Unleashing Potential with Justin Roethlingshoefer: Health, Habits, and High Performance

Welcome to the Amberly Lago Show, stories of true grit and grace. Hi there. Welcome to the Amberly Lago Show. I have a real treat for you today. I have my friend Justin Rothling-Schofer, which it took me a while to learn his last name. He is, oh my goodness, he's got a new book coming out. He's the founder of Own It Coaching. He happened to be out here in Dallas doing a keynote. He travels all over doing speaking. And I'm like, yeah, I want to have you on the show. Can you come and stop by the studio? I'm so excited to talk about his journey to where he is today, because you're going to be so inspired. You're going to want to take your health back. He really— look, he helps you take control of your health, wellness, mindset to feel and perform your best. So he's going to teach us all his tricks and tools today. Justin, thank you for being on the show.

Welcome to the Amberly So great to be here, Amberly. We've had such a long relationship virtually, and now that you actually get to— can you believe this is the first time we've met in person?

I know, and it's been— yeah, well, I forgot to say, he's got a top podcast, and I had the opportunity to be on your show. Or was it a summit that I spoke at?

No, so we had you speak virtually to our audience, and then we had you on the podcast, and then we've got you coming back speaking to our Couples Collective here in a few months. So it's been, it's been And so, we've been in this crazy, like, 2-year virtual relationship that has now culminated with an in-person meeting here in Dallas, which is so exciting.

And I had the chance, I got to read part of your new book that's coming out, which I was like, oh, no wonder there was instant connection because you and I both grew up athletes. But there's something that your dad said to you. And so, when you were 13, you really dove all in as far as like the health and how could you be your best. And he said, talent will get you noticed, consistency will get you paid. And you took that to heart. And can you take us like back to when you were that age and you started really like going all in as an athlete?

Yeah. So, I think the unique part about this is that when he said that to me, I was 12 years old and I was actually playing hockey with 14- and 15-year-olds. And I had gone through like this this tough season, if you will, where just nothing was clicking and wasn't seeing the results that I was looking for. And he— I still remember he put his hand on my lap and he looked at me dead in the eye and he said, son, talent will get you noticed, but consistency will get you paid. And immediately something clicked inside of me that said, man, how do I become the most consistent version of myself? What is it that I can start to control? What is it that I can start to lean into? I'm not enjoying my outcomes right now.

Yeah.

But if I'm honest with myself, my outcomes are the lagging effects of my habits and behaviors that I've been engaging in inconsistently and unintentionally for the last little while, and I've just been relying on what it is that I've been God-given, which is a little bit of talent, and that won't get me to where I'm trying to go.

Mm-hmm.

And so it was that moment that I was like, I'm going to start taking ownership of some things, and I could take ownership of how I slept, of how I ate, of how I trained, of how I recovered, of how I prepared myself for what it was that I was ultimately striving towards. And, when I say I went all in, Amberly, I went all in. I was the weird kid. So, at 13 years old, I asked my parents for a heart rate monitor. They go, what, are you sick? Is something wrong with you? And, I was like, no, no, I want to know more about this thing, more about this thing that I'm living in. So, I started to measure heart rate variability, started to measure my training load and my heart rate during sleep versus during exercise and training bouts. I started to measure brainwaves. I started to look at my blood work.

How would you measure the brainwaves?

It was, again, through a simple device that was available back then. It was through Pulse API. And, I would wear a heart rate monitor at night. I would wear 3 sensors.

You would?

Oh, yeah, heart rate monitor at night, 3 sensors that tracked brainwave states to look at alpha, theta data when I was sleeping, the depth of sleep that I was getting.

This is how many years ago?

This is 2010. 21 years ago.

21 years ago. I mean, now you hear of more things like that because, like, I see you're wearing the watch. I usually wear the Oura Ring. Yeah. And I got obsessed about the whole sleep. And I'm so glad, by the way, that my daughter, who's 15, is here at the studio with us and that she can hear it because she's an incredibly talented horseback rider. So I'm glad she's hearing, and the audience too, but I'm glad she's hearing Exactly how you went all in, like with your sleep, measuring your brainwaves. And then what about your food? Did you change your food up?

