Spouts, pitchers, batter scoops, and other tools make it easy to pour a liquid into a tiny receptacle. But you don’t need to spend on those. Just grab a waxed cardboard milk carton, clean it out, and you’re good to go.
You’re reading The Importance of Morning Rituals and How to Make One, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Most people have a morning routine. They roll out of their beds, brush their teeth, and groggily stroll into their days. But if you’re reading this, you don’t want to be like most people. You want to blow past the average, get an edge on the competition, and maximize your potential. So instead of dipping your toe into your day, dive in head first by ditching the morning routine in favor of a morning ritual.
When I say ritual I’m not referring to secret or religious practices. There are two key difference between routines and rituals:
Ritual connotes something more spiritual than routine does. It’s nonnegotiable. It HAS to be performed in order to achieve peak performance. We already see rituals right in front of our eyes from NBA players who dribble the ball in the same exact way before every foul shot to computers that run the same boot-up scripts every time you turn them on. Anecdotal evidence is great but I have concrete research to back me up. Researchers Francesca Gino and Michael Norton has this to say about rituals:
“Rituals performed after experiencing losses – from loved ones to lotteries – do alleviate grief, and rituals performed before high-pressure tasks – like singing in public – do in fact reduce anxiety and increase people’s confidence.”
In other words a pre-day ritual helps by reducing some of the tension you may feel about the upcoming day. In fact, the rituals, those researchers tested were simple like wearing lucky socks, or crossing your fingers. What we’re doing here goes beyond the simple superstitions. It makes you feel good and prepares you.
Now that you know a lack of a morning ritual is holding you back, how do you go about establishing one? I can tell you firsthand that it’s not as easy as it may seem. Don’t worry, I’ll lay out all the necessary steps next.
While those three steps seem simple enough, there is some nuance involved in getting it down perfectly. Maybe over the weekend you have time to hit the gym for an hour while during the week you can barely have enough time to stretch. That’s for you to work out. Eventually though you’ll have an awesome system to jump start your day. Don’t take that advantage lightly. Often times the one who wins the race isn’t the fastest, but the one who gets the best start. Now you can beat your competition out of the gates every time.
You’ve read The Importance of Morning Rituals and How to Make One, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
You’re reading The Importance of Morning Rituals and How to Make One, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Most people have a morning routine. They roll out of their beds, brush their teeth, and groggily stroll into their days. But if you’re reading this, you don’t want to be like most people. You want to blow past the average, get an edge on the competition, and maximize your potential. So instead of dipping your toe into your day, dive in head first by ditching the morning routine in favor of a morning ritual.
When I say ritual I’m not referring to secret or religious practices. There are two key difference between routines and rituals:
Ritual connotes something more spiritual than routine does. It’s nonnegotiable. It HAS to be performed in order to achieve peak performance. We already see rituals right in front of our eyes from NBA players who dribble the ball in the same exact way before every foul shot to computers that run the same boot-up scripts every time you turn them on. Anecdotal evidence is great but I have concrete research to back me up. Researchers Francesca Gino and Michael Norton has this to say about rituals:
“Rituals performed after experiencing losses – from loved ones to lotteries – do alleviate grief, and rituals performed before high-pressure tasks – like singing in public – do in fact reduce anxiety and increase people’s confidence.”
In other words a pre-day ritual helps by reducing some of the tension you may feel about the upcoming day. In fact, the rituals, those researchers tested were simple like wearing lucky socks, or crossing your fingers. What we’re doing here goes beyond the simple superstitions. It makes you feel good and prepares you.
Now that you know a lack of a morning ritual is holding you back, how do you go about establishing one? I can tell you firsthand that it’s not as easy as it may seem. Don’t worry, I’ll lay out all the necessary steps next.
While those three steps seem simple enough, there is some nuance involved in getting it down perfectly. Maybe over the weekend you have time to hit the gym for an hour while during the week you can barely have enough time to stretch. That’s for you to work out. Eventually though you’ll have an awesome system to jump start your day. Don’t take that advantage lightly. Often times the one who wins the race isn’t the fastest, but the one who gets the best start. Now you can beat your competition out of the gates every time.
You’ve read The Importance of Morning Rituals and How to Make One, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Nacho Cheese Doritos are a perfect junk food and, until now, my only way of getting more Dorito flavor in my life was putting them in a pepper grinder and grinding them over everything. Things are about to change around here though, as the Real American Heroes at Epicurious have come up with their own Dorito-inspired seasoning mix.
Doctors often use BMI, or Body Mass Index, to quickly screen patients for more tests. But having a normal or low BMI doesn’t mean you’re healthy
, and having a high BMI mean you’re unhealthy
. To help your doctor better assess your overall health, measure your waist size too. Here’s how.
