What does it mean to sleep on it? It means we should delay making whatever decision we’re about to make until the following day. Sleeping on a problem helps us tackle it in the morning with a new fresh perspective. We don’t have to act rashly all the time. Sometimes when we’re faced with what feels like an insurmountable obstacle, the right thing to do is to take our time with our decision. Our mothers were right; just go to bed and everything’s going to be alright tomorrow morning.
1- If you sleep on it, you will make a wiser decision
Common sense suggests that sleeping on an issue helps us relieve ourselves of the accompanying stress of making a fast decision. If you’re faced with a problem right this second, you might end up making a wrong decision just because you were stressed enough to. Sleeping on it will help you process the information better, because scientific evidence states that the rapid-eye-movement (REM) stage associated with dreaming helps in linking together the facts we know and the things we experience. This will in return help us wake up with a more organized and coherent trail of thought. We will be more aware of the bigger picture and end up making more informed and wiser decisions.
2- Our unconscious minds have a role
Research have always suggested that the more consciously we think about a problem/decision, the worse the decision is made and that we’ll perceive the issue as more complicated than it truly is. New research suggests that in order to avoid that, we need a period of unconscious thought about the problem at hand; in other words, sleeping on it. Our unconscious thought is an active, goal-directed thought process. The difference between our conscious thought and our unconscious thought is that the latter lacks all of the usual biases of the former. In our unconscious trail of thoughts, we leave all preconceptions behind and weigh the significance of the factors that make up our decision more equally. This is why it’s better for the decision to come from the unconscious instead of the conscious, because it’s from deep within ourselves.
3- The risk of regret is less probable
We’re all guilty of losing control sometimes. We get angry and lose ourselves in the heat of the moment. When other people piss us off or if we hear bad news, that could lead us to make snap bad decisions that we could’ve avoided if we had slept on it. When you find yourself in a muddle, sleep on it instead of acting irrationally so you wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences later on.
The bottom line? Sleep on it when the risk is high. But, don’t forget to be spontaneous every once in awhile or else life will be no fun!
