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The next of the methods for advanced morning mastery is take a bath. You're going to say, "Robin, what are you talking about?" Well, I love the Romans. I love all things about Rome. And when I really studied about the Roman warriors and the Roman emperors, you know what I found? They loved taking baths. And it wasn't just a quick bath; they would take one-hour-long baths. And I started to practice this in my own life. And I find if I'm spent, and if I'm feeling depleted, or even if I just want to feel inspired, I will take a bath. And the best time to take a bath is in the morning and in the evening.
And so you might do your meditation, and then you might do your exercise, and then you'll do your growth period by reading and listening to audiobooks. You know what I encourage you to do after that? Get a nice hot bath going. Get a bag of Epsom salt. Epsom salts have magnesium in them. And Epsom salts are extraordinary for pulling out the toxins that build, and the lactic acid that builds up after exercise and stress and just living life. And you pour the Epsom salt into the hot bath. And then the key is, give yourself at least 20 minutes. So this method is called the 20-minute Epsom salt bath. And you might light a candle to give it even more of a great vibe. You might listen to some great country music or some great classical music. Just imagine doing this as part of your morning routine. And you just lay there, and you let your body renew, and your spirit renew. And you give yourself some time for self-care.
No matter who you are, self-care is the gateway into self-love. And self-love is an absolutely essential elite performance methodology. Self-love is one of the great doorways into strong productivity. As you love yourself more, you're going to honor your primal genius. As you love yourself more, you're going to bring your magic to the world. As you love yourself more, you're going to believe in your vision even more. As you love yourself more, you're not going to care about the cat calls of chattering critics because you love yourself, you believe in yourself, you have self-faith. So a 20-minute Epsom salt bath is extraordinary, extraordinarily powerful to renew your heart set. So you release any, any anger or sadness or these toxic emotions. It's wonderful for your mindset and your positivity. It's a great way to start your morning. It's, of course, it's great for your health set. You release all the toxins, you allow regeneration of your muscles. And of course, it's great for your soul set. You're giving yourself some time to just reflect. You might even want to read in, in the bathtub as well. One of my clients loves to use that morning Epsom salt bath to read. Might be reading about a, a great hero. It might be psychology, spirituality, a great business biography, a productivity book. I don't know. But an Epsom salt bath for 20 minutes as part of your morning routine is absolutely powerful.
The next method is this: it's the strategic use of coffee. I call it strategic coffee consumption. Every morning, here's what the research says. The research says two cups of coffee every morning is tremendously healthy. Did you know coffee is one of the greatest antioxidants of all time? Coffee is a superfood. Coffee in moderation is actually a brilliant cognitive enhancer. So drink coffee as part of your morning routine. If you really want to get to mastery, when I'm working on a new book or preparing for a new digital course, or maybe it's preparing for a live event or a keynote for a Fortune 50 company, what I do is as I'm preparing, I'll be drinking some coffee. And I just find it electrifies my focus. It's great for my creativity. It just gives me more energy. I absolutely love it.
Next method. Another one of the things that I don't share very often, but it's central to my productivity and to the way I do things. And I, I invite my top clients, the, the billionaires that I mentor and the industry titans that I advise, I encourage them. And this is not medical advice, but I encourage them to explore fasting. Did you know that fasting significantly increases BDNF? I, I was wondering why when I fast, would I have all this energy? Why when I fast, would I just drop into flow state? You know, flow state, it's transient hypofrontality. You can read about it in The 5 AM Club. But essentially, your neocortex, that's the seat of thinking and worrying and rumination, that stops. And you actually go to a deeper place and access flow state where hours go by in minutes. And as much as possible in your workday, you want to institutionalize flow state. So you're not checking time, you're not even in the real world, you're in that secret advanced universe of the greatest creatives and the greatest productives and the movement makers and the world changers. Flow state is where it's at, my friend. Flow state is what you want to institutionalize.
And so what I find is, I was finding that when I'd fast, I would just drop into flow state. And as I dug deep into the scientific research, I realized when you fast, you actually, your brain actually releases more brain-derived neurotrophic factor. And so of course, you'll be more creative, you'll be more focused, and you'll get into flow state. Did you know that fasting also puts you, call it fasting or caloric restriction, puts you into what's called autophagy? Let's say that together: autophagy. Something great to say at your next mastermind or your next nature walk with your best friend. Autophagy. Autophagy has been shown to reduce inflammation, to extend a lifespan, to increase your immune system, and to release all these amazing chemicals within your body. So when you fast, you will not only be more creative, when you fast, you'll not only be more productive, when you fast, you'll not only have more energy, when you fast, you will actually reduce inflammation, which is what causes disease, and you will extend your lifespan.
