Milk is actually one of the poorest sources of calcium (that actually contains calcium). Your body has a hard time using it. Same for the protein in it. I like my calcium from broccoli.

I have become a huge fan of my iPod naps. They work great. I got a new Bond CD in the mail today that I may start using for my wake-up. Because I have had success with my 15 minute iPod naps, and trouble with my core sleep I am thinking about going total Uberman. I don’t like the frequency of naps (every 4 hours) then, but at least I don’t need to worry about sleeping in from my core. . .
We will see what tomorrow holds. . . .

At home my wife got me a great dual-alarm clock with a nap timer. You hit a button and it will wake you up in a fixed period of time. The dual alarm is great for the polyphasic sleep too. Dawn uses it to wake up in the middle of the night for up time, and then I use the second alarm to get up in the morning.

I was using my cell-phone’s alarm to wake up from naps, but it is a pain to set, and was not 100% reliable. I came up with this great solution that I really like: the iPod Nap.

How it works:

1. Create a play list. I have 3 playlists for naps: they are named 15 minute nap, 20 minute nap, and 30 minute nap.
2. Add meditative, relaxing or soft music to take up the amount of time you want the nap to be. I have some hypnosis tracks I use.
3. Add some high energy and loud music to wake you up, after the soft music. I use Bond’s Highly Strung from their album Classified.
   
4. Play the playlist in sequential play (non-random).
5. Sleep during the soft / relaxing tracks, wake up for the high energy track.

This works great! Using the same soft music reminds my body it is nap time, so I go to sleep quicker, and every single time I wake up right away with the high energy music. Since I carry my iPod most of the time I am always ready to take a nap. The added bonus is the headphones block out a lot of the background noise so I can sleep easier, and without interruptions.

If you don’t have an iPod then you can get any portable MP3 player that supports playlists. You don’t even really need that much storage capacity.

Enjoy your naps!

I actually woke up later then I planned, but I still got to work at a good time and took two 15 minute naps at work. The first was in the morning, so I went out and laid down in my car. Afterwards I realized that in the afternoon that would be a hot place to nap, unless I wanted to start parking in the garage, which is a long walk. Plus I plan to go back to riding the bus again to work, so I won’t have a car to sleep in. Need to come up with another option.

Since I have gotten good at the 15 minute REM power-nap I actually woke up on my own right before my cell phone’s alarm went off.  I imagine because I had a plan worked out this morning that is why I got sleepy at the scheduled times, then went to sleep and woke up as expected.

For my second nap I thought I would try sleeping in my cubicle, but that was too noisy, even with headphones on.  Next I tried the bathroom stall.  Again it was noise, and hard to breath.  At this point I was getting sleepy so I thought I would just go out to the car.  That is when it occured to me to grab an empty conference room.  I quickly found a quiet and dark conference room that is rarely used.  It was perfect.  Took my nap and woke up 20 minutes later.

After my nap I use some deep breathing and stretching to get myself woke back up again.  The result is I actually felt better, more alert and much more focused today.  My productivity was much higher and I was able to work out things very quickly.

Here is my plan: Start adding 15-30 minute naps every 4 to 6 hours during the day, and then gradually reduce the amount of time I sleep at night. I actually participated in Dawn’s polyphasic sleep schedule a few times, and so I have gotten really good at the 15 minute REM nap.

Interestingly, we are all born practicing Polyphasic sleep – rotating through a cycle of sleep and awake time through-out the day. Most babies are trained into sleep cycle where they sleep 8+ hours a night, with a nap or two during the day by about 1 year of age, and beteen by 5 and 7 most of them have given up the nap and are now completely monophasic.

At least this is true in the United States. Mexico is famous for its siesta, but it is actually practiced in many other parts of the world. Also, a large portion of Europe used to nap during the day, and then have some awake time at night. They are moving away from this in an effort to more align themselves with the US I imagine.

To sum it up, we are born polyphasic sleepers, which is breaking sleep up over multiple “naps” during a single day, but at least in the US we force ourselves to become monophasic, which is to sleep in one solid chunk once a day.

There is not many types of monophasic sleep. Some sleep less, other sleep more. Some sleep at day, others at night. That is about it.

Polyphasic sleep on the other hand is very varried. The most famous, and probably the most difficult type is called Uberman where there are 6 naps from 15 – 30 minutes throughout the day, and that is it. At the other end of the spectrum is a shorter sleep block at night, with a nap during the day.

