Jumpstart Your Dream Life

A Good Night’s Rest: How to Sleep Well and Wake Up Feeling Energized

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Sleep. We know it’s important to our well-being, and yet we do a poor job of translating theory into practice.

We whittle away the hours working on projects, watching late-night entertainment, and talking to other people when we should be calling it a night. Some of us pull all-nighters just to get something done right before a deadline. You might even hear someone brag about how little they sleep.

There are more things to do now than ever before. More obligations, more choices, more opportunities. But with the ever-present constraint of 24 hours in a day, the first thing we cut is sleep.

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Drinks, Drugs, and Dinners: How Diet Affects Your Sleep

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It’s that dreaded time again.

Not when you have to get out of bed. Not when you have to step into a meeting. It’s when the clock strikes, signaling time for you to sleep.

As you crawl into bed, you wonder if things will be different. Will you shut your eyes and finally fall into slumber? Or will you once again stare at the ceiling, waiting until you drift asleep? If it’s the latter, you’re likely to end up exhausted the next morning, even though you went to bed early.

There are numerous reasons why we have difficulty falling asleep. Sometimes, it’s psychological. Other times, it’s due to the stresses that life cruelly throws at us. But what about our dietary habits?

We carefully plan out our diets to energize ourselves, trim our figures, and improve our overall health. Yet, the substances we ingest take a secondary role when it comes to sleep.

Here are four dietary factors that might be affecting your sleep:

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The Only 5 Things You Need In Order to Live a Good Life

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“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” — Confucius

Overload has become the norm.

Every single day, we’re barraged with copious amounts of information. We’re told how we should spend our time, what we should eat, and where we should go. While we search endlessly for the answer, we usually end up where we began: in a bottomless well.

When you add in factors such as the rise of automated technology, increasing choices, and the pressure to keep up, is it any wonder that we feel swallowed up in everything?

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How Late Should You Be Drinking Your Daily Coffee?

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Imagine it’s a Monday morning. You wake up to the beeping of your alarm and slowly open your eyes. After lying in bed for a few more minutes, you slowly get up and rub your eyes.

Groggy and bleary-eyed, you get dressed and prepare yourself for another start of the week. You glance at the clock and realize that you’re running late, so you leave for the office ASAP.

When you arrive, you turn on the computer and put down your things before heading to the kitchen. Now, here’s a question: what drink do you make for yourself?

If you chose coffee, well, you’re in good company.

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How to Fall Asleep Within Minutes

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How would you feel after a restless night?

How about two nights? Or 10 nights in a row?

On December 28, 1963, Randy Gardner, with the help of two classmates, went on a mission to find out how his body would respond if he stayed awake until January 8, 1964, making a total of 264 hours (or 11 days).

To begin, he woke up bright and early at 6 am, alert and energized. But by the second day, he had trouble focusing on his surroundings and recognizing objects given to him. By the third day, Gardner became grouchy and his speech began to slur. The day afterward, he imagined himself to be a Paul Lowe, a 200-pound football player, while he was barely 120 pounds.

The experiment was originally meant for a high school science fair, but news spread to Stanford researcher William Dent, who flew down to San Diego to get involved[1].

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