Trev

The famous snooze button.

Often the first way to start our day, you and I would typically wake to a jarring alarm clock, hit snooze for that extra few minutes only to wake again with that extra groggy feeling.

My best mornings happen when I just wake up without an alarm.

Sometimes I get up at 4am. Other times it’s 6am.

As your next experiment, try waking up to start the day without falling asleep again. Here’s how you can do it without snoozing:

Get to bed on-schedule.
Chances are you are tired in the morning because you had a different sleep pattern. Your body needs to stick to a consistent schedule of bed times and wake up times. The average adult needs 7-8 hours of sleep. Stick to your schedule to feel awake every time you hear that alarm clock ringing.

Place the alarm clock far away from your bed.
Please ensure the alarm is still audible! By scrambling in the dark to find and turn off the alarm, you get a short boost of exercise that will hopefully keep you moving.

Stop using alarm clocks.
If you follow step 1 religiously, your consistent sleep schedule will actually allow you to wake effortlessly, without the need for an alarm clock.

Drink a cup of water before bed.
One cup of water will get you up in the morning. By the time you head to the bathroom and back, you will feel less in need of more sleep.

Get passionate.
If you are motivated, you will have a desire to wake up with a positive energy. A personal passion or interest will get you in a positive mood, ready to tackle the day. Find the activity that lights a fire under you and sleep will become a secondary endeavour.

Eat healthy.
Healthy eating has the benefits of improving your sleep. Your digestive system will thank you and leave you with a peaceful sleep if you go to bed with a stomach free of toxins, like sugary foods. Your brain function will be sharper and more focused when fed the right nutrients. Can’t say enough about this one.

Next time you prepare for bed, give these tips a try and let me know what works best for you.

Originally an eBook, I decided it would be advantageous to freely share this incredibly valuable resource I’ve created for you to help you overcome discomfort and shyness.

If you are a live human and not a robot, you will find this guide beneficial for you.

We all face uncomfortable obstacles on a daily basis. It can be related to our work, relationships, finance, business, you name it, we’ve felt the butterflies.

Here I am going to share 25 ways to expand your comfort zone and overcome challenging obstacles:

1. Put your hand up and ask your superior to clarify something.
2. Take part in a club locally via meetup.com.
3. Ask to be the leader on your team’s next project.
4. Go to the mall and tell a cashier they look pretty/handsome (warm-up: say hello and smile to the cashier).
5. Start a passion project that pushes your skill level.
6. Go to the next local event on eventbrite.com.
7. Speak in front of your friends, team or customers.
8. Wear mismatched socks.
9. Compliment five different people on their clothing in one day.
10. Talk to your stranger-neighbour (next door, on a train, etc.).
11. Try something you’ve never tried each Saturday.
12. Turn off your electronics for 24 hours.
13. Find 3 opposite-sex friends to learn socially from a fresh perspective.
14. Walk around the block and say hello to everyone you meet.
15. Hike a trail.
16. Reach out to 3 Facebook friends you haven’t chatted with for over a year. Script: hey John, it’s been awhile, wondered if you wanted to catch up at a local Starbucks?
17. Travel to a new place (nearby or country).
18. Give critical feedback.
19. Change your story (I am Negative Nancy to I am Nice Nancy…Timid Trev to Triumphant Trev).
20. Change your mindset (can’t to can, won’t to want).
21. Ask for a raise (list all the reasons why you are valuable).
22. Start saying yes to every invite.
23. Network with a support peer.
24. Grab an accountability partner to accomplish a goal or break a habit in 30 days.
25. Immerse yourself into groups to get away from the computer.

I thought I’d include the introductory chapter to my new book on life below. If you’re overcoming a struggle, this might be the best book to motivate you. Overcome struggle today and achieve anything.

Introduction.

My name is Trevor Carss and this is my story.

Recently I had a retinal tear which affected my vision. Potentially the damage could have blinded me. It was a scary moment. I went in and had laser treatment. Things seemed to be progressing in the right direction.

A couple of weeks later, I suffered four more retinal tears.

My entire vision is threatened for the first time since childhood. I have no vision in my left eye so something like this happening to me at the age of 28 is certainly a wake-up call for how I live my life to this point and how I choose to conduct myself in the future.

