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.

A Parable

Jeff and Jack are best friends, and aspire to be master poetry writers. For some reason, poetry calls to both of them – or so they think.

Jeff loves the craft of poetry. He views it as something he does for fun. He knows that more practice will make him into a great poet, but he doesn’t want poetry writing to turn into a chore. He wants to keep it fun and doesn’t want to turn it into something he hates. So, when he feels like it, he writes poetry. Other times, when he feels like it, he reads poetry. Sometimes these reading and writing sessions last all day. Other times, they last 15 minutes. It all depends on how Jeff feels. If he feels particularly frustrated, he’ll give up on poetry for the day and go watch TV. If he’s not having fun, he figures, why bother practicing?

Jack knows that, in order to become the best poet possible, he needs to write and read a lot of it. He sets aside a couple of hours every evening, after his homework is done, to write and read poetry. For the first hour, he writes, and for the second hour, he reads. He does this like clockwork, every single day, whether he feels like it or not. On some days, when Jack really doesn’t want to write, he writes poems about how much he doesn’t want to write. When he has writer’s block, he doesn’t get up and do something else, he just sits there, pen in hand, waiting for something to get on the page. Even when the reading becomes tedious, he continues to read because he knows there’s something to learn from every poem he reads. Jack knows that the only way to improve his skills is to continue practicing — especially during the times that he feels like giving up.

3 years pass.

Who ends up being the better poet?

Who ends up extracting more enjoyment out of poetry in the long run?

Hint: the two answers are the same.

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.

Valuing Sleep

The reason why we are so okay with not getting enough sleep is because we can’t really see the effects while we’re in a sleep-deprived state. Not getting enough sleep on one night, in isolation, won’t do much to hurt our performance, but not getting enough sleep for 3 or 4 consecutive nights will (and your body will let you know). However, most people try to be tough and continue with an overloaded schedule — witness college students, for example — because their body eventually adapts to getting less sleep. Once they’re in that adapted state, they can’t really tell that their performance is being hurt because they’re so tired, so they continue to deny their bodies the sleep that it needs, which further locks them into that adapted state of perpetual sleep deprivation.

In addition, it’s hard to break out of a schedule that demands that you’re awake for 18-20 hours a day; it’s much easier to make commitments than it is to give some up. Most people who don’t get enough sleep actually have very good reasons for doing so: they take on too many commitments and sacrifice sleep in order to meet them all.

The problem is this: we don’t value sleep enough. We don’t get enough sleep because we figure that we can stay up an hour later watching TV and we won’t feel any worse for it. We don’t get enough sleep because we value every possible commitment that we could possibly take up more than we value sleep. We value “doing” over rest and recovery, and that paradigm has to be shifted.

Rest Is Just As Important As Action

The truth is, in order to perform well, you can’t be performing all the time. Endless practice without ample time for rest and recovery is terrible for athletes, so why do we think that we’re any different?

Our bodies operate best in cycles of rest and recovery. That’s why it’s best for us to work in intervals — work for an hour and a half, take a 15- to 30-minute break — and that’s why we live in intervals as well. Ideally, we should be awake for 16 hours, then asleep for 8, and carry on that cycle every day.

Sometimes, the 8 hours of sleep isn’t the best. For, grabbing 7 hours of sleep at night coupled with a 30-minute nap in the middle of the day, works just as well, if not better, than getting 8 hours of continuous sleep at night.

If you want to discover the value of sleep, I’d do a simple sleep experiment to determine how much you’ve been missing out on. It’s very simple:

First, write down how you feel at certain times in the day — 10:00 AM, 2:00 PM, 6:00 PM, for starters — with your current sleep cycle. Detail how focused/distracted you are, how good you feel, how energetic/aware you feel, and how “fresh” you feel. Please do this without the aid of stimulants, like caffeine, especially if you use them all the time.

Second, make sure to get 8 hours of sleep for 4 straight nights. Do whatever you can to make this happen, even if you have to drop some “important” things. This will make sure that you “recover” from your previous sleep-deprived state (if you have a bad sleep cycle, that is).

Third, on the day after your 4th night of getting 8 hours’ sleep, detail your feelings like you did in the first step for your old sleep cycle. Compare your notes to see just how important sleep is. Most people will see quite the jump in their awareness and performance — proof that sleep is incredibly valuable. Even if you have to cut back on some things in order to make a good night’s sleep a regular occurrence, it’s worth it.

Readers – I’m curious to see what you’ll do with this experiment. If you’re living a life of fatigue and low performance, I think getting something as simple as sleep handled may be the thing that brings you back to life. You shouldn’t be living a life where you’re constantly tired of work; you can and should be able to go to work feeling energized, focused, and alive.

How much do you value feeling on top of the world? If you want that feeling, go to sleep.

Here, go on and take it. It’s yours, if you really want it. In fact, you’ve had it all along and you never realized it. You’ve just never decided to take the leap and tap into your own power, my friend. But trust me — it is there, and it will be there for you if you want it.

Of course, it comes with a price: in order to keep the superpower, you must, for 30 minutes a day, sit up straight (or lie down, whichever you prefer; all that matters is that your spine stay straight), and don’t think. If you make that 30-minute session a ritual, I guarantee that your superpower will be working all the time.

The Power of Meditation

What do you call sitting up straight and not thinking for extended periods of time?

Meditation.

And, truly, my readers, it is far and away the best habit you could ever pick up. Nothing I have done in my entire life has changed my life as radically as meditation has – when I’m in a meditation groove and I’m doing it well (as in, no thinking and being very present) for 30 minutes a day, I feel amazing. I feel like a superhero, without the other cool superpowers; I really wish I could fly, but, unfortunately, meditation doesn’t confer such powers upon me. It only makes me feel virtually unstoppable — I can remember one day when I was really well rested and meditated a lot the night before, and I went around giggling all day, saying to myself, ”I’ve got lightning coming out of my hands!” And, truthfully, I felt incredibly powerful that day, kind of like Darth Vader.

Actually, I felt exactly like Darth Vader, just without the cool voice and the evilness.

