The "science" behind this states that everybody has 2 versions of themselves:

1. the identity they really walk around with = the shell
2. the person they really want to be = the core identity

The core identity is the true identity, held captive by lack of knowledge, and circumstance.

If you are working as a lawyer in a law firm, working 70hr weeks and not very satisfied, your shell dictates that you are a stressed out lawyer.
But, your core identity could be that of an artist. Or a Casanova. Or a rock star.
That’s your core identity. That’s who YOU want to be.

Most communication between people is surface to surface, shell to shell. That means, you hear someone’s words, and based on those words, you comply…or not.

Our deepest core desires are never things such as ‘make money’, ‘get out of the house’, etc… If this is what you think it is, your brain is lying to you. It’s never something like that. These are the just surface outcomes. The truth is, the whole point of ourselves is to create and to perpetuate experiences. Goals are meaningless.

If you think about what you want in life, you will probably find that it’s not about money or wealth. It’s experiences, as well as to perpetuate, and to create.

You need to know who you are, and who you want to be. But, how do you know?

THE QUESTION:

If there were no limitations or consequences, what would your perfect, average day look like?

Limitations means you don’t have to worry about money, health, geography nor limiting people.

Consequences means it has to be something safe, not anything that will get you in trouble or arrested. Be wise.

Average means you could do it everyday and not get killed (this means your perfect day would not include climbing Mount Everest, for example.)

Ask yourself:

• Where would you live?
• What would your house look like?
• What time would you wake up?
• What would you do in the morning?
• What would you do in the first hour of your day?
• Who would you eat with?
• What would you eat?
• What would your friends be like?
• What would you do for personal fulfillment?
• What purpose would you strive for?
• What would your business be?
• What would you actually do for work?
• What are your clients like?
• What are your relationships like?
• What would you do for family time?
• What would you have for dinner?
• What would you talk about over dinner?
• What would you do at night?
• Who would you do it with?
• Where would you be?
• Where would you do it?
• What would your thoughts be as you go to sleep?

Your perfect day will help you identify who you really are, and what your core identity is.

Law of Attraction

When you have a picture on your mind of your core identity and your new life, you’ll find that things start moving you towards that: you start attracting the right circumstances, the right people and so on… This is because you are more focused on your goals as you work towards them…

What we are really aiming for is this:

• experiences (because goals are meaningless);
• a new identity, and
• the sum of all this is Life.

I got a few comments following the last post in which I shared with you the study that revealed that A LOT of workers are chronically sleep deprived…

So I thought I’d just share with you just a few pointers to get you on the right track if you are suffering from lack of sleep. Please share your comments at the end of this post

According to Harvard Health Publications’s Press release, Repaying Sleep debt, more than 60% of us don’t regularly sleep the brain’s required seven to nine hours of sleep per night.

This is quite a significant number of sleep-deprived people! But don’t fear, there’s hope. They also say that you CAN ward off the negative effect of sleep loss because you CAN repay even a chronic, longstanding sleep debt.

So how do we counter the effects of chronic sleep loss?

Harvard Women’s Health Watch suggests:

If you’ve missed 10 hours of sleep over one week, make up for it over the weekend and the following week. If you’ve missed sleep for decades, it could take a few weeks to repay the debt. Plan a vacation with a light schedule, and sleep every night until you wake naturally. Once you’ve determined how much sleep you need, factor it into your daily schedule.

BrainBasedBusiness further discussed this in an article last year, showing that this really has been/is an ongoing problem.

Dr. Mercola says in a short article about lengthening workweeks robbing people of their precious sleep:

While sleepy workers know they’re not performing well, work is what’s keeping them up at night. Workdays are getting longer and time spent working from home averages close to four-and-a-half hours each week.The average waking time is 5:35 AM, and the average bedtime is 10:53 PM.

The good news? It’s not all bad news. You can do something about it.

I’ve also compiled a few tips for you, to get you started on helping yourself sleep better, ASAP:

8 tips to better sleep

• Don’t nap too long during the day so you can sleep better at night
• Exercise regularly, earlier in the day, not before you sleep
• Finish eating at least two to three hours before you sleep
• Avoid alcohol, caffeine and nicotine before you sleep
• Maintain a regular sleep/wake schedule, including during weekends
• Make your sleep environment cool, peaceful and comfortable
• Use relaxation techniques if they help you sleep
• Start a relaxing bedtime before-you-sleep routine

However, the battle is only just beginning, because:

Bodies don’t ’spring ahead’

By Kim Painter, USA TODAY

A bold prediction: A week from today you will be feeling sleepy, very sleepy.

