Investing in Well-Being Part 2: Mind

If we continuously build a habit of learning, we can actually reverse if not delay memory loss significantly. We truly can reverse brain aging. Our brain aging is our own creation by not investing in learning and operating out of an expert mindset of just doing right. So whether it's learning a language, whether it's learning how to dance, whether it is learning a new skill, whatever it is, we can actually really take care of our mental well being.

Hey there friends. Welcome to Happiness Squad. This is the podcast dedicated to helping you unlock your full potential by mastering the art and science of happiness. We bring on the best leading experts on these topics to help you unlock your true potential and live with more joy, health, love and meaning in your life. Your host is no other than the star combo of Ashish Kothari and Anil Ramjiani who are both on a mission to provide you with an unfair advantage to be the masters of your experience and leaders in your industry. Get ready to be moved, challenged and enlightened on this podcast. It may change your life. Thanks for being here and joining the Squad.

Hey Happiness Squad. I'm excited to be with all of you today and honored to be with Ashish as we explore his book Hardwired for Happiness chapter by chapter. If you didn't know, I actually connected with Ashish during the COVID lockdowns and our passion for helping individuals unlock their own potential and find true meaning in their happiness, health, love and life just became immediately clear. I'm on this journey with you and Ashish to explore how each of the nine practices that form the sunflower that Ashish has laid out just so simply and beautifully. What I find incredibly unique is how Ashish has taken years of experience, study and research and captured them in microhabits that can change our lives for the better in just a few minutes a day, leading all of us to a more joyful, happier and healthy life. Today we continue with a third three part series on Practice seven Investing in your wellbeing we wanted to address the body, the mind and the spirit. In the previous episode we covered body and movement and the importance. In this episode we're going to focus on the mind and the power of quality and quantity of sleep. Now for me, I'm on a bit of a roller coaster in developing consistent habits here as we share our own personal stories. Ashish incorporates research that even served, pardon the pun, an awakening even for me. Stay through till the end as Ashish provides several tips that you can easily integrate into your life from today. Explore natural alternatives to caffeine, the effects of blue light and practices that you can take that nourish you into a refreshed and recharged day of focus and activity. Are you ready to learn how to do less and be more? Join us then as we talk through how we can rewire for happiness together. Enjoy. Hey Ashish, great to be back with you. How you doing?

I'm doing really well, Anil. I'm really excited to kind of continue on our series here of mind, body, spirit around well being.

Absolutely. I mean you, you know, wellbeing and investing in it is one of my passions and it's a practice that I truly love. We had recorded an episode around wellbeing. This is part two and in the last one we talked about the body, the spirit and the mind and how the three coming together is true harmony. And you know Ashish, I want to say to our listeners, I highly encourage you to listen to it. You shared so many amazing facts around well being around, you know, how we are living longer, but living longer but maybe not in the healthiest way and the only way we can live a better, longer life is by improving the quality and by really investing in our well being through that mind, body and soul that is the unlock. And you shared some amazing simple tips around movement. And I'll tell you, before we recorded this, I actually spoke to my wife about it. I said we have to listen to this together because there were some things you shared, Ashish, that blew my mind. And I'm telling our listeners even though I'm a triathlete, what he shared in that episode has changed how I'm now working not only at home but just at my desk alone. So thank you for that, Ashish. I'm excited to talk about mine but this is, this is just something where we can go into so many different conversations on well being. I want to share a story with you Ashish, before we dive into mind and you know I travel quite a bit. I know you did as well when you were in your consulting days. Last week I had only four hours of sleep. Anika and I, we got to Schiphol airport, just wasn't in the greatest mood. I was feeling tired, sleepy, you know, I had to go through the security line and I'm, I'm priority, Anika's not and the lady wouldn't let us both go and I was just like, come on, can I speak? I literally said like, I need to speak to a manager. And she's like, sir, I'm sorry, you're going to have to go somewhere else. So I go upstairs and Ashish, I'm telling you, there's no cue. I did not need the priority line, but I'm still acting, feeling frustrated. I got through security and, you know, I'm like, I'm at this airport and our flight's in an hour. And, you know, I'm sure our listeners can relate to this. You don't have enough sleep. You're at an airport. We're talking about, well, being. I'm depleted, I'm stressed. I'm projecting my frustration to other people. I can't go for a run. I can't drop and do 20 pushups. That'd be awkward. Ashish, if you were in my shoes or if you were next to me, what would you tell me to do?