Welcome to Hackerspace! This is the reader-run community of Lifehacker and our weekly open thread for you to share and talk about whatever you want. Well, it is not summer yet but it was about 90 here (in Philly area) most of the week and now it is a long weekend where everyone is going to the beach so it is summery enough! So, with that inspiration, what is your favorite summery beachy food? I’m not a native Pennsylvanian but man, I can appreciate a good sausage and they have some excellent kielbasa (and in Scranton, they literally have a sausage fest). Sausage, hot dogs, all those types of foods in meat casings with lots of mustard and relish are my choice but what are yours? I will also say that I like any kind of frozen dessert
, ice cream or not.
Are you striving for happiness when just being happier is good enough?
I don’t know anyone who is happy all the time. Well, maybe the Dalai Lama, but aside from him, happiness eludes even the most cheerful of us from time-to-time. So, I don’t think your initial aim should be to achieve utter happiness. I would recommend that you aim at a target that’s easier to hit.
I think when our goal is not happiness but being happier, it’s more achievable. Also, it gives us something on which we can focus and measure on a daily basis. Being happier is easier to quantify than happiness.
Being happier is a moment-by-moment decision. It’s easier to answer the question “what can I do to make myself happier right now” than it is to answer the question “how can I achieve happiness.”
Here’s what I know about happiness from a personal perspective. I believe that you – not outside influences – control your level of happiness. I’m not ecstatic every single day, but I experience some happiness daily. I became happier when I stopped striving for the life goal of happiness, and just began enjoying a few moments during the day that would make me happier right then.
Now to practice being happier, you must first have the proper foundation. You’re probably thinking, “oh, boy, there you go Harry. A foundation sounds like hard work!”
Settle down there nitro. The foundation isn’t hard and it is based in scientific fact: it’s harder to be happier if you don’t get enough sleep, you don’t move enough, or you let yourself get hungry. In essence, being happier is found at the intersection of a sound mind and body.
Let’s take a look at the science behind these.
It turns out that lack of sleep makes you more susceptible to negative emotions. According to the British Psychological Society, people who stay awake throughout the day become progressively more sensitive to negative emotions. In contrast, those who take an afternoon nap are desensitized to negative emotions yet more responsive to positive ones. The new finding builds on past research by showing that not only does sleep deprivation cause emotional problems, a sleep boost can bring emotional advantages.
So, even if you don’t get enough sleep at night, a quick nap can turn your day around.
Although I do recommend that everyone practice yoga and exercise with kettlebells, I’m not saying you have to do either to get enough movement in your day to affect you level of happiness. What if I told you that there is a research-based program that takes just seven minutes to complete? It requires only your own body weight and items you have around the house. The exercises include jumping jacks, wall sits, push-ups, ab crunches, step-ups onto chair, squats, tricep dips on chair, planks, high knees running in place, lunges, push-ups with rotation, and side planks. According to an article in Lifehacker, the exercises should be performed in rapid succession, allowing 30 seconds for each (with a 10 second rest between exercises), while, throughout, the intensity hovers at an 8 on a discomfort scale of 1 to 10, (director of exercise physiology at the Human Performance Institute Mr. Chris Jordan says. Those seven minutes should be, in a word, unpleasant. The upside is, after seven minutes, you’re done.
Not ready yet for an intense seven-minute interval workout? Just get outside and walk for 10 minutes. A study indicates that just being outside makes people happier.
Then, you’re probably not happy at the moment. Science tells us that we should eat every four hours or so. In our hectic, fast-paced world, we don’t always hit that mark, and if we do we are often eating the wrong things.
Sugary, starchy foods may comfort us momentarily, but the elevated mood quickly passes, leaving us feeling cranky and irritable. In acute cases, we produce too much of a hormone called ghrelin — known as the hunger hormone — that may be a key to post-traumatic stress disorder and other stress-related mental illnesses.
What can we do to inhibit the hunger hormone? An apple a day helps keep the ghrelin away, as does wheat bran, rice bran, and green tea.
OK, now get that healthier foundation in place, so you can begin to build a happier life.
The post Being Happier: An Achievable Goal appeared first on Change your thoughts.
Your grill: it’s the quintessential outdoor cooking vessel, and yet it can be so much more
. From cleaning your grill to upgrading its features, here are some of the best tips and hacks we’ve seen to maintain your grill and take it to the next level.
With the summer grilling season upon us, you may be looking for the perfect backyard cooking surface for your next cookout, or you may just have strong opinions on which grills do the best job at helping a skilled cook turn out the best dishes. Whichever it is, we asked you for your picks for the best grills on the market, and you responded. Here are five of the best, based on your nominations.
Memorial Day kicks off the start of summer and some of you will be using to holiday to shop for a new ride. This weekend can be a great opportunity to catch some sales, so here are some of our top tips to score a great deal.
Sig Nordal 