CLIENT SESSION: "What Affects My Confidence Daily?" | Ep 146 | Self-Belief Chief

3, 2, 1.

And we are live.

Welcome to the Self Belief Chief podcast, you wonderful people. You're here with David Holman. And if you've ever asked the question, am I good enough? Whether it's in your relationships or your performance or your career or in terms of your health, whatever it might be, then you're in the right place. We're not here to hype you up. We're here to give you strategies and techniques to help you transform your life in those areas, ones that I've shared with the highest performers, from Olympic athletes to business owners. So make sure to hit that subscribe button. Share your favorite episodes and remember, if you change today, today will change your life. Today's quote is emotion is created by motion, and that's a quote from Tony Robbins. And that perfectly sums up today's episode. And so let's go into the usual summary, shall we? So what you're going to hear today is a conversation between a client and myself. I've been working with them for a while. You'll hear her speak about some of the changes that she's already made. And she wants to know, is there anything else that she could do going forward that will help her? And is there anything that she's unaware of that could be robbing her confidence day to day? And so this isn't the first thing I do when I work with someone, but it's an important factor and it's about energy. Energy is a huge part of confidence. The ability to build testosterone in the body and to reduce cortisol, which is the stress hormone. And so every day that we, you know, every day we all do things that kind of rob us of energy and make us suboptimal, and it makes us less resilient, it makes us more tired. And so we've got to factor these things in. I want you to imagine something so you know that 10 years ago, you maybe felt fresher, healthier, had more vitality, had more energy, maybe had less sort of bumps and bruises, less aches, whatever it might be. There's some sort of variation where 10 years ago, health wise, something was better than it is now. You might be fitter than you've ever been now, but you know, there'll be something that isn't quite as fresh and fit and whatever. So I want you to imagine that as that happens over 10 years, it happens very gradually. Well, imagine if that change that had happened over that 10 years happened in one day that you just woke up one morning. If you had all those changes just in one Day, you would panic, you'd be stressed out. Your mind, you'd be wondering, why do I feel like this? And yet it's the silent thing we're unaware of because it's happening gradually over 10 years.

And that's what I want to have.

A look at with this person is what are the things that she's doing that might be robbing her of energy that she could do to shift and change and have more vitality and feel healthier and more. More alive? That's going to allow her to create the level of, you know, confidence and enthusiasm that she's really been seeking. She'll speak about how she's developed that confidence already. But is there anything that she can do in the future, going forward? Every single day that's going to make a massive difference. So you're going to hear a conversation. You could hear how I talk to a client about their energy levels and work out how we can make small adjustments. So we're just going to look at a few key areas.

There are sort of about 10 areas.

That I typically look at. You're just going to hear about a few of them today. And so you might be able to factor these things into your life that if you get that boost of energy, will help you feel happier, more confident, and probably or not probably will in fact, get you much better results in your life. So I've done enough talking. Let's get into the episode.

What would make this an extraordinary conversation for you?

So I guess. So I guess that because I'm in a. I feel like I'm in a good place and I've got. I've learned a lot, a lot over the last couple of weeks or months. I would like to know, or I would like to figure out, I guess, collectively whether there's anything else that perhaps I'm not even aware of that I might. That might be affecting my confidence. Because that's what's happened, I think, over the couple of weeks is some things I've. Just. Because of the activities and the work that we've been doing, there are some things I'm not consciously aware of that have been probably affecting me, but it's all kind of subconscious. So I would like to know if there's anything else or if. If there's any other work that could shed light into anything that perhaps I'm consciously not aware of that is affecting my confidence.