There is nothing – and I mean nothing – better than the high that meditation gives me. It’s incredible. Everything that would normally annoy me or cause me to be reactive just slides right on by, as if it never mattered at all. I begin to enjoy the little things in life more, from breathing to the wonders of modern technology, and I feel like saying, Whoa every time something cool happens as part of a pure appreciation of life. I feel much more creative and The Resistance is weakened a lot when I’m in a stretch where I’m really into the meditation habit; I’m a much smoother writer and new ideas come to me effortlessly. I also become a kind of social butterfly, even though I’m extroverted already. Sharing things and being expressive are a lot easier.

Predictably, though, when I go without meditation for a little while (even one day!), things go south. I become extremely reactive, the quality of my work everywhere, from school to writing, drops precipitously, and I get hit with massive writer’s block. I don’t feel like talking to anyone, and a general sense of apathy washes over me, which makes it hard to get myself out of the rut.

I’ve also noticed this bizarre pattern that, whenever I’m keeping the meditation habit up, great things tend to happen to me, and the opposite is true too: when I stop meditating, bad things start to happen, like meditation gives me good luck in addition to making me feel amazing.

One piece of advice for all of you: if you start meditating and you begin to observe positive results, you’re probably going to think that you don’t “need” meditation anymore and you’re going to stop doing it. That’s wrong. Once you stop meditating, you’ll stop getting the benefits, then you’ll have to start the cycle all over again. It’s much easier to maintain the habit than it is to keep starting and stopping and starting over again.

I don’t think I can say enough about meditation, so I’ll cut it short here. Meditation is absolutely fantastic, and you’d be a fool to look down on it as New Age nonsense. I was a skeptic once, too. That is, until I tried it. Then there was no doubt in my mind that meditation was and is a great and incredibly rewarding practice that everyone should pick up. I have no idea why it works; it just does. That’s good enough for me, and it should be good enough for you too.

Why? I believe in becoming a complete human being. One that has strengths in every area, and weaknesses in as few as possible.

Becoming a complete human is the end of all self-improvement. It is the goal that we are always striving for – to become a balanced, good person across every aspect of our lives. A true jack-of-all-trades or the archetypal Renaissance man is what I’ve tried to become – and I think everyone in the self-improvement game will trend towards becoming one themselves. It’s part of the natural process.

Becoming a complete human being requires being very good in every ‘sphere’ of life – it requires having integrity and being an honest person; having diverse knowledge of a wide range of subjects; being in excellent shape; having solid relationships with yourself, family, and friends; having a career that you enjoy; having hobbies and skills that you practice regularly and are competent at; and being able to maintain a life of balance.

I don’t think that there can be anything more rewarding than becoming a complete human being. Being the total package allows you to have the broadest experience of life possible – something I think is very valuable. Being complete also makes you a very strong, competent individual – being so good in every part of your life will prevent a total breakdown should something go wrong in one part of your life. In essence, your mental well-being is not predicated upon just one ‘sphere’ of your life – rather, it is broken up into every part of your life, leading to flexibility and mental fortitude.

Let’s break all the different spheres of living down, one by one.

Having Integrity

Having integrity, as I’ve said before, is the foundation of living a good life.

Building integrity is like building trust: it takes a long time to make, and a very short time to lose.

It requires total honesty in action – doing what you truly want to do – and a belief in yourself that transcends the opinions of any other person.

How to build integrity, you ask? Just act on what you believe in, over and over again, every day. Give yourself credit for your effort, rather than the results of your effort. Your effort is under your control, the results are not.

Be gentle with yourself, but give yourself a kick in the pants when you know you’re not following your values. Be a kind master over yourself – how you talk to (and perceive) yourself will ultimately be reflected in your actions.

If you do the right thing, over and over again – being true to yourself, not caring what people think, not being torn by emotion – you will see your self-trust and personal integrity rise. It takes the cumulative effect of days’ and days’ worth of effort, but the kind of internal satisfaction you get from being a person of integrity and honesty is simply unparalleled.

Cultivating a Knowledge Base

It’s not my intention for people to read this post and say to themselves, “Alright, I have to have diverse knowledge of a wide range of subjects. So… Uh… I guess I’m gonna go read like 10 random articles from Wikipedia per day, so I know lots of stuff! Yeah!”

Uh… No.

A true Renaissance Man would not acquire knowledge just for the sake of it – they would be propelled by their own curiosity and interest in the subjects that they’d study.

Let’s face it: you’re never going to know everything. So stick to the subjects that you’re genuinely interested in – something that you’re naturally curious about.

For me, I’m a history, psychology, business, tech and sports geek, so I read a lot on those subjects. I love all of them for different reasons – for example, I love finding out why people do what they do, so psychology is a natural fit for me. But I also like seeing how different courses of action can, over the course of years and decades, change society, so I like history (and especially biographies of historical figures). The list goes on and on.

So, what’s the best route to develop a wide base of knowledge? Ask yourself – what would I like to know more about? Write down the various subjects on a piece of paper. After that, go on Amazon and buy some of the top-rated books on that subject. You don’t have to buy academic texts or anything like that – something that’s popular will usually give you a good enough introduction of the subject, and you can decide from there whether you’d like to learn even more about it.

That’s when you can check out blogs (there are blogs on everything out there), forums, other books, and so on, continually learning more and more.

This is organic, natural learning, driven by curiosity rather than external compulsion.

Don’t learn more because I told you to. Learn more because you want to.

Handling Health

Health is way too complex for me to break down, so I’ll give you a few tips to get you started:

1. Buy organic. I’m not going to tell you to eat raw, but eating organic food more often has definitely improved my health, and others’ as well. The less preservatives and pesticides that you ingest, the better. Trust me.

2. Exercise often – or, better yet, play a sport. You don’t want to be worrying about hypertension, blood clots, and heart disease when you get older, do you? Staying in good cardiovascular shape will make your heart stronger, keep your arteries free of plaques, and lower your blood pressure. Oh, and exercise releases endorphins, which make you feel happy.

3. Drink nothing but water. Feel free to indulge in something else from time to time, but the main liquid that you should be putting in your body is water. I routinely drink upwards of 6 liters per day – your mileage may vary. You weren’t made to be drinking fruit juice, soda, and all that other junk. Your body needs water.

