Program your sleeping environment’s temperature to drop 1-3 degrees to fall and stay asleep, and increase 1-3 degrees to wake up refreshed. This is essential for a great night’s sleep and improved sleep quality.
Implement morning routines and practices to set the stage for emotional resilience and avoid getting triggered throughout the day. These routines are vital for ensuring your nervous system is in the state you need it to be in.
Focus self-care on ensuring your nervous system is in the optimal state needed for your day, beyond just massages or exercise. This approach is crucial for enhancing emotional resilience.
Actively collect the raw materials of experience by seeking out disparate experiences, rather than just specific inputs. This is fundamental for generating new ideas and fostering inspiration.
At least once a week, walk, hike, or run without earphones, actively trying to achieve states of wordlessness and turn off the linguistic narrative. This allows the raw materials of experience to marinate and combine, fostering new ideas and inspiration.
Dedicate 5-10 minutes to being completely still and wide awake, allowing stored information from your unconscious mind to ‘geyser up’. This practice can lead to inspiration and deeper self-understanding.
Practice mirror work by staring into a mirror while awake, reflecting on self and aspirations, and the idea of the body as a container. This simple practice helps activate and access the unconscious mind to enhance mental health.
Engage in structured introspection and zero-cost practices to proactively enhance your mental health, viewing it as ‘mental fitness’ independent of income level.
To offset seasonal depression in northern latitudes, extend your morning bright light exposure by 2-3 minutes as days shorten. This tricks the melatonin system into perceiving longer days.
If natural sunlight is scarce, use an artificial bright light source (e.g., a 900 lux drawing tablet or bright incandescent bulb) for about 5 minutes, 90 minutes after waking, especially during fall and winter, to counter seasonal affective disorder.
Engage in activities that increase neuromodulators like serotonin, epinephrine, acetylcholine, or dopamine (e.g., elevated focus, talk therapy, or determined learning of an instrument) to open windows for neuroplasticity.
Promote children playing musical instruments, especially with others, as it significantly improves their ability to learn across various domains throughout their lives by enhancing brain connectivity.
Incorporate 150-200 minutes per week of Zone 2 cardio (e.g., walking where you can just barely hold a conversation) into your routine to significantly improve overall health span and lifespan.
Perform resistance training approximately three days a week to maintain physical health and prevent age-related decline, contributing to health span and lifespan.
Integrate mobility exercises into your routine to prevent falls and bone fractures, which are critical for maintaining health span and lifespan.
Use a standing desk (can be improvised with stacked boxes) to avoid prolonged sitting, which is beneficial for overall health.
While sitting, repeatedly raise your heel (pushing your toe down) to engage the soleus muscle. This dramatically increases blood glucose utilization and reduces insulin levels, mimicking some benefits of walking for sedentary individuals.
Employ a fidget device, such as a footrest that kicks back and forth, while using a standing desk to encourage continuous movement and reduce static standing.
Utilize physiological sighs as a real-time tool to reduce stress during highly triggering situations.
Engage in practices that help you become more comfortable with adrenaline circulating in your system. This can elevate your threshold for a stress response.
Perform a perceptual exercise by deliberately shifting focus from internal states to close objects, then distant objects, and finally imagining oneself on the globe. This trains the nervous system to shift between time domains and can improve task switching.
Drink AG1 once or twice a day to ensure foundational nutritional needs are met, providing essential vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and fiber for optimal mental health, physical health, and performance.