The School of Greatness - 302 Shawn Stevenson: The Top 10 Ways to Sleep Smarter

Episode Date: March 14, 2016

"You are what you eat, drink, breathe, and think." - Shawn Stevenson If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video and more at http://lewishowes.com/302

This is episode number 302 with Shawn Stevenson. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome everyone to this podcast, number 302.

Thank you so much for being here. Our guest is a good buddy of mine. His name is Shawn Stevenson, and he is a bestselling author and creator of the Model Health Show, which is one of the top nutrition and fitness podcasts on iTunes. With a background in biology and kinesiology, Sean went on to be the founder of Advanced Integrative Health Alliance, which is a successful company that provides wellness services for both individuals and organizations worldwide. He's also a dynamic keynote speaker who's spoken with TEDx, universities,

and numerous organizations with outstanding reviews. And he is the king of sleep. He's the king of mastering your sleep to optimize your health, your performance, your mind, your body for the best experience in your life. That's right. This is all about sleep. And in this episode, we cover what actually happens to our body and our mind when we sleep, why kids have so much energy compared to adults, the big issue with looking at your phone right before bed.

And I know so many of you do this. So many of you are guilty of this. So you're going to learn what the big issue is right now, what drinking caffeine before bed does to your brain. Even if you can still sleep after drinking a cup of coffee late at night, I know some of you guys like to do a late night cappuccino after dinner. It's a no-no, and we're going to explain why, how to set your workouts up to get the right kind of sleep, and so much more. I hope you enjoy this one and love it.

So let's go ahead and dive into this episode, number 302, with the one and only Sean Stevenson. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about my guest today. His name is Sean Stevenson. What's up, brother? What's up, man? Good to see you, man. Good to see you, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about my guest today. His name is Sean Stevenson. What's up, brother? What's up, man? Good to see you, man. Good to see you, too, man.

Glad you're here in studio in Los Angeles. Yeah. Both, well, you're from St. Louis, but I lived there for about six or seven years. Still have 314 on my area code for my phone number. So it's good to have you here. I know you're doing some work and doing some interviews, but you've got a new book out. It's called Sleep Smarter. You guys want to make sure you check this out.

21 Essential Strategies to Sleep Your Way to a Better Body, Better Health, and Better Success. And you had a smaller version of this come out a couple years ago that did extremely well with very little effort of promotion. It just kind of blew up. And you had all these publishers reaching out saying, we want to republish this. And it's two or three times as long, it looks like, right? That's right.

A lot more research. And it's really powerful. I wish I was a sleep expert so I could write this book because I know it's going to do extremely well. Now, why did you decide to talk about sleep in the first place? Wow. Because you talk a lot about health too. You've got the Model Health Show.

Right. But why sleep? Why is that your expertise? Yeah. Why? Well, man, it was really, I'm a very analytical person by nature, you know? And so working in my clinical practice,

seeing incredible results with people over the years. For example, working with people with type 2 diabetes and seeing help, helping people to get off things like the metformins and potentially being on insulin, things like that. And we had over 80% success rate. It was pretty shocking. But there was always this category of people who weren't getting the results. It was like a thorn in my side, you know, maybe, you know, 20, 30% of my patients. And so after doing a deeper dive and a deeper

introspection myself, I start to see, Hey, there's a problem going on with stress or sleep with these people. And after we get their sleep dialed in, then all of these results come flushing in. And so that was number one, number two, having my show, you know, the model health show, we were about 50 episodes in, we still a baby at the time. And I did three episodes on sleep and I looked at the downloads and they were in the top 10, those three episodes. So it was like, people want to know about this. Wow. And that's when I put the initial book together. And like you said, it did amazing. It just kind of took off on its own. But you know, even hearing the name sleep smarter, a lot of people like, yeah, I need that, you know,

best form of marketing is a great product, you know? Absolutely. So what, I need that. The best form of marketing is a great product. Absolutely. So were you a sleep expert before or did you just start saying, okay, my audience wants this information. I did a couple podcasts on this. So let me just put out a book. Or did you say, okay, now I'm actually going to dive into the research. Are there other sleep doctors or experts who add to this information that you learn from? What makes you credible in this space? So the first thing is personal experience always. I tell people you don't truly know anything until you've done it yourself. And little did I know that my story really was coupled with a change in the way that I was sleeping helped to transform my body and my health.

with a change in the way that I was sleeping helped to transform my body and my health. So when I was 20 years old, I was diagnosed with something called degenerative bone disease and degenerative disc disease. So the disc in between the vertebrae and my spine were breaking down. And my first physician told me I had the spine of an 80 year old and I was 20, right? And even take a step back before that, you know, you being from St. Louis playing high school sports there, I went to Lafayette, which is the number one school in the state currently, for a couple of things. Nobody's deal. Yeah, you know, but at the time, so when I was 15 years old,

I ran a 4-5-40 right before the football season. So football went through. Yeah, when I was 15. But I was really in the track. That was my thing. And so at track practice, I was doing a 200-meter time trial. And as I was coming off the curve into the straightaway my hip broke broke just i broke my hip wow no trauma some bo jackson stuff right there you know so random right but you know i just thought i pulled a muscle you know being a hard-headed guy i just kept coming to practice

for a couple of days until my coach made me go and i a scan done, and there was my iliac crest, like the tip of my hip bone had just broken off. And so standard of treatment, ultrasound, NSAIDs. Yes, stem, ice, crutches for a couple weeks. Got to get out of class early. So I thought it was cool, but nobody stopped to ask, how did this 15-year-old kid's hip break? Just running. And this is something usually reserved for people when they're older.

And generally people think that people fall and break their hip, but in reality they break their hip, then fall. All right. And that's kind of what was happening with me. So I was so malnourished with just kind of cut to the chase that my bones were just breaking down rapidly. It wasn't until five years later when I got that diagnosis and, you know, being an aspiring athlete, it just kind of made my whole world come crashing down, very scared, you know, especially getting the diagnosis that there's nothing that I can do about it. And this was an incurable condition, according to my physician. I was smart enough to get multiple opinions, but it was the same story. So two and a half years went by until things changed. And I definitely dip into a state of depression for sure. Kind of mingled around in that and gained about 50 pounds of unsexiness. And I was fluffy version of myself,

man. Just was definitely off track in my life. But ultimately things changed when, man, I just really decided to get well. I got the last note from the last physician I saw, and he said the same thing the other ones did. And I was just like, if I don't change my life now, I'm never going to change. And most people never make the decision to get well. That's the issue. It's like, I'm going to try. Like you, I'm going to try to hit the New York Times bestseller list. No, this is done. So when you make a real decision about something, it's from the Latin de meaning from and caidea which means to cut. So you cut away the possibility of anything else.

And so I made a decision to get well. And that really drove me into when I initially went to school. It's so funny. Taking a pre-med track, you don't have to take nutrition. But I just happened to take nutrition the first semester. And I remember it so clearly. It was a big auditorium-style classroom, and the teacher walked in, but his belly came in first.

