One of the earliest changes I made felt almost irresponsible at the time.

I stopped using an alarm.

That sentence alone would have terrified the old version of me. The alarm felt like control. Safety. Insurance against failure.

But what I didn’t realize was how violent that interruption actually is to the body.

An alarm doesn’t wake you—it yanks you out of whatever stage of sleep you happen to be in. Sometimes that’s light sleep. Sometimes it’s deep sleep. Sometimes it’s the middle of a cycle your body was still finishing.

No wonder mornings felt brutal.

As I learned more, I discovered something that now feels obvious in hindsight: sleep runs in cycles, not straight lines. Roughly 90 minutes per cycle. Deepening. Shallowing. Resetting.

And here’s the part that changed everything for me:

You don’t choose your wake-up time in the morning. You choose it the night before—by choosing your bedtime.

Once I started honoring that rhythm instead of fighting it, my body responded almost immediately.

But that’s getting ahead of the story. We’ll go deeper into cycles later.

​What mattered at this stage was the realization that my body wasn’t broken. It was patterned. And patterns can be changed.

Jared, there’s another part of this story that I didn’t talk about for a long time.

There was a season when I didn’t struggle to sleep because I couldn’t. I slept because I didn’t want to be awake.

I was deeply depressed. And sleep became an escape hatch.

If I was unconscious, I didn’t have to feel the weight. I didn’t have to face the pain. I didn’t have to think about what felt broken or lost. So I slept. Twelve hours some days. Sometimes more. I would wake up, stay up just long enough to function at a minimal level, and then go back to bed as soon as I reasonably could.

I told myself I was resting.

I wasn’t.

I was trying to disappear.

And the hard truth is this: it didn’t help. Sleeping half the day didn’t bring peace. It didn’t solve the pain. It didn’t restore anything. It just quietly stole time. I look back at that season and realize I was sleeping away my existence instead of learning how to sit with it. I lost what feels like half my life during that stretch—not because I was lazy, but because I was hurting and didn’t know another way.

I was in counseling. I was taking medication. I was trying. But I wasn’t fully honest with my medication management professionals about what was happening. I didn’t know how to explain the heaviness. I didn’t realize that oversleeping like that was part of the depression. I didn’t even know help was available beyond what I was already doing.

So if you’re reading this—and especially you, Jared—hear me clearly: if sleep becomes your way of escaping life rather than restoring your body, that’s not a sleep problem. That’s a pain problem. And that deserves real support.

This isn’t a story about shame. It’s a story about awareness. Because there’s a massive difference between deep, restorative sleep… and using unconsciousness as anesthesia.

I had to learn that difference the hard way.  

I doubt you are dealing with this, Jared—but in case someone reads this who is down or depressed, you need to hear this.

This was another hard lesson.

Some of my most intense thinking used to happen after the lights were out. The house was quiet. No interruptions. Just me and my thoughts.

It felt productive.

It was sabotage.

The mind loves the quiet of night because there’s no competition—but that doesn’t mean it should be given the microphone. The brain doesn’t distinguish between important thinking and threat-based thinking when it comes to sleep. It just knows attention is engaged.

And attention is the enemy of rest.

I had to learn to say, almost ritualistically:

Not because the problems disappeared—but because night is not when solutions are born. Night is when the system resets so solutions are possible later.

​That was a humbling realization.

Here’s something I didn’t know for most of my life:

The moment you pass from consciousness into unconsciousness is one of the most influential windows of your entire day.

What you focus on there doesn’t fade—it imprints.

This is where Joe Dispenza’s teachings hit me like a bell.

The subconscious doesn’t shut off when you sleep. It takes notes. It listens. It rehearses. It builds tomorrow from what you hand it tonight.

That means the last thing you dwell on before sleep isn’t trivial—it’s formative.

And if the last thing you feed your mind is stress, urgency, fear, or unresolved emotion… the body spends the night swimming in those chemicals.

No wonder mornings feel heavy.

This realization didn’t make me anxious—it made me intentional.

If that window is powerful, then it deserves respect.​

I’m addressing you directly because you matter to me. Because I’ve watched you wrestle with patterns that don’t serve you. Because I know how easy it is to think, “This is just how I’m wired.”

But this isn’t only for you.

If you’re reading this and nodding quietly, this is for you too.

Sleep is not a luxury. It’s not a reward. It’s not weakness.