Yeah. So I, so I actually started to look at all the macronutrient breakdowns. I started to actually understand what was happening from— again, when you start to look at blood work, I went and got blood chemistry done every quarter. And then I'd ask my doctors for the information back so that I could dive into it and start to look at some things.

What were they looking at in your blood? Were they looking at hormone levels, sugar level? Glucose levels.

So, to be honest with you, even at that level, like at that age, all they were doing was a simple CBC and a CMP, which is looking again at vitamin levels, looking at glucose levels, looking at cholesterol levels, fat levels, and really just overall nothing really specific to what we know now of what we actually do and how we operate with people at the cellular level and looking at micronutrient deficiency, which is what I would have loved to do, but that didn't even really exist back then because remember, this is 21 years ago.

Yeah.

And even when I wanted a heart rate monitor, we went with— I had to go with Polar. Polar was one of the first ones that actually did heart rate monitoring.

I used to put those when I was a personal trainer. I had a Polar heart rate monitor that I would put on some of my clients.

100%. And think about this. This is the craziest part. You can get these things for like $20, $30, $40, $50 now, and it's not a big deal to have a wearable device or a heart rate monitor or pulse oximeter or something like that that's fairly cheap. Well, that's just 21 years ago. A heart rate monitor was like $1,000.

Was it $1,000?

It was $1,000. And my parents came to me, they were like, Justin, like, what do you need this for? And I said, guys, honestly, I just need this thing. It's gonna help me. It's gonna really help guide me. It's gonna like help propel me and take ownership of my health in a unique way. And they were like, Justin, this thing's so expensive. And I said, pool grandma's money, pool grandpa's money, pool the aunt and uncle's money, pool your guys' money, and pool my birthday and Christmas money because this is what I wanna do.

Wow. And now most kids that age would be spending money on, you know, uh, video games, video games, fast food, uh, but not you. You were focused, laser-focused on your health. That must have made your parents really proud.

It was, and, um, it was to an extent because I think—

Were you obsessive about it?

For— this is where it really— where I I almost went to a deep end where it became obsessive and it became something for me because I didn't have the full knowledge. I didn't have the full education. There's a difference between knowing enough to be dangerous and there's enough of being truly an expert and educated. And, I feel like on my journey, there was this— I had to actually go through this time. So, between the ages of 14 to 18, I actually became extremely anorexic.

You did? I didn't know that.

Yeah, extremely anorexic. 14. I was about 100.

And, there's not a lot of guys that talk about that.

No, it's taken me a while to be able to talk about it, to be honest with you, because it was embarrassing for a long time and something that—

So, you would deprive yourself. So, the difference between the— I had some unhealthy eating habits when I was a dancer. And, even in the fitness industry, I didn't realize it's not normal to eat a lot and then think, oh, I have to go run extra now. That's That's not normal. Like, I was doing way too much. So, you were just depriving yourself of food?

So, I had a multitude of things that was going on with me. So, I was obsessive and compulsive about every behavior. I had major body image issues in terms of how I looked. I went from— I was a heavier kid, so teased a lot, made fun of. I was always a very old soul, was always very interested in what was actually happening. You have a 13-year-old kid that's wanting to look at heart rate variability, for example.

Yeah.

So, always different. And so, I never felt like I really fit in. But a lot of that body image issue stuff was something that came out very heavily in this age bracket for me. And so, I would run to classes, I would do 50 squats and 50 push-ups before I allowed myself to put pick my books up out of my locker. I would do—

Wow. So it was, it was very like obsessive-compulsive almost.

Totally. I would run up and down the stairs 3 times before I was allowed to sit at the dinner table. After I ate dinner, I'd have to do 10 push-ups, 10 sit-ups. I would—

Did your parents see you doing this?

