Energy Management Principles | The Better Than Rich Show Ep. 3

Become Superhuman

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Become Superhuman 〰️

Energy Management Principles

The morning time is the most important part of your day. What you do in the morning and your mindset affects the entirety of your day; from how much you get done to how you will react to daily situations. Which makes ensuring that your mindset stays where you want it and that you are as productive as possible just as important, but no one said it was easy. There are numerous techniques to help you make the most out of your day while keeping a set mindset throughout or resetting it when you get off track.

Practice Micro Days

Micro-days promote productivity by separating one day into multiple intervals. During those intervals, you’d have a set amount of tasks to complete before that micro-day is over. Once the micro-day ends you give yourself a bit of rest and start your next set of tasks.

For example, if you normally complete five tasks a day, using micro-days of 6 hours you can get three times the work done. Five tasks each micro-day while leaving one micro-day for sleep.

Managing Notifications

Limiting the number of distractions in your surrounding while completing tasks allows for you to stay focused and complete tasks faster. Deciding ahead of time what notification you don’t mind interrupting you sets you up for success.

Every time you get distracted while doing a task it takes you twenty minutes to get back to the same level of focus.

Morning Routine

What’s your morning routine? Knowing what you need to do in the morning to prepare yourself for the day is essential to your success. Productivity starts as soon as you wake up. Having a set morning routine will allow you to place yourself in the right mindset for your day.

Watch Your Thoughts

During the day we must keep a lookout for saboteurs within our thoughts. Sometimes we have negative thoughts or doubt in ourselves and worry.

We call that voice in your head Mr. or Ms. Wimpy.

Wimpy is not a bad version of you, Wimpy can keep you safe in tough situations and ensure you think twice about what you do. But you don’t need Wimpy all the time because you don’t need to be concerned all the time.

Sometimes you just need to dive in and tell Wimpy to step aside, because you got this! Catching unwanted thoughts before it affects you negatively can be the difference between a bad and good day.

Feel Your Feelings

Permitting yourself to feel your feelings is a necessity. We all have emotions, there should be certain times out of the day where you step back and ask yourself how you feel. What am I feeling?

Pretending you don’t have emotions or ignoring them is more destructive than giving yourself a safe space to express your thoughts and feelings. You can’t be a positive or productive person if you aren’t feeling that way.

If you are looking for an outlet, journaling can be that for you.

Journaling is an outlet that brings the emotional part of your brain to connect with the logical. It allows you to let out your feelings and answer those questions of “How do I feel?”, “Why am I feeling this way”, and “What can I do to change the way I’m feeling”. Along with keeping a record of those answers to be reflected on at a later date.

Learning to live intentionally with your time and energy will allow you to stop being a victim of circumstance and become more committed to your goals.

