In this article, I’m going to share with you biggest mistake people make when falling asleep that causes them to stay awake far longer than they should. Then I’ll share with you the paradoxical sleep technique that, If you’re one of the many people who make this mistake, will get you falling asleep faster than ever before.

So what is the biggest mistake people make? It’s simple. They TRY to fall asleep.

Let me explain…

A group of researchers gathered together 5 people who had massive problems falling asleep. These people were hard core insomniacs. They tried all sorts of relaxation techniques but nothing worked. But the researchers had a trick up their sleeve – the paradoxical sleep technique. Here’s what happened:

When it was time for bed, the researchers put these 5 people in a darkened room and gave them one instruction…

“Try to stay awake for as long as possible”

So they must have stayed up all night, right…? Wrong. They fell asleep significantly faster.

Curious, the researchers performed the same test, this time with 25 insomniacs. Again, they told them to stay awake. Once again the researchers noted a “significant improvement” in their sleep.

The same experiment was conducted time and time again with different researchers and they all got back the same result: People sleep better when told to stay awake.

So what the heck is going on here? It’s called performance anxiety. If you try to do something and fail, you start to feel stressed. You try even harder, but if you fail again, you feel even more stressed.

The problem is that trying to fall asleep never works. Sleep is an involuntary action, like the beating of your heart. You can’t tell your heart to beat faster. It doesn’t take orders from you, just like sleep doesn’t.

The more you try to fall asleep, the more you fail, the more stress you feel. And the more stress you feel, the longer you’ll stay awake.

So how do you fall asleep faster? Use the paradoxical sleep technique. Don’t try to fall asleep. Even better than trying to stay awake, make relaxation your goal. Relaxing is something we do have control over. The more you relax, the greater chance you have of drifting asleep without you even trying.

Try it out tonight and I guarantee you’ll fall asleep faster than ever. Want some tips on how to relax? No problem, just head over to the How to Relax page.