Great. Okay. Okay, we can do that. So in that case, I've had people, you know, an athlete, who. They would say things like, you know, what I struggle, you know, my struggle with confidence and I struggle, you know, my self belief and my ability to be able to do something, my ability to be able to handle things. What I'll find is, and I'll use my hands as a diagram, which is super not easy to do, but I'll try it anyway is what I'll find is if this is their baseline for self belief. And let's say that those high pressure moments or the moments that matter to them when it matters most are up here. And this sort of scale is in terms of emotional intensity. So if this is their baseline, actually they're quite good at switching it on in those particular moments, in the moments that they need it. Actually they don't give themselves enough credit that they're actually very good at switching that on. And they think that's the issue. They think that's the problem. And actually it's really, really not. What I find out is they can switch on for those moments. And that's what high performers are very good at. They can switch it on for those moments. They've learned how to switch that whatever it is, they might not even be able to describe it, but they know how to turn it on when they need to. What I find with these people is actually it's. I can switch it on, it's the baseline, it's what's happening the rest of the time every day that's the issue. So it's this baseline. And actually what I find is from where their baseline is to these high intensity, high intention, high intense moments, it's a huge leap all the time, huge leap for them to make. Now they can make it, but it's still a huge leap. And to make those huge leaps is actually very disorientating. I feel like this usually, but actually to do these sort of high pressure moments or the things that really matter to me, it's like a huge swing to be something else and to get in a different head space. And whilst I can do on occasions, it's just very disorientating. I'm not used to doing that. But actually if their baseline was up here, then it would just be small jumps all the time. And they'd have to. You have to make jumps. If you go on a date with someone, if you have to perform in a particular moment, if you have to deliver something under pressure, you have to make jumps because you can't be at that optimum level all of the time. And you can't stay at this level and expect as great results. So what do we talk about with this baseline. Well, a lot of these people, they'll say, I struggle with this. Struggle with this, struggle with this. And actually, on a different occasion, I'll ask them and they'll say, I don't struggle with any of these things. I'm absolutely fine. I say, well, hang on. You could. You said, this is. You can't deal with these things ever. They're a problem, and it's a separate occasion. You said, I've got no problem with them. I'm absolutely fine. So what is the difference? Because clearly they're not actually really a problem for you. So it goes back to a word we used before. It's about how much energy they have. That's it. How much energy do these people have? And I might have used the example with you previously, which is Olympic athlete crying every single day. Why is she crying? Turns out she's listening to Adele every single day. If you listen to Adele every single day, you're going to spend a lot of time crying. So everything affects your energy levels. And a good way of thinking about it is there's the expression you'll have heard, you are what you eat. There's a different expression I use, which is you are what you consume, what you eat, what you drink, how you sleep, who you spend time with. All of these things. We want all of these things to be pointing at the same. Imagine if you get all of these things pointing at the same thing, and you've got the strategy to do that. It would make things so much easier. And that's why we do the little things with the music and other things, because we get more and more things to point in the same direction. And actually what happens with most people doing this stuff, and we're going to do a little bit work in a second, I'm going to show you some very basic things that really tax people, fatigue people. That doesn't need to be the case is if we get more and more of these things pointing in the same direction, then as I said, when you ask questions like, what else is going on? What about this? What about this is some of these things might just not be problems anymore. It sounds very basic to say, and it's not a case where we should never have any problems, because actually, if we have no problems, I'd argue that person's probably going the wrong way anyway. You're living too easy a life. And so when you ask that question, which is very. Sorry. When you answer that question, which is a very good answer, actually just going to take it A slightly different way, which is rather than assume there's more going on and everything else again, getting back to that point of what can we control our response? If we raise that baseline in terms of our energy level a bit, then actually stuff's going to feel like you're going to be like sassy. Asha doesn't think any of this is a really problem. So let me pull up a few slides together. Okey dokey. Right, I'm going to put up a few slides and then we're going to do some work in terms of what is it we think for you personally we can actually make some improvements. So as I say, you are what you consistently consume. So on the left hand side is you get what most people are like, addicted to their phone, constantly listening to sad music, pretty much anyone who goes through a bad phase of life, they all of a sudden switch up their music taste to something which they've never listened to before. There is a good part of it which is when it feels like you listen to something that makes you feel understood. I absolutely understand. So I never stop people from listening to the music that allows them to do that. But at the same time, if you tell me how you want to feel, does that ladder up to how you want to feel? Everyone says no. Right. We can make an adjustment. Too much alcohol and too many acidic foods. We'll talk about that a bit more. And on the other side is actually if we explore exercise, listening to high energy music, drink more water, have more alkaline foods and watch and listen to things that are empowering and make us feel good. As I said, everything pointing the right direction against how we want to. How we want to feel. And so really goes back to asking better and better questions. And the thing we want to ask is, and you've probably said that you've given me this answer many, many times, how do you want to feel? Because then when we go, how do I want to feel? The end result, we can make sure everything points to that. So you tell me, as I said, you might be the same answer. You've given me plenty of occasions. How do you want to feel? What would you say?

Yes, it would be things like confident, comfortable, relaxed, warm. Not as in temperature, but as in like feeling of like warm, excited.

Yeah.

High energy. Really? It's like high vibration, isn't it? That's what it is. I don't know if you've read the book Good, Good, Good Vibes, Good Life.

Yes, I have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, perfect. So let me just pull a few Things together. Okay, so we've got comfortable, warm, excited, and they're all good things, they're all great things. And it's. It's a sort of a constant reminder of, you know, instead of asking ourselves the question, what do I feel like doing? When we say what do I feel like doing? It bypasses all of those things. You know, when we think about what do I feel like doing Is maybe I feel tired, so I'd rather do this, I'd rather do that. And so that's the adjustment we want to make is, you know, instead of what do I feel like doing, how do I want to feel? I want to feel warm, I want to feel excited, I want to feel comfortable, want to feel cozy, all of those things. So I'm just going to pull out a few things that are important and I'm going to make sure we go through this document together. So exercise.

