EP26 Habits that really move the needle

In this episode, Mike shares his personal journey of overcoming anxiety and discusses practical techniques that have helped him improve his mental health and productivity. He emphasizes the importance of sleep and shares his evening routine for better sleep quality. Mike also talks about his morning routine, which includes meditation, breathwork, exercise, and cold plunges. He explains the benefits of journaling and shares breathing techniques that can be used throughout the day to regulate stress. Finally, Mike discusses the importance of transitioning from work to home and the overall importance of self-care. In this conversation, Mike discusses the importance of self-care and personal biohacking habits for business success. He emphasizes the integration of personal well-being and business performance, highlighting the interconnectedness of these aspects. Mike believes that understanding business deeply and prioritizing self-care are critical for leaders to excel in their roles.

Takeaways

Prioritize sleep for better mental health and productivity.
Establish a morning routine that includes meditation, breathwork, exercise, and cold plunges.
Journaling can be a powerful tool for self-reflection and mental clarity.
Practice breathing techniques throughout the day to regulate stress.
Create a transition ritual to shift from work to home and prioritize self-care. Self-care is essential for business success as it improves overall well-being and performance.
Biohacking techniques can optimize physical and mental health, leading to increased productivity and focus.
Integrating personal well-being and business success is crucial for leaders to excel in their roles.
Understanding business deeply and prioritizing self-care are not separate but interconnected aspects.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Context
02:29 Morning Routine: Sleep and Wake-Up
07:08 Morning Routine: Meditation and Breathwork
11:22 Morning Routine: Exercise and Cold Plunge
13:49 Morning Routine: Journaling
20:40 Throughout the Day: Breathing Techniques
39:47 End of the Day: Transitioning from Work to Home
45:28 Conclusion and Importance of Self-Care
10:32 The Importance of Self-Care
20:15 Biohacking for Optimal Performance
30:50 Integrating Personal Well-being and Business Success
45:49 The Connection Between Self-Care and Business

Find out more about working with me or about applying to join the ILN. mike@smbmastery.com.au

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeadamscott/

https://theintentionalleaders.com/

Transcript

Mike (00:01.314)
Hey guys and girls, really good to be back after what has been quite a decent break. It's first of Feb 2024 and it's been a tough start to the year. Actually that's what this podcast is about. So last year or should I say the last, I don't know, roughly three months ish probably have been an incredibly tough part of my life, a really, really tough period. And

I won't go into too much detail because it's, I don't know how relevant it is, but it's been really testing and it's taken me quite a long time to be able to get myself out of what has probably been the deepest rut I've ever been in, certainly that I can remember. What that means for me, I think it's different for everyone, is it shows up as fear. It shows up as anxiety, right? Like a dread and a catastrophizing of the future. And it's really...

really intense. That anxiety, which is really fear, sets off a cascade of things. It puts my brain and body into what we call fight or flight, which releases a ton of adrenaline and cortisol as I understand it. And that then reduces my ability to think clearly. I'm in this kind of panicked state. Cortisol is a toxin and it literally reduces my brain capacity as far as I understand it, which makes decision making really difficult.

And that makes doing any meaningful and impactful work really difficult, which then decreases the quality of the work, which then drives the fear, and so continues an extremely destructive and difficult and negative cycle from a mental perspective. This is sort of how it shows up for me. And this has led to me taking a really hard look at what I can do to begin to pull myself back from this...

really dark place and redirect that energy because there's a ton of energy going into intense anxiety. It's not great energy and it's going to a negative place, but there's a ton of energy there. Redirect that energy to something constructive and positive and helpful for myself and I think actually almost more importantly for those around me. So that's the context of this episode. It's super practical and I really just want to talk through a bunch of things that some of them I've been doing for years. Some of them I've started in the

Mike (02:29.002)
some of them have started in the last few months. And the things that have really helped me to get into what is now a much better state and a much more productive state without having to use, let's say, traditional medication or anything like that. No judgment if anybody is, but for me, I don't want to go there. So I work with a lot of founders, and I work with a lot of leadership teams of small and mid-sized businesses.

And I speak to even more. So I work with a bunch, but I speak to a lot. And I'm super open about my challenges with anxiety, mental health, all of this kind of stuff, and it often catches people off guard because, you know, I'm really tall, I'm six foot five, I'm pretty healthy and fit and to a lot of people from the outside, I seem like I've kind of got my shit together. And I guess from a worldly perspective on paper, you could in a lot of respect say that I...

do, but that does not mean that from an inside perspective, I have it all together. In fact, I would say that for a lot of the time, I'm sort of just holding it all together, right? When I communicate this and open this sort of stuff, it's quite amazing. Really often, it almost like kind of opens up a space for people to go, God, me too. You know, I've never acknowledged this or admitted this or been able to speak about it.

