The Powerful Secret That Improves Your Sleep
A reflection on anxiety, alignment, and the deep peace that comes from not postponing your life.
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Sleep is often the first place where truth shows up.
For most of my adult life I couldn’t sleep through the night. I would often struggle to get to sleep, and then 3am would come for me with a vengeance.
Mind suddenly wide open. The house dark and quiet while I lay there running mad loops on things I often couldn’t solve: work. Direction. Family. Frustrations. More frustrations. Decisions I kept putting off.
My mind was stuck in the future.
By morning I’d be functioning again. Just. Meetings, conversations, responsibilities. From the outside everything looked fine.
But something inside wasn’t at rest. I was hanging on. And a lot of people recognise this pattern. Most just don’t say it out loud.
There is a Sleep-boosting Breath Exercise attached to the bottom of this newsletter.
What Good Sleep Actually Feels Like
As we all know, when sleep is good, life feels different. Genuinely different. You feel amazing. Vital.
You wake before the alarm, not because you have to but because your body is simply done sleeping. Bang. No drowsiness, just… delightfully awake.
You make coffee and it actually smells like coffee. In fact, you often you don’t need coffee.
That day you are able to be more patient. You listen properly. You make better decisions, not because you’re smarter, but because you’re not operating from a place of depletion.
When I’m well-rested I am a different person.
The science confirms it. Studies from the National Sleep Foundation and multiple long-term health studies show that good sleep improves memory, emotional regulation, immune function, and decision making.
People who sleep well carry lower anxiety, maintain better relationships, and even live longer on average.
Sleep is not a luxury. It is one of the foundations of a good life. And for a long time, I was building mine on very shaky ground.
The Mind That Cannot Rest
The majority of people carry worry through their days. It becomes so familiar we stop noticing it. It’s just the background noise of being alive.
What will happen to my work? Am I making the right decisions? Where is the world heading? Am I on the right path?
We are living through a tense period of acceleration. Technology moving fast. AI reshaping industries overnight. Careers that once felt solid now feel provisional. The future harder to read than it’s ever been.
We talk constantly about productivity, innovation, disruption.
But there is one subject almost nobody talks about. Our mortality.
The simple, plain truth that our time here is finite.
Because here’s what I’ve come to discover. Our anxieties and worries, the work ones, the direction ones, the what-if-I-get-this-wrong ones, they are not really about work or direction or decisions. They are fears. And all fear, if you follow it honestly to its root, grows from the same, ancient, existential source.
The fear that time is running out. That we will reach the end having not quite lived the life we meant to. That we will run out of chances. These are all modern fears that grow from the same root.
We don’t face that root directly. It’s too large. So instead we break it into a thousand smaller worries and let the mind keep scanning the future, trying to control what was never ours to control.
And this, more than anything, is what shows up at three in the morning.
Where Mortality Changes the Equation
Something amazing happens when we become aware of our mortality on a regular basis. Not in a dramatic way. No thunderclap. Just a quiet acknowledgement that life is finite, time is actually moving, and certain questions deserve real attention now, not eventually.
When that truth routinely lands, something simplifies. The future loosens its grip. Instead of scanning ahead, trying to manage what can’t be managed, you come back into the here and now. Into this meal, this conversation, this ordinary Saturday.
Mortality awareness doesn’t pull you toward death, it pulls you toward life. Toward the present moment, which is the only place any of us ever actually are. And the present is where rest lives. This is where one steps into ‘Aliveness’.
Sleep only happens in the present moment. Anxiety only exists in the future.
When the mind is scanning tomorrow, it cannot rest. It is trying to predict, control, prepare, solve. It is trying to survive a future that does not yet exist.
But when mortality becomes real to you, not as an idea but as a fact, something pulls you back into today. Into this room. This breath. This ordinary life that is actually your life.
And it turns out the nervous system can only relax here. In the present. That is where sleep blossoms.
When you stop pretending you have unlimited time, decisions that once felt paralysing begin to clarify. The fog lifts.
And clarity… real clarity… the kind that comes from honesty rather than optimism, has a calming effect on the nervous system. You become present.
Because a lot of what keeps the mind awake at night isn’t workload. It’s unresolved direction. The role that no longer fits. The conversation you’ve been avoiding for months. The path you can feel pulling at you but haven’t stepped onto yet.
While those tensions remain unspoken, the mind keeps working on them quietly. In the background. At 3am. Sleep becomes restless because life feels unresolved.
My Own Turning Point
I won’t overclaim this. But I will tell you what’s true. Since I began practising mortality Awareness, something I am starting to see as a state of ‘Aliveness’, regularly this last year, not as a concept to think about, but as something to actually sit with, the quality of my sleep has transformed.
I sleep through the night now. Deeply. Like a baby, which is not something I ever thought I’d say about myself. And it is a beautiful thing. Waking rested changes my entire experience of being alive.
The world feels different when you’re not moving through it half-depleted.
A Simple Thought Before Sleep
If sleep has been restless recently, you might try something simple tonight.
When you get into bed, before reaching for your phone or letting your mind wander off into tomorrow, take a series of slow breaths and let yourself hold something quietly true.
Your time here is finite. Not as a threat. Just as a fact of being human. The same fact that makes a sunset worth stopping for, or a meal with someone you love worth being fully present for.
If you want a more powerful sleep practise, look at the exercise attached at the bottom.
If this article resonated, please comment, like, re-stack, and share. My vision is to establish mortality awareness as a recognised wellness practise. By supporting this work, and being part of this community, you are helping this vision come true. Thank you.
Live happy,
Hoppy
Tools & Updates
Videos: Watch my conversation with award-winning Funeral director Poppy Mardall, on what it’s like to work in the death sector.
Podcast: I appeared on the Unapologetic Living podcast with Elizabeth Elliot, discussing how mortality awareness unlocks potential and purpose.
Visit Tools to explore 14+ self guided exercises designed to reduce anxiety, improve vitality, deepen your sleep, and bring clarity to your relationships, career, and health.
I am designing a new AI chatbot called Live Purpose, that will help you discover deeper purpose in life. Stay tuned.
Reverstory: the bespoke AI tool designed to help you identify major life regrets and suggest ideas of how to course correct while you still can. Available to paying subscribers.
The Ultimate Meditation: A guided practice designed to help you slow down, reflect on mortality, and reconnect with a life of no regrets. Many people tell me it helps them discover greater calm, gratitude, and clarity.
I have been invited to perform the mediation at both Connect and Medicine Festivals this summer.
Go deeper: I Finally Did The Backflip, Aged 46 / Return To The Womb / How Death Denial Influences The News
Full website with all content: Here
What people are saying about DTLWP: “In a world increasingly disconnected- from nature, from one another, from spirit, and from death itself-Hoppy’s work offers a vital path. He helps people release their fear of death and reconnect with a deeper sense of meaning and belonging.” (Nick Von Christierson, CEO of Woven Science & El Puente)
More testimonials here
Below this paywall is a Sleep-boosting Breath Exercise.
