How to Overcome Limiting Beliefs | The Better Than Rich Show Ep. 18

Set Yourself Free

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Set Yourself Free 〰️

How to Overcome Limiting Beliefs

Sometimes the thing that is holding us back isn't the how or the business strategies. Often it originates much sooner within our belief systems or how we are wired psychologically.

Self Awareness

A great starting place for self-awareness is to begin and analyze one’s thoughts. Too often we neglect ourselves by letting our thoughts run wild without analysis or control because we aren’t paying attention. If we aren’t paying attention to our thoughts most likely the best version of ourselves isn’t at the wheel.

To begin understanding our limiting beliefs we can start by understanding the significance of the different ‘voices’ or perspectives in our heads when we are having conversations with ourselves. We have a voice that will protect us. Sometimes this voice is protecting our ego and other times protecting us from physical harm. This voice is very distinctive because it’s built into our wiring as a human characteristic. Then we have the voice that is the best version of us.

Once we understand the voices we can begin to question the voices themselves and the beliefs behind those voices.

We are not the voices or thoughts that we have in our head, we are observing them so therefore we must be something else. This is important to remember and becomes more clear as we continue to become more self-aware and analyze our thoughts. We need to get more comfortable with our empty consciousness state, this state is the most observant. Then we can analyze limiting beliefs and uncover where they came from. These thoughts aren’t happening all the time and can be monitored and controlled.

We get to decide what facts we want to look at, we can find evidence for any belief that we create. Focusing on the gifts of life and the positive to help transform and reconstruct limiting beliefs.

Where Did This Limiting Belief Come From?

A lot of our belief systems and trauma come from our early years of childhood. It can be extremely beneficial to look into our childhoods and find memories that we still hold onto. Often we are holding onto that memory and feeling that comes along with it, which continues that feeling of trauma and creates a limiting belief.

If a memory that is older than 18 months and is still triggering us means that we haven’t integrated or fully learned the lesson that the situation is attempting to teach us.

A few beliefs to look into are our beliefs about ourselves, our beliefs of others, circumstances, money or finances, career, friends, family, and how the world runs.

How did our parents speak about money? What kind of relationships did I view as a child?

Who helped set our views on ourselves?

A good exercise to help find positive beliefs and realize which need to be reconstructed is the “I Am” exercise. Write “I Am…” and anything and everything that comes to mind.

I Am Reliable

I Am Honest

I Am A Procrastinator

Once we have the list we can reconstruct the negative ones to be positive. For example, “I Am A Procrastinator”, “I Am On top Of My Work When I Feel Energized”. Language often triggers beliefs.

Interpretation

We can only approach situations with the level of maturity that we have at that moment. If our maturity is lower than needed to truly understand the situation then we might simplify it into something that isn’t true.

A good example of this is when parents separate and they have a young child. The child doesn’t understand the entirety of their parents' relationship, so to find a solution to the problem that makes sense to them they might blame it on themselves. This isn’t true, but their maturity level only allows for such an explanation.

If we have beliefs that serve us that's great, we should keep them up! But, if we have beliefs that don’t, we need to switch them up! Why keep something that is limiting you that more than likely isn’t true in the first place.

Mike Abramowitz 0:11
Welcome to the better than rich show with your hosts Andrew Biggs and Mike Abramowitz. The better than rich show helps ambitious leaders who are on a mission to leave the world better than they found it changed their perspective on what's important, increase their income and impact and systemize their life and business. If you've ever struggled with finding your purpose and felt disconnected or distracted or found yourself going through the motions, this show will remind you that what you do matters and will re inspire you to chase your highest dreams. It's time for you to become better than rich.

Andrew Biggs 0:44
Hello, and welcome to the better than rich Show. I'm your host, Andrew Biggs and I'm here with my co host, Mike Abramowitz. Mike, how are we doing today?

Mike Abramowitz 0:52
Feeling good as always, Andrew?

Andrew Biggs 0:55
Yes, yeah, good, good. Well, then I'm excited to touch base today. And if you're joining us on Facebook, good to see you alive. If not, make sure you do go to our Facebook group, you could check it out in the show notes below. And make sure to join that group, we love to have people engaging with us in real time if you're able to. And we're so excited for today's topic, which is going to be all about the power of rituals and routines. Specifically, we'd love to talk about morning and evening rituals, and just how to start the day. Right? And also how to end it right. So that you are energized, refreshed, clear on so many different levels. Mike, what do you think about these topics? And once you get started?

