Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of your Brain's Coach podcast. My name is Angela Sharina, I'm your host, I'm your Brain's Coach and it is my job here to bring to you all the best, cutting-edge, recent, most important, essential, vital and quite effective hopefully sometimes fun brain-body tools so you could take better control of your thoughts, of your emotions and, most importantly, your actions, so you could shape the exact life experience that you absolutely love living. Hey guys, so many things I want to share with you. I haven't been making my regular three podcast a week episodes and the reason is Digital Divas 2024.
Speaker 1There was an event that I was speaking at and it happened on Friday and it definitely took quite some of my time and it reminded me of the fact that the things that certain events, certain projects that we really want to deliver a great job at, they usually take more than the bare minimum of work. So the takeaway from myself, from my life experience and probably from any high achiever out there who is committed to great quality work the takeaway is great things take more time than minimum and than you usually plan for. Not everything, but most of the time. If you want to deliver superb quality, you got to dedicate to it time with slack. Dedicate to time with slack. It also reminds me of a phrase by one of the most famous money and financial coach, rami Teti, and he says spend lavishly on the things that you love and not the exact quote, but along the lines and be safe mercilessly, or cut mercilessly. Cut a lot on the things that you don't really care about. And the same goes to time management. Don't try to squeeze in as much activity into your day as possible. To squeeze in as much activity into your day as possible, but instead prioritize and minimize time on tasks that don't really matter, don't really add quality that you don't even remember at the end of the day, at the end of the week or months, and then spend a lot and plan a lot more time so you can do them without rush. On things that truly matter and I'm not just talking about here, about work, but also the most important relationships, the most important pursuits in different areas of your life Give it some slack, give it more time than it feels necessary, and sometimes you end up spending less time, less money, less resources, but because you're not rushed, you're going to feel like there is so much you got so much more joy out of it.
Speaker 1It also reminded me of a story told in a book by Derek Sivers. One of the told in a book by Derek Sivers one of the multidisciplinary entrepreneurs who developed quite a few businesses to quite a great level and learned how to live life on his own terms, and he told the story in one of his books about how he would take this ride along the coast on his bike every single day, and every single day he felt like rushing, like he needed to just push it in order to save time, be effective, be productive and get exercise in. And at some point he realized it didn't feel like joy and he was like I actually love riding my bike. Why am I feeling so stressed, pressures and tense every time I do it? What if I just enjoyed the ride? And so he took the same ride along the same coast and he watched the birds and the sunrise and just took a few more deep breaths and stopped a couple of times to just suck in the beauty. And then, at the end of the ride and that was quite a long ride he looked at his watch and it was something like plus three minutes and he realized at that point that it's like a lot of things in life, if we just don't rush, we actually don't need that much time, but we enjoy the heck a lot more of the experience if we Suck it all in and be present and be in awe and just enjoy it and savor a little bit more. So that's the story.
Speaker 1Before we begin our podcast, I definitely want to do an episode about how the event went and how I'm going to be preparing for next similar workshops with a lot of people, hundreds of people. I'm going to be preparing to perform, not to just deliver the information. I always get compliments on the information and people want to learn more and they remember it and they take notes and they get insights. But I know that performance side of things. Like you know, when you see someone speaking and it just gets to you, it's like something just grabs you and you go through the experience with the speaker. Like I want to deliver that kind of performance and I'm not there yet, but I'm aware that I'm capable of with the right preparation and the right time allocated to this and the right techniques, et cetera. So I'm going to be coming back to that at some point in the future, especially because I have three more talks scheduled and want to schedule a lot more to share what I have inside of me, because I believe we learn to ultimately share and to improve human condition as widely as possible, to decrease suffering and so we all can live in a better world and create amazing things and see what we are capable of. So I'm going to be getting back to that.
Speaker 1Today is about productivity, but from the point of recovery, and not the kind of recovery when people talk about or I went to this meditation retreat for a week, or I started spending time doing yoga for a few hours a week, or I went to completely disconnect somewhere on a deserted island. We're not talking about that kind of recovery, but the small pieces of recovery that you sprinkle like some cinnamon on your oatmeal in your day, which allows you to actually never get to the point of exhaustion at which you feel like you need a whole week of yoga and meditation just to get it out of your system. When you sprinkle your recovery throughout your day, when you learn how to switch your nervous system into rest, digest mode, into speaking scientifically parasympathetic mode. When you learn how to do that, you learn how to switch on your own echo mode. When you conserve more energy, when you spend less energy, and your energy the same energy. You don't need to create more of it at this point. You're just going to learn how to waste less of it, and so you make your battery last longer, and that can be compared to let's say, you have your phone and you have the same exact battery capacity, but one day you forgot to turn off your Bluetooth and your flashlight mode, and so your phone is expending energy at a much more accelerated rate and you're going to have the exact same battery charge, but it's going to last a lot less because all of this stuff is running so staying in your sympathetic, nervous system mode or your fight or flight state most of the day. It's like that. It's like having your Bluetooth and flashlight on all the freaking time, and so your own charge disappears in a matter of well, it's not exact sign, but it's going to last a lot, a lot less, and that's why, actually, a lot of people end up feeling so drained at the end of the day like I need a whole week of vacation to just get over one day.
