#436 The stress & sleep hacks for high-achieving entrepreneurs to unlock pain-free peak performance, with Mark Gray.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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Mark Gray 0:00
Having the ability to actually recognize when you're stressed is super important, because then once you recognize it and you're aware, then you can do something about it. Whereas if you just go around with your head in the clouds almost, and you just think, that's how I feel all the time, that's just who I am, then you won't do anything about it.

Agi Keramidas 0:18
You are listening to personal development mastery, the podcast that empowers you with the simple and consistent actions to take that will help you create a life of purpose and fulfillment. I'm your host, Id kiramindas, and this is episode 436 if you are a high achieving entrepreneur, or perhaps if you are looking to optimize your health and performance, then this episode is for you. By listening to today's conversation, you will discover why stress and lack of sleep are sabotaging your success without you even knowing it and you will also discover practical tools and strategies to elevate your health and well being and live pain free. So whether you're an entrepreneur or simply seeking better health and pain free performance, Today's episode will inspire you to reclaim your vitality before we dive in. If you enjoy listening and appreciate what we're doing, the quick favor I'm asking of you is to click the subscribe button, as this helps us make the podcast better for you. Now, let's get started.

Agi Keramidas 1:39
It is my pleasure to speak with Mark Gray. Mark, you are an online personal trainer and a pain free performance specialist, originally from Ireland, you have spent almost a decade helping your clients transform their health and live pain free lives with a unique approach that goes beyond just workouts and nutrition. You focus on building healthy habits around sleep, stress management and overall well being. You are passionate about helping entrepreneurs to reclaim their vitality, live pain free lives and optimize their bodies for better performance and productivity. Mark, welcome to the show. It's a real pleasure to speak with you today. Awesome. Thanks

Mark Gray 2:27
for having me. And yeah, that was a great introduction. That's That's me in a nutshell. Yeah, thanks a lot for having me. It's

Agi Keramidas 2:34
my pleasure. I'm looking forward to it, and I do believe that this kind of introduction gives a concise idea to the master is securely listening right now about who the person is. You know there are. And let me start backtrack for a moment and say that I would like today to explore with you, among other things, one is certainly the common misconceptions that many entrepreneurs have about the so called balance between work and health, and also, we'll talk about reclaiming our vitality, the pain free life, all these things before We go there, tell us about what inspired you actually to transition from the traditional personal training to what you do now to focusing on this, the pain free performance for entrepreneurs.

Mark Gray 3:34
So yeah, so I did what every personal trainer does. You you get your usual like six, four week course, whatever it is, and you learn your graph, you you build up your skills in the gym, and I went into that whole pain free performance side of things, much for myself at the start is because I had injuries. I played sports all my life, so there was always something that was niggling me. So I did it from an educational viewpoint for myself, was teaching myself, and obviously then to develop my skills as a coach. And as I started to get more experience, and I started to build up more of a reputation in the gym, I was working in as someone that was very good at their job, so I would teach my clients to move a certain way. I would help them with nutrition, whatever it is, I just was a great coach. And then I was lucky enough to go work in a gym in London, one of the UK's biggest gyms, or most successful gyms, in Equinox. And in there, I got introduced to just a kind of a different caliber. Maybe not caliber is the right word, but just a different kind of person, and just that person that person that was at the higher end of entrepreneur entrepreneurship, and people that were running like multi, multi, multi, like seven, eight figure businesses. And I was just yeah, just exposed to that type of person. So I started. Really working with them. And the reason I got to work with them is because I was a good coach. So you get entrusted with people with maybe, like, a higher reputation, because they need is that's not to disparage obviously, just like your regular Joe soap with someone else, they're still a human being at the end of the day. So they both get treated with the same level of respect, but someone that is used to a certain type of service and a certain level of service, whether they're in a restaurant or in a hotel. And as I was talking to more and more these people, I started to kind of notice a bit of a trend, and that was the trend that they had all achieved amazing things, but they had left a little bit of themselves behind in the pursuit of that, like in pursuit of entrepreneurship, yeah, and the reason I seen that trend is because they were all in pain. Okay, now I'm not just a like, pain free performance, but I should be one of my titles, one of my qualifications I have so I don't just try and fix people's pain. Obviously, there's so many different things we do. It's just one of the elements. But all these people had some sort of pain, and it was stopping them from just reaching their potential. Now it wasn't impacting their business, per se, they were still able to go and do their their business. Obviously, all wildly successful, but whether they knew it or not, it was having a negative impact in other aspects of their life.

