16. The Top 6 Success Hacks That Will Change Your Life

Have you ever wondered how people like Elon Musk are able to run several companies and still have time to throw giant parties with knife throwers and fire sticks? Do you feel like you're swamped with to do's and no end in sight? Have you ever wondered how you can work smarter and not harder so that you can sew, stop, overwhelm and turn the page? And finally, starting a chapter where you're calling the shots, not your stress and overwhelm. No matter where you are in life, whether you're simply trying to survive or if you're looking to level up on your productivity, this episode is a must. Listen Today we're going to take a look at the top six success hacks that will change your life welcome to my podcast. I'm Dr. Nicole Cain, a naturopathic doctor with a Master's in Clinical psychology and a former anxiety sufferer turned anxiety Freedom Rebel. There are three main points in this podcast. First, your brain likes strategies and rituals. Second, strategies and rituals in and of themselves won't work. You need the six hacks I'm going to teach you today. And third, the six hacks you're going to learn today will help you to reduce stress, reduce overwhelm, reduce anxiety, and pivot you away from worrying about what your life will be like if things don't change. These hacks will increase your productivity. They will increase your sense of calm and pave the way for more income, more satisfaction, and more opportunities to create a meaningful contribution in the world in the way that you feel called so let's start with expanding on the topic of strategies and rituals, including what they are and why they are not enough. Ritual is a word that means ceremony, or a dance or or a performed series of actions according to a premeditated order. Our brains thrive with ritual. The concept of ritual goes back to our earliest records of human history, and rituals have been observed in all known human societies. Rituals add a richness to the human experience and structure to a brain that has the capacity to receive a 11 million bits per second of information from the body. And that does not even include the data coming into your brain from your environment. Whether you're a planner or enjoy the whimsical freedom of flying by the seat of your pants, your brain needs ritual or structure. If you aren't intentional on drawing the map for how you think and feel and function, your brain will create it for you. Here's an example of a ritual that I commonly see in my consultation clients and let's be real myself sometimes too. Wake up. Check email, panic at 300 unread emails and then stagger out of bed, chug coffee, scroll through morning news, panic over the President's latest tweet, check your watch, realize you're late, shove a burrito down your gullet, and leap into the car with your T shirt on inside out. Okay, so maybe it's not always that extreme. But seriously, look at your daily routine. When do you wake up? What's typically the first thing you think of? What do you do? What is your initial impulse? And what is your ritual? Your brain loves habits. In fact, I did a whole podcast on how your brain loves habits so so much that the average person spends 95% of their time on autopilot. This if it's shocking to you, as it was to me, check out my podcast entitled Wake how to wake up and live the life you were meant to live. And rituals cut down the input of noise going into the brain so that the brain can concentrate on whatever is most important in that moment. So that in those small moments when it's not on autopilot, it has the bandwidth to think about what really matters to you. Having rituals is evolutionarily favorable. For example, let's say that you are gathering in a forest and a hungry bear comes out of the bushes. In order to keep you alive, your brain goes into what is called autonomic arousal, where even before you have engaged in any critical thinking, your muscles are primed to run, your heart is pounding and sending more oxygen and nutrients to your muscles. Your airways open and are ready to pull in lots of extra oxygen to keep up with the frenzied demand from your biology. You run away from the bear, diving over branches you didn't really see, turning corners and nearly missing trees that came too fast for you to assess, and you quickly get out of harm's way and into safety. The greater the ability for your brain to go into autopilot, the greater likelihood of survival. In a world where we're running from dangerous wildlife, this is totally sufficient. But in the 21st century, there's a whole different layer of demands. And this is where we come to our second point. Strategies and rituals won't get you the results you're looking for without the six hacks I'm going to teach you today. And in order to explain what I mean, we're going to talk about mimes. I promise. It's going to be great. Imagine a mime spinning plates in her right hand. Balanced on each of her five fingers are two spinning plates each. She has another. It's spinning atop her head. And then she has 10 more in her left hand. A mime companion comes along with some pretty amazing looking plates and he offers them to her. She's skilled at spinning plates and she's got it down to a pat, but she would love to give these new ones a go. So she squats down, her bottom touches the floor, and with plates still spinning, she's now sitting with both knees pointing upwards. Can you see it in your mind? The second mime comes and he places a spinning plate, one upon each of the first mime's knees. And she's now feeling a little overwhelmed. And the plate on top of her head is wobbling. A third mime approaches, wielding more beautiful plates, these plates even more appealing than the last. And her brain bounces its awareness to the plates in her right hand and then to the plates in her head, and then the plates in her left hand, and then down to the plates on her knees. And she starts to sweat and her mind is racing for ideas. She could decline this amazing opportunity to try her skills with these new amazing plates. She could risk dropping the plates she already has spinning for the chance to add two more to her routine. Or was there a different option? Have you ever felt this way? She's not haphazard. She allocated her plates accordingly and appropriately, and she's structured in her methodology. But she's feeling extremely overwhelmed and thus has a glass ceiling preventing her from taking on more opportunities. Dropping the plates won't kill her, but they can represent a loss of everything she has worked for. Have you ever felt like you were navigating so many tasks or spinning so many metaphorical plates