9 Tips in Life that Lead to Happiness

Are you truly happy? Do you even know what it means to be happy and what it takes to achieve happiness? These are important questions for anyone who is seeking happiness to ask themselves. I live my life to maintain my own happiness while trying my best to not cause unhappiness to anyone else. If you want to be happy you need to understand that you can be happy and that you should be happy. Many people make the mistake of believing that they don’t deserve happiness and accept their unhappy state as their destiny. The truth of the matter is that happiness, like anything else in life, needs to be nurtured. The following are a few tips that I follow to create happiness in my life.

1. Understand what it is that will make you happy. Everyone has unique requirements for attaining happiness and what makes one person happy may be very different from what makes someone else happy. Revel in your individuality and do not worry about whether or not your desires are comparable to those of your peers.

2. Make a plan for attaining goals that you believe will make you happy. Your mood will very likely increase as your pursue your goal because you will feel better about yourself for going after something you value.

3. Surround yourself with happy people. It is easy to begin to think negatively when you are surrounded by people who think that way. Conversely, if you are around people who are happy their emotional state will be infectious.

4. When something goes wrong try to figure out a solution instead of wallowing in self pity. Truly happy people don’t allow setbacks to affect their mood because they know that with a little thought they can turn the circumstances back to their favor.

5. Spend a few minutes each day thinking about the things that make you happy. These few minutes will give you the opportunity to focus on the positive things in your life and will lead you to continued happiness.

6. It’s also important to take some time each day to do something nice for yourself. Whether you treat yourself to lunch, take a long, relaxing bath or simply spend a few extra minutes on your appearance you will be subconsciously putting yourself in a better mood.

7. Finding the humor in situations can also lead to happiness. While there are times that require you to be serious, when it is appropriate, find a way to make light of a situation that would otherwise make you unhappy.

8. Maintaining your health is another way to achieve happiness. Being overweight or not eating nutritious foods can have a negative effect on your mood. Additionally, exercise has been known to release endorphins that give you a feeling of happiness.

9. Finally, it is important to understand that you deserve happiness. Those who believe that they are not worthy of happiness may subconsciously sabotage their efforts to achieve happiness. If necessary, tell yourself each day that you deserve to be happy and remind yourself what steps you will take to achieve the happiness you desire.

Happiness is hard to define but most people are aware of whether they are happy or not. Many people believe that happiness is a form of luck and that some people are destined to be happy while others are destined to be unhappy. I try to incorporate the tips above into my life and have had great success in achieving happiness. The tips in this article are small but meaningful steps that you can take each day to lead you to true happiness.

Optimize Your Sleep for Better Health and More Free Time

Getting too much sleep is hazardous to your health — it may lead to higher risk for obesity, diabetes, and premature death. We’ve been brainwashed to think we need 8 hours of sleep a night, but sleep requirements vary greatly by age, stress level, and health. In fact, research suggests 7 hours might be the ideal amount of sleep the average adult needs per night, and getting 8 or more hours can lead to increased mortality — even more so than too little sleep!


All this talk about how we are sleep deprived and how we need more sleep is enough to, well, put me to sleep. Even the good folks here at Money Watch have pounded the table that “improving job performance may be as easy as getting a good night’s sleep” and that “getting a good night’s sleep is the single best way you never thought of to improve your abilities and human capital literally overnight.”



Not only can too much sleep be bad for your health, it can rob you of your other 8 hours. If you work 8 and sleep 9, that only leave 7 hours for you to pursue your goals and live your life. Every hour, minute, and second you sleep more than you need to is a complete waste of time and your life.
Too little or too much sleep can lead to low energy and mental sluggishness. Your goal is to get an optimum amount of sleep, which I define as the least amount of sleep possible while still feeling physically energized and mentally alert. So how do you know how much sleep you need? Test, test, test. Here’s what to do:




Step 1
Start with 8 ½ hours of sleep. Make sure you get the full 8 ½ hours. No more and no less.

Step 2
The next day, complete the Sleep Optimization Form. This is a simple form to gauge how you feel (physically and mentally) at different times during the day. Because stress, eating habits, and a host of other factors can influence our energy levels and outlook, try to keep all other variables constant (i.e., unchanged as possible).

Step 3
Repeat Steps 1 and 2 for four nights in a row.

Step 4
Reduce your sleep by 30 minutes and start the sleep/test process again for four nights in a row. Keep cutting your sleep in Step 1 by 30 minutes until you reach 7 hours.

Step 5
Analyze the data. Review your Sleep Optimization Form and identify which days you felt the best (based on higher scores). If you find that you feel good on 8 ½ hours of sleep, but you also feel good on 7 ½ hours of sleep, you’ve just saved yourself an hour a night and given yourself an extra 30 hours a month to create something.

If you really want to get fancy, you can test 15 minute increments (e.g., 7 hours and 45 minutes versus 8 hours). Remember, we’re trying to identify the absolute minimum amount of sleep you need because every minute you aren’t sleeping is another minute for you.

Late Night Eating Tips to Help You Lose Weight and Stomach Fat

What and when you eat at the end of the day can have a large impact on your body. If you eat the right thing at the right time you can actually lose fat while you sleep. Eat the wrong thing at the wrong time and you can plan on waking up with a little more body fat in the morning.

To successfully loss weight, you'll need to stop eating two hours before going to bed. You should not feel hungry before bed, but you should also not feel completely full. When you're trying to lose weight, going to bed at night feeling slightly hungry is actually a good thing. It's your body telling you that what you did that day is working and you're losing body fat. If you don't feel this way when going to bed, you're probably not losing fat.