Mike Abramowitz 1:36
Well, I think the first thing that shows up is a routine versus ritual. I talked about this, you know, with, I don't really remember, one of my groups I'm a part of and we're talking about a routine is a series of habits or patterns or behaviors. So it's like just a routine, like brushing your teeth is, you know, when you wake up in the morning, like I asked one of my staff members, like what's your morning routine, I wake up, I brush my teeth, I take a shower, I get dressed, I make my breakfast like that is a routine, it's a series of patterns or habits or behaviors. The difference with a routine and a ritual is a ritual has some level of intentionality behind it. It's on purpose. So it's a routine, a ritual is a routine with some sort of purpose behind it. So that intentionality then becomes well, what is your intention of the day? What what what how do you win your day? How do you what do you want to kind of put yourself into motion for and that's where the conversation then gets interesting? Because that's the answers to those questions, will oftentimes reveal what is a powerful ritual that is aligned with what are the outcomes that you want to get accomplished for that day?

Andrew Biggs 2:46
Hmm, absolutely. And I definitely want to talk specifics, but I think that distinction between ritual and routine that you bring is really good. When we talk about the idea of a ritual, right? You know, it almost has a spiritual component to it, there's something very serious about it, there's something you know, where we're taking it with reverence, right, it's a sacred time that we're that we're using every single morning, or every single evening, when we do these rituals. Now, you know, don't take that too far. Of course, you could add religious elements, specifically like prayer or, or reading his texts or different things like that. Or you could just treat it as sacred to your life. And what really what I mean by sacred in this context, not to not to water it down too much. But just to say, it's like, it's set aside for an important purpose, right. And it's, it's something that you don't violate, it's something you don't desecrate that time is important to you, and you make sure that you use it wisely. So that's really what I mean by, you know, bringing that spiritual component into it and treating that time as sacred. You know, what are some of the things I liked how you, you kind of said, well, if I think about what I want to feel, how I want to feel, what do I want to experience? I can ask that question. And then in some ways, the rituals, it would seem are the steps to get to that state, right? So you're almost reverse engineering a ritual? Is that what you'd say, Mike, and or what do you think about that?

Mike Abramowitz 4:15
And that's what's worked for me because I've had many different morning routines and different evening rituals and routines over the course of the last decade of my life nearly a decade and a half. So if at one point in my life where this all really started is Hal Elrod is a friend and acquaintance and a mentor of mine, and he has the Miracle Morning, so I highly recommend the book and his Facebook group is amazing with a couple 100,000 people around the world. And he has the philosophy of savers, silence, Affirmations, Visualization, exercise, reading and scribing. So his savers concept. He'll even tell you if you read the book. It's like he didn't invent savers. He just took the practices from all the Guru's that came from home for him, it said, if you're inside of personal growth, these are like the five or six or seven type of rituals on purpose routines that will move you closer towards the goals that you have. If you sit and visualize your goals, like that's a big one, if you journal through your goals, that's a big one. If you activate endorphins and exercise, that's a big one, right? Like, so he just took them all and said, Let's bundle them all up and just do all of them together and make that a ritual. And that's served me many, many times over. And at the same time, there's been times in my life where it's like, well, I either don't make the time for all of those, or I don't necessarily need every single one of them to start my day or, you know, an evening ritual that aligns with that. So just meeting yourself, where you're at one of the one of the things that we'll jam on here in a little bit is something called the MVP, the minimum viable product of your rituals, and what is your optimum product of your rituals. That way, you have like a drop down menu of what's going to be most most needed that you could call forward. I remember, Andrew, you had this conversation with me, I don't know probably circa 2017 was when I was using a ritual called hashtag BMW, breathe and meditate walk. And I said, this is the minimum viable product for me that if I just do breathe, meditate, walk if I do those three things to start my day, that will put me into motion with the type of vibrations and type of focus and, and the desires and helped me reveal what I need. So I would go drive myself to the bridge over in Clearwater, and you would catch Mike Abramowitz circa 6am At sunrise and I used to invite people to come with me, I would drive over there, and I would walk up and down the up and down the beach, and, like by the bridge, and I would do my breathing and my breathing would be in for and then exhale for with I love my life. I love my life, it was like gelling this walking up and down the up and down the beach, chanting it as I'm doing my breath work. And that's a practice I learned from Tony Robbins. And then I would sit down on the sand on the beach. And I would do a meditation book that was guided from also Tony Robbins. And I would listen to it and he would take me through a priming exercise where I would do this breathing activity in this primary activity, have a breath of fire, and then I would just feel my body and he would take me through three gratitudes I'm grateful for it would take me through three goals and I'm excited about accomplishing it would take me through people that I'm I'm excited about having in my life. And then it would be like a visualization of the of what I want. So it's like a really beautiful meditation practice. And then I would just, I would just act, obviously, I would just walk you know, just motions, whether walk would be run or jog or jumping jacks or some sort of exercise. Sometimes I would go to the gym, sometimes I would just add my steps in just walking up and down the beach, whatever it might be. So that routine, breathe, meditate walks served me for the better part of probably about two years, two and a half years. But it all came under this umbrella of what is a ritual that can move me into motion because by me doing those things. It took me from a valley that I was in at 2016 where it was a very low point in my life where I just needed to practice way more gratitude and get more centered and connected to my feminine energy. More so than trying to be so achiever focus, because that's what was creating so much tension in my life was trying to achieve so much in the outside world that I felt disconnected to my inside world. And that was a lot of what Biggs, you and I talked about when you were coaching me, you know, 2016 2017. And that practice really served me in that chapter of my life.

