The Health Habits, Rituals, Routines, Biohacks, Foods, Supplements, Workouts, and Success Secrets of Brendon Burchard.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, first thing, when you're sliding into death's doorway, at least in that moment for me, that fear that bolts through your body is an existential question of did I live? I sit there with the planner. I close my eyes, I visualize doing the thing, and I ask myself, how can I do that thing with joy and excellence? You know, we tracked a lot of the guys from the high performance world who are, you know, more of the physiology type coaches. And we had a world class cyclist there who came up to me and said, how did you just do that?

Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. All right, I have my friend and world famous motivational speaker, Brendan Burchard. The show today, Bren, is actually really cool. I've gotten to know him lately, and he's the real deal. Like, he's a really cool cat. Super kind hearted, super giving, really inspirational. He doesn't get a chance much to talk about his personal life, like his personal biohacks and supplements and fitness routine, but he got a chance to. On today's show, we have fun. You're going to like it. All right, folks, my guest on today's show is actually somebody who I've been aware of for a long time. I think probably like, gosh, I want to say this was like eight or nine years ago. I was, I was sharing a hotel room at a triathlon with one of my triathlon buddies named Carrie Sullivan. And Carrie, he took out his computer and he's like, dude, dude, dude. You got to watch a video of this guy. He's, he was like living out of his apartment and dead broke. And now he's just like this enormously successful Internet entrepreneur. He's super inspirational, motivational. And I watched the video and at the time, this guy wasn't super duper well known, but he was making it, so to speak. And then I kind of forgot about him for a while. And then over the past few years, I've seen this guy everywhere. He's a number one New York Times bestselling author now. He's written books like High Performance Habits and the motivation manifesto, the Charge, the Millionaire Messenger, Life's golden ticket. Oprah magazine named him as one of the most influential leaders in the field of personal growth. Many consider him to be the world's top high performance coach, like Forbes magazine and Success magazine. And he literally speaks to tens and tens of thousands of people at live events every year. He has trained Oprah he has trained usher. He has trained dozens of Olympians and Fortune 500 CEOs, and he is all over the place. But perhaps most important for you, my listener, is he's really into health, too, and I've had a few very fascinating chats with him. And he really takes care of his body and his brain in some pretty profound ways and has his own rituals and routines and habits that I think you guys will really dig in addition to some of his success habits. So his name is Brendan Burchard, and everything that Brendan and I talk about today you can find over at best. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Brennan Burchard. And his name is spelled B R E N D O N B U R C H A R D. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Brendon Burchard for the show notes for his books for his website to learn more about this cat. Brennan, welcome to the show, man.

Man, it's an honor to be here, and I love your show so much, dude. So this is a great moment for me. Thank you for having me.

Awesome. Well, I'm stoked to have you. And you're probably sick of getting this question, but let me tell you, it is inspirational. And so I'm wondering if we can start off with you just sharing your fascinating backstory with folks.

Yeah. The thing that brought me into what you and I do and this whole world of psychology and high performance was the fact that I was a miserable, sad, and suicidal kid.

I know. I watched that cheesy video, like, nine years ago.

That's really where it came from. I wish it wasn't so cheesy, but it just happened to be my life at the time. I had gone through a really terrible breakup with my high school sweetheart. We thought we were gonna get married, and we went to college together, and we were kind of, like, just completely united in that, like, gross high school love, where we were each other's, you know, everything. And so I kind of followed her to college at the University of Montana. And, you know, within that first semester, she had cheated on me. And my whole identity was kind of wrapped up in us. And sometimes when a relationship like that falls apart, you fall apart. And that's what happened. I fell apart. I didn't have the mindset or the psychological tools to deal with that type of thing. So I fell into just first blatant sadness, and then it became depression, then it became suicidal thinking, and I just. I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't motivate myself. I Couldn't, you know, friends, I had friends, they'd come over, they let's do something. I couldn't do that. I didn't want to go to classes because she was in the classes, because I signed up all my classes to follow her around. I mean, it was just a hopeless situation. So that bitch, you know, I lay in bed and, you know, ate terrible food, didn't take care of myself, didn't shower, didn't go to class. I mean, not uncommon college, freshman store, I guess. And then one day, I was the one thing that saved me. Ben was reading and I was always reading. And I happened to read the school newspaper, flipping through it and there was a big ad, this full page ad, and across the top had this headline, this may be the best marketing headline of all time for a sad young dude. Anyway, and it said, escape across this thing. And it was this, you know, bright white sandy beach, turquoise water, palm trees, and it said, you know, summertime jobs for students in the Dominican Republic. Now remember, I'm in Montana. I'm in Montana. I have no idea where the Dominican Republic is at that time in my life. But I knew she wouldn't be there. So I take this job, I go down there, I become like a glorified tour guide. And you know, real long story short, one night I'm driving around, clients drop off some clients, My friend Kevin hops in the car, he takes the wheel, he's driving us back home a little after midnight and we're going down this road, brand new paved road in the Dominican Republic. We're going about 85 miles an hour and we came upon a corner that at least in the US would have had one of those big yellow shaped signs with a U turn, slow down, be cautious, be careful. And it didn't have that. And so we round that corner at 85. And that became like the literal, literal turning point in my life. We skid off the road and in the next few minutes from there, I really discovered a reverence for life. Because here I was, this kid previously wanted to take my life and now it's being threatened. And as the car flipped off the side of the road, these things and these images and these feelings and sensations went through my mind and my body that really put me on a different path. Because that first thing, when you're sliding into death's doorway, at least in that moment for me, that fear that bolts through your body is an existential question of did I live? If this is it, if this is my last moment, that that feeling of Fear is contextualized to, did I live my life yet? You know, did I live fully and vibrantly and cheerfully and joyously? And I did really feel life. You know, I obviously didn't like the answer to that question.

Yeah. How many seconds or minutes is it taking for all this to go through your head?

It's one of those situations where anyone who's ever been in an accident knows that weird slow motion thing happens.

Yeah.

And, you know, time is unbound somehow. And, you know, and I'll be honest, too, I don't know if I felt 100% of how I digest it now and years later and months later, as I did in that exact moment, because it was instantaneous, but forever at the same time. Because as the car went off the road, it smacked into this little retainer wall of bricks and boulders and it smashed the car up in the air, and I hit my head on the door and I started seeing all these images of times in my life when I was surrounded by people that I cared for and loved. And it makes that. It makes you ask that question of, did I love? Did I? You know, because you will think of who you miss, who you'll miss, and who will miss you at the end. And the car smashed, the ground, rolled several times. I got knocked completely out. When I came to, Kevin was screaming, you know, get out of the car, get out of the car, get out of the car. And he's trying to get outside the driver's side window. I had to go to get outside my passenger side window, but it's all smashed down. The whole car smashed on top of me. So I kind of kick through this windshield in front of me, pull myself through, and I stand on the crumpled hood of this car. You know, this is seconds after the car accident, surely, but it felt like a year, you know, And I stand up there, Kevin screaming at the side, all bloodied. I'm looking down my body, and there's just blood pouring off my body under the hood.

Wow.

