The 90-Second Reset That Helps You Perform Under Pressure with David Nurse

Name one thing that high performers do in their worst moments that separates them from everyone else.

In their worst moments, they detach from the actual results.

Beautiful. How often do we do that?

Very rarely. But it is the funniest thing with athletes detaching. Like in training basketball players, you look at stats, you look at what your results are gonna be. But if you can actually not care about those and not try to control those, you play so much better, which people think it's reverse psychology actually, because you're supposed to care about that. But once you can die to caring about what comes from the results of it, you're going to be free to do much better.

David Nurse, welcome to Rooted in Wellness.

I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much.

As I was sharing before, the ultimate goal of this podcast really is to help as many people as possible. And I love that I met you online and instantly knew that we have a lot of the same kind of mission and purpose. Alignment.

And friends.

And friends. Yeah. So let's dive in with, um, really understanding what I want listeners to own into. I believe that everyone has the power to feel more rooted. And when they feel rooted, they feel rooted in their health, their happiness. And what I think that we all have is this inner knowing that we all have to heal. So are there any practices, maybe 2 to 3 practices that you have every day that help you feel rooted in who you are?

Absolutely. Yeah. Great question. So the, how I start my day, I think is, and I know morning routines kind of get, you know, this and that, and there could be 19 different things and everybody's got their thing. And, but for me, it really is that rootedness in my, actually my coffee practice is, you know, that might sound kind of cheesy, but I wake up looking forward to drinking my coffee. Like it's that, like, you know, I'm gonna—

I go to bed waking up. I go to bed dreaming about more morning coffee. I'm the nutritionist that doesn't take away coffee. So I'm with you on that one.

And anybody says like, yo, yo, we gotta take a week off coffee, go. And then I ask them the question like, well, how you feeling this week? They're like, my head hurts, I can't think straight. I'm like, why would you want to do that?

Yeah, I'm with you.

So the coffee time, and I play some praise and worship music. I like to start my day off like that. And then I just spend 10 minutes alone, and this is my prayer time. I'm talking to God, I'm trying to listen to have him say anything, something to me. Now, I've never heard anything audibly, but I have like, my faith is rooted in God and in Jesus, and that's You know, my time of just centering myself and starting myself off on that kind of positive note. So that's one, and that's, you know, it's kind of just, you know, quick, but how you start your morning I think is really important. And then it's just connections to my wife throughout the day. We're both going a million miles an hour.

Mm-hmm.

So the days that are my best, and I'm, you know, I try to be intentional with this, of we actually put our phone away in the evenings. We have a closing time. And we'll talk to each other about what our closing time is in the mornings. And it doesn't always work. So I say, I say all this because like it doesn't always work, but that's one practice that— because even if we're sitting there, you know, watching a show and we both have our phones, somehow Instagram comes up.

Yeah.

Isn't it a crazy addicting thing of like, why, why do our fingers go to that app? And then we're scrolling in it and like, I've never come away from Instagram feeling like after scrolling, being like, man, I feel so good.

Like, this is— That was so worth it. Yeah. It's never worth it.

I am rejuvenated.

Yeah.

So putting the phone down the morning time and then just hugs throughout the day with my wife. She's the best. She's my rock. Like, it's, I always, you know, I joke that, you know, no matter what happens in my career or anything, things can go haywire and all over the place, but You know, if I have God and my smoking hot wife, I'm good.

I can't wait to meet her. That's so special. So I ask these questions to experts sitting in that chair to always just showcase that feeling rooted, feeling at your best. Every modality that everyone has said, maybe with the exception of Dave Asprey and biohacking, everything has been free, right?

Totally.

I love— you said 2 things that are unique in the sense that, um, they're part of these massive pillars of wellness, which is connection to yourself and connection to others. And when you're focused on someone that you love, I think that healing has become so selfish and self-centered. When we focus on other people, it's the dopamine hit. We feel better. We want to engage more. We want to serve more. So thank you for sharing that. That's really beautiful.

Yeah. Good point out that it's free, right?

Right.

It is. It is a kind of like a contradictory world in this health world that I've found is You know, there's so many things that you can think that you have to do to be healthy, but at the core of it, it comes back to the simple free things.

Yeah.

There's this term that I love. It's, it's complexity, sorry, simplicity on the far side of complexity and everything. You know, like when you get into something, whether it's a sport or something, when you're young, it's just fun. You're free. You're just doing it because you were doing the thing. But then in that middle 90%, it becomes convoluted. It's, this, you got to do that, you got to do this. And then like you lose the joy of it, right? But once you rise above that and think about the most elite athletes or top people, they're just, they're back to the fun and the free of it. So it's that whole cycle of it. I think that in the wellness world and the biohacking world is like coming back to the simple is where the true beauty is.

So complexity to simplicity.

Right. Simplicity on the far side of complexity.

Sorry. Simplicity on the, on the far side of complexity.

I like to say that because it makes me sound smart when I say stuff like that.

I like it. No, it landed. It landed. No, but I think there's something to that because fun is also something that we, we forget about. Wellness is so serious. Let's make it, let's make it fun.

Yeah. And even like Instagrammy health and wellness can get so serious.

Totally.

I was literally just watching something where I won't say the person's name. I actually helped this person. Get a lot of connections. And they've now since like kind of got too big for their britches a little bit. But there's this whole thing of like, oh, well don't eat at In-N-Out on Tuesday afternoons because they don't clean. I was like, that's not even your lane, man. Like, what are we getting into here? Anyways, side note. Sorry.

All right. Let's talk about your journey then. 'Cause I think a lot of us, when we talk about drifting and then feeling uprooted and all of a sudden the simplicity, the fun, it feels overcomplicated. Do you notice when you drift and are there other rituals that cause you to feel uprooted? So Instagram, let's just call that out as one of the biggest culprits. What else?

Totally. Drifting is when I'm on that thing called my phone too much.

Mm-hmm.

Like if, if I go through a day of I'm responding to emails, I'm responding to texts, texts in real time, I never feel like I actually had a, you know, fulfilled day. It felt more, you know that feeling when you just feel hurried and rushed? It, it, it's the worst. It's kind of hard to pinpoint it.

Mm-hmm.

And it's hard to step away if you're in the moment of it. So one of the biggest things that I do is a reset. And this is, once again, I'm, I'm saying this and like, it's a practice that I practice. I, I don't do it perfectly every time, but so if, you know, I, I'm, I'm really looking at using text messaging as emails. So I'll have a bucket, a time bucket. I call it my zone time in the morning. It's a 30-minute block for emails and texts in the morning. And then in the afternoon, whether it's 30 or 45, where it's just in that time. Cal Newport, I think he calls it the deep, deep practice or deep focus that, that he wrote about in his book. But if you put it, these type of things that could, you know, bleed into your whole day and start to become your whole day into these buckets, these time zones where you like, after that 30 minutes, I'm not getting back to texts. Mm-hmm. I'm not, unless it's my wife, something urgent, I'm not getting back to emails right away so that it gives me this time to actually do the things that move the needle that I'm excited about. Like, I'm not trying to be a professional texter or being a professional emailer. And sometimes I find myself going into that. So the time, the zone bucketing, finding those times, and then the reset. So as coming from the sports world, I was always fascinated with halftimes because you'd see it like one team's momentum was killing it the first half.

Mm-hmm.

