Transcription
In this lesson, I'm going to share with you the secret on how to jump-start your brain every single morning so you win that day. Really, what we're talking about is the power of habit.
So, how do you jump-start your brain every single morning? Well, I'm going to share with you some of my favorite things to do every morning to jump-start my brain.
Now, when I go through this, this is my personal routine because I believe in order to win the day, you have to win that first hour of the day. Does that make sense? In order to win the day, you got to win that first hour or two so you get some positive momentum.
When we're talking about this, often people wake up and they don't have a clear process. I believe, first, you create your habits, and then your habits create you. Write that down: first you create your habits, and then your habits create you.
First, you create your routines and the things that you do, and then those things create you back. You create your habits of working out, you create your habits of studying, you create your habits of meditation—whatever your habits are, you do them, and then they become you.
Research suggests that about 40 percent—minimum 40 percent—of your day is habitual. Forty percent of your behaviors are things that you do without even thinking about it. They are like these invisible scripts. But where do they come from? Where did your habits come from?
I'm here to say that the things that you want most, the treasures you want most, are hidden in your daily routine. The treasures you want most in life—the love, the relationships, the health, the great fitness, the great grades—anything you want to be able to create is found in your daily routine and who you're being in that day.
So, let's go through this. I'm going to give you a handful of things I do every morning. Now note, you do not need to do every single one of these things. These are things that I do. I'll share with you why I do them, and ultimately, try them, and then you can trust your nature, see what's working for you, and go forward with the things that resonate with you.
You don't have to do everything, but you want to do some of them. All right? Because some days you won't have time. You're traveling, you have an early morning test or exam, you need to get a good night's sleep—maybe you miss some of the things in the morning. That's fine. Be kind to yourself.
Right now, though, I'm going to give you some of these things. Write them down and then say, "Okay, I'm going to try these one, two, or three extra things in the morning." All right? It's not meant to take time; it's meant to save you time and make time in productivity and performance.
So, let's say I wake up in the morning. The first thing I do is I remember my dreams. You’re like, "Jim, what does that mean?" Well, this is what the research says: you probably spend about 20 years of your life sleeping and about three to five years of your life dreaming.
When you are reading and studying all day, your brain doesn't shut off at night. If anything, it's more active at night. What are you doing? You're consolidating short- to long-term memory, but you're also coming up with great ideas and new learnings. Your brain is still learning at night through the process of dreaming.
Did you know Mary Shelley came up with Frankenstein in her dream? Paul McCartney came up with the song "Yesterday" in his dream. A chemist came up with the framework for the periodic table—in his dream. Elias Howe, the inventor, came up with a sewing machine in his dream. Jack Nicklaus, the golfer, was in a slump and didn't know what to do. In his dream, he visualized changing his grip, and he woke up the next morning with the solution. He started shooting in the 60s.
Your brain is incredible. Your dreams are a tool to help you learn, but most people don't remember their dreams. So, I go through a process—six steps—on how to remember my dreams.
The next thing I do from there is I make my bed. You’re like, "Jim, what does that have to do with anything? Why do you have to make your bed? Why is that good for your brain?"
Here's the thing: write this down—how you do anything is how you do everything. How you do anything is how you do everything. If you want an excellent day, you want to start with excellence.
There's a reason why in the military they make their bed a very certain way—certain angles, certain inches, with precision. Because you do something with excellence, and then you're more likely to take that excellence into your life.
When we're talking about habits, excellence is a habit. So, you make your bed. And remember, I talk about the power of a clean environment. A clean environment is good for your brain. How good does it feel coming back at the end of your day, going back to success? You come full circle back to success. Make your bed for a better brain.
Another thing I do is I hydrate. We talked about this during your brain breaks. You could lose up to a pound of water in your sleep through respiration and perspiration. Your brain thrives on hydration; it's the number one brain nutrient. Get hydration right—a tall glass of water.
That's also where I've taken my nutrients, my supplements, maybe my probiotics. By the way, your gut is your second brain—just a little thought there. It has the highest concentration of nerves.
So, once you have that, I brush my teeth. You’re like, "Yes, Jim, obviously everyone brushes their teeth." Remember when I say "remember," I talk about toothpaste. It reminds you of the elements—all of that is done purposely to help trigger all the remembrance in your life.
