Know Thyself

Every human being is the author of his own health or disease. – Buddha

Taking Control

The first realization to develop good health is that you are in control. You can’t blame anyone else and doing so only weakens you. I know I’m probably not talking to most of you but this is for the few that need to hear this.

Grabbing the steering wheel is the first thing that needs to happen before you can drive your health forwards. So many people are in denial about this that I thought I’d better point it out first.

It’s hard to admit sometimes but you are doing all these things to yourself. Nobody lifts that hand to eat that burger except you. Only you have the power to change. Now when you’ve claimed your power, here are 9 excellent habits that I’d recommend to you.


1. Stop Eating At 80% Full – Your bodys signals aren’t available to your mind straight away, This is why when you eat to the point of being full, your body feels absolutely stuffed for long after you’ve finished, it was full long before then.

If you stop eating at 80% full then your body will be nourished but not stuffed and your energy wont be drained by an overly active digestive system. Digestion takes so much of your energy away. Just look at how people fall asleep after eating a Sunday Roast.


2. Eat For Nutrition First, Then Pleasure – This is a mindset which all healthy humans make at some point. You realize that health is more important than satisfying your tastebuds. Some people put importance on things like how food is prepared, the cost in disregard to the quality etc.

Eating for nutrition is simple. Just eat what your body needs. I’m not one for over complicating things and so I just eat what I know my body thrives on and makes me feel amazing and take a …


3. Daily Multi-Vitamin – When I first started a Raw Vegan Diet I had a lack of some vitamins because I started it without knowing what I was doing. I didn’t like eating some of the foods that had essential vitamins in. I now take a single multivitamin tablet each day to make up for it and make sure I covered all bases which leads me to my next point …


4. Continual Change/Improvement – You have to be prepared to pick out what you think may apply to you, what doesn’t and experiment with it including everything in this article. Most Raw Vegans don’t eat a supplement but its the right path for me right now.

Most 21 year olds don’t get up at 5am and exercise every day but that feels totally normal to me. Making small changes to your diet each day can lead to massive results a few months from now. Exercising a little self control over time allows you to conquer bigger and bigger challenges.


5. Eating The Diet That Nature Intended – Follow your intuition when it comes to deciding which foods to eat. I like to think that it will lead us all to a Raw Vegan Diet but that might not be the next step for you.

You can find more about my experiences with this diet here. I’m not trying to push it upon you. It’s just that the path for most people tends to be -

Meat/Dairy Eater > No Dairy Products > No Meat > No Processed Food > Raw Vegan (Nuts, Seeds, Fruit, Vegetables – All Uncooked) > Fruitarian (Just fruits – uncooked)


6. Heavy, Light, Veg - This idea came to me when I started a new job and needed to fit my diet around its awkward times. This is what I’d eat on an average day.

Morning – After my morning workout I’d need to get lots of calories. I would eat a fruit and nut breakfast. It would include foods like bananas, mangoes and especially avocados. This gave me energy to burn throughout the day.

Dinner – I would eat lots of fruit. I’d get a large lunch box and fill it with all the fruits that I enjoyed and more for variety. The idea is that the fruit will give you an energy boost at lunchtime just when you need it so that you can get through the rest of the day.

Tea – I’d buy a bag of fresh green leaf salad on the way home and mix it in a big bowl with cucumber, cherry tomatoes, maybe some grapes and definitely some red peppers! The idea is to eat a light meal at the end of the day so your digestive system is not working throughout the night, preventing you from getting good sleep.


7. No Eating For 2 Hours Before Sleep – Did you know that the digestive system is the most energy consuming process in the body? Eating in the 2 hours before sleep made me feel groggy because my digestive system took away all my energy so I stopped and instantly felt more refreshed in the mornings.


8. Regular Waking Time – I’d definitely recommend experimenting but here’s what worked for me. I get up at 5am every day and go to sleep whenever I feel tired. The idea is that you sleep when tired but always have a regular waking time.

