HEALTH
Before you set out on your quests for wealth, love, happiness or spirituality, it's best to make sure that you start off on the right foot. Your body is a machine. What you put into this machine and how you service it matters a great deal in affecting its output. Taking care of your physiology will ultimately determine your emotions, feelings, thoughts, and finally, tasks that you perform as well as how well you perform them.
PHYSICAL STATE
Mastering your physiological health doesn't mean you have to be a pro-level athlete. Let's start with some basics that will affect your emotional and mental states.
SLEEPING BEAUTY
Unlocking this achievement is fairly easy, yet so very few of us actually do it. 8hrs a day for adults is a must. Consistency is key if you like remembering things, having 400% better concentration, and avoiding Alzheimer's down the road.
I LIKE TO MOVE IT, MOVE IT
Research shows that just 30 minutes of cardio workout (fast walking) three times a week is enough to make a long-lasting impact on your health, not to mention the immediate positive impact on concentration, increased energy levels, improved mood, and memory. Your brain produces new Neurons, grows in size, becomes resilient to neurological diseases. Talk about a worthwhile long-term investment!
JUST BREATHE
If you're reading this - it means you're alive and are a novice at breathing. BUT... getting oxygen to your lungs and preventing immediate suffocation is not the only thing breathing is good for. Who knew, right? Take Wim Hoff for example... through breathing, he's able to achieve some pretty astounding feats in his physiology and even immune response. Whether you want to go so far is up to you, but for now, let's focus on achieving the basic task of regulating your heart rate (which affects the mental state) first.
YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT
What you eat, how often you eat, and when you should perhaps fast are some of the things you could experiment with and measure their impact. You would think that there's a one size fits all approach, but apparently, it's quite custom.
EMOTIONAL STATE
Now that you've taken care of the core physical skills, it's time to take it one step further.
Emotions are messages that something significant is happening. It's essential you don't get lost in the noise, but rather learn to listen and take corrective action.
PRACTICE AWARENESS
First step to "control" your emotional state is to make sure your physical state is optimal and then to be aware of what it is you're feeling as you're feeling it and being able to change it through breathing or meditation. Have you unlocked this achievement yet?
PEAK MENTAL STATE
Did you know that stressful situations can cause our heart rate to become frantic and essentially lobotomize that big brain of ours? We enter into our primordial fight or flight mode and I'm sure that some of you felt this kind of anxiety long after the situation that caused it was over. This is why the basic skills above are an important precursor to what you'll be doing with that big brain of yours later. If you're here, then it means you're at your 100% and won't go about your days half-assing everything else.