Yeah, I think, look, it's a great question, right? And so we can talk about. Look, I always think about Anil. There is a base level of energy, and there are things that we need to do to continuously invest in creating a solid foundation right. On the top of which we can live life. But we don't live in a monastery, we don't live in a cave. We don't live where we have all the time in the world and life goes perfect. So I think what you described was one of those moments where, you know, that moment, that day wasn't perfect. Right. And you were struggling. You know, some of us have stress, some of us have, you know, and this notion of just feeling off. First of all, you know, friends recognize. Recognize those moments and be grateful for them because they can be good reminders of what it feels like when we are feeling off and why we need to take care of ourselves to feel on more often. Right, but you highlighted a bunch of things on that particular day that were.

Going on enough to dissect and don't.

I hadn't slept enough. I hadn't eaten enough. Right, so you were also hungry, you were in movement. So you were kind of off from your regular, you know, routine. You were traveling. I mean, airports can be just pretty stressful anyway, you know, between all the flight delays and kind of people and, you know, it just surprises me. You know, flight is. Is such an amazing invention, and it is so powerful. I mean, every time I fly, Anil, you know, I'm just. I'm in wonder of the fact that we're flying in a. In a. In a cylindrical tube. And like, you know, I just flew earlier this week. Right. I mean, we were in Philadelph. It's the other end of the. Of. Of the US and you know, we got to like Boulder in four and a half hours. It like, I didn't invent the plane. Somebody was flying it. I don't know how to fly the plane. And you know, I'm like, oh my God, it's so amazing. And yet, you know, we have people all around us that are just stressed and like, oh my God, they're like just complaining and. But anyway, it's filled with stressful, complaining people. We can have a whole conversation around.

That as we can.

But, but listen, you know, three things, three suggestions, my dear friend. I just, just listened to tune into you and I think we'll cover some of them in more detail, frankly, you know, in this episode as we delve into the mind. But you know, one, on those days for you and for our listeners, my dear friends, when you don't get enough sleep, one technique, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, swears by it. I have so many other folks who've talked about this. It was actually something created by Thomas Huberman, a neuroscientist. And it is a technique called NSDR Non Sleep Deep rest. And it's a particular way of breathing through which in within 10 to 15 minutes. And you can do it anywhere, you can of course do it lying down, but you can even just do it sitting. We can actually restore ourselves and get some of the benefits that we get from long term sleep in as short as 15 to 20 minutes. Okay. So it's a really, really powerful technique. It leverages breath and body scan as a way to kind of really relax our mind and our body. So very powerful. It can actually act as, you know, the reason our brain, you know, we are kind of feeling irritation is because our brain is struggling, right? It's struggling to recover. It hasn't got enough. Especially if you broke, if you got up in a REM cycle, right? And you all of a sudden got woke up, you didn't complete through your full cycle. It can put us in that. And so just consciously, you know, doing an NSDR. And by the way, there's tons of videos on YouTube and other scripts that you can use to do that can be a very simple thing that you could do, right. When it comes to your mind, okay, Something that you can do your mind to kind of recover your mental energy. You know, on the physical side, when we are feeling this way, I think just noticing and moving, you know, we covered movement in the last one, right? And so this notion of even taking our arms and actually kind of just, you know, lifting up and down, almost flapping your wings, if you will, like a bird, right? Moving our body, turning and twisting, touching our toes, just that movement. Notice what it does to you. In airports, oftentimes we're feeling grumpy, we're tired, and then we sit down. And when we sit down, we hunch over, right? Somatics, as you're going through your own course in Newfield, how important somatics is. So if we just open up, if we actually move, you know, it's that kinetic. You can create energy through your body. In that moment when you feel you don't have energy, you can actually create and you'll notice, oh my God, I got a lift, right? And then I will tell you, my dear friend, the third one, and this is my favorite, has changed my life. Compassion, heart, spirit. When we are feeling down, when we are feeling stressed, all the focus, our brain's focus goes to me, me, poor me, unhappy, me, stressed, me, I need this, I need to recover. If we just for a moment tune outwards, you know, and just scan, you know, the beauty in an airport is there are so many people who are going through. There's so many people who are working in restaurants. There might be people who are cleaning the airport. They're air hostesses or they're like flight, you know, or like flight attendants as well as those ticket counter people who are, you know, they're every. This is their day to day job, right? They're working through it. We are transiting through a place where they work and everybody has their story. Many of the people who work don't lead, as you know, their lives in general are not as privileged as ours are. Especially those who are working in the restaurants and the shops. They have their own battle, they have their own story, you know, just tuning in and seeing the beauty of the human being, beings around us, connecting with them, making somebody smile, giving them the attention, noticing them, you know, Anil for the whole day, a hundred thousand people going around them and you witnessed the beauty of that human being and you were able to, through that kindness, recognition, create a smile in them. It'll bounce back to you, right? It'll bounce back to you. And so, yeah, and also, right, like recognizing that you're not alone, it also reduces that loneliness. Why me? Pity. So three simple ways, my dear friend. Even though if we are in an airport, one is just move. The second one is do a quick 10, 15 minute, you know, NSDR and three is just tune into the others. Tune into the magic that is kind of surrounding you, right? By opening your heart, by Opening your.

