EntreLeadership - #208: Mel Robbins—5 Seconds to a Better Life and Business

Episode Date: June 12, 2017

What if you could become more confident, stop procrastinating, beat fear and uncertainty, story worrying, and feel happier? This week’s featured guest, Mel Robbins, says you can change in five seconds, and she’s sharing the tools you need to get started transforming your life. Also on board, Shawn Stevenson joins us to help you even more. He discusses why you can’t cheat sleep and how to get some great slumber. entreleadership.com/podcast EntreLeadership Growth Assessment Infusionsoft's Identify Your Target Market Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. Broadcasting from the Music City, this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, and four leaders. Thank you for joining the conversation. We're going to pack this episode really tight for you. Mel Robbins, Sean Stevenson, two great conversations based on two really important books. and folks, we're going to get right to it.

So, Mel Robbins, pretty well known in the personal growth space, but here's what I love about Mel. We went after Mel because you, the people. You the people. You said Mel Robbins is somebody we want to hear from, and we love feedback. Quick plug for feedback. Podcast at Entreeleadership.com comes right to me, Eric the producer, Will the Engineer. We love to hear what you want. That's who we're here for.

So anyway, somebody tells me about the book. And as soon as I heard the five-second rule, it instantly grabbed me. So Eric the producer goes and gets the book. He hands it to me, and you'll hear me talk to Mel about this. I really think it was a fantastic book cover. It just pops. And I started to dive into it. And I realized, I kind of chuckled.

I went, this is fantastic. I love what she's doing here. And the reason I got so tickled about it is because I had, have my own rule, three second rule. And it's really a shame that I didn't come out with this idea first. Now, Will and Eric are laughing behind the glass. They know what I'm talking about. If you were to talk to my producers, directors on the Dave Ramsey video channel, they would know what I'm talking about. They would laugh as well. So here's what I mean by I've been doing the three second rule for a long time. In my hosting, when I would do video projects, I've been doing them for almost a decade. Right before I

would go live. I just did this little mental thing and I would just go, okay, three, two, one, boom, and I would go into it. I wouldn't say boom. That would be obnoxious if I said, boom. But I would say three, two, one. And it's really fast. It wasn't the same cadence every time, but I would just get ready to go right before I go live and I go three, two, one. Now, on the Dave Ramsey video channel, every day when I'm live, I've got a director counting me down. 10, 9, 8 counts me down. So I've had him kind of do the 10-second deal, but for years and years and years, I would do that. And I still do that here in the podcast to do, right? When I'm ready to go, I mentally kind of go three, two, one, and it just kind of focuses my brain, puts a little pressure on me.

So that is the premise of why I think this is such a fantastic book. And her subtitle is Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage. I think this is a great mental hack. I think we should all do this on so many different levels. And here's why. Every day as a parent, I'm confronted with teaching my kids courage. I mean, you think about if you're a parent, almost on a daily basis, you are having to give courage. Walk alongside your kid.

I think of all the times we've gone to amusement parks and we get there right up to the roller coaster. and they've been very, very cautious the whole time. Expressing fear, concern. Oh, it's okay, it's okay. And they get there, and that's the moment where they've got to decide, am I going to do this, am I going to throw a fit, am I going to just say, hey, I'm out, or do they get in the car and go?

I remember my biggest moment of fear in my life as a kid was having to pass the swim test. I could swim. But now back in the 80s, you had to jump off the high dive. Now, Will and Eric have no idea what a high dive is. This doesn't even exist at a community pool anymore. Back in the 80s, the high dive, I mean, this was a platform, like concrete platform. And you had to edge up to it, toes over the edge off, jump off, swim to the side.

That was it. That was the final test. Failed it twice. Two summers in a row. Seven years old, eight years old, failed, humiliated in front of all my friends. They know I can swim. Could not jump off of that dive. Could not do it. It was about 20 feet. Couldn't do it. I was just paralyzed.

Summer of my ninth year, I finally jump off. Now, I got to tell you, I was equally terrified. But for whatever reason, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, right? Boom, jumped off. Terrified. Here's the best part. I went from being absolutely sick with fear. to then bobbing up out of the water, realizing I was alive, and then swam to the side. And guess what? Aplause.

Mom and dad are proud. Who even cares? At this point, I'm alive and I passed. I overcame my fear. That's the beauty in all of this. Courage. And the genius of the 5-4-3-2-1, the mental hack,

the genius of this, is in story after story after story, story after story that we've watched our whole lives of everyday men and women acting courageous, right? Jumping in the water, icy water to pull someone out. What's happening in that moment? There is no 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. It's 1. Boom, I got to go. I got to act. And in those moments of instinct when we just step into fear because we know we must, that's when courage is best exhibited. That's the beauty of this book. I just wanted to give you that because I know that there's so many different types of people listening in here right now. And here's my question for you as you listen

in to my conversation with Mel. Where do you need to exhibit courage in your life right now? Where are you terrified? You're paralyzed. You will not move. You know you should move. You know you could move, but you refuse to move because you're scared. 5-4-3-2-1. Here's Mel Robbins. Well, Mel, this is a treat to have you on the show. I got to tell you, when I saw the title of the book, I said to our producer, I said, we've got to get Mel for this book title. The five second rule. Now I have ADHD and the audience knows this. I just completely own it. It's a gift. It's not a problem. And if this book were sitting on the shelf in a Barnes & Noble or any bookstore, it would stop me in my tracks. So congratulations on a great book title, the book cover, everything about it really seizes the attention of some of it. with ADHD. So congratulations on that. So undoubtedly, I'm going to pick this book up and I'm going to flip through it and find out. So I thought it was just a masterful marketing job. And it's so brilliant. And you know this as a communicator. So I think that's why for me it stopped the ADHD in my tracks. Well, I want to say something right there because I think one of the most important things in business and in

life is having the clarity to hear your inner wisdom and the courage to listen to it. And when I was writing this book and I went to my literary agent and this is a person that works with some of the biggest names like a Tony Robbins and a Dr. Phil and Joel Olstein and some of the big, big, big names in personal development publishing. They said, absolutely not. You cannot have that title. And I said, why? That's what the rule is. And they said, well, because for a lot of people, they're going to think this is about food on the floor. And I said, I don't care. This is what we're calling the book. And it was a battle. And, you know, one of the things that, that is so important in life and in business is that you listen to what your instincts are telling you as a

business person and as a human being. Because that is the key differentiator. That is the magic that you have that is different than any other human being on the planet, your wisdom, your instincts. And at times, that's going to mean that you're going to have to stick to your guns. So selfishly, I love hearing that the title worked in a way that it just invoked curiosity for you because it validates the fact that when I was writing this, I knew that that's what I wanted to call this book, regardless of the pushback that I was getting. And that's an important skill in life, is knowing how to push back when you know in your gut that this is the right call for you. It's the right call for your business. It's the right call for your family, for your brand, for whatever. Yeah, you know, and it also proves a great point, Mel, that you know so well, that conventional wisdom isn't always wise.

