Why do we need to sleep?

Until recently, no one really knew the answer. But in the past few years, Neuroscientists have made some incredible breakthroughs in understanding the purpose of sleep. I thought I’d share some of that research with you:

• Sleep Helps You Retain Information You Learned During the Day – While you sleep, the hippocampus and the neocortex are busy chatting away with one another. The hippocampus starts the conversation by sending newly obtained information it received from other parts of the brain during the day to the neocortex. The neocortex then reaches out to the brain to try to find out where this new information was initially acquired. If enough neurons respond, the neocortex sends a response to the hippocampus that this information is important. What happens next is really amazing. During the REM portion of sleep, the hippocampus and neocortex repeatedly loop this new information back and forth with one another thousands of times in an effort to convert this new information into a long-term memory.
• Conscious & Subconscious Communication –  Sleep enables offline communication between the conscious mind (aka neocortex), which shuts down during sleep, and the subconscious mind (limbic system and brain stem). This is important because the subconscious mind is regularly taking in sensory data that is invisible to the conscious mind. When you experience intuition, this is actually the conscious mind telling you something it learned from the subconscious mind during a sleep cycle.
• Sleep Helps Brain Cells Communicate – Sleep increases the size of your myelin sheath. The myelin sheath insulates the axon branches on each brain cell. Without the myelin sheath, brain cells would not be able to communicate with each other. The thicker the myelin sheath, the faster and more powerful the communication. Individuals who have thicker myelin sheaths have higher IQs.
• Sleep Restores Willpower – When willpower is depleted, we become unable to focus and think clearly, causing us to be distracted and to make poor decisions. Sleep helps to restore our depleted reserves of willpower.
• Sleep Reduces Inflammation and Helps You Think Clearer – Sleep slows down your Sypathetic Nervous System, reducing stress. This not only helps you think clearer but also helps to reduce inflammation throughout the body. Chronic inflammation is associated with all sorts of diseases, including cancer and heart disease. Individuals who do not get enough sleep make poor decisions, suffer from chronic inflammation and are susceptible to disease.

How much sleep is enough?

The average adult requires between four to six sleep cycles a night. Each sleep cycle is composed of five separate levels of sleep: alpha, theta, delta, rapid eye movement (REM) and then back to theta. The first three sleep levels last approximately 65 minutes. REM lasts 20 minutes and the final level of sleep lasts 5 minutes. So, each sleep cycle lasts about 90 minutes. Four sleep cycles is six hours, five sleep cycles is 7.5 hours and six sleep cycles is nine hours.

This is why some individuals require more or less sleep than others. It all depends on how many sleep cycles your brain needs every night. The number of hours you sleep is less important than the number of complete sleep cycles your brain requires every night. Five sleep cycles a night, or 7.5 hours, is considered optimal.

What great achievement are you currently working to accomplish?

Everyone should have one thing they are pursuing that, when achieved, helps set them apart from everyone else. It should be something they are doing on the side that is big, challenging, unique and riddled with adversity. This side hustle should be something that forces you to gain knowledge and develop either new skills or improve existing skills.

Only through growth is success possible. Growth, therefore, is a prerequisite for success. So, what are you doing to grow?

Most will not have an answer to these two questions. And most eke out a living, bathed in mediocrity, following the herd of others eking out a living, pursuing mediocrity.

Life becomes worth living when you are pursuing something that separates you from the herd. Find your masterstroke, your side hustle, your life dream, or big goal. Then pursue it. Those who become rich and successful all have something they were pursuing that, when achieved, transformed them into the successful people they needed to become in order for success to visit them.

We are the only species on the planet that dreams and pursues those dreams. Find your masterstroke and devote time every day to it. It won’t be easy but it will light a fire inside you that makes life worth living.

I’ve been “working” on a research article. This includes about 200 pages of research to read before I complete the article.

The truth is, I’ve been procrastinating.

For two weeks I’ve been been lugging this research around with me inside my car, rationalizing that lugging it around will spur me on to get through the reading.

This morning, finally, I got fed up and decided to commit to five minutes of reading. Nearly two hours later, I had most of the reading done and was even able to start writing my article.

As human beings, we have a tendency to overestimate the difficulty and time commitment of challenging tasks. As a result, we procrastinate.

I knew this from my research, yet despite my knowledge, I still procrastinated. Once I realized what was going on, I immediately leaned on one of my favorite anti-procrastination tools. I’ve come to refer to it as the Small Start Strategy.

