If you wake up already, you spend your days feeling overwhelmed. If you have a morning with me, you would love to put into action. This episode is great. Welcome to Roots of the Rise with me, Sarah the Cook, where spiritual wisdom is practical tools and short lights high steps. These are tasers, not deep dives, meant to spark curiosity, help you root deeply, rise freely, and remember who you truly are. We talk so much about morning routines, you know, productivity, momentum, discipline, getting ahead of the day. But we need to make sure we spend as much time talking about evening routines, about all the things that lead to feeling behind before you've ever gotten started. If you're that high performer who can just not shut your brain off, or maybe the mom who finally gets silence at the end of the day and suddenly feels everything and just wants to stay up a little longer to savor that alone time. And then all of a sudden it's, you know, two o'clock in the morning. I get it. I can definitely relate to having difficulty unwinding, wanting to savor some alone time. And I do what I think many of us these days do. I find myself doom scrolling and or playing my silly little logic and puzzle games. It's become how I wind down instead of reading a book or, I mean, goodness, just going to sleep, because most of the time I am tired. And this is a problem because how you end your day determines the quality of your sleep, the tone of your subconscious, the ease of your morning, and the safety your nervous system feels overnight. So today we're going to talk about this the same way we did the morning routine episode last week. We're going to cover the physiological, the psychological, and the spiritual aspects of a good evening routine. Because real transformation always lives at the intersection of all three. So once again, let's start by talking about the why. Why does an evening routine matter? Well, just like your first hour of the morning, those evening hours you're asleep or trying to sleep are not neutral. According to people like Andrew Huberman, Dr. Peter Attea, you know, sleep is one of the most powerful levers we have for long-term health, emotional regulation, cognitive clarity, even longevity. Heck, even in Ayurveda, one of my favorite quotes is happiness and unhappiness, nourishment and emaciation, strength and ability, sexual prowess and intimacy, knowledge and ignorance, life and death, all are dependent on sleep. I mean, basically everyone agrees, sleep is really important. It's when integration happens. It's when your brain consolidates memory, when your nervous system processes stress, when your emotional experiences get sorted, when your subconscious absorbs what you lived. If you don't consciously release the day, your nervous system, it just keeps rehearsing it all night. That midnight overthinking, it's unfinished energy. That inability to shut off, that is an unclosed loop. That wave of emotion when the house finally gets quiet, that's space you didn't give yourself to feel earlier. You know, evening routines are not about being impressive or productive or flashy. They're about signaling safety and closure. Okay, great. So how do we do that? Well, let's start with the physical body, the biohacking side of things that matters. So Huberman talks extensively about light exposure and circadian rhythm. Your brain needs cues that night has arrived. So, you know, dimming the lighting 60 to 90 minutes before bed, reducing overhead light, minimizing blue light from screens. And I mean, let's just challenge ourselves here. Screens at night. We all do it, but we all know we shouldn't, right? They spike dopamine, they expose you to light that tells your brain it's midday. They also, depending on what you're looking at, can pull you into comparison, news, productivity, unfinished business. I'm with you. This is not judgment. I struggle with this too. It is so easy at the end of a long day to just scroll, to numb, to distract, to avoid feeling the quiet or the stress or the pressure. It's just nice sometimes to do something mindless for a while when you have been working hard all day. You're not weak if this is a challenge for you. You're not failing, you're human. You know, but our nervous systems, they don't know the difference between stimulation and stress. And while a late night scroll session may feel relaxing, physiologically, it's activating. Now, I did a whole episode on sleep a while back, so you can go back to that if you wish, but just some highlights. You want to go to bed at relatively the same time every night. Your system will get used to that being the time that you go to sleep. You want to avoid heavy meals right before bed, you know, stop drinking around six or seven to limit the chance you need to get up constantly to go to the bathroom. And a gentle note here: caffeine has a much longer half-life than most of us think. That afternoon coffee might still be in your system at bedtime. And also, while alcohol can make you sleepy, it fragments deep sleep later in the night. So if you're waking up at 2 or 3 a.m., this might be part of the equation. Another thing you want to think about is room temperature. Uh, cooler rooms support sleep. So you want your room to be somewhere around 65 to 67 degrees. I recognize that this can sometimes start the war of the thermostat. I mean, my husband and I joke like, are you even married if you're not fighting over the thermostat? Um, he wants it warmer than I do. But uh you got to figure it out. And you have this fodder if you're the one