Oct
21
This is the first of what I hope will be many reviews of personal development products (if you have one you want me to review, here are the guidelines). I’ve added it to my newly improved resources page, which now has many more links and is categorised for easy reference.
To get the disclaimers over with immediately, I have written for Steven Aitchison’s blog (and will again), and the links to his product in this review are affiliate links (meaning that if you follow the link and buy this or one of his other products, he gives me a commission). I got the product at a discount because I’m on his mailing list and bought early, but I did pay for it.
Why I Bought It
The idea behind How to Become an Advanced Early Riser: Getting 5 Hours of Sleep and Feeling Fantastic is that you can learn to get better-quality sleep, which means you can get up earlier, have energy throughout the day and achieve more in life.
I could definitely do with all of that. I’ve also been looking for a personal development challenge that I can write about on the blog, as I think that makes interesting reading. This is a challenge that’s relevant to me, that I believe I can do, and that falls into my interest area of using your thinking and behaviour changes to change your life for the better.
I’ve started waking up slightly earlier the last couple of months (at 5:45 instead of 6:00), and I have found that I feel less sleepy during the day when I do that rather than sleeping in (at the weekends, too). So I was already predisposed to take Steven Aitchison’s approach seriously, though I was somewhat skeptical about the idea that people in general can reduce down to 6 hours or less of sleep and that this is more healthy than sleeping for longer. His marketing materials cite research that people who sleep less than 6 hours a night tend to live longer, but (as he does point out inside the course), this doesn’t establish a cause-and-effect relationship.
The course is very reasonably priced, though, at $25 USD (and I got it at a 40% discount because I’m on his mailing list and bought before it was released to the general public). That falls well into the “Why not?” zone for me, provided that I have a specific need or use for the product, and as I already mentioned, I do.
If I were creating this product, incidentally, I probably would have titled it “How to sleep better and have more time and energy to do the things you value”. Getting 5 hours of sleep is a feature. Getting up early is a feature. Feeling fantastic is a benefit, but a vague one. The benefits I was interested in was having more energy and time, and that’s important because there are things I want to achieve with that time and energy.
What’s In the Box
There are two parts to the program, both downloaded from the Internet (in case you thought I was being literal about the box).
First, there are three PDF files, Ditch The Alarm Clock (a 19-page ebook Steven wrote earlier, about how to train yourself to wake up without using an alarm), the Early Riser file itself (66 pages), and a Success Log (basically an 8-page workbook). These come to 10 megabytes. There’s also a link to another download of 100 megabytes of audio.
There are four audio tracks: A guided relaxation meditation with a musical backing, the music track by itself, a second inspirational guided meditation to music by Brian Eno, and a high-energy track for exercising to.
The Forest Walk guided meditation uses a lot of visual imagery, and because I’m not a very visual person I don’t find that as useful as other people may. I was pleasantly relaxed by the end of the 23 minutes, but personally, I found myself much more relaxed after the 15-minute track with the Eno music. That track (Intention Manifestation) is a tiny bit New-Agey in its wording, which I’m OK with but it isn’t my preference. It incorporates a progressive relaxation script, which is probably why I found it more relaxing than the other.
I haven’t used the Warm Heart piano music track by itself (Steven suggests using it to fall asleep to) because it doesn’t really grab me that much musically and I don’t feel the need of music to help me fall asleep.
The high-energy track uses binaural beats, which I am personally a bit skeptical about. The theory is that by putting different sounds into your two ears using stereo headphones, it’s possible to actually shift the brain’s rhythms, and from all I’ve read that can be done, but it’s an area that’s rife with overstated claims of effectiveness with minimal scientific backing. It shouldn’t do any harm, though, and it’s a bouncy track which should be good for exercise (I haven’t actually exercised to it yet).
So, as you can tell, I’m not wildly enthusiastic about the audio component, but it’s not the heart of the material anyway. It’s OK, and other people may well like it more than I do. As someone who makes audio tracks myself, I’m unusually critical.
