Calming phrases before evening meditation or sleep

Through most of my life I've used my thoughts to try to calm myself down before going to sleep at night, and before evening meditations. I thought I'd share some of those phrases here today.

In my teens

When I was in my teens and had too much energy, I'd lay in bed at night, unable to fall asleep, so I'd follow this pattern of thoughts:

• Breathing in slowly and deeply, I'd say to myself, "Relax".
• Breathing out slowly, I'd say, "Release" (meaning "release all tensions"), and I'd try to let every muscle in my body completely relax, with no tension in any muscle anywhere.

I didn't feel much mental pressure on myself those days, at least not until my parent's separation and then graduation from high school, so that was enough to get very, very relaxed, and eventually I'd fall asleep.

In my 40s

A few years ago -- 2007 to be precise -- I came up with this phrase/poem, which I repeated as often as necessary at night until I felt mentally relaxed:

There's nothing to do,
there's nowhere to be.
I don't need anyone else,
and no one needs me.

After repeating that phrase several times, I'd typically follow it with other statements like these:

• I worked hard today. There's nothing else to do right now. If I keep trying to work now, I'll just be overly tired tomorrow.
• This is a time to relax.
• Everyone deserves time to relax, and for the next eight hours, this is my time to relax.
• The world can start beating me up again tomorrow morning, but for right now, for the next eight hours, I deserve this time to relax, recharge, and explore.

I didn't have any statements I'd use consistently, I just said whatever felt appropriate that evening.

I found that saying things like this to myself before sleeping or before an evening meditation helped get me in the right frame of mind. I don't like to jump right into meditation (or sleep) when I'm worked up about other things, so I'd use phrases like these to create a short "cooling off" period.

In my late-40s

These days the phrase/poem I use most often in the evening is quite a bit different, and I don't know if most people will understand it:

I am the universe,
the universe is me.

There is no I,
there is no universe.

Just be.

I don't want to explain this poem, other than to say that my former yoga instructor used the phrase "Just be" during our corpse pose meditation at the end of class, so in addition to the calming effects of those words, I like that sentence in there as a reminder of her and my former classmates.

Namaste.