that you were worried you were just going to lose it? I have. I was building my private practice in integrative psychology, running a successful preceptorship for budding physicians, leading clinical medical rotations, writing a new psychology curriculum for a medical institution, and teaching didactic classes, all the while talking with my medical students about prioritization and essentialism, topics we'll get to later in this podcast. But what about all of those people who are achieving 10 times more than me and in the same amount of time? Was I just not working hard enough? Was I too inefficient? What kind of superhuman would I have to be in order to spin all of these plates? Can I get a witness? Are you with me? Well, it turns out I'm not a superhuman, but that wasn't my problem. My problem wasn't even that I wasn't structured. I was organized. I had a good routine going. But my problem was that I didn't know the six tools that I'm going to share with you today. And boy did it show. I eventually dropped a lot of plates. I mean, porcelain everywhere and sitting there on the metaphorical floor, plates scattered about me, I knew I had to figure out what I was doing wrong. I found the answer by looking at who was doing it right in my mind. And this is where we come to the third and main point of this whole podcast. If you're looking to increase your effectiveness, if you want to defeat Overwhelm, if you want to win the game of showing up in the world in a way that you've only ever previously dreamed, and if you're ready to ditch the habits that have been holding you back, then get ready. Because I'm going to share with you my top six success hacks that will change your life. These tips come from some of the most successful and well achieved humans on earth and you can start using them to transform your life right now. Hey loves, if you're anything like me, you want results like yesterday and you're eagerly anticipating solutions that you can start putting into play now. So I have created an Anxiety Breakthrough Wellness Springboard. This springboard is designed to fast track you to feeling better right away and I'm giving it to you for totally free. You're going to get access to the Morning Mastery Routine used by the experts, a technique called the five Minute Spot Point that in three simple steps will teach you how to shift your brain out of an anxious cycle and back into productivity mode. And you will also get the three bonus tools that seriously ramp up your resources, whether it to be getting calm on command, reigniting your fire, or even to catapult you into some seriously awesome healing. The link for the springboard is in the show notes, so check it out right away. Alright, let's get back to the show. Picture two screens. One on my left is my poor baby Dr. Self surrounded by dozens of broken plates. And on the right screen is our mime. She's sitting on the floor, knees up, spinning all of those plates like a super magician. And one of her compatriots is standing to the side cheering for her amazingly astute plate spinning wizardry. And another has approached with yet another set of porcelain. In this metaphor, if you haven't gathered the plates are tasks, opportunities, jobs, and spinning takes attention, focus, bandwidth and stamina. Our mime as she's at the crux of a decision and she's totally overwhelmed. But she's thinking, what about those mimes who can spin 10 times more plates than me? How do they do it? I have an answer to that question, so let's just ask our mind to hang on for a few minutes while you and I talk about billionaires. If you had to guess what the wealthiest people on the planet have in common, that is besides a disposable income, and the answer is one Leverage. In crisis or states of stress or overwhelm, or when we're spinning too many plates, the brain shuts down on what it sees as lower priority and focuses on the issues at hand. With advancing neuroscience and research into the brain, we can learn how to leverage our brain's response in a way that frees up space or bandwidth in your brain. And as you're probably gathering by now, it's not just about scheduling. There's way more to it than that. Some of the most respected entrepreneurs of our time attribute a great percentage of their success to their ability to leverage their brains through creation of ritual and structure. Structure is not the same thing as leverage, though. Many make the mistake of structuring their time in such a way that they feel boxed in, their creativity and freedom is stripped away by rote routine, and their sense of joy and well being is buried under a series of five minute alarms. If not used wisely, structure can be binding and it can add to your pile of spinning plates. On the other hand, if leveraged properly, structure will set you free. For example, billionaire and one of the wealthiest people on Earth, Bill Gates breaks his daily schedule into five minute intervals. He gets up at the same time, has a mastery morning routine. He routinely stretches throughout the entirety of his day and throughout the week. But digging in a little deeper, you'll see our six strategies dappled throughout all of this. Elon Musk, A founder of PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, also schedules his day in five minute slots. He wakes at 7am and he says that one of the habits that has had the biggest impact on him is showering every morning. But that's not the end of it either. Musk uses our six strategies too, so let's get to the hacks already. There are six important guidelines when creating a life that will leverage success. Are you ready for them? They are automation, batching, scheduling, prioritization, delegation, and enrichment. Let's look at each of these one at a time. Automation Automation is a method or technique or system that takes the place of your logical and mental intervention. This might look like you doing the same task the same every time so that you don't have to think about it. The more you can automate, the more room your brain will have for what really matters. This also offers the side benefit of muscle memory. Automation can involve using software or other mechanical devices that can operate independent of your functioning. Here is a super basic example of automation in my practice, I have a big team of amazing humans that help me share the word about the Anxiety Breakthrough program and all of our amazing services. And instead of sending hundreds of emails, we use software that coordinates deadlines, sends reminders, and enables prioritization and delegation of tasks. This takes a ton of pressure off of me and my team so that we can focus on what really matters.

