How to Become Mentally Vibrant & Alive with Dr. Michael Breus & Jim Kwik

Welcome back, Kwik Brain. Your question for today, this is a topic that comes up a lot in our app and also in our private Facebook group, which many of you are a part of. How do you unleash untapped mental energy? How do you become mentally vibrant, cognitively alive? Because without energy, you're not gonna have the motivation to be able to plow through, do all the things that you're meant to do. And I'm very excited to have back on our podcast a very popular guest by demand, My sleep doctor, Dr. Michael Breus. Many of you have listened to past episodes. We'll put links in our show notes at jimkwik.com/notes. He is the master of The Power of When, which was one of my favorite books. And his new book is called Energize: Go from Dragging Blank to Kicking It in 30 Days. Which You wrote with Stacy Griffith, who is the founding instructor of SoulCycle, and there's a lot of energy in that room also as well.

Oh yeah.

Welcome back on the show, Michael.

Thanks for having me, Big Jim. You know, I love hanging out with the Kwik Brainers and talking sleep, talking brain, talking activity, talking success. I love it and I love you. So thanks for having me back, bro.

Yeah, we've had you on the show because you're so popular as a guest, talking through everything from optimizing sleep, how to fall back to sleep, How to use sleep as a recovery tool, chronotypes, which maybe we could touch upon a little bit today. Now, one of the biggest complaints over the past couple of years is people suffer from brain fog. They suffer from mental fatigue. We talk a lot about human motivation, having purpose, and small, simple steps to make it easy for you, but you need that energy.

Yes.

So where do you start when we're talking about helping people have more energy? How do you— are there different forms of energy or?

So it turns out that there are actually, there's several different forms of energy. So one of the things that we talk about, so let me back up. You know, everybody knows I'm a sleep doctor, right? And so it's pretty easy to measure sleep, right? You stick electrodes on somebody's head and you can measure sleep stages and cycles and all these interesting things. But how do you measure energy, right? That was kind of a unique idea for me. So I started to think, well, conceptually, how How do I think about energy? And I actually think about it in multiple categories. So, there's physical or moving energy, right? There's resting energy. There's eating energy with fuel and things like that. And then there's emotional energy. And I think the emotional energy category also encompasses what you guys are here and think about, which is mental acuity, how to do things more efficiently, how to be more successful mentally, how to have more attention, how to have more focus, how to read quicker, all of those things.

Yeah.

