← Progress Mode with Brendon Burchard
Progress Mode with Brendon Burchard
The Sleep Routine That Changes Everything
00:19:56
In this episode of The Motivation with Brendon Burchard Podcast, Brendon shares the powerful science-backed routine that can transform your rest and, as a result, your entire life.
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There's almost no other thing that is more important long term for your mental health than making sure sleep happens. There are some things in life where the science is pretty dang clear. And sleeping for the average adult in that seven to eight hour range is vital, vital, vital, vital. A lot of people right now are really burning themselves out. You know, so many new people are working from home for the first time. They've worked in offices, they've had nine to fives, nine to sixes, nine to sevens, or they've worked night shifts. But at least they went to work somewhere and then came home. And so many more people are learning to be at home and learning the challenges of handling family and work and life and trying to just balance it all. And it's taking people into later evenings of work all around the world. And there's a lot of repercussions to that in how we end up feeling. Sometimes we never feel free, sometimes we never feel like we can break away. We don't feel rested. We feel like work is coming into all sorts of other areas of our life that we didn't want it to. And of course, years ago many of us learned that when, you know, everything was on our mobile phones. But I think in the last two years it's been exacerbated. And so as many people don't go back to the office, or more people learn to work remote, or just the reality that we are all confronted with so many more obligations and opportunities these days in a mobile and a technological world, we just gotta be thoughtful about breaking away, taking a beat, getting our mindset right, resting our bodies, recovering, so that as we're heading into the trenches, as we're working each day, whether sometimes that now means morning, a little bit in the afternoon, more at night than we're used to, that we're still taking care of ourselves. And we're especially doing one of the most vital and important things you can ever do for your mindset, for your mental health, for your physical health and for your life satisfaction. And that is sleep. You've got to prioritize sleep now more than you ever have in your lifetime. Especially for those of you, my friends, who are working from home for the first time on a more consistent basis. Especially for those of you, my friends, who are finally coming out of that infant toddler sort of stage where now maybe there is a possibility of a little bit more consistency in sleep, especially for those who are hard driving strivers all week long you push, you push, you push and you really do exact a mental Toll from all of that ambition and focus and achievement. You got to make sure you're getting sleep. Now, of course, you already know this. The question isn't whether or not you know it. The question is whether or not you've implemented consistent discipline practices to ensure that that the sleep that you do get is the best you can get. And that's so vital. What I've always focused on my career is teaching universal principles in personal development, in positive psychology, in sociology, and how we manage our lives that endure. And so here's a couple good ideas for you regardless of what tools, tech, or mattresses you have. Okay, let's always start. I always start with the easiest of solutions. I call it 3, 2, 1. Sleep. I'm sure you've seen all over social media. I think it's been shared like a k billion times now. And this was a philosophy I've been teaching for a really long time in our high performance work. Three, two, one, sleep. This means three hours before bed, no food. Two hours before bed, no work. One hour before bed, no screens. Three hours before bed, don't eat. Two hours before bed, stop working. One hour before bed, no screens. That means no phone, no laptop, no tv, no Netflix. Oh, God. I think it's so important for you to try this for 10 days or to 30 days before you judge it. And here's what people do, and this is a good lesson in human behavior change and habits. Anytime you suggest an idea, people will always rebut it without trying, even if they know it could be healthy for them. Well, I know that'd be a great idea. That won't work for me. Why? Well, because I just know it won't work for me. Well, how do you know? Well, I've tried similar things. I know, but have you tried that? Well, no, I haven't tried that, but you know, that was not going to work. One more for me. How do you know that? What happens in our psychology is we get fixed into our positions and beliefs and we immediately judge things without ever having tried them. And I always say in lots of realms of life, we actually don't want to try things dumbly. There's plenty of things that we just know we shouldn't try. Stand in front of a bus. Good idea not to try that. But in personal development, in wellness, in optimizing our lives, I often say most of the advice is actually fair enough, probably good for the majority of people. And you know what? We can try it. And we can't try it once. We can't try it. Twice. You usually have to give something, a good old challenge, you know, something on the average of two weeks to 30 days at least, to see is it moving in the right direction. And if it's having a positive benefit, then