Andrew Biggs 8:53
Nice. Well, I mean, that's, that's awesome. I love my life. It's something I wrote down. I think that's a really cool, breathing exercise. So if you want to steal that, from Mike, give it a shot this morning, or maybe tomorrow morning when you wake up. I think that'd be a really, really useful thing. Or if you're just on your drive right now, no one's watching. Okay, just go ahead. Try it out. I love my life. Let's do it. Well, I think you know, one of the cool things I wrote down as I was kind of thinking about this and listening to your share was, you know, different routines and rituals for different times in your life. Right. And you mentioned that sometimes, you know, we kind of need an achiever orientation, sometimes we need to kind of let let go. And I think sometimes when I talk to people about rituals, one of the biggest problems I have, that people have with with rituals is they don't like to, to, to be so constrained, right? There are some personality types out there. Right? Generally, it's people who are going to be high in in what we call industriousness if you're high and industriousness on the on the Big Five model If you haven't taken that test go to understand myself calm check it out. It's like 10 bucks, and take that you can kind of get understand your personality. But the if you're high and industriousness, you're probably gonna like structure more, right? If you're hiring orderliness, you're gonna like structure more. But some people, they're like, oh my gosh, just the idea of, you know, planning out every five minute increment of my morning, just doesn't sit right with me. Okay, fair enough. Let's find one that works for you. Right. And so, you know, these are different. It's almost like a menu, I really want to encourage everyone here listening to that to think about, it's like, you have a morning routine, you have an evening routine menu that you can, you can kind of select from, and you know, try to try to try one on for 30 days, right? 90 days, see how it goes. But you can't just say, Oh, I don't like savers. So I'm just not going to have a morning routine. It's like, no, no, it'd be inspired by savers and choose exactly what yours is going to be. Mike chose BMW, right? Breathe, meditate, walk, but what's yours? Right? What do you need during this time of your life? And I do like these ideas of journaling, right? Affirmations, Visualization, exercise, reading, writing, these are important things, right? Throw in their breathing, exercise, meditation, right? If you're a religious person, maybe it's prayer, or it's reading your Bible or devotional book, in your faith. It could be anything, right? Anything that's going to help prime you to get you into the right state, one of the things I'll just throw out there is trying to define what are your big three today. And generally, this is kind of like towards the end of the of the ritual, we're starting to transition into the day where we want to be focused, right? So the question is, you know, what are the big three things I want to make sure I get done today? Or who are the three people I need to reach out to? Whether it's just a send them a voice memo, and say, Hey, I was thinking about you, I hope you're doing well. I just want to say I love you. And I hope you have a great day today. Or it's a business orientation, you're trying to make a sale, or you're trying to get a key initiative in your business complete? Who are the three people I need to talk to? And what are the big three tasks that I need to get done today? So these are just some other options that come up. For me, I definitely wanna talk about the MVP option. You know, the the minimally viable product, the minimal viable product of your rituals, but Mike, what other like things can people throw on the menu? Or was that like an exhaustive list in your opinion,

