The Science of Building Your Best Future Self Through Sleep
We spend one third of our lives undergoes sleep. That's around 8 hrs. everyday.
With that much time, sleep has become the first easiest victim that we deprioritize for other activities that it seems important or even more fun.
And here we are, the age of instant dopamine crisis.
Many of us feel stuck with current society systems. Looking it in a good way, it's a part of evolution that signals us it's the time for changes.
This is the crucial time in human history, if we can adjust the wheel and regain our highest potential while we live.
AI is here to help us live easier in many ways. By the way, using it the wrong way, it only pulls us away from who we possibly can become.
Breakthrough from Lifespan to Healthspan
For the very long time, we define human lifespan that we get older while we age.
Bringing the most challenging factor to all of us. The limited time.
One life if done right is long enough to make a good one.
But not all people have the opportunity to learn and do better from their mistakes.
How much are you confident to discover and walk the right path with the time and constraints that we are all given differently.
What does it take to pursue the best version of you
- Get good guidance: spending time with good teachers through classes, reading, collaborating, consulting.
- Have necessary resources: relevant education, experiences, money, time.
- Meet good friends and networks: connections that are supportive and grow together.
- Maintain a healthy mental and body: ability to spend time for self-care on a regular basis. Minimize entropy, maximize energy pool within.
The reality is not always as we expected. There will be a lot of struggles and obstacles. They are inevitable. In fact, they play the important part to make you become stronger than you can ever imagine.
The main problem is time. Will you be able to hang on the path long enough to reach that point?
Can we extend our time?
The good news is WE DO CAN now more than ever.
SO, BE BRAVE AND BE BOLD.
The world needs the best version of you. We want to know the best of whatever you can do and make impact to the society. Even if it's just for a few people or millions.
How long we can extend?
With the latest life sciences discovery and more to come, I believe we can aim for many decades or even hundreds. Is it like living forever? No, it's not at all.
We are talking about how to extend our lifespan, so more people have their opportunities to become the best version if they want to.
Living forever without reaching the best version to me seems scary. What's the point?
And the natural law we all have seen in anything is, maintaining an object in its stable state, it's only going downside little by little.
We will dive deep into the how soon. Here are the questions to ask yourself if you have longer time like a hundred year or more, living stronger and smarter:
- How would you imagine your future best version?
- What you will be doing in the next 10-20 years?
- How far is the distance between your current to get there?
Keep these questions in mind for now. We will discuss how to design the best future of you very soon.
Why it's important to picture the future you
In real life, you will need to learn and make hundreds of decisions to understand of who you want to become, what do you like to do, where do you want to go.
By the way, having a picture of your future self will indeed help you navigate much clearer with self-awareness of when to adjust the direction. Otherwise, you may sometimes feel like randomly go up and down endlessly.
I personally don't think we can reach the best ever because there will always be a room to stretch further. Don't aim for perfection, aim for determination.
How to choose and design the future of you
Choosing the future of you can be very exciting. It helps you turn life into a fun game that you are the one who design and play the main character.
"If you don't create your own goal, someone will do it for you."
Some guide to design the future of you
Similar to the game you like to play. It should excite you rather than bore you.
- Look out to the persons you consider as a role model. Then draw a picture of your own future; what do you want to do, how do you want to live, how would you make decision if you were him or her.
- Make a list of your legacy. Even we can live much longer now but it doesn't mean forever. What impacts do you want to build for the society?
- Do it for people you love. It's easy to do something for one person, especially for yourself. But it takes a lot more effort to do for many others.
- Run away or run towards. Choose the future you want to run towards to or away from.
Money should not be the goal but a tool to help you clear the game faster.
Pick up the pen
Draft a good plot of your life story ...
Be the person who hold the pen ...
Write and rewrite every day...
Make it's a good book that readers will get inspired ...
Imagine your own character that would fit to the role
- What does he/she looks like?
- How is the character? attitude? passion?
- What does he/she love, like or dislike?
- What does he/she do every day to get closer and closer to the goals?
Create your real-life character
Now that you have clearer picture of your goals and character to develop.
How to know if you are doing it right? You feel excitedly love this character. Even if it seems to be far from who you are at this moment. But that's how all good stories are made.
