Nick Hutchison breaks down Ed Mylett's Max Out Your Life, focusing on two ideas: building rituals like morning routines to carry you through unmotivated days, and using your brain's reticular activating system to filter what you notice. He shares how daily affirmations can reprogram your focus to spot opportunities you'd otherwise miss.
Chapters
Hello, Book Thinkers family! Today's book tip is going to come from Max Out Your Life by Ed Mylett: Strategies for Becoming an Elite Performer. One month ago, I had no idea who Ed Mylett was, but I found a video of his, I found a ton of value in it, and I did a deep dive. And boy, I am very happy that I did so. Ed Mylett is a superhuman elite performer. I think he's very cool. He's one of the most powerful speakers that I've seen, so I highly recommend checking out some of his content. In one of his videos, he mentioned to his guest that he had written a book, and he had written a book with intention. It was only 100 pages, but every single one of those pages provided a lot of value. So I bought the book, I read it, and like I said, I'm very happy that I did. There are 2 things that I'd like to talk about today. One, habits. Number 2, the reticular activating system in our brains. So back to the first one, habits. I'd like to start off by reading a quote. Ed says that, quote, habits and rituals are what carry us through on the days when we aren't motivated. People have the misconception that it's the most motivated people who are the ones winning, but that's not the case. Extraordinary habits are what allow people to perform at an elite level even on the days they are not motivated. Isn't it crazy that most people lose control of their days within the first 15 minutes of waking up? If you don't have a morning routine or a habit in the morning, right when you get out of bed, you'll lose control. You'll read an email that makes you upset, or you'll realize that you woke up a little bit too late and you'll get behind the schedule. You'll become late to work. You become reactive. If you lose control within the first 15 minutes of your day, your entire day will most likely become ruined. But if you set some structure, a morning routine when you wake up and an evening routine right before you go to bed, the chances are the middle of your day will also become more productive. Become proactive. Have a morning routine. Now, my morning routine, I've been carrying it on for 70-something weeks in a row now. I think I'm almost at week 80, and it's changed my life. I have more control over my entire schedule by simply acting with intention in the morning. I highly recommend that you move forward and get a morning routine. I'll definitely do a separate video on what my morning routine is soon, but that was one of my biggest takeaways. Now, the second one is really interesting. I had never really known how to articulate that feeling of, okay, I'm thinking of a yellow car. I haven't seen one in a couple days, and now all of a sudden I'm seeing a yellow car everywhere I go. How does that happen in your brain? Well, there's this gatekeeper that acts in your brain. It's a bundle of nerves that sits on your brainstem. It's called your reticular activating system, RAS. And your RAS system, like I said, it activates as this filter. So What can you do? You can program your brain with intention. It receives all of this input all day long, and it thinks based on your habits what should or shouldn't be allowed to be seen or heard or whatever, thought about. Now, if you focus on becoming a millionaire, or you focus on becoming more healthy, or you focus and become obsessed on your goal, your brain will help you get there. It'll filter out all the nonsense. It'll make you more aware of opportunities. And I'll give you another good example. I got into real estate investing about 6 months ago. I had never thought about real estate. Nobody ever talked to me about real estate before that. But once I started to become obsessed, I started reading books on real estate investing. I started listening to podcasts on real estate investing. All of a sudden I saw opportunities for real estate everywhere. Everybody was talking to me about real estate, and that hadn't happened before because my brain wasn't aware of it. It wasn't prioritizing those things. It was filtering them out, not filtering them in. It was always around me. I just wasn't aware of it. So a couple tips and tricks. I really like to say daily affirmations, and my daily affirmations help me focus and help my active brain focus on the things that I want to focus on with intention. So I guess intention is the word of the video today because I've said it a few times. But that reticular activating system in your brain, if you understand what it's doing and you understand why it's doing it, and you can intentionally filter things in or filter things out, that's a beautiful thing. So affirmations have helped me become more positive and grateful every day, but they've also helped open up opportunities by making things consistently part of my active mind or my active routine. And every single morning, as part of my habits— we're talking about habits in the beginning of the video— I say those affirmations. So be aware of that reticular activating system, be aware of that RAS system in your brain and use it intentionally. And that is today's book tip. I highly recommend that you check out Ed, follow him on Instagram. There's a lot of really powerful content in there. I hope everybody has a great day. Bye.
