In life it happens sometimes that the difficulties are transformed into problems and that the efforts necessary to solve the complexities that life presents to us are important and sometimes last a long time. Sometimes we feel discouraged, and we feel like saying “Enough, I can’t take it any longer, when will it end?”. That’s how we lose trust in life.
Those who know the universal law of alternation continue to have confidence in life, whatever happens because they know that everything is change, renewal and impermanence. They were able to observe that an expansion necessarily follows a contraction and that after dark the light returns. They are aware that one day things will change, and that life will make them smile again.
The guides who accompany the great expeditions in Kilimanjaro, one of the highest mountains in the world, use a Swahili expression to comfort fatigued walkers: “Polé, polé”, which means “slowly, slowly, one step at a time”.
Without interpreting what happens to us or projecting ourselves into a future that we do not know, we are left with only the concrete possibility of welcoming our moments of misfortune, without resisting them, because all the efforts will only cause loss of energy.
So, go ahead, keep on with trust in life, and slowly, slowly, one step at a time, you will find the light at the end of the tunnel.
We are approaching the end of summer. For those who have already returned from vacation it may be difficult to go back to everyday life, to start over with the usual routine.
So, I would like to share with you seven simple rules to follow for a quiet and less stressful life:
1. Make peace with your past so that it won’t disturb your future.
2. What other people think of you is none of your business.
3. The only person responsible for your happiness is you.
This relationship was highlighted by a study conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago, coordinated by Dr. Eva Van Cauter, director of the Center for Sleep and Metabolism. According to scientific research, sleeping less than 7 hours a night would contribute significantly to weight gain. The reason is that less sleep corresponds to a greater appetite during the day because the body automatically tends to feed more to stay awake longer. Sleep is in fact an essential condition for regulating many biological mechanisms, both mental and physical.
While you sleep, your metabolism slows down, allowing your body to consume less and optimize its energy reserves. Sleeping poorly and a few hours interrupts this rhythm, so increased appetite is one of the many ways nature tries to compensate for what it lacks. It is estimated that just one hour less sleep than the recommended average of 7/8 hours translates into a consumption of about 300 extra calories per day and 1 kilogram of extra body weight per week!
All this is due to the decrease in the satiety hormone, while ghrelin, the hunger hormone, increases. That is why, despite attempts to lose weight through exercise, few results are achieved. It is obvious that sleeping more and better is not the only thing you can do, but it is a good habit that should be part of a healthy lifestyle, including a rich and varied diet.
Therefore, to get back in shape, in addition to going to the gym and seeking advice from a nutritionist, you could simply increase the hours and quality of your sleep, thus restoring the balance of your body.
Becoming older means also becoming wiser. You realize what really matters in your life, what you privilege and who you choose to spend your time with.
Priority goes to what really matters in your life
During your youth, you felt almost always excited and you believed that the world was in your hands. You thought you had all the time ahead to realize and live your dreams. Becoming older makes you understand that time is limited and therefore precious.
Because of that, you want to enjoy every minute and every second with what is essential for you. Going out in the evening and getting home very late (or also very early the day after), nights spent drinking, dancing until your feet would hurt, no longer interest you. What matters is enjoying the time spent with your family, dedicating them qualitative time, that is time of exchange, time that counts and that is not forgotten. You realize that time flies, so you want to favour the present moment. Looking at photos together, savouring the small magical moments of hugs, or playing with your children are moments of unforgettable happiness.
Avoiding self-righteous people
Hypocrisy is no longer part of your life as an adult (at least it should be). Sincerity is what you are looking for. Instead of uttering an uninteresting sentence to someone you barely know or don’t particularly like, you’d rather be sincere, kind but sincere. At the same time, you will be attracted to people who are honest in their gestures, words and actions; people who bring a positive note to your life.
Respecting the lives of others.
Time and experience are great teachers when it comes to knowing oneself and the others. Wisdom teaches you to turn away from the problems and conflicts that don’t concern you, so as to avoid getting involved with bad energy. Therefore, respecting the lives of others becomes a fundamental principle.