It’s maintenance. It’s training. It’s stewardship of a system that carries you through every waking hour.

And the good news—the hope I want to leave you with at the end of this first part—is simple:​

Not forced. Not hacked. Learned.

In the next part, I’ll walk through what I learned from Lesson IV of Brainology—about depth, attention, the nervous system, and why so many well-meaning habits quietly sabotage rest.

For now, just sit with this:

If you’ve struggled with sleep, it doesn’t mean something is wrong with you.

It means something hasn’t been taught yet.

And that can change.​

Jared, in Part 1 I told you that sleep isn’t just about how long you’re in bed.

It’s about depth.

That one idea rearranged my entire understanding of rest.

For years I asked the wrong question:

“How many hours did I get?”

But the better question is this:

“How deeply did I sleep?”

Because eight hours of shallow sleep will leave you drained, while six hours of deep, uninterrupted sleep can feel restorative. My body actually seems to function better on slightly less than eight hours. I’ve often been told that six to eight hours is healthy—and I’ve found that to be true for me. In other words, don’t stress so much about the exact number of hours you’re “supposed” to get. Protect depth first, then let your body tell you what amount works best.

Lesson IV of Brainology makes something very clear: sleep has both length and depth—but depth matters more.

​That landed hard for me.

I used to think that if I was tired enough, I would sleep.

That’s not how it works.

Exhaustion and relaxation are not the same thing.

You can be completely worn out and still neurologically alert.

Lesson IV describes our nervous system almost like a finely tuned watch. If it’s wound too tightly, overstimulated, constantly activated, it doesn’t simply “turn off” because you lie down.

Sleep is not a shutdown.

It’s a release.

​And release requires conditions.

This is where the lesson became practical for me.

​There are three primary enemies of deep, restorative sleep:

Anything that speeds up heart rate increases mental activity. When the heart is pumping fast, the brain stays online. Late caffeine. Heavy emotional conversations. Intense problem solving. Even scrolling. All of it tells the system: stay alert.

​You can be physically tired and still mentally activated.

This one exposed me.

The very ability that makes us productive during the day—focused attention—becomes the enemy at night.

When the mind locks onto a problem, replays a conversation, analyzes a future plan, or rehearses a scenario, blood and energy move to specific regions of the brain.

Sleep requires looseness.

Attention is tight.

​And tight minds don’t drift into deep sleep.

Unexpected noise. Bright light. Discomfort. Subtle interruptions.

I used to fall asleep to scriptures or meditations playing all night. I thought it helped.

Sometimes I could fall asleep.

But I wasn’t sleeping deeply.

There is a difference between unconscious and restored.

​Deep sleep requires decreasing stimulation—not feeding it.

You and I both tend to run hot mentally.

We analyze. We plan. We replay.

That’s a strength during the day.

At night, it keeps the engine idling.

The mind doesn’t know you’re “just thinking.” It responds physiologically. Heart rate shifts. Hormones move. Awareness increases.

And then we wonder why sleep won’t deepen.

The goal isn’t to force the mind silent.

It’s to loosen your grip.

Lesson IV describes gently redirecting thoughts—almost like shooing a butterfly away when it lands. Not fighting it. Not wrestling it. Just releasing it.

​The moment you concentrate on forcing sleep, you’ve already lost depth.

Before sleep cycles.
Before subconscious work.
Before meditation refinements.

I reduced stimulation.

Bed became single-purpose again.

Sleep.

Not planning.
Not rehearsing.
Not worrying.

​Sleep.

When I stopped obsessing about total hours and started protecting depth, my sleep actually shortened slightly.

But I felt more restored.

Because depth heals.

Duration without depth only passes time.

You already know what passing time feels like.

We’re not doing that anymore.

​In Part 3, we’ll talk about cycles—the 90-minute rhythm, testosterone before waking, and why choosing bedtime is really choosing your wake-up time.

Jared, this is where things started to feel almost mechanical—in a good way.

Once I understood that depth matters more than duration, the next breakthrough was understanding cycles.

Sleep does not move in a straight line.

It moves in waves.

Roughly 90-minute waves.

Light sleep.
Deeper sleep.
Deep sleep.
Then back up toward lighter stages.

Over and over again.

When you wake naturally at the top of one of those waves, you feel clear.
When you get yanked awake in the middle of one, you feel drugged.

For years I blamed mornings.

