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37 - 3 Simple Habits That Build Masculine Containment · Masculine Containment

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Sometimes it's the simplest practices, the simplest things in our life or the basic things that have the biggest effect on our lives.
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And that's what I want to talk about today.
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I'm recording this podcast for a few reasons.
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One, I want to share the most important practices that I have and give you some background on them.
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Two, I have a lot of men coming to me who are asking, where do I start when it comes to containment?
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Where do I start when it comes to fixing my relationship, to making things better?
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And I want to be able to point them to this podcast.
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And three, really for reinforcement for myself, because I've been a biohacker since before Dave Asprey created the word.
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And if everything went away tomorrow, these are what I would stick with.
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This is where I would continue to practice.
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So I'm doing things a little bit different today.
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I've been inside a lot this week.
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There's been a lot going on in my life, in my family, and I just didn't want to be in the office today.
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So I grabbed my portable microphone and came out here to my backyard, which I'll give you a little view here.
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It's kind of awesome.
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Katie and I set this up so it would feel like a resort and it really does.
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And so I'm in my backyard resort today to record this podcast that I think some are going to overlook and some are going to think like this is too basic.
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It's too easy.
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But here's where this comes from.
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You know, when I say I've been a biohacker for since before the word was created, I have spent my life, literally my life looking for optimization and more energy.
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And how do I get more done?
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And how do I do more with less?
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And how do I become more?
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How do I do better?
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It's just it's been an obsession of mine.
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It's how I'm wired.
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It's something that's never gone away.
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And Katie and I here in our home, we have built like literally an entire rehab center, an entire like physical therapy center.
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I mean, if I go in order of just thinking what's in our basement, we have an infrared sauna, we have red light, we have a treadmill, we have a full gym, we have a tonal, the electronic gym machine, we have direct current electricity in the form of a newbie, we have two commercial PMF machines.
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Yeah.
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We have one of those meditation mats that includes PMF and light stimulation.
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We've literally spent, and like, that's just what we own.
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And I have done so much to optimize.
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I've worked with functional medicine doctors.
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I've gone all over the place for treatment.
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I've done stem cells.
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You know, I've worked with psychedelics.
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I've done so much.
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And-
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spent far too much money on this stuff.
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Maybe not too much, but an extraordinary amount.
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We have means and one of my hobbies is optimization, so that's where I've spent a ton of money.
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And if everything was taken away tomorrow, I would come back to these three practices.
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And when I think about my coaching career and how much time I've spent with other people, helping them optimize and run bigger businesses and have a bigger impact in the world, these three things really have just a massive impact.
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And over and over again, I've seen how these have changed people's lives.
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And to give you a preview of what I'm going to talk about, I want to talk about water and hydration.
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going on a walk, and I know this sounds crazy, but I'm going to give you the science behind it, and spending time in neutral.
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I'm going to start with water and hydration.
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The origin of my obsession with water goes back 20 years to my honeymoon.
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And I know that sounds kind of nuts, but it really has been 20 years of obsession.
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I've done so much research around water and hydration and what it does for the body.
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And 20 years ago, Katie and I were in Sedona for our honeymoons,
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And there was a lecturer who was talking about a book of the magic behind water.
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And in the book, they took water crystals or sorry, they took water and put labels on the outside of bottles.
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Some that were positive, like they said, love, compassion, empathy.
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Some that were negative, they said hate, frustration and anger and love.
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They froze the water and it made like the positive words made perfect crystals when they froze the water and the negative words made unformed crystals.
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And it started this obsession for me around water.
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And I know that sounds kind of crazy, but I'm going to get to the point.
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So in my research around water and why I think this is so important, not just for men, but for every human being, is that for us to be in a place of presence and to regulate ourselves and to have our full capacity available, all of our energy available, we have to be fully hydrated.
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Hydration is such a life-changing habit.
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If you are...
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In a place where, you know, I hear, I've heard this for years.
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I wrote a program called the 10 Day Natural Thirst Challenge and we've had over 10,000 people take it.
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I've gotten a ton of feedback around it.
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You can go check it out.
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It's a little old, but probably needs updating.
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It's at getthirstynow.com.
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And here's some of the feedback that I've gotten around water.
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You know, I don't like the taste of water.
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I don't like drinking water.
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I'd rather drink Diet Coke.
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You know, I don't feel thirsty during the day.
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And any of those things feel like a preference.
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But what I've found is that they are actually a symptom.
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Because water is drinking.
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Hydration is actually a survival mechanism.
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And.
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If you look at the human body, there's very few things we can go without like water.
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So if you think about the thing that we need the most to keep this body running, to keep ourselves optimized, I think I just bumped the microphone.
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Hopefully you didn't hear it.
