Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 656 - Morning Routines For The Best Year of Your Life

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

Today we share our morning routines and routines of other successful people to help you crush 2022! Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Vertical Diet Meals: https://verticaldiet.com/ Use code POWERPROJECT for free shipping and two free meals + a Kooler Sport when you order 16 meals or more! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Power Project family, you know how much we talk about sleep on this podcast. A lot. Because sleep is one of the biggest things that you need for muscle gain, fat loss. I can't believe your cravings. You need good quality sleep. And that's why we are super pumped to be partnering with an amazing sponsor, 8Sleep. Now, 8Sleep is a mattress company that has something called the Pod Pro and the Pod Pro Cover.

Okay, this is a cover that regulates the temperature of the mattress. So you can actually sleep cool. And they've done a lot of research showing that people that sleep on the eight sleep mattresses actually fall asleep 32% faster. But the great thing too, people, we over here at The Power Project are hot sleepers. And what I mean is that we sweat. We have many times in our old mattresses woken up in a puddle of our own liquids being sweat. And let me tell you, that has not once happened in this eight sleep mattress because it keeps you cool while you sleep, which helps you get better restful quality sleep. Andrew, tell them more about it. Absolutely.

Yeah. So and then another thing also is if you sleep with a partner and they maybe don't run as hot as you, you actually have dual temperature zones. So I can set mine extremely cold. My wife can set hers not as cold, but still cool. And that really is like that in and of itself is like, it's so helpful. And especially again, like I said, when you sleep with partner, they're happy, you're happy. You both wake up extremely happy. Everyone's happy. You got to head over to eight sleep.com slash power project. That's eight spelled out. So E I G H T sleep.com slash power project and you guys will receive 150 off your

pod pro mattresses again eight sleep.com slash power project links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes head over there right now all right i gotta explain to you guys because i think this would be super effective for everybody i got this amazing morning routine. First thing I do is I grab my phone. I hop me on some Pornhub. There you go. And I beat my meat for a little while. A little bit of Gold Bond cream. Oh, hey now.

Hand cream. Actually, no. Water-based lubricant's the best. Coconut oil, right? Coconut oil works great, too. Nice and slippery, but it smells like coconut. I don't like the smell. Yeah, I jerk off and uh and then like i just look at the clock and i'm like i

don't feel like getting up so i just stay there a little bit longer and then the mood hits me to jerk off again so i do that and then do you nap in between yeah a little nap a little nappy poo in between how the fuck do you do that refractory period you're just like yeah i'm old i'm old but i ain't dead you know you fall asleep it kind of resets everything it's the test yeah it is it's not the test of time it's a refractory factory refractory factory but vitamin b12 is actually gonna be super beneficial to you guys for that so get on it then I load up on some caffeine and some kratom. And then I take a shit. Then I text you guys like, hey, it's 9 o'clock.

I'm supposed to be there at 9 o'clock. I had to poop. I had to poop. And 9.30 hits. And the second wave hits. And now my day is just really, the wheels are falling off. And then you send that other text, sorry guys. Just pooped again.

Second wave. And then I somehow get here. I managed to get here. All in one piece. And then we make up some podcasts to do kind of on the fly like this one right here. And that's why our

productivity is low and our product is low quality. And we're going to continue to service you guys with that as much as we possibly can. You can rely on me to show up late all the time. And not only am I going to show up late, but I'm going to under deliver pretty much every single time. And when I'm done with this, I'm usually so fatigued that I halfway think about working out. And when I'm done with this, I'm usually so fatigued that I halfway think about working out and then I do push myself to work out because I need something for Instagram for the day.

I get way too much anxiety if I don't get an Instagram post in there. So I'll just film like one thing that looks badass, but I didn't actually do that thing. Like the chains and the walking. Yeah, I just did it for 0.2 seconds and then, you know, make a post and, um, I go home and when I'm home, I, you know, my, my bedtime routine is like, uh, I don't really have much energy for anything. So I just eat some dinner, watch some TV with my wife and then usually yell at my kids a little bit.

And I lay down. I'm like, oh, fuck, I forgot to brush my teeth. And I'm like, oh, shit, my mouth tape's across the room, and so is my eye mask. But I need to make another Instagram post, so let me get the eye mask and let me talk about mouth tape. I'll take a quick selfie. There we go. Then I plop down in bed and say, oh fuck, I

forgot to brush my teeth and then I fall asleep. And then it's just, you know, usually next day is on repeat. If I have trouble sleeping I just take like mushrooms or something like that and then I'm out cold. You don't do a quick fapping nap? Fapping nap. I don't need to. The wife's sitting right there, you know. So if he gives you a quick fapping nap. Yeah, yeah.

Something like that. There we go. Always helpful. You know, dude, a morning beat off is never good to start the day it seems like it but it fucks you over absolutely because you're just there you got no pep in your step got some nut on your belly and you're just like i want a phone back or something do you realize how like sad that looks just a little nut on your belly you're just like oh oh made another lake oh i did it again shame sets in you're like i'm disgusting i can't believe i was watching that video either that was gross and then you take a little finger finger and lick it on your tongue.

It tastes like salt. And you guys don't do that? Nope. It has electrolytes in it, right? It does. Right? It has amino acids, I believe. Yeah.

Tell people how they can get electrolytes, Andrew, without eating their own cum. Oh, my God. We're going to do that right now? It's perfect insert, isn't it? It can be. Have we ever talked about this before do it are you do it okay uh they're telling me to uh some elements that don't require as much work they do bring pleasure but you know what i mean uh drink lmnt.com slash power project

uh that's for um you guys can go there for a free element recharge pack it's salty it's five bucks it's it's a lot of a lot of salt in there but it's a different type of saltiness it's a more enjoyable i'll say is it is it can be it is uh but if you want to get a uh get a value bundle because you can get four different boxes for the price of three again that's at drink lmnt.com slash power project i can't be the only one who's tried it before we're not doing this again so did we talk about this in the past oh my god how do you not remember this i got in trouble with coach house oh yeah i remember dude's wife's like i'm done with those guys we had people we have people i love coach house i can't get in trouble with the guy dude we had

people saying like well i guess i'm gonna go listen to table talks and these guys taste their we're not yeah we're not tasting each other's cum yeah no no i mean we just haven't gotten to that yet yo y'all okay nah you know what i'm sorry coach house if you're listening to coach house is like no no no no no no no no no y'all cannot tell, nah, you know what? I'm sorry, Coach House, if you're listening, or Coach House's wife. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You know. No, y'all cannot tell me, as a grown man, you haven't at least once been just like taking a little dab. Has anyone at least smelled it? I mean, at least smelled it, right?

Yeah, everyone has. There's no way. It has a very smelly smell. Is your curiosity that smelly? I didn't mean smelly but you know i mean it has a lot of odor yo if you're if you can smell your shit when it comes out you again going back to the towel like you know like ah that's definitely been used like wait that towel is getting a little stiff oh Oh, man. You can break the towel in half.

Hey, who here, who here, when I was a kid, yo. This is going to be weird. Man. This is the shit that happens when you watch Porn at 11. When I was a kid, yo, I was like, hmm, I want to make this feel better. So, you know, you discover lotion and then you discover, whoa, oh, you could stuff a sock with some lotion. Yeah.

Like make your own fleshlight. Homemade sock fleshlight. You need to make a YouTube video on that. Bro, you've been hiding shit from us. What kind of sock are we? Never mind. Just a white tube sock. Classic.

Nothing crazy. He needed a knee-high sock. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. What was it, a knee-high? He needed the old school basketball. Your average sock. You want a really good time, get a compression sock, put it in the microwave. I mean, you know.

You probably had like a party. Like the socks that Cholo's wear. That's a good one. I'm an inventor. I'm an inventor. Yeah, I could add to. I'm an inventor. Yeah, I could add to the patents that I got. Should we get into actually helping people with a morning routine?

Because it's necessary. It's necessary. I think people right now are like, that's fucking awesome because I do the same exact schedule. I'll do it right now. If I can do that right now, I can end up like Mark. Great. He goes two in a row, though. That's a lot of work yeah man that's impressive shit i need time part of that is very honest though you do text us and say like sorry guys i had to dig a shit that was the truth that

happened recently yeah uh yeah maybe maybe it's all maybe it's all real who knows hey but with 2022 coming up i know a lot of you guys are trying to turn a new leaf. A lot of you guys are trying to start better habits, change things up. Whack off a little less. Whack off a little less. Watch a little less porn. A little less. A little less.