And then there's this block at the halftime and it just all changes and it's like, Well, what happened? But what they're doing is they're resetting, they're moving their environment. So you can't get out of your own head or out of your own, you know, just texting, emailing, whatever it might be, if you stay in the same environment. So you have to change your environment. You have to shift your state that you're in, whether it's, you know, you can shift it by hot and cold, run your hands under cold water, splash cold water on your face, jump in the sauna, jump in a cold plunge. And Also changing, you know, your mindset of it too. You have to be able to change the state of your mind, and we can talk more about that in this type of reset. So I, you know, sometimes on good days I'll have an alarm on my phone. It will say halftime, and it's usually at noon if I don't have a call, and it's just a reminder, do I need to reset and take a halftime?

All right, I want to break into all of that. I think that what you're saying It is such— there's so much beauty in it. But something that I know, I started off working with athletes, and it changed my life, just understanding how they think, the power of having a coach at your back, the training that goes into it, mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional, right? It really just changed the way that I perceived athleticism, having not grown up as an athlete. And here you are. Do you think that a lot of the way that you are today is because of your training in sports?

Totally.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

I think so. I think a lot of it too, in terms of dealing with teams also.

Yeah.

So, I'll do a lot of consulting for now Fortune 500 companies. And a lot of it's around building a team, building a culture, communicating. And through team sports, and I think basketball's the ultimate one. That's my background, playing basketball, played overseas for a little while, professional basketball, but it was more like the Will Ferrell semi-pro. So, you know, I like to think I was a little bit better than I was. And then just coaching in the NBA and seeing all these different cultures, but seeing what makes a great culture versus what makes a bad one and being able to identify the differences and then how to actually put those into action has been huge for me. And even in the own company that I run, but just also in the being able to lead and consult through most of it, seeing how it's done bad. But then also seeing how it's done in a good way.

Well, we're going to dive into all of that. And I really wanted to have you on the podcast because so much about what you teach, how you teach, it really applies to all aspects of life, right? And you going into big organizations, I'm afraid to use the word optimization over and over again because it means like you've got to become someone else when I think that feeling your best is often a process of remembering, like remembering how good you can feel, right? And I think part of that is flow state. So before we dive into all of those things, here's some rapid-fire questions. Whatever comes to mind, spit it out, and then we'll dive in. So fill in the blank. The fastest way to kill your flow is—

Uh, too much on your plate.

If you could give someone only one pre-performance ritual to use right before a big moment, what would it be?

Diaphragmatic box breathing. 5 breaths.

Beautiful. True or false, flow state is something you can either have or you don't. False. Overrated or underrated morning routines for peak performance?

Underrated.

Name one thing that high performers do in their worst moments that separates them from everyone else.

In their worst moments, they detach from the actual results.

Beautiful. How often do we do that? Geez.

Never.

All right.

Very rarely. But it is the funniest thing.

Yeah.

So with athletes detaching, like in, in training basketball players, like, you know, you look at stats, you look at your, like, what your results are gonna be. But if you can actually not care about those and not try to control those, you play so much better.

Right.

Which people think it's a, you know, reverse psychology actually, because you're supposed to care about that. But once you can die to caring about what comes from the results of it, you're gonna be free to do much better.

Good point. Let's put it through the lens of people who are listening. You know, on this podcast, we have a lot of high performers. They're high-functioning, they're managing a lot, whether it has to do with their health, showing up for work, showing up for others, maybe they're raising families, but they might feel scattered or reactive, especially being alive in today's world, right? Like, there is a lot happening. How does disconnecting from flow show up in their everyday life? How is it impacting them?

I mean, I think it's impacting them in a huge way. I think, well, I know through doing this whole flow code study, and I kind of give you a little background on this. All right. So I've always been fascinated with flow state and, you know, it's Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the '80s introduces flow state and with his 8 characteristics of flow. Stephen Kotler takes it to another level with his books and his 22 cues of flow. But I, you know, I could just never find of like, well, how do you actually get into this state? Because everybody talks about it, but it's kind of this thing of like, you know, it's a happy accident, lucky type of mode. So I was interviewing or just asking athletes that I worked with or I knew, you know, have you ever been in flow state? So I asked Allyson Felix, who's, you know, one of the most decorated female track athletes of all time. I was like, you know, have you ever been in flow state? She's like, yeah, 3 times. Like, that's pretty specific. Uh, tell me about it. She's like, oh, I don't know, it just happened. Like, that can't be.

That can't be.

Uh, I asked a friend of mine, Mike Chandler, he's a big UFC fighter, and he's like, yeah, totally. I remember this fight, you know, I could see the guy's feet moving and I just knew where he was going. I knocked him out cold. I was like, cool, tell me about how you got there. He's like, I don't know, no clue. Like, this is interesting, right? And everything in the, you know, Kotler's books and Csikszentmihalyi's tell about it, but it never was like, hey, here's a way to train formulaically actually to activate the brain to get it closer to this 10 Hz state. So 10 Hz is alpha state. Alpha in the brain is the focus, the essentially the flow. 8 to 12 is where alpha occurs. 10 is kind of the sweet spot. So I got connected to these incredible neuroscientists and they've worked with Peyton Manning, Bryson DeChambeau, these top athletes. And I was like, hey, like you've seen their brain maps, you've seen their QEEGs. Is there something different with them? And they're like, yeah, totally. We can tell where this flow state happens. It's like, huh? Because if you think about it, like any state of the brain, there has to be a way to get closer to that.

Mm-hmm.

So I went on this journey. This long journey, it's been about—I mean, I guess overall it's probably ten years—but really focused in the last four to five years of how to tap into flow state more regularly and stay in it longer. And I promise we'll come back to the everyday and how this correlates and everything. So we formulated this study, this IRB scientific approved study of you know how to get into flow state, and came up with this formula based on what these neuroscientists had done before, what we have seen, and what our theory. Theory was like, this can train the brain to get closer to flow state. Because right now people think flow is, like we said, just this happening, but it can be trained. It's just like anything else. People see the physical, and this is where working with athletes in mindset was always fascinating to me, of like, they'd see the physical could be trained. Like, you can go to the gym and you can feel the gains in the gym, or, you know, the physical actions, the muscle memory development myelin in the brain and all that being developed, but it's a lot harder to see the brain in the mind aspect being developed through the same kind of, you know, practice and, and, um, muscle memory development.

Mm-hmm.

So we set up this Flow Code study, which we can go in depth on what that looks like. And we had 60 participants. So we QEEG'd them at the start, and that's basically taking their brain map and seeing what everything's going on under there in the alpha, delta, theta, gamma. beta, all that. And if they were lower than the 10 Hz, we had them in the up-training group. So they would up-train their brain, the brainwaves, to try to get closer to that 10 Hz. And if they're higher, which a lot of people are higher, and like me, for example, is definitely one where I'm, you know, kind of thinking more like Type A, going fast all the time.

Mm-hmm.

To be able to, uh, down-train them. And then we had 20 in the control group, which was, we just gave them Kotler's 22 cues of flow and said, Take your choice. So over the course of 3 months, you know, we checked in on them weekly in terms of how they're feeling as well, which was an interesting part of it too, that after doing this Flow Code study, or sorry, just the Flow Code, which takes about 3 to 4 minutes, you can do it in your morning routine. You could do it your halftime. You can do it whenever. People felt more calm, more peace. They felt more presence. Mm-hmm. And presence is essentially what we're all looking for, to be present in a moment. And that is the flow of your day, to be able to stay present. And they, they felt more purpose and contentment. So these were, you know, more just like asking them questions, how you feel, that type of thing. And then we qEEG them at the end of it. And the interesting thing is overall in the delta, and we're still going through the white paper, so this is kind of real time as we're going through this in the white paper, but we've seen the results for the majority, we're not quite there with the exact delta of it, but it is getting closer to the 10 Hz for the majority of the people, which is, which is crazy.

