Sleep Better: My Evening Routine

Hey, my friends, it's Brendon Burchard.

And welcome to another episode of the Brendon show.

How do you manage your sleep while you're traveling? Like, what are your evening routine? So I'm gonna talk about that. So how do I do it? The number one question we got was like, okay, how are you managing sleep at your events, but also, how do you just have a better evening routine? So I want to talk. I know not everybody here. You're on stage for 40 hours, you know, in a week. So instead, let me just share what my basic evening routine and philosophy is, and I hope that will serve you. The first thing that I always think about is your evening routine is, is completely dictated by the quality of your daily structure. And what I mean by that is often our evening is completely destroyed because we didn't organize our day. And so now our day is encroaching into our evening and we become exhausted. We don't get enough sleep or we carry our stress into bed, which ruins our sleep. So I think one of the most important things you have to learn to do is better structure your day. That's my first tip for you. Structure and organize your day so you are so clear about what you are doing, when you are doing it, how long you are doing it for, and what, most importantly, what are your major outputs and major intentions for the day? I got the high performance planner. I use this every single morning. And it just keeps my intentions clear. It keeps my tasks clear. It keeps my mind on my own performance so that I can't, you know, make a lot of excuses. It just gets me in a good morning mindset and sets the day up right and makes me win week over week, month over month. Also, I think outside of just structuring your day, well, is having that intention in your mind to enjoy the day. So, yeah, structure and organize the day, but, like, enjoy it. Like, find moments of peace and gratitude or love or creativity or passion. Because if you enjoy the day, if you love the day, if you have positive energy during the day, it's so much easier to go rest easily at night because you feel fulfilled, you feel grateful, you feel in a positive mindset. So I would say, you know, my first big idea about evening routines, Structure the day and fill it with enrichment and joy and gratitude and you'll sleep better. Then my real evening routine begins, which is what I call my three, two, one pattern. And what this means is three hours before bed. And yes, I set a time every night that. That is when I'm going To bed. So if I say, okay, it's going to be midnight or it's going to be 11, or it's going to be 10, whatever, I always know what time I'm going to bed and I work backwards from that. So the three, two, one, three, three hours before bed. I never eat any food. That's really critical. Honestly, for me, it's probably usually four to four and a half hours. But minimum expectations, I will not eat three hours before bed. I just think your digestion system needs a little bit of processing time before you go horizontal, you know, so that's the three. The two is I don't do any work two hours before bed. For me, that means no email, no social media, no DMs, no looking at anything on my phone or screen that is work or social media related in the two hour block of time before bed. And this really sets me apart because I know most people that scroll in bed and they're wondering and they're getting that light from their phone, they're getting that dopamine drop, the more they scroll, the more their brain gets excited and they don't realize that's ruining their sleep. Four or five hours later, that comes back to haunt you. So just put the phone away. Or if you have to look at it, look at it for your messages or something real fast before, you know, maybe 30 minutes before going to bed. But my rule is two hours before bed, no work, no email, no social media, no news. And that is letting my mind wind down. The 1 in 3, 2, 1 is that the hour before bed, I have no screen time. That includes television. That includes looking at the phone at all. Like nothing. So two hours before, no work activities, one hour before, zero screen time. Ideally, that means Netflix turns off. It means I'm not looking at the phone. It means maybe I'm journaling. It means maybe I'm just chatting with my wife, maybe I'm just doing the dishes, maybe I am, you know, making the bed or laying out the clothes for the next day or, you know, journaling or something like that. But in general, I'm not doing much screen time or work or any other activities in that last hour going into bed. And that's really key. Third big idea I have for you is the room is so critical. I spent a lot of my life trying to figure out how to set up ideal environments to allow my creativity and my joy to flow. Whatever I'm doing, whether it's work or it's, you know, some type of creative endeavor or it's Even sleep. And sleep is important. And so what do I do for sleep? For me, I make sure that the room that I'm sleeping in is set at 65 degrees. And I know you're gonna like, oh, my God, that's so cold. And yes, because people sleep better when it's cold and your body goes, oh, it's nighttime. I should sleep here. This is important. So I set the room very cold, 65 to 68 degrees, depending on where I'm at and how humid it is. Then what I do is I make sure every bit of light blocked out. I travel with a little electrical tape. My friend Arianna Huffington taught me this. I travel with electrical tape. So when I'm in a hotel, you know, they got all the fire things and the alarms and the little red lights with the TV and, you know.

