Time for another round of Amateur Creativity! Today, I play the beautiful theme song from the French film, Amelie.
The song is called “Comptine d’un autre été”, which translates to something like “Song from another summer”.
I hope you enjoy!
Having a Supermorning is key to having a great day. And a good night’s sleep is key to having a Supermorning.
Sadly, the world is in the midst of a sleep-deprivation epidemic. Some are too busy to sleep, some are too stressed, others just lead lives that are too chaotic.
Whatever your reason is, better sleep can probably help to fix it (ironic, isn’t it?). You just need to break the cycle.
So, let’s do just that…
Here is the simple 1-2-3 to getting a good night’s sleep:
I wish you an active and exciting day followed by a deserved night of peaceful sleep 🙂
Monday’s post briefly mentioned our modern sleep-deprivation epidemic. The TED talk shared in that post (repeated below) should be a major wake-up call about the importance of quality sleep.
Now, the question is just how to get ourselves sleeping soundly every night.
The first step is to give sleep the priority (and the time) it deserves. This was covered in Monday’s post. Yesterday, we looked at the next step: smart choices during the day and, especially, during the evening.
But there is still one deeply fundamental element missing: a general sense of being in control of your life.
If your mind is constantly in fight or flight mode, you’re going to struggle falling asleep (and staying asleep). For obvious reasons, the mind has evolved to be on guard whenever we feel threatened. And being on guard is clearly incompatible with falling asleep.
Our modern world has eliminated most physical threats, but it has introduced a huge amount of complexity and information overload that seems to have a very similar effect. To feel safe, we need to take control of this wonderfully complex life.
As you probably know already, there’s no quick fix. In fact, reaching a point where you feel fully in control of your health, finances, and creative powers takes years of careful planning and execution.
But luckily, the brain cares much less about where you are than about where you’re going. In other words, if you’ve given yourself several good reasons to believe that the future will easily outshine the present, you should sleep much better.
It may sound cheesy, but a proactive personal development journey is the key to feeling at home in this overwhelming and rapidly changing world.
Sleep really is just a nice side benefit of such a journey. But it’s an important one 🙂
See you tomorrow when we wrap up this week’s topic!
There are several well-known sleeping hacks that most have heard about, but few manage to implement.
I used to be in the same boat until I finally figured out the right strategy: go all in! Yes, I just implemented everything at once. This resulted in such a clear improvement that I just had to keep going.
All these ideas are summarized below in a quick 2-minute read. Maybe it can entice you to go all in too 🙂
If you want to sleep soundly at night, you need to use both your body and your mind actively throughout the day. Be fully present in every moment, get stuff done, and get some physical exercise.
Then, when evening comes, you need to formally slow down:
Stimulants of any kind (coffee, energy drinks, etc.) should be avoided for several hours before bed. Heavy eating and alcohol are two more no-no’s. They may help you fall asleep, but your sleep quality will suffer.
Then, when you enter that golden hour before bed, the key things to avoid are:
Once you put your mind to it, all this is actually quite doable. Getting every night perfect is not going to happen, but getting most nights right is certainly within reach.
It also helps to track your progress. If you installed Sleep Cycle yesterday, this becomes very easy. You’ll know you’ve arrived if your sleep quality is consistently above 70% with an average score over 80%. My previous week is shown below as an example.
I wish you a pleasant day, followed by an even more pleasant night!
Win the morning, win the day. Good advice, but not quite complete…
Here\’s the full (albeit less catchy) version: win the evening, win the night, win the morning, win the day.
Indeed, getting up fresh and ready for the day is much easier if you gave yourself a good night\’s sleep. And your sleep quality is heavily influenced by the choices you make in the evening.
This week we\’ll discuss some ways to boost your sleep both in terms of quantity and quality.
To do this, we need a convenient way to measure our sleep. Luckily, there\’s an app for that!
Sleep Cycle is an awesome little app that tracks your sleep both in terms of quantity and quality. It can also serve as an alarm that wakes you up when you\’ll be least groggy.
All you need to do is to press start every evening when you get in bed. The app then listens to your breathing and movements and gives you a sleep quality score the next morning.
