The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - 5 Morning Challenges to Make the Rest of Your Day Easier | Foundations Friday #94

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

I share 5 things I do daily that have improved my mental, spiritual, and physical health and that I recommend to each of you.Get up earlyGet exerciseTake a cold showerFast or eat good foodPractice mindfulness

Do you want to know how to start your day with challenges that make the rest of your day a little easier? Well, fortunately, you're coming to the KevTalks podcast because on this Foundation's Friday, 94, I'm going to share five challenging things that I do most days to help make the rest of the day a little bit easier. But first, thanks for coming to the KevTalks podcast. Here you'll lead industry-leading best practices and program, project, and all-hazard incident management with a dash of jiu-jitsu and a smidge of health and wellness. So whether it's a solo episode with me, Kevin Pinnell, or one of my fantastic guests, the focus is on people, how we can share our processes so that you and I can make progress together. Thanks for listening. Now let's get

back into this episode. Hey everybody, thanks for sticking with the podcast and for visiting kevtalkspod.com for more information about this episode and the many other episodes I've done. So what are five things that I do pretty regularly and that I think would benefit you all listening, whether you work in an office, on a construction site, you're in law enforcement, you're in the military, whatever it is, here are some things and certainly not groundbreaking, but they've made a big difference in my life, both in consistency and just overall health. So the first thing is get up early, get up early at the same time every day or most days. It's not that I don't have late nights sometimes hanging out and then I get up

a little bit later, but most days I am up between 530 and six, if not a little bit earlier. And it makes a huge difference. You're up, Jocko says up before the enemy, but you're up early, right? As the world is waking up, you get to see the sunrise. There's so much value. The hard thing is not everybody's a morning person and you don't have to be a morning person. Just make yourself an earlier in the day person or however you see that. And why does this matter? Well, if you do have a big workday coming up, you can get ahead of it, right? You can pre-plan some of your workday or all of your workday coming up, you can get ahead of it, right? You can pre plan some of your workday or all of your workday, your personal day, just so many advantages. The first one for me, though, which is the second thing I do is exercise. I'm morning exercise guy, because I feel like that

sets the tone for the rest of your day. You feel great after you do it. I mean, sometimes I'm sore and exhausted, like today I had jujitsu, but do some weights, go for a walk, do some body weight stuff, do yoga, do jujitsu. Of course, I talk about that. Got a jujitsu episode coming up soon, but you've challenged yourself already before you go to work. Or if you're commuting, you start the commute or you work from home or whatever's going to happen, or you're watching the kids or stay at home, mom or dad, whatever. If you knock out that exercise early, you're done for the day, right? And that doesn't mean you just give up on all the other healthy habits, but what an accomplishment. Again, maybe you felt the cool morning air or the hot morning air as it's getting warmer and warmer. You saw the sun come up, you see your neighbors.

There's just getting up early in the morning and working out at some level to do something is well worth it. And you've started with a win. One of the things I should have put before this is make your bed. But we'll just assume everybody's making their bed in the morning, right? That's a really good thing. The third thing I do, which seems to be popular, is this cold water therapy. So I don't have a plunge. I don't have, I've done cold baths in my bathtub, but I do cold showers. So my cold shower is between 45 and 50 degrees water.

I do not suggest you jump right into this, but for me, especially today, I had jujitsu. I was sore, tired, had great rounds, but I'm hot. I'm still hot after a while. You're in a gi, which is this heavy thing, heavy cotton thing, and you roll around and you just lose pounds of sweat, honestly. When you've done something, activity, and you sit down and you're still sweaty. And so you know, when it's when you've done something activity and you sit down, you're still sweaty. So a cold shower has many benefits, you can Google that. The first of which is it cools you down. It's

kind of like an ice pack, it helps with inflammation and soreness. It is a mental thing as well. So as you get used to breathing and look up when half breathing, it helps and you don't have to get do the full program. But basically, just like if you go in cold water, you know, you go and you breathe in, but you don't want to do the full program. But basically, just like if you go in cold water, you know you go and you breathe in, but you don't want to sit there. And if you have heart problems,

don't just jump into the cold shower, but you want to get used to, I can take this, it's good. The cold shower feels good, even though it also feels terrible. But when you get out, you feel refreshed. It increases your dopamine levels. It decreases inflammation and soreness.

It's also a mental motivation. So in addition to getting up early, in addition to pushing yourself somehow, you've said, I'm going to get in this water that I don't want to get into. I'm going to clean myself up. I'm going to stay in the water as long as I can. And then I'm going to rinse off and get out. Let's say you don't do a full cold shower, right? A five minute cold shower is kind of a goal. and there's all these different studies. Do a regular shower and then just turn it to cold, a little colder each day for the last 30 seconds. There's some studies out of maybe the Netherlands or a country over there that talks about folks that went cold shower for the last 30 seconds of their shower had better immune system, which in the past few years, we all wanted better immune system from viruses and things.

And it's just generally good to have. But there's a reward. You do feel really good out of that cold shower. Other folks that I know that do the cold plunge a lot can't say enough about it. There's some controversy. Do I cold plunge or shower before workouts or after? After I might not get the hypertrophy, which means my muscles tear and grow bigger.

