By Dr. Femke E. Bakker

How you close your day matters, because what you fall asleep with is often what you wake up with.

Many of us go to bed replaying our to-do lists, unfinished conversations, or regrets from the day, worries about tomorrow and beyond. This keeps the nervous system on high alert, making it harder to fall asleep. Even more, when you fall asleep with an active mind focused on problems that need solving, it is quite likely that as soon as you wake up you’ll pick up where you left off last night.

The secret of sleeping is that it can serve you as a reset from all problems. When you sleep, you replenish not only your energy and body, you also have the opportunity to replenish your thought processes. Simply because when you sleep, you don’t think. And when you don’t think, you can’t feed your thoughts with more worries and troubling ideas. And thus, when you wake up, you’ll have a very serious chance to start thinking things that will make you feel better.

Key to get to this point is to close off your day without worries. You can try this for yourself.

Try this gentle evening practice tonight:

1. Lie down in bed, ready to sleep (lights off, eyes closed).

Place a hand on your heart. Take a slow breath, breathe out even slower. When you notice a thought, gently say:

“Today is behind me. I allow myself to rest.”

Continue for a minute (or two). If it helps, you can count every breath in and out up to ten and start over.

2. Think of three small things you’re grateful for.

A smile by a stranger, the smell of a flower, the softness of your blanket.
Be aware how gratefulness feels in your body. Let it exist there.
Can you expand it to other parts of your body? Be with this feeling for a bit.

3. Set a simple intention:

“Tomorrow is a new day. Everything is possible again tomorrow.”

Try this tonight before you fall asleep. Don’t expect miracles. If you feel even the slightest shift of relief or relaxation, that’s it. You did that.

Watch: Why Ending Your Day Selfgentle Helps You Tomorrow

This short video explains how my selfgentle evening and morning practice work together, and why it can change the tone of your entire day. It is not about forcing calm or doing it perfectly. It is about starting with a small moment of inner support.

In the video, I’ll guide you through the core steps, and I’ll share what to do on evenings and mornings when you already feel behind, tense, or emotionally full. In this practice you’ll explore:

• inner dialogue,
• emotional regulation,
• a selfgentle daily rhythm.

In this video I explain how combining an evening and a morning practice is a practical selfgentleness tool for real life, especially when you are under pressure:

“And why is that important? Well, when we go to sleep and we take things from the day with us, including for instance self-criticism or worries or problems, then we sleep. and asleep you can see like a reset and then when we wake up we have a whole opportunity to start our day with a different perspective but very quickly we pick up on those old things we went to sleep with but by doing this practice we break that we don’t go into our worries before we go to sleep we go into gratefulness and then we set that intention to remind ourselves that when we wake up it’s anew day it’s a whole new day with new opportunities new possibilities and new outcomes.“

How Selfgentle Are You?

Reading about selfgentleness is one thing. Seeing your own pattern is another. Take the Selfgentleness Quiz to explore how you respond to yourself in real moments:
Explore your pattern

Be selfgentle,
All love, Femke

P.S. Also check out my post about a selfgentle morning practice. How you end your day shapes how you begin the next. And when you fall asleep with this kind of presence, you set yourself up for an even better morning tomorrow.