Many of us are so caught up in the belief that just doing something automatically equates to achievement that we lose touch with the benefits and subtleties of not-doing.
What I’m referring to is getting better results from your efforts (and increasing the quality of that effort) by putting more focus into what you’re not doing; taking advantage of your natural system for optimization.
Let me explain,
Ever notice what happens when you go camping where there are no lights? As soon as the sun goes down you start getting sleepy, even if it is hours before you usually go to bed!
This is a biological rhythm programmed into our bodies to start the repair cycle that will attempt to heal the new, or old, injuries to our bodies and minds and replenish the energy we’ve expended during the day.
Once the sunlight fades over the horizon, cortisol levels (the wake hormone) reach their lowest point and melatonin (the sleep hormone) is released into the blood stream. The systems in our bodies that use energy and keep us awake are down-regulated to their lowest point, while the systems that repair and regenerate our bodies are up-regulated.
The catch is that we need to be asleep in order to fully benefit from this repair cycle.
(And our modern existence of 24 hour lights and immediate access don’t help matters.)
A quick explanation of brain wave function might be useful here.
There are 4 major brain wave categories:
1.Beta is normal waking consciousness – such as how you should be feeling now.
2.Alpha is clear, peaceful consciousness – such as during relaxation or meditation.
3. Theta is deep reflective consciousness – such as how you feel when you’re dropping off to sleep, or sleeping lightly.
4.Delta is unconsciousness – the deepest sleep you fall in to where you’re “dead to the world” and where most tissue repair tends to occur. You would, under normal circumstances, drop into delta sleep 4 or 5 times in the first 4-5 hours of sleep between ten p.m. and two to three a.m.
The normal systems of your body include two repair cycles. The first is the physical repair cycle which begins at approximately 10:00 pm and continues until about 2:00 am. Then the psychogenic repair cycle begins and ends around 6:00 am.
These start and stop times are general proximities. You may need to fine tune the exact timing to fit your individual needs and schedule, but two things are clear:
1. If you are sleeping during the hours other than those consistent with your natural repair cycles, you may not be revitalizing yourself. Anyone who has worked a graveyard shift knows about this.
2. If you’re staying awake until midnight staring at the computer screen, you’re body will not have the time to replace the energy expended during the day or repair your cellular wear and tear.
Not getting in enough delta wave sleep is like a repetitive strain injury to your hormonal system.
Take Action Today
If you want more available energy to use each day of your life and stay as healthy as possible, then you need to first let your body repair and regenerate!
5 Tips
1. Go to bed at the same time each evening.
2. Prepare for sleep an hour earlier by dimming the lights and avoiding flashing screens; computer, TV.
3. Don’t confuse being tired with being hungry; if you feel hungry late at night, go to bed!
4. Keep your bedroom cool and dark
5. Only use your bedroom for sleep (and maybe one other use, but no tv or computer use!)
Establish this routine and find out just how much more energy you’ll have to do the things you love.
Written by Patrick Welch
Patrick Welch is the founder of AllProactive, a coaching service that features a holistic approach to nutrition, exercise and stress control. www.allproactive.com
To be remembered for generations, to be written in history books, and to change your life and the world, you need to go down the path that hasn’t been walked on much or that hasn’t been walked on at all.
You need to step on the weeds, sneak around the poison ivy, and try to avoid the fallen tree trunks that trip you up along this rarely traveled path.
Most would love to be a trailblazer, but they just don’t know where to start and they’re scared to go down a route that’s often not lit.
Well, there’s no longer a need to be scared and now you’ll know where to start, because this is the map to the path less traveled.
First and foremost…
You need to know what your destination is, before you even know where it is because on the path less traveled you might not even know where a destination lies until you’re standing on it.
To figure what your destination consists of, requires you to think about your life’s big questions and force you to do a lot of self-reflecting. There’s really no avoiding it.
Fellow blogging friend Chris Guillebeau published a must read ebook aptly entitled, “A Brief Guide to World Domination.” In this ebook, Chris hits the nail directly on the head especially with page eleven. He states “The Two Most Important Questions in the Universe:”
1. What do you really want to get out of life?
2. What can you offer the world that no one else can?
These questions (or other similar questions) are essential to ask yourself and answer, to figure out what your aim is.
When you ask yourself these two questions you’re most likely going to have several detailed answers, which is completely fine; I had many myself that added up to two larger, broader answers.
Push aside fear
One of the biggest fears of those who want to walk down the less traveled path is fear of failure. The fear grows from the misconception that doing what has proven to work almost always guarantees success.
Unfortunately (fortunately for you) that’s not the case. Doing what has already proven to work or that has already been done gives someone more of a chance of failure. Or at least when success is achieved by going down the main path, it’s mediocre.
