How to Transform Your Energy, Emotions, & Environment to Transform Your Results - With Jason Stacy

25:45And I first need to start to figure out who that is. Like, I need to know who I am. I need to know what I stand for. I need to know what boundaries that I am not going to cross no matter what. Because I've seen what those boundaries, those crossing those boundaries do to people. I saw, I could see it in very disgusting, very violent ways what happens, you know, if you don't know how to manage that well enough, right? I saw what happens when you decide to like get involved in drugs a little bit here and there. Like, you know, I see, I could see what was happening. So I just knew that I had to hold very, very strong values.

26:18And that that was the only thing that I can control, right? That that was the thing that I had power over is how I showed up, what I stood for. And there was, there was times where I got injured very badly because I stood up for those values. And I would have no, no matter the cost of me in that moment, I knew that whatever it was going to cost me in that moment was nothing. If I broke that, if I broke that value, if I gave in what the bigger cost was going to be. And I know people say these things about their life all the time, but I'm telling you right now, I know very specific, clear moments in that period of my life that I would literally, I'd be walking for hours.

26:50Sometimes days I would just walk. I don't got nowhere else to go, right? So I just wander, like I'd walk, you know, from one city to another for hours and days sometimes, and just be thinking sometimes. And this was the thing that I would, I mean, I knew, I realized that I was telling, I was talking to myself about this. I was like trying to understand, like, why do I need to do this? I was reminding myself often because it was so easy and so tempting to go the other way. You know, it's so easy to just accept that, well, this is my life. This is who I am. When I knew that wasn't who I was. This was just a situation I was in, but it wasn't me and it wasn't going to be me.

27:24Yeah. And so I did everything I had to do. And that was just slow, just making, you know, finding the right environment, the right people, trying to have, you know, this is where my pressure thing comes in. where I just knew that there was a lot of things I could not control, especially at my age as well. It was like, there was a lot of things that I didn't like that were very scary, very dangerous, but I had no control over it, right? From what I knew and what I could do. But I had this sense that like, if I'm just aware of the thing that I know I need to change, even though I can't do anything about it now, that that alone is power.

27:58That alone is gonna be an opportunity at some point because at some point, that thing that's hovering over me, holding me back, there's gonna be a crack somewhere in it. There's gonna be a tiny little crack. And because I'm already putting pressure on it because I'm paying attention to it, I'm already gonna be through the crack, that little opening, before I even realize that it's there. And that's how I live my life was just like, just knowing all the things that I could control, the things I couldn't control, why that was happening. And just, that was just vigilant about that. Like aggressively, just, I'm holding those values no matter what.

28:28So that was kind of a long story. But there's a lot of stuff in between that, But I mean, yeah, to me, that's the most important thing. That's still how I live my life. That's how I coach. That's how I parent. That's how I, I mean, every decision I make, I always look back at it. Who am I? What do I stand for? And make sure that that's every time I have any decision to make, that my action has to be aligned with those values, period. Yeah. That's it.

28:51Shawn Stevenson:I've never heard somebody say that they want to have less energy. I just got so much energy. I don't know what to do with it. I don't know what to do. For most people today, they want to have more energy. Energy is the fuel of our lives and our experience of energy. If we're looking at it through the lens of biology, boils down deep down to the role of our mitochondria, also known as our cellular power plants or cellular energy plants. But it's a dynamic exchange going on constantly with all of these trillions of mitochondria that we have within our bodies. Now, the question is, what is going to help our mitochondria to do what they do and to give us that energy that we're really looking for?

29:37Shawn Stevenson:Of course, we want to mind our mitochondria, eat some nutritious food, eat foods that are not creating derangement and all these abnormalities, blood sugar spikes and gumming up all of our cells and our tissues, making sure that we're getting adequate sleep, checking all those boxes. But if we're boiling things down to a category of nutrients that we really want to look for, look no further than that category of electrolytes. Electrolytes are minerals that carry an electric charge, and they are critical for the function of your mitochondria. A recent study published in Free Radical Biology and Medicine determined that mitochondrial sodium levels are critical in contributing to changes in mitochondrial energy exchange and redux capacity.

30:26Shawn Stevenson:So this is about delivering energy to all of our cells and resisting the harmful impacts of oxidation and stress. Who knew sodium was so essential for life? Well, a lot of people have known this, including researchers at McGill University who found that not only does sodium help to maintain proper water balance for all of our cells, but also our most essential organ of energy and life period, which is the amazing human brain. They also found that sodium functions as a quote on off switch in our brains for specific neurotransmitters that support optimal function and protect our brain against numerous diseases.

31:12Shawn Stevenson:And so we want to make sure that we're targeting plenty of electrolytes in our diet. It's going to come in the form most often of whole organic fruits and vegetables. But this is also the reason that so many people feel and experience more energy and faster recovery when they're utilizing supplemental electrolytes. Now, if you're going to utilize an electrolyte supplement, the number one science-backed electrolyte supplement that supports active hydration, cognitive performance and a healthy lifestyle overall look no further than the incredible folks at element element has the science-backed ratios of sodium potassium and magnesium to help you to feel and perform at your best the best performers in the world utilize element i'm talking about team usa weightlifting nba athletes nfl teams navy seals the list goes on and on and on.

