How to Create an Evening Rest Routine That Makes You Feel Calm

*This is a collaborative post on how to create an evening routine that makes you feel calm

If you’re working hard each day, then you might find that your work ends up following you home. You might pace around the kitchen, replaying a work-related meeting in your mind, or even answering emails, and chatting on Slack, when you’re supposed to be attending to your family at the dinner table.

This is not a sustainable strategy. You’ll need to take your rest time seriously if it’s going to be effective. And that often means coming up with a routine for your evenings, and protecting it.

But what changes are worth making? Let’s take a look at some would-be tweaks.

Create a calmer environment

First, you should think about the space you’re occupying. Does it support relaxation? Or does it feel like a mere extension of your working environment?

Often, you can achieve substantial gains with the help of a few well-placed lamps, and by using the right window dressing to reduce glare from the outside world. Roller blinds can be highly effective. Keeping a space tidy, so as to eliminate visual clutter, can also be helpful. This doesn’t have to involve a significant one-off effort; the right habits, if you nurture them, can help keep the space tidy.

Prepare your body for stillness

Being still, and resting, doesn’t come naturally to some of us. It might be that you need a good wind-down routine in order to provide your body and mind with the cues they need to finally settle down. This might mean hitting the gym on the way home, or using nightly yoga, meditation, or stretching to keep yourself limber. There are plenty of free resources available. Just make sure that you aren’t pushing yourself too far, too quickly.

Focus your mind with a simple ritual

You don’t need to set aside an hour for exercise just to provide your mind with a cue. A simple ritual can be used to divide working time from downtime. Even brewing a cup of tea, or soaking in a bathtub, can be enough to entrench this separation – provided that you’re ruthless about excluding work from your evening.

Wind down with entertainment

Different people like to wind down in different ways. Don’t feel, therefore, that you need to unwind with scented candles and yoga – if you’d rather play shoot ’em up games while listening to speed metal, then this might be something worth doing. Just make sure that you keep your mind screen-free during the hour before bed. Avoid social media at all costs during this sacred time!