Restricting your circle of friends
By ageing, the idea of making new friends doesn’t interest you any longer. Your priorities are more related to your family. You seek good friends rather than many friends. You try to build healthy relationships and you want to avoid toxic people.
Becoming older means crossing many paths with pitfalls. However, the difficulties that life presented you, allowed you to become stronger, more determined and wiser.
You have learned to know the difference between a person who is harmful to your well-being and a person full of positive energy who brings you joy and good mood.
Sleeping well is one of the secrets for your well-being that has been confirmed by science several times.
Find out what a good night’s sleep can bring in terms of well-being.
In the past people would go to bed at sunset and get up at sunrise. Our ancestors had no alarm clocks, they did not have neither a schedule to stick to, nor morning meetings to participate in. Their sleep rhythm was simply based on the natural day/night cycle, basically on the light.
Maintaining a healthy and regular sleep pattern is one of the (many) challenges of modern life. With our busy schedules, long working hours and smartphones always on, it may happen that we don’t get enough sleep.
Yet even though we all have a schedule to stick to, cutting back on your sleep hours is never a good idea. Sleep really has fabulous benefits, and getting enough sleep is vitally important for your overall health and well-being. Sleeping well doesn’t just serve to look good: it keeps you healthy.
Discover six benefits of sleep for your happiness and health.
1. Sleep makes you look good
Sleep is perhaps the closest thing to a fountain of youth. During deep sleep, the brain secretes a growth hormone responsible for cell renewal and repair of damaged tissue. This growth hormone is only released at night and can work miracles for your skin. The skin cells themselves go into repair mode when you sleep. Their metabolism accelerates and they regenerate faster than at any other time of the day.
In addition to these freshly renewed and healthy cells, sleep also has the effect of increasing blood flow to your skin, which is why your cheeks are warm and pink when you sleep. Lack of sleep can make the skin dull or chalky.
Thanks to a good night’s sleep you will look naturally throughout the following day.
2. Sleep strengthens the immune system
Researchers are only confirming what your mom has always told you: when you’re sick, the best thing to do is stay in bed and sleep as much as possible. Sleep helps fight the flu and other similar conditions, because the body produces disease-fighting proteins called cytokines when you sleep. If you’re sick often, maybe you’re not getting enough sleep. To strengthen your immune defences, try going to bed earlier or napping during the day.
3. Sleep helps solve problems
When faced with a dilemma, a good night’s sleep can help make the right decision. Researchers have observed that sleep helps solve problems creatively, because it provides access to the mass of knowledge and memories stored in your brain. At rest, your brain looks for associations that are not obvious when you are awake. This makes it possible to imagine creative solutions to solve the most difficult problems using information you didn’t even know you had.
Sleep and stress are back-feeding. Stress can cause a lack of sleep and lack of sleep can generate stress. It’s a vicious circle that can be hard to get out of. But by managing your sleep well, you learn to fight stress too. Better quality sleep helps your body and mind recover, but you’ll also be less sensitive to stress if you’ve slept well. All challenges are easier to face after at least 6 hours of good sleep!
5. Sleep helps to lose weight
If you’re looking to get back on your ideal weight, a good nap can be as effective as a workout. A study published by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition claims that people who sleep well burn more calories during the day than people who don’t get enough sleep. According to researchers at the University of Chicago, sleep promotes weight loss, and another study in the journal Obesity shows that tired people tend to consume more caloric foods.
6. Sleep is good for your social relationships
Sleeping well is not only good for your physical and mental well-being, it is also a way to keep healthy relationships. Lack of sleep makes us more irritable, less patient, and with less energy to devote to others. It also impacts our capacity for empathy, and prevents us from being sensitive to the emotions of our loved ones. In short, we are much more pleasant for others when we are well rested. A nap may not solve all your relationship problems, but sometimes all that’s missing is a few hours of sleep.