I don't want to go too deep in each of these methods, but I want to overwhelm you with value in this advanced course. So I'll simply say on fasting, it is one of the greatest things you could possibly do to increase your creativity and your productivity. What I do is, my last meal is generally around 9 o'clock in the evening. Because one of the keys to deep sleep is if you, if you eat late, your digestive system will be working all night. It'll consume a lot of energy. You won't be able to get up early. So I stop eating. My final meal is at 9 o'clock. Then I'll get up early in the morning. I'll have my two cups of coffee. And then through the day, I will not eat if I'm in my high excellent cycle. Let's say working on a book, and I'm not on vacation. This is my sort of work routine. But what I will do is, I will drink my two cups of coffee in the morning. And then through the day, I love fresh mint tea with fresh ginger. So from the grocery store, you pick up organic mint. You put it in your strainer or in your tea, whatever it is, you know, your teapot. You put in the water. And then you just chop some fresh organic ginger. And you put that into the cup. You let it simmer or steep for about five minutes. And I drink that through the day. And I find I'm not hungry. You know, for the first few weeks, you'll feel hungry, maybe have a headache. But now I've installed it. And then I'll break my fast between two o'clock and sometimes I'll go as long as six o'clock. So it's a, I don't know, it's a 16-hour to 20-hour fast. And I'll do that four to five times a week when I'm in a high excellent cycle, which might be three months working on some key chapters of a book, we're doing a lot of speaking tours. And then what I'll, when I'm in my deep recovery cycle, which could be a month or a few weeks, or it could be taking a whole summer off, I don't do this. It's not as, it's not as intense as this. But fasting is incredibly powerful.
As I record this program for you, I'm working on my new book. And I've been working on it for 11 months straight, giving my heart and soul to this book. Because I believe when you do any work, you have a window of opportunity. You can make it mastery, or you can make it mediocrity. And you know what you put out in the world, you have to live with the rest of your life. And there's a window of opportunity to do your finest work. And so I'm doing my very best to make this new book the best piece of work I've ever done. Because my name's on it, I want to serve you, and and my readers deserve the absolute best. That's just my philosophy. And I've been fasting has been one of my secret weapons. Because it allows me to get up in the morning, and I just lock the doors. No one can reach me when I'm in my work lab. And I fast, and I drink this tea, and I just get down to business. And the, and I don't even use a watch anymore. Picasso said, when I became, Picasso said this, when I became an artist, I sold my watch. And I've realized at this advanced age of mine that when I was looking at a clock, even it would keep me from being in flow state. So I'm in fasted state, I'm not looking at a watch, not looking at a clock, I'm drinking this tea. And all of a sudden, five hours goes by in what feels like a minute. And I do what I hope is my best work. So that's a little bit about fasting.
What else can I share with you in terms of advanced morning methods that I usually never share? Auto suggestion. A great way to build discipline is restraint. At my live events, people ask me, "Robin, how do I build self-discipline?" Well, you restrain yourself and you practice impulse control by the doing of difficult things. Even something as simple as getting up early consistently builds willpower because you reorder your self-identity. You say, "Oh, I'm the kind of person who can get up at 4 AM. I'm the kind of person who rises at 5 AM." Which reorders your self-identity. And as you know, your income, your impact, and your performance are always aligned with your self-identity. That's where the real work needs to be done. Sadly, most of the majority has a very poor self-identity and they're unconscious and have very little self-awareness about that because they haven't done any metacognition work, which is thinking about your thinking, strategizing about your strategy, and reflecting on your reflections. But the more self-awareness and and personal mastery work you can do first thing in the morning, the more you're going to realize where your self-identity is sabotaging you. Incredibly important point. You can live at world class, you can have financial freedom, you can achieve domain dominance, you can have a loving family life and a deeply spectacular spiritual life. But often, we are our own worst enemy. And because we don't have any self-awareness, we blame it on our past, we blame it on the economy, we blame it on our significant other, we blame it on our boss, we blame it on our customers or the disruption in our industry. So by auto suggestion, the use of words and restraining ourselves from using victim speak, restraining ourselves from saying, "I'm tired," or "I hate this," or "I don't like this," or "A poor me" all day long, by restraining ourselves and using the words not of victims, but of leadership and heroism, we will be reprogramming our self-identity.
So auto suggestion is something I use. As a matter of fact, I want to share some, some of the auto suggestion and mantras that I personally use. I rarely do this, but I want to do this for you to give you even more value. So the first auto suggestion, or you can call it a mantra. Mantra is actually derived from the Sanskrit word "man," which means mind, and "thra," which means freedom. Mantra: free your mind. So to practice auto suggestion or mantra, here are some ones you can use. First one: it's derived from the French physician's old mantra. He used this with his clients or his patients, and he had incredible results. And it was, "Every day and in every way, I'm feeling better and better." That's all it was. "Every day and in every way, I'm feeling better and better." You can use that while you're walking, while you're grocery shopping, while you're doing your daily errands. "Every day and in every way, I'm getting better and better, stronger and stronger." I have actually hacked that with all due respect to Émile Coué and I've made it into, "Every day and in every way, I'm getting better and better, stronger and stronger, more prosperous, wise, and loving." Imagine repeating that a hundred times every day, restraining yourself from victim speak and installing the method of leader talk. "Every day and in every way, I'm getting better and better, stronger and stronger, more prosperous, wise, and loving." And then you just memorize it, and it becomes your auto suggestion. And people are always asking, "How do I rewire my self-esteem? How do I rewire my self-identity so I start making more money, having better performance, having greater impact to the world at large?" One of the great ways is auto suggestion. I'm going to, if you look at the link below the resource section, I'm actually going to have these transcribed so you can print them out and, you know, think about them.
