Sleep is so important. If you have problems waking up, like I have, then what I have to say here may be of help to you…

According to psychologist and sleep expert David F. Dinges, Ph.D., of the Division of Sleep and Chronobiology and Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, irritability, moodiness and dis-inhibition are some of the first signs a person experiences from lack of sleep. If a sleep-deprived person doesn’t sleep after the initial signs, said Dinges, the person may then start to experience apathy, slowed speech and flattened emotional responses, impaired memory and an inability to be novel or multi-task. As a person gets to the point of falling asleep, he or she will fall into micro sleeps (5-10 seconds) that cause lapses in attention, nod off while doing an activity like driving or reading and then finally experience hypnagogic hallucinations, the beginning of REM sleep. (Dinges, Sleep, Sleepiness and Performance, 1991)

So lately I’ve been treating myself like a sort of human guinea pig. I’ve always been ‘plagued’ by sleep problems for as far as I can remember, so I decided to do a little testing. Here’s what I’ve found so far…

I use an iPhone app called ‘Sleep Cycle’ and so far it’s been the best alarm clock I’ve ever had. It’s designed to sense if you’re in a deep sleep or not and then attempts to wake you when your in the partially awake cycle. It doesn’t do this 100% of the time but its better than a standard ‘unintelligent’ alarm clock.

I found that when waking in a deep sleep your mindset is different to that when waking close to the awake state. By different I mean that your mind seems to only be able to think about how to get back to sleep, and it will be ingenious in reasoning while doing so! For instance you wake at 8:03, you’ll reset the alarm for 8:05. Then at 8:05 you’ll reason to reset it to 8:10. After all, what difference does a few minutes make? And then BAM you fell into a deep sleep again, managed to turn off the alarm without your concious brain knowing and its now 10:23, you’ve overslept. Thus enforcing the belief system that “I can’t wake up on time” and annoying anyone who was relying on you to be somewhere at a certain time.

A glass of water can pull you out of the deep-sleep-waking conundrum of wanting more sleep. It’s like an emergency defibrillator and thus you should keep one handy before you go to bed. When you wake up feeling like you want to go back to sleep, just sit up and drink a pint of water. It will help.

In contrast there’ll be times you can relate to where you’ve woken up and had no problem waking up. You have all your faculties and there’s really no problem. This is what happens when you wake up in a partially awake state and not from a deep sleep state. Your mind is more on the day ahead of you rather than finding ways to reason with yourself for going back to sleep.

The thing I’ve discovered is that half an hour can be all it takes to make a difference. This is really important. Just getting to bed half an hour earlier it can make you wake up in a partially awake state instead of a deep sleep state.

Another thing I’ve also discovered is to cut caffeine at least 6 hours before you intend on going to bed. Even if you don’t think caffeine affects you that much any more. It’s not that it doesn’t affect you any more, it’s that you’ve become so used to it from abusing it!

Drinking alcohol or beverages containing caffeine in the afternoon or evening, exercising close to bedtime, following an irregular morning and night-time schedule, and working or doing other mentally intense activities right before or after getting into bed can disrupt sleep.

If you have trouble getting to sleep quickly or you often find yourself staying up on the computer, take sleeping tablet an hour before you want to sleep, I promise you it will trigger a subconscious countdown in your head that will enable you to get things done quickly that you intended to get done before sleeping tonight and will prevent you from procrastinating. And you’ll feel so beautifully drowsy come the time you actually should be in bed you’ll have no option not to, in fact you’ll want to, instead of staying up all night on facebook, youtube, games, or some other poison.

Stress is the number one cause of short-term sleeping difficulties, according to sleep experts. Common triggers include school- or job-related pressures, a family or marriage problem and a serious illness or death in the family. Usually the sleep problem disappears when the stressful situation passes.

You may think you only need 4 or 5 hours sleep a night, but intend on getting 8 anyway. 8 is the magic number (3 is not so magic in this case!).

So this is what I’ve discovered so far, feel free to share your experiences and discoveries in the comment section below. I’m interested to hear!

Quotes cited from: http://www.apa.org/topics/sleep/why.aspx

I am of course talking about the legendary Jim Rohn, who sadly passed away on December 5th 2009.

Since discovering him I’ve looked for every video I can find on youtube of him. I’ve listened to some of his audio books. I’ve tried to absorb everything he’s said because it really is pure gold.