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If we want to keep the body optimized, the first thing we need to do is breathe.
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Like if I was choking someone, their body would need air really, really fast.
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But when you look at other than air, the next thing that we need to keep our body optimized is water.
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So if you don't have oxygen, you're going to have a hard time.
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If you don't have water, if you're dehydrated, that's the next thing that's going to get you.
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You can go for a long time without food or sunlight or human contact or all kinds of other things and survive.
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But water is the second most important thing that we do as human beings.
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It's first breathing and oxygenation, then hydration and water, then nutrition, then movement.
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water is crucially important.
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And I did a ton of research around water, obsessive research, probably diving way too deep around this.
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But here's what I believe about water is that when we are hydrated, it actually helps us connect mind and body.
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And when we connect our mind to our body, when we're not living in our head, when we feel our body, when we understand what's going on in our body, this body that we have is this extraordinary navigation tool for the world.
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You know, when people say trust your gut, what they're really saying is trust your body.
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When somebody asks me a big decision that they have, oftentimes, especially as a coach, people would say, I have this big decision, Alex, what do you think?
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And I would say, what does your body tell you?
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And if they hadn't worked with me for that long or if they were new to my work, they would say, I don't know what you mean.
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And here's why I think so many human beings, when they're asked, like, what does your body tell you?
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Or when we hear trust your gut, which, by the way, before I figured this out, somebody would say trust your gut, and I'd just go straight into logic.
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I'd get up in my head.
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So you're not alone if that's what you do.
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I was there.
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But now...
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What I know is that so many of us don't trust our body, don't trust our gut because we're disconnected, we're disassociated.
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And like I said, other than oxygen, the thing that's going to disassociate you from your body the fastest is water.
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Water.
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Here's the cascade of things that happen when we get dehydrated.
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It's pretty intense.
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So when you look at the body, the thing that the part of the body that uses the most water is actually your brain.
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There's more water exchange, more water usage in your brain, just like calories.
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The brain is it uses more calories than anything else.
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But it also uses water and it uses water to function correctly and to actually connect mind and body.
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And so when we get dehydrated, the first thing that goes offline is our brain.
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Like we don't have our full capacity of our brain that thinks for us and reasons for us.
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And, you know, we try and use logic when we are using our body, when we're not trusting our body.
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There's a little bit of wind blowing my notes around.
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Yeah.
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When we're not trusting our body, we try and use logic, but we're often using logic in our brain at reduced capacity because we are dehydrated.
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And when you look at the cascade of things that happens, dehydration does so much.
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If we're dehydrated, it actually slows down our digestive system.
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I think so many people who have digestive issues or what we call autoimmune disease might just be dehydrated.
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And it doesn't just slow down our digestion.
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If you think about what happens when we disconnect mind and body, I mean, that can cause things like ADD or depression or depression.
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feelings of anxiety, feelings of not being safe, not being okay, because we're actually not in a place where we are allowing our body to survive.
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And when we drink water, we are invoking survival.
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We're actually saying, Hey, I want to survive.
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I want to survive.
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And when we have created a preference, what looks like a preference, actually a symptom that we don't want water.
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I think we're actually in a place where we've been in fight or flight for so long.
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We're fighting natural survival mechanisms.
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And here's my theory.
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It's my theory.
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You may have heard parts of it somewhere else, but I put this together two decades ago, is that for us as humans, thirst is a very subtle instinct.
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It's a survival instinct, but it's very subtle because if we go back thousands of years...
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if we were thirsty and there was water present, we would drink it because we, and if we felt thirst, we would probably feel a little bit of a panic because if we go back thousands of years, there was probably times where there wasn't water available.
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And there was probably times where we went for a stretch without water.
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And so if water was available, we would drink it.
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So my theory on the body is that when it says I'm thirsty, it is a subtle instinct.
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It's not like choking, like oxygen.
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Oxygen is not a subtle instinct.
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It's like, I need oxygen right now.
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But I think the body sends us a signal and says, hey, you need water and we can easily detune it.
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In fact, one of the things that I know I did forever and I know my clients did forever and I've talked to people about this is sometimes I would get up in the morning and I was one of those hard charging, charging entrepreneurs.
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It's like everything all once and right away.
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I'm going to strap myself to my desk.
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I'm going to get everything done.
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I'm going to do everything all right now.
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And what would happen is I'd sometimes look up and at the end of the day, I hadn't had any water.
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I might have had a few cups of coffee or a soft drink.
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I used to drink a lot of Diet Coke, but I wouldn't have had any water.
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And before I became aware of this, I'm pretty sure that I lived for days without drinking water.
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I just drank whatever was there and I was probably in a constant, not probably, I was most definitely in a state of constant dehydration and chronic dehydration.