This will be out in 2022. Hey, 2022 is going right now. There we go. It's here. It's going. You already beat it too much. Fucking. There we go. It's here. It's going. So you already beat it too much. Fucking bring that shit back. It's not.

Tile it down a little bit. It's January 2nd and you've beat your shit six times. Calm down. Why do we want to beat off so much? Hey, man, it feels great. Dopamine. It does. It does.

Damn. Trying to figure out the root cause of this situation. I understand like we have to reproduce but like why is it that like i don't know we can't hit a switch to me like we're not reproducing right now bro that metaverse is gonna make things so hard on guys it's gonna make things so hard it's because it'll be done hey but when you can get like you know virtual whatever and virtual poon virtual poon you don't need to go out there and work for it you don't even need to work out anymore you could just be there with your miserable self with this virtual vagina and a fleshlight on your dick that vibrates and pulses why would you go out and try to get the real thing i own a fake house on

a street next to snoop dogg come Come hang out in my Metaverse crib. Oh, man. That's just going to be real dark. MTV Metaverse cribs. Yeah. Right? I get it. Yeah.

That's a real thing. That will be a thing. And I just think once people experience the real thing, though, they'll just be like, this Metaverse thing is cool. Got me through some hard times, but it's not like the real thing. I'm just saying, though. I know. I agree with you.

But getting the real thing, cool. But getting the real thing consistently. And as much as you'd want to get the real thing, some people haven't gotten themselves to a point where they're able to do that. So the real thing happens once every two months, and the metaverse happens 90 days every two months. And also, you can kind of have whatever you want in that metaverse. Women have been dreaming about vampires and fucking

werewolves and shit for a very long time. And now they can make that happen, and they're looking at your ass, they're like, I don't think so. Yeah, I'll take Edward or Dracula. We're screwed. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. But, hey, my ass, I want to find out what companies are going to be coming out with these technologies and see if we can invest in that shit. Oh, dude, absolutely.

Because that will sell. Yeah. Everything's always, I said it before, as soon as there's great inventions and it's always sex right behind it. It's like, how can we fuck this new invention? Yeah, or weapons, you know? It turns into that. I have a question for the audience real quick. For all my homies that are, you know,

we've talked about Portal on this podcast, but if you're still indulging, are you going to fuck with that virtual shit? Like, are you going to put those goggles on and see those bouncing virtual? It's like smoking a cigarette. Like, you're better off not ever even trying it. Right.

I know it's going to be too good. So I'm never going to let myself experience. It's not a cigarette. It's like morphine. It's like, it's like crystal meth. Yeah. It might be.

Yeah. It just needs one shot. That's why I never want to try cocaine. I don't think I should try it. Yeah. No, Mark, please.

I'll look like Stevie Wonder all around here. I'll be kind of moving my head around. The glasses on all the time. But the things you'll invent, though. You guys will be like, man, we lost him. We tried. We told him. Remember that podcast that we did when we told him not to do it?

Yeah. We were all joking. He wasn't. Yeah, man. There's just some things that certain people should not try yeah titties bouncing right and they'd be unlimited titties could be like four or five titties and have to be two you know what i mean all yeah any any which like total recall there you go uh you see now you got three boobs hey they made a new one i didn't see and they did have the same re they called back the three boobs yeah for the females in the audience uh they already left they they slammed the door shut i guess i

hope you guys are still here because we're gonna get into some good shit pretty soon well we're already in some good shit right now this is a very serious topic this vr you know this virtual meta porn so many people got oculus or sorry it's not even called Oculus anymore, but they got the meta quest to headset on Christmas. Andrew's our, Andrew's our plug. Yeah, dude, you set us up with that shit. I know. Um, I, I still think, so I'm into video games and when I experienced the quest to for the

first time, uh, literally like, uh, just over a year ago i was like oh my god like this is not what i expected i thought it was gonna be bullshit and it was so much fun and it was like where i thought video games should have been when i was like in high school but it's so good but yeah it's people just yeah people always go straight now quest has uh it has like um exercise and stuff on that too right absolutely yeah like even even absolutely. Even something like Beat Saber. I've seen some of that advertised and I'm like, that actually looks really neat. It might expose young people. I mean, young people are going to be on porn all day,

so I don't know, but hopefully it gets people into exercise. I've read people say that they can't exercise consistently, but they can play VR consistently and have fun. There's games where you are shooting stuff or whatever, but you have to squat under things and you have to dodge

and you have to move and flail your arms all over the place. Playing something like Beat Saber, you'll be drenched in sweat. It reminds me of Wii Boxing. When Wii Boxing first came out. That was so fun. That was super fun. Morning routine, what do you do?

You had mentioned your jump rope and then you hop into a cold plunge. Yeah, man. Dude, what a crazy bastard. Andrew, what do you think about that? I don't know. Getting freezing cold right off the bat? Yeah. So there's a method to this.

And there's a reason. So like the reason why I. Andrew said no. I said no. Twice. No. Three times. The reason why I jump rope outside is because sleep's a big deal, right?

And we learned from Andrew Huberman who came on the podcast. That's an episode. If you haven't listened to it, you got to go check it out. That you want to get some morning light to kind of start your circadian clock at the beginning of the day. Because if you just wake up and you stay inside for a period of time and your eyes don't get actually to sunlight, you just wake up and you stay inside for a period of time and your eyes don't get actually to sunlight, your body doesn't start releasing certain things that help your clock start so that when evening time comes, you feel sleepy again. So it's supposed to help regulate like your melatonin. Exactly. Helps regulate your melatonin too, so that your melatonin starts

actually going up at a certain time during the night to get you ready for bed. So a lot of people just go from there, you know, they wake up, they go from their car, they're outside for a few minutes before they get into their office. They're in there for a majority of the day, then they go home, but you want to get yourself morning sunlight. I want to point something out too, your car, just everything, all our modern technology is just crap, but your car has tinted windows in a sense that it blocks you getting the benefits of the sun. The blue light. It blocks the blue light.

So if you think that you're like, oh, I'm in my car for 45 minutes and the sun's out at that time, it's not the same. So unfortunately, yeah, you got to try to figure out a way to get sun. Maybe you can roll your window down and look at it a little bit. But it'd be nice if you could wake up a little earlier and try to catch that sun whatever way you can. Or even take a walk. It's a great thing. I like to jump rope, so I can just jump rope, then hop into the plunge, and then my coffee's already being made, go shower, come down. But whatever you can do to get your morning sunlight, realize that that morning sunlight right there is going to set you up so that you can actually have good quality sleep.

And then I also try to, every time I can, I try to get a bit of the evening sunset because there's another ray of light that happens in the evening when the sun is setting, that's going to help also get that clock ready to everything wind down so you can actually fall asleep well. You want your eyes to be seeing that. So those are two things that I do to make sure I have a good night's sleep because with a good night's sleep that I can do all the things I need to do the next day productively. So my routine is I get up, I go downstairs, let my dog out. I go jump rope for 10 minutes. And then I hop right into the cold plunge for five minutes, go inside, coffee's made, shower, come here. If I can find some time to meditate within there too, cool.

If I can't meditate at that time or whatever, and I use Sam Harris's app, Waking Up. But if I can't do that then, I'll do it sometime during the day. That type of stuff, meditation, when you do it more, you'll find that it helps you be able to focus on certain things for long periods of time

because you're supposed to train yourself to be present. And those are the things I do in the morning. Jump and rope, how long have you been doing that for? I think I've been doing that for on and off for two and a half months now. But I've been trying to get much better at it. I really want to be able to just jump rope without it feeling difficult. And it's been continuing to feel easier and easier and easier. I would guess that you're doing it inside because it's been-

I'm doing it outside. Okay. Doing it outside. Because even if it's raining or it's cold, I still want- Oh, you said you let your dog outside. Yeah, I let my dog outside. So I need my eyes to see that outside light. So that's what's happening during the jump rope.

