For a few years know I have been getting by on 4 -5 hours of sleep and I didn’t realise how unusual that was until a few weeks ago when I was having a conversation with some of my work colleagues.  A lot of them said something like ‘Oh I need my 8 hours of sleep every night’.  It got me to thinking where this myth of needing at least 8 hours of sleep per night came from.  So I done some research and found it comes down to science.  It’s the scientists that say we need at least 7 – 9 hours of sleep per night depending on age, gender and working patterns.

So why do I need only 4 -5 hours and other people, like my wife, need about 8 hours of sleep per night?

I decide to try a little experiment.  For the last few weeks I have been trying my hardest to sleep for 8 hours per night.

My results were strange.  The first few days I kept on waking up at 4.30 – 5.00am.  I forced myself to stay in bed and try to fall back asleep, I dosed on and off.

By the 5th day I was able to sleep for about 7 hours before waking up.  The thing is I felt kind of groggy when I was getting up and the rest of the day felt rushed and I was trying to catch up with myself.

The last week I actually got into it and I was starting to get used to sleeping longer, on average about 7 – 7.5 hours per night.  I felt less groggy and got into the swing of the day a lot quicker.

A few days ago I went back to normal and got up at 5am after turning out the lights at about midnight.  I felt groggy again as my sleep pattern had been upset again however this morning I feel fine after getting my 5 hours of sleep.

What this has shown me is that we get by on what we are used to and our sleeping patterns will take care of itself once we have developed a sleep habit.  My habit is 5 hours of sleep and I believe my sleep cycle will work itself into my habit of 5 hours of sleep.

Of course our body needs to rest and we need sleep and our sleeping cycle, REM time, delta sleep, theta sleep and alpha sleep etc all play a role in replenishing our minds and body’s.  However, I believe the sleeping cycle will work itself into our own sleeping habit.

Here is how to get by on 5 hours of sleeper night

Week 1 – Get 7 hours 15 minutes of sleep per night

Week 2 – Get 6 hours and 30 minutes of sleep per night

Week 3 – Get 5 hours 45 minutes of sleeper night

Week 4 – Get 5 hours of sleeper night

Now the only thing you’ve got to worry about is what to do with the extra 15 – 25 hours per week.

I occasionally have the odd dose in front of the TV for 15 minutes but it’s one of those micro-naps when I feel totally refreshed after it.  I know have a lot more time to fit everything I do online into my schedule and feel much more productive throughout the day.

Some other articles you might be interested in:

How to Micro-Nap your way to success

90 Minutes sleep cycle for a better life

Sleep Paralysis

My Morning routine – Zen Habits

Wake up at 5am for 30 Days

How to become an early riser

Finding your creative genius – The bridge to the unconscious

There are many ways to find the inner creative person inside you and there are some great blogs, which can help you on your way. Check out some of these blogs:

• The
  Positive Blog Network
• Balanced
  Life Center
• Dating
  Tips and Relationship Advice
• Dragon
  Slayer’s Guide to Life
• Evolving
  Times
• Get
  the Most Out of Your Life!
• Make
  It Great!
• Motivational
  Speaker
• Passive
  Income
• Personal
  Development for the Mind
• Personal
  Finance Forum
• Pick
  the Brain: Critical Thinking
• Personal
  Growth and Effectiveness
• Personal
  Development Podcast & Blog
• A
  Quest for Personal Freedom
• Sales
  Motivation
• Talent
  Development
• Zen
  Habits – Simple Productivity

Here is another suggestion to find creative solutions to problems, for creating works of art, for writers, for anything you just want to mull over.

Our dream images can tell us a lot about ourselves and can give us deep insight into our lives. You can use this knowledge to your advantage by harnessing the power of your subconscious mind. As mentioned before it can be difficult to get access to our subconscious without a lot of effort on our part.

Hypnogogia

Hypnogogia is the state we experience just as we are falling asleep. We are not quite conscious but we are not fully asleep yet. The brainwaves are going from the alpha and beta states to the deeper delta and theta waves usually experienced in dreaming. Therefore, it is like the bridge to the unconscious.

Hypnogogia can produce hallucinatory experiences; tactile, auditory and visual hallucinations. It can also produce a state called sleep paralysis, which is a state when our bodies are paralysed for a period. Our mind is still awake and we are awake when sleep paralysis occurs which can be a terrifying thing if we start to hallucinate.