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And what we now know, like there has been studies that show that chronic dehydration starts, like I said, all types of things in the body start breaking down.
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Your ability to digest food, your ability to breathe and actually take in oxygen, your lungs dry out, your body kind of goes into a fight or flight on its own.
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So like when I think of those symptoms of like anxiety and depression and panic and all the other things that happen to people,
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You know, at one point I looked at the top 20 or 30 drugs in the United States, like what are the most prescribed drugs?
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And other than birth control, when you look at all of those drugs, they could actually treat the symptoms of dehydration.
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They're treating anxiety and loss of focus and anxiety.
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Depression, like not feeling good, not feeling like you're in your body, not feeling like you're connected to something bigger than yourself or something more as important and not connected to how important you are.
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And so when I bring men into the brotherhood, the first thing we talk about is hydrating.
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The first thing we talk about is spending 10 days really focusing on drinking water.
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And here's some simple tips.
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Like if you don't want to go to getthirstynow.com, let me give you like the punchline of how you do this.
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So step number one is you always keep water with you.
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I carry this crazy water bottle because if I don't have enough water with me, I actually get water anxiety.
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And the second rule is have water with you.
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The second rule is...
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wake up every morning and hyperhydrate.
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And what that means is drink 16 ounces or more of water.
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Here's why.
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We wanna wake up your natural thirst instinct.
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When you get up in the morning, drink water.
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And I think like if you look at that evolutionarily, when we drink water in the morning, we're telling our body we're in a water-rich environment.
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And so it's triggering our thirst instinct all day.
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And the third thing is, if you think, drink.
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And here's what I mean by that.
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If you glance over at your water bottle and you think, oh, I should take a drink, but you're like, oh, I'll do it in a minute, you turn off that natural thirst instinct.
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So if you think about water, if you look at your water bottle, if you get that subtle hint, take a drink.
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And what you'll find is you'll start drinking more water.
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So I just want to review the tactics here.
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Have water.
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So first thing in the morning, I should have shared this first.
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First thing in the morning, drink 16 ounces or more of water.
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Some of the science behind this is intense.
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So if you drink 16 ounces or more of water, you actually increase your metabolism.
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So we have like this obesity epidemic and dehydration actually creates obesity.
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It puts your body in a panic and it causes your body to store toxins, store fat.
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So when you get up in the morning and you drink 16 ounces of water, it can stimulate your metabolism up to 30%, 30 to 50% depending on the research you look at.
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It actually creates metabolic activity to drink water in the morning.
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Then have water with you, and if you think, drink.
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The stories I've had of people just changing this one habit in their lives and everything else changes are crazy.
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So many people have said, I took the 10-day natural thirst challenge.
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I started drinking water.
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60 days later, I had dropped 10 pounds of body fat, or I was getting along with my kids better, or I felt like I didn't need my ADD medication,
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Or I've had chronic depression for years and it felt like the colors started changing and things were brighter.
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And I look outside and the trees looked even brighter and more green.
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And I really think this is a game-changing habit if you allow it to be.
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I know it's simple and it's free.
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It's free.
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Water doesn't cost anything pretty much anywhere you go, but it can absolutely change your life.
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Now, the second habit I want to talk about is
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one that I fought like crazy.
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Let me give you the origins of this one.
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It's going on a 20-minute walk every day, walking for 20 minutes or more without electronics, just you and your thoughts, bilateral stimulation to help you process.
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I'll tell you when I first learned about this.
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So...
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The origin story for this one's a little more involved.
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When I was a kid, about 10 years old, I was at a garage sale, and this guy was selling a box of personal development books.
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And it was Tony Robbins and the original NLP guys, Bander and Grindler and some other stuff, and then a book by Dr. Wayne Dyer.
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No, sorry, a tape set by Dr. Wayne Dyer called The Awakened Life.
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And he had a price tag of $100 on this box.
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And I remember as a kid at this garage sale, 10 years old, begging my mom to buy me that box.
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And there was no way that was going to happen.
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My family didn't have a lot of money.
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We struggled a lot with expenses, with money, with...
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having anything.
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And I got most of my stuff used when I was a kid, not most, almost all my stuff used when I was a kid.
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My mom had an amazing way of like setting an intention and we'd find what we needed at a garage sale.
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So we always had what we needed, but it was most of the time used and most of the time came from a garage sale.
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And so we're at this garage sale and I'm begging my mom to buy this box.
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And I knew there was no way we were going to spend a hundred dollars on it.
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Like our weekend budget back in the seventies or early eighties at a garage sale was probably like 10
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And by the time we were about to leave this garage sale in this guy's driveway, like a yard sale, he got up and he went and grabbed the box.