It just isn't. And so there's a system, and you fought against the system on that. That's systematic thinking. I think you're absolutely right. It's marketing 101. I mean, you cut through the clutter. That's why it's so beautiful. All right, so let's dive into this.

And I'm going to walk you through this, this five-second rule. Break it down, take our time, because it really is simple but profound. So what is it? What is the five-second rule? Let's just start there. Well, it is super simple. And when I tell you what it is, I don't want you to dismiss the rule based on its simplicity because the results that you will achieve with it are mind-blowing deep and profound and lasting. So the moment that you have an instinct, that you should do something, or you start to hesitate because you start to feel afraid or you start doubting or overthinking, that's when you use the rule. Moment of hesitation, a moment of an instinct to move forward. Start counting backwards, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then move. It's really that simple.

Now, one of the reasons why the rule works, and yes, you do need to count backwards, you don't have to do it out loud, but you do need to count backwards 5, 4, 3,21 to yourself, is the rule, believe it or not, I discovered it by mistake, the rule is a form of metacognition. Now, metacognition is a fancy word that basically means brain trick, brain hack, you can use tricks to outsmart your mind in furtherance of your higher goals. And so when you count backwards in a moment when normally you'd overthink or you'd procrastinate or you'd listen to your fears or you'd start to think, think, think, think, when you start counting backwards 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, you're doing a number of things at once.

Number one, you are taking action because counting backwards is an action. number two, you are interrupting the patterns of behavior that get encoded in the interior part of your brain as habits. Habits of worrying, habits of doubting yourself, habits of procrastinating, habits of overthinking, habits of blowing things off until you feel like it. And when you start counting backwards, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, you actually interrupt the pattern. And finally, and this is the really wild, cool, profound part. when you count backwards 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 to yourself, it requires focus. You don't do it all the time. It's not something that you just kind of on autopilot, you catch yourself counting backwards.

When you stop the action and go 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, you are forcing your prefrontal cortex to awaken. And the prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that you need in order to change. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that is active in functional MRIs when we're teaching people new behavior, when somebody is doing deep and strategic and slow thinking, and when somebody is acting with courage or taking a risk or doing something new. And so essentially, the five second rule is a brain hack that turns off the part of the brain that sabotages your success and activates the part of the brain. that makes change and courage and confidence easy. And what you said is so true about focus, that the real power of this trick is focus. So this book is full of stories, real people who use this rule. That's what I love.

This is not some little goofy idea. It's so practical and powerful. Well, let's be honest, it is a goofy idea. I mean, I literally invented it in order to beat my habit of hitting the snooze alarm. That's how I invented it. I mean, I invented it to launch myself out of bed. And so when it started to work, I was so blown away that 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 would help me break these habits that, you know, I never intended to tell anybody about this, Ken. Because first of all, it sounds so dumb.

Oh, just count the phone. You have to stop saying that. You have to stop saying that because it doesn't. It's really fantastic. It's not dumb. I know that it is. But I'm saying this on purpose because there are people listening right now whose lives could change if they try it. But they won't because they'll dismiss it because they think it sounds like,

throw away advice. Exactly. And so what I'm going to tell you right now is one of the facts about life that once I say this, you will wonder why nobody's ever told you this before. You have all the answers inside you. And the moment that you have an instinct that kicks in, you only have five seconds to act on it before your mind is designed to stop you from acting. Your mind is designed to protect you.

Anything that is uncertain, anything that requires you to do something new, anything that is even the smallest of risks introducing yourself. to somebody, for example, sharing an idea, for example, starting a new project, for example, anything that appears as a risk or something new, your brain will work to get you to not do it. If you move within five seconds of the instinct, you win every time. And so when you understand that there's only a five second window between all the wisdom and the knowledge and the urges and the shoulds that could change your life and your business forever and your mind killing those things, now you have the secret to success.

You have the secret to productivity. You have the secret to sales. You have the secret to confidence. And so it's all about moving in those small moments on the inner wisdom that's always there talking to you. Now, I wouldn't feel that passionate about this rule if it only just worked for me. But as you were just saying, Ken, what happened is when I first started sharing the rule, it spread like a prairie fire. And next thing you know, we got people around the world writing to us about how they have stopped smoking after 23 years. They stepped away from a gun thinking that they were going to kill themselves.

Not kidding. We know 13 people that have used the five-second rule in their deepest, darkest moments right before they were about to either step to the rope or jump over a railing. And their inner wisdom said, this is not the answer. And they went 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And the counting is critical. And the reason why it's critical is because it gets you out of your head. You stop the patterns of thinking and you take action by counting.

And once you hit one, just like you do, as you're about to go on air, it's awakening your prefrontal cortex, which is a mind trick that gets you to have instant focus. Absolutely. It's so great. Okay. Now, I want to go a couple steps back. Yeah. Because I do believe this is profound, and I'm such a fan of it. But let's go back.

Let's encourage some people who are going, all right, I get it, Ken. I get you fired up about this. Mel's making a lot of sense. I get it. But there's a decision that has to be made. This all ties in, I believe, but I want you to comment on it. The decision has to be made prior to that 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Because once you start that countdown, theoretically, you're jumping off that diving board.

There's no more bouncing up and down. It's go time. What do we need to do to get ourselves into this rhythm? So this is before we even say 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, there's some action and thought process that you're fighting, wrestling with before you get to the countdown. Let's talk about that space. The fastest way to start experimenting with the rule is this.

You know, tomorrow morning set your alarm 30 minutes earlier than you normally get up. Why? Well, because I want it to feel hard and annoying because when you have to do something that's scary, it's hard and annoying. And the moment the alarm goes off, I want you to count, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then I want you to stand up. And the reason why I tell people to start this way is because I want you to experience what psychologists call activation energy. Now, this is a term that was borrowed from chemistry by a very famous guy that taught at the University of Chicago by the name of Chick-Me, Sent Me High. And he studied human behavior, and he realized that the biggest issue for most of us is

obviously just getting started. Everybody listening, I guarantee you can, has something that they've been thinking about doing for a long time, whether it is, I need to go through my cash flow and do an analysis and figure out where I'm going to shave something off or whether it is I need to start exercising again because I understand the mind-body connection. Or maybe it's, you know what, I really need to stop micromanaging my employees. I need to catch myself before I snap, before I swoop in on stuff that's really dumb. Or, hey, maybe I better take some of the advice that I'm getting from Ken and actually apply it. Like, you know generally what you need to be doing.

Most of us, the problem isn't knowledge. It's the fact that when it comes to be game time, you don't do what you need to do. You stop and think about it. So I want you to start by setting the alarm tomorrow 30 minutes earlier. And you're going to go 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. You're going to think this is the stupidest thing. You're going to feel a bunch of resistance. And then you're going to stand up and you're going to start your day.