It doesn’t have to be 5am. It’s one of the best things I’ve done for my health. The combination of good eating habits and good sleep does amazing things for your body.

Getting up at a regular time helps you stick to a set meal plan and opens so many other doors for you in your health. Getting up early gives you mental clarity, a sense of self control and allows you to exercise or do something you are passionate about before your normal routine starts.


9. Fasting – I didn’t know that they sold Raw Chocolate where I shop and after buying some one day, after eating no chocolate for over a week it was heavenly. Words can’t describe. It was like I hadn’t drank water for a week and the first drop was hitting my dry tongue.

I savoured it like it was the last piece of chocolate I’d ever eat. An occasional fast like this gives you a new level of appreciation for food. They say you never miss the water until its gone and you’ll appreciate it on a whole new level once its back.

You’re are an author writing the book of your health whether you like it or not. Some of the book has been written and some is still to come. It’s a work in progress and you just have to ask yourself – What am I going to write for the next few chapters?

I have lots of half finished books and have a feeling I’m not the only one in personal development circles. Having too many books unfinished is an ineffective way of learning. They just start to stack up and nothing really gets done. I was thinking about this the other day when I saw Leo Babauta mention that he had less than 10 books in total.

I wanted access to the information from my books but didn’t want them in my home as they take up space and re-reading books for information is inefficient. So, I created my own system . It’s minimalistic, flexible and fills my needs.

This system will suit you if:

• You want more physical space
• You enjoy minimizing your possessions
• You have books lying about unfinished
• You never want to re-read a book again
• You want to digitize as much of your paper as you can
• You want an organized system for new books that you buy
• You feel that sorting your books into a system would give you mental clarity
• You want to extract the best lessons from a book and convert them into real life lessons

THE FIRST PURGE

The first step is to put all the books you have now into the system. When they’re in the system we can learn how to deal with new books.


Collect Your Books

Next, put aside a few hours to process all of your books. Maybe a day at the weekend or an evening. Collect them all together and get them in front of you on the floor.


Elimination

Get rid of all the books that you don’t want to read even if you’ve already started them. Also get rid of books that you have read and don’t want to come back to in the future. Don’t feel obliged to finish a book that bores the life out of you. You can give them away. Give to needy friends, sell on-line or give them to your local library and loan them out if you need them back.


Select Your Keepers

Are there some books that you just know that you’ll want to keep with you even after you’ve read them and taken notes on them?. Be strict here. Would notes do really and it’s just an emotional attachment?

I recommend setting a permanent limit on the number of books you can keep. You don’t have to max out that limit now. It’s like an overdraft, it’s just for emergencies. I chose a limit of five, but only have four in the list now. This is your “Keepers List”.

The “Keepers List” books are there for you to dip into whenever you want. These are the only books that will stay with you for the long term. You can change them but it may require sacrificing another book.


Separation

On paper or preferably a computer create three lists:

1. The ‘Keepers List’
2. Books you want to take notes on immediately without a re-read to decide if they’re good enough (called the “Notes List“)
3. Books to read/re-read before deciding whether they’re worth taking notes on – called the (“Reading List“)

Learn To Speed Read

Before you start processing the books I would seriously recommend learning to speed read so that you can scan a book before deciding whether it should progress to the “Notes List”.  A book I own and would recommend is The Speed Reading Book by Tony Buzan. Speed Reading is a set of simple techniques for reading at significantly faster speeds than normal. Imagine reading every book in a quarter of the usual time. I’d say you’d easily half your reading time compared to reading the book in a normal way, very easily.

The Three Stages

Stage 1 – What To Read Next?  (Reading Stage)

Is there a topic/book that you want to dive into right now that really gets you pumped? Or even one that you would love to collate notes on to get a view of the bigger picture? Or just simply to get them out of the way and off your mind? If so, put these books at the top of your “Reading List“. Pick one and start speed reading it straight away. If it’s good enough it will go to the ‘Notes List’ Stage. If not, you can get rid of it.

Minimize the books that you bring into your life during this purging period. Don’t buy and ask others not to give you any. If they do, then they simply go to the bottom of the ‘Reading List’ so that you can process the ones that you already have.