those things to get that good data in. We know actually some of those things can be energetic and some of those things can kind of drag you down. When we talk about how to identify you energetically, I came up with, as you might imagine, a little thing that people can take of a diary. So, I have them look at their energy levels 5 different times throughout the day. We use a scale called the Perceived Exertion Scale, which was made by a gentleman named Borg. And this is a scale that's used during exercise. So, when you're exercising, you rate from 0 to 10 how much exertion or how hard it is to do something, which is kind of a measure of your energy. So, we ask people to, just for a week, to energetically kind of check in with themselves and say, what is my energy like after I wake up, just before lunch, after lunch, just before dinner, and then just before bed? That way we can start to check in and see where are the energy deficits that people are having because a lot of people don't think about their energy until it's too late, right? So, they're like, I'm demotivated. I'm so— as the title of the book says, I'm dragging it, although I use a different word. And people understand like, wow, now is the time I need more energy. But what I'm here to tell people is just like you tell people, like, readers is for leaders, right? So, working through and having daily habits around your cognition is important, and it's the same holds true for your energy. And actually, a lot of the habits are the same. So, one of the things that's easy for people is to know when their most energetic time is to do certain things. Now, of course, we covered a lot of this in The Power of When, and a lot of that has to do with your chronotype. But a new area of energy that I can talk about, and I'll mention it in just a second, has to do with intermittent fasting. But I do want to double tap a little bit more on that mental energy and what it is and how it works. So when we talk about emotions, emotions can be very energetic in a positive way or unfortunately in a negative way. I was just describing to you before we got on that my son is driving me crazy. And I was very adamant and throwing my arms around about it. So I was pretty energetic, but it wasn't necessarily The most positive thing that could be going on there. So, what are some things that we can do when we start to feel ourselves slowing down energetically, especially when we're trying to focus? Well, one of the things that you taught me a long time ago is take breaks, right? So, give yourself some stopping points to be in there. But also, if you want to tip that scale and make it from a neutral energy to a positive energy, one of the things we learned is— Try to avoid emotional vampires. Now, you might be saying to yourself, hold on, Michael, is this a new term? What's going on here? Jim already knows exactly what I'm talking about. There are people in our lives that just suck us dry of energy. Maybe they're negative people, maybe they complain a lot, maybe they're just having a hard time with their lives right now and they need our help. But sometimes that pulling of that energy can be really too much for us. And so I've got a bunch of things that you can do during those periods of time, as well as if you're having times of low mental acuity. So, one of my favorites, laughter. So, you might not know about this, but there's a lot of interesting data on laughter. So, speaking of my son, he sends me a joke almost every day from a website that he thinks is really funny. And so, I actually utilize the jokes. Number one, it's a great way for me to connect with my son. But number two, if I'm having a tough time, I'm like, hold on, I'm going to take myself a 5-minute break and I'm going to read a few jokes. And honestly, some of them are really funny. It literally shifts my energetic mode just like that, doing something like that. Another thing that you can do, and this is going to sound a little strange, but it's a different type of energy, is be kind. Be kind to someone that you care about. Kindness changes your entire focus. It gives you energy. Whenever I'm helpful to somebody else, I mean, like, just even talking about it, thinking about being kind makes me feel more, you know what I mean? Like, more energetic and interested and in kind of what's going on. And then a third one, and this is one that you taught me as well, is music. Music can be very energetically focused. So, I know I'm telling a lot of stories about my son, but here's another one that kind of exemplifies our morning energy focus with music. So, Cooper has a hard time waking up in the mornings. And so, I said, here's the deal, dude. You get to control the music in the mornings. And he was like, okay. I said, you can put on whatever volume you want. It has to start at 7:00 AM, but everybody gets to wake up to whatever you want them to wake up to. So, he became the morning DJ. So, number one, it got him out of bed a lot faster, which was pretty impressive. But my son, as you know, is kind of a '70s throwback kid. So, he just decided to play You Have to Fight for Your Right to Party by the Beastie Boys every single morning at volume 8. And here's the funniest part. Our whole family was bopping around. We were like, yeah, you got to fight for your right to party. Like, we were having a great time, but it changed our energetic level like that, right? And so, morning times are low-energy times for a lot of people, especially if you've got teenagers in the house. You know, adding these types of components to your day really can shift your energetic focus, give you that energy, that positive energy that you're looking for. And then you hop back into what it is that you were doing and you're off and running.

You know, we in our courses and our programs, we always tell people to take their nouns and turn them into verbs. A lot of people say, I don't have focus, but we're like, no, this is a verb. You do focus. And same thing can be applied to energy. You don't have energy. There's a process for generating and creating energy. You know, as you mentioned, taking breaks, you know, being around positive and nourishing people, not those emotional energy vampires. Comedy, you know, who doesn't love throwing something on, you know, on YouTube or You follow the people on Instagram that have these memes or these dad jokes, right? Being around kind people that are nourishing you or being kind yourself to others and listening to music. And this is what I've always loved about you. First of all, you're a mentor of mine. You were one of my coaches for energy and sleep, and you're so tactical. And that's really— Thanks. I want to encourage everyone to make sure you get this book, Energize, because this book, it's in 30 days to be able to optimize your energy. I mean, so many people suffer from fatigue. They say, they complain they're exhausted. They feel, you know, burnt out. Are you seeing a rise of this, you know, in your practice?

Holy crap.

With people?