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And I remember thinking, what's happening?
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And he walked over to me and he's like, kid, you need this more than anybody I've ever met.
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If I give you this box, do you promise you'll listen to these tapes and read these books?
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And I'm like, yes, I absolutely will.
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It's like, great, it's yours.
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And he gave it to me.
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And I'm like, oh, my God, this is amazing.
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And I listened to those tapes and I read those books until I almost wore them out.
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And so I had this experience with Wayne Dyer so early in my life.
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I think the tapes were called The Awakened Life.
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And it was so intense to learn from him as a kid.
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And I was an awkward kid to begin with.
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But this made me infinitely more awkward.
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I went back to third grade and, you know, third and fourth grade.
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And my teacher's like, we're going to write an essay.
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And I'm like, what's our intention?
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And how does this connect us to source?
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And I was being sincere, but it looked like I was trying to give my teacher a hard time.
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So things got weird.
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Well, flash forward to decades later.
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Katie and I were living in Florida.
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This was probably 15, 14 years ago, something like that, where we were maybe a little bit more than that, but we were in Florida and, um,
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There was a huge hurricane and we had to get in our car and get out of the hurricane area.
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When we lived in South Florida, we lived in Lighthouse Point at the time.
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And so we had to drive up to Orlando.
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So we went up to Orlando as quickly as we possibly could and ended up getting into a hotel.
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And it was at a time where I was doing Bikram yoga every day.
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I wanted to do it every day for a year.
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So as soon as we got to Orlando, I'm like, where's the Bikram yoga studio?
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So we went to do yoga.
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Yeah.
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And if you're not familiar with Bikram, it's like you do it at 120 degrees.
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It's this really intense pattern.
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It's not very popular anymore.
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Bikram was kind of shown to be a fraud and misogynist and got kind of ugly.
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And so not as popular as it was back then.
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But I was in this yoga class.
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And afterwards, I went into the locker room and I was changing.
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And I heard this voice behind me.
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And I'm like, holy shit, I know that voice.
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It was Wayne Dyer.
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And I turned around and I'm like, you're Wayne Dyer.
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And because that was the brilliant comment that I could make, meaning one of my heroes.
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And he's like, yeah, you're Alex.
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And I'm like, what?
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How does Wayne Dyer know me?
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And he goes, yeah, you do Bikram Yoga down in Boca Raton.
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You're usually in the front row.
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I'm usually in the second row.
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But yeah, we've been working out together for a long time.
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And I'm like, what?
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what?
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Uh-huh.
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I was so shocked.
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And he's like, what are you doing here?
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So I explained why we were there.
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And he said, oh, well, you know, tomorrow I'm speaking at the convention center.
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You and your wife should come see me.
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I'm like, okay.
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And so here we are, refugees from a hurricane.
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And I walked out and I'm like, Katie, you're not gonna believe, or I actually introduced Katie to Wayne Dyer.
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And we were walking back to the car and I'm like, Katie, you're not gonna believe this.
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Dr. Dyer invited us to go to his presentation tomorrow.
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And Katie's like, where is it?
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I'm like, he said the convention center.
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What time is it?
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I'm like, I have no clue.
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So I got online and like figured out when it was and where it was and we went there the next day.
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And I remember arriving and thinking like, what do I do now?
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And I found somebody with a clipboard and I said, hey, yesterday I was in a yoga class with Dr. Dyer and he said I should come talk to somebody that worked for him.
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And she goes, oh, okay, yeah, great.
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So he invited you to the event.
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I'm like, yeah.
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She goes, great, come with me.
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And before anybody got into the auditorium.
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They walked us up to the very first row.
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And I sat in the front row, like before anybody was there, with Dr. Dyer's daughter, Sky.
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And I can't remember who else was there, but it was like an out-of-body experience.
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And he came out and spoke.
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And it was so amazing because they say don't meet your heroes.
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And I've definitely had that experience.
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Do not meet your heroes in some cases.
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But meeting him was the opposite.
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It was like he was everything I wanted him to be.
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And he came out.
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And the first part of his talk was about walking.
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And he was barefoot, which I am most of the time now.
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And he started talking about walking.
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And at the time, I was like distance running and doing Bikram yoga and weight training.
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And I was like a bodybuilder.
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And I'm doing all these intense stuff and things.
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And as soon as he started talking about walking, I'm like, well, I hope this doesn't take too long.
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And it was like a third or half of his talk.
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And he just kept going on about walking and how like ancestrally as humans, we would get up and walk and it would help us process and it would help us think and it would stimulate our bodies and it would connect us to the earth and it would connect us to who we are.
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And I'm like, come on, how long is he going to talk about walking?
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It was so frustrating.
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So if you're feeling that, hearing me tell you this, you're not alone.