Spirit, I love that.

And see how it shifts.

Do you know, I think, let me work backwards on that because it's almost like a seesaw, right? If you're on one end, I'm on the other and I give you thanks and I put the weight and focus on you and then it comes back to me, I put it on you, it comes back to. And I think it's. It's interesting because I think just being able to say to someone, hey, thank you for what you do. Because let's be honest, we get frustrated at an airport. The person we take it out on is that quote unquote, innocent person at the gate that's dealing with all the passengers. If there's a delay or if there's something going wrong, just being able to smile at that person and seeing that genuine connection can be brief but sacred. The moment you talked about movement, Ashish, I was thinking about our last episode where people at their desk, we do hunch over. So whether you're at the airport or whether you're sitting at your desk, movement is critical. I encourage everyone to do that because I think it's so amazing how again, that simple movement can make a difference. And you know, I notice whenever I crack my chest and I just open up my body, I actually feel tension release and I actually feel better for it, even just moving my shoulders up and down. It's just these simple little things that you can do, right to. Like you said, okay, recharging, you don't have to drop on the ground and do 20 pushups to get that pump. You know what I mean? Like, that's. This is a much more, let's say effective and etiquette way of recharging yourself. And from a seated position. I like it.

Yeah. And you know, friends, as you go through your day, just a simple thing, right? You don't even, by the way, have to do it when you're stressed or tired at the lead. You know, we walk through life, we interact, run and run around, we cover. You know, we go through so many people, so many people we touch. But we don't think. Think about just your coffee shop. You know, we're going through somewhere there's somebody working. Oftentimes we're on the phone. These days I see it all the time. Either our head is buried in the phone or we are talking on the phone and we'll just go and say, what do you want? One latte, please. And our heads are still tied to our phone, or I'm still on the phone and I'll be like, hold on one second. Mute. One latte please. Thank you. And then I go back on my conversation and we say card and we go, okay, right, that person there is sitting there. If they weren't there, they just gave you something that allows you to be refreshed, allows you to take care of yourself, right? And it doesn't even matter, right, whether you thank them or not or if you thank them but didn't even look at them, you know, we go through these motions and all it takes, you know, frankly, is, you know, one. So for me at least, you know, I'm conscious when most of the time, right, If I'm going through someplace and I'm going to interact with somebody, just notice them and just say, hello, how are you?

How's your day going?

How's your day going? Or how are you? Right? And then they're like, fine. I said, well. And then I'll say, can I please, right, Can I please get this? Thank you. Have an amazing day, right? And just giving them that brief attention just that brings a spark in so many and that like reverberates back to you, you know what I mean? And it's just so simple and you know, I don't know, right. We have in certain ways today we can do things 90% faster, you know, in many cases even more than we could before. And yet somehow we've gotten so busy, we've gotten so self immoled and we've kind of lost the humanity, you know, we've lost the ability to kind of just. And we don't have to do anything. You know, we can give the gift of a smile, we can give the gift of just seeing the other person. That is the biggest gift. And yet it is just not done, you know, it's just not done. So I invite you, dear friends, to just next time notice the human being you're interacting with and just see them. Just see them and let them see you.

I love that because, you know, I mean, let's now kind of shift to mind right now we're all at the airport, we're walking on the street. And again, Ashish, you know, you're on your phone, you're looking down, you look around you, you see literally throngs of people just looking down at their phone. Now I'm going to say, I'm going to take a guess here. That's not the healthiest activity for your mind, especially when you're out and about, crossing the road, looking down. We all know what could potentially happen there, Ashish. Let' swhen we shift to mind, a couple things come to mind.

Right.