This strategy really works in overcoming procrastination. It gives you permission to start small on any project, say five minutes, and then quit. The interesting thing is that every time I’ve used this strategy to get started on some project, I always go way beyond the five minutes.

Starting small is a powerful way to overcome procrastination. Why does it work?

It’s neurological. Once your prefrontal cortex gets going it’s hard to turn that engine off. Our brains, believe it or not, like challenging tasks. They like being used and especially like working on challenging projects.

So why do our brains fight us so, forcing us to procrastinate?

Well, our brains are also lazy. It’s like having a Jekyll and Hyde living inside your skull. Part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, loves to work while another part of the brain, the Basal Ganglia, is obsessed with conserving brain fuel, or keeping our brains from going to work.

So, these two brain areas are constantly in a tug of war, competing with one another to get their way.

The Small Start Strategy works because the Basal Ganglia is not threatened by five minutes of thinking – five minutes will not use up that much brain fuel. As a result, it does not fight us during those first five minutes.

But once we get started, the prefrontal cortex, like a sleeping giant who has been awakened, overpowers the Basal Ganglia and takes over. This “flow” will last until our willpower reserves begin to run dry. We have about 2-3 hours of willpower reserves.

So, start small on any project you have been procrastinating on. You will awaken the sleeping giant that resides inside each one of us, our prefrontal cortex, and soon you will find yourself happily working away, getting the project completed.

“He that hastens to be rich has an evil eye, and considers not that poverty shall come upon him.” Proverbs 28:22

At one time Howard Hughes was the richest man in the world. He worked hard to build an empire. He became obsessed in his singular desire for wealth, power and fame. His greed overtook all of his other priorities in his life. Despite all of this wealth, power and fame, in the end he had nothing. He became a recluse, isolating himself in his home and abandoning all that makes life worth living – family, relationships and community.

There is nothing wrong with pursuing a dream and working hard to become rich and successful. But when that pursuit morphs into the single-minded desire for wealth, dictating every aspect of your life, you’ve been infected by a cancer known as greed.

Greed creates unhappiness

Greed, unchecked, destroys your family, friendships and relationships, resulting in unhappiness.

Greed shifts your focus

It distracts you from the pursuit of your dreams, your goals and the things that are important to you – financial security, family, friends and relationships.

Greed creates tunnel vision

Greed forces you to chase what you do not have. You obsess on what others have and what you lack in life.

Greed makes you reckless, arrogant and lazy

It seduces you into taking shortcuts. Greed will entice you to take careless risks. It will drive you to do things that are illegal, unethical, immoral.  

Be on wary of greed. It is a destructive force of nature that will undermine your life. It will take your soul, your family, your friendships and your happiness.

To prevent greed from overtaking your life, keep your eye focused on what is important to you – a loving family, caring relationships and devotion to your community. Don’t make money your focus. Money is just a means to an end.  Give generously to those around you. Generosity is the antidote to greed. 

I read every email I receive from subscribers/readers/fans. I read every tweet. I read every Facebook post and LinkedIn post. I do this because I often find inside these communications an opportunity for an article that could add value to everyone. One such opportunity presented itself yesterday. I think this is an important topic and thought I’d share some of my research.

When both spouses are on the same page, success is almost guaranteed. When both spouses are not on the same page, success comes hard. What do I mean by being on the same page?

• Both spouses are frugal when it comes to money.
• Both spouses are habitual savers – If one spouse is not a saver, it will virtually guarantee that you will never become financially independent.
• Both spouses have similar long-term financial goals.
• Both spouses have a positive, upbeat mindset – Having a positive mindset is a prerequisite for success. If one spouse suffers from depression and does not seek treatment to manage it, that virtually guarantees you will not succeed in achieving your dreams and goals. It will derail you from the pursuit of success. Drug or alcohol addictions will create a toxic environment and infect both spouses with a negative mindset. Gambling addictions have the same toxic effect on mindset for both spouses.
• Both spouses are supportive of each another – We all have dreams and goals. Supportive means each spouse supports the other in the pursuit of their dreams and goals. Sixty-one percent of the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study were business owners. Their spouses supported them in their efforts to grow their business. Oftentimes, both spouses worked together in growing the business.
• Both spouses must be loyal to each other – Infidelity will not only doom a marriage, it will almost always prevent you from becoming rich and successful. Only 19% of the millionaires in my study were divorced, whereas 46% of the poor in my study were divorced. There are numerous studies that found divorce of a spouse is more stressful than the death of a spouse, which negatively affects your health. Not only that, divorce is often financial suicide. Most never recover financially from a divorce. The few who do learn that it takes an average of 5-7 years to recover from a divorce.