It's funny you mentioned about what you, like, consume and stuff. I had a friend that was quite depressed and she watched EastEnders every day. So I was like, please stop watching.

Absolute. Absolutely.

I don't want it, by the way.

Just to let you know, that's absolutely fine. I don't judge you either way. Yeah, no, but absolutely, you know, I don't watch EastEnders and it's. It's just one of those things, really.

But I did notice, I went through. I love watching crime documentaries and true crime and I went through a period of binging those. And actually I didn't watch anything that was positive. And you do. After a while, even though it's like high adrenaline, after a while, you do feel a bit like, okay, the world is rubbish.

So I've had to. So to make that point. This is because I take this stuff so seriously. I really enjoy that stuff. I don't watch any of it, so. And that's how seriously I take my own sense of wellbeing. And people might go, david, doesn't. Only. Doesn't that really just affect you, like 2 or 3% maybe, but 2 or 3% on a regular basis, I start to feel suboptimal. You feel suboptimal. It's a domino effect. I do a little bit less this. I don't feel like doing this as much now, so I'm going to do that less. I'm going to do that. Let's do that. So I'm not here to make people do things they do or don't want to do. It's not even about that, but it's actually asking the question, what is the Real result I want, okay, what little adjustments can I make that make a big difference? Now what I've got, what I'm going to have on this screen isn't even all of the areas that I'd look at with someone. But I just want to write down a handful of ones that I think might be important for us. And so, and they're important for lots of people. What do my screen a bit bigger. Okay, we've got exercise, I'm going to put diet here. So exercise, diet, hydration, alcohol, sleep, social life. Okay, six things that really, really in terms of how we consume them, really affect our day to day life and affect our ability handle things. So what like us to do as we've done on many occasions is just score each of these out of 10 so everyone does the same reaction which is oh crap, no, God, I'd look really bad on this one. Really. It's just against the picture of, not in terms of society's picture but in terms of our own picture of you know what, compared to where I'd like to be doing this, this is the level I'd like to be doing it at. And when we make any adjustments that we're going to make, we're not going to make as we do with everything else, not going to make adjustments to all of them all at once at all. We're going to look at which one actually would make a big, big difference and then make a real conscious effort that that's something I need to do better or something that if I improve that's going to make a big difference the quality of my life. And actually as I said, when you're, when your brain is healthier, you feel physically fit, spiritually, feel a bit more aligned when all of those things are working together, whereas for most people they're all working separately all the time. Stop putting those things together and I'm going to show you some exercises that can link up different parts of the body, body as well. It becomes a bit more harmonious when you feel more harmonious and feel more at peace and you feel things more like, you know, gratitude and stuff like that. It's impossible to feel depressed and grateful at the same time with the emotions that you experience. In terms of feeling warm, it's a very similar, similar type of thing. It's actually I can't be if I feel genuinely warm, I can't feel anything else. And therefore when negative thoughts naturally pop into your head like everyone else, they don't really feel like problems anymore, they just start to feel A bit more like, okay, something I've got to handle, but I'm very well equipped. I feel good enough. I feel excited, I feel energetic. And actually, a good way to put it is you have the knight and a knight protects a king or queen. So if you imagine that your brain is a bit like a knight and your knight protects the king or queen, but it doesn't protect sort of civilians or peasants or whatever words you try. I'll try to think of a better word. Whatever word you want to use. In terms of. Just see as the king or queen is the most valuable person in that community, the knight will do everything to protect the king or queen. The knight won't do as much for everyone else because the king or queen's the most valuable thing for anyone. It's, what do we see ourselves as? Do we see ourselves as a king or queen? If so, your brain will start to protect you. If you don't see yourself as that, your brain won't work. So your brain will go, what's the point? It's not that valuable. We start to see our value increase. Our brain will start to work for us and work better. So let's go through each of these schools in terms of exercise. Out of 10, 10 being where you'd love it to be. Um, you know, it might even feel like a slightly impossible target, but just really, really on top of things and zero being not at all. I'm the laziest person that's ever existed. Where would you put yourself on that scale?

I'd probably give myself a four.

Okay. A four. Yeah. Okay. In terms of diet, what would you say in terms of actually, you know what, being eating a diet that would. I would really like to be eating as a. Or as opposed to zero, which is. Well, I have three pizzas a day, so that's probably not great. What are we saying?

I have a. I'm not even gonna say my diet is terrible.

Okay.

Mainly because I. I don't put time into planning it too much. And, yeah, I would give it a three.

Okay. What sort of things do you eat? What would be like, what would be your lunch?

Well, I've had pizza every day for the last three days.