Sleep, like you just said, how we actually are able to do more things, but that dopamine effect that kicks in, that we're now addicted to when it comes to focusing. I'd love, Ashish, for you to start sharing with our listeners some of your thoughts and ideas around these areas. Because looking after our mind and keeping it healthy as we age, as we live longer and want a more quality life, looking after our mind is absolutely critical. Where would you like to start?

Yeah, so look, I mean, I looked into this space quite deeply and I was actually quite privileged now also that I actually could spend almost two years of my life before I left McKinsey on this topic of well being and mental well being. Right, Mental wellbeing, physical wellbeing, we spent a lot of time on it, but in particular, mental wellbeing. As I mentioned on our last episode, you know, McKinsey launched the McKinsey Health Institute. It's a think tank which is predominantly working on topics around well being and how we can drive systemic change. I was part of the team that launched the first corporate mental wellbeing survey that companies can use when I was at McKinsey to really benchmark holistically around how companies are doing on this topic of well being. You know, what is the current state of well being? What are the interventions? Are people removing the stigma around it? So really amazing work, right? For all those corporate leaders, it's some of the best work I've seen out there. So I strongly encourage you to go to the website of McKinsey Health Institute and check those out. Some of my colleagues, ex colleagues now, but Jackie, Brassi, Barbara, are really, really doing some critical and amazing work there for me. You know, when I looked at this topic, there are three things. Again, as you know, we can study this in, you know, in all the beautiful research, but what are some simple things that people can do? And I'll list them in this order. The first and foremost, which is a core foundation that we are all guilty of taking away from, is sleep. Let's focus and go deep into that in this episode because I think it is really one of those most profound things, just like, you know, I shared in the last episode around movement and how sitting is the new smoking and the effects of a sedentary lifestyle, how bad it is. You know, sleeping is one of those myths that I would love to bust on this episode and really make people aware of how important this is. The other two are actually Focus and building a habit of continuous learning. Okay, so when it comes to focus, you hit it on the head. We have become dopamine addicts. Did you know, Anil? According to a recent survey that was done, on average, Americans check their phone 344 times in a day. If you sleep for eight hours, that's once every four minutes, right? That's once every four minutes. We have traded away in the last 20 years our ability to focus to the likes of Facebook, Instagram, and all the other LinkedIn. You know, just look around. We never sit at actually, you know, if you're in the queue, you've got your phone on. If you're riding in an elevator, we glued to our screens. It almost reminds me of this device that. That, you know, was in this Batman movie. It was the horrible version of the Batman movies that came out in the. I think it was the 90s or the 2000. Jim Carrey played the Riddler, and he had created this device on set top boxes that used to take all of our fricking mental energy out, brain waves into it. Yep, into it. That's what these phones have become for us. And we just can't hold ourselves back. And when we do that, right, we experience 40% reduction in productivity. We drop 10 IQ points, we have 50% more likelihood of making mistakes. So in another episode, let's talk about how we actually fundamentally regain control back from the social media networks, from our smartphones. So that's a really important mental. You know, that's a really important mental practice. The other one that I was covering was this whole notion of adaptability and learning. You know, we go through amazing periods of learning anil growing up till we are 21, 22. Right. We graduate from college, we might indulge back into it when we go for our postgraduate program, but once we graduate, we stop learning. We start operating out of an expert mindset. And you know what? As we do that, our brains start to atrophy, our learning abilities start to atrophy, our memory starts to suffer. And just like that story we have, we hold that story too. Oh, yeah. Memory loss is just part of getting older. It's not true. It doesn't have to be. If we continuously build a habit of learning, we can actually reverse, if not delay, memory loss significantly. We truly can reverse brain aging. Our brain aging is our own creation by not investing in learning and operating out of an expert mindset of just doing right. So whether it's learning a language, whether it's learning how to dance, whether it is learning a new skill, whatever it is, we can actually really take care of our mental well being. I think in the following episodes we should delve into these more. But let's talk about sleep because sleep is one of the most foundational things that we can do. And as you know, I'm a big fan, Neil, of how can we achieve more by being more rather than doing more. And this is just that, how can we truly be more? How can we invest in our sleep to. To truly be more effective?

So Ashish, when we talk about investing in wellbeing, I know you've mentioned that sleep is incredibly important. Now you've had an experience as a consultant traveling across the US and also the world. Maybe you can share with our listeners some of your experience with how you found your body handling your sleeping habits from your past.

