How To Sleep

Your body regenerates during sleep and to optimise your sleep I have set up a simple sleeping guide. The body needs sleep on certain hours of the day to feel re-energised and to function well on the day that follows. I do not believe in such thing as B-persons or A-persons; if you live a well-balanced life and have a solid foundation, you will go to sleep at 22.00 – 23.00  (i.e. 10pm – 11pm) and wake up at 06.00 – 07.00 (6am – 7am). If that does not apply for you then there is something in your life that is out of balance.

The body follows a natural cycle that is connected to other natural cycles (e.g. night and day). When it is dark the body rests and when there is light it awakes. The body has a gland that can detects night and day; it is called the pineal gland and it produces melatonin that is important to prevent a number of disorders (e.g. cancer, ADHD, Alzheimer, migraines etc.)

The liver is also in need of rest at night in order to process proteins. If it is disturbed it will not do a proper job and you will not re-energise. If you fail to get a proper sleep your body will degenerate because of the many functions of the liver.

1.     Do not consume proteins after 19.00 (7pm)

2.     Go to bed no later than 23.00 (11pm)

3.     Get up no later than 07.00 (7am)

4.     Sleep in total darkness and quietude

5.     Exercise and eat healthy during the day

It is important to keep this cycle – also in weekends and on days off!

Food for thought: We spend one third of our life in bed but how much time do you spend in your car? How much did you pay for your car and how much did you spend on your bed?

How To Eat

Although it seems like basic knowledge it is my experience that few people eat right. Your body needs fuel to function and it needs different kinds of fuel depending on its tasks. Food and eating right is a science and can occupy a large proportion of your time. Only few people want to spend all their time figuring out how to eat right.

I have spend a lot of time researching this topic and my conclusion is that if you optimise your food and eating habits your life will become difficult and lonely. Your quality of life will be reduced if you choose that path because living is much more than eating right. Sometimes it is better to eat unhealthy food. E.g. if you attend a party and you bring your own food because you only eat biodynamic raw cabbage, then people will consider you difficult and weird; you will be pushed to the rim of any social network and that is a very unhealthy place to be. It would be better to just eat what is there and enjoy every bit of it.

I have made a few rules of thumb that you can follow and they will guarantee that you get what you need to get through the day in a productive way:

1. Eat breakfast every day.
2. Most important meals are breakfast and lunch
3. Focus on a varied diet
4. Eat a lot of vegetables
5. Avoid proteins after 19.00 (7pm)
6. Eat snacks (and I do not mean candy bars!)
7. Avoid processed food
8. Combine your eating habits with sleep and exercise.

Test Your Personal Foundation

You can test whether you have a solid personal foundation or if you have a very unstable foundation. Take a look at the keywords in the table below a mark the words that you feel describe you best. If you have any words in “Very unstable” then you should think about what you can do to improve.

E.g. if you are depressed then take a look at the keywords that characterise a solid foundation and see what you would like to be instead of depressed. If you choose positive, then ask yourself what you can do to be more positive.

It is okay to be characterised by some of the keywords in “unstable”, but you should strive towards the keywords in “solid”.

Solid	Unstable	Very unstable
Peace and quiet Good adaptability Flexible Understanding Sympathetic Free Focused Trust Positive Witty Efficient Curious Adventurous Fearless Patient Considerate Self-confidence	Hyperactive Over-committed Superficial Insensitive Envious Dependent Uninterested Poor self-confidence Humourless Shy Indecisive Defensive Dominating Irritated	Exaggerated Fanatic Suspicious Selfish Whining Depressed Commanding Focus on problems Nervous Paranoid Bad-tempered

How To Build A Solid Foundation

If you are stuck and feeling unsuccessful then it is time for change and change requires a solid foundation. Every aspect of our life has a core where our life path and worldview originate. This core contains the basic idea of everything we know and experience. You will find this core inside yourself and that is why everything you want in life, without exception, starts inside yourself.

First thing you need to do is to build a strong body and mind that can serve you well in your life path. This is the basic foundation and it encompasses elements like nutrition, exercise and rest. To develop yourself and others you need to have a strong body and mind and to get that you have to give your body optimal conditions. Your health will be reflected in everything you do and your successes depend on your health.

E.g. if you are a human resource manager in a company and you want to improve absence, how well do you think you will do if you frequently call in sick? Or what if you were a doctor that have a distinct smell of tobacco? – Would you appear convincing when you tell your patient to stop smoking? How well do you think your brain would work without fuel? Would you make good decisions if you are stressed and tired?

That is why you have to build a basic foundation inside yourself as the first thing. Then you can start working on your immediate environment that encloses people with whom we have an everyday relation. This is the phase where development takes place and when you have build a solid foundation for your inner core and immediate environment, then you can start change and expand your world in new environments.

Test if your foundation is stable or unstable, I will post this test tomorrow – please subscribe to be notified.

How Long Does It Take To Build A Business?

Building your own business and creating an income that is decent enough to live from is hard and takes a lot of work and most of all it takes persistence and patience.

A business takes 3-5 years to build and the first year is, by far, the hardest. The first year you should not expect any income at all so be prepared to finance your business and living concurrently with other activities. The first year you need to set daily goals and do them even if it seems pointless. Work intensively on communicating your accomplishments in your network. Know that your network is the most important tool you have.