Agi Keramidas 6:26
Mark. Can you give me a couple of examples of when you say pain? Can you give me two or three, like common pain, so that people might identify with that? Yeah,

Mark Gray 6:36
yeah. So lower back pain, obviously the right one, shoulder pain, knee pain. Just yeah, those ones and like so yes, they've come to me with a multitude of goals, fat loss being one of them, obviously looking to become healthier, and then pain was on every single one of them. I want to get rid of my back pain. I want to eliminate my knee pain so I can run again. I haven't been able to put on my jacket for 10 years without getting a shooting pain on my shoulder, all these sorts of things where you don't think of them in isolation as being that bad. Obviously, back pain is a bit different, because that's quite debilitating. But you can get away with like a bad shoulder and a bad knee and that sort of stuff, and it can impact your day to day life, but not as much as some, yet it still takes away from your life, like day by day, week by week, you can't you can't run so you can't do your hobbies you enjoy. You can't throw a ball with your kids because your shoulder is bad, so all these other things, and then whether they know that or not, that is having some sort of negative impact on their business, on their entrepreneurship. So what I do is I obviously fix one of the root causes, and then that positive impact just floats and positively impacts everything else. One of them is their business relationships, family, all these sorts of things. I think I've answered your question

Agi Keramidas 8:03
now, yes, and I will let me continue with what you just said now, but you said fixing the root causes. So where does one investigate the root cause? For example, you know, a shoulder you said something that is, I think many people can relate. I know I can relate personally with that shoulder that you know, when you try to put your jacket on, you feel something and it's, it comes and goes. It's not, you know, perhaps it's not debilitating, but it's not enough to make you make consent. So when you say root causes in that, where could one start looking for, for that, apart from the obvious, which is some kind of injury, which, yeah, I suppose we go way beyond the the obvious reasons for the pain.

Mark Gray 8:57
Yeah, so there's in my experience and what I've learned and dealt with, there's usually, like, two culprits when it comes to pain. One of them is like blunt force trauma. So that is like getting hit by a car, or I was lucky enough to dislocate my shoulder and break my collarbone in two different places when I was playing Gaelic football when I was 18. So that was a bad injury. That was trauma. I knew what happened. A lot of the times. It's just poor movement over time, over time, over time, and that is the result of weakness. So I always say weakness will often show itself as pain. So the root cause is weakness. So my job as a coach, then is to identify where in the body is weak, and then we can go about building a plan and strengthen that a stronger muscle is much less likely to be a painful muscle. So more often than not, when someone comes to me and they've got an issue, we. Work on strengthening the areas around the problem and then stabilizing and then, more often than not, the pain is gone. Okay, it's not gone straight away. You have to be very consistent. You got to be very diligent with it. But yeah, so more often than not, if you want to eliminate your pain, increase your strength, and it's, as simple as that, but to be honest, more often than not, it actually is.

Agi Keramidas 10:25
Thank you for that answer that is quite helpful to, you know, get a better understanding, or perhaps what to look for more there are, apart from the, you know the physical or the muscle elements or the pure exercise elements, mark which, obviously they go without saying, when you do personal training, your approach includes other elements as well. Which I find interesting, I also find it necessary, because it is certainly completely one way, when we only look at things from one point of view. So it is much better to I know you don't like the word holistic very much, but it is a word that, if for me, because I'm Greek and I can get the meaning of the word, it is the whole everything. So it is, but I know that what you mean, that it's been thrown around too much. But leaving that word aside, let's I would like to hear your thoughts on, you know, implementing additional approaches, like you talk about stress management, you talk about sleep, let's not even talk about nutrition yet, because that's huge, but let's focus on sleep and stress manager, I would like to hear your thoughts on that and the impact that they have, and how people maybe have some misconceptions about them, or consider some things to be normal whereas they aren't. And I'm sure you have, from your experience with the people that you work to you, you can think of very specific examples with what I'm asking,

