Bright Ideas Come To Us At Night, Not In Office Hours

By: Colin Fernandez / Source: Couriermail.com.au

EARLY to bed, early to rise, makes you healthy, wealthy and wise, so goes the old proverb. But it seems the advice holds little truth.

Research now suggests that if you want to be the wisest, you really need to stay up – well, until 10.04 pm at least.

This is supposedly the best time for a eureka moment, according to research.

And around a quarter of us feel we formulate our most cunning plans when we are burning the midnight oil, a survey of 1,426 adults found.

By contrast, despite what many managers may believe, daytime in the office is not conducive to blue-sky thinking.

The afternoon, when most people are at work, is when an overwhelming 98 per cent of those polled say they feel most “uninspired”.

The creativity drought just gets worse over the nine-to-five working day, hitting rock bottom at 4.33pm.

When asked about methods they use to get their creative juices flowing, 44 per cent said they took a shower.

Unfortunately for mankind, even when we do get a stroke of genius, more than half of our ideas are lost for ever.

When inspiration strikes, 58 per cent of us fail to write the idea down immediately and forget it, according to the poll conducted by hotel chain Crowne Plaza. Women were better than men at jotting down their best ideas for posterity.

A third of over-35s chose to scribble the thought on the back of their hand, perhaps having learnt from experience how forgetful they are.

The findings echo an Italian study in 2006 that found those who stay up late have the most original ideas.

Night owls came up with the most creative thoughts – perhaps because they are more likely to be unconventional and bohemian than early birds – according to the research by the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan.

Perhaps creative types have a good reason to stay up.

Research in February 2006 showed creative types such as artists and poets hook up with two or three times as many sex partners as other people throughout their life.

A UK study by Newcastle University of 425 men and women found the creative types averaged between four and 10 partners, while the less creative folks had typically had three.

Being in Stillness

There are many battles to be fought and many issues that surround us and if one wants to continue to fight the injustices in the world, then one needs a way to find inner strength and peace. Here is one approach: Find stillness in life around you

If you find  yourself in stillness, you may feel connected to everything. Being in stillness allows one to touch the very fabric of life and allows one to participate in its unfolding, moment to moment. All truly creative acts and inspirations come from stillness. Can you imagine a more creative place to be than where the universe births itself right in front of you? Poets describe this Heaven in different ways. William Blake's poem speaks to this.

When you experience yourself in stillness - that is, when you give your undivided attention to experiencing the truth about you - you will experience the conflict-free, calm, dynamic peace of perfectly centered abundant life energy. This exquisite peace deep within you is actually the harmony of oneness felt within you as you. It is the phenomenological feeling-tone of Being, or Existence, and it is the truest thing about who you are. When you experience the peace within you, you will spontaneously undergo a fundamental transformation in the way you think about yourself and how you see the world.   Nothing will seem quite the same ever again.

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

The first level of stillness is about being with yourself in order to know yourself. This is accomplished by being wide awake and aware as you deliberately relax into yourself. The idea is to consciously enter into a state wherein you temporarily suspend everything you think you know about who you are, including anything you have ever been taught, and simply be attentive to what's going on right there where you are. You practice being quiet, both physically and mentally, as you pay attention to the sensations in your body, the various thoughts in your mind, and your current experience of being conscious and alive.

The second level of stillness involves living your daily life with this new and growing inner certainty of who you really are. in other words, meditation in action. This is not always easy, and it takes a little getting used to, for it means staying in touch with the deepest truth about yourself in the midst of daily life. This involves continually letting go of the judgments, evaluations, and contradictory opinions about yourself that arise in your mind throughout the day and in your relationships with other people. You do this by staying centered in your peace.
Source:  http://www.movingintostillness.com/book/meditation_moving_into_stillness.html

How to Live to 100...and Beyond

We are living longer and this post by by Donna Fuscaldo, Published July 31, 2012 at FOXBusiness

shows that we can live longer by making some simple changes in our routine. 

Good news: Working out seven days a week and maintaining a zero-fat diet aren’t the only ways to live longer. Going to church, taking naps and eating nuts can also add years to your life

“Diet and supplements and exercise programs aren’t what is achieving longevity,” says Dan Buettner, founder and CEO of Blue Zones Projects, which identifies happy and healthy communities across the globe. “Having a faith-based community can add four to 14 years.”