But wow, hearing you speak about this just kind of allows me to say, God, you're describing my state and I don't know what to do. And I don't know how to speak about it, like speak to her about it. Um, and it's almost like the bit of a relief to go that like you're not alone. So if you're one of those people that is holding a position in life of very high responsibility and what have you, or not actually just know that you're definitely not the only person that's, that's experiencing this kind of stuff. It's, it's actually sort of worryingly common, but

I think our culture and our societies, depending where you are in the world, make it a little bit difficult to speak about this in many instances. So yeah, at the time of this recording, I definitely feel like I'm on the other side of this. So if I was at like a nine or 10 in intensity and horribleness, I would say I'm sort of hovering around sort of between four and six now. So it's manageable. I think I've managed to convert.

Mike (04:48.362)
or transmute a lot of that energy from really negative, bad stuff and destructive stuff into much more constructive and positive stuff. And that's sort of showing through in, I guess, the kind of material side of life, you know, business, getting stuff done, being clear headed, all of that kind of stuff. So I don't think this is ever done. I don't think there's a solving of these problems. I think it's about integrating your integrating these things into your life and really learning how to

be more resilient and deal with these things when do they come up? Not if they come up, when they come up, because they will. Life is gonna punch you in the face continually over and over again. And I think for me anyway, it's really about developing or in my case, rebuilding that kind of resilience muscle, that resilience capability. I've learned a ton about what works for me. And just because it works for me, doesn't mean it's necessarily gonna work for you. But this episode is gonna be me talking about the things that I have now experienced.

have and continue to work for me quite profoundly actually. As always, I'll make this as practical as I possibly can. I need to give a very clear disclaimer here though, in that I am not a doctor, I am not a therapist, I am not qualified in any of the things that I'm gonna be talking about today, right? Like I need to make that really clear. This is just me sharing what has worked for me, and I would strongly advise that for any of the things that I speak about today, especially the physical ones.

that you do your own research before going deep into any of these things. I'll try to give references as I go through this to, so if you want to go deep, you can go and look at the real experts of these things. But, you know, as this says is on the turn of the podcast, this is kind of like for the rest of us, right? You've got guys like Dr. Andrew Huberman and you've got like Tim Ferriss, and you've got these really incredibly high performing sort of 0.1 percenters and they're amazing and I learned a ton from them. But I kind of have this view that like, okay, but what works for the rest of us that actually have families and

you know mediocre businesses and are not worth X hundred million dollars and living a kind of quote-unquote more normal life and that's what this is about cool. So let's get into it. I Will structure most of what I talk about today in the form of like what a typical day for me looks like now because I Think that's the most relatable. So that's not this Theoretical concept that it's actually a

Mike (07:08.766)
sort of relatable to hopefully your day and how you might structure it. I think it's important for me to say upfront that I've got a two-year-old and an eight-year-old. So I have a lot of constraints in my life if I wanna be a present dad, right? So I find that really, really difficult to figure out routines that actually work for me and allow me to be present with my kids, especially a really young toddler who's doing what two-year-olds do and just being completely chaotic. So that's like a...

That's almost a framing for this. If you don't have kids, it's likely you've then got a whole bunch more, uh, freedom and choice on how you structure your day. Maybe I'm wrong, but I certainly did before I have kids. If you do have kids, then I think this will be sort of particularly relevant to, to you. So let's get into it. So it all starts for me the night before, right? I know with certainty now for me that sleep is at the core of

all of this. If I am not getting enough quality sleep, for me, I'm kind of wasting my time with everything else. And you might be rolling your eyes now, but like there is a lot of evidence out there now. There's a particularly good Ted talk by a guy called, I think his name is Matthew Walker. He wrote a book called Why We Sleep. It's fantastic. If you haven't watched that Ted talk, go and watch it. You'll learn a lot and probably change your view of sleep. If currently your view of sleep is not one that is.

it is of ultimate importance. But for me, if I am not getting enough sleep and the quality is not good enough, the rest of everything I'll talk about today just has nowhere near as much of an effect. So it starts the night before. What does that mean? I try to get to bed by between nine and 9.30 every night. That's really hard when you have young kids. You gotta bath the kids, you gotta feed the kids. Every night I take them for, I'll speak about this later, but I take them outside for a walk or a run or something.

It's really difficult to do that, but I get pretty close to this most of the time. And, you know, I have an amazing wife who, um, is really a blessing in this regard because, you know, she has given me the space to say, cool at nine, nine 30, it's okay. You go to bed if you need to. I've got the kids, particularly the little one, if he's not ready to go to sleep, you can't force kids to go to sleep at a certain time. Most of the time we get that right. When we don't, I've got enormous support from my wife that she goes, cool. I'll stay up with the little guy.

Mike (09:35.306)
you can go to sleep. So that's amazing and I need to acknowledge that. So try to get to bed between nine and nine thirty. I turn my phone off at around eight p.m. every night. Why do I do this? Because we know now that phones, laptops, TVs, they emit blue light, blue light, makes it harder to fall asleep firstly, also lowers your quality of sleep. So I try very hard not to look at any screen at all for at least an hour before bed. That's...