And, you know, I feel this. It's hard to explain because for those who've been in shock before, not only is time unbound, but you're kind of unbound from your body. It's the weirdest thing. You feel like a thousand pounds, but not there, too. And the blood was going off of the hood of the car, and I thought I was going to pass out. I thought it was the end. And I just remember looking down at all of it, and I just thought, you know, did I even matter? You know, if this is it? Was there a purpose to this thing? I mean, I just felt this, this moment I was gonna pass out and then there was a glint in my blood at the side of the car where the hood was going. The blood was going off the hood and like a reflection, it made me look up and there was this huge moon that night. I hadn't even seen it. And all of a sudden I felt this huge connection. And there's no way to describe it for me other than I felt like instantaneously things were going to be okay. I felt like almost a calm, a grace. I felt, I always say I felt like the big guy reached down and handed me what I eventually called life's golden ticket. It was like, hey, kid, you're still alive, you can still live and you can still love and you can still matter, but guess what? The clock is ticking. It was my moment of reverence. It was my moment of grace. It was the moment I've connected to God for me personally for the first time. And it was a sense that I was going to be okay. And you know, I don't want to ruin the whole story to everybody, but yeah, I lived heaven lived and you know, a bunch of scared kids with tons of blood and broken bones and stuff and just the horror of what was going on. But at the same time, maybe the best moment of my life because it truly made me realize two things. One, I didn't want to die. And it faced, you know, a 19 year old kid facing immortality. That's a, to me, that was a blessing. But then the other side of things, it gave me intention because, you know, weeks later, as I'm recovering and thinking through everything and I'm trying to digest it all, and I just remember realizing like, oh my God, I was given my life's last questions. Everybody who's listening right now, at the end of your life, you're going to evaluate your life to see if you were happy with it. You're going to ask yourself questions of how you felt about your life. And those questions might sound like, was I a good dad? Or did I follow my dreams? Or did I take care of people? Or did I fulfill my potential? I just found out that my questions were, did I live? Did I love? And did I matter?

Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter? Interesting.

Yeah.

By the way, not to throw your story off the rails, but have you read that book, the Top Five Regress of the Dying?

Yes.

So good. What is. I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life other people expected of me. I wish I hadn't worked so hard. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. I wish I'd have stayed in touch with my old friends. And I wish that I had let myself be happier. And now nobody needs to go read that book unless you actually want to read a super powerful book. But that also same thing. You can actually almost know what questions that you need to address early in life by looking at what people have had near death experiences like you or who are on their deathbeds are saying, so you said again, did I live? Did I love? Did I matter? So what'd you go on and do from there? Because obviously Oprah didn't just like show up and ask you to be on the, on the front cover of her magazine right after that.

Yeah, well, first I went back to school and I very quickly got my act together. Because when you recognize life is short, you want to live it and you want to connect with other people and you want to do something with yourself. So I came back and unbelievably motivated guy. And you know, this is. But just to give Context, this is 25 years ago and I still. 25 years in a row, including last night. Last three questions of my day are, did I live? Did I love? Did I matter? And I always tell people, when you are living into the questions that you know you're going to ask at the end of your life, that's when you start living purposefully. When you start evaluating those questions, that's when you start living purposely. So for me, you know, I just started trying to do those things. I started being more bold and courageous and living. I started talking to people more and sharing my feelings and trying to live through my heart. I tried to volunteer and do leadership stuff for the first time and that was a huge deal. And then I was in school and I got my degree in political science. Then I got a master's degree in organizational communication. My emphasis was on leadership so that I could really understand how to make a difference. How, how do I change people's lives? I then got a job going to work for Accenture, which was then the world's largest consulting company. And I was in charge of change management. My job was helping companies thrive through change and developing leadership development programs. So here I am like this 20 year old dude who looks way younger than you do still, and I'm like wandering around Fortune 500 companies helping build their leadership programs with these other partners who kind of, they sell the work. And then I do the research and interview all the teams, develop the framework that was unique to that company, train their people, roll it out and did that for seven years. Liked the job, but I wanted to write books. My passion, as I said, was reading. Reading always saved my life, so I wanted to write a book.

Yeah, I learned a lot. By the way, any bookworm usually loves to write or has like this deep seated desire sometimes subconsciously to write. And just about anybody who isn't into reading hates writing. Like my wife, like she, you put her in front of a canvas and she will make amazing art because she loves to go to museums and see art and watch art and get super into feng shui and interior design. But you know me, I love to read. And yeah, like if I go a week without writing, I feel like something's missing from my life.

That was it for me too. And I, so I did seven years in a corporate job and I loved it and it was good. And I was, you know, high achieving because I was all, I was just completely surrounded by high achievers. And that got me deeper into studying performance because, you know, when you're, when there's such a demand, when you're working 12 hours, 16 hour days, surrounded by like super A type people, which was not where I grew up and not what I was used to. I grew up in, you know, at the poverty line in Butte, Montana. And I, you know, we never had anything. And there wasn't a culture of excellence, if you will. There wasn't like, there weren't a lot of leaders. People were just trying to survive and care for their families. So I didn't have a lot of exposure to that. So that really helped me. But you know, from the time I was 19, I read a book a week on psychology, philosophy, leadership or communication. And so when it came time to write my book, I was prepared. I wrote Life's golden ticket and it bombed because I knew how to lead, I knew how to communicate. But I never learned anything about marketing, which is probably what you were sharing at the beginning of this show when you were talking about your friend. But hey, look at this guy out here, he's kind of made it. It's because what happened was the book didn't do well and it really ticked me off. And so I thought, okay, well I guess I better learn how to do this marketing thing. And you gotta understand this is like 2006 and 07 when the Internet was super new in terms of like people doing, you know, e commerce or Internet marketing for themselves. And it was also brand New at that time to really online video. Online video was really emerging.

Oh yeah, I remember that when online, like doing like video sales letters or. Who was the guy? Was it Frank Kern, who was the original guy who was training? Because I actually, I launched a triathlon training product, I guess it was about 10 years ago. And really like followed his formula, video sales letter, where you have like a whole PowerPoint presentation and you film it and then your voice is like the background for the PowerPoint presentation and you push that out and it's like this video that people watch instead of reading those super long sales letters.

Yeah, exactly. It was him and Andy Jenkins, video boss guys. And I wasn't in their world to this day. I'm not a marketer. I'm a personal development guy who had to figure out marketing to sell his personal development books and courses and trainings and seminars. So I learned how to do that. And all I did is I came in at that time and I brought two things. One, I could really teach because I learned to build frameworks at Accenture to roll out these global companies. And two, I was approaching it not as Internet marketing. To me, it was a career I didn't think. I never thought of get rich quick. I never thought of like the make money side of things. I was like, oh, this is a way to further my career. So I brought the value orientation of excellence and career and customer service stuff into this space and was quickly rewarded because it was so different. Within 18 months, I went from literally bankrupt because I quit the job I tried to do the book, went bankrupt doing that and didn't know what I was doing, to learning online marketing, applying the discipline of what you and I talk about in our own mindset and performance. And in 18 months had become a millionaire and had sold my books. I came out with the very first personal development online courses. That was me. Like literally the very first ones. Our first, like I'll never forget my first refund dude, was because people were getting frustrated with the, you know, when you watch the video and it'd take like seven minutes to watch two minutes of a video and people were freaked out. And so we were early. We're talking about full course online personal development courses in 2006 and 7. So it was really early. And so we. That took off. That's 25 online courses ago. Two million students through those courses in 190 countries gave me a monster platform to also then do my other passion, which is research. Even just four years ago, we conducted the world's largest study of High performers that's ever been done academically supported by the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Department and UC Santa Barbara Psychologists largest study has ever been done at high performers, which is essentially the top, depending on the field or category, the top 10 or 15% of most successful people who also maintained well being and positive relationships. So we measured them and that is what the research study that fueled my book, High Performance Habits. So what I love about your podcast, this is a long way to go about it is like you and I dork about similar things. We had similar journeys and we similarly obsess about things and yours so much about physiology and health, but obviously recently so much more about, you know, your holistic approach is why I listen to the podcast.