Many lucid dreamers go through the state of sleep paralysis before becoming lucid in their dreams. When I practiced lucid dreaming a few years ago, I had a few scary sleep paralysis nights. It is also a state, which can occur during hypnogogia, and when we recognise this state, we can use it for our benefit.

Creativity in the state of hypnogogia

To practice keeping your mind awake just as you are falling asleep can take a few weeks but it can be done.

If you want to practice this you have to first have the will to do it, so don’t do it half-heartedly as you will give up after a few nights.

When you have the will, practicing is easy, perseverence is the harder part.

Practicing staying awake

Just before falling asleep each night, as you are the dozing stage, talk to yourself and tell yourself your mind is awake. Don’t repeat the statement as this might make you sleepier, rather make a running commentary something like ‘my mind is awake but I can feel my body falling asleep, my arms are relaxed, my mind is alert, my legs are also relaxing………’ and so on.

When you have practiced this for a few nights and you have got used to this state you might experience sleep paralysis, hallucinations, and lucid dreams or even astral projection (yes it really happens).

Using it for creativity

You can now start using the hypnogigic state to begin your creative journey. Before drifting off to sleep ask yourself a question, you need an answer to. This can be anything, like; what can you paint for your next painting, what can you write about in your next post, where can you find a great business idea, how will you sell your house or anything you need inspiration for.

Obviously, this is only another tool in the toolbox of personal development. It may work for someone who is highly motivated and it might not work for others who are less motivated. Try it, if it doesn’t work move onto another tool.

If you have had experienced the tae of hypnogogia and used if to help you why not tell us about it and leave a comment.

Creating a parallel you

There are many things we wished we could change about ourselves. Being more productive, being thinner, being well off financially, and being more intelligent: a whole host of other attributes that we would want for ourselves.

Imagine a world where there are multiple your’s, there is another you walking about who is 14 pounds lighter, there is yet another you who is 14 pounds heavier, there is another you who is a millionaire and there is another you who is homeless and destitute. Sounds like science fiction but we cannot say for sure that this is not the case.

Your world is just a theory

Now it may be hard to imagine a world like this, after all it’s just fiction posited by some mad science fiction writers. Not so, there are now many scientists working with superstring theory and other theories that postulate that our world is possibly made of lots of worlds all within a millimetre of each. One such theory called the M-Theory brings together all other superstring theories and is a complex and unfinished theory, which proposes that there could be multiple universes existing side by side.

What the hell theories have to do with our lives. Well if we think about it, we are living our life based on theories.

• We believe that the study of psychology is a science, therefore fact, when in fact it is all based on theories.
• We believe in evolution when it is really based on a theory, albeit a very convincing theory.
• Most of us believe in a God of some kind; yet again another theory and a belief system, one that most people get angry about when questioned.

Now these three statements alone are a huge part of most people’s lives but they are all theories and nothing more. Yes, there has been evidence put forward for evolution, there has been studies carried out in psychology but they are still nothing more than theories.

Our own world theories

Why not come up with our own world theories? A lot of us do not think we are intelligent enough to come up with a theory and leave it to scientists to do that kind of stuff. A scientist is someone who has managed to get a great education and has undoubtedly studied hard and spent their lives, some of them, studying a specific field. However that does not mean their theories are any more valid than our theories.

Beliefs and theories

We live our lives based on the theories of the world and we base our beliefs around some of these theories. What about if we change our beliefs and our theories about the world.

I am not suggesting proposing a theory of the universe, although it is possible, but rather come up with micro-theories and change our lives around them.

For example, imagine a world where there were multiple universes and another you were living your dream life in another universe. Now imagine seeing the other person knowing that you are living 1 millimetre apart and the time difference between your dream life and your current life is whatever you want it to be. For example, a thin you is only 1 millimetre away but they are 1 year apart. You now know you will reach one of your ultimate goals; to be thin. Knowing this could change your perspective and your life. Now it is just crazy thinking stuff like this as it is not true! Who is to say it’s not true? You are living your life based on theories, make your own theories and make them work for you.

Question your beliefs and live your own theories.

