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So hey guys, listen. We're all trying to get more productive and the question is, how do you find a way to get an edge? I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth, a growth based environment that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster. And that's why I love Growth Day. Growth Day is an app that my friend Brendan Burchard has created that I'm a big fan of. Write this down growthday.com forward/ed. So if you want to be more productive, by the way, he's asked me, I post videos in there every single Monday that gets your day off to the right start. Got about $5,000, $10,000 worth of courses that are in there that come with the app. Also some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content in there on a regular basis, like having the avengers of personal development and business in one app. And I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis. And I do. So go over there and get signed up. You're going to get a free tuition, free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well. So you get a free event out of it also. So go to growthday.com forward sled. That's growthday.com Ed Dell Technologies is celebrating with anniversary savings on their most popular tech. For a limited time only, save on select next gen PCs like the XPS 16, powered by Intel Core Ultra processors and more. Plus curate your dream setup with great deals on select monitors, mice and more. Must have electronics and accessories. When you shop online@dell.com deals you'll have access to leading edge technology to match your forward thinking spirit and free shipping on everything. Again, that's Dell.com forward/deals. This is the Ed Milet Show. Welcome back to the show everybody. It's so great that we're going to spend some time together today. And as I do on every solo episode, I try to make it something that can really improve or change your life. And I've been getting a lot of questions. Team's been telling me about habits and do I have any unique daily habits that I wanted to share with you and so I'm going to do that today. Today I'm going to give you 20 very unique habits that I do on a daily basis and some of them I just really started doing that have kind of moved the needle or made a difference in my life. Some of them are very simple and some of them are changes from other things I've taught before. You know, as you learn new information, you change hopefully in life. One of the things I admire about great leaders is when they say, well, I've got more information or new, I've changed my mind. And so there's a couple things today I'm going to share with you that I've never really shared before that are a little bit different as well. And some of them are pretty basic things. But the reason I think habits matter so much is that our brain is trying to all the time create habits so that it can conserve energy. It doesn't want to spend energy, so it's always building habits. And habits matter because if we can conserve energy or put ourselves into a routine, rather, we end up having more predictable behavior, more predictable results. And habits are something that when we're under pressure, we respond with habits reflexively. So the better your habits, the better your routines, typically, the better your life. And so I'm going to take you through some very basic things I do that you would think don't make a difference, but they do because they save me time about thinking and I can take my focus and generate it to the things that matter. I don't want to deplete my energy or my focus to having to make decisions about stuff that I could have just predetermined with a habit or a routine. And so these are some very simple things. Some of them aren't so simple that I do on a daily basis. Maybe 20 of them. Okay, Some of them you probably already do, and some of them you probably definitely don't do. Do you need to do all of them? No, but I'm sharing with you what I do that works for me. Okay, so Here we go. 20 habits that can improve or change your life. Number one, I make a to do list the night before for the next day, and no more than six things on it. I'm a big to do list person. So in the evening before I go to bed, when I'm winding down, I make. I look at my day that's coming up the next day, and I make a to do list. I love checking things off lists, I love being focused, I love not having to think. I don't want to forget things. And so the night before, I make a to do list for the following day. I put no more than six things on it. Now, by the way, most of my days I get a whole lot more than Six things done, but these are six non negotiable things. Sometimes it's three, sometimes it's five, sometimes it's two. Sometimes if I'm in a busy day, maybe it's one, but no more than six things because there's just too many things and you can create overwhelm. So the night before I write down the six things I'm going to get done the next day. Why do I do that? Well, I wake up with a plan. I wake up with autopilot. Also, I believe that when you write these things down the night before, your subconscious mind, your unconscious mind even can go to work on the strategy, on putting it together, on the things, the thoughts, the places, etc. That you may need to make those things a reality the next day. And it just creates structure. If you want to know what the people that I coach have in common or successful people that I have on the show or that are friends of mine, they have created structures around themselves that allow failure to have a very difficult time creeping in. And so the people that have a lot