Yeah, well, I will try not to take offense that you just alluded to our similar journeys because there's no way in hell that I grew up in Butte or but Montana. I'm an Idaho boy. I'm an Idaho boy. So I had a step up in life because I started in the panhandle. My wife's though, my wife's from Montana. So anyways, you obviously could talk about performance habits till the cows come home and success until the cows come home. And I know that you talk about that a lot. Like you have your own podcast. You have all these wonderful books that I'm going to link to in the show notes. But because I know you have such a passion now for health, for sleep, for biohacks, for supplements, for workouts, for meals, I kind of want to delve into maybe some of the stuff that you haven't had a chance to get into so deeply, like your own life, how you take care of yourself and what your own performance habits, so to speak, are, as far as how you're just brass tacks keeping yourself put together. So you're in Puerto Rico right now, right?

Yeah, yeah, we are. I've moved here. We were in Portland, Oregon for eight years, which we loved. But man, I just remember my car accident began in the Caribbean and my journey of personal development began in the Caribbean. I always thought, you know, someday I'll move down there, maybe when I retire and stuff. And then a couple years ago, the gray was getting us to in Puerto Rico and we started deciding to be snowbirds and we thought, well, you know, we looked at everywhere, you know, San Diego and Florida and Austin and other places. And I was like, I'd rather just be in the Caribbean. And so we started coming down for that and I just, we fell in love and made the, made the move because it's also great for my health because I get in the ocean, can't swim with crap, but I love it. I, you know, get to run on the beach and get to live in it.

But. Well, legally avoiding the 37% federal rate tax in the US is also a nice little perk there as well.

Yeah. The funniest thing, I'm the dumbest, I'm the, that was the last thing I.

Learned about really like everybody I know who moves to Puerto Rico. It's that. What is it like an income tax of 4% down there?

Yeah. If you started. For those who start a services based business down here, it's a 4% tax rate and. Which is unbelievable. Yeah, but you know, I moved down for the sun in the Caribbean, the people. But that's, that's definitely a perk for some, some of our businesses. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, so my morning here.

Yeah, I want to get into it. Let's start there. Let's start with your morning. What's your morning routine look like?

So I get up and I do a 20, 20, 20. So I get up and I do 20 minutes of stretching and mobility every morning. Just get up and start stretching out my body. It's not my workout for the day, it's just rolling around on the ground, doing calisthenics, getting the heart rate up a little bit, but mostly yoga type flow. Then I spend 20 minutes after that reading. And it's always, you know, it's always philosophy, personal development, psychology or spirituality.

Okay, so. So as a, as a guy who also reads in the morning, and for me, actually I typically, I'll read my spiritual thing in bed and then my reading after I do a little bit of morning. Body work, which is kind of similar to yours, is more like research and kind of catching up on any studies for the day. But it begs the question, where do you read? Because for me it's naked, sandwiched in between two big red light panels, typically with some kind of other lights on my face or shoved into my skull or my nasal cavities. But I'm curious if you're multitasking while you read or if you're just sitting out in the sunshine.

You know, usually, usually I am sitting in our living room, caught a 20 ounces of green tea next to me. And because when I wake up, I immediately drink 20 ounces of cold water, then I do that 20 minutes of mobility yoga. Then I do 20 minutes of reading, which is timed. I literally keep it to 20 minutes and I usually have 20 ounces of green tea during that time. And it's just on a chair and I have a journal and the book and that's it. Sometimes the cat comes over and completely messes it up. But you know, usually it's like that. And then, then I do 20 minutes with my planner. I built this thing called the High Performance Planner and used to be just on tons of papers and journals and notebooks. I finally thought people want to know how I did my life. And so I do that. And the High Performance Planner is basically you ask yourself 10 prompts to get your mind right and your priorities right for the morning. Then you fill out what you're going to do during the day. Even if it's in the calendar, you still write it out. And then you write kind of bullets of what would make that successful. Then in the evening you ask another 10 prompts about your day and then you score yourself on specific habits and what I do.

That sounds very similar to the ancient practice of. Well, it's called Examine e xamen, the examine of consciousness that Benjamin Franklin probably made most popular when he came out with his self examination journal that he would do at the end of each day. This is actually what you're describing is a topic near and dear to my heart right now because I'm so taking my boys, our entire family actually through this workbook called the Spiritual Disciplines Workbook. And we are in the chapter right now on Examine. So at the end of every day we're examining not just our successes, like well, what is it that we're grateful for? What do we do well, but also what we suck at. What aren't we grateful about? What could we have done better? And so we're doing this right now as a family, this process of self examination in the evenings.

Dude, I love that. I love that. The evening questions in the High Performance Planner are a moment that I really appreciated. Today was a situation or task I handled well. Today was something I realized or learned that was impactful. Today was I could have made today even better if I something that could have helped me feel more connected to other people today would have been. And then last question. If I was my own coach, my own high performance coach, I would tell myself this statement about today. And you do a scorecard on your habits which we found from the research. The six primary habits that affect performance long term for people are clarity, energy, necessity, productivity, influence and courage. And I rate each of those on a scale of 1 to 5. And so I'll send you one if you don't have A high performance planner.

Yeah. So this is something people can buy. Like you actually have this available?

Yeah, it was only for our seminar people for years, and then it kind of took off, and now it's hundreds and thousands of copies of these a year.

Is it on Amazon?

Yep, it is.

Okay, backpedaling real quick. And then I want to get back to what you're doing after you fill out that planner. Cold water. Why cold? And the reason I ask is I've really gotten into Ayurvedic medicine recently and the practice of tongue scraping and coconut oil pulling and dry skin brushing, lymph shaking. All these practices that I think are. Are pretty wise from the ancestral practice of Ayurvedic medicine. But one big thing for them is they treat cold water almost like poison in the morning because it dampens the fire and can slow down peristalsis, et cetera. And so I've kind of shifted towards lukewarm or warm for my big glass Mason jar of water that I have in the morning. But is there a particular reason you do cold besides the fact that you're in Puerto Rico?

Yeah, just my reaction.

That's it.

I don't have a philosophy on it, per se, of like. I just notice the difference if I have lukewarm water in the morning and I go into that 20 minutes of yoga flow versus just some cold water. And I'm not saying there's piles of ice in this thing. It's just more chilled water. And that cold water somehow makes me feel like the morning has hit my mouth. I have no idea how to describe it.

Yeah, another part of it, though, could be too, because in Ayurvedic medicine, they classify people as vata, pitta and kapha. And some people who are like super pitta, like really warm, fiery people, and they typically are like, like, kind of like sharp, intelligent people. I would imagine you might fall into that pitta category. And maybe the cold's just like, maybe you're. Maybe you're too warm, you're too fiery in the morning. You're too ready to get going. The cold water just kind of balances you out a little bit.

Yeah, I could. I mean, to me, it's a similar effect. Not a similar effect, but same reason I like a cold shower in the morning, you know, just. I don't know, it's a change in sensation and state, I guess. And I think, you know, because then I'm going to hit that hot water, I'm going to hit that green tea, you know, within another 20 minutes. So I feel pretty balanced about that. Main thing is just to me, whatever you do, get 20 ounces of water in. And then here's the thing on the planner too, because I don't want to make it seem just about the planner. The most important thing is I spend. People are always like, the planner could take like five or seven minutes. What do you do in the next 13 minutes? Because you're 20 minutes. I time it. And the difference for me, and this is huge, which you'll appreciate for performance. So a lot, you know, other achievers out here, which is I look at the day, I plan the day, but then for each of the major activities or items, I sit there with the planner, I close my eyes, I visualize doing the thing, and I ask myself, how can I do that thing with joy and excellence? And so, like this, you and me are doing this right now. I already did this at 7am with you this morning.