Difficult and I want to acknowledge that means that what am I saying here? I'm basically saying that I am NOT watching TV. I am NOT scrolling I am NOT doing work or anything that involves a screen from 8 p.m. That is a really difficult choice for most of us It's a difficult choice for me. I enjoy watching series I enjoy doing these things right if I have to make a sacrifice if I'm gonna truly say that this is important I've got to sacrifice that so basically I've stopped watching TV in its entirety

Right? Which is a difficult thing. I'm not saying this as a brag. I'm saying like, this is a conscious sacrifice that I've had to make if I'm gonna get them out of sleep that I need to get, because I need to wake up early in the morning to get done what I need to get done. Something I struggle with massively, probably the thing that I've solved the least is eating after dinner. So we have dinner, which is usually pretty healthy in my house, but then I snack and I eat rubbish.

And this is something that I really need to still need to work on, but it's a really bad idea to be snacking, especially on processed or sugary foods after dinner. So this is probably the next big thing that I need to figure out on a consistent basis. But if you can avoid snacking, especially processed foods and sugary or caffeinated drinks and foods after dinner, that'll help you sleep a lot. You want to kind of have quite a decent window before consuming your last calories and going to sleep. All right. So then...

How do I go to sleep? Pretty simple. I get into bed, I read a book for a couple of pages, and that usually makes me pretty tired. And I'll usually do a little bit of breath work. I'll speak about that a bit later. And then I try to go to sleep. I go to sleep at between 9 and 9.30, because I need to get up at 5.30 if I'm going to get what I need to get done in terms of habits and behaviors in a time that actually allows me to get them all done in a day. So again, it's a conscious decision that...

Mike (11:50.158)
requires a bunch of sacrifice, but for me, this has changed my life, right, and continues to. So my alarm goes off at 5.30 because I need about an hour for my morning routine, which is really what today is largely about. And this is where I've just seen the huge impact for my mental health, my ability to focus, my performance in every way, and my general outlook on life, moving from quite pessimistic to quite optimistic. So what am I saying here? I'm saying that I am prepared to sacrifice.

staying up and scrolling, staying up and watching TV, staying up into the evening, which I actually enjoy doing. I have to sacrifice that if I want to get up at 5.30, but to me that is an easy sacrifice because if I don't do that, everything else begins to slip. The rest of my family is still asleep at this time. If you've got young kids, you'll appreciate this. So really what I mean is this is kind of like the only time of the day that I just get completely and utterly to myself, right? So it's 5.30, I'm up, what do I do?

The first thing I do is I walk over to the bathroom and I take some cold water and I splash it on my face. Pretty simple, but it wakes me up, kind of shifts things into gear a little bit. Then I drink a big glass of water just to rehydrate my body because I haven't had any liquids for the previous eight hours. So that's kind of an important thing. I just chug down a room temperature glass of water. Then I go straight into doing a 15 minute guided meditation. So there are a couple of channels that I quite like on YouTube.

Declutter the mind is one that I really like. In terms of meditation apps, there's some cool ones. Calm is really good. Head space is really good. Waking up is really good. There is so much evidence now around what meditation and mindfulness can do for our brains, our mood, our outlook on life, our performance and everything. I'm not even gonna try and sell it. I'm just gonna say that I am absolutely convinced that meditation is a critical and core piece of being a...

high performance and well-rounded human being. What I wanna say here though, from a practical perspective, is what I've noticed quite a lot is that people might hear me say, cool, there's a channel called Declutter the Mind, or I just listed a bunch of apps, Calm, Headspace, Waking Up, and they'll pick one of those. So let's say you pick Waking Up by Sam Harris, and they'll go and listen to a guided meditation on whatever by Sam Harris, and they won't like his voice, or they won't like what it's all about. And then they'll go, meditation is not for me.

Mike (14:19.362)
That is such a waste. It is so, it is such a waste if you do that. So what I would say is, if you find, if you listen to somebody like me and you go and try meditation and it doesn't resonate with you, don't give it up. Just look for another channel because they're very different. Tomorrow Leavitt's voice on the Calm app might appeal to some people, but really annoy other people. Sam Harris, same thing. Declutter the mind really works for me. You might not enjoy it. So don't not meditate.

rotate and have a look at all these different channels. YouTube has got a million, millions of free meditations. There's tons of apps. Look for the app or the voice or the person or the style that works for you. Cause you will find something. You will find something that works for you. And it is just such a gift to yourself. Cool. So splash water on my face, chug a big glass of water, get into a 15 minute guided meditation. What I will say is for me, it's not a linear benefit. In other words, a five minute meditation and a 10 minute meditation and a 15 minute meditation.

doesn't sort of go up incrementally. For me, it's exponential. The difference between a 15 meditation and a 10 minute meditation is massive. So it might not be the same for you, but that's why I do 15 minutes. I get many times the benefit from 15 minutes than I do from a 10 minute meditation. Cool, so that meditation is done. I'm now a little bit calmer. Maybe it's worth sort of mentioning here that, especially during this really, really difficult period in my life that I'm sort of coming out of the end of, most mornings I was waking up

struggling to actually sort of quote unquote, get out of bed. Just basically waking up with like a sense of dread for life to be blunt. Right. Not always a particular reason for that, but usually for me, my triggers are like financial catastrophization and it's got nothing to do with like the reality of the world. It's a very difficult thing to explain, but I would wake up in the morning feeling terrible, right. And I just developed quite a strong.