of money, they can create a lot of those structures with teams and staffs and employees and people around them and handlers and those kind of things. But for most people, they don't have the money to do it. And so they've got to create that within themselves. And so number one habit for me, not in any order, by the way, not in priority, just 20 of them. Number one, make a to do list the night before with the things you're gonna get done the next day. Number two habit I've established over the last few years, it's really made a difference for me is I make a video every morning to three friends. And I call it the Let Me Tell you About yout Video. It takes me just a few minutes long and I just make a quick selfie video to three friends every day. And it could just be, hey, Joe, I love you, brother. Just want to let you know I was thinking about you this morning and these are the things I think about you. These are the things I'm focused on. This is what I'm praying for you. Just wanted you to know you're on my mind. And then usually tell them two or three things I love about him or that I'm focused on or remind him of a previous conversation. Make three of those every single day. Just, I put that out into the world. I start my day with contribution. I start my day with love. I start my day with gratitude for these people, thanking them for being in my life. Some of them are very good friends that I've known a long time. Sometimes it's someone I met the previous day, but I had a very powerful meeting with. Hey, I just want to tell you how much I enjoyed our meeting yesterday. I'm looking forward to building our friendship or building our business relationship. What I loved about our conversation was this. What I loved about you was X, Y or Z. Sometimes it's my best friends. And I'll say, just a reminder, let me tell you about you. You're the kindest, most brilliant, most generous, most funny, most beautiful, most whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I make three of those every day. It usually takes me 10 minutes to make three one or two minute long videos for my friends. It's something that I do daily to put out into the world I know my friends look forward to. It starts my day with a gift, with contribution, with the highest frequency, with love. And so I do that every day. I recommend you do some version of this every day. Just take you a minute, it'll change people's lives. And what you put out into the world comes back to you, right? You can't give to somebody that which you're not experiencing yourself and you can't receive it. So when you put love and gratitude out and just touch people's lives, the likelihood of that coming back to you, the law of reciprocity in your day is much higher and it just puts you in the right state. Number three thing I do randomly every day, I take a daily walk. I believe walking is one of the greatest things you can do for yourself. There was a social media clip cut out of a podcast. I did that. People were saying that. I said walking isn't exercise. And that's not what we were talking about. We were talking about walking, we're talking about muscle building exercises. And obviously walking doesn't build a lot of muscle, but daily walks have changed my life. It's a gift for me. I take a daily walk, it gets my body moving, gets my thoughts happening, gets me outside, which I'm going to talk about next. I find it. Some of my best connections to God and other people are when I take a walk. And one of the great gifts you could give yourself is to take a daily walk. If for the rest of your life you took a daily walk every day of your life, you'd be a richer, happier, more fulfilled, more grateful, whole, peaceful person. And by the way, you'll generate a bunch of great business and life ideas on those walks as well. What a great daily habit so, so far, to do this the night before, send a message to three friends. I do it on video. Take a daily walk. Number four, sky before screen. I learned this from Dr. Amy Shaw on my show. But what I mean by that is, right when I wake up in the morning, one of the first things I try to get done very quickly is I try to get outside. And by the way, I live in cold weather places like Maine, so I know what it's like to be cold outside. I also live in Florida. I know what it's like to have a beautiful morning as well. But I try to get outside. I want to see the sky before I see a screen. And there's something to be said for just getting outside, breathing in the air. Even if you live in a city, hearing the hustle and bustle of other people that are moving around, that's effective. Looking at the sky and seeing the sun if you can. Even if it's a foggy, cloudy day, just letting those rays hit you and just getting outdoors, connecting with God really quick. Sometimes it's 30 seconds. Usually it's no more than five or 10 minutes. But if it's really cold and it's in Maine and it's snowing, I may go outside for 30 seconds. But just to feel nature, to feel the breeze, to feel the cold, to feel the hot, to feel the humidity, to feel just to feel before I start having a screen hit my face. And I also try in my morning routine to delay drinking any caffeine or coffee. I learned this from her as well. Adenosine in your brain is something that kind of makes you feel foggy, and it's something that you have when you're sleeping at night. Adenosine is a neuromodulator in the brain that helps regulate sleep, arousal, and other brain functions. It's a byproduct of cellular metabolism that builds up during the day and then at nighttime, it's recycled during your sleep. And so it helps you. It helps with arousal, it