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We don’t need perfect rituals to rest.
Sometimes the best “sleep hygiene” is letting go.
I thought I had my sleep routine down until I realized my “relaxing ritual” was stressing me out. Herbal tea, meditation, journaling, stretching, lavender spray—the list grew longer each week.
Instead of drifting into sleep, I was performing bedtime like it was a job interview. And every time I added another step, the whole thing got heavier. What started as a wind-down turned into a performance I had to get just right.
I hear about sleep hygiene all the time from friends, news articles, TikTok, and random strangers. Everyone’s got their secret formula: a splash of lavender here, five minutes of some sleep app there, three rounds of breath work, the perfect pillow.
It starts to sound less like a bedtime routine and more like prepping a potion.
And still, sleep doesn’t always show up. That’s the strange thing about sleep hygiene: the more we try to perfect it, the more performative it feels. In addition to the pressure to do other things perfectly, now we have to get sleep just right.
Sleep hygiene was supposed to be simple. Dim the lights, turn off the computer to wind down, and let the body know it’s safe to let go. But somewhere along the way it turned into a full list of rules. No screens, no liquids, the right supplements, the right meditation, the right blanket, the right gadget. The list never ends. And instead of drifting off, we end up staring at the ceiling, thinking: If I don’t do all of this exactly right, I am not going to sleep at all.
A soothing routine can be helpful, until it becomes another way to measure ourselves. When our evenings turn into a marathon of steps, sleep transforms from a natural process into a task we can fail. We start clock-watching, self-monitoring, asking: Am I doing this wrong? And that anxious inner voice keeps the brain humming in high alert. Instead of rest, we get rumination.
This is where the principles of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) are surprisingly refreshing. Instead of piling on more hacks, CBT-I tells us to do less. It teaches us that sleep is biological and it doesn’t require perfection. It shows us how to reframe those late-night thoughts, get out of bed if we’re wide awake, and trust that rest will return naturally.
And most importantly, it reminds us: lying awake sometimes is normal. It’s not a failure.
Maybe our rituals don’t need to be so complicated. Maybe it’s enough to pick one or two things we actually enjoy—like a few minutes of slow, steady breathing to calm the nervous system. Then, a few pages of a light book or even an audiobook, just enough to give the mind a softer story to hold onto. That’s it. Two steps. Simple, repeatable, calming. Sometimes less really is more.
At the end of the day, sleep isn’t a contest. It isn’t a performance we perfect through the right playlist or the most expensive eye mask. It’s a natural process. And the more we try to perfect it, the more it slips away.
So maybe the real “sleep hygiene” is trusting our bodies a little more. Choosing less. Doing what feels good. And letting rest come when it’s ready. Because sometimes the deepest sleep doesn’t arrive after we’ve done everything right—it shows up when we finally stop trying so hard.
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