Wow. And I was like, oh, he's going to teach me how to do it. The nutritionist. Yes. It's funny when you see a big doctor, you know, that's just overweight and trying to prescribe you something about your health, and you're like, how is this? It's kind of ironic in a way, but, you know,

the thing is these are generally really great people, and they're doing what they're teaching. Yeah, what they were taught too. And a lot of people don't know this, but a lot of nutrition programs in colleges are funded by General Mills. So there's a vested interest to get people to eat the bottom of the pyramid, which is the number one glycemic loading food, the highest spiking food, which is a tragedy. So people are just chronically elevating their blood sugar, which is keeping insulin turned on, which is keeping them storing fat.

Really simple thing. I think I heard recently that the government just put out an updated version of – MyPlate. Right? They just put out an updated version saying, well, actually, you're not supposed to have this much grains or whatever it is. Like they used to say as a staple, you're not supposed to have this much milk or something. I'm not sure. It's slightly different, but still there's a lot of work to be done.

But with the podcast world, with what's going on online, millions of people are getting connected to this information every year and changing the way that they're eating. And so for me, man, it was- Were you just eating a lot of sugar yourself before? I was on the college diet. So I'm like, there's something called the Papa John's special. So it's five bucks. I love Papa John's.

So large pizza. Papa Joe's, baby. Yeah, I would crush a large pizza by myself on a regular basis. McDonald's breakfast if I got up in time. Oh, my God, it's so good. And that's how I was living, man. I had no idea that food mattered. No vegetables, no fruits.

That was essentially my life. I mean, rarely would a veggie pass my lips. Yeah, exactly. And it's because really you don't know what you don't know. And at that time, I didn't know that there was a difference with food. I just thought if you can eat it, it's healthy. Of course. And that's what a lot of people kind of fall into that reality, you know.

And so once I understood, and by the way, I asked my first doctor, I don't know to this day if it was like my spirit animal or like my future self jumped into my body. But I asked him, does this have anything to do with what i'm eating you know this disease that i have and he looked at me he just cocked his head and like shook his head he's like this has nothing to do with what you're eating really he's like you were born with this this is something you just have to deal with i'm sorry yeah and so yeah but that was it never sat right with me because he told me this has nothing to do what i'm'm putting in my mouth. But then he wrote me a prescription to put some drugs in my mouth. Right? So that's the level of, you know, but I didn't know what to do. I just knew what he told me to do.

Yeah, he's the expert. Yeah, and it's effectively like, we just mentioned Dr. Lissa Rankin, who I just talked to. It's a nocebo effect, which is giving somebody a negative injunction saying there's nothing you can do about this. Or, you know, you've got one month to live and seeing people who walk into the hospital are wheelchair bound within a day after getting a you know terminal illness diagnosis right and so the power of our minds is very powerful man but for me so to kind of wrap up the story and see the the light at the end of the tunnel i'm a very analytical person by nature, like I mentioned. So it wasn't like I made this decision and unicorns came out and the clouds parted. I really dug in and decided, I remember

going to school and learning this stuff, but I was taught a lot about disease and problems. I'm going to learn everything that I can about health and the human body. So there was basically three things I did. Number one, I changed the way I was eating, you know, funny enough. Number two, I started to move again. And it's shocking how many people are diagnosed with something and their doctor tells them to be careful, don't do anything, bed rest. Your body requires movement in order to heal itself. So I started to exercise again. And the third thing was- So not actually resting and requires movement. Yes. Is that true? There's this crazy study, and I actually mentioned it in the book.

It was done on horses. And, you know, a racehorse can be potentially, you know, millions of dollars, the value. Yeah, of course. And if they break a bone, that's grounds for the animal to, you know, get put down, quote, put down. Yes. And so there's a really vested interest in keeping that bone, that horse's bones healthy. And so with the study, they had the horses start taking calcium and other supplements to increase the bone density. And there was some change, but there was even

more change, more radical change if they walked the horses and gave them the supplements. So there was a study with, you know, so one group of horses just got the supplements, improved walking and supplements, radical transformation. And this is because- Go ahead, sir. Walking and supplements, radical transformation. And this is because your body really assimilates nutrients through movement. Not through sitting there and resting. Right. I mean, you can do some stuff, but when you really move your body, it's actually turning on activating biochemical pathways for your body to actually assimilate stuff. Now, if you have a broken leg.

Of course. You're not supposed to be walking on it. And especially, you know, if you have an acute situation where, you know, you just got hurt, take a couple of days off. But then from there, you need to do what you can. A little bit of movement at a time. Right. Do what you can.

Not like to extreme pain. Yeah, that's just silly. Just a little bit of movement at a time. Okay, I just want to make sure we're clear. Like, oh, I broke my back. You're telling me to run? Not today. Yeah. Not today. Yeah, you want to take your time, but you want to do what we're clear. Like, oh, I broke my back. You're telling me to run? Not today. Not today.

You want to take your time, but you want to do what you can. Some movement. And it's also, especially being an athlete, you start to fall into a victim status very quickly. That something's wrong. Things are just going bad now. And we start to self-pity instead of just being proactive. It's easier said than done. But a big cause of you getting well is, you know, you usually hear about cause of problems. a big cause of you getting well is, you know,

usually hear about cause of problems. A big cause of you getting well is you being active for sure. Okay. So what was the third thing? So the third thing, and really quickly, so with the nutrition piece, and that's really my domain, that's where I've been operating for a decade and a half now, clinically, and man, it was really simple, man. I did the low hanging fruit. So instead of eating like a McDonald'sdonald's burger fries i'd go to you know i was shopping at whole foods which just opened in st louis which midwest is kind of late to getting a lot of stuff really it just opened there yeah i thought it's been there for a while yeah this was let's see so this is about yeah this is about 16 years ago gosh i was like no no it's been there it's packed

there too now man but when i was first start shopping i was like no it's been there it's packed there too now man but when i was first start shopping there was like me some random old guy and then like a lady with a shirt on yeah yeah right and so uh but i thought it was so cool it's like all of this stuff and of course i would meet a lot of uh uh major athletes there as well like isaac bruce i would bump into regularly there um so it was really interesting and kind of changed my paradigm. So I started to eat grass-fed beef instead of whatever conventionally farmed, factory farmed beef from McDonald's, a sprouted grain bun. Instead of fries, I'd get a bunch of broccoli. I just did small changes that I could. And I was drinking water like I was getting paid for it. So here's the thing. This is so cool, guys.

This is really what transformed my body. So I started to ask the right question. You know, questions are so powerful. So I asked, what is my spine actually made of? And then dug into the research, and I was shocked. Because when you think of your bones, what's the first mineral or nutrient you think of? I think of calcium. Exactly.

I'm ignorant, though. No, this is where everybody lives the majority of us there's other there's like 200 other factors that are equally as important that's just the big marketing one right right and so it's things like magnesium silica i needed vitamin c to help to regenerate tissues i didn't know that sulfur bearing amino acids all these interesting things i'd never heard of. And no way was I getting that via Papa John's and Sunny Delight, you know? So I changed the way that I was eating and I was starting to get- Eggnog muffin wasn't bringing the nutrients, man? No, no.