Wow.

Now, that to be said, can you, you know, snap your fingers and drop into flow? No. Can you train it on a daily basis to be able to get closer to do that on the go? Absolutely. And there's also a 90-second neuropriming action into flow that You know, I'll give to athletes or I'll do before I speak that you can, you know, get closer to that ability to to get into flow state on the go in ninety seconds. All right, so coming back full circle here too. All right, so along with this journey, I start interviewing these top flow state people, and this is where it got really fun. So like Alex Honnold, the free solo climber, he just climbed Taipei 101. I went out to climb with him last year.

Wow.

He had his place in Vegas, the nicest guy, the best. And you know, we weren't climbing outside, we were climbing inside his little indoor thing. My wife was like, there's no chance you're climbing outside. You will fall, you will die. Uh, so you know what was interesting with that though? So this guy is, you could say he's probably the top flow state person walking the planet, maybe known as, and everybody asks him about, do you feel fear and stuff? And you know, he does. But the fear that he feels is different. I remember one of the things that he said was, he's like, I don't fear, you know, climbing a mountain. I fear living a life of complacency, of like not going for it. And he kept just saying this. He's like, man, I, you know, I just love doing the thing. I love doing the thing. So, we interviewed for like 45 minutes and then we climbed for 5 hours. Oh my God. I'm not even exaggerating. Like on his wall, like watching him meticulously Do different movements. Like he was so obsessed. This is, and this is the beauty of it. This is the deep practice. There's a difference between practice and deep practice. So let me break this down real quick and I'll come back to Alex. So deep practice, sorry, practice. Like if I'm shooting a bow and arrow, I'm just shooting the bow and arrow, right? You're just shooting at it. You're aiming at the target. But if I'm in deep practice, I'm analyzing every rep.

Mm-hmm.

I'm how my feet are, how the wind is blowing. What trajectory of that, you know, the angle that the arrow hit. Every rep is analyzed. The best basketball players in the world. I used to train Shai Alexander, who's now the top NBA player in the world. I trained him for 3 summers and he would train differently. He wanted to master every move. He would, he trained in deep practice. Most people just train in reps, practice. Huge, huge difference. I can't emphasize that enough. So Alex would do this for, you know, hours, hours on end. And it's, you know, it's why, like, when he climbed Taipei live on Netflix, most people, it was uncomfortable for them to watch. They were freaking out. Like, my wife was beside herself and she hadn't even met Alex. He was nuts. But I, I literally was like, there's no way he's not going to do that. Like, he's been doing this for 30 years. I watched him do what he does every day. But the point that, that really draws it back to everybody in their daily life. And this is where it hits and where, you know, being with Alex, and we can go into more stories of different ones that we have gone and interviewed that have been fascinating too. He had passion for what he did. Okay. So he loved doing the thing and he kept saying so much like, I just love doing the thing. Now I know when you're thinking about that, like, hey, what if I don't love my job?

Yeah.

Totally. I get it. But there is something within that. It doesn't necessarily have to be the job, but what is in that job? Is it, can you look at it as like you are, you know, doing it because you're gonna show your kids what, you know, working hard is about and it's for your kids? Is there somebody that you can, and you said it at the start, serve? Can you serve somebody there? I mean, if you're stuck in your own head, that is the best way to get out of it. Just how can you go do something for somebody else? Is there something that you know you're building towards? Is this job that you have a stepping stone to something bigger? What's your vision for your future? Like if you don't have a vision for where you're going, you're just wandering, and nobody ever meanders their way to greatness. Like you have to have a vision. So maybe this is a stepping stone part of it. So the passion, whether it's for what you do or something into what you do, has to be there. There has to be some kind of spark. Now he had it personified with presence. So I kind of put those kind of two Ps together. Personified it with presence is he was fully immersed in that, you know, in that moment when we were there. He wasn't checking his phone of everything that was coming on. You know, he wasn't ruminating about the past and he wasn't anxious about the future. And that's a huge thing. Like there's, you can only live in 3 spots. You live in the past, the rumination of the past. You live in the here and now, the present, or you live in the anxiety about the future. And if you can put that bucket of the present as, as, as much a percentage as you possibly can, you are winning. Mm-hmm. And that's the presence personified. He was living it out. And the last part is the purpose. And he did it for a purpose. And he even did this in the interview for Netflix afterwards, and I'll probably butcher it, but it was like, hey, I want anybody to see that they can overcome obstacles in their lives. Like they can do things far greater than they think they actually can. And he wanted to show people by climbing and climbing the building. So those, when you think about it in your life, if you're living a life of flow, and now we know this, like, it's like we're here talking about it and it's like we both don't always live a life of flow. Like there's, you're never always gonna be in it, but if you're pursuing it and you have the knowledge and awareness of what it is, You can take the action towards it. It's the passion, the personified presence, and the purpose. And that is how you get to a life of flow.

That is so powerful. And just the distinction between understanding, you know, practice versus deep practice. Maybe this is a good question to put out to the audience. Like, what, what are you in practice with versus deep practice? Because I think often when we get into habits or routines every single day, we're kind of distracted. From that, unless you're working in a profession where it's actually a necessity, right? What's really interesting, and I'm sure this comes up with the people that you work with, flow state is optimal health. Flow state is optimal happiness. Flow state is, you know, being in alignment with manifestation and feeling a sense of ease and peace.

Right.

Ultimately, what I do with my clients, I guide them back Even for a split second, if I can get them to a moment of feeling 100% pure ease and peace, call it flow or flow state, all of a sudden, all the problems, the challenges, the hardship, everything just disappears in that moment. And what's interesting about the brain of an athlete, you can imagine the sense of freedom that comes with that. And I love how you shared the story, beautiful shares, thank you.

Thanks.

But really helping people understand, like, how much of life right now is a distraction from living passion, and purpose out of necessity of doing and being and chasing and trying and comparing, which is constantly reflected to us through social media, right? Can you describe for somebody maybe who's listening, let's just say like they're not into sports or athleticism, they might've seen a movie where they caught a glimpse of what flow is, but what is the feeling behind a flow state?

Well, I think you nailed it right there. It is an unburdened rhythm.

I love that, an unburdened rhythm.

That's flow. But you said it perfectly and you've lived it too. So the biggest thing that keeps people back from living a life of unburdened rhythm is they're doing something based on expectations or already perceived identity that they might have. Like, you know, being in high fashion, thinking like that's Mm-hmm. And being able to step away from that and find what your real, true, unburdened flow is, your rhythm is. I don't think people allow themselves to do that. The majority of people, let me see if I can say this right, is that they live a life of quiet desperation in trying to manufacture who they think they need to be in order to be accepted. Out of fear of if they don't, what will happen? So think about like this, and I learned this from when I interviewed one of the top violinists in the world. She was playing with Josh Groban in the Hollywood Bowl, and I was just blown away. Hit her up on social media after was like, "We got to do an interview." She told me, so like anytime she goes on the stage, and she like she said Josh literally texted her two days before. He's like, "Hey, come do a bit for me in the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in front of forty thousand." I took my daughter to that. Did you go to that?

I didn't. Craig just surprised my daughter, my 7-year-old daughter, and took her.

Whoa. It was the— you wouldn't know Lucia. She's amazing. So, you know, I brought her in the studio, she played the violin, and it's just, it's unreal. Anyways, the thing that stood out about that is she was talking about like the example, the word picture of bowling. So when you're bowling, what is the fear of bowling? To go in the, in the gutters, right? But if you have bumper bowling, there's the, the fear of what that thing is goes away.