I'm getting my heart rate up, feeling good. My body's getting warm. But I'm also looking at the sky because the main reason I want to do it outside is so I can get that morning light. Everything's supposed to be setting me up so I can have a good day. I can have, again, a good night's sleep to wake up and do it again. But if I don't get that light, I notice that I don't sleep as well. I don't fall asleep as fast. It makes a very big difference. So whatever way, you don't have to jump rope. Go take a walk. Go sit outside. Maybe just sit outside and think. I don't know.

But get your eyes seeing light when you wake up in the morning. I have not messed with this much before, but people talk about earthing. And it would be very difficult to do earthing now because it's really cold out. But people just talk about having your feet make contact with the ground, like your actual feet. No socks, no shoes. Earthing, grounding, people call it different things. There's even like a grounding mat that's supposed to give you like a similar vibe, but I don't know if that's like weird like voodoo stuff or if it actually does anything.

But, you know, I'm a pretty big believer that we're pretty damn connected to this earth. And what you're talking about with the light in the eye sounds almost like we're like robots, you know, like we're some sort of like computer or something like that. But we kind of are. We are. We have this kind of programming in us that allows us to express certain parts of our genes in certain ways. And I think just a really key thing to hone in on is if you're not currently starting your day with movement, that would be an excellent thing to start your day with. Some sort of movement, whatever version of movement that you can figure out. I realize for some people, like right when you wake up, trying to think about,

you know, doing like squats or pushups, like if you're older or you just kind of beat up and your body's tight and sore, that might be kind of hard. But there's so many variations of all that stuff that you could do. While you're making your coffee in the morning or in between sipping your coffee, you can literally do some push-ups on your counter and just, you know, just go on an angle. And those push-ups will be super easy. But the point isn't to have anything be really super hard or anything.

The point is just to introduce some movement into your life uh first thing when you wake up i think it's a great idea for me it's usually walking but i don't have an opportunity to walk usually right away because i usually drive to wherever it is i'm walking but that's for me that um and i set up my walks a lot of times to where when i'm coming back from my walk that I'm usually facing towards the sun. So I'm walking and it's usually pretty dark because I'm usually walking and it's kind of early. But as I go to come back, it's almost like I'm high. Like it feels, if I'm running, it feels fucking incredible. But I feel so good.

I'll be like super emotional during that. I'll be happy. I'll be like super emotional during that. I'll be happy. I'll cry. I'll go through every emotion you can think of, which sounds kind of silly. But I wouldn't go through any of those things if I wasn't like pushing myself through something. But I think that the sunlight has a ton to do with it and allows me to work through stuff. And then sometimes I have people, they'll say, fuck, man, how are you so calm? And it's like, well, if you did some of the stuff I did every day, you'd be pretty chill

too. Cause it's like, I feel like I have a good skillset to be able to fend some of these things off because of the way that I'm just spending time taking care of myself. So if you're not currently moving first thing in the morning, I would strongly suggest even based off what Nseem is saying, how he's getting up and popping outside and jumping rope, I'm thinking like, that would be good for me to do something where I'm moving right away, because by the time I go and do my walk, it is a little bit while later. So I'm just thinking, you know, there's probably a couple things I can do first thing in the morning, some squats, some pushups, something right when I get up with no excuses, just get a couple of them done.

Yeah. And a jump rope is just like a super cheap piece of equipment that I think anybody can do. And you don't need to do it nonstop. When I started doing it, I was doing 50 jumps, chill for a little bit, 50 jumps, chill for a little bit. Currently, the way I usually do it is I do 100 jumps, chill for maybe 10, 15 seconds, do 100 jumps, chill for 10, 15 seconds. I'll do a little

bit over 1,000 jumps within 10 minutes. And I'm feeling good at that point. You know what I mean? Like I've been breathing. I'm good. It's not super strenuous either. Like you don't even have to do it for that long, but that will get your body ready to do whatever else you need to do during your day. And you'll end up feeling like you have so much energy. I used to, in the past, I used to start my day trying to meditate first, but I like now moving first. I like that so much more. And I can be more consistent with that than I can be with if I have to wake up and then I have to try to relax again. It's already so, you know, there's already a little bit of, I wouldn't call it toughness, but you got to get yourself up and out of bed,

but then you're going to sit back down and try to meditate. And that's why that doesn't work. Like, I think this works much better for me currently. Get your heart rate up. Yeah. There's so many different things you can do. We had a female on the show,

um, probably about two years ago now who had one lung. I'm just having a hard time recalling her name. She was good friends with gabrielle lion but um killer ko oh was that was that her does she have one lung no no sorry i was thinking push-ups in the morning she would do like a shit ton well she might be her i don't i can't remember her name but she would do a hundred a hundred push-ups uh first thing in the morning like she literally that was what she did.

Like the second that she got, like she would pop out of bed and bam, pop off 100 push-ups. And she got to a point where she could do 100 push-ups in a row. She'd be able to get them all knocked out at one time. And anybody who's tried to push their push-ups up a little higher knows how hard it is to do 100 consecutive push-ups. Very, Very difficult. But I was like, damn, that's awesome. But a lot of times when you first wake up,

you're not going to really feel like doing that. But just trust us on if you do something like that, you are going to feel better doing it than if you hadn't done it. Yeah, the elbows might crack. You might have a little bit of this or that. But just whatever way you got to do them. You can even put like a pillow down or something

and do like a half push-up or wear a slingshot or whatever way you got to do it, but just get yourself moving right when you wake up. Yeah, there we go. Oh, so it was her. She had her lung removed when she was three. Kara Kelazowskis. Yeah, Kara is a badass.

She is fucking savage. Yeah, she had one lung, but her one lung grew and expanded from the type of work and workouts that she did to the point where it's got a similar capacity to somebody that has two lungs. She's such an intelligent athlete, too. Athlete and coach. She's so fucking smart and such a savage. She's great. Beast mode. Yeah. All the way. smart and such a savage. She's great. Beast mode. Yeah. All the way.

I'm glad I remembered. That's dope. Get your shit moving, man. Especially if you have an injury, you have something that hurts or something, you're gonna feel better. Anytime that I've had injuries, I used to do this very religiously. The first thing I would do when I first woke up was do,

I would do banded good mornings and banded tricep pushdowns. And I would just take a band that you get from like elitefts.com and I would hook it over top of the door and I would just do like a pushdown with it. And I would do like a couple hundred reps. I would also do some squats and like all during my powerlifting career, building up those big lifts. I wouldn't do those all the time. It was just anytime that I got like banged up or anytime something got hurt, elbow started hurting. I'm

like the only way to like lean into this and to fix it is to do more of these exercises that are going to promote putting a lot of blood into the area. But it also is doing a ton for your brain. Like when I'm walking in the morning, imagine as soon as you're done jumping rope, you're probably thinking of all these ideas, all these jujitsu moves are fucking popping off in your head. And you're like, oh, I got to tell Mark and Andrew about this today. And I got to do this later.

And I need to talk to my mom about that. Like just all this stuff, just your brain lights up. Yeah, you were saying that meditating first thing was like you had to swap that out was there anything else that maybe you tried and it just simply didn't work like i know you mentioned journaling um anything like that that like yeah just maybe give people caution if they do want to try this during their morning routine the big thing is i just say just i like now getting movement in first. Journaling and doing all that,

I do that throughout the day. I have my notebooks on me, so if there's anything I need to write out, anything I need to plan out, cool. And I usually do the planning for my next day the night before. So when I get home, before I go to bed, at some point within the last two hours of the night,

I'll go through the tasks that I had set. I'll go through the things that I need to move on to the next day. I'll go through the way I'm feeling about the day, all that stuff. I'll just write that down. I do that through the day. But some people start their day with meditation. And, hey, that's cool. That's not a problem.

I used to do that too. I just found that movement works better for me. And jumping rope is so simple. I don't need to go out and I don't need to run. My main goal is trying to make sure I get outside and get that sunlight so that my day starts off well. And jumping rope is just perfect. I can go to my backyard, jump rope,

plunge inside the house, shower, meditate if I have time then, or I'll do that later in the day. But the meditating and journaling, I can do that at any point during my day. Just think about like if you just set a timer to do, let's say, five minutes of exercise and five minutes of some sort of like reading. It's like I know you don't want to do it, but trust us when we say that many, many, many, not all, but many of the high-level performers that we've had on the show,

many, not all, but many of the high-level performers that we've had on the show, people that end up fulfilling the things that they've talked about for many, many years, they end up fulfilling their dreams and meeting those things, and then some, a lot of times, through some of these practices, because you start to train yourself that way, and you start to kind of, you start to kind of recognize that you are, you start to recognize that you're that person that's capable of doing all these things, and you never thought you would be that person. You always thought that was for other people. You always thought these people that were of power and these people that are kind of like, quote, unquote, in control of some stuff, you always thought they had some sort of thing over you.