So I’d like to pass on a few bits I’ve learnt to you in a hope that maybe if you’ve never heard of him you might just think about looking him up and maybe it might change your life too.

1. It’s not what happens that changes your life’s future, It’s what you do about what happens.

So many times I hear people blame their failure to do something upon some outside force. Hell, even I’ve done it in the past. People are too ready to make an excuse. We have to realize that we are in control of our own reality. You see, the same wind blows on us all, your destination is not determined by the blowing of the wind but instead the set of the sail. You can change what happens in your life by altering your response and reaction to people, things or events.

2. Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were smarter.

How many times have you come up against something challenging in life, such as a difficult task at work, and felt like giving up because it was too hard. Some other people could do this task though with relative ease. It’s the same task but different people see it differently. This is because different people have different skill levels. They know more and so the thing that you’re finding hard would be easier for them. So instead of complaining how hard something is, start reading the books!

3. It’s not too expensive, you just can’t afford it!

This one is a big paradigm shifter in my mind. It follows along with something else Jim Rohn says; Some valuable things in life are put on a higher shelf because they’re worth more, and in order to reach the higher shelf you have to stand on the books you read. A rich person and a poor person can walk into a classy department store and look at shirts, the price for one shirt is the same but the opinions of each the rich and poor guy regarding how expensive it is are different. Things of value are put on a higher shelf for reasons. It’s not too expensive, nothing is. You just can’t afford it! So it follows on that to afford it you need to read the books and learn how to afford it. Learning new techniques to earn money and extend your riches.

There are of course plenty of more amazing things Jim has said over his time and I bet I could write a book on them all describing how they’ve affected me and my personal opinion of how the world could be a better place if we all took that kind of learning to heart.

So I’m interested, what are your favorite Jim Rohn qoutes and principles? Comment below!

It really challenges you to explore the workings of your mind and make the right changes to become a better person. Changing the core of you, working inside out. Chop a tree at it’s roots kind of theory.

Well anyway, I searched online for Stephen Covey videos and found a few video series’ on youtube, and so I’m going to share them here for you to watch because I firmly believe they will change your life.

“You get rewarded in public for what you practice intensely in private.” – Tony Robbins

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face. Do what you think you can’t do.”

“The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.” – Tony Robbins

“if you don’t dream you don’t achieve anything” – Richard Branson

“It’s not that some people have willpower and some don’t. It’s that some people are ready to change and others are not.”

“A person can succeed at almost anything for which they have unlimited enthusiasm.” – Charles M. Schwab

“Those who have cultivated the habit of persistence seem to guarantee insurance against failure” – Napoleon Hill

“Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.” – Theodore N. Vail

“Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.” – Jim Rohn

“Unless you change how you are, you will always have what you’ve got.” – Jim Rohn

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” Alice Walker

“We can have more than we’ve got because we can become more than we are.” Jim Rohn

“Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.” Walt Whitman

“Successful people do what failures wont” – Tony Robbins

“Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.” – Norman Vincent Peale

“Discipline is making the choice between what you want now and what you want most.”

It’s stories like Nick’s that really proves that the only thing that is limiting ourselves from achieving our desires is our minds, and that if we can condition our minds ready for success and decide not to let our various ‘disabilities’ prevent us from realising our true potential then we could all be successful!

I found a particular 3-part video series quite inspiring and I wanted to share it with my readers:

There are so many good points raised in this video and I feel it makes you appreciate what you have already. For me I realised that I limit myself from what I’m capable of just by procrastination and not being bothered. I’m sure it’s a similar story for most of us.

A few powerful statements I took from these videos where as follows:

Your priorities and daily agenda determines who you are

The day that you believe you have reached your fullest potential is the day you haven’t

Do not put off the things you can do today

In conclusion, we should never take what we have for granted, we can always worry about our flaws and think about how they slow us down. Instead why not consider our potential and our perks, then build on those and achieve what we really want. You are what you concentrate most on.

What are your thoughts?

“Why not just become more valuable than wait for a raise”

“Why would we pay someone $400 per hour? They’ve become more valuable!”

“Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job”

Life Changing.

Why don’t we follow through?

It’s my personal opinion that there is a line that you have to cross before you actually do it. The part where things change from want to need. For instance someone may want to start a new exercise regime and eat healthy but that’s just a ‘want’. The day they almost have a heart attack and feel very unwell is the day that the ‘want’ turns into ‘need’. They crossed the line.