Oh yeah. And what did they say about it? I mean, what could they do? They, they had conversations with me. They sat me down. I think here's the thing about my family. They are so loving and so kind and so supportive. That's all they knew how to do was love me more, support me more, and try to give me everything that they could. They took me to the doctors, they took me to the therapists, they took me to all the people that they thought could help, but really nothing set me free. There was this constant fear just crippling me inside that had its grips on me. And, At 16 years old, I came up from the basement, and when I came up from the basement, I saw my mom's face drop. And I was like, I have no idea what's going on. I went to the bathroom and my face was yellow. And so you actually come back and we went and got some testing done. I was going through liver and kidney failure.

Oh my gosh.

I had dropped from 148 pounds to 95.

And I had no idea this about you. Let me tell you, I, when I was a dancer and then I was going through a horrible relationship, I turned vegetarian and I got off the plane from LA back. I came to see my family here in Dallas and my mom looked at me and she, same thing, her face dropped. And I guess I was yellow and she looked at me and said, Where's my Amberly? Because I was like 112 pounds and I'm 5'11. Yeah, you know, so wow, I did not know that we had that in common.

Yeah, yeah.

So what did you do? You saw— you were— did they take you to the hospital?

Oh yeah, I still remember that. I mean, and here's the thing is I never identified as somebody who was anorexic. I never identified as somebody who was sick. I never identified with somebody who had an eating disorder because that's not something that I saw myself. I still remember walking into a lot of these eating disorder clinics, looking at everybody else in there, skin and bones, being fed through feeding tubes, going, that's not me. I don't need to be in here.

Wow.

Because I would leave and I'd go step foot on the ice playing AAA hockey. I would go step foot into the weight room. I'd go step foot in places where I felt like that's where my identity was.

Yeah.

And, uh, but still just this crippling fear that I couldn't eat anything and I had to be able to Perform and ultimately show up. And so I say all of that to say that the only thing that actually changed my thought process was I had a coach at 12 years old who I hadn't seen for about 5 years, and he saw me at 16. And I walked in the door and he looked once, twice, and the third time, and he goes, oh my God, Justin. Like, he goes, are you okay? And I said, Yeah, what's wrong? Like, I don't— yeah, absolutely. He called my parents that night. He said, hey, I want to really start working with Justin because something's not right. Something's not okay.

Yeah.

And we started to actually work on a lot of these things. And to be honest with you, it was God's grace that ultimately freed me from this and this realization that I had to choose myself and that I was already chosen.

Mm-hmm.

I was already chosen by him and that I didn't need to prove myself to anybody. I didn't need to— I didn't have to say that I was good enough to be loved or good enough to excel or to exceed, but simply that just being me was enough. And I think that part of my journey was so imperative to shaping who I became and where I went, because at 18, I came to the States on a hockey scholarship. I went and got 2 undergraduate degrees. I went from there and got my master's degree. I went from there and did my postgraduate doctoral work in heart rate variability and sleep. And, it was all of this experience and knowledge of understanding it from a firsthand experience, understanding what the constitute of stress, mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, does to your body internally and how it can actually create just this massive disintegration of your health. And when you treat health, mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, in a disintegrated way, you will see the disintegration of your health. It will fall apart. It's like putting a rotten apple in a healthy bowl of fruit. It's only 24 hours before the rest of that fruit is rotten. And so you can't treat these areas separately. They all have to be treated together. They all have to be looked at together as one holistic unit.

Yeah.

Otherwise, you'll never actually get that true health that you're searching for.

Well, I thought about you. I mean, I've been looking forward to this interview and everything that you share. And by the way, y'all follow him on social media because the things that you post are so inspiring. And I'll have the links in the show notes. But I thought about you because I was like, I have a headache and I feel a little inflamed today. And I'm like, I know what Justin would say to that. There are a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to the show. There are a lot of entrepreneurs that are really stressed out.

