The feeling of sleepiness when you are not in bed, and can’t get there, is the meanest feeling in the world.
-Edgar Watson Howe

You spend one third of your life sleeping. This one third has significant effects on your waking life, in terms of productivity, energy, alertness, creativity, memory, body weight, mood, safety, and good health. Here are 10 sleep hygiene do’s and don’ts for better sleep:

1) Sex

Do: Have pleasurable sexual relations or masturbation before bedtime. Researchers have found that this can promote sleep onset and induce deep and restful sleep.

Don’t: Have un-pleasurable sexual relations before bedtime. If sexual experience leads to dissatisfaction, anxiety, or performance concern, it will be detrimental to a good night’s rest.

2) Exercise

Do: Exercise to stay fit, reduce stress, and induce deeper sleep. Exercise elevates your body temperature, and an ensuing drop in body temperature at bedtime will induce drowsiness and deeper sleep. The best time to exercise for better sleep is in the late afternoon or at noon-time. Exercise in the morning has little effect on the quality of your sleep.

Don’t: Exercise within three hours of bedtime. This will stimulate the release of adrenaline, and you’ll be too alert to relax and fall asleep.

3) Eating

Do: Eat a light snack high in carbohydrates and low in protein if you are hungry before bedtime.

Don’t: Eat a large or heavy meal within four or five hours of going to bed. This may make you drowsy initially, but you will toss and turn during the night.

4) Drinking

Do: Cut back on liquids of all kind before bedtime. This will ensure you don’t interrupt your sleep due to a full bladder in the middle of the night.

Don’t: Drink any caffeinated beverages within six hours of your bedtime. Stimulants such as caffeine will delay sleep onset and disturb REM sleep. Additionally, avoid drinking alcohol within three hours of bedtime if you expect to sleep well. The common practice of “having a nightcap before bed” actually suppresses REM sleep, and you will experience early-morning awakenings.

5) Nightly Ritual

Do: Create a nightly ritual of reading for pleasure before turning off lights. Use a reading lamp that can be gradually dimmed, and take your mind off the day’s worries. Also, try taking a warm bath before bed. After the bath, your body temperature will plummet (if you have a cool bedroom), and this will initiate sleepiness and more deep sleep.

Don’t: Create a ritual of stay in bed longer than you need to get sleep. Staying in bed too long will promote shallow and disturbed sleep.

6) Sleep Schedule

Do: Establish a regular sleep schedule. Researchers at Harvard Medical School found that if you alert your sleep schedule by even a few hours, your mood deteriorates.

Don’t: Sleep in on weekends. This does not help overcome sleep loss during the week any more than overeating during the week would be helped by dieting on the weekend.

7) Sleep Position

Do: Sleep on your side, with the spine straight; or on your back, maintaining the primary curvature of the cervical spine.

Don’t: Sleep on your stomach or with your head elevated. This can give you aches and pains, and is not recommended by medical experts.

8) Napping

Do: Take a nap of fifteen to thirty minutes in duration, if your hectic lifestyle doesn’t permit you to get enough sleep at night. Set an alarm for 15-30 minutes, as any time longer than that will put you in deep sleep, and you will wake up terribly groggy.

Don’t: Take a nap if you are already getting adequate sleep during the night. Additionally, don’t take late-afternoon naps, as this delays your falling-asleep time in the evening and will begin to shift your biological clock.

9) Pets

Do: Sleep with a stuffed animal if it comforts you.

Don’t: Sleep with your pets. Their movements and noises during the night or early morning can disrupt your sleep.

10) Your Bedroom

Do: Use your bedroom for sexual activity and sleep. If you watch television in your bedroom, focus on comedy as a tension reducer.

Don’t: Use your bedroom for arguing, watching exciting/violent television shows, eating, or working.

This post is part of the Sleep Evolver Series


photo credit: girlstyle, bmfcker, cowbite, slightlypale

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The best quitters are the ones who decide in advance when they’re going to quit.