Even after that though, people may not follow through with the new thing whatever it is. Why is this?

I think people are waiting for something. Waiting for the weekend. Waiting for the movie to finish. Waiting til they really have to. We humans are lazy by nature.

My study of marketing has brought me to many conclusions but one of them is that everyone is looking for the magic pill. Or the silver bullet. The big red button that does it for them. That’s why diet pills exist. That’s how you sell sand in the desert – make it seem like the magic pill.

Look how lazy the majority of the population are, sitting in front of TV’s every evening letting the media brainwash them. If you could hype something up that they want to be the magic bullet then they will buy it. But it won’t make them any better because there is no such thing as a magic pill.

By using the Pareto principle (80/20 rule) we can say that 20% of the population owns 80% of the wealth. Whys that? Because only 20% of the population actually put some effort in to achieve the results of the magical red button. Whilst the other 80% sit on their arse looking for the magic pill to solve their problems.

It’s easy to slip into the hole of laziness however. So I thought I’d be proactive and come up with some ways of combating it.

1) When you feel like doing nothing, just make a list of what you need to do. Tell yourself you don’t have to do what’s on the list right away. Just make a list. It will wipe your mind and allow you to focus on individual things.

2) Go for a walk/jog/run/bike ride. It will get the blood flowing and make your mind more active allowing you to process more. I think it’s kind of like turning your computer on from sleep mode. What can you achieve in sleep mode?!

3) Set a stop watch to 30 minutes. Then spend a solid 30 minutes doing exactly what you need to be doing. Then when the time is up treat yourself for doing it. Have a break, then do another 30 minutes. Never spend a solid 6 hours doing one thing, you’ll burn out after 2 or less. Not unless you are in a supreme state of flow – in which case lucky you!

4) Say “fuck it” and do it anyway!

5) Ask yourself “What would Chuck Norris do?” or “How would Winston Churchill deal with this situation?”. See it through someone else’s eyes that you look up to and then follow through with what they would do in that situation.

What methods do you use to combat laziness? Comments are welcome

With this particular song the sample playing in the background was of some unknown-to-me speaker who talked about something very philosophical and interesting.

Here is what he said:

“People who fly in this world have a different point-of-view of  than those who spend their lives on the ground. A very wise man once wrote a poem while he was flying, and he called this poem ‘The God’s Eye View’, and he said that this view was entirely different than the view he always had on the ground, which he called ‘The Bug’s Eye View’.

Out there, somewhere, in the air we fly through, exists an old Persian legend much like this poem about a bug who spent his entire life in the world’s most beautifully designed Persian rug. All the bug ever saw in his lifetime were his problems. They stood up all around him. He couldn’t see over the top of them, and he had to fight his way through these tufts of wool in the rug to find the crumbs that people had spilled on the rug.

And the tragedy of the story of the bug in the rug was this: that he lived and he died in the world’s most beautifully designed rug, but he never once knew that he spent his life inside something which had a pattern.

Even if he, this bug, had even once gotten above the rug so that he could have seen all of it, he would have discovered something – that the very things he called his problems were a part of the pattern”

My first reaction to this was “wow!”. What a concept.

Just think in your life the problems you face, does a pattern emerge? What if you could find the pattern, and use it to your advantage.

I think there is one pattern that is consitent with almost all of us. That is something I like to call the ‘New years resolution syndrome’. This is when at the start of the new year you are filled with so much hope for new beginnings, but after a while you lose sight of the goals you set yourself and keep telling yourself “I’ll do it tomorrow”… Tomorrow doesn’t happen though. It’s a story of procrastination which with-strains you from achieving your full potential.

Well that’s a pattern, and it’s not just new years resolutions. Even just when you want to get something done, but you procrastinate and put it off. That’s a pattern!

So how can you beat this pattern of failure, and turn it into a pattern of success?

You’ve got to pre-visualize yourself succeeding in what it is you want to do. Close your eyes and imagine the finished result. Do this several times until you BELIEVE it! Then with sheer confidence and determination go ahead and accomplish the task at hand!

If all else fails, remember the story of the bug who never even realised that the problems around him were just part of a pattern. Imagine if the bug could have flown above the rug to see the pattern and how nice of a rug it really was!

Tell me what you think about this story of the bug