32:09Shawn Stevenson:And right now you can try Element risk-free with their no questions asked refunds. If you don't absolutely love the way that Element makes you feel head over right now to drink element.com forward slash model, and you're going to get a free bonus pack of their most popular flavors with every single purchase. All right, go to drink element.com forward slash model. That's drinklmnt.com forward slash model to take advantage of this right now. Head over there, check them out, drinklmnt.com forward slash model. And now back to the show. I got to say this is this code kept you alive and also has helped you to.

32:56Shawn Stevenson:And I don't want to even belittle this word, but to thrive like you are one of the most prized coaches for the number one tennis star in the world. Like, and you were homeless, right? Like this, it doesn't make sense unless you understand the code. Like you had a code even then as a child, you were 13 when you came back home and looked through the window and everybody was gone. And deciding in that moment, like, okay, let's go. Like this is, I have to to figure this out. And having those principles, these kind of code of ethics, the pressure code, the beginnings of it starting to form that carried you through and to help you to survive circumstances that, I mean, be honest, like the vast majority of people are not gonna survive.

33:47Shawn Stevenson:And so, man, this is unbelievable. And with that being said, you have kind of broken down the pieces of this code. And again, so much has happened since. You've picked up these different skills over time. But I think a big part of that and like the kind of affirmation and the expression of it and seeing a place where you can actually add value with it happened with this dojo. Yes. And so - They gave me the language, the structure. Yeah. And you would go, and I don't wanna give too much away, but it's in the book. And this is actually just a small part of the book, but it's so, it's, yeah, it's just like, it's a few pages, but it's just like so much happens in these pages.

34:34Shawn Stevenson:But, you know, one of the things that you would do, like you were literally just kind of going and like looking in the window of this dojo and then you got to actually just kind of go and sit in on the side. Again, you didn't, you were homeless. And over time you were invited to start to participate and, you know, just went from there. So let's talk about that experience there with that dojo. Yeah, I mean, you know, the neighborhood we were in, you know, there was two areas where I spent most of that time. And, you know, one of them was called the murder capital of the state. It was crazy violence, like a lot.

35:07You know, this little dojo was a run-down building. There was a pawn shop and a porn shop in between, you know, on either side of it. Double P's. Yeah, exactly. So it was just all that kind of area, you know, just some run-down taverns and all this, you know. So it wasn't like some fancy, you know, shiny place. but you know i think i was born in japan and i think i just had this like connection with you know i'd done martial arts when i was younger and i sort of it was like a part of my old life kind of thing you know i guess so i just i'd watch i'd be interested and yeah you know like i said i went in got the balls to go in one day basically i could actually go in the building and just would let me sit and watch and i just did that a handful of times and then um beyond the the main sensei there and al who's a you know ex-investigator a cop you know there's a lot of like sort of ex-military current military guys there it was like also like a military town not too far anyway they invited me in and just wanted to know who i was and why i was there and i just kind of kept randomly showing up and yeah i mean lucky for me i think that they allowed me to train there i didn't have any parents to sign anything i didn't have money um i mean this was already me you know slowly getting off the streets you know so it was already a couple two three years of me already being you know living in that environment um that i got access to this community you know that's what gave me it really gave me like some structure obviously yeah some understanding you know of there's more out there it gave me a language to a lot of things that i thought i understood and some things i did understand but i didn't know the words i didn't know how to you know i know language for it i just was living it um and like i said already is you know for a big part it was community it was like wow you know this is a what do you call it a safe place but it was a a place where it's like, you know, there was just different kind of respect, you know, the way people interact with each other.

36:55You know, it was like that first time where you can go, you know what, you and I can go like beat the crap out of each other, literally, right? And then after we're done, we shake hands, we go have a drink or whatever, you know, have some coffee or whatever, I don't drink, but you know, I just, I don't know why I said that.

37:08Shawn Stevenson:But you know what I mean? Like there's this environment where you can literally, you have an understanding of each other. You're there to help each other get better and you helping each other get better through adversity, through difficulty, through discomfort, through not allowing you to take shortcuts. You know, like we even have this thing where like, if you and I are like working on some technical thing, right? Where we're sparring and, you know, let's say we're skilled, you know, similar skill level and you're kind of letting me do something and allow me to do it, even though it's not, it wasn't right.

37:40Like I didn't do it right. You know, whatever, say the technique was, but you're kind of letting me do it. Not in a learning environment, but we're sparring or fighting or whatever. like to us that's extremely disrespectful it's like you're now you're now allowing me to believe that what i'm doing is working and it's not so how am i getting better it's actually worse than me not getting better i have this false sense that i know what i'm doing and then one day i have to go do that and it's not going to work out for me right and so we have this very strong sort of sense of like we're gonna we're here to help make each other better and we're going to do that through these difficult things.

38:14And we're not gonna let you hide in the corner and hide from yourself. And so on top of that, when I started getting like the black belt levels, we had to read stacks of books on human behavior, psychology, nutrition, history, sociology, like sometimes on specific ancient sort of, the older books on Zen and just so many different books that he would give stack of books and we had to write a paper about each book. And then he would give us a topic, you know like my very first black belt level um my first you know i got my black belt there um i had to write a paper on my eye which is like space conditioning so like in you know martial arts it's the controlling the distance basically right but this concept of space conditioning and how that applies to today's society i was like 19 or 20 i don't know i was like i was so young i'm like say what so i had a it forced me to think about these these these things that I was doing physically or these, these principles and theories, but how can I take one thing and how can that one thing apply to other things?

