11 Ways To Become An Early Riser

2015-01-08 By Kassandra 3 Comments

I am sharing this information today from Tegan Jones in synergy with the last post, 10 Morning Habits to Be Extraordinary. For many people, it’s difficult to rise so early when they have so much going on, maybe stayed up too late, maybe had a rough night’s sleep … Whatever the case may be, I wanted to provide some tips & tricks to help you become an early morning riser, just like most of the uber successful people do!

REMEMBER: Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal!

Go To Bed Earlier

I know this one is hard for a lot of people, cause gosh darn it everything seems to be happening when you’re off work and it’s night time! Or perhaps you need to stay up late to finish a project.

But here’s the thing – if you go to bed earlier, then you can wake up earlier! It’s that simple. And then you can follow those 10 Morning Habits and still have time to work on that project! (Eat that frog, remember?)
Have A Consistent Sleep Schedule

When I was trying put the UP24 band, it had me on a consistent sleep schedule (would alert me to go to bed for whenever I needed to wake up the next morning) … And I felt amazing! It was kind of hard the first couple of days, and I’m sure my boyfriend wasn’t too thrilled that he lost 2 hours of the evening with me, but it really did me good to go to bed early and keep my schedule consistent.

The reason for this is your body THRIVES on routine. Ever get hungry at certain times of the day? You trained your body to expect it!

REMEMBER: You HAVE to be CONSISTENT! Consistency is key to any successful habit. That’s why it’s called a habit.

So to utilize this, you must go to bed & wake up at the same time EVERY DAY – including weekends. I know – it can be a struggle! But if you don’t keep a consistent sleep schedule, your body will not know when it should wake up, making getting up early that much more difficult.

Click Here to Learn More About Why You Need A Consistent Sleep Schedule
Never Eat Before Bed

Sleep is the time for your body to rest, regenerate or repair, and recharge. If you’re digesting during this time, it interrupts your body’s ability to effectively provide the power it needs.It basically robs your body of the strength you’re supposed to be regaining.

It takes energy to digest food, which can also cause you to have difficulty falling asleep! And even if you do get the full recommended 8 hours (I believe 7-8 is ideal), you will still arise feeling drained.
Reduce Your Caffeine Intake

Over 90% of what I drink on a daily basis is water, and anything I do drink almost never contains caffeine. So while this one isn’t an issue for me, I know a lot of people who this may pertain to.

The original article I was reading suggests not drinking any caffeine in the afternoon (and obviously not in the evening). The thing is (and I’ve seen this first hand with my boyfriend) is that when you start taking care of yourself (including getting up & going to bed early) you won’t need that caffeine anymore to help you through the day.

And if you need the occasional pick-me-up, then go for an energizing snack instead! Much healthier for you.
Never Drink Before Bed

Although it may help you pass out, drinking alcohol before bed is NOT good for you – especially for your sleep! Not only does it dehydrate you (which can cause problems for the repair process) but it will increase your deep sleep cycle and rob you of the most important part – REM sleep! Doing so causes you to be tired when your alarm blares at you.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:
=> While deep sleep promotes rest & restoration, the lengthening of this due to alcohol can worsen sleep apnea & sleepwalking
=> REM is the deepest sleep stage where most dreams occur, memories are stored, & learning occurs
=> 1 or 2 drinks can increase slow-wave sleep & not affect REM sleep

Click Here to Learn More About The Affects Drinking Before Bed Has
Have a Good Reason to Get Up Early

Always Start With Why! If you know WHY you’re getting up early (e.g.: better health, get in time to ___, etc), it will fuel you to do the things you don’t want to do (like go to bed early).

These can be reasons like getting tasks done or having something to look forward to. Be sure to include both kinds of reasons. Whatever it is, remember yesterday’s post.

Be sure to give yourself little rewards to keep you motivated – our bodies have a reward system that help keep you motivated, and if you aren’t rewarding yourself, you’re less likely to continue to do things you don’t want to do – even if it will get you where you want to be.
Turn Your Reason Into a Challenge

If I’ve learned anything from Jane McGonigal it’s that games are imperative for us! They help us learn & overcome, can even help us work harder towards a goal …

Tell yourself that you won’t fall into a rut or break your routine! [Remember, 21 days to form a habit!] Tell yourself that you can and WILL get up early and that you’re capable of turning this into a habit.

And if you’re super competitive, try using Wake N Shake to earn achievements and play against your friends! Sadly, it appears this particular app is only for iPhone users … So if anyone knows of an Android one leave a comment, please!
Start Working Out

Do it in the morning like in my last blog’s suggestion to feel energized and ready to conquer your day!

