Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of your Brains Coach podcast. My name is Angela Shurina, I'm your host, I'm your Brains Coach and an Executive Coach. 360, multidisciplinary, which basically means that I help people to take care of their health, of their productivity, of their mindset, systems for work, for execution, for being doing ourselves and growing into our best selves every single day. So this is what I do, and here I'm passionately sharing lessons that I'm getting from all the different sources, from my personal life and experience work with my clients, who are amazing entrepreneurs and CEOs and leaders in different companies and running their own companies and leading leadership positions in other companies, and also moving different world-changing agendas forward. So I get a lot of lessons from them. They're smart people and that's how they got where they got, but then also, everyone is working on something, and I want you to also think about this for a moment that people we consider to be at the top of their game, they still have things they're working on. Tony Robbins has this beautiful saying in life, you're either growing or dying. So chances are, if you're still alive, you have a lot of things for improvement and to work on, to grow, to get better, to fulfill more of your potential in this life, and it's true no matter on what level you are. And that's, I think, a beautiful thing in life. It keeps it interesting, right? You are constantly discovering things that you can work on, discovering things that you can work on.
Speaker 1I also get a lot of insights from reading books and then talking to authors, interviewing them. I read a lot. I have my 100-day challenge, where a part of the challenge also is to read one book every three days. 33 books in that 100-day challenge, and I'm on my book four, so that's where I learn. I also reach out to people, to authors, scientists, researchers who resonate with what I'm teaching, with what I'm passionate about change, leadership, uncovering, discovering our full potential and living it in this life. And so when I feel like, oh, I really connect to this author and I'd like to ask more questions and I'd like to share that, I bring them to this podcast, and the next guest is coming up next Monday, so stay tuned for that.
Speaker 1I'm actually going to be part two conversation with Jeff Karp. Jeff is a bio-inspirationalist. He basically learns from nature, from biology, from natural world, and then applies it to creating different solutions in the world of business, in the world in different industries, creating medicines or different medical solutions technological solutions, I mean. So he's going to be again on our podcast on Monday sharing his journey and tools that he discovered. While, believe it or not, jeff has many, many patents and research papers and he has a PhD I don't know if one or two and he is a fellow in some amazing science societies and he has very successful companies. And, yeah, just an amazing individual. But, believe it or not, jeff had learning disabilities when he was starting out, and so he had to overcome ADHD, something that he was diagnosed with and he made it into something really beautiful, not just in his personal life, but also business life and in the life of so many people, by creating medical solutions that maybe, without Jeff, nobody would have thought of Anyhow.
Speaker 1So Jeff is on Monday and today I want to share with you on this podcast my best, my most loved, most effective, best, my most loved, most effective health tools or health habits, I'd rather say that are also based on really solid research in their effectiveness to make our life better on so many levels. So two health habits that I found the most transformational, effective and life-changing. When you apply it daily, you know, it's like a lot of those habits are like brushing your teeth you don't notice the effect of it right away, although I'd say if I don't brush my teeth that really happens. But if I'm flying in the morning for whichever, whichever reason, I didn't have the chance to brush my teeth. I forgot my brush in my other piece of luggage or something and I don't brush my teeth and I feel like, oh, my teeth kind of feel weird and my breath I'm not sure about the freshness of it. You know you still notice some stuff, but it's not like it's life-changing. If you don't brush your teeth for a couple of days, probably nothing major gonna happen in your life quality. But if you don't brush your teeth for months and years, yeah, not only your breath gonna sting more and more and it's gonna be not so pleasant for other people to be around, but also you start getting cavities and if you just continue this practice you have rotten teeth and then you can't eat, you can't digest food properly. In the natural world you would probably die in the evolutionary times, but maybe right now you could, I don't know, drink soylent and liquid nutrition and not die. But having rotten teeth I think you'd agree that's going to spoil your life's quality quite a bit.
Speaker 1But the point is a lot of the habits that make major life difference when you apply them consistently. They make the difference, life-changing difference over time, not right away. And so where a lot of people, I think, get it wrong is they expect this big, huge result, or at least some difference, right away. But a lot of things we do in life, like daily writing or working out and exercising, or going to bed on time or another habit that we're going to talk about today, you don't really see or feel a lot of difference, really see or feel a lot of difference, and even over time, sometimes we don't appreciate the long-term effects that these habits have. And you might ask well, how do we know that some of those long-term habits actually work? Well, that's where you want to be sort of on top, or at least somewhat aware of research and good quality research that stands the test of time, like, for example, the research on regularity of your sleep.