I think a lot of us live our lives without questioning our beliefs. I know I have spoke about this before but it is worth re-iterating. Question everything you believe in. We have based our lives on what other people have told us when we were young and we have been brainwashed to a degree, we naturally believe our parents when we are children, but our parents were conditioned when they were children by their parents and peers and their parents and peers conditioned them.

We are all special enough to question ourselves, our beliefs, and the theories of the world.

I am working on a theory whereby I can control the cells in my body to burn fat quicker. It might take a few years to get my brain to believe this theory, when it believes my theory the cells in my body will follow my brain.

Tips for a better life #3

It has been shown that an average sleep cycle lasts for around 90 minutes. The
90 minutes consist of 2 distinct states rapid Eye Movement, REM, sleep
and nonREM (nREM) sleep. There are various cycles within this 90 minutes
cycle but the main ones are REM and nREM.

I have read a lot about this but only tried messing about with it last year. I
now usually have around 3 sleep cycles which sees me getting up at around 5am. I
go to sleep around 12. If I go to bed earlier I get up earlier. So
I am basically functioning on 3 sleep cycles.

My tip is to experiment with this 90 minute sleep cycle and see how it works
for you. You can squeeze an extra 8.5 hours per week by getting up 1
sleep cycle earlier and not requiring to take a nap during the day.

A shift in consciousness

For the last few years now my life has been changing and I couldn’t
really figure out how or why it was changing. Until a few days ago, I
have had a massive shift in my consciousness and I put it down to my thinking.

For years, since I was about 19 or so I have read a thousand books on self
development, I have listened to a hundred tapes on self development, and I
have attended a few seminars on self development. Some of them worked
for a while and some of them didn’t, I have sometimes been fortunate
there have been times when I have been unfortunate.

Reality shift

The reality shift came when I questioned my life, questioned my beliefs, and
questioned my existence and a few days ago some questions were answered.

Bear with me here as this is going to be long but I believe it will be worth
it.

I am God!!!! Truly, I am God. I have been trying to figure out why we
dream and a few years ago I asked myself the question I am in a dream just
now. I constantly asked the question ‘am I in a dream just now’.
There were some reality shifts at the time and I started looking at the world
in a different way, I looked at buildings with a sense of awe, I marvelled
at the way things worked instead of taking everything for granted. Eventually
I asked the question well if this is a dream ‘so what!’ I can no
more control the dream than I control my real life.

Then I started having lucid dreams, see
my eight articles on Lucid dreaming, and suddenly the whole question
of me controlling my life, or supposed dream, took on a whole new perspective. I
could control my dreams to a certain degree therefore it begged the question
could I control what happens in my life.

Life is a dream

Well, if I come from the perspective that my life is a dream I should be able
to control that. However in order to really believe that my life was
a dream I would have to wake up from my present perspective in order to do
that. How the hell would I do that? I was going further and further
down the rabbit hole.

In my lucid dreams if I wanted to fly, I would think ‘fly’ and
it would happen, if I wanted someone with me I would think of them and they
would be with me. Now could I do this in my ‘real life’? So
I went about trying it….’I want one million pounds…I want
the perfect woman in my life……….I want a family………etc. Did
it work? Did it hell and the reason for this was because I was trying to put
a new belief system on top of, what was my, current belief system.

New software

My belief system at the time was that: the world happened to me, everything
in my world happened by chance. It was unlucky that I went bankrupt;
it was unlucky that I lost a lot of money; I was unlucky to have not found
my true love. Now I believe that I create the world around me. I
am the controller of this dream I am having. I create the people in it,
I create the amount of money I have, I create my relationships, and I create
everything. For me it is a belief that I found difficult to install,
at first, but I am getting there.

Since I started installing the belief a few years ago wonderful things have
happened to me, I’ve discussed them before in previous posts: my wife,
my kids, my career, my everything has changed for the better.

Well, a few days ago something inside me clicked into place. I believe
the software of my new belief has been fully installed and ready to use and
it is amazing. Before this I used to say to myself I more or less believe
in the power of positive thought and the power of intention etc but now it’s
shifted a great deal to ‘I know this is real and I know it works’. I
don’t know why it has clicked into place just now I just know it has
and I am going to start to experiment big time with it.