Because you were like, I don't know what that's about. I don't know how to be in a position of power. I'm never going to own a company probably, so I may as well not ever really think about it. But when you start piecing these things together every single day, you recognize how capable you are. Other people are like, hey, man, what have you been doing with yourself? You're in really good shape.

Or you get in conversation with them, and you're able to spit all this information back to them because you've been reading, you've been expanding your mind. They're like, what in the fuck you, as you start to hear these things more and more, they start, it starts to build a lot of confidence and you start to be able to start to

paint a picture of like, Oh, like maybe, maybe I could do some of that. Maybe I could do some of that shit. Maybe I'm not such a dummy. I'm actually going to have, uh,

and SEMA, cause he's better reader than me, but this is sent to me every single day without fail. And this is from Michael Niddle. I knew it. And I sent it to you. And I didn't, I was like,

is he getting this from like an app or something? He's like, no, I just read every morning. And he sends me all these different like quotes and you can kind of just maybe pick one or something to read. But he reads for, I think, a minimum of 30 minutes every morning. I'm not saying that you have to do this stuff, but I'm saying just fucking give it a shot, man.

This is from our guy, Michael Niddle. We did the podcast on NFTs and the metaverse. You guys need to go check that out because I had so many people DM me saying how much use they got out of that. People have already been making money based off of the stuff they learned from that podcast. So check that out. And also, Michael, we're going to go on a dog date soon, bruh. I'm sorry.

Anyway, let's read this. He's part of that Bored Ape thing. Yeah, he is. He's in the Bored Ape Club. All right. Our painful experiences aren't a liability. They're a gift. They give us perspective and meaning, an opportunity to find our unique purpose and our strength.

Dr. Edith Eager. Surrender yourself to the process of emptying yourself. You simply permit the pain to come up into your heart and pass through. If you do that, it will pass. Michael Singer. And this is the last quote. The dark does not destroy the light. It defines it. It's our fear of the. The dark does not destroy the light. It defines it.

It's our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows. Brene Brown. This dude is reading at some point. He's like reading. I think he mentioned he reads like six different books at the same time. It's like 6 a.m. This is coming your way. Yeah.

Yeah. And he's extremely like such a good dude. I mean, just kind of think about it. Like you want to be successful. And that guy is sending that to you. But that's guys sending that message to you before a lot of people wake up. Again, I'm not saying that you can't be successful waking up later. And I'm not saying that you can't,

that you can't be successful by not reading. Cause I, I haven't really read much of anything, but I have always been a student. I have always studied stuff to try to learn more. It's going to be really difficult for you to fulfill some of the hopes and dreams that you have of yourself without becoming a material expert on it at least a little bit.

And trying to solve problems that you may have. Like if you have a great relationship with your partner, then maybe there's not a lot of reasons to read up a lot of things on relationships. However, somebody that's ahead and somebody that's intelligent would say, I'm actually going to listen to that because I would like to be more attractive for my partner, even though I think she digs me the way things are now. I'm going to, I'm going to listen to

this because there might be something in there that I could learn. And maybe that will make our marriage or our partnership or however, whatever you call it, maybe it'll make it even stronger. And that's what people do that are already ahead. I've mentioned this many times. Jim Rohn talks about how he would do these, he would talk about how to make money and how to be successful. And he's like, okay, when I drove up here today in the front row, I saw a BMW, I saw a Lexus, I saw,

he's naming off these cars that are fairly expensive that were parked as close to the front as could possibly be. And a lot of those same people sat like in the front row of these seminars that he would do. And he's like, I don't think any of you need to be here. You probably are already making some pretty damn good money. But that's the way that those things work, because those people started to believe more and more in themselves, and they start to recognize, okay, that's kind of cool that I'm pretty good at this, but I bet you that I can be better, and I bet you that maybe if I try hard enough and work hard enough, maybe I can be great at it. And, you know, if you're listening to this podcast, there's not a chance that you're not someone who's already an individual who believes in the

idea of lifelong learning, you know, because a lot of individuals when they, you know, get out of school or whatever, the learning kind of stops there. You don't really learn anything new or you don't learn anything outside of the realm of where you're already interested, but you should keep going down what you're interested in. But I mean, like, it is a good idea to expand into other things that maybe you're not so potentially good at or maybe things that you if you feel you don't know about something like in the recent years I've been when I was younger, I would have never thought that philosophy would be something interesting to me, especially when I was in college. I thought philosophy was a fucking joke. Same here. Right. I fucking hated philosophy yeah

it was so frustrating yeah but in the recent years after i started like diving into stoicism a few years ago i've just been like really digging into a lot of stuff that i would have never found myself reading like named my son aurelius you fucking that was the biggest 180 i've ever taken for sure. And that stuff is like fun for me. Like I just started, I started this book, crime and punishment by a Dostoevsky and it's,

it's a dense fucking read, but it's like, it's really interesting because these are books that a lot of people have talked about and have mentioned that like, this is a book that has informed like leaders, people in power, et cetera. And you can understand why a lot of people don't read it but you know it's really fucking interesting and it really does inform some of the things that i'm thinking nowadays so just dive into different shit but i was going to also mention this because we don't we moved away from the morning thing a little bit um don't look at your phone once you wake up i do that still a little bit every now and then i think this morning this

morning come on i made that mistake it was right by my nightstand i woke up i was like and then three minutes and i'm like bruh put that shit down go do what you gotta go needs to be an app that like screen that takes a picture of you and sends it to a friend yeah that'd be great that'd be so good that'd be so good it robs you right there like

that's a great idea caught you in the act bitch yeah that's a great fuck should've kept that to myself that's a great app idea redact that from the podcast

yeah exactly yeah you know again these are things that we're not saying like that you can't ever do them. And they're just things that you might want to be aware of. I actually think that in today's day and age, it would be a fair statement to say that just avoidance of a lot of stuff, just don't eat a lot of processed food, you're going to be pretty successful in terms of being able to manage your body weight without even exercising.

The exercise, I guess, would be like icing on the cake. It would be like a little extra topping on everything that you're doing. But, man, if you could figure out a way to abstain from certain things, technology, there's appropriate times to use all these things. But first thing in the morning, I think what you're trying, at least what I'm trying to do, I'm trying to give myself the best opportunity possible to have the greatest day that I can. And there's nothing wrong with the phone. The phone is amazing for communication. Us three, we communicate all the time.

I'm communicating with my kids. I'm communicating with my brother. I'm communicating with my dad. I mean, we're going back and forth all day long, hundreds of text messages, literally. So the phone has its place, but what happens when you go to reach for the phone is we don't end up with just a text message,

say, hey, I'm going to be there at 9 o'clock. We end up getting super distracted. We end up on social media and we end up kind of like just wasting time and just kind of like maybe overexposure. Like what we're supposed to see in the morning is the sun, sunlight. And we're probably supposed to like kind of view like what the weather's going to be like, you know, just for survival purposes and shit like that. And so the more that you can kind of abstain from certain things that are things that are kind of addictive and things that can just sort of slow you down, I think the better off you're going to be.

Parent Project Family, how's it going? Now, you guys know how we've had Stan, the rhino, efforting on the podcast. If you don't know who Project family, how's it going? Now, you guys know how we've had Stan, the Rhino Efferding on the podcast. You don't know who Stan is. He's an expert in nutrition, exercise, et cetera. And he's the creator of Vertical Meals. We came on this podcast and he's talked about the vertical diet many times, the different types of foods

that you can have on the vertical diet. But how cool would it be if Stan was cooking for you? That's why we've partnered with Stan Efferding and Vertical Meals. And if you go to their website, you can have an amazing selection all the way from Monster Mash to breakfast samplers. There's an amazing selection of food there, and it all comes right from the mind of Stan the Rhino Efferding.

Andrew, how can the people get it? That's right. All the way from Stan Efferding's head straight to your door. Head over to verticaldiet.com and at checkout enter promo code power project for free shipping. And if you order 16 meals or more, you get two additional meals. Absolutely free. Again,

that's a vertical diet.com links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Absolutely. And there was, Ooh, what was I just about to mention? We talked a little bit about, Oh God.

