5 Psychological Tricks to Optimize Your Energy

I want to be able to summon the energy I need to serve in any given moment, to have it in terms of endurance or what you might call stamina over a period of time. For those of you who are coaches or you want to be a creator, artist, you're an entrepreneur. You know how much mental energy that takes. Adaptability is a big part about it. If you think about physical fitness, that adaptability in range of motion or flexibility or even on a different court, set a higher bar, don't go through the motions, have clear intention, clear goals, know what you're going after. When I think about each of these areas, mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, and social, my goals at the very beginning, from the time I was 19 years old, I had one overarching goal, and I wonder what yours is. When we start talking about fitness in each of these areas, I want you to define it in a minute about what your goals are, and I'll share with you. I really had, like, four, but one was the overarching goal. And many of you know, if you know my career, you know that goal for me was energy that I wanted to have. Notice I don't. I'm not just talking about energy overall. I'm talking about what I call applied energy. I want to be able to summon the energy I need to serve in any given moment and to have it in terms of endurance or what you might call stamina over a period of time. In other words, I didn't want big dips in my energy. I didn't want to have that experience where it's like I couldn't get the energy to serve on stage or a day like today where I'll be teaching, what, probably six hours. Don't worry, not this session. Today. I'm with you this morning session for about three hours. We'll do some workshop and breaking. But overall, I'm teaching a lot. I'm on the road a lot. For those of you who are coaches or you want to be a creator or you're an artist or you're an entrepreneur, you know how much mental energy that takes, right? You've got to constantly be in a creative mode. You've got to be able to come up with ideas. You got to handle problems. You. You have to know how to be, you know, focus on one thing, but then in another moment, innovate and build a new thing. It's incredibly hard. And to me, mental energy was the beginning, because when I was. When I was 19, I realized I couldn't study for a long period of time. Anyone ever had that before you. You're at school and your attention span is only like 30 minutes or today three minutes or a TikTok video. But I was realizing, I was like, wow, I don't have the mental stamina to study all night. I'd go to class and my friends would say, yeah, I studied all night. I'm like, how did you study all night? Like, my brain would get fried. I couldn't believe that people could study all night. I met friends who would read multiple books every week. I met speed readers during college. I met people who could study class notes and retain that and I mean at like, epic levels. And I was like, wow, they've got a. A level of mental fitness that I don't have. So I'm sharing this with you because, look, I could have ordered this in, in any given way, but for me, it started with mental energy. I was like, wow, I don't have that. But also at the time, I was struggling with a lot of mental, emotional and physical realities, as we'll talk about today. And I had to learn to broaden this topic of energy. And we'll do that right now. But for me, my overall goal was I've always wanted to have the energy I need on demand and over the long term. So most of my life and my habits from how I meditate or exercise, how I deal with nutrition and supplementation and movement, and my entire, I would say, habits and routines are set up to make sure that I have the energy to serve at the level that I want? Now, that's just very simple and elegant question to you. Do you have the energy you need to serve at the level you want? Now, I know serve is a weird word for some people, but do you have the energy you need to serve the level you want in terms of serving as a parent to your child, serving at work, serving in your creative endeavor, serving in caring for your team or your business or your customers, serving in terms of you having that. That feeling to care for other people. I know that's a broad definition, but I think it's so important. We're going to start with that simple challenge today. Do you have the energy you need to serve at the levels you want in each of these areas? So one of my goals was energy. Another goal, though, if you write this down for me, was strength. Strength in each of these areas. I wanted mental strength because I thought, oh, I. I'm falling apart here in school or emotionally, I was falling apart all the time. I didn't have emotional strength. So when I went Through a breakup with somebody I love because I didn't know how to deal with that. I went into depression. When I got frustrated in my learning, I quit. I didn't have any emotional resiliency, what I would overall call strength. I didn't have the emotional strength to deal with life's basic challenges, right? Because life's basic challenges, you have them there, we all have them. Some of your life's basic challenges are uncertainty, our dread in dealing with things we don't want to deal with. Our disruptions from people disrupting our plan, our disease or sickness, not feeling well, our plans changing. And all of a sudden we, it's like we got to deal with all those things. Those don't go away. And I didn't have the strength to deal with those things. And that frustrated me. So to me, fitness is about strength, but not just about your bicep strength. It's about mental, emotional, spiritual, physical and social. And I had to really learn that. I didn't have a lot of social strength because I, I was uncomfortable in myself. Does that make sense to anybody? I