Change Your Bedtime, Increase Your Brilliance

With 80 to 90 percent of my clients, I have them shift the answers to all of these questions within a few weeks, and it has an immediate impact on their level of brilliance. Let me explain why: Although we have seen dramatic changes in the way we live in the last few hundred years, and even more accelerated in the last few decades, our nervous systems are still very much wired to the way that our ancestors lived for thousands of years before us.

Edison invented the electric light bulb in 1879. Prior to the invention of electricity, everything happened by candlelight, and therefore according to circadian rhythms. Before the widespread use of electricity in homes (less than 130 years ago), almost all of your ancestors would prepare and eat their evening meals before the sun went down. For most people, it was impractical to cook and eat by candlelight. Once sunset hit there was not much else to do, and people would go to sleep soon thereafter. Human beings lived like this for thousands and thousands of years; only perhaps kings and queens would be able to afford candelabras or gas lamps allowing for late-night revelry. This kind of rhythm also meant that your ancestors almost invariably woke up before the dawn, like most other mammals do, and they probably woke up hungry, which meant that the main meals of the day were breakfast and lunch. That kind of natural rhythm persists more today for people who work manual jobs. Work at a construction site, for example, begins at 7 or 8 in the morning and ends at 4 or 5 in the afternoon. A plumber or a carpenter is more likely to be available at 8 a.m. than after 5 p.m. Contrastingly, creative people (particularly those living in big cities like New York or San Francisco) are more likely to have just a coffee for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, and then to eat a large meal as late as 8 or 9 p.m., going to bed sometimes after midnight. Many of the people I coach (who aspire to be creative and brilliant and want to have new ideas) come to me for coaching in such a state, often staying up until 2 a.m., and complaining that they feeling exhausted, burned out, and foggy-headed. This seems to be particularly true for single men in their twenties and thirties. Sometimes it seems they are still rebelling against their mothers telling them to get a good night’s sleep.