Latest / Motivation study / This morning routine will change your life (science based)

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This morning routine will change your life (science based) · Motivation study

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Dopamine is this incredibly powerful molecule that allows us to
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  Speaker 1: buffer the effort process. It allows us to be in
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  Speaker 1: effort longer, and it allows us to actually eventually enjoy
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  Speaker 1: the process of effort.
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  Speaker 2: And not think about the reward, but just say, oh,
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  Speaker 2: I'm enjoying the process. Well, you just described the first step.
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  Speaker 1: The first step in learning to attach dopamine to the
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  Speaker 1: effort process, which is the key operation in order to succeed,
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  Speaker 1: is to.
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  Speaker 2: Be very careful.
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  Speaker 1: About how much you focus on the end goal. So
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  Speaker 1: if you're having a hard time controlling your thoughts, your
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  Speaker 1: feelings and emotions, you're feeling triggered, you're feeling like everything's
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  Speaker 1: bearing down on you, do something to shift your physiology
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  Speaker 1: so that you can approach that challenge from a different stance.
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  Speaker 3: If you were to instruct someone to do the worst
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  Speaker 3: possible things in the morning to set their day up
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  Speaker 3: for failure, what would they be?
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  Speaker 1: Staying in bed, curtains drawn, passively scrolling on social media.
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  Speaker 1: They're drinking coffee too early in the day. They aren't
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  Speaker 1: getting into any kind of movement. Sort of making a
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  Speaker 1: cup of coffee while texting.
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  Speaker 3: And they're not being deliberate or intentional with the things
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  Speaker 3: that they're doing. They're just allowing the morning to kind
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  Speaker 3: of come and take them wherever the wind blows.
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  Speaker 1: That's right. And I have to say, even though I
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  Speaker 1: describe my morning routine accurately, if I were to really
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  Speaker 1: optimize it, I wouldn't.
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  Speaker 3: What does your morning routine look like at the moment?
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  Speaker 1: Morning routine is, and I have to be careful here
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  Speaker 1: because whenever I've described my routine in a little bit
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  Speaker 1: of detail, people always say, I can't believe you don't
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  Speaker 1: go to the bathroom. And it's like, well, of course I,
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  Speaker 1: so I want to be my pants.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly.
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  Speaker 1: Right foot, left foot. So I want to be clear. I,
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  Speaker 1: I take care of my basic functions. Um, but when
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  Speaker 1: I wake up, I make a beeline for sunlight. Uh,
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  Speaker 1: so I'm going to get sunlight in my eyes for the,
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  Speaker 1: you know, I'll probably go into the grave saying this.
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  Speaker 1: So forgive me if people have heard me say this before, but,
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  Speaker 1: The single best thing you can do for your sleep,
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  Speaker 1: your energy, your mood, your wakefulness, your metabolism is to
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  Speaker 1: get natural light in your eyes early in the day.
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  Speaker 1: Don't wear sunglasses to do it takes about 10 minutes
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  Speaker 1: or so. Um, if you live in a cloudy area,
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  Speaker 1: if you're in the UK in the winter, yes, or
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  Speaker 1: the summer, or the summer, maybe you resort to some
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  Speaker 1: artificial light as a replacement, but as much as one
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  Speaker 1: can get bright, natural, and if not natural artificial light
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  Speaker 1: in your eyes early in the day, Without sunglasses, contacts
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  Speaker 1: and eyeglasses are fine. Don't try and do it through
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  Speaker 1: a window or windshield. It's going to take far too long.
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  Speaker 1: This sets in motion a huge number of different neurobiological
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  Speaker 1: and hormonal cascades that are good for you, reduces stress
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  Speaker 1: late at night, offsets cortisol, a million different things really
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  Speaker 1: that are good for you. So I get that. So
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  Speaker 1: then I come back inside and then I do not
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  Speaker 1: drink caffeine right away. It's important in many ways to
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  Speaker 1: delay caffeine Enough so that you can clear out some
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  Speaker 1: of the chemical signals in the brain and body that
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  Speaker 1: lead to a feeling of fatigue.
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  Speaker 2: So the longer you're awake, the.
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  Speaker 1: More a molecule called adenosine builds up in your system.
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  Speaker 1: And when you sleep, you push that adenosine level back down.