39:13So it really challenged your, your ability to, again, you know, take a skill or understanding of one thing. And can you really apply that? Do you understand it on a level that you can walk into any room or you can go to any environment and understand how to take some skills and some tools from one thing and apply it really effectively in another. So, so much about who I am in that sense and how I coach and how I parent, I would say is, is, was really built from that. It gave me that structure.

39:40Shawn Stevenson:Yeah. So yeah. It goes back to that code because that code translates into so many different areas of our lives. You know, these certain attributes, certain skillsets, certain mindsets, right? I love the simple sentiment of how you do anything is how you do everything. and this is something that I have instilled in my kids again and again, you better do these dishes like you're trying to, you know what I'm saying? The winning shot in the game. You know what I mean? Take it seriously because it's not just about you as well. Right? And being able to frame it like, do you want me to give you a dish that has debris on it?

40:18Shawn Stevenson:Tell you to drink out of it. Of course. And just like, oh, I don't want that to happen to me. Let me take care of my family. Let me look out for everybody. And if anything, look out for myself. So I'm not eating off of dirty dishes, you know, but just like that translates over just having, having respect for the work that you're doing. I saw that as one of the things you said it as well, respect in this environment. It wasn't about necessarily being a quote safe space. That's right. It's a, it's a, it's a space with structure and with certain ethics in a code. Right. And also how do you create an environment that you want to do that thing?

40:56Shawn Stevenson:That's right. You're big on environment. We're gonna talk about environment in a minute, which I got some great insights from you already. But one of the things that I've seen my kids do, and I'm seeing it with my youngest son right now, again, we didn't tell him to do this. He just kind of picked this up from the environment. And now he's spending the last, like this summer, he spent so much time in the kitchen, like cleaning the kitchen and like cleaning the fruit. Like we get fresh berries, he rinses them, whatever puts them in these containers. We've seen many, many fruit purchases come and go right into the trash, right?

41:31Shawn Stevenson:And so he's taken that upon himself because he loves the fruit of course as well. But he saw that this was the gap in our family structure, right, and we were losing out on a lot of stuff. And he doesn't like to pick through and to see which ones are good, right? So he found something, some value proposition for himself. But what he does, man, he puts on his vibes that he's into. He's in there. He's doing his thing. He's in there singing, whatever, you know, singing, you know, listen to his, you know, favorite artists or whatever the case might be. He just creates a vibe to where time disappears.

42:01Shawn Stevenson:Sure. And he's just in there doing these things, you know, and that's what you want to create for yourself. And also that you're intentionally doing this with your athletes. And so first of all, I just want to thank you for sharing and, you know, just, kind of unpacking some of these insights, you know, thought process and these conditions and, you know, seeing this catalyst for change because within that context in the dojo, you also started to teach as well. And so obviously since then, you've impacted the lives and coached people in, you know, every domain you can imagine really just, you know, whether this is like, you know, the various sports, you know, people in business, whatever the case might be.

42:43Shawn Stevenson:And in this place that you are now, you are sharing the code with other people, which is invaluable if people really get this. And so one of the things that you talk about in the book are these three E's. And so I wanna dive into each one of these. So the three E's are energy, emotion, and environment. Yes, sir. All right. And something super powerful came up in energy that was just like, oh man, he said the thing. But first of all, let's just start off with energy. I think we have a superficial idea of why that matters. Let's talk a little bit about energy and just a couple of tips in that domain for people to really help to cultivate that.

43:27Yeah, I love this one. Can I sidestep for just a moment? Absolutely, yeah. What you were just talking about with the respect and them taking action and taking some responsibility on their own is when you're first talking about, about, hey, go do the dishes, do it well, do all these things. And it's almost like a respect thing, like respect your environment, respect your family, respect this and that. When these things come up, you know the way I saw the change in my own kids, when I changed it up a little bit, instead of saying, hey, why don't you have respect for X, Y, and Z? It's like, why don't I have some respect for yourself?

44:05Like at the end of the day, when you're doing that, it's like about how, yes, the outcome might be that you're also showing and respect to your environment and the people around you and whatnot or the thing, but it needs to start with you. Like you're doing this because you have respect for yourself. It's not just half assing something. You're not just kind of doing it. You have some purpose behind it, even if it's a small thing. And so that's part of that exposure and that sort of mentality of when you're doing that, it's not just what you're doing, it's not very respectful the way you're doing that or it's more respectful that way for this reason.

44:34It's like, well, no, like have some respect for yourself. Like, why would you wanna be that person or to be seen that way, you know, if that's who you really are. So anyway, that's just a part of the way I kind of flip it a little bit. I remember the first time it just kind of happened one day when I said it to one of my kids, and I literally saw like this light, like you could literally see their facial expression just completely change, and it's like, oh, I never thought of it that way. So anyway, I had to share that. It was just something I thought about. Okay, my man. So energy, you want to talk about that, huh?

45:04All right, well, with the three E's, to me, let me just explain first what I, what I, why I talk about these three so, and so passionately and why I think it's the thing is that we live in this world that we're just trying to optimize everything. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Like, obviously it's, well, we all do it, right. We all have the things that we do. And you know, all our social, everywhere we go, it's just optimize, add, add, add, add, adding layers and go do this. You need that. You need this, you know, and then eventually, you know, you see the general population or the people who are really trying to push themselves.