You.

Batching A big part of my job is getting the word out on social media about all the awesome stuff that you can do to heal your brain, reduce your stress, and conquer anxiety. Batching enables you to focus on one key action item or way of thinking and then set that aside when it's time to focus on the next type of task. Because my time is better served writing content and working directly with my clients, my team uses software that enables us to upload a big batch or a ton of content all at once and then the software will slowly trickle it out so that you don't get totally overwhelmed by a hundred posts in one day about how to send your anxiety backstage. That would just make you more anxious, right? Instead, you can see a few neat things each day, absorb that, and then be ready for tomorrow's supercharged tip while meanwhile, I'm off to the races. Scheduling Scheduling centers around building intentional time blocks where you can perform specific tasks during your brain's optimal performance times. For example, I tend to be more creatively inclined in the morning and so I block off my schedule to write in the morning. In this example, I'm leveraging my time to write not only a certain amount of time, but at a pre designated time when I know I'll perform that task best. At the beginning of each day or week, schedule out times for specific action items that you want to complete. When creating the schedule, make sure to include specific times to respond to emails and tasks, because that's huge. CEO of Apple Tim Cook always checks his messages and emails in the morning. It helps him to prioritize what he needs to do for the day and removes the distraction of unanswered messages throughout the rest of the day so he can focus on the task at hand. Prioritization Greg McNohan, author of the book entitled Essentialism, is quoted as saying, remember that if you don't prioritize your life. Someone else will. This means that instead of being a doer of all and master of none, you will achieve more and with greater satisfaction, efficiency, and less stress and less overwhelm by starting each day prioritizing your to do list. I remember when I was in graduate school, a clinician said to me, you know, Nicole, I love you because you always say yes. And that was a huge turning point for me where I realized that instead of saying yes and doing all of the things and burning myself out, I needed to look at what do I need to be saying no to? Where do I need to focus my attention in order to produce the greatest impact? What does that say to you? Delegation. Prioritization is followed by delegation. Naturally, one of the biggest challenges of high achievers and perfectionists is that they want to do it all. But that's not always reasonable or even efficient. McNohan summarizes this eloquently by stating, you cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything. I want to say that again. You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything. A big mistake we often make is that everything feels too important. But if you can relinquish that mindset and identify the areas where you feel you can make the most impact, you you will be able to make a bigger impact. Delegate what is not your top priority in order to free up your mind and bandwidth so that you can focus on what really matters the most. Enrichment. Your productivity is contingent upon the health of your mind, and the health of your mind is contingent upon the health of your body. Enrichment includes things like exercise, nutrition, unwinding, and even having fun. Both Musk and Gates schedule time for reading and personal enrichment. For example, Musk shares that one of his favorite titles is Lord of the Rings, and Gates has a huge list of his favorite reads on his blog. Warren Buffett plays the ukulele, and Walt Disney loved model trains. What can you do to enrich your life? Let's go back to our mime. She's been waiting for us for a little while, so she's been spinning plates, which in our metaphor represents all of her responsibilities or tasks or obligations. And when someone approached with an additional appealing opportunity, her overwhelm mounted and she worried about the future and what might go wrong if she said yes to that opportunity. So how could our MIME apply the six hacks in her life? So automation. I went to a show once where a master juggler demonstrated automation beautifully. He did this by, instead of juggling each item himself he balanced over a dozen spinning batons that were on fire, by the way, atop vertical posts. And as the juggler went to work on adding more and more amazing items to his routine, the automated batons continued to spin and entertained us all. So by automating some of the show, our juggler was free to demonstrate his skill beyond the capacity of a single human in a single moment. So let's look at batching. An example of batching in the metaphor of juggling is shown in the above example, where the juggler batched out a dozen of those spinning batons, which entertained the audience while he focused on other parts of his routine and scheduling. Let's say that you're juggling on commission and you want to make sure you're positioning yourself for the biggest bang for your buck. Make sure that you're pursuing your passion when people are out and about. And be sure to schedule yourself during times when you feel