Oh yeah. You know, if you find yourself checking your phone in the morning because i always find myself like if i go on youtube and my intention was maybe to go see something that we did on youtube power project and then something comes into my feed and i click it the best thing that has helped me out so much is to like my mind continues to play the question why are you doing this because once you like if you're going Instagram, if you're on Instagram and you're scrolling through and you're like, why am I doing this? You realize how useless the time you're spending is right

at that moment. You'll be like, wait, I'm not even remotely interested in this video I'm watching. It's not really, and you'll turn it off, but you got to be, you got to be present because like what happens when we start doing that shit is we go into autopilot, whether it's on YouTube, watching multiple videos, whether it's on Instagram, going through our feed, TikTok, whatever you go into autopilot. But once you ask yourself, why am I doing this? Is this helping me? Like write that down somewhere and just ask yourself that you will, you will put that shit down and go what you got, go do what you got to do. That's been a useful tool for me for a long time. You could also try to set like a little time limit to it. You know, you can even just talk to your phone, say, you know, set a reminder in 10 minutes to,

you know, go work out or whatever it is, whatever the other thing is that you're supposed to do, rather than just, you know, spending so much time on social media, because it's real easy. Just you start poking around and next thing you know, you've been on there for 20 minutes and you're like, I am completely racing my time. It's sort of like if it fits your time macros. You can make it work, but maybe it's just not the healthiest thing to do. I think Kalipa's talked a lot about that, setting a time to it. But a big thing, too, I think why it's so important to start your morning with something good, you know,

is because it starts your day off with a win. Like it feels the worst when you have a morning and it's a slow morning and you're dragging yourself out of bed. You have your cup of coffee. Let's say you do spend your time on social media and then you do go out and go to work. You've already been like, right? Like your day's already starting on a low point and now you have to try to build up from there but if you can start doing something physical get your heart rate up do some

push-ups with the slingshot like if you don't want to just do some bare push-ups grab a fucking slingshot and just pop those push-ups out because you'll be able to do 50 or 60 right you're already heart rate feels good you want to go move you go take a walk you come back home you get everything in like you've already started your morning winning that gives you so much good momentum for the rest of your day yeah and i don't know the science behind any of it but i've heard enough smart people mention about your cortisol levels being higher in the morning so that's why i like to i like to work out in the morning um at least that's one of the reasons why but yeah if you can combat that extra cortisol with that's a hard word for me to say right now with some exercise you know it won't go straight It's one of the reasons why. But yeah, if you can combat that extra cortisol with,

that's a hard word for me to say right now, with some exercise, you know, it won't go straight to them hips. I think, you know, something you're looking to do in the morning is, for some people, like if you are kind of reaching for your phone or doing things that you maybe aren't supposed to be doing at that time because you're trying to be more productive, is you're looking for some like gratification. you know you know for a fact you go for a jog around the block you go for a walk you go on a walk with your wife or one of your kids or you

do something in the morning you get in a couple push-ups whatever it is you know that you're gonna feel fucking amazing after that like fuck a fuck a cup of coffee. Like, that's way more powerful. And that's actually what Kara brought up when she was on the show. She's like, do 100 push-ups before your day even gets rolling. She's like, you've never had, like, something give you more energy than that. And we lose sight of that. You know, the human body is kind of like, it will get pretty lazy because it will view things as, like, it will get pretty lazy because it will view things as like it

costing too much, you know, pushups. We're not like, we're not like wired to do pushups, but we are wired for movement. And once you get the movement going, and once you've had some momentum, again, this is mentioned many times over in James Clear's book, Atomic Habits, over in James Clear's book, Atomic Habits, where he talks about once you set yourself in motion, that is motivation. That is because in order to be motivated, you need a motive. And your motive, you can't understand it until you're already in motion, unfortunately. Sometimes you can. Sometimes I could sit down with certain people and say, these things, let's talk about all these things. What do you think are the five things that are in your best interest to do day in and day out that are reasonable for you to lose some body fat?

Right? And we go over these things. They agree. I agree. Well, they have a motive. They understand. You understand. The principle of awareness is a key element of coaching, making people aware of what it is they're doing, why they're doing it, and also maybe even how they're going to do it. But once you kind of work yourself through that process, there still is the thing of, because if it just ended there, we wouldn't have anybody being overweight. Everybody would be at their goal already. It doesn't end there. You have to actually go and do the thing. Something that helps me a ton is, and I've mentioned this before, and I'm not sure if I heard this from Jocko Willink. So if I am stealing this from him, I'll credit him. But

I heard him mention something similar to this, but I'm a big believer in trying to develop unflinching discipline. You're just going to do it. You don't think about it. There's some people that believe, people like Andrew Huberman and some people that study the brain, they believe that thinking happens the moment that conflict arises. But if you can if you can beat if you can beat conflict to the punch then you can just go and do the thing that you wanted to do before that ever because once that conflict hits ah it's a little later than i thought um fuck man jumping rope outside and it's it's raining out there today you know it's yeah well ah my dog doesn't even want to go outside like it's, it's raining out there today. You know, it's, yeah, well, ah, my dog doesn't even want to go outside. Like, it's just, you just, the excuses, once the excuses come up, you're

kind of dead in the water. So if you can try to beat those things to the punch and have an, start to build an unflinching discipline to where you're just in motion, you know for sure that once that thing is done, you're going to feel way better and there's not ever going to be occasion unless you somehow got injured where you're going to feel worse. Absolutely. That's a big deal right there. Like, for example, this morning,

I woke up and my body wasn't, I told you this, my body wasn't feeling the best. I felt kind of like, ooh. What if your mom heard you say that? She'd punch you. Oh, you're right. She body wasn't feeling the best. I felt kind of like, ooh. What if your mom heard you say that? She'd punch you. Oh, you're right. She'd punch you in the stomach.

Well, I didn't say that my body is this way. I said I just wasn't feeling this way. But if I said, if I ever made a bad statement, yeah, she'd be like, correct yourself. She'd make me correct myself. But yeah, and I woke up and my body was obviously kind of beat up. Yesterday I was in the sauna for like an hour, hour 15.

So because I didn't go to jujitsu yesterday. So I did the sauna for a long time. And what I noticed is when I do the sauna for a long time, I have those residual effects

for like a day or so. So when I woke up, I was like, fuck. And when I went, I jump roped. I'm like, ooh,

I'm really feeling this right now. So I only ended up jump roping for like, I think like five or six or seven minutes, I jump roped. I'm like, Ooh, I'm really feeling this right now. So I only ended up jump roping for like, I think like five or six or seven, seven minutes, I think. Um, and then when I went into the cold plunge, which I usually do for five minutes, I went in and immediately, you know, you're, you know, when you go into a cold plunge, you're supposed to slow your breathing down. Cause that actually makes it so that feels fine. Um, but once I went in, everything was pins and needles and I was like, I was like,

whoa, dude, calm down. You don't usually do that. And I slowed my breathing down, but still it was like pins and needles. So I only stayed in there for about two, two and a half minutes and I got out. But the thing is, it was still a win because I did the necessary things that got me. It's, I still felt great after I did that. It may have not felt like it usually does, but I still got something in. I saw the sunlight, right? I, I, right? Everything was going the way it was supposed to. So there's going to be mornings when you're going to find yourself not wanting to do the thing you typically do, whether you're a person who chooses to want to meditate in the morning and usually meditate for 10 or 20 minutes, maybe just go sit there and try to do it for four or five minutes, right?