Now, what I will say is this. What you're going to find out is I'm not going to put you on some sort of diet. And I'll show you a really simple adjustment that allows you to eat whatever you want, but I cannot go through life without pizza. I cannot do it. I can't do it. It's My favorite food in the world. We got that in common. It's not a problem. Or I tell. I tell myself it's not a problem.

I mean, I feel good when I eat.

Exactly. Yeah. So. So it's going to. So it would be unbelievably hypocritical if I was to say to people things like, no, you don't have to eat your crisps or pizza or whatever it is, because I still eat those things. But I'm just going to show you something that. That makes it easier to do that but doesn't reduce your energy levels. Significantly.

Hydration.

So we're talking about, you know, what it is. It's eight glasses of water a day type.

Yeah. Well, this is a problem I have. I actually forget to drink. You know how people get thirsty and then they drink? I don. It's not that I don't get thirsty. It's almost like my. My brain or body doesn't signal to me when I need to drink. It's like on the autism spectrum. I'm not. I'm not like on the spectrum or anything, but it's one of the things that people with autism struggle to do. So. Yeah, my hydration. I'd probably give myself a two.

Okay. Okay. Alcohol consumption. So what we're talking about here is, you know, it's not even about drinking. Nothing. It's just asking ourselves a 10 would be, you know, I don't abuse my body. I like a drink. I do drink. If I saw my friends, I'd have a drink. That's all perfectly fine. Let's call that a 10 and 0 being. It's not where I want it to be at all. I'm drinking way too much every single day and it doesn't make me feel good. So where are we on that scale?

Do you think I would give myself a 10 for that?

Yeah.

Happy with my lack of alcohol consumption.

I thought that might have been the case. Now your sleep. So 10 being in the mornings. I always feel well rested. I feel. I feel, you know, relatively fresh. I feel I've got some. I feel maybe a little bit tired. But then some energy kicks in. I'm ready to get going. And zero being every morning is just the worst. I feel like I've been hit by a train and just. I just really don't want to get up for the day. So in terms of how you would. How your. How you would like your sleep to be, where do you think we are?

I would probably say I'm about an 8. I'm happy with my sleep.

Okay. And then social life. So, you know, in terms of a 10 would be. I really like the people I spend my time with. They're really sort of. They really, they really add to me. They really add to my energy levels. They really create a warm, feel good environment. And then going down that scale is less and less and less obviously and zero being, you know what people I spend time with either not at all or they take stuff from me in terms of how I feel. So where do you feel like you're on that scale?

I'll probably give myself. About five, I would say.

Okay, when you look at those numbers then. So let's go through them again. So exercise, 4. Diet 3. Hydration 2. Alcohol 10. Sleep 8. Social life, 5. When you look at those numbers, how do you feel?

Well, I look at them and I think some of them are very. I mean, the hydration thing is so easy to fix. I would say, like I could just put an alarm on my phone for every hour to drink, you know, so at the moment I'm fasting because I'm doing Ramadan, but outside of that, I should put an alarm on to drink.

So, yeah, this is a very interesting week to talk about energy levels, I assume, once again. Yeah, yeah, I've had this. I've had this with people before and it's possibly time these things at the wrong time, but anyway. But yeah, absolutely. We look at these things and when I look at these numbers, and by the way, these numbers are no worse than anyone else's or anything like that, but we look at those numbers and all of a sudden, you know, we hear people bang on about these really basic things all of the time. And so many of us go, can't be that simple. It really can't. It can't be that simple that everything improves a result. It really, really does. It really, really does. And one of my favorite quotes is about sleep, which may have mentioned before, which is the. Just imagine there was a drink which helped you feel fresh, helped you felt recovered, helped improve your social life, helped improve how you treated people, helps the amount of value you could give other people, helped everyone saw you in a better light. And of course that drink doesn't exist, but it's called sleep. And so a lot of these things have a similar principle where actually just very minor adjustments make a huge difference. But all of these things are of course about consistency. So we look at hydration and we might go, okay, that's the thing that the next week that needs to become a habitual Thing or whenever, whatever date we want to start that from, we go, that's. I'm going to make that habitual thing. And you're right, it might be that, you know, in your calendar or you have a phone alarm or whatever, it might be that you have that, you know, triggered that every couple of hours you have another drink. I know what it's like. I know what you mentioned about water and your circumstances. I know in terms of my own circumstances that actually if I don't drink water regularly, I forget what it's like to be thirsty. I don't recognize, like, oh, I feel thirsty. It's just. That's what you're used to.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

And so you would have no concept whatever. Sometimes people have a drink of water and they go, oh, I was thirsty. I didn't know that. And of course that's so. So in terms of hydration, it is one of those things, a bit unlike food, where you go, God, I'm hungry. And every part of your body aches and every part of your body wants that pizza right now. Hydration doesn't typically do that. So we have to be very disciplined in that way. But I know if I'm feeling, if I feel down in any way, shape or form, immediately go to either sleep or water. For me, I know it's one of those two things and I'll go and fix it straight away. So rather than me going, okay, but maybe I don't need to actually solve anything right now. It's just my energy levels low. Pick my energy level up.