Andrew Biggs 2:02
What's going on everyone welcome to the better than rich Show. I'm your host Andrew Biggs and I'm here with my co host, Mike Abramowitz. Good morning to you all. And we are so excited that you've decided to spend this morning with us or if you're listening back to the recording whatever time you're listening to this whether you're on the drive, or you are just enjoying a nice cup of coffee by a fire wherever you're at in this world, we're glad you're here. Mike what's going on this morning.
Mike Abramowitz 2:26
Morning, I am my mother in law's house here in beautiful Jacksonville.
Andrew Biggs 2:32
Nice. Nice already
Mike Abramowitz 2:34
already went in the pool this morning, did my workout feeling good. And it's, it's already a great morning, anytime you could start the day before the sun comes up. It's a good morning, in my opinion.
Andrew Biggs 2:44
There you go. There you go. And that's actually something we're gonna be talking about today. By the way, guys, we did figure out the comments feature. So if you guys have comments or questions, we are able to bring in your questions here on the show live. So if you do have something you want to talk about, feel free to mention it in the comments and we will jump on it if it is sufficiently relevant to the shop. But uh, yeah, making me that's actually really good that you brought that up about diving in the pool this morning and getting things started before the sunrise because today we're gonna be talking about energy management, and the importance of energy management. What is energy management? You know, it's been said that energy management is actually more important than time management. And I tend to agree. And we're going to talk a little bit about that. But when you think about energy, Mike, how do you start to think about energy? How do you relate to energy? Why is energy important? You know, start us off here, man, what are you thinking or energy? And where do you want to dive in to start to that,
Mike Abramowitz 3:40
I mean, the first thing that comes up, it's like, there's so many times in the past where I wouldn't feel like doing something or it's like I hit the roadblock in the middle of the day where it's just the only thing I want to do is take a nap or just chill on the couch. And and so the way I think about energy management is more of the opposite. It's like what what I know what I feel when I'm like lethargic, or when I don't feel like doing stuff or I don't have the energy. And I just think about the activities that I do settle into when I don't have energy. And I think about do those activities move me closer or further away from the life that I want to have and the goals that I want to achieve and who I'm worthy of becoming so if I if I don't have energy and that's who I am and that's what I'm doing then I probably should do the opposite of that. So So then, what's the opposite of have you know, energy management for me is making sure that you know, I can honor my micro days and you know, my 6am to noon and my noon to 6pm and 6pm to midnight and midnight to 6am and like I could just honor my micro days and have enough energy to be able to win each of those micro days with things that are aligned with whatever my priorities are my goals are, huh,
Andrew Biggs 5:05
totally. So we're going to talk a little bit about energy management strategies, we're going to dive into that pretty heavy today. You mentioned a concept there that I'm sure some people listening at least aren't familiar with. What is a micro day?
Mike Abramowitz 5:18
I heard this I got introduced to this. During quarantine during COVID. Maybe in March, I was listening to Ed mallette podcast, and he was talking about the concept of the micro day, and I'm sure it's been around before then and whatever. But that's when I got introduced to it. And I said, Wow, this is kind of what I'm already doing unintentionally, but let me get really intentional. And the concept was three axing your time. So if everyone is doing like, say they're getting five things done in a day, well, that means they're only doing seven days worth of five things that's 35 things a week, where if you could do a micro de within a day where you're getting five things done in a micro day, it means you're getting 15 things done within three micro days. And then the fourth micro day is when I sleep. So say sleep for those six to eight hours. And then I have my three micro days where I get my five things done. So I'm getting 15 things done in a day. Time, seven days, I'm three times more productive than the average person and that's what it was what was happening for me during you know, during March. I was very intentional with Alright, what are the five outcomes I want to get done before noon? And then I'll have like a little recess and it was like, Alright, what are my five outcomes you want to get done before 6pm? And then I'll have my little recess, then what are the outcomes? I want to get done before I go to bed? Then I have my recess and what are the outcomes that I want to do during that that fourth micro day is nothing because I'm sleeping but
Andrew Biggs 6:49
that way you sleep the whole day on the fourth day are you like God creating the earth here like what what happens on the fourth day?
Mike Abramowitz 6:56
The fourth micro day is when I am zonked out and sleeping because it is typically from midnight to 6am. So Oh,
Andrew Biggs 7:03
yeah, I for some reason was interpreting it like you took a full day. Okay, fourth micro days you sleep, okay,
Mike Abramowitz 7:11
micro day is that midnight to 6am. Usually, for me, it was about like 1030 or 11 o'clock till about 545 or 6am. So I was like that fourth micro day. So it wasn't exactly like that six hour interval. But that was the concept of how it was introduced to me. And it's been revolutionary for me, even today, you know, just started my day. I didn't have to, you know, wake up, you know, before six and do a workout and do fit in a micro day this morning. But it's just so habitual at this point from doing it for so many months that Why not? Yeah, right. And I Oh, believe me, I tried to convince myself we could talk about that a little bit. Those voices tried to sabotage me this morning.
Andrew Biggs 7:56
Sure, sure. So basically, the concept for everyone listening is you split your days into four separate hours or so four separate micro days of six hours, right? So you know, maybe it's midnight to six, six to 12, you know, 12 to six, six as well on the on the pm side, basically, you know, breaking that down so that you can be really efficient in those six hours. It also kind of works if you want to have a particular focus for that micro day, I find so many people want to switch tasks often, right. And so you know, this is just an important concept for you all to understand. But distraction is a killer of your energy. And it's a killer of your focus. So every time we get distracted from our work, whatever it is that we're focused on what we're supposed to be focused on for that time, whenever a distraction comes in, it's going to take us another 20 minutes to get back into the level of focus that we were in before the distraction came in. This is why you have to manage your notifications. If you're not doing that write that down you know put that into your Notes app or whatever it is, but you have to manage your notifications so that you're not getting interrupted when