If you usually go out and take a walk and it's usually a 15, 20-minute walk, go out and take a 10-minute walk, five or 10. Get yourself outside. Get yourself moving. You want to do 100 pushups so you don't feel it? Do 50. Do something. Get that heart rate going a little bit because it's still going to set up. It's still a win. That's the whole idea of not having that all all or nothing mentality because when people set themselves up with that all or nothing mentality like if i can't do this whole thing then i've failed it makes them so that on that one day when they're not totally feeling it and they don't manage to do something they're like oh they're beating themselves up and they're like this isn't going to work for me and then they fall off but if you can at least make sure most of the time you're doing what you set out to do. And sometimes when that happens, you do something that's still a win. I like what you said. I think it's pretty simple. Like just try to start your day out with a win. And when you're trying to start your day out with a win, like give yourself like an opponent that's like easy to beat, you know, like throw in a glass Joe, you know,

throw in somebody that's real easy to whoop on that way. Because, you know, you're, you have expectations of yourself to like do this jumping rope for 10 minutes or something like that. And you're able to like curtail it. And you're like, it's not the same today. So I'm going to cut it a little bit short, but it's still a victory. You still got your, your heart rate still went up and because it didn't feel as good, it was still challenging because your body was just fatigued and it was acting differently. What is a cold plunge for you? Cause I don't think you've been doing it for a really long time, but what are you noticing? Like, what's it doing? Any noticing any difference in like cognitive behavior or like what do you think it's doing for you? So the resilience aspect is a big deal because going into like freaking 38-degree water, it's cold.

It shocks you. But one thing is I feel like it helps with just mental resilience. You know what I mean? So a lot of people find it hard to focus on things for a good period of time or they find that things sway them one way or the other. I think it – well, a lot of people have mentioned and I noticed it too. It does help me with that. Another thing though is the inflammation aspect of things. There have been multiple days that I've gone into my cold plunge.

I was like let's say that I felt something in my back or something was just feeling – my body was feeling kind of wonky. I hop in there for a few minutes. I come out and I feel fucking good. And I'm like, placebo. Like I'm really trying to pay attention to this for a while after. Like how do I feel? And quite literally, I just feel really, like my body, it's like that whatever I had, I don't feel it anymore. Right?

I had, I don't feel it anymore. Right. So one thing that we do know is that cold plunging does literally reduce and stop inflammation that's going on, which is why it's not suggested that you do it after a lifting session. You don't want to go into a cold plunge after you lift because the inflammation and all the things that are happening post lift, you want that to happen. You want that to spur growth. But in the morning when I'm trying to get my day started, that's something that is good for me to do at that point in time um maybe several hours later would be fine too right yeah not gonna matter like if you lift it in the in the morning and you cold plunge like at two o'clock probably not gonna be a negative right not gonna do that at all what about a pre-workout plunge a pre-workout plunge you know that

with okay so after i cold plunge my body is residually like even when i go take a shower i'm still having many shivers for about an hour or two um and we the interesting aspect of it is i haven't even talked about the fat loss things. But there is – because of the increased movement and what shivering does, a lot of people have shown that it does help with a little bit of extra fat loss. I'm not doing it for that, but that is a benefit of doing that. And I shiver – like afterwards, I am shivering for maybe two hours even when I come in here, even after I take a warm shower because my body is trying to get back to normal, right? So there is that too. A pre-workout plunge, I've never done it. But, hey, it's not problematic.

Maybe quite a bit shorter so that way maybe you're not like messing with your body temperature. You know, if you did it for like a minute, that might be good because then you might be like hyped. I'm just speculating.'ve no you're right i could yeah yeah i could see somebody doing that just hopping into a cold plunge real quick 30 seconds popped out smashed on some push-ups and some kettlebell swings you'd probably be pretty fired up right i'm just thinking dude because i work out in the morning you know if i would cold plunge i would probably have to do it in the morning like you but then i would do it before yeah do it before um morning like you, but then I would. Do it before. Yeah. Do it before. Yeah, the cold plunge stuff is interesting.

But, you know, the thing is with cold plunge and with sauna, something that I think is really important for people to recognize is you're going to elevate your heart rate a little bit, and it will mimic exercise just a pinch. So for those people that kind of hate to exercise, they don't really enjoy it, they don't really love it, For those people that kind of hate to exercise, they don't really enjoy it, they don't really love it, or somebody that is either injured or someone who is a little older and just doesn't have the same output that they used to have, you're burning some calories from that stuff. Oh, yeah. So however you can implement it, I'm not saying it's like this crazy fat burner.

I'm not saying it's going to help you burn an additional thousand calories a day, but hey, every little bit helps. Absolutely. And there was something you just mentioned right there. As far as the cold plunge is concerned, ah, the breathing. So I wear my Apple Watch when I cold plunge, and it is, you know, what happens is initially when you get in there, like, right? Your heart rate, like my heart rate goes up to like 130, 140, but that breath control. This is what some people forget. I go to this place called Asha Urban Baths, and I notice when people go into the cold plunge there, they get out after like 15, 20 seconds. But they get out because they can't control their breathing.

You're supposed to get in there. It's extremely uncomfortable. Your body doesn't feel good. But throughout that, you slow down your breathing, and you notice that, like my Apple Watch, heart rate goes up to 140. Then it starts going down to 120, 110, 80, 60. Probably pretty smart to have something that monitors your heart when you go in there. Probably a good idea. Yeah, and then it goes all the way down to like 55, and it's just like once it's there, you're just like you're chilling.

But that gives you – I mean Wim Hof talks a lot about it, but that ability to control your breath and that allows you to control your mood. And think about this, when stress hits you during any point, there are a lot of other things than cold plunging that you can do to train yourself to handle stress. That is literally a direct way to train yourself calming down from extreme stress because that doesn't feel good. It feels good when you're relaxed, but it doesn't feel good initially. Let's talk about day before, like, you know, getting yourself set up the day, the night before is huge. And also I would say something I've learned, which I just not sure why I haven't thought about it before, but I've also recognized over the years that I could start my day before practice anytime I want.

It doesn't have to be at night. So a lot of times, like for me, I'm pretty good like during the day. I want to do a lot. I want to experience a lot. I want to work out. I want to podcast. I want to do a lot. I want to experience a lot. I want to work out. I want to podcast. I want to do a lot of like just work in general. But as the day wears on, my decision making kind of dwindles. And at the end of the day, I'm like, I just love to go home and just kind of go downhill and start to relax and get ready for bed and stuff like that. It's helpful to me to like pick out some clothes for the next day, look at my calendar and see what's in store for the next day.

Even like some visualization of like this is where I'm going to be. This is what I'm going to do. Oh, really? This is great. We have a guest coming in. And then I might start to maybe text people a little bit. I don't want to get into too much of that, like especially too late at night,

but I might have to communicate with some different people here at work about a particular guest that's coming in. I'm just trying to set up the next day as much as I possibly can before the day even starts. That way when I wake up, I might kind of be sort of clueless on what the hell I'm doing exactly, but my clothes are laid out and I'm like, oh yeah, I texted Ryan this and I texted and Seema this. I remember now that these are the things that I got to do. So the day is like all the like little things that I can take care of.

They're already taken care of. They're already set up. I'm already pretty much ready to go. Absolutely. And I think a big deal there too is, you know, you start your day, you already have a plan set up, but the reflection at the end of the day on how your day went is going to be something that allows you not to continue going on autopilot. Like I mentioned before, when you're on your phone, just scrolling through Instagram, YouTube, or whatever, you're on autopilot. But when you ask yourself, why am I

doing this? You realize, I need to switch. I need to go do something else. Then you switch off. That's what reflection does at the end of the day. You do want to have a time where you're reflecting on the actions that you took. How did my day go? Did I get what I needed to get done done? Why didn't I get it done? Or, oh, what was good today? And when you're able to do that, you're able to make sure and to plan in a way so that it maybe doesn't happen the next day. If you made some mistakes today, sit down, write it down. That's when I, like when I have my journal, like that's when I write those things down on what went well and what didn't. And I can adjust for the next day. But if I were just going through every single day, just going through everything that I do and not sitting down and thinking about the day,

not sitting down and thinking about the wins or the things that didn't go the way I wanted them to go, then I'm just going to repeat those same exact things the next day because there's nothing going on. And that's how a lot of people go. That's how a lot of people live. They live in autopilot. And I'm not perfect. I try to do this every day and I do this a majority of my days, but there are some days that I'm not able to sit and that I don't sit and reflect, but I do that most of the

time. And that's one of the things that allows me to continue to course correct, slowly course correct each day to get close to what I'm trying to, where I'm trying to go and what I'm trying to do. I think something else that might be helpful to people is to maybe have an overarching idea, concept, theme, goal, dream. So that way, you know how to point all this stuff. You know, everything will make more sense when you work your way backwards from it. So you say that, um, that you want to, you know, bench press 315 pounds. It's like a major goal of yours, but you also have like a nine to five job and you have these other things you want to think of. What are all the things

involved in me being able to bench press that weight or for me to be able to lose some weight. And once you start to kind of recognize all the different things, then you can say, what are things I can reasonably implement? Because we can point out tons of things that will get you there, but then there's also a moment where things get to be way too much, way too time consuming in accordance to your lifestyle and so on. So I think it's important that you have something because we're talking about these morning routines for us and these late night and bedtime routines for us, but it's in accordance to the particular goals that we have. You're going to see a lot of commonalities across the board of like,

yeah, people like laying out their clothes before they go to bed, people trying to have good sleep hygiene. I do think it's critical for a lot of people to try to get the phone out of the bed. I know that's like a tough thing for people, but the more resistant that you are to something and the more you're like, fuck no,

probably the more you need to like review that and really consider it. We had Ben Pekulski. Yeah, Ben Pekulski when he was on the show. He said as soon as it's something that you say you can't, that means you must. So when somebody's like, I can't, I can't live without my phone, you know, in my bedroom, then that's probably a sign that you need to look into ditching it. But yeah, whatever your, whatever your goal is, whatever your main thing is, then you can start to kind of set your days up and they'll be in accordance to a lot of the things that you're trying to get done.