Great.

That does one or two things. Either the problem goes away and I feel fine, or now I've got some energy that I can handle the problem. I handle the handle problems. When I'm exhausted, I forget all the exercises and strategies I've taught you and I've taught people for years. It won't really matter. It really, really won't matter. And that's why I treat this with such importance and try and get people to recognize how important this is. Because at the end of the day, how you treat these things and the other 10 things are going to put on this list is who you are. That's who you are as a person. So we look at hydration. Okay? That's something we could pick up. Now we talk about diet. Now, as I said, I'm not going to make you stop eating pizzas. I can't do that. It's not an issue for me. It's not an issue for anyone. Okay? And it's certainly not one of the worst foods. However, what I want to show you very quickly about diet is this other slide here. So what causes us to feel tired or fatigued, we might have a meal where the next morning you sort of go, feel good, like it feel rough, is it's about the acidity level in the body. So this is some of the stuff you may be well aware of already, but in other cases with other clients where they actively want to lose weight and they might go, David, I keep losing weight, putting it back on, losing weight, putting back on. I don't know what's going on really. I don't really. Well, it's because they don't understand the mechanics of what's going on. But most people go to exercise first. I'm going to do some exercise now. When the body's too acidic, it holds on to fat to protect all the vital organs. So when the body's got a high PH level, whichever way around is high acidic PH level, then the body goes, we need to hold on to this fat. It doesn't matter what you do. And the mistake then people make is they go and do a lot of exercise. They don't change their diet. Particularly what happens during exercise, they build up lactic acid, so the body just becomes more acidic. So actually they continue to feel tired and fatigued and they don't lose any weight or they don't reduce, you know, fat, fat levels. So when I talk to people, it is not about saying, you can't eat this, you can't eat that, it's just about becoming more alkaline. Yeah, that actually. So one of the most acidic foods is lobster. You find at the bottom of the ocean where all the waste is. It's a very, very acidic item. And so it's not about not eating lobster, it's being very consciously and actively increasing the alkalinity around that lobster. Same with pizza is that actually we increase the alkalinity with it so it doesn't have the, any of the negative side effects that we want. And all of a sudden it increases people's energy levels significantly and they feel fresher and acidity level goes down. Acidity just robs you of everything. It just robs. It robs you of absolutely everything. And so some of these things you'll be aware of made that bit bigger. But it's why people bang on about the really basic, basic things. And you can do an easy enough Google search just to integrate some of these things, but integrate things that you might actually like. So acidic foods are meat, poultry, Fish, dairy, eggs, grains, alcohol. Bread is a very acidic food as well. So people like to eat. You know, I love bread, I love croissants, I love pizza, I love all of those things.

And then my diet regularly, right?

And so there isn't. People look at bread and they go, surely nothing wrong with bread. Bread's not a bad food, except it is a very acidic food. And actually, again, it just robs us of energy. What is good about and addictive about these things is these things quickly change the biochemistry and change the blood flow and get us into a different state. So that's when you talk about, why do people eat? Well, some people do it when they're bored or stressed or whatever. Well, what it does is it changes the blood flow, changes biochemistry and then gets them out of the headspace they want to be in. And that's why people can become somewhat addicted to certain foods. And so alkaline, you know, anything that's alkaline is. Goes back to the hydration. It's a massive. Of course, that's a neutral ph, but that's a massive reason for drinking water is to bring that acidity level right down. Then you've got your beans, nuts, fruits. Even with fruits, I tell people, best time to eat fruit is first thing in the morning. But aside from that, of course, fruit is full of sugar. Sugar, it's very acidic. So that's why a lot of people, if they have to choose between veg and fruits, they'll go, oh, I'll go for fruits, because it tastes better. It's got loads of sugar in all of that type of stuff. So all I'm saying is that. And this is a decision for you to make. I'm not going to. As I said, I'm not here to make people go, this is what you need to do. It's just, how can I become more alkaline if I'm going to have a sandwich, if I'm going to have pizza, if I'm going to have these foods that I love, how can I become more alkaline? And as I said, it could be looking at these things. There are hundreds of other things that are very alkaline as well that you might go, oh, I actually really enjoy these. Okay, I'm going to put a bit more of that in with what I do. So it's a very simple adjustment that has a very, very big effect. And all I want is for you to have a think about thinking more in those terms. So that actually when I eat the pizza, as much as I love it. It doesn't also mean that for the afternoon, I just feel a bit tired, feel a bit exhausted, and by the end of the day I'm starting to stress about certain things and then actually the negative thoughts come in. I actually just don't have the energy to deal with them. Now I've just got to distract myself and do other things, but I'm not actually handling anything. And it's this snowball effect that occurs where people think these things aren't big deals. But I know what it's like for me and with people I've worked with where it very, very quickly snowballs. So in terms of being more alkaline, do you have any questions around that, or does that sound like something that seems an easy enough or sensible thing to do? Or is that something where you start to go, I just want to eat my pizza and be left alone and not have to introduce all this other stuff with it? So what do you think when I talk about that stuff and does it make sense?

