Course Summary
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Course Summary CONTENTS DAY 1 WATCH TODAY’S SUNSET AND TOMORROW’S SUNRISE ....................................................... 5 DAY 2 TAKE A COLD PLUNGE AND SHOCK YOUR SYSTEM .......................................................... 10 DAY 3 FIND A PLACE OF ISOLATION, THEN COUNT TO 1,000 .................................................... 15 DAY 4 PICK A NEW SKILL AND ADD IT TO YOUR GAME THIS YEAR ........................................... 19 DAY 5 VISIT A PART OF YOUR CITY YOU’VE NEVER BEEN TO BEFORE ....................................... 23 DAY 6 WRITE YOUR PERSONAL TEN COMMANDMENTS .............................................................. 27 DAY 7 PRETEND YOU HAVE TO GET A NEW JOB — TODAY ........................................................ 31 DAY 8 OPEN YOUR MIND: READ SOMETHING BY SOMEONE YOU DISAGREE WITH ....................... 36 DAY 9 FIND YOUR MOST PRIZED POSSESSION—AND GET RID OF IT ......................................... 40 DAY 10 FREE YOURSELF FROM ONE SOCIAL MEDIA AccOUNT OR NEWS APP ............................... 44 DAY 11 GO OUTSIDE AND PULL WEEDS ..................................................................................... 50 DAY 12 PICK A PHYSICAL PR TO BEAT... AND RE-BEAT THIS YEAR ............................................. 54 DAY 13 SET UP YOUR PERSONAL BOARD OF DIRECTORS ............................................................. 58 DAY 14 SIT DOWN, WRITE A LETTER TO A FRIEND ABOUT THE NEW YOU, AND SEND IT ............... 62 DAY 15 CUT OUT ONE RECURRING EXPENSE .............................................................................. 66 DAY 16 TODAY, SAY THANK YOU ( YES ) TO EVERYTHING ............................................................. 71 DAY 17 GET ROASTED—LEARN HOW TO TAKE AN INSULT .......................................................... 75 DAY 18 PLAN YOUR PERFECT DAY, THEN MAKE IT HAPPEN ........................................................ 80 DAY 19 PICK FIVE IMPORTANT BOOKS TO RE-READ THIS YEAR .................................................... 85 DAY 20 START (AND FUND) AN EMERGENCY RESERVE ................................................................. 89 DAY 21 BE SOMEONE’S HERO: DO A GOOD DEED ...................................................................... 94 BONUS DAY : WRITE A EULOGY ........................................................................................................... 99 DAY 1 WATCH TODAY’S SUNSET AND TOMORROW’S SUNRISE “The day has already begun to lessen. It has shrunk considerably, but yet will still allow a goodly space of time if one rises, so to speak, with the day itself. We are more industrious, and we are better men if we anticipate the day and welcome the dawn.” —Seneca, Letters From A Stoic, 122.1 In a beautiful letter reflecting on his “advancing years,” Seneca wrote of the comfort he took in the fact that so many of life’s greatest pleasures are found in beginnings and endings. The seed planted and the fruit harvested. The first day of the year and the last. The curtain opens to reveal the stage, then closes to a standing ovation. To Seneca, the ultimate example of this was the natural cycle of the Sun’s daily appearance and disappearance. Like the first and final acts of a play, the opening and closing points of a circle, “a day has its beginning and ending, its sunrise and its sunset.” 5 There are few things more pleasurable in life than watching a gorgeous sunrise or a beautiful sunset. To wake up when it’s still dark out, sitting in the quiet that’s only possible when the rest of the house is asleep, watching the night creep into the day. Then, after a long productive day, sinking into your favorite chair on the porch and watching the day fall into night as the Sun sets over the horizon. Your challenge today is to observe this cycle: watch the sunset this evening, then get up before dawn and watch the Sun rise tomorrow. (Or if you got this email in time, watch today’s sunrise and sunset—literally the dawn of a new year.) Go ahead right now and Google the times for sunset and sunrise. Set alarms so that you don’t forget. Identify a place with a clear view of the western horizon. Then, when the Sun sets tonight, be outside, ready to witness it all. Take in the beauty of the last light, as it ripples across the horizon and the Sun stains the sky above it with colors that feel like they don’t exist anywhere in nature other than here in this moment. Pay attention as the bottom of the Sun reaches the horizon. It’s shocking how quickly it disappears from view; one of the most signif- icant cosmic events visible from our Earth, over in a few minutes. Tomorrow, be sure to wake up nice and early as your spot on earth swings back around in its rotation and the Sun prepares to make its reappearance. Get your coffee set up tonight so