The PDF files do have some typographical errors (my former-book-editor reflex cut in and I sent a list of them to Steven, so by the time you read this there will probably be fewer). The writing style is simple and accessible, though he does tend to run his sentences on and leave the reader mentally breathless, and the design is clean and attractive.
What I Learned
I already know a reasonable amount about sleep. In fact, my own Sleeper’s Checklist contains a lot of the same items that Steven mentions, so most of the actual information was not new to me – which is about what I expected. The value of something like this, though, is the implementation, not the information. Steven makes it easy to absorb, explains it well, and accompanies it with specific, achievable exercises.
He emphasises taking a gradual approach, since this is a program of lifestyle change. If you do it well, he says, you’ll use it for the rest of your life, whereas if you try to implement it all at once you’ll get discouraged and lose the benefit. That’s good advice.
Speaking of benefits, Steven has a good exercise to go through to think about what you’ll do with the extra time you get by sleeping less. It’s well integrated into the program and he returns to it later, with good advice on how to use the time effectively to work towards your goals. This makes excellent sense as an approach to behaviour change and motivation.
For myself, I’ve been trying to think of a way to fit exercise into my daily routine, but just haven’t come up with one. In the evenings just doesn’t seem to work for me. One of Steven’s suggestions is to do exercise in the morning, so I my first step has been shifting my waking time back by another 15 or 20 minutes and using that time to exercise. By using some of the other tips (which I’m not going to reveal here – you’ll have to buy the product), I should be able to lift my energy and make more use of the time I already have to work on things that are important to me.
Since I bought the program last week, I’ve been applying this. I have woken up early (before the alarm) every day but one, and I’m confident I can do it daily with some more practice. I have been using the extra time to exercise and feel very much better for it. (I’ve restarted my stalled attempt to do the 100 Pushups challenge.) My mind is clearer and I haven’t noticed being more tired – in fact, I feel less tired.
Even if getting a sounder sleep, waking 20 minutes earlier and adding some exercise (and energy) to my day was all I achieved, I would feel well satisfied with myself and consider it excellent value for money. Steven certainly indicates – from his own experience over 15 years – that more is possible, though, and it will be interesting to see how far I can get.
I’m actually more interested in being able to stay awake later than I am in getting up very much earlier, since I already get up earlier than most people but go to bed very early as well. So far, I’m still getting tired very early at night, but we’ll see what happens with more practice. I’m falling asleep more quickly, though, so that’s good.
I’ll report back later in the year on how the challenge is going. In the meantime, I recommend you get your own copy of the Advanced Early Riser program ($25 USD).
Summary: What I think of the Advanced Early Riser
Key:  Terrible  Poor  Average  Good  Couldn’t be better
Audio component:
Music
Spoken word (audio quality)
Script
Overall 
PDFs:
Editing
Design
Content
Implementability 
Overall Usefulness
Overall Value
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Jun
22
Last week I surveyed selected members of my mailing list about what they wanted to see in the Emotional Circuit-Breaker Toolkit, because I want to make it really useful. (It’s already been useful for me – and I’ll talk about that some more soon – but I want it to be useful for you.)
What I actually asked them was:
- What would you change about your emotional life if you could?
- What is your ideal outcome if you had a solution for question 1? Put another way: What benefit would you see in your life from being able to make that change?
The results are in (thanks to all who responded), and I’d like to share them with you now. I’ve edited them slightly for spelling and grammar, but otherwise what I quote below are the respondents’ own words.
The responses fell into two clear groups – what I call the “confidence” group and the “stress” group. Let’s look at them separately.
Confidence
Confidence was about, as one person put it, “fear of failure, looking foolish”, or as another said, “reacting to what I perceive to be people’s judgement on me” (his or her emphasis). Another said, “I wish I could always believe in myself, and be strong and true to myself, and not doubt my beliefs, and not succumb to other people’s beliefs and expectations of me.” That’s well put (and a good goal).
The reasons for wanting confidence went like this:
- I could then embark on a new consulting career, present my product, talk confidently and convincingly to an audience.
- I could relax a lot more in other people’s company and stop worrying about going out.
- [I would] feel safe and secure in the knowledge that I am worthy.