4. Get enough sleep. You can play around with polyphasic sleeping if you want (I am doing a bi-phasic schedule right now), but the bottom line is this: get enough so you can feel your best from the time you wake up ’til the time you go to bed.

5. Eat “good” fats. Avoid fast food and overly fatty foods (but meat’s fine). Incorporating good fats from things like olive oil and nuts (especially from almonds and walnuts) help stabilize blood sugar levels, allowing you to have a more consistent energy level throughout the day. Also, nuts make for a great healthy snack that keep hunger away for hours. As a caveat: make sure you eat them raw – you don’t want all the salt from the salted nuts. You can buy raw nuts in bulk at your grocery store for much lower prices, so everyone wins there.

6. Supplement intelligently. Avoid destructive supplements (I’m looking at you, creatine – and yes, I’m aware it’s safe when done right) while supplementing with things that help you. I’m a big proponent of vitamin B complexes for increasing focus and improving brain function, as well as a good antioxidant supplement that includes vitamins A, C, and E, as well as selenium. However – don’t buy these based on my recommendation. Check with your doctor first.

This barely scratches the surface, but I recommend picking up Tim Ferriss’s book The Four Hour Body for other quick tips that can change your health – and your life. There’s something in there for everyone.

Creating Good Relationships

As far as treating yourself goes – never say anything to yourself that you would never tolerate from someone else. Be kind to yourself, as I stated in the section on integrity. This simple rule will make your relationship with yourself much, much better.

When it comes to building relationships with others, here are a few simple rules:

1. Your input = your output: If you put little to no effort or energy into developing the relationship, you won’t be able to develop a strong relationship. If you talk with people often, do things with them, and just have fun in their presence, the relationship will grow in strength over time. Don’t expect to talk to someone once or twice and expect them to think of you as a great friend – great relationships take time to develop.

2. Be a great listener: If you’re good at listening to others, you’ll become much better at relating to them, which means that you’ll have a stronger relationship faster. Being a great listener also helps you build trust, which is my next point…

3. Be trustworthy: If you can be the type of person that’s like a Swiss Bank account (virtually impenetrable) for your friends’ secrets, then your friends will sense this and will trust you so much more as a result. I’ve been burned on this before over things I didn’t know were secrets, so if your friend is telling you anything sensitive, I urge you to ask them whether the things they’ve told you should considered confidential. It’ll save your relationships. Trust takes a long time to build up and a long time to lose.

4. Find the good in others – and put a spotlight on it: If you become good at finding out the best attributes of others’ personalities and making them show it, you will become a social dynamo. It’s difficult to do, but if you master the art of reading people and truly understanding their personalities, you will make them feel very good and at ease around you. Listening to your friends allows you to do this – if you know Jesse makes killer deadpan jokes, set him up for some by including threads he can use in your conversation. If you know Clara is quiet normally, but becomes really outspoken and excited whenever discussion revolves around music, make an effort to talk about music when you’re out with her. It’s all about listening to the emotions running under people’s words, and if you can make them feel good around you, they’ll love you for it. Of course – don’t do this in a manipulative way, but do it because you want to see them happy. However…

5. Make your needs clear: If you don’t make your needs clear in the relationship, then you’re bound to be let down. People will take whatever you’re giving them without giving much in return sometimes, and only you have the power to call them out on it and say that they need to invest some more effort into your relationship. If they refuse, then you’ll realize that they weren’t really a good friend to begin with.

Having a Career You Enjoy

I don’t have many tips here, as I don’t really have much of a career to speak of and it’d be wrong of me to suggest anything that has never worked for me.

However, there are a few things that I believe:

• Life is too short to have a job you hate;
• You should be doing work that you find personally fulfilling;
• You can “do” more than one thing and switch careers, no matter how old you are;
• “Job security” is a sham and risk is everywhere, no matter what industry you’re in;
• Entrepreneurship is a great route for those who are very independent, driven, and have a creative vision that they need to fulfill;
• There are plenty of ways to make money – even on the side.

Overall, I’m a little out of my depth here, but there are a few blogs I can recommend for finding your passion, making money, and keeping more of it: Ramit Sethi at I Will Teach You To Be Rich, Neil Patel at Quick Sprout, Pam Slim from Escape From Cubicle Nation, and Dave Garland of The Rise to the Top are all fantastic resources.

Hobbies and Skills

This is probably the easiest section for people to get handled.

I think that having a ‘craft’ from outside of your work that you can get better at over time and practice as a way to relax (and develop mastery) is necessary. Having at least one of those things on top of your other obligations as an aspiring Renaissance Man is incredibly useful – you get to track your progress over time, which is immensely rewarding, and it serves as a constructive break from the rest of the world.

Even picking up a new hobby from scratch, with no prior experience, is something that can transform your life for the better. Don’t be afraid of being bad when you start – everyone is. Instead, embrace the opportunity to learn and to make yourself into a master at whatever you decide you’re going to do.

Need a hobby? How about: martial arts, photography, painting, drawing, any sport, mountain biking, hiking, rock climbing, logic puzzles (Sudoku/Kakuro), watching movies, writing, any musical instrument, (break)dancing, skiing/snowboarding, gardening, cooking, building stuff (whatever you can think of!), woodworking, sailing, singing, knitting, sewing, and magic tricks? Pick one. Or you can always google something like ‘hobbies’ and find something that meets your desire.

Maintaining Balance

The really difficult part about becoming a complete human is living a life of balance – making sure all the components of being that complete person can coexist in your life.

I’ll admit: I’m not a very balanced person by nature. I like diving into things headfirst and immersing myself in projects for long periods of time, then becoming more extroverted and being social while I ‘recharge’, then going back to work.

The key that I’m finding is creating habits that reinforce your Renaissance Man “training” is the easiest way to maintain a life of balance.

That is, you have to “schedule” your time to develop your relationships, the time that you’re going to develop your knowledge base, and so on.

If you make inviolable times during your week to do these things, over time, balance will become a habit.