you don't want to get interrupted basically the only notifications I have on are you know text messages or or certain things that are more urgent from certain people. And if that's not the case for you, you should really look into how you can manage your notifications better so you're not distracted. So basically, we've already talked about micro days breaking things down getting five things done in six hour intervals that get you 15 things done in a day. And and also you know I want to give like a larger frame about energy. You know, when we think about energy more globally, you know not to get all you know, spiritual or metaphysical on you, but you are energy. You are energy. Obviously, every single cell in your body is moving. Every single atom in your body is moving every single proton like Tron neutron is moving around at a certain frequency at a certain rate, they are moving man. And energy is really what you are at the deepest level. And of course, we can also talk about what you are, you know, from a consciousness metaphysical level, but from a physical level, you are energy. And so you have to be paying attention to what your energy is, and what you're bringing to every single interaction. Because if you want to be influential, you need to have energy, you need to have a higher quality energy, a cleaner energy and more focused energy, a more directed energy than others. And you have to be able to bring that in every single day, if you want to be successful. So understand that you are energy and how you manage your energy matters. You know, and in 10, have another frame to kind of look at this is there's physical energy, there's emotional energy, there's mental energy, and then their spiritual energy. And my goal on a daily basis is to ask myself, am I in alignment with my physical, my emotional, my mental energy and my spiritual energy. And if any single one of those is a little off, you can almost imagine it like children's blocks, and they build, you know, four blocks on top of each other. If one of them is slightly askew, or slightly off, then my energy is not in alignment, and I need to do what I need to do to get that physical, emotional, mental or spiritual energy back in alignment with that sort of pillar. And if I can, then I'm gonna have a good day. If I can't, then sometimes I'm a little off. Mike, what do you think about these concepts that you are energy and you think about physical, emotional, mental spiritual, what's coming up for you?
Mike Abramowitz 11:46
Yeah, I can physically feel drawing out the energy within me at on command. So the concept of that we are energy is, in my opinion, is proven because I have witnessed myself drawing it out on command when I need it, certain types of energy. So for example, if you need to draw out calmness, there's a way and certain breathing techniques that you can activate calmness, if you need to bring out more drannit like that adrenaline rush of like, going in a cold, like, for me going in a cold shower, or going into an ice bath, I need to draw out and bring out more adrenaline, that rush of energy. So there's different types of energetic that we need to be able to command ourselves to be able to bring out and bring to the surface. And that's where I have realized through whether it be calm, or whether it be through like a larger journal in Russia, I've been able to call that energy forward. And their opposite ends of the spectrum. Sometimes it's, you know, drawing compassion, that the energy of connection and that heart energy that needs to be called forward. So the self awareness and giving giving the mind and body a chance to connect with one another, to be able to be in tune to call forward, what energy is needed in that moment is going to is really what allows an individual to be a person of influence.
Andrew Biggs 13:20
Totally. So let's talk about strategies. What are some of your strategies, we talked about micro days, but we talked a little bit about morning routine? Do you want to walk us through some of your strategies, and I can walk through some of mine? What How do you manage your energy? And how do you make sure that your energy is on point on a daily basis?
Mike Abramowitz 13:39
So I know, people around me know when I did not do my morning routine, let's put it that way. So if I don't do some sort of morning routine it is it is it there's a tendency to for it to be ugly and messy towards the middle part of the day. I had a conversation yesterday with a student that I'm coaching and and they said what's your morning routine? She said, Well, I brush my teeth and I put my clothes out and I get dressed and I shower. And he said that is a morning routine. There's no doubt about it. And so I bought her how rods book The Miracle Morning and mail the tour. So I said and I introduced her to a very similar a simple at savers concept that was introduced to me when how created it savers stands for silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading and scribing. So it's a very great morning routine that I definitely recommend. And I've done my own versions of those routines. I had my hashtag BMW breathe, meditate walk for quite some time. The morning routine that I've been doing now for this year for 2020 has been serving me very well. And it's been very intentional and that that starts with me making sure that when I set that alarm at nighttime, I visualize myself getting up so it starts with the evening. I set the alarm. And I remind myself of why I'm setting that alarm in the first place, it starts there. So I do math in my head. And I think, okay, I want to make sure that I at least a bare minimum, getting six and a half hours asleep. But I'd like to shoot for close to seven or seven and a half if I can, but six and a half hours. So if it's, I'll do the math, and I'll make sure that I'm getting giving myself ample sleep. So then, I set the alarm, I have a conversation with myself that says, Okay, why am I setting this alarm in the first place? What am I doing? What am I waking up to get accomplished? Okay, these are, you know, I want to get accomplished these conversations, this meeting these, this is how I want to feel, this is what I want to get accomplished tomorrow. Great. So I get that into my head. So I want that to program my mind. Like, I want that to be the last thing that I'm thinking about in my unconscious before I go to bed. So I'm thinking about waking up, I'm thinking about waking up on purpose to get some things done, and to be a better version of me for the for the next day, the alarm goes off, and I'm always is ugly, the alarm goes off. And it is like shit already. Like this sucks. You know, there's always that first initial response. The second response is, hey, you set the alarm in the first place, remember, so I always put the phone on the opposite side of the room. So I have to get myself out of bed, I go grab the phone, shut the alarm off, and I like a frickin zombie walk to chug water. I always have water set aside and chug water is my first thing to just bring some energy or oxygen to my body.
Andrew Biggs 16:35
Hey, quick question, what, what's an example of an intention you might set before you go to bed because I love that concept of setting an intention before you even go to sleep, which a lot of people don't do. What is an example of what that might look like for somebody who's listening.
Mike Abramowitz 16:50