Mark Gray 12:15
yeah? So yeah, so I've said Yeah, holistic, yeah. You glad you answered it then, or justified it is, I It's not that I have a problem with the word holistic, because that is how I just, I would describe my training approach. It's just like it's thrown around so often. It's like, I'm holistic, and it's the same as, like bespoke, like bespoke Trone training program. So almost, when I see those words, sometimes I kind of lose a little bit of its value. But yeah, I do have, like, a holistic, that whole, whole approach to to my coaching. I work with a lot of very successful people, and with that, success usually becomes high stress. Now, one of the first things I teach my clients, and it's not a it's not like actionable steps, or it's not a specific like strategy. It's just having the ability to actually recognize that you're stressed. So if you are in a perpetual state of being stressed, it's all, you know, okay? And if you are running these, if you're if you're running big businesses, or you're just trying to fend for your family and you're just stressed all the time is that you always have that constant state of stress. But you do need to recognize when you have moments that maybe you're more stressed. And you need to be able to recognize, like, Okay, I'm stressed a bit more than normal. It's like, why is that? And then you can give yourself a little bit of, a little bit of, almost like breathing room, or not going to say, not an excuse sorry, but like a reason for why you're feeling that way. And it's like, maybe I had a big project I had to get done, and that's why my stress was higher. It's like, Why was I a bit more annoyed with my spouse, or my patience was less for my kids? And it's because you had higher stress. So that's one of the first things I just try to make people aware of. Is having the ability to actually recognize when you're stressed is super important, because then once you recognize it and you're aware, then you can do something about it. Whereas if you just go around with your head in the clouds almost, and you just know, you just think, that's how I feel all the time, that's just who I am, then you won't do anything about it. So you have to be aware. So then you can do something. And then when it comes to just kind of managing stress, like just personally speaking, what I do with my clients is it's obviously all dependent on the individual, but there's a load of different practices or kind of strategies. The number one stress management tool I advise to walk clients is sleep. And it's as simple as that, because, yeah, you probably knew that was coming, and people that were listening probably knew that as well. And it's I'll keep seeing it to the cows come home. It's just that's how important it is. And. So like, besides some of the specifics I get into with, like, obviously my training and, like, fixing injuries, where most people wouldn't know what I'm doing or what I talk about if I was talking about specific muscles, they're like, what is that? Most of the stuff I talk about is very simple, and it's what most coaches talk about as well. It's very simple things, just, we repeat them a lot, because they're the things that work. So things like if you want to lose body, if you want to lose weight, eating a calorie deficit, if you want to gain muscle, eat enough protein and lift weights. If you want to manage your stress better, get enough sleep. It's just one of the tools, because the flip side of that is, then, if you don't sleep enough, you end up becoming more stressed. And if you're stressed, you actually can find it quite hard to get to sleep. So it's a bit of a vicious cycle, but sleep in itself, just like exercising, just like managing your stress, and maybe just like having the skills of proper nutrition and that sort of stuff. Sleep is a skill, and that's something I tried to make my clients aware of and educate, is that if you like, you have to be good at sleeping. Some people are great sleepers. We've all heard that as like, Oh, they're a great sleeper. They can fall asleep in one minute. And as babies, we can sleep all the time. As we get older, a lot of us lose that skill, and it's because we're busy doing stuff. It's like we spend our teens up playing Xbox till what God knows, time in the in the evening, in the night. Sorry Nemo, were hit our teens and early 20s, we go out drinking and party and that sort of stuff. I'm just generally speaking, so sleep becomes less and less of a priority. So it's very easy for people to slip out of that skill and but it's much easier to have that skill if it's a priority. So that's the issue a lot of people, especially in this space we're talking about, is they don't have they don't place that value on sleep. And if you don't place a value in something, you don't prioritize it. So it's the same way as weight training. If you are weight training, or if you have value on weight training, you'll do it because you're doing it because you want to be as strong as possible. You want to be able to run when you're 80, whatever it is you prioritize that, you value it, sleep is the exact same. So yeah, if you can get your seven, eight hours sleep, that will have a massive impact on your stress levels, because you're going to wake up, your mind will be clearer, more energy. So what does that do? It means you can attack your big tasks with much greater vigor, and you're you're energized, you're more productive, your cognitive function is better. And that just all starts from sleep. So I always say sleep is like the foundation upon which everything else is built on. And if you don't have that foundation, everything else is just a little bit shaky. Yeah, it's, it's as simple as that, that's, that's a it's the bread and butter of your health.