Stage 2 -Take Notes (Notes Stage)

If you decided that the book was good enough to take notes on, it progresses to this stage. Go back through it this time at a slower rate, taking notes as you go along in a way that will make it easy for you to quickly relearn in the future.

Go through the books that we decided before were in your ‘Notes List’ before progressing with books on the ‘Reading List’.

Go out there and apply what you learn and this is what I call your ‘Studying Book’. Study it you until you’ve achieved a level you’re happy with. Taking notes on personal development books is only good as a backup, their needs to be action. There’s no rush to get through the list. This is why I recommend being so picky with your reading books.


Stage 3 – Is it A Keeper? (Keepers Stage)

At this stage you can decide whether the book qualifies to be added to your ‘Keeper List’. Most wont but maybe one book per year will change on it. Most books can just have the lessons drawn out of them. If it’s not good enough to be a Keeper then learn from it, take notes and get rid of it.

Here’s a simplified flowchart diagram of the  system and three stages.

(click to maximise. It will open in a new window and can be printed with my permission.)


Digitizing

If you’re digitizing your notes then I recommend you use Google Docs. It has every feature you could want plus more. It has highlighting, folders, remote access, can be accessed off-line and from anywhere with an internet connection and is totally free.  The best feature is that it has a search function to separate notes into genres so they’re easier to find. Applying this system over years could give you a lot of notes after all.


Topic Notes

You’ll get to a point where you have made notes on several books in one area. You will start seeing patterns and want to keep note of them. I recommend keeping an editable document that combines ALL of the notes on this topic condensed further than the original ones. You will learn more and more as you go along and eventually have everything that you have learned on a topic on one page. You can add to this with information you read on-line, hear about from other people or learn through personal experience.


Once All Is Done

It’ll feel great once you’ve got this up and running. You’ll have something that lets you know exactly what will happen with books once they come into your life and you’ll have access to the information without the bulk. They will be processed efficiently and you will have peace of mind knowing that all the information is being dealt with.


Notes

1. I’d recommend getting several books on one area and taking notes on them all.
2. Go To Philosophers Notes for a wide range of notes on Personal Development (Text and Audio) to save you time. If you have a personal development book already then you could go to the site and use some of the notes there. I’d always recommend buying a book rather than just reading notes about it because you might pick up a gem that someone else missed. They might be detailed enough for you or at least a great starting point. Another idea is to do an internet search for Book Title Notes eg. The Power Of Now Notes.
3. You can use this system for exam revision but with taking more detailed notes. The section on topic notes applied especially here.
4. The system is suited at factual books but could as easily apply to lessons that you’ve learned from fiction books too. If you read a Harry Potter book (crap example!!!) and it fired off some creative ideas then you’re still learning something and should jot it down and then implement it.
5. I have no fears about digitizing my notes. I’ve been doing it for years and I’ve never had a problem. If you are nervous that you will lose the notes then you can always back them up to an external harddrive. Documents hardly take up any space at all.
6. Getting all the notes on a specific area in front of you allows you to get a great zoomed out view of the greater underlying principles at hand. You can’t get experiences like this from just reading them one after another as you’re too focused on the shallower concepts.
7. Work the system to your own needs. You don’t need to do everything I’ve set out here. Be creative and do what suits you, that’s how I developed this system.
8. You could do this with audio programs and documentaries. I’ve listened to so many audio programs over the years and sometimes they’re great to re-listen to just for motivation but why not extract the information and move them on?
9. If time goes by and you don’t want to read a book any more just get rid of it. Life’s too short.
10. It might be a bit messy at first as you go through books on unrelated areas but in the future you can buy several books on one area and condense the notes for future use and it will allow you to get deeper into a topic than jumping between different areas.
11. (For those of you interested, my Keepers at the moment are

• Personal Development for Smart People - Steve Pavlina
• Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
• The Power Of Now - Eckhart Tolle
• Stillness Speaks - Eckhart Tolle