I was missing it, man. I was missing the mark. And so I started to look for the foods that had those things in them. And then there was a radical transformation in my health. So the last piece was sleep, rest and recovery, man. When I started to do all this good stuff for my body and training again, and again, I just started where I could. I started off on an elliptical, then a stationary bike, walked, picked up the weights again, and I naturally fell into a normal sleep pattern. And six weeks later, man, after making that decision, I lost 28 pounds.

The pain I'd been experiencing every day for two and a half years was gone. Ultimately, about nine months later, I got a scan done and I had two herniated discs that retracted on their own. I lost three-fourths of an inch in height and I grew half an inch back, which was crazy, right? And the degeneration was starting to essentially be reversed. And the last physician I worked with, he was just standing there looking at the picture. The MRI is just like, wow, son, whatever you're doing, keep doing it. I haven't seen this before. Amazing. You had no clue. Yeah. And so that's when I fired my doctor. Wow.

But with love, with love. But yeah, I kind of got what I needed from that experience. And even when I went to get a scan done, I already knew I was well. It was just kind of an affirmation. And that was the birthing of my career, man. Amazing. People at my university saw the physical transformation that took place. I didn't look like a guy who lost weight. I looked like a guy who was healthy. And I remember walking out of class and my professor stopped me who had seen me, you know, prior the semester prior. And he was like, what happened to you? You look so healthy. And I was like, is that wrong? Is that a problem? He's like, no, what did you do? And so I started to work with him. I started to work with my fellow students and working at a university. I had such a great bank of people from different cultures and different countries to work with.

And it really taught me a lot. And so since then, you know, I've worked with thousands of people clinically, but you know, hundreds of thousands through, you know, the podcast, speaking and all that good stuff through books. And it's just been an amazing ride, man. Amazing, man. Okay. So you, when did you really dive into sleep as like, I'm going to understand every, you know, you're an analytical guy. You go all in with something. You do it to like the max.

Let me know what's in that water, how it's processed. But you have everything. Water doesn't touch your body unless it's filtered a specific way. I know that about you. You don't take a shower unless it's filtered away. So everything is to the extreme in the way you do it. So why don't you say, okay, I'm going to know everything about sleep more than anyone else in the world. I'm going to learn from all the experts.

When would that happen? Yeah. So that was about five years ago and seeing this transformation in my clinic and seeing it with people firsthand. What type of clinic do you have? So this was a nutrition consulting practice. So I'd work with a lot of physicians would bring their patients over to me, chiropractors, things like that. And so I would help their patients. Gotcha. And it was a great team, great network of people and just seeing some really remarkable results. But across the board, man, and by the way, you mentioned about physicians not necessarily being healthy. It's because it's the way the system is set up. Some of the most important people and the smartest

people in our culture, our physicians are brilliant, but the system really beats them down, you know, and puts them through a lot just to be able to serve people. A lot of stress. Yes, of course, of course. And so all of us teaming up and it really kind of opened the door for me to do this research. Sure. And right off the bat, man, I started to understand why I got well. And so I dug into that first, like what's going on during sleep that makes you recover faster? And so here's what's so cool.

If you and I right now, we go to the gym after this interview and we're standing there looking at the gym where it's like we're going to have the best workout of our lives. We're going to crush it. We're in better shape then than after the workout. After the workout, if we go get some blood work done and I get you a hormone panel done, it might look like there's something wrong with you. Your cortisol is going to be elevated. Blood sugar is going to be wacky. Your inflammatory biomarkers are going to be up. But the only thing you did was just, it's called a hormetic stressor. You just did a workout and your body will recover from that when you sleep. Sleep is really where

your body comes back better from that workout. Sleep is where your body helps to convert food into you, a big portion of that. And most importantly is to eliminate the metabolic waste products and get stuff out of the way so you can have more room for growth. And actually same thing with your brain. And this was some, some of the new research that went into the book. Dude, this is so crazy because your brain creates your body, but when you're sleeping, so there's something called the lymphatic system, right? Your lymphatic system is basically your extracellular fluid. You have four times more lymph than you have blood, right? So this is kind of the body's channel for eliminating waste. If that lymphatic system gets clogged, nasty stuff is going to start happening.

You know, just kind of like you're plumbing in your house. Like if it gets backed up, stuff's going to get kind of gross. And so, but your brain has something called the blood-brain barrier. And so stuff can't just readily get there. Matter of fact, your lymphatic system basically stops at your neck. So your brain has its own lymphatic system. It's called the glymphatic system, which a little shout out to the glial cells in your brain that control it and you're it's for the purpose of eliminating and your brain is doing like millions of processes every second eliminating all the byproducts from

all this change is constantly doing and it turns on the glymphatic system is 10 times more active when you're asleep than when you're awake all right and your brain cells actually shrink about 60 percent while you're asleep to make more room to eliminate waste. It's really important. So what they're finding is that conditions like Alzheimer's is probably an inability of your brain to eliminate waste. Wow. It's compiling all of this stuff, right? So I started learning all of that, you know, but I didn't talk about all of that stuff publicly, but because it was too much, man, there's so much information out there that people didn't know about all of that stuff publicly because it was too much, man. There's so much information out there that people didn't know about unless they start to ask the right questions.

Sure, sure. Crazy. Okay. What actually happens when we sleep? What is the process? What is our body doing specifically, just so I'm aware, in terms of how does it take in the nutrients or burn the fat or whatever it does? What happens? How is it recovering?

Sleep is so weird, though. And this is part of the reason our culture looks down on it in a weird way. Like if you've got 10 things to do, sleep is one of them. Neglect to sleep. Yeah. Sleep when you're dead. Exactly. Sleep is for those who are broke.

Hashtag no sleep. Right. And the only thing that's accelerating. It's like a badge of honor. Right. Who slept less? You know what I mean? It's just accelerating the day to when you are sleeping when you're dead, you know?

Because your body is really transforming itself while you're asleep. So sleep is sort of weird because- I think they did it before you go into that. I think some documentary I saw, I think it was on happiness, talked about like the happiest people in the world or the oldest people in the world. One of the things they say is like we slept a lot and the people like people over 100 years old like the key to living a long life is sleeping a lot taking naps or whatever it may be it also getting like eight hours of sleep every night yeah and so that's one of the things too is that

you know at no point in the book do i say you need to get blank hours it's more about the sleep quality quality you know making sure that your body's getting the natural normal stages of At no point in the book do I say you need to get blank hours. It's more about the sleep quality. You know, making sure that your body is getting the natural normal stages of REM and non-REM sleep. Because that's really what's changing you. So we'll start with the brain first. So this interesting process happens. It's actually called memory processing with your brain. So you've got these synaptic connections that happen. And just from people right now listening. This data is changing what's going on with their brain and becoming physical structure.

You know, so this is why number one, you want to mind what you're listening to, by the way. But then there's this myelination process that basically makes these connections like a super highway. And a lot of that is going on while you're sleeping, right? So this memory processing, especially during REM sleep is converting your experiences into short-term memories and then eventually long-term memories. But if you're not sleeping, you're going to miss a lot. You're going to miss a lot of that process. So this is why it's really important for the brain. As far as physically, man, there's so much going on here.