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  Speaker 1: When you wake up in the morning, that adenosine level
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  Speaker 1: can be zero, but oftentimes there's still some hanging around.
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  Speaker 1: Caffeine is an adenosine antagonist. It blocks adenosine function. It's
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  Speaker 1: a little more complicated than that, but that's effectively what
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  Speaker 1: it does. So if you wake up and you've got
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  Speaker 1: 20% of your adenosine has still hasn't been cleared out,
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  Speaker 1: that's sort of a drowsiness that you woke up with.
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  Speaker 2: Then you go and you drink your.
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  Speaker 1: Coffee and you crush that, that, uh, ability of adenosine
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  Speaker 1: to have that effect, but it hasn't gone away. So
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  Speaker 1: that when your coffee wears off mid morning, now that
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  Speaker 1: adenosine is there and you feel like there's a mid
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  Speaker 1: morning crash or an afternoon crash. So I delay my
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  Speaker 1: caffeine intake for about 90 and ideally 120 minutes after
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  Speaker 1: I wake up. Because in that way, you bring your
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  Speaker 1: adenosine level down very, very low to zero. And then
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  Speaker 1: you don't get this rebound crash in the afternoon. For years,
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  Speaker 1: I would get this post-lunch crash. And I thought, maybe
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  Speaker 1: I'm eating too much for lunch, which I probably was.
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  Speaker 1: Or maybe I'm eating the wrong foods. Turned out it
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  Speaker 1: was all related to my timing of caffeine. And your
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  Speaker 1: system learns how to wake up naturally.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: You get the natural cortisol and adrenaline.
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  Speaker 2: Give it the time. Give it the time.
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  Speaker 1: And people hate this one because it's a little painful
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  Speaker 1: for the caffeine addicts. But I'm a pretty serious caffeine
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  Speaker 1: addict and I embrace that. And I'll tell you, it
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  Speaker 1: also makes the joy of the coffee so much greater.
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  Speaker 2: Like waiting for that. You're savoring it like, oh, my
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  Speaker 2: first sip. It tastes so much better.
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  Speaker 1: And that relates to the dopamine system, which I know
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  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about later. Yes.
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  Speaker 3: Just how triggering are our phones when it comes to dopamine?
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  Speaker 1: Okay, great question. We often hear that social media is
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  Speaker 1: getting dopamine hit after dopamine hit. When we first get
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  Speaker 1: on social media for the first time or after a
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  Speaker 1: long period of time, the amount of dopamine that's released
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  Speaker 1: we think is quite substantial. It's novel. Remember, dopamine is
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  Speaker 1: about novelty, surprise, and the sense that we are on
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  Speaker 1: some exciting track. That's what dopamine is really about. It
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  Speaker 1: puts us into states of readiness, anticipation, looking, seeking, et cetera,
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  Speaker 1: almost always for things outside the confines of our skin.
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  Speaker 1: One of the key takeaways from that book dopamine nation
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  Speaker 1: that I've incorporated in my own life is that there
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  Speaker 1: are certain activities like cold water that create long lasting
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  Speaker 1: arcs of dopamine. Those can be very useful for putting
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  Speaker 1: us into long lasting motivational states. These are not big
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  Speaker 1: peaks and troughs. These are the pain of the cold water.
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  Speaker 1: followed by this long, long arc of dopamine. Wonderful. It's
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  Speaker 1: kind of an antidepressant, positive motivator, natural stimulus. I always say,
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  Speaker 1: if you don't have access to an ice bath, cold showers, yes,
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  Speaker 1: will work. If you have a shower that doesn't get
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  Speaker 1: cold enough, keep in mind that the original study showing
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  Speaker 1: this dopamine increase had people get into 60 degree water,
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  Speaker 1: which is not that cold for 45 minutes to an hour.
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  Speaker 1: So your water bill might go up, but you could
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  Speaker 1: just draw a kind of cool bath and get in
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  Speaker 1: that up to the neck. So, cause I realized there
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  Speaker 1: are sometimes some cost barriers to people. They, not everyone
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  Speaker 1: has an ice bath. And I have to say, even
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  Speaker 1: though I described my routine, accurate, my morning routine accurately,
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  Speaker 1: if I were to really optimize it and I I've
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  Speaker 1: done this from time to time, I would get up,
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  Speaker 1: I would hydrate and I would immediately exercise. I would
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  Speaker 1: use that early, you know, peaking of the cortisol response
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  Speaker 1: that comes with waking to get the body into action.