or conviction or belief that if I can get through this routine, I'm going to feel a lot better at the end. And it was remarkable how effective that was. So at this stage of the morning, I'm still feeling pretty crap to be blunt. So don't have this view of this dude who's waking up and, you know, life's amazing and this is all very easy. Like this is hard work. It's like get up, cold water on the face, chug a glass of water. Oh my God, I'm not happy about life. Sit down, do this meditation. Maybe I feel better. Maybe I don't. It's important to sort of trust

Mike (16:42.07)
the process that you're beginning to play with. The other thing I'll say about meditation is that for me at least, it's about building a resilience muscle. So you may or may not feel better when you sit down and do a meditation. Sometimes actually I feel worse after doing a meditation, but I know that discipline of coming back to the breath, coming back to the breath, coming back to the breath, coming back to the breath, every time my mind runs, I know that that's building this muscle of resilience and mindfulness. It's kind of like

as Tim Ferriss and Peter Atiyah say, meditation is not about sitting there in this absolute zen state with no thought. That's probably unattainable for most people. It's really more about you have a thought and then you see that thought and you bring it back to the breath. You come back to mindfulness. That's the quote unquote bicep curl of meditation is, if you're coming back 600 times in your meditation from your mind running to going, oh, my mind's running, let me come back to the breath. That is the work that you're doing.

That is what's building resilience. That is what's building mindfulness. That was a huge shift in my thinking of meditation when I figured that out. Okay, then I get into some breath work. What is breath work? I'm not gonna try and be an expert on this because I'm not, all I can tell you is my experience of this. There's a dude that you may or may not have heard of. His name is Wim Hof. He's this awesome Dutch guy. He's super famous now. I discovered him, I don't know, probably five years ago, I would guess, more or less now. And he offers some super practical

very, very beneficial breath work exercises. Simply put, the way that you do this is, or let me say the way that I do this is, I use his app, but you don't need to. And effectively what you're doing is you're breathing in, focusing on your breath going into your belly and then your chest, and then you're releasing through an exhale, but it's more like a release. So you're going, hh, hh.

Mike (18:37.038)
So you're breathing in as fully belly, chest, then I release it. I do that about 45 times. Then on the last exhale on that number 45, I take a deep breath in, belly, chest, I release the breath and I hold my breath. I stop breathing. It's kind of crazy. When I started doing this, I could hold my breath in that way for about 30 seconds. Now, frequently I hold my breath for more than four minutes. It's crazy.

And you're not forcing this. You're holding it until you feel like you need to take a deep breath in. When do you need to take a deep breath in? You take a full breath in and you hold your breath for another 15 seconds and then you release. I do this about four times. So I do about four cycles of that. There's a ton of evidence now, you can go and research this yourself, but my understanding of this is it is a great...

process for reducing inflammation in your body, which is how most diseases are caused. It increases cardiovascular health. It decreases the stress response. It decreases your cortisol levels, which I spoke about earlier. And it's just an incredible feeling, to be honest. Sometimes, I'm sure everyone's experience is different, but sometimes during these things, I just have the most incredible experiences of calm and peace. I cannot even explain it. It's actually mind blowing.

what can happen sometimes. I can't replicate those things. They happen when they happen, they don't when they don't. But by this stage of the morning, I'm starting to feel alive, I'm starting to feel awake. My body is starting to feel pretty good. You can lie down when you're doing this or you can sit up straight. Again, I am not an expert. You can go and check out Wim Hof stuff. There's a ton of evidence and there's an endless amount of stuff on the internet about this. So I've got up.

splash water on my face, I've chugged a glass of water, I've done a 15 minute meditation, I've done three to four rounds of Wim Hof breathing method. And at this stage, I'm starting to feel pretty alive and a bit better.

Mike (20:40.282)
Then I get down and I do 50 push-ups, right? Why do I do this? Again, I'm not a health expert or anything, but one, I just like to stay quite strong. Two, I'm 40 now. And if I understand this correctly, your muscles begin to effectively, I don't know if atrophies is the right word, but your muscle mass begins to decrease by default as you start getting into your 40s. So we need to maintain this, not because we necessarily just want to look good on the beach, but because...

We need to maintain muscle mass. It helps with bone density. I could be totally wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that there's a link between Alzheimer's and dementia, and this is a great thing to do. So I do a minimum of 50 pushups, perfect form, really focusing on my core, and it makes me feel, again, just a bit better. So that's a minimum of 50 pushups. I sometimes do a whole lot of other stuff, but that's sort of most people can build up to getting 50 pushups. To be clear, that's not 50 in one go.

