Everyone has habits, good and bad.

Habits can make or break us, take us closer or further from our goals.

If one of our goals is life optimization to become an Alpha Energy male, here are 10 habits that need to be in place.

#1 Sunlight

Just recently I wrote an article on the benefits of sunlight and why it’s fundamental to get some sunlight daily. A few benefits I’ll list here include improvements in libido and attraction, increased synthesis in dopamine, beta-endorphin and testosterone, improvements in blood flow, mood, etc.

A few ways to supercharge sun exposure is to combine it with exercise (walking/sprinting/parkour/calisthenics), earthing and proper breathing, preferable where there is greenery.

You can also apply lanolin and niacinamide topically as both will protect against UV damage. Lanolin is also a great source of cholesterol, which is used for the synthesis of steroids in the skin. Niacinamide increases NAD and enhances the synthesis of cholesterol in the skin, and will enhance baseline cholesterol availability for steroidogenesis (R).

I try to get at least 30min of full upper body sunlight daily when the sun is shining. If it’s cloudy, I’ll still go outside for the benefits that sunlight has when it shines in your eyes.

#2 Sleep on time

Sleep is very important for all aspects of health.

Poor sleep:

• Increases cortisol
• Lowers testosterone
• Increases inflammation
• Increases appetite
• Reduces mental function and creates conditions such as depressed mood, poor focus, impaired memory, anxiety, anti-social, brain fog, etc.
• Reduces mitochondrial effeciency and function
• Enhances the risk of getting medical conditions such as hypertension, dyslipidemia, cardiovascular disease, weight-related issues, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and cancer, such as colorectal cancer (R)

A few tips to improve sleep quality:

• Be consistent with your schedule
• Get sunlight (and preferably movement) first thing in the morning
• Minimize mouth breathing by taping your mouth. Micro tape works great for this.
• If your nose is clogged at bed time, apply some methylene blue on an earbud and apply that in your nose. It might burn slightly, but it will open up your nose. Gut irritating foods are a common offender for clogged noses. Vitamin B1 at doses of roughly 300mg about 30min before bed might also be helpful.
• A few good sleep supplements to improve sleep quality include GHB (illegal I know), Holy Basil, aspirin, magnesium, theanine, lemon balm, glycine, taurine, etc.

Read more here on how to optimize your sleep:

• How to Optimize Sleep for better Life Performance

#3 No porn

Not only does watching porn spike your dopamine and cause dysregulation long-term, it also messes with your mind/psychology in terms of having normal relationships with people/women/your partner.

It’s difficult for men to stop since everything in our society is about sexuality. Anything can become a trigger and make you fall down that hole again.

#4 Slow breathing

Rapid breathing blows off too much CO2, which then releases serotonin from platelets (CO2 lowers free serotonin and keeps them trapped to prevent them from causing problems). Excess serotonin causes/contributes to vascular leakage and constriction, inflammation, fatty liver, fat storage, asthma, anxiety, dizziness, etc.

Rapid breathing, especially if it’s chest dominant, can increase cortisol and lead to anxiety and dizziness. Breathing is one thing that you can control and controlling your breathing is super powerful for taking control of your physiology. Every time you feel stressed/frustrated, think to yourself: “Control your breath.”

It’s important to do slow nose breathing even when you’re active. I like slow breathing in general as opposed to other breathing styles. For example 6 sec in, 6 sec out. But instead of shooting for a certain number, just focus on breathing slow.

#5 Be active

Doing some sort of physical exercise/movement is great for overall health.

Exercise (done right):

• Increases dopamine
• Increases testosterone
• Improves blood flow
• Enhances mitochondrial effeciency
• Improves metabolic syndrome (lowers lipids, blood sugar, improves insulin sensitivity, etc.)
• Improves metabolic flexibility
• Lowers overall inflammation
• Reduces all cause mortality
• Improves cognition
• and much more!

For me, moving makes me feel good, improves creativity, helps me come up with solutions and improves bonding with my loved one (wifey).

Walking, sprinting, free running and doing parkour give me different benefits than just weight lifting, specifically in terms of stress relief and creativity. There is actually evidence that showing that “enriched movement activities” improve creativity (R).