Yeah, there's no question. We're, you know, honestly, this is such a great time to come out with a book about energy because so many people need the advice. I mean, between the advice that you share on these podcasts and the advice in the book, people really have now got a great resource because let's be honest, this whole COVID thing is not going anywhere. Right? I mean, we're starting to see more and more people, and that increases that stress level. And what does that do? That affects your ability to focus. That affects your ability to sleep. It really affects all of those abilities. You know, I wanted to double tap really quickly on that break, taking those breaks, because one of the more interesting aspects of the book is we have a very unique section on it. Stacy actually developed this section quite thoroughly on moving and movement energy.

That's right.

So, if you think about it, right? So, when a body is in motion, it has a tendency to stay in motion. When a body is at rest, it has a tendency to stay at rest. So, we don't really want people to be sitting all day long. And unfortunately, now, as you've already identified, a lot of people are stuck on Zoom calls and they're sitting all day. I mean, you're the one who told me sitting is the new smoking, right? So, we got to be up. We got to be moving, right? We got to be getting out and around. So, here's the thing that we do. So, you know those 5 times that people are monitoring their energy in the book?

Yes.

What we do is we flip it around on them and then we say those 5 times that normally you would check your energy, Now, you're going to spend 5 minutes during each one of those 5 times doing specific movements. So, what we did—

Wow.

Yeah, it was kind of awesome. So, what we did was we took the 4 chronotypes. People remember those from before. Lion is the early bird, bear is in the middle, wolf is a night owl, and dolphin is the insomniac. And we laid on top of it body types. So, I know you're— I know, right? So, think back to high school, right? Endomorph, ectomorph, mesomorph, those body types actually come into play when we learn more about movement. So when I was working with Stacy, she turned to me and she said, Michael, you know, for some of my clients, I can't get them motivated. But one of the things I try to do is I try to match their exercise with their bodies. And I was like, hold on a second, what are you talking about? And she was like, well, for some of my bigger clients, I don't ask them to do cardio right away because Motivationally speaking, they fail almost immediately in doing something like that. And I was like, so you actually use body types? And she said, actually, I think I kind of do. So, when we started to think about body types and movements, we actually did a study where we took 5,000 people who had already taken my Chrono Quiz. We asked them to do the body type quiz, and it revealed all kinds of new information about the chronotypes. So, for anybody out there that's read my Power of When book and learned about their chronotype, This is like version 2.0 of that because now we are adding in movement, which helps us sustain that energy. I am going to tell you about the types of movement and then we will talk a little bit about intermittent fasting because that is the 3rd component for that fuel to go into the body. So, the movements are really fun. We have 5 different types and you do them for 5 minutes. To be clear, this ain't a workout, OK? This isn't something that is going to make you fit. This is going to be something that is going to give you energy. So, the first one is called stretch. Kind of makes sense. You're waking up. Everybody's kind of been in bed for a while. Kind of stretch out all of the crotchities, as my friend Lonray likes to say. All of that stiffness and soreness that you might have from sleeping kind of gets it out of you. The next three different ones are in different orders depending upon your chronotype, but there he's here are the basic three. One of them is a shake. So you ever seen a dog when they get up? What do they do?

Yeah.

Right. They do that whole shaky thing, right? I mean, I just did it and like I feel more energized. So it's, it's funny to just shake your hands, right? Shake your arms, right? Shake your legs. All of a sudden, right? See, all of a sudden it changes your energetic component. Um, the next one after—

I was talking to a dog trainer. They said they do it also to reset their nervous system. That's correct as well. And give them, give them life, give them energy.

Exactly right. And so we know this is working in the animal kingdom. Why can't we take advantage of it in the human universe, right? The third one is bounce, right? And so, what does that mean? Literally bounce, jumping jacks, skipping, that kind of stuff, right? Because what happens is energetically speaking, you getting off the earth for a second or two can be really helpful for you. Number one, it changes your equilibrium, which resets again, helps reset that nervous system again. So, instead of going down that non-energetic path, You've now changed your energetic pathway to do something that's more involved.