When both spouses are not on the same page, success becomes very difficult. It’s like having a business partner who is not working on the business. Both spouses must pull the same cart together. When one spouse is not on the same page, the cart will eventually become too hard to pull on your own.

Rich people are not average. To become rich and successful you must do what average people are unwilling or afraid to do. This typically involves taking some financial or career risk and devoting most of your time to ensure that that risk pays off.

In society, we are conditioned into believing that the path to success lies in a college education. But my research says otherwise. It’s not enough to get a college degree. College degrees most definitely do help you find a job but they are now a pre-requisite or commodity, not something that makes you stand out. According to the Census Bureau, between 32%-36% of working adults have a college degree.

Getting a college degree does increase your chances for becoming rich – 39% of the self-made millionaires in my Rich Habits Study didn’t have a college degree. And, according to a 2014 CareerBuilder survey, 51% of all jobs in the U.S. do not even require a college degree.

The true, sure path towards unlimited success and riches can only be found in pursuing a dream or something you are passionate about that you can monetize and then committing yourself to this dream or passion for the rest of your working life. In other words, you stand a better chance getting rich if you start a business. That’s where the real world learning takes place. You learn by doing. Real world learning is far more valuable than classroom learning in a capitalist society. And America is a capitalist society.

Some of the wealthiest most successful people in the world were business owners who did not have a college degree: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie (US Steel), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Larry Ellison (Oracle),  Like Ingvar (Ikea), Leonardo Del Vecchio (Luxottica eyewear), Michael Dell (Dell Computing) and Ferrero Rocher (Ferrero Chocolates) are just a few examples. I could fill up this entire page with millionaires and billionaires who started a business without the benefit of any higher learning.

How did they do it?

They took a risk on themselves and then spent every waking moment devoted to some business that added value to the lives of others. Through self-education, relentless practice and persistence they eventually became experts in their fields. And society rewarded them with enormous riches and success.

Calculated risk, devotion and commitment to their business eventually paid off. For most, the payoff took many, many years. For some, it took much less time. But the common denominator was taking a risk and starting a business.

Most people are conformists. They are unwilling to do what it takes to become rich – take a risk on themselves, start a business and spend the rest of their lives trying to make that business a success. Conformity is the norm and nonconformity makes you an outlier.

According to the famous University College London habit study, it can take anywhere from 20 days to 254 days for a habit to form, with the average habit taking approximately 66 days.

A habit is formed when brain cells (neurons) form a long-term synapse. A synapse is a neural pathway that is created in the brain when two or more brain cells repetitively communicate with each other. If that communication continues long enough, a part of the brain called the basil ganglia, reaches its tentacles out (axon filaments) to the synapse, marking it as a habit. Once a synapse is co-opted as a habit by the basil ganglia, that synapse, or neural pathway, never truly dies, even when the activity that created the synapse ceases. They are often brought back to life during periods of stress or emotional duress. This is why habits are so hard to break – the neural pathway becomes permanent once it is marked as a habit.

100 Day Challenge

Consistency transforms behaviors into habits. Adopting good daily habits can only happen if you consistently engage in those habits every day. One strategy to make good habits stick is something called the 100 Day Challenge. Here’s how it works: for 100 days, focus on engaging in one new habit for 100 days in a row. By the end of the 100 days the neural pathway will be strong enough to get the attention of the basal ganglia and will in all likelihood become a permanent habit.

The key is to focus on only one habit during this 100 day period. Here are some new habit ideas:

• New Exercise Habit: For 100 days run, jog, walk, cycle, lift weights for 20 minutes a day.
• New Self-Education Habit: For 100 days read for 20 minutes a day, or listen to a podcast, or watch TEDx talks, or study something related to your job or career.
• New Skill Habit: For 100 days practice some new skill for 20 minutes a day.
• Healthy Eating Habit: For 100 days reduce how much junk food you eat by 300 calories a day.
• Change TV Habit: For 100 days reduce how much TV you watch by one hour a day.
• Change Social Media Habit: For 100 days reduce how much time you spend on social media by one hour a day.
• No Gossip Habit: For 100 days avoid gossiping about anyone.

After 100 days the synapse or neural pathway will be strong enough for a permanent habit to form. Then, apply the 100 Day Challenge to another individual habit.