Dr. Ed Tori walks through five practices that shift your state in five minutes or less: a quick exercise, writing, reading, breathing, or talking to someone. He starts with a crowd exercise on posture and breath, then breaks down each one and why it works.
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This is Dr. Torrey. Welcome to the Influence Every Day show, where we make every day better and we influence for good.
If I ever get on stage and there happens to be low energy in the room, especially if I'm doing a keynote after lunch or if I came up after a speaker that had some sort of technical kind of presentation, and then I'm up there now, now what I want to do is I want to shift the energy. And what's really interesting is I do this small exercise only takes a little bit of time to do. And afterwards, invariably, people approach me about that very exercise. The exercise is this. I tell the crowd, first, take note of how you feel right now. What's your state? What kind? What's your mood? What do you. You know, how's your energy level right now? Okay, now I want you to put your shoulders back. Okay? Shoulders back. Deep breath in. Let it out. Smile like you mean it, not like you have gas. Smile. And now turn to the person next to you and say, I'm glad you're here. And then what happens is everybody starts, I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're here. They're laughing, they're joking, they're starting to have conversation. And then eventually they turn towards me to keep going with the talk. I say, okay, now take note of how you feel. Tell me how do you feel right now? And they'll, wow, I feel better. They notice the change. And I say, look, that was what, 30 seconds? 45 seconds? A minute? And your mood changed, your energy changed, your readiness, your engagement, all of that changed in under 30 seconds. How did that happen? You can do this. You can do this on your own before a meeting, before walking into your home after a tough day, before writing that difficult email, before having that conversation. You can change your mood. You can change your perspective. So there are five things you can shift in under five minutes. You can shift your energy in under five minutes by doing something like exercising. And you might say, wait a minute, I already struggle to exercise. Yeah, all I'm doing is asking you to do five minutes. Can you do five minutes of a stretch? Of course you can. If you do five minutes of a stretch, I promise you, it will change your energy. Now, what's really interesting is all five of these things, they're all easy to do, which makes them also easy not to do because we falsely think they're so simple. There's no way that this works, but it does. So first, energy exercise. If you exercise for five minutes, even less than five minutes, you will notice a shift in your energy. If you want clarity around a topic or an issue or an idea, write about it for five minutes. If you write for five minutes about an issue, you will have so much more clarity around it. Now, it might not solve the entire thing, but you will have more clarity around it. Just write about it for five minutes. Now. If you want to shift a perspective on something, read for five minutes. Read every morning. At least recently, I've been reading 101 essays that will change the way you think by Brianna Wiest. I read one essay in the morning. One essay. That's all it takes. And sometimes it's enough to shift my perspective and shift my day even. Because sometimes I'll start writing about a topic that, that I was sparked by in one of her essays. So I'll, I'll start writing about it. But the point here is reading can change your perspective in under five minutes. It doesn't take long. Read for five minutes. Literally. Set a timer, read for five minutes. And you, you will notice your perspective can shift. As far as mood, you could shift your mood. You can shift even your entire physiology by breathing exercises. If you take those deep breaths in a rhythmic kind of way, inhale, exhale, and you're conscious of your breaths, you can change your mood, you can change your physiology. Same goes for having conversation. If you have conversation with somebody who has an energy level or an engagement, a certain amount of engagement with you, or a certain amount of rapport with you, that can shift your mood. It can shift your physiology. Now why am I bringing these up? Because these are small things you can do that can better equip you for whatever it is you have to handle. You see, your problems aren't going to go away by doing breathing exercises. This is one of the things that people poo poo well being efforts from the workplace or they poo poo it because they say, oh, well, we have these staffing issues and they're letting positions go and they're doing this and, and now they're telling me to do breathing exercises and they're coming by giving us little trinkets or, or stuff for our well being. If you want my well being, why don't you fix the staffing problem and then I'll have a better work day. Yeah, you might be right. Maybe they do need to fix the staffing. Okay, but at the same time, you will show up differently. If you do those breathing exercises, you will show up to that next meeting, that next person, that next client, that next patient that next colleague of yours that needs you, you will show up differently. If you do those breathing exercises, you will show up differently. If you shift your energy with exercise, if you shift your perspective with reading, if you shift your thinking and your clarity, if you write, you will show up differently. And that might be enough to actually affect change. See, this is what we can control. We can control our energy, we can control our mood. We like to blame those on external factors, but we have control over those. And these small exercises will prove it to you. But again, the challenge is they're easy to do, which makes them also easy not to do. We falsely think their simplicity. There's no way that something this simple can work. But when you actually do it, you'll see that it absolutely does. I'll see you in the next episode.
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