All these little dials around.

I shut off everything. I block every little piece of light, so it's completely pitch dark where I sleep, which is totally critical to me being able to sleep well. So the room is now set. Okay, now, before I get into bed, I do about 10 minutes, sometimes five, but let's call it five to 10 minutes of stretching and mobility work. Just like stretching out my body. So it's kind of like yoga or calisthenic or, you know, just stretching. And I'll lay on the ground, I'll open up my hips. I'll do runner's lunge. I'll do, you know, happy, baby. I'll do all these things to stretch out my body. Then I'll lie on my back just flat and allow my vertebrae kind of fall into place. And I'll lay there for maybe two or three minutes and just focusing on my breath. That's all I'm doing. So I'll stretch, and while I'm stretching, I'm not thinking of anything. I'm just being in the stretch, focusing on my breath. Then I end it with about two minutes to three minutes of just laying there for flat on the ground, letting my vertebrae fall into place, just focusing on my breath. So my last big idea, and this is important before I go to bed, is what I call my peace offering. And that is I'll lay in bed. I'll consider the questions that I consider every night of my life. Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter today? And as I always say, the answer isn't always yes. But if I felt like I lived a little bit today, I tried something. I was spontaneous. I was vibrant. I was happy. I had a positive mood. If I loved Today I led with my heart. I was vulnerable. I was sharing and caring. If I mattered, if I stayed on path to helping you guys, because this is all I do. I'm coming up on my 20th year as a writer. My first book was published in 2001, but I wrote it in 2000. And so I'm coming up on 20 years as a writer and as a creator. And I've had lots of different jobs and businesses and brands throughout the time, but it's always been for you all. And I just wanted to teach and. Right. And so if I did some of that during that day, I feel good. So I asked, did I live? Did I love? Did I matter? And just think about them very softly. But then my peace offering, my peace offering is to the day and to God. And it's very simple. It just says, thank you so much for this beautiful day. I hope that I served well. I want to release all of the energy and all of the emotions of, of this day. I would love to sleep tonight peacefully all through the evening. I want to say thank you for a great day. There's nothing from this day that's going to come into tomorrow. I have done all that I can. The day is over. The emotions are over. The work is complete. There is nothing for me to do until I wake up well rested and excited for the day. The day is over. I appreciate the opportunity to live today. God, thank you for the opportunity to serve my audience. Thank you for this work I get to do. Thank you for Denise, my wife. Thank you for the health of my family who are still here. Thank you for all of our fans and our friends and people around the world who support us and believe in us and allow us to serve this important mission. Lord, please allow me to rest tonight. And that's about it. It's just like a. It's just getting into peace. It's talking myself to sleep. It's just like, just like releasing all the energy from the day. And I tell you, I just, I've always been at that moment. There's nothing left in my brain. I'm done. Because listen, think about how all that lined up. I won the day, right? Because I organized it, I followed my high performance planner. I, I got things done then three, two, one. By the time of the night. So I've spent three hours winding down, right? Three hours, no food. That's the three, two. I did not do any work in that last two hours ideally. And one, no screen time in that last hour. Then I made sure the environment was set up for when it's dark, it's cold. Then what I do, I stretch out my body to open it up, to release it, to align my vertebrae just to get comfortable. That I got into bed. I thought about my life. I gave my gratitude. I released the day. There's nothing else to do. Let's go to bed, babe. That's it. That's kind of how I wind down. I hope that serves you all.

I hope this served you.

I hope to see you out on the road. You guys will hear more from me as we are doing this. Until next time, please go out there every single day and as I always used to say, make sure you live fully, you love openly, and you go make a difference. Today.

If you're ready to take your life to a whole new level, make sure you grab my book, High Performance Habits, How Extraordinary People Become that Way. It's available on Amazon right now and when you order your copy, you're really supporting my channel and the message. And you're also getting a book that will reveal to you 20 years of my research into what is it that helps people go to a new level of success in their life? What does it really take? What habits are proven to help you reach long, long term success in your career, your health, your personal life, your relationships? It's called High Performance Habits How Extraordinary People Become that Way. It's available on Amazon right now.