Right.

So you can be creative, you can do your thing, you can get into that zone. So it's just like, I'm just trying to get in between the lanes. Like, I didn't know, I've never played with the Philharmonic before, but I'm just trying to get into the lanes and, and take away that fear of, well, what if I mess up? What if I, what if I— and most people live in that instead of in the lanes and being able to dance and create because There's, hey, there is no, you know, gutters. There's no essentially failing or whatever that, you know, they, most people live their life of, you know, what happens if I don't do this? If I give up this job that I don't necessarily love, will I be able to pay the bills? Will my, you know, family have enough money to survive? Will we end up on the streets? You won't. Like, and this isn't in a, like a, You know, this is probably not the right thing to say, but you know, I've been on homeless food lines and given out food to them. There's 90% of them are on drugs. Like, I just call it like it is. You're not— you're likely not going to end up homeless. So you can take that fear away from it of if you give up this thing that's causing you stress. There's a— there's a book by Bronnie Ware. I think it's called The The top 5 regrets of dying. Like, what's your biggest regrets on your deathbed? And the number one was, and once again, sorry, I'll probably butcher this, but it's, I wish I would have lived a life more true to myself and taken the chances.

Wow.

And I think that hits hard. Like, what is worse than having regret? And majority of people will hold themselves back from a true life of flow Because of they're afraid if they give it up, what will happen. I also think there's a piece of a lot of people don't think they deserve it. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

I grew up Catholic, and let's just say like, that's kind of ingrained in that, you know, people's brains of like, you have to earn it. You don't deserve it.

Right. You have to do this to be, to be loved or received or accepted. Right. That's a really powerful reframe because even in goal setting, a lot of people will create goals that are based on fear, you know, being homeless, not having enough, not making enough money, not living a long time in my world, having a heart attack. If your actions are fear-based, there's a resonance of fear within your body. And chances are every one of the athletes that you mentioned was never in flow feeling fear, right?

Good point.

They do not go together. They are different frequencies altogether. But if you switch that goal around and you become so in tune with how you feel having achieved everything, all of a sudden it's like it becomes you, right? That's a completely different frequency.

Totally. Yeah. You no longer become you. You are the action. Yeah. And you're not— and it's funny you say that too, of like the, you know, even with athletes, the fear of— like, if you know who Steph Curry is, if you listen to this, he's the greatest example of flow, right? Because he's always smiling, he's having fun, and You know, I even tell NBA players that I work with of like, you know, if he misses 13 shots in a row, how's he shooting that next shot? They're like, the same way. I'm like, would you do that? Like, no, totally. 'Cause why not? Right? Because you shoot the next shot after you've missed so many out of fear of what if it doesn't go in. And if you ever live out of that exactly of like the fear of the what if it doesn't, then it won't.

Do you coach a lot of people with what you just mentioned, like getting out of your own way? Really just getting out of your own way. If you, and this is what I think, like if we truly remember that this life is all about the fact that we have this spirit that chose to jump into this lifetime to have this crazy experience, and yet we write down the things that we spend most of our energy focusing on. It's like, good God, what would happen if you could show up every day just feeling free and happy and do, and I'm saying this with a mirror back to myself, obviously. Um, but just—

Totally.

Pure love of life, right?

But I think it's that, like, your ability to, you know, take yourself out of your body and see over top. Most people can't do that. It's just a constant, you know, hamster wheel. And everything starts with the awareness of. So if you have this awareness of, oh, I'm kind of just grinding it out in life and this thing's going fast and I'm not on the path I want to be on, you have to have that awareness. Without the awareness, nothing happens. Then it becomes the relationship with. So then you're like, okay, I have the awareness of it. Now what's my relationship with it? Am I going to beat myself up for it and feel terrible about it? Maybe for a second, but hopefully I can get over that and have this relationship with it of like, okay, God's created me for more. Like I can do more. And then it's the action from. So those are the 3 steps that you, the awareness of, the relationship with, and the action from. Now what are you going to do about it? And that's, I think that's the difference maker. But what you're saying is so beautiful of like, Everybody has the ability to do it. It's just, can you take yourself up, look down over your life and understand like, yeah, we probably weren't created just to go through the motions and be a cog in a wheel for some kind of corporate game that, you know, making money for somebody else.

And what a beautiful gift to come into that. Like, your line of work is just so powerful and to be your age too, coming into this. Because I feel like a lot of the conversations that I have with people, and let's put it through the lens of like, you know, a CEO or a top performer who's just like so strategic in the corporate world. We were talking about this before we started recording. People who on the outside appear to have it all, all of a sudden wake up one day and like, oh shit, I actually don't feel fulfilled or happy. I don't feel like I have legacy or passion or purpose every single day. And then it's this course correct? So it's a beautiful conversation to have. And I love the concept of what you had mentioned. And this is my question, not because I don't play basketball. My son loves Curry. Yeah. I think his energy actually changes when he puts on his Curry jersey.

Totally. You know, that's his alter ego right there. That's it.

Yeah. So when an athlete, let's just call it, you know, is focusing on visualizing, visualizing getting the goal. Are they visualizing getting the goal or are they visualizing the state that they need to be in to get there?

I love this question so much. And this is actually the first step of that neuropriming flow state that we were talking about. And I call it meta visualization where it's the, the, the box breathing mixed with the visualization of it. So, you know, going into the, the visualization in specific, it is the actual, it's, it's the feelings. But also it's the seeing the result of it happening, what they're what they're looking to do. So if I'm on stage speaking to a company, I'm visualizing before I go out there. I'm visualizing the audience going crazy, a standing ovation. I know that feeling is real and it's going to happen. So that's my like that's the part. And I'm I'm I'm trying to feel the feels too, where it's because the more that you can make things happen twice, right? They happen in our mind and then they happen in reality. The more that you can make it feel. Real and convince yourself that that actual feelings of it is happening, it becomes real to you. So I learned a lot in this space from a good friend of mine, George Mumford, and he was Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan's mental coach. He's the, he's the best. And he told me Kobe and Michael, 2 of the greatest players— Michael, greatest of all time, Kobe definitely, definitely right up there too— they would watch each game before it happened and they'd watch themselves going through the motions, different shots, different footwork. They basically see the game playing out in their head, how it felt. And so they had that game plan going into it. And then they'd watch it from a spot of— they'd rewind it and watch it again from a spot of when something bad happened, when they messed up, when they had a turnover, when they had missed shots. So like when the storm happened, and they would see it of how they would overcome that. Because everything, you know, when we do, when we plan something, it usually doesn't occur the way we want it to. So it gives— it gave them more armor of this visualization of, yeah, things are gonna go wrong in here, but how can I overcome it? And they've already overcame that.

Hmm.

So to come back to the visualization of how important it is, is yes, absolutely. It takes it from a, you just, you know, kind of hoping and going in there to having much more control because you already have a relationship with that future person that you're going to be. That I think that part is not even just in a visualization in the moment, but if you have vision for where you want to go, not saying that's exactly where you're going to go, but you have to have a plan for it because clear vision is pretty much the antidote to fear, and it's it's called self-efficacy. So there's three stages of confidence: self-esteem, loving yourself, obviously the base very important; self-confidence, being confident in your own skills and abilities when you walk into a room. But self-efficacy is living today as the person you are going to be tomorrow.

Hmm.

So think about that. If you are living today as the person that you have vision for tomorrow, you already have a relationship with that person and your actions reflect who that person is. If you don't have a vision or have any relationship with that person of who you're going to be, you're kind of just hoping things will happen for you.