If you're interested, this is really not an important detail, but I usually do 20 and then 15 and 15 Cool. So now I'm ready for what is probably the thing that has had the biggest impact on my Mental health and I know it's doing a ton for my physical health as well. I Now I'm in some shorts. That's all I'm wearing at this point It is pretty hot where I am at the moment, but that's not going to change when it gets into winter It's just gonna get harder, but I'm not gonna change that

And I'm super lucky in that I've managed to get a cold plunge pool at home. So it's like a little bath that is hooked up to basically like a cooler machine. And it keeps water very, very cold. Everything I'm about to say right now, you don't have to have a cold plunge pool for you can use a cold shower for this. So just don't stop listening. Now, if you don't have a cold plunge pool, if you have a shower in your house or a bath, you can do what I'm doing right now. It doesn't have to be as cold and as extreme as I'm talking about.

you will get massive benefits from a cold shower. So I'm standing in my shorts now, I'm in my living room, I walk outside, I go down to my little cold plunge pool, I unclip the hood and I get ready to get into a very cold plunge pool. Just a quick note, before I've done this, I've made a cup of really warm tea because after this I'm gonna wanna warm up and that tea that I have is...

Mike (23:01.506)
ginseng and I think it's called ginseng and matcha tea. It's like a tiny bit of caffeine. It's a really good thing that works for me in the morning. It's not like a kick, it's just a nice warm thing with a little bit of caffeine. And that's waiting for me inside for when I'm done with my cold exposure. So now I'm about to get into a cold plunge pool. I set it at the moment to about six degrees. That is super, super cold.

I'm sort of moving to get towards three degrees, but I need to understand what the actual benefits of that are. So a cold shower, depending on where you are in the world, I think in my shower, on a cold day, the coldest that shower would ever get would be about 15 to 17 degrees is what I understand. Currently, it's about 22 degrees. So this is really, really cold water. I take a deep breath in, I hold my breath, and I get into this cold water. I stay in the water for about two minutes. I'm still learning a lot about this.

What I've been told by somebody who's really a lot more knowledgeable than I am on this stuff is that it's less about the two minutes that you're staying in the water and more about how quickly you can get from that initial stress response of going, Oh, my God, this is so cold to a place of calm. So I get in this cold water and I focus very deeply on my breathing. I focus on short in-breaths, long out-breaths, short in-breaths, long out-breaths. And what I'm looking for here is I'm trying to go from super stress response, super freaked out.

to actually relaxing into this incredibly uncomfortable situation. Now, there's a lot behind this and I can only speak for me here, although there's a ton that you can go and research and look behind this. But what am I actually doing here, right? It's not about just getting into cold water. It's about consciously choosing to do difficult and uncomfortable things. It's about consciously making that effort to go...

this is going to be like incredibly uncomfortable, but I'm going to do it anyway. And on top of doing it, I'm going to relax into it. And then you do it and you realize that it's doable and you realize that it's doable again and you come back and you do it the same morning.

Mike (25:08.086)
These are my views, what I'm about to say now, but I think there's a ton of evidence that actually supports this as well. You're building an enormous amount of resilience when you are choosing to put yourself into uncomfortable situations. When you're choosing to expose yourself to stress that isn't so intense that it's damaging, but it's enough to make you want to stop. And you're building this resilience so that when life throws difficult things at you during your day,

you begin to change your response to those difficult things. You begin to realize that you're actually in control and you're actually, you can choose how you respond to these things. So when you get to work later on in the day and something comes at you, you can stop and actually go, hold on, I can choose how I respond in this situation. I can let the world impact me and have absolutely no kind of control of how I feel and respond to this, or I can actually choose how I respond to this. It's an incredible thing that happens.

My understanding of this as well, which could be wrong, is that from a chemical, like a brain chemistry perspective and like a hormone release perspective, it literally is different when you are choosing to stress yourself versus when it is quote unquote thrust upon you. So when you pushed into a very cold body of water and you're resisting it and you're fighting, you're like, oh my God, how can you push me into this cold body of water? There's a whole lot of bad stuff that's happening. It's horrible. It's stressful. You're releasing a ton of adrenaline and cortisol and da da.

When you're choosing to do it, my understanding is that it's actually a whole different set of hormones and chemicals and physical and brain responses that actually happen where you come out of that cold water and you actually have a huge boost in focus, in your mood, in I think the chemicals. In fact, I'm not even going to try and repeat them here because I'm probably going to embarrass myself. But your happy hormones are more your focus hormones are more and they're sustained throughout the day. So this has been a

massive impact for me. I've been doing it, I've been in cold showers for years. Leveling it up to cold water immersion is just another level. But again, I just want to repeat, if you don't have access to a cold plunge pool, it's totally, totally fine. Just use a cold shower. What I can share from a cold shower perspective is the difference and the impact is so big between starting with a cold shower and ending with cold. Like that's a good way to start this and get into it.