45:36Suddenly they have like 80 different supplements they're taking a day. They're measuring every little metric. They're, you know, there's adding more and more layers, but that's again, just taking more of their time and their energy, their attention, which is energy. It's resources being used up and they're just inputs and we're really good at it. And there's some awesome ones. I do them, but what I find is missing is, is all of these inputs, all these hacks, all these programs and systems and whatnot. I look at those as like apps on your phone, right? And the three E's are the operating system of the phone, right?

46:07So yes, there's amazing apps out there. There's also some useless ones, right? But everyone's out there chasing to add more apps. I bet you if we look at all of our phones in this room right now, we all probably have a ton of apps. We don't even know how we got them and why we got them. But at the time we needed it, you know what I mean? And we were, oh, that was the new thing. And this is the thing. And we don't even use them anymore, right? It doesn't matter how awesome, how effective and amazing an app is. If the operating system underneath it is corrupt or it's running in like a survival mode, then I feel like a lot of people, and this is gonna lead into the energy part, is that they're doing tons of work to optimize their stressful sort of life, whatever that means for them.

46:48But what's happened is they're in survival mode and now they're just building a really optimized survival mode. And at the end of the day, a survival mode is still survival mode. That makes sense? Absolutely. And that's what I see where like so many people are like losing a lot of themselves, a lot of the resources, they're doing all the right things, right? If you said, oh yeah, I take this, I do that in my room temperature, like, oh, you know, all the stuff, you know, you've written some awesome books about those things. They are so effective. But if there's deeper layers of like why and when they apply those things, if there's, if they're sort of living out of alignment of like who they say they are versus what they're doing, you know, there's a lot of layers here, which we can talk about.

47:27Then, you know, they're chasing and adding so much, but they're using up so much resources chasing the next thing with no real intention behind it, no purpose about how does it all work together? Are you adding those layers because you need to, again, add a layer to your code, right? So it's in aligned with what you're aiming to do or to improve. So when I talk about the three E's, it's not just like there's these three separate things. And it's not even about how you can control or manage each of those separate things individually. It's how can you align those three things? How can you align those three E's?

48:02Now getting into energy. So I had to kind of set the table sort of thing with this. So, cause it's a big thing to me. It's, it's everything. It's everything. Anytime there's an opportunity, an obstacle, some good, some bad, whatever, any and every time, whether it's me, arena, anyone on the team, my family, if there's something we have to face and there's all this noise and it could be excitement, it could be terrible. It could be fear. It could be stress. Every time those things happen, the way I'm able to kind of create a little bit of space between me and the thing happening so I can see more clearly, I can make a better choice in that moment is that I just go back and I just cycle through those three E's.

48:36Of those three things, what was missing leading up to this moment? What did I miss or do or not do up to this moment that made this go wrong or made it stressful or whatnot? And then I cycle through those three things. So what it does, it gives me like this power. I can turn down all the noise. I can turn down all the voices. I can save energy, all this mental and emotional energy that's just being used up with all this noise and this panic and this whatnot because I have this platform, this operating system, this code that I know I'm building, that I know I need to be loyal to. And now when I would go into energy, I have two parts.

49:13Well, there's three, like you get mental, physical, and emotional energy, essentially, right? Like we all kind of know this. And on a superficial level, we have, well, how do we process our emotions, right? How we internalize them, how we process this information, this feeling, these emotions. And the second part is, well, how do we present those emotions? How do we allow them out in the world, right? So with energy, we have our physical energy, obviously our mental energy, and even without diluting it or getting into the emotions, that this is emotional energy. But for, keep it simple, we'll say we have physical and mental energy, right?

49:45We only have so many resources available to us based on what we've been doing with our bodies, with our sleep, with nutrition, our environment essentially. So again, they're all very connected. But with energy, everyone talks about sleep, right? You know very well a lot about sleep, right? Everyone talks about all these things on recharging your batteries, like build up your recovery. We talk so many things about recovery out there, right? So there's all these things. And again, people are constantly going and adding more things to help them recover better, right? And the part about energy that I think, because we don't have forever to sit here and talk, is the biggest part I find that people are missing maybe or that has the biggest impact isn't all these things that they're adding because a lot of them are really good.

50:32But it's like where they let the energy leak, right? And often I find it's in the things that they're either avoiding, right? There's some things that they know they need to face and they're avoiding it. That weighs on you. And the longer you avoid it, the heavier it gets. The longer you avoid it, the more energy is draining from you, the more resources it's taken, because it's in the background, it's hanging out there. The other thing, you know, it could be a conversation you're avoiding, right? The other part of that, so there's the avoiding. The other is that the things that you're allowing.

51:01So there's things that may be around you, whether it's conversations, content, you know, there's things that you allow that, again, might go against who you are, what you want to do, where you want to be. And that is taking energy from you, right? So there's, I usually start with people, So it's like, instead of let's look at what we can add and optimize, because it's not there, you know, the information is out there. It's not so hard to figure out, right? So much of it these days. But what I want is, let's go a little bit deeper. Let's figure out where are you losing energy, right? And I'm going to add one more thing, because there's probably three big ones, is I know I mentioned it earlier, just subtly, that everything in our world is designed to take our attention.