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It was funny.
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I did an interview with one of the members of the Brotherhood and he said the same thing.
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He's like, you know, you told us to hydrate, walk and spend time in neutral.
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He's like, when I heard walk, I'm like, I run.
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I lift weights.
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I do all this intense stuff.
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I'm not going to walk.
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And then he started walking.
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He's like, walking is life changing.
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And so what happened was we finished the lecture with Dr. Dyer, which was amazing.
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We actually stayed afterwards with his family and hung out with him and the other speakers.
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And like when I say that whole don't be your heroes, but in this case, it was the opposite.
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It was extraordinary.
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And so we left there and I probably didn't think about it for a few days, but I remember like one day probably going back to our house or something after the hurricane.
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I remember thinking like, what is with this walking thing?
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Like Dr. Dyer, Wayne Dyer is like one of the most brilliant humans I've ever encountered.
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And his work has changed my life.
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So maybe I need to look at this walking thing.
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And so I started doing research and I started really looking at it and I started really digging into it.
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And holy crap, the science of walking is insane.
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You know, a lot of us walk around in a place where we are in some state or fight or flight, in some state of central nervous system dysregulation, in some state of central nervous system activation.
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And when you look at what central nervous system activation does, I think it's one of the places where disease comes from and maybe not all disease comes from, but all disease is made worse by central nervous system dysregulation.
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So if you've got something going on, you're not helping it if your central nervous system is dysregulated.
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And here's the magic of walking.
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If you walk with your mouth closed, maybe at the beginning you won't be able to, but eventually you'll get there.
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If you walk for 20 minutes a day, no electronics, just you and your thoughts.
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First, it's like a meditation.
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It's you with your thoughts and it's just you allowing your body to process.
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And if you walk with your mouth closed, breathing in and out through your nose, you're moving while you show your body you're safe by breathing deeply.
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You breathe in and out slowly.
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And so you're actually showing your nervous system you're safe.
23:09
There's like the science here is if your nervous system is activated, you can deactivate it by walking with your mouth closed, breathing slowly.
23:18
If you have to walk with your mouth open at the beginning, that's fine too.
23:21
But you're actually showing your body it's safe.
23:24
You're detuning or deactivating that survival mechanism of central nervous system simulation.
23:30
Fight, flight, fawn, or freeze.
23:32
If you're in a place where you feel activated, where you can't think clearly, where you can't make the next decision, you know, I've always shared with entrepreneurs for decades, coaching entrepreneurs, very little in your life that feels like a problem can outlast a 20 minute walk.
23:45
And I can't tell you how many times people have come back to me and been like, hey, dude, I tried the walking thing and I totally thought you were full of it.
23:51
And it's life changing.
23:53
And it's not just walking and breathing detunes the central nervous system or kicks it out of activation and shows you you're safe.
24:02
There's actually science around it now, just like EMDR therapy, which uses bilateral stimulation to calm the body and help us process trauma.
24:10
There's science that walking actually helps us process trauma.
24:14
When we left, right, left, right, left, right, as we think with no stimulation, no podcast, no music, no nothing else, just you and your thoughts.
24:23
We actually get to a place where we're processing those things that get stuck.
24:27
You know, when I look at trauma, to describe it in like the easiest way possible, it's like those times in our lives where in the present moment, we don't have the capacity to process what's going on.
24:38
And so we're there, but there's things happening and it's too much and it's overwhelming.
24:44
And so we don't really have the capacity to process everything.
24:48
And so if we're ever in a place where we're triggered and we go into escalation, then rupture, withdraw, repair, that's most likely a traumatic event for us.
24:56
And for a lot of us, that happens sometimes a lot.
24:59
If we're walking around dehydrated, it might be happening all the time.
25:02
And so when you go for a walk, you actually allow your body to process those things.
25:09
And when you don't have anything with you and you're not listening to anything and you don't have electronics with you, I do this every single day, whether I'm on vacation, whether I'm somewhere else in the world, I walk every day.
25:19
If I miss a walk, which happens rarely, it happens, but I feel it by the afternoon.
25:24
I can feel it.
25:25
I can feel the stimulation.
25:26
I can feel like...
25:28
a different level of capacity.
25:29
I can feel detuned, decapacitated a little bit.
25:32
I can feel like some activation.
25:33
So for me, walking is so crucially important.
25:36
And again, so simple and so free, free.
25:39
Like all it takes is your time.
25:41
I'm going to put my water bottle on my notes so that they don't blow away again.
25:46
And so I,
25:47
This is one of those things that if you're like me and when you first hear it, you're like, this can't be that important.
25:54
But it's also one of those things that really is life changing if you let it be.
26:00
And I would suggest you try it every day.