-Seth Godin, The Dip

Remember the old advice, “Winners never quit, quitters never win”? It’s wrong. In fact, winners quit often- as entrepreneur and marketing guru Seth Godin explains, “to stick with something in an absence of further progress is a waste.” In his short book The Dip, Godin provides a simple framework for looking at anything you do in life, and deciding when to quit. He uses three patterns to describe situations you could be facing in your life (e.g., your career, an exercise routine, relationships):

Three Patterns You Could Be Facing in Your Life

The Dip: The most difficult part of the journey- “the long slog between starting and mastery.”

Example: A new business that hasn’t quite taken off yet

The Cul-de-Sac: The plateau. You put in a lot of time and energy, but you still don’t end up anywhere.

Example: Dead-end job

The Cliff: The peak and drastic descend. Your future efforts, even when greater than past efforts, won’t be enough.

Example: Smoking

Strategic Quitting

If you are in a cul-de-sac or cliff situation (above), these both lead to failure so you should quit. You have finite time and energy, and should use it towards parts of your life that you can be excellent at. If you are in a dip situation, you need to decide under what circumstances you will quit. Strategic quitting is when you decide to “outline your quitting strategic before the discomfort sets in.”

Using Strategic Quitting When Setting Goals

I decided to implement strategic quitting when I set new goals for myself. For each new goal I set, I now keep track of “Circumstances in which I will Quit.” This way, I will ensure that I am quitting something for the right reasons, not because of stress of the moment. It also helps me decide if a new endeavor is even worth committing to if I cannot commit to the “Circumstances in which I will quit.”

Here are a few examples of how to you can use this method in your goal setting (assuming you are in a dip pattern):

Example 1) Starting a new business

I will continue working my hardest on this my new business unless I am still unprofitable after X time.

Example 2) Maintaining your exercise routine

I will exercise X times per week for the next X months, unless I get injured.

Example 3) Doing your best at your job/career

I will continue doing my best at my current career, unless it has a significant negative impact on my health and/or professional/personal goals.

Example 4) Making an investment

If this investment loses me more than X%, I will sell it (could do this systematically if it’s a stock using a Stop Order).

The Benefit of Using Strategic Quitting When Setting Goals

The main benefit of using strategic quitting when setting goals is that you will begin giving your all in whatever endeavor you get involved in, versus coping:

Coping is what people do when they try to muddle through… The problem with coping is that it never leads to exceptional performance… All coping does is waste your time and misdirect your energy. If the best you can do is cope, you’re better off quitting. Quitting is better than coping because quitting frees you up to excel at something else… Quit the wrong stuff. Stick with the right stuff. Have the guts to do one or the other.

-Seth Godin, The Dip

Strategic quitting allows you to focus your energy on doing your best, versus that gray area where you aren’t doing your best but you aren’t quitting.

Three questions to ask yourself before quitting: Am I panicking, who am I trying to influence, and what sort of measurable progress am I making? These will help you determine if you are quitting for the right reasons, or simply quitting because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.

Here’s some more advice from Mr. Godin on when to quit:

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What is autopilot mode? One way to describe it would be your morning routine- You get up, brush your teeth, shower, and get dressed, all without thinking about it. This is good, because you wouldn’t want to have to consciously think through repetitive tasks. But the problem is when bad habits and behaviors become automatic. For example, if you made a habit of waking up each day in a bad mood and thinking negative thoughts, this could have a negative impact on the rest of your day.

How Autopilot Mode is initiated

A growing body of research suggests that as little as 5 percent of our behaviors are made consciously. This means that as much as 95 percent of what we do occurs in autopilot mode- meaning that most skills and behaviors you learn eventually becomes automatic habits. For example, when learning to ride a bike, you tried pushing the pedals, but you couldn’t stay balanced, so you fell down. If you decided not to give up and repeated practice, you eventually improved your balance. One day, bike riding became an automatic habit for you- you didn’t even have to think about it any more.

This is beneficial for learning new skills and positive habits, but what about negative mindsets and bad habits? What if you repeated being impatient with friends and family members, until it became automatic? To break this bad habit, you would need to learn how to get out of autopilot mode:

How to Break Bad Habits by getting out of Autopilot Mode

With practice, whenever you revert back to your old self, you can detect this and interrupt the program.

-Joe Dispenza, Evolve Your Brain

1) Create an Anti-Bad-Habit Habit

Every time you feel yourself falling into a habitual negative mindset or bad habit:

1) Focus on a word or phrase that has a positive meaning to you. Words like “one,” “love”, “peace”, or “evolve” work well.