I have a question for you, Mark, because I've realized this. How often do you say that you can't do something? How often do you word things that way? Because obviously there are things that maybe you're not going to take part in or whatever. But how often does your self-talk, is it ever like that? Is there anything you've caught yourself with? Yeah, yeah.

I catch myself reframing my wording kind of all the time. Yeah. Even saying all the time. Like I try not to talk in absolutes, but it still slips out here and there. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. absolutes, but it still slips out here and there. Um, yeah, I, I, I do my best with it because, uh, saying that you can't do something is, uh, it's just really limiting. Like there's, and it's usually not true. Somebody says like somebody listening right now, they might think this is true of themselves. Um, I can't lose weight if I'm eating carbs. And it's like, well, you know, I'm sure there's like,

hey, there's a special person out there for any and all kinds of things. However, most diets that I've ever seen that will take your energy down a little bit, the energy that you consume, and it encourages you to have a little bit more energy out, they almost always have a net bit more energy out, they almost always have a net result of you losing weight. So I try my best to nix certain words, but even the word try is something that I've tried to eliminate because I just think about doing more so. But certain words are very difficult.

I'll give you an example. Should, would, and could are also things that I try to use sparingly because I believe those are acts of forcefulness. Those are acts of coercion. And if I'm telling you shit that you should be doing, like if I'm telling you shit that you should be doing, it's like, it's not as, it's not a great communicate.

It's not as good as the communication of me explaining something to you and saying, Hey, do you think that would be like a good idea for you to do that? Rather than me telling you, you should be doing something. As soon as I say should, you're kind of a little bit on the defensive almost.

You're like, why the fuck is this guy telling me what I should do? But also within yourself, though, I think it's important because if you say I should jump rope for 10 minutes every morning, what happens when you don't? Now you're beating yourself up. I should eat better starting tomorrow. Again, what happens when you don't? So I do my best to work on eliminating a lot of these words and or using other words, but it gets to be tricky and it gets to be very difficult. But I guess overall, my mindset is still, it's not set because it can mold to many different things, but I try to at least set it on a mode of you can and you will. Some things might take you a little longer than you'd like, but you will get there and that sort of language.

You know, when you mentioned the thing about people saying like, oh, I can't drop weight on carbs or while using carbs or whatever. It reminds me, I get this a lot. Whenever, if I'm ever eating something that's suspect to people in fitness, like Thursday, I brought some Panda Express with some orange chicken in here. I remember somebody was like, you can do that because you're you, right? Or I get that a lot when I'm like eating certain things here and there, but I'm just like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Number one, I fast quite a bit. So this is totally going to be within my range. Number two, I burn a lot of calories. So this literally means nothing. It means nothing in the grand scheme of what I'm eating during the day.

And it also makes me realize, because sometimes when I pay attention to how some of those people eat, they eat in very limited ways, right? And very restricted type of diets. And they're like, you're acting in a, and you're acting and you believe like that you cannot eat certain things or that you cannot perform while eating certain things. So you will not be able to, right? Because you already believe that this special person is able to do this because they're special. I could never eat like you. I'd never be in the same shape. Right? And it's like, well, if you did all the other things, then maybe you wouldn't be in the same shape, but you'd probably be in better shape than you are now.

And this falls right in line with like people that are doing well on youtube people that are making a lot of money ah shit i could never do that because you need such a that person speaks so well all right i could never do that because they have that great camera i could never do that because uh whatever right that you're you're literally already putting yourself in a place that you can't do it. That's why I don't, I'm very, because my mom, because a lot of stuff here, I'm very careful with the way I say things about myself and the way I put things forward. Because I know that if I say, if I see someone doing something dope and I'm like, oh, I can't do that. I can't, I really won't be able to, because I've already stamped that out, right? You got to look at a lot of things that other people are doing and don't say you can't do it.

Maybe be like, oh, okay, that's not for me right now, but I know how I could do this. Or, oh, that's definitely cool. How are they doing that? Change that because that's a big deal. Yeah, I do my best with it. And even saying things like are saying that something's going to be like really hard. You know, again, I try to rather than use that word, maybe I'll say challenge, like that might be challenging, like that's going to be a challenge for me. To me, that has a little bit more positive. It means that because I'm aware of the difficulty of it,

I'm going to do my best to work my way through it or learn enough about it to where I can come out the other end better. But yeah, reinterpretation has been super critical for me. I really think about people's language and how they word things and how they say things and how they say things. All the way to the point where I've had a lot of people mention to me these family situations that pop up. And it's usually them and somebody else that they have an issue with. And a lot of times they'll say, you'll just hear like the pain in their voice. Like they're so upset and

frustrated with the other person. And all I can do sometimes is just say, hey, like you ever considered therapy? Like have you ever, and what they always say is they're like, oh, the other person would never go for that. And so even that kind of language is like, well, I don't know if you presented it to them. I don't know if you had a conversation with them. And I don't know if you chose to have the conversation at an appropriate time, not when you're like fighting or whatever. But also when I mentioned therapy, why did you automatically assume that I meant that both of you need to go? I was just talking to you specifically. So then people get defensive though. And they're like, well, what, you know, why would

I go? And it's like, well, I, okay. Now that you said it that way, you're probably going to miss the point, you know, because I'm not a professional therapist, but there are people that have knowledge. So when you start to say can't, and when you start to say things that are super limiting, you have to just recognize there's people out there that have dealt with these things before. There's people that think about these things. They think about these things all day long, whether you have diabetes or whether you're trying just to lose a couple pounds or whether you're trying to bench 900 pounds or like whatever the thing is, you can find people out there that have done it before. And all you got to do to get past your limitations is to leave your brain open to asking, just

asking questions. That's all you really got to do. Got to ask. I know we steered away from a little bit of our evening habits, I guess, before bed, our rituals. But for me, it's like a matter of just trying to calm down from the day a bit. So I love using my sauna. I love using my hot tub, taking a shower. Like all that stuff seems to help a ton.

There's not anything like that I can think of that's real like glaring. That's like, oh, that's like revelation. But cutting out my eating like a large meal by around 7 p.m. I try to go to bed around 9, 10, somewhere in there. That has been really helpful. And so I still might have like a protein shake or I might eat something small, but normally I try to cut that out. And if I do, if I am successful with that,

I've just noticed it helps improve my sleep. And so that's why I've kind of gone to that. Yeah, I'm trying. I'm pretty good at not eating an hour before bed or an hour and a half before bed nowadays. And I'm always using those blue blockers. The blue blockers really help me feel like I'm winding down. I usually try to read before bed too.

And like I mentioned, the journaling thing, I always do keep that on me so I can write down certain things about the day, which will help me have another good day the next day. Because now I already know the things I'm going to be trying to get done the next day. I don't need to think. I don't need to wake up and then sit down and think, okay, what do I have to do today?