Since this is a little abstract, here’s an example: let’s say that, every day, work effectively takes up my free time until 6 pm, and my “real” free time falls from 6:30 to 10:30 P.M.

Every Monday and Wednesday night, I’m going to devote 3 of those 4 hours to learning and one hour doing whatever I want to do.

Every Thursday night and Friday evening, I’m going to devote my time to my skills and hobbies.

Every Friday night and Saturday afternoon/evening, I’m going to go out with my friends, and I’ll chat with them as part of my free time during the week.

Every Sunday, I’m going to do whatever I want to do, for the entire day. The only rule is I can’t think about work, and I have to be doing something I enjoy.

All the while, I’m going to be eating well and getting my sleep.

To stay in shape, I’m going to go on runs every Monday and Friday morning, while I hit the gym on Tuesday and Thursday nights.

If you hold up this schedule for about a month, it’ll become a habit, and you’ll have no problem whatsoever maintaining your balance. The key is to let yourself break your own rules a little bit, but not so much that you throw your life out of balance for anything short of an emergency.

However – sometimes, balance isn’t necessary and can actually harm you. For reasons why imbalance might actually be the answer, check out this post from Jonathan Mead.

Action Steps

They’re everywhere in this post – close your eyes, scroll up, stop, and open your eyes. Look! Action steps!

What do you think about becoming a “complete human”? Is it a flight of fancy? Or something we all should aspire to be? Is becoming a jack-of-all-trades viable in an economy where specialists are becoming more and more important?

The result? Millions of people each year die from heart disease, and billions of dollars in health care costs are incurred due to things that could be fixed if people were in better shape.

In this post, I’m going to show you how to perform an excellent cardio workout that requires no workout equipment, no gym, and takes 10 minutes or less – though you can do it for longer if you choose. The benefits are immense, but, I’ll say this: they aren’t for the faint of heart. If you aren’t willing to push your comfort zone and endure a little pain in the name of getting healthier, you don’t need to read this article.

Introducing Tabata Intervals

About two years ago, I was searching for a way to do my cardio training for hockey without having to use gym equipment and without having to run, as my access to a gym was limited and I really hated to run distance. If possible, I also wanted my workouts to last as short a time as possible (so I could spend more time doing other things) and to prepare me for hockey.

After a week of searching, I arrived at Tabata intervals as a perfect solution.

Essentially, Tabata intervals make you perform one exercise (sprinting, for example) for 20 seconds at full intensity, followed by a 10 second rest period, followed by another 20 seconds of full intensity exercise, and so on. Each 30 second work-rest cycle is one rep. Typically, I did workouts ranging from 20 to 60 intervals (10 to 30 minutes), but even doing it for 4 minutes will bring excellent results, especially if you’re sprinting as your Tabata exercise.

I can attest to the fact that this type of training just plain works. Diligently doing tabata intervals 2-3 times per week for a couple months whipped me into incredible shape – the best shape of my life, to be honest. When hockey season started, I didn’t get tired nearly as fast as I used to.

If my results aren’t enough, consider the original study that spawned these intervals. The abstract (taken from here) says:

Second, to quantify the effect of high-intensity intermittent training on energy release, seven subjects performed an intermittent training exercise 5 d.wk-1 for 6 wk. The exhaustive intermittent training consisted of seven to eight sets of 20-s exercise at an intensity of about 170% of VO2max with a 10-s rest between each bout. After the training period, VO2max increased by 7 ml.kg-1.min-1, while the anaerobic capacity increased by 28%. In conclusion, this study showed that moderate-intensity aerobic training that improves the maximal aerobic power does not change anaerobic capacity and that adequate high-intensity intermittent training may improve both anaerobic and aerobic energy supplying systems significantly, probably through imposing intensive stimuli on both systems.

Basically, trained athletes doing the protocol for 6 weeks had their anaerobic capacity shoot up, along with their VO2max. Also, one thing about HIIT (high-intensity interval training) is that it’s very, very effective at burning fat – the “afterburn” effect of intense interval training actually makes your body use up fat faster than low-intensity, long-duration cardio exercise (like jogging, biking, and so on). Tabata intervals, then, can help you lose weight and will make you get in excellent physical shape.

Getting Started With Tabatas

The simplest way to do Tabata intervals is to find a long, open field, arm yourself with a stopwatch, and do 8 cycles of Tabata intervals, for a total of 4 minutes. As you get in better shape, you may want to extend the time – but trust me, 4 minutes is a challenge for anyone. If you’re reading this and think 4 minutes of tabata interval sprinting is easy, go out your door and do it, because it is incredibly hard. However, it will whip you into shape very quickly.

However, when the weather got really cold, I didn’t want to have to leave my house, find a field, and run on it. Plus, I’d have to drive to find fields, and at the time I started doing tabatas, I didn’t have my license.

My solution? Replace sprinting with burpees, which is a combination of a push-up and a squat jump. You can see a video of what burpees look like here: YouTube Link. Instead of doing 8 cycles, I recommend doing at least 16 (8 minutes) for burpees to get the same effect.

The greatest part about doing burpees is that, if you have a nice carpeted floor and a high enough ceiling, you can do it at home. No gym fees. No equipment to buy. Just your body, a good timer, and mental discipline are required.

At first, I recommend doing full-intensity burpees for 10 cycles (5 minutes) to make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into. You can raise or lower the total time of your workouts as you please, but I think that 5 minutes is the minimum that will be needed for the exercise to be effective.

Even – or especially – if you’re not anything resembling an athlete, I still think that Tabata intervals will be enormously beneficial for you. And, just think, you only have to exercise for less than 10 minutes per day, and you don’t even have to leave your house!

The only requirement is that you do things with full intensity, all the time. Try squeezing in your max amount of reps in each interval – for burpees, my max in 20 seconds was 6 (and your milage may vary). You’ll see how difficult the tabatas are when you truly do them at full effort, but that’s when they’ll bring you the greatest reward; for HIIT, you get out what you put into the process.

Most of all, though – these exercises do not require tons of athleticism to do. Athleticism and being in good shape certainly helps. However, if you can do even one burpee, you’re going to be able to do the intervals.