So So for me, I do several activities in the morning. So a lot of my mornings include meetings or conversations with people, or a certain, a certain emotion that I need to make sure I'm bringing for those meetings. So specific examples. Today, I have a staff meeting, it's a 90 minute meeting with my staff. And it's a very important meeting. So before I went to bed last night, what energy I needed to bring to my staff because I'm going on vacation for a week, I wanted to to bring more directedness. And I also wanted to bring in more curiosity, because, you know, I want to make sure that I'm leading with questions that they're able to come up with some of their own responses, but I also wanted to give direction, so that way, they don't rely or they're not dependent on reaching out to me. So I wanted to make sure okay, I want to bring curiosity and I want to bring directedness to my meeting tomorrow morning. Yesterday, I knew I had 12 like 11 or 12, one on one conversation. So I wanted to make sure I brought the right energy. So before bed, I just wanted to make sure that the self talk I had yesterday is like cool, I want to challenge myself in the morning. So that way, when I have conversations with them that leading from hypocrisy are projecting onto them. So that's why I've walked to the gym instead of drove to the gym, because I wanted to make sure that I brought like that extra challenge energy. So I set my alarm for 15 minutes earlier. So I had time to walk to the gym, instead of drive to the gym to do the little bit extra that I normally won't do. So I'm not projecting any like, you should do more type of energy onto my people. So because I'm willing to do more, so I can project like, I'm doing more, I invite you to do more, it's actually not that much more difficult, but it much is much more gratifying and satisfying. So it's just a couple of examples.
Andrew Biggs 18:43
That's great. I love I love the idea of being congruent, right. And ultimately, when we're talking about energy management, congruency is ultimately the goal. And by the way, if you're listening to this, you're like, yeah, yeah, I know, I should have a morning routine. Yeah, yeah, no, I should have an evening routine. I've heard this before, you should also be asking yourself, well, am I doing it? You know, to what extent am I actually putting these practices into place? Because the truth is that, we could almost say that unless you've taken your understanding to the level of implementation, unless something that you have learned is actually changing your behavior, you haven't yet learned it. And that's kind of a better than rich concept there at a really deep sort of principled level is, well, you don't know something until it's changed your perspective and to the point where you've actually implemented change in your life. So it's actually transformed your life. So if you are listening, and you're thinking to yourself that I've heard this before, well, you got to ask yourself, to what extent Am I doing it and how much am I actually implementing this? So I love the intention of congruency. You know, and in a way, that sort of alignment idea that I was talking about is very much I think that maps really well to the idea of concurrency. You know, I like To say, concurrency is king. And the truth is that my perception is that people are very intuitive. People can kind of understand what passes the smell test and what doesn't. People can obviously understand, is this person being real with me or not? And is this person, you know, living the way they are reporting to live or not. And if we're not, then people are going to tell, right? People have a really good bs meters these days, and they can read through the lines, and they can smell you from a mile away, if you're being phony. And so it's your job to make sure that you're being congruent on a regular basis. And if you're not, then that's going to be seen that's going to be felt. And there's gonna be ramifications. You know, the truth is, sometimes I'm more on than others. And I feel like, you know, people can pick up on that, I bet you, you can probably relate you were talking this morning about not wanting to do your morning routine. It's like, that's kind of okay. And also, you know, the truth is, as long as you're honest with yourself, you're gonna be able to bounce back. But at the same time, you know, if you want to be a badass, like, Mike, you gotta at least start these processes and try to win more days, then you don't try to win more micro days, then you don't. And if you can, you're gonna find yourself much further along than you are today. My talk to me a little bit about that, you know, well, how do you handle this when you don't feel like waking up in the morning when you don't feel like doing your morning routine?
Mike Abramowitz 21:24
First off, I have to, I've had to label the voices in my head. Now this sounds super weird. All
Andrew Biggs 21:31
right, well, we'll call the we'll call the psychiatrist on you, we'll get you checked out. And
Mike Abramowitz 21:38
so the saboteurs so so it's important for you to understand that there are saboteurs that try to sabotage your your daily behavior, that's 100%. And if we're not aware that those 50,000 thoughts that are coming through our mind, oftentimes aren't our thoughts that they're just here to kind of, they're already programmed into our mind, I can label them. And what's interesting is this morning, it happened twice to specific it will happen way more, but two specific ones when the alarm went off, and when I went to jump in the pool, the pool was a little bit cold this morning, and she has a pool here. So when I went in on the first thought is like, Oh my God, this sucks. I don't want to wake up. And that voice is I call that the shithead. Alright, you could call it whatever you want. But that's what I call it's like the shithead voice that's like, screw you. tries to get in my way, he classy, right? Then there's other voice that tries to protect me. This is the voice it's like, you might get sick, the waters really cold. Like, and and that voice I'm more gentle with I call that what voice is wimpy, so wimpy shows up all the time when B is like my mother. Okay? When B is like, you know, when I was like really young, my mom would try to protect me and coddle me like that's when it's like you don't want to get pneumonia, you don't want to get sick, the waters really cold. What if you know all that stuff. And all I do with that voice is I smile. And I say thank you, thank you for caring thank you for loving me and I'm gonna be good. And I go walk into the water and I go in and I underneath the water and I'm fully exposed. My arms are out and I'm just like, thank you. I love you. I appreciate you. And I'm not going to die. And like literally a conversation going in my mind. Sometimes even I say these words, especially if I'm by myself no one's around but to to acknowledge that hey, this, they're trying to try and protect me but I don't I don't need protection right now. I don't need protection right now. So that's, that's number one. How do you you need to know what the truth is. And sometimes there's a little saboteur voices try to convince themselves that they're the truth but that's not the truth. The truth is that I want these goals The truth is I have a higher purpose. The truth is I'm capable. So all those feelings and thoughts and emotions, those are limiting in a lot of cases. And