I decided to post a couple of things that I've discovered post-divorce to share with you fellas.

I hope you find these small things helpful in rebuilding your life. Some of these things may seem a bit obvious But no one really told me so here we go.

Tip: reacquiring normal sleep patterns

Divorce is of course as we know stressful time and that can impact our sleep the quality of our sleep but it also impacts our wakefulness are ability to concentrate on things throughout the day.

One of the things that I encountered was that I wasn't getting enough sleep my sleep pattern was all over the place and when I was awake I was not always alert and as a consequence I think that I made some judgment errors and some poor decisions.

The importance of this should not be lost just because it seems rather self-evident that we need sleep.

A lot of people will tell you things that are very useful such as you should eat in a particular way to you know not eat before going to sleep you should get exercise at a particular time of day I don't know about those things but what I do know is that you need to discipline yourself in getting on a schedule.

Some of us may not be able to get on a schedule that is a set schedule You may have a shift that floats at work or something like that if that is the case then you have to normalize your schedule as much as humanly possible.

I know I can go on 5 hours of sleep. That is not optimal and it is not preferable and it is not a good way to conduct your life if you want to have sound judgment throughout the day can you do it can you remain alive and do it for a very long period of time Yes you can but that is not the point here.

If you are like I was with the 4-5 hours of sleep start aiming for 7 or 8. The way that I accomplished it was to try and just get a little bit more sleep every evening It was difficult to shut off my brain because there's so much going on there's so much noise in terms of what it is that's going on You have to think about you know lawyers and courts and bills and you know kids and you know what's happening with your stuff and all these other million things.

So by changing my sleep habit a little at a time going to sleep a little bit earlier forcing myself to do that I also changed my eating habit not eating so close to the time that I go to sleep but that helped a little. Now I'm hovering around 7 hours something like that some days I get more which is nice.

I bought a new pillow two new pillows It helped. I'm actually replacing my bed that has two impacts I think one is it's a better bed The other is it is not my marital bed. 😆 So no negative memory attached to my memory foam lol.

Is it expensive Yes for me it is is it necessary no but actually I feel like it is necessary.

It's also nice to have new things when you can so there's that.

Now I will share another thing that I did and this is NOT me dispensing medical advice it is just me telling my story. Because I was on shift work at the time I developed shift work sleeping issues I spoke with my doctor about it my doctor prescribed modafinil. I found that the modafinil really helped me to increase my alertness during the day and made me feel more like myself and helped me to compensate while I was adjusting my sleep schedule back to a normal routine I feel like my decisions were better and my mind was clearer and sharper perhaps even BETTER than it was when I was getting 8 hours of sleep.

That helped me through that of time when I couldn't get to sleep that my body needed. For me it was more like a Band-Aid to fix the temporary problem. understand that taking anything is a personal decision I made my decision after talking to my health professional.

Okay here's the disclaimer: I not would endorse trying to self-medicate either with prescription or non-prescription drugs or alcohol or any other substance you should only try things or take things after having a long conversation perhaps multiple conversations with multiple health professionals and that's my disclaimer.

I'm just telling my story about what I did temporarily in conjunction with my doctor's advice that helped me temporarily until I got off shift work and could fix my sleep issues.

(So to continue my disclaimer I would encourage you to speak with your doctor if you are also having sleep issues and are on a shift that keeps moving and you feel that it is impacting you they may have some guidance for you as to things you can do to help you get a better night's sleep and remain more wakeful during the day.) admin if you feel that my story is not in keeping with community guidelines please feel free to remove my post with my apologies.

So I fixed my wakefulness temporarily and I fixed my sleep permanently by adjusting my behavior and making some slight modifications a little at a time. Got some new pillows, (bed) The impact of that has been fairly noticeable for me I feel like my decisions are better I feel like they are more in line with the outcomes that I'm looking to achieve and they have not been detrimental or questionable. I also believe that my decisions have been the last emotional and more rational and logical since I began getting better sleep and more of it. Incidentally my body feels better as well.

That's it so that's my story with tip number two. I hope you found it useful. I sometimes feel I should change my username to Captain obvious but I'm sure it's already taken lol.

Gentlemen, be well, get rest, do your stuff, you got this. we got you bro. no problem. It gets better everyday. You're not alone.