promotes sleep, and it suppresses arousal. And so when you're awake, adenosine levels increase each hour. It helps with neurotransmission as well, but it's an inhibitory neurotransmitter. So what happens is when you wake up, your brain still flooded with all this stuff. That's where you have brain fog. And when you consume caffeine early, what caffeine does, particularly coffee, is it blocks these receptors, which means it doesn't leave your brain. And so that's why a lot of people like, man, I need a second cup of coffee. I need a third cup of coffee. I need a fourth cup of coffee. Because the fog is still there. Because you've been drinking coffee and caffeine, you have not allowed the adenosine to leave your brain, which typically takes 20 to 40 minutes after you wake. So if you can do something for the first 20 to 40 minutes, let that adenosine clear your brain, have the coffee that you want. But for me, it was sky before screen and then not trying to consume caffeine. At least the first 30 minutes of my day. You'll feel like your brain fog will change. At least it has for me. Your clarity of focus improves and then you can certainly have that morning cup of coffee if that's something that you partake in. Okay, that's fourth habit for me. Sky before screen and no caffeine the first 30 to 45 minutes. And no, I did not know that was going to rhyme when I first wrote it down to tell you. Number five. I've just become a habit of taking in daily protein and doing resistance training. I think there's one thing to walk and to do cardio. But so many people who have been on my show and all the data that I've learned is that, you know, there is a major reason in the world to build lean body mass, muscle mass, and the way that you do that is protein and resistance training. And so if you don't have high enough protein intake in your life, you're probably not going to build enough muscle in your life. And that's going to hurt you. It's going to help you. You're going to. If you build more muscle mass on your body, you're not going to gain as much fat, you're going to be stronger, you're going to build more skeletal muscle, your bone density improves, all kinds of things improve. And the other way that you get that is resistance training is lifting stuff. So no matter what that looks like, if you use body weight resistance or kettlebells or like I do free weights in the gym, I've been very limited the of a back issue of lifting almost any weights. But I've been using body weight resistance. I've been doing pushups, which is still resistance training. And so anything you can do to have protein and resistance in your life is going to be a really big deal and you need to do it. And so if you don't have that daily habit, add that to your daily habit. 6 major hydration early in the day. So one thing I've Changed. That just works for me. I'm just sharing with you. What works for me is I hydrate a great deal a day. I drink a gallon of water every day, but I try to get a liter done before I even leave the bedroom. Okay? And so hydration, hydration has been great for me because it's given me more energy. It also makes you feel more full and you're likely not to eat as much. But most people are dramatically dehydrated because of the caffeine that they take in, the medication they take, the supplements they take, and they do not drink enough water. And by the way, alkalized water or hydrogenated water is something I've really done a lot of as well. So I hydrate like crazy throughout the day. I have found a direct connection between my energy, my clarity of thought, my process, everything, and by the way, my lack of wanting to eat as much as well when I'm hydrating. And I think most people are under hydrated. If you do drink a lot of water, then you got to be checking on your electrolytes and things like that. Here's another thing I changed. Maybe this is because I'm a middle aged guy. I stopped drinking water by 7pm so that I am not up multiple times during the evening having to use the restroom and breaking my sleep. Because I truly believe over the next five years, the frontier of anti aging, the frontier of wellness, of health, of cognition, of brain function, of strength, of energy, is more and more going to be focused on sleep and being able to get into the right brainwave states when we sleep, to be able to get our HRV in an optimal state, to be in a parasympathetic state, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And if you're getting up three, four times a night because you're so hydrated, you're not getting deep sleep. I gotta be honest with you, a lot of my friends that hydrate like crazy don't sleep well. And the reason they don't sleep well is they have to keep getting up to empty their bladder. I know this may sound very, you know, I don't know, not podcasty, but that's been my new process. So I get all my hydration done by 7pm at night. 