All right, bye. I'll talk to. I'll talk to you later. We're done. This podcast is over. It's already been done.

I was like already. Whatever it was, you know, 7, 7:30am this morning, I was writing down. I was like, oh, I'm with Ben today. That's awesome. How can I enjoy this and bring excellence to it? I was like, oh, okay, well, enjoy. I'll just make sure my body's in a good place. I'll make sure I get my standing guests going. I'll make sure my environment is in a way in which I really enjoy it. So I can just be there with him because, you know, I love this guy. And then, you know, with excellence. I was like, well, I'm just gonna. I'm just going to show up authentically and let him go wherever. I know you had sent some questions. I did look at them today. I just wanted to be in the moment and I thought, you know, let me just convey my story and let me convey some ways that I tactically move through the day from my morning routine, but also my supplements and my foods and my workouts and anything that I haven't gotten to share, because this is the format for that. So let's just go. And so I kind of visualize and think through things for that 20 minute morning. And that's really key. That 20 minute slot is just whatever the activities are. I visualize it and ask, how can I do it with joy and excellence? And then I jot down notes about it. And then by the time I shut that thing, I'm already, I'm primed. To win the day.

Okay, so. So you're also, I would assume based on that, doing some kind of like intermittent fasting or compressed feeding. Because that's a lot of stuff to do in the morning. And you haven't mentioned breakfast yet. So do you fast for a while when you get up?

I didn't. You know, it's so funny. I didn't know it was a thing until about three years ago. But I don't, you know, I've. I've always about 14 hours between, you know, dinner and breakfast. And breakfast for me is usually a shake. And you. And I dork out on shakes. You more than me for sure.

Yeah. Well, so does my audience. So fill folks in on your shake.

Yeah, it's plant based protein, usually 25 grams. Plant based protein. It's water.

You mean like a powder, like a pea or rice or a hemp type of protein powder?

Yeah, yeah. It's mostly, it's almost a combination of those things with chia as well. And then I throw in almond butter, spinach or kale. I throw in blueberries. I throw in. Let's see what's in that thing. Let's see flax, chia and avocado.

Okay, that's it. Yeah, yeah. Do you take digestive enzymes when you have that morning smoothie?

It is. It's in my. Because I also take essentials with it. We have a performance line of supplements and one is called H Essentials and it does have digestive enzymes.

Okay, cool. Yeah. The reason I ask is I also typically will do like a pea or a rice or a hemp protein or sometimes just like some colostrum or some collagen in my big ass morning smoothie. But I take digestive enzymes if I do the plant protein because they've actually shown the amino acid bioavailability of the protein can get as high as animal protein if you can consume a digestive enzyme with your. With your plant protein. So yeah, that's a little tip for folks. And that's good that your formula has the enzyme in it because that'll help out with the plant protein being more bioavailable.

Yeah, I'm just looking now. It's got 25 milligrams of amylase, cellulase, lactase, lipase and proteins. Cool.

Perfect. Awesome.

That's big. Also though, dude, in the last year I put in just a half a scoop of your amino acids. Kion and total difference maker. So I'll do half a scoop of the amino acids with the shake. And then also before My afternoon workout, I'll do the other half scoop before the workout, only because for somehow a full scoop for me really turns me a little too beasty. So it seems to help. I don't know if it keeps my energy more flat through the day, but that really works for me. And I love that product, dude.

Yeah. Well, four months ago I would have told you not to put it in your smoothie because the absorption's better without food. But then they just came out with a study like two months ago showing that when you add amino acids in with any other protein powder, it actually increases muscle protein synthesis when you have EAAs added to any type of smoothie that has a protein powder in it. So it turns out that it actually can be used to. To upgrade a shake, so to speak.

That's the way I thought about it from the get was this is going to be great for my protein. And so then, so what I do is I take two supplements in the morning. I'll take HPX Essentials, HPX Optimized, which is something we developed at High Performance Institute over three brutal years. As you know, supplements were way harder than we thought. But one is just like a functional multivitamin, kind of boost it up for longevity, joint health, vitality. And then I take Hvacs Optimized, which is our brain Health Mental focus supplement. And so those two just with the shake and the green tea, I'm on, man. I'm ready for the day.

Nice. Okay, so once you've got all that out of the way, what about workouts? When are you actually doing a workout? Aside from that mobility type of routine that you do in the morning, are you kind of like weaving physical activity in throughout the day? Because you mentioned your standing desk or what's your physical movement workout protocol look like?

It really does follow my workflow for the day, so I work in 50 minute blocks of time. So we've been teaching block time since.

Did you say 15 or 55? Zero. Okay.

Yeah. 15 minute blocks of time. The world's largest study on productivity that's ever been done from data was actually a productivity app. And they found that the most productive people take breaks at 52 minutes.

Yeah, I remember seeing that. Yeah.

And we've been teaching. I've been teaching 50 minutes since 2008. So just the idea of block time, you know, popularized by like deep work later on. But we've been doing that in our high performance seminars for years, which was really based like this 50 minute ideal workflow for focus. So 50 minutes, I'm usually sitting or standing, whatever. At the end of that 50 minutes my buzzer goes off, I stand up, if I'm not already standing, I close my eyes, I bounce in place, sort of bouncing slightly at the knees and do qigong like a full body meridian opening qigong work. Take 10 deep breaths while doing that. Then I might just seeing how I feel, might stretch out on the floor, do a few vinyasa flows, go get 20 ounces of water, drink that, fill up the 20 ounces of water again, come back and then before I start working in, I close my eyes and I say, what's my intention for this next hour? And even it's already scheduled, I go so that that little movement every 50 minutes is a big deal. I tend to do my workouts around the 4 o' clock time. Not always, but at least every other day at 4 o' clock is probably my schedule. And for that I usually do like a probably of thinking about how long it takes me to the gym is about five minute walk, then a five minute jog, then I'm at the gym, I stretch out for five minutes and then I'm usually lifting heavy, doing more complex things like squat thrusters, hex bar deadlifts. A lot of more full bodied weightlifting than the bodybuilding stuff.

Now this begs the question, by the way, not to rabbit hole too much, but we're having this chat during the coronavirus pandemic. Is the gym closed? And if so, have you had to adapt to work out at home?

Yeah, the gym's closed, so that sucks. And then they closed the beach which was so at first the beach was open, so I was just going swimming. I was just running and swimming, which.

Is one of the healthiest things in terms of the negative ions, the water, the minerals, the photons of sunlight. One of the worst things you can do is limit people's ability to get outside. Right now I think it's ridiculous that parks are closed.

I agree man. And I'm 30 yards from the ocean, so it just, it kills me not being able to go out there. I'm looking at it right now and I can't go do anything about it. But yeah, so what I did is I, we were moving between homes and so we don't have a home gym set up because the gym was here. So I ordered really quickly, a bench, hex bar, seven foot bar, you know, a bunch of plates, 60 pound kettlebell, 35 pound dumbbells, 40 pound dumbbells and a couple mats. And they all showed up like right before Things got, you know, really, really difficult. So that's been huge. So I'm still getting the workout in the house if I have to, you know, use the weights. And that's been, that's really helped me. And then I just boosted my immunity. I already have immunity stuff kind of in lock in our supplements. You know, I just added a little extra to it. So like in general, I'm always taking some type of longevity blend which is like astragalus, resveratrol, chaga. Those are big. I threw in. I've increased things like echinacea, olive leaf, zinc. We already have a mushroom compound that we take. I think you take the same one like Stamets Daily immunity.