Yeah, it's a great question, Anil, because you know, it alludes to. It'll talk my own experience. And with sleep is so much like so many others out there where we kind of convince ourselves that we don't need a lot of sleep or don't actually know how much is the right amount of sleep. Right. So all the research scientists, Matthew Walker being one of the deepest experts who studied the science of sleep, he's written a book on it. It's actually a masterclass by him. Consistently agree that for most of us we need seven to nine hours of sleep. Okay. Now the reality is 40% of us in the US get less than seven hours, right? So we need seven to nine and we get less than seven. How many hours do you sleep every night?

I would say I average five and a half, six hours in bed by about 11, 1130 maybe at 12 and my body just wakes me up at 6, 5, 36.

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Right? So here's a statistic for you around the effect of sleep. If we go consistently about 10 to 14 days with 6 hours or less of sleep, we are, in terms of our ability to think at the same level. If we actually went a whole day, a whole day, 24 hours without sleeping, we just don't realize it because slowly, slowly, slowly, our brain reserves deplete, right? And it's a little bit like the analogy of the, you know, the, you know, it's a myth, but like this analogy of this boiling frog, right? If you put a frog in water and you start heating it, it won't even know till it's cooked. It's actually not true, but it's a little bit like that. You know, we get so desensitized. And again, because of our brain's ability around this hedonic adaptation in terms of just getting used to what we've got, it slowly starts, you know, our ability to think clearly, the time it takes to make decisions starts to go down, down, down. In fact, we are sometimes at 25 to 30% less, you know, thinking clearly and taking longer to make decisions. Now think about, you know, professions like yours and mine in consulting, yours and marketing, where it's all about creativity, right? How bad of an effect that it can have, right? Like, it's. It's actually terrible. And I lived into that same myth, you know, for about 20 years of my working life, right? There was periods where I was sleeping four to six hours a night. In fact, if I go back even to my college years, it's terrible. Now that I thought about it, I used to be actually quite proud about this fact that I went, you know, 16 days, sleeping one to two hours a night. They're like, oh, look at me. I slept only 30 hours in two weeks. And you guys spent, you know, sleep that much in a week, right? Look at how much more I got done. I did get a lot done. I'm not sure the quality was that good, right? Or maybe I could have done things a lot, lot, lot a lot easier, a lot faster.

But there was a period of time, Ashish, when you were in college, where I think you went, correct me if I'm wrong, nearly 16 days straight with only a few hours of sleep, like, you were just on it.

Yeah, no, that's what I, that's what I just mentioned, right? Like, it was crazy. Like, and, you know, back then I could do it. And my look, it was that plus lots of caffeine, right, to just get you going. And I hear about that all the time here. Like, I was at, you know, like four months ago, I was at the Best Buy and college. It was like exam time. And this kid who was working behind on Geek Squad was like, yeah, you know, I said, how are you doing? He's like, I'm tired. I said, what's going on? He's like, I haven't slept in three days. Literally. He said, I haven't slept in three days because I've got exams. I'll sleep in a couple of more days once my exams are done. And, you know, it's crazy because we are operating at 30, 50%. Sometimes if you haven't slept at all, you're at such lower level of performance, you're just like muscling through. And there just is a better way to go about it. There is a better way to be at our best mentally, Anil, if we just harness the foundation of sleep and put some things in effect.

So, Ashish, if I think about. I'm going to give an example. Parents, right? They have their first newborn or their second born, and I'm imagining that they struggle with their sleep at night. How can we find a way to help them? Like, what are things that they can do knowing that they're. It's not in their control? They're up when the baby's up, they're down when the baby's up. What would maybe be some thoughts that you could share with that, that segment of our listeners?

Yeah, so look, great, great, great question. You know, I'll refer to the original thing that I just talked about at the beginning of the episode. NSDR is a really powerful way, right? Because you can't control what time the baby sleeps. So this whole notion of go sleep 7, 8 hours uninterrupted is not a luxury that's available to parents, right? Especially of newborns. I mean, you're kind of up and down with the, with the baby, right? So NSDR can be a really, really effective way to kind of relax our brain. Because sleep at the core of it does two functions, right. One is an ill, it rejuvenates our physical energies. But second is it's a way for the brain, for our brains to recover. In fact, a lot of the neurotoxins that our brain produces actually get drained. And by the way, these neurotoxins, when they don't grain the right way, is the reason for those who don't sleep enough have higher risk of Alzheimer's. Right. It's because of that. So sleep is a really powerful way for the brain to rejuvenate, recleans itself. Right. That's a really, really important function that it does. You know, the other thing is it's. And it's true for all of us, it's true for parents, it's true for, it's true for others, which is really understanding the role caffeine plays in our sleep cycles. You know, before I knew this, I was just like so many other people. You know, at 2 or 3, I needed to get my caffeine jolt. I don't know if you have that habit too.