Buettner, who is also a National Geographic fellow, has trekked around the world to locate regions where people are living to be 100+ and what’s behind the citizen’s longevity. He identified five regions with long-last residents: Okinawa, Japan, Sardinia, Italy, Loma Linda, California, Nicoya, Costa Rica and Ikaria, Greece and nine characteristics that all of the people in these places share. The good news:  they are things that can be easily incorporated into anyone’s life. 

Move Around

Many of us are stuck behind a desk most days with a sedentary job, but getting up and moving can add four years to your life, according to Buettner.

“People who are making it to 100 live in environments where they are regularly nudged into physical activity.” Take the village of Okinawa, where some individuals live to 140, they spend their days getting up and down off the floor, not because they want to build their leg strength, but because they don’t have furniture.

Have Faith

It doesn’t matter the religion, being part of some form of a faith-based community can add anywhere from four to 14 years to your life.

According to Buettner, it’s not about measuring your faith, but people that attend a religious institution four times a month have less stress and less illness. Of the 263 centenarians the Blue Zones team interviewed, only five didn’t attend faith-based services.

Choose the Right Friends

Even if you think you aren’t easily influenced, who you surround yourself with can have an impact on how long you live. If your inner circle likes to drink every night, smoke or eat fatty foods, chances are you are going to partake at least periodically.

“In the five areas, no one is sitting on a bar stool or sitting on the couch watching reruns,” says Buettner. “The people are passing along positive health.”

Shift to a Plant Diet

Embracing a plant-based diet and snacking on nuts can add two to four years to your life, Blue Zones Project finds. Curbing meat intake to lean options and small portions twice a week, is a step in the right direction for a long and healthy life.

“Black beans and soy beans are the cornerstones of longevity diets around the world,” Buettner says. He adds that eating nuts—no matter the type—on a daily basis will also boost life span.

Keep Your Parents Nearby

Buettner’s research has found that keeping aging parents nearby adds anywhere from two to six years for the aging parents and lowers the mortality rate for young children.

“Kids in a home with grandparents are healthier. We warehouse our grandparents and seniors in homes at an enormous cost. This is going back to traditional values.”

Know Your Purpose

Having a reason to wake up every morning can add up to seven years to your life. Having a sense of purpose, whether it’s at work o r in your personal life, will bring you joy and reduce stress.

Buettner suggests doing an internal inventory to figure out your values, passions and talents and then come up with ways to put those skills into action.

Drink Wine…to a Limit

Drinking isn’t always bad for you as long as you do it in moderation. According to Buettner, moderate drinkers who have one to two drinks a day in social settings outlive non-drinkers.

Buettner suggests drinking Sardinian Cannonau wine and discourages against saving all of your drinks for a weekend of binge drinking.

De-stress

No matter the location, everyone is prone to stress, but it’s how you deal with it that determines your lifespan, according to Buettner’s findings.

Centenarians have found ways to de-stress, whether it’s exercise, meditation, yoga, prayer or curling up with a good book. “They have ritualistic times every day where they down shift,” says Buettner. “It either comes from prayer, mediation, happy hour and even taking a nap.” In fact Buettner says napers have 35% less cardio vascular disease than non napers. You only have to sleep two to five minutes to get the benefits, he adds.

Don’t Finish Your Plate

How much you eat is just as important as what you eat. People in the Blue Zones subscribe to the policy of only eating until they are 80% full. That means they don’t go up for seconds or eat until they are stuffed. In fact, many eat their smallest and last meal in the late afternoon or early evening.  Adopting this eating habit c

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Parrots and cockatoos in the morning

When I was in Australia, I loved getting up in the morning, going out onto the patio sitting at the table and watching the cockatoos, parrots, Rosella's  go about their morning routine. These beautiful birds added to the ambiance of the setting and the joy of being close to family.  They also made the Australian Experience more fun,as we could feed them and the braver ones would eat out of our hands. Finally, they added to a peaceful, easy feeling, which could only be good for blood pressure and ease of stress.