It wasn’t mornings.

​It was timing.

You choose it the night before.

That sentence changed everything for me.

If a sleep cycle is approximately 90 minutes, then your body prefers to wake at the completion of a cycle—not in the middle of one.

So instead of asking, “What time do I have to wake up?”

I began asking, “What time do I need to go to sleep to complete full cycles before I wake?”

For example:

If I want to wake at 6:00 AM, I count backward in 90-minute intervals.

6:00 → 4:30 → 3:00 → 1:30 → 12:00 → 10:30

That means 10:30 PM or 12:00 AM are more natural bedtimes for that wake time than 11:15 or 11:45.

It’s not magic.

It’s rhythm.

​And when I started respecting that rhythm, I stopped fighting mornings.

This is where it gets interesting.

As I aligned bedtime with cycles and reduced stimulation at night, something unexpected happened.

I began waking up naturally.

Not once in a while.

Regularly.

And here’s something I didn’t know before studying more deeply: in men, testosterone begins to rise shortly before natural waking.

In other words, the body prepares itself to wake.

There is a hormonal ramp-up.

When you blast an alarm in the middle of a cycle, you interrupt that preparation.

When you wake at the crest of a completed cycle, you ride that hormonal rise.

That’s why some mornings feel powerful… and others feel like you’re crawling out of mud.

It’s not willpower.

​It’s physiology.

For years, waking up felt like discipline.

Now it feels like alignment.

Instead of forcing mornings, I design nights.

Instead of obsessing over hours, I complete cycles.

Instead of dreading alarms, I trust rhythm.

This doesn’t mean every night is perfect.

But it means most mornings are no longer battles.

And that changes everything about how the day begins.

This is not about becoming obsessive.

If you stay up late occasionally, life will not collapse.

The point is not precision to the minute.

The point is respecting that your body runs on cycles, not clock hours.

Once you understand that, you stop fighting yourself.

And that’s when sleep starts working for you instead of against you.

In Part 4, we’ll talk about the most powerful window of the entire night—the transition from conscious to subconscious—and why what you focus on in those final moments shapes how you wake.

Before I go further, I should explain what this actually looks like for me. I generally put on a guided meditation that runs about 30 minutes. Most nights I’m asleep within the first five minutes. But the track continues, feeding my subconscious steady cues of relaxation, safety, and slumber. I intentionally set a timer so it shuts off at the end. That way it supports the transition—but doesn’t stimulate me all night long.

Jared, this might be the most important part of the entire series.

Not cycles.
Not hours.
Not even depth.

The transition.

The last few minutes before you fall asleep.

For most of my life, I treated that window casually.

Lights out.
Phone down.
Mind wandering.
Sometimes thinking about problems.
Sometimes replaying conversations.
Sometimes drifting into anxiety about tomorrow.

I had no idea that those final thoughts were not fading into the dark.

​They were sinking in.

Joe Dispenza teaches something that aligns powerfully with what Lesson IV hints at: the subconscious mind never sleeps.

When you move from beta brainwave activity (active thinking) into alpha and then theta (the drowsy, dreamlike state before sleep), the analytical mind softens.

That softening is a doorway.

In that state, the subconscious is more receptive.

Less guarded.

More impressionable.

Whatever you focus on as you cross that threshold becomes instruction.

Not metaphorically.

Biologically.

​Your body begins rehearsing it.

I used to take my problems to bed.

Not intentionally.

But that’s what happened.

I would think through finances. Relationships. Regrets. Future plans. Mistakes. Conversations I wished had gone differently.

And I would drift into sleep mid-analysis.

Which meant my nervous system spent the entire night bathing in the chemistry of stress.

No wonder I woke heavy.

The last thought before sleep is not neutral.

​It is directive.

Lesson IV says something profound: the thoughts we dwell on just before becoming unconscious shape our lives.

The subconscious takes its cue from those final subjects.

If the tone is negative, it works destructively.
If the tone is constructive, it works constructively.

That does not mean fantasy.

It means orientation.

A calm certainty.

Not detailed planning.
Not emotional replay.
Not intense visualization that excites the mind.

Just a simple, settled internal posture.

“Today is over.”

“We’ll find a way.”

“Rest now.”

This is where I had to adjust something subtle.

Sleep meditation is powerful.

But it must end.

If spoken guidance continues all night, it becomes stimulation.