feel agile and energized. If our mime was to juggle in a bar at 6am, she might not get as many tips as she would if, for example, her routine was done in town square around dinner time. How can you leverage your time and your schedule prioritization? One of the secrets of longevity is to know your ikagai. This is a traditional Japanese concept that represents your reason for getting out of bed in the morning. It's broken into three parts. Number one is what sets your soul on fire. Number two is what you're good at. And number three, what will the world pay for? Whether you're saying yes to tasks or picking new opportunities, make sure that it satisfies your ikagai. If our mime focuses on prioritization of hers, she will be juggling plates in a way that feels complete and fulfilling. And she won't be as likely to get FOMO if someone comes along with snazzy new porcelain delegation. And so, in this example, what if our mime had gotten, let's say, help from the audience? I've seen that before. Maybe she could have spun plates on their heads or their knees or fingers. Now that's delegation. Getting help when you need it most so that your brain and bandwidth are free to explore what really makes you excited and enrichment. Instead of staying in the same old same old, expanding your world through experiences and personal development and having boredom and exploring the world will provide you with a world of opportunity. What if, instead of spinning plates, our mime had gotten into something even more exciting and unique for her? What if she was actually missing out on new, exciting experiences? Because she was so busy maintaining what she was already doing. Is there any way in your life that you can make changes where you're able to do something that feels more fulfilling, more exciting? And if that's the case, what are you saying yes to right now that maybe could become a no? What feels reasonable and doable for you and it doesn't have to be something huge and existential and groundbreaking and earth shattering? Maybe it's just one little change. One little thing. Today we talked about the top six success hacks that will change your life. Remember, structure is important, but what sets the status quo apart from status setters are those who use leverage. You can leverage your choices and your life in a way that will reduce stress, reduce overwhelm, reduce anxiety, and pivot you away from worrying about what your life will be like if you things don't change. These hacks will increase your productivity, increase your sense of calm, and pave the way for more income, more satisfaction, and more opportunity to meaningfully contribute in this world in the way you feel called the very first step is starting by mastering your morning routine. After years of studying the most productive, the most innovative and the most creative people of our time, I have summarized the my findings into a four step process for mastering your morning and this process is included in the Anxiety Breakthrough Wellness Springboard. The four step process for mastering your morning is just one of three implementation strategies you'll get in the Anxiety Breakthrough Wellness Springboard. And if you're anything like me, you want to see results yesterday. So I've included the Springboard in the show notes and it's yours for free. Go download it right now and let's get you started on a life that sets your soul on fire. Hi everyone. Thanks for listening. This has been Dr. Nicole Cain. If you love what you're hearing and are eager for more, please hit the subscribe button. It helps me know that what we're doing is valuable for you. To get your free copy of the Anxiety Breakthrough Wellness Springboard, click in the link in the show notes. If you want more information on how to get your life back, check out my website@www.Dr.nicolecane.com. you can send questions, learn about consulting with me directly, and even preview our online courses. We love to meet you and learn more about how to support you and getting your life back. And now for the disclaimer.

The recording you just listened to consists of the personal opinions of Dr. Nicole Caine, a naturopathic doctor with a Master's in Clinical psychology. While these opinions are based upon literature, her counseling education, medical training, and clinical experience. This content should not be viewed as the definitive opinion on these subjects. Listening to this podcast is not a substitute for any sort of medical, psychological, or other form of treatment. If you are in a Crisis, please call 911-OR call the National Suicide Prevention Line at 1-800-273-8255. If you're in need of counseling, don't hesitate to make an appointment with a counselor in your area. Dr. Nicole Caine is so passionate about people getting their life back. If this resonates with you and and you think this podcast would help someone you love, please share it with them. Stay in the conversation with Dr. Nicole Cain about writing the next chapter of your life so that it plays out just the way you want it. Explore your options for working with her at www.Dr.nicolecane.com. that's Dr. D R Nicole N I C O L E Caine c a I n.com when you're there, be sure to take advantage of the Free Anxiety Freedom One Week Challenge. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the get yout Life Back podcast. Here's to your next chapter.

SA.