Mm-hmm.

And a little stress in the gym can be good. We grow from that. You know, you lift heavy, get stressed, those muscles, and you get bigger muscles. But like the chronic everyday stress and the grind and what I see people doing every day, that's like slowly killing themselves. Or they're hitting burnout, what is one way somebody can reduce that stress in their life that they're like, yeah, I wake up with headaches and thought that was just part of being a mom and an entrepreneur or building up my business or what I'm doing. What is one thing that somebody can do today to start reducing their stress?

So, I mean, the first thing, it also always starts with awareness. And I think a lot of times we're just not aware of where we're at. And there's this quadrant system I talk about where we've got in the upper right-hand quadrant, we've got this overreaching quadrant. You want to build a business, you want to build a family, you want to get fit, you want to change your circumstance. Life does a great job of stressing us and applying stress to us and helping us overreach. We have to live in this quadrant. This is a non-negotiable. If you want a life that's extraordinary, you have to live here.

Mm-hmm.

But the thing is, Type A people, people who are pushers, people who are achievers, they think you live here.

Yeah.

And that's not the case. If you're gonna be pushing and you're gonna be exalting and you're gonna be operating in this quadrant, you also have to operate in this bottom left-hand quadrant, which is called regeneration.

Yeah.

And you have to find a rhythm that tosses and turns back and forth where you're able to push, able to overreach, but then also able to intentionally and consistently behave in this regeneration quadrant and build life by design that intentionally puts you going back and forth so you can perform and execute and live in what I call ownership, which is when you have that mental clarity, you have that energy, you have that focus. Because if we spend too much time up here, what ends up happening is we slowly start seeping down into that burnout space, into that space where we actually feel hopeless, we feel joyless, we feel like we're just—

You get to a point where you just don't care.

Yep. And you just feel like you're bogged down. And the crazy part about it is the longer that you spend down here, we actually put ourselves into what I call this area of fake health.

Mhmm.

Because on the—

Let me talk about that.

Because on the far right side, you've got this true health space where you're vibrant, you're focused, you're clear, you feel good every single day. You've got more than enough energy to take the kids to school, to get done your to-do list, to connect with your spouse, to get to the extracurriculars, to get all your to-dos done, but then sleep well and look after yourself, and there's more than enough time. Then there's death and disease on the far left side, which is you got diagnosed with cancer, you got diabetes, you've had a stroke, you've had a heart attack, you're getting your chronic illness dealt with. But the middle space is where 90% of us live, called fake health.

Disease-free, but you feel you're inflamed.

But symptom-free. Yeah, disease-free but symptom-free.

I love when you explain it that way.

And, when you're disease-free and symptom-full, you've got the brain fog, you've got the inflammation, you've got the headaches, you've got the weight gain you can't explain, you've got the gut issues, but you call that normal. You say, that's what it takes to build a business. That's what it takes to be a mom.

This is what I always love that people tell me because now I'll be 52 soon. People are like, oh, well, that's how it is when you get 52.

That's what happens when you turn 50.

You're going to gain weight. You're gonna— your skin's gonna look bad. You're like, these are the things I hear. And I'm like, but no, that's not how I want to be. I'm not. No, I'm gonna—

I'm different. I'm different.

I'm like, that's not what I envisioned for myself.

No, 100%.

I, you know, and I do feel a difference in some things. Believe me, I feel a difference. But it's like, yeah, people say, well, that's just how it is. And it's like, no, you're saying there can be something different.

Totally. These are all lies. fake health. We don't have to live there. The world tells us that that's where we have to live. That's what normal feels like.

Yeah.

But in actuality, the longer we live there, the faster that window closes when all of a sudden it shuts and it thrusts you into this death and disease bucket where all of a sudden you wake up and you have diabetes or you wake up and you have anxiety or you wake up and you're 50 pounds overweight. It didn't happen literally overnight. It happened because you earned your illness. We earn our health. Or you earn your illness based on the decisions and behaviors in which you continually have over and over and over again because chronic stress, our body doesn't know the difference, mental, physical, spiritual, emotional. Chronic stress leads to chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation leads—

Leads to disease.