If music loops endlessly, it can prevent full depth.

What I found most effective was this:

Guided support to help me disengage…

Then silence.

Because the goal is not to fall asleep distracted.

It is to fall asleep settled.

Instead of asking, “How do I fall asleep?”

Ask, “What am I handing my subconscious tonight?”

Because you are handing it something.

If you hand it stress, it rehearses stress.
If you hand it regret, it rehearses regret.
If you hand it quiet confidence, it rehearses that.

The body listens.

​Always.

The final minutes are simple.

No problem-solving.
No emotional excavation.
No mental debates.

Just one or two clear internal statements.

Calm.
Brief.
Certain.

And then I let go.

The difference in how I wake is not subtle.

It feels like my body worked with me all night instead of against me.

​In Part 5, we’ll put all of this together into a practical rhythm—CPAP, depth, cycles, hormonal rise, subconscious programming—and build a sustainable night routine that actually restores you.

Jared, we’ve talked about depth.
We’ve talked about cycles.
We’ve talked about the subconscious window.

Now let’s put it together.

Because knowledge without rhythm doesn’t change anything.

Sleep improves when it becomes intentional—but not obsessive.

Before anything else, deal with what is medical.

For me, that meant getting a CPAP.

My body was literally running a marathon every night before I addressed sleep apnea. Oxygen dropping. System jolting. Heart working overtime. I thought I was tired because life was hard.

I was tired because my body wasn’t getting air.

If someone reading this has sleep apnea—or suspects it—start there.

No mindset shift compensates for oxygen deprivation.

Once that was handled, everything else actually had a chance to work.

Depth heals.

So protect it.

That means:

Sleep is not something you force.

​It’s something you stop interfering with.

Instead of asking, “How many hours should I get?”

Ask, “How many cycles can I complete?”

Count backward from your wake time in 90-minute increments.

Choose your bedtime accordingly.

Your body prefers rhythm over randomness.

When cycles complete, waking feels natural.

And if your body seems to function best at six and a half hours instead of eight, don’t panic.

There is a range.

​Let depth determine restoration—not cultural pressure.

The final minutes matter most.

Don’t hand your subconscious stress.
Don’t hand it regret.
Don’t hand it unfinished arguments.

Hand it calm certainty.

A simple statement.
A settled breath.
A quiet trust.

For me, that often includes a short guided meditation—about 30 minutes long—but I’m asleep within five. The rest plays softly until the timer shuts it off. Enough to reinforce relaxation. Not enough to stimulate.

The goal is not distraction.

​It is surrender.

This one is personal.

Sleep is restoration.

It is not anesthesia.

If you find yourself wanting to be unconscious because being awake feels unbearable, that is not a sleep hygiene issue.

That is pain.

And pain deserves support.

Jared, I doubt you’re in that place—but if someone reading this is, hear this clearly:

You are not weak for needing help.
You are not broken for feeling heavy.
You are not failing because you’re tired.

Oversleeping will not solve the ache.

Connection will.

Honesty will.

Professional help can.

Sleep should restore you so you can live—not help you avoid living.​

I no longer ask:

“How do I get more sleep?”

I ask:

“How do I build a night that restores me?”

That subtle change has altered my mornings.

I wake without an alarm.
Clear.
Present.
Ready.

Not because I mastered sleep.

​Because I stopped fighting it.

You don’t need perfection.

You need rhythm.

You don’t need eight exact hours.

You need depth.

You don’t need to force unconsciousness.

You need to hand your body safety.

And when you do, it responds.

Sleep is not an enemy.

It is an ally that has been waiting for the right conditions.

Build those conditions.

And then trust your body.

​It knows how to rest.

Jared, I don’t think this part will interest you much—but for any reader who might be curious, I first learned about Brainology by Elsie Lincoln Benedict through a book club I joined.

It turned out to be more than just a place to read old self-improvement books.

It’s a community of people who are actively working on themselves—talking about what they’re learning, applying it, challenging each other, and growing together.

There’s something different about studying ideas inside a community instead of alone. It becomes less about collecting information and more about transformation.

It’s honestly more powerful than just stacking up a few great self-help books on your shelf—although I highly recommend doing that too.

If you’re reading this and you’ve been trying to improve in isolation, consider finding a circle of self-improvers. The right community can amplify what a single book starts.
​
​Create a great day,

Scott Alan Westhoff