But I brush my teeth with my opposite hand. Brushing your teeth with the opposite hand is good for your brain. You have something called cross laterals: one part of your brain controls the opposite side of your body. God forbid you know somebody who's had head trauma or a stroke. If there's brain damage on the left side, if there's paralysis, it manifests on the opposite side.
Research suggests that one part of your brain controls the opposite side of your body, but it's not just a mind-body connection; there's a body-mind connection. Using your opposite hand while you do things could stimulate different parts of your brain on the opposite side.
So, if you're using your dominant hand, that part of your brain gets the stimulus. Use your opposite side. What else can you do? You can eat with your opposite hand. Studies done by Dr. Lawrence Katz on longevity—keeping senior brains alive—were all about a lot of simple things you could do to stimulate and upgrade and keep your brain alive.
Wonderful! So, you're using your opposite hand. The other reason why I ask you to use your opposite hand is it keeps you present. Remember we talked about memory and observation and the power of presence? How it helps your memory? A lot of people are everywhere, and they're training their distraction. You need to starve your distraction and feed your focus.
What helps you do that is by being present. When you brush your teeth with the opposite hand, it forces you to be present. You can't concentrate on other things and get your job done, right? It forces you to be in the now.
Another great practice is exercise. From there, I do a light workout. I don't do my primary workout, but there was a study done at Appalachian State University saying when's the best time to work out for weight loss and sleep: was it 7 A.M., 1 P.M., or 7 P.M.?
They found that actually 7 A.M. was the preferred time. Now, why? I would say whatever's good for your heart is going to be good for your head. So, good for your heart—blood flow, oxygen—get your heart beating. It feeds your brain.
Also, those people in that group that worked out in the morning slept better as well. We talked about the power of sleep. So, I don't do my full workout in the morning, but you want to get your heart rate up for about three minutes to jump-start your brain.
You could do a number of things—jumping jacks, calisthenics, jump rope. I like jump rope a lot. Three minutes of exercise gets your brain pumping, your heart pumping, and your brain pumping as well.
Also, I take a shower. All right, again, you could do any of this in any order. I take a shower. You’re like, "Yes, obviously, Jim, most people take a shower." But I take a cold shower.
Studies done on cold therapy basically say it helps to lower inflammation in your body. Inflammation, research suggests, starts a lot of challenges and a lot of dis-ease—lack of ease—in your body. So, take a cold shower.
You don't have to start by taking a 10-minute cold shower. You could alternate going from warm to cold and warm to cold because it creates a pumping effect in your body, which could also be beneficial. Cold therapy is basically if you hit your knee on a coffee table, you put ice on it, and it reduces swelling. It reduces inflammation.
So, cold could serve you. Lower the temperature. Now, obviously, if you have the flu or you have a cold, you don't want to be in the cold. Use common sense, right? But alternate—maybe 10 seconds of cold, 30 seconds of warm, going back to 10 seconds—and see if you could sustain.
Also, the reason why I do a cold shower is this primary belief that I have that you could adopt: do the difficult thing. Do the difficult thing because you want to train yourself to have resilience and grit. It is a muscle, like anything else—like your focus, like your motivation, like your energy. Any of that could be trained, like your memory, but also your grit and resilience.
A reminder to do difficult things because if you just do the easy things in life, the easy thing is to procrastinate. But if you do the hard things, like learn these lessons now, you sharpen the saw, and everything gets easier after that.
So, you put yourself in hard situations, like taking a cold shower. The next time you need to perform and show up for yourself—maybe you have to give a talk in front of a class or in front of an auditorium, or you need to take a test, or you need to push yourself—you've developed some emotional reserve and grit.
Emotional fitness—it's not just mental intelligence; it's mental fitness. Just like with your body, I want you to be mentally fit, strong, energized, and flexible.
Take a cold shower. From there, you can do a lot of different things. I like to make a brain power smoothie. Go back to your brain foods and take them all and put them into a blender. I like things to be easy and fast—put it into a blender.
So, you have your avocados, your green leafy vegetables, your water, your hydration, your dark chocolate, your blueberries. Pro tip: don't put eggs or wild salmon and sardines into your brain power smoothie.
But you make your smoothie, and now you have your nutrients all there—highly digestible. And then what do I do from there? I do a little bit of reading. I do a little bit of reading because, as you see from this shirt, "Read More." Reading is to your mind what exercise is to your body.