To chronic symptoms. Chronic symptoms that we consider normal, we just stay there and we live with it, leads to chronic illness. And chronic illness is the leading cause of death in the United States at 71%. And, it's amazing to me when we think about that, the leading cause of death in our country, 93% of those deaths are preventable through habit behavior change.

Mm-hmm.

And so, this is this concept to me that it comes back to really making sure we can educate, we can equip, and we can empower people with the information to take them from a state of knowing because there's no shy of information out there. on how to take ownership of your health, how to feel good. There's no shortage of information. People know what to do, but they still need to be convinced of it. If I can take them to a state of understanding what to do, they understand their body, they understand how the impacts of their habits are having, they understand what's going on, they're now convicted to create some change.

Yeah.

And that's where I want people to get to. And so that's why I constantly talk about taking the same philosophies the same systems, the same principles that we used at the NHL level with some of the best athletes in the world for the last 12 years, and now making those same systems, those same practices, those same philosophies available to everyone so we democratize health, we democratize high performance, we democratize a highly intentional lifestyle so that now the outcomes that you're having are inevitable. It's inevitable that you're going to feel good. It's inevitable that you're going to have a great night's sleep. It's inevitable that you're going to be mentally It's inevitable you're going to lose the weight you want because you're acting in accordance with the habits and behaviors that make those outcomes already predetermined.

Oh, I just love this so much. And I think the thing is, people don't realize that when you feel good, you can do more good. And I was burning the wick at both ends. I was really— and I had an assistant who Oh my gosh, I loved her. I love her. She had 3 kids and was like, I'm not gonna work anymore. And I'm like, please. I was like, I'll babysit for you. Like, what can I do to convince you? But she told me something that really hit home for me. She said, Amberly, your impact is only as strong as you are healthy.

That's good.

Yep. You know, and I love that you talk so much about health about faith, about consistency, which is key. And I think that there are a lot of people out there that, you know, preach about how to be motivated and how to move forward, and they're obese. And to me, that screams there's a problem, I think, you know, and I'm probably gonna get a lot of hate for saying that on the show. But it, like, it screamed a problem that when I was underweight, there's a problem. It screamed a problem if you are walking up the stairs and you're out of breath and you can barely manage just to get up the stairs. Do you believe that there's a balance between, like, not that everybody has to be, you know, look like a magazine cover or anything like that. But I think they do have to take their health in their own hands so they can do better as a mom or dad or in their work or an athlete. And it is mind, body, spirit because— and look, I had somebody tell me that I needed to be on antidepressants. It was a therapist that said, well, you need to be on antidepressants because if you have to move your body to feel better, then something's wrong with you. And I was like, but it does move my mood. Like, no, I know if I work out, I'm going to feel better. What would you say to somebody who's like, but I just can't work out? And, you know, this issue with losing some weight is not my fault. It's the medication I'm on. Or, you know, what would you say to that person?

The thing I tell to say to people all the time is you're not broken. You're not broken. There's nothing wrong with you. What I mean by that is the outcomes that you're experiencing are simply the lagging effects of your habits and behaviors, and it's not something internally that's broken in you. It's your order that's broken. And here's what I'll— and here's what I'll speak to that.

Oh, that's good.

The world has told us that you have to look a certain way, you have to weigh a certain amount of weight, you have to have 6-pack abs, you have to look Like the magazine cover. You have to look a certain way in your clothes.

Especially with social media.

Totally. It's, it's, it's, um, it's become absolutely perverse in, in what we see in our culture. But because we've taken what I call a bottom-up approach— so physical first, let's be on this certain diet, let's work out this many times, let's execute these types of habits, let's cold plunge these amount of times, I have to sun, I have to get these things done—

Yeah.