My wonderful wife Dawn actually adopted a modified polyphasic sleep schedule to help our son deal with some behaviorial labels the school was placing on him. The two of them go to bed and get up at a normal time, but they are up for 15 – 30 minutes in the middle of the night, and then take a 15 – 30 minute nap during the day. By breaking up the sleep like this causes a calming effect. She has written about it in her blog. (Using polyphasic sleep to deal with Aspberger’s syndrome and Polyphasic sleep update).

Sometimes it may feel like we are bombarded with random thoughts – they just keep coming with no end in mind.  How can your possibly control them?

Think of yourself as a casting director for a play. You do not get to choose who shows up for auditions – the talent agency does that – but you do choose who ends up in the play. There will be many people whom you respond “Next” or “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” Some of those who are auditioning may require some additional persuasion to leave the stage (imagine a big long cane that pulls them off the stage), but in the end the decision is yours who will stay and who will go.

When you do get a good audition, you will no doubt keep them on the stage and have them work with more material. Then you will be sure you have a great record of their contact information so that you can call them back to be in the production.

Now it may seem that it would be important to allow anyone audition who is interested, but that would not be the case. Sure, you are the one who makes the final decision, but the more time spent entertaining unsuitable auditions, the less time you have for the good ones.

Plus, remember the most important key:

You may not cast everyone who auditions, but you will only cast someone who does audition.

So if all your audition time is taken up with undesirable auditions, then you will be stuck with an undesirable cast. If you never make time for a desirable audition then you will never have the opportunity to cast them.

Another thing will happen if a casting director is very strict with who they let audition, they will get a reputation for what they want. Eventually the talent agencies will know what the director is looking for, and they won’t send anyone if they don’t have it. Sure, you may have some that think they have it when they don’t, but the number of inappropriate ones will decrease.

So what does this have to do with those of us who are not involved in theater? Everything!

Our subconscious is constantly sending thoughts to audition on the stage of our mind. It gathers these thoughts and ideas from many sources, some are our original creations, but most are a rearrangement or combination of external stimuli both past and present.
As we (our conscious mind) are more strict and disciplined with our thoughts – by getting rid of ones that do not suit us and celebrating the ones that do – we create more space for thoughts that will serve us. In addition we also train our subconscious to send us more thoughts that do serve us. While our subconscious and external stimuli seem random and chaotic, we can recreate our perception of them however we choose to.

Seem far fetched? It is actually quite easy. Have you ever noticed that if you are thinking about buying a new car of a certain model that all of a sudden you see cars of that model everywhere? Did the mix of cars change simply by your desire to buy a car of that model? Of course not.

What changed was you consciously conditioned your subconscious mind to pass along every time it saw a car of that model. Your subconscious mind is always noticing everything, it is incredibly powerful. Even when you think you are focused on reading the words in this post, your subconscious is observing everything in your field of vision, everything you hear, and anything else you are sensing. You also have a dialog going on in your head about what you are reading. You are debating if you agree with me or not. The only thing that changes is what you are aware of consciously.

When you see the model of car you want, you give it a label. Lets say you want to buy a Honda Odyssey mini-van. Before your mind simply labeled all the Odyssey’s it noticed as mini-vans, and rarely bothered to notify your conscious mind when one was spotted. Now that you let your subconscious mind know what to label this specific type of mini van as, it is able to group them differently. So occasionally your subconscious points out an Odyssey to you. You get excited, since that is the kind of car you are looking for. This excitement lets your subconscious know it did good, so soon it starts pointing out more and more of them. Eventually it is pointing out every single Odyssey it notices. You had no idea they were such a common car. You subconscious loves to recognize and categorize things, you just need to let it know what you are looking for.

Why is it so important that we choose our thoughts? As I mentioned before, not all thoughts necessarily become actions, but all our actions were first thoughts. So if all our thoughts are self defeating, then our actions will also be self defeating. As we train out subconscious to provide us with more thoughts that serve us then we will have a better selection to choose form.

What can we train our subconscious to recognize? How about opportunities? What if we trained our mind to take everything as encouragement or a compliment? I know I have known people who did exactly the opposite – look at Eeyore!

People generally find what they are looking for. The problem is most people don’t bother to tell their subconscious what they are looking for. Get clear on what you want and focus on that. If something comes along that you don’t want, then tell it “Next”.  Make space for what you want, and when you find it celebrate!

