Your bedroom is your sanctuary; your place to escape stress. Feng Shui recommends that you not have too many books in your bedroom, because lots of books make it harder to get deep, restful sleep.
Over the years I have noticed what kind of books people keep in their bedroom. I have also observed there is a gender difference in books at men and women’s bedsides. Men tend to have histories, biographies and books about their professional fields. Women tend to have self-help books. What a horrible message to give yourself as you try to relax and have a good night sleep: “You are not a good enough person.”, “You need to improve yourself.”
I pointed out a bookcase of self-help books to a recent client, with the suggestion she go through them and decide what books she really wanted in her bedroom. During our follow-up phone call a week later, she said she moved most of her self-help books out of her bedroom. “It was like having a bunch of nuns hanging out in the bookcase. Telling you what you haven’t done, or haven’t done good enough.” Now, without those books in her bedroom, she sleeps much better.
You may not have a “bookshelf full of nuns” in your bedroom, but your critical-self needs only the slightest nudge to relentlessly badger you, instead of letting you sleep.
Check out your stack of bed time reading. Weed–out the self-help, diet, exercise and “guilt “books – those books that were given to you, but which you have no real interest in reading. Move the ones that are truly useful to another room and donate the rest to your local library. Curl up with an intelligent mystery, novel or biography; or maybe some poetry. The really good ones teach you about the larger world. You never out-grow the need for a good bed-time story.