I love my caffeine jolt.

Yep, right. Two to three, jolt of joy, jolt of caffeine, Right? Yeah, exactly, Right. So two to three is a very standard time. A lot of people drink their coffee because, you know, you're kind of coming off the afternoon coma and like, you just need something. We like to treat ourselves. So like, why not just get a cup of coffee? Did you know that caffeine has a half life of five to seven hours?

No, but it explains a lot because when I have a coffee later in the afternoon, let's say around three or four, during, let's say just a one to one meeting, I notice that evening that I may be asleep, but I'm not feeling sound.

Right. Yeah. So that's the thing, right. So I didn't need. I didn't realize that once I realized, it all started to make sense. So if you have caffeine at three, which I used to do all the time, what that means is when I'm trying to go to bed at 11 or 10, I still have half of that caffeine surging through my body. No surprise. We don't. We find it hard to fall asleep. Now back in my consulting days, usually we had late night dinners, team dinners or client dinners where, you know, copious amounts of alcohol was, you know, could be consumed. And so of course, right, you go like, yeah, no, but I don't have a problem falling asleep I always fall asleep. No, that's not sleep. Now you've got two things going against you in the quality of the sleep that you're getting, right? The first is you've got caffeine surging through your body so implicitly your brain is on high alert. Now, on top of that you've got alcohol's effect, which is more of a numbing effect. So what alcohol does it when you are. If you have alcohol and you sleep, you can fall asleep, but you don't get into deep sleep. So what happens is it's the deep sleep that truly regenerates, renews our brain, right? And so that's. That is the core issue, which is two of these things acting together can be actually really, really bad. Going back to our recommendation for parents and for others, the simplest things we can do knowing that caffeine has this long effect is to actually not have coffee after 12. Give your body enough time for it to actually work through it. And yes, will the first couple of weeks be hard? Of course it'll be hard. You know, we are weaning ourself off a habit. But what we will notice, and I noticed this personally Anil once I started doing it, is not only do we sleep better and wake up more refreshed, I used to wake up groggy all the time. But because we wake up refreshed, we don't need that urgency of first thing in the morning, I need to get my coffee, otherwise I can't even get out of bed. That notion is a clear indicator. So to all our listeners, if you are waking up tired, groggy, we need to actually look at all the conditions around the way we are sleeping. Now one of the things might be physiological, right, which is you might have sleep apnea and hence you need to actually get doctor's advice and get that checked. But if you're not waking up continuously in the day, in the night and yet you're actually feeling groggy, look into your caffeine consumption, look at the last time you have caffeine and then also look into alcohol. Again, as I mentioned, if we have alcohol in the night, yes, we have, if we find it easier to go to sleep. But no, our sleep is not of.

That high of a quality, you know. So Ashish, I. I have a whoop band that gives me metrics every morning based on my sleep the night prior. I've used it consistently for nearly two years now. My sister has the oura ring and I think these are great devices if folks are keen to get them and apply what they learn and how it informs them on their sleep patterns. Like you mentioned, I notice a night like last night, I went to a friend's birthday, I had a few glasses of wine, I had a heavy dinner. Great. Got home, I still went to bed at 11 or 11:30. I did not have great quality of sleep. In fact, when I woke up this morning, I noticed that my heart rate variability was high, my resting heart rate was high and my REM sleep was low and overall quality sleep was low. So I may have had. And I did wake up at seven o', clock. So I did have, you know, nearly eight hours of sleep. But back to your point, the quality wasn't there. I almost felt like I was in a light sleep for that duration of time. And I know that's not good for me because I wanted to go for a run today. I wanted to be focused and ready to speak to you, you. I wanted to be ready to do, you know, on a Sunday, let alone a weekday. And now you imagine if you're going into work, what you're going to end up doing is you're going to have that morning coffee, you're going to have that midday coffee and probably a late afternoon coffee and that cycle is going to perpetuate rather than breaking the flow. And I do want to kill two birds with one stone. On the previous chat we had on movement, maybe a tip for the listeners is instead of going for that 12 o', clock, 3 o' clock coffee with the people here, take that meeting outside, go for a walk, have a chat. So you're getting your movement, that's one less bit of caffeine you're having. You're having that time with a colleague to discuss. I think it's a way to break that cycle and almost see does the night of sleep you have following that improve or not? And I'd be keen to hear from the audience after listening to this, if they do it for a few days and write back to us, whether it be on LinkedIn or email us and go, you know what? That actually did improve my sleep quality just by doing these two, three things at a very basic level and breaking that cycle that, Ashish, you and I both know we've done, we continue to do, but are looking to improve upon.