The world's put this on us because I have to look a certain way, I have to cross this finish line. It ultimately poisons your heart. When it poisons your heart, it erodes you emotionally. So now you have a state of fear, you have a state of overwhelm, you have a state of anxiety, you have this emotion— emotional erosion that happens because we led physically. That emotional erosion continues to drop, uh, the strength of your mind. So it's now, I'm not good enough. It's now, I'm not worthy.

Yeah.

It's now, I'm not far enough along. It's, I'm never going to be able to do this, which, which only takes you further away from what you're called to spiritually. That's what happens in the world we live in because the culture tells us to take that bottom-up approach. Physical first erodes you emotionally, which degrades you mentally, which separates you spiritually. Well, how about if we took a top-down approach? If we connected spiritually to the identity and desires that we have that are placed in us for what we're called to, which then all of a sudden solidifies and renews our mind that tells us, no, you are exactly who you need to be. You are exactly where you're supposed to be. You are exactly good enough exactly how you are.

Wow.

Which then gives us the confidence, purifies our heart, confidence to step into what we do, knowing that we can step in powerfully, to then take action physically for what it is a priority in this season of our life. Is it going to the gym 5 days a week? Cool. Is it training for that marathon? Cool. Is it changing your diet?

Cool.

Is it focusing on recovery? Cool. But what does it look like? Because now your order is right, now your alignment is right, now you're not doing it for anybody other than yourself.

Mm-hmm.

And you have a purpose and a reason that makes it intentional. Because the way I define performance is not outcome-driven, not the way the world defines it.

Yeah.

Rather, my definition of performance is the capacity and desire to intentionally and consistently behave at a level equal to your God-given potential. And so, if we can be intentional and consistent with behaviors and do them over the course of time, we can increase our capacity to match The level of desire in which we have.

Well, that's so good, by the way. That's so good. But, and I wrote something down here to talk because you said stop chasing results and start chasing the process. Chase the lifestyle. Yeah. And I love that you talk about it. Yeah. You don't have to look like somebody on the magazine cover, but it really ultimately is your actual health and how you feel. And you talk a lot about the consistency, but you also talk about how important sleep is.

Yeah.

So, what amount, how much sleep should someone get?

Again, anytime somebody asks me for a definitive answer, I always say, you're going to hate my answer and I apologize, but it depends on who you are. It depends on who you are. Even like, what's the best thing somebody can do? It depends on who you are. It depends what season of life you're in. And so, what I come back to is the truth. The truth of sleep is that we sleep in 90-minute cycles. We have 4 stages of our sleep. We have slow-wave sleep, we have deep sleep or REM sleep, we have a light sleep cycle, and a wake cycle. It takes 90 minutes approximately for anybody to get through that full cycle, and all the data shows us that we need approximately 5 cycles per night. Well, 5 times 90—

What?

5 times 90 is about 7.5 hours of sleep per night.

Okay.

And so, if we need 7.5 hours of sleep per night, And this is where we need to get into it. Well, I should probably design my life accordingly, and I should probably try to be in bed by 10:00 PM, sleeping by around 10:00 or 10:30, if I'm waking up at 5:00 or 5:30 to get my 5 and a half, uh, to get my 5 full cycles to bring me to 7.5 hours of sleep. And the more consistent I can be with my sleep and wake time, it means that I'm gonna be getting better quality sleep.

Mm-hmm.

It means I'm gonna be getting deeper sleep. It means I'm gonna be getting more restorative sleep. It means that I'm going to be able to actually feel rested when I wake up, and it will create circadian rhythm regularity, meaning that melatonin is high at night, cortisol is high in the morning, which will make me tired at night and wired in the morning. But the way we work is we go to bed so inconsistently, we go to bed with such poor habits and hygiene that we go to bed wired and we wake up tired.

Yeah.

Because we've now created inverse circadian rhythms.

Oh, that's good. That is good. Okay. So, I have to admit something. The night before last, I get in bed and my heart was just going.