Right.

And that's where the, the individual visualization in the moment of something you're about to do is so powerful because you already create what's gonna happen and you feel it, but also the vision for your whole life.

Powerful. You're making me think of one of my favorite quotes. Um, what the mind can conceive and believe, the mind will achieve, right?

That's good.

But it's about believing. You actually have to believe it. And I think that what a lot of people miss out, especially what their health goals like, or they're so focused a specific outcome as opposed to the feeling behind it, right?

Totally.

Like, you know, losing 20 pounds is one thing, but we hear that that doesn't always work or it doesn't last long because it's a fleeting moment of success, right? Behind, you know, what you could actually be focusing on is how you would feel in that moment, how light you would feel, the health that would come with it, the abundance that comes with it, right?

Super good point.

So, let's think about distraction then, right? I was reading this, this quote that I wanted to pull up, and there was a research, there was a paper that was done on workers, and they found that workers would self-interrupt every 40 seconds when they're sitting down at a computer, which we all do. The average person spends 47% of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they're doing.

I would contest more.

Right. I would say so too. So, the question really isn't, you know, are people disconnected from flow? It's actually, do they even recognize how far from that they are living every single day? Right? So what about our modern world is really distracting us from this feeling, which, gosh, we all just want to be our birthright?

Yeah, I think the modern world is set up in a way of it's everything to keep us out of that flow. It's everything to keep us distracted, whether it's the, you know, the on your computer notifications, if it's the dopamine that's been created by these juggernauts that make that certain ding sound, or you're looking for likes, or like, even when your email, you know, you got a new email, like there's so many things created to get us out of this. And yeah, it's something like too, there's like, if you're in flow and you're out of it, it takes like 23 minutes to get back to that spot.

Some stuff like just absurd amounts.

Right, I remember that. So, but I also think it's like, it's distractions even further of that. Like, it's the distractions of, you know, what is the news? Usually not reality. It's a distraction from something that's actually going on so we don't have, you know, see what the truth is. And distractions are imminent in us all the time.

Mm-hmm.

Now the question is, okay, how do you not live in that world? Right. Easier said than done. I think there's been such a societal pressure of knowing everything that's going on. Like, when did we 10 years ago, or even, you know, 15 years ago, know everything that was going on in a foreign country that might have been, you know, somebody got this over there in Algeria of like, what?

Yeah.

All I knew was my little local newspaper and things that like, even for athletes, I was just like, hey, what's that? You know, my boy who plays for this other team, what did he do? I wasn't comparing myself to an ultra Victor Wembanyama, 7-foot, unbelievable athletic god playing basketball. Like, that just kills anything that you have in terms of like, oh man, I'll never be that.

Mm-hmm.

Or I get shamed because I don't know what's going on over here. And it's just like, it's kind of what I compare to LA traffic.

Yeah.

You don't really know how much of a wear it has on you. It's a subconscious strain. And constantly being on and feeling like you have to know everything in the news or then you're out of it is a subconscious strain that just wears us.

Right.

You know, when you just get to the end of the day, you're like, I'm exhausted, but I don't know why. And, you know, there's ways to definitely, you know, combat against it. I think the easiest way in the work stage is like, You fully have to commit to, like, you cannot have text messages up on your phone. You cannot have, you know, email messages up on your phone. You have to— the environmental control of your workstation is so important. Even like, you know, can you find a spot that if you have kids or, you know, you work from home, that can be a zone that's actually a productive spot?

Right.

Because you'll get more done. I think it was, um, So they have a Deloitte or McKinsey study that was, you know, workers in flow are 500— Yeah, 5 times more efficient. Yeah, 500% more efficient. I mean, it's probably not that like you can't just say, hey, I'm just going to be in flow on Monday and not work Thursday through Friday. But there are studies that show like if you can find that sweet spot of flow, you're not going to have to work as long. You can be more efficient. You create that leverage. That's the search of, you know, everything that I'm doing is like, How can I create more leverage in my life? How can I like be more efficient with it? And there's also something known as the chronotypes, which I love the chronotypes, is understanding where your best focus time is, where your highest energy is. Like in me and my wife connecting on this helped us a lot early on because she is a night owl. I think she's the wolf or something where you—

That's like my dad, my Craig also. Yeah.

He's a night. He gets his—

He's a night and I'm like a 5 AM.

Oh, so we're the same. Yeah. We might be the bears. I, I'm, I'm, I might be getting these ones wrong. Look it up. It's pretty cool. But I know like in the morning I'm on, like, you know, if it's 6 AM to 10 AM, like that's it. You know, I'm decent in the afternoon, but if it's past like 8 PM, I won't put sentences together. Yeah. My wife hits this spot at 9 PM. She's like in it, creative like that. And it used to be like she was trying to have these in-depth conversations with me at night. I was like, Taylor, like, I, I got nothing for you. So, understanding also where your sweet spots are for being able to do your best and most creative work are important.

So powerful. Let's put this through the lens of people who maybe they haven't ever, you know, we've had the privilege of working with athletes. You are an athlete. I'm just in awe. I'm just in awe. And I remember specific moments of just feeling that awe and like, wow, what if we just apply this to day-to-day life? Flow state isn't something that is reserved for athletes and CEOs and creatives. What would the impact be if everyone who is listening understood the power of flow for whatever their purpose or passion was?

I mean, I think it'd be life-changing. I think it's just that knowing that that pursuit of is out there, that you can actually activate a state Of your highest most presence, your unburdened rhythm. Basically, I mean, if you want to really break it down as basic as you can, it's it's just joy. Yeah, it's joy without fear, right? Like it's you know you're in the moment, you have joy. You're like, hey, you know things are going to happen, but I'm okay with it. So I think it would be transformational, and that's what I'm trying to show people through this flow state and through the flow code and the next book that I'm doing. And yeah, I mean I mean it's just. I think that's, I think that's probably it. Just it's, it's a, it's a joy that you can have that it almost seems unfair. You know what I mean? Like it's, you know, when you're around those people that you're just like, ah, I want to be them. They've got something about them and that's it. And I've been hearing kids too say this of like, I'm in my flow. I'm in my flow. Like it's, I don't know if it's me just being so immersed in it that now I start seeing it and stuff, but on like TikTok, like kids are like, this is my flow. And I don't know if they're necessarily using it in the right way, but that's cool because they know it's something that is in, you know, their state of joy.

So beautiful. When I was at the ashram, when I was live— was living there, the schedule at the ashram is the exact same every single day. When you're in it, especially when you first get there, you're like, good God, okay, you know, 5 o'clock wake up, 6 o'clock meditation, 8 o'clock yoga, 10 o'clock brunch, 12 o'clock karma yoga, only to be repeated at night. When you leave, and I get the feedback from people who I send to the ashram, when they leave, it's that daily structure that they miss the most. Why? Because the schedule throughout the day is in alignment with keeping you focused in that moment. You're kind of setting the stage to lower all distractions, right?

Yeah.

So let's use this as an opportunity. How do you help people set up Their stage for day-to-day life to get into flow.