Mental toughness is all that’s required to finish 4 or 5 or 8 or 10 minutes tabata intervals. Believe me – you are probably going to be more tired and breathing heavier than you ever have in your life when you do these exercises. You need to be willing to keep going when you’re tired, you need to be willing to challenge yourself, and you need to be willing to block out the pain and just keep going even when everything in your body is screaming at you to stop. You can do it – it’s just a matter of mental toughness.

In that way, tabatas reveal character. How much can you endure? How badly do you want to get into shape? How tough are you?

Give the intervals a try, right now, and you’ll learn the answers.

“You are what you eat” has been repeated so many times during our lives that it’s lost its meaning – but it’s still true.

Here’s what I like to say – “Junk in, junk out. Great food in, great performance out.” If you feed your body tons of processed foods, chomping on Snickers bars, danishes, ice cream, and cupcakes – you’re never going to feel at your best. Your body will spend tons of energy filtering out the toxins that these foods put in your body, and you’ll feel tired and be much more susceptible to illness as a result.

On the other hand, if you give your body healthy, whole foods, like meat, nuts, vegetables, and fruits, your body will be getting the nutrients it needs from healthy sources – and will be able to run much more efficiently. If you make the commitment to eating healthily, you WILL notice a big increase in your daily energy levels.

I’ve always had an achilles heel when it comes to eating healthily, though: I can’t cook. I’m lucky to live in a house where healthy food is plentiful and the meals that are cooked (thanks Mom!) are much healthier than your average American meal.

However, a new ebook by my friend Diggy of UpgradeReality.com may make a chef out of me – he’s releasing his new ebook, Easy Healthy Dinner Recipes [not an affiliate link because Diggy deserves all the revnue from his sales], today.

It’s excellent, and I recommend that you pick it up, especially if you’re like me and can’t cook! Diggy does a masterful job at walking you through each recipe he gives you – via text and video, just in case you need to see how things are done.

Easy and Healthy – and Incredibly Valuable

Diggy’s ebook contains 8 incredibly-easy-to-make recipes for dinner. I took a look at his ingreidents list for each recipe, and they’re all healthy, too – they’re all made from whole foods, which is incredibly, incredibly important. Diggy explains everything very well, showing how to make everything step-by-step on video and in his ebook. I could tell that he had, indeed, made each of the dishes hundreds of times over the years, because he’s made it into a science.

Each recipe only takes about 10 minutes to make, and, I’d presume, taste excellent. In fact, when I took a look at his fried rice recipe today, it pretty much mirrored the delicious fried rice recipe I made for myself yesterday afternoon! It’s a strange coincidence, to be sure – but if the taste of my fried rice (and his) is any indication of the quality of the food in the rest of the book, it’s sure to be amazing to your taste buds, as well as the rest of your body.

The best thing about this book, to me, though, is the ease of all the recipes. Diggy makes them look super simple – and it’s not just because he’s been cooking them for a long time. It’s because they are very, very simple recipes, which means that cooking newbies like yours truly can pick up the book and start cooking in 5 seconds flat. They’re that simple.

The simplicity of the recipes inside means that you no longer have an excuse to not eat healthily. You can definitely take 10 minutes out of your day to cook this for your dinners or prepare them for your lunch. Even I, as a teenager, no longer have an excuse for my lack of cooking ability – with Diggy’s book, now I have the ability to make myself meals.

It’s just a matter of telling yourself that you can cook well, and following the recipes in the book. He’s made it so simple for you – and that’s where all the value comes from.

I can see myself as a college student or even as a traveler stopping in at the grocery store, picking up a few cheap items, returning to my place of residence, and cooking these very recipes for my meals. They’re that simple. I don’t know how much more I can emphasize this, guys. They’re incredibly, incredibly, unbelievably simple.

Another really cool thing about the recipes that Diggy included is that they’re easily adaptable. What this means is that once you get comfortable with cooking the ‘core dish’ (a term I made up myself), the recipe that Diggy gives you, you can easily add in different ingredients to the recipe in order to change the tastes up a bit – essentially creating a new dish. Diggy gives you an excellent foundation to build on, and the potential that his recipes has is pretty close to infinite.

That’s just awesome – especially for someone like me who easily gets tired of eating the same foods over and over again.

The best thing I can say about Easy Healthy Dinner Recipes is this: I can see myself returning to these very same recipes over and over again 1, 5, and maybe 10 years from now. That’s value. Or, maybe I won’t have to look back at the book, since I’ll remember them by heart after making them so many times!

Your health is the most important thing that you can take care of. With Easy Healthy Dinner Recipes, you’ll have no reason to eat junk food and drain your body of energy.

I think I’ve already done a good enough job to convince you to buy the book and see what Diggy’s offering. It’s truly excellent and he’s a total class-act, so…

What are you waiting for? Buy Easy Healthy Dinner Recipes at the absolute steal of a price of $47 here!

Health is, really, the ultimate personal development topic. It’s the foundation for everything that you do and how you feel. So why don’t we concentrate on it more?

I don’t know. Probably because no one is qualified (I don’t know of any PD blogger who has an MD), and, really, health is a pretty easy thing to ignore. Most people hardly ever do things to change their lifestyle, especially when it revolves around health. Point is: for the majority of people, they either have healthy habits or unhealthy habits.

Before I give a few practical tips on how you can improve your health immediately, let’s set the record straight about your health.

Your health defines how well you want to live your life – before any change in mindset and psychology that you can do using the other information on this website.

As I said before, it is the foundation for how you feel at any given moment. Not eating a healthy, balanced diet will hurt your mood, your physical abilities, and your physique. Conversely, if you eat correctly and treat your body with respect, you’ll feel pretty good, nearly all the time (unless you’re tired). Take care of your health above anything else, or else you’ll suffer the consequences. Having good genes certainly does help, but you can be reasonably healthy, no matter what hand you’ve been dealt (unless you have some awful genetically-inherited disease, in which case, I am really, really, really sorry for you and wish you all the best in life; I don’t know how I’d be able to live with that).