And babies naturally do that also. They'll hold on to the crib and just jump up. Yeah.

And they start kicking around, having a good time, especially, or if they're on those little walker things and you see their little butts bouncing around, having a good time, it's awesome. The, the 4th one is called build, and that's with a major muscle group. So you're going to do pushups, you're going to do sit-ups, you might do squats. Again, not to the point of like having a big sweat, but just to engage that musculature. Because if you've been sitting all day, you haven't really engaged yourself that way. And again, think about how you feel when you, when you do a push-up, right? You have complete focused energy on your physicality. And then when you get up, hey, I accomplished something. I feel more energetic. I feel good. I use those muscles in a unique and different way. The final one is called balance. And this is where we have people do mild yoga poses just before bed, like a tree pose or something like that. And that's really to help people settle down their brain, right? So maintaining that energy but not having too much energy to not be able to fall asleep. So Stacy developed the program. It's really awesome, and it's 5 by 5, so 5 minutes, 5 times a day of these different types of exercises, and people love it.

And there are different benefits then. So when people ask you what are the benefits of morning versus evening fitness, it's really you have the 2 anchor points, you know, in the morning and then in the evening, and then in between it changes depending on your, your chrono and your body type.

Exactly, exactly. So what's been fascinating about it is matching people up with things that they like to do. So for example, in the build, we may not have somebody who's an endomorph who might be a little bit on the bigger side, we may not ask them to do You know, a 30-second cardio, we may say to them, hey, here's what we— here's all we want you to do is we just want you to, you know, lift, do leg lifts as a start, because we want to get people to be able to achieve the goals that they're setting out to achieve. Because guess what? When you achieve it, you feel good and you get energy, and that's where that emotional energy comes into play. So that part's exciting as well.

You know, I know a lot of people are listening. So some people are listening, might be thinking, can you change your body type? Is that something that they could change? It's a great question.

So it turns out, no, you're born with your body type. Now, what's interesting, however, is when you look at body types. So let's just quickly double tap on that. Ectomorphs are the long and lean people. Mesomorphs are kind of the more V-shaped sort of muscular types of people. And then endomorphs are the people who carry weight a little bit more around their belly or more on their hips, a little bit on the, on the thicker side. When you really look into that, That has a lot to do with metabolism. So what ends up happening is our long and leans have got fast metabolisms, our mesomorphs, medium people, have medium metabolisms, and our endomorphs end up having slower metabolisms. Here's where it gets really interesting is we've discovered that knowing your body type and your chronotype, you can actually intermittent fast and be able to figure out not only when to fast, but for how long to fast, right? So yeah, you're stuck with your body type, but you can use intermittent fasting to change your weight, right, as well as change your energy levels. So if people— do people in your audience know a lot about intermittent fasting? Have you talked with them about that before?

Um, we've done a couple episodes. Um, okay, great. We could give a 30-second review for, for those who haven't listened to those episodes yet.

Yeah, perfect. So intermittent fasting has to do with only eating during a certain feeding window is what we call it. Now, what's interesting about this is this, this represents, or this is, this process helps us with something called autophagy. So autophagy is where our cells completely turn over and get all the gunk basically out and revitalize. We get more energy to our mitochondria. One thing we now know is if ectomorph, that's our long and lean fast metabolism people, For 12 hours, feed for 12 hours. For our medium types, you would fast for 14 hours and feed for 10 hours. And for our bigger people, you would fast for 16 hours and feed for 8 hours. So it gives you a starting point based on your body type in terms of the amount of time you should be fasting or you should be feeding. So that's one new thing that we learned on the book that's never been discovered before. The second thing happened with me. So I've been an intermittent faster, as you know, for like 5 years now. And I do everything based on my chronotype because I'm kind of the chronotype guy. And so I started intermittent fasting based on my chronotype. And I have to tell you, it became much more effective doing it that way. So that's the second part of the intermittent fasting section, which is now that you know how long to fast based on your body type, you can use your chronotype to know when to intermittent fast. So, dude, this is unlocking the keys to total energy all day long with healthy eating. You can choose the diet that you want to choose, healthy memory, healthy focus, healthy energy. It's pretty cool.