The good news: I was already planning to include one of my best hypnotherapy tracks, Confident Person, as a bonus for the first 100 people to sign up for the Emotional Circuit-Breaker Toolkit. I’d been wondering, though, whether it should just be part of the kit. Now I know: It should be, and it shall be, included for everyone.
I’ll think of something else to give as a bonus to the early adopters.
Stress
Stress is obviously a big part of why our emotions get stirred up in the first place, and it’s a fixture of most modern lives. Stress management is a huge part of what I help people with, too. So it’s no surprise to read responses like this:
- I would like to be less stressed, I would like to be able to go to bed at night, wake in the morning NOT having thoughts of work as the last and first things in my head.
- Sometimes when stress and tiredness takes over motivation and good decisions go out the window. Goals suffer, likewise health & relationships.
- I’d be able to let go of things and not have them eat away at me.
People are also pretty clear on the benefits of dealing with stress:
- Much more “ho hum” about work, making it more of ‘working at work time’ – not having it part of my life 24/7
- Less stress, more energy, better balance, structure & organisation, improved health and relationships and goal attainment.
- More present in where I am, better able to relax and to sleep
The good news: Stress management, especially by letting go, has been at the heart of the Toolkit from the start. There’s plenty of material on relaxation, as well. One thing I will consider adding is a specific sleep track, since a couple of people mentioned sleep – I already have one, so I can just include it in the list of bonuses.
I’ve been going back and forth on whether to include a module on stress specifically (what it is and how it works), or whether to make that a separate free course that’s introductory to the Emotional Circuit-Breaker Toolkit. I still haven’t decided, so if you have a strong opinion, let me know in the comments.
What Else?
There was one other response, slightly cryptic: “eating instead of acting”. I take this to mean that this is something the respondent is doing and wants to stop, but I’m going to follow that one up to make sure.
It raises the question: Should I say some things specifically about the means that people often use to manage their emotions – eating, smoking, drinking etc.? I do cover these in my book, Changing Health Behaviours, so I don’t want to just repeat the information there, but I do want to go over them at least briefly. Again, your opinions in the comments, thanks.
And finally, what else am I already planning to include (and should I leave some of it out or make it into separate products? Again, I welcome your opinions in the comments.) In summary, I’m planning:
- Techniques to deal with past emotional hurts and continuing emotional pain
- Quick techniques to break the immediate emotional “circuits” that carry you round and round the same emotional territory
- Deep techniques to change your underlying emotional patterns and build a positive emotional life
- Specific techniques for anger, sadness and fear (including phobias)
I’ve had one comment that the amount of material in the Toolkit is “overwhelming”, and I’m also conscious of the price point – I don’t want to make a Rolls-Royce for a Mazda audience. How would you feel about a series or a set of related products, since I’ll be encouraging you to pick and choose what you need anyway?
Your Mission
Here are my follow-up questions. Answers to any or all of these in the comments, please:
- If you didn’t answer my survey (or even if you did and have thought of something else), what are your answers to the questions? (Those questions again: What would you change about your emotional life if you could, and what would be your main benefit from doing so?)
- Would you like a stress module in the Emotional Circuit-Breaker Toolkit, or do you see that as a separate thing? (No extra charge in either case, it will either be a bonus or a freebie.)
- What about material on the common stress management techniques of eating, drinking and smoking? How much do you want me to say?
- Anything that I’ve put in that you want me to leave out, or make into a separate product?
The best comment this week will win something. Exactly what will depend on the comment, since I want it to be something you’d like, but it will be something I’ve made.
Have at it!
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Aug
11
As I mentioned in my last post, I’m reading Candace Pert’s fascinating book Molecules of Emotion at the moment, and her theory of the “bodymind” as one integrated, dynamic network is seizing my imagination. She’s a prominent scientist who has worked mostly on peptides, the “molecules of emotion” of her title, which are the means of communication between a number of bodymind systems.
 photo credit: net_efekt
Peptides are made up of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. There are a number of different amino acids, but there are 8 in particular that we can’t make for ourselves out of other amino acids, and we have to take these in through our food. They do get recycled, and if our diet is inadequate we can sometimes get them from the proteins that make up much of our body’s structure, but ultimately we have to eat them or we won’t have enough.