We are all born curious. Think about when you were a child or at children you know. They are extremely curious, aren’t they? They ask a lot of questions and they put themselves in dangerous situations.
Curiosity has great benefits: from rejuvenating your minds to helping you cope with change successfully.
However, we don’t all experience it the same way. There are those who are fascinated by Instagram to look into others’ lives, and there are some people who focus their interest on getting to know how things work, like for instance a car engine.
In both cases they are curious people.
However, the latest research shows that there are different types of curiosity which influence our personality and abilities.
Joyful exploration: this is the classic type of curiosity. You look for something related to new knowledge or information, from learning how to cook a dish you liked to knowing who built a particular building. This curiosity, as the name indicates, is linked to the joy of learning something you did not know before.
Anxiety caused by missing something: this dimension has a different emotional tone. While the previous one gives you joy, in this case you get stressed or anxious to know how to solve a problem during an exam or to remember something that does not come to your mind, for example.
Tolerance to stress: it is activated when you accept doubt or anxiety facing new, complex or unknown events. In some ways, it helps reduce resistance to change. It allows you to ask yourself what there may be beyond fear, for example when you experience changes in your job.
Social curiosity: if you are socially curious you tend to observe what others think, or how they behave. It is the desire to learn about others’ lives through the press, TV or social networks.
Thrill-seeking: This is the dimension that leads people to take any kind of risks to seek out new experiences, such as practising extreme sports or travelling to dangerous countries for the pleasure of the adventure.
According to a research conducted in 2018 on over 3,000 workers in the United States, Germany and China, 84% recognized that curiosity allows them to generate new ideas and 64% that it helps them to get a job promotion. Furthermore, according to the study’s conclusions, the first four dimensions of curiosity improve outcomes at work while people with high social curiosity are best at stirring up conflicts and gaining trust.
Ultimately, you can have one or more of the previous dimensions and, depending on this, you will be a joyful explorer, or you will be more inclined to solve problems, or, thanks to your social curiosity, you will be more empathetic.
Towards the end of the 19th century, a group of economists from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland studied the social inequalities in Europe. Analysing the tax data of several European countries, they found out that in each of them about 20% of the population owned 80% of the wealth.
This discovery was a real springboard for the career of an economist, Vilfredo Pareto, who gave his name to a principle, the Pareto principle, also known as the law of 20-80.
Some examples of the application of this principle:
• to optimize production, some industries in Japan focus on 20% of the causes that generate 80% of production problems;
• customer services of most companies focus on 20% of customers who generate 80% of turnover;
• finance professionals agree that 20% of their investments represent 80% of the benefits.
What does this principle make us understand? The message of Pareto’s principle is that we need to focus on 20% of the actions that lead us to 80% of the results.
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
In practice, we must focus on high value-added actions because they are the ones that make us move forward.
This principle is very important because it deals with a precious resource: time.
To avoid being stuck on a goal and slowly losing sight of it, it would be beneficial to use this perspective (20-80).
However, how can we identify what are the essential things to our goal? Moreover, how to choose high valuable actions?
Try to answer these two questions for each action you have planned but are hesitating to take:
1. Is this action vital in moving me towards my goal?
2. Am I the only one who can do this action?
The first question allows you to separate essential actions from those that can wait.
The second allows you to identify what are the actions that others can do in your place and that, therefore, you can delegate.
Once this is done, you will know 20% of the actions you need to take to advance towards achieving your goal.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
Now you could estimate the time required for each action but it is not ideal, because you would end up putting it on your “to-do-list” and you could continue to shift the priority order. Therefore, in the end you would have wasted some time.
Once again you have to ask yourself some questions:
1. What problems are stopping you from really moving forward with your goals?
2. What do you need to do to solve these problems?
3. What are the elements that allow you to understand if the problems have been solved?
You will be surprised to see how well these questions work. The 20-80 rule allows you to focus on actions that have a visible and direct impact. You will see that they will soon become a habit to you, and that you will use them every time you feel stuck with something.
Crisbie Coach 