Yeah, I love that tip. You know, look, I think today in a lot of ways, technology interrupts our sleep, reduces our ability, but this is an advantage, you know, you gave, whether it's the Apple watch, it's, it's the whoop band it's the oura ring. You know, we can actually become our own sleep scientists, so to speak, right? We can actually look at how well are we sleeping and really play around with all the different variables that are actually going in to make sure that we are able to truly increase both the quantity, which is seven to nine hours, but also the quality of our sleep. Really, really important. So we covered some of them. I'm going to highlight a couple more things for you all to just consider things to play with. Now, of course you can go to a six hour listen to Matthew Walker. And for those who are really interested, I really recommend doing that. But here's some additional tips. If you only have 30, 45 minutes and you're tuning into our conversation, what are some things you could consider integrating into your routine? The first one we already covered was try and limit your caffeine intake after 12, if not eliminated completely. The second one was around really think about alcohol use in the evening. Even if you think you're actually getting good sleep and it helps you sleep, it's not deep sleep, the kind that you would want. The third one is light dinners. And you mentioned when you eat heavy, we don't sleep as well. Right. For most adults actually if you look at the yogic sciences, always recommended much, much lighter dinner. You know, even in western wisdom there is this notion of eat like a prince, right? Or eat like a king in the morning, eat like a prince in the afternoon for lunch and eat like a popper, yes, for dinner. There is lots of wisdom when our stomachs are filled with we don't get that quality of sleep. So really thinking about our food intake can be a big driver around the quality of sleep. The fourth thing that can really help is actually around blue light that our screens emanate. Now for many of us, we might not have the luxury of shutting off at 8 and not looking at our computer. Let's be practical. If you can, you should do it. But if you can't, at least invest in some colored glasses that eliminate blue light. If you're going to have to work right after eight to nine, one to two hours before you go to bed. They're like lenses with orange hues, et cetera, that really eliminate blue light has been studied. It actually creates wakefulness and that's because of the circadian rhythms. Our bodies are designed to rise with the sun and set with the sun. We all have our unique circadian rhythm. I was the longest time in ill, was convinced I didn't have one. I could wake up anytime I want, I could sleep anytime I want, right? And the data suggested it. I mean, I could fly, you know, I used to in Midwest and I could fly actually to west Coast. And I had no issue, quote unquote, falling asleep and waking up. Well, I fell asleep because I had drinks and I woke up, up because I had coffee. So I mean, that's not, I'm talking about unaided. Covid changed all that because all of a sudden I realized I actually did have a sleep rhythm. I did have wake up and end times. It's just that I was spending three, four days on the road, east coast, west coast, Midwest. My body had no idea what the time zone was. They're like, I have no idea how you sleep. So, you know, you just. Our body gets used to, to whatever we subject it to, but find your circadian rhythm. Eliminate blue light. Find your circadian rhythm. Are you a morning person or a late night person? And just slowly using data, start to kind of optimize your sleep routine to sleep at a time that is optimal for you, your brain, your body, and just create a nice relaxing routine. Right? So those four or five things that we just covered in link I think can really help us actually both work on the quality of sleep that we are getting, but also on the quantity of sleep. And if we do that, my dear friends, you are laying a foundation that will allow you to be more effective in the 8, 12, 16 wakeful hours and get more done in that time because you're thinking sharper, you're thinking clearly, your IQ is higher versus sleeping six hours and putting those two extra hours at work because guess what, at that time you're probably only at 30, 50% of your true mental cognitive ability.

