The best piece of advice I was told recently was: never trust how you feel about life after 9 PM.
Because after 9 PM, your thoughts aren’t very gentle to you. They don’t love you. They don’t make room for reason or perspective. They take everything you fear and lay it out in front of you like undeniable truth. The version of yourself that shows up at 1 AM isn’t the real you—it’s the exhausted, scared, vulnerable part of you. The part that turns small worries into unbearable thoughts and anixety. The part that convinces you you’re failing, that you’ll never be enough, that nothing will ever get better. And that version of you? Its lying to you.
It’s the version that tells you that no one cares, that the thing you said earlier was embarrassing, that your future is crumbling, that you should send the text, make the call, quit the thing or person, burn it all down. But you shouldn’t. Because those aren’t your real thoughts. That’s just tired talking.
It’s funny how the world looks different when the sun goes down. Everything feels heavier. The things you could brush off at 2 PM feel like the end of the world by midnight. And yet, nothing really has changed—only your ability to handle it. The truth is, your brain is done by the time night rolls around. It’s been working all day—processing, deciding, coping. And by the time the clock strikes 9, it’s not operating at full strength anymore. You wouldn’t trust a phone with 2% battery to get you through a road trip, so why trust your overworked, overtired mind to define your entire reality?
So here’s what ive been doing instead: writing it down. Every intrusive thought, every conflict I want to solve at 11 PM, every life-altering decision my brain is demanding I make or fix right now. I write them down and look at them in the morning. I promise you, most of them will seem smaller in the light of day.
And even if the problems are real, they’re not urgent in the way the night makes them feel. You don’t have to solve everything right now. Normalize telling yourself: “It seems I don’t have the capacity to handle this or think rationally the way I want to right now, so let’s continue this in the morning.” And then leave it at that. Give yourself permission to wait. Because waiting a little longer before spiraling, before making a decision—it can change everything.
And here’s the truth no one talks about: most things can wait. That apology, that confrontation, that existential crisis—it doesn’t have to happen tonight. The world won’t fall apart if you hit pause. In fact, waiting might be the very thing that saves you from saying something you don’t mean, making a choice you can’t undo, or breaking your own heart in a way you didn’t need to.
I believe all of our choices have ripple effects, and we learn from them no matter what. But some choices don’t need to be made at 2 AM. Some thoughts shouldn’t be believed at midnight. Some battles aren’t meant to be fought when you’re this tired.
So, when your brain is screaming that everything is wrong and nothing will ever get better, remind yourself: this isn’t reality—it’s just late. And you don’t have to act on everything you feel. You don’t have to fix your whole life in the middle of the night. You are allowed to rest. You are allowed to wait. You are allowed to trust that things will look different when the sun comes up.
And if you take nothing else from this, take this: what you’re not changing, you’re choosing. So change this. Change the way you let the night convince you of things that aren’t true. Change the way you let exhaustion make your choices. Change the way you let your worst fears sound like facts when really, they’re just passing thoughts in a passing moment.
And if you still don’t believe me? Sleep on it.