Let's just talk about the whole weight loss thing because we know how our society is doing right now. It's not the best, but a lot is changing for the good. And there was a study done, it was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, two groups of exercisers, and they put them on the same diet. Group A got to sleep eight plus hours a night. Group B, they sleep deprived them. So they're getting like around five hours of sleep per night. Group A lost far more weight and body fat than group B. Only difference was the amount of sleep they were getting. So again, just kind of piggybacking on the point that your body is changing physically while you're asleep. One of the big reasons for that is something called human growth hormone, which people already probably know about thanks to Barry Bonds and-

Mark McGuire. Jason, yeah, Big Mac, Jason Giambi, Marion Jones. Exactly. If you're listening to this show, hey, shout out to you guys. But it's just understanding that this is an endogenous hormone that your body produces. And so human growth hormone is also known as, quote, the youth hormone. So kids have a lot of it, and that's why they have so much energy. And a lot of parents are just kind of sitting there watching their kids, you know, run around the park like they're crazy, you know?

And it's just they have so much of this human growth hormone going through the system. And according to the research, when we get around the age of 18, we have a pretty sharp decline in human growth hormone. But my argument is that that's not necessarily the case. When we were around 18, we'd go to college, and we stopped doing the things that helped encourage human growth hormone production because, like, you know, mom, you can't tell me what to do anymore. You know, I'm going to stay up and, you know, do whatever we're doing because it's college, you know. And you're getting the biggest secretion of human growth hormone when you go to sleep, right? So this is helping with lean muscle growth.

This is helping with a lot of anti-aging factors. And speaking of that, another one is melatonin. So melatonin is like the quote sleep hormone, but it's not really that. It really is a get good sleep hormone. It helps you to go through the normal stages of sleep properly. And here's another thing, though, is that melatonin is quite possibly our body's most important endogenous anti-cancer hormone. Okay. So this is why there's a study that I cited in the book done on nurses who work overnight.

And there was like over 50% increased incidence of them having breast cancer. No way. Yeah. And then, so that's what I do, man. It's like, here's the research and why it's a problem, No way. lot there but the main focus though of the book is strategies to make everything good and make sleep yummy again and you got 21 strategies and what i want to do is when maybe we cover 10 strategies let's do it um so maybe i'm going to look through the the chapter outline and i'm going to i'm going to go through 10 um let's do one of them here is get more sunlight during the day. Get more sunlight during the day. So tell me about why is it important to have sunlight?

Awesome. Yeah. So the first thing to understand is that serotonin, right? Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, and it's supposed to be like a feel-good kind of compound. This is why so many antidepressant medications, there's serotonin reuptake inhibitors to help keep serotonin active in your system longer. Here's what's so cool is that serotonin gets converted into melatonin. And we already talked about how important this is. That's the anti-cancer.

It's a precursor to that. Right, right, right. Right? And so exposure to sunlight boosts your serotonin immediately. But also exposure to sunlight helps to set your cortisol rhythm. So cortisol has been getting a pretty bad name in the media lately because it's like glorified stress hormone. We've got like 50 hormones and cortisol is the only bad guy now. But cortisol is incredibly important and valuable. It's just when it's out of balance, it can become a problem. And so sunlight is clinically proven. I cited one of the studies in the book to help to normalize your cortisol rhythm, right? So it helps to keep your cortisol lower in the

evening if you get sunlight during the day, which will elevate your cortisol, okay? And cortisol and melatonin have basically an inverse relationship. So when cortisol is high, melatonin is low. When melatonin is high, cortisol is low. So it helps to get that on track again. And it's not like rocket science. We know that sunlight is valuable to human health, but we've been dissuaded in the media because of photoaging of the skin and skincare and things like that. And I actually talk about in the book and kind of demystify some of that because then we get into conversation about UVA and UVB and all this stuff. But bottom line, make sure you're getting some exposure to sunlight every day.

It's going to help you sleep better at night. And this can also be through your photoreceptors. So through your eyes as well and just getting light in the room, natural sunlight, you know, every day. And that's going to help to kind of set your circadian. What if in Chicago in the winter and there's no sunlight for St. Louis and there's no sunlight for three months? Check this out. So, and I do recommend, I share some hacks, right? There are light boxes that are used clinically to help to address things like seasonal affective disorder,

right? There are earbuds that shoot light through your ear canal right there's visors you can wear and they're clinically proven to be effective you're sunbathing in a tanning salon or or no that actually does work if it's the right kind the right light so you need more uvb actually and really depending on where you are in the world pretty much the united states period is not getting uvb at certain times of the year right. So we want to be proactive with this, but understand it's not just the exposure on your skin is what I'm talking about. Your skin has photoreceptors that pick up light, but just the exposure in your room. All right. So making sure you have an office with windows, access to windows. There was another study done. This is crazy because some people

work in like a cubicle dungeon. Dungeon. Yeah. You know, and what they found was that office workers who are not exposed to windows actually got 173 percent less exposure to natural light. And they ended up sleeping 46 minutes less every night as a result of that. And they saw this correlation, which was so interesting. And they reported more physical ailments, less energy and and also a higher propensity towards diseases. So this is super important. And even getting some exposure to sunlight on an overcast day is like 50 times more valuable than any fancy light you can get exposed to. But those things are great hacks for sure. There's so many things there. course okay that

was the first one second one avoid screens before bedtime and i think this is probably uh something that a lot of us are at a fault with i know you're kissing that phone good night yeah you know i i always tell myself like okay shutting it off by a certain time and like not having it in the room and all these other things but it's a challenge challenge, man. It's definitely a challenge. Here's why, dude. With this book, I was able to dissect that because I knew that that would be the toughest one of the 21 strategies. This one is the tough one because we're addicted. We are in fact addicted. Here's why. Here's what's happening. So there's this interesting compound called dopamine, right? And it was once thought that dopamine was related to pleasure, but it's not. Dopamine is all about seeking.

It's driving you to seek, right? And so the internet is perfect for this because there's infinite seeking. Instagram is perfect for this because you're continuously going and just there's more to see. But every time you find, you get a little hit from your opioid system. So it's like a slow drip of drugs. I seek, I find, I seek, I find. And you get looped in

and it's very difficult to break that pattern. And everybody's had this happen where you're like, I'm gonna check my Instagram for a minute. I'll check Twitter for a minute. And then it's 30 minutes later, an hour later, and you're still scrolling. This is what's going on. Like our brain is hardwired to get addicted to stuff like this. And these awesome social media apps know how to

manipulate our mind and to take advantage of that. So this is a call to take your brain back. I'm not saying I love this stuff. I absolutely love it, but it has a place and it's being more aware. Now that you're aware, you can catch yourself and break the pattern. So here's why it's an issue at night in particular. So there was a study done at Rensselaer Polytechnic that found that just two hours of your device usage before bed was enough to suppress melatonin secretion. All right. So again, you can pass out just being on it two hours before, you know, like that span. And so you can go to sleep or pass out, but that doesn't mean you're getting that rejuvenative sleep. So this is why a lot of people are sleeping eight hours, but they're still tired when they wake up in the morning.

