Transcription
Chances are that in the last few days, you have felt tired or depleted of energy. One of the problems I hear a lot about is this feeling of being chronically tired. When you lack energy, you make poor decisions, get easily frustrated over the most trivial of issues, and operate significantly below your potential. When feeling energized, however, you become the chief architect of your day, and there's nothing you feel you can't overcome.
As the bestselling author of *Energize*, I want to share with you a few simple habits that almost anyone can do that are proven to energize your day. In today's video, I'm going to walk you through seven simple practices that I personally incorporate into my daily routine to give me the energy to focus on what matters most. At the end of the video, I'm going to share with you a bonus habit that will energize your day immediately, especially if you're going through a particularly tough time at the moment. Let's get to it. And if you enjoy this video, make sure to hit that subscribe button.
**Habit One: Plan your day the night before.** For many of us, the period of our day when we have the highest level of energy is in the morning. Yet we waste it because we don't know what our priorities are for the day ahead. So we're using up that brainpower to think about what we should focus on or aimlessly scrolling through our phones and social media or doing something that isn't really going to help us tick off the things on our to-do list. However, when you ask yourself the question the night before, “How will I know that tomorrow will have been a productive day?” it allows you to have focus. It allows you to understand what your priorities are because, as Sun Tzu said, “Every battle is won before it has been fought.” Productivity is less about doing more and more about doing less—and also the right things.
**Habit Two: Have a work uniform or a small collection of items that you can easily mix and match to create a decent outfit.** There's a reason why Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs wear the same thing every single day. This is because it creates the mental capacity for you to focus on the more important decisions for your day. When you do not have to decide every morning what you are going to wear, you can channel that energy towards the decisions that are going to have the greater impact on your life.
**Habit Three: Meal plan.** There are lots of videos here on YouTube that talk about the right diet and the right nutrition. I'm going to add to this because I feel that the right plan is different for each of us. We have different factors, constraints, and lifestyles that would drive a different nutrition plan for each of us. However, at a macro level, what is important to understand is that many of us can benefit from eating less, eating more fruits, vegetables, and plants, having more fun with our diet by including a greater variety of foods on our plate, and becoming a waterholic—drinking more water in our day. This is why I have a bottle at hand wherever I am, whether it's traveling, in the office, or at home. It can give us the energy we need and also be beneficial for our skin. Most of our bodies consist of water, so getting enough of this in our body can have a significant impact on our energy. When you meal plan, it means you have already decided ahead of time what you are going to eat and why, so you won't find yourself, as hunger strikes, ordering from a takeaway or walking to your closest restaurant to consume and binge on junk food.
**Habit Four: Move your body.** I often get asked, “Simon, why do you have so much energy? How can I increase the level of my energy in my day-to-day life?” I always share this habit: moving your body, because exercise is one of the most powerful ways to energize your body and your mind immediately. Ernestine Shepherd, who runs 10K every single day, works out in the gym four times a week with weight training, has won nine marathons, has written multiple bestselling books, and is a personal trainer and model at the age of nearly 90, demonstrates the power of exercise. Not only does it help her have energy more than those half her age, but it's allowed her to live her healthiest and to live to an age that is greater than the life expectancy of many American women.
The thing about exercise is that consistency always beats intensity. It is why many of us will start the year going strong by signing up for the gym or a series of gym classes. Then, by the time we hit February or March, we don't go as often. We drop out because we think that in order to get exercise, in order to move our body, we've got to be moving it for a certain amount of time. The fact is, you aren't always going to have the same amount of time each day to dedicate to moving your body. This is why consistency is always better than intensity. When you have days where you have more time, of course, you can hit the gym or go outside and run, cycle, or swim for longer. But on the days where you are busier or you have a deadline to hit, you can still do some form of exercise by moving your body. It's about scheduling time in your diary for what matters most. If living long, living healthy, and having energy to bring into each day is important to you, you will find the time to do so.
**Habit Five: Have a bedtime routine and avoid bedtime procrastination.** So what is bedtime procrastination? Well, bedtime procrastination is this idea of being unable to detach yourself from avoidable habits that are not great for your energy—things such as binge-watching television, aimlessly scrolling through your social media, or continuing to work despite the fact that you already feel tired. One of the ways that we can create a healthy bedtime routine is through a principle called the 3-2-1 technique. The 3-2-1 technique works like this: three hours before bed, you want to log off from your work and finish work so you can begin the transition to sleeping. Two hours before bedtime, you want to stop consuming any more food. One hour before bedtime, you want to escort your digital devices outside of the bedroom and begin easing into sleep. This may include activities such as journaling, reading, having a nice warm bath, or meditation. For me, I enjoy meditating to calm and soothing music to relax my mind as I get ready for bed.