I would say that, you know, I would say, I guess maybe I've been too harsh with that score. I mean, I do eat fruit and vegetables alongside the pizza, but, yeah, so maybe my diet isn't as bad as I think, but it definitely could be better. And I think that could be a fairly straightforward improvement. Just be more conscious just what I put in my body.

Absolutely. And so, you know, trying to group a number of these things together, it might be that again, rather than adding lots of different things, we might go, actually, the only thing I've got to do right now, I've got to get on the water. And there's a. There's a. There's a important reason why now it's not just drinking water, because that's what I'm supposed to do. If I start leveraging that enough by saying if we don't drink enough water, by the end of every single day, we're going to be tired. By the end of every single day, we'd have more negative thoughts. As a result, by the end of every single day, we're going to be too tired to handle them. And every day this is going to happen over and over again. As opposed to the flip side of that, which is if I drink water, I have so much vitality, I feel so much fresher, I feel so much more alert. I provide even more value to my students, I provide even more value to the people around me. I have so much more energy to give my friends, and I have so much enthusiasm for life and that have caused people be attracted towards me.

I think I'll have more energy to exercise too.

To exercise as well. And so it starts to put a number of these things in place. And so if we drink enough water, just out of interest before we talk about some of the other things, if we don't drink enough water. Okay, so that's just talking about drinking more water. If we wanted to get that to a five, what does a five look like? So we're at two. What does a five look like in terms of hydration?

I would say, I would say 5 would be minimal hydration. I mean, I could go a whole day without drinking. That's the thing. And I don't realize until I get to the end of the day when my head is like hurting, and then I'm like, oh, my God, I haven't drank any water today. I, I could easily get to a five. And I think that'll be a good, like, that'll be a good spot to get to and then build on that.

Okay, what would a six look like?

Oh, it'll start to get into, like, oh, very normal range now. Very normal hydration range.

Okay, so you tell me what that looks, what you think that looks like.

What do you mean?

So both in terms of actually how much water do I need to drink, but the other side of what five or six or seven will look like is actually what am I actively doing to make sure this happens. So, you know, for example, someone who does hydration at a 1 makes 0 effort to, you know, prep any of this stuff, plan any of this stuff, hasn't got the equipment, hasn't got the resources, doesn't have, you know, doesn't bother ever walking towards a tap in their day. And, you know, all of these, someone else at a six might be, you know what? Actually, I've either scheduled it, I've bought the right size water bottle, I know how many times a day I need to drink water. I know when I'm going to do that. Someone at 10, all of a sudden, water is their favorite thing in the world. I'm not suggesting we have to get to a 10 by any stretch of the imagination, but they'll be like militant about it where it says water is as soon as I wake up, glass of water, bang, done that at 11, 12. That's the perfect time. I've done all the biology research and science for my body. I know what the optimum drinking times are. You don't have to do any of that. But six, what would you have been doing? To make sure that this all happens. And how much would you be drinking?

Well, I would probably make. So I've got a water bottle and I would just make sure that I'm refilling it like several times a day and making sure that I drink three in the day.

What size bottle do you have?

I don't know what size it is. I have to find out mine in front of me. Actually, I think it might be. It's not a liter. It's probably about maybe either 500 or 700.

Yeah. So it's one of those sort of that size thin ones.

Yeah.

Bit like this microphone. Okay. Yep, fine. Okay.

But yeah, I think that would be fairly easy to do and it might just mean that for the first few days or for the first few weeks, I need to put an alarm on my phone just to remind me to drink because I do forget.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. And then what would a 7 look like?

7 would probably look like adding an extra water bottle and, and not just drinking. When I remember to drink, it's actually like having, having a drink regularly, even if it's like, you know, every 15 minutes, 20 minutes, having a couple of sips of water. Because what I find is when I, when I remember that I need to drink, that's when I just like drink like half a bottle of water or something.

Yeah.

Throughout the day.

