Keith McArthur's Blog, page 18

Six Hacks For a Better Night’s Sleep

My teen-aged son Connor is going through some bad insomnia. This is terrible for him. It’s also bad for Laura and me, because when he can’t sleep, he comes into our room and wakes us.

 

I’m lucky that I’ve rarely had trouble falling asleep. But right after my transplant, when my body was getting used to all the new anti-rejection drugs, I suffered from some terrible insomnia and found it incredibly frustrating.

Here are six hacks to help you fall asleep faster and to wake up feeling more refreshed.

1. Avoid screens

The human body has an internal clock that tells us when it’s time to go to sleep. Light is an important trigger for that clock. Exposure to light sends a signal to our bodies to stop producing melatonin, the chemical that makes us feel sleepy. The brighter the light, the worse the impact.

One study had one group of test subjects read a paper book at bedtime using a dim lamp. Another group read on an iPad. In just five nights, the iPad group took longer to fall asleep, spent less time in the restorative REM sleep and felt more sleepy and less alert in the morning. Any light near bedtime is harmful to natural sleep patterns, but phones, iPads and laptops may be worse than lamps and TV screens because we hold them close to our eyes and because they emit blue light that is especially triggering for our internal clocks.

2. Routine

Going to sleep and waking up at the same time every day — including weekends — helps your body’s internal clock to function more effectively. It’s also helpful to have a bedtime routine to help your body get ready for sleep. About an hour before bedtime, dim the lights, turn off electronics and do something relaxing like taking a bath or mindfulness meditation.

3. Go for a long walk

The best exercise to beat insomnia is a long walk, according to the National Sleep Foundation. Research shows that a single long walk will help you fall asleep sooner. More intense exercise may be less helpful over the short-term, especially close to bedtime. The sleep benefits of vigorous aerobic exercise or weight-lifting kick in after a month or so, research shows.

4. Turn down the thermostat

A bedroom temperature of between 60 to 67 degrees Fahrenheit (15.5 and 19.5 degrees Celsius) creates the optimal temperature for falling asleep and for getting a better sleep. That’s because the body isn’t focused at regulating temperature, and can devote it’s resources to the more restorative aspects of sleep.

5. Don’t abuse the snooze

Sleep experts are divided about the snooze button. There’s agreement that if you use it repeatedly — delaying your wakeup for an hour, for example — you’ll wake up feeling much more tired than if you’d just slept undisturbed for that extra hour. Some sleep experts say the snooze button should be avoided altogether. Others say using it once can be helpful, especially when the alarm disturbs a REM cycle.

 

 

 

6. Avoid booze

Okay, this one won’t apply to my son, not yet. But booze is sneaky. Yes, alcohol can help you fall asleep faster. But research shows that it disrupts sleep patterns and the quality of sleep you get. So while you may fall asleep faster, you’ll wake up feeling more tired.

What about you? Do you have any hacks that help you get a better night’s sleep?

#SundayFunday: The Practical Joke Edition

I love practical jokes. I love pranking people; I love watching pranks; I even appreciate being on the receiving end of a high quality prank.

On Sundays I take a break from writing about happiness, health and productivity to share something more fun. So in today’s #SundayFunday post, I’m sharing some of my favorite pranks.

Enjoy!

Toy Story 3 Prank

Some teens reedited this film to give it a very un-Disney ending. This video shows what happened when they show the remixed version to their family.

Stuffed skunk

One stuffed skunk; so many opportunities.

Best Man Speech Goes Horribly Wrong

The day I got home from the hospital after my transplant surgery, I got into bed and turned on the television. I discovered a show I hadn’t seen before: Impractical Jokers. The show made me laugh so hard it hurt my incision. So I kept having to turn the channel to something more sober so the pain would go away before turning back and laughing more. Some of the humor is cringe-worthy, but I know I’m going to laugh a lot every time I turn on this show.

Do you like practical jokes? Scroll down and share your favorites in the comments below.

10 Inspirational Quotes To Change Your Life

A great inspirational quote uses just a few words to convey a life-changing idea. Today I launched a Quotes page on My Instruction Manual where I’m collecting inspirational quotes that embody what this blog is all about. I’ll continue to add to it as I come across quotes I like.

Today, I’m sharing 10 of my favorites.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” — Albert Einstein

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” — Mark Twain

“Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.” — Henry James

“Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” –Muhammad Ali

“The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keep out the joy.” — Jim Rohn

“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” — Maya Angelou

“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.” — Dalai Lama

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” — Steve Jobs

“If you are willing to do only what’s easy, life will be hard. But if you are willing to do what’s hard, life will be easy.” — T. Harv Eker

“Your past doesn’t have to equal your future unless you want it to.” — Luminita D. Saviuc

Do you have a favorite inspirational quote? Scroll down and share it in the comments and maybe I’ll add it to the quotes page!

An Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation

For the most part, I’ve been living in a glow of happiness and healthiness since my kidney transplant. But this week, stress crept back into my life.

Three reasons:

First, my kidney doctor thinks I’ve been pushing too fast with exercise and wants me to slow down. So I’m walking more, running less and avoiding weights altogether. I’ve lost an important stress reliever.

Second, I’ve been commissioned to write a book. I owe a chapter a week. The timelines are easily manageable, yet I’m allowing these external deadlines to create stress I don’t get when working on my own projects.

Third, it’s been three months since my transplant. Doctors advise kidney recipients to plan to go back to work three months post-transplant. Even though I’ve been working for weeks, I’m allowing this artificial date to impose expectations on my productivity.

In the months before my transplant, I was feeling too sick to exercise and extremely anxious about whether I would get a new kidney in time to avoid dialysis. I tried mindfulness meditation and found it extremely helpful. I tried it again this week for the first time since my transplant and remembered how beneficial it can be.

Mindfulness meditation is easy and only takes a few minutes. What follows is a primer on what it’s all about and how you can try it at home.

What is mindfulness?

Being mindful is about living in the present moment, instead of dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.

What is mindfulness meditation?

Mindfulness meditation is about training our minds to ignore the noise in our heads that make it so difficult to be mindful. The messages we play over and over in our minds are often negative and almost always focused on the past or the future, instead of the only moment we can influence — the present.

 

How to meditate mindfully in four steps

Go somewhere comfortable, ideally in a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. Most people sit on the floor or in a chair when they mediate. I lie down in bed for meditation, which is okay as long as you know you won’t start drifting into sleep.
Set an alarm on your phone. Start with five minutes for the first couple of days, then lengthen it to 10 minutes. It’s important to have an alarm because you want to avoid thinking about how much time is left.
Close your eyes and focus on your breath until your alarm goes off. Breathing is a great thing to meditate on because it’s one of the few actions that can either be controlled by our conscious mind or run on autopilot. You can focus on the rhythm of the breath, how it feels, how it sounds, it doesn’t really matter. What’s more important is the next step, what you’re trying to avoid thinking about.
As you meditate, your inner voice will constantly try to interrupt you about the past and the future. Your voice will interrupt you to replay an uncomfortable conversation from the previous day or to formulate plans for tomorrow. The goal is to recognize these interruptions, set them aside and go back to focusing on your breathing. Successful meditation is not about being perfect. The exercise is not about avoiding other thoughts altogether, it’s about being aware of them, setting them aside, and returning to your breath.

Mindfulness meditation works for me and there’s research that shows it can have a positive impact on happiness and health. I’ll get into the science in a future post.

What about you? Have you tried meditation? Has it helped? If not, give it a try using these directions and come back and let us know how it went in the comments below!

 

 

Maybe I’m Not Too Old to Make New Friends

No new post today, so I wanted to re-share something I first published in early June. Looking forward to you hearing from you in the comments!

My Instruction Manual

I’m not a very good friend.

I care deeply about the people in my life and want to stay close with them. But maintaining friendships takes work, and I’ve been lazy. The friendships I do have are largely thanks to the other person making the effort.

As part of My Instruction Manual, I’ve been thinking about the people who are important to me, and I’m slowly starting to put in the required work.

But what about making new friends?

I read in Gretchen Rubin‘s The Happiness Project (my review here) that one of her happiness resolutions was to make three new friends in a month.

THREE new friends? In a MONTH?

Nothing she tried in her year of happiness experiments seemed more daunting to me than the idea of making new friends. If I couldn’t be bothered to maintain existing friendships, how could I even consider…

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Book Review: 15 Things You Should Give Up to Be Happy

The Book

15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy. By Luminita D. Saviuc. First published in 2016.

Summary

Sharing stories from her own life — some of them tragic and horrifying — Saviuc talks about each of the 15 things we need to give up and provides a path to achieving happiness by ridding ourselves of each one.

What you need to know

Saviuc is the creator of the PurposeFairy blog and this book is based on her most successful blog post. You can read the post here.

The parts of the book where Saviuc is talking about her own life are the most compelling. These real examples do the best job of illustrating her 15 points. The sections where she provides the “path to” are a little more abstract.

Key Takeaway

Here’s Saviuc’s complete list of things we must give up to be happy.