So, you know, I think this is incredibly powerful folks because Ashish, what you captured are just things that we can do naturally in our day to day. And I know, hey, there might be folks out there that suffer from, as you mentioned, Ashish, like a medical condition that requires, let's say sleeping pills or, or expert advice to help them sleep better. You know, I know folks who take melatonin at night and I know it's one thing that you, you mentioned in the book, how what you just mentioned, if you can manage your circadian rhythm, that's almost key in terms of how we regulate our melatonin production. And you know, you also mentioned about how you can just create a nice relaxing routine to unwind before you're going to bed. So you put on the glasses and you can, you can read if you'd like you can turn off the devices, you can journal, take a warm shower and for those that love, you know, something warm before they go to sleep, you know, maybe replace that cup of coffee with a nice, you know, organic chamomile tea or something that can relax and soothe you. So the practices that you're mentioning, Ashish, are really powerful because you're almost nourishing yourself. And why wouldn't you want to if you could spoil yourself a little bit before you go to sleep and just see how that can improve the quality, quality that you have over the course of a busy work week or a relaxing weekend. I think these are just amazing ideas, Ashish, that you've shared.

Go ahead. Hey Anel, by the way, you mentioned melatonin, right? Which is by the way, one of the most, what I would call abused sleep supplement because most people think it's actually okay, I'm not taking sleeping pills, I'm taking melatonin and I did this right? So I am saying this from personal experience when I researched melatonin, which was another thing, our body naturally produces melatonin, right? It's the rise of melatonin in the body that actually gets our brain. You know, we go to sleep now when we take supplemental melatonin, we are fundamentally reducing our brain's natural ability to produce it because we've got more of it in the system, right? So I think it's a little bit of a dependence that we're starting to create. Also the amount is important for most individuals. 1 to 2, 1 to 2 milligrams of melatonin is enough. And if you look at many melatonin supplements out there, it is 3, 5, 7, 10 times higher. Forget about people who pop. I know some people who will take two pills at a time. Oh, I haven't slept enough, let me take two or three. So we end up overdosing ourselves on something. Too much of anything is not good. And this is one again, dear friends, really look into this and if you do take melatonin, look at how much it is that you're taking and have a conversation with your doctor. You might think because it's over the counter, it's not harmful. It actually can be pretty harmful. So rather than self diagnose, I would focus more on these simple lifestyle changes rather than, you know, supplements as a way to actually try to get us into us into a good quality and quantity of sleep. Sleep as everybody does. No other organism in the world needs help sleeping. But somehow because of all the activity we get into as Humans sleep disorders are on the rise and seem to be affecting all of us.

And Ashish, I think this goes back to enemies of Learning. I think we typically want to do well. I've always done that. You know, I've always had my coffee, I've always had my, my melatonin. I've always had my few beers, my glass of wine. I've always used it. It's always helped and you know, it's. I think what you're offering is ideas on how if you're open to doing it differently, doing it more organically, doing it naturally, you can actually see how it can change your life. And you know, again, I encourage folks who are really interested in learning more about this for those that are in our Happiness Squad community. You know, Ashish has put together these micro practices on well being, both not only on the importance of sleep, but also on how movement can actually complement that well being as well. And again, this is all about safeguarding and protecting your mind. I mean, Ashish, I'm still thinking about what you mentioned earlier, how the body needs sleep to remove those toxins to reduce the chance of Alzheimer's. And I think that, you know, folks, this is something that we should all be thinking about, about. And I really do invite everyone to try, you know, one or two of these practices. You don't have to do them all at once. We've been doing them here and there. And you'll, you'll, you can hear from Ashish, like even myself, we don't actually do it daily. There are times we fall back into old patterns, but that's okay. The goal is how do you continue to move forward, bouncing forward with ideas, with tips that can really and truly change your life. Ashish, before we shift gears, I just want to say and close up, is there anything you would like to share with our listeners regarding the mind sleep? I know we've talked about focus. This has just been incredibly eye opening for me as well. Pun, unintended.

Look. Now I'm excited to continue on this journey together. I think in the coming episodes, let's circle through focus, adaptability, learning ways in which we can do that. Sleep. My friends, as I mentioned again, we are big fans here of Happiness Squad on how do we achieve more. Not by doing more, but by being more. And this is one of those core things that can help you truly achieve more. Try it. Try it, my dear friends. Try and get seven to nine hours of sleep and that one extra hour or two extra hours that you're putting into sleep. Notice how that helps you achieve more in the eight to 12 hours that you actually work. Your productivity, your quality of thinking. Just notice how it affects you and you will become believers too. So I invite you, start by one small change at a time. Be your own researcher. Be your own creator of how I can hack your own body at all. Everybody's bodies are different. Find your routine and I wish you have a wonderful I wish your quality of sleep goes up and you also wake up refreshed every morning like I started doing once I started integrating these into my life.

Love it. Thank you very much Ashish. Hey, big hugs and lots of love. Thanks Happiness Squad folks.

Take care and sleep well till we connect. Next.

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Sa.