As you walk down the path less traveled you may see shortcuts that look inviting but really lead to a dead end.
Success comes from walking miles farther than those who quit or take the shortcuts.
Don’t look for signs
There are no road signs on the path less traveled, not even rusty, weathered down ones, to help you. You’ve got to see and find other paths yourself. Sometimes the opportunity to a path is hard to see. It might be covered under dirt, dust, debris, and tall weeds, but lead to an oasis.
The terrain changes
The map and landscape to the path less traveled is strange. It’s basically alive and changes its shape much like sand dunes, depending upon the person walking it.
For one person there might be flat ground right in the beginning; for another a deep valley; or a hill for someone else.
Every landscape and map for each person does have its fair share of hills, meadows, rocky areas, valleys, and even mountains; just at different times and in different locations.
It’s lonely looking forward…
But looking back, the path that you started begins to receive more and more walkers. You’re leading by example and these are your followers.
If you’re a trailblazer, you’re going to have admires (along with critics) and it’s your obligation to encourage them to veer off and start their own paths, instead of copying you exactly.
The map never ends
Some may say that the path less traveled ends up at death like any other way of living; but they are wrong. There’s no final destination, unless you give up.
After you reach the end of one path a new one needs to be created right there, by you. You need to conjure up new ideas and goals to aim for so that you don’t settle down and quit.
And when you do go on to the next life, the next world, the afterlife, heaven, or wherever you believe in; your map falls into the hands of a new traveler. It could be one of your followers, someone who reads about you in a history book, or one of your relatives. They’ll take it and start their own paths.
Each and every one of us has been and will be handed lemons from life.
Perhaps life wasn’t even kind enough, and just threw the lemons at you like it often did to me.
Most of us aren’t sure what to do with all these lemons, so we just let them sit there and rot.
Life didn’t intend for that to happen. Life wants us to make lemonade, but doesn’t give a recipe for it.
For years I waited for the recipe to come, but then I decided to take it into my own hands, rolled up my sleeves, and created a sweet, delicious, and refreshing recipe for lemonade using life’s lemons.
I call it Life’s Lemonade.
The ingredients
- Patience
- Positivity and a good sense of humor
- Hope
- Self-reflection
- Goals and dreams
- Adversity and failure
Directions
First, get together your goals and dreams. They’re your pitcher and glasses for the lemonade to go into because if you want to take adversity and turn it into something sweet, you’ll also need something that the lemonade can be used in, drank and benefited from.
Next, you need to juice life’s lemons.
Take the biggest adversities you’ve ever been dealt throughout your life. Don’t think about any of the negatives that you’ve obtained from them, you need to reap what’s good about these lemons.
Add in a little self-reflection while you juice these lemons. Think of similar questions to these:
- How have I grown stronger from the adversity?
- What tough lessons did I learn?
- What did it teach me about myself? Am I stronger than I think? Smarter than I think?
- What did the adversity teach me about others?
Now that you’ve got a lot of juice, you need to toss in sugar for sweetness. For sugar in life’s lemonade you need to tap into positivity and a good sense of humor.
Adversities are really just opportunities in harder to open packages. And like any opportunities in life, you need to be in a positive and open-minded state to seize such chances. They won’t be captured when you’re in a bad mood and your head is down, because you won’t even see the opportunities.
Now it’s time to fill your “pitcher” with some cold water.
When cold water is dumped on you, it gets your attention, shocks you a bit, and gets your blood pumping. To get yourself pumped up, you need some inspiration to get you off your seat.
Here are a few stories and videos of people who battled tremendous odds and came out on top.
Dump the inspiration from these amazing individuals into your pitcher. Then the last ingredients you have to mix in are patience and hope.
Patience because life’s lemonade may not be ready right away; the ingredients need to chill and incorporate more. It takes time to see and enjoy the benefits of turning adversity into prosperity. But putting in hope will keep you positive and knowing that you will definitely reap the sweet lemonade, with time.
That’s it! It’s a simple recipe for complicated problems, but in the end life’s lemonade turns out delicious and refreshing.
Our physical bodies may only last for a hundred years, if we’re fortunate enough to have great health.
However, you can make your spirit, your mission, and your life last for a thousand years, perhaps more.
Here are 6 ways to do it.
1. Help people every day
Friends, family, and strangers. Help at least one person out every single day. You don’t always have to do a major act of kindness, even little acts can create big changes in lives and the world.
“Why would this make my life last for 1,000 years?” I’m sure you’re asking yourself this.
When you help people it creates a domino or ripple effect. The people you affected now help others, it’s similar to the pay it forward concept, but it’ll most likely be on a subconscious level and last for generations and generations.