Now it's going to stink for about a minute because you're going to be tired. You're going to be grouchy. You're going to hate the fact that you've just done this. But then you're going to awaken and realize something. Oh, my gosh, I've got 30. 30 minutes that I can never seem to find throughout the rest of my day. And then I want you to 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and I want you to do something that's very hard. I want you to not look at your phone for 30 minutes.

And what's going to happen is you're going to come face to face with the fact that you have developed a habit of looking at your phone more than you realize. Your phone is no longer a tool. You've become the tool. You've become a tool in the attention economy. And those are the first two things I want you to do with this rule. Every time you feel yourself reaching for that phone in that 30 minutes, I want you to go 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 as a way to interrupt the pattern of reaching for it

and awaken your prefrontal cortex, and then I want you to turn and walk away from it. What you're going to experience, especially if you're a business owner is, but I got to look at it, but something might be going wrong. but but but but but but but but but but but and this is at the heart of behavior change behavior change doesn't come down to big things it comes down to five second decisions what do I want you to do in those 30 minutes well one thing you could do is take out your calendar or take out your journal and actually plan your day and and work on a couple things that you never have time for another thing that you could do is you could be present with your

family another thing that you could do is you could go out and take a walk and be present and I want you to every time you notice that your mind is drifting in those 30 minutes to be wanting to grab the phone or feeling anxious that you're not looking at it or thinking thoughts that don't serve you. I want you to use the rule again. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 is going to interrupt the pattern of thinking that sabotages you. It's going to awaken your prefrontal cortex. And now you can redirect and focus on something that actually makes you feel empowered. So if you were to do those two things, just those two things tomorrow,

We'd give you 30 minutes that you can never find to work on things that are important to you. We would put you in control of your day instead of letting the phone and email and texts and the media take control of your day. And we would teach you a simple mind trick that you can use to develop focus all day long so that you're actually using your brain to think about the things that make you money and make you happy instead of becoming a tool of the attention economy. Now, what will happen is you're going to start to then see five second windows all day long where you know what you should be doing but you don't do it.

I mean, I found very surprising ways. I'll notice, for example, that I get home and I'll be standing in the kitchen and I'll be seeing my daughter, who's 18, and I'll be thinking about how awesome she is. And in the past, I might not say anything. Now, I don't really need to count anymore because it becomes a habit to then catch yourself hesitating and then just move. I mean, in the beginning, you're going to use this as what scientists call a starting ritual to interrupt old patterns. As you use it over and over and over again, you will gain the ability to switch mental gears immediately, immediately when you start to hear that wisdom.

And I have become a much more affectionate person. I've shifted the tone in which I speak to my husband. My husband and I have been married for 20 years. We're both entrepreneurs. Like so many of you, we have a very busy household. and there are times when I certainly was not speaking to Chris in a way that that actually matched my commitment to our marriage and how much I honor love and value the guy.

And so I've changed how I am as a wife because I have eradicated that tone that I used to have that I would use with him or the kids simply because you tend to do that with the people you're closest to, you're lazier about how you behave. And so it's a self-monitoring tool. And there's a huge trend in Silicon Valley right now for mindfulness. And if you read Tim Ferriss's book, The Tools of Titan, the one thing that every single billionaire that he interviewed in the book share in common is they all have a mindfulness practice in the morning. The five-second rule is a way to train yourself to have instant focus and mindfulness and self-monitoring. I mean, the reason why people meditate is because it trains you to be able to control your mental state and your mindset.

That's why people do it. And this is a rule that you can use at any moment. Like, I use it in business negotiation all the time, all the time. Because if you let your emotions kick in as somebody's trying to undercut you, you're not going to be powerful. So today, for example, we had an instance, when I'm done with you, I hop a flight and fly to San Antonio and I'm giving a big, speech down there and we've just found out that my publisher did not ship the books. So you've got an upset client. I'm disappointed. And if you let your anger, your frustration, your blame rise to the surface, what's going to happen is everybody that works for me on our team is going to feel

afraid and made wrong and panicked. And so that sort of energy spreads. I'm going to be, upset on the phone, so I'm not going to be powerful in terms of problem solving. And all of the research shows that once you get upset about something or you get worried about something, your brain literally becomes hijacked by the cortisol that starts to flood into your mind, and it's impossible to focus on anything else. And so the moment in business where I start to feel nervous or I start to feel angry or I start to feel, you know, frustrated about something. which, let's face it, it happens all the time of business.

I go 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Because you can't necessarily choose the stuff that's going to happen. You know, you can't control the fact that books won't arrive or a flight gets delayed or some jerk on the other side of the aisle tries to undercut you in a deal, but you can always control how you think and what you do. You know, I want to talk about a word that you mentioned a few minutes ago in your answer, empowerment, because you've laid out so beautifully how this rule helps but it seems to me one of the greatest rewards of beginning this practice is when it comes to performance.

And I'm talking about the entrepreneur, the high achiever who has to perform. And when you begin to use this, Mel, it has to be such a great tool for you to develop confidence that, hey, you're going to make a gut decision sometimes that is wrong, but you learn from it. But you begin to not worry about the gut instinct and it's not going to destroy you. And out of that comes confidence. And then I think, Mel, that you, that you're going to be, well, that. confidence leads to the wonder drug of life, and that's belief. Just straight up belief. I believe that I am equipped and I can do what I need to do.

And mistakes, failures, they're just going to be learning opportunities to continue to go forward. I think that's what's huge about this, is training our brains to have courage, which breeds confidence and confidence breeds belief. What do we say about that? I 100% agree with you. And you said it so beautifully. So let me see if I can even underline it or highlight it further. So I think there's a major mistake that people make when they talk about confidence and when they pursue it. And the mistake that people make, and I made it for a very long time, is that confidence begins with a belief in yourself.

And see, I think that that may be true for a few people, but that's not true for the vast majority of us. Yeah, I agree. And the trick to confidence is actually getting yourself to take action when you don't believe. Because confidence comes, as you so beautifully said, through just the willingness to try. When you see yourself behaving as the kind of person who takes action, when you see yourself raising and sharing your ideas, what happens is you start to believe in your abilities because you see yourself doing it. And then as you said, the more that you try, even if you fail, look, you're going to either succeed or survive and either way you learn.

And every time you push yourself, you 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 push yourself to experiment with an idea or share an idea at work or work a little on a business plan and then get feedback on it, even though you're terrified of what people might say or you don't think it's ready or you don't think it's perfect. If you 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and you send somebody that business plan to review or you ask somebody that you really admire to take a look at your financials so you can get some advice, yes, you're going to be terrified. Yes, you're not going to be confident. But every single time you push yourself to do it, you actually see yourself behaving as the kind of person that's successful, the kind of person that has courage. And then the belief comes. And over and over as you try,

Now the belief comes at, hey, you know what? Who knows what the hell is going to happen with the books today? But I have confidence that we'll figure it out. I have confidence that it won't be the end of the world. And I have confidence to have the conversations to try. And I have confidence, even if the person's angry, that somehow it'll all be okay. I didn't used to believe in myself. I didn't believe in my ideas.

