Can the making of good habits go too fast?

Scaffold Tree © by Webb Zahn

I was up at the usual time at 6.28; I poured myself a glass of water and sat for a while. It was nice just sitting there and letting my mind wander. My mind wanted to review what happened yesterday. My first lesson of yesterday was that I could only make a habit if I can find the desire for that habit; but that was not what I was thinking about. My mind was thinking about a healing session I tried.

I think it is healthy to try new things and to be open-minded. I am a reflexologist and I agreed to exchange session with a healer, so I gave her a treatment of reflexology and she gave me a healing session. I couldn’t feel a thing, and I was a bit disappointed I admit. But this morning my mind was rethinking what happened and I realised that I was filled with some kind of calmness that I haven’t felt for a long time. Maybe that healing did something to me after all?

I have learned another lesson by that: I have to consider that maybe I’m pushing myself a bit too hard? I have to accept that my mind and body have limits. Things take time and so does the making of new habits. I have learned that as long as I make new habits I have to accept that I cannot make too many new habits at the same time because then I risk building an incomplete foundation instead of a strong and stable foundation.

My foundation consists of sleep; exercise; diet and cleaning cluttered areas both physically and mentally. But if I break up all of my existing foundation to build a new and stronger one, then what will support my development if I don’t have any foundation?

It would be like building a house without using a scaffold. The scaffold is only a temporary device that stabilises the house while building it. Without the scaffold the workers risk falling down and the working conditions will be too hard and too difficult. You risk that the house will never be finished.

My existing habits are making my current foundation, they are my scaffold and if I want to strengthen my foundation I have to accept that I can only work on some of the foundation at the time or I will not have any foundation at all. My mistake was finding a new habit to implement every week. That is too much.

The past two days have been very important in the making of new habits. To sum up I have learned:

1. You need desire

2. You have to accept that habits take time

3. Do not push yourself

4. Keep a peace of mind

Make a Wake Up Schedule

Time © by alancleaver_2000

Sleep and exercise is going well, I get up at 6.28 and later today I am going swimming 2.000 meters. Soon I will have to work on my diet habits because much to often I have to decide what to cook when I get hungry and by then it’s too late and I just eat whatever I find in the refrigerator.

6.28 am – that’s an odd time to wake up you might think? Well, there is a reason for that; I started my sleeping habits by setting the alarm clock to wake me up at 6.00 am but I realised that was not good. I just could not get out of bed at that time of day. I think it has got something to do with my geographical location. I live in Denmark and today the sun rises at 8.43 am and it sets at 4.17 pm, so getting up at 6 o’clock feels like in the middle of the night and for some reason we ‘Norsemen’ seem to need more sleep in winter than in the summer.

The sun rises about two minutes earlier each day and I thought it would be nice to get up about 6.00 am in the summer, hence I set the clock to wake me up two minutes earlier every Monday. This way my body gets used to getting up earlier and I get a bit more sleep during winter.

You can use this technique no matter where you live in the world. If you have trouble getting up early then start out by deciding a good time to get up (e.g. 6.00 am). Find out when you usually wake up; if you wake up at 9.00 am then set the clock to wake you up at 8.00 am. If you feel good about getting up at 8.00 then set it to 7.00 am.

If 7.00 am is hard for you then you should start getting up at 7.30 am and then accustom your body to get up earlier by setting the alarm clock two minutes earlier every week until you reach your goal.

Make a schedule that shows your progress and then you will reach your goal and get up at 6.00 am. It could look something like this:

Wake up schedule

Goal: 6.00 am

January 6.30 am – 6.24 am

Week 1: 6.30 am

Week 2: 6.28 am

Week 3: 6.26 am

Week 4: 6.24 am

February 6.22 am – 6.16 am

March 6.14 am – 6.08 am

April 6.06 am – 6.00 am

May 6.00 am!

Suicide Pills Would Make Living Easier!

Danger © by spcbrass

How are your eating habits? Today I read in the news that a Danish research team has developed a pill that produces the hormone irisine. That is a hormone that can reduce white fat cells; usually you produce these hormones after regular exercise but now it is possible to loose weight without exercising. Apparently that’s great!

Exercise is not only for loosing weight. Exercise is extremely important for maintaining good health and I don’t understand why people insist on being inactive. If you do a little bit of exercise every day you will strengthen your immune system and get less sick. It seems we are living in a world where we are trying to avoid anything that could be remotely dangerous to our health.

