Long gone are the days where people pull all nighters and are up until sunrise. Rested is the new black.

The new trends of this decade have emerged and thankfully being healthy is now in. We see hours and hours of social media videos of night routines perfected to be the ultimate sleep routine. As a fellow insomniac I have had trouble sleeping my entire life, and I decided this was the year to change everything.

The goal is to make your winding down routine as peaceful and as enjoyable as possible. You want your bedroom to be a sanctuary, your night routine to be blissful and your sleep to be deep and revitalizing.

Here are five simple steps to help you get the sleep of your dreams.

What? Why? Where?

The first step in problem solving is determining exactly what the problem is. When we are having trouble sleeping there is usually a reason why. Maybe you need complete darkness or silence, maybe you're experiencing anxiety (I feel y'all on this one), maybe you're addicted to your phone (guilty). Whatever the problem is, I have some solutions that may be able to help.

Last call

Give yourself a "last call" time. If you have no idea what this means let me explain, just as a bar or a restaurant might have a last call time for orders or drinks, you need to give yourself a last call time for devices and electronics. Scientifically it has been proven that blue light affects our circadian rhythm and even through personal experience I think we can all say we sleep better without our devices. I would recommend a last call two hours before your bedtime.

Smell the roses

Scent has this magical property of taking you back in time and to different places, it can also make you experience a plethora of emotions. Which is why it is an excellent way of making your sleep routine feel like you're floating. Scents like lavender and eucalyptus have a calming effect on the body, something like a pillow spray can help change the ambiance in your bedroom.

Anxious Annie

This one is a lot harder to have a blanket solution for, or is it? One thing I have found to help me is actually a weighted blanket, I discovered after years of living with anxiety that it helped when my partner would put his full weight on top of mine to calm me down. It was a weird trick that lead me to researching weighted blankets. I find whenever I am feeling particularly restless and anxious, this is one of my sure fire solutions to help reduce panic, stress and anxiety.

Romanticize your bed

Everyone has heard the statistics before, about how much of our lives we spend in bed. It only makes sense that we invest in the place we rest our heads. When you make your bed an enjoyable place to be, it is a lot easier to wind down at the end of the day. Investing in your bed can look like buying new bed sheets, getting the proper firmness in your pillows and mattress, using a sleep mask or purchasing new pyjamas that make your bed time feel like you're at a five star hotel.