Your health, happiness, and success depend on this.

These days I innocently opened Instagram.

I say that ‘cause I wasn’t ready for what would come.

Simply one of the best videos I’ve seen recently.

In it, the description of at least 90% of people:

(The video is in Portuguese, so the following rhyme was adapted from the original)

*“Drowning your ss in booze, lungs full of smoke. Fighting loved ones daily, in bed you soak. Worship politicians high, on anxiety pills you rely. Cheer when tax hikes hit. Always feeling like shit. Spending all day sitting down, processed food all around. Never once lifting weights, defenseless is your fate. Won’t read, won’t learn. For growth no concern. Scared to death of love’s touch, settling for a life that isn’t much. Common behavior we see. Normal? It shouldn’t be.”

All of this points to one word: likelihood.

The tendency to go in one direction or not.

Each of our decisions alters our likelihood.

Here’s how to change it to increase your health, happiness, and success:

1. Fix your SLEEP!

People don’t understand what sleeping really is.

Most think it’s just “resting.”

Not at all.

There’s something called the ‘circadian rhythm.’

It relates to your body’s functioning over a 24-hour period.

If it’s out of sync, your body will be too.

And if your body is off, so will be your life.

So, how do you regulate it?

3 things: fixed schedule, sunlight, and exercise.

Sleeping and waking at the same time will help your brain and body understand the day has a beginning, middle, and end.

Without that clearly defined, it’s like your brain wakes up with jet lag every day.

The problem?

A bad night’s sleep directly affects your brain’s functioning.

It impacts your judgment, increases irritability, reduces focus, memory function, and many other things.

Setting a fixed bedtime and wake-up time (if you don’t already have one) helps fix this.

But it’s not the only thing.

The second step is to include exposure to sunlight/natural light every day.

Sunlight isn’t just vitamin D, despite all its benefits.

In fact, it’s exactly what will regulate something extremely important for your brain’s optimized functioning:

The suprachiasmatic nucleus.

It acts as the body’s internal clock.

You know those people who naturally wake up at 6 a.m. with no alarm clock?

Well, their suprachiasmatic nucleus is dead on.

Not only does it regulate our sleep, but also body temperature and hormone release (especially melatonin, which helps us sleep well).

Now, guess what it uses as a base to function properly?

Light.

It adjusts our circadian rhythm based on the light levels in the environment.

You know what that means?

That when you’re almost drunk with sleep and insist on staying on your phone/Netflix/video games/etc., you’re setting yourself up for a terrible start to the next day.

This is because your brain is telling you it needs rest, but you keep exposing it to artificial lights and stimuli.

Thus, you make it understand that it’s not time to fully rest, since there’s light plus sensory stimuli.