I’ve spent the last four years trying to feel great. I’m a fairly healthy, fairly happy person but it always seemed like life could be better. I consulted with doctors, coaches, therapists, healers, spiritual leaders, elders and a few hundred books. My learnings can be summarized as:
- Eat perfectly
- Reject technology
- Have perfect relationships
- Never stop exercising
- Meditate, meditate, meditate
- Do the perfect things
- Reject consumerism
These all seemed to make a lot of sense, so I conducted a series of unscientific experiments on myself to see if any of them worked. Spoiler alert: they did. But they also took me out of mainstream society, which made me feel weird again. So I’ve developed a sort of half-assed version of this perfect life in a 7 day schedule, each day only addressing one hard thing.
Monday: take a day off from sugar
For most of humanity’s existence, sugar came in the form of stuff you could harvest: fruit, honey, maple syrup, sugar cane, etc. Given just a limited understanding of agriculture, you can imagine that even the most abundant pre-industrial farmers could only produce so much of these things. Enough to make a cake? Probably not. Enough to have an apple in the fall and some honey on a day you stumbled upon a hive? Sure.
[Side note: the same goes for salt, dairy, meat, wheat, coffee, alcohol and pretty much every other delicious consumable out there. Of course it applies to veggies too, but I don’t know people struggling with overconsumption of green beans, so we will leave that alone.]
So what happens when we have virtually unlimited access to sugar? We eat a hell of a lot more than our bodies were developed to consume. What does that do to our bodies? Let’s talk math: if you use up a third of your daily calories with food that provides very little nutritional value (such as when you eat a cupcake) you better have some really nutritionally dense food for your remaining meals. Or, like most people, you just end up eating more calories than you burn for that day. And we all know what happens when that becomes a regular occurrence.
One other thing about sugar that is less commonly known is that it actually impairs the immune system. For a few hours after consuming high-sugar foods or drinks, your ability to fight infection actually drops. And remember, alcohol and simple carbs spike blood sugar a lot like sugar itself does.
Bottom line: give your body a break from sugar for a day a week. Pay attention especially to how you feel upon waking up the next morning. Which brings us to….
Tuesday: stretch before you look at your phone
This one was really hard for me because I use my phone as a clock and watch, so I was in the habit of looking at it as soon as I woke up. Many mornings it’s the only way I can get my eyes to open. The problem with that? Psychologically, it means the first thing you do upon starting a new day is see all the emails/texts/alerts you did (or did not) receive while you slept. This brings all the excitement/stress/disappointment that awaits you during the day into your first few minutes of consciousness. Give yourself a some time to wake up and adjust to the day before you get bombarded with it.
This is really hard. My solution? Get an analog clock for the bedroom. And how to get those eyes open? Stretch. I set a yoga mat by my bed and roll onto it into child’s pose and go through a few basic stretches. It takes less than a minute and gets the blood pumping through movement, rather than psychological excitement, meaning your mind is clear and calm when you get back to your phone.
Wednesday: call someone you love
Sometimes its hard to keep in touch. Setting aside a regular call time gives you the space to make the calls you know you need to. And once you get out of the rut of feeling like you owe people a call, it starts to be enjoyable. Which is the whole point anyways. I like to take the long way home on Wednesdays and make my calls during my commute. More than half the time I just leave people messages, then not only do I feel better about doing my part but I then get the time to myself anyways.
Keeping in touch is more than just avoiding guilt. Staying connected to our loved ones is incredibly important for your health too. Recent studies have shown that addiction isn’t as much a physical problem as it is a social one. Building and strengthening a community of people who know and love you, and who you know and love, provides the connection we all need to stay sane. Regularly sharing thoughts, dreams, fears, plans and everything in between with a few close people makes dealing with challenges less daunting and successes more exciting. You don’t have to share everything with everyone of course — I have friends I talk about work with, friends I talk about love with and friends I talk about health with. Of course, someone you can talk to anything about is amazing and if you find that, treasure it. Call them!
Thursday: take a walk after dinner
The vast majority of us need more exercise. The best hack I’ve found for that is to get a dog. But how about the rest of life? The fact that until fairly recently we had to work to get our food means our bodies were made for quite a bit more activity than we get now. The most pleasant way to get into a healthy rhythm of activity is an evening stroll. You could do this any time, but making a ritual of weekly post-dinner walks gives you fresh air and a bit of non-strenuous movement to ease digestion.
Friday: spend ten minutes doing nothing
We’re all busy. I really don’t know anyone who doesn’t do too much. Being busy create stress when we feel we can’t keep up and we’re constantly missing out on more. The best way to combat these feelings isn’t making better lists or sleeping less or trying harder but to be an extreme prioritizer and more importantly for this article, take a break from it all occasionally. Taking a few minutes to just relax does miracles for your motivation, executive functioning and stress levels. Sure, formal meditation is one step better, but let’s start with something manageable: no phone, no exercise, no self-love, no planning, no ruminating, no learning, no prayers of gratitude. Dedicate ten minutes at the end of your workweek to get away from it all. Just zone out. Keep a notepad by you to write down thoughts that come to you (I find all the things I’m supposed to do rush to my mind whenever I do this and it is very tempting to run off to do them immediately). Just let your mind wander. As thoughts come up, either write them down for later or let them go to be forever forgotten.
Saturday: do something you’ve been putting off
Just do it. Those things you have been avoiding, big and small, are like chains on your happiness. One day a week I pick something from the depths of my mental to-do lists to get out of the way. Sometimes its just unsubscribing from email I have been deleting every day for the past year (4 seconds of time), sometimes its installing a new kitchen faucet (5 hours of time). Strangely enough, either one will give you a surge of energy that you then have the rest of your Saturday to enjoy.
Sunday: don’t spend any money
Even if you’re rolling in dough, you probably wish you spent less money. There’s a lot of hard stuff you can do, from figuring budgets to refinancing loans to getting a cheaper apartment to making lunch every day. You know what’s easy? Take a day off from redistributing your wealth and just live. Go to the library, call up a friend who owes you lunch, use that old gift card, forage in the back of the freezer for your breakfast. Whatever you do, leave your wallet at home. It becomes a pretty fun game and every week you will save an average of 14%…that’s over $7k if you spend $50k a year on discretionary expenses like restaurants, entertainment, shopping and travel.