Give up the past
Give up your fears
Give up your limiting beliefs
Give up your excuses
Give up your resistance to change
Give up blaming
Give up complaining
Give up the luxury of criticism
Give up living your life according to other people’s expectations
Give up your self defeating self-talk
Give up control
Give up the need to always be right
Give up the need to impress others
Give up labels
Give up attachment

Personal Impact

This book is crammed with terrific quotes on various self-improvement / personal development topics. I’ve started compiling quotes from this book and elsewhere and I’m planning to launch a “quotes” page soon on My Instruction Manual. She also includes quotes from Lao Tzu, one of the Chinese philosophers behind Taoism. I studied his writing in university and it is beautiful and profound. This book reminded me that I need to read it again as part of my journey to live better.

Worth Reading?

Mostly. I imagine it could be a huge challenge to turn a 1,000 word blog post into a 200-page book. And while the post is definitely worth of being expanded upon, I sometimes felt that book could have been a little shorter. Pick up the book, but feel free to skim the “path to” sections if it feels repetitive.

Seven Things I’m Grateful for Today

Today marks three months since my kidney transplant and three months since I got my second chance at life.

It’s a good day to take stock of the things I’m grateful for.

1. I’m grateful for Laura. It was twenty years ago this month that we got engaged and there’s still no one in the world I would rather spend time with. Laura is funny, generous, beautiful and wise. She’s also exhausted. Today was supposed to be the day that I was going to be able to start pitching in with all the heavy lifting for my son Bryson. But my doctor recently advised me to wait four more weeks. This means another month where all the burden will fall on Laura. Thank you wifey!

2. I’m grateful for my boys. Every day Connor and Bryson amaze me as they continue to grow and develop in wonderful ways. I’m so proud of them both and cherish every moment we have together.

3. I’m grateful for Stephanie. My little sister celebrates her birthday this month. She’s the one who gave me this new kidney and a new lease on life. Like me, she’s also a huge Toronto Blue Jays fan and it’s fun to have someone with which to celebrate and commiserate.

4. I’m grateful for my mom and Laura’s parents. My dad died three years ago, a constant reminder of the terrible truth that parents don’t live forever. Every day we have with them is a gift.

5. I’m grateful for the My Instruction Manual community. Just six weeks old, this blog has been successful beyond my wildest dreams.  The best part is the feedback I get through comments, emails and Facebook messages about the positive impact the blog is having on other people’s lives. (Special thanks to the most frequent commenters Tanushka, Sara, Ipuna, Roda, Pamela and Bella!).

6. I’m grateful for a gig. My business was on hold for several months when I was too sick to work before the transplant. I’m in the process of refocusing the business to align more closely with my new life and the kinds of things I write about in My Instruction Manual. In the meantime, I was asked to write a short book for another publisher. It’s good to have a project with income I can count on.

7. I’m grateful for health and happiness. I launched this blog to chronicle my journey to be happier and healthier. And I can honestly say that I feel happier today than I ever remember feeling as an adult. I’m healthy too. It’s mostly the new kidney, but it’s also that I’m taking steps to eat better and exercise more. I’ve had a minor setback. I was overdoing it on exercise so I’ve had to slow down a bit. This means I won’t achieve my goal of running 5 kilometers by today. But I’m grateful I should soon get that chance.

And as always, I’m grateful for sharks.

What about you? What are you grateful for today?

Five Ways to Beat Procrastination Today

A couple weeks back, Tanushka of That Desperate Friend blog asked me to write a post about procrastination.

I said I would, but I kept putting it off.

But seriously folks…

(See what I did there?)

Procrastination used to be a big problem for me, but I don’t struggle with it much now.

That’s partly because I enjoy what I do. I work for myself, set my own hours and reap my own rewards.

But it’s also because I follow a few simple tips to keep myself focused.

So I won’t put it off any longer. Here are five ways to beat procrastination. Do it today! Don’t delay!

1. Eat and sleep well

The prefrontal cortex of our brain is in charge of executive functioning. It’s the part that helps us set goals, focus and make good decisions. But the PFC is resource-intensive. When we haven’t had a good night’s sleep or haven’t eaten in a while, we don’t have enough energy to run all parts of our brain at full capacity. So our brain shifts resources away from the PFC to prioritize “essential services” like breathing.

This leaves us feeling groggy, or hangry (hungry-angry) and unfocused. In this state, it’s almost like we have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Focusing becomes harder and procrastination more likely.

2. Take time to plan

I find it’s best to plan the next day in my bullet journal at the end of the previous day, but you can also do it when you first start your day. Planning means setting a realistic list of what you want to accomplish in a day, then scheduling it into your calendar. Don’t forget to schedule breaks and to build time into your day for non-work related tasks, things like getting some exercise or calling a friend. For projects that will take longer than a day, it’s important to set a deadlines not just of when you’ll be finished but also deadlines for smaller steps along the way.