I don't want to live a life where I'm limited by saboteurs influencing my behavior, I'm capable of choosing consciously what I'm actually able to do I'm not going to die. Thank you for trying to protect me and I'm going to go ahead and jump in the whole pool and I'm going to wake up and start my day and I'm going to you know, tell this person I care about them even though it feels weird I'm going to do that you know, even though it's uncomfortable I'm going to look at my affirmations I'm going to look at my goals and even though some of them are large goals like having a million dollars before I'm 40 yeah that's a big goal it's like oh my gosh you know but the fact is I've been looking at that number now and it's cool to you know just kind of work my way towards it almost halfway there which is pretty exciting and and but when I first set the goal it's like yeah right good luck your your your your family never did that no one you know you know like that's not your your you know, all that stupid sabotage. sabotage. Our voices give up like Silly. So I think that's important. Number one is label those voices as weird sounds,
Andrew Biggs 25:06
I love that man. I love the, the shithead. And, and wimpy. So I for some reason I think my camera's frozen. But um, but basically, you know, I love the idea here. And just getting back to this idea. Having this little conversation also requires self awareness. How do you develop self awareness? What do you see there?
Mike Abramowitz 25:32
Yeah, so in order to develop self awareness, I think it's important for you to be able to sit with yourself, and just observe the thoughts that are coming into your mind. So some people call this meditation, you might call this stillness, whatever you want to call it. It's just a practice of sitting with myself, and observing my thoughts. So like a thought will come in, why am I doing this right now? And I'll let that thought just go by, like, imagine watching a movie, and the movie are your thoughts on my back hurts right now. It's like, and I understand and thank you, like, I'm hungry. I understand. And thank you and like, just watching the thoughts go by, and, and being the observer of these thoughts that come in and come, you know, come out. And sometimes those thoughts are serving, sometimes those thoughts are not serving. And if they're not serving me in that moment, I just let them go, I release, you know, I can't even see what happens is I can't pinpoint some of the thoughts that come through, because I release them because it's almost like, I let them go, I let go of them. So for me to give you an example of something I was trying to, you know, for right now, but I let a lot of those thoughts go. And sometimes those thoughts are about conversations I've had, sometimes those thoughts are about feeling inadequate on something, sometimes those thoughts are about not having confidence for something, sometimes those thoughts are, you know, you know, some sort of fear of like, Am I good enough? Am I gonna be able to do that? Does this person like me? Did I do Am I approaching this the right way? You know, questioning, sometimes those are those thoughts, and I just released those thoughts, release them, release them, but the ones that hold on to are more. So how can I serve this person? You know, sometimes it's cute like that the Curiosity comes in, or I'm really proud that I made that choice. And I'll feel I'll feel that feeling of like, pride and self love. Because I'm aware, I'm giving myself the space to feel aware and see those thoughts and let some of them go by and then hold on to other ones. And I think that's, that's it's a really important way of approaching that, that inner self talk.
Andrew Biggs 27:58
So hopefully, my camera is at least somewhat working here. I think it is. But you're
Mike Abramowitz 28:02
back, I can see that. It's a split screen. It's just you, and then there's me.
Andrew Biggs 28:06
Cool. So if if you guys can relate, go ahead and mention this in the chat. How Mike is kind of talking about watching your thoughts, right. And I love the idea of your thoughts are something on the screen. And somebody who's a somebody who I really respect and admire in this space of awareness is a man named Mooji. You can check him out online, he's he's totally changed and revolutionized my life. And a lot of ways he has some really cool content, some really deep content, it's a little out there, but I think you guys would like it. And you know, he says, Hey, you know, if your thoughts are on this movie screen, and you're watching it, you know, if there's a raging fire on the screen, at the movie theater, the screen is not burned. If there's a rushing river, on the movie screen, the screen is not wet. And ultimately what he's talking about is, you know, these thoughts are projections on top of a layer of consciousness. You are not the projection, you are the consciousness watching it. And so if you can be sure to sit back and watch and observe, then you can actually see Oh, there goes this saboteur, right? There's the wimpy version of me, or there's this childhood version of me, or there's the immature version of me or whatever. And you can start to label these ideas, start to label these parts of you and have a conversation with yourself, like Mike said, and ultimately say, Hey, I love you. I appreciate you. I know that you're scared right now. And I know that you want to kind of lead but here's the thing. You're you can come along for the ride but you got to sit in the backseat because I'm driving because we are going somewhere that really matters. And unfortunately, you're not the best Ever, because you're too concerned, and we need to get to our destination, and that means I need to drive. You know, sometimes my son, who's five years old wants to drive the car. And obviously, I have to say, hey, you're more than welcome to come along for the ride. I love you. You can't drive yet, because you're not mature enough yet. You're not ready yet. But you can still come along for the ride, I need to drive because I'm the leader here. And I think that this is so important. So So yeah, let's talk a little bit about physical,
Mike Abramowitz 30:30
something there. Yeah. To just to echo, those thoughts are not negative. I think that's important too. Oftentimes, we, we might label these, like, wimpy is not negative, it actually is quite serving because that the version of me is here to protect me. And sometimes I need that, like, if I'm if someone with a gun starts with the machine guns, there's shooting around me when be I need wimpy to protect me. You know, that's a that's a very important version of me. So I don't I don't want to say, hey, wimpy, you're negative. It's just you're not serving right now. Like, I don't need you in this moment. But like Andrew, just what you just said is, you could come along with the ride, you could come along for the ride, hey, but you got to be in the backseat, you're just not driving this time, I'm in control. No real me the truth is in control. So that's kind of like my, my alter ego is the truth. You know, so Mike, you know, Mike is me, but Mike was the name that I was given by my parents. When I say the truth, that's, that's, that's my, that's my like identity. The truth is, I can observe, when be the truth, observes, won't be the truth observes shithead. And it sounds interesting, but when you can get to that place of self awareness, where you could be the observer of your saboteurs, and you could be the observer of the movie screen, and you can label it. It's liberating, it's liberating. Awesome, I just wanted to echo that.