Speaker 1There is this phrase I love, a quote from the book Effortless by Greg McKeown, one of the world's top productivity experts, his book Eff Effortless Make it Easier Do what Matters Most. And so the quote which is, by the way, included in my daily newsletter email a day that your best will thank you for. We cover areas like health, mindset and performance, mindset and performance. And so the quote is do not do more today that you can completely recover from by tomorrow. This is a principle of high performers at different arenas, on different levels, from Olympics to corporate warriors and people who achieve a lot in business being able to recover fully as often as possible. So if I tell you today you have to continue the hustle for another year, a couple of years, you can actually do that without burning out.
Speaker 1If you can do that, you are unstoppable, because when everybody will feel like they need to stop and take a vacation, you're like screw it, this is the opportunity of my lifetime and I'm going to seize it. You want to have reserve in order to seize opportunities, because you never know when those opportunities are going to come into your life, and if you are already exhausted and tired and barely lusting, guess what? You're not going to be seizing that opportunity to its full capacity. You cannot fake your best performance. If your batteries are almost done and gone, then you're not going to be doing your best. No matter how caffeine is in you, you cannot give what you do not have.
Speaker 1Another quote this is from Finding Mastery. It's a social media account and it's done by Michael Gervais, one of the top world's best high-performance psychologists, who trains the minds of the best, not just in athletics but also in business. So the quote from his account in one of the Olympic athletes is recovery isn't something we only do right after big events. It's something we build into our everyday lives and, believe it or not, against popular belief, pushing yourself to the point of exhaustion every day without any good reason isn't a great strategy to deliver your best performance or close to that consistently. But again, sprinkling that recovery throughout your day and throughout your week, so by the weekend you don't feel like you have nothing else to give to your life, to your hobbies, to other important and essential to who you are pursues. If you don't want to end up in that place, you want to create a simple practice of sprinkling those recovery practices which are, by the way, very simple. So throughout the day you also get to recover, so you do spend more time in your parasympathetic nervous system mode, which is your echo mode, compared to fight or flight. So you do recharge, recover as you go and you allow more creativity, more great ideas for problem solving. So you allow more of that to flow through you consistently, versus some aha moment once in a blue moon, which happens to most people, to a lot of people who do not learn how to recover consistently daily throughout the week again. So most of the time you are in your echo mode and most of the time you have reserve to push through when you need to.
Speaker 1Another image I want to share with you before we continue into more practical discussion, which is not going to be actually that long you understanding the principles and why it's important. That's actually more important because that will motivate the action. The action steps and action steps plan is actually very simple and very short. So let's first imagine and picture something. Picture this you are in the final lap of a race and let's say it's Olympic Games and it's swimming race and every muscle is burning, but you push through, driven by the side of the finish line, and you win that goal. And now imagine something different, starting that same race, already exhausted. Which scenario do you think has the most potential to lead to victory? You see, I think where a lot of high achievers don't always understand recovery is that not every event, project, to-do list item deserves the kind of effort that once-in-a-lifetime projects require, like Olympic Games projects require like Olympic Games.
Speaker 1And so you pushing yourself to the point of exhaustion every day without good reason is not a great strategy, because the more you push, the more you have to recover, and if you don't do that, then you burn out, you get sick and you're going to lose a ton of time, a ton of ideas and opportunities. Being in that lower energy, poor health, mental and physical, bad moods and lack of enthusiasm state, you're going to miss out on a lot. If you push yourself to exhaustion without the good reason to do so, without the proper event of the scale, your effort got to match the scale of the event. And so again, if daily, for no good reason, you push yourself to the exhaustion and you never recover, you might not have what it takes for the big events. You know what Olympic champions are great at For those years, four, eight, decade, a couple of decades they're great at recovering consistently and daily in order to give it all to a few races that truly matter. And so the purpose of daily recovery is sprinkled like that cinnamon or maybe you prefer cocoa on your oatmeal. So the purpose of that daily recovery is to give you, to build the reserve that you need, at the same time building the skills consistently. So for the big events, for the opportunities that truly matter, you have what it takes to give your all, and you cannot fake it Again. No amount of coffee will help you.