Your daily goals help you to keep motivation and that is very important because you will experience times where you just feel like giving up. But do not give up! Listen to the feedback from your network and be conscious of the messages you send out. Focus on your success because that will create positive feedback. Your close network like family and friends will be concerned about you and you will meet some resistance, but it is just because they worry and you have to be very positive in the stories you communicate.

After the third year you will see that you have reached a break-even and income seems to level your expenses and after five years you have a good business that can make you a living. It takes time to build credibility and trust; your environment needs to see that you can make it for at least one year before it starts recommending you. Your network needs a business partner that it can rely on.

How To Clean Up Your Cluttered Life

Do your life feel chaotic and cluttered? Most of us have tried the frustrating feeling of chaos and loss of perspective. Everything seems hopeless and you just feel like giving up. This entry is an introduction to frequent tips on how to clean up your life and regain your sense of perspective.

In my worldview it is all about energy and whether that energy has a positive or negative impact on my life. To maintain a good perspective of life I think it is very important to keep things as simple as possible. Do not cling to the past, live in the present and do not worry about the future. The past is history and there is nothing you can do to change it and the future is unknown, so why worry? I have a strong believe that my present actions will lead to a good future.

Take a good look at your life areas, like partnership, physical surroundings, economy, health, mind, social network etc. Every aspect of your life needs to be cleaned up. You have to remove everything that you do not need. Remove items or thoughts that belong to the past and do not contribute to a positive development. E.g. if you went through a divorce, then you need to remove everything that reminds you of your ex partner in order to get on in life.

In general you need to remove things that you do not use, because they will clutter your life and fill it with stagnation or even destruction. 

The Secret About Routines

We need routines to exist!

The downside is that we prefer to hold on to routines that hinder us from success. Man’s nature is to pursuit happiness and to do that he needs to be in some control of his own destiny. The odd thing is that to maintain happiness you need to constantly change and develop and this implies loss of control. You have to let go of control to truly pursuit happiness otherwise you will get stuck in your routines.

The art of living a happy life is to create good routines that contribute to your development. The complete routines are, by nature, inflexible but you have to build in some flexibility in your routines to make sure they can be changed without crumbling. This is why change has to be done in small steps.

The same routine will not make you happy forever and if you hold on to that routine it will eventually become destructive or at least lead to stagnation. If your life is a mess then start building a good foundation of routines that will support your development. Continue questioning how your routines can be better so that you will feel happiness.

For the past 3 years I have been working hard to get my business running. From the beginning there were no customers and no income. Today I have enough work and I try to spread work to prevent exhaustion. Wednesdays are always packed and although the work is important for my economic foundation I feel that the routines on Wednesdays are increasingly destructive. I now ask myself – What can I do to get a good Wednesday? 

Whenever you feel that one of your routines starts to affect you in a negative way then ask yourself what you can do to change that.

How To Get Lucky

Some people seem to be very lucky and turn up at the right place at the right time, but it has nothing to do with luck! It is synchronicity; a concept introduced by Carl Jung: “A meaningful coincidence of two or more events, where something other than the probability of chance is involved.”

Luck is something you feel when something unexpected happens, that makes you feel good. You cannot control unexpected happenings but you can choose to be observant. By paying attention to what happens you are more likely to see opportunities you otherwise would have missed. We tend to be focused on our goals forgetting about the path to these goals. If we do not pay attention to things that happen on our way, then we will miss good opportunities along the road.

Often people get stuck at a dead end in their effort to get to their goal. If they had understood that the world is in constant change, then they would have seen several other paths they could have chosen instead of the dead end.

I believe that you can get more luck simply by being open to opportunities and by exploring interesting perspectives. We need goals on our life path, but it is important that we do not plan the way to our goals and stick to it. It is like driving from Berlin to Paris choosing the highway just to find out it is closed halfway there. Then you are stuck. I suggest you start out at the highway and then pay attention to the exits along the highway; when you see one that appeals to you, then turn of and go exploring.

How To Exceed Your Limits (part 3 of 3)

To exceed you limits it takes willpower and it takes discipline. When the feeling of oneness occurs then you know you will succeed. Today I will show you what willpower and discipline means in this connection and I will try to explain the feeling of oneness.

To exert willpower you need to control your emotions, behaviour and desires. This can be a tough job because you have to believe that you can exceed your limits and reach your goal no matter what your emotions say. Emotions are extremely strong and sometimes you need to fight them in order to get something you know is better for you.

E.g. a runner that turns the 40 km sign does not enjoy running in that moment. He is exhausted and every muscle and bone in his body screams for rest. If listens to his emotions he would collapse and cry; but he does not – he will ignore his emotions and continue running in pain for another 2 km to reach his goal, because he knows that the satisfaction of accomplishment is greater than a moment of rest.

Yesterday I was at swim practice and I was told to dive four times 25 meters. - That is impossible, I thought to myself and started the first dive. I reached 15 meters and had to go up. I just had to breathe and I was unsatisfied about the result. My second dive went the same way, but on my third dive I reached 20 meters. Then I thought to myself – I can do it, I want to do it! I kicked of and started my fourth dive; I focused 100 % on technique and relaxing to save oxygen. When I reached 15 meters my lungs started complaining but I kept focus and suddenly I had this feeling that I could keep diving forever, I felt like I was one with the water, I felt relaxed and focused; I felt oneness. As I emerged the water after 25 meters I felt joy and happiness – I did it! It was not impossible and I had just overcome a barrier in my mind.

These examples are physic activities but you can exert willpower in every aspect of your life to exceed your limits.