Agi Keramidas 18:03
I completely agree with you, Mark, and I like very much how you use the word tool for the sleep, and you also use the word skill for the sleep. And these are very, I think, important distinctions, because many people just take sleep for granted. They don't even consider it as any of those things they consider something that they have to do. You've mentioned earlier on about stress. You said that it's important or the first step is the ability to recognize that you are stressed in the first place. Of course, as you know, this requires a certain level of self awareness to be able to stop and look at yourself and recognize that stress So is there some practical tool or some way that you can recommend so that someone can have better ability To recognize their stress level,

Mark Gray 19:01
yeah, for sure, the most simple one is to grab yourself one of these and to write stuff down. So journal den, I it's, yeah, it's, honestly, it's, again, it's very simple, but it's, it just gives you space to just write down how you're feeling. And for some people, that's very tough, and it will feel really weird at the start, and it will feel a bit odd, and you're like, why am I doing this? But if you do it enough, then you'll, you'll like, you ask, ask yourself a few questions. Like, how did I feel today? What went well? What didn't go well? What could I do better? All these sorts of things. And you just start to create that skill of just recognizing how you feel, okay. And then it's like, so I did this today, and then I felt like this. It was like, right tomorrow, what will I do to stop that from happening? Or at least if it does happen, how can I approach it better? So the result is a bit better. So yeah, if you want to get better the skill of recognizing when you're stressed or why you're stressed, I. Recommend, it's just writing down and journaling and yet, just a few minutes in the evening or in the morning. And yeah, that'll help massively.

Agi Keramidas 20:11
If you enjoy this episode, can you think of one person that would find it useful and share it with them? I'd really appreciate it. It helps the show grow, and you will also be adding value to people you care about. Thank you. And now let's get back to the episode. Definitely, thank you for that. I'm also a big proponent of journaling with self reflection. Let's go back to sleep now, because it was very as I was saying, very interesting. What you said about the skill, what I find, and I think some people will, there might be the reason why they're not getting enough sleep. You already mentioned, it is that it's not a priority of them. They're not put enough value. And I suppose the reason for that is that they are not convinced somehow of how important it is to have that. So what would you say to someone who says, Mark, I know what you mean, but there is no way that I can find eight hours of my busy schedule to sleep. I read somewhere that for some people, six is enough, for example, or they would find some kind of objection to do that. So how would you approach a comment like that?

Mark Gray 21:32
Well, I could give them probably 101 different studies as to why sleep is important and how it is extremely detrimental to get a certain amount of sleep. Okay, like, there's been studies, I don't know them off the top of my head, whereas that showed that if you get between like seven and eight, seven to eight hours, that's obviously seen as like optimal, and you get like, certain amount of benefits from it. When you go to like, six hours consistently, it's been shown to have like, a little bit of a detrimental effect on your health. And then if you go below six and you're at like that, 456, hours a night, which some people do, is that has been shown to be extremely detrimental to your health. So it's not just about you waking up the next day and feeling more energetic and you're you're rested and your mood is better. That's not why you tried to get those seven, eight hours. It's because of the long term effect on your health and like so you can be you can neglect your sleep for 510, 1520, years, and in those in that time period, do you know what? You might not have too many ill effects with your health. You're not going to feel great like that's just plain and simple. You won't feel as good as if you did prioritize your sleep. But long term, 20 years time, 20 years time, 25 years time, that decision to neglect your sleep is going to come and bite you back in the butt. It's as simple as that. Okay, if you are in that routine of just not sleeping enough, it will come and it will haunt you in the future. Okay, so the things we do now might not necessarily have that much of an impact on us at the moment, but with your health, you need to think long term, and it's as simple as that. So I try to get that across to people is that you need to prioritize it, not for yourself now, but for yourself in 10 years, for yourself in 1520 you don't want to be you don't want to be inundated with these diseases or health concerns just because you wouldn't get enough sleep. And I wrote a post about this, and it was a comment I wrote on link someone's LinkedIn post, and they were talking about sleep and entrepreneurs, and I was saying how it's almost seen as, like a bit of a badge of honor, and like almost like a rite of passage in entrepreneurism, is that you kind of it was kind of cool to say you didn't get enough sleep. It's like, I was, I got five hours sleep because I was up, like, sending emails till 2am and I got up at six, and I'm in the I'm in the office, and I've had three coffees and and a pack of cigarettes, and it's only 9pm whatever it is. And that was almost seen as, like, it's like, I'll go, you know, that's, that's, that's awesome. You're a really hard worker. But thankfully now that kind of mindset is slowly starting to kind of die away. It's still there, but if you know why you're sleeping, you'll have a much better chance of of prioritizing it. So it's not just like you said. It's something you have to do. We all sleep like we have to go to sleep. You have to know why you sleep. So when clients join my program in the first like two to three weeks, one of the trainings I deliver them is why we it's, I don't know the exact title of it, but it's about why we prioritize our sleep. And why you need to prioritize your sleep. It's one of the very first things I teach clients, and it's just to get across the point of you need to have a value on this because of all these different things. It's not just for the fact if you put in your head in the pillow and then wake up the next day. It's because when you sleep and you get enough sleep, good quality sleep as well, is you have more energy. You are better to be around. Your mood is better. You're happier. You've like I said, you've got more energy, so then you can work out harder. You wake up, you're not all fuzzy, brained and lethargic. So you're more inclined to eat better, because your body is not craving those sugars and the carbs to give you some energy. So it's, it's a cycle that can work really, really well in your favor, and you get some really good momentum. The opposite can go if you don't sleep well, and it all goes the opposite way. So, yeah, I just urge anyone that, if you are one of those people that thinks skipping on sleep is almost cool and it's right in passage, is just do a little research. Just Just go on to Google. Just Google like, why you need sleep. Find a journal or message me. I've got loads of content on it, and you'll soon switch your mindset and hopefully learn to prioritize it and put that value on it, but yeah, if you have to value it, simple as that,