So what do you do to recover daily and fully? Well, a couple of examples, which are based on very solid science Taking brief walks when you feel you hit a block, a limit, a wall, while working on a presentation, while working on some business problem. Working on a presentation while working on some business problem, while working on a program bug, or working through a chapter as a writer, whatever that is, when you feel like you are already quite tired and you are kind of stuck. This is not the time every day to push through. This is the time to get the F off your ass and go for a walk, and it doesn't have to be an hour walk, it can be as little as five to 10 minutes. And the effect when you do it consistently you'll notice is so freaking profound.
Speaker 1And then you get back to what you were doing and your brain will feel like it's your battery, if not full on, then uploaded and upgraded for sure. It's like you get your own power biopower bank connected to your phone all of a sudden. You'll feel that you have more ideas. You'll get more ideas. You'll feel that you have more ideas. You'll get more ideas. You'll feel like you have more energy, like you have another reserve, like you have more stamina and motivation to keep doing what you wanted to finish in the first place. So short strolls.
Speaker 1Let me read you something from Research Direct Indicated that regular walking improved mood states and shifted autonomic balance to parasympathetic predominance. And, by the way, parasympathetic predominance, that means activating that nervous system that helps you to recharge your energy, to recharge your battery, versus spending that energy at an accelerated rate in a stressed state, which is known as sympathetic mode. Not only that, when your nervous system is in a stressed state, your prefrontal cortex doesn't do its best job with creativity, especially with divergent creativity, when you need to pursue or consider many options and connect as many dots as possible, creating some not thought of before solutions. Now, that mode of your brain only works well when you are quite relaxed, when you are chilled. And the more you sit on your bottom and don't walk, don't exercise, the more you accumulate that stress response. The body does not like to be in a sitting position for prolonged periods of time, the more usually your breathing is going to get shallower, which also activates further that stress response and you're going to be delivering mediocre work, feeling like you are pushing some boulder up the hill. So short walks this is hack number one to allow yourself to recover throughout the day. So you waste, spend less energy and you recover faster. So by the end of each day, you actually and especially Next morning, you actually feel like your batteries are fully topped up and you're ready to repeat the day again and again and again and again as long as needed till you get where you want to go.
Speaker 1That's how I was able to not take a vacation for four years and still feel like I had time of my life doing and achieving and moving at a quite good pace and not feeling exhausted or tired, not getting sick, not getting any negative effects of not having a vacation. You don't need a vacation from a life well designed and results are matching. Matching the work, the consistent work, the show up. So the point here is you can have those mini recovery periods which are not even that long, and then you don't need that weekly vipassana or quarterly time off. You can take time off to like, read books and go on adventures, not feeling like you're so exhausted that the only vacation you can think of is by the beach, doing nothing, planning nothing and experiencing nothing. So regular walks when you feel like you push the gas pedal to the limit and you're kind of stuck, then it's time to get off your bottom and go for a walk Again. Plus, you're going to get closer to those 10,000 steps and you do not need to walk for hours to get the effect.
Speaker 1The second part of daily recovery and sprinkling that recharge throughout your day is taking deep breath. Again back to this idea of being in parasympathetic or rest and digest state, more often in relaxed mode of your nervous system, which is echo mode, which conserves energy, which creates energy, which also is great for your digestion, reproductive organ and DNA repair, by the way. So if you want to age slower, guess what you need to do Stay chill, and that is achieved by deep breath. Breathing A slow deep breathing tends to activate the PNS, or parasympathetic nervous system. I'm reading to you from Science Direct, promoting a state of calmness and relaxation. On the other hand, rapid and shallow breathing tends to activate the SNS stress state, or sympathetic nervous system which activates our sympathetic nervous system, accelerating our adrenal glands, cortisol levels and hormonal balance, which can affect our aging process. Breathing deeply, with a slow and steady inhalation and exhalation ratio, signals our parasympathetic nervous systems to calm the body down.
Speaker 1It's like your button to again switch on that echo mode to spend less energy, recharge, recover. While you can continue doing the work that you do and you're going to be spending less energy, your recharge bill, so to speak, is going to be lower. At the end of the day, you're going to feel less exhausted, less tired. The next day, your battery is going to be fully charged and you can keep going living your life to the fullest as many days as you want and need it, without getting sick, getting injured, feeling like you need a vacation just to survive another day. So all of that can be achieved if you introduce those mini recovery rituals into your day Walks we already mentioned, and then deep breathing.
Speaker 1What does it mean to do deep breathing? It simply means to make sure that your exhalation process you breathe in and you breathe out longer process you breathe in and you breathe out longer and usually in more controlled fashion. So you focus on the exhale process compared to inhale. So if your breathing is dominated by inhale, so you inhale more and your exhales are very shallow and your breathing in general tends to be faster. That's what switches on fight or flight, which is waste a lot of your energy, that's what makes you fatigued and also make you age faster and a lot of other things make your immune system do not work that well. A lot of things are not great when you're constantly in a flight and fight mode, right.