51:41Our attention is constantly, our phones alone. It is so advanced technology that it doesn't matter if you can be the most mindful person in the world You open that thing up a half hours gone. You know where it went You know what I mean? You go how many times you open your phone to do one thing and suddenly you're doing something else And you forgot what the thing was the only reason you picked up your phone You know and everywhere we go everywhere driving around listen the car everywhere we go These are pulling our attention. It's taking our resources our energy and One of the most powerful things I've ever seen happen for myself my kids the athletes and clients I work with is getting them just to find moments throughout the day, 90 seconds, 30 seconds, five minutes, just to stop.

52:22Like you take some control of your attention, right? You own it, it's your resource. And just stop, like literally just stop. Like don't look at your phone, don't worry about thinking or not thinking. Like I have this thing I call it, don't fight it, don't feed it, right? You know, I'll give you an example of what I mean by taking these moments. So I don't get very good sleep. I have some issues with sleep still. Still trying to work through it. I haven't been to sleep clinics. I'm super systemic when I'm sleeping. Even though I thought I slept, I don't go into deeper stages half the time or most of the time.

52:52Shawn Stevenson:Just to be clear, this is an extraordinary situation that you were in living. Yeah, I've had people literally trying to murder me in my sleep. Like literally have people like, you know, I've been shot at. One of my concussions was like getting hit in the head with a gun while I was sleeping. You know, I've had all kinds of crazy things. Like, so yes, I understand where it's coming from now, but I spent most of my life just burying that and just helping everybody else. like until recently when my health started coming, coming at me, knowing very well about how sleep works. I mean, I've written papers, you know, with like some of the schools and stuff.

53:19And anyway, I know what it means, you know, it's not too difficult, but you know, I'll give you a real example for me is that in my lifestyle, like I might be coaching in one place. I might be lecturing at some university. I might have a presentation to do. I might be, you know, got my kids, family, you know, a lot. I'm in like 10 different places each day, let's say on an average day what i do is right before and after the thing i'm doing now so before i came upstairs to hang out with you i just sat in the car for five minutes turned everything off you know how quiet a car is when there's nothing on like literally you imagine all this stuff because you sealed it's sealed shut for a reason right so when you turn off everything you set your phone down you sit there and you could breathe if you want you can just chill out you can do whatever you want.

54:02Like I have some breathing things I do, but just quiet. And at first, you know how loud quiet is? It is heavy and it is so much louder than you might have like could have ever imagined because you never do it. You never just have things off. There's always sound, you know? Have you ever been in your house when the power goes out? Suddenly like it just sounds different. You don't realize the constant noise that's going on all the time, right? And these things take in your energy all the time. They're taking energy, taking, taking, taking. So a big way I like look at energy is look where the leaks are.

54:38Again, what are the things that you're avoiding or hiding from? And as often as you can, just take a minute, like five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 times, you know, throughout the day, just take a little break. So before and after you got up meeting, you know, before and after that thing you have to study, you know, before you go into a game afterward, just take a few seconds. how much ever time you have, and just slow down your breathing. Let your thoughts kind of, don't fight anything, don't feed anything, just be. And that not only are you saving some energy, like you're not scrolling on your phone or you're not answering some whatever, email or whatever, or overthinking something that just happened previously, you're actually gaining energy.

55:22That moment of just being present, that literally recharges you. Your nervous system's like, oh yeah, thank you. I needed that moment.

55:31Shawn Stevenson:You already addressed the specific thing I was gonna ask you about with energy, which was again, we, especially in this community, but just, we all know this stuff. We know like food gives you energy. Of course. Your sleep quality is gonna influence your energy. Obviously the choices that you make with these things are gonna influence your energy, the inputs, right? Inputs, yes, yes. But what I specifically was impressed with was this statement in the book is, and this is a direct quote from the book. It says, most people don't lack energy. They leak it. Exactly. All right. We've got plenty of energy.

56:06Shawn Stevenson:We're teeming with energy. Like these atoms and doing all these things, these molecules, we're teeming with energy. ATP is getting produced like crazy, right? But it's the fact that we're leaking our energy. And you said in the book as well, you wouldn't pour water into a cracked glass, right? And so it's making sure that we're not just leaking energy and so that we can actually contain the energy that we're taking in. And you shared also there's these three moves with that ledger when it comes to our energy. Build your reserves by creating deposits. That's the one that we tend to hyper-focus on.

56:43Shawn Stevenson:Protect what you have by guarding against leaky withdrawals and spend your energy wisely by investing deliberately. you know again so you've got some super just science-backed simple insights when it comes to these things when it comes to our nutrition when it comes to movement and but mostly this insight of like we've got to guard against and you got a great section on this draining our energy through having these leaks and you you talk about the specific ways that it tends to happen which which is attention drain, which you already covered, the digital distraction, all that stuff. People tax.

57:26Shawn Stevenson:Yes, sir. That's a big one right there. That's a big one. And system friction. So sloppy environments, endless meetings, and just all of those types of things. And these three E's are integrated. It isn't just like, here's your energy over here, here's your environment over here. It's an ecosystem. I wanna move on and talk a little bit more about emotion. So we hit energy already, we set the table. So why is emotion so huge? Why is that one of the three E's? Well, I mean, for a lot of people, unfortunately, I would say, is they allow their feelings and their emotions to drive the bus, as they say, to control how they respond in any given moment, you know, and how we walk into a room, how we present ourselves, no matter how we're feeling like we have to understand like you know if i have some crazy thing happening to me this week or this last night you know i landed here at three in the morning you know i had all these issues with the car always if i bring all that garbage into this room we're not gonna have a very good conversation the outcome is not gonna be a positive one it's not gonna be a win-win for everybody and so you know i have to understand that like okay i might have a way i'm feeling at the moment but i have to understand how i present and how i respond to that is going to directly impact the outcome, you know, what happens next, right?