think social fitness is more than just social intelligence. Knowing people's psychology or understanding people. It's about the strength to convey who we really are. It's about the strength to stand up for ourselves. It's about the strength to set boundaries. That's what makes us socially fit. And I never thought about that before. Another thing that I needed to learn was I needed to learn skill. I think fitness is tied to skill in everywhere, even just physical fitness, right? If I walk into a gym and I don't know what to do in there, I don't have the skill of understanding a proper movement, then I injure myself, right? I go trying to do, I go to the squat rack and I don't know proper form. I don't have any skill in doing a squat. I tend to hurt myself. And I think that's very true for people in a lot of areas of their life. They never develop competency in the areas that matter most for their well being and their advancement. When you get great at dealing with people, when you get great at knowing what works for you, when you have a higher level of understanding and competency in what makes you successful in how to deal with people, in what to eat, in how to sleep, all these skills come together to give you more energy, right? And I don't think a lot of people think about fitness as a skill. I think it's a tremendous skill. That's why I admire so many of you who are physically fit. Like you've cared about understanding form or many of you, you can hop on a bike and ride, you know, dozens or hundreds of miles and you understand the like, efficiency. Efficiency in sport is a skill. Nutrition in a sport is a skill, right? Movement in any given sport is a skill. If you ever gone into a gymnastics center before and watched an amateur, a brand new person, you know, in their first two, three years figuring out gymnastics versus going to the Olympics, that level of skill and mastery, is it, you know, like 10x. It's like 10,000x. It's so different because they develop real skill and understanding of the little things that make a difference. You know, the little things, like I spent my career in high performance understanding some of those little skill sets and understandings that help people become more productive or more healthy or more effective in influence or leadership or sales. Like, I've had to understand that some of you studied marketing, right? Because you want to learn a social skill and you studied marketing and you, you know, exactly. You can look at a sentence and understand how to make that sentence more compelling because you have the skill set of marketing or psychology. Well, I think many people in each of these areas never thought about it that way. Like, oh, you're, you're developing skill here. That's your personal development. I tell people all the time, are you into personal growth? They say, yes. I say, great, what skills you're developing right now? And they go, and they go, oh, we're not yet fully conscious or, or at that higher level, that ultra level of personal development. So I want you to be clear, what skills are you trying to develop in your life? One of the things, though, I hope that you'll also write down and I had to learn this. Adaptability, adaptability. When I think of fitness, adaptability is a big part about it, right? If you think about physical fitness, that adaptability in range of motion or flexibility or even on a different court, right? Can, can you be physically healthy on, on a basketball court, but also go, you know, go over here and row? You know, when you think about an Olympian, I've worked with some decathletes. They do 10 different events and their, their body is adaptable. They've built in that adaptability, range of motion or flexibility to be able to do extraordinarily well in different sports. So why does this matter? Because are you adaptable in different social situations? Are you adaptable, emotional, hey, have you had a bad day at work? And then you can walk into your house and be an amazing mom like you have that spring back effect, that bounce back effect, that resilience to shift or to change, that's a, that's a big one. You know that adaptability I wanted, you can use a lot of words here, resilience or flexibility. But we certainly know that your survival, our survival as humans came down to a lot of our adaptability. Right. Could we adapt in our environments over a period of time is what led to a lot of evolution. And so these are fundamental in our fitness and. Right. The survival of the fittest. Okay, now it's locking in here. Now it's locking in here. And here's why most people don't survive and adapt, but more importantly why most people don't thrive and reach ultra success or higher levels. Let me share with you what I believe it to be. I really deeply believe it to be. They've never set that mastery mindset. I think it's really important. It's like, hey, let's set that higher bar. So key, right? Set a higher bar. Don't go through the motions, set a higher bar, don't go through the motions, set a high bar. Have clear intention, clear goals, know what you're going after. And I think that's going to really benefit you today. Could you all set a higher bar today? Not just want to do okay in these, but have extraordinary energy, strength, skill and adaptability. And if you think about what we talk about in, you know, the, the greater community of, of personal development, whether it's that part of biohacking or mental fitness or coaching or leadership, all of it requires these, doesn't it? So why don't most people get these? Well, I don't think it's because they're lacking intent. I don't think it's because they're not smart. I don't think it's because, you know, their environment isn't set up. I think what usually happens is like we teach in all of high performance, they don't have clarity, they just took their eye off it.