Yeah, it kind of sounds similar to me. There's so many things that I take from my big anti aging smoothie that I have in the morning that has a ton of sirtuins and NAD precursors and is rich in ascorbic acid to the vitamin C I add to my morning glass of water to the beta glucans. I've been putting my coffee for a long time. There was very little I personally changed from a supplementation standpoint.

Yeah, your personal development habits are showing up now. You can see how much you had to shift for your health and wellness. Coronavirus is going to be that demarcation line because most of my friends and guys like you and me, we kind of. There's not. I mean, I'm having more garlic with dinner maybe. I mean, not much of a big shift because we already had that unlock which I, which I really love because people's personal development really has shown up. It's really become clear how prepared people were for health and wellness.

It's also going to be important too. If a vaccination gets rolled out. The efficacy of the antigenic response to a vaccine is going to be vastly improved. If you have things like good vitamin D status, good zinc status, good immune system function from things like beta glucans and mushrooms and sunlight exposure and exercise is huge in terms of, of a proper antigenic response. So, you know, let's just say a vaccine comes along and you know, for me personally, you know, I always raise an eyebrow and look at any adjuvants added or, you know, how much the Marisol or you know, aluminum or things like that are in it and the delivery mechanism and the efficacy and the research on it. I'm not opposed to vaccinations, but I can tell you right now, if you're not already thinking about preparing your body to have a Good antigenic response to a vaccination, then you'll be kind of behind the eight ball. And so, you know, keeping up these type of immune supporting activities, even if you don't feel like you've been exposed or if you're doing a really good job, quarantine, like it's a good idea if you plan on getting vaccinated, especially if, you know, if vaccinations are required for you to return to, you know, normal societal functioning, you, you want to keep equipping your body with everything it needs for a normal immune response.

The ad on top of immunity that everyone should be thinking about. And this is, you know, near and dear my heart and definitely selfishly stated, which is people should be very thoughtful about taking some type of brain health blend and taking some supplementation that's really focused on helping them get mental clarity, reduce stress, and really optimize the functioning of their brain. Because right now, what's, I mean, hands down, impacting way more people than coronavirus is the fear, the stress, the overwhelm, the uncertainty. And if all you're doing is just drinking tons of coffee, which by the way, nothing against coffee, but if it's just caffeine all the time, you're just frying yourself out. And there has to be something to help people optimize their brain. So I'm telling everyone, it's like if you've never experimented with nootropics, this is the time to finally do that. We've got a blend called hpex Optimized, and that's got stuff like rhodiola alpha lipoic acid, lion's mane alpha gpc, ginkgo, phospho, serine hoop A, acetyl L, carnitine quercetin, Chaga cordyceps, CoQ10. That type of blend, it's a great time to experiment with that because if your emotions and your mind has been completely frazzled, obviously consult your doctor. I'm not a health advisor, but I had a brain injury as Ben in 2011 that took me way deep into the brain supplementation stuff. I mean, way deep, because I had, you know, that's when I'm starting to get the calls from the big celebrities and the people on covers of magazines to coach them. Not as a physical performance coach. When I do high performance coaches, mental and productivity. And man, I had to figure it out. My butt was on the line. I had a multimillion dollar book contract at the time. I couldn't write, I couldn't focus. I mean, I was super frazzled Massive brain fog from a post concussive syndrome. I was in deep hurting. But I only bring that up because I optimize my brain. I've got that just like I've got immunity. I agree with what you're saying. It's like the environment for you to thrive and survive with coronavirus or after being vaccinated is way better.

Oh yeah, absolutely. And you know, with the brain thing, I think you could make an argument for coffee and cigarettes and lsd, but you know, certainly supplying the brain with the proper nutrients and neurotransmitter precursors and minerals, I think it is a very smart move. And it's actually something I kind of wanted to ask because a lot of people consider that to be something that falls into the realm of biohacking, the use of smart drugs or nootropics or microdosing with psychedelics or anything like that. But I talk to a lot of these high performance folks, whether it's Tony Robbins is a good example. There are some others out there who are really into this minimal effective dose of exercise or this idea of enhancing recovery dramatically. And so you see people using things like the vasper and the biocharger and hyperbaric chambers and infrared devices. Are you messing around with any of that kind of stuff? Would you consider yourself to be a biohacker in any sense of the word? And if so, you know, what do you mess around with?

Yeah, I'm just a performance guy. I want long term performance. So because of brain injury. Yeah. We own a hyperbaric chamber and that's been a big part of my process for a long time. Since 2011, I would say the greatest biohacking really, to me for long term performance is, you know, we call it medsrx. So you take your meds, meditation, exercise, diet and sleep ADD Rx R is deep relationships and X is the X factor of supplementation that you specifically need for your body and your performance needs. I'm somebody who, you know, my performance needs like I do more hours than anybody in our industry in terms of single trainer events. So I do a five day seminar and I'm on stage from 9am to 7pm Just me for five days. For me, for five days each day I do over a marathon of steps and I gotta eat 6,000 calories a day.

Yeah, I was gonna ask you, like, does your nutrition plan kind of change or are you using things like ketones or extra aminos or different strategies? Because that's a huge amount you hear about. Again, you're probably sick of Hearing about guys like this. But you hear about Tony Robbins, same thing. That he, you know, runs a marathon or whatever, the equivalent of one during one of his weekend conferences. It sounds like you're doing something similar. So I'm curious, you know, behind the scenes for people who might be interested in how you're optimizing your body with that amount of throughput. Are there some extra little things that you throw in besides LSD on days like that?

I mean, you came to my bed, you might wonder, with all the dancing, jumping, clapping. Yeah. Tony's a great friend, by the way, and a great mentor and great buddy. I've been able to serve in a lot of ways too. From being on his stages to him being on my stages. And we've done a lot of programs together.

Yeah. You know, you know, you're talking to a guy who's so disconnected from like the personal and self improvement industry that when we're talking. The only reason I've mentioned Tony Robbins a few times is he's like one of the only other guys I know in this. In this sector.

Yeah, no, he's. He's a beast. You know, with our events, they're so curriculum driven and they're, you know, different hours and since I don't have any. But he's got other speakers and trainers and they. He shows a lot of video, his events of him speaking in the past to save him time on stages. I don't do any of that. So it's just me. And to. Honestly, at first I was an idiot. I was losing on average about 11 pounds in a Ben because this output is so much.

Yeah.

Which like, that's great. What a great, you know, fat loss routine. Just do seminars, but I do eight a year and these are with thousands of people. So If I'm losing £11 eight times a year, that's eventually going to kill me. Because it's terrible for your heart to yo, yo like that.

Right. And your leptin sensitivity too. That's why you see a lot of weight rebounds in athletes who cycle throughout the year, like MMA athletes or cyclists. Once they quit, they've really struggled with metabolic disorder because it screws up your leptin sensitivity pretty dramatically to go through intense periods of fat loss followed by weight gain.