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I try to eat more alkalizing food. Beans, berries, leafy greens, dark chocolate. And because I do eat so much protein, I eat a lot of protein. I do eat red meat. In my case, I do eat chicken. By the way, I respect you. If you don't do that, that's okay. But in my case I do. So it's even more important that I'm working on alkalizing myself and so PEMF beds help me with that. Eating a lot of greens and berries, as I said, have made a huge difference for me. These are just daily habits that have worked for me that I have found that make a big impact for me. Number eight Totally random. Touch your dreams more. So many of you I know these are uncorrelated habits. So many of you have dreams in your life and you don't go touch them. You've got to begin to touch your dreams. So the more your brain becomes familiar with something, the more it's going to move towards what you want because it becomes familiar, it moves towards. If you don't spend any time in your dreams, like let's say you have a dream home you want or a dream car, or a dream job, or a dream body, or a dream relationship, a dream, whatever. If you spend no time in it and don't touch it, the likelihood of you ever moving there in your life is very small. So I've said this many, many times. I'm constantly on my app looking at houses, you know, and places I might want to live someday. And touching my dream by seeing it, sharing it with friends of mine who share it with them. And I've got buddies of mine that share with me like the car they want or the jet they want. My faith based friends, hey, this is the mission we're going to serve this summer. Isn't this me incredible? We could go. But you're touching your dreams. It's taking a. You know, I wanted to live in a particular neighborhood I could, couldn't afford. And I'd work six, seven, eight weeks really hard. And if I hit my goals and my numbers, I'd go spend one night. I've said this many times, but I always wanted to live in Laguna Beach, California, Dana Point area. And there's a Ritz Carlton there. And when I was a very young man, I didn't have a lot of money, right? But I wanted to know what it was like to be there. I didn't live there. I lived in the Inland Empire. If you don't know what that means, I live not there, right? Far away. I could drive there, I could see it, but I didn't live there. And so once I started in business, I would work really hard and if I hit my goals, I'd set up a contest with myself. Hey, if I hit this many sales or I make this much money, and at that Ritz Carlton, I'd go there for one night, go there on a Saturday night, and we'd check into the hotel. And I remember the first time I walked in a valet. I'd never had a valet take my keys. And I'm thinking, man, I probably should have vacuumed the car out. You know, that's. And I gave the valet my keys and we walked in like, wow, marble floors. Look at this. And I was blown away by this place. And then you checked in Mr. Mylett. No one called me Mr. Mylett, you know, checked in, I got my room, we got to the room and I'm like, hey, I'm gonna go play golf. You Go to the spa. Just for the day. We would touch. We would live for one day the way we wanted to live the rest of our lives, right? And we. Then we'd have a great bottle of wine and have dinner. And I'd sit there, dinner, babe, we're going to make this happen someday. Make this dream. We would dream, and then. And then six weeks, eight weeks later, we would do it again. If I hit my car, if I didn't hit my numbers, we wouldn't go. And we. And we would work hard to get a deal on the room and, you know, whatever we could do. But the point is, two, three, four times a year, I touched my dream. And the more I did that, the fifth time I walked in, I'm like, hey, it's Ed Mylett. How are you? Great to be back, Mr. Mile. It started to become familiar. And the more I started to do those things, the more it's like I belong here. Because you believe you belong in your dreams when you touch them. Not enough of you are touching your dream. By the way, your dream may have nothing to do with material things. Your dream may be, I want to serve in this particular charity full time. If I had all the money or if I had time, I'd serve this mission in my church, whatever it might be. So once every three or four months, take a day and serve that mission. Take a day in that church, take a day at that nonprofit, and touch your dream. And the more you touch it, the more it becomes familiar, the more your mind goes to work on getting you there someday. But if you never touch your dream, you don't know. So touch your dreams. Set up a schedule. These are habits. Let's review where we are so far. Everybody, let's start from the very beginning again, because I'm giving you 20 of them. So here we go. Okay, I want to make sure that these are uncorrelated things you can do to change your life. Number one, make your to do list the night before so when your mind goes to work on it, you wake up with a plan. You have to think about it. Autopilot. 2. Message 3. Friends. Every morning, you have to do all these things. As I said, do some of them. Take a walk every day. Give yourself the gift of some time alone or time with your significant other. Sky before screen. And try to eliminate that caffeine early in the morning when you can. Okay? Number five. Make sure you're getting enough protein and do resistance training. Six, Major hydration. Try to stop in the evening. Number seven. Go alkaline. And number eight, touch your dreams. These are all uncorrelated habits and thoughts that can improve your life. I exist here weekly so that you can make your dreams come true, become the man or woman you're capable of, and then pay it forward. So these are things I've done in my life or I am currently doing that have really moved the needle because the difference between winning and losing is so small it's almost too scary to talk about, but I'm talking about it. These are the needle moving things. These are the things myself and others that I coach that I know do very well habitually that seem to not be a big deal, but when you stack them all up, they're a huge deal. Think about this. What if every single day you really, truly had, the night before had written out your to do list and just, you know, got your day ready for the next day, woke up with a