Yeah, I love that. I mean, I think that it is kind of like the bumper bowling, that if you put in these zones and these times, um, you're going to be able to activate it more because you know that's time dedicated towards that. So a big thing of, you know, what I do to help people, I, I call it the time pizza. And you literally just break up, you know, it's 24 hours and you can break it up into any slices that you have. And this is You know, something that's fun to do at home if you're listening, like, you know, do your own time pizza. What is it? You hopefully like 8 hours of sleep, maybe 7, maybe less. You know, what does the next slot look like in work and, you know, with your kids? And, and usually there's a lot more time available than you actually think there is. And there's a lot of time that's probably used towards, you know, nonproductive or just non-flow. So then you'll create your ideal time Pizza. Well, what does the time allocation look like? How long in your ideal life, what does work look like? What does time with your kids? What does friends? What does community? What does, you know, working out? Where are those slices? So you're basically setting up the ideal day that you want. Now, when you have that pizza, now you put it into the buckets of what time of day based on, you know, like we talked about, you know, where your zone spots are and Your productive times, where this work block looks like, where that looks like. So you're pretty much, you know, the best way that I've found is, you know, in your example of setting up your day to be able to activate flow based on, you know, the the things you want to pursue that move the needle, but also in the time zones and cutting them off if like because when things start to become you know when they bleed into each other, that's when the convolution occurs. That's when the chaos. Occurs. And I think a lot of that stress is due to the chaos and it just feels like there's too much, right? Like, I know if I have like 8, if I feel like I've got 8 things I've got to do at the same time, I'm like, my mind's about to explode. But if I just chunk it down and, okay, here's this 30 minutes for this, this 30, this 30. So yeah, I think, I mean, that's the way that I do it and I've found it very, uh, to be very effective.

So powerful. And you make it really simple and easy. I think for a lot of people it might be confronting to actually look At how you're spending your time.

It's eye-opening. It's eye-opening.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know Jesse Itzler? Yeah. Do you know who he is? Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. So I was a lead mentor within his community for about 5 years. He's awesome. And the one thing that he probably said 1,000 times, but one day it just like, he said, there's 8,760 hours in a year. How are you spending your time? And I was like, Jesus Christ. And they were so aware of time and time passing. And, you know, I think it's important that people look forward to to doing things in their life outside of the grind.

Oh, yeah.

And for an athlete, this is kind of built into their ethos. It's kind of like there is intentionality built into their day-to-day to seek flow or feel flow or to incorporate flow. But maybe for most of us who aren't in that world, we're not intentional about it. What if we were intentional about it?

Totally.

What would the impact be?

Totally.

Right?

Well, I also think, though, that too, of like, If, if you get too habitual and routine-driven, that it, you know, the novelty wears off and everything kind of becomes, you know, this, this continued film that you forget. Like, if you were— and I was talking about this with my wife actually last night— like, I can't remember many shows that we watched together. Like, there'll be like 8 episodes and I'll be so into it, and then like 3 weeks later, I'll be like, what was that called? What happened in that? But the reason is, is because it's, you know, so many of that same thing. Like, have you ever gone to the same vacation spot like 10 times or 5 times? Multiple? Yeah. You're good if you have it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And they kind of start blending together, right? Totally. Because the same thing becomes that. So there's, in, in, obviously there's a lot of good to it. It, there's this Harvard study of this, you know, when you hit 30 years old that you've done everything, you know, and so it kind of continues to just become On repeat. And that's why time goes faster when you're older. Think about when you're younger, when everything's new and everything's novel. And they did this study that, you know, people would do one new thing a day. It could be so small, like, you know, walk outside without your shoes on or brush your teeth with a different hand, but just something different and novel.

Yeah.

And their days felt longer in a good way. I mean, If you want your days to go fast, just do everything the same way. But it's that whole thing of like, you know, the novelty effect, because as you do something so many times, even if we look at it as like, you know, great athletes, oh, they get to do this, but it becomes, you know, normal to them and it becomes a routine to them. And you can die by the sword of routine if you don't continue to have that Novelty. But to the point that you made of like, I'm huge on having something on the calendar that I can look forward to. Like, that drives my wife nuts. I'm like, all right, we're planning our Europe trip. It's like 6 months in advance, but we're putting it on the calendar. We're gonna plan this trip. We're gonna do this. And I'll throw so many trips at her. I get about, you know, half of them, maybe, maybe less. But that excitement expectation of the future, I think, is something that's very powerful.

Yeah. We're really falling into busy As that new emotion. I think there was an article done about that. How are you busy? Oh, we're going to be busy. We're going to get busier and busier, right? As AI and tech increases and stuff like that. So if we're not scheduling the, the, the priorities, time will just pass by and it won't happen.

You're totally right. And busy is a choice.

Busy is a choice. Yeah. Yeah.

I usually say like, I'm so busy, like to people I don't really want to talk to. I got so much on the plate, but it's a choice. It really is a choice.

That's a good point. All right, you mentioned clarity, composure, and consistency. Let's dive into that and why you think that those things matter more than talent or even effort in your day-to-day life, because it's something that really applies to being able to maintain that level of high performance or high achievement or flow.

Yeah, totally. Well, I mean, I think clarity is kind of like we were talking about with vision. Clarity is one of the most important things individually, but also collectively as a team. If there's not clarity in roles in a team, that kills a team. I mean, that's part of the whole, like, how do you get on the right page with communication and culture? And it is through clarity. I mean, clarity in your— in marriage. Like, if there's, you know, one person's thinking one thing and one person's thinking the other thing, that's not going to work out. So clarity is, is, it's kind of a hybrid of, you know, communication and connection, um, individually and collectively. Composure, I think, is just such an underrated term as it is. I mean, are you able to be okay when things hit the fan? Because I don't think there's anybody in life that went through life and like, yeah, I just, you know, I didn't have any difficult times. I'm just like, I'm good. I'm— so that composure is knowing that, you know, you've been through difficult times, you're going to get through the next one too. Um, and consistency is the love-hate relationship with that word so much. It's like, you know, when I go to the gym and see someone who's just, you know, just jacked, you know, like, and, you know, assuming natural, uh, they don't ask them. I'm curious, like, hey, what do you do? You know, what are you eating? Like, what do you— and it's always the same answer, like, yeah, you know, I've been lifting weights for 25 years, just eating clean. Like, dang it. But it is in the consistency, and I think it's in the consistency that I've seen in these, you know, the athletes like the Shea Alexanders or the different You know, top athletes of even when they're not feeling it, they'll still show up. And there's such a power to relentless consistency and just the, just the ability to show up. But even for us, like the ability to show up, like I was telling you, like you have such a calming presence and I'm sure that's not just today. I'm sure that's how you show up every day. And I always wanna show up the same way for people and, you know, encourage them and be in the moment and be, You know, in a service mentality, like it's the art of showing up is essentially the consistency. So talent is great, but it's only going to get you so far. I, you know, in training, blessed to train like 200 NBA athletes over the course of a long time. And I could tell you from very early on, did they have the potential to be great versus not? And the main thing that I tracked that on was Do I have to drag them to the gym? They all had talent. They all had talent. But if I had to drag them to the gym, they didn't really want it. Like, it wasn't going to work. Or did they drag me to the gym? And that's where, you know, the whole consistency, um, just absolutely dominates talent.

Because we're all training for something, right? Whether it's life or parenthood or marriage or whatever it is, like, it's all some aspect of training. And I love that you said that. It's whether they really want it or not. And I really hope that right now what's happening in the world around self-help or optimization or wellness or feeling our best, I really hope that there's like, we need just to hit the reset button. Like what we think, we're looking for the red pill, the perfect protocol, the next guru constantly.

Yeah.

When I think that like we've got the proof, the proof is that, you know, All of us who are working with people day in, day out, we see that the proof is in that consistency every single day. And often going back to just being consistent, that's what makes you feel good. And then when you've got the proof of what makes you feel good, you're enrolled to continue, right?

Totally.