Yeah, that's it. Honestly. And I didn't even know I had. We tracked a lot of the guys from the high performance world who are more of the physiology type coaches and trainers, and we had a world class cyclist there who won a bunch of awards and came up to me and said, hey man, how did you just do that? Because for anyone listening, if you've ever spoken on stage for an hour or two, you're exhausted. If you do it for nine hours a day, for five days, you're an athlete. I mean, it's a completely different thing. So he told me that, which I didn't realize. I was just like, oh man, I'm happy. He's like, no kid, how much are you eating? Let me strap this thing around you. So he straps this thing around me, he's like, you're doing a marathon a day for five days, what are you eating? And I didn't honestly change it up that much. Now at my events, I eat on average three and a half to four times more per day in just straight up calorie intake than I usually do. Much more high in fats than I used to do. Much more supplementation, 60 to 80 grams more of supplementation of protein per day. Much more supplementation for nootropic, not with caffeine, but just to help the brain process that much memory. To give an hour presentation with no notes, that takes a lot to do it for nine hours, it's another level. Especially when you're going down in the audience, you're interacting, you gotta be on the thing. So that's really hard. My sleep, which we'll talk about is super amplified. I get insanely OCD about the sleep at the events and then about every single, and then every single night. Two nights before the event, every night of the event, and three nights after I do ice baths. And that knocks out for me the inflammation, re energizes me, puts my butt into a place where I can sleep for eight hours straight. And that's all really key.

Amazing. Okay, so regarding sleep, you probably have your at home sleep habits and then the type of sleep habits or the extra things you might implement when you're on those really intensive days. So what would a normal sleep routine look like? And then what little things might you add in, whether it be extra supplements or extra routines? If you're doing one of these more high performance, high pressure conferences.

Yeah, normal. Like last night I just practiced what I call three, two, one sleep, which is three, two one. Three stands for I don't have any food. Three hours before bed, then two stands for I don't do any work. Two hours before bed, then no creative work, no email work, just no work at all. Then one hour before bed, no screen time at all. No phone, no social media, no television, usually maybe a book or Maybe a walk. I like to take a stroll in the dark and just let the night air get on me a little bit. Come home, do some simple stretch. And obviously for those who don't know my brand, I am married and Denise and I have our own way of just catching up each night and talking about our day and our appreciation for things and then we go to bed. I don't take any supplementation at all other than probably about that one hour mark before bed. I take some extra magnesium, which really helps because I'm a good sleeper because I've been trained. I used to be a terrible sleeper. And then I realized I'm just not going to get out of bed for eight hours. I'm just going to lay there if it's miserable. If I wake up in five, I'm going to lay there and I'll meditate.

Yeah, it's kind of funny how the advice goes back and forth about some people, don't train yourself into insomnia by laying awake in bed at night. If you can't get back to sleep within 20 minutes, get up, do something, you know, be productive and then go back to bed. And other people are just like, have your ass planted in bed for 80, don't care what you do. And I think probably the latter advice is better if you actually are using that time to meditate or do breath work because you can actually simulate sleep cycles with things like yoga, Nidra, and long periods of four, seven, eight breathing. And, you know, I've personally had mornings where I wake up at like 4am and I know my ass should probably stay in bed another couple hours and I'll just meditate literally for two hours. Four, count in, eight, count out over and over and over again, put on some peaceful and relaxing music. And then when I check my. I use the aura ring to attract sleep. When I check the score in the morning, it lit like, it's so good. It fools the ring into thinking that you're still in your sleep cycles. So, yeah, I'm of the persuasion that you stay in bed, but if you're going to stay in bed, it's not on your phone or reading a book. It's just doing meditation and breath work.

I'm the same thing. I would add to that creative visualization in that if you play, if you learn to kind of create and play a movie that's similar every time and you're breathing or like interspersed with meditation, or you kind of fall in or out of your meditation to have a visualization that can go along with it, you kind of return to. It's that old saying like that's where that old philosophy of counting sheep came from was it's just returning to a normal movie in your mind that puts you asleep. So some people, you know, they visualize themselves, you know, playing baseball or getting ready to bat over and over and they, they knock it out of the park or they have, you know, some romantic scene or something. But anyway, whatever it is that really helps at my events, it's, it's definitely different because that 3, 2, 1. While the 2 and 1 are relevant, I need to eat in that last three hours so that my body is recovering more. So I'll have another shake about three hours, probably almost two hours before bed just to make sure I get through the evening. I'll also take additional supplementation with magnesium, vitamin C and GABA. And those do pretty good for me.

GABA's amazing at settling you down.

Yeah. And that one I do take earlier, I think that one's probably call it a three hour mark because I don't want the effects, I don't want to feel that in the morning. So I'm really sensitive about that. And then sometimes if I'm just really feeling, sometimes just the stress is really on me or I feel just super keyed up before my ice bath. I'll take five HTP with the gaba and somehow that gets me in a better mood mindset before bed, somehow. But honestly, the magic for me is the rolling out, the stretching, the yoga to open up my body and then hitting that ice bath. I do anywhere between 13 and 15 minutes with about 10 bags of ice in the, in the.

Wow. So you do pretty long, you do pretty long soak. Like I personally might do like, you know, three, five minutes max. So that's, that's great. So you're doing that daily, that long?

I do it, yeah. Two days before the event and then at. Because I don't want to shock myself.

Right.

When you go to the event, you don't want to do everything brand new. It really, I, that, that was, that took me, I don't wait five years to learn like a dummy. But I was like, you need to like when you roll into an event, especially a super crazy performance situation like that, you gotta be, you know, you want to be on a rhythm.

Oh, it's like, you know, when I used to do an Ironman triathlon, the last thing you would do is try some new nutrient or new supplement or new food strategy the day of the race. Like you always had to set aside at least one weekend in the four weeks leading up to practice exactly what you plan on for race day.

Dude, that's so key. And I'm surprised people don't realize that how important that is for performance. If you're speaking on stage or you're going to go to that big meeting, it's like they get up and their whole day is different. For that big meeting, it's like, oh, no. I mean, that's just creating a lot of jitters in the room.

Save my special expensive nootropic just for the day of the event and find out halfway through. It gives me explosive diarrhea.

Exactly. You really want to have your, like, your A game should be prime by the time you do the A game activities. So the ice bath for me, yeah, I fill up the tub probably a quarter of the way of just cold water. I put in at that time, eight scoops of Epsom salt, and then start the bags of ice going in. And I usually get about, probably half the bags of ice in. And then I get in and then start a podcast. Half the time I'm laying there naked in ice thinking, listen to Ben Greenfield, so don't let that weird you out.

Known to cross shrinkage.

It's that deep, lulling voice that calms me down. And then I'll lay in there and I'm all the way up to my neck, so completely submerged up to my neck. And then I'll put in at about the five minute mark, which is the super pain point for me. It's like, Obviously the first 30 seconds sucks, and then 90 seconds later it sucks again. And then you kind of work yourself through it with your breath, work by, you know, two, three minutes. You're finding a rhythm, at least for me now. And then after about five minutes, I'll put in the rest of the bag of the ice because it's not as painful. It feels like maybe that's stupid. And then, yeah, usually about the 13 minute mark. I definitely want out. The only reason, at my house, before the events, I don't do it that long. I might only do like five minutes. But at the events, I mean, I'm hurt. I stand that entire time from 9am to 7pm I barely ever sit. I mean, maybe, well, definitely at lunch I sit and I consume massive amounts of tacos at lunch. That's my thing. At lunch. I just need as many calories clean. Burning knows how it affects me kind of thing. And then dinner is almost always salmon, lots of kale, lots of veggies. Shake. And that keeps me going, man.

Nice. I dig it. You know, by the way, all those bags of ice on laborious. Have you. Have you looked into the. I don't know if we talked about this when I was talking with you earlier. The Morozco. Morozco Forge ice bath?

No.