Yeah, that's what most people do. And there, there is, there are a lot of benefits of. It's the just consistently throughout the day as opposed to, you know, you have to sip it every two minutes. But yeah. To sort of regularly just have some water on the go. Having a water bottle is really, really important. But having. Yeah. Not just having these huge bursts of water because your body trains a certain way then as well. If you think about it, if you exercise every day, your body has to adjust to meet those needs. If you just train in one day, your body will adjust to that. But it will. In both of those cases it was just a very, very extreme directions. And drinking water is no different. If you take these big gulps of water, your body will sort of slow down in certain processes to kind of pace out that water and everything else. And it'll start to do things which aren't optimal for us. Was actually we just have that level of consistency. Our body doesn't have to work so hard to do certain things. Good. So you go from a two. I don't think it's that hard for us to go to a seven.

And for that to be seven is good aim. I Don't feel like I need to be at 10.

Yeah, I don't think anyone. Yeah, I don't think attempt for any of these isn't always that necessary, to be honest. Yeah, but. But, yeah, fine. Okay.

So I want to start that next Thursday.

Like.

Okay, that would be very easy. Next Thursday. Okay.

And then I want to. Alcohol we don't need to talk about. So I want to talk about sleep and hydration. Well, actually, let's. Yeah, let's talk about sleep and social life and then we'll talk about exercise. So we talk about sleep. We're at an eight now. I'd just be curious because there might be some very.

David, I didn't catch what you said.

Oh, can you hear me now?

Yes.

Yeah. So with sleep, even though we're at an A, I think there might be. I'm just curious to hear there might be some minor adjustments that we can make that would make a big, big difference. So just out of interest, what does usual sleep look like in terms of what time you might go to bed, what the consistency of that is, when do you get up? How do you actually sleep? What does that all look like?

It is a bit all over the place at the minute because I am fasting. So I tend to go to bed around like 12 and then wake up in the morning around 9 o'. Clock. But outside of that, I would usually go to bed around say, 10:30, 11, and then wake up around 8 o'. Clock.

Okay, fine. How do you actually sleep in terms of. Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night? Do you ever feel sort of disturbed? Do you ever sort of struggle to actually fall asleep? How does that all look?

So some days I do struggle to fall asleep. I think I'm not relaxed enough to actually fall asleep. So that's why I do struggle to get to sleep. But during the night, I tend to sleep through the night. Yeah.

Okay. So how long would you say it takes you to fall asleep on average? So by the time you actually get into bed, we're talking 20 minutes, half an hour. An hour.

What would you say about half an hour? Sometimes 40 minutes?

Yeah, 30 minutes. 40 minutes. Okay. And what would you be doing just before you go to bed?

I'll be on my phone.

Say that again.

I'll be on my phone. I know, it's terrible. I'll be on my phone. I usually, yeah. Have my phone with me. It's terrible habit. I know.

Well, you say that's terrible. Why do you think that's terrible?

Because I know it's terrible because it gets me kind of cognitively active because I'm thinking about things, whatever I'm reading or engaging with. And also, I guess the light from the phone as well.

Yeah, so that. So more that second point was to get into. So just to sort of really hammer home the people hear about this blue light stuff, but they're not sure of the actual effect. So a lot of studies have been done on this stuff now. And what they find is, you know, most people think that when their eyes close, they're asleep. And as you know, there are different stages of sleep. The whole point of sleep is that the brain's being repaired and that we're actually getting restorative sleep. And that only occurs later on in the sleep process. Now what happens is that when we use a phone or watch TV or on our laptop and that blue light is shining through, what it takes, what science shows that from that point, it takes two to three hours for us to get into a deep sleep. So if we're using our phone. So in the example where you spoke about 10:30 and 8, if you're using your phone up till 10:30, we're talking about probably, let's say, put it in between. We're talking about only being in a deep sleep by 1am so we think that we're going to sleep at 10:30. Part of the reason why it might take 40 minutes is because of that blue light. But actually, even though we're not consciously aware anymore, we're not actually in a deep sleep to 1am Now. That means we've got seven hours sleep. So now that, that might. That might be perfectly fine, that might seem adequate, but it's actually a very simple adjustment. Not so you don't use your phone anymore, but a simple adjustment to make, which you might even be aware of already. So that every night we're getting two hours extra sleep a night. By the end of the week, we've had 14 hours extra sleep. So we've basically had two days extra sleep without actually sleeping any longer. And that might be what gets you to a 9 or a 10 with your sleep. You're actually sleeping two days extra a week without actually sleeping any longer. As you can imagine, that makes a massive difference. So all I might suggest is that, you know, phones, they've started to have kind of night filters. What they have, what's on the phone typically isn't that good. But what's even better than that is always sounds like a work for this company. When I talk about this app, you don't have to pay for anything like that. But it always sounds like I'm promoting it. If you've got. Do you have an Android or Apple?

I have an Android, yeah.

