This is how to hold your kids accountable to things that you ask them to do, without nagging them for 15 minutes on the phone and annoying the shit out of them. Tell them to do something (i.e. a chore) and then tell them that you will call tomorrow and check on you the next day. This keeps them accountable while keeping the nagging conversation to a minimum.
Short and simple.
Here is my guide: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/topicoftheweek121.htm
I’m starting my week-long detoxification session. Doing some spring cleaning on my body. I hope this helps fix my stomach problems. Get the shit out of my body….literally and figuratively.
One is motivated by self-improvement, rather than money. We cannot continue to persevere if it is just money that we are after. Money is a tool, a means to an end. It is not the goal. Money will serve its purpose as far as allowing us to pay the bills and whatever else is necessary for the purpose of survival, but that is where its purpose stops. After that, after the bills, food, lights, rent, everything else is luxury. We may gain brief pleasure from these extra items, but cars jewelry, clothes, and the etceteras are not sustainable forms or sources of happiness. A car driven 100 times will be just another car, even if it is a Phantom. As is is the case for jewelry that is worm over and over again. These are items, and they cannot continuously and endlessly give us joy.
What is the lesson here? We must find a way to satisfy our thirst for happiness from within. Nothing superficial is sustainable in terms of happiness. This, my friends, is the great challenge of life. Not to get more money, advance in our careers, buy more stuff. No, that is not the purpose and challenge of life. Rather, the challenge is to quench that seemingly insatiable thirst for more and more and more. But we cannot go about quenching this thirst by acquiring more. Instead, we must stop this way of thinking and appreciate what we already have. THIS is the challenge of life: being happy with what you have. Being OVERJOYED with what you have. That is our challenge.
HOW CAN THIS SENSE OF HAPPINESS BE ACHIEVED?
Be present. We are either in stages of regret about the past, or in phases of worry about the future. Focus on what IS. What is happiness? Living in the moment, and appreciating it.
After extensive research contrary to my original assumptions, the biphasic sleep is actually NOT optimal. What I will do instead though is experiment with another form of biphasic sleep. I’ll sleep from 12 to 6, and then take a 30 minute nap after work at 7pm. This should be perfect for me.
[Note: This is a poem that I wrote about a year ago. I just found it and wanted to remember it, so I am reposting it here. Hope you enjoy it!]
it has been a while. been a while since i’ve made a real, genuine, sincere, emotional connection with anyone…since you. been a while since the feelings for another have been mirrored and reciprocated with the same intensity…or mirrored and reciprocated at all.
I lost my innocence to you. And ever since you, it seems like I’ve lost my inner child too. So I lost me when I found and lost you, and all I really want is the old me back, at least the good parts.
it’s weird because it’s almost like i’ve become you. but the difference is, i can’t force myself to forge the spell of love to seep through the blood vessels in my body into my mind. i guess my brain isn’t getting the dopamine dosage it needs, and i’m having a serious case of withdrawals.
i’m surprised that it took so long. so long for me to long for something longer than a night’s worth of fucking formalities and physicality. see, the reality is that i miss all the cute shit that comes with having a girlfriend, boo, significant other, wifee, whatever is a synonym for lover.
so fuck the fucking. wait, okay, i didn’t mean to say all that. what i mean is that i miss the sweets kisses, whispering sweet nothings while cuddling on the bed with our body and souls touching.
But I guess all the cute shit is nothing compared to the fear I have of making myself vulnerable. I mean, I don’t mind telling a chick I’m feelin her and getting rejected. Yeah, it hurts my ego a little bit, but what’s worse is falling in love and then being left with a broken heart and breathless, something that makes optimists pessimistic.
So my mind argues with itself, conflicting trains of thought on the same track speeding toward a head-on collision…in my head. All I know is that, at the end of the night, after all is said and done in bed, the one thought that still remains sitting upon my head is that I wish I had one. Just one.
But the space next to me still remains vacant, rented out by girls with boyfriends and ex’s looking for replacements. The place in my heart with the space created to fit my soul mate is still untaken. Where’s that somebody that will make me forget all the sadness that comes after the fact?
Cupid is slanging arrows out on some Katt Williams shit, talking about, “Remember that shit I gave you last week, homie? That was nothing. See, this shit right here, homie? This shit right here?! This shit is called LOVE.” And best believe, right now at least to me, that shit sounds real attractive.
I am ready for love, so you know India.Arie is my girl. So here’s my love letter, break up note, sorry card all rolled into one and dedicated to the world. And to my soon-to-be boo, I hope things aren’t super complicated when I meet you, but it’ll all be worth it in the end even if it is.
Yesterday was the most excruciating wake up ever. Today wasn’t too much better. My body did not want to wake up at all, so I had to force it up. I was dead tired through the whole day, but when nap time came around, my body didn’t want to sleep AGAIN!!! So I laid there with my eyes closed and basically meditated for 1.5 hours.
Honestly, I have definitely wanted to just quit multiple times, and it’s only been 3 days. I seriously feel like I will go crazy due to the lack of sleep, but I’m forcing myself to not be a bitch about it and finish. I’m taking two weeks out of my life to test whether or not biphasic sleep is compatible with me or not. I hope it is, because I do SO MUCH MORE with less sleep at this point, even though I’m Black-Friday tired.