plan and you ended up really making sure that you've taken some darn time to do some hydration and you got outside early day and you limited your caffeine and you became someone who took a walk on a regular basis. Just think about how much better your life would be and how much more structured it is and you're eating enough protein and doing some resistance. You get it right? Number nine, huge habit. Always be reading. I am constantly reading. I have averaged reading probably 50 books a year for 30 years. For longer than that, for 35 years, I've read at least 50 books a year. And right now I could tell you I read a couple hundred books a year because of the show. I'm always prepping for podcasts. And so now I've learned to read quickly. I've learned to scam through a chapter, you know, skim through it if it's not productive. But leaders are readers. How much reading are you doing? Well, Ed, I don't like to read. Well, then like it. And if you really can't get good at it, then you need to be listening to my podcast and you need to listen to books on Audible or some sort of audiobook. You got to be growing and learning, you know, how powerful it is to be reading books. Someone that is very successful in a particular topic has taken their life and put it into a book and you can read it in a week what they've learned in their life. And the more you pour that into yourself, the more you grow and change you, the more the internal you grows and changes, the external results change. Always be reading. Do you know how many of my mega successful Friends don't read a lot. I would have to spend a really long time to find one. I'm sure there's one. But I could tell you almost all of my friends, artists. What you reading right now? What are you reading? What did you just read? Let me tell you, I just saw this book. They're sending me books. I'm sending them books. Books. Leaders are readers. And by the way, my worst subject in school was comprehension. I couldn't remember things I didn't read quickly. Reading was a real struggle for me. It no longer is because I do it a lot. All right, number 10. Make your bed. Make your bed. Make your bed every day. And it's correlated to number 11. And then I'll talk about both. Make sure you have a clean bedroom and a clean office. Why does that matter? Edge. Because clutter creates confusion and clean creates clarity when your space is made. I'm on the College Football hall of Fame, the National Football foundation board, and Bill McRaven is on that board, and he has a very famous talk that just basically says, make your bed. You should go take a listen to it. And he's talking. You know, one of the foundations of life is successful people make their bed. It's amazing to me how many people live a messy life. Their closet's messy. Their car's messy. Their bedroom is messy. Their office is messy. Their life's going to be messy. I can tell you that there's a direct connection, I really believe this, between people that have a clean closet, a clean car, a clean bedroom, a clean office, that live more productive, efficient, peaceful, giving, dreamlike lives. People that live in mess usually create messes. They just do. And you say, well, I have a mess and I'm winning. You'd win more if it were clean and organized and tidy. It's a reflection of who you are. Your external environment is a reflection of what's really going on internally. And when I meet someone, I get in their car and it's a mess. I know this person probably has a mess in their life of some type or they're about to create one. Because we move what we're familiar. We move towards what we're familiar with. Did you hear that earlier with Touch your Dreams? If you're familiar with messes around you, you'll move towards them eventually. I don't believe that's a metaphor. I believe that that's true. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. So what are some of your relationship green flags? Maybe it's when your partner thoughtfully listens to you or anticipates your needs. We often hear about the red flags that we should avoid. But what if we focused more on green flags and friends and partners? If you're not sure what green flags look like, therapy can help you identify what they do look like and how you feel when you get them. 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Or it'll eventually happen, but it should have happened happen sooner so you'd be on to the next thing. Great leaders, great people, hyper productive, happy people have deadlines. I mean, even as simple as if you're dating somebody, you know there should be a deadline of hey, when you're committed or when you're going to get married or when it's going to be exclusive in business, when's the goal? When's the number going to hit? When's the account going to come in savings? Your physical changes? When are you going to hit that body fat percentage? When? Like deadlines. The more you have deadlines, you're moving towards something. You have something to look forward to. You have an accountability, right? I have so many friends in my life that don't have deadlines. Think about this. I have friends that don't have deadlines, that don't have clean bedrooms, that don't make their bed, that aren't reading, that don't touch their dreams, that don't hydrate, that don't take a daily walk, that don't have a to do list every day compared to someone who does. Who's going to win? Think about this person I'm describing. And by the way, all of this is easy. None of it's connected, but it's all connected. Number 13, say thank you more. I added this about a year ago. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Write more thank you notes to people. You know, I gave a speech this last weekend, and the dentist office that I go to, many of the people that are there went to that speech. And then I went back to the dentist. And so many of these ladies that work there wrote me personal thank you notes. And I cherish those notes anyway, makes me. I know what I did made an impact on them. And as much as what I did had an impact on them, their note of thanking me had an even bigger impact on me. Say thank you more. More often. You say thank you. Like when you wake up, thank you, God, for another day. You know, someone made you breakfast, thank you for breakfast. Someone got your breakfast, Someone brought your coffee at Starbucks. Whatever it is, thank you, thank you, thank you. Write more thank you notes. Say thank you more often. Thank God more often. Thank people more often. When someone comes in your meet your office and you have a great meeting, say thank you. Thank you. That was a great meeting. Thank you, thank you, thank you. The more you begin to thank people, the more you're in a state of gratitude, the more you're looking for things to be thankful for and just happy people say thank you. Good people, people with manners, kind people, giving people say thank you. I actually can't stand it when I go to dinner with friends and they don't thank the server when they bring them their food, they don't thank the server after they order the food. I'm always conscious of that. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Can I get a glass of water? Thank you. It's such a sign of a good person, a solid person, and these things shouldn't have to be said. Yet in a world today where manners and decorum and gratitude and grace and patience and kindness is out the window, people who say thank you stand out. And even if you didn't stand out, it's good for you to say thank you. All the great things in your life come from saying thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. You will find more things to be thankful for by simply saying it all the time. I'll bet that one of the top 10 things I say is thank you. And writing thank you notes to people has a deep impact on their lives. Trust me. I get them on a daily basis from people around the world, and I read them and it fills my soul with desire to continue to go on and it overrides the negatives in life. Number 14, ironically. Say no more. You got to learn to say no more. You don't want to go somewhere, say no. You don't want to do a meeting, say no. You don't want to do something, say no. You got to learn to say no more. I'm speaking to me probably more than anybody. I'm a people pleaser. I have a hard time saying no and me not saying I have. How many of you have things going on in your life right now that are in your calendar that as they get closer you're like, gosh, I hope it cancels, man. Why'd I say yes to that? I can't. I don't know if you're like me, I do it all the time. I should have just said no. There's a polite way to say no, you know, there's a well mannered way to say no. But I in my life would have been a much happier man the last 53 years had I learned in a polite, kind, firm way to say no. If people are asking you to do things you don't want to do or shouldn't do, say no. If you don't want to go somewhere or do something, say no. If you're in a conversation that doesn't serve you, or someone's gossiping, say no. I don't want to talk about this. Okay? That type of conversation doesn't serve you, say no. Okay, number 15, totally unrelated but totally related. Plan your sleep, Rest more, Structure your sleep, Learn about sleep. I can promise you this, the people who can get to sleep and sleep deeply. I do everything from stimulating the vagus nerve to go to sleep every single night with a little device that I use to keeping the room cold, to everything structured in my room, to keeping it very dark in the room. I've learned all of the codes for me to help me get deep sleep and rest. You will live longer. You will wake up more calm, cognitively strong, physically strong, higher energy. Everything in your life will benefit from getting deeper sleep, getting your HRV at an optimum level, your heart rate lower, all of these different things. Not drinking caffeine, all the things you can do. You need a plan for your sleep. Ask yourself this, do you have a plan for your workout? You probably do. Do you have a plan for work and the things you got to get done every day? You probably do. Do you have a plan for your sleep? Probably not. Yet. You will spend one third of your life doing that one thing. You will spend more of your life sleeping than any other activity of your life long term. And there's no plan for it. And in culture and society today, 99.9% of people don't, they go, well, I go to sleep. Yeah, but are you getting deep sleep? Do you even know? Do you have anything you're doing to monitor your sleep? You have an aura ring or something like that. That's something that's telling you how good your sleep is. You have a 30 year life that you have no plan for. And by the way, it's the one third of your life that impacts the other 2/3 all the time. And so I finally, you go. If you follow my social media, even though I haven't posted in a long time, my sort of obsession was with my sleep. And so I've got a plan for sleep now. Do you have a plan for yours? One third of your life impacts the other two thirds. Do you have a plan for it? Number 16, set your alarm 15 minutes early. This is something I just done in 2025 so far. I wake up 15 minutes earlier. I feel like I've stolen a day. 15 minutes. So because I plan my sleep, I