The last few days

The last few days I have asking myself why I created the cars that are on
the road, why I created the people around me, why the people in my life were
in my life. Now, I am not talking that I am literally God I am talking
on another level, I didn’t really create the cars or the people but I
did manifest them and their manifestations have matched up with mine to be
in the same place at the same time.

I have literally jumped onto another level of consciousness without knowing
how I did it except to change my beliefs about things. I still see the
world with the same eyes but I see the world differently, I still hear the
same things. As it is such a new experience I am just getting used to
the feeling just now and the rush that has taken over, there’s an energy
inside me that is burning and I am trying to make sense of it all.

I have had similar shifts in consciousness when I was younger and there is
one thing in common and that is intentions. I intended to change at some point,
I intended to have lucid dreams, and I intended to manifest more money in my
life. The difference this time is that it is not a fleeting shifting
consciousness it is a lasting one. This shift is also, at the moment,
not discernable to the people around me, colleagues and family.

I am frightened just now to start using this power as I know it is so powerful
so I am going to take a few days to calm down and think about what I want in
my life and start the manifestations.

I really hope this all doesn’t sound too absurd and I hope I have explained
it well enough for you to understand. I am just typing furiously just
now. I think I have written about 1000 words in the space of 20 minutes.

I will write more on this when my brain has had time to absorb the information
and the new energy it has.

Change your life; Part 4: Visualising the life you want.

The visions in your head create the life you live! Everybody who has ever read a self development book of any kind knows this, but it is worth re-iterating. It literally affects every single area of our lives from going for a walk to building up a business.

We have to realise that our thoughts are real and they have energy.

Think about what you do every morning to go to work. You wake up; picture your place of work and either roll back to sleep or jump up, ready for action. You picture, in your mind, what you have to do for the day, either dreading it or looking forward to it. You are picturing your outcome for the day ahead. You do this with almost everything you do day to day.

The thing is when we have pictures in our head and dread the image we are never going to have a good day and we leave our days in the hands of fate. If you took 10 minutes out of your day, don’t say you don’t have the time because that’s just not true and you know it, we could have a great day, a great week, a great month, a great year and ultimately a great year.

A lot of people are concentrating so much on what they don’t want that they are attracting more of what they don’t want. I was talking with a friend the a few weeks ago and he told me his son was always getting into trouble at school and seemed to attract children who wanted a fight. During the conversation it was clear that his son was always on his guard in case someone picked on him or bumped into him. My friend told me his son always had a scowl on his face and looked angry all the time, another reason he was attracting attention to himself. I got a chance to speak with my friend’s son and he did indeed have a scowl. We spoke about his problems at school and he told me what my friend had told me. I asked the boy of he could try something for me. I asked him to be aware of every time he scowled and to straighten his face, literally. I also asked him if he could try a fun exercise very morning and that was too picture in his mind having a great day at school, I asked him to picture having a laugh with his friends, playing football, and getting on well at school and enjoying himself. I didn’t mention about the fights or anybody who was causing the trouble. I wanted him to concentrate on the good things and not wake up every morning thinking he was going to get into a fight.

My friend reported, a few days ago, that his son has not been in trouble for a few weeks and had actually enjoyed going to school.

How it works

By visualising something you are literally creating a ball of energy, it is real and it can be directed. It is attracted to the same type of energy you have created e.g. positive energy you have created will attract positive energy someone else has created. Sound far fetched?

Try this:

Stand up. Feet together, legs straight. Bend down and try and touch your toes without bending your knees. See how far you get.

Now try this. Picture in your minds eye or feel it, if you think you can’t visualise, yourself bending down and touching your toes but this time going further than you did the first time. Open your eyes. Now do it again, bend forward in your minds eye and bend forward and go further than you did the last time. Do this a few times.

Now stand up for real and bend down, without bending your knees, and try and touch your toes. I am willing to bet that you got further than you did the first time you tried it.

This is the power of visualisation, only this time it is affecting your physiology as well, that’s for another article.

For now, take it for granted that your thoughts stem from mental energy which forms a physical energy which is attracted to the same form of energy of others and attracts back to you.

If you do this only once you may get something back in return. However of you do it often you will get what you wish for or visualise for.

The process works like this;

1. Set your desired outcome
2. Visualise it in your minds eye
3. Focus on it often, preferably a set time every day
4. Always give it positive energy.