People are scared of eating and touching things because of the risk of getting sick. Why don’t they use their common good sense and exercise to strengthen their body and immune system? We have a whole army of friendly bacteria that will fight for our health if we take good care of them – but we don’t!

Everyday we are warned about the risk of eating and touching things. Let me give you just a few:

1. Don’t drink water from the tap, it is not clean (this actually makes sense in some parts of the world)

2. Don’t drink bottled water, you are not guarantied that it is clean.

3. Don’t eat butter; you risk cancer.

4. Don’t eat red meat; you risk heart decease.

5. Don’t eat poultry; you risk salmonella infections.

6. Don’t eat salt; you risk high blood pressure.

7. Don’t eat sugar; you will get fat.

8. Don’t drink coffee or tee; it will damage your kidneys.

9. Don’t eat raw vegetables, you risk unfriendly bacteria and it is not enough cleaning them in water because of point #1.

10. Don’t eat processed food, because it is full of chemicals (ironically we don’t mind eating an arsenal of pills)

11. Don’t eat canned food; the cans will release unhealthy substances.

12. Don’t eat eggs; they are full of salmonella and cholesterol.

13. Don’t eat fish and shellfish; they are full of heavy metals.

14. Don’t drink milk; it will give allergies.

15. Don’t eat cheese it will harm you colon.

I could probably go on with the list because I see new things every day that we should not eat. But what should we do then? According to the list above it is impossible for us to live, we shouldn’t really be eating anything. But the dilemma is that if we avoid eating anything then we will die from starvation. Thus, we should just take a suicide pill and get it over with, because living is just too troublesome.

Do not focus on all the dangers in this world; use your common sense and trust your body’s ability to take care of those dangers if you take good care of your body. Develop good eating habits; develop good exercise habits; develop good sleep habit and use good sense.

All the above dangers are right; you do risk all these things, but not because you do these things or eat these things. You risk getting sick because you do not take care of your body and because you exaggerate the use of the above things. Too much of anything is bad to your health, but a little of everything is good to your health.

Did you know that if you choose to be a fanatic health freak you would end up being very lonely because you do not fit into any social environment? Research shows that people that don’t socialise and worry too much are generally unhappier, they are sicker and they don’t live as long as they could.

Think about it; sometimes it is healthier for you to drink a beer and eat a chocolate muffin than a well-cooked carrot!

Living is hard – you can die from it! We are surrounded by potential danger and that is what makes living interesting. Make a choice: Live or die; challenge danger or give up and take a suicide pill!

Sleep Is a Mystery

Sleeping in the subway © by Smath.

Today I wanted to give you a series of videos from YouTube about sleep habits, but it turns out that opinions about sleep are very different. A lot of people experiment with sleep because in the fast moving world we are living in it seems like waste of time to sleep.

There are some similarities though; no matter who you ask everybody agrees that sleep is important and there are a few things most people agree are important to a good night’s sleep like having a good pillow, waking up early at the same time every day, not drinking coffee before going to sleep and not watching television in bed.

Quality over quantity

I believe that whatever you do it is better to do it well than doing it over again because you didn’t perform well and made a lot of errors. It is more important to deliver a few good results of high quality than a lot of results of low quality. Sleep will help you to perform better and I would rather sleep more and produce high quality results than sleeping less and doing a lot of second rank work.

Cultural differences

Apparently sleep deprivation is a huge problem in the United States of America and it leads to a lot of health issues. It seems that the US citizen believe that sleeping is for lazy people and the less you sleep the better. Research shows that the nations that take most naps are Japan, Germany and Denmark (according to Dr. Sara Mednick). I’m lucky to live in a nation where taking a nap is looked upon as a good thing (Denmark). I nap every day between 1pm and 3pm and I feel energised.

Please watch Dr. Sara Mednick present her research and you will see the importance of sleep and napping.

Milk and cookies – don’t!

For some weird reason most American sleep experts recommend milk and cookies before bedtime. It puzzles me and it must be a cultural thing because cannot imagine that eating fat and sugar before bedtime is a good habit. If you would eat anything to fall asleep the best thing would be a bit of oatmeal with water; it is healthy and helps your body relax.

Sleep habits by BBC

BBC has made a program about sleep I highly recommend watching. It highlights the problems about bad sleep and sleep deprivation and it shows the recent sleep research.