Bottom line: treat your body with respect. Many of the readers of this blog are pretty young, and to you, I say this: don’t make your body take too much stress at this stage of your life. You may think you’re invincible now, but, as you age, your body will show you just how well you’ve been treating it. Just because you can get away with bad eating habits now doesn’t mean you should. You may regret it later in life.

I know a few people who treated their bodies right when they were young and now they look like they’re in their mid-thirties when they’re actually in their mid-forties. I’ve seen these things with my own eyes – and it sold me on the idea of being healthy from cradle to grave.

3 Ways to Improve Your Health Today

I’ll stop preaching now, and give you the top 3 things you can do to improve your health right now (as in, they don’t require weeks and weeks of dieting):

1. Drink nothing but water (and milk/milk alternatives, for the calcium): This one will be fairly controversial, but I stand by it. The only exception I’ll allow are green teas, since their caffeine levels are fairly low and their antioxidant levels are high. Anyway, you want to shoot for at least 3.5 liters of water per day (that’s 7 of your average plastic water bottles), and enough of milk or “milk”, like soy or almond milk, to reach your 100% RDA in calcium. I’ll cover your objections below:

• Coffee: I’m not opposed to someone drinking a cup of coffee here and there. What I am opposed to, however, is relying on coffee for that morning ‘pick-me-up’ that you need to function. That’s what’s called a caffeine addiction. And addictions are no good. We all know more than a few people who are addicted to coffee and need it more than anything in the world. Don’t be like them. Please. Don’t shortchange your life just because of an addiction to a drug. If you need a good, clean, morning pick-me-up, drink 20 ounces of water as soon as you wake up. Works as well as coffee without the crash, or exorbitant amounts of cream or sugar.
• Alcohol: Yet another controversial one. If you’re a moderate drinker, you can get away with a couple of beers here and there without killing your body. But, to perform at your peak, I recommend not drinking at all. Alcohol’s a toxin – while your liver can filter it out, even small amounts of alcohol can damage your body over a long period of time – and, as always, I’ll recommend staying away from it. Many people drink to lose their social inhibition, but the truth is, you can lose your inhibition without alcohol too. If your friends try to pressure you into drinking when you’re out, then you need new friends. I’d recommend trying to go out sober for about a month to a month-and-a-half, just to see what happens. If you need a bit of booze to loosen up, do so after that, but at least experiment for me.
• Juices/Smoothies: Juices are no good because they have a lot of sugar and no fiber to regulate how your body absorbs it. This results in giant insulin spikes/crashes, which you have to be aware of even if you’re not a diabetic. Smoothies are okay, especially if you make them yourself, since the fruits’ fiber will be retained. Rule of thumb for smoothies: blender = good, juicer = bad. (The juicer doesn’t retain the fiber from the fruit)
• Soda/Sports Drinks: Do I even need to talk about these? Tons of processed sugar, no nutritional value. Consume sports drinks only while you’re working out. Otherwise, nix them.

2. Establish a good sleep cycle: This requires a lot of trial and error. What you want to do is establish a consistent schedule so your body gets the maximum amount of restorative sleep per night. The catch is this: some people need more sleep than others, and do better if they sleep at different times (or their schedules demand that they sleep at different times). Some people function fine on 5 hours’ sleep, others do better with 10. During the school year, I typically go to bed around 10:00 and wake up at 5:30, which is 7 and a half hours of sleep. It’s all about finding the schedule that works for you. If you’re a night owl, go to bed late, wake up when you have to, and try to catch a nap midday. If you’re a morning person, something like my sleep schedule would probably work for you. Just experiment with different things to see which one you (and your body!) like best.

Once you find a cycle you like, though, be sure to stick with it!

3. Eat green stuff: I’m talking about leafy greens, here, like lettuce and spinach. Eat more of them – try to have a bowl of salad containing them at least once a day. You can eat them raw, if you so choose, as well. Baby spinach is my personal favorite, though buying spring mixes and the like works just fine too. I don’t know what it is about greens, but they just make me feel good (doing my own research, chlorophyll from the greens may be responsible for this). After eating greens, my body feels more relaxed, I get this nice “healthy” feeling running through my body, and I look better as well. That’s reason enough to start eating them as much as you can; I know that the effects of eating greens are not a placebo effect! Others have claimed the same effects from adding a lot of greens to their diets.

Also: if you do buy your own greens, please buy organic! They’ll be more fresh, tastier, and better for you and the environment!

What other tips do you have to immediately improve your health and wellness?

However, we know that we’re of much higher value than a lowly serf. In fact, we’re of such high value that I like to say that we are the equivalent of a Ferrari – a work of amazing craftsmanship and performance. In order to treat yourself like you’re high value, you have to understand that you are high value.

You Are a Ferrari

As Glen was very fond of saying when he was the writer here – you are enough. You are intrinsically high value because you are a human being, and you should realize that, unlike even the greatest of Ferraris and other supercars, your potential as a human being is infinite.

Seriously.

Let that sink in for a little bit.

Your potential as a human being is pretty close to infinite. If you put your mind to it, you could learn an astounding variety of languages and other such knowledge, become world-class at a skill (or two), get yourself in unbelievable physical condition, and have a wonderful network of friends and family, to boot.

For those who are scoffing at me right now and calling me crazy – hear me out. While it is highly unlikely that you’d have the time to do all of those things, it’s possible that you could do a couple of them.

Or, more to the point – as a human being, you can improve yourself from now until the day you die. You can make strides in the right direction every single day – and if you compound the effects of small daily improvements over a lifetime, you’ll see that your potential in any given direction approaches infinity. The only restriction on your potential, really, is time – but you can’t do anything about that. I hope I’ve made this clear.

This simple realization that your potential is infinite is what makes you a high-performance, high value being – much like a Ferrari. You are a Ferrari because of the myriad of things you can do – it’s only up to you to reach your potential.

Making the Choice: Are You a Ferrari or a Minivan?

This is where the true mentality of being a Ferrari kicks in.

The question, at all times, is this: If I were a Ferrari, would I treat myself poorly?

The answer is a resounding no!. If you were a Ferrari, you would treat yourself in the best way possible at all times.

Know what I call treating yourself poorly? Minvan behavior.

Here are a few example situations detailing the difference between the Ferrari and the minivan.