58:48And if I really want to improve my life, if I want to have that normalcy, that steady, you know, safe, you know, high performance, whatever the environment is that you're wanting, whether it's what you have and you're trying to keep it, or you're trying to get to a place that you're not now, then you have to understand that emotions are powerful. We, our brain and our emotions are responding, like, before we even realize it, right? They're the ones that are like, Like those deeper levels, they're trying to like control us. But, you know, the more we're aware of ourselves, the more we understand why we're experiencing something, the better that we can create a little bit of separation.

59:25Like I like to talk about a little bit of space between this emotion and how you respond. Because that response is everything, right? It's, you know, it's not my kid's fault if I had some crazy conversation on the phone or good or bad, doesn't matter. It's not my, you know, not Arena's problem if I come with her. It's not ours if she has something. Like, you know, it's like this weird coin. There's two sides. It's everyone's responsibility. It's also nobody's. But at the end of the day, it comes from that coin is you. And so the emotion is, it's such a driver. It's very powerful. And if you just let it be and just let it do whatever, and you just, you know, fall into the bubble of whatever social media is feeding you, because, you know, you know how that algorithms work.

1:00:06You're like in a bubble and a bubble and a bubble. It's like your world, you know, you believe this thing to be so true because that's what you talked about or what you said. And so then everything you read and see and hear and consuming is just that thing. So it becomes your world, you know, and that creates an emotion in you. And then you let that drive you, right? And so then you really have no control of where your life is going, right? You have no, there's nothing there, you know? And then what ends up happening is that when peak moments happen in your life, good or bad or otherwise, a good opportunity for you to grow, to take a step forward or whatever, is that you've been living in such a disconnection from what you've been feeling and how you respond and like the values you stand for and the actions you take.

1:00:48There's such a separation there that when these key moments come, the emotion that takes over is the one that you've been building, that code that you've been building, right? That's the one that's gonna show up on those big moments in your life. And the big moments don't have to be big. They can be small moments, but the ones that can shift the direction that your life is going next, the direction that you're gonna end up. And if you let the emotion just take over, and just let it do whatever it's gonna do. And you allow all these external things to decide who you're gonna be, right? Instead of you deciding who you wanna be and then making sure that those actions, and part of that is to understand, not to control your emotions so much, but understand who are you?

1:01:24And why do I feel these types of emotions in certain environments or certain things? I like it with Arena. I never went to change her, right? She was who she was, but I had to help her understand who she was. And then she can understand, okay, well, this is who I want to be. So I need to act this way to get what I want. And I need to have, you know, I can still experience those emotions. I can feel them. They can exist. So I'm not saying you suppress them. You never want to do that. Like I said, I call it don't fight it, don't feed it. You give it what it requires for this moment right now. So I can have those emotions.

1:01:58I can experience all those things, and I'm going to. But most of the time, I want to be the one driving them. Occasionally, they'll take over because that's how it is. right it's gonna happen to all of us but i think just having that understanding that if you don't do these things with intention and you don't understand what you stand for and you don't be as mindful as you can about why are you responding like why you have that feeling inside about something and then understand how you your next thing that you do is going to influence the direction your life goes you know it's you're done you're just gonna be like everyone else chasing their tails even the ones even like your audience for sure they're out there trying to do all the right things but why are they still so stressed why are they still exhausted why are they still chasing another thing why in the big moments are they falling apart because there's that deeper thing that they're just they're not in alignment with yeah so yeah i love that you also

1:02:55Shawn Stevenson:illuminate the fact that our emotions are valuable there aren't these bad emotions and these emotions are really signals. And again, really aligning with who we want to be. Sometimes a signal can show up and it might not be in alignment with the person that we're choosing to be right then. So the signal can show up and typically it would just take over. That emotion would take over. And again, it's not right or wrong. It's just, it could be what it is. But the signal can also come up and we can catch, see the signal and we can make an adaptation in that moment. But for most of us, what happens is the emotion comes up and it takes over.

1:03:35Shawn Stevenson:And a lot of times, especially with something like anger, it has to run its course. That's right. Before we kind of can reset. It's like the Hulk. You know what I'm saying? Like it's massive, like you shrink back down. Wait a minute, wait, pause, what? Anyways, when the Hulk becomes, you know, and he's just like, what did I do this time? You know what I mean? And it's when the emotion takes over instead of like having a plan because that emotion needs a place to express. Of course, it needs to exist. And so again, if anger has been a tool that you've used to succeed, right? To fight. And this, I think this is a great kind of description of certain stages with arena, right?