Be sure not to mix up those positive thoughts with thoughts of negativity, which is quite easy to creep into your thoughts.

This works every time and the only reason it won’t work is you working in negative thoughts into your thinking when visualising your desired outcome.

Positive thinking

This might sound clichéd, but it is true. You will not attract positive things in your life if half your time is spent thinking negatively. If you keep thinking about the lack of money you have you will NEVER attract money into your life.

Also be prepared to work for your desired outcomes. Don’t just visualise 1 million pounds and expect not to work for it.

You will have to be aware of the synchronicities that will happen after a few days of your practicing your visualisations. Be on the lookout for people coming into your life, books presenting themselves, signs in general that will lead you towards your desired outcome.

If you have any stories about how this has worked for you let me know or if you have any questions let me know and I will be happy to answer your questions.

When farting gets out of control!

Now I know for a lot of people the very word ‘farting’
sounds offensive especially offensive to a lot of women for some reason, I know
my wife and my aunts and mum hate the word. However it seems a lot of men
suffer from this, especially in the morning. The reason I wrote about this was
because I woke myself up this morning because of a gargantuan fart, honestly! my
stomach must have deflated by 2 inches.

I know what is causing this, for me, to happen, it’s the
sweets I eat. I gave up sweets as a trial for 3 weeks and my bloating and my
flatulence levels were at an all time low. So, I thought, I can give up sweets
lets see what happens when I start eating them again. Within a day or two I
felt bloated again and my flatulence levels increased. I have now been eating
the sweets, by this I mean biscuits, sweets, cake and flapjacks, for almost two
weeks.

So I now know what causes my bloating and flatulence
problems so I can cut them out of my daily diet altogether. But I got to
wondering how farts are formed (I know I know I’ll never mention this again in
any other post but somebody’s got to do it).

I went over to

How stuff works for an explanation and here is their explanation:

Flatulence occurs when a food does not break down
completely in the stomach and small intestine. As a result, the food makes it
into the large intestine in an undigested state. For example, if
you are “lactose intolerant,” it means that you lack an enzyme (lactase) in your
intestine — the enzyme that breaks lactose apart into two sugar molecules so
they can enter the bloodstream. Without lactase, lactose passes undigested
through the stomach and small intestine and arrives in the large intestine.

There, the lactose meets up with billions of hungry bacteria — the
natural “intestinal fauna” we all have in our large intestine. These bacteria
are happy to digest lactose. They produce a variety of gases, in much the way
that yeast produces carbon dioxide to leaven bread (see

How Bread Works for details on yeast). Gases such as methane, hydrogen and
hydrogen sulphide are common gases that these bacteria produce. Hydrogen
sulphide is the source of the odor we associate with flatulence.

Certain foods produce more flatulence than others because they
contain more indigestible carbohydrates than others. Beans, as you might
expect, are particularly well-endowed in this regard.

A few ways to reduce flatulence.

1. Take a probiotic to counteract any loss of the good bacteria we
   have in our stomachs
2. Cut down on food offenders which may cause gas such as dairy
   products, apples, pears, wholegrain foods, soft drinks and fruit drinks.
   Experiment as not all of the aforementioned foods cause it for you.
3. Limit high fat foods as this takes longer to digest and causes
   more gas in your stomach
4. If you are lactose intolerant cut out dairy foods from your diet
5. Experiment with all different types of food. Cut one food out for
   48 hours and note the effect and keep on doing this until you find offending
   foods which may cause flatulence.
6. If it becomes a real problem see your doctor who can get some
   tests done for various problems you may have.

I hope this has helped a little but it still begs the questions why do men
fart more than women?

If you enjoy this site please leave a donation for Steven, and you can enjoy the spirit of giving too.

If you enjoyed this post please Digg it.

The Secret

No doubt you have seen or heard about the movie ‘The Secret’. I have heard a lot about and finally managed to get a copy and watched it a few times over a period of 2 weeks.

It’s not a film as such it is more of a documentary similar in style to ‘What The Bleep Do We Know!?“>what the bleep do we know?‘ It also had the same effect on me as Bruce Lipton’s work such as the ‘Biology of belief’, the DVD has to be seen. The secret had a similar effect however I currently use a lot of the principles talked about in the film.