Andrew Biggs 32:13
Awesome. And, you know, we talked a little bit about spiritual, we talked a little bit about mental, I'd love to talk about physical and emotional a little bit more. You know, from a physical perspective, one thing that just will share is you don't need to be a gym rat, you don't need to, you know, have a six pack, you don't have to, you know, only drink green drinks or whatever, to, to take care about your physical energy, you can simply have a plan to make sure that you have the energy you need, when it's time to go, right. And so you know, one thing I'll just say, say there is you need to have some sort of physical plan, I don't care what it is, but have a plan for your diet, have a plan for your exercise, if for the very least, you're going to start to work on your discipline, and your you're not going to let yourself go. And you're going to have the energy you need when you need it, which is ultimately why we even care about our energy is because we need energy at certain points. And if you have a purpose, if you have a mission in this world, which here are better than rich, we believe you do, then you have to care about your energy and be able to call on it when it's needed to fulfill your purpose. So from a physical perspective, you know, at a minimum, you need to be working out three times a week, I don't care what your workout is. But um, you know, you need to be getting your heart rate up somehow, some way, you know, we really need to be asking ourselves, obviously, in this modern era, we're able to sit back and kind of be comfortable and drive everywhere and do everything and have food on demand and, and drinks on demand, whatever we want. We have, we're very, very comfortable. But we got to ask ourselves, you know, can I really have some self respect for myself, if I'm not getting my heart rate up three times a week, you know, even if you're just going for a walk for 20 minutes? Like that's at least a start. Again, Mike mentioned this yesterday talking about hey, what can I control? What can I do, and if that's all you can do great, if you can only do 10 minutes, great, but do something get started. Because again, just from a self respect perspective, you are going to want to, it feels good, it feels like you've accomplished something. So making sure that you are getting your heart rate up at least three times a week, you know, obviously some people listening to this call will want to do it more than that. But I think at a bare minimum, that's important. From a diet perspective, you also need to be watching what you put into your body and making sure that it's it's really enriching and you know that your body really enjoys it. So checking out that stuff and making sure that you have some sort of plan is really at the at a base level what you need to do. Mike, why don't you talk a little bit about physical what what some of your practices are.
Mike Abramowitz 34:56
So my current practices are four times week Monday through Thursday, without fail, I just finished my 200th workout so far for the year. Excuse me. And it's been, it's been, it's been really serving. And I like what you said about discipline because when when I'm able to have the discipline to do the workout in the morning, it allows me to be a little bit tougher on later on in the day with other people who might not be disciplined, because I'm like, Hey, I'm disciplined. For myself, let me bring that type of energy to my future conversations not to project, I'm great you are not, it's like, I can relate, like, I had that same conversation with myself about, about not wanting to be disciplined. So I relate to you. This is what I told myself, this is how I was able to overcome that. And this is what I did about it. So I do, that's why I love the for four days a week, so four days a week, I have some dumbbells like I just did this morning. So I did I have 20 pound dumbbells, I just brought with me on this vacation that I'm on. And some curls, hammer curls, some triceps, some overhead, triceps, side planks, and some leg lifts. That was it, you know, the whole workout might have been maybe 25 minutes, three sets of 12 type of thing, three sets of 15 on each. And that was today. You know, sometimes it's body squats, sometimes it's jumping jacks, sometimes it's push ups, sometimes it's chin ups and chin ups are at home. What what's interesting is that in January, I would just hang from the Chyna bar, I couldn't even do one couldn't pull myself up, I would just hang there. And it's, it's cool to now be able to do 10 just the the progress of working working through this. And it's the goal wasn't necessarily to lose weight, the goal was to increase strength. And that that concept there and just that little flip of the switch, I had a conversation actually in San Francisco with it with Andrew Evans, and I was trying to like, eliminate back pain I was trying to, you know, become more flexible. I was trying to, you know, maybe lose weight or, you know, he said it's interesting is like, a lot of what you're saying is you want to lose stuff. What do you want to gain? I was like, well, I want to gain some strength. He's like, cool, focus on that. What do you want to gain by working out or gain by doing what you're doing? And was just such a small, insignificant, insignificant conversation, but it's like, wow, yeah, that's, that's a good point. So I want to become more strong, I want to increase my strength, I want to increase my energy. What if that, that's why I work out. So then that that concept is important. So a lot of body weight, tension, you could even even if you're like, don't have weights, you could do a dynamic tension where you take this hand and move it down, and this arm is moving up. And you could do dynamic tension where it's just you're pushing against and pushing against, and that could work the arms you know, you could just go to like a vanity in the bathroom and just do push ups on the vanity in the bathroom. You know, these are these are simple, simple exercises that my dad is 79 years old, and he does To this day, every single day. He does these, these simple exercises that you could do you could you know like a little chair dip. He'll do some of those dynamic tension workouts, squats that you know just quarter squats even depending on what you're able to do. But yes, something to increase the heart rate something to create some sort of motion with my body I foam roll once or twice a week, I think that's really important for you know, just loosen up some of those muscles, you know, break up some of the the fascia or you know fascia or however you say that word but just underneath the skin, that layer there just to loosen that up a little bit. So that way I don't get too sore. Even though the soreness is good just to break up some of that lactic acid. And cold cold showers have been really helpful. I've been doing those for about three, three years maybe. So these are just some some activities that I do to just increase the heart rate, whether it be the cold, whether it be some sort of exercise, some sort of weight training. That's what's been working for me and that's what I've been enjoying crunches. I have a Bosu ball at home. So I'll do like the weights on the bosu ball do crunches on the bosu ball. And especially about my lower back. I've herniated discs in the lower back. So some of my mobility is is limited but again, I'm able to focus on what I'm able to do and what I'm not able to do. I just