I always say, then extend it for 45 or 60 days to lock it in as an enduring habit. Give it that shot, two weeks to four weeks to see the result, then lock it in. Now, I know this one is not always perfect for everybody. I know sometimes athletes will say, man, are you kidding me? I. I got it. I gotta eat within two hours before bed or I wake up hungry. I know that some people say, you don't understand my work, Brendan. I have to be answering emails from my boss until I go to bed. I know some people will say, but, Brendan, you know, an hour before bed, you know, the screens, the tv, it helps me fall asleep. In all those cases, perhaps those are true. But in all those cases, you could still take a little test, still give it a little try, and just see if the assumptions are true. And most people aren't willing to change their normal pattern of behavior to try a new framework or a new set of behaviors, especially this way, like this one's stacking different behaviors, right? A behavior related to eating, a behavior related to working, and a behavior related to screens and ending the day. And so, three, two, one. Sleep sounds easy, but I found a lot of people struggle because the assumptions they make or the patterns they're stuck to. And yet I only share this because literally the thousands of people who've written me saying, oh, my gosh, I thought there was the stupidest thing ever. And then I tried it for 10 nights in a row. I can't believe it. I. I feel 20 years younger. I'm sleeping again. What is this magic sauce? Well, it's just caring for your brain. It's caring for your circadian rhythm. It's caring for how you're going to feel in the morning. The worst thing we can do is not try to optimize our sleep somehow to just. Well, you don't understand, Brent. That's just the way I am. That's just the way I sleep. I go until. You've tried a hundred experiments on how you sleep. Prefer to sleep or gone through sleep. Don't even think you understand your body's sleep. That's what people say. No, I'm just this way. No, you were conditioned that way, and you got used to a pattern behavior. You actually don't know the way that you are unless you've tried to optimize Once you've tried to optimize, then you can say, you know, it's very much like people say sometimes, you know, it's the equivalent of someone who grew up in a green room saying, my favorite color is green. But they've never been in any other rooms of any other color. Of course that's the one you like. That's the one you know. And it really does take a lot of experimentation. And notice I'm not saying 3, 2, 1 is the ultimate or the best. I'm saying it's an approach. And I'm only using it if you didn't pick up on it as a metaphor to suggest how resistant people are to try new behaviors. But hopefully you're also picking up on something here I'm doing, which is teaching you how to habit stack, which is take any area of your life and approach it from multiple angles. I'm having trouble sleeping. Okay, let's talk about three, two, one, sleep. Three is related to. You got it right. Three is related to eating. Two is related to working. One is related to screen time. Okay, so we're taking those three different ways of thinking about sleep and we're putting it to a little framework and we're trying it. You can do that with any of your habits. So whether you try 3, 2, 1, sleep, or you choose another way to approach it, my urge to you today after the session is open up your journal and capture how you're gonna optimize your sleep. What's your plan? If you don't use 3, 2, 1, what else will you do? I'll share some other ideas here that might help, but I think that's incredibly vital for people to make a plan, experiment. Make another plan, experiment until you dial in what really does work for you. And trying one thing or two things or three things once on New Year's is not optimization. That's called just guessing, trying, seeing if you like it. And what most people do is fall back into the comfortable default or unconscious patterns. What we want you to do is optimize. That's what we want you to do to figure out your best approach to this vital, important topic. There's almost no other thing that is more important long term for your mental health than making sure sleep happens. Did you know that at night your brain and your neurochemistry is basically functioning kind of like a dishwasher? It's cleaning up old negative thoughts. It's cleaning up the drama and the stress and the anxiety it's releasing or getting rid of some of the hormones that might have you jacked up, it's like very important for that neural work to be happening at night. And having a solid night's sleep, seven or eight hours, there's 50 years of in depth research showing that that is the optimal time and that truly serves you. Of course people say, no, no, no, I know this person, they only sleep five or six hours and they're happy, they're fine, even successful. And that could be true. Imagine how much more successful they'd be if they were rested and they felt smarter each day. Because we know that those who sleep a full seven to eight hours aren't only reporting being more rested, they report being more productive, more healthy, more confident. Those things matter too, don't they? Doesn't mean you can't survive without it. But at this point, there are some things in life where the science is pretty dang clear. And sleeping for the average adult in that seven to eight hour range is vital, vital, vital, vital. But you won't know your optimal range until you've really found whatever that number is between seven and even call it nine hours. Somewhere in that range. How do you deeply sleep? 