But I have pushed myself so much to try that now I believe I can figure anything out. And that is at the heart of confidence. Yes. I want to spend the rest of our time with what you call your favorite section of the book. It so happens to be mine as well. And it's a bold promise that you lay out there, but you deliver. It's entitled, How to Become the Most Fulfilled Person You Know. Now, I'm going to read just a section, folks, from page 191.

But she's talking about the things that courage will do for you, and she really touched on those. But you say that we will be able to explore deep and meaningful connections and relationships. and there's some amazing stories in this section. And so I want to tee you up to maybe share one of the stories from that section because I think at the end of the day, the big payoff of all of the valuable things that you've already touched on is this idea of fulfillment. And this little rule gets us to a point where we can get to a place of true fulfillment. And I just believe, Mel, and I know you agree with this, that fulfillment is what everybody's truly. chasing in their soul, even if they can't articulate that fulfillment is what it's all about. Share with us a story from this section.

Yeah. Look, they've done so many studies on fulfillment, on satisfaction, on the meaning of life, and at the end of the day, it comes down to relationships. And life is not about thinking. It's about living. And the thing that's interesting about, particularly this section of the book and the section about relationships is, how scared we are of one another, how often we're just not telling one another.

You know, I think one of my favorite stories, though, and I'm going to get really choked up talking about this, it was one of these instinct moments where somebody had seen me speak and they wrote to me and said, hey, you know, I just heard you. And something tells me that you would love to check out the memorial page for a guy named Josh. 29-year-old kid who was killed by a hit-and-run driver in New Orleans on New Year's Eve last year. And he said, I think there's just something about this page that will really speak to you. He's the kind of person you talked about. He's the kind of person who thought it and said it.

He's the kind of person that lived fully. And I went to that Facebook page, and wouldn't you know, the first post at the top of that page, and this is totally random because he had sent it like three days before, and I was just catching up on email. The first post at the top of the page that morning was by a woman named Mary. And Mary wrote this story. She knew Josh. She was very good friends with the family.

And Josh and her son had grown up together. And she wrote this story about how at Christmas time she had seen Josh across the way at a store like a Target. And she commented on, you know, and it was a classic Josh moment. He was laughing and smiling and he had on a Santa Claus hat. And, you know, he was home from. you know, wherever visiting his parents. And she thought, oh, there's Josh. I got to go say hi.

And then she stopped herself because she thought, oh, gosh, I look like crap and, you know, I got my sweatpants on and, you know, I'll catch up with him later. And then she saw him again at a grocery store, like two days later. And again, she saw him and wanted to go over and say hi, but she stopped and she thought. And what she thought is, oh, I don't want to make a scene. he's far away, so I'll have to yell. Well, she finds out three days later that he had been killed. And she writes about how she really regrets the fact that she stopped herself.

And she stopped herself from the silliest things, and she'll now forever think about it. But what she took away from it was that she now was going to be more like Josh. And she tells the story about how she was. was at the store the other day and saw a lady that she hadn't seen in a while whose parents were sick or something. And she had that same instinct where she wanted to connect. Her wisdom was telling her. And she went to go, oh, I'll wait. And then she said, nope, I'm doing it. And she yelled, hey, Mary, you know. And so what also happened is I decided I wanted to include Josh in the book because it's this really important point that all you need to do is say it. That's what human

connection is. We're all dying to feel connected to one another, and yet we hold back, we edit ourselves, we don't say it. I mean, I can point to a million examples of it. And I contacted Josh's mom to make sure it was okay. And she shared with me a bunch of screenshots from the night that Josh was killed. And right before, literally an hour before they lost him, Josh had sent his parents, you know, a text that said, hey, before the new year, I just want you and dad to know how much I love you. And she said, to me, I will cherish that text forever. And that's exactly who Josh was. He thought it and he said it.

And at the end of the day, that's all that relationships are. If you have an employee that's not doing well, instead of like judging them, stop and ask them how they're doing. ask them what's up you know if you feel disconnected from your spouse say it if you see somebody you love who cares what you look like say it like that's what life is about it's about these five second windows that contain all the magic and all the opportunity and all the joy in your life that is so powerful a great personal example of the five second rule how it should be used how it could be used and Mel, this is really an important book, an important work, and I know that you are fulfilled by sharing

this with all of us. And on behalf of our entire audience, I can tell you that we're better for our time with you. Folks, run, go get this book, and live it. Don't just read it. Mel Robbins, the book is The Five Second Rule, Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage. Thank you for being with us. Thank you. powerful stuff there from Mel and a great reminder this isn't just about courage this is also about connection she said it's all about human connection but we edit ourselves folks we got to stop editing we got to start living love this book the five second rule transform your life work and confidence with everyday courage mel robins dot com m-E-L-R-O-B-I-N-S dot com or you can get the book

wherever books are sold. All right, folks, two great resources for you this month. The first one from our Entree leadership team. It's our leadership growth assessment. I love assessments because I think they are life's perfect scorecards. Where do we stand? Where do you stand? Where do your leaders stand?

And so we're focusing specifically on how to develop the leaders within your team. You are the leader. You have to continually be growing, but you all. also have to be developing the leaders around you. And so this is a great resource. We've been telling you about it all month. It allows you to get your team on the same page so they can see where they stand. There's nothing wrong with rankings.

This is not elementary school. This isn't Little League Baseball where everybody gets a trophy. It's time to keep score. So this is a great resource. You can get it two ways. You can text the phrase, smash together like one word, leader growth. Leader growth. You text that phrase to 33-44-34-34-4-4-4.

Or Eric, the producer, has a link for you in this episode's show notes, episode 208 at entreleadership.com, click on the podcast tab, episode 208. Also, InfusionSoft. Man, we're getting great, great response from you, the listener. They're giving you some amazingly practical resources. Now, we knew they would. That's why we work with them. they help us. We knew they would help you.

And so their tool this month, identifying your target market. This is an actual worksheet. It's not some article that you read and then you've got to try to figure out how to apply it. This is what I love about Infusionsoft. They actually show you how to apply it. So they're going to give you a worksheet

that will help you identify your target market. Now, Chad Kirby is one of the VPs at Infusionsoft and he actually taught on this at our summit. Really well received. So in the worksheet, you're going to get done with this and you're going to be able to pinpoint your ideal customers pain points. What really, really matters to them? What do they need? You're going to be able to establish why your customers buy from you. And then from that begin to build and shape that target customer.

Infusionsoft.com slash target dash worksheet. Infusionsoft.com slash target dash worksheet. or if you can't remember that, remember. The link is in this episode, show notes. Episode 208, Entreeleadership.com, click on podcast. So how you sleep in these days? I got to tell you, I'm reading so much about sleep. Sleep this, sleep that.

Everybody's a sleep expert. I mean, my goodness, even Ariana Huffington is now like making herself. She's like rebranded herself as the queen of sleep. And so I thought, what's going on here? Is this a trend? Are we getting new information? And I think the answer to both of those questions is yes, but doesn't matter? Resoundingly yes.