Okay, so Android has an app called Twilight. I can send you a link to it. It's perfectly free. What's really good about it is not only does it block out the blue light, where you can adjust the settings is actually. So it emits a red light. So it's actually sending you to sleep. And if you, if you imagine getting to 10:30 and you're like. And you might feel like that's already. But actually so your brain isn't still wired, because that's what we're really talking about, that your brain isn't wired anymore. I made this shift about three years ago and my, my sleep was horrendous, absolutely horrendous. Even though I tried everything. And that just changed everything for me. You could do the same on laptops and computers. It's a slight. It's a different app called F Lux, I think, which is also free, where you can create the same settings so that by say, seven, eight o', clock, you actually have something that's now sending you to sleep. And that's what you want, really, because then you're going to get back. You're going to get back those two or three hours extra sleep a night. So it's a very simple thing. We don't actually have to do anything. The only thing I suggest with any of my clients is that, you know, there isn't like an app for your TV or anything like that. So you might either by a certain time stop watching TV and only watch things on your laptop, or you might have, whether it's EastEnders or what actually is your favorite TV program, you might have something on a particular night where you go, I want to step and watch tv. Yeah, fine. Okay. So as long as consistently we're making that adjustment, but with all of these things, what we're talking about is I can't make you do any of these things. So it's really asking yourself the question, how optimal do I want to be? How much, how, how much better do I want to be able to handle my emotions and how I feel about myself? Could I be more optimal in certain categories? Yes, that's the trade off I make in terms of. There are certain things I'd like to do and enjoy, but the trade off is actually, for me, it's not worth making this adjustment. But I'm willing to make an adjustment up to this level and that's that. So with all of these things, you might recognize I would make adjustments. I might not go to tens and everything, because then I'm starting to sacrifice what might feel like some of my own enjoyment. But you might start to go, you know what? I can get eights and nines in a lot of these categories, and that make a big difference and I'll still enjoy myself.

Yeah.

So on the sleep thing, how do you feel about that in terms of getting a couple extra hours sleep a night?

You know, I actually really struggle to wind down. That's a problem.

Yeah.

So that half an hour, me being on my phone is my time to wind down.

Yeah. So the point is you still use your phone up until 10:30.

Yeah.

It's just that that app has been.

I'd be happy to use that app.

Yeah, that would be because that's why, you know. Yes. It goes back to that thing of how optimal do we want to be? They're really good people like Jim Quick and a few other people who talk about this type of stuff, where they talk about why not to use your phone as soon as you wake up, as soon as you go to bed again, that's one of those things where. Where do I draw the line in the sand? You might go, I'm not. I'm not ready to draw the line in the sand in terms of not having that downtime. That's okay. But you might go, I'll draw the line in the sand that I'll use my downtime. But I'll also improve my sleep by using this app.

But I'm also very selective about what I do on my phone. Like, in that time, I make sure that it's not anything like, I don't, like, watch the news or anything like that.

That's. That's another perfect category. So I barely watch the news now. You know, I make sure I stay up to date with everything. I'm aware of what's going on. But if you imagine what it's like, if you watch the news three times a day, you'd think you wouldn't come out. You'd be too scared to come out your house. It'd be awful. And it's not. It's not. It's. It's what's going on. But it's a bit like social media in terms of. It starts to make it look like that's everything. You know, you see everyone going on holiday and it makes you feel like, oh, everyone's going on holiday all the time. They're not. It's just you've been. You've got this categorized thing where it looks like everyone goes on holiday.

Yeah, well, that's another reason I don't go on Twitter that much anymore. I used to spend a lot of time on Twitter, but I find that it's very. It's. It's more draining than bringing anything else.

Yeah. Yeah. And so for me, I could have put other things on here, you know, other things that could have gone in this list of things like social media and all those types of things. I don't have any of them installed on my phone when I need to use them or post something or share some value, install it, put it up, uninstall it, I'm out.

So what you just heard are just some very minor adjustments that make a massive difference. And the thing is, I know with the people I work with, that's what I'm really trying to give people is minimum work for maximum reward. And so imagine what it's like to get a couple hours extra sleep without having to sleep any longer by just having a very kind of simple app on your phone that blocks that blue light and radiates a red light, but also reducing acidity in the body and feeling less fatigued without having to sort of stop eating some of your favorite foods. It's really up to you how optimal you want to be. And you'll draw a line in the sand at some point where you say, oh, it's not quite worth this, but I promise you there are some things that you can do that don't require much to help you feel much more confident, much stronger, and get much better results. My name is David Holman. If you change today, today will change your life. So enjoy the rest of your day, enjoy the rest of your life, and I'll speak to you on the next episode. If you enjoyed this episode and are enjoying the podcast, make sure to subscribe to keep up to date with the latest episodes. And if you would like a free copy of my book, Very simple, leave a review on itunes and email self beliefchiefmail.com with the headline free book, and we'll make sure to send you an audio copy of the book. Otherwise, we'll speak to you next time.

Sam.