Speaker 1Time is just accumulating and piling up and there is more and more data telling us. You know, if you go to bed on time, meaning on the same time, and you wake up approximately on the same time, a lot of good things will happen and if you don't, a lot of not so good things will happen. And so this is habit number one, transformational habit number one that I've started to pay more and more attention, sometime in the past, maybe like a year or maybe a couple of years ago, where I really decided, you know, I'm going to be regular with my sleeping time and I'm not ball, meaning I go to bed around 8, 8.30 and I wake up around 4.30, between 4.15 and 5 am and 5.30 for me sleeping in. But I decided, you know, I'm going to keep my sleeping time consistent because, based on research and on data and what neuroscientists tell us, our body synchronizes everything, like all the processes, based on just a couple of things your sleeping time when you go to bed, when you wake up, your eating time, when you consume nutrition and also light Things like or exercise as well helps with that. But light is the next one when you see sunlight or artificial bright light and when you don't see it.
Speaker 1But sleeping and eating, those are two foundational behaviors which your brain tracks and uses as a timer to align all the processes in your body. Because, if you think about that, your recovery, your sleep time is one of the core things that defines your thriving, your ability to think clearly, to take actions, your ability to recover, your ability to even digest food. And, in the research, what researchers tell us is people who have regular sleeping time reportedly well meaning. They report that they've been having regular sleeping time for that many years. Their lifespan is longer, they have less other problems related to chronic diseases, and significantly so. And so what they also started to notice is one of the main predictors of how long you're going to live in good health is actually regular sleeping time.
Speaker 1And again, that is understandable, because I don't know if you are aware of this fact, but again, your brain uses your sleeping time as one of the ways to synchronize all of the processes your hormones, your digestion, your different blood markers, how your body regulates things like insulin release to metabolize sugars and other fuels and to adjust your body temperature, and also do things like release melatonin and other substances in your brain. So you sleep on time, your sleep quality is great and you wake up on time and you're alert and focused and motivated and driven to take action. And then so you could digest your food and absorb nutrients well and you have energy levels matching your day, when you have more energy throughout the day, especially in the first part, and then you will naturally slow down towards the sleeping time. So all of that is synchronized and optimized, and even your sleep experience, like the depths of your sleep, the quality of your other sleeping cycles, like rapid eye movement sleep cycle, which is crucial for maintaining good mental health, for regulating your emotions, for memory, for learning, in order for you to have great sleep experience and go through all of these stages and go through them optimally and maximize the benefits of each of them, right. For example, if you exercise and you want to recover well, the benefits of each of them, right. For example, if you exercise and you want to recover well. Sleeping on time ensures that your body releases certain substances and hormones, like gross hormone, so you can recover better and then better results in your fitness as well. Also, your hormones that regulate your appetite, like ghrelin and leptin, and how your body burns fat or other fuels, or how your body adjusts your immune system. That also depends on the consistency of your sleep and wake time and they have a term social jet lag, when over the weekend, that when you over the weekend, you go to bed later, two, three hours later, and then it's going to take you about two to three hours for the body to synchronize you back. That's if you go to bed then on regular times during the week and if your sleep time is all the time two to three hours back and forth, then you never really get into synchrony, so you aren't tapping into your best health.
Speaker 1And one more thing you know, when people have consistently, predictably, when we as society have more heart attacks, more incidents, just a lot of bad stuff happening consistently on the same day, it's when we adjust our time. You know, in some countries they do this that put the clock forward or backward, and when the clock is moved forward and people get one hour less of sleep, that's when we get more heart attacks and more accidents and all of that stuff happening. That's how powerful that is for our health. Can you imagine that? It should tell you something that is not a coincidence and it's consistent and that just shows how much we are affected by the time of our sleep, by consistency of that time. And so one of the best habits that happened to me, or I decided to develop and really commit to that, is consistent sleep time and again I'm an oddball.
Speaker 1I go to bed at 8 and wake up at 4, 4-ish and, yes, I do miss a lot of things at night. But you know, I realized after a while I don't miss all of these things all that much. They don't really contribute to a lot of quality of my life. Like for you it might be different. So choose different sleep time. Choose the time that works for you, but do it consistently. That's what I also tell my clients. You don't have to wake up and go to bed when I do that, but you have to pick one which you can commit to, because it is important for the quality of your life and your health and your fitness. And if you have the possibility to adjust your sleeping time, obviously, if you're a parent, it's kind of like all screwed up, what can you do? But when you have the time and flexibility to have a regular sleep time, it's going to change your life, just like brushing your teeth.
Speaker 1The second habit that made a major difference in my life is breathwork, consistent breathwork, doing breathwork in the morning, throughout the day, before going to bed, each session of my coaching, whether that's executive coaching or health coaching or anything in between. So in 2025, I decided to commit to starting each of the coaching sessions with my clients with breathing. Well, for the coaching sessions. It does many things. Number one it helps my clients to transition from what they were doing to the thing that we are about to do. Very often they would come to our coaching calls from another meeting and they're like in the middle. You know their brain. Researchers say that it takes time for our brain to switch from one activity to the other and if you have no sort of transition thing that separates one activity from the other Half of the next hour you're still kind of in that old thinking and a lot of thoughts get into the session. But also it allows the clients to get present for here and now and be more open to change, be more open to reconsider their old patterns and learn and improve and think differently. It also switches your nervous system from fight and flight and go, go, go, where you're actually not that receptive to change. Number one the breathwork allows you to switch your nervous system into rest, digest, learn, open up, feel safe. But it also saves energy.