Well, I'm 5'11", 205. I think I'm good on my muscles. Yes, I'd like to get in better and better shape, but I'm not worried about that. I'm not a bodybuilder or trying to look perfect. For me, I'm all about cold shower after exercise. The fourth thing that's a challenge is to throw in some fasting. One, when you eat, and again, there's tons of work on this and work meaning research, information, et cetera. The gist of it is, is don't eat right away when you get up. Don't eat right away after you work out. And don't do this right away either too, right?

If you have blood glucose issues, diabetes, things like that, don't mess with your metabolism like this at first without a professional. Again, there's my safety caveat. But basically what this means is one thing I'll do is I won't eat things after 8. And I don't do that all the time. Sometimes on the weekends I'm sitting there eating chips at like 9.30 or whatever. But I really try not to. And so the fasting is, so during the day, let's say I'll start in the evening and go to the next day.

So I will have eaten dinner, maybe had some snacks, hydrated a bit through like seven or seven 30. And that's a little bit later than some folks do when they fast. And then I won't eat again until the next day, like 10, 11 or 12, just depending on the day. Some days I'm like, I'm having a protein shake right after I work out. But on the days that I do fast, you are a little sharper, right? You're not lethargic from eating five pancakes or whatever heavy breakfast. Or if you're not going to fast and you just don't want to do that, just eat really good, right? Eat a good savory meal, like some nice eggs, some Ezekiel bread that has super healthy grains in it, bacon, things like that. So you get just good nutrients. So why is this hard? It's hard to eat good because unhealthy food is delicious. I love Dave's like Junior or whatever it is, the bacon cheeseburgers they have. We have

a great Wendy's here. I'm not advocating that all the time, but you know what? Work hard and reward yourself or whatever your favorite kind of unhealthy but delicious food is. It's good to have that every now and then, but it's easy to get in the cycle of eating that food all the time, which I know I did a few periods over the past few years, just because it's a quick grab. It's on the way. It's delicious. But make it a challenge that as part of your getting up early, pushing yourself with exercise, getting that cold shower or cold exposure, that you're going to either fast or you're going to eat good. And that's such a mental thing that the exercise part is hard,

but the diet for many of us can be a huge challenge, even more so than doing pushups. So try and eat good or fast. The fifth challenge, and I say it's a challenge, even though it's peaceful, is mindfulness. I've talked about that here with a few guests and myself. This has been a game changer in my life in stress management and managing any time I'm kind of feeling anxious.

But the challenge is because it's hard to sit still and be quiet This has been a game changer in my life in stress management and managing any time I'm kind of feeling anxious. But the challenge is because it's hard to sit still and be quiet and listen to your breaths and all the sounds around you and not let your mind water. But that's not the thing. It's not to perfectly control your mind. It's to help retrain your mind to know, hey, when there is a bunch of stuff going on around me, I can chill out. Or when I'm trying to go to sleep, I can calm my mind down. So having mindfulness at some point in the morning or earlier in the day, or it can be after lunch, but let's say we're to go with the morning theme. 10 minutes is what I go for each day.

There are longer sessions you can do. Again, I use Headspace. It's a fantastic app. They walk you through it. But the gist of it, as I've talked about here before, is sitting down somewhere, we're not going to be interrupted for whatever given time, start with five minutes, take some deep breaths in your nose, out your mouth, do like four of those, and then just sit there. And the typical rhythm of the mindfulness that I do or routine is you do those breaths. And then you sit there, you kind of feel grounded, your eyes are open. And then on like the fourth breath out, you close your eyes, you kind of feel your body sitting there, you imagine there's a scan that's going to go from your head to your feet over your body kind of feeling what's

going on. Do that for a few minutes, and then listen to your breaths and kind of don't change your breathing, but just focus on them in as one out as two and do that up to 10. Then restart. So you're just sitting there kind of focused on your breath. Let sounds come and go. If you get, you know, not confused, but distracted, then let it come into your mind and leave your mind. And then just again, focus on your breath and then slowly open your eyes. And that's it. If you do that every day for 10 minutes, it has huge benefits. You can feel it pretty quickly, you know, in the days after you start it. Certainly, if you're in a spot where you're not sleeping well, or you're super

stressed, it won't just magically put you to sleep. But you will feel it over time over the next few weeks, you'll start to feel at the times you're trying to go to sleep or relax, you can control a bit more. It's a huge game changer. So to me, what I highly recommend to start your day, get up early, get some sort of exercise in, get a cold shower and or a cold bath if you're doing that fast or just eat good food and then practice some mindfulness. Thank you all for being mindful to hit play on the KevTalks podcast. I really appreciate you all listening and for showing up and particularly this week. Must have hit a nerve. I appreciate it.

That had a lot more response and listens this week. So I appreciate it so much. I have some great guests coming up. Going to talk some jiu-jitsu and martial arts and some other really good stuff. Honestly, I don't want to spoiler alert it, but I think you all recognize the folks that I'm going to talk to. And again, go to KevTalksPod.com. I'll have write-ups and links to all their stuff.

I do for other folks I've talked to, whether it's the All Clear Foundation or Dr. Tracy Marks or a lot of other people. So thank you so much. KevTalksPod.com. Please subscribe and share the show. And remember, everybody, have that plan, stay informed, and get involved. Godspeed, y'all