Andrew Biggs 39:43
don't Awesome, awesome, great advice there. Focus on what you're able to do. If you're not able to do something, don't and find ways Don't make excuses, right? There's like a no excuse sort of mentality there even if it's push ups against the vanity or it's you No, just bodyweight exercise calisthenics, whatever, there's so much that you can do through through some sort of exercise on a daily basis, you know, talking about moving up the column here a little bit to emotional energy. You know, I didn't want to make sure that I did want to make sure that this wasn't overlooked. When it comes to emotional energy, one of the biggest things I really want to advise everyone listening to do, and this is gonna sound simple, but it's also very counterintuitive in today's culture. But the biggest thing really, is simply to feel your feelings. Ask yourself, what am I feeling right now, and then just let yourself actually experience directly what it is that you're going through. And, you know, what I found through this practice. And what I found through letting people have a safe space to be able to explore this practice, is that once we actually give ourselves permission to feel our feelings, whether it's anger, whether it's frustration, whether it's sadness, maybe it's apathy, maybe it's guilt, or shame. These are some of the more on the lower end of the spectrum emotions that people feel. You know, once you give yourself that space, and that permission to actually feel it, something shifts, something changes. And we talked a little bit about psychological safety on the first episode, if you haven't listened to it yet, you should. In a way, basically what you're doing is you're creating a safe space for your own self, in creating this, this permission to feel your feelings. Again, this sounds very simple, but it's also counterintuitive in today's culture, particularly for men. But if you're feeling guilt, if you're feeling shame, if you're feeling apathy, these are not great feelings, to walk around and start your day with. These are not great emotions to be walking around and trying to be an influential people person in the world with, if you're feeling anger, frustration, if you're feeling sadness, you know, it happens to everyone. But these are not great emotions to be creating a, you know, multimillion dollar business from, so we need to be asking ourselves, am I gonna just carry this around all day, or am I gonna handle it. And in a weird way, that's actually a more masculine way to handle it, than to walk around pretending that you don't have feelings, it's like, hey, let me get this over with Let me handle this, let me address it and maybe getting get over with is maybe again, a little more hypermasculine we don't want to necessarily go there. It should take as long as it should take but give yourself permission to feel your feelings in the morning. And you know, if that means, you know, a little bit of frustration and you got to punch a pillow, or it means that you got to you know, yell at the top of your lungs for yourself, or you got to you know, let out a few tears, whatever it is that you need to do, at least you're attuned to what's happening inside your life inside your body and inside your heart and if you're not doing that, then you're not going to be attuned and people are going to not going to receive your influence as well. Mike any thoughts on this emotional side? What are your thoughts here?
Mike Abramowitz 43:07
Well, I am astrology sign of a cancer with a rising of a Leo so that's a water and a fire. So you're talking
Andrew Biggs 43:17
and just you know, I don't know, I don't know much about what you just said. So I know I'm a dancer as well. But
Mike Abramowitz 43:22
all that means is water is is emotion, of like, you know, just a very emotional type of assign. And then fire is like fiery emotion. Water is like the, the feeling like just very much in tune, feeling emotion. And then fires, like the fiery emotion like more of like an aggression and more of like a, like, cries, you know, that's kind of a way of putting it. So both are very, very strong emotions. So um, I definitely grew up in a motional kid. And thinking that that was a bad thing. So what you just said is giving yourself permission to feel. Now there are certain surroundings in a certain environment that I want to position myself in to feel I don't think it's necessary for me to activator access some of those some of those sadness, emotions in front of my staff, right? I don't do that I don't access frustration, typically in front of my wife, because I want to serve them. So I'm going to, I'm going to make sure that I call that you know, bring that emotion forward and give myself permission to feel that at certain times, usually, whether it's in my morning meditation, or if I go away to a retreat, or if I'm in in a safe psychological space where I can feel that way. Because it's easy for someone to not number One know what to say like they just don't know the right thing to say at the right time. Number two, they might also cast judgment, which is not necessarily intentionally on their part. But it's it might put my guard back up now that I once I lower it, so I want to make sure that I'm also I'm giving myself permission to feel these emotions, emotions and access them. But also, timing is kind of important to do that as well. Sure, that's one, that's the thing that shows up for me.
Andrew Biggs 45:33
Cool, cool. I love that. And basically, it's just, you know, a lot of times vulnerability, authenticity can get misconstrued in the modern world. Vulnerability doesn't mean that you're airing all your dirty laundry out every single time you talk to somebody, it just means that you're willing to share what feels relevant. And I also love what Mike said, it's like, well, I want to serve, right. And sometimes people are vulnerable, almost at this like narcissistic level. I don't know if you've ever seen that, Mike, but it's like, look at all my problems. And that's not exactly what we mean, when we talk about vulnerability and authenticity. What we're really saying is, when it's appropriate to serve this moment, now, sometimes you need to serve yourself, if you're on a retreat or something like that, or you're working in a morning routine, that's the whole idea, serve yourself first, and then go serve someone else. But if I'm trying to serve someone else by Chuck is not to be, you know, talking about myself and my problems too much. It's really to be there for them. Now, if, in that moment, it seems appropriate and relevant and helpful for me to share something that's going on in my life and to open up a little bit and be vulnerable, then I'll do shop. And I think that people really appreciate that and can relate to that. This next thing i The last thing I want to kind of talk on, Mike before we depart for the day is, is journaling. You really strike me as like a journal expert. I love when we have our phone calls. And I say, yeah, Mike, you know, if you remember we had that call way back when I'm not exactly sure when, but we were talking about this, and we were talking about this concept. Yeah. Do you remember that? And you're like, yeah, hang on, let me pull up my notes. We talked about that on January 17 2017. And this was exactly what you said. And this is exactly how you said it. And I was like, oh, wow, like you're super organized over there, man. So talk to me a little bit about journaling and the importance of it in your world. How do you journal and what's the importance of it to you?