Because the peptides (and other messenger molecules which keep the body’s systems coordinated) are made from them, a lack of one of these essential amino acids is clearly a problem. Normally this doesn’t occur, of course, since they are common enough that any reasonably normal diet should contain all of them in sufficient quantity. Vegetarians have to be careful, though, and there are some subtleties to be aware of.
photo credit: Tina Keller
As an example, I’ll start with tryptophan, which I came across when researching my Sleeper’s Checklist. Tryptophan is the precursor to the neurotransmitter serotonin and the neurohormone melatonin. Melatonin is thought to be involved in regulating the sleep-wake cycle, while serotonin is well known for its role in mood regulation. Antidepressant drugs apparently relieve depression by affecting the levels of serotonin available in the brain. The exact reason why this relieves depression (and why the antidepressant effects take a couple of weeks to kick in, even though the effect on serotonin is very rapid) is not yet fully understood.
Serotonin is also important in the digestive system for regulating the movement of the intestines, and in fact about 8 or 9 times as much serotonin is found in the digestive system as in the brain. In the brain, it modulates appetite, sexual desire, mood, anger and sleep, among other behaviours and drives. A Swedish study has even suggested a correlation between the density of a particular kind of serotonin receptor in the brain and the likelihood of having had a religious experience.
photo credit: h.koppdelaney
Since serotonin is made from tryptophan, and we can’t make tryptophan, it’s important to have adequate levels of tryptophan intake in our diet – but it’s not just that simple (things seldom are when neurotransmitters are involved). Two other amino acids, phenylalanine and leucine, “compete” with tryptophan to be transported into the brain across the protective membrane which surrounds it (the blood-brain barrier), so not just the absolute amount, but also the ratio, of tryptophan to these other amino acids is important. Also, in some conditions such as lactose intolerance (difficulty digesting dairy products) or fructose malabsorption, tryptophan is not properly absorbed by the gut. Interestingly, fructose malabsorption has been linked to depression.
photo credit: steffenz
So what foods help balance the books for tryptophan? Bananas, dates, pineapples, plums and nuts are mentioned in one article on nutrition, depression and sleep. However, an editorial in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience tends to minimize the contribution of diet to serotonin levels, though it does note some interesting correlations between levels of American corn or maize consumption and homicide rates in countries around the world (corn being relatively low in tryptophan). That article places more stress on changes in thinking, exercise, and exposure to light as non-drug means of raising serotonin levels (and I’ll talk about those more in future posts).
Not just serotonin levels, but the rate of serotonin turnover, seem to be significant in relation to violent behaviour and suicide. Low serotonin turnover, for reasons as yet not understood, correlates with high rates of these behaviours. So it isn’t just how much you have, but how long you’ve had it, apparently.
I was recently reading about another study correlating consumption low-tryptophan foods with aggression, not at a population level but in individuals. Moeller et al. (Tryptophan depletion and aggressive responding in healthy males, published in Psychopharmacology) found in 1996 that healthy young men, after 24 hours of a low-tryptophan diet and having been given a tryptophan-free amino acid mixture, responded significantly more aggressively a few hours afterwards than the same subjects under control conditions. So feeding aggressive or suicidal people on, for example, Diet Coke and corn chips (high in phenylalanine, low in tryptophan) seems like it would be a bad idea.
I’m not going to do the Usual Internet Thing and make a flat-out statement about how eating such-and-such a food will work a miraculous change in your mood because of its tryptophan content, though. The mechanisms are more complex than that. Diet does contribute to mood, and so eating a well-balanced diet that is well adapted for your particular biochemistry and other circumstances is an important contribution to keeping your bodymind in good order, but it’s just not as simple as eating more tryptophan-containing foods in order to feel better.
For further information, I suggest Nutritiondata.com and the World’s Healthiest Foods website, two excellent sources of information about food and health. (Those links lead to pages directly relevant to tryptophan.)
Technorati Tags: nutrition, tryptophan, serotonin, mood
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