Getting some cool data about sleep is important in our modern society with it\’s sleep-deprivation epidemic. Have a look at the interesting talk below for some more detail.
Then join me tomorrow when we\’ll talk more about shaping the evening for sound sleep.
The superpower of consistency is all about doing the small things right day after day to invite the awesome force of compounding into our lives. We simply need to take it one week and 1% at a time.
For me, it was a pretty good week. I had a little stumble over a couple of half-price chocolates at the start of the week, but recovered nicely afterwards. You can see the dip and recovery in the little red bit at the end of my Graph of Life below.
So, how was your week? The three simple poll questions below can help you decide. They’re formulated from the understanding that we really only need three things to be happy: good health, a feeling of progress, and positive relationships.
If you ticked any of the top two boxes in all three questions, I’m pretty sure you made your 1% gain this week 🙂
If not, what can you do to make sure next week is better? Resolve to take at least one action to help you make your 1% gain next week.
We’ve reached the end of another month! Time to continue the never-ending search for perfection and make another small adjustment to the blog structure.
Readership stats suggest that the removal of weekend posts over the past month wasn’t such a great idea. I’m therefore bringing them back for September, but I’ll keep them light (it’s weekend after all 😉 ).
The 1% better series will make a comeback on Sundays (in a lighter format). On Saturdays, I’ll simply share the best YouTube videos I’ve ever seen.
This week’s video is a beautiful time-lapse taken over a 1-month journey across the ocean. I think it’s a good way to start the weekend 🙂
A few weeks ago, I was treated to another quiet morning with some beautiful reflections on the lake close to my home.
The picture below reminded me of the power of compounding and, just like the Force in Star Wars, how it has a light side and a dark side. Life is rarely stagnant. Most of the time, this powerful force has us either spiraling up or spiraling down.
Some people spend more time spiraling up, others spend more time spiraling down. This is one of the key reasons for the vast inequalities in our society.
The superpower of consistency is simply a method to keep all spirals pointing upwards.
It really is as simple as that 🙂
See you tomorrow!
Making the right choices early in the morning can help you get a whole lot more out of the rest of your day.
The way you fuel your body is one critical choice within this golden time window. Do it poorly and you’ll be fighting cravings and irregular energy fluctuations all day long. Do it well and your body will just work the way it’s supposed to, allowing you to get on with your day undisturbed.
Aside from the productivity boost, a healthy morning meal also makes it easier to keep eating healthily throughout the day. Indeed, a super breakfast will protect you against self-destructive snacking.
Sound good? Here’s the 1-2-3 of a super breakfast:
There you have it. Make breakfast a super wholesome activity you look forward to every day 🙂
See you tomorrow for this week’s Amateur Creativity!
Having a Supermorning becomes much easier when you have a super breakfast.
Realizing the importance of having a super breakfast, I’ve been experimenting with different options for many years. This post shares the two breakfasts that emerged on top after all these years.
This breakfast combines the following ingredients:
It only takes a minute or two to chuck all this stuff into one bowl and then it’s ready to enjoy!
Given that this breakfast contains 15 different nutritious ingredients, each bite tends to be subtly different, creating a highly enjoyable culinary experience 🙂
This one has a little less variety, but it’s still super healthy. Here are the ingredients:
Here, I mix together the seeds, All-Bran, and almond milk in a bowl and then heat it in the microwave. The blueberries are added on top after the microwave pings.
The chia seeds are a particularly enjoyable part of this meal. They swell quite impressively when heated in moisture, creating a very enjoyable texture.
For the fun of it, I compiled a list of nutrients provided by these two breakfasts using the nutritionvalue website. Both are tailored to provide about half your daily required calories.
Both these breakfasts are super convenient, tasty, and affordable ways to load up on most of the macro- and micronutrients you require for a given day. They also promise a slow and steady energy release for controlling cravings and energy levels and contain all the fiber required for good digestive function.
I hope they inspire you to do some breakfast experimentation of your own. Being the most important meal of the day, this is certainly worth some of your time.
See you tomorrow when we wrap up this week’s topic.