Mike Abramowitz 47:32
That's That's hilarious. Because it's so true. I'm only if they were good conversations, though. Andrew. You know, I don't I don't remember every page of my journal. But
Andrew Biggs 47:42
every conversations a good conversation with me might come up. I agree. I agree.
Mike Abramowitz 47:46
So, so those, but it's true I when I'm actively writing so So a couple things that show up with me with journaling. All journaling not all journaling is but the main thing that I get from journaling is answering questions with myself. So it was introduced to me that the physical act of writing it down is bringing the emotional part of my brain to the logical part of the brain. And the physical process of processing emotion to logic and writing it down, can offset most of this of most of the emotional tension that's happening behind the scenes, this unconscious, any of the unconscious tension could be resolved, just by writing it down, because it's unloading some of the emotion that's stuck. And we we just by processing it, the physical act of writing, not typing, not not texting, but the physical act of writing. There's some sort of mechanism in the body. I don't know the science behind it, but just by writing it down, releases some of that emotion. So that's number one. I understood that from a logical standpoint, I said, Okay, that makes sense. Let me write and sometimes all I write what it would be like, how do I feel right now? Cool. Why do I feel this way? How do I want to feel? What actions can I take to get there? That's one of my go twos. Sometimes I write down the word update question mark. And then I just write it just an update of my life. I'm just answering the question what's an update right now? Some questions I'll answer of who who do I who needs my love right now? And I'll just answer that question of Like, who do I feel needs my love right now. Like that will just remind me of who is important in my life that I want to make sure that they know I care about them that so it's so these are a couple a couple other questions are what are my favorite things to do? And I'll just write down all my favorite things to do when I'm at my best I and I just will fill in the blank and I'll just list off the these different things. So the all a lot of journaling came for me is just asking really good questions, and then just answering them so I took probably my top 50 or 60 favorite questions and I create Did my own guided journal for myself? So that way I could just flip any of the pages and answer my questions. And that was really helpful for me. And I shared it with a few people, they're like, wow, you should really offer that to more. So I created a journal, and it's on Amazon. And it's a guided journal for that reason to help people that just get stuck, and they just don't know what to write. So that's my first thing with journaling. The second thing with journaling is to revisit the past. So I went on a man keishon couple weeks ago, went to a dude ranch, and I brought my 2016 journal, and I brought my 2019 20 journal. And just revisiting the last four, three or four years and just seeing a lot of my goals from 2016 are now my, my a lot of my problems from 2019 and 2020. Were my goals in 2016 is really funny to look at. I'll say it one more time, my my, my problems in 2019 and 2020, were my goals in 2016. So it's just so funny to see that it was also really great to see the emotional snapshots of what I was working on, and what I was thinking and what I was working through in 2016. And seeing in 2019, now I'm teaching, helping other people work through those things. And now it's almost like, not that I became the master of it. But I became so self aware of a lot of the things that I wanted to work on three years later, four years later, give me so much confidence, and it gave me It almost like validates the progress, which makes me to want to continue doing it. So it's a snapshot of emotion by journaling and writing it down so I can revisit some of those, I would say my journals are my most prized possessions moreso than my photo albums because a photo, it's just has a picture. But the the journal is a photo op of my thoughts, the photo album of my emotions, the photo album of what was actually in Felton and happening in that chapter of my life, and I could revisit some of those. And I they're by far I mean, they're there were they're priceless possession of mine are those snapshots of those emotions.
Andrew Biggs 52:07
Hmm, I love that the photo album of your thoughts is your journals. And there's some of your most prized possessions because of that. That's really beautiful. And looks like we're getting some some love in the in the comments and the emotions here as well, the reactions you know, at the end of the day, and I'll kind of leave you all with this concept. But being better than rich, one of the one of the core principles is intentional living, you know, we're talking about energy management today, you know, one of the concepts that everyone learned, I'm going to take you back to, you know, 10th grade, you know, physics physics class, or whatever, but the concept is entropy, right? So the natural state of energy is to dissipate in our universe. And so, dissipating energy and things falling apart things decaying is a natural part of what it means to you know, exist in this time, space reality. So entropy, and the the tendency for things to dissipate and things to, to dissolve is kind of the natural state of things. So our job, I guess what I'm saying there is, your life is going to become, you know, just a living embodiment of entropy, things are gonna go wrong, things are gonna get worse, things are gonna go bad unless you intercede on your own behalf. So it's your job on a daily basis on a weekly basis on a monthly basis on an annual basis, to engage your life intentionally and take on problems take on certain perspectives and drive the narrative for your life. Otherwise, you're simply going to have someone else driving the narrative, you're going to be a victim of circumstance, which obviously, you probably know a lot of people who see the world this way, but if you're gonna be better than rich, you have to live an intentional life and fend off entropy as much as possible. And what I heard in Mike's comments there when he says, This is how I do it, this is how I do it. This is how I do it every single step of the way. There's such an attentional focus, does that take a lot of times that takes a lot of energy, of course, but someone who's really committed to their purpose, someone who's really committed to changing the world, someone who's really committed to making this world a better place and not just talking about it on social media. They are committed to living an intentional life. So those are my closing thoughts. Those are my closing comments. Thanks to everyone. Thank you, Mike, for all of your thoughts today. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Same time, same place. Thank you all. Have a great day.