So, Sean Stevenson, this book came across my desk, Sleep Smarter, 21 essential strategies to sleep your way to a better body, better health, and bigger success. Now, here's the reality. In a conversation like this, I don't think it serves any purpose to break down the 21 strategies. But I personally went after this because I needed to learn. And my philosophy on any of these conversations that I record for you find people. is that if I'm learning, you're learning. And this really opened up my eyes. I have already begun to work on a lot of these things.

My room is now a cave. I now brought in a little fan that is over near the air conditioning vents, and it is blowing cold air around my room like crazy. I am legitimately cold when I go to sleep. These are just a couple things. The night mode, I haven't gotten the goofy glasses yet, but I've got the iPad night mode on and all that good stuff. stuff. But there's so many things. Got myself a eucalyptus candle. Smells good. Very relaxing.

Yeah, apparently eucalyis is a very relaxing smell. I'm dead serious. So the guys are looking at me behind the glass like I've lost my mind. I'm not kidding you. Now, Will the engineer's not married, but Eric, the producer, is newly married. Go ask angela, your wife, about eucalyptus candles. I guarantee you she knows what they are. They're very, very relaxing. In fact, you go to many spas, nicer spas in the steam room, you smell the eucalyptus. But anyway, I've gotten off track. I'm just telling you people that I've been going to do some of these things, and it's really paying off.

Now, here's the deal. Don't check out on this. If you're like, oh, I don't need a lot of sleep, I'm a high producer. Well, you might be. But the physical effects may not be manifesting themselves. This is important. That's my point. All right.

I've now scolded you find people too much. Let's get right to this, because I think this is a revolutionary conversation. Here's Sean Stevenson. and a sleep expert teaching me how to get better slumber. Sleep smarter, 21 essential strategies to sleep your way to a better body, better health, and bigger success. So this is not necessarily a new topic, but I think there is a growing movement around this idea of how important sleep is

and you can't cheat sleep. So first let's start with why the book and give us a summary of what the reader is going to experience. For me, this started out of my own desperation, you know, having big time problems with sleep. And this is while I was in college. And just a kind of short story is that I was diagnosed when I was 20 years old with something called degenerative bone disease and degenerative spinal disease. So I went from being a seemingly fit, healthy young guy to my physician telling me that I have the spine of an 80-year-old person. And so there was kind of earth-shattering news. But just to kind of fast forward the story, I, I went about two and a half years from that point of diagnosis to the point when I kind of woke up to the fact that I'd been kind of giving my power away to be able to change any of this stuff and just hoping my physician is going to give me some good news at some point and that never really happened. And so during that two and a half year period, my biggest struggle was going to bed at night because the pain was so bad. It would essentially keep me up if I even changed positions. And so I had this little chemical cocktail of my prescription medication celebrics and over-the-counter Tylenol PM to try to basically put me out every night. And what that did was it created this really foggy life when I woke up in the morning.

It's very difficult to peel myself off of the mattress and also difficult to get around campus. I just didn't have the energy. And so to put a bow on the story, when I woke up to the fact that I could actually do something about the way that I was feeling and kind of take my own health. into my own hands. I entailed three things, which we'll probably get into today. Number one, I changed what I was eating to provide my body the raw materials to actually regenerate my tissues. Two was movement practice, you know, started to actually use my body again, which is kind of like an obvious concept that I had forfeited. And three, I got my sleep optimized, sort of by accident. And once my sleep got back on track, it's like the floodgates open. And I got healthy very, very quickly.

Matter of fact, I lost about 28 pounds in about six weeks. And people at my campus saw the transformation that took place. And people started asking me for help. And that's when I was kind of the birthing of my career. The last part was more recently when I was running my clinic for over a decade, I was working with a lot of chronic diseases and, of course, the typical weight loss and things of that nature. But we always had about an 80% reversal rate for type 2 diabetes. So helping people to get off things like metformin and insulin, things like that.

But the 20% really got on my nerves. It's just like, why can't you guys get the results everybody else is getting? And after a deeper dive and asking people questions, I found out that sleep problems was a huge issue. And so I looked for clinically proven strategies because one thing that everybody listening is going to understand, we don't like to turn our world upside down just to get a benefit, right? We want to be able to do the things that we like to do and still feel awesome. And so I found some clinically proven strategies my clients and patients could use. and put in play to improve their sleep quality. And once they did that, the floodgates opened.

The weight finally came off. Their blood sugar got optimized. Cholesterol numbers got on track. All of this from improving their sleep. So that was about five years ago. And since then, you know, writing the book and really pushing a lot of this information out in a culture that people are hearing about today. But today, hopefully they'll get the real story in a more empowering way.

Okay. So obviously, folks, throughout the book, he's going to walk through 21 essential strategies. Now, we don't have time to cover all of them, but I want to cover some high points here. So let's start with the optimal amount of sleep, right? I read so much about this. That's why I was so excited to actually speak with you and transfer this to our audience. What would you say the optimal amount of sleep is? Is there a certain number, or is it truly based on the person?

You know, the book is titled Sleep Smarter, Not Sleep More. Right. So just to put that immediately into perspective, it's not about sleeping more because there's plenty of people listening who sleep eight hours and they still wake up feeling like a dirty, holy, smelly sock in the morning, you know. And so that's not really where we want to look. We want to look at how do we optimize your sleep cycles. That's really the key because I'm sure many people listening have really kind of taken on this idea. It's been impressing the culture that all calories are not created equal, right? concept of it's just calories in, calories out. That's not how it really works. If you eat 300

calories of broccoli, it's going to impact your metabolism and your physiology much different than 300 calories of twinkies, right? And so the same thing with sleep, it doesn't matter if you're getting a certain amount of time in if that time is a bunch of twinkie sleep. And so what that looks like is, number one, optimizing the sleep cycles. What that basically means is, what that basically means is finding a way to ensure that your brain is able to shift gears and get into the different stages of sleep. There's essentially four stages of sleep, specifically of non-REM and REM sleep, and to be able to modulate because each one of those stages provide your body with a different hormonal cascade and a different neurotransmitter cascade to basically heal you, to regenerate

your brain, to regenerate your muscle tissue, and basically bring you back better every day. if you allow your body to get in those stages. And little do people know we're destroying our sleep stages haphazardly by some of the simple things that we're doing on a day-to-day basis. So the book is focused on how do we optimize the time that you are asleep, whether it's six hours or whether it's nine hours. There is definitely a bottom threshold and there are outliers, but that's very few. We're talking about a half of a half of a half of a half of a half percent of the population

that can manage themselves and be able to effectively pass cognitive tests and things of that nature with less than five hours of sleep. Right. Because our sleep cycles are approximately about 75 to 120 minutes each. And we need to generally get about four of those in. So that's going to be somewhere in the ballpark of six hours as being that basement level that we want to hit. So again, it's not about trying to sleep more necessarily. It's optimizing the sleep that you are getting.