Agi Keramidas 26:25
definitely. I do remember, personally, years ago, I had read the book Cold Sleep by Nick little Hales. Yeah, he was the sleep coach for Monster unite and some really big sports, or living athletes, etc. And I that was the first time that I realized that there is so much more to sleep. And what you were saying earlier about the use the word skill, there are so many things involved too. It's not just going to bed at a certain time and waking up eight hours later. There is much more before that. Sleep actually starts before you go to bed. It's a big topic. I will add to that and tell me if you have similar experience for me personally, because I'm a person who likes to see metrics with my relationship with sleep and finding out the optimal numbers and things like that happened when I started to using a wearable hoop band for a few years. Yeah, have one also. I'm wearing it because it is it gives you a breakdown you see every morning what happens, and you can actually feel it. Also, when it says that your sleep was really poor last night, you can actually feel it. And then it, for me, it helps, you know, to motivate you towards establishing this good habit. Because now I have established it. I don't need it anymore, but now it's part of my routine, my habit. I know how my body reacts to sleep and what it wants.

Mark Gray 28:07
No, that's amazing. Yeah, and you hit the nail on the head is, I use this analogy quite a lot when it comes to people's health. And people are like business owners, entrepreneurs. Is that you when you open a business or you run a business, you have metrics that you measure, simple as that like you measure how much money you're making, how many employees, whatever it is, turnover, profit, etc, is that you need to do the same with your health if you want to be as successful with it as you possibly can. The most common metric people measure is obviously their body weight. They jump onto skills. In the morning I weigh this cool the next day I weigh this you have to do, or it's, I highly suggest that you do the same with other metrics as well. One of them, then, is your sleep, and that's one I like you. If anyone has a whoop, will do the same thing they do when they wake up every morning. What's my whoop? What's my recovery score on the way down to the beach in the morning? I'd do it. And it's not just because it gives you information, but it also gives you something to work towards. And that's what I that's why I think it's very important. And you said it, you used it to help you build the habit. If you didn't have that information, you wouldn't be as inclined to do it. And I use the word gamify a lot with people's health is that it's good to gamify things. It's like, you gamify your workouts, yes, and you do. You can gamify this. I was like, Oh, I only like, I hit 80% awesome. It's like, let me try and average that for the week. I was like, What can I do for that? And then you end up going to bed half an hour earlier than you might have done normally, because you want to get a bigger score. Now, you might not do it. You're not going to do that forever, but at the start, it's a great way of just building habits and getting into routine. And I like, I'm a great sleeper. I could 100% do without this week because I'm it's so embedded in me, I know to get to bed at a certain time I don't. Always do it, but I know, like, roughly how much sleep I want to get. I know when I wake up if I feel a certain way. Sleep hasn't been that great, like, only, like, last night, I didn't have a great sleep. I was very restless, because just 1,000,001 things in my mind, and then when I woke up, my group actually said, he goes, you had a restless night's sleep. It's like, well, I knew it's like, I knew that investigate your restless night's sleep. But yeah, so I think metrics like that are just just amazing. So not telling everyone to go get a whoop. And this isn't an endorsement for who brain, but if you can get something like that, it just it just makes it that little bit easier. I've had so many clients jump on the whoop bandwagon, and they're all a bit like, oh, I don't know if it's for me, because I'm not an athlete, or any of that. I'm like, trust me, it's, it's not just for athletes. It's for anyone that is willing to kind of use the information and then, like that, they're hooked. And it's like, sleep, score, this, strain, this. So, yeah, it's, it's awesome. Yeah,

Agi Keramidas 30:56
it's, I will, I will close this. It's that, that phrase, what gets measured gets improved. It is as simple as that you can't improve your sleep or your weight or whatever it is, unless you have a number to compare it against. So thank you. That's That's fascinating mark. And you know this, we focused more on the sleep element in this conversation. And I'm actually glad that we did, because that was probably the thing that wanted to come through from from this conversation. So it's great. I will start wrapping things up. Can you share with the listener, what? Where is the best place for them to find out more about you and continue the journey with you?