2) If you find your mind has wandered, or you notice any intrusive thoughts entering your mind, simply disregard them and return your focus to your word or phrase.

After repetition, you will create an anti-negative-habit habit. Just don’t angrily yell your phrase like Frank does in Seinfeld episode Serenity Now, otherwise you might create a habit just as bad as your original one!

Example of using this method correctly: Tim has a bad habit of being impatient when interacting with peers at work, family members, and the cashier after waiting in line at the store- he creates a positive habit of saying to himself “kindness matters.” This makes him consciously aware of how he wants to behave in the situation, and is then able to break his bad habit.

2) Mentally rehearse your day without the bad habit

See yourself in your imagination taking positive, intelligent action toward solving a problem or reaching a goal. See yourself reacting to threats, not by running away or evading them, but by meeting them, dealing with them, and grappling with them in an aggressive and intelligent manner.

-Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics

For 20-30 minutes each morning, go somewhere quiet, close your eyes, and in your mind, go through your day. Think of all the times throughout your day that you typically act out the bad habit or behavior. Now instead of acting that same behavior, choose an alternate, more positive behavior, and mentally rehearse that behavior.

After doing this mental rehearsal for several days, you will notice that you start acting on that mental image, and molding your reality to match it. This is because your brain cannot actually tell the difference between mental rehearsal and reality. Professional athletes use this same trick to mentally practice and improve their game.

4) Closely examine your friendships

Are you friends reinforcing your bad habit, or are they supportive of you breaking it? You need to closely examine your friendships and determine if they are enabling you to continue this negative behavior, or helping you break it. If they continue to enable/reinforce you to continue your bad habit, it may be time to re-think your friendships. You should consider how truly dedicated you are about breaking your bad habit, and what sacrifices you may have to make along the way.

5) Focus energy on a positive habit that will replace the bad habit, versus the bad habit you are trying to resist

Read my post on creating consistent daily habits. Use the tips there to apply toward the positive habit you are introducing into your life. Specifically:

• You must practice the new positive habit, breaking your bad habit, each day consistently for the first 21 days
• You must be accountable to yourself
• You must accept yourself

6) Initiate your change in small increments

If nothing succeeds like success, it is equally true that nothing fails like excess. Because change requires moving beyond our comfort zone, it is best initiated in small and manageable increments.

-Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, The Power of Full Engagement

If you are trying to break a highly-addictive bad habit such as smoking, quitting cold turkey is often setting yourself up for failure- incremental change is the way to succeed. Make a plan to smoke less cigarettes during your first week, with the longer-term goal of quitting.

photo credit: FrancoisRoche

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When you hear the word invest, you might think of stocks, bonds and real estate. But the topic of this post is investing in yourself. How do you invest in yourself? You do this every time you choose to channel your time, money and energy into an endeavor that will make you a more successful, knowledgeable person in the long-run.

You have probably heard the financial advice telling you to “stop buying Starbucks every day, and instead, put that money into savings”, and over time, especially if you start young, the compound interest will make you rich. There is a similar effect when you decide to invest in yourself, for example “instead of watching television for 30 minutes per evening, put that time and energy into yourself.” This may not make you rich, but the effect it will have on your long-term success is significant. You could call this the effect of compound success:

When investing in yourself, you are always devoting a combination of time, energy and money. It is important to not focus so much on the monetary side of investing in yourself (ex. Cost of meeting with a personal trainer), and instead think about the positive long-term benefits this will have on your life:

.

Investment of Time / Energy / Money	Long-Term Benefits
Read a book a week	New ideas and ways of thinking Become an expert in your field in several years
Join a meditation group	Learn new ways to train your mind Less stress/negative energy in your life
Start an exercise routine	Better health, memory, more energy
Form a mastermind group (coordination of knowledge and effort of two or more people, who work toward a definite purpose)	Exposure to new ideas and alternate solutions to your problems Less trial-and-error when trying to reach goals Larger network to utilize Accountability to reaching your goals
Take a class or seminar	Learn from another individual’s accumulated knowledge and experience
Start a new business	Learn about yourself, your own strengths and weaknesses
Meet with a personal trainer	Accountability to maintaining your workout routine Exposure to new exercises, ways to switch up your routines Learn the correct posture for exercises, so you don’t get injured

These are just examples- think for a moment about what investments you could be making in yourself. What are the long-term benefits you would receive? Can you see how you would be more successful in the long run?