#6 Exploration/novelty

Exploring something/somewhere is a great way of increasing dopamine, which will have a good effect on your cognition and mood. Exploration also helps to lower fear and anxiety. Anxious animals/people don’t explore much and a great way to reduce fear and anxiety is just to go and do something. That will help to reduce fear. That makes future expeditions easier.

Routine blunts dopamine, whereas novelty increases dopamine.

That’s why I like parkour and freerunning. Although you’re running, the terrain and how you run and move, will always be different. You have to think creatively to make the whole “exercise” flow.

A lot of people love to travel to explore, but you can even explore your own city/town or just outside your city.

#7 Start your day strong

Nutrition is key to feeling and performing optimally. After an overnight fast, glycogen stores have dropped (in some people glycogen stores have dropped significantly and are even depleted) and then glucagon and cortisol are increased to create new glucose. Not consuming anything can keep those hormones unnecessarily elevated.

Starting the day strong with nutrition can go a long way for optimizing your whole day. When I was metabolically compromised, my whole day would be negatively affected if I didn’t have solid food soon after waking. I felt less stress-resilient even if I had a good lunch after skipping breakfast.

A coffee helped for like 15-20 minutes for me but often resulted in a stress response if food wasn’t consumed soon after.

Since starting to eat sooner, I was able to manage stress much better during the day. If I didn’t, any stress could cause a stress reaction. Meaning, I didn’t have much of a buffer to buffer the stress. But by eating, I had a buffer and could handle stress more calmly.

As I recovered metabolically, I didn’t have to consume anything immediately after waking, but could wait a couple of hours if need be. But regardless, I still like to have something within 30-60min after waking since I feel that it benefits my whole day.

#8 Earthing

Being in direct contact with the earth is great for lowering inflammation (and inflammatory-related conditions) and cortisol.

As a result, you’ll experience better blood flow, better mood, feel more stress-resilient, etc.

As we earth, free electrons are “absorbed” into the body, which then neutralizes reactive oxygen species (ROS). Less ROS leads to less inflammation. Inflammation thickens the blood, causes insulin resistance, degeneration, gut dysbiosis, leakage of the blood-brain barrier and much more.

I earth at least 30 min per day when I get my sun exposure and I’m always barefoot, so whenever I go outside to play with the dogs or something, I’m earthing some more.

Also, we use an earthing mat for our bed, so that we can earth uninterrupted for roughly 8-9 hours.

#9 Small wins

Winning is great for increasing testosterone and dopamine. Even if it’s a small win, it will benefit you. Small wins can be getting a gift, getting something you didn’t expect (that you are happy about), completing a task, doing something you said you will, doing something for someone else, etc.

We can “program” small wins into our day to purposefully give us that boost.

Habits can be seen as winning. If making your bed is a habit, then making it is a small win. You did it, you already accomplished something today.

Or in my case, completing a task, such as an article, a video, etc, makes me feel good. Completed, done for the day, yay!

It’s also important not to have too many tasks on your to-do list, because to-do lists tend to never get finished. Although you tick things off, you didn’t finish the whole list, thus you don’t get the maximal boost, since you didn’t “finish”.

#10 Create habits

We all have habits, it is just that we want more of the good ones and less of the bad ones. Good habits include going to bed and getting up at the same time. Getting sunlight each morning. Having meals at mostly the same times, showing affection to your loved ones on a consistent basis, taking frequent breaks from work, etc.

Good habits can take you far in life. make you happier, help you earn more money, help with stress management, improve your health, etc.

Creating habits at first can be difficult, but you don’t have to overhaul your whole life to make it happen. If you tried implementing a certain habit like reading, but failed before, next you can try limiting it to 20min of reading instead of 60min. Or listening to the ebook instead of reading it. There are different ways of going about adding or removing things in your life.

Or changing your motivation why you want to adopt a habit. If your motivation/reward is not big enough, chances are you won’t do it, especially if it’s hard/difficult to do.

There are many other habits that can be formed or unformed that will take you further in life. Take it slow and try one at a time. Don’t overwhelm yourself with too many at one time, unless you can combine a few into one. Like walking (in a new area), breathing, sunlight and earthing all in one. That’s your queue after breakfast for example. Combine them and train them after another. Create triggers for them. A meal leads to walking. After a shower leads to reading a book. Etc.