Makes a mistake at work or school:

Ferrari: Says it’s okay, shakes things off, and focuses on the next challenge at hand. Does not dwell on the past because it knows that beating himself up wouldn’t get him anywhere.
Minivan: Relentlessly beats himself up and “replays” the mistake in his mind over and over again. Focuses on punishing himself so he’ll never do it again. Actually creates a cycle of pain because the mind, by focusing on the mistakes, is doomed to repeat them.

Is tempted by dessert or another unhealthy food:

Ferrari: Doesn’t give in to temptation, because he deserves higher quality food and nourishment. Realizes that the dessert is actually a toxin that will impair his ability to perform at his best. (You wouldn’t put poor gas or oil in your Ferrari, right? Well, you shouldn’t put it in yourself either. This is where the saying “You are what you eat” comes from)
Minivan: Eats it and doesn’t care about the consequences. Doesn’t perform at his best for the next day (seriously – I’ve found eating junk food makes me feel worse for a day after).

Has a big project looming:

Ferrari: Creates a solid action plan with steps (and due dates) to complete the project. Chips away at it every day, and completes it on time with little to no stress. Is a very clinical, cool, dispassionate worker – he has passion that fuels him, but is very focused. Gets everything done with maximum quality and efficiency.
Minivan: Very haphazard, and procrastinates until the due date is very close. Rushes things, which compromises the quality of the project. Uses procrastination and distraction as excuses for why his work isn’t as good as it could be.

This is All About Self-Esteem

As you can see, the Ferrari is the picture of high performance, professionalism, and self-esteem. The Ferrari (that’s you!) treats himself right, all the time, no matter what.

Meanwhile, the minivan makes every effort to treat himself poorly, like he was… Well, a minivan. He puts bad food in his system. He never performs at his best because he’s too busy procrastinating and dwelling on his mistakes. This all comes from a place of low self-esteem.

The Ferrari does everything it can to make sure it performs its best – this includes feeling its best. While the minivan might work a lot of hours doing things it hates, the Ferrari knows that, when his quality of work starts to dip, it’s time to take a break, loosen up a bit, and play, whether that means a night out with friends or playing a sport or a night watching a favorite movie. This is why I dislike when people are workaholics at the expense of sleep – to be a Ferrari, you need your time to refuel and recharge, which means you need to get enough sleep every night.

If you’re coming from a place of high self-esteem and treat yourself accordingly, you’re the Ferrari.

If you don’t treat yourself or others right, you’re being a lowly minivan.

Ask yourself – which one would you rather be: a Ferrari or a minivan?

It’s your choice.

In the coming days, how are you going to treat yourself like a Ferrari? I’d love to know! Please leave a comment!

Whether you didn’t wake up early enough, you obsessively checked your e-mail all day, or you ate that piece of birthday cake at your friend’s party, we’ve all been there. I know I’ve been there plenty of times. I’ve recently been unable to hold my habit of eating healthily – I ate a cheat food once per day every day for the past couple of weeks, excluding today! And this is from a guy who made it over 6 weeks without cheating during the winter!

And, you know what I told myself after eating that delicious black raspberry chocolate chip ice cream on Saturday – or every other day I cheated?

“This is the last time I’ll cheat! No more cheat foods!”

Of course, the tiramisu at the restaurant we went to was too appealing, so I went for it. Then, I told myself that it would be the last time as well, and so far (after one day!) I’ve done well at keeping the promise.

The problem that I’ve run into is whenever I acted human and didn’t do what I knew was right because I gave into temptation (eating incredibly healthily is the habit that’s the hardest to keep consistent over a long period of time; of course, “incredibly healthily” means no cheat foods whatsoever), I’d get this awful feeling of guilt. It would choke my creativity and self-esteem, because I felt like I wasn’t being strong enough in maintaining a habit that I knew was essential to my life. This goes for other habits that I’ve tried to form – reading a certain amount of pages daily, spending less time consuming and more time creating, going to sleep and waking up at certain times, and meditating, to name a few – and it would stifle me in ways that you wouldn’t believe. I was so focused on cementing these habits into my life (sorry, Leo – I’m still working on the habits from Zen to Do, even after 6 months) that, if I failed, I felt like a failure myself.

Everyone’s felt like that at some point. If you haven’t, then you’ve either never tried to change your lifestyle in a significant way, or you have some ridiculously strong willpower that you should probably consider bottling and selling (you’d make an amazing profit off of it). The struggle of making lasting changes is so ubiquitous to humans because we’re not perfect. We make mistakes. We break promises to ourselves, even when we say it in the mirror. We have an addiction to our ingrained habits, and will return again and again to them unless we act like we’re stronger than them. Sometimes, old habits beat the new ones. It’s okay.

And yet, even though I knew that it was okay and these things happen, even to the best of us, I still felt immensely guilty whenever I ‘failed’ myself. In the darkest depths of my mind, I still kick myself for being too haphazard and not having very good focusing skills. To be honest, I’m pretty scatterbrained – I do work for 5-10 minutes, then space out for a bit, then return to work, and repeat ad infinitum. I’ve been working hard on developing laser-like focusing skills, but I’ve failed miserably every time. I will get it someday, I tell you!

Want to know why?

Because, I may have lost the battles, but I will win the war.

That’s what you can say whenever you trip and fall on your path to cementing a habit as a permanent part of your lifestyle. It’s a beautiful thing, because it:

• Dissolves guilt: We feel guilty because we think that, by failing just once, we’re ruining our chances of ever making the habit a reality. This assures that our current mistakes won’t influence our future.
• Shows you have other chances: If this time is only a ‘battle’, surely there will be more battles – or opportunities to practice the habit – ahead. It’s like that quote from Vanilla Sky – “Every passing moment is a chance to turn it all around.”
• Makes success a reality: By saying you will win the war, you are telling yourself that you will make the habit a habit. You’re setting up the best kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Of course, saying this to yourself is nothing unless you also get fired up to win the next battle. Make it your mission to win the war by winning every battle afterward. Affirmations like this are all well and good, but they are only effective if they are backed up by action! This is just a way to set you free from the destructive tendencies we engage in whenever we do happen to ‘lose a battle’, as they usually do more harm than good. I’m a believer in treating yourself (and everyone, of course) with respect and care, and this is a way to do it.