Mike Abramowitz 12:24
those are, those are great lists, and there's a few others that show up, you know, such as something as simple as you'd like, under the umbrella of visualization, using a vision board, under the umbrella of journaling is looking back at past journal entries for perspective, that's something that's really helpful. Under the umbrella of refer, I would put the size of reflection, looking at photos from your past, or looking back to who you were, and seeing where you are now, like the power of three years. So it's like something really powerful about looking at a photo of yourself or some photos from three years ago. And then journaling, like, what was life like, How is life different now than it was three years ago, and just that concept is a really great reflection. So reflection is a great one. I know you said prayer, or you know, reading the Bible, or reading any type of any type of personal growth. I also think listening you know, sometimes music, you know, music can really light up the soul. So if you have a drop down of, of songs that can trigger certain emotions, I think is a really cool idea that that I have some of my clients do. There's another another one of my clients does a, she does a dance party. So so it's we've talked about this where when the song comes on, that triggers, you know, her body to move in a certain way. And that's, that's one way that she wants to wake up. Which is really cool. Another thing, another one is, there's I had her write down on like on blank sheets of paper, her like I am statements of what she'd said. And it's like writing those im statements in the morning. And then she, you know, putting them in different places around around her house. So that way, you know, they're there. So part of the morning ritual is going to read these im statements. And so there's a lot a lot of different fun ways to you could add to this menu for the morning. What's what's also also the last one on the big three that you mentioned, is I look at my schedule of calls or people I interactions that I have for that day. And I and I work in my mind, and I just sit there and just think about each each interaction that I have and I start thinking what is this person? Like? What is their lens of the world right now? And how might I be able to serve them at the highest level I can? It's like just thinking about what is their lens of the world right now? What are they possibly thinking about? And then it'd be like, how can I serve them today and how can I make sure I show up to this conversation the best way possible, and just bringing that type of intention. analogy has really been helpful for me, especially in the evening before, which we'll talk about evening rituals in a moment, but also the morning of just to get my mind in the right place. So this morning, as an example, when I went and my walk to the gym, that's a part of my my ritual, I'll walk to the gym, and I've been listening to Will Will Smith's audiobook, it is lovely, I highly recommend it, it is really beautifully done. And it's him reading the book, and he tells all the stories, and it's really beautiful. So what's nice is like I'll listen to I've been listening to will, oftentimes I'll listen to a podcast, it's typically I listened to our show, when we release it, it sounds funny, but I do just to kind of hear what we were talking about and make sure it's fresh for me and just like picking it apart a little bit in my mind, but I feed my mind while I'm on my walk. And while I'm doing my workout, and then pairing that with what I did before, which is thinking about those conversations. Now I'm like learning something new, that I might be able to bring into some of those conversations. So as I'm listening and learning, I'm listening and learning with the intent of how can I bring some of that into the conversations that I'm about to have today. So it pairs really nicely when you have this menu, you know, to what you're saying. So

Andrew Biggs 16:17
totally, totally. And there's, there's an intentionality and everything you're doing right. Every single aspect of what you're saying is, is is important. And again, you know, we have to as leaders be feeding ourselves if we want to, you know, be able to pour into others. You know, a couple of things if you haven't listened to Andrew Huber mins podcast, he's a Stanford professor, he has some really good stuff on this. And one of the things he really recommends is just getting a bunch of light early on, and just helping yourself wake up. You know, this is a technical term, but he says we need about 100,000 Lux of, you know, exposure in the morning to kind of help ourselves wake up. So that's something to consider. So these are these are some some important things. I really like this. What if What if just to play devil's advocate here, what if someone's listening and they go, Wow, cool. You know, I'm really glad that you're able to give yourself all that time in the morning, but my you don't understand my life. Like, I wake up and I got a screaming baby, and I got kids, and we got to get to school. And like all like like, barely can get I'm scraping by over here, man, I don't have time. I don't have space. I'm just lucky to get through the day. And the only thing that gets me through is is is four cups of coffee man. So like, you know, congratulations on your great life. But you don't understand what mine's like, like, what would you say to someone like that?

