- Avoid doing what 99% of the population is doing. If you do the same as normal people, you get normal results.
- Get in the best shape possible, lift weights 3 times per week, eat healthily, get enough sleep, get stronger, et cetera. Wherever your body goes, your mind will follow. If you get in great physical shape, you are more likely to feel better mentality. Health is everything.
- Practice positive habits. I’ll give my example. These are the habits I try my best to stick to every day: I read, write, work out, go for a walk, tidy my house and meditate. You have everything to gain by following these habits and nothing to lose. Swap bad habits for good ones. To become extraordinary, we must win today and try to win every other day for the rest of our lives; if we do, we might become extraordinary. All we can do is the work, and that’s required every day.
- Get up early. Part of winning the day is winning the morning, so getting up early at 6 a.m. is usually best. I’m fully aware that people are on different work shifts, and so am I, so I replace getting up early with getting up several hours before my shift so I can work on myself.
- Read: to become extraordinary, we must determine what extraordinary means. We can only discover this by following our curiosities and becoming more erudite. Reading helps us find out what we want. The more you know, the more you can do, and the more you can do, the more opportunities you have to succeed.
- Read about extraordinary people and associate with exceptional people. By learning about the lives of the extraordinary, we can gain road maps for becoming extraordinary in our own lives. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, so if you are friends with exceptional people, there is a good chance you’ll be extraordinary yourself.
Tag: wellness
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How To Become Extraordinary (Do What The Extraordinary Do)
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How To Dramatically Improve Your Life
It’s all about habits. If we can dramatically improve our habits, we can dramatically improve our lives.
If you practice the following habits you’ll realise you have everything to gain by doing them and nothing to lose.
- Work out 3 times per week– this will strengthen your body and mind and dramatically improve your confidence, where the body goes, the mind will follow. Getting fit will also make you more productive and effective in all areas of your life. Health is wealth, and life isn’t about fitness, but fitness dramatically improves your life. It also teaches you that to get better at something is to get better at anything. If you can dramatically change how your body looks and feels for the better, you might just be able to change your life.
- Read 30 minutes per day. The world is overwhelmingly complex, and reading literature helps us make some sense of it all. Reading is also a highly satisfying activity. It’s relaxing and improves your vocabulary and communication skills.
- Follow whatever dream you have and see where it takes you if you stick to it for 2 years– I don’t know what your ambition in life is; maybe you don’t know. But if you can start doing that thing for 30 minutes to an hour every day, the results compound over time miraculously. I enjoy writing, so I’m spending 30 minutes to an hour per day writing. Although I don’t get paid for this, writing is a deeply satisfying creative outlet for me. Find your thing. And if you can’t find it, then try a few things until you stumble upon it.
- Save and invest – here’s an example of how effective investing can be. Say you earn £2000 per month and invest 10% per month of this (£200) in the S&P 500 index fund ( the top 500 companies in America) then this, on average, has a 10–12% return of interest. So if you started investing now, then in 30 years, you’d have almost £500,000. Which is a sizable nest egg. In the next 2 years, if you learn this vital habit, it will set you up for life. Ideally, you’d invest more.
- Meditation – I recently watched a video with Billionaire Ray Dalio and film producer Martin Scorsese, and they both discuss how beneficial meditation has been in their lives. Ray Dalio says it’s the greatest gift he could give anyone. Meditation helps you maintain a state of equanimity and balance. So that you can make better decisions in life (and under pressure), it helps you get in touch with your subconscious mind, which is where creativity comes from and a lot of your wants, desires, dislikes, etc. come from; if we can get in touch with our unconscious, we can win at life. Meditation is extremely effective.
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Some Of The Best Night Time Habits (And What Not To Do)
- You should sleep roughly the same time every night, give or take an hour. For example, if you go to bed at 10 or 11 p.m., you should get up at 6 or 7 a.m.
- Wind down with a book or something else, such as a board game or even tidying your house, so you won’t be staring at screens before bed ( the bright light from screens keeps you awake).
- Having a warm shower will relax your muscles and mind, helping you have a restful sleep.
- Do not eat too close to going to bed. Try not to eat for 1 or 2 hours before going to bed. No one likes going to bed bloated.
- Don’t drink lots of water before bed. Stop drinking an hour before bed so that you won’t wake up like an old man to pee at 3 a.m. in the morning. Try to get most of your water intake during the day and evening so you’re well-hydrated before bed don’t chug all your water intake at night
- Don’t drink alcohol before bed. Or at least limit the amount you drink. It’s known alcohol makes you fall asleep faster, but the overall quality of your sleep is much worse, and you wake more frequently. Alcohol also dehydrates you, and this can diminish your sleep quality.
- Don’t exercise too late at night. Ideally, try working out in the morning or afternoon. If you must, work out in the evening, but not one or two hours before bed. Otherwise, your adrenaline will be high, negatively impacting your ability to fall asleep. When I work out at night, I find it very hard to sleep.
- Don’t drink caffeine before bed. Try to drink all your caffeine as early in the day as possible. I try not to drink caffeine after noon. This means that by the time I lay down to rest, the caffeine is out of my system.
- Don’t smoke before bed. Nicotine, like caffeine, is a stimulant and will keep you up at night.
- Write down five things you’re grateful for and tick off your to-do list. There’s no better and more comforting feeling than completing your goals for the day. It’s the only way to get to our idealised selves, and we can only do it one day at a time. Being grateful for the small things is a cheat code to life, you instantly become happy.
- Brushing your teeth, this is a no-brainer.
- Clean your kitchen. I hate going to bed knowing I’ve forgotten to do my dishes or spray down the surfaces. For me, going to bed with a clean kitchen means going to bed with a clean mind.
- One easy hack is to use lamps at night on their lowest possible setting rather than have your main lights on. Your body prefers a dark environment at night as you get closer to bed time due to your circadian rythm (natural body clock). The picture below is me now in a darkish environment winding down for bed.
The Importance Of Good Sleep Hygiene And night Time Habits
If you follow the above advice, it should help massively. I know it has helped me a lot.
Good sleep hygiene and nighttime habits are vital for living a happy, enjoyable life.
We spend about one-third of our lives sleeping, or about 26 years. This is equivalent to 227,916 hours.
Just like we need to get our wakefulness right, we need to get our sleep right.
We always focus on:
I must do this; I must do that.
I’ll go here.
I’ll go there.
But how many of us stop and think:
How can I improve my sleep routine?
Unfortunately, not many of us do.
And if you ask yourself that question.
Great, you’ve taken the first step.
Now, focus on the advice above and get to work.
Some Additional Helpful Habits
- Get a massage from your spouse or give him/her one. It feels great to get a massage, and it feels great to give someone else one. We humans are givers; we generally feel good knowing that we’re helping someone else feel good.
- Listen to classical or calming music. This will relax your body and mind.
- Light a candle; pleasant smells can help relax and calm us.
- Do some deep, slow breathing. This will slow your heart rate and trigger your parasympathetic nervous system, which is the rest and digest nervous system rather than the fight-and-flight one. This is extremely relaxing.
- Meditation is another way to relax your body and mind. It helps prevent you from getting lost in your thoughts and instead immerses you in the present moment, which is deeply satisfying. To meditate, you can either focus on your breath for 5-10 minutes while sitting in a cross-legged position with your eyes closed or take the same posture and repeat a mantra for 5 minutes, e.g., “Ohm” (this type of meditation is called transcendental meditation).
Good nighttime habits enable us to sleep at a time we like so we can get up early and seize the day.
Benjamin Franklin said “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise”.
And I believe him.
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