We would prefer to just lie in our bed every night and fall asleep straight away. But instead of leaving for dreamland, our brain thinks about all kinds of other things. TikTok has found a solution to this. This is everything you need to know about cognitive shuffling.
Evening worries
Many people experience worry in the evening. You think about all kinds of things that keep you from falling asleep. For example, you think about that one time you embarrassed yourself in seventh grade, what you have to do the next day and whether you did that one thing you really had to do. Especially if you suffer from worries, anxiety or stress, it is very normal to suffer from worrying while trying to sleep. This is because your brain no longer has to focus on other tasks. After all, you lie in bed and do nothing else. Now your brain has space to pay attention to all the other thoughts running through your head. This gives us the urge to do something to distract ourselves, such as scrolling through TikTok, but that of course only has the opposite effect. The light from your phone and all the stimuli prevent you from falling asleep. This is when you can use cognitive shuffling.
The benefits of cognitive shuffling
Cognitive shuffling is very popular on TikTok. It is a technique in which you, as it were, stir through your thoughts. This makes it more difficult for your brain to focus on a specific thought. It may sound like cognitive shuffling causes more overthinking, but this is not the case for many people on TikTok. Cognitive shuffling helps you relax so that you fall asleep more peacefully. You distract your brain, so to speak, so that you think about completely different things than your daily stress while you fall asleep.
This is how you do cognitive shuffling
There are different ways to do cognitive shuffling. But in all cases the goal is the same: distract the brain. The most popular method on TikTok is thinking about random things. The more random the better. Lie in bed and think of several random words. For example glass, book, elephant, skating rink. It doesn’t matter how fast or slow you do this. Let your brain slowly shuffle through the words. If you need more structure, you can also choose a category. Think of food, rhyming words or colors. For more of a challenge, you can also go through the alphabet and always think of a word that starts with the next letter. Monkey, banana, crouton, and so on.
Also interesting: Not enough sleep? This trick will make you feel completely rested!
