3 Simple Things That Will Change Your Life

1. Hack your sleep — Did you know that there are ways to only need 4 hours of sleep? Or how about like Cristiano Ronaldo who sleeps only 2 hours a day? And did you know that there is also scientific evidence showing you how to feel awake no matter when you get up?

These hacks all involve knowing about your sleep and its cycles.

During sleep we go through different stages known as REM (Rapid Eye Movement), stages 1–4, and non-REM sleep, stage 5.

You need to reach stage 5 to feel completely rested (the details of why that is are still studied, but we do understand that non-REM sleep is crucial) and it usually takes you about 30 minutes from when you go to sleep to get to that stage.

You then stay in stage 5 sleep for only a relatively short amount of time and it will take you a total of 60 minutes to get back to stage 1, which is your lightest sleep phase. We go through these sleep stages every 90 minutes, plus or minus a few minutes depending on each person individually.

If you try to wake up during the REM stage you will wake up extremely tired, not well rested and you’ll feel like you just fell asleep a minute ago. Waking up during stage 1 sleep, however, makes you feel well rested regardless of when it is. The only problem is that it’s a relatively short interval to catch, usually lasting about 10–15 minutes.

If you want to use your sleep to your advantage you have to figure out when your light and deep sleep stages occur. Start out by planing your sleep in 90 minute intervals and then adding or subtracting 5 minutes week by week.

Eventually you’ll find a pattern as to how much sleep you will need to feel rested. Once you have that interval you can not only plan your sleep more effectively but also your naps, as you can just run through one full sleep cycle whenever you feel tired, and a couple more at night.

Or you could try another sleeping cycle, such as the 4 hour cycle that Cristiano Ronaldo is on. Just know that those cycles work for few people as they are quite hardcore.

For more information visit: Your Sleep Cycle Revealed

For more sleep cycles visit: 4 Alternative Sleeping Cycles That You Didn’t Know About [infographic]

2. Apply confirmation bias — We often believe that we need to see things to believe them… but what if I told you that it’s actually believing in something that causes you to see it and psychology actually supports this?

For those of you who do not know, confirmation bias is essentially the idea that your mind wants to confirm what you believe, making you unaware of any contradictory ideas. An example of which is if someone believes the sexist stereotype that women are bad drivers, whenever they see a bad driver who is female they will feel justified in their belief and remember it, same with good drivers who are male.

But, should they happen to see a woman who is a good driver, or a man who is a bad driver, it will be ‘an exception’ or bound to the situation, or their mind simply will not remember it, and when they think back they’ll still feel confirmed in their belief.

The question is whether or not we can use this to our advantage. What do you think will happen if you start consciously believing in some positive things about yourself and the world? If you believe the world to be a better place it may not necessarily become better right away, but from your perspective you will start to see more positive things in the world and less negatives. Or rather, you will remember the positives more than the negatives because your mind will begin to block out contradictory beliefs.

This will have an affect on you, as it will make the world seem like a better place overall and may even change your actions accordingly.

Believing something first causes you to see proof of it! It’s not like that proof did not exist or that contradictory proof does not exist, but your mind will block it out to confirm the beliefs you hold.

Let me use an example. Please take a look around the room right now and notice everything that is red in color. Try to remember as many red things as possible.

Now stop, and without looking around the room, name as many things you can that are blue. Probably you do not remember many, but if you look around the room again now for blue things you’ll find far more.

This is the same thing whether it’s a color, a belief, an ideal, personality trait or anything else. You see what you are looking for and your mind is constantly looking for things that confirm your own beliefs.

If you want to change those beliefs then you must actively look for things that will strengthen certain beliefs. Assume the world is great, that you are confident, or that every look you get is because that person is attracted to you.

Over time this will not only strengthen those beliefs, but you will see more proof of it and dive into a self-sustaining cycle of exactly what you want.

3. Motion creates Emotion — This is one of Tony Robbins’ favorite sayings, but he got it from Psychology, where it’s more commonly known as the Embodiment Theory.

This theory hypothesizes that it’s not your emotional state causing your body to react a certain way but rather your bodies reactions that cause you to feel that way. We believe, for instance, that we cry because we feel sad… but what if we actually were sad because we cried? How do you know which was first?

This is the concept the Embodiment Theory tries to put forth. And although the crying example may be a bit far fetched, we do know that this theory holds true to a certain extent.

We have all heard that smiling makes you happier, for one, and you can try that right now. Smile as wide as you can, stand up, act as though you are laughing at a hilarious joke or even fake laugh on purpose. Commit to the act and you will find yourself to feel a little happier than before.

If that does not work, you can try the same with confidence. Sit up straight, spread your legs at least shoulder with apart. Puff out your chest, put your arms around your surroundings to take up as much place as possible and life your head just a little bit. Add a half-cocked smile and you’ll most likely feel a difference, and Psychology can actually attest to that with various findings.

Now, if that holds true for happiness or confidence, why not with other things? Why would this then not work in making us more intelligent, attractive, charismatic, excited, brave or motivated?

You can call forth any emotion you desire by simply behaving in the way that people feeling that emotion do. You just have to fully commit to that character.

Imagine an excited person in your mind right now… How do they walk? How do they move their arms? How do they look at the world? What do they do with their facial muscles? How do they smile? Talk? And how do they view the situation from their point of view?

You know the answer to most of these questions, and all that is left for you to adopt their excitement is to model them and copy what they do.

That’s it. That is how you can feel whatever you want to feel.

Ask yourself: “What would the ____ [confident|brave|charismatic|etc.] version of myself do in this situation?” And fill in whatever adjective you want to. Visualize that person as detailed as you can, copy them and act out as much as possible.

If you do this for long enough your body will automatically adopt those feelings more naturally and you will find that you can be, at least in part, in control over how you feel.