Make a list of things to take actions today to build up this character. Take on the role professionally with love and joy of who you are becoming.
Develop the future of you
It's about time for your character to walk on the path. At this point, you should be able to see the gap between where your character is and must be.
If you aim high enough, it will surely be intense. But the reward is worth more than any amount of money could buy. It's you versus the doubtful version of you.
It likes going against the person who know you the best, your strength and weakness, your wisdom and emotion.
Many people want to change the world, but a few have a strong will to change themselves.
Don't let that version blocks your way to meet the best of you.
Always be reminded that others want to get to know the real you, the best one at the time, the one that makes them smile and enjoy being with.
Identify the gap to work on
Before developing your character, the most important thing you need from within yourself is growth mindset. The true believe that you can do better and be better.
The growth mindset in itself, it has nothing to do with age. It's not an asset that you have or don't have.
We all have growth attitude in particular areas stronger than some other areas.
Growth mindset level = skills + energy + experiences
List all the gap under the three components to increase growth attitude on the areas you are about to pursue
- What skills will you need to develop?
- How much resources (money/time/effort) will it take?
- Who are the best persons you can learn from where you start at?
Break it down into short/medium and long term. Ensure it's clear enough for you to get started under the short-term list.
Good read: https://www.psychotactics.com/products/suddenly-talented/
It's time to prepare to play the long game, the one you design your own.
How sleep plays the crucial role
The world has changed.
These days, we are expected to always learn new things, develop new skills by all workforce industries.
Most manual labor tasks are being replaced by technology automation.
Many people will live a lot longer than before. Specific knowledge, skills and wisdom become high valuable assets to thrive in the age of AI.
So how does sleep impact the way we live nowadays?
Side effects when we don't get enough sleep quality
- You may forget a lot of what we learn during the day.
- Degrade your creativity and problem-solving capability.
- Weaken body muscle, immunity system and energy overall.
- Carry sleep dept over to the next days. This leads to accumulative brain fog.
- You may feel harder to focus on study and work.
- Missing an opportunity to restore the body and mind to your optimal state, in other words, accelerated aging.
Make sleep your true allies
Sleep is the golden foundation of overall health.
The amount of sleep need can be different from person to person.
My personal recommendation is to get your sleep quality measured. Consider it as running an annual health check. So, you know the current status.
Ideal Targets
- Deep sleep range between 80-150 minutes.
- Rem sleep range between 80-150 minutes.
The light sleep is there to facilitate each stage. It has its benefit. Some nights you may get more or less. It's better than interrupting awakens during the night.
Do I need to sleep 8 hrs.?
The common sleep stage takes around 90 minutes to complete its full cycle of deep, rem, and light sleep. We normally go through 5 stages in total each night. That's around 7:30 hrs.
I find this is not always applicable to all. In some people, their sleep stages can be concentrated with long deep sleep early at night and rem at later half. I'm one of this group and still reach targets with less than 8 hrs. of sleep.
Ensure you gain the most from sleeping hours
Sleep is not our ultimate goal here. It would never be to live our best.
**Dedicate to study, work hard, exhaust yourself and have fun during the day are keys to maximize your sleeping time.
Remember the days you sit whole day watching TV. and feel hard to sleep at night?
Sleep is packed with many restorative and organizing processes of our body.
Make sure you build up something during daytime for those processes to do their jobs at night.
Consistency is key
Here is the best part of this article. Thank you for reading this far.
Life is a long game, and you are the one control the wheel of your own.
Don't chase instant gratifications or quick dopamine.
Don't follow what majority of people are doing so much.
Design your own game and live you own life.
Every day,
You will study or read books that you are interested personally.
You will work on the projects that help you become an expert in that domain.
You will choose the path that support your unique path.
You will have a reason to work out, prioritize quality sleep and self-care.
In the next 5 or 10 years, all your effort will form you into a version that no other people can copy or replace you.
Are you willing to pay the price?
Walking on the path to your best future version comes with its high price.
You may find yourself often times living differently to people you know. The truth is, there are also many others who are walking and make scarifies on their path.
Share your friends and family on the path you are choosing. Ask them to support your decision and dedications. And always spend times with them regularly.
The true value of becoming the best version of you is the ability to take good care of people you love. Be the person who others can rely on and feel thankful for.