The Quick Guide to Life Improvement

Do you ever feel down, depressed, or gloomy?

Well, wait no longer because the first official Quick Guide to Life Improvement is here!

In the first edition of The Quick Guide to Life Improvement, we will focus on three topics of popular interest that WILL improve your quality of life. The discussions of these topics are vast in the opinions of others and are highly deliberated today across the web. By disregarding the debates that one may find across the trenches of the web and by narrowing the focus of the following topics, the enrichment of one’s life will soon be realized. This guide is the microwave of improvement. In this quick guide, the reader will find three of the quickest lifestyle changes that if implemented TODAY will improve their life.

 

The focus of this guide is to help minimize the plethora of information available on the Internet and help those wishing to improve their life. It is too easy for beginners to get lost in the forest of forums available on the Internet. The purpose of this guide aims to simplify decision making. This saves readers enormous amounts of time and energy.

The following three steps are simplified to the bare minimum and allow the reader room to improve on their life.

 

Before we begin, it is important to recognize that everyone wants to change something about their life. Taking action makes it better. Maybe they want a new car, bigger house, new job, or all three. The problem is that almost everyone thinks that they deserve these lavish improvements in their life, but few people actually do anything about it. In the world of today, convenience is the king of kings. Everyone wants to get more for less. People want more results with less effort. Unfortunately, trying to change your life is anything but convenient. It requires dedication and hard work. Making anything better than before requires more work than previously done.

 

Step 1:

The first step is eating healthier. The  actual quote, “You are what you eat” was coined around the early 1920’s, but was derived from  Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s masterpiece, Physiologie du Gout (The Philosophy of Taste) written in 1826. The Physiology of Taste was completed two months before his death. It is largely considered his magnum opus. The book accounts for Brillat-Savarin’s meditations on the numerous relationships between food and humans. He pioneered the idea of a low carbohydrate diet and discusses the relationship between sugar and white flour to obesity.

Check out his free translation here:

The Philosphy of Taste (for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and PC).

Brillat-Savarin gives us three great examples for eating healthier. By following his advice, we can begin to improve ourselves. To start, it is time to STOP eating refined sugar and white flour. The first challenge is to stop drinking soda. Yes, this means all soda, even diet. Substitute soda with water, unsweetened tea with lemon or lime, or fresh squeezed juice from you local co-op.  Then, stop eating anything containing white flour including any type of white bread, hamburger buns, pastries, bagels, and muffins. Substitute white flour with whole grains.  By focusing on the elimination of these two ingredients, our diet becomes significantly healthier and we begin feeling better.

The debate of the role carbohydrates is a heated battle between the annual best sellers. Here’s the gist. Do not cut carbohydrates out of your diet, but rather eat a fair balance of healthy, whole grains. It is not healthy to overload the body with grain and starch. They lack adequate vitamins and minerals that are better provided by foods like fruits and vegetables. Get the most bang for your buck! The key is not to focus on eating less, but to eat only healthy carbohydrates like whole grains. The trick to eating healthier is to stop eating what’s bad.

After tweaking our diet, exercise provides immediate reward to life. Exercise is shown to help eliminate depression and play a vital role in fluctuating mood receptors. Exercising activates our mood receptors and triggers them to release dopamine and serotonin before, during, and after we exercise. Working out not only makes us look great which give us self confidence, but also makes us feel great which lead us to appreciate ourselves. Very few feelings in life can be rewarding as the end of a great workout.

Step 2:

For starters, there are many ways to exercise. There are different workout programs, recreational sports, and at-home exercise options available to the average reader of this guide. Some will be better suited than others. Do something that is exciting and challenging. Do not get caught up in the sea of programs available for sale. Spending precious time trying to decide on a specific weight loss program will only be a distraction. For those readers interested in following a program, here are a few awesome recommendations: p90x, insanity, pop Pilates, what else?, do it yourself gym

This guide encourages readers to start exercising slowly. It is best to take smaller steps in creating a new habit like exercise. Maybe only exercise for 5-10 minutes at first. Cardio exercises like walking, running, or jogging can be a great way to begin enriching life. They provide a great beginner’s solution to creating a habit of exercising. A five to ten minute jogging session a couple of times a week is the perfect way to begin feeling more empowered in life. If jogging is too much, try walking quickly at a comfortable speed. Bring along some music to enjoy during the workout.

Once you begin, do not stop. Set aside specific times during the day to exercise and write this time on your schedule.

Exercise is the only drug our bodies need. Start exercising slowly and work within your comfort zone. Exercise will be the addiction your body craves. Check out this awesome guide to walking here from Nerd Fitness:

The Hobbit’s Guide to Walking

`Step 3:

After exercising the major muscles of body, we must exercise the most important muscle in our body, the mind. Meditation is a great way to relax the mind, calm the body, and develop self-control. Three important processes happen during meditation. First, during meditation, our body is capable of processing cortisol. Cortisol is the hormone that produces stress. During meditation the bloodstream is able to decrease cortisol levels. Eliminating stress is crucial for enjoyment. The second benefit of meditating is that it slows our breathing down. Meditating lowers the amount of oxygen in our body. Though this may sound harmful, it is one way scientists measure the amount of rest on a body. Less oxygen calms the body providing it more rest. Whilst in a deep sleep, one breathes significantly less than during the day. Meditation follows this logic, but physiologists have determined that meditation provides more rest for the body than sleep. Testing trials from Harvard’s renowned psychologist, Herbert Benson, proved that through meditation the body is able to reach a deeper level of rest than sleep. The final reason to meditate is to gain self control. The practice of calming the mind is the most difficult aspect of meditating. This challenge will prove itself during the first couple attempts of any experimenter. Like any other muscle in the body, the brain must be exercised for greater control. By practicing meditation, one can learn to control their thoughts. This is very useful in eliminating anger, frustration, and negativity. Instead, the brain’s potential can be directed in a positive manner.

 

Put simply, meditation decreases stress, increases rest, and helps one gain self control. We are constantly thinking all day. We focus on all the wrong things like worry, greed, being self conscious, and jealousy. Learning to have better control over your thoughts will add great value to one’s life.  To start meditating, take three to five minutes a day and quite your mind. Start small and try and only count your breaths. Counting to ten slowly is a perfect starting place for a beginner. Great things will happen when you reach twenty breaths.

If you want to know more about Dr. Benson’s amazing techniques in The Relaxation Response, You can save $10 and download a free PDF here.

 

Remember, this is a quick minimalist’s guide to a self improvement. This will only help to kickstart your new life. This is intended to give the reader a push or a kick in the right direction. The difficulty does not lie within this guide, but rather within you. The hardest part presents itself right before you sit down to meditate, exercise, or eat. All you have to do show up. Make the right decision and watch your life improve.

 

P.S. I can’t wait to hear about your results!

-SS