Mark Gray 31:48
Awesome, yes. So you can hit my website, which is paradigmproject.uk, and you can catch me on LinkedIn or Instagram at coachmark Gray. So yeah, you search my name on LinkedIn, you'll find me, and the same on Instagram. And yeah, if you feel like you want a message or you just need some advice or questions, my doors are always open. So that's why I created my social channels. Was to help. So yeah,

Agi Keramidas 32:15
that's great. Thank you for that, and the two questions I always ask my guests. The first one is, what does personal development mean to you?

Mark Gray 32:28
Personal Development for me is to always, and I'd say always, because always is a very strong word when it's used in certain senses, you just always be on the or always be, on the path of trying to, of trying to grow. So there's that thing of, like, if you're not growing, you're dying, as simple as that. And it doesn't have to be anything massive. It just has to be that mindset and approach of just trying to get a little bit better. And personal development for me is that, like, I've got so many books behind me and everything, and not read half them. But, and it's, it's just to have that mindset of just trying to get a little bit better. And I used think of just 1% if you can get 1% better every day, every week, you'll be so much further than the line in a few months or a year. So yeah, just that kind of mindset of just Yeah, trying or just Yeah, growth mindset, if you're going back, if you're not going if you're not going forward, you're going backwards. Simple as that,

Agi Keramidas 33:29
I agree. And let me ask you a quick hypothetical question mark, if you were to go back in time and meet meet your 18 year old self, what's one piece of advice you would give him,

Mark Gray 33:42
18 year old, me just going to uni, I I'd probably tell myself, in it, from a business viewpoint, is buy a video camera. Start recording yourself. Start. Do YouTube before everyone else. No, it would. It would just to be as focused on getting better as I was back then. I'm very I'm extremely fortunate that I played a lot of sports. So I grew up playing sports, and sports are what molded me. So I would have told myself to just keep doing that. I would have told myself to repay sports a little bit longer. But yeah, it would have been just to stay through to that, because it taught me a lot. Taught me, like a lot of the values I have right now and who I am as a person. So would have just been, yeah, kept, keep truth to that. And yeah, don't apply to trying. Don't apply to the police, because that's what I originally did. Didn't get into it, thankfully, I got my sports course. But yeah, just just that, yeah, stay true to what you were doing.

Agi Keramidas 34:45
Thank you, and mark what I would well, I want to thank you, first of all, very much for this conversation. It was very enjoyable and useful, I think, and there were some hopefully important. Sites that was, you know, expressed, I want to wish you all the very best with your mission, with what you're doing. And I would like to conclude by asking you to give to the listeners something actionable, something practical, based on the conversation we've had so far as a small, actionable step they can take to improve or grow what you were saying, to move one step forward. Yep,

Mark Gray 35:31
because we did a lot of sleep, I'll give you one asleep and want to stress really quick. So when it comes to stress, if you are someone that has a lot of stress, or you have moments where you've got like those periods of high stress, is one of the best, best tools you can use is breath work. And a really simple way of doing breath work is to get your phone put on for 10 minutes, a 10 minute timer, and then breathe in for five or six seconds, exhale for five or six seconds all through your nose, and just keep doing that until the 10 minutes are up and you'll feel a million times better. You'll bring your body down from a sympathetic nervous system into a parasympathetic. You'll feel so much better. And then the other one is one you touched on, actually a few minutes ago, when it comes to sleep, is to go to sleep roughly the same time and to wake up roughly the same time that there is one of the the quickest wins you can have when it comes to improving your sleep, because there's babies. You put babies to sleep at a certain time. It's like, we need to do that with adults. Okay, there's a reason why you have mothers running down the road in the car saying, We have to get them to sleep, get them to bed. There's their nap time or sleep time. Adults need to do the same thing. So if you could do that, get it within like roughly half an hour each night, then your sleep will blow up. You'll be so much better at it. So yeah, that's what I would do.

Agi Keramidas 36:59
And before I end today's episode, if you enjoy this podcast, can you think of one person that would find it useful and share it with them? I'd really appreciate it. It helps the show grow, and you also add value to people you care about. Thank you. And until next time, stand out. Don't fit in.