Do it in the afternoon or early evening …

Just do it!
Make Sure Your Alarm Clock Is Out of Reach

This forces you to get out of bed. And if you have an urge to get back in it? FIGHT IT!

Too cold? FIGHT IT by doing some jumping jacks.

Stay strong, and stay out of bed. And apparently there are other apps you can use to help you get up and not press that snooze button … Like Morning Routine!
Go To Bed Calm & Relaxed

Regardless of how tired you are, if you go to bed when you’re stress, tense or upset, it will only keep you awake longer.

If you have issues in this area, try meditation, yoga, or even some relaxing tea. Melatonin is also a good tool.
Have An Exciting Breakfast Planned

When all else fails … But seriously! When you’re anticipating something delicious, don’t get excited?

And it doesn’t have to be complicated. It could be a shake, or simple eggs & bacon, some crunchy muesli … whatever it is, make it something that you’ll be more likely to get up and out of bed for!

I hope these tips were helpful in giving you ideas on how to be an early riser and that you’ll start implementing them. And if you need more, then click here!

Successful people have successful habits. They have teams of people helping them stay focused and on track.

If you’re looking for a team that will do the same for you, I wanted to give you some additional information about one of mine. See the “Wealth is a Team Building Sport” below. 🙂

10 Signs You Might Be Sleep Deprived

2015-01-06 By Kassandra 8 Comments

Our society has been called a “goldfish” or “microwave society” … We want everything and we want it NOW! Sound familiar?

We value productivity and distraction, just like this site describes … We try to edge out as much time in a day as we can, and since we only have 24 hours in a day it has to come from somewhere! So in order to get that time, our sleep usually suffers for it.

Once in a while, you might be able to not get enough or adequate sleep, but doing it on a regular basis can really do a bad spell on ya.

Have you ever had muddled thoughts? Been upset over something super trivial?

Perhaps thought you saw or heard something that wasn’t really there?

“Sleep Dep” can be a source for domestic unhappiness, career shortcomings, and can even put you in life-threatening situations (research has shown that those who sleep 6-7 hours a night are twice as likely to be involved in a crash as those sleeping 8 hours or more & when sleeping less than 5 hours increased their risk four to five times).

Because I know I have been victim to sleep deprivation, I wanted to give you some signs of it so you are more aware and can take a nap.

Inability to Handle Stress

When you don’t get enough or adequate sleep, it wears down on your normal capacity to deal with daily aggravations or challenges that you come into contact with. It lowers your “stress perception” threshold … Your routine activities may seem to be impossible tasks.

Poor Memory

When you don’t get enough sleep, you can begin to have “senior moments” (which I truly detest this term as it’s agist, so please leave a comment below if you know of another term please) …

REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep aids in the formation and retention of emotional memories.

When you sleep, you are facillitating connections between nerve cells. The less deep sleep, the less connections you form. What I found interesting from this, was that apparentely memory tests showed that both humans and animals suffered from memory loss when deprived of sleep.

Inability to Concentrate

Something really interesting I learned while looking in to sleep deprivation was that people not only perform poorly on concentration tests, they also overestimate their performance. What was even more fascinating, and seems like it should be common sense, but the effects of sleep deprivation increase as the sleep debt builds. So even someone who gets only 5 hours a day for a week would perform better than someone who got 4 hours of sleep a night for the same time frame.

That’s why all those sugary, caffeinated drinks have a peak and only last for a short while.

Increased Appetite

“The longer you’re awake, the longer you have to consume calories.” — Well, duh! What I didn’t know was that a lack of sleep causes you to be more hungry. APPARENTLY the hormones that signal the body that it’s time to eat are increased when you don’t get enough sleep, and you have less of the hormones that tell you that you’re full or satisfied.

Another issue in regards to your “new” eating habits, your body tends to crave more sweets & salty foods, as well as starches. One of the reasons for this is that your brain metabolizes sugar at a slower rate when you’re sleep deprived.

Vision Problems

When you are deprived of sleep, you may find yourself fighting through a fuzzy world — and blame it on your contacts.

You may even start to see things at the corners of your vision, or even find it difficult to process peripheral images & those in your direct sight at the same time.

The problems you experience are caused by neurons deprived of regenerative sleep becoming less efficient and trying to cut corners. Just like we all do when we cut back on our sleep.

Poor Decision Making

This is something that can have repercussions much later down the line, even when you’ve “erased” your debt (sleep). Sleep deprivation also affects your prefrontal cortex that is what affects your judgement and impulse control (which could also be part of the reason you eat more).