Happy to report as of this point that the repair has been a success and the tears seem to be fixed with a special belt that the doctor placed around the eye to ensure that no more retinal tears would occur – we hope.

With my eye, you never say never. I’ve only got the one eye that I can see out of. When you think about it, you take your vision for granted. There’s so many things that you do day-to-day with your vision and the minute you have some sort of a threat to your eye, you realize, okay, this is really important and you take for granted what you can see in this world. You take for granted all of the different sensory experiences that you see with your vision.

What I realized is that I need to look at how I spend my days. My life isn’t over or anything. I do expect to be able to see and recover completely. But I also now cherish what I see, how I spend my time seeing, and how I live my day.

When I look back at my childhood, I lost my left eye at a very young age. As a result, I didn’t fully appreciate the ability to see out of two eyes, because I never had that function and privilege in my life.

So now I only have one eye and a threat has now occurred to my one eye, affecting my ability to work on a computer screen, read things, really do a lot of what I did, which was marketing online.

It’s affecting how I should continue and adapt. I’m definitely thinking about it because I have a lot left to explore. We all do.

I’m telling you this real-life, raw story because I want to create a theme around getting you motivated and seeing all of the opportunities you have out there. I created this book because these are experiences that others are going through all over the world.

People are sitting around. People are lying around. People are just taking things for granted. I don’t want you to go down the same road that I did and just lead an average life.

I want you to be excelling with the one life that you have and what you’re given, whether it be the full two sets of eyes, one, or none. Cherish what you do have. Arms. Legs. Your mind. These are all things that we take for granted. So instead of me sitting around and recovering, I have to do something impactful. I can’t be lying here, waiting for things to get better. I thought it would be important to create and document while I’m recovering so that I’m producing something of meaningful value. Something that you can relate to that would maybe get you excited in your situation. That’s why I created this book for you. Hopefully this will connect with you on a meaningful level.

You may have gone through something in your childhood that you’re still dealing with today – 20, 30, 40, 50 years later. I want you to know that it’s never too late to really consider how you’re spending your time and how you’re living your day.

Definitely this was a surgery that was a wake-up call. I now question a lot around what I’ve been doing for the last 28 years because I have an opportunity to make an impact, and have I? The answer is no, not yet. I always say I’m going to and I think this is a realization that I must create more.

Couple of weeks ago my first retinal tear was a wake-up call, right then and there. From that day onward, after I did the laser treatment to repair the tear, I worked hard. I was putting in sixteen-hour days to make a living. Sixteen-hour days to produce content for the world. Sixteen-hour days to tell a story. Sixteen-hour days to help others. I was motivated because I had only the one eye left, and how much longer? It was a sign that I needed to start creating rather than consuming. That was an interesting wake-up call. Couple weeks later it was like another reminder. You’re not over the disease yet, you’re not over this injury, you’re not over this hereditary illness. You need to continue to appreciate what you have.

So if I look back at my story, this is an introduction, really. I look back at my childhood and certainly did not appreciate the fact that I only had one eye. I did not appreciate it to the extent that I could have. Maybe it was just with not knowing and not understanding, but I wish I had taken the time to appreciate and be more grateful for what I had.

So today I’d like to encourage you to reflect on your childhood and appreciate or be grateful for the things that happened in your life. Appreciate the things you had. Turn the page on this book and start fresh today. I think that it’s important to reflect and admit there was a stress or traumatic event that happened in my life, but it’s not dictating how I live my life going forward.

These are things that you might want to consider if you’re down, if you’re unhappy, if you’re in a situation where you wish things were better.

You may want to consider where you are right now and say this is pretty good. This is pretty good that I’m still here. I still have this. I still have that. Appreciate that you have something because I know you do. You will construct your future life the way that you should because you’ll start looking at the meaning behind what you have. That is really critical.

That’s my intro story and what I’ve seen and what I need to start appreciating. I encourage you to reflect and decide if where you’re headed is where you want to be headed. If not, assess whether you should change course. If I didn’t say anything about my life or I didn’t share with you where I’m at in my journey or what I’ve gone through, then it could be a lost learning opportunity for you. I hope at the end of the day that you learn something from what I’m saying and that you start to appreciate where you’re at.

Buy the full book on Amazon.