that you can have a steaming mug ready to take outside with you when the predawn darkness be- gins to lighten into that steely cobalt gray color that we only used to see in our younger days when we hadn’t gone to sleep yet. Like the hundreds of visitors who flock to the top ofHaleakalā Crater in Hawaii every morning to witness one of the world’s great sunrises, make sure you’re situated when those first bright rays peak up out of the eastern horizon and quickly turn the sky from purple to blue to red to orange. Take note of all the ways the sunrise affects your senses: The silence of night giving way to the emerging bustle of dawn. The smell of the crisp air, so cold in parts of the Northern Hemisphere it almost burns your sinuses. The feel of your skin beginning to equalize with the air temperature and your body beginning to emerge from its nightly dormancy. Observing this cycle is an important practice, especially to kick off this year’s challenge. It combines the symbolic with the practical and it brings you up close to a primordial pro- cess of renewal and rejuvenation—two things that we want you to experience during this challenge. It’s not just the coming and the going of the day’s light that is so important to absorb, phys- ically. It’s also the symbolism of the cycle itself—one day finished, a new day born, one year finished, one year beginning—which is a key to unlocking the perspective we want to culti- vate for the months to come. 6 You see, 2019 is gone. It’s dead and buried. It’s in the past and it won’t be coming around again. And yet, because we don’t pay attention to this kind of cycle in its daily form, we allow ourselves to let one year—sometimes whole decades—bleed into the next as if they are all the same thing, just as we do with our days. This is part of the reason it’s so easy to get stuck on the petty resentments of yesteryear and fail to make any personal progress as a result. How many of us fixate on past failures, or continue basking in the glory of last year’s successes? How often does it “feel like it was just yesterday” that all this stuff happened? Because in our minds it has been, and we’ve stagnated as a result. The times of stagnation are over and done. We want you to see the Sun set on today, and know that just as January 1st is over, just as 2019 is over, so too is the you that existed for that year, for that whole decade. Forget what William Faulkner said, at least for the moment; for you, the past is dead. It is in the past. And that’s where you’re leaving it. Beautiful sunrises and sunsets happen literally every day; yet how often have you taken the time to witness them? We want you to become the kind of person who is able to stop and smell the roses, the kind of person who can appreciate the beauty that is all around us and find joy in the stillness of a quiet morning or the anticipation of night. Of all the reasons we hear for why waking up early, alongside the Sun is so important— successful people all seem to do it, it builds momentum for the rest of the day—Seneca identified the best reason 2,000 years ago: we should do it for the delight of getting to witness life’s greatest beginning. Indeed, taking time out of your busy schedule to watch an extended sunset, then waking up nice and early to see the Sun rise the next day, is a great way to begin actually forming the new you. And the scientific benefits of waking up early only serve to reinforce that notion. It produces: • Lower risk of depression: Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder and the Channing Division of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital studied how sleep and waking preferences affected the wellbeing of 32,470 participants. The study, published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, found that “late risers” were more likely to become depressed than those who woke up earlier each day. • Greater positivity and proactivity: Biologist Christoph Randler conducted a study of 367 college students to assess the correlation of sleep schedule and proactivity—a trait he previosusly linked to better job performance, greater career success, and higher wages. He found that morning people are more energetic and able to take action to change a situation to their advantage. 7 “The fascinating thing about our findings,” Randler said, “is that duration of sleep has nothing to do with the increased proactivity and morning alertness that we see among morning people...The timing of sleep does.” • Healthier eating habits and increased health: A random trial of 2,000 people conducted by researchers from The Obesity Society compared “morning types” and “evening types” and found that morning types eat a more balanced diet, make better food choices, stick to regular meal times, and eat less often—all contributing to lower rates of obesity, lower risk of heart disease, and lower risk of diabetes.