It's amazing. And you and Stacy, you embody this. You have so much energy for your family, for your mission, you're traveling, you're a spokesperson, you're always on the media all the time. And people must ask you, and it's great because I recommend the book because there are many more sections people need to look into because a lot of people tell you what to eat, but they don't tell you when to do it, right? They tell you what to, you know, how to work out, but not when to work out.

Exactly.

Or, you know, or things about sleep, but not actually when to actually go to sleep. So you've really cracked the code when it comes to chronotypes and body types also as well. So how do people get the book? Like, what's the best place for people to go? Because I know they're going to want to find out more because you go deep into chronotypes, body types, sleep, diet. I mean, you've really— this is like the energy It is.

I like that. I should have called it The Energy Formula. So, if people look over my shoulder, you can see that energizemyself.com is a website where you can go and preorder the book, or you can run right over to Amazon, Books-A-Million, any independent bookstores will also have it as well. We're super excited about this. And if you go to Energize Myself and you sign up there, there's some extra free bonus material for folks there if they want to check it out. But I'm very, very excited for this. Also, of course, if you head on over to my website, thesleepdoctor.com, plastered all over there as well.

Amazing, amazing. Michael, Dr. Bruce, thank you so much for again serving our community so well, giving us a big download of information. If people got value out of this, you know, short podcast episode, I recommend you, you see the full extended version also, which we put on YouTube. Make sure you subscribe there as well. Make sure you get a copy. And I would also encourage everybody to get a copy for a friend. Remember, you read to succeed. You read to succeed. And, and during seasons, the holidays, birthdays, books are the number one gift, right? So, you know, we're definitely going to go out and I'm going to get— make sure we get 5 copies for everybody also as well. Um, for, for people who want to do this, just a quick challenge. I challenge everyone to take a screenshot of this episode, tag Dr. Bruce, tag myself and post it and, and do share one thing you're gonna do to generate more energy. What's just one thing you're gonna do to generate more energy? And we'll see it because you tag us. And I will gift out 5 copies of the book at random to just our community, just as a thank you. Because again, you know, we wanna get people reading this book, you know, for the, for the, you know, so they can jumpstart the year so they can have passion and energy and vitality to reach their goals and do the things. that they really desire and then really deserve.

I can't thank you enough. You know, you have always taught me that readers are leaders, and that is something that has always stuck with me. And the mentorship goes both ways, my, my brother. You teach me and I teach you, and that's part of the reason that we're such good friends, um, and that we have these opportunities to share these conversations with our tribes and be able to educate people. So thank you so much, and thank you to all the Kwik Brainers out there. You know, I love you guys. I'm excited to have a new opportunity to educate, and the book is loaded with tactics. If you want to know exactly what to do, I'm going to tell you.

Thank you, everyone, for listening. Please share this episode. Leave a review if you're willing. Go get your copy of Energize. And remember, be limitless, everyone.

Hi, Kwik Brain. It's your brain coach. I want to thank you so much for watching this video. 3 things to do. Number one, make sure you share this because when you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Update your learning so you can update other people's learning as well. Number two, make sure you subscribe to this channel so you don't miss a thing because if you miss a video, you miss a lot. And finally, make sure you hit that bell so you're notified and you find out when we put out the latest and the greatest. One extra thing, if you want really close attention, then text me. Here is my phone number.

310-299-9362.

Did you remember that number? 310-299-9362. Shoot me a text and we'll stay in touch. Ask me your burning question, and I wish your days be full of lots of life, lots of love, lots of laughter, and always lots of learning. I'll see you in our next video.