Do a little bit of your studies while you're drinking your brain power smoothie. A great time to up-level your brain when you're most able to learn.
Another couple of things that I do really fast is I journal. I journal because when you write and take notes, a different thing happens. You'll notice patterns of genius. Geniuses—if you think of Da Vinci, Marie Curie, and Einstein—they all wrote in journals, and their journals are priceless.
Now, they were geniuses, so they wrote in journals. But is that really what happened? Is it because they were geniuses that they wrote in the journals, or is it because they were writing all the time in their journals that they became geniuses? Interesting, right?
So, a good pro-life tip: write in a journal because that's a great way of building your self-awareness, building your mental acuity, and building what they call your episodic memory about the things that are going on.
And notice, by the way, the one thing I did not mention of all these things you do to jump-start your brain is the thing that most people do. What is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? Most people check their phones.
I want you to have a to-do list and put these things on your to-do list: make your brain power smoothie, do your little workout, do your deep breathing and meditate, take your cold shower, brush your teeth with the opposite hand, make your bed—do these things. Remember your dreams.
But also, while you have a to-do list, I challenge you in this lesson to have a not-to-do list. The most successful people in the world—and many of you know the people that I train—have a long not-to-do list. These are their non-negotiables.
As the book says, another great book, "Good to Great" by Jim Collins, you must say no to good so you can say yes to great. Say no more often. Say no to things and where you're putting your time.
There's a big opportunity cost of your time and attention, so don't overcommit. Say yes to things that really matter. And what should be on the top of your not-to-do list? Checking your phone the first hour of the day.
Now, here's why: when you first wake up, you're in a relaxed state of awareness—a brainwave state called Alpha and Theta. But when you're in those states, the relaxed age are extremely suggestible.
If you pick up your phone the first hour of the day, you're retraining your brain, rewiring your brain for two things: number one, for distraction. Every like, share, comment, cat video—you're getting this dopamine flood, which makes it very addictive and trains your distraction. You're building your distraction muscles.
So, you wonder why you're reading or you're sitting in a lecture center and you can't pay attention? It's because you need to stop touching your phone the first hour of the day because it's rewiring your brain for distraction.
But the second thing, the second reason you don't want to touch your phone first thing in the morning, is it's rewiring your brain to be reactive. It's training your brain just to react to things.
And here's the thing: you're never going to have a quality life, much less a day, if you're just reacting to what's going on in the environment. Because you know this—you get one text message, one voicemail, one email, something from a friend—whatever puts you in a bad mood, you take that mood on the entire day, and it disrupts your productivity, your performance, your profit, your positivity, and your peace of mind.
I have a friend named Brendan Burchard, New York Times bestselling author of "Motivation Manifesto." He says this about your inbox: your inbox is nothing but a convenient organizational system for other people's agenda for your life. Let that sink in.
So, if you're just reacting to everything, you're never going to be proactive, which is one of the laws of habits of highly effective people. In Stephen Covey's book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," he says to be proactive instead of reactive.
If you're just reacting and you're on defense and not on offense, what I do is when I'm journaling, I'm writing the things that will make this a great day. I'm going to begin with the end in mind. I'm going to put first things first, like another habit of success that Stephen Covey talks about.
The most important thing is to keep the most important thing the most important thing. But first things first, I write down three things I want to do for myself professionally and three things I want to do for myself personally.
And I don't touch my phone until I do one of those things. They don't have to be big things; it could be a simple workout or journaling. But I don't touch my phone until I get one of those things done.
But the main idea here is this: don't wake up and just pick up your phone and be reactive. Technology is a tool; it's not good or bad. Fire is like a tool—it could cook your food or it could burn down your house. It's how you use it.
But if you pick up your phone out of habit to drive distraction and reaction because you're bored, technology is a tool for you to use. But if the technology is using you, then who becomes the tool? You do not want to be a tool in this equation.
So, what I want you to do is commit to not touching your phone the first hour of the day. You'll see a productivity lift that you cannot imagine.
So here, remember this: the treasure you seek most is hidden in your daily routine. First, you create your habits, then your habits create you. Do it by design. Take any one, two, or three of the things I mentioned this morning and test it on yourself.
Limit the amount of phone use you do first thing in the morning. You'll be more proactive, less distracted, and more focused. In the comments, I want you to share the one or two things that...