Sleep deprived?

An estimated 80 million American adults are chronically sleep deprived, sleeping less than the recommended seven hours of sleep a night.  

Not getting enough sleep affects our alertness and performance.  You know this.

Do you get enough sleep?

Energy – Have it… or create it?

When you wake up in the morning and “don’t feel like it today”, and have trouble summoning energy, maybe it’s not that you “have no energy”; it’s more like you aren’t generating any.

Besides diet and exercise and sleep, we generate energy when we are really, personally, looking forward to what we are about to do. So, can we do things that we look forward to every day? Can we schedule in time for things we love? Can we do our jobs in a way that is unique and novel and experimental? 

Can we run our life in a way that we look forward to each day?

I think we can. What do you think?

The best version of you

We were born with inherent talents and ambitions. If we ignore them, and try to be someone we aren’t, we will likely find ourselves unhappy.

Mix virtue and best effort with who you already are. I think that’s the recipe for happiness.

What do you think?

Comment with the orange button!

We like consistent forward motion

If we made no money for nine years and then made a million dollars in a year, we would be less happy than if we made $100,000 a year.  If we had nine dull days in a row and then one fantastic one, we’d be less happy than if we had small daily rewards and satisfactions.  

Most people know this and develop daily vices and habits that provide satisfaction in the short term, but not necessarily in the long term.  People who delay gratification in favor of “paying the price” for long-term goals (hopefully that’s you) can be a lot happier if they break down rewards (the fun, the celebration, and soul-satisfying recognition of progress) into small chunks fit for daily consumption. 

Enjoy the journey.

FOMO

Addicted to your smartphone?  You may be suffering from FOMO – Fear of Missing Out. Who said what on Facebook? Returning texts and emails within minutes? Notifications? Meat for marketers?….many of us have lost control of our consciousness and attention.  

You may be able to get by this way in a world where everyone is cycling between floating slivers of distracted attention, but you will never realize your full potential this way.

Do you need to get control of your relationship with technology?

Someone wants to change you…

Lots of people want to “change the world.” Often that means they want to change you. There are lots of them and they have different ideas. Will you comply?

Of course, you’re going to say no. Your life is your own, and you’re not going to bend to the will of anyone else if you don’t want to. Fair enough. But we must understand that is what other people are thinking when we want to change them. They aren’t going to let you do that.

The only people we can really change is ourselves. Control that controllable, because when we change, our world changes.

How are you doing on you?

Ready to hear it.

Sometimes we hear good advice or the answer, but we just aren’t ready to hear it.  We don’t recognize the value or dismiss it because our head is just in a different place right now.

Maybe it’s not something new we need; we just need to listen to what we have heard before.

Are you ready? 

Learn and return

“One recognizes one’s course by discovering the paths that stray from it.” – Albert Camus

We make mistakes, and those mistakes tell us when we are on the wrong path – we can feel it and we know it.

It’s ok. Come back to who you are.

"Eudaimonia"

It’s Aristotle’s word for happiness, and it means “good soul; succeeding at expressing the best within ourselves. Virtue.”

Expressing the best versions of ourselves moment to moment is what happiness is all about. Happiness is a virtuous activity of the soul.

What would your soul like to do right now?

The Economics of Attention

Don’t underestimate how much you play the role of addicted user caught up in the $7 trillion attention economics industry (mind-hacking).

Use technology to become your best self rather than mindlessly letting your one-million-year-old prefrontal cortex get hacked all day every day.