Okay. Yeah. So that's what I have that's on my office right now. I've been climbing in that thing at the end of the day. So every day, especially during this coronavirus pandemic, I'm doing breathwork, heat and cold. And so I've totally altered my evening routine, cut my workouts down to about 15 to 20 minutes, and then taken the extra 30 minutes. That frees up for me. I heat up the sauna when I start my workout, get in, do a bunch of really deep, intensive breath work in the sauna. Almost a little bit more of like. I'm not opposed to the idea of relaxation breath work and parasympathetic breath work, but I'm doing more kind of like Wim Hof style immune boosting breath work, which is a little bit more intensive, a little bit more workouty. And then, you know, I've got a deep sweat going on. Then I. Then I get in the cold tub for about three to five minutes and do box breathing. But the cold tub I'm using now, I just got a few months ago. It's one of my new toys. It's called the Marozco Forge. And I literally have to break through the ice to get in. It maintains about 31 degrees, even if it's like 110 degrees outside. And it is automatically clean with UV and ozone. So you don't have to, like, clean it out. You don't have to change out the ice. It's slick. Like, it's like my new favorite cold tub toy because it just saves me a ton on ice, on filling, on refilling, on adding hydrogen peroxide, all this other stuff. So, yeah, that would be something. If you ever get tired of moving the ice in and out of that.

Tub to look into, let's find out if they'll just send one down to Puerto Rico. I bet they figured out my event. Sometimes at my events, I'll have a mobile unit come up that does mobile cryo. And I'll only do that maybe every 15 events. But the other aspect about it is just the nutrition thing that really helps me. For the performance side, I didn't share about, which is everyone's asked, do you drink caffeine? And I'm really careful about caffeine at events because it can really affect your vocal cords. So we have to be really sensitive about everything you're drinking. You shouldn't do the hot tea and water and honey things. That's. That's terrible for your voice. So instead what I'll do is I'll do, like, a performance blend, which I thought you'd dig because I've actually never shared this before, but it's a performance blend of organic beetroot, goji berry, coconut water for electrolytes, maca root, yolithro, schisandra, rhodiola, and then 60 milligrams of organic green tea. Caffeine.

Nice.

And that little blend, man, is just, I mean, you know, the benefits of all those. But that is like a heightened performance energy I get, obviously, from the beetroot and elethro. The maca really does a good job of, like, evening out my sort of like both my. As a guy, my hormone levels, but also my blood sugar levels.

Yeah, that kind of sounds kind of similar to the Drew canole. My buddy Drew has a company, organifi, and they make a red juice powder. It's very similar that, like, cordyceps beat Eleuthero, some rhodiola, some ginseng, but same thing. Like, you mix that stuff up in super cold water and, like, a Nalgene water bottle. I have no clue if they're a sponsor of today's show, but now they have to be. But, yeah, same thing, because our product's called HBX Boost. Okay, so it's your product. Can people get that one on Amazon?

By the time they listen to this, they will.

Yeah. Okay, cool. I'll link to it for people.

Yeah, it's all organic, which is a big deal. I know, and I love that. I love you do organifi, too. And, you know, a lot of people don't understand when you're recommending organifi, that is a nootropic. And I think that's what people. You know, there's this idea that biohacking is this weird, you know, weird land of things that doesn't mix with, you know, our regular lives of trying to maintain, you know, alkalinity and taking greens and things like that. It's like, oh, no. If you're taking anything organic.

Yeah. I mean, freaking sunlight's a nootropic. I mean, when you look at what it does to nitric oxide production and neural tissue and, you know, upregulation of cytochrome C oxidase and mitochondria I mean, you know, granted it works better if, if you've got dark compounds in your, in your bloodstream like chlorella or you know, melanin from Chaga or methylene blue or something else that helps the sunlight to charge you up or even just minerals. But yeah, I mean like you, you could classify a lot as a, as a nootropic for sure.

Yeah, I think it's really important to people. I think that will help people overcome like I don't know if I should take brain supplements. I'm like, you probably kind of are. You just don't know. So why not optimize and figure it out?

Yeah. Okay. I, I want to ask you a few other questions just like, you know, kind of a little bit more of like a rapid fire type of format. Here one is in your office because you do a lot of work from home. Are you doing anything to manage, you know, exposure to electricity? Are you aware of non native emf? Like are you kind of pulling out any of those types of, of building biology type of hacks?

Yeah, probably not. Definitely not levels you do, which is super smart for me. I'm really more. Same thing with you. I went back to regular incandescent lights. I don't have WI fi in my office. Everything's by cable. Because I'm super tweaked by the WI fi stuff and the power of that now especially with mesh network for your surroundings.

Well, I mean it caused coronavirus, we all know that now. Yeah, didn't you see the YouTube video? No, but I believe 8 billion of them.

Oh my gosh. You know, the best thing I do is probably every two of those 50 minute work boxes, I just go outside in the sun. Since we're in Puerto Rico and I just go out with flip flops on, I'll take my shoes off and I'll just ground a little bit and come back in. And that's probably better than anything else I do. I'm sure you could give me a lot of advice on other EMF stuff I should do though.

Yeah, well, I mean sunlight and earthing to mitigate defects, that's huge. But you know, when I had a building biology come through or building biologists come through my house and just test a bunch of stuff, you know, what's working, what isn't, what's producing emf, what's producing Flickr. His name was Brian Hoyer. I'll link to it in the show notes if you guys want to listen to the full episode episode. And we're actually he's supposed to fly up here if this quarantine blows over. And we're gonna do another one in about a month here. But the. The thing that was most dramatic, if I give you one thing, Brennan, it was dirty electricity filters. So I got these filters from a company called Shielded Healing, and you just need one in like every outlet of a room that's fed off the same breaker. And that plummeted the amount of dirty EMF or electrical surges in the room. So that was probably the biggest change, which is a super, super dirt cheap, easy. You just plug some into the wall and that's it. So that made a huge difference. Okay, so another question that I have for you is a little bit unrelated to the health stuff, but I think it would be interesting for folks because as you mentioned, you read a lot, which means that you. Not only are you tuned into some of the better books out there, but you probably follow some different authors or thought leaders. And so kind of a two part question. What books in the past month or two have you read that you think are kind of non negotiables for people who either want to bring their performance or their health to the next level? And then b, who are you following right now? Whether it's an author or a thought leader or someone like that on Twitter or Instagram or wherever, you personally tend to kind of like follow people or soak up advice.

Oh, man, that's good. Well, first, totally not to kiss ass, but yours, your podcast, and Boundless. I'm still working through Boundless. That thing is a beast and I am dedicated. Don't.

Don't feel bad. I wrote it to take people a long time to get through.

No, dude, it's actually genius. And everybody, everybody listening. This needs that book because it's not just something, it's also a resource manual. If you ever hear like, oh, what is Coq 10? Should I do it? What's its effect on my performance? You open Ben's book. So it's like kind of everything there from supplementation, but also to balance and exercise routines.

Thanks, man. Your check's in the mail.

Okay. Yep, yep, yep. Sorry about that, guys.

For real.

That's one. So, last month's books. Okay. A couple things that really helped in this last month, especially with the pandemic going on. I reread Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. I do not believe we can ever talk about performance without purpose and meaning. And so always revisiting your spirituality or books that inspire meaning is important. And Viktor Frankl went through the Holocaust. And, you know, his single line of talking about how you can take everything from a person, from a human, but the last of our human freedoms is our ability to choose our own attitude. And so as soon as the pandemic started, I said, listen, let's adopt role model mindsets through this. Let's be the role model. Let's have the attitude of a role model through this. Because it will pass at some point, and yes, it will be. It's a very serious and scary, unprecedented thing. And attitude really matters.

Yeah.