So, the next time you ‘lose a battle’, remind yourself that you’re going to win the war! Lick your wounds, forget your past, and start with a clean slate your next go around.

As always, your input’s greatly appreciated!

Seriously, I’m interested in your objections. This discovery also comes on the same day that running is shown to be bad for your heart, cannabis makes you smarter, and alcohol doesn’t make people seem attractive, their physical appearance actually changes.

Photo Credit

Objections to Smoking Being Healthy

Back on the subject of smoking for a minute, I’ve tried my best to read your mind and answer some of the objections you may have about smoking being good for you.

Objection 1: Everyone Knows That Smoking is Bad

Oh yeah? Why is that? Did they each take a few puffs and feel sick or like damage had been made to areas of their body? If smoking is bad, why do so many people claim that it calms then down and helps them feel relaxed? If we can get addicted to smoking, doesn’t that mean our body thinks it’s good and just wants more?

Surely it’s better to be relaxed and following your bodies cravings rather than angry and suffering? Of course it is. Regular smokers crave cigarettes because their body wants more of the good stuff.

Objection 2: Smoking Damages Lungs

Wow, really? How do you know? When was the last time you put your head so far down someone’s throat that you could see the damaging effects of cigarettes? Ok, so maybe that’s a little silly. But when was the last time you saw, in person, some actual lungs which were very unhealthy and their state was directly linked to smoking cigarettes?

Unless you’re in medical or science fields, my guess is never. Lungs shrivel after years of smoking because their ability to absorb oxygen from the air has greatly increased so they don’t need to be as big.

Objection 3: Smoking Shortens Your Life Span

You’re probably sick of me asking this by now, but really: how do you know? If I went and said that to my next door neighbour who is 94 and smokes 40 cigarettes per day, he would start laughing in my face. Sure, his teeth look a bit rotten and yellow, but I put that down to the lack of good dentistry when he was younger.

If something that relaxing shortens your life span then why would there be over 100 million people practicing things like Yoga and Meditation on a daily basis? There wouldn’t and we both know it.

Objection 4: Government Agencies Have Proven That It’s Bad

You’re probably wondering what smart and sophisticated answer I can give to this one, but it’s actually quite simple. The man in charge of smoking regulations for the American Health Association was bullied in school by the owner of one of the most successful cigarette brands out there today.

Anything he can do to claim that smoking is bad cuts into said bullies’ profits and makes the head of the AHA sleep better at night. I told you it was simple.

Of Course, Smoking Probably Isn’t Healthy

If you can’t tell by now, I wasn’t being very serious with those answers, but there’s only one reason for that: there is enough evidence out there (which lots of people believe) which suggests that smoking is damaging to your health. And I believe it. But that’s not the point.

The point is that, as social creatures, we have a lot of beliefs that aren’t our own and instead they are purely from secondary sources such as:

• Religion
• Government Agencies
• TV
• Newspapers
• Movies
• Friends & Family…

…and so on. It is this social learning which has allowed us to survive and thrive as humans for thousands of years. However, as I’m sure many of you will agree, we hold beliefs about the world and ourselves that serve us no positive purpose whatsoever.

In fact, many of the beliefs we have simply hold us back from our true potential in life.

Beliefs such as “I’m not good enough,” “Nobody likes me,” “I’m ugly,” or even “I don’t deserve success” are rarely formed by us. Instead, they’re typically created from societal influences and feedback from others. If somebody’s appearance doesn’t match the cover of Cosmopolitan or GQ then they tend to think something must be wrong.

Based on this, there are three points I want to make.

3 Takeaways

If this article hasn’t already helped to shift your thinking and your current perspective on reality then let me share what I believe to be the most important things to take from this.

1. Keep An Open Mind – Once we have beliefs, we rarely want to change them. That’s one of the reasons we’ll argue till we’re blue in the face just so that someone understands that we were right and they were wrong.

The slogan behind the PluginID brand is ‘plug into your identity.’ At first glance, that might not mean much, although I have covered it multiple times throughout the site. The thing is, a lot of people have their own definition of the word identity. I was reading an article where a blogger I like described your identity as something that can change and something can be improved.

Instead, I view it as your core self. You without unnecessary social conditioning and limiting beliefs. I noticed myself thinking that this blogger was wrong simply because I didn’t want to lose my belief about the word. You have to accept that someone, somewhere, will think differently to you, and that’s OK. You should also try to keep an open mind about your current beliefs because just like for those who thought the world was flat, different ideas will come along.

2. Take in Other Views, But Give Priority to Your Own Experiences – If we took what we saw in the movies as fact and the way things are, life would be a lot differently. Firstly, there would be a lot of guys (or at least, a lot more) spending 6 months or more ‘wooing’ girls with presents and fancy restaurants just to get her into bed.

Secondly, there would be people not worried about going to jail because they could do undercover work for the FBI which would give them a get-out-of-jail card, Monopoly meets Fast and the Furious style.

At the end of the day, you’ll receive multiple perspectives for ways to go about pretty much everything in life. Of course, try new things, but give priority to your own firsthand experience over most advice out there.

3. Don’t Look to Others For How to Live Your Life – It doesn’t matter what I say, Brad Pitt says or even what Barack Obama has to tell you, it’s completely up to you how you want to live your life. Not even your friends or family should have a strong influence over which direction you want to take things.

If I look at the situation of most of my old school friends right now, they’re all in dead-end jobs or with university degrees they don’t care about and in a number of cases…still living off mum. It’s so easy to do what everyone else does, but simplicity doesn’t equal happiness.

If people do something and you like the idea of that path (i.e. Cloud Living) then go for it and try it out for yourself. But, if things don’t pan out the way you expect them to, feel free to switch things up. Never forget point 2 here: give priority to your own experiences.

I read on CNN today that if you purchase a copy of Cloud Living you’ll instantly become healthier and insanely more attractive. 97% of their readers agreed and backed that statement with logical quotes and mind-blowing ‘before and after’ pictures.