You will have trouble getting out of bed. If you are a teenager, you will have even more trouble than usual. If you are an early-morning commuter, you may struggle to keep your eyes open as you drive along darkened streets.

What will trigger this mass bout of drowsy driving, this predictably mopey Monday? It will be the first weekday of daylight saving time — that once-a-year "spring ahead" that robs us of one hour of sleep (which is returned when clocks "fall back" in November).

It’s just one hour, but experts in chronobiology — the study of our internal body clocks — say it takes most people several days to adjust. (The fall change also is disruptive, but less so.) One recent study from German researchers, published in the journal Current Biology, found that some habitual night owls have trouble getting enough sleep for weeks after the spring shift — which, in effect, demands that we all go to bed and get up an hour earlier.

At best, "we’ll have a lot of groggy people on the highways the first couple of days," says Michael Smolensky…

……….(click here to continue reading this article)

You can also take a look at:

• Dr. Mercola’s 33 Secrets to a Good Night’s Sleep.
• 25 Tips For a Better Pre Sleep Ritual on Sleepybed.com.
• On Better Sleep by the Better Sleep Council.
• 10 tips for better sleep on MayoClinic.com.
• Tips for a Good Night’s Sleep:Getting the Sleep you Need on Helpguide.org.

How well do YOU sleep?

"Nearly three in 10 workers have become very sleepy, or even fallen asleep, at work in the past month, according to a first-ever study on sleep and the workplace"

Stephanie Armour, USA Today

Sleep apnea is a common disorder: as common as adult diabetes according to the American Sleep Association. They also report that

Risk factors include being male, overweight, and over the age of forty, but sleep apnea can strike anyone at any age, even children.

and that:

Untreated, sleep apnea can cause high blood pressure and other cardiovascular disease, memory problems, weight gain, impotency, and headaches. Moreover, untreated sleep apnea may be responsible for job impairment and motor vehicle crashes.

It can result in excessive snoring with lapses in breathing, and extreme tiredness that may even lead to falling asleep while driving. However, many people snore but do not have sleep apnea. (read more about sleep apnea here and here).

Fortunately, there is treatment available for anyone who suffers from sleep apnea.

Lack of sleep catches up with today’s workforce

By Stephanie Armour, USA TODAY

U.S. workers are silently suffering from a dramatic lack of sleep, costing companies billions of dollars in lost productivity, says a study out Monday.

Nearly three in 10 workers have become very sleepy, or even fallen asleep, at work in the past month, according to a first-ever study on sleep and the workplace by the non-profit National Sleep Foundation. The late-2007 survey was based on a random sample of 1,000 workers.

"It’s a very expensive issue for employers, and it can be fatal, too," says Nilesh Dave, medical director of the Sleep and Breathing Disorders Center at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. "The 24/7 global economy means work is now around the clock."

About 70 million Americans have a problem sleeping, according to the NSF.

Some employers, such as Union Pacific (UNP) railroad, are so concerned that they’re now allowing workers to nap on the job. Employees also say it’s a significant issue, causing them to drive drowsy or even fall asleep at their desks.

Ursula Forhan, 53, of Chicago, used to fall asleep at her desk. She was treated for sleep apnea and says she has no problems today.

"I would take a nap on the floor of my office, and my boss was so tolerant he would step over me," says Forhan, a paralegal in Chicago. She used to drive for work and had to roll down the windows to stay awake.

Among the survey’s findings:

•Dangers on the road. Thirty-six percent of respondents say they have nodded off or fallen asleep while driving, including 26% who say they drive drowsy during the workday.

•Work performance. Twelve percent of respondents have arrived late to work in the past month because of sleepiness. Other problems cited: impatience with others, difficulty concentrating on job tasks and lower productivity.

•Work hours. Employees with more than one job report the highest rate of dissatisfaction with sleep: 43% say they get a good night’s sleep only a few nights per month or less. Part-time workers report the highest rate of sleep satisfaction.

