Personal Development Blog to Plug You Into Your Identity
You hear it over and over again – “Laughter is the best medicine.”
Is it really just an old saying that was made up without any reason? We almost always feel much better after a good laugh. But is it possible that it’s not just an emotional thing? Is it possible that there are some medical truths that can back it up, after all?
Give Your Body a Boost – With Laughter on WebMD is an interesting feature about laughter’s potential as a health booster.
Looking for more reasons for you to stay positive? What about your physical health? Read more about this on “How Your Emotions Affect Your Health and Immune System” on Oprah.com.
I know, I know – I should be the last one to talk about consistency. I’m not the most consistent man on the planet, that’s for sure.
However, I’ve achieved a fair amount of success. And I know that, in order to be successful, consistently doing the right thing is the key. I’m consistent in my study habits. I’m consistent in how I work out. I’m consistent in how I do my work (an hour and a half of work, followed by a 15 minute break). I’m consistent in how I do just about everything – and, yet, somehow, I haven’t become consistent in my work on this site, even though I’ve been “working on it†for a long time.
Sidenote: even though I know what the right thing to do is, oftentimes, I don’t do it. That’s how hard implementing ANY advice is. So if you’re struggling with implementing self-improvement advice, don’t worry. You’re not alone.
You can’t take days off from practice. You can’t use excuses to get you out of putting the time in that’s necessary to become great.
If you want to be great at anything, everyone knows you have to practice a lot. The best way to guarantee that you practice the number of hours it takes to become great? You make it a habit. Forming great habits is the key to consistency.
We Americans are a sleep-deprived bunch. We don’t get enough sleep, relying instead on stimulants like caffeine — why do you think coffee is so popular? — to give us an energy boost, and we don’t perform as well as we probably should as a result.
One thing that I’ve found immensely helpful is taking a quick 20- to 30-minute nap in the middle of the day. During hockey season, this was especially crucial, since napping would restore my energy after a long day at school, so I felt fresh and energized when it came time to hit the ice.
As I experimented, I realized that the nap boosted my performance so much that I had to make it a habit. There was really no comparison: with the nap right before practice, I felt at least twice as good in practice, and the benefits of increased energy and alertness carried on for the rest of the day. They didn’t just make me better at hockey; they made me better and more efficient at getting writing and my homework done.
Telling to sleep more seems really obvious, but taking a nap and making a concerted effort to get more sleep has made my performance improve more than just about anything else.
