[00:00] Welcome back to the Focus B show. This is Katie Sudddhart here aka the focus b. And on this show, I interview high performers and leaders around the world to discover their secrets on peak performance, productivity, mindfulness, and leadership.

[00:21] So if you want to take your.

[00:22] Performance and your leadership to the next level, then you're in the right place. Listen up and connect with the magic.

[00:41] I'm really excited to announce that in the upcoming weeks, I am launching my new program to help you to optimize your time and your energy to reach the results and impact you want in your business and in your life. If you want to find out more about my new program, check out thefocusbeat.com program. We're starting off the new series on energy, and there's so many different aspects to energy. I can't wait to dive into it. The first episode of this series is on physical energy. This is probably what you think of when you think that you want to have more energy, when you want to feel more energized in the morning, or during the week, or in the evenings, after work. Often we think about our physical energy. And an acronym I like to use, that I created to help us to remember what are the different aspects of physical energy or that you can use to boost your physical energy is the anachronym nest nest. And I think of these four as pillars of our physical energy. N stands for nutrition, e for exercise, S for sleep, and T for timeout. Let's look at each one in detail, starting with N for nutrition. Now, you already know that eating healthy is good for you and eating junk food isn't. So, so far, we already all know all of this, but I think sometimes you might underestimate the importance of it and what actually happens on a physical and biological level. When you eat, for instance, let's say, cookie or sugar or any form of sweet food or pizza, all of these things, not only, of course, do they impact your energy, as in your body needs more energy to digest these food and break them down, but they also release cortisol. So sugar, for instance, releases cortisol in your body, which is stress, as you know, the stress hormone. And I remember when I interviewed Mark Metri on the show, and you can check out the episode of this show with Mark Metri and he used to struggle with mental health issues. This is why he's now a mental health advocate. And he said that for him, one of his biggest breakthroughs was when he realized the impact the food had and that just by changing what he ate, he suddenly started to feel differently. This is tremendously powerful. It not just comes down to gaining or losing weight, which is what a lot of people think of in terms of nutrition. But it's so much more and so linked to our mental health and our abilities to deal with stress. So instead of giving you a lecture, which I'm not particularly interested in doing, on nutrition and what to eat and not to eat and all the rest, there's plenty of information out there. I'd invite you instead to just start to notice. When you eat certain food, how do you feel afterwards? Which foods do you have a food coma afterwards? Which ones you start to feel stress afterwards, which ones enable you to have a good night's sleep or not? And just start to notice because we're all different. And though there's certain foods that are bad for everyone and certain foods that are good for everyone, there's still some variation there. So this is one of the fundamental pillars of physical energy and that's our nutrition, which is exactly what you put in your body, and that also includes beverages such as alcohol or tea and coffee and all of these things, and start to notice what works well for you and adapt to what actually makes you feel good. The second pillar is exercise. Again, I'm not here to lecture you on the importance of exercise, but I would like to mention that there is a misconception when we might think that just doing one big thing of exercise in the morning is good enough and then we can sit the rest of the day. Although it's good, obviously, to do one big workout in the morning or in the afternoon or evening, it's even more important to keep your body constantly moving throughout the day. For instance, remembering to get up every hour from your chair, maybe do a quick walk around the office, or do a few push ups, or go on a quick walk at lunchtime. I think more than over focusing on how much you're exercising and how many workouts you're doing a day or a week. That's important. And please continue to do that or start putting it in place, but also start to notice what small movement can you do during the day. Maybe you can go from sitting to standing. I'm now recording this podcast on my standing desk, for instance, and then going for a brief walk, or like I said, doing push ups or jumping jacks. Yes, I do this sometimes in my office and it really doesn't take much. I'm talking a couple of minutes, one, two minutes, and it just gets your body moving again, feeling good, a few squats. And this is what's important because your body constantly wants to move and this is what makes you feel good. And this also makes your energy go up. And if you can fit in a long walk or hike or some form of long outdoor exercise during the weekend, that's a bonus. Over the last few months, I've been doing every single week either a hike on a Sunday or a long bike ride. And it really is the best way to finish on a Sunday and get a great night's, sleep Sunday evening and start the day Monday feeling super energized. Moving on to the third pillar of sleep.