All right. So on that point, will the body, if we do what we are supposed to do, and we're probably going to get into this, but let's set this up. If we do what we're supposed to do, Sean, will our body naturally take us through those four stages? Absolutely. Your body, your genes already know what to do. And one of the things that I actually cite in Sleep Smarter is a really fascinating study that

found that sleep, specifically sleep deprivation, is one of the most powerful epigenetic triggers. So what that means is it can literally activate genes for disease simply from you not getting enough sleep. So this is why we see a radical increase in heart disease and heart attacks. This is why we see a radical increase in diabetes and cancer from individuals who are not getting enough sleep, which is crazy. And again, this is something you don't hear about. You hear about the next cancer study. You hear about, you know, the different drugs that we're trying to come out with. instead of looking at what is the body actually need to put itself in homeostasis so cancer is not an issue, so your immune system is able to do his job. And I've got to share this because I just talked with Dr. Joseph McCola yesterday.

And he's one of the kind of biggest names out there in the health space for many, many years. And he shared with me a statistic that by the year 2030, approximately one out of two individuals is going to be stricken with cancer. Right. So this is a serious issue. but here's a little kind of fun fact that a lot of people know about is that melatonin, this glorified sleep hormone, is quite possibly your body's number one anti-cancer hormone. And to the degree that the World Health Organization has actually come out and said that shift work, so working overnight is a class 2A carcinogen because you're not getting a natural darkness cycle, right?

We're basically creating a second daytime and never allowing melatonin to be. Release. Melatonin. Exactly. It's only released during a phase of darkness. Okay. All right. So I'm going to touch a couple of the chapters so that we can give folks just enough to kind of start to go, all right, where can I fix what I need to fix?

We've talked about this on the podcast before, avoid screens before bedtime. I just want to touch this super fast to move on. How many hours before bedtime? So let's say it's a 10 o'clock bedtime. How many hours before bedtime, Sean, do I need to make sure I'm not looking at screens? And does that include television? This is one of the great tragedies or dramas that we're experiencing today. And it's because of something that we love.

Like my iPhone is right here. I love my iPhone. But we have a great relationship. You know, I understand that it can do me wrong if I spend too much time with it. You know, and so actually Apple has come out and put a tool called Night Shift on all of their devices that blocks out the most troublesome spectrum of light from your phone immediately. you just turn it on it, you could set it and forget it. And it does this when it gets dark outside. So just to pinpoint this issue, Harvard researchers confirm that blue light exposure,

specifically from our devices, increases your cortisol at night and suppresses your melatonin and also disrupts that sleep cycle that we were talking about earlier that you really need. And they found that blue light, as compared to green light of the same intensity, actually suppresses melatonin twice as long. and disrupts your circadian rhythms twice as long. So it's the color of light specifically. Now, through our evolution, if we did have light at night, it was from fire. And so that's why that reddish-orange's hue that the device puts on your phone is much safer,

and it's a negligible impact that it has on your melatonin secretion. So what the research shows is that basically every hour you're on your device suppresses melatonin for 30 minutes. So if you're up working or watching YouTube videos on your laptop, desktop for, you know, two hours before you go to bed, melatonin is suppressed for an hour. So you can go to bed and be unconscious. You can physiologically pass out. But because melatonin isn't getting secreted, you're not getting into those stages of sleep that really regenerates your tissues and your brain. So this is why, again, you can wake up feeling not so good the next day.

You know, I recommend just even an hour screen curfew, 30 minutes even, just to, give your body a fighting chance. All right. Now, caffeine, caffeine curfew. Again, I want to move through several things here. So give me a quick rule on the caffeine curfew. What does that look like? Meaning, when do I need to not have caffeine prior to bedtime?

How much time between consumption and heading to bed? Full disclosure, I'm a fan of caffeine. Yes, I am as well. This is not a caffeine bashing session. But what we want to understand is that caffeine is a very powerful nervous system stimulant. And so it inherently is going to elevate some of your catacolamines. Okay, catacolamines are essentially your stress hormones. All right. So things like adrenaline, noradrenaline, even cortisol. And again, it's not that it's bad. It's not cortisol is not bad.

It's getting vilified in the media lately, but cortisol is important to your health. It's just if it's produced at the wrong time and in the wrong amount, you do not want cortisol high at night because cortisol suppresses melatonin, right? And so with caffeine, There was a really interesting study that I cited in the book. And what they did was they looked at what is the actual impact that caffeine has on your sleep? And they had study participants to take caffeine immediately before bed, three hours before bed, and even six hours before bed to measure the impact that it had on their sleep quality. Now, this was 200 milligrams of caffeine, which is equivalent to maybe a strong cup of coffee. And so what they discover was that even six hours out from bedtime, the study participants lost.

They actually lost one hour of their actual sleep. So what happened was subjectively, they thought that they slept for eight hours. But with the sleep monitor, they lost the full hour. They only got seven of those sleep stages of sleep cycles. We've been talking about phasing in and out of those sleep cycles. They were only getting seven hours of sleep. So caffeine can strip away an hour of your sleep easily if you're having it too close to bedtime. So what we want to target is having a caffeine curfew and getting it in in the earlier part of the day.

And so why do we want to do this is caffeine has about an eight hour half life. So that means after eight hours, half of it's still active in your system. All right. So the earlier, the better, right? So we want to target just in the morning, like have your cup of coffee. but for some people, they've hardwired themselves to need that stimulant throughout the day. So what I would encourage is starting to just wean off a little bit. All right.

So let's move on to one that I find to be really important. And when we have friends come over to our house during the winter, Sean, they're struck by how cold we keep it. I just am hot-natured anyway. But we notice that in the wintertime, we will sleep with, the thermostat on 65 degrees. And that is good sleep and weather. Yes? Oh yes. Definitely. Why is it important that we're so cool or cold, if you will, for sleep? So there's this process that our bodies have done called thermal regulation. And there is a natural drop in your core body temperature

at night when it gets dark outside to help to facilitate sleep. Now, people think, and I was taught this also in my university setting, that optimal temperature for human beings is, you know, 98.6 degrees. But your temperature fluctuates a lot throughout the day. You know, it's actually a little bit higher in the morning, especially if you exercise things like that. That's not a problem. And it actually goes lower at night to facilitate sleep. So what happens is when your cord body temperature drops in the evening, it allows for certain hormones and neurotransmitters and reparative enzymes to be released, to basically set you on pace for better night's sleep. And experientially, we all know what it's like trying to sleep when we're too hot, right?

It just feels bad. It feels gross. And what research has discovered was that individuals with chronic sleep disorders or insomnia by simply wearing these cooling caps. So they put these caps on their head that ran cold water through it, dropping their temperature just by one degree, just one degree, effectively cured the insomnia to the degree that their time falling asleep was actually faster than individuals who were not diagnosed with insomnia, right? And they also slept almost the same amount uninterrupted by cooling off just one degree.