Mike Abramowitz 17:40
I would say I relate fully, that was eight months of my life of 2021 when Lindsay and I were living in a hospital. So that's where that minimum viable product shows up. Because the MVP of a morning routine is really important, where it's like, what's the minimum that I can do for myself to show up for myself, and for the people I love. And, you know, frankly, those are really tough seasons. So if you're in that season of life right now, where you're very much in survival mode, you're very much in a winter, you're very much in a you know, it's a very, it's a very tough time I've been in that spot many times I've been in a lot of valleys, and I feel you 100% And what I would say is, what is the least that you need to do for you to so you can show up for your purpose and for other people. And you know, I don't know what that is for you. But I know for me, walking and motion was very important for me. So even if you don't have that much time, Motion creates emotion. So whether it be jumping on a trampoline or doing you know 20 Jumping jacks, or just doing as many pushups as you can until fail, or just taking a little bit of a walk outside just to kind of get some fresh air to start the day. That's something's very important. So some sort of motion, so it triggers some sort of emotion. The second thing is gratitude. Anytime the minimum viable product is gratitude because that gratitude is important to just kind of activate the oxytocin to activate or reduce some of the stress hormones like the serotonin. So you want to try to bring some of the higher frequency emotions, you can show up as much as possible for the people you love. So if you're a lot in reaction mode, it's still there's people counting on you in some capacity. So you want to serve them. So something as simple as five gratitude voice messages or five gratitude text messages or three gratitude like voice video messages that you could just send to people that Andrew alluded to earlier. You could just write down what am I grateful for right now question mark and just list off and set a timer and see what you can come up with in 60 seconds. So some sort of gratitude practice or some sort of motion to activate emotion and then see I'm sort of gratitude that can say, no matter how challenging this season is right now, I know there's a gift that I can find, if there was a gift, what might it be? What might it be and just giving myself space? How long would this take 20 Jumping Jacks could take minute, depending on how fast you move, and then sending out three or four or five gratitude text messages, you know, or voice notes can take another two or three minutes, we're talking under five minutes, you could do those two things. And it could put you into some sort of intentionality for the day. And if there was a third, hypothetically, if you're in a winter season, just being mindful that spring always follows winter, it does not matter where you're at, if you always look at trends from life, spring, always comes after winter, and just being reminded that spring is on the horizon. So whatever you need to do to be reminded that spring is coming, whether that'd be reflecting on a past winter, and when spring showed up how beautiful that season was, or just looking forward to what that next spring is going to be. And for me, that was me, I made a list of all the data activities that I couldn't wait to do with James when he got out of the hospital. And that was really tough, because, you know, there's so many uncertainties of ups and downs of like, is even going to make it out of the hospital. I'm over here thinking about, you know, I can't wait to take James to a Tony Robbins event or I can't wait to do a pb&j Feeding Frenzy with James where I can't wait for him to host one one day like I'm thinking about all these things down the road. And I'm looking at my two pound baby, one pound baby three pound baby. And I'm like, I don't even know what what today brings, but just having this minimum viable product of motion, which for me, a lot of it was walking in, you know, and for me, it was the gratitude of like reaching out to people and making lists of people and places and principles and things that I had already in my life. And then thinking about those gifts of spring is going to come and when spring comes, I'm going to be ready for it. And that's what happened. I didn't know spring was going to be eight months later, but shit. When spring came September 10, when we got into the hospital, boom, launched three businesses boom, you know, I was ready to rock and roll because I was so so excited and anticipating this day for eight months that I knew spring was gonna come and now, you know, since September until now it's March. It's it's been really cool to see the navigation through that. So I know it's kind of a longer rant on the question of if you're kind of in a place where winter is tough. You don't have to go out there and have all the answers right now. But I do believe that some sort time is irrelevant, but some sort of intentionality and some sort of ritual is going to be critical during this season.

Andrew Biggs 22:43
Awesome, great share. And I really appreciate that. And I think, you know, what Mike's kind of alluding to is like, something is better than nothing, right? And so often we we kind of have this all or nothing thinking we can be victims of that and think oh, man, you know, if I can't make it to the gym six days a week, like why haven't got one, right? If I can't have a full hour in the morning, why should I get five minutes? If I can't, you know, completely stick to this this diet that I'm on right now. I guess I might as well just order a pizza. And it's like we kind of fall victim to this instead of just trying to make the right decision make one right decision takes zero does. Yeah.