The film

throughout the film there are various speakers come on to talk about how your thoughts create your world. If you think about the things in life you do not want they will invariably be attracted to you. If you think about the things in life you do want, you will attract them. For example I sometimes find myself thinking about the money I DON’T have to buy the things I want, this has the opposite effect to what I want. When I catch myself thinking like this, and it’s easy to do, I stop and think of the things I already have and think about the things I will have in the future. I really do believe in this passionately and my hope is for everyone to grasp this principle.

The speakers are people such as Jack Canfield, Mike Dooley, John Grey, Bill Harris, Bob Proctor, Joe Vitale, Marie Diamond and my personal favourite Michael Beckwith. According to the website these are the teachers of our generation. Past teachers were people such Dale Carnegie, Joseph Campbell, Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill, Carl Jung, Emily Pankhurst and Thomas Edison.

The premise of the film is very simple but it is amazing how most people do not know, accept or use the concepts. Change your thoughts and you will change your world, literally.

The secret blog

The Secret also has a blog here and the visualisation tool video you can download this video here, save it and maximise it on your desktop. I have watched the visualisation tool video a few times when I need a little reminder to focus my thoughts.

If you enjoy this site please leave a donation for Steven, and you can enjoy the spirit of giving too.

scary figures in your sleep?

I found a great article on Sleep paralysis in Science News discussing describing the personal account from David J. Hufford of a sleep paralysis episode and his encounter with a malevolant entity.

It mirrored my experiences and I have since found other sites and major studies detailing sleep paralysis and a common thread runs thoughout these strange experiences. There seems to be some kind of entity, as described in my previous article: sleep paralysis and the shadow people.

Psychologist J. Allan Cheyne has collected over 28,000 stories from people who have experienced the sleep paralysis.. Cheyne runs a Web site here to collect stories from individuals.

Read the full article here it is really fascinating

If you enjoy this site please leave a donation for Steven, and you can enjoy the spirit of giving too.

Benefits of taking a cold shower

I have been taking cold showers for a while now and now have one every morning. I find it energises me and I feel awake instead of drowsy and I need this as I do research in the morning for the articles I write. I have not got used to jumping into a cold shower. I tend to take a normal shower and do my hair and body etc and then for around 5-10 minutes I adjust the temperature setting until it gets to the coldest setting and I stay under for about 5 minutes.

I remember, when I was younger, going on holiday and I was hung-over from the night before (you know the type of holiday the 18-30 type and every night is just drinking) I always dove into the pool in the morning, which was cold, it cured my hangover after 10 minutes swimming and my headaches would disappear. I did this a few times in the course of the morning.

There may be one drawback, if you are not religious like me you might find god very quickly when the cold water first hits me I tend to shout some expletive or ‘Jesus Christ!’, ‘oh my God!’

I have since found out there are many benefits to having a cold shower or a cold bath, I haven’t really done the latter, which I hadn’t realised until I did some research on the subject.

I found an article on CNN about a centenarian who attributes his long, healthy life to having a cold shower every morning read it here

How it helps the body

In an article from earthclinic the following benefits of cold water were noted

• Brings blood to the capillaries, therefore increasing circulation throughout the body.
• Cleans the circulatory system.
• Reduces blood pressure on internal organs.
• Provides flushing for the organs and provides a new supply of blood.
• Strengthens the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems.
• Contracts the muscles to eliminate toxins and poisonous wastes.
• Strengthens the mucous membranes, which help resist hay fever, allergies, colds, coughs.

Some evidence

A lot of people have reported that it helps panic attacks, although I haven’t seen any scientific backing for this it is purely anecdotal. However panic attacks bring blood rushing from areas of your body to those that need it most to get you ready for the flight or fight syndrome. Normally you would start to calm down after a while however if you suffer from panic attacks your adrenaline is still floating about in the body and your para-sympathetic nervous system does not shut down properly. It may be that a cold shower helps to shut down the system and readies it for heating your body up and getting blood to your vital organs.
Again some more anecdotal evidence, taking a cold shower every day helps to ward off colds. This is probably something to do with it strengthening the mucous membranes which, as mentioned above, helps to reduce fever, allergies and colds.

Try it for 21 days and see if you notice a difference.

If you enjoy this site please leave a donation for Steven, and you can enjoy the spirit of giving too.