Several factors are driving the trend toward sleepier employees. Employees are putting in longer hours, in part due to increased pressure from employers to ramp up productivity. The study found that one-fourth of respondents have a workday that lasts between eight and nine hours, and another fourth say they work up to 10 hours a day.

Technology, which is supposed to enhance productivity, has also required employees to be available. "You’re not disconnecting except when you hit the pillow," says Mark Rosekind, a consultant who worked on the survey.

(read this article here)

Related posts:

How to Wake Up and Have an Awesome Night’s Sleep

Napping: How To Do It… and Feel Good About It

30 Ways To Destroy A Hangover – The Ultimate Guide

How to Maintain and Increase Brain Activity Over the Long Haul

Discovering Peace … through White Noise?

Follow These 3 Tips to Get More Done

… without killing yourself.

Do you ever feel like the more you have to do, the less you actually get done? Sometimes it’s hard for me to really decide if this is true in reality, but even the feeling of it can cause me mental anguish.

Because I’ve been extremely busy the past few weeks (hence the fewer blog entries), I decided to study myself on my most productive days. What do I do during those days that finish with me feeling really proud versus those days that feel like a waste?

I did a some self-study and talked with a few colleagues, and here’s what I came up with for fighting laziness.

1. Put your tasks into "blocks."

I like to put related tasks together so they are easier to accomplish. For instance, I group all the phone calls of the day for midmorning when most people (on the other end) are available. I make all the calls, mark down my results, and then group any unfinished calls for the next day. It is important to mentally "end" the task, so it doesn’t occupy your mind later on. I’m in the habit now, so I don’t think about the calls for the rest of the day.

2. Take frequent, planned breaks.

This doesn’t mean take a break every 15 minutes, but set a timer or promise yourself "after I get this done" that you will get up to stretch or walk around. The mental break and short (albeit minor) exercise will keep your blood flowing and help your posture.

3. Set limits to your work-day.

This might seem counterintuitive, but when you start wearing out your brain power, your work output takes a nose-dive. So, plan long term and don’t burn yourself out by staying for "just one more task" at the office every day. Set your days goals, and once they’re done, take some "me" time. Be happy! You made good use of the day (hopefully you set big yet realistic goals)!

These 3 tips will help you accomplish more tasks in LESS TIME, but they aren’t the end-all for productivity. It’s a long road, but by building 1 small habit at a time, you’ll soon feel a world of difference.

Use this technique to begin ditching your bad habits.

…and start building GOOD ones (yes, it’s possible).

Do you smoke, but wish you didn’t? Does it seem impossible, no matter how hard you try, to keep your desk or office lean and clean? Or do you wish you read for 30 minutes a day to learn new gardening techniques?

Habits, good or bad, are a major part of our life. Think about it, how many actions or activities do you repeat day in and day out? If you can’t think of any, observe yourself today and note which tasks you do daily without a second thought.

The beauty and the curse of habits is they’re so thoughtless. But wait! There is usually something that inspires each habit occurring; a meal inspires a cigarette, getting home from work inspires 2 hours in front of the TV, or a meeting means you need a Coke.

Introduce yourself to The Trigger. The Trigger is the specific event, feeling, or activity – the meal, arrival home, or meeting – that triggers a desire in you – the cigarette, TV, or coke. The first key to breaking a bad habit is understanding what triggers it. Once you know that, you may be able to remove your bad habit by removing the trigger. Only smoke cigarettes when you’ve had a few too many beers? Limit your intoxication by only bringing cash when you socialize and limiting the quantity you bring. No money = no more beers. But don’t forget the taxi!

Some triggers can’t be removed from daily life. Fact of life. And these bad habits generally bring some sort of pleasure, albeit usually a short-term pleasure. So, your next step is figuring out how you’re going to fill the void left by this habit-removal. Now we’re starting to understand…

… The Substitute. The Substitute is what replaces your habit in bringing you pleasure. Want to quit taking that Coke to the meeting? Take a smoothie or fruit juice instead. Always need a coffee in the morning? Try replacing it with tea. Although you must be extremely careful with this, you could try a multi-step substitute replacement using progressively better (or less bad) substitutes. This method highlights the fact that, regardless of the 1-step or multi-step, you…

… need A Game Plan. Your Game Plan is your schedule for habit-removal. Set up checkpoints, 30, 90, and 365 day checkpoints seem good (you didn’t think you could get by with no record keeping, did you?). Use these check-points to assess how successful you’ve been. If at Day 30 you’re kicking that poor habit, feel good! Give yourself a reward. If you haven’t improved much, assess why it is. Did you properly identify The Trigger? Or maybe you don’t have…