Mike Abramowitz 23:24
If I can't brush my teeth for two and a half minutes, like the dentist tells me I'm not going to brush my teeth at all. That sounds ridiculous. Right? You do 20 seconds at least if you can't do the full three. Yeah,

Andrew Biggs 23:35
my wife accuses me of doing 20 seconds every morning. She's like, did you really brush your teeth? Like that? Was it? You know? I'm like, Yes, I brought.

Mike Abramowitz 23:44
But no, that's MVP tooth.

Andrew Biggs 23:45
There you go. Um, but no, I think I think this is spot on guys. So it's like, you know, find your minimally viable ritual. Right? What does that look like? Even if it's five minutes, 10 minutes. I love a gratitude idea. If it's not, you know, even you don't even have to tell people, you know, necessarily, I think it's kind of cool if you do but even if you just journal and reflect what am I grateful for? Right? I'm grateful for those people or I'm grateful for that, you know, the wind on my face, right? That I'm alive today that I've been given the gift of life for another day, it could be anything. But first finding that gratitude is so important. If we were to kind of shift gears here a little bit towards the concept of winding down for the day. You know, I'm obviously it's in some ways a similar concept. But I think more has been said about morning rituals than evening rituals. Just in kind of the the, you know, info sphere out there. What would you say about evening rituals? Why do they matter, as well? And let's kind of kick that conversation off a little bit so that people can get some context into that position.

Mike Abramowitz 24:49
Yeah, Jack Canfield has an awesome speech. He's the author of Chicken Soup for the Soul where he talks about, I think it's called the power of focus. And he also has a book but I remember hearing the speech He talks about that science proves that whatever you hear, see, hear or see, right before you go to bed that 30 minutes before bed plays over in your unconscious mind six more times. So he says, that's why you don't want to fill your mind with fear based activities, like watching the news or something like that before you go to bed, because that's going to play over six more times in your unconscious mind. So what does that actually mean? That means your body is going to have some sort of visceral effect of you your thoughts that you're putting into your mind before you go to sleep at night. So if that's the case, and if science proves that to be the case. So that's why the intentionality of those final 30 minutes before bed might be a good idea. It might be a good idea to be intentional, with those final 30 minutes of the day, if that's the truth. Now, whether or not that's the truth, that's up to you to decide. But according to according to Jack Canfield in the message, I heard, this makes sense, you know, all right, I trust. So if that's the case, a couple of things screens, like blue light, is shown also by science to it suppresses melatonin, and melatonin is the chemical our body naturally produces to let our body know that it's time to go to bed. So anytime you hear someone say, I study better at nighttime, or I like to do a lot of things at nighttime, I'm not a morning person, it's more than likely that they've suppressed that melatonin so much throughout their life, that it's not being like drawn out or activated. So that's why they're like, I'm a night owl, or I'm not a morning person, where realistically, and I'm not I'm not scientist on this, but more than likely, it's probably because you suppress the melatonin so much that it's not really active anymore, and it's not triggering your body, that's time to go to bed. So they're being intentional with, let me remove the screens. You know, let me allow my body to activate some of the melatonin, maybe even take a supplement if you'd like activate the melatonin and then what do you want to do for those 30 minutes before you shut I without a screen? So that brings up the question, What can I do for 30 minutes with no screens? You can read a book, you could look at a photo album, you could look at your planner for the next day, you know, you could you could look at your vision board. I mean, there's so many that you could grab a journal, I mean, there's so many different things that you can do without screens. Before you go to bed, you could actually have quality time with your significant other, you know, I mean, there's so many ideas, and you can get really creative with this, we can go back and forth ainger and jam on what are some of those ideas, but just understanding the concept, maybe is enough for you to be intentional with it. That's my immediate thought.