Racing.

It was racing. And now, you and I are both doing books, which is— no, that's a big deal. Writing a book is no joke. Putting on events, you're speaking, traveling different time zones.

Yeah.

What do you suggest when someone has that pounding out of their chest, like feel their heart? You've like almost like you feel your whole nervous system vibrating. You're wired is a great way to put it. Just wired.

Yeah. So there's 2 types of nervous systems that we have. that are primarily always in battle with one another. One's not always on and one's not always off. It's almost like a dimmer switch. It's called the parasympathetic nervous system, which is more of like your rest and digest, and then your sympathetic system, which is your fight or flight and go mode. And so what we typically see is people who are constantly wired at night, they are having a sympathetic overload or sympathetic tone And so, what we need to do in our night routine is we want to make sure that we're preparing ourselves for what is the most important thing that we do during the day, which is sleeping, which is going to give us the energy to ultimately restore us into where we're going. So, a simple framework I have for people who are wanting to get the best night's sleep and really make sure that this is something that's optimal is 3 hours before bed, we stop eating because there's 400 times more melatonin in our gut than It's produced by the pineal gland in our brain. And so, if we're eating food late into the evening before we're going to bed, now all of a sudden we don't get the melatonin released we need. We're now having to have a battle between digesting our food and actually getting us into deep stages of sleep. We're going to see an increase in cortisol when we should actually be seeing an increase in melatonin, but we're going to have that battle. So, 3 hours before bed, no more food.

But see, the way you explain it, it really helps. I like to know why.

Totally.

Because people say that all the time. Don't eat 3 hours before you go to bed.

But why?

You know what I mean? And that, I think, is when I was in the fitness industry for 26 years, that was the time that was the hardest for my clients is they wanted to eat at night before they go to bed. Their willpower was out the window. They were good all day.

But, I'll even come back, maybe they weren't good all day and they just didn't have good habits throughout the day and that's when all of a sudden they were starving because they didn't eat all day and they didn't create a good eating window, they didn't create good eating habits throughout the day. So now, they're starving at night and now they have time on their hands, they're not busy. So now, it's like, oh my gosh, I'm going to eat the house and then I don't sleep well.

Yeah.

And, it just creates this downward pinwheel. And so, that takes us to number 2, which is 2 hours before bed, which I'll get into answering your question in a second. I know I've taken a long way around it, but 2 hours before bed, no more decision-making, no more cognitive thinking, and no more problem-solving. So, shutting off all of your creative work, shutting off all of your work for the day, shutting off— I'm so fired. Shutting off all of these hard, critical, analytical thinking because when we're So if you're thinking, remember, mental, emotional, physical, spiritual stress, your body doesn't know the difference. So if now all of a sudden it's 8:30, 9 o'clock at night and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, how am I gonna get my schedule done? How am I gonna get this done? I've gotta change this in my schedule.

I've gotta change this. I have to prepare for this. I have to do this. I have to do— yeah.

Your brain starts thinking about, okay, how am I— how am I gonna problem solve this? How am I gonna find the solutions to this? So it keeps going and it keeps going. It keeps going and that's why you can't actually shut down. Which probably has a part of a reason why your heart was going so heavily that night, was because you're actually starting to think about that process. And then 1 hour before bed, no more blue light, because for every 30 minutes of blue light exposure after sunset, it delays melatonin release by up to 1 hour. And so, so no TV, no TV, no watching Shameless on Netflix. So there's a caveat to this, but no blue light. Uh, you're— it's on your phone, it's on your TV, it's on your computer, it's on your iPad, it's on all of these things. However, if you go on your phone and you can go in and you can actually put it onto night shift mode where it actually pulls out all the blue light from your tablet, your iPad, your iPhone, so you can still actually utilize them, or you put them on grayscale so it actually eliminates all of that, uh, brain stimulus as well.

And then I did not know that.