It's because melatonin is suppressed because they're on their device right before bed. And it's this blue spectrum of light that's shooting out, kind of pouring into your optical sensors. What if you can stop that spectrum? Is there shades? Is there screen protectors? Is there glasses? There's all of those things.

Now, is that okay, then, if you have the band-aid on it? It's a hack. It's not the optimal, but it's the better than. Yes. So, absolutely. Everybody today can get Flux F.LUX, which basically cools off your screen. Pulls off that troublesome... Do you have that?

Of course. So, I've got all my troublesome... Do you have that? Of course. So I've got it on my different... Do you want to see what it looks like? Or is it just like a film that goes over the top? Yeah, so it's a cool app. It does this automatically. It's an app? Yeah. So you just download it on your phone?

Yes, exactly. Oh, I got to get this. Okay. Yeah, and it does this automatically based on your time zone. Oh, wow. And the time of year, all that stuff. Amazing. So it pulls out that most troublesome spectrum of light.

And so Harvard researchers found that it's not just light exposure. It's the color and it's the luminance. It's the strength of the light. You know, so green light was like three times less impactful to your sleep than blue light in their studies. Wow. So cool stuff like that. So flux, you can get the blue blocking glasses.

Basically, they're like sunglasses. Use those too? With the orange tint. Yeah, I do. Yeah. I've got some cool ones. You can watch got to watch tv or something yeah you know like if you're gonna stay up late and watch a movie a little bit later yeah you know but the whole thing is to not make that a habit because these are of course you know these are hacks but the best thing is and this is so important especially for for for our audiences you know who are really about taking their life to the next level and they're missing out on this key component, which is you have to find something that's of greater or equal value to the device.

So people, you know, actually connect with real people. Connection, a book, you know, something like that. You know, playing games with your kids, talking to your family, have sex. You know, there's other things that you can do. That'll help you sleep well. Yeah, I talk about that in the book too. But you have to find something that fills you up because that addiction is so strong and that's really the best tool which is to avoid the screens in the first place yeah okay that's uh number two number three uh i have a caffeine curfew so what time i mean here's the thing i

feel like i don't have that much caffeine and i almost never drink coffee except for about a month ago i started doing some intermittent fasting testing until I had Bulletproof in the morning. It's like what time is it? It's almost 2 o'clock. I still haven't eaten today. But before, if I'd have like a cappuccino after dinner or something, it would never affect me. I never felt like, oh, I'm wired now. I could always fall asleep, but I'm assuming

that it still does something to my brain and my body, even in my system to not allow me to fully rest. So what is the optimal time to, how many hours before you sleep should we not have any caffeine? Got it. And by the way, the hours before with the screen time, 60 to 90 minutes, that's all I recommend. So with the caffeine thing, you just said it perfectly. You can definitely go to sleep, but your nervous system can still be active because caffeine has something called, yeah, it has a half-life of about eight hours. So if you have 200 milligrams of caffeine, eight hours later, a hundred is still active in your system. And so this can keep you out of normal stages of REM sleep and deep sleep. All right. So you can be physiologically laying down and think that you're

getting eight hours of sleep. And so this study that was done, they gave people caffeine right before bed, three hours before bed and six hours before bed. And they found that even six hours out was enough to have noticeable. And they use like monitoring systems, you know, measuring their brain waves to find out that, whoa, their sleep is actually getting interrupted because of the caffeine. And then there was the subjective. So there's objective and subjective parts of this test. And people thought like, hey, I got enough sleep. Like, I feel great. But in actuality, their body was lacking that rejuvenative sleep. And what that does is you have this false sense of being well-rested and you automatically, unknowingly start using more caffeine at some point during the day

because you're going to have more daytime sleepiness all right so and that creates that whole vicious circle with caffeine to keep you going sure okay so how many hours before i recommend and i'm a fan of caffeine right um just do it in the morning do it in the early part of the day it depends on how sensitive you are before by the. By the way, too. Yeah, before noon would be ideal. But some people are hypersensitive to caffeine. Yes, of course. Everybody's metabolism is different. Some people might need to lay off of it completely, but that's a whole other book on how to make that happen. Sure, sure, sure. Okay, so no caffeine afternoon. This is my fourth one that I see here that I like.

This is one of my favorites that I was doing that I needed before I learned about the power and importance of sleep, and that's be cool. I remember growing up in Ohio. My dad, we did not have air conditioning in our house. And my dad was just like, well, I don't want to spend the money on this. And it's only two months in the summer where you've got to deal with it. But St. Louis is the same as Ohio. And, man, it was miserable. You're speaking my language, man.

I couldn't wear sheets or anything. I'd just be laying there sweating with the fan on. And my dad would make me turn the fan down because he didn't want me to get whatever. I don't know. Right. So it was just misery. And I couldn't sleep. I'm up all night.

And I wish my dad would have read this book then so he could understand the importance of being cool. But what does it mean to be cool? What's the optimal coolness that you should be in or does it matter? Yeah, absolutely, man. And my story is very similar with yours. My bedroom was upstairs. The top of the freaking house, man. You know, heat rises.

Oh, it's the worst. Coolness drops. It's the worst. So this is why our basements tend to be cooler. Upstairs, I would literally see those heat waves walking up there, 100 degrees, St. Louis weather. And so I would spray myself with a water bottle and then lay there butt naked and hope my brother doesn't come in the room when I'm trying to sleep. But yeah, man, it's not good sleep. And so this is really simple. Your body goes through a process. It's something called

thermal regulation. And it does this every night. And we'll just say around 9 p.m. average. It does this process to lower your core body temperature to create the ideal environment for deep sleep. Your body cools you off to sleep better. So you want to support it and not work against it. So some simple tips, and it's going to sound a little frosty to some people, but ideally, your room temperature is going to be, and this is according to research, what experts say, to some people, but ideally your room temperature is going to be, and this is according to research with experts say 62 degrees to 68 degrees for sleeping. All right. And some people are like, no way. Like my wife is actually, she's from Kenya. So hot climate. No, she's not having that. So I find a happy medium, you know, you're at the top, you're at 68, 69, 69, you know,

but, um, and also, you know, our friend Kelly Starrett, Dr. Kelly Starrett, he had a pretty big struggle with this, with being too hot. And he got it cold in the room, but it still was enough and he didn't want his wife to suffer. So, he got something called a chili pad, which basically sits on your side of the bed and he's like, he swears by it. Underneath the mattress or underneath the sheet. Right, on top of the mattress. Underneath the sheet. Exactly. But it just keeps you cool underneath you.

Yeah. Oh, interesting. And it's been a game changer for him. You know, so just top of the mattress. Yeah, right. Underneath the sheet. Exactly. But it just keeps you cool underneath you. Yeah. Oh, interesting. And it's been a game changer for him. So just cooling your body temperature, even just one degree difference. It's huge. It's huge. It's huge. Okay, cool.