Just a note: often people aren’t going to want your help. When this happens to you, just move on to the next person.
2. Share
This isn’t sharing in the kindergarten sense. This is about sharing your talents, your voice, your ideas, and sharing the real you. Draw, paint, write, take photographs, make music, talk; there are millions of ways to share.
If you’re talented in some sort of arts, you need to share that talent with others. You don’t have to be a rock star or celebrity, if you don’t want to. Many artists of the Renaissance weren’t famous during their time, but their art will never be forgotten.
3. Cryogenically freeze yourself
Who knows if it really works? Wouldn’t you have to be frozen alive for scientists in the future to revive you?
I rather make the best of the life I have now. Live it to the fullest, and hope that I don’t need to be revived in the future so that I can start over.
4. Concern yourself with the depth of your life
The cryogenics got me thinking. We are too concerned with how long our lives are and not how much we live while we’re here.
Be more concerned with how well you live, and your life will end up living on for a thousand years.
For more on living a deep life, please read my previous article here: Dive deep into life
5. Put yourself on the line
Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Alice Paul, and ancient philosophers put their popularity, credibility, and lives on the line. That’s why we read about them in history books today.
If you want to be written into textbooks, then you need to take risks and stand up for something you passionately believe in.
6. Focus on what you do, not what you own
In a thousand years, your money and material possessions will crumble away into dust. What you do for others and for the world can never die. It’ll be passed on from person to person and mind to mind for all of time.
Enjoy this article? Dislike it? Please share in the comments below.
“It is not length of life, but depth of life.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
We all hope to live for a hundred years. We believe that 100 years guarantees we’ll have lived life to its fullest.
However, it doesn’t matter how long we live, it’s how much we do and how much life we have in our days.
You may be stalling until you retire or until the kids move out or until you make enough money to really enjoy life. But you can’t do this. Who knows when your time will be up?
So do yourself justice and focus on how well, not how long, you live.
Move to the edge, look over, put your arms up, take that leap of faith, and dive deep into life.
Purpose
If you really want to experience what it means to be alive, then you need to figure out your purpose in life. It’s the foundation or the diving board you must dive into life from.
Knowing your purpose unleashes so much joy and motivation. It also brings you peace of mind.
If you don’t believe you have a purpose, you’re merely in denial and avoiding a difficult subject. It’s understandable; thinking about your purpose in life can bring about a lot of questions and revelations.
Most of us have memories that we want to forget. But doing so is like cutting out chunks of our lives.
To really live you need to accept and embrace all the adversities and events you went through. They have taught you so many lessons that you need now.
Do infrequent things frequently
Living means to do new things. Existing means you’re just doing the same old thing.
Cut down on planning and start doing
Planning is essential. You need to know where you’re heading in life, but a lot people over do it, instead of just doing it!
You can plan and plan, but nothing will happen until action is taken.
Stop turning age into a barrier
This goes for the old and for the young.
You’re never too young or old to figure out your purpose, achieve goals, change, or start being happy. Each day is a new opportunity. You have 365 opportunities each year.
Don’t seek perfection
Seek to grow and to learn, but don’t seek to reach a state of perfection, because being perfect is as good as being dead.
Your body may stop growing, but your mind doesn’t. So be sure to engage in as many topics as you can, even if you don’t like them. Growth needs an open mind to work.
Get to really know your family members
It’s kind of sad and frustrating that we often don’t get to really know our family members. I guess we get so caught up in work and in what we call “life” that we forget to talk to our family members about their past, present, and future.
Get to really know yourself
To really know yourself, you need to experience new situations, both good and bad, and sometimes let them get out of your hands. You also need to meet people from different races, backgrounds, and regions. Then you should reflect on the way you reacted to them and what you liked and didn’t like about that.
Death
Don’t be afraid to think about it every once and awhile. You shouldn’t dwell upon it or fear it, but thinking about death always puts things into perspective. Troubles, money, adversities, and set-backs seem to disappear. They’re no longer that big.
Thinking about your death is also great motivation to jump back in the game and seize every second you’ve got.
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
- Oscar Wilde
How do you dive deep into life and live it to the fullest? Please share your tips, quotes, stories, and advice in the comment section below.
On Lyved (pronounced lived), you will find articles on various aspects of life. Every post is positive, motivating, and offers tips on how you can improve your life and change the world. To learn more about Lyved please visit here.
This is a guest post.
To be remembered for generations, to be written in history books, and to change your life and the world, you need to go down the path that hasn’t been walked on much or that hasn’t been walked on at all.
Our physical bodies may only last for a hundred years, if we’re fortunate enough to have great health.