A plan is a contract with yourself. That doesn’t mean you should be inflexible with your plan. Successful people pivot all the time. But it means that you’re making an explicit decision to alter course, not being sucked into a YouTube vortex of baby elephant videos.

3. Hide the distractions

When it’s time for work, you want to make it nearly impossible for you to do anything but work. Close all the browser tabs except the one you’re using. Hide your phone across the room or in your bag. And most importantly, turn off all the notifications. It’s very hard to resist the urge to check a “ding” even though the vast majority of texts, emails and Facebook messages are not urgent, important or satisfying.

4. Focus on progress, not perfection

Sometimes procrastination sets in when we’re not satisfied with the quality of work we’re producing. When we start to feel bad, we seek out quick hits of pleasure by checking Instagram or playing Geometry Dash. When this happens, the key is to reframe the task. Focus on getting it done, not getting it done perfectly. Most of the time, if you push through, it will turn out better than you expect. And you can always revise later.

5. Reward yourself

If you’ve scheduled three hours to write, publish and promote a blog post, but you get it done in two hours, you’ve earned yourself an hour to do with as you please. Take time to read a novel or go for a walk. You’ll probably find that you’ll choose to spend this bonus time in much more rewarding ways than you would have if you were procrastinating. Knowing that you can “win” this bonus time is a great incentive for pushing through and getting something done faster.

What about you? What hacks do you use to avoid procrastination?

What Do You Want To Be?

Hey all!

I would love your help in improving the focus of my blog.

Are happiness, healthiness and productivity the right categories to include in an instruction manual for life?

If you haven’t already, please take a minute to comment on the post I’m reblogging today.

Thank you!

Keith

My Instruction Manual

What do you want to be?

Richer? Thinner? Happier? More popular? More successful? All of the above?

When I launched My Instruction Manual last month, I wanted to create a guidebook for being human. I knew this would help me and I hoped it would help others too. My initial vision was to focus my journey on three things: 1) becoming happier, 2) becoming healthier and 3) becoming more productive.

For this post, I want your help.

I want you to let me know if this is the right list. Does happier, healthier and more productive cover everything that matters? Or are there other important themes that are missing?

You can help shape this blog by scrolling down to the comments and letting me know what you think.

But first, here’s how I see the three categories:

“Happier” will include posts about growth, gratitude, stress, human relationships and mindfulness. Recent…

View original post 231 more words

Will Eating Oranges Make You Orange?

Will eating oranges make you orange?

Will eating bread crumbs make you feel crumby?

Will eating chicken make you such a chicken that you run away and hide?

The answer to these questions is obviously no.

So why do so many of us continue to believe that eating fatty foods makes you fat? As I wrote in a recent blog post, the latest nutritional research shows that sugar, not fat, is what causes us to put on weight — and makes it harder to lose it.

But what about cholesterol? Will eating foods that are high in cholesterol raise your cholesterol levels?

This is an important question for me since one of the side effects of the anti-rejection drugs I take to protect my new kidney is that they can increase my bad cholesterol levels and my blood pressure.

My doctor is debating whether to put me on drugs that will lower my bad cholesterol, but in the meantime I wanted to learn whether diet plays a role.

First things first. Not all cholesterol is bad. Low-density lipoproteins (LDLs) are known as “bad” cholesterol because too much in our blood increases the chance of heart disease. High-density lipoproteins (HDLs) are known as “good” cholesterol because the more we have in our blood, the lower our risk for heart disease.

It wasn’t that long ago that doctors believed that eating foods with cholesterol was the most important contributor to high cholesterol levels. We were told to restrict egg yolks because they were so high in cholesterol. But the most recent research suggests that just as eating oranges doesn’t make us orange, eating cholesterol doesn’t have much impact on our cholesterol levels.

But diet does play a major role. And it’s as much about eating  more of the right foods as it is about avoiding the bad ones.

Foods that are high in fibre and omega-3 fatty acids help lower bad cholesterol. If you want to lower your LDL cholesterol, the best thing to do is eat more oatmeal, bran and legumes as well as healthy fatty foods like nuts, salmon and avocados.

You also want to cut trans fats out of your diet as much as possible. The science here is clear. Trans fats raise bad cholesterol levels while lowering good cholesterol.

The science around saturated fat is more controversial, because eating it raises both good and bad cholesterol levels. It’s best not to overdo it with fatty red meats or full-fat dairy, but saturated fat is probably not as bad for us as scientists once thought.

A hat-tip to The Half-Arsed Runner, who left a comment on my blog post about fatty foods quoting one expert who said that believing eating fat makes you fat is like believing eating green foods make you green. This comment was the inspiration for today’s post.