The second one: "This day is a glorious day that I will live absolutely fully, radiating positivity, maximizing my productivity, and savoring life's beauty." Again, I'll print it. You can print it out. It'll be in the resource link below. But "This day is a glorious day that I will live absolutely fully, radiating positivity, maximizing my productivity, and savoring life's beauty." This is how you build optimism too. It's how you build positivity, which is so incredibly important for exponential productivity. If you're not inspired, you don't have great energy, you're not going to be able to build productivity around your mighty mission. So positivity is so important. I would also say, as you do your auto suggestion, bring lots of energy to it. Bring that heart-set energy to the intellectualization of the words. Your energy, your emotions are going to bring this auto suggestion to life and allow you to restructure your self-identity.
Finally, another mantra: "I am living this blessing of a day with a fully focused mind, a wide open heart, an increasingly fit body, and noble spirit, making my magic, materializing my dreams, and making the world a brighter place." I know that sounds a little long, but imagine even just journaling that every morning once or twice. It'll give you a morning focus and a day focus, which will cascade into a great weekly focus. So those are some specific tactical mantras for you to practice auto suggestion.
Let me give you a few final methods for morning mastery after auto suggestion and all the other ones I've shared with you. The no news device rule from four o'clock to eight o'clock. Or 5 AM. You're probably a member of The 5 AM Club, bravo, by the way. But from 5 AM to 8 AM, no news. The job of the news is to terrify you. The job of the news is not to report what's best in the world. It's to show you what's wrong. So you go into fear, activate the fear hormone of cortisol, and then you become addicted to the news because you think the world is falling apart. As a matter of fact, research has been done. People who consume the news daily actually see the world less clearly than those who don't consume the news because all of their reading and studying and consuming the news has actually given them a negativity bias. It's activated the negativity bias of the brain. You know about that? The brain has a negativity bias. It served us well when we were prehistoric people. We would scan, the brain has this mechanism to scan the environment to neglect what's positive, but to find and spot threat: the sabretooth tiger, the warring tribe, the predator. Well, now here we are in the modern culture, and our brains scan the environment not for the blessings, not for the gratitude, but for the threat. And the news taps into that negativity bias, which creates that neurochemistry of pessimism, you know, cortisol and all of these neurotransmitters that bring you down, versus dopamine, the inspirational neurotransmitter, and norepinephrine, which gives you focus, serotonin, which gives you happiness. Depressed people have lower serotonin.
So this rule is: no news until 8 o'clock. I'd actually just say until noon. And no digital devices until 8 o'clock. So you have some time for yourself to build that inner hero, to think about your goal, to think about your plans, to work on your four interior empires before you go out in the world. As a matter of fact, what I do is, I look at the news one day a week. It's usually Saturday. And I'll read the Financial Times. And that's it. The rest of the week, I don't want to. I don't want to. I want to be in that VIP bubble of total focus. I don't want any negativity. I need inspiration to do my creativity, my productivity. I want to live in a distinct orbit for most of the world. I want to create my own reality. You say, "Robin, that's not very practical." Who wants to be practical? You're a visionary. You're an empire maker. You're a world changer. You're someone who wants to do amazing things for your family, yourself, and change the world. I think you can be in the world, or you can change the world. You can't do both. So remember that. Stay away from the news and stay away from digital devices at least until 8 o'clock so you can stay in flow state. As a matter of fact, I think your productivity will upgrade exponentially if, let's say, five times a week, you do not check your devices until noon. And you literally block yourself away in your workspace, your lab, and you do real work versus fake work.
And then the final thing I'd say is prayer. Prayer is so helpful to me. It's not about religion per se, unless you're a religious person, which I'll honor. But if you're a secular person, I honor that as well. And you can do scientific prayer. But prayer is so powerful. Prayer sets intentions. You can pray for more honor. You can pray to be more of service. You can pray to turn adversity into possibility. If you're going through a tough time, you can pray for more energy. You can pray for better health. You can pray for greater prosperity. You can pray for healthy, healthy family. You can pray for your parents. You can pray for your team. You can pray for the benefit and the upgrading of your clients that you are blessed to serve. Prayer is powerful.
And related to that, please spend some time every morning planning. Planning. One of my clients had the best year he'd ever had. I said, "What did you do?" He said, "Every morning, I set a few goals. I did them every day." So simple. He planned each day with intimate clarity. Increased his income by a factor of three. Increased his impact. I call them the twin currencies: income and impact. Just by some morning planning.
Okay, that was hopefully world-class information. One of my clients in IconX, that's one of my top mastermind groups, said, "Robin, when we are with you for two days in Rome or Barcelona or South Africa, you fire hose us with premium content." And that's what I want to do for you in this course here. So you just love the material and embrace it and create these amazing changes with this world-class week system. So you live this beautiful life along with being the most productive person you know, the most elite performing person you know, and being the kindest, most, let me just say, aware, caring, creative, as well as a productive person in your neighborhood, or maybe in your community, or maybe in your country. That would be great. Okay, let's get to the next module.