who wants it cooler. You have the support of science on your side saying that the ideal uh room temp is, you know, mid-60s. And the lastly, you know, you want to have a defined kind of shutdown moment where you switch from like work and productivity to okay, it's time to wind down. I mean, we do this with kids. Kids have bedtime routines. My son knows, like, and he has it kind of programmed. There's this, all right, he gets into the tub, he does his bath, and then he, you know, brushes his teeth, and then he gets into bed, and then we read, and then he goes to sleep. And that all signals his body that it's time to rest. He falls asleep within minutes. So, you know, what all of the cues are doing is telling your body the day is complete, you're allowed to power down. For some nervous systems, especially ones that learned to stay alert growing up, nighttime can actually feel more activating than morning. If that's you, nothing is wrong. Your system is trying to protect you. I mean, if you've lived in stress patterns, especially if you've lived in unpredictability, your system may not power down automatically. It may really need a signal. And your evening routine can become that signal. Okay, now let's talk about the mind. The anxious overthinker at midnight is usually not anxious for no reason. They're unfinished. You know, the brain replays what feels incomplete. If you don't give your mind closure, it will try to create it through rumination. And this is where something simple becomes really profound. Just a simple five to 10 minute evening journaling practice. Tim Ferris talks about closing loops before bed. Mel Robbins emphasizes preparing tomorrow, the night before. Different styles, but it's the same function. You calm the body and then you close the mental loops. So there are some questions you can use to help you do that. Things like, okay, what went well today? What am I still carrying? What's unfinished? What needs to be scheduled instead of worried about? I know there are thoughts out there about listing out all the things you accomplished to kind of give yourself a boost, right? To point out what you did get done. And I'm not saying you don't do that, but what research has actually proven is that it's more effective, it's more useful to write down what you haven't done, what you still need to do. There was a study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology that had people spend about five minutes before bed writing. And one group wrote a to-do list of the things they needed to accomplish in the next few days. And then the other group wrote about like completed activities, things they had checked off their list. And what the researchers found is that people who wrote the to-do lists, the future and unfinished tasks, fell asleep significantly faster, like eight to 10 minutes faster on average than those who wrote about completed tasks. And the more specific their lists were, the quicker they fell asleep. It's called cognitive offloading. It's kind of an interesting reversal of the typical gratitude practice, which I think has merits for different reasons that we'll get into in a moment. But the function here is that your brain can rest because it trusts the information won't disappear. Now, for those of you who feel emotions kind of rush in at night when things get quiet, you might want to borrow from the work of Tara Brock and her rain framework. R recognize what's here. A allow it without fixing it. I investigate gently. Nurture yourself. So reign. Recognize, allow, investigate, nurture. This isn't about taking a deep dive. It's just a moment of acknowledging, right? Oh, sadness is here. Oh, tension is here. This is awareness without escalation. You don't need to solve your problems, all of your life issues when you're trying to fall asleep. You need to acknowledge what's present for you. Now there's one more psychological piece that is getting more and more talked about, especially from people like James Clear and Atomic Habits, and that is preparation, not hustle, not productivity obsession, just gentle setup. Mel Robbins, she talks about winning the morning the night before. And high performers across the board consistently reduce friction for tomorrow before they get into bed. Why? Because decision fatigue is real. If you wake up and you have to decide, what am I wearing? Where's my gym bag? Did I pack what I need? What do I need to do first? Like you've already used a lot of willpower and kind of mental brain power. And for the person who struggles to get moving in the morning, that can sometimes be enough to derail the whole day. Preparation is an act of kindness to your future self. It can be as simple as putting out what you need to take to work, setting your gym clothes where you can see them, placing your exercise mat out, filling your water bottle, even putting a glass by the sink so you start your day with hydration automatically. There's an automatic reminder. This is all about reducing resistance. When the path of least resistance supports who you want to become, change becomes gentler. And psychologically, something powerful happens when tomorrow is kind of lightly arranged or prepared. Your brain relaxes because it knows you've thought ahead. You don't have to mentally rehearse the morning while you're trying to fall asleep. It's handled. That's closure. Members, I have a guided evening contemplation waiting for you in Patreon that will walk you through this step-by-step, calming, reflective practice to close the day fully, body, mind, and spirit. Because