So be cool at night. Doesn't mean you can still wrap yourself in a blanket. Yeah, get cozy. But just keep the room cool. Yeah. Gotcha. I like that. Okay, so that was number four.

Number five, let's do is get to bed at the right time. So why is it important to be at the right time? Yeah. Should we be at the right same time every night? And what is that optimal time? Good, good question, man. So timing your sleep is like timing an investment. If you invest a lot at the wrong time, you're going to get pain.

But if you invest even a little bit at the right time, you get some big rewards. And so according to research, our quote money time sleep is between 10 PM and 2 AM. And why that is, is that this is when you're going to get your greatest increase of melatonin, which is going to help you to go through your normal sleep cycle and the greatest secretion of things like human growth hormone as well. So more recovery, more anabolic growth and development. Between 10 and 2 a.m. That's right.

Is when you should be going to sleep or that's when you get your optimal sleep? Right. If you can get some sleep in that window, and some experts say that it's like twice as much value per hour. Wow. Right? So if you go to bed at 9.30, 9.45 and you're asleep in that window that whole time, that's the optimal time essentially.

And people will notice this. When they tend to get to bed a little bit earlier, they're just like, wow, I slept really great. Right. You know, I see your face. You're like, yeah, when that happens, but it rarely happens, you know? And so that's the kind of money time window. But it's not, again, it's not about being perfect.

If this doesn't fit your lifestyle, stack the other conditions, do the other things. Yes. You know, because the timing does matter because your body's wired up to work with nature. Yeah. You know, and only recently can we basically manufacture a second daytime, you know. And our systems, our genes are expecting a night cycle for us to get cozy, to get sleep. But we can throw on the, you know, do the laptop lap dance all night long today, you know, watch YouTube videos and Netflix

and be on our social media. But our genes are not different from our ancestors, even, you know, a hundred years ago, let alone thousands. So we can evolve through this stuff, you know, like some X-Men stuff, but it's going to take a little bit of time. I hear that, man. Here's a good one good one i mean there's so many good strategies here but i'm only going to pick 10 uh get it blacked out yeah i think this is number five is this number five that i'm saying now i don't know it's number five we'll say it's five get it blacked out now why is it i know i did this after i talked to you a while ago and I got, you'll see in my room, it's got like blackout, pretty much blackout. There's a little light that comes through

in the morning, but it's pretty dark. Why is this important to have a room pitch black so you can even see your hand? Awesome. Yeah. So again, so that normal sleep cycle, just helping to support that. And your skin has photoreceptors that pick up light. Even the littlest amount of light. Yeah. There was a study I put in the book that the room was otherwise pitch black, but they put just a tiny light behind somebody's knee. No. And it was enough.

Shut up. It was enough to take them out of their normal stage of sleep. It's crazy, right? It's crazy. Crazy. And so because, again, we evolved in darkness. And it's not all light. It's crazy, right? It's crazy. And so, because again, we evolved in darkness and it's not all light, it's unnatural light. Like moonlight, if you look at the Lux and I put a Lux chart in the book, it's not even a problem, but that unnatural light. And so

your skin has photoreceptors that pick up information and basically send it to your brain to secrete more daytime hormones, namely cortisol. All right. So your neighbor's porch light, you know, street lights outside, that kind of stuff, this unnatural light. It's been dubbed light pollution now. So getting your room pitch black can keep that stuff out of your room, but also the internal light too. So if you've got an ugly alarm clock staring at you, you know, that kind of stuff, you might want to consider, you know, getting a dimmer shut off or, you know, throwing a blanket over it or something like that.

I like that. Okay. That was actually number six. Got it. So this is number seven. Let's see. Train hard, but smart. Number seven. What does that mean? Awesome. Well, I think a lot of people know that a good workout can help you sleep. However, it is the difference between going to sleep and passing out, you know, as we've mentioned. So a lot of people, you know, I just, I talk with Rich Roll and if he doesn't do one of his, you know, he's like running for days, you know, if he doesn't do one of his workouts, like he says his sleep isn't, isn't the same. And he's, it's because of his cortisol rhythm, which he's changed, but that's a whole

other story. Bottom line is there's a difference, number one, between going to sleep and passing out. And here's how to do this the right way. So the study done with Appalachian State University, they broke exercise up into three groups. Group A exercise at 7 a.m. in the morning, group B 1 p.m., group C 7 p.m. at night. Group A spent up to 75% more time in deep anabolic sleep. Earlier in the morning. So early in the morning, if you can get a workout in. This doesn't mean it has to be the time you hit the gym. You can work out in the afternoon.

But that initial morning activity is important because going back to our evolutionary biology, it encourages that normal cortisol spike. So getting up and taking a walk. Yeah, you can do a power walk. You can do a four-minute Tabata session, do some body weight stuff, or you can do your full workout. Some air squats.

Yes. Some yoga, stretching, whatever it may be. You're helping to encourage that normal cortisol. First thing in the morning. Yeah. First hour or something. Yeah, exactly. Interesting.

And then what about the full workout? What about if you're like, okay, I'm going to do my hour workout today, when should that optimal time be? If you want to do it in the morning, perfect. If it is in the, and there wasn't much benefit to the afternoon as far as sleep is concerned, but in the evening there was some benefit, but it has to be the early evening. All right. So if I do work out in the evening, it's okay. If it's the early evening, so six, seven, you need about four hours. So if your planned bedtime is

11, you need about four hours for your cortisol to get normalized and your core body temperature to come back down, which we talked about how important that is. Yeah, because I'll work out and then I'll take a cold shower, but I'm still sweating an hour later. Yeah. A cold shower is a great help, though, to help to lower your core body temperature. But still the burn is just like a big guy. You're still sweating. So that makes sense. Okay.

So four hours after the workout you should take before you go to sleep. Right, right. And some people are like hitting their jujitsu class at like 8 p.m. and then trying to get to sleep at 10. That's not optimal. Yeah, it's not. But it is good. You still get benefit if you go up until 7 o'clock or four hours before.

It's okay. Just try and time it different. A lot of times that we get in issues with this is because we tell ourselves there's not another option. You know, we're infinite beings that have plenty of different ways that we can change things. Gotcha. Okay. I believe that was seven. Okay. So number eight, use smart supplementation. What does that mean? Oh man, this is a, this is a great chapter, man. Um, this whole working in a, in a clinic, people would sometimes see me like allopathic treatment, like what can I take? You know, so I'm having problems with losing weight. What can I take for that? What can I take for my sleep? And that sent me down a path of research and some stuff. And some of the stuff I found wasn't – it didn't feel good.

One of the first things in the biggest supplement for sleep is melatonin. We talked about melatonin a lot already. Just because you could buy it at a natural food store doesn't mean that it's okay. Not all melatonin is made equally? Is that what you're saying? No, not that. This is a hormone, man. This is a hormone.