Speaker 1Parasympathetic mode, or rest and digest, is where I always bring up this visual to my clients. Imagine if you're in a car and you push gas pedal and your engine is ramp up and everything, just you use the fuel and energy and everything, so much more of it than if you take your foot off the gas pedal and you allow it to just stand still. So this is kind of what happens. When you switch your nervous system through breath work into rest and digest, you use less energy and that means that your energy lasts longer and that means that you have less fatigue and that means you have more motivation, more energy to stick with your hard choices and hard habits and to also spend quality time not in front of Netflix but actually doing something with your friends or your family. Because you have the energy, you can reinvest it into living more richer life experience and also you learn better. When you have more energy and the beginning of next day you don't feel that fatigue that just carries over through days.
Speaker 1So all of that happens when you do breath work throughout your day and do the switch from fight or flight into rest and digest more often. You take your food off the gas paddle more often. That switches you into the echo mode where the energy you produce, you use it more economically and that allows you to be more effective with it and to get more out of life without you really doing anything on top of that. And breath work is easy. You don't need to sit on a meditation cushion or get to a place. You can just be literally at work in your chair and you lean back, close your eyes and take three deep breaths. In fact, let's do it right now. So if you're not driving, if you're driving and you can stop, I recommend you doing that. But if you're not driving, just stop and four counts in Eight counts out, four counts in Eight counts out, and you're going to be in a completely different state. And also, doing that after your workout will switch your nervous system into rest digest and you'll recover faster and you get after it again sooner and better and you get more gains from the work you put in. Breathwork is so magical.
Speaker 1So these are two core habits that are changing my life as we speak. How are they changing my life? Well, because I have consistent sleep time, I'm a lot more regular with all of my other habits. This consistency creates consistency of my morning routine, of my work routine, of my focus, of my productivity. That builds up my discipline that I said I'm going to go to bed on the time and I do go to bed on the time. That also synchronizes all of my sleep cycles, one of which is rapid eye movement sleep cycle, where your brain consolidates learning, where you learn better, where your brain takes care of your mental health, of your emotional regulation, so things don't bother you that much and you actually work through the patterns that don't work in your life, or remember the patterns that do work in your life and you don't take things personally and you become a lot balanced person. You make better decisions for long term. How would that change your life? It is life changing.
Speaker 1You are also triggered by so few things. Just that will add years to your life and points to the quality of your life. You just don't care. You're like well, that person got mad, let them be mad. That allows you to be more lighthearted and more open-minded and then breathing Well.
Speaker 1I love having more energy for the things that matter. And then also I love being more present, and also I love being more open-minded to learn and to accept feedback and to get better, and I like to be more present for other people who can teach me or who I can connect with, and I love again to have more energy and I'm not that fatigued or tired at the end of the day, even though my days are full with learning and work and all the stuff that life throws at you. You know, curveballs and whatnot. And also I forgot when I really got sick, because probably to a huge extent to these two habits. Because also, when you do the breath work, when you're more interested in digest, your immune system works better and because of that, whatever pathogens are around, your immune system can deal with that and you get sick and you're more in your 100% zone. And what could you do with that? These two habits are transformational and that's why I do them at the beginning of our coaching sessions with clients.
Speaker 1When I do workshops, we also start with breath work. I actually need to do a better job on that one. So we do every workshop, every meeting. I would start exactly like that. Don't you need alignment with people? Don't you need people to be present? Don't you need people to be on their best foot? Don't you want people to learn and accept the differences and take perspectives of other people? Breathwork does all of that as well. It's a leadership tool as well.
Speaker 1And sleeping on a regular time. In terms of the benefits for your biology. That then changes your psychology and mindset and basically changes everything else in your life. The effects of regular sleep just undeniable. If you're also having troubles with I don't know, your digestion or your gut health, probably regular sleep time has a lot to do with that, because it also has a lot to do with all of your other habits, from eating to exercise to your willpower for doing the hard stuff your willpower for doing the hard stuff. So my ode to sleeping on time on the same time and doing breath work every single day it is life transformational, just like brushing your teeth, I'd say even better. So if you could commit to only two habits in 2025, I highly recommend considering breathing and sleeping on time.
Speaker 1If you have questions about anything you heard on this podcast, please do reach out Angela at brainbreakthroughcoachcom. If you believe someone in your network needs to hear that, someone you care about, please do share this podcast episode with them so their life gets exponentially better and better and better. And till next time and our conversation with bio-inspirationist Jeff Karp on Monday on this podcast, till next time, sleep on time, breathe and be your absolute best, because you are freaking amazing and this life deserves the best of you and you deserve the best in this life. Talk to you soon, stay tuned for our conversation with Jeff Karp and have an amazing day, amazing weekend, and we'll talk very soon.