once the body is calm and the mind feels complete, well then we can really surrender into the spiritual. So in the morning we set intention. In the evening, we release control. It really is about surrendering. You can't force yourself to sleep. You have to surrender to it. The Dalai Lama emphasizes compassion and reflection before sleep. Many contemplative traditions include forgiveness practices at night, gratitude practices, letting the day be enough. This matters more than you might think. If you go to bed subconsciously believing you didn't do enough, you wake up already behind. If you end the day saying, I did what I could today, I'm learning, I'm allowed to rest, you wake up lighter. It's not bypassing responsibility. It's not saying you don't have an intention to do things differently tomorrow. It's refusing to carry shame into sleep. So a simple spiritual closing might be three gratitudes and why you're so thankful for them. One thing you forgive yourself for, and one thing you release to tomorrow. Even whispering to yourself the day is complete. Your subconscious is listening. So give it something good to listen to. So as you begin to think about or tweak the evening routine that you already have or that you want to create, keep in mind the three pillars. Calm the body, close the mind, open the spirit. That's it. So I want to give you one per setup, a realistic structure you might want to play with if you don't already have one in place. So for your evening routine, about 60 minutes before bed, dim the lights, reduce stimulation, signal the shift. Do something intentional that intentional that says, I am downshifting now for my son that's getting into the tub. 20 minutes before bed, prepare tomorrow lightly. Clothes, your top three tasks, you know, not productivity obsession, just removing friction, setting out the glass of water, setting up your gym equipment, whatever it is. 10 minutes before, do your journaling. What went well? What's unfinished? What am I carrying? What am I grateful for? And why? And for the final few minutes, hand on heart, slow your breathing down, and say to yourself, the day is complete. That's it. It's not fancy, it's not complicated, it's not optimized for Instagram, it's just grounded, centered, and doable. Even as I say doable, I can feel the resistance because it might take some effort to get over the phone addiction. If your phone is the last thing you touch at night, you are not alone. And I say that with compassion because I am with you. It's something I am actively working on right now. We are tired, we want escape, we want relief. But relief through stimulation is different than restoration. Maybe your shift is not about perfection and jumping straight to no screens for an hour before bed. Maybe you shift just from phone to TV to begin with. You break the phone cycle, and maybe you switch it to TV for a little while. You know, you charge your phone across the room, watch TV for the last hour without double dipping, and also playing a game on your phone, just TV. If TV is the screen that you always end the day with, not the phone, well, maybe try turning it off just 15 minutes before you go to bed. Not the hour, not the hour and a half, just 15 minutes. See if you can just back it up a little bit. And instead of just turning it off and twiddling your thumbs, try doing the journaling practices. If you feel hugely resistant to even that, well, then do the journaling practice before settling it for TV. It's a lot easier to add something than it is to subtract. So maybe add that in and work on letting the screens go later. You know, as you think about your evenings, ask yourself, what would closure look like? Evenings are not about productivity, they're about integration. Gosh, even as I say that, I think, do you even know how much I try to get done in a given evening between making sure like the dishers are done and the laundry is put away? And I mean, I know it feels sometimes that the evenings are about productivity, but part of it is mindset. And try to get that productivity part of it done earlier so that as you get closer to bedtime, it really is about closure, about integrating. How you end your day teaches your nervous system what to expect for tomorrow. So if you want a regulated, intentional morning, you build it the night before. You deserve to sleep without rehearsing survival. You deserve to wake up without dread. And it doesn't start with perfection, it starts with closure. So tonight, just dim the lights a little earlier. Write three sentences of what you're grateful for, write down the things you didn't get to, place your hand on your heart and tell your system, we are done for today. You did enough. Rest. Thanks so much for listening. I hope this helps you get started creating a nourishing, restful evening routine. In this episode, I mentioned materials for members. If you're curious what that means, I offer a membership through Patreon that includes show notes, reflective prompts, guided meditations, other resources to help you integrate the episodes on a deeper, more embodied level. You can learn more by clicking the link in the show notes. I hope you have a wonderful week and remember, know who you are, love who you've been, and be willing to do the work to become who you are meant to be. I am not a licensed therapist, and nothing shared here is meant to replace the guidance of a physician, therapist, or any other qualified provider. That said, I hope it inspires you to grow, heal, and seek the support you need to thrive.