Like you're taking a hormone. And so I cited a study in the book that right now, and there's a lot more being done on this, but right now what's seen clinically is that taking melatonin supplementation decreases the function of your melatonin receptor sites. So they start to downregulate. Basically, your body stops being able to use it. No, you can produce it, but your body won't be able to use it no you can produce it but your body won't be able to use it oh all right so like taking creatine where you're like take so much creatine back in the day and then it stops using it because it's something like overload of creatine

like that okay but yeah man so so you shouldn't be taking melatonin ideally not not consistently you know and this is coming out uh dr mich. Michael Bruce is somebody I mentioned in the book, board certified sleep specialist and really smart guy. And he's recommended people to back off it can be okay. But getting that dependency on it and using too much, the amount that's in a normal, just everyday supplement is way too high. Right. And your body will start to downregulate. And so what do people do? They'll take more. So melatonin is not the way to go. The ideal way is to start with things that are natural first, things that have a storied long lineage of use to the human body. You can start as simple as chamomile tea can be really helpful. Clinically proven to be effective. Kava Kava is another one.

That's the national drink of Fiji, which Tony Robbins always comes to mind when I think of Fiji. But it's been shown to be a mild sedative as well as valerian. So these are three options. Then we can get into the chemical isolates, which I would do that later. But 5-HTP is effective. L-tryptophan. 5-HTP is a precursor to melatonin. So it gives your body the chance to do a step still and produce it versus you taking the end product and lowering your ability for your body to actually use it. Gotcha. Wow. That's powerful. Okay. So that was number eight. Number nine, go easy on the bottle. So this was one of the funnest chapters of the book. And wow. I'm assuming you're talking about alcohol. This is alcohol.

Yeah, yeah. What about my late night glass of wine or going out to the bars and drinking until I'm passed out? That's not going to help me sleep better. So here's what's so interesting is that the research shows that drinking alcohol before bed does in fact help you to fall asleep faster. Hands down, no doubt about it. It passes you out, right? What also has been found is that you're not getting into normal REM sleep in particular.

Your sleep stages are broken. This is why you wake up with what's known as a hangover, because it's interrupting your sleep cycles. So you're passed out. You're physiologically sleeping, but your brain isn't doing the right processes. Why not? The alcohol interrupts those processes. So one of the things that I mentioned earlier,

and I didn't want to get into it, but adenosine, which we talked about in the book in regards to the caffeine. So adenosine is this end product from your body. It's producing this compound to basically nudge you to go to sleep. And caffeine sits in the receptor sites for adenosine. So you don't really know you're tired, even though you are. All right. Alcohol does something similar to that. So it makes you feel tired, even though physiologically, you might not be ready to go to sleep for some people. So this has a lot to do with it, with the impact with the adenosine as far as alcohol is concerned.

And so it does work again to put you to sleep, but getting good sleep, not so much. One of the other things that was fascinating about writing this chapter was looking at how similar sleep deprivation is to being drunk. sleep deprivation is to being drunk and actually seeing right there. Statistical correlation between. And when you see this man, the national highway patrol and all of the deaths that occur every year due to people falling asleep, truck driving while drowsy is shocking because there isn't an easy test for that as there is with testing with blood alcohol.

And there was a great myth busters episode that I talk about in the book that actually showed, wow, you can actually be even worse off if you're sleep deprived. Of course. You can't open your eyes. Exactly. I mean, I'll wake up sometimes and I'll feel drowsy and sleep deprived. I've never been drunk in my life, so I don't know what the feeling is. But I think a few nights ago I woke up.

I was coming back from an international trip for two weeks. So I was just waking up at 3 a.m. and it was just all off. I woke up. I remember just like walking around the room, like hitting the wall. I'm like, man, I feel so drunk right now. That's what drunk is. That's what it feels like, man. I don't know what it is.

I can only imagine when you don't have a stable footing and you're just like, where am I? That's interesting. Yeah, but there are benefits to drinking, especially like you mentioned, drinking wine, you know, red wine, the resveratrol. There's a lot of great benefits. It's just how about we go for a happy hour or how about you give yourself the opportunity. I talk about how to do this. Almost like four hours before you sleep, kind of like that. Yeah, a couple, even two.

Okay. Even two and drink plenty of water to help your body to essentially flush it out. And you know, when you're drinking alcohol, well, you don't know this, but you tend to go pee a lot. Your body's trying to eliminate the poison, you know? Sure, sure. And so just encourage that, you know, just by drinking, getting really hydrated and just

giving yourself a couple hours before you go to bed. It's really that simple. Gotcha. Okay, cool. So that was number nine. Number 10, let's do early to rise. Be early to rise. Why?

How about let's do the get grounded. Okay. So it's a correlation. Let's do it. Get grounded. This was the way your book kicked off, right? Yeah. And this is the way that mine wraps up.

I like it. And it means psychologically, but also physiologically. And wow, this was some of the most fascinating research that I got to dig into. And I got to talk to Dr. Jeff Spencer, who's, he's been on your show, right? Yes. Yeah. So, and he was, he's, he's directly connected to like 40 national championships, Olympic gold medals, Tour de France victories combined, you know, all together with his coaching and his being a team physician for the Tour de France, for example. One of his leverage points and his kind of secret sauce was through utilizing grounding and earthing equipment.

And so what is this? So getting grounded basically means getting your body connected with the Earth's surface. And again, me being very analytical, I'm not, you know, I don't like to get too unicorn, you know, but respect to that. There is some of that relevant in the world. But I want to see the science. Like I want to know how it works. And so the Earth itself is brimming with free electrons. Okay. And so your body is really operating off of this interesting combination of protons and electrons for events to happen. So positive event in your body is an inflammatory event, basically. And you need inflammation to get better, you grow, to develop. Inflammation is actually good, but we don't want it to go too far. Bringing an electron molecule into an inflammatory process, because what happens today is people are having too many inflammatory overreactions, right? So this is like autoimmune condition where your body's doing too much.

And bringing an electron in basically neutralizes that inflammatory event. So one of the things that's seen is when you get grounded, and there's so much cool research on this, inflammation goes down. Your parasympathetic nervous system kicks on, right? And so there was a study done, and this was a journal of environmental and public health. And I cited this one in the book that found that as soon as you get grounded, instantly your parasympathetic nervous system is turning on and your sympathetic nervous system is turning off. So what are those?

Parasympathetic is basically your rest and digest system. Sympathetic is fight or flight. And most of us are chronically in this. It's a binary system. It's either off or on. You're not a little bit sympathetic. So getting grounded immediately does that and why does that work human bodies conductive you know like it's not some magic right now you know

if somebody might be listening to podcasts now matter of fact let's i'm gonna use a different example scary movies right one of the worst ways to go out is like you're taking a bath and here comes Freddy Krueger and he throws an electric device in the bathtub. Yeah. Right? That would suck. It sucks, right? Because we're conductive. We can be electrocuted because we're conductive.

We can electrocute each other just with static electricity. It happens every day. You're very, very conductive. So that should help to kind of buffer that disconnection of like what's going on. You just can't see the electricity, the electrons coming from the ground, but they're there. So conductive surfaces are mainly like grass, dirt, you know, soil. is not. Bodies of water is why we feel grounded and ideas come in the shower. Yeah, yeah. All right? Because those pipes are grounded.