So I'm not saying to go and get an ice bag and put on your head to go to sleep. I'm just saying to cool off the environment. And what researchers say is that between 62 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit is the ideal range. And so some people are going to be like, whoa, that's frosty, the snowman is too cold. what I would encourage you to do is wear some warm socks. You know, it's like a lot of times it's our extremities that make us cold. And of course, you could still use your covers and all that good stuff. That's good stuff.

All right, let's talk about the right time. You call it money time in the book. That's 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Why are those hours that span so vitally important? Wow. This goes back to optimizing those sleep cycles. And so what's happening is you're getting a, in some ways, even twice the benefit for those hours. And this is something I've seen consistently is that the people who are, quote, early risers that get to bed early as well, they tend to have a lot more energy throughout the day.

And I also want to share this. This is something fascinating that I've been telling people about recently because it's not just the hours. It's the consistency. All right. And here's a study. There's a study that was published recently in the current biology, and they looked at the sleep habits of more than 65,000 adults and found that people with different workday and weekend sleep schedules had triple the odds of being overweight. So it's the jumping around. We're creating social jet lag by bouncing around with our sleep schedule because our body is always looking for patterns.

It's always looking for homeostasis. And so many of us don't realize that just changing the time that you're getting to bed by an hour. hour or two or getting up by an hour or two, throws off your hormonal rhythm or your biological rhythm. It's like just throwing a monkey rich in the whole thing. So we want to create a sleep schedule. You don't have to go to bed at 10 o'clock, whether it's midnight or whatever the case may be. Definitely the earlier, the better for most people. Be consistent with that schedule. That's one of the most important things. One of the big reasons people need to assimilate and take this information on for their performance as a business owner, as somebody who's working,

as an entrepreneur or just looking to climb the corporate ladder, your sleep quality is probably the greatest leverage and greatest tool to helping you to be effective. And number one, let's talk about your body fat. University of Chicago did a study and they had individuals on a calorie restricted diet, just the same thing I would teach people from my traditional university education, which I don't teach anymore, but they put them on a restricted diet. They allow them to get eight and a half hours of sleep and they monitor their results. another phase of the study they take the same people now they're on the same exact diet but they sleep deprive them

and they take away three hours of their sleep at the end of the study they found that they lost 55% more body fat just from sleeping more all right that's crazy because you can't get those kind of results doing CrossFit seven days a week you can't get those kind of results cutting more calories it was simply from getting more sleep and it's because it has a huge impact on that hormonal cascade

And last thing I want to share is that a recent study found that 6% of the glucose trying to reach your brain, specifically 14% of that was from your prefrontal cortex. So that's the part of your brain responsible for decision making, for thinking, for distinguishing between right and wrong, for social control. That part of your brain starts to starve when you're sleep deprived. And so so many of us are mistaking being busy for being effective because our brains are actually not working at their optimum levels. because we're sleep deprived. And simply optimizing your sleep cycles like we're talking about today can effectively, in many ways, supercharged your brain and your cognitive ability. All right.

So now I want to focus on what you call, it's the chapter called Get It Blacked Out. That's creating this cave-like environment. It's so dark because that's huge. We kind of touched on this with the screen issue early on. I want to ask you a question for parents everywhere because we've got an audience of high achievers and entrepreneurs and leaders, but they got kids. I'm guessing that the nightlight is a problem for the kids. And I've got three kids.

They all like a little nightlight action. That's bad, right? It's not helping our kids sleep well. You know, this is a really fascinating question and a fascinating issue. And I actually, just to put it bluntly, there was a study that was conducted by researchers at She Eye Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. And they did a simple test to look at the effect of a night light and how it can contribute to something called myopia in children,

basically where the individuals is short-sighted, right? And so they're going to have a tendency towards losing some of their vision. And they found that 479 children under the age of two who were put into these three categories, A, slept in total darkness, B, with a night light on, and C, with the room light on. on. And the results were absolutely crazy. The researchers found that 10% of the children who slept in total darkness ended up being short-sighted, while 34% of the kids who slept with a night light on,

and 55% of the kids who slept with a bedroom light on ended up being short-sighted. Now, this study does not account for every variable possible, all right? So I want to make that clear. This is not saying causation. It is a correlation, right? But this is something to be mindful of. and just looking at, again, our bodies need a cycle of darkness. And having a nightlight was not something that we had even a hundred years ago, right? This is something that is a new invention for us. Number one is about comfort and love within the household. So I don't want to say that it's bad to have a night light.

We want to establish a great relationship because oftentimes we're putting that on the child, right? We're not conscious of the fact that this might be an issue. And so if we can come into the parent-child relationship knowing that as my kid is growing, I'm not going to have a nightlight in the room. It makes it a lot easier to have this conversation. But the bottom line for all of us is this. I talked a little bit earlier about that melatonin is only secreted during a cycle of darkness. All right. So this is very important, like specifically defending against cancer and things of that nature that I talked about earlier.

And now the issue is that Cornell University did. this study and they took a fiber optic cable with the light the size of just a quarter and they put it behind the test subject's knee who slept in darkness except for this quarter-sized light behind their knee and that light behind their knee was enough to screw up their circadian rhythm and to disrupt their sleep cycle it's like how like your knee is obviously not your eye but your skin has photoreceptors that pick up light and send information to your brain and your indecron system that, hey, I think it's daytime. Your body's like trying to figure it out.

Like, what is this light? And so this is why I encourage people that if you sleep in a neighborhood where you do have street lights and your neighbor's porch light, cars coming up and down the street, definitely get yourself some blackout curtains, all right? Like you would find it a nice hotel. But for individuals who sleep in a more secluded area or, you know, your neighbor, doesn't have the porch light beaming into your house, it's all good. It's not the natural light from the moon and stars.

It's artificial light. And today we're calling it light pollution because of the impact that it has on your nervous system. And it doesn't do this stuff during the day. It's just at night. We need to be in a nice kind of bedroom cave and sleep in darkness so that we can get the full benefit of optimizing our sleep cycles. There's so much in this, Sean. We're going to finish with calm your inner chatter. I went through a season of life where this was a big deal.

And then when I got control of this, I think this chapter 16 is so huge for go-getters, people who are risking every day going for it, creative, passionate people. Yeah. This is, if there's no other chapter in here, this one's a big one. Talk to us about this and strategies that have worked for you. Wow. This is definitely, like you said, for people who have the superpower of having a lot of files open on their mental window and people who have a tendency towards, you know, being very

assertive, you know, even individuals with ADD and ADHD. but I see it as really a gift in many ways, you know, because being able to process a lot of information and to be very passionate about something that you do get locked in on. But how do we minimize all of the windows at night? That is the question, right? You've got all these windows open on the computer of your mind, and we just want one to be open, the sleep window at the end of the day. So how do we go about doing that?