Andrew Biggs 27:50
Right? Totally. And I think it's, you know, that idea, right? I think resonates with everybody, we've all like gone to sleep, and like maybe who's ever been guilty of falling asleep with the TV on or something, right? And you're watching like an action movie or something. And then all of a sudden you find yourself in a dream and you're like, you know, you know, fighting the bad guys or whatever. And the reason is, right, because, you know, we're we're engaging with something right before bad. And so that I think that totally makes sense. Obviously, it's not like I've read, you know, the study or anything that that represents that but it seems to make sense to me. And then the blue light is huge, right? So, you know, when we think about blue light, there's also a really cool feature on your, on your, a lot of your devices, especially Apple devices, called night shift, okay, if you're not familiar with night shift, you gotta check this out, you want to go to your settings, and activate your night shift and you want to have you do want to have it on for just, you know, the night because you actually want blue light during the day that have you be alert and focused, right? You know, so we don't want blue blockers on all day. And there's also blue blocking, you know, glasses that you can wear. And and those are really useful for when you're looking at screens at night. So you can check out blue blocker glasses, there's a lot of different brands out there that you can get. But the the whole concept for the night shift is it basically takes the blue light out of your screens, right. And so when you when you don't have the blue light, it's going to start winding you down that melatonin is going to release and that's a that's a really good thing. I wouldn't be a little careful gang with supplementing with melatonin. I really only like to use that if it's an extreme case like we go to India a few times you know, maybe like once every couple years as my wife's family's from there. So maybe if I need to sleep early and like reset myself you know I'll you know throw a couple melatonin gummies back or something like that. But generally I think you don't want to rely on on supplements to to fall asleep. And especially younger folks. You know, especially like kids shouldn't be taking those things. What this what the studies have shown that it could delay puberty and in some cases completely screw up their hormonal structures. So just something to consider there. Again, this all this information that I'm residing here is from the Huberman lab podcast. It's Andrew Huberman again, if you want to check out his work, but yeah, I mean, this evening routine stuff. It's like, yeah, just it's it's all about settling down for the day, winding down your body, right? We get ramped up all morning, we're taking coffee, we're moving, we're, we're excited. We're constantly stimulated. So you just need a time to like, put away the devices and like come to a resting position so that your body is ready to actually fall asleep. So definitely at least 30 minutes without screens. And then, you know, find some way to, to kind of help yourself wind down. You know, have a conversation with somebody read a book, do what you need to do. Some people are really detail oriented, they like to lay out their clothes for the next day. They like to look at their calendar for the next day, write out who they want to reach out to. But in general, what is your evening routine? What is your evening ritual that you're ready to have? Maybe it is evening prayer, or that's when you read the Bible or whatever. But just making sure that you have some sort of routine, and ritual that's going to serve you and have you ready to wake up the next morning really rested and ready to rock right? That's ultimately what we're going for is optimum performance. So if we want to do that, we have to be intentional.

Mike Abramowitz 31:30
And exactly what you just said, injuries is the what is the goal of the the evening ritual? The goal of the evening ritual is to look forward to the morning. How does the kid get up Christmas morning, super fired up to wake up to the presence is because that's all the kids been thinking about all night long, is right before bed. It's like the anticipation of the morning, where a lot of people go to bed, they're thinking about the angst or the anxiety of the morning, what's the difference between angst and anticipation is one is faith based and one is fear based. That's the only difference. So it's like if we can intentionally create anticipation, which is based by faith, versus the anxiety of fear. It's, we're able to be intentional with that. What is the fear of anxiety of the morning? It's like, Oh, when I wake up, I'm already going to be tired. I have like so much stuff to do tomorrow. If so, and so takes tells me that thing again, I'm gonna freakin you know, you fill in the blank. Right? So it's like, this is the anxiety based upon fear of something that might not even happen. Right? Where are the? Yeah, so you got your thoughts? Well, no, I

Andrew Biggs 32:45
was just gonna say I think I think part of partially people are like, afraid of the morning. I think the other thing is sometimes they're just not connected at all right? It's just a complete, they're not even thinking about their purpose, their their what they got to get done tomorrow. It's just not even on their radar. And so they wake up and they just, they're like, What am I got? What am I doing today? Again, right? What's my purpose? What am I trying to accomplish? And there's just so many people going through the motions. Maybe you don't know what your purpose is. Fair enough. Have a conversation with one of us will try to I will try to draw it out here. But yeah, but I think it's like, you know, you have to be connected to something like that. And most people are right there, you know, their evening routine probably consists of, you know, scrolling through social media, or just binge watching a show on Netflix, it's not even that good. Or like having a few drinks or smoking a bowl or whatever. And then they wake up and they're like, get out it, they're waking up at the last possible second to scramble out of bed to get dressed, get to work on time. And then that's how they start their morning in a frantic state. So I totally agree. The goal of the evening routine is to start the next morning the right way. What were you gonna say?