26:05
You know, if you're going to start drinking water, try going 10 days really focusing on drinking water.
26:10
Try going 10 days really focusing on getting a walk a day and see what it does for you.
26:14
And then maybe add this last thing.
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It's called Time in Neutral.
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And I'll share the origin of this with you.
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So I first heard about meditation when I was a kid in California.
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Transcendental meditation was kind of taking over out there.
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And a lot of my friends were trying it and they were using a mantra for hours or for an hour or hours.
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And I wasn't really into it.
26:40
I didn't really think I was someone who could meditate.
26:44
And I had that belief for a lot of my life.
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But then what happened was over and over again, people I respected would talk about meditation.
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And so I started meditating and I used guided audio and I would just try and sit neutral and picture a blank page or sit without anything else going on, picture a blank page.
27:02
I would try breathing.
27:03
I did breath work and I've done tons of different disciplines to try and quote unquote meditate.
27:09
But like.
27:11
For some reason, well, let me share with you the origin of time in neutral and how much different it feels for me and how much more effective it feels for me.
27:18
So years ago, Katie and I were working with ayahuasca and sitting every few months with ayahuasca with a really gifted shaman and kind of counselor therapist type guy that was helping us with a lot of stuff in our relationships.
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And we did a series of ceremonies.
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I think it was two nights in a row or three nights in a row with ayahuasca.
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And something really weird happened for me at the end of the third ceremony.
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The next morning, we were in our integration session with him.
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And he said, you know, Alex, how do you feel?
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And I said, you know, I feel kind of neutral.
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And he's like, explain what you mean by neutral.
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And I'm like, I don't know.
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Like most of the time when we come out of ceremonies, it feels like I'm in a place where I really have like urgent work to do or something that I need to take care of.
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Or I kind of have clarity around something or there's something I feel like I need to drill on or something I need to do next.
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And.
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today I just feel neutral.
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I just feel like I'm here.
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And he goes, that is fantastic.
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I'm like, really?
28:24
Neutral is fantastic.
28:25
He said, yeah, this is fantastic.
28:27
He's like, you're in a place of presence.
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Neutral is being right here in a place of presence.
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And I was like, wow, yeah, it kind of feels like I'm right here in a place of presence.
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Like I don't need to be anywhere else.
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I don't need to be doing anything.
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I'm not judging how I feel.
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And,
28:42
And so this concept of neutral was born to me.
28:46
And I remember thinking, I kind of want to keep this going.
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And so later that week,
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maybe a couple of days later, or actually maybe he suggested, he said, I want you to spend time in neutral this week.
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And I'm like, okay, how do I do that?
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He's like, well, you just do nothing, put on an eye mask and lay down and do nothing.
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Or maybe he didn't suggest the eye mask, but he's like, you just lay down and do nothing, but you just let your brain have its thoughts and do whatever it needs to do.
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No goal, no outcome, just whatever needs to happen.
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And I did it that week.
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I actually used an eye mask and I would lay down on the floor of my office and I did it every day for like 10 to 20 minutes.
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And the first time I did it, now I'm remembering, like I want to paint the picture like it was so awesome.
29:38
But the first time I did it, I laid down and this is, you know, I've done breath work and I've meditated.
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I've done guided meditations and I've like done mantras and I've done all this stuff.
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And I'm like, I'm going to do time in neutral, which should be easier than all of it.
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And I laid down and I set a timer for 10 minutes.
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I put on an eye mask.
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laid down on the floor in my office.
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And I'm like, well, this should be easy.
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And then I'm laying there and it felt like it was taking forever.
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And I'm like, you know what?
30:02
I'm pretty sure I didn't set the timer right.
30:04
Cause it should have gone off by now.
30:06
And I remember looking at it and I had been laying there for maybe six minutes or eight minutes.
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So I hadn't even gotten to 10 minutes yet.
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And I'm like, okay, well, this is going to be a practice like everything else I've done in my life.
30:17
And so that week I kept doing it.
30:19
And by, uh,
30:21
I don't know if it was by the end of that week or whatever time later it was, there was a time where I started setting the timer to do time in neutral for 10 minutes.
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And it started feeling shorter and shorter.
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And it actually started feeling like I kind of wanted it.
30:37
Like if there was a day where I didn't do time in neutral, I'm like, oh, I'd look at my to-do list at the end of the day.
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I looked at what I had accomplished.
30:44
And I think like, you know, something felt off today.
30:47
Oh, I didn't do time in neutral.
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You know, I'm hydrating.
30:49
I'm walking, but I would miss time in neutral.
30:52
And so it became this practice that I try to engage in every day and I miss like this is one that I miss like I just looked at my notes for the week and I did not do time and neutral anywhere near enough and I really should have there was a lot going on this week.