… High Stakes. Having High Stakes means you get a meaningful reward or a punishment for success or failure. For example, let’s say your goal is to work out 4 times per week (here’s how to do it). Before starting, give a trustworthy friend $50 to hold onto. If you succeed to you get to use that for a professional massage. If not, they get to keep it (be clear about this and make sure they agree to it). The Stakes are high and in this case could get expensive, so you…

… might as well Maintain Focus. Keep it to one new habit per 30 days. Here’s why. One per month means that in one year, you could stop (start) these bad (good) habits:

• Smoking
• Drinking 4 Diet Cokes per day
• Maintain a lean and clean inbox
• Work out 4 times per week
• Read 30 minutes per day
• Stop watching TV completely
• Stop picking your nails
• Keep the litter box clean for your feline friend by cleaning it daily
• Meditate daily
• Eat breakfast every day
• Keep your kitchen clean by scrubbing it down each month
• Stop eating those brownies after every dinner

Not a bad list, eh? I’d call that a pretty good year.

(Photo Source)

Four Tips to Keep Your Brain Active and Alert.

Use this list to keep your brain healthy and energized during those marathon work periods.

If you are like most people on this planet, I’d bet you sometimes find yourself feeling like no matter what you do, you can’t get ahead in your work. And when deadlines, overbearing bosses, or family obligations loom over your head, sometimes you are forced to work for extremely long, unhealthy periods of time. However, it is fairly well known that long periods of work and sleep deprivation can alter your mental awareness. Here’s a list of things to do to keep your mind energized and your brain activity high.

1. Meditate – Meditating regularly will recharge your brain and help you refocus your thoughts. It also has great health benefits. When you work without a break for extremely long periods of time, you will begin to find yourself “unable to think about this or that.” If you find yourself thinking this statement, it is a big clue that you need a break. Meditation can help you re-energize your brain.

2. Exercise – The health of your body and mind are interconnected. The status of one will definitely affect the other, so be sure to make exercise a habit and enjoyable. You’ll find that as your physical health increases, so does your mental health. Here’s what a NY Times had this to say about it:

One form of training, however, has been shown to maintain and improve brain health — physical exercise. In humans, exercise improves what scientists call “executive function,” the set of abilities that allows you to select behavior that’s appropriate to the situation, inhibit inappropriate behavior and focus on the job at hand in spite of distractions. Executive function includes basic functions like processing speed, response speed and working memory, the type used to remember a house number while walking from the car to a party.

3. Get Started – Think about it. How many times does the anticipation of your workload actually prevent you from getting started? Your brain experiences a flurry of activity as you prepare for the tasks ahead, and this sometimes causes you to forget to start! Having a plan is important, but don’t get lost in planning. Or sulking because of upcoming work. Just do it. Here’s a few specific tips for overcoming procrastination.

4. Get A Few Hobbies – Hobbies bring joy to your life and keep your brain active. Why find more than 1 hobby? If your brain focuses on performing only a few different activities, it’ll never develop the wide processing power required for true cognitive development. Having a venue for creativity is just pleasant in general, too. That same NY Times article offered this:

That is, practice can certainly make people better at sudoku puzzles or help them remember lists more accurately. The improvement can even last for years. Similarly, people tend to retain skills and knowledge they learned thoroughly when they were younger. Unless the activities span a broad spectrum of abilities, though, there seems to be no benefit to general mental fitness.

Summary

Start with these 4 tips and you’ll be well on your way to a healthier, more active brain that is more capable of lasting through those long work sessions. If you would like even more tips, here are some more ideas for increasing brain activity.

(Picture Sources)

A new study sheds some light on how your mind combats negative events like death.

A study to be printed in the November issue of Psychological Science says that when faced with negative events (like your own death) the mind automatically triggers happy feelings. This is done as a sort of defense mechanism to keep us from falling into a depression due to the setbacks we encounter in our daily lives.

In the study, students were broken into 2 groups, one asked to contemplate their own death and the other to imagine dental pain. Afterwards, they were put through explicit emotion tests as well as implicit emotional tests. The study found:

There was no difference in scores between the groups on the explicit tests of emotion and affect. But in the implicit tests of nonconscious emotion — the wordplay — researchers found that the students who were preoccupied with death tended to generate significantly more positive-emotion words and word matches than the dental-pain group.

