When I was in my early 40's I started an ad agency with many, many small business clients. You have to collect the money up front as--once the book was printed with their ad--if you hadn't collected the money, well...not everybody is so honest as to pay you the fee.
I took care of selling all the ads, drawing up the ads, working with the graphic artist to get the ads correctly and collecting all the monies owed. It was an enormous amount of hours, and a great deal of stress.
Many times, near the deadline, I could not sleep. I would toss and turn and worry about someone paying me or if I had forgotten something.
This happened ALWAYS during the last two weeks of the deadline when the stress was greatest.
One night I woke up at about 3 a.m. and started my usual, "now tomorrow I have to collect $300 from Sam, and then..gee..I sure hope Susie doesn't give me a hard time about the money again...and then I have to do" blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. After starting this routine again for the umpteenth time during a deadline I stopped and said--all of a sudden--"IT IS 3 A.M. WHAT THE HELL CAN I DO ABOUT THIS AT 3 A.M.? NOTHING. GO BACK TO SLEEP AND RELAX. WORRY ABOUT THIS IN THE MORNING WHEN I CAN ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT."
Believe it or not, I adopted that philosophy right then and there and never went back to worrying and waking like that but a few more times. When I did wake up again at 3 a.m., I would repeat the above and relax and go back to sleep.
I, too, can't believe LOGIC actually worked for me in this situation, but it did. I think the reality that there is sometimes nothing you can do at 3 a.m. about something that doesn't have an immediate remedy in front of you--and just put it on the back burner for now--works sometimes. It did for me.
If that doesn't work for you, go to a drugstore and buy some over-the-counter Melatonin, a mineral that will trigger your brain to sleep. Always works for me, too, and it's cheap.