Another powerful insight that I learned by asking people, “When was the last time you had your best sleep?” is the fact that we can make our bedrooms feel like we are checking into a hotel room every night. If we are spending a large portion of our lives sleeping, it makes sense to invest in our bed environment. When you do so, you make the place more inviting to sleep in. What this contributes to is deeper, better quality sleep.
**Habit Six: Create an environment that makes it impossible not to feel energized.** James Clear talks in his book *Atomic Habits* that our environment is this invisible force that shapes our thinking and also what we see as possible in our lives. When we think about our environment, it's not just the people we spend time with; it is also who we follow on social media, what we listen to, and what we read—our physical spaces and our digital spaces. Your inputs affect your level of energy. Here's a way to think about this: the more negative energy you spend time around, the quicker a negative person you become. The more positive energy that you spend time around, the quicker a positive person you become. This is how powerful our environment can be in shaping the way we feel and our level of energy.
So when you think about creating an environment that makes it impossible not to feel energized, you want to think of what habits you can promote that would make this easy for you. One of the things I do, as an example, is carry a book wherever I go. So when I have those micro moments of being delayed or being stuck in a queue, I can pick up my book, dive into that, and feel energized and inspired, perhaps getting an idea that can help me move forward in a particular area that I'm working on in my life.
**Habit Seven: Make time in your day to disconnect and to just be.** Many of us think work and rest are opposites. If I rest, I'm not productive. If I work, then I'm hustling to make things happen. The fact is, to thrive in the long term, to feel energized over the long term, there must be a balance between work and rest. Work and rest are partners on the same team. Just as you need periods of deep work, you also need periods of intentional rest. Those periods of rest will be where you not only disconnect but where you are able to do activities that will help you come back to work feeling rejuvenated.
Here are two examples of the power of making time to disconnect. When Thomas Edison spent an hour each day to go to the lake and fish, what he was actually doing was crafting time out in his calendar in order to reflect and to be with his thoughts. Despite fishing every day for that time, he did not catch a single fish. When asked, “How come you have not caught a single fish in all of your time fishing?” Edison replied, “Because I didn't use bait.” He didn't use bait so that no one, not even the fish, would disturb him. Marina Abramovic, when she did this performance exhibition called *The Artist is Present*, invited guests in the auditorium to sit opposite her in silence. It was a private yet public affair. But what she was teaching the participants was to educate them on the power of the present moment—not dwelling on the past or thinking about the future, but being absolutely here now in the present. By disconnecting and living in the present moment, what we are doing is giving ourselves the experience of living instead of just existing. Slowing down in a world that is only getting faster is a superpower.
**Habit Eight, which is the bonus habit for this video, is taking time to express your gratitude to others.** A three-step exercise that I'm going to share with you will elevate your energy immediately, especially if you're going through a particularly tough time at this moment. The first step is to write down the name of somebody that you can be truly grateful for—somebody who has helped to shape you into the person that you are today. The second step is to write down why. Write down why in as much detail as possible. How have they helped you? How has your life changed because of them? In what ways have they brought out the best in you? How have they supported you? The key here is to get as specific as you can.
Step three—and this for me is where the magic happens. Step three is you want to pick up the phone, call that person, and tell them everything that you wrote in step two. Now, if this is a little uncomfortable for you, then at a minimum, what you want to do is send them a voice note. The reason I'm encouraging you to use voice is that voice carries emotion, and emotion is nothing more than energy in motion. The recipient will get to feel your energy and emotion through your voice—something you can't really get when you read a text message or an email. This is one of the most powerful ways to elevate your energy immediately.
The reason I'm emphasizing gratitude as the bonus habit is that happiness ultimately begins with gratitude, and gratitude is the path to abundance. When you express your gratitude to others in ways like this, it not only benefits the recipient, but it benefits you as well.
So those are my tips to help energize your life. If you have any that have personally worked for you, let us know in the comments, and I look forward to reading them. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next video. If you enjoyed this video, make sure to hit the subscribe button to get more videos like this in the future.