Have you ever wondered where you are? Where are you right now, at this very moment? What state are you in, how do you feel, how do other people feel around you? Do you get compliments from them or do you find that they say goodbye to you surprisingly quickly?

No harm in pausing for a moment to find the answers to the questions. On the contrary – it is even very good to linger a little longer and to take time for the process of getting to know the point in one’s life at which one finds oneself. Where we act, breathe, are.

Because if we feel that we are acting differently than we want to – as our basic nature dictates – that we might be behaving differently (in a bad or inauthentic way) towards the people around us, that we might be out of breath or feel an uncomfortable heaviness in our chest, or that we just know we are not OK, then this is a clear sign that we need to do something. Something needs to change.

Mr Albert and Mrs Fortune

Albert Einstein said that doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. So to expect to do better tomorrow, to breathe more fully and to enjoy life to its fullest potential, but without first making any changes to our daily lives, is – to be a little more diplomatic than Albert 😁 – illusory to say the least.

Simpler: if I don’t like the café I’m sitting in at the moment, when I’m writing this blog, I have the choice to get up, say goodbye and go to another café, or if I want to stay warm, I can go to a city park, because almost all cities have internet access now, or I can go to a nice restaurant and order a snack, or I can go to the library or to the nearby college (where I’m slowly finishing my postgraduate programme in Ayurveda 😁) …in short, I certainly have more choices than I can even remember. The snag is that I just have to get to the point where I am aware of how I feel, where I am, and based on that, I figure out where I am, and – if I just don’t feel OK where I am — well, move, but! I change location. I change the feeling. For the better, of course.

In some way, we all have a desire to live as good and beautiful a life as possible. For a life filled with joy. A life embraced by love. A life where Mrs Happiness visits as often as possible, but can also settle permanently. Because yes, that is possible too!

What do a café and sleep have in common?

Recently, an acquaintance looked at me in disbelief when I told him that I didn’t believe that a happy life was unattainable. However we turn and toss the determinants that affect it, it is still up to us to decide. Which choice we will reach for in the palette of choices that opens up to us (and of course we have to perceive it!). Will we change cafés, move to a city park, go to a restaurant, or choose some pure XY option?

And if we map this ‘café’ onto another example, I can think of many examples of individuals I work with in my Ayurvedic coaching programme ‘Let’s Balance Life‘ who have disordered sleep hygiene. Some so much so that it could not really be called ‘hygiene’ at all. And then, when we look a little more closely at their lifestyle and well-being, we quickly realise that sleep (dis)hygiene is to a significant extent the main reason for their well-being and their general state of being, and consequently their functioning and relationships – with themselves and with others, that is.

And although many people think that going to bed by 10pm is the best way to get a good night’s sleep. It is, however, somewhere around that time that they finally get some time to themselves, and many look for the opportunity to do less stressful work in the quiet of the night, when there are no longer as many distractions around them as during the day, but this is – perhaps paradoxically for some, but quite logically for common sense – actually the cause of stress for our organism.

The latter urgently (really urgently!) needs a good night’s rest. The regeneration and internal nourishment that sleep provides. And no, one sleepless night cannot simply be ‘made up’, as we like to say, by an afternoon rest, which in some of my clients’ cases has even developed into a regular daily ‘practice’. A good night’s sleep is ‘meant’ for everyone – yes, everyone! – every night. So, just as night comes every 24 hours, so sleep must happen every 24 hours.

Well, once we understand why the importance of sleep and the natural rhythm of which it is only a part (but a crucial part!) is so remarkable, then going to bed by 10pm is also a good idea. is no longer so ‘exhausting’ or even unfeasible. I have noticed this in all the individuals who have had unregulated sleep hygiene up to the time of treatment, and who – all of them! – after having it sorted out, felt at first more alive, which carried them through their daily lives, and then directed their new-found energy (which, if they had not succumbed to sleep disorders, would have been a perfectly natural level of life energy) towards personal progress. Improving their well-being and, in turn, improving themselves – for themselves and for others.

It’s not hard to guess that this has immediately brought them an improved quality of life, isn’t it? But it was just one change, which may seem insignificant and too minor at first glance (when we resist change, our critical mind is also capable of bringing up all sorts of negative observations and reasons to dispel the suggestion that something needs to be changed after all), but the results easily disproved this thesis of even the most intelligent mind.

Sleepy and beautiful! 😁

And because ‘Nanu – the beautiful girl’ stands for active natural cosmetics, which (for real, and in the last year, proven on our own skin! 😁) helps us to look youthful and thus feel good (as we also take care of our self-love with our beauty routine), it’s worth repeating that proper sleep hygiene is essential for internal care, and therefore also for melatonin levels, which are already decreasing a bit over the years, and with sufficient melatonin levels we are more alert and generally more resilient and healthy – and as the sparrows on the roof are already chirping, our health is also reflected in our appearance. (And the same goes for lack of health and good energy.)

So – if we don’t feel good where we are, we have no choice but to change, right? How much change is needed depends on the (current) situation. The longer we drag on in a situation that we don’t like, passively hoping that it will ‘fix itself’, as we like to say, the more change will be needed after the ‘dragging on of the bad situation’ (which is also a process – a silent and perhaps seemingly imperceptible one – but a process nonetheless!) has brought us to the wall. Let us only hope that the crash against it will not be too severe. But then, hand on heart, it all too often turns out that it is the degree of impact that determines the degree of readiness for change.

In this context, it is worth recalling not only the above-mentioned remark by the very wise Mr Albert, but also what another acquaintance from Western history said, i.e. To improve, we must change, and to approach perfection (although the subject of perfection deserves a detailed treatment of its own), let us change as often as possible.

So: where are you now?

Alenka Lena Klopčič is a ‘Nanu Ambassador’ and a postgraduate student of Ayurveda and runs her own Ayurvedic coaching programme ‘Let’s Balance Life’. Read more: www.ajurveda.pro