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  Speaker 1: Sort of Jocko Willink style, right? The 430. I always
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  Speaker 1: see his posts, but I see them at 7 a.m. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Let's say somebody really wants to take on a fitness routine.
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  Speaker 1: They hate running or they want to lose weight in a,
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  Speaker 1: in a healthy way, this kind of thing. So we've
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  Speaker 1: all heard the example, well, you put your shoes by
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  Speaker 1: the door on day one. Day two, you put them on.
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  Speaker 1: Day three, you go out the door. Day four, you
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  Speaker 1: walk around the block and then, you know, and then
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  Speaker 1: eventually like they're running marathons.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, great.
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  Speaker 1: But to sustain that behavior or even to make the
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  Speaker 1: behavior pleasurable and to give you energy, the key is
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  Speaker 1: to subjectively reward those steps. So it's not going to be,
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  Speaker 1: let's say I go out and I run a mile.
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  Speaker 1: And my goal is to run 10 miles in a
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  Speaker 1: few weeks. The key is as you're in the strain
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  Speaker 1: of that mile, the hard part, you want to tell yourself,
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  Speaker 1: this is the good part.
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  Speaker 2: This is the part that gives me energy.
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  Speaker 1: And I'll be very surprised if people don't actually feel
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  Speaker 1: like they could continue further. So it's a journey of
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  Speaker 1: a thousand miles starts with single is made up of,
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  Speaker 1: you know, single steps. But the key is to reward
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  Speaker 1: the harder steps, not the easier ones and not the
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  Speaker 1: ones where you get the thing that you want.
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  Speaker 2: Don't reward yourself for putting your shoes on and taking
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  Speaker 2: a step outside. You could, if that was a huge
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  Speaker 2: barrier for you, it was very hard. It was very
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  Speaker 2: hard for you running to 10 miles. That's hard.
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  Speaker 1: Find the wall and push a little bit further through
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  Speaker 1: that wall and reward that process. These are the, this
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  Speaker 1: is the hard part because that's when adrenaline, norepinephrine are
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  Speaker 1: getting maxed out. And that's when you have an opportunity
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  Speaker 1: to bring dopamine in and teach those neural pathways to
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  Speaker 1: slam that back down. The other element that's really important
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  Speaker 1: to plasticity is this deep rest phase. And it's associated
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  Speaker 1: with the release of the molecule neuromodulator serotonin. Serotonin is
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  Speaker 1: a reward molecule, just like dopamine, except that it's released
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  Speaker 1: in the brain. in response to the subjective experience that
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  Speaker 1: we have enough resources. So when we eat a big
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  Speaker 1: meal or we enjoy even better, when we enjoy a
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  Speaker 1: meal with friends or family, and it just feels like
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  Speaker 1: one of those incredible evenings, you know, you're reset. It's
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  Speaker 1: that feeling of being reset as an antidepressant effect. When
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  Speaker 1: we are, um, when you hold, you know, if you
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  Speaker 1: hold your child or a partner that you love or
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  Speaker 1: your dog, there's this feeling of having enough. And so
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  Speaker 1: whereas dopamine is really the molecule that makes us look
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  Speaker 1: at things outside the boundaries of our skin, like to
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  Speaker 1: be in pursuit of things. It really is the pursuit
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  Speaker 1: motivation molecule. Serotonin is really about feeling like we have
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  Speaker 1: enough in our immediate environment. And it's so powerful because
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  Speaker 1: unless that serotonin box is checked off periodically, we cannot
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  Speaker 1: lean back into the dopamine outward pursuit process for very long.
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  Speaker 2: So we need serotonin. Absolutely to feel more what complete
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  Speaker 2: whole safe safe.
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  Speaker 1: You need to balance serotonin and dopamine maybe across the
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  Speaker 1: day maybe across the week, you know, I think in
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  Speaker 1: religious practices All religions really there's a kind of Sabbath.
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  Speaker 1: There's a rest period, you know for many many or
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  Speaker 1: I think all of them um, that makes sense because
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  Speaker 1: there needs to be a renewal.