1:04:20Shawn Stevenson:And versus when that the anger might leak or kind of take over and then it can affect your play in a negative way. That's right. Right? So it's being able to use that to your advantage, to be aware of who you are. Exactly. Right? And your superpower and not allowing your superpower to also become your kryptonite. Exactly. Which you can very easily if you're not careful. Yeah. A hundred percent. But I do talk about that a lot with emotions. It's just signals. It's data. It's information. It's real. It's important. But you don't need to always have this like, well, I'm feeling it, so it's it. it's it's real it's fact it's just the way it is it's like well no you know i heard analogy i put in one of my my cards in this card deck thing that i made is that you know these these feelings they often lie right because you know how it is our brains always trying to protect us you know there's all these little things that are our brains trying to do to us and our environment even but um is that you know these feelings or emotions i know there's some differences but feelings and emotions it's like it's like the weather but it's not the climate right there's going to be moments right It'll be sunny, it's gonna be rainy, the wind's gonna come, there's a bit of hail out of nowhere.

1:05:29You didn't expect, it's supposed to be a sunny day, suddenly there's a monsoon, I'm in Florida. Where'd all this water come from? Half hour later, it's sunny again. That's just weather. Things kinda come and go in your life and that's the way it is. It doesn't matter what you do, it's gonna happen. But the things we're talking about is that, it's not the climate, not that bigger picture of like, okay, how do we really exist? Who are we really and where are we going? So it's just those, be able to zoom back and kind of just separate yourself a little bit. It's very hard to do, especially again, going back to what I just said, if you don't take those little moments throughout the day, just to stop for a second, all those external things are gonna control you.

1:06:06They're gonna drive, they're gonna decide where the destination is for you. You have no control over that now. Yeah.

1:06:12Shawn Stevenson:I've seen videos of her doing some breathing exercises. Yeah, of course. Gotta use the body to control the mind, my man. What is your kind of go-to recommendation with a breathing exercise? You know, look, I think there's a couple things. I would say it depends. There's a couple things. One, on a sort of just real simple way of looking at it is when I have people breathe in a certain time, like in this moment, I need you to breathe. Often it's like, I'm not even going to tell you exactly how to breathe. Just want you to stop. Just slow down your breathing for a second. That's it. Like, don't overthink it.

1:06:51Don't analyze. Oh, it needs to be four, six, 10, or just, you know, like, we have all these numbers and all this science. And like, again, it's real. I use it. So I'm not saying that's not a thing. Don't get me wrong here. However, you know, most people, you know, just, if you just slow it on your exhale for a second, just take a nice deep breath in, hold it for a couple of seconds, exhale as slow as you can. It doesn't matter if it's six seconds, 10 seconds. I don't care. Like, what are you capable of doing? what if i asked you to do like you know a certain number of seconds breathing but you're like super out of shape your mobility is really tight you're stiff everywhere you can't you know your rib cage doesn't move your diaphragm is like you know just been in a nap for like 20 years you know what i mean just chilling you know what i mean you're living in a stress state so always breathing really up in your neck and your shoulders and all that and i'm asking you to take a deep breath right now you know how you're gonna breathe you know it's gonna be all neck all tension oh it's it's tension it's systemic again it's like yeah right so i need to find out well what are you capable of where are you and just first step, take a nice long exhale.

1:07:52Just reset. It doesn't even matter how long it is. I don't care. Because again, I don't want you to be thinking like, oh, I have to do this thing. I have to add another input. I have to do it this way or else it doesn't work. Because that's the part where everyone's trying to over-optimize almost where it becomes a stress in a negative way because it's like, well, I have to do this or else. Well, I need to do it this way. oh, you know, they said I have to, you know, be a bed by 10 or 10.30 or else I'm gonna lose all these things. Some of them will be true, you know, obviously. I'm not saying there's not real evidence behind some of these things, but if you give it to people that way, then it's like, it's too constraining.

1:08:28They'll do it for a little while out of compliance, but not out of a commitment, right? It's not them. So meet them where they're at. So my first thing is, you know what? Take a breath in, you know, try a relaxed deep breath. Hold it for a few seconds. Just exhale as slow as you can. And then just breathe normal for a few reps and then do it again. That's it. Great advice. So easy. I have a lot of other things with like breath holds and I mean, there's a lot of things I do, but I mean, honestly, man, sometimes that's just the missing, like that simple little thing, take a time out, slow down your breath and you're good to go.

1:08:58Amazing.

1:08:59Shawn Stevenson:So simple. Again, the longer exhale, right? Just it literally, if you are listening to your heart, when you breathe in, your heart rate goes up a little bit. When you breathe out, it goes down. Yeah, sympathetic versus parasympathetic every time. A little bio hack, which again, that word has been bastardized, but just being able to exhale as long as you can, just a couple of times, a couple of breaths can help your body just kind of find a new state. That's right. Well, it gives you just enough space. Yeah, the space. Just enough space to kind of like see what's really going on around you. And that's all you need sometimes.

1:09:35Space between. That's right.

1:09:36Shawn Stevenson:Who was saying that? Was that Dave Matthews? Maybe, I don't know. Why do I know that? I don't know. We'll have to Google that later, I guess. All right. So I know somebody's listening like, yeah, that's it. That's my guy. All right. Lastly, I want to talk about environment. All right. So the three E's, energy, emotion, environment. In the book, you say, quote, your environment doesn't just surround you. It programs you. It teaches your body and mind what's possible, what's dangerous, and what's normal. Let's talk about that. a bad quote yeah it's fire it's fire actually um look i i don't like to put any of the you know either of the three e's as one's more important than the other it's a very strong ecosystem each one influences the other and it just cycles around all the time environment is i'll break it down to like i did the others we have environment we have an internal environment and external environment.