Speaker 1So breathing exhale focus, breathing slow breathing helps you to do the switch and turn on your echo mode, your energy conserving mode, in which you experience less stress, more creativity, more inspiration, your DNA repairs better, your reproductive organs and systems and hormones work better. It allows you to recover, restore and just be more effective and productive in general, in effective not just at work but also in life, when you actually do want to do something with your time off, versus just collapsing and watching some Netflix, which is, there is nothing wrong with that. But if it's the only thing that you want to do when you are off because you are so damn exhausted, isn't that a poor way to live life? Just my opinion. But in my personal life, watching a ton of Netflix never added something that I would say oh you know, I'm so glad I spent all this time watching Netflix. I'm like no, I actually regret not spending time with my friends or family pursuing my hobbies, because I was so damn tired, so breathing.
Speaker 1How do you do that? As simply as that. Try to, at the same time, close your eyes. That accelerates the process of relaxation. Allow your shoulders to go down, just relax every single muscle that you can feel, and closing your eyes allows you to tune in better into your internal systems and really relax everything. Do that a couple of times and that's all it takes to activate that switch, and then you can continue working. And guess what it also does? It gives you more creativity. You all of a sudden see more solutions and all of a sudden you don't feel that exhausted and you can actually do more of what you wanted to do in the first place and you're more present and more open-minded and all the good things you know about yourself. They're going to be activated in that state of parasympathetic nervous system, which is activated by breathing. So the last piece how often do you do that?
Speaker 1I usually recommend doing it when you feel that you're either stuck or you have this mental pressure, but you don't necessarily feel like walking yet. You're like Just take a couple of deep breaths and you can do it also while walking. And those two rituals taking walks and sprinkling this breath work I think a lot of people are so afraid of breath work because they think it's something complicated. You don't even have to follow any count, just focus on your breathing out. Breathe the F out slowly, deeply and long, and that's all you need. Do that a couple of times and sprinkle it throughout your day. Do it every 20-30 minutes. That's what I recommend, and after it becomes your habit, you won't even notice it and it's not like you're going to add additional time to your routines. And then walk what I recommend, I don't know in the middle of the day, take a walk. If you need more walks because the task you're working is so complex and so draining, take more walks Again. You don't have to walk four hours, just walk around the block or around your house.
Speaker 1I personally have a walk in the morning, walk in the middle of the day and walk at the end of the day, and that charges my battery. Sometimes, when I feel like it's really not coming, I'm going to take an additional walk. Or if it's extremely sunny and I'm like, son, why don't you enjoy a little bit more of it? Then I go for a stroll and I'm always feeling invigorated after I do that. I'm like I so want to do this work and attack this piece that I couldn't handle before. That's what proper recovery, sprinkled throughout your day, does to your work ethic, your productivity and also just the quality of it and the quality of your life.
Speaker 1So two little hacks from recovery science. I'm finishing right now. Now rest, recovery, resilience certification with precision nutrition. So by September 1st it's my own personal deadline to finish that, and it got me thinking about recovery from one side, deeper and more complex and with more details, but on the other side, simpler. It doesn't have to be complicated to work, it just has to be there and it has to be consistent. Just like with a lot of things in life, you don't have to make heroic pursuits happen every single day. To build great goals, you just have to show up consistently, and usually heroic efforts isn't something you can do consistently, nor would you wish for, probably. So recovery, it doesn't have to be complicated Two things to do throughout your day micro walks, a couple of deep breaths every half an hour and at the end of the day, you're going to feel still like you have a lot in you to enjoy life.
Speaker 1Every day, you'll feel like you're ready to get after it, which will increase, improve your productivity and the quality of your work. Not only that, again, these micro rituals of walking and breathing scientifically proven to switch your nervous system into parasympathetic rest and digest state, the most important feature of which is saving you energy. Again back to this metaphor of your phone running a flashlight, bluetooth and everything at the same time the most energy draining apps. When you are in a stress state, fight or flight that's what you are doing to your body and your brain. You are in the most energy wasting mode possible, and that is what's so detrimental to your health, your work, your productivity and performance. So take walks and breathe.
Speaker 1If you want to read a little bit more, some more quotes, information, please do sign up to our daily newsletter and email it. They are your best will thank you for. Please do share this podcast episode with one other person who might not know this and be suffering from a lot of fatigue, exhaustion for no good reason. So share this with at least one person. Screenshot it. Send them a Spotify link. Send them an Apple podcast link, whatever that person listens their podcast on. Also practice this with your family, with your friends, with other high achievers, so you all on your A game as often as possible. Please connect, if you feel like it, my Instagram Angela Brain Body Coach. All one word and until next time, stay chilled, stay in your eco mode and do awesome work. Chat soon, stay awesome.