I'm a big believer that your habits, when you turn them into rituals every day, your rituals become you. Habits can come and go. We can all, you know, cut certain things out, but the rituals become you.

Totally.

But I also know that living in today's world, chronic stress is something that knocks us out of our rituals. And we get stuck in this season of chronic stress. Athletes are not, you know, they're not removed from stress. They experience— they're alive in today's modern world. They experience the same things. It doesn't take them off the track, though. What's the difference between an athlete and how they've trained their mind Versus somebody who might be listening to this?

Yeah, I think it's a phenomenal question. I think it's, you know, it comes to the core of— in, you know, I don't even think athletes and just someone that might be listening to this is very different, really. I mean, they struggle with the same things, even if they might look like they have it all together. Just, you know, like anybody we look up to, they, they really don't. I think the difference in it all, in the chronic stress, is, is it enjoyment in the pursuit of So even when you're talking, like, I totally agree. It's like, you know, the self-help thing, the this, like everybody, and I've seen this in, in every industry, is really just looking for affirmation that they are doing a good job, that they matter, that they're significant, and they'll do it in so many different ways. And the chronic stress gets so wearing when it's When it's done for the outer applause. When you do it for the inner flame, that changes it. So like back to Alex Honnold, he never pursued climbing for like, man, I'm gonna be famous. I'm gonna have a documentary at all. He's always telling me, he's like, I had no idea this could be a job. Like I literally did not mean to do it. I just loved doing the thing. And he had an inner flame about him. So I think it's great if like, you know, these gurus are like, hey, let's try to live to this age or let's do this. Only if it's joy in the pursuit of, you know what I mean? Like, if it comes from like, I'm validated by this, then you're gonna come up empty. And one of the stories I love to tell, because it hits home so hard for me personally, and I think a lot of people can relate to this. Two of my really good friends are one is the head coach for the Miami Heat, Erik Spoelstra, one of the most successful NBA coaches, probably one of the best all time. And the LA Rams head coach Sean McVay, and super successful coach as well. So we're having dinner a couple years ago and it was amazing. It's like a masterclass in leadership, you know, Spoh, McVay, a couple of the good friends in Santa Monica, Meet on Ocean, great spot.

Amazing.

Yeah. And what really hit was they both said the same thing. They said their lowest moment, their lowest moment in life, Was after they won the championship, after they won the greatest quote unquote award for their given sport—the NBA championship for Spoh. He said he was depressed; he was empty. McVay came out publicly and almost retired because he was so low, so empty. Because what they thought was going to fill them, their mountaintop—they realized doesn't exist. It's why there's a whole depression thing when someone wins a gold medal in the Olympics. Like. It won't fill you. And if people think like if they get to a certain level, there's a certain mountaintop, they're, they're good. I made it. You're kidding yourself. It will never happen. So to the point of like to combat that chronic stress is like, is the pursuit of what you're doing, do you have joy in the pursuit of? You'll never have a mountaintop. You'll never have an I made it moment that you feel like, okay, I can just cruise in life and chill and it's all good. But what Spoh and McVay realized is they love the day-to-day of improving the players, building relationships with the athletes, helping them become, you know, better human beings, better leaders, better men, better husbands, better fathers. That's where they found their actual joy and not in just the fleeting championships.

I'm just thinking about how powerful of a practice it would be just to ask yourself that question every day. What about this is bringing me joy?

Oh, man. It's a great question.

And I even think about it through, you know, if you're a parent, making lunches for your kids every day is like, God, I can't wait for the day to not have to do it. But then I would catch myself in the moment and be like, oh my God, I get to feed my children. Like, this is joyful. I'm nourishing them. I can put love into their bodies. And I'm thinking about this through the lens of somebody who might have a corporate job or who runs a big organization. It's like, although the passion or the purpose might not be joyful all the time, I think what you're saying is, Seeking moments throughout the day when you find those things that bring you joy.

Totally.

That's powerful.

That's powerful. Yeah. That's a great reframe. I love that. I was just thinking like, I don't have kids yet. I'm like, am I gonna hate giving my kids lunches? I'm thinking like protein gummies, frozen.

It's a lot of years of lunches. Um, all right, so let's make this tangible. How do we support our listeners in understanding how flow is tangible on a day-to-day basis? Give us a scenario on how to make this happen.

Totally. Totally. So I think let's, let's start it off from the whole, the, the holistic macro and bring her back to the micro. So the first thing I want you to do is sit down and create your vision. Where is the, who's the person you want to be and pick your distance. It can be a time horizon of 10, 15, 5 years. I'm not really concerned about the years, but who do you aspire to be? I want you to create that vision and then have a relationship with that person. Think about like how they would act. What would they do differently? That you are not doing today? Like, would they act differently? Would they have a different pace about their life? That's the first thing that I want you to do. All right, then the second thing is breaking it up into the, the smaller micros. Think about what one win for the day could be. And the win for the day means what's something that can be one step forward towards that person that you aspire to be? And these don't all have to be individual things for you. Like we were talking about earlier, like if you're in your own head, if you're stressed, like Go serve somebody. I know it sounds cliché, but like it really helps totally. So the power of just one thing—you can get overwhelmed if you have five things a day. You'll never keep up on that pace. But one thing, so the one to the power of 365 is one. 1.01 to the power of 365. So think about that. That's one percent. That's one step forward. Is 37 point. 2, 9, something around there. Uh, that's just one thing. Think about, you know, how powerful the difference in that is. So what's your one thing for the day? And you can do this every day in your morning routine when you're drinking amazing coffee. Uh, that's gonna be the needle mover towards that. Okay. So you've got those 2 kind of like big macro, tiny micro step that will lead towards that. And then I do want you to think about like, what is your zone? For the days, like we talked about bucketing these time zones of when you do your best work. When is it? Is it the morning block? You probably, if you have kids, you gotta, you know, cultivate this around kids' schedule. Uh, so put that down too. And then also in those blocks, what are you doing in those days, in, in those time frames? Like what, what are the needle-moving work-type things or relational-type things that you're fitting in these different blocks that you Mm-hmm. So those are the biggest ones. And then I also want you to, I know I'm throwing a lot at you. I told you this one thing, there's like 5 things here. Put something on the calendar that you're excited about that has not nothing to do with work. What is it that you and your family, you and your loved ones can do together? Put that on the calendar so you have something that you're looking forward to.

Will you sit down and like workshop this with someone on their calendar? Will you go through like 6 months or a year with them?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. That's a super powerful practice.

Oh yeah. And, and, and you know what? But it is— to have a coach can kind of be a cliché thing too. But the best athletes I've ever been around, the top athletes, all of them have coaches. There's a tier that's below them that don't because they don't think that that's going to help them take one step forward.

Mm-hmm.

And at the difference of those little details, even just a coach to help you create your life of how you— and keep And honestly, some of it's just like, you know, keeping you accountable for what you say too. So yeah, that's, I think that's important. And I think it's important to always be, you know, the fun it is like, how can I keep improving?

You just made me think of an interesting reframe. I think a lot of people were focused on finding a therapist or someone to go talk things out with. I feel like a lot of my work as a nutritionist, I become a life coach for a lot of people.

For sure.

But then, you know, knowing about this world and with the caliber of people who I work with who need to show up every day, we have access to that feeling, right? Even listening to my son's soccer coach, for crying out loud, I'm so grateful for this man. I'm listening to him coach these 11-year-old kids and I'm like, yeah, I can do this. This is incredible, right?

It's a good coach then.

It's a good coach. Yeah. You know, I, I wanna hear more about your platform and how people can have access to that. What would be the impact if we focus on having a coach at our back, on our shoulders?

