5 Reasons To Wake Up Early

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I've made it a habit to get up earlier nowadays, around 5:30 in the morning. Doing so, I'm following in the footsteps of what apparently a number of successful people have done and do every day; this post from Business Insider lists 23 such individuals, including Disney CEO Bob Iger (4:30), Benjamin Franklin (5:00) and Brooklyn Industries CEO Lexy Funk (4:00).

It might seem hard to get up earlier -- but I've found no great feeling of "sleep deprivation" by doing so. Which is to say, I don't really "miss" the extra hour or two of sleep I don't get.

Here are five reasons waking up early can be to your advantage:

Five Steps To Achieve Your Heart's Desire

image by aussiegall on Flickr

There's a quote from "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho that I've always been very inspired by:

"When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream."

Did you ever really want something so much -- like to get that big break, or find the perfect home or car -- and then a bunch of coincidences happened that almost literally led you your goal? Maybe you met the right contact at the right time, or saw an ad in a particular website, or took a way home from work different than you usually do?

Getting "Clean" And Kicking The Toxins Out Once And For All

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Over the past several years, I found myself settling back into a routine I thought I had left behind: eating poorly, relying caffeine and sugar as my "fuel" for the daily work grind, and kicking back at night with alcoholic beverages. My daily "ritual" didn't seem to be that much different than that of large sections of my peer group: it was all "normal" ways to stay productive, unwind, and generally "enjoy life."

My body was crap. It felt like crap.

Two months ago, I decided to attend a free "wellness" evaluation at my place of work. Blood test, body mass index, weighing, blood pressure, etc. And what the registered nurse told me shocked me. No, actually it didn't shock me at all. But it was bad:

5 Tips For Remembering Your Dreams (And Making Them Memorable!)

I've been recording my dreams, on-and-off, since 1992. That's a lot of damn dreams. Through it all, via book research & personal observation, I developed a methodology of dreaming that you might find helpful.

WARNING: The more you record & pay attention to your dreams, the more vivid and long and weird they are going to get. Trust me. If at any time during this experiment (which would take several weeks to really kick in) you are too freaked out, just stop recording the dreams. Drop all attention to them, and they will fade out. The Dreamtime can be like an "attention whore".

5 Divination Methods You Can Do Yourself

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With a bit of research, a lot of practice, and some faith, you can be your own "fortune teller." While I can't promise you will always "see" the future like a Nostradamus, using divination techniques can be a great tool for self-discovery.

Here's a quick introduction to five methods of divination I am very familiar with that you can learn to do yourself.

Learn When To Sway: Lessons Learned From Hurricane Sandy

World turned upside-down, roots coming to light

I haven't updated this blog in a good long while...so long, in fact, that I was actually embarrassed to go back to it. Like a cat who trips or accidentally walks into a wall, then acts like it meant to do it. "Oh, I had started this thing, but then it dropped off the map like so many things do..."

How To Find Your True Purpose In Life

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There are many self-help books regarding the quest for one's true purpose in life. There are also career coaches and gurus who will help you determine this perhaps most important pieces of self-knowledge. After all, if we cannot divine what our Purpose truly is, how can we possibly structure the rest of our life?

But the easiest way I know how to find out our true purpose is to simply think back to what we liked to do as children. Young people have more of a direct connection to their Self than adults...they have yet to learn to second-guess themselves or try to be something they're not just to make others happy. By looking back on what mattered to us most back then -- activities, entertainment, wishes and dreams -- we can best pinpoint what we should be doing now in order to find supreme personal fulfillment.