And then the other thing my wife and I do, because we are those I'm one of those people at night that the thing we love to do together to wind down is watch some stupid show that just kind of puts us into a space. I'm the guy that wears red light or blue light blocking glasses, so red frames that eliminates about 90% of blue light that's coming in. And the other thing that we do at night that really helps is we dimly light our house and 90% of the time it's all done through candlelight. Yeah. And it just sets the ambiance, sets the environment for where we're trying to go. And I talk about a lot of these things in my book because heart rate variability is that measure of how your body's adapting to stress and strain. It's that language for, are you adapting well based on your habits and behaviors, or are you not? And then I give you 8 levers or 8 things that you can take control over. So exercise and, uh, movement, Nutrition, sleep, hydration, environment, self-care, immune function, and mindset.

So good.

And so, when you look at these 8 levers or these 8 handles that you can pull and you now have a different habit set under each that you can start focusing on, you begin to have agency over your health to say, oh, you know what? I'm actually having a downward trend in heart rate variability, meaning my body's not adapting super well. To my current habits and behaviors. It brings awareness. And now, where on my journey am I not focused well enough that I can reestablish some intention to build a consistent habit around this?

Mm-hmm.

And once we understand heart rate variability and our 8 controllables, our habits and behaviors, it's then that we can double down on some of our cellular testing, our DNA testing, our epigenetic Our hormone paneling, to learn more about this body so we can get more specific, more refined, more individualized in each of those domains, and then continue to identify further what tools are going to be able to exponentially increase our ability to have capacity and do more.

Oh, this is so good. So, we're running out of time. I want to make sure people know where to get your book. And also, one thing that I think is really important is accountability. Like, sometimes people just need that accountability. You have coaching programs. And so, tell people where they can find out more, how they can get connected with you, and where can they find your book?

Yeah. So, thepowerofownershipbook.com is where they can find it and get access to all the beautiful tools and resource vault That we have access to there. And then, for our coaching programs, ownitcoaching.com is the best place in which to go. Like I said, it is truly a holistic model where you come into our ecosystem and you're going to have 3 different accountability members behind you. You're going to have a mental performance coach, you're going to have a health coach, and you're going to have a medical advisor that oversees everything. So, when you get your testing done, you get your technology through your wearable device, And then, you ultimately have your coaching to help guide you and pull you along. It's literally an N-of-1 solution.

Yeah. And, I mean, look, you just came back. You go into corporations and work with huge companies to get all of their employees, like, tell them how they can take back their health and feel better mentally, spiritually, physically. And so, I just think it's amazing all that you're doing. Your book is coming out in April. And we've got the same publisher, but it's The Power of Ownership. I just looked at your website. It's beautiful, by the way. What now? So if somebody preorders that, is there— what do they— do you have stuff that you give them?

Oh, 100%. It's, uh, you have to, right? You have to. So, uh, if you sign up early, get the preorder, you're gonna have access to the resource You're going to be a part of the pre-launch team. You're going to get access to 3 lives with me. Again, you're going to go into a raffle to actually have me come out and do a keynote with you and your audience or your family or you, whoever. So we're going to give away 5 of those in that component as well.

That's awesome. I know that Coach Star did something similar to that too. I don't know if you know her. She's one of my friends. I love her. But I am so excited for your book. So yeah, y'all go out, follow Justin, check out his book. And like I said, I got to read part of it. I was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing.

Thank you.

And I feel like I could have talked to you for— I need to have you back on because this just like touched a little bit of all that you do. But thank Thank you so much for being on. Y'all, thank you so much for tuning into the Amberly Lago Show. And take a screenshot of this, or if you're listening on Spotify or Apple, take a screenshot and tag us. Tell everybody your handle on Instagram.

@JustinRoth is where I can be found. R-O-E-T-H.

Yes, I was going to say spell that out because I would probably spell it wrong. But yes, and me @AmberlyLagoMotivation. And until Until next time. We'll see you soon.