, refreshing sleep.
Whatever else you do, or do not, form the habit of making a call on the Great Within of yourself before retiring. Leave there the message of up-lift, of self-betterment and self-enlargement, that which you yearn for and long to realize but do not know just how to attain. Registering this call, this demand for something higher and nobler, in your subconsciousness, putting it right up to yourself, will work like a leaven during the night; and, after a while, all the building forces within you will unite in furthering your aim; in helping you to realize your vision, whatever it may be.
The period of sleep may be made a wonderful period of growth, for the mind as well as for the body. It is a time when you can attract your desires; it is a propitious time to nurse your vision.
Instead of making an enemy of your subconscious self by giving it destructive thoughts to work with, explosives that will destroy much of what you have accomplished during the day, make it your friend by giving it strong, creative, helpful thoughts with which to go on creating, building for you during the night.
There are marvelous possibilities for health and character, success and happiness building, during sleep. Every thought dropped into the subconscious mind before we go to sleep is a seed that will germinate in the night while we are unconscious and ultimately bring forth a harvest of its kind. By impressing upon it our desires, picturing as vividly as possible our ideals, what we wish to become, and what we long to accomplish, we will be surprised to see how quickly that wonderful force in the subjective self will begin to shape the pattern, to copy the model which it is given. In this way we can correct habits which are wounding our self-respect, humiliating us, marring our usefulness and efficiency, perhaps sapping our lives. We can get rid of faults and imperfections; we can strengthen our weak faculties and overcome vicious tendencies which the will power may not be strong enough to correct in the daytime.
If, as now seems clear, the subconscious mind can build or destroy, can make us happy or miserable according to the pattern we give it before going to sleep, if it can solve the problems of the inventor, of the discoverer, of the troubled business man, why do we not use it more? Why do we not avail ourselves of this tremendous mysterious force for life building, character building, success building, happiness building, instead of for life destroying?
One reason is that we are only just beginning to discover that we can control this secondary self or intelligence, which regulates all the functions of the body without the immediate orders of the objective self. We are getting a glimpse of what it is capable of doing by experiments upon hypnotized subjects, when the objective mind, the mind which gets most of its material through the five senses is shut off and the other, the subjective mind, is in control. We are finding that it is comparatively easy while a person is in a hypnotic state to make wonderful changes in disposition, and to correct vicious habits, mental and moral defects, through suggestion.
There is no doubt that so far as the subjective mind is concerned we are in a similar condition when asleep as when in a hypnotic trance, and experiments have shown that marvelous results are possible, especially in the case of children, by talking to them, during their sleep, advising them, counseling them, suggesting things that are for their good.