31:08
But I did it right before I did this podcast to get into my body and I did 20 minutes and here's the experience of time and neutral for me now.
31:16
Um.
31:17
I lay down, I set the timer for sometimes 10, 20, 30, 40 minutes, depending on how much I have going on, depending on what my body is telling me I need.
31:26
So today was 20.
31:28
And for the first two or three minutes, my brain's really active.
31:31
It's like thinking through stuff from the day or thinking of something that happened or like going through checklists or trying to figure out what I'm going to do next.
31:40
Or I mean, a lot of random stuff comes up.
31:43
But then my experience these days is that period of activity is shorter.
31:48
And then there's like this period of almost absence.
31:53
I mean, I'm there, I'm not asleep, but the timer goes off and I'm like, wow, that was fast.
31:59
And that's happened for me over and over again.
32:02
And, you know, if I'm in a place where I feel stuck, I'll often go for a walk.
32:07
But if I'm in a place where, like, I feel agitated or I have looping thoughts or I don't feel like I'm focused like I should be or I'm about to do a podcast like this one or I'm about to get on an interview with somebody or I'm about to jump on one of the brotherhood calls where I have to be present for two and a half hours.
32:23
My go to right before is to do time in neutral for as long as I can.
32:29
I mean, we're as short as I have.
32:31
Like there's been times where I'm rushing into a podcast interview or something.
32:35
I only have six minutes.
32:36
I'll do five minutes in neutral because I feel like it kind of changes how I approach what I do next.
32:43
I don't feel like this podcast would be as good as it is.
32:46
Hopefully you think it is good.
32:48
I feel great about it.
32:51
I don't think I would feel as good as I do right now if I hadn't done time in neutral coming into this.
32:56
And there was this interesting thing that happened.
32:58
I was listening to an interview with Naval Ravikant, who is a Silicon Valley investor, but he's also like a philosopher.
33:06
And he's done a lot of amazing things in his life and created extraordinary wealth.
33:11
And he has a really interesting way of looking at like how to be an entrepreneur and how to live life and not pushing and not doing everything all at once and right away and stepping into your full capacity.
33:21
and this was after I'd been doing time in neutral for years, he described the exact same process.
33:27
He didn't call it time in neutral, but he said, you know what you should do is put on an eye mask and, and,
33:33
spend some time with yourself and do it every day.
33:36
And what you'll find is your, your brain's going to process and your brain's going to process and your brain's going to process and it's going to be difficult.
33:42
And it might even get harder before it gets easier.
33:44
And then there'll be a day where you put on the eye mask, you set the timer and the alarm will go off before you even know it.
33:52
And that lets you know that you've cleared things out and that you're in a place where you are present and you're grounded and you're in your body and you're aware.
33:59
And so often, um,
34:02
These days, that happens to me during time in neutral.
34:05
There's been a couple times in the past few weeks where I went in with the intention of doing 20 minutes and I lay there and there's this feeling that comes over me of like, it feels so good and so peaceful and so present and so here.
34:22
And, you know, I feel like I'm feeling that for a very short period of time.
34:26
The timer will go off and I will like lift the eye mask, look at the phone, hit repeat
34:32
So grounding and so calming.
34:34
And here's what I can tell you about time in neutral.
34:38
It makes me more efficient and more effective at everything.
34:41
Like, look, I understand, especially if you're an entrepreneur or a top producer or a manager or a leader, I get it that it's so easy to listen to the guys who say things like, you know, get up in the morning, strap on your computer or strap yourself to your desk, get on your computer and just grind and do everything and, you know, push yourself.
35:01
And you can always make one more phone call.
35:03
You can always send one more email.
35:04
You can always do one more thing.
35:06
Like, believe me, I've lived like that forever.
35:11
But when I started coaching other people and started seeing their habits and how destructive they were, and I like the early in my coaching career, and I started myself getting in my body through hydrating, through walking, through what I used to call meditation, I now call time in neutral.
35:26
I started realizing that the days where I pushed and grinded and tried to do everything all at once and right away, I now have perspective.
35:37
Those were my least productive days.
35:39
Those were the days where I made more mistakes.
35:42
Those were the days where I did things I didn't need to.
35:45
Those were the days where I do a whole bunch of work that didn't end up the way I wanted it to.
35:51
Those were the days where I'd have to redo stuff and apologize for things and repair later.
35:55
And it just is so counterintuitive.
36:00
If you're in that place, especially if you're getting started or trying to get a business off the ground, it's so counterintuitive to stop and do nothing.
36:08
But if you allow yourself to try it, again, try it for a week.
36:12
If you allow yourself to go into neutral, what I find is if I spend time in neutral, the next period of time is extraordinarily productive.