Mike (27:26.466)
but stepping into a cold shower is so much more difficult and therefore for me, it was so much more impactful. Okay, so now I've gotten through this cold plunge. I've literally been in there for two minutes. I get out and there's apparently quite a lot of research that shows that you wanna go through a process, I think it's called thermogenesis, where you don't just run and jump into a warm shower, you actually allow your body to get warm again naturally. And that's why I've made this tea, because now I sip in some warm tea.

dry myself off after a few minutes. I put on a bunch of layers of clothing. I move a little bit so I do some, you know, sort of light movement and I allow my body to warm up. At this stage, I've made some overnight oats the night before. So like, you know, oats with chia seeds and a bunch of good stuff in there and they've soaked overnight in some milk. In my case, I don't have a lot of dairy so it's non-dairy milk. So whatever, oat milk, almond milk, whatever. It's soaked overnight and I begin to slowly eat this.

very whole food, real food breakfast. There's nothing processed in there. It's all natural whole food. It's not very expensive either. I then take a multivitamin and I also supplement with omegas. These things have helped me a lot. And for a while now, I've been using a mushroom supplement called Lion's Mane mushroom, which seems to actually have quite a big impact on my focus, my ability to focus, which again, there's a lot of emerging evidence now on.

certain mushrooms which can help with these things. So in my case, I take lion's mane. I really struggle to focus. So anything natural that can help me, I'm always willing to experiment with, but you really wanna do your own research on this. Cool. So at this point I've warmed up and I'm kind of ready to go and have a shower. I go and have a shower, not very interesting there, and I get ready and I get dressed. The last part of my morning routine is journaling, but...

I want to say something about journaling. I've tried different forms of journaling for pretty much my whole adult life. And I've, I've never really got benefit from it. It's never really worked for me. So sitting down and going three things I'm grateful for or three things I'm going to do today or whatever, like it's just, I don't know, it's never worked for me. It's always felt like work. I've never really got benefit from it. I felt like I was just ticking a box and I, it's just never stuck, even though I've tried it for many years, for a long time. Then I came across something called morning pages.

Mike (29:51.158)
The morning pages technique is, I think it was introduced by somebody called, I think her name's Julia Cameron from a book called The Artist's Way that Tim Ferriss made pretty famous. And it's been incredibly effective for me. It really has. I've been doing it for about two months every single day. And I can really notice a difference. So how does morning pages work? It's really, really simple, really simple, but it, there are a couple of kind of quote unquote rules, right? So basically what you're doing is.

You might notice that up until this point, I haven't looked at a screen or a phone. Right? So my phone is off still at this point in the morning. I have not looked at a screen. I have not looked at a phone. I have not let the world in. And this is really important. Right? This is my time before the world gets in. It's just about me and my self care. And as I always say, self care has got nothing to do with me. It's got to do with the people around me that rely on me, that depend on me, that I impact.

Right, so this is the investment in myself, sure, but it's actually the investment in the people that are depending and relying on me. So at this point, I have not let the world in. I haven't looked at any social media. I haven't looked at emails. I haven't looked at my bank account. I haven't looked at stock prices, crypto prices, whatever it is that you're into that is gonna start your body and your mind just going off on these crazy spirals, right? And I definitely don't do that before I do my morning pages journaling. So how do I do morning pages journaling? Before I answer, you can go and Google this. You'll find it.

of stuff but this is how I do it. I aim to write three pages okay so my journal is a little a5 book it's three pages. No one should ever read this journal not because you're going to write deep dark things maybe you will maybe you won't but you want to give yourself permission to just write whatever the hell comes into your mind and I really mean whatever so some days it's going to be

ridiculous and juvenile and petty. Some days you're gonna be a victim. Some days you're gonna be pissed off. Some days you're gonna be grateful. Some days you're gonna be a complete asshole and unreasonable and you need to give yourself permission to just write with the knowledge that nobody is ever gonna read it. That's the one thing. The second thing is you just write whatever comes into your head. If you don't know what to write, then you write down, I don't know what to write.

Mike (32:08.722)
If you can't think of anything and you don't know what to say, write down, I can't think of anything and I don't know what to say. And I promise you something will come and you will start writing. You just write a stream of consciousness. So like legit, this is how I do it. I'll sit there and I go, I am recording a podcast. I'm thinking about this. What am I going to have for lunch today? I've got to get my daughter to school today. Ooh, I've got to go and do that thing. Literally it's that kind of stream of consciousness. But what happens is you're getting this. You're getting this noise.

that's in your head, you're getting it out of your head and you're putting it down onto a piece of paper. Two things happen for me. One, generally by the end of this, I'm actually feeling a lot more excited about the day, open-minded, optimistic, curious. There's a shift in my mental state at this sense. Sometimes I have pretty profound insights, sometimes I have no insights at all and it's just this ridiculous brain vomit of nothing. And that's totally fine. You're right.

Three pages, if you wanna keep going, you keep going, but three pages is enough, and then you close it. You'll notice that I haven't given you structure there. I haven't said you write three things you're grateful for, three things you're gonna do. You don't do that. You just write whatever comes across your mind with absolutely no judgment and absolutely no fear that anyone is gonna read it. That's all you do. It is profoundly impactful for a brain like mine. I really cannot stress enough what a...

what an impact this has made for me. So I do this every single day. It may be that you simply just cannot do this in the morning. And if that's the case, figure out in your day where you can do it. It is much more impactful if you do your morning pages journaling before you've looked at any screens. But if the only time you're gonna do this is at lunchtime or in the evening or before you go to bed, that is infinitely better than not doing it at all. So...