What does this mean? Our mind may just have an immune system that aids us in our psychological battles of facing rejection, aging, and the like. So, as we go through our days and inevitably face our challenges, remember – our mind is trying to help us! Use this fact as your first step towards building a strong positive outlook and getting the most from life. On that note, you should also check out the American Monk – some great (and free) lessons for developing your mind.

(Reference)
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A few tips to becoming a skilled listener.

It’s a skill so many talk about, but so few actually have. How well do you listen? Are you actively digesting the information, or are you instead already conjuring up a response? Do you often forget something (like a name) right after someone tells you? If so, try some of these tips to improve your listening skills.

1. Put forth effort in processing the information someone is sharing with you. Listening takes energy, whereas hearing does not. Don’t yet begin creating a response or pondering the ramifications; you should be focusing intently on the speaker.

2. Allow the speaker to share their complete thought – do not interrupt them. Interrupting prevents you from receiving the complete picture the speaker is trying to paint. This not only can cause miscommunication, but can also make the speaker angry. No one likes getting interrupted.

3. Repeat back what you heard when possible. This ensures you have properly heard and processed the message from the speaker. Once you have confirmed you properly interpreted the speaker, then you can begin formulating your response.

4. Do not perform other tasks while listening. Performing other tasks will steal the energy you should be putting towards listening. Additionally, it is disrespectful to treat a speaker in such a way, especially when your mind wanders too far and you realize they just asked you a question.

I’ll repeat this one again since it is so important – and so common. DO NOT begin formulating a response until AFTER the speaker is done. This prevents you from getting their full message and also, during emotional conversations, helps you be more level-headed.

Mastering these few tips will make you a much better listener. The road to becoming a skilled active listener is not easy, but with consistent effort and determination you can dramatically improve your ability.

(Picture Source)

Scientific Researchers are finding – and seeking to replicate – areas of brain stimulation common across all spiritual and faith-based experiences.

Is communion with your God or Spirit merely a figment of your imagination? Or does it make sense that spiritual experiences stimulate specific areas of the brain? This is the question researchers are trying to answer as they study devout worshippers of different faiths, measuring their brain activity as they meditate, pray, or recall powerful experiences.

While interpretation could go either way towards proving or disproving the existence of a higher power, it is logical that a Buddhist in meditation has an active right prefrontal cortex (responsible for attention and planning), given the meditative requirements of intensely focusing on one thought or object. And on the same coin, who’d argue the merits of nuns experiencing an activated caudate nucleus, common when experiencing feelings of love – coinciding with reported feelings of “unconditional love” while in prayer.

So, is science or faith the real player here?

Maybe it’s both:

Moreover, no matter what neural correlates scientists may find, the results cannot prove or disprove the existence of God. Although atheists might argue that finding spirituality in the brain implies that religion is nothing more than divine delusion, the nuns were thrilled by their brain scans for precisely the opposite reason: they seemed to provide confirmation of God’s interactions with them.

Either way, mastering the replication techniques described here could provide vast benefits for the general public, like improving immune systems, decreased depression, or just a more happy, healthy person. Faith and Science… maybe they CAN get along.

Scientific American::Searching for God in the Brain

The Top Productivity Blogs Collected by Social Rankings!

An incredible new website, Productivity Zen, identifies the top 15 productivity stories and blogs of the day by monitoring the buzz of the productivity blog community.

The developers of the site use a software called SocialRank to monitor each of the best productivity sites and determine the day’s hottest articles and bloggers in the field.

According to the SocialRank team:

This is done by analyzing how sites and users link, connect, and discuss each other’s content. Add a touch of math and what we have is a powerful filter into the hottest stories of the day.

Now you can find better productivity stories, learn more, and get updated… much faster and easier than before.

So far great sites like Zen Habits, Life Optimizer, Matt Idea, and Lifehack have been showing up on the top rankings for the site. But also some new faces that I urge all your productivity junkies to go check out!

It’s so nice to be able to find stuff from within the longtail without having to deal with the complications of technorati and the sheer bias some some social networking sites.

Want to know more about these great sites? Visit the links below:

SocialRank
Productivity Zen