Tips for Investing in Yourself

1) Invest your Time and Energy before your Money

When I am considering making an investment in myself that will cost money, I always make sure I am fully committed beforehand. For example, before I started meeting with a personal trainer, I committed to working out six times per week for a month. This way, I had already built the habit of exercising, so the likelihood increased that my financial investment would be worthwhile.

2) Don’t try to do too much

When we try to do too much, we compromise our potential for growth, both in terms of happiness as well as quantifiable success. Quantity of good things affects quality.

-Tal Ben-Shahar, Happier

Write out a list of all the investments in yourself you would like to make, and then prioritize the list by long-term benefits. Focus on the investments with the most long-term potential.

3) After deciding on an Investment in yourself, write down the circumstances in which you will quit

Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.

-Seth Godin, The Dip

Instead of deciding to quit when you are in the middle of your new endeavor, decide under what circumstances you will quit before you start. Then put all your energy into the investment. This will ensure that if you do quit, you are quitting for the right reasons. Read my post on quitting for specific examples of how to use strategic quitting for success.

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Think of any positive daily habit you would like to acquire. Daily exercise. Daily meditation. Spending more time with your kids. Now imagine two potential versions of yourself- one has acquired that daily habit for the long-term, the other has not. Which version of yourself would you prefer to be? If you chose the one with the positive daily habit, then why haven’t you already acquired it? What is stopping you? Most likely, accountability, acceptance, and 21 days.

We first make our habits and then our habits make us.

-John Dryden

You have already acquired the daily habit of brush your teeth each morning. When you were a kid, your parents probably got after you if you didn’t brush them. This habit is now so deeply ingrained in you, that if you accidentally forgot to brush them one day, you might feel a bit grossed out, and your mouth wouldn’t feel clean.

As an adult, when you try to acquire a new habit for the long-term, it may seem more difficult. For example, exercise routines can be tough to maintain. Most of us can easily start a work-out routine for a short period of time. It feels very good to work out at first. But what happens? Excuses. You get too tired. You have no time. You enjoyed working out at first, but it became boring.

The problem with only acquiring positive habits in the short-run is that you put in a lot of time and effort, but you don’t get to keep the results. It’s like giving up on the last leg of the race. You are so close, but you let excuses get in the way. Why did you even start in the first place if you don’t get to keep the results?

Instead of focusing on cultivating self-discipline, introduce rituals similar to brushing your teeth. Incremental change is better than ambitious failure. Success feeds off of itself.

-Tal Ben-Shahar, Happier

Take a moment to think about a positive habit you tried to acquire for the long-term in the past, but only kept for the short-term. What stopped you? Chances are, the habit never became a ritual.

Tips to Creating Daily Habits for the Long-Term

Here are three tips to creating a new daily habit for the long-term:

1) You must practice your new habit each day consistently for the first 21 days

You’ve probably heard this one before, but scientifically, it has been proven as true. If you don’t perform your new daily habit every single day for 21 days, chances are, you won’t keep it. It will never become as ingrained as something like brushing your teeth. It is easier to stay consistent during the first 21 days if you perform the habit at the same time each day.

2) To succeed, you must be accountable to yourself

You aren’t always going to have someone else to be accountable to. So be accountable to yourself! I’ve found it is easiest to do this by keeping a daily log tracking my progress in maintaining positive habits.

3) To succeed, you must accept yourself

Should you give up the first day you don’t perform your positive habit? Of course not- you are only human. Accept yourself in your present moment, while understanding that your future self will be better-able to maintain the positive habit. Then move on without looking back.

That’s it. Now you get to keep the results of your positive habit for the long-term. I’ve tried this, and it works. After 21 days of practicing the new daily habit, if you keep yourself accountable, and are accepting of your mistakes, you will succeed. It’s best to try it with one habit at a time. Your daily habit will then become so ingrained in your daily schedule that not performing it will be like not brushing your teeth.

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