When your brain doesn’t get the chance to regenerate, refresh & reorganize itself, your decisions suffer. You’re more likely to take risks, be aggressive in the hopes of short term gains, and more likely to be fiscally irresponsible.

Diminished Motor Skills

This is one of the reasons why I am so adamant about people getting enough sleep.

Research has shown that when you go even a single night without sleep that you essentially are trying to operate your life as if you were legally intoxicated!!! You might have:

slurred speech
stuttering
speak monotonously
slower reaction time
fumbling with small objects

Click here for more information on drowsy driving!

Relationship Troubles

Having sleep patterns that are irregular (or lacking completely) can affect your significant other. It throws off schedules, bonding time, and your family’s sleep patterns.

Sleep deprivation can also cause these relationship strainers:

flagging libido
moodiness
agitation
poor memory
chronic snoring
sleep apnea

Medical Problems

Yeah, no fluff here. Just things that affect your health:

decreate in body’s ability to metabolize sugar
higher blood pressure
lower body temperature
heart rate that can’t quite find it’s rhythm
lowers defenses of immune system
decrease in white blood cell count (remaining white blood cells become lethargic)
your body will forcibly shut itself down to catch up, but you technically do have a potential to die from lack of sleep

Mood Swings

Even the littlest thing can set you off … “Cell Block Tango” anyone?

It can also increase feelings of depression, decreased empathy, burnout … or make things worse for those who already have these negative emotions.

So seriously. Stop killing yourself slowly with not sleeping. It’s not good for you and can have some detrimental effects. Both for you and your loved ones.

Take care of yourself!

8 Inexpensive Ways to Socialize and Spend Time With Friends

2015-01-05 By Kassandra Leave a Comment

Too often, I hear things like, “Oh I can’t hang out tonight. I have no money.”

This simply breaks my heart. Aside from the things I post to try to provide information on how to budget income, pay off your bills AND have a budget for fun, it just blows my mind that people always assume they have to spend money to have a good time.

Where did this concept come from?

For years, people were having fun without an XBox, Playstation, or even a movie theater … They found ways to interact with people that was fun, stimulating, and inexpensive (if not free)!

So in order to bring a little bit of that back, I’d like to remind you of a few things I found here that you can do so you don’t have to spend much (if any) in order to spend that precious time with your friends. [And I added a couple of my own to the list, too!]

[Read more…]

Merry Christmas!

2014-12-26 By Kassandra 2 Comments

Previous Post: Part 6 of 6 – Affiliate and Network Marketing Myths BUSTED!

Next Post: Mahatma Gandhi’s 7 Deadly Sins

Yes, it’s a day late … But I was spending time with family and loved ones, so I just let yesterday’s post be the only post.

I did, however, wanted to touch on the subject matter at hand … And not the last Chistmas post I did, but about the spirit in which the season brings.

During the hustle and bustle of Christmas shopping, this one idea may be lost amongst those who get so caught up in their lives … They forget this one little thing …

The holidays are a reminder to reach out to those you love. Unfortunately, it is during the holidays that a lot of people get depressed. People tend to feel suicidal. And sometimes tragedies occur as well during the holidays.

I was at karaoke the other night and a friend of mine got up and sang a song in remembrance of her brother who died on Christmas eve 2 years ago.

“Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.” ~ Hamilton Wright Mabie

Whether it’s in remembrance of those we love, whether we have the pleasure and gift to be able to spend with those we care about, even if we can just make that phone call …

Love one another. It’s not that hard. A smile can turn around someone’s whole day. Offering to help open the door for someone with a ton of groceries … simply being there for someone to talk to? It could mean the world to someone.

Sometimes people are just lonely. And they don’t know how to reach out nor do they want to “burden” others …

I don’t know how many times to say it.

“All you need is love.” – The Beatles

Just spread the love. While Christmas is the big season to remind people of that, try to take a little bit of the Christmas spirit with you always so it will spread throughout the year.

And if you don’t know who to spread the love to … Or if for some bizarre reason believe you are unworthy of love yourself … Know that there IS someone out there who cares. I do. I care about you. I believe in you. I know you are meant to do great things. And I know that there is more to what is going to come from you than what you are currently able to see.

5 Useful Tools To Manage Money

2014-12-14 By Kassandra 10 Comments

Previous Post: Why I Became an Entrepreneur

Next Post: 4 Limiting Money Beliefs

My passion in life is to help everyone I can, and the biggest thing most people feel they need help with is managing money. Whether it’s an allotment of all incoming finances to ensure you’re living a balanced life with where your money goes, or giving advice or training on things that can increase one’s wealth, or providing tools to help you achieve financial freedom … I want to provide all of this and more to you.