3, 2, 1 is one of my approaches. Another thing that we just know from science is lower that room temperature, make it a little cooler in the room. And even if you're someone's like, no, no, I don't like a cold room. I don't like feeling cold. Okay, that's okay to put on some covers. It's not saying you can't have blankets, it's saying chill the room. It's also saying make sure that room is darkened out as much as possible. A dark room is really important to sleep. I'm someone who just recently moved and our new house has these electric shades that come down, but we don't have blackout curtains yet, which I've been used to. And so I'm waking up way earlier and it's been very troubling for my mental health. Let me tell you what, I don't like it. And so I'm like, okay, as soon as we get that handled, I know how I feel. In the meantime, sleep mask so that I can at least have blackout. That situation is very important for sleep, I have found in my own optimization. Another thing that you can do is find a little bit more consistency in your sleeping time when you go to bed and when you wake, a little bit more consistency. The more random it is, the more, well, no, I'm going to watch one more episode of Netflix and it's all over. The place. I get it. I understand, believe me, someone who. I actually love working at night and I also love to curl up and watch something with Denise. But I also know that the more that those hours become variable, the more my productivity over the week goes down. You're able to see over a period of time your, how that, you know, obviously can match up to your productivity or to your clarity, energy, necessity, courage. And you'll see that the more you report struggle in sleep, the more everything else goes down, especially over a period of time. Consistency is so key. Another thing that's important, especially in our world, is to just be aware of the caffeine in your products or how much caffeine you are consuming. And we live in a world where caffeine's been put in everything. It's almost like, I mean, they literally like share. They like, they like sell shampoo with caffeine in it now. I mean, it's just like everything they're putting, I mean, I see caffeine in face lotions that people use at nighttime. I see, you know, caffeine and toothpaste. I'm not kidding. It's like it's. People are, they're putting it in everything now. And if you're consuming significant caffeine, especially the research shows after 2 or 3pm in the afternoon, it can really negatively affect your sleep. Even for those people say, it doesn't affect me, I can drink five Diet Cokes with dinner at 9 o' clock at night and still fall asleep, no problem. Yes, it's true, but you're actually still limiting how much your brain does that dishwashing at night. Even if you sleep throughout the night, the sleep is not as deep and you aren't getting the same level of restfulness that someone does that did not consume caffeine, as an example. So that's a funny thing about sleep. Some people say I sleep just fine. But the reality is they're not aware of how much they wake up. They're not aware of how their sleep is not that deep REM sleep, that deep, deep level of sleep where the brain's really doing its repair work. And so they're always overwhelmed or frazzled or stressed or even if they don't feel that they're just, you know, they're at a 90% recovery when they could be at a 97% recovery. And that feels very different in life. I hope some of these ideas serve you and you'll capture in your own journal what you're working on. You know, people always ask like If I ever personally, you know, follow these things, I'm like, yes, very consistently. There's a few of them that I will break from time to time, depending on my workload and my stress load. For example, there are times when I just need my brain to be taken off of something. So I'll consume something, you know, on a screen, I'll watch a show, or I'll, you know, you know, read something on my phone or something like that towards the end of bed. But usually not that last, latter part. Especially like that last 30 minutes. Usually last 30 minutes before bed. I'm stretching on the floor and like, literally like realigning my body, my hips, my, my, my back and making sure that I'm just feeling okay and taking time to do that. And so everyone's got their different things. Sometimes people ask what supplements I take. I usually don't take any supplements for sleep. If I'm having to be on the road or if I've been struggling for a while, I might do a GLM protocol. GLM standing for gaba L, Theanine and Magnesium. Glm, GABA L Theanine and Magnesium. Of course, I'm not a doctor and we don't make a lot of recommendations like this here in Growth day. So consult your doctor anytime you make a change to your diet or your sleep routines. I hope this episode has helped you go in your journal capture. What are you going to do for your sleep routine? What are you going to optimize in this area of your life? How are you going to get more consistent? What's one thing you could do or try to learn something new about how you sleep, to test it out, to experiment and to keep dialing in this area of your life. I promise it will make a huge difference. Huge difference. Just want to encourage you to get some great sleep tonight because every day is a great day to grow.