Yeah, I just, I can't stress how great this has been for me. I don't always have enough time to get it done in that first morning routine. So if I don't do it there, I'll generally have it, I'll generally do it about an hour later when I get into the office or when I'm at a client site, busy doing my prep work, but I never miss it. And I think I'm gonna continue this for the rest of my life, I really do. And again, I just wanna repeat, I am not someone that has got a lot of value from journaling in the past. This is just a different level altogether of value. Cool.

Mike (34:34.91)
So that's pretty much the morning routine that has made a profound impact on my state, my productivity, my impact in the work that I do, how I am as a dad, as a husband, as a friend. It's really been pretty transformative for me. And I need to stress that last part though, like for me, it might not be for you, but

There is a lot of stuff that you can go and look at and research with all of those things that I've spoken about. Again, I'm not an expert. I'm not a medical professional. I'm not a therapist. I'm not an expert on any of these things. I've just been doing and trying these things for a long, long time, and I know what works for me, and I know it doesn't.

Then we might want to talk about sort of throughout the day. So I just want to talk about a few things that I do throughout the day that really make a big impact and they're very, very small, low effort things. So the work that I do is pretty intense. So, you know, I work with leadership teams and founders and I'm often facilitating and coaching, um, either one-on-one, but, but more often I'm facilitating and coaching a group of leaders, like a leadership team and it's very intense work. I love it.

but it requires a huge amount of attention. I give everything that I've got in those sessions. Sometimes there's a ton of conflict, sometimes there isn't, but the work is never easy, right? It's always difficult, valuable, but difficult. Especially if I'm doing a full day session. So if I'm doing a deep dive into the company's vision or facilitating a strategy session or doing a quarterly planning session, these are like nine to five, they're full days where I'm guiding a group of people through intense work. I often...

need to kind of reset or regroup or reenergize, or I'm too overexcited and I need to bring myself down and regulate myself, or I'm really nervous and I need to sort of build up my confidence. So there's a couple of things that I do that really help me and I'm hoping that at least one of these will help you. And you can literally just like, if you're about to go into a difficult meeting or even if you're in a difficult meeting or if you're in a difficult piece of work or if you're stuck or if you're anxious or if you're whatever, you can literally run to the bathroom, close the cubicle door.

Mike (36:39.422)
and do these things. They really do help and you only need a few minutes at least I do. So there are three types of breathing, right? The first one, I was first introduced to by Andrew Huberman, which is called the physiological sigh. So what this is, very simply you take two sharp in-breaths through your nose. So you go, and a long sigh. So you go. So it's short in-breaths and a long out-breath. I do this for about two minutes.

So however many cycles I get in about two minutes and that really lowers my heart rate, brings my anxiety down, just centers me. So I literally just sit there for two to three minutes and I just go.

Mike (37:23.862)
You can Google physiological sigh, and you can go and look at Dr. Andrew Huberman's work on this. He's obviously done all the science that, looked at all the science that backs this up. The second type of breathing is called box breathing, which sometimes I find more effective, sometimes I find less effective, but you can also try this technique. Everyone's gonna have different preferences. So this is called box breathing because you breathe in through your nose for four beats, you hold your breath for four beats, you breathe out through your mouth for four beats.

and you hold your breath for four beats. So you go in, two, three, four, hold, two, three, four, out, two, three, four, and that's a cycle and you repeat that. Same thing, I'll do that for two to three minutes and it really just regulates me, brings my heart rate down, brings me centered again, allows me to think and focus again, increases my energy, interestingly.

and I go back into doing what I'm gonna do. You don't need half an hour for this. You literally need two to three minutes, at least I need two or three minutes. The last one I'll introduce is something that I often do at the end of the day to downregulate and to just sort of come back down to earth because I'm quite a frenetic, frantic, highly strong person. It's called the four, seven, eight technique. So if we think about what we've been talking about with the physiological sigh, which is two sharp breaths in and then a long sigh out,

Box breathing, which is four beats in, hold for four, four beats out, hold for four and repeat. This is four, seven, eight. So it's in through the nose for four beats, hold for seven beats and exhale through the mouth for eight beats. Same thing, you just repeat that for two to three minutes and it really helps me just come back down again. All of those might be useful to you. One of them only might be useful to you, but I'd be very surprised if...

everybody doesn't benefit from at least one of those things. Again, you can go and Google the science behind these if you need to. They certainly are not things that I have made up. These are things that I've adopted from far smarter, more experienced people than myself. Then we sort of get to the end of the day, and I wanna share some things that I do at the end of the day. So whether you work from home, or whether you work in an office, this doesn't really matter. I used to do this when I was working 100% from home. And now that I've chosen to work at a co-working space, it doesn't matter, this is still very applicable.

Mike (39:47.126)
What I will quickly just say here is...

Mike (39:53.358)
Counter-intuitively for me, I've opted to work at a co-working space, which has actually made a massive, massive impact to my productivity and my headspace in a positive way. I love my house. I have an awesome office at my house, but there was a massive rub for some reason for me. I just couldn't focus. Basically, when I was home and doing work, I felt bad that I wasn't helping my wife with a little guy or doing housework or whatever.