Now let’s say you follow your brain's directive and eat close to bedtime, your body will not dip into the fat it has stored away, and will probably even store some more. Every time you eat, your metabolism increases slightly. However, this effect is minimized late at night. You don't get the same metabolism boosting benefit when you eat just before bed, because a couple of hours after dinner, your body will start preparing for sleep. This natural slowing down of your metabolic rate overrides any metabolic boost you might get from eating. So once you hit the pillow, the only calories you're going to use are the basic calories you need to keep your heart beating and your lungs breathing and allow your eyes to move in REM sleep. This is only a minimal number of calories.

Believe it or not, eating late at night can also inhibit your calorie burning potential the next day. Say, for instance, that you treat yourself to some pasta and fruit at 10 PM one night and go to bed by 11 PM. When your alarm goes off the next morning at seven, the last thing on your mind is going to be breakfast, because you're still full from the pasta and fruit you ate the night before. Chances are you're going to skip breakfast and lose all the great metabolism boosting benefits you'd get from eating a balanced morning meal. Also a number of different studies have suggested that individuals who skip breakfast are more likely to over eat, and make very poor food choices, during lunch and dinner.

Important Tips:

• Eating too much food, especially starchy carbohydrates, late at night increases your body fat stores.

• Eating high-glycemic carbs (pasta, potatoes, white rice, sugar, etc.) right before bed will spike your insulin levels and lower nighttime Human Growth Hormone production. This is very bad, because not only will lowering nighttime Human Growth Hormone production make you fat, but it will also speed up the again process and make you look old. About 80% of this fat-burning and anti-aging "super hormone" is released during sleep.

Here are a few simple tips to make sure you get the most from your last meal of the day:

• Eat about 3 hours before going to bed, you'll have some time to burn off calories but you probably won't get too hungry before going to sleep.

• Eat frequently throughout the day, small, healthy meals and snacks spaced about 3 hours apart to minimize hunger cravings at night.

• Your last meal should consist mainly of a lean protein like chicken breast, low fat cottage chesses, fish, turkey, and low glycemic carbohydrates like vegetables and fruits. You should avoid all starchy carbs close to bedtime like breads, pastas, rice, potatoes, and cereals. The only time you should be consuming these starchy carbs close to bed is if you workout late at night, because then they will be stored in your muscles for energy instead of being stored as fat.

• If you get major carb cravings right before bed, then eat some carbs. Just make sure they're the high-fiber, low-glycemic kind like apples, berries, peaches, plums, citrus fruit, fresh vegetables or vegetable juice.

• If you're currently strength training to build lean muscle, a great late night meal option is low fat cottage cheese of skim milk, because it is full of slow digested casein protein.

14 steps to a healthy summer diet!

Here are some useful lifestyle tips you can follow to beat the summer heat.
1. Water is the best option to quench thirst.
It is a key ingredient in keeping the body cool. With high humidity levels, sweat will not evaporate quickly. This prevents the body from releasing heat in an efficient manner. This is why it is necessary to hydrate and drink water, even when you are not thirsty. Increase water intake regardless of your activity levels.
2. Avoid caffeinated or carbonated beverages, alcoholic beverages, and those high in sugar.
All these drinks contain preservatives, colours and sugars. They are acidic in nature and act as diuretics. They cause loss of fluids through urine.
Many soft drinks contain diluted phosphoric acid, which damages the inner linning of the digestive tract and, therefore, affects its functions.
An excessive intake of soft drinks increases phosphorous levels in the blood. This separates calcium from the bones and moves it into the blood.
This calcium displacement from the bones makes them porous and brittle. It also causes plaque on the teeth, kidney stones, arthritis and bone spur.
Soft drinks also reduce mineral levels in the body to such an extent that enzymes are unable to function well, resulting in indigestion.
3. Do not drink very chilled liquids.
They do not really help cool you down in summers, though they make you cool for some time. Drinking really cold liquids when feeling hot may lead to a slight constriction of the blood vessels in the skin and decrease heat loss, which is not advisable when trying to cool down.
4. Limit all strenuous activity.
5. Eat light, nutritious and non-fatty meals.
6. Reduce intake of heaty vegetables and fruits, like spinach, radish, hot peppers, onions, garlic, beetroot, pineapple, grapefruit and ripe mangoes (if you cannot resist mangoes, soak them overnight in water).
7. Minimise the intake of dried fruits. Increase the intake of fresh fruit.
8. Use sabza (tulsi seeds) in your drinks -- this has very cooling effect on the body.
9. Include lots of fruits and vegetables in the form of salads and fresh juices, preferably without sugar, in your diet.
10. Drink lemon juice, coconut water and thin buttermilk, to replenish the fluids that are lost in sweat.
11. Avoid sugary foods, especially honey and molasses, and stick to natural sugars available from fruits and veggies.
12. Minimise the intake of hot, spicy foods and extremely salty foods. The body retains salt in the organic form found in fruits and veggies; the inorganic salt, meanwhile, is digested and needs to be thrown out of the body. And this is why you need to drink water!
13. Cut the intake of fried foods, like vadas, samosas, chips, bhajias, farsans, etc. Fat has a thermal effect.
14. Maintain good hygiene levels.
Since the sultry heat of summer increases with each degree rise in the mercury, by rooting ourselves to nature's provision of healthful food choices we can experience the bloom of our health and vitality.