Mike Abramowitz 34:02
Yeah, we talked about that on one of our former episodes, like how to not like inoculate yourself in the the ideologies and also in social media and stuff. But it's like, if you really think about what's happening when you're scrolling through social media, it's a version of entertainment. And of that version of entertainment is good. The other part of this entertainment, though, is it is triggering certain inadequacies and certain emotions and certain there's certain things that are happening behind the scenes in your mind and your emotional structure that you might not be fully conscious of. But that that's that's not a great thing to not be in the Nola, right. Like, you don't want to be like a zombie. You want to be some somewhat of someone aware. And if you, all of us, all of us are guilty, myself included where we were scrolling and it's been 20 minutes. You're like, holy shit, I can't believe I've been doing this for 20 minutes already. And it's like this That's been a zombie for 20 minutes, if I just would have done that 20 minutes at the gym, man, that would be a way more productive 20 minutes for me, but it's just being aware of it. So to your point, Andrew is, if people are if you catch yourself going through this motion, where it's like, I just don't even really have a problem and just kind of scroll through this, I'm just gonna watch Netflix fall asleep, I just invite you to at least be aware of the pattern. I'm not saying change the pattern. But could you at least be aware that a pattern exists? And here's my invitation to you, is write down your current routine. And just really think about what is my current routine that I do? What are the patterns that I'm currently doing? Alright, I go to sleep, I grab my bowl, I scroll through for you know, however, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, I watch Netflix, I fall asleep and just right and just by you writing that down. And then when you wake up in the morning, what is my current morning routine, I wake up, I do this, I scroll even more, I scroll even more, and I scrolling more and eventually, like I hit my alarm five or six times, right? And now you know, whatever it might be and just writing it down. Now that you're aware, you can do something about it if you choose, but at least become conscious of your behaviors.

Andrew Biggs 36:15
Absolutely, absolutely. Because we all have a routine, we know whether you your routine, is productive or not really is the question. Right? You have a morning routine. And whether or not serving you in in reaching your goals and achieving your purpose is really the question. You know, the last thing I just want to say is, you know, there are times in your life, when you just need to buck up when you need to step up. Right. And if you're listening here, I definitely I think the gentleness you know, is sometimes needed, where we're like, hey, you know, if you could even just give five minutes to this, I think you're gonna really benefit from it. It also sometimes a little tough love is needed to. And if you're listening to this, and you're like, you know what, I've heard about this, I thought about this, but I've never really made that commitment I've never, you know, I always wake up at six, because, you know, that's when that's when it works for me. But you know, I know that if I woke up at five, my life would be dramatically better start waking up at five, like, just do it stop delaying. And especially if you pair that with an evening routine, right, you get to bed on time, it's not hard to wake up at five. So if you need to, like you know what you need to do on the other end of this, if you really are in a winter season, and all you can do is five minutes, cool. But if you're like, you know what, I've never truly tried this out, try it for 30 days, right? Try a full hour in the morning, and see what you see what that can do for you. If you're like, I don't know what to do, you know, shoot us a message, a private message or whatever we'll we'll get back to or drop a comment here, you know, on this on this thread. But I think the the reality is, if that's you step up, lean in and just just try it out and see how you feel. The reality is, you will feel great. If you do it, and you're consistent. So I just want to I just want to share that with you. Because I think the reality is sometimes we need to be gentle. And sometimes we need some tough love and some of you listening or like, you know, have been dabbling for too long, and it's time for you to make a decision.

Mike Abramowitz 38:14
Yep, mornings are a fantastic time of the day, if you allow them to be. So don't allow yourself to be convinced of the story that I'm not a morning person. You know, just just start being aware of what are your evening rituals or routines I should say? And what are your morning rituals or routines I should say, and start changing them into intentional rituals and you will see a dramatic shift in your life. Coming back to the question of if I did blink daily, it would improve my life dramatically. If I did blink daily, it would improve my life dramatically. And for what he just said, When I woke up. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the show, please share it with others post about it on social media or leave a rating and review a couple 100 To catch all the latest from us. You can follow us on Instagram at better than underscore rich and join our Facebook group at the better than rich show. Thanks again for listening and I look forward to seeing you next time. And remember, leave today better than you found it

Andrew Biggs 39:13
and remember to leave today better than you found it we'll see you next week on the better than rich show. Thanks everyone. Bye