So for me to just refresh my attitude, I reread two books, Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl, and then Benjamin Hoff's book the Tao of Poo. And I know the Dao of Poo is. Yes, you gotta read it, dude. It is the story of Dao, as in Tao, like the Tao Te Ching. So it's basically if you took the Tao Te Ching and you overlaid literally Winnie the Pooh's story with Christopher and Robin, now you learn how to de stress.

Okay, so it's not a book about constipation.

It's not about constipation. And I will tell you, it was like it was life changing to me early in my life. And so I read it again because it's just about how do you go with the flow when the world conspires, you know, to make you fearful of the flow? And so I read that again just to get my mind reset. That really helped. I read the Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene, who's an author many people know from 48 laws of power or his book Mastery, which is phenomenal. I follow those. Those are really helpful to me, my network of people. So, you know, in my industry, we've got like, Tom Bilyeu. We've got like, you know, Trent Shelton. Yeah, Tom's a huge buddy. So I watch what he's doing and creating and. And just a dear, dear friend. Impact theory for those who don't watch on YouTube is super key. I listen to a lot of his work. I listen to a lot of Trent Shelton because he gets fired me up. I go back to good old school personal development. Earl Nightingale, Zig Ziglar. I mean, Earl Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn, Dale Carnegie stuff. I just go. I drink deep from the old school. Well, because it's just mindset stuff that really encourages me and helps me.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. By the way, Zig Ziglar was a good friend of my grandfather's. They were salesmen together down in Florida. They both sold cookware. Yeah. Well, I'll throw one other in there that I read as soon as this hit another kind of like, older book, Napoleon Hill's Outwitting the Devil. I don't know if you've read that, but the reason that I read that was because I felt like I got ripped out of my daily routine. And I thought, okay, how could this be a good thing? That my entire routine has changed dramatically, as it probably has for a lot of people. And the premise of that book is that Napoleon interviews the devil. And the devil fills Napoleon in on all the different ways that he keeps people from attaining success in life. And one of the ways of doing that is by keeping people locked into what is called in that book their hypnotic rhythm. And by breaking out of this hypnotic rhythm, this routine, this ritual, this habit, you can actually bring yourself to another level. And I'm bastardizing the concept to a certain extent, but I would throw that one in there too for people. And I'll link to all these books in the show notes. But Napoleon Hill's Outwitting the Devil, I read that four weeks ago when this thing first started, and it's pretty quick read, but that's another one I'd throw in there.

Yeah. Three resources I sent a friend recently. On top of that, I sent.

The.

Audio for the Power of Positive Thinking from Norman Vincent Peale, because that friend of mine is Christian, so that really supports that ideology. But also, just how do you keep a good mindset through faith right now? For me personally, when I'm working out, I often listen to Joel Osteen or something just to get fired up or other pastor type podcasts. I'm a person of faith, obviously. I feel like God gave me a second chance at life and I want to earn that second chance. So I'm listening to a lot of messages of faith, which is really important to me in my life. And I think that, you know, finding audio right now that really helps with you with mindset that that is not.

Yet another scientific explanation of coronavirus or a pandemic podcast. I agree because it seems like half of them are right now.

Yeah.

I also have been finding a lot of hope and positivity each morning with more spiritual podcasts. And right now the one I'm hooked on are John Piper's daily sermons and John Piper's, he has two. He has a like a morning kind of like quick 3 minute audio. I'm blanking on the name of that one. And then he Also has, like a daily sermon. And that. That dude just rocks my world, I think. I think he's a great, great preacher. So I'm in the. I'm in the same boat. I've been working that stuff in every single day. Joel Osteen's very, very inspirational as well. I like him.

Yeah. You know, one, if you want to get super fired up, like a good workout, one is what's his name? I can't remember what he calls his. His podcast, but it's TD Jakes. And TD Jakes has some of his. His sermons, and he is fired up. I think he called Potter's Touch or something like that. Anyway, he's fired up. Like, he's kind of. He's more of a. You know, he's like, if you took Joel Osteen and you just. And you just put Les Brown on it.

What. What's his name again?

T.D. jakes.

T.D. jakes. Okay, cool. I'll add him into the show notes as well. I actually don't know him. Like T T D Jakes. J A K E S. Yeah, that's right. Okay.

And I also. The Potter's Touch.

Okay, awesome.

I'll have to do Fired Up. So I've been listening to him because just. Just for the fire obsession, especially during a workout, those have been really helpful because, you know, I think the most important thing is you all maintain your mindset and your habits and challenge yourself. Like, expect something from yourself through this, because years from now, you. Months from now, you're gonna look back and either be proud of your behavior and how you treated your kids and how you showed up for your audiences and treated your team and your employees and the people you could serve through this, even when it got hard. Because that's what shapes character.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I know that you're doing a great job out there, Brendan, helping people shape their character and achieve a lot of success, and you're putting out a lot of really good information. So I'm gonna link to all your books and your products and everything in the show. Notes for people at. Again. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Brendan Burchard. And if you guys want somebody good, somebody inspirational, somebody who's also a real wealth of knowledge, you know, especially, I mean, like, during these times when you might be reinventing your career, Brennan's information is going to be absolutely fan frickin tastic for you. So. And then you're still gonna. I would assume, once this kind of washes over with the. With the sheltering in place, orders you'll be doing some conferences as well this year, Brendan.

Yep, yep. We do eight a year and we only had to cancel one, but we took it totally virtually, which worked just great. But yeah, I miss the people. You know, I've been doing this whole series on my podcast which is called the Brendon show. And we did this whole series called Striving in Chaos. And just how do you keep striving through this difficulty you got? You know, there's a lot of in those podcast episodes and a lot of our best of training there from our seminars that we play on the Brendan show podcast. So for those who can't go to conferences, but you want to go to personal development conference, go listen to Brandon show podcast because it's a lot of those recordings.

Cool. Awesome. You know, someday I'm gonna have to make it up to one of your events. Now I know you're running a marathon out there. I just gotta go and stand in the back and watch you run around. Maybe, maybe I'll show up and be your water boy.

No, no, first I'll have you come out and speak to my people about physiology and health. And then also you can kind of like you, can you. I gotta hire you to consult me and tell me what else I can do because I mean, I love to be recognized for what I do, but I'm recognized for what I do because I surround myself with super smart people who tell me how not to be as dumb as I usually am. So I would love for you to come out and give any advice and thoughts because I just wanted, I want to do this. I'm going to do this until I keel over. This is my, you know, this is all I've done for 25 years.

Well, I'd be happy, happy to do that. However, with as few personal or self improvement events as I've gone to, about all I really know about those things is I have to develop some kind of a signature clap or an intense clapping protocol. So I need to work on my clapping game before I show up.

Obviously that's not me. You don't have to worry about that.

My events, fair enough.

Mine are all based on performance psychology and research. So we're deep into the frameworks and the tools that people actually do at the events. So it's a very different vibe. You dig it?

I dig it. All right, cool. Well folks, if you have questions or you have comments or you have feedback or your own little tips, favorite books to ask, things that have kind of saved your butt over these past few weeks, people you follow, or other ways that you kind of optimize your own daily routines. Then head over to the shownotes@bengreenfieldfitness.com Brendon Burchard and leave them over there because I like to read the comments and the feedbacks that you all leave. And I'll link to Brendan's books over there, all the other books that he talked about. Pretty much everything that got mentioned you'll find in the show notes. And in the meantime, Brendan, thanks for coming on the show, man. And I guess it wasn't too hard to take a break from the beach because it was closed. But regardless, thank you for taking time out of your day and coming on the show, man.

Man, it's an honor. I appreciate you, Ben.

All right, folks, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Brendan Burchard signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.

Sam.