go into bed 15 minutes earlier, but I get up 15 minutes earlier and I feel like, oh my gosh, I'm ahead of the whole world when I get up. If you start getting up 15 minutes earlier, you will feel like you're stealing the day. Like you're the early bird gets the worm. Like you're just. I just, I just created some more time in my life. I just created a scenario where I'm doing more. I'm doing something I didn't used to do 15 minutes earlier. When you get up, set your alarm 15 minutes earlier. It's just the best feeling in the world. And I don't think you'll miss those 15 minutes if you get deep sleep. And if you go to bed 15 minutes earlier, number 17, totally unrelated. Stop trying to multitask. There's no such thing. We've had enough studies on the brain to know you cannot multitask. You can't do two things at once. You shouldn't text and drive, that's dangerous. And you shouldn't be on the phone and doing emails. And you shouldn't be trying to make a phone call and write your speech or write your one thing at a time. Instead of multiple multitasking, learn to task switch, which is to do one task fully present, switch from it and do another. And by the way, many things are really good if you'll get away from them for a while. So, like when I write a book or a speech or plan a podcast, usually what I'll do is I'll start planning a podcast, like today for a little while, and then I will task switch and go do one of my other business activities or workout and then come back to the podcast for a while. Task switch. Getting away from a task gives you a refreshing look at it. Different set of eyes when you come back to it. More energy, more clarity, a different perspective. So stop trying to multitask all the time. You're incredibly unproductive when you multitask. Totally unproductive. Don't do it. Task switch and get away from things. Number 18, take the stairs. I've learned in my life that more I can take the stairs and not the escalator or the elevator. It's good for your body. It's good for your mind. No one else is willing to do it. And you start building this thing where I do things other people are willing to do. These things seem so trivial and small. Take the stairs more, and I guarantee you, you start doing that, you're like, yep, I'm special. I'm different. I do stuff other people aren't willing to do. And it's just little hacks, man, my heart rate went up a little bit. This is good for my legs. Hey, and guess what? No one else does this stuff. And you start taking the stairs of life. You start changing who you are. When you start behaving in a way that most people don't. When everyone's going one direction and you go the other, there just becomes a part of you that knows you're going in the right direction. Take the stairs. Number 19, practice mental rehearsal. Start visualizing more often. If you're not any good at it, start just trying to picture your future mental rehearsal over and over again of the talk you're going to give, the meeting. You're going to go into the goal, the dream you have. Start the habit of learning to be a person who does mental rehearsals. So before this podcast, I mentally rehearsed doing it. I just saw myself doing it. Before I give a speech, I see myself doing it. I mentally rehearse my goals. I mentally rehearse the victory. I mentally rehearse all of it. I'm a mental rehearsal addict. Almost where I'm constantly prepping my mental rehearsal. And the more someone does that, the more they become familiar with something, the more their mind moves towards it. Number 20 of my totally disconnected habits that aren't connected but are. Plan A Non negotiable vacation. Every year it's changed my life. I did not do it for years. Every year have a vacay you're going to take. If you can't afford it to go very far, make it a staycation and stay in your house. But plan your vacation. Why does that matter? It's a dream. It's something to look forward to. It's something you get excited about. If every year you just did something where you gave yourself the gift of a vacation somewhere, whether that's two days a week, whatever it might be, every year of your life you should be taking a vacation. And I know you go, well, Ed, that's just not in the cards for everybody. Believe me, I know I've had three jobs at one time, but I'm telling you, even if it's a weekend, every year you should have a vacation so that when you look back on your life, you've taken a bunch of them, you've gone somewhere, seen something new or maybe just that new place is actually your place that you never spend any time in because you work all the time time. But every year plan a non negotiable vacation. I promise you, you'll thank me for it. Yeah, plan a break. It's important that you give yourself that gift because you're going to work so hard. And here's lastly, I'll give you a bonus habit. Pray. Pray more. Spend more time in prayer, more time in contemplation of where you come from and where you're going. Find your own answers to that stuff. Pray more. Your life will be better. I can promise you that. Pray more. All right, everybody, that was 20, totally disconnected. Completely connected though in life. Habits that I think can serve you. And a bonus one which is prayer, whatever that means for you. Spend some time with God, your life will be better every single time you do it. But that's what I'm here to do every week with you. Just try to give you something. I gave you 20 things today that I think if you did at least some of them and you adopted those habits, your life will just end up being better. All right, God bless you, everybody. Max out. This is the Ed Milan show.
