Morning Miracles & Self Reflection

I think it was Dr. Peter Martone, who's like this sleep specialist who I had on my podcast. He taught me that if you're trying to fall asleep or trying to relax, if you engage in forward thinking, like planning what you're going to do, maybe when you get up from a nap or the next day, or a conversation you're going to have, or an email that you're going to write or whatever, you actually see a shift in electrical and blood flow activity to the frontal cortex where you kind of host a lot of your ruminating thoughts. And it will increase sleep latency or disrupt napping patterns or relaxation. But the complete opposite occurs if you force yourself to instead think back to. And you can start with very simple things like what I have for breakfast this morning and what was the first thing I did when I got up, and then maybe what did I have for dinner last night, what was my workout yesterday, who did I talk to? And you train your brain to start to shift into the past. It's actually an incredible way to relax you.

I'm curious for you, from like a, from, from, from a biohacking or fitness or health standpoint are when, when you're going throughout your day and you're getting exposed to all these new ideas, tactics, tools, books, et cetera, what's it actually look like for you as far as how you're structuring your day to be able to research or experiment with or try a lot of this stuff? Are you just like full time doing that? Are you writing or what's your actual daily routine look like when it comes to being able to explore this stuff?

It's a good, good question. I mean, I'm a full time biohacker these days and that involves testing devices.

Meeting speakers, hanging out with speakers, and traveling around the world and testing different things. Really, that's pretty much my full time job these days.

Part of it is obviously organizing speakers and brands with the conference, but really it's testing this. So my day is pretty structured most of the time. I do have a couple of days a week where it's no structure and it's basically just free flow to be in flow state. But generally I work out first thing in the morning. And one of the things that I've implemented that has made me so much more productive and happier is actually implementing the Morning Miracles. And I think I mentioned them briefly on our last podcast, which was.

Basically based on the book called the Morning Miracles. And it's, it's about silence, affirmations, visualizations, exercise and Reading and you sit down and basically meditate, read, exercise and before anything else so you awake, you hydrate or do whatever you do your Morning Miracles, which sets you up for the whole day, every day. And that's a non in terms of visualizations as you know how powerful they are affirmations in terms of how they can help you grow so much Silence obviously is my form of meditation which where I reflect on the previous day to be better. But really this is the foundation of my day without question and without exception. And after that I have, you know, for instance, the day is structured. For instance, it's my time in the morning to test out devices to do whatever I need before the call. Start at like kind of 10 or 11 in the morning and then it's calls through till 2 o' clock and then I have head down time in the afternoon. So I do change this from day to day depending on, you know, depending on the day. But really a lot of my day is dedicated to testing using different biohacks these days.

Yeah, yeah. And I think the Morning Miracles, I think it's Hal Elrod is the book and the program. I'll hunt it down and put it in the show notes for folks. But I'm curious just as far as that Morning Miracles, the silence piece, what's that actually look like? Are you just like sitting quietly with the eyes closed and if so, for how long?

This is a really great question actually because I've always had trouble meditating. I've always been, you know, 200 miles an hour not wanting to sit still, always wanting to achieve stuff. And I tried the Sense 8 device which I still use from time to time but it was a staple for me because I found that it the Sensei meditation device help me hold myself accountable to doing it with a device.

Describe that. However, what the sensate is.

So sensate is like a teardrop shaped device which you actually put on your chest on your breastbone and it pulses, vibrates or.

On your chest in time with the music or the sounds to help you get into a deep meditative state. It's a vagus nerve stimulation device as well. So it's really think of it as a purring cat on your chest while you're meditating which really takes you out of the mind space, puts you into the kinesthetic position and helps you to distance yourself from the outside world. So for me that really guided me into being more of a meditator, but I still relied on a device when I read the Morning Miracles. However, it Said silence. So I would sit there and I would challenge myself to 10 minutes of silence. Nothing, literally nothing. And whatever came up came up. But as I did this more and more and I forced myself to do this instead of meditation. Silence is a key different, like differentiator with it. Because I didn't care what came up. And I found eventually the more that I did it, the more my brain looked for things that I had done the previous day where I could have been a better human, whether it could have been helping someone better, how I could have worded something better to someone if something triggered me. Reflect on that and ask myself, why did I react in that way? So every day I'm self correcting from the previous day in my 10 minute silence. So this is really about self growth and understanding things where I could have been better, how to be better. And I found since then I've been a self correcting machine and worked through years of stuff very, very quickly just from a ten minute reflection.

That's interesting. It sounds like almost unintentionally it shifts you into a state of, you know, what many ancient philosophers would have called examine or self examination. Even without necessarily meaning to do so, if you let your thoughts fall back into the previous day's failures, mistakes, lessons learned, et cetera. I still think self examination, which I do at the end of the day by playing the day back like a movie in my mind, typically as I'm falling asleep or sometimes with my family during evening meditation. It's a tremendous way to keep in touch with that concept of how you live your day, is how you live your life. Because it's pretty easy to get into this Groundhog Day scenario where you're not really improving, not learning from your failures, not growing as a person, but if you've carved out a certain time of day to actually measure that so that it can be managed, I think it's an incredible tool. And interestingly, I think it was Dr. Peter Martone, who's this sleep specialist, who I had on my podcast. He taught me that if you're trying to fall asleep or trying to relax, if you engage in forward thinking, like planning what you're going to do, maybe when you get up from a nap or the next day, or a conversation you're going to have, or an email that you're going to write or whatever, you actually see a shift in electrical and blood flow activity to the frontal cortex where you kind of host a lot of your ruminating thoughts. And it will increase sleep latency or disrupt napping patterns. Of relaxation. But the complete opposite occurs if you force yourself to instead think back to. And you can start with very simple things like what I have for breakfast this morning, and what was the first thing I did when I got up, and then maybe what did I have for dinner last night? What was my workout yesterday? Who did I talk to? And you train your brain to start to shift into the past. It's actually an incredible way to relax you, because, I mean, Tim, you've probably seen, like, these devices. I think there's one called the ebb ebb that you literally wear around your head, and it circulates cold water near the forehead to apparently vasoconstrict and cause blood flow to shift away from that frontal cortex. And it is interesting because it. Because it does have that same relaxing effect. Unfortunately, it's difficult to relax with this giant headset on. But this idea of past processing versus future processing is something I find really interesting.

Yeah, I mean, they say that, well, it's important to visualize where you want to go, but it's also important to visualize and work through where you've been. And I think, you know, it's in its empowerment, opposed to most people. And I've put myself in this category for my pretty much my whole life of running around so much, doing so much stuff instead of actually. Instead of being doing. And we are human beings. And I think when you actually start reflecting on the things that trigger you.

Or.

Can actually craft them or adjust them. So I think it's a really. In terms of making me grow up as a human and to work through things and make my relationships better. And my health, my psychological health, which means physical health, obviously catches up with that as well. It's been probably the biggest game changer of my last two years.