Sure. All right? Sand, things like that. So getting your body in touch with those things. And this is why people feel so good when they go to the beach. They feel relaxed and get better sleep. Some people fall asleep at the beach. Of course. Yeah, absolutely. Because your body's actually getting... It's setting the circadian timing is getting back on track. So that's one thing. And also getting grounded, and this was so cool that I saw this, clinically proven. And so let me preface this. So what Dr. Jeff was using was grounding equipment.

So this is equipment that basically connects to the grounding prong in your outlets. And it's basically like sheets that align with this particular material that sends that energy basically to the human body and so there's grounding mats like i think you have one i got one for a buddy john lee dumas that he uses all the time uh i have a mouse pad there's grounding sheets there's all this other cool stuff that basically connects you to the electrons that the earth is is emanating and so by there was one study that i cited getting grounded using this equipment number one it lowered nighttime cortisol so they monitor the person all night the people all night long in the study lowered nighttime cortisol all right and also it helped to normalize cortisol during the daytime so they're not hyper fight or flight just by getting yourself grounded.

Right. All right. So super powerful stuff. The inexpensive way to do it, which it helps if you're in California, you know, it's so great to be, I was shoveling snow the day before I came here, but it's easy to get grounded. What other places, you know, depending on the time of year can be a little bit more difficult, but I encourage you to explore, you know, if it's a little chilly outside and you've got a patch of grass in your backyard, still get out there, roll up your, roll up your, uh, your pants and do that. Or you can get yourself some of the earthing equipment that I talk about in the book. Awesome. Okay. Um, make sure you guys go,

that was just 10 of the 21 strategies. There's a lot more great stuff that we didn't even talk about. That'll let you guys dive in and learn more about when you get the book. So make sure to go get the book. It's called Sleep Smarter. I'll have it linked up here in the show notes. Also, you can get it on Amazon or anywhere books are sold with that same publisher that I have for my book. And also when you get the book, you're going to get a 14-day sleep makeover. So he's going to talk about how to essentially go through 14 days and do this process to see better results. And also he talks about sleep sanctuary.

So we're going to do a video if you guys are listening or watching right now. We'll have a link afterwards where you guys can go watch a video of Sean in my bedroom helping me with my sleep sanctuary. So make sure to get this book. I highly recommend it. I wish I was smart enough to write it myself. Three final questions for you. This is great.

So thank you for sharing this with us all. One is what are you most grateful for in your life recently? Wow. I'm grateful for my wife. You know, she is my hero man she's my best friend and none of this would be possible without her

you know she was definitely the catalyst for me to find ways to get better you know in every area of my life and I'm just so grateful for her man I love her I love her to pieces wow how long have you guys been married?

we've been married for almost 9 years we've been together for almost nine years. We've been together for 11 years. Amazing, man. Congrats on that. Thanks, man. Next thing is three truths. I don't know if you've heard this question we asked before,

but at the end, I ask everyone, at the end of the day, if all your books have been erased, all your podcast episodes deleted, and the only thing people had to remember you by was a piece of paper with three things that

you get to write down. They say what you know to be true about your experience in this world and what you'd pass on to everyone else. Say, this is Shawn Stevenson's three truths about life and how to live it. What would you write down and say? What would you write down and say? Three. Okay. So the first one would be to be yourself. Be yourself.

People don't buy your books. They buy you. People don't listen to your podcast. They listen to you. You know, people connected to people. And the more that you can be you and full out, flesh out all those parts of yourself, the quirky stuff, the funny stuff, the sad stuff, the greatness that you have. Just being more of yourself is going to help people to connect with you more. And this reality, this life is really about your relationships.

So be yourself. Find a way to find your voice as quickly as possible because this world can force different voices onto you. Be yourself and you're going to be successful. Okay. So that's number one. That's number one. Okay. Two more. All right. Number two. Number two would be, this is piggybacking off of that one. The most influential factor on your health and your wellbeing and your success in life is the quality of your relationships. So make sure that you are mindful of that and seeking out great people to be around because, you know, you've heard the whole quote, the compilation of the five closest people in your life. So make sure that you are investing in that and taking care to have great relationships

because they are in fact, and there's a study done with Princeton that found that two people so make sure that you're investing in that and taking care to have great relationships because they are in fact and there's a study done with princeton that found that two people just talking and there's a little bit of rapport between us our brains sync up you know our brain waves actually sync up we're so connected to each other and you want to make sure that that connection is a good one with people who are uplifting and and you're uplifting to them as well so be that person you know be that person who you would want to be friends with and show up for other people in your life and create great relationships. Okay, that's two. All right.

Okay, the last one would be it's not you are what you eat. It's you are what you eat, drink, breathe, and think. So all of those things literally create physical structure. So just the thoughts that you're predominantly having, the information that you're taking in, literally changes your brain and creates physical structure in your brain. And the food that you eat, wow, food isn't just food, it's information. So you get to choose what kind of data you're providing yourselves every single day and basically to print out cooler copies of yourself. Or you can print out some crappy copies.

It can happen. But you can change that in an instant. So you are what you eat, drink, breathe, and think. I love that. Thanks for that. Before I ask the final question, I want to acknowledge you for a moment, Sean, for your service and your commitment to healing the world. I love when people are so dedicated to their craft and doing the research and doing the things that are challenging and going above and beyond to learn all the information. Obviously, you're running a

business and you want to sell books and things like that, but I know your heart is so committed to healing people and having them live a healthier, happier, richer, fuller, longer life. And this is, in my opinion, been one of the main components of the last few years that I've just taken on for myself and understood the power of sleep. So I want to acknowledge you for everything you consistently do to serve humanity, to live better. Thank you, man. Yeah, of course. Of course. Final question. What's your definition of greatness? Lewis, man, you find a way to hit me. Oh man, that was amazing, man. Thank you so much. Oh, man, that was amazing, man. Thank you so much. My definition of greatness, service, you know, find a way to serve, some exercise tights, you know, from this really

cool store that was by my hotel here in Cali, you know, there's stuff in Cali that you can't get anywhere else. And I got the wrong size apparently. And so I went back to exchange it and I saw, you know, on the, um, the person at the cash register, his, his demeanor, like he was worried that there was a problem. And I just, I felt it. And I was just like, man, it's okay. Everything is cool, man.

Because he actually helped me yesterday. And so just letting him know that it was cool, like he's a person, you know, he's doing the best that he can with his life. And let me make sure that he feels like he's a value in the world. So I know it's a little silly instance, but every day, you know, find a way to be of service. And there's like a cool saying that, you know, find a way to serve the many

and you shall be great. You know, so find a way to be of service. I love it. Sean Stevenson, thanks for coming on, man. Appreciate you so much. Appreciate it, bro.

Thank you. Thanks. Sleep, sleep, sleep. It's a powerful thing. We all need to do it to optimize our life. I hope you guys enjoyed this one and got a lot out of it. If you did, make sure to share this. lewishouse.com slash 302.

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It's time to go out there and do something great. Thank you.