I am currently reading Tony Robbins’ latest book, Money: Master the Game, and it’s absolutely fantastic! A MUST for anyone. But since I haven’t finished it yet, I can’t give a review about all of the things I KNOW will be beneficial for you.

In the mean time, I wanted to let you know about a few tools I’ve recently heard about. The first one I developed from a concept I learned through someone I greatly admire & has helped so many achieve freedom from debt. The other 4 I heard about when I was reading a Forbes article.

My FREE Downloadable Interactive Personal Finance Tool

This is a tool I created based on the money management system that T Harv Eker explains in his book Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. I have had several people already download it & have told me how much it has helped them. Please be sure to get it for yourself and let me know how it helps you!

Click Here to Learn More About My FREE Downloadable Interactive Personal Finance Tool
FlexScore

This tool is more of a day-to-day tool you can use. Not only is it FREE (they get paid if you use financial institutions on the site, but you’re not obligated to) … but you can kind of look at it like a game.

You’ll put in your information, and the site will give you a score based on how well you act with your financial choices & managing your money. It will also show you how to raise your number, with a perfect score goal of 1,000!

Downsides:
1) You really need to use this tool daily and be sure to input the information so you can actually see how you’re doing.
2) FlexScore doesn’t offer a human adviser to help you reach your goals.
3) No household score, so if you live with someone, are married or have a partner, you’ll each need to have your own.

Click Here to Learn More About FlexScore
Guide Financial

From what I read in the article, this tool sounds pretty handy. It’s expected to give you step-by-step advice on such things as how to save money refinancing your mortgage, find the highest-yielding savings account, choose a retirement plan & more! It will also allow you to search and find if you’ve spent more in one category this month than previously done so you can curb your spending as needed.

You will need to pay for this service, but it’s not a lot.

You also will not be provided with actual investment advice, but this tool will help you visually see where you’re putting your money and help manage a little better.

Click Here to Learn More About Guide Financial
Future Advisor

This one is a DIY online investing tool. You’ll provide answers to a questionnaire that the site will use, coupled with your current holdings, and will tell you what to buy, sell, or hold. Periodically, it will suggest ways to rebalance your portfolio … all of which with the intended result of a highly diversified portfolio with the right asset allocation for you, but without the high cost or low/poor performing ETFs and funds that most investors don’t realize are really just wasting their money.

While this service is NOT free, for the benefits you get the price is phenomenal! ($9 a month for a portfolio under $50k)

With the paid services, you’ll get all of the above, and they’ll also take your existing investments & make the minimum adjustments to get the portfolio you should have.

The premium service ($19 a month) also provides you with automatic tax-loss harvesting! What that means is that they will sell your losses to offset your taxable gains.

Click Here to Learn More About Future Advisor
Financial Guard

This tool is also something you would pay monthly for ($15.95 a month or $149.95 a month) — however what this tool will do for you is it will grade your funds and ETFs on an A-F grade scale. This grading system is based on performance and fees. It will then tell you which ones you should keep, and suggest which ones to buy so your portfolio will get an A.

There are some other pretty nifty perks — be sure to check out their site if this sounds of interest to you.

Possible Issues:
1) From the article I found, this is an algorithm-based system and may or may not be a wise way to go with your investments.
2) The suggestions are not really comprehensive in analysis for your personal, current situation beyond what you input into the questionnaire.

Click Here to Learn More About Financial Guard

I really like the idea behind these tools, and at this point in time I’m simply providing information. I have not yet used these tools myself (except the one I created and shared first).

I’ll be honest – I would definitely get Tony’s new book. It’s the most comprehensive piece of information that allows “the 98%” access to information and services that the top 1% of the 1% used to be the only ones who knew about it.

And as soon as I’m finished reading it, I’ll be sure to let you know which ones I like the best. 🙂

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As always, I like to provide information that will allow you to be prosperous in all forms. The below box has information on something I’m involved in that is helping people earn additional income — some of which were able to replace their income!

Get your information and make the decision for yourself. I would love to work directly with you to help you increase your wealth and prosperity. ^_^

Search The Site

Go To Bed Earlier

Have A Consistent Sleep Schedule

Never Eat Before Bed

Reduce Your Caffeine Intake

Never Drink Before Bed

Have a Good Reason to Get Up Early

Turn Your Reason Into a Challenge

Start Working Out

Make Sure Your Alarm Clock Is Out of Reach

Go To Bed Calm & Relaxed

Have An Exciting Breakfast Planned

My FREE Downloadable Interactive Personal Finance Tool

FlexScore

Guide Financial

Future Advisor

Financial Guard

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