This is one of those universal laws that applies everywhere.  For example (again generally speaking) you don’t marry everyone you date, but you date everyone you marry first.  So if you are only dating losers then you will marry a looser, but if you set high standards for who you will date, then you will end up marrying someone who matches those standards.

Likewise you don’t speak every thought you have, but you don’t say something that was not a thought first.

As you train your subconscious mind to find and provide what you are looking for, you will find it more often and in more places.  You will continue to refine your ability to recognize and you will get closer to your goal until it is the only thing that is achievable.

Get clear on what you want and accept no substitutes!

• _____ become _____
• ______ create _____
• ______ build ______

Then the words: Thoughts, Actions, Habits, and Character. Now as I try to recall this I realize I don’t remember the specifics that well, but I think that is the general idea. The teachers started talking about the lesson, but my attention was on the board. In a few seconds I blurted out “Thoughts become Actions, Actions create Habits, and Habits build Character,” again assuming I remember correctly, but it was definately something similar to that. It was obvious by the teacher’s reaction I had jumped ahead, but for some reason that was a very memorable concept to me.

Years later I read As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. It mirrored the same concept. A great book and I highly recommend reading it.

Recently I was reading Matt’s Blog on WordPress (my favorite blog platform) and he has the following quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Watch your thoughts; They become words. Watch your words; They become deeds. Watch your deeds; They become habits. Watch your habits; They become character. Character is everything.

(Slight punctuation editing on my part.)

This reminded me of when I was listening to an interview with Joe Vitale recently the comment was made that if we become what we think about, then why are there not more porn stars in the world? I thought that was a pretty good question. We have all heard the statistics (which I suspect are greatly exagerated) in reguards to how often men think about sex. So if there are so many thoughts focusing on sex then why do we not see more people who’s character is defined by sex? There is a gap between thoughts and actions.

The explanation for the gap, I believe, is that not all thoughts become actions. The important point is no action comes about without first being a thought. If you want to change your actions, first change your thoughts.  By starting with thoughts the above quotes show how small things become great. It is important to realize that “thougts are things“.

Practice shows that some of each level don’t make it to the next level. Not all actions become thoughs, and even some of your habits are not influential in determing your character (although the gap gets smaller at each level).

Maybe a better quote might be:

Character is built from habits. Habits are built by actions. Actions are created from thoughts.

You can quote me on that.

There is no break down or fall-off in that chain. All character is determined by habits, actions and thougts. All habits are determined by actions and thoughts and all actions are determined by thoughts alone.
Before anyone points it out, there is a gap between a person’s actual character, and their precieved character, but they are two different things. Your character is personal, but your precieved character has to do with your relationship and the characters of all those who precieve you.

Even thought this chain does not break, you are still in control. You determine your character by choosing your thoughts.

Well it turns out there are two healthy barley drinks. The first is barley water. Barley water is made by taking barley and soaking it or simmering it in water. You drink the water and leave the barley. I was little hesitant at first. It looked kind of odd to see the barley sitting the bottom of the jar, but I figured it was worth a shot, and she said it was really good for me. Wow, it was delicious! I really, really liked it.

The second health barley drink is barley grass juice. This is sometimes grouped as a wheat grass juice. It is made by taking young barley grass (sprouted barley if I understand correctly) then drying it and grinding it to powder. Then the powder is combined with juice, or in this case water. Since the grass is green, the liquid is green. It literally looks like grass juice. I was even more turned off by how this looked. Dawn assured me it was even better for me then the water. I decided to give it a shot. It was actually pretty good, and was very different then anything I had tasted before.

Besides chlorophyll and a myriad of vitamins, minerals and enzymes, barley grass is said to have¹:

• 16 vitamins
• 23 minerals
• 18 amino acids
• hundreds of active enzymes
• Compared to milk:
• 30 times more vitamin B-1
• 15 times the protean (per oz)
• 11 times the calcium
• Compared to spinach:
• 6.5 times as much carotene
• 5 times the iron content
• 7 times the vitamin C in oranges
• 4 times the vitamin B1 in whole wheat flour
• Unlike most plant sources it also contains 80 micrograms of vitamin B12 per 100 grams of dried barley plant juice.

It is interesting how green or raw foods at the bottom of the food chain have so many vitamins, minerals and nutrients. I am sure I will have a lot more barley (in various forms) in my diet.

¹Analysis conducted by the Resource Research Association, Office of Science and Technology and Japan Food Analysis Centre.