There are a few reasons that I absolutely NEED to take the entrepreneurial route. Aside from hating the fact that I have to work for somebody, one huge reason is that I am very unhappy with the assumption that we must be miserable at work. Yeah, people always tell me “to appreciate the present” or “you are in control of how you feel, not your work”. Well, I think that’s true, up to a certain point. You might be able to convince yourself of this, but if you aren’t using your full potential, you will never be happy. I agree with the belief that the main purpose of life is to do what you can to reach your full potential. What does this mean? It means giving this world the best you can.
This the one thing that brings about insecurity, doubt, and regret in people. People are too afraid to take risks and do something that they love, or at the very least enjoy. I think it’s important to take chances and go for what you want. It’s better than wondering how it would’ve gone.
These are our favorite Hip-Hop beats from the 1990’s that will be going on our mixtape. What do you think?
[6:53am] Definitely a struggle waking up….don’t know if I….can….make……..it. HAHA just kidding! It was pretty hard getting up, but not as painful as I thought it would be. It might be because I was looking forward to changing my sleep schedule, as opposed to actually waking up for work. But all in all, I’m actually surprised, considering I really did only sleep like 4 hours. I hope this isn’t one of those times where I feel alright in the morning and then lose all energy and hope in about 2 hours. We’ll see! But for now, good morning!
[12:17am] First day wasn’t too bad. I actually couldn’t sleep for my midday nap, so it’s gonna be another late night today. Hopefully I’ll be tired tomorrow at 7pm so I can sleep during my nap. I was pretty energized the whole day though.
Success is often tedious. When we see success in others, it looks exciting and fun. We see someone who is successful in business living in a magnificent house, driving a shiny new car and taking exotic vacations. We see a successful athlete being cheered by the crowd after a winning performance…
Has this happened to you, where a friend tells you something, and then a week later you forget what he/she told you? Well, if you have a terrible memory like mine, it happens every day. But I was thinking about it from the reverse point of view, how would I get somebody to remember something that I told them? Well, it came in the form of an epiphany, but is probably really simple.
Here it is: make it so that what you say is relevant to them personally. For example, instead of saying “I have this really cool blog”, you could say “You would really like my blog, I always talk about [insert interesting thing here]”. Obviously a terrible example, but you get the point. Make it important to the person you are talking to. Otherwise, it’s in one ear and out the other.
These will keep me busy for a while. Time to do work!
Very recently, I started realizing that the 24 hours we’re all allotted daily isn’t enough to do all the things I want to do. I’ve also realized that:
(1) I really love sleep, and
(2) I will not function well if I’m sleep-deprived.
This led me to research ways to get more energy. I am currently spreading myself really thin in like 278,472,834 other activities (slight exaggeration), so I’ve been looking for healthier lifestyle changes I can make in order to be more awake. After googling “sleep less more energy”, I stumbled upon a method that has apparently worked for many. It’s called biphasic sleep.
The majority of us follow a monophasic sleeping pattern, which is the classic 8 hours per night. With this other sleeping method (biphasic or polyphasic), it is actually supposed to increase your energy, dream recollection, and sleep quality. I’m not really into the scientific stuff, so I’ll explain the method in Dustin’s terms (a cousin of laymen’s terms). Basically, you take a 1.5 hour nap around 7pm, stay up until 1:30am, sleep for 4.5 hours until 6am. You sleep for a total of 6 hours a day cumulatively.
Besides the obvious benefits of having more energy on less sleep, saving time, etc., you are also able to be a night owl and an early bird AT THE SAME TIME. This is so intriguing and appealing to me because I love staying up late AND waking up early - it’s just hard to do so simultaneously.
So with the facts laid out, I will start the experiment today. I will nap at 7 (which is actually in 15 minutes), wake up in 1.5 hours, and sleep at 1:30. They say that it could take up to 2 weeks to acclimate your body to this new sleeping pattern, so hopefully the jet lag feeling won’t be too much of a downer. I will keep you guys updated on my progress. Good sleeping!
[edit: I slept in too late this morning, and can’t sleep hahaha. I’ll just have to force myself to wake up super early tomorrow]
For more info on this, check out this discussion in
Steve Pavlina’s member forum. There he provides you
with a list of resources that you can read as well.
This post is more for my fellas, but works for both.
I realize that both genders are inclined to do some shady side stuff. There’s just one thing, girls are able to sweep it under the rug so well. From my personal interactions with the girls that I’ve befriended and spoken to on a very intimate (but still friendly) basis, they are just better at keeping those things secret.
Now that I’ve gotten the uncomfortable gender comparisons out of the way, here’s what I was getting to: honesty. Honesty is so important in any relationship (friendship, love affair, etc.) that you want to succeed. Not only is honesty going to keep the communication open between you and the other person, it shows that you respect them. This is so important to me, to be able to be honest. There should be no reason to hide things from the person you are seeing, including (but not limited to) going out, smoking weed, drinking, and [insert anything you could possibly hide here].
Those little things, while negligible, add up! You shouldn’t have to hide away from your significant other so you can do something, and if you absolutely MUST have to involve yourself in those activities, then that person isn’t for you. Find somebody who understands, or is more open for you.
If you are seeing multiple people, you should respect them enough to let them make the decision as to whether they are comfortable with you seeing somebody else. This not only shows them that you are man enough to be honest, but it also gives them the option to leave. They cannot hold anything against you if you have been completely honest with them; in fact, they will see you in a higher regard.
Come on, gentlemen - be honest, be respectful, and don’t be pansies.
Don’t you hate when people do that in the comments section on YouTube? Anyways, this is my first blog post for this post, which I will designate as my “Personal Progress Blog”. I will keep you updated with my progress, where I’m at with my goals, etc. I will make a first “official” post soon.