36:23
And, you know, a lot of us, I used to have this all the time.
36:26
Middle of the afternoon, you start feeling tired.
36:28
You start feeling detuned.
36:29
It's when you reach for an, or when I used to reach for an energy drink or something to like give you stimulation.
36:37
Honestly, when I was younger, it's when I used to reach for porn, when I used to reach for anything to like get through that time.
36:42
kind of gave me obsessive compulsive behaviors.
36:45
Now, when I get to that place, if I get to that place in an afternoon, it doesn't happen often, but it does.
36:51
Occasionally, my go-to is time in neutral.
36:54
Maybe a walk, but a lot of times it's time in neutral.
36:56
I'll lay down, set a timer for 20 minutes, throw the eye mask on, no input, just letting my brain be.
37:02
And at the end, I feel refreshed.
37:04
I feel like I took a nap, even though I didn't take a nap.
37:06
And again, there's science behind this.
37:10
It's...
37:12
There's a acronym I can't remember right now.
37:15
I think it's NSDR, non-sleep deep rest, is one of the most renewing things that we can do for our brains.
37:22
So non-sleep deep rest is like laying down and allowing your brain to chill out and going into a different brainwave mode.
37:29
and there's a lot of science behind it.
37:31
I'm not gonna use all the technical terms because they get confusing but just to give you like the practical punchline here, when we lay down and do something like time in neutral and we gauge a non-sleep deep rest, we actually have more capacity available to us in our bodies, in our brains afterwards and I feel this over and over again.
37:51
And when men get into the brotherhood, if you want to know where we start, like a lot of times guys reach out and they're like, Alex, I'm in trouble with my relationship.
37:58
I'm having trouble with my business.
37:59
I'm having trouble with my finances.
38:01
You know, I want to do this containment thing because it sounds like it's really what I should do.
38:04
Where should I start?
38:05
And I think they're expecting like a really complicated framework or something that sounds magic.
38:10
My reply is hydration, walking, and time in neutral.
38:14
And the first brotherhood call, we talk about hydration, walking, and time in neutral.
38:21
connecting to your body, of creating presence and awareness and grounding, and they're acts of self-love.
38:29
These are acts of self-love.
38:30
This is you showing yourself that you care about yourself, you showing yourself that you matter through doing these things.
38:39
And so if you're open to it, here's my suggestion.
38:46
Try drinking 16 ounces of water every morning.
38:49
Then keep water with you all the time.
38:51
And if you think about it, take a drink.
38:53
Drink 16 ounces or more.
38:54
Hyperhydrate.
38:55
You know, you take it and you drink.
38:57
Like humans are the only animal I've ever seen that sips water.
39:02
You look at a dog or a lion or a cat or, you know, you watch one of those nature shows when animals drink, they drink with purpose.
39:09
You know, giraffes fill up the whole trunk and spray it in their mouth.
39:13
We sip little drinks of water.
39:14
You think about water, take 16 ounces or more.
39:16
It's not a water drinking contest.
39:18
It's just showing your body that there's water available and fully hydrating.
39:21
And then once a day.
39:23
Throw some shoes on, maybe even go barefoot or get some really minimalist shoes so you can feel the ground and go for a 20 minute walk by yourself, nothing else, and allow yourself to process.
39:32
And then sometime during the day, before the evening, because you might fall asleep, spend 10 minutes in neutral.
39:39
Do this for 10 days and see how it changes your life.
39:43
Pay attention to how you feel.
39:44
Pay attention to what's going on for you.
39:46
Pay attention to the capacity you have available.
39:48
Believe me, I take all the supplements and I do all the things.
39:51
And like I said, I've been a biohacker forever.
39:53
But these three things are the most important for me.
39:57
They're my go-to.
39:58
This is what I would do if I couldn't do anything else.
40:02
I so appreciate you being here with me today and listening to these practices and understanding just how crucially important they are because they are absolutely life-changing.
40:12
And if you're a man who is looking to improve your life and understand masculine containment and optimize in a way you never thought possible, you know, these three habits help us optimize and they actually help us remain contained.
40:25
They help us get into our bodies and regulate and be present and aware.
40:28
But when we focus on that habit of regulation and presence and awareness, we have more capacity available to us than we ever thought possible.
40:36
You can go to thebrotherhoodsociety.com and join the interviews for the next container.
40:40
I'd be honored to walk this path with you.
40:43
I'd love to have you in the next container so that you can be more grounded, more present, more aware, and see your life moving forward as well.
40:50
Thebrotherhoodsociety.com.
40:51
Thanks so much for being here.
40:52
If you have a question, please make a comment.
40:54
I read every single one and I'll get back to you.