Well, I think you did a great reframe there too. So back in the day, it's, it's Jung and Adler. Mm-hmm. So Carl Jung and Alfred Adler. Right. Jung set it up for therapy. That's why therapy is common day therapy of what he set it up as. Come with your problems, talk about your problems. Alfred Adler, who doesn't get notoriety as much, is— it was more from an encouragement standpoint, from a challenge and support. So like you're talking to the soccer coach, like that's probably what he's giving. And that's what I think people need more than, you know, the therapy. There isn't even like some stats around like people come out of therapy, like, you know, 53% of them feel worse than they went in.

Right. You're reliving everything.

Yeah, you're reliving it. It's just, it's a whole different shift of it. So anyways, that sparked that. But, uh, yeah, I love, you know, I love helping people. I love having these kinds of conversations. This is so fun to have these conversations. Definitely. Um, sorry, were you asking where you can find me? I'm sorry.

Yeah, let's dive into, well, first I want to say, um, I think hearing you speak about flow state, I think a lot of it really does have to do with ancient rituals. And when we think about, you know, the art of things like yoga and tai chi and qigong and stuff like that. If you see those, you know, seniors in the park who are practicing tai chi, they're so in the moment that I imagine like that must feel like some form of flow or training, right? But it's something that they're intentional about every single day. So can you tell me about your book, your upcoming book?

Upcoming book, yes.

The intention behind the upcoming book. Oh, totally.

The intention is to show people how to get into flow state more regularly and stay in it longer. And really activate what we've been talking about—a life of flow told through the IRB scientific approved study that is actually you know shows you how the brain chemistry works, and also through these incredible stories of these great flow state people. Like even interviewed the the top National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklin and went into his world. The top coffee barista in the world. The top violinist. Like I said, I'm running sprints with Usain Bolt here soon. gonna go to one of the top chefs in the world and go behind the scenes there. There's this skier, Jim Morrison, who's gonna have a big documentary coming. He skied Everest and talked and like, just seeing like the, like these high-level elite different situations.

So cool.

And, but, but taking from it and bringing it back in like almost an alchemist type book way of these different sages along the way teach something about flow. And by the end of the book, You'll have the absolute way for how to get into flow state.

What's your website?

Mine's just davidnurse.com.

Fabulous. You have incredible training videos that are available for people too. Super inspiring. What was the pivot? Tell me a little bit about your protein gummies.

Oh, this is good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my wife was eating, uh, it's about 14 months ago. My wife was having a Chomps beef stick and I hadn't seen her for a couple of weeks. She was in New York doing some filming. TV stuff. And I was like, Taylor, what are you doing? You hate beef jerky. Like, she makes me take it out of the house. She hates the smell. She's like, well, I got to get my protein in. I got— I was like, Taylor, I've never heard you say this before. Who are you? Because she's like, you know, interested in health, but she's not going over the top. And, you know, so I started asking everybody what they do for healthy, clean ingredient protein on the go. And I can't get a good answer. It's, you know, bars, but they got too many calories or bad ingredients.

Yeah.

And the number one answer by far, and primarily by females, was Chomps beef sticks. And then my next— and there's nothing wrong with Chomps, like I'm not saying anything wrong, but, but I don't think people are actually seeking out a glossy beef stick. Like, it's like—

Multiple times a day on repeat.

There you go. So I called a good friend of mine. He started this company Four Sigmatic, and he's, uh, yeah, Tero, just a savant in the space. I was like, what do you think about protein gummies? Because protein was just getting hot. And we know how important protein is, and that's not going anywhere. And gummies were, you know, making this comeback resurgence. It's like, dude, there's no one really doing this. Like, it must be really hard to do. So we put together this all-star team that, you know, this gummy guru, this top branding marketing. We brought on our friends, you know, Max Lugavere, some other people in the community because Taro and I had been around this space for a long time and just built this amazing team. And made the gummy by just like it kind of like a Willy Wonka factory and how crazy it is to actually make this thing. I would have no idea how to do it. Thankfully we had the best guy on our team. But yeah, the gummies, there's 2 grams of protein per gummy. And so each little sachet has 5 gummies, 10 grams of protein, only 50 calories. That's amazing macros. If you're into macros like myself, it's crazy. No sugar, no bad ingredients, doesn't hurt your stomach. And tastes really good. So it's so good for on the go. Um, and it's a whole world I had no, like, I didn't know this world and now I'm obsessed with it.

Now you're part of it, but it kind of makes sense, right? It's part of performance and how you show up. And totally, I agree protein is important. And something that I was like refreshingly satisfied or happy about also is I work with a lot of people who are putting a lot of animals into their body every day to get their protein goals. And like people, unless your digestion is optimized, you gotta think about how many animals you're putting in your body. Such a good point. This is a really beautiful kind of take on that. So congratulations. Thank you. They're yummy.

Yeah. Isn't it fun? I mean, we'll keep making— we have new flavors coming out and it's just— yeah. Who doesn't like a gummy? Yeah.

You know, we'll link it out. Uh, I can't wait to have you back on the podcast. I'd love it. This went by so fast. Great questions.

This is really fun.

Yeah. I thought I didn't even ask you what was on my list. I just kind of, I guess—

so the best interviewers do it, to be honest with you.

Right. In flow with you.

Yeah. Yeah. It feels really good.

So to close things off, let's just remind people about what's overcomplicating them in their day-to-day life that's preventing them from getting into flow, something that they can be mindful of today or tomorrow morning when everyone wakes up.

Oh, that's such a good question. What is overcomplicating people? You know, I think it's just if we kind of talked about it earlier, but I really believe If you can kind of, you know, step out of your environment physically and mentally. So if you can go, you know, on a walk, and I know it's, you know, kind of cliché, whatever, you know, like we're here in nature right now. It's so peaceful because there's not the constant noise of helicopters, ambulances, cars. So getting out of your current environment into somewhere different, a state shift. But then also doing, you know, bringing yourself out of your body and looking down from 40,000 feet and looking at it like it's The Sims, like you're a little guy in The Sims, a little girl going through, you know, life. How would you change it if you're on the current trajectory that you're on now? How would you change it? What would you do differently? And, you know, I, I, and I even see it too as like Life is like a long hallway, right? It's like a long hallway and a long road. And, you know, we're walking down this hallway and the road, and we'll go into this door and we'll learn something here. And we might fall off the path and we might fall off the road in the hallway, but then we go back down it and we go into another door and learn something there and keep going. And like, it's— I don't know the way to say it, but it's like everything you do is a learning for something that is to come. And if you can look at it that way, instead of a way of, you know, what's happening to me, it's just, it's just the choice, right? It's just the choice of everything is perspective. If you look at it from of like, good things will come to me. I'm going down this journey. I can, you know, enjoy the journey of this life. Um, yeah, I know that was kind of a lot there, but it's—

Yeah, it's beautiful. I'm going to share a reflection. I think this actually brings things full circle to how we started the conversation and you and your morning practice. having a strong foundation in spirit. Something that I've noticed for the clients that I've worked with over the years who really have the most success, they step into feeling whatever their goal is, right? Or flow. They turn whatever their journey is into a spiritual journey.

Yes.

It's a spiritual path. And a lot of what you said today just echoes that.

Totally.

It's around, like, this higher calling or understanding or inner knowingness. But it exists within all of us. And I think it's our birthright to feel flow state every single day. So—

Couldn't agree more. That is, everybody has some kind of seeking inside them for a higher power that's created them. Yes.

You got it. Totally. Thank you, David. This is so good.

Thank you so much.