So in this chapter, I talk about calming your inner chatter. And for a lot of people, this is a big issue. So we have around 50,000 or more thoughts per day. Most of them random, most of them short-lived. But with our kind of hyper-stressed, hyper-sensitized world today, it can be a bit much and tip us into a place where we can't consciously, for most of us who don't have a little bit of training, to turn that off. This is where something I like to call brain training comes into the picture. and this takes on many of the aspects of meditation, right?

But meditation, even though it's growing in popularity now, can still have some strange connotation for people. Like this means you have to, you know, try to be like the Dalai Lama or whatever. It's not like that. This is something that is a valuable resource, and there's tons, tons of clinical data to back this up. And I'll just share a little bit of it.

One study I like to share is that the Medical College of Georgia found that meditation, a simple meditation practice, lowered blood pressure and reduced the risk of heart disease and stroke simply by meditating once a day for a few weeks, instantly drop those numbers down. And with sleep, when it comes to sleep, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, this is like the big entity that publishes studies like this,

found that meditation is, in fact, an effective treatment for insomnia. as comparable to the best sleep drugs. All right? And the study found that over a two-month period, they improved total sleep time, sleep latency. So this is how quickly you go to sleep. Total wake time. So if somebody does wake up, how quickly they go back to sleep.

So wake after sleep onset. Sleep efficiency. So that's what we've been talking about, about modulating those sleep cycles, and overall sleep quality. We're all improved with meditation. And so to put a bow on this, here's what we want to do. When I talk about brain training, your breathing is part of something

called your autonomic nervous system, right? This is basically stuff that works on automatic in your body, like your heart beating, like digesting your food, your breathing is something you don't think about. Until now, everybody is thinking about their breathing. And I know you are too, because it's something that we can actually, unlike beating your heart and digesting your food, which you don't want that job. That's right. Evolution and our, creative force allows for us to jump in and take the steering wheel on our breathing and jump in and take the steering wheel on this part of our autonomic nervous system for a reason. Because our mind is so expansive, we can over-stimulate ourselves just from our thoughts and put ourselves in a state

of fear, panic, stress. We can change that by modulating our breathing and activate what's called our parasympathetic nervous system and simultaneously turn off your fight or flight or sympathetic nervous system. You could instantly do that by breathing deeper. And so what I recommend people to do is a simple box breathing strategy where you sit tall and you can close your eyes or not close your eyes, but I recommend closing your eyes. And as you're breathing, you think about your body as you're breathing in. It's basically like a water pitcher being filled up with water. It's going to fill up from the bottom up. Right. So we want to, when we're taking that breath in, we want our belly to expand. And so many of us, because we're trying to keep the abs tight, absexy one look like we got

the flat belly going, we start chest breathing, right? And we become, and that's not even a sexy name, is it a chest breather. But what we do is we start using the full capacity of our lungs and thus not really activating our parasympathetic nervous system. So as you breathe in, you feel that belly up with air and you breathe in for five seconds, like a slow breath in. And then you hold that breath in for five seconds and then you breathe out we totally empty the picture for five total seconds right empty out that belly and then you hold the breath out for five seconds and then you do it again you repeat that process for you know even two or three rounds and you start to notice an instant difference in your state or in your physiology right you feel more calm more relaxed more present

so there's a lot that people can pull from to help to reduce that inner chatter at night. And I will say one thing, there's so much in this book, Sean, one thing you mentioned personally in this chapter that I have done, and it was a big win for me, was to begin to read fiction. And so instead of personal growth books or things like that, that kind of spur mindsets, you know, to kind of go in so many different directions, when I began to read fiction or biographies tend to do it as well, then that shuts my mind down. And I'm completely in it. I notice you. did that as well. So that's another great tip. Folks, I got to tell you something, the book is

absolutely practical. It's easy to implement. We just scratched the surface. And here's the best part in the final chapter. He actually gives you a model to follow and a plan to follow. It's called the 14-day sleep makeover. I think everyone should check this book out. I think you should run, go get it. It really is important stuff. He is Sean Stevenson, the book, Sleep Smarter. 21 essential strategies to sleep your way to a better body, better health, and bigger success. Who doesn't want those three things? You're not listening to this podcast. I can tell you that if you don't want any of those three.

So it's really good stuff. And Sean, appreciate you so much. I think we'll have you back and go deeper in conversation here because this is just a wealth of information. We appreciate you, man. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. I've got to say one more tiny thing, though. That fiction, adding that in at night is so brilliant because I know a lot of the listeners

they're like me. We want to learn. We want to get better in our field. And so I spent many years reading nutrition books and business books to help to reach more people. And I saw fiction as being nonproductive. But actually, it's one of the most effective things we could do to improve our creativity and also to turn on that parasympathetic nervous system. And I actually did a recent episode of my podcast, The Model Health Show. We broke down an optimal evening routine. So people can definitely check out the book, but they can check out the Model Health Show as well and get some more insight on that. Now folks, here's the deal. I'm telling you the fiction thing was a breakthrough for me. About five years ago, I started reading fiction. And nobody told me to. I just was like, I can't read

this personal growth stuff. And so I started reading spy novels, espionage. And boy, you know, I really would get into it. And next thing I know, my mind is not focused on anything, but I'm deep into a great story. And then you get to the next level and the eyes start, you know, shutting on you a little bit. You go a little chin bob, chin hits the chest bone. That's when you shut the book. Lean over, turn the light off, gonzo. Now, warning to you super creative, imaginative people. While I was able to go to sleep, I was starting to have very vivid dreams where I was rescuing Stacey from crazy situations. And my poor wife is like, what is wrong with you?

Get off of me. I was protecting her. I found myself one night waking up on all fours, panting like a dog who's been running. I was terrified and I was in some crazy situation. So I feel like I should put that out there. If you have a crazy imagination, you read the spy novels,

well, you may think you're James Bond at two in the morning, and that's problematic for your poor wife. So folks, you've been warned. Now you need to learn. Sean Stevensonmodel. com, shan stevensonmodel.com. You're wondering, why is model in there? Well, not only is he a sleep expert, but he's also a model. That'll make you hate the guy, won't it? All right, hey, folks, moving forward, man, we are absolutely blowing up on iTunes. The guys are telling me that

the data says we're growing and growing by leaps and bounds, and so that means you, kind people, are telling others about us, and we appreciate that. And so, hey, we would love for you to do a couple things if you have yet to do it. Would you go on iTunes and give us a rating and a nice comment. Now tell the truth. I'm not, you know, this is not stuff I read at night. And so, you know, we're not looking for hot air. Just, if you love the podcast, it's helping you out. Give us a rating and a comment.

And if you haven't subscribed, please subscribe. And then while you're at it, share it. You can share it right there from iTunes. You can share it from Antre Leadership. Share, share, share. Say, hey, this is helping me. I think you should give it a listen. We would appreciate that very much.

So on behalf of Eric, the producer, engineer Will Rutter, and the entire Entree leadership team, Thank you so much for listening. We appreciate you, and we'll talk with you again very soon.