It's already planned out. It's already like these are the tasks I need to try to get done today. Let's get them done. And it's like less hindrances to actually doing things. That's what I try to use the night before for. And what do you put in the journal again? Like, or your to-do list and all that? The events, the tasks I have to get done, and then the different things that come to mind as far as the way I've been feeling, you know, about certain

situations or about people or about whatever, just kind of dump that shit out. Yeah. Tasks, yeah tasks events and feelings let's talk about your feelings not on air the one thing you don't want to share on there bro i just told y'all i ate my cup that's why i'm saying you'll go there but hey and it was only a dollop like let's not act like i'm actually that dollop's pretty large say that dollop to say that. A dollop's too big. Nah. Of course. You're drinking a lot. I'm picturing like a big spoon. No, okay. Because I was thinking of a dollop of daisy. That's too much.

That's a lot of sour cream. No. It's literally. Not sour cream, though. Shut the fuck up. It's a dot on a pinky. That's all it is. All right.

Andrew, with the baby and stuff, what do you guys got going on over there? It's just a whole mess. It just terrible now carnage um yeah on on good days in the mornings um sorry every day is a good day but on days where i can check all my boxes or hit all my make my asterisks asterisk asterisk um you know i wake up and lately I've been reading in the morning because I'm trying to ditch the phone and I've I've mentioned this in the previous podcast where like I know for sure my phone is a detriment to me in the morning you know the same thing it's like I'm scrolling and I'm like you know I've been saying like I'm not good at reading I'm getting better but yeah I can read someone's Twitter post and read the next one and the next one for like an hour. I'm like, Oh my God, like what a fucking idiot. Like I just threw away my morning. So,

uh, I've been reading, reading, uh, atomic habits. And so that's been cool. And then, so after that I will roll into a workout and then after that shower, by the time I shower, um, my son's usually awake. So I'll make, I'll make him breakfast. I'll make my wife breakfast. I'll make myself breakfast and then I'll end up here. And that's been, like I said, that's days where I can cross everything out. Um, the ones that are kind of non-negotiable is the reading and, um, at least some form of back stretching of something, you know, like just getting my back warmed up somehow, whether it be just doing like a version of Stuart McGill's big three or, you know, again, a workout. Yeah. That's something, you know, I talked about was just trying to string together a bunch of

days in a row of like, I'm going to at least do something from my back every day. Yeah. Yeah. And then the other non-negotiable just because she's doing way too much stuff, but I, I, I need to make breakfast for my wife like she's doing so much so many things all at the same time sometimes it's like hey what'd you eat today she's like oh yeah i gotta do that still like oh my gosh okay and then for my son i mean you know i wanted to be i want to set him up as best as possible so making him an egg is awesome. He's not eating the whole thing, not yet, but you know, that's, that's my non-negotiables right there. You know, and then I wish I could say that exercising and stuff's non-negotiable either. It kind of is, but you know, if one thing's going to

fall, it's probably going to be that right now. But you know, I, I do my best to get all those things in, in the morning and then the nighttime routine. Um, again, right now it's, you know, I, I do my best to get all those things in, in the morning. And then the nighttime routine, um, again, right now it's, it's a little bit all over the place because if Aurelius is asleep, I definitely don't want to go into the room and, you know, wake him up by like fumbling through my clothes or whatever. Um, so one thing I do need to do is just right when I get home is just start laying clothes out and getting stuff ready. Like you said today, Mark, like you don't have to do your nighttime routine right before bed. You can do it, you know, whenever you want the day before. So that's, yeah, that's what it's been for me. And it is extremely fulfilling when I leave the house and I've read, I've worked

out and I've cooked for my family. I don't, i can't imagine anything better than that i can imagine a lot of things that are not as good because i have done that where it's like oh fuck i you know tried to buy another xbox for somebody you know i wasted time in in line at best buy on online yeah and you know got nothing out of it and then it's like oh my gosh now it's a mad dash to try to get here on time because i haven't got the the text from Mark saying that he's late yet. So that means he's probably early. Shit, I got to get there. Those days suck.

Thankfully, we don't have a super strict clock unless we have a guest coming on. But like you said, you kind of start the day out with a loss or not not with a win yeah and then you know from there you're kind of chasing that win and you know when you're you're trying to be like on the offensive you kind of end up messing things up even more so when you're able to kind of like sit in the car take a deep breath and be like we're doing good like this day is going to be an awesome day and it just gets better from there it does so it's tough um you know because because with the baby you know sometimes he wakes up early and it's like ah shit like stephanie just clocked in like ah fuck man i was just about to get into this set i'll change his diaper you know like damn it like

that totally throws me off but you know But it happens and you just have to chalk it up to life and have one less set of chest that day. It's not the end of the world. And that's the other thing too is my workouts right now, I am not setting PRs. I'm not doing anything too dramatic. I'm not posting anything on Instagram because I'm just doing very basic stuff. But I'm just trying to make sure I'm not going too far away from any of that, away from my fitness, away from my diet, all that stuff. I'm trying to be as close as possible while still being there for all my other responsibilities. all my other responsibilities. Another James Clear-ism is he talks about priority,

and he talks about the word priorities, you know, because he said that you can't have more than one thing be the priority. So you pick one thing. It sounds like for you, the one thing that you want every morning is to kind of set your family up for the day. And then you're like, okay, I did that. That's my dad job for the day. And even though I don't want to, I'm going to leave and go work and do some other dad shit because I need to make some money. Absolutely.

Maybe I'll get a chance to lift later or maybe because I had to push other things aside. But I think that's a key. And that's what I was talking about earlier was maybe it's not necessarily a goal. I probably should have reframed it and used the word priority. Like find what's your priority? Because it doesn't have to necessarily be a goal, but your priority. What is your priority? What are you trying to do? And for some of us, it's as simple as like, hey, I just want to get my heart rate up a little bit. I want to see some sunlight and I want to like kind of set my body up for the whole day. And in your case, you're trying to set your family up for the whole

day. But another key element to that, as we always point out, is you can't set your family up unless you're set up. So you got to feel good. You got to get yourself right. And if you do that, take the time to do that. It's going to be that much easier to pour all that into your family. Absolutely. Want to take us on out of here, Andrew? Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you everybody for checking out today's... Whoa! Swish! And Seema just... A swisher. That's like, I don't know, what, like 10 feet?

10, 15 feet? Just nailed it. 25 feet, 30 feet. The 85 foot jump shot. was sick man buzzer beater basically curry over here uh thank you for checking out today's episode uh please like and follow and or subscribe to this youtube channel um ring that bell notification so you guys know when we drop new shit and um even go live follow the podcast at mark bow's power project on instagram at mb power project on tiktok and twitter my instagram and twitter is at i am it and even go live. Follow the podcast at MarkBowlesPowerProject on Instagram, at MBPowerProject

on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ in SEMA, where you be. Talk to us about some of your morning routines, guys. I didn't see my ending on Instagram, YouTube. I didn't see my yin-yang on TikTok and Twitter, Mark. What's that little ninja guy you got over there? Oh, it's an 8-bit Ryu. Oh, man, that is the best

one I've ever seen. Ryu from Street Fighter. Damn. But it's an 8-bit form. That is the best one I've ever seen. Ryu from Street Fighter. Damn. But it's an 8-bit form. It's very Minecraft-y. Yeah, bruh. You know, it's problematic. I don't collect these anymore, but there is a period of time in my early 20s, weird to say, that I purchased a lot. I had over 100 different pops. Whoa.

Yeah, I had over 100 different pops. I gave some away. I still have some in bags. I love a lot. I had over a hundred different. Whoa. Yeah. I had over a hundred different pops. I gave some away. I still have some in bags. I love those things. Um, but yeah, I mean,

I think it's kind of like they're dolls, right? Like, so whatever. They're not dolls. Oh, they are action collectibles. Action.

They're collectibles. I'm sorry, sir. Just wait till my, uh, my, my master chief one comes in. Hey, my, my, my black Panther. I'm a, sir. Just wait till my Master Chief one comes in. Hey, my Mech and Black Panther.

Yeah. Yeah. I know. Did you put my Captain America on? That was my Mech. Okay. I was like, who did this? Who touched my shit?

That was my Mech. Who's playing with my toys? I mean, my collectibles. Yeah. I was like, this shit's dope. It's not a toy. It's a collectible. Yeah.

It's a bobblehead. Captain America what are they called mech or i don't know what that series is called yeah but it's fucking sick these are pops if you guys are interested i know people listening are like what the fuck are they talking about i'm at mark smelly bell strength is never weakness weakness never strength catch you guys later bye