[06:44] So much to say on sleep.

[06:46] Again, I've had an episode with a sleep expert. So if you look in the previous episodes I've done, I have interviewed a sleep expert on techniques, on how to sleep better and all the rest. I think it's just one of those things that is constantly underestimated and people don't prioritize enough. So if you identify yourself in this group, start to a realize the correlation between your energy performance and your sleep. Again, the more you notice the correlation, the easier it'll be for you to adapt and then start to see, okay, what can you shift? Is it about going to bed earlier and turning off tech before you go to sleep? Or having an energizing morning routine? Or keeping the same times during the whole week? Just start to put a little plan in place to optimize your sleep. And Matthew Walker did a great Ted Talk on this and obviously his book is called Sleep and he has a lot of information on this topic, but it's just so important because it helps you to manage your emotions. Again, coming back to stress levels, diminishes stress, better relationships, performance, and you just feel better. Let's face it, when you've had a good night's sleep, you feel like a different person. So if you can start putting a plan in place, and if you're one of these people who struggles maybe either with insomnia or waking up during the night or any of these things, then it's again a matter of looking, okay, what needs to shift? Is it your nutrition? Is it because you drink alcohol in the evening? Is it because you're preoccupied and there's some things you haven't processed? Could a meditation help you? Can you use breathing techniques? I mean, there are ways to work on this. So it's a matter of prioritizing it and putting in place the different action steps, whether it's seeing a sleep specialist or hypnotherapist or someone to help you with this, because once more, it does have a huge impact. The last pillar of Nest is T for time out. In today's world, we're constantly switched on. We use far too much the sympathetic nervous system, which is the action one, versus the parasympathetic nervous system, which is rest and digest. And so having time out is a bit, like I said earlier, fitting in some mini breaks where you exercise well. It's also fitting in some mini breaks during the day where you take a bit of time out. Can just be sitting for two, three minutes with your eyes closed before an important call or after you've had a meeting or a call, ensuring you take a couple of minutes to write down a few thoughts and make your mind go clear. What I've noticed in both myself and the clients I work with is this tendency to hop from one topic to the next and from one task to the next without taking a break. And we really need these transitions to have mental clarity, to be able to process the amount of information we're giving throughout the day. So timeout is an absolute must. And one pillar that isn't in the nest, but I'd like to add, because I'm very passionate about it, is cold showers. I did a whole episode on this, but talking about physical energy, I feel it's essential to mention just having a literally one or two minute cold shower in the morning does marvels for your physical energy. I literally feel I can't stop my day with that one. When I skip it, I feel sluggish for a couple of hours. And this is in spite of exercise routine or of meditating or all the other things I do in the morning. So if you're looking to boost your physical energy, maybe just even splashing your face with cold water helps. But if you can have a full cold shower or go and do a skinny dip in the lake or the sea, this can really wake you up and give you that extra energy boost. It really does improve your focus and clarity and energy. So this is all in terms of physical energy. And as I mentioned, it really comes down to you observing and paying attention to nest, to looking. How is your nutrition? How can you improve it? How is your exercise? What can you tweak and your sleep? What can you put in place? And are you taking enough time out? And every day reviewing. And it's not a question of being angry or upset or guilty because you ate a cake, fine. Just observe. Observe how that made you feel and put a plan in place to reduce that or change it if that's something you want to do. Constantly reviewing these will help you to see how you can optimize your physical energy. And this is absolutely massive in terms of your performance. I hope you've enjoyed today's episode. I'd really appreciate it if you leave a review. It gives me the motivation and energy to continue my podcast to do these episodes and also it helps other people to find it and that might be just what they need to hear today. Thank you for tuning in. Wishing you a great day.

[12:05] Thank you so much for tuning in today to the Focus Be Show. I would absolutely love to hear your feedback, so let me know in an Apple review or YouTube comment what was most valuable for you. And feel free to share this episode.

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[12:24] Wishing you a wonderful, magical and focused day ahead.