And I just needed to shift and I ran an experiment of saying, I'm going to go for a week and work in another office and see how I feel. And it's absolutely changed my world. So that's not going to be for everyone, but for me getting out of a house and having my home as my home and my workspace as my workspace has made a massive impact for me. Right. So this is, I'm going to talk about this from my perspective, sort of coming home physically, but this is absolutely applicable. If you work from home and you have a home office, you just substitute the.

external office for your home office in this example. So I work pretty intense days. Most days I have at least one session with a client, which as I said is usually a group of leaders. These are difficult people to coach, difficult people to facilitate. It's very intense, very valuable, very high impact and very rewarding, but it's very intense. So generally, I'm quite revved up and highly strung and sort of let's call it intense by the time I get home.

So then I think this comes from near Eyal. I think this is where I first read this. He wrote a book called Hooked and then another book called Indestructible. I think this is where I first read it, but I'm not sure, it doesn't really matter. Very, very simple practice. I, before I come into the house, so I literally get into my car and I'll usually park five minutes away from my house, I'll just stop and I'll do a five to 10 minute meditation. It doesn't have to be a meditation. It can just be some breath work.

But the idea here is quite simple, is it's transitioning from work mic to dad, husband, home mic. Now these things are integrated. I won't go down this too much. I don't think there's actually a clear separation between these things at all. One serves the one and then vice versa, it serves the other. But I just find that when I actually intentionally take five to ten minutes as a buffer, down-regulate...

Mike (42:14.518)
do some of those breath work exercises that I've told you, or do a meditation, I'm able to step back into my home a lot more present, and I'm able to show up for my eight year old daughter, or my two year old son, and my wife, just a lot better than I normally would, right? My kids are really intense, they require a lot of attention, they're very challenging, they push a lot of buttons. I just say that about my kids because, you know, I have no idea how everyone else's kids are, behind closed doors, but I really have to be very present.

if I'm gonna be the best dad and the best husband that I can be. So I take that time, I do a meditation using one of those things I told you about, or I just do some breath work. And then I sort of say, okay, now I need to be present as a dad and as a husband. Again, that's made a huge impact for me and then I can really focus on my kids. So we then have dinner very early, which is all part of this whole thing. We have dinner at 5.30 and then.

I take the kids and I give my wife a break because she's been with the kids all day. I think this is really important to say, cool, you take an hour and go into a workout or a walk or whatever it is that you need to do. And at the moment, what I'm doing, what this looks like is I take my kids to the bike jump track. There's a really cool little jump track with big jumps and rides near our house. And my kids are really into riding, which is awesome because it's my passion. And I take them to the jump track watching my two year old.

consistently trying to kill himself on big jumps that he can't ride on and my eight year old actually conquering her fears day to day. So it's really, really awesome. It might not be a jump track. It might just be a walk around the block. It might be a ride up to one of the fields. It doesn't matter. Like the point is just connection with my kids as present as I can possibly be, which I really struggle with. And this really helps with a lot of the chemicals in my brain and my body as well. There's a lot of stuff going on there. Right. I wanna end off by sort of just saying that all of this

is sitting around this concept that I really have is that like, you are the asset, not your business. You are the thing that's going to drive success. You are the thing that's going to live in this world and be an excellent leader or manager or strategist or what have you. And if you're not taking care of the asset, which is you, you're just not going to be as good as you could be in any sphere of your life. So these things are not separate. Like being a great business operator or being a great leader is not separate from the self-care stuff. It should be and, not all.

Mike (44:35.306)
And again, my observation is just so strong that if you don't have your own shit together, you're just not going to be the most effective, full in the blank, whatever that means to you, that they're very interrelated stuff. And these are practical things that have helped me to show up as someone that can actually add significant value into businesses and into one-on-one coaching sessions and into leadership teams and into the world at large, but not at the cost of myself doing it in such a way that is

building myself at the same time. Because I think a lot of people are high performing in the world, but it comes at this enormous cost of themselves because they're just ignoring all of the fundamentals. And then we get sick or we get depressed or we get extremely unhealthy. And sure we've made a financial success, maybe or maybe not, but is it really actually truly worth it and have you actually achieved that feeling that you have set out to achieve by being quote unquote successful?

There's a whole lot more that I could speak about here. A lot of the work that I've done is around belief, self beliefs, overcoming these beliefs and very practical techniques that we can use to begin to sort of realize that we should not really believe our own thoughts, especially the negative ones and how to overcome those. But maybe I'll do a separate episode on that in the future.

So yeah, that's kind of it for today. You might be thinking, well, Mike, like what has this got to do with business? This has got everything to do with business. Yes, I am a business coach that works with leadership teams and founders. As I keep saying, the more I work with founders and have been a business person for a long time, the more I see that these things have to be integrated. They are not separate, right? And understanding business deeply and the self-care and personal biohacking habits, all the stuff is, I think it's a critical combination if we're gonna help.

leaders like yourselves be better in everything that you do in your world. So I really hope this was useful and I'll be back soon with another episode.