1:10:36So internal environment, people used to think what? Nutrition, hydration, maybe even the air you're breathing. These kind of things will influence your overall health, your wellbeing, the kind of stressors, good or bad, that your body's going through based on what you just ate, what you're drinking or didn't drink. So it's that part that we already kind of understand, the internal environment. The other part about the internal environment that I think, again, I like to highlight more so

1:11:06is the conversations that you're a part of, the content that you're consuming, the conversations that you allow. Like you may not be directly a part of it, but you're in an environment where these are the things being talked about or discussed or highlighted or whatever, made into some big thing that doesn't need to be, is giving it all this stuff it doesn't need to exist. So those things that you allow, the things that you are part of, the things that you initiate. And again, with our phones, the things that you're consuming, all those things have a strong influence on your internal environment the way you see the world the way you're thinking is the way your emotions are acting um responding you know so that's our internal environment our external environment yes of course we have like you know sleep you know the darkness the temperature the you know the setting and all these things that people already kind of know really well about but for me when I talk about the external environment to me it's the 100 % it's the people.

1:11:57100 % it's the people. That's the most important thing, I believe. And that's, again, you can't always control who's around you. So I look at it, there's like three circles, right? You have like your inner circle that you're around most of the time, spend most of your days with. You have sort of a bit of an outer circle. So people kind of come and go, maybe different phases at different times, more or less. And then like the peripheral. And this is the part I think sometimes people miss, is like, let's say, you know, let's say you and I work together. We spend a lot of time together, let's say, you know, we have projects we're going, We spend a lot of time.

1:12:27Then we have a few people kind of coming and going in our business and we're, you know, you know, we're still spending more time with them or with our family, people coming and going. But what we don't often think about is like, well, who would you spend your time around when I'm not around? Like, cause those people are going to influence who you are. And then you're going to bring that into where, into my environment now. And so this is the part that people kind of miss, you know, like you can come in here and put on a facade and, and, you know, say you a certain way and they have certain values and you have a certain intention.

1:12:55but if you spend most of your time around people that aren't like that or that's not your environment and you're not mindfully trying to you know be different than that environment then you're going to bring that garbage into my environment and people miss that all the time that's for me that's a big part so when it comes to environment yes internal environment all the normal things we talk about all the time for supplements nutrition etc but remember the content you're consuming the conversations you're having and allowing and initiating, those are powerful. More than anything else, it doesn't matter.

1:13:26You can do all the right things with your sleep, right? But if you're in this, again, like the survival mode, like I talked about, and you've been optimizing your survival mode, so you've optimized your sleep, but you're still in this environment that is just influencing you in such a negative way, or it's not going the direction, or it's out of alignment with who you are and what values you want to stand for, then you can go ahead and lay there. You can do all, check all the boxes you know sean told me i go to abc i'm doing everything you know and it's and it's the best things but i'm still laying there in a horizontal position still with that same mentality that same internal you know noise going on and it doesn't matter how much i optimize it i'm still going to be optimizing a survival mode you know so that's the thing we have to be very very mindful of for me it's and as we talked about earlier it doesn't even matter like they might say the right things they might have the right body language but you gotta know who they are what's their real intention in this environment right now?

1:14:20And then also what are they bringing into that environment? And being aware of like, does that environment need this right now? If I were to give you an example, like even just with Arena and our team, there's different times that, so each of us have our own like sort of, you know, official job. Then each of us have sort of like these sort of, you know, more peripheral sort of external other things that we all kind of do just to make sure that everything's going really well for the whole team and for each other. And sometimes those skill sets or the personality, what the team needs now, or let's say even what Irina needs right now, like I know what she needs right now.

1:14:55I know what she needs to hear. I know what she needs to do. But you know what? In this moment right now, if it comes from me, it's not gonna be heard. Not the right way. But I know if, you know, if Helen, like our physio, if a female, she's the physio, they kind of have some quiet time together doing stuff. You know what? I'm gonna talk to Helen about something and see if she can just kind of like, hey, how you feeling about this? Or whatever it is. It can be a physical thing or mentally, it doesn't matter. But you see what I mean is understanding you don't have to be the guy all the time. You have to understand the environment and who would bring the most value at this moment.

1:15:28It doesn't devalue the others and it doesn't lift up the other. The person who's in charge of that time is just understanding that this is a living, evolving ecosystem. And if I really want the most for everyone around me, and I want us to be able to achieve whatever it is that we're trying to achieve and sustain that while maintaining our values, while maintaining true to ourself, so we can look back with positive memories of these things, these experiences, then you have to understand that like, you can have someone who's the least experienced, the newest person on your team or in your environment.

1:16:05And there's just a moment like what they bring to the table is so much more powerful than it came from me. There's times that, like, I remember early days with Anton. He was, you know, he's half my age. You know what I mean? I think I'm older than maybe their parents. I don't know. I don't know, but, you know, and he was new at coaching. So we used to talk every night when he first started coaching Arena about how we're gonna approach the next day, what we should do, what we should say, how we should structure things, you know, physically and mentally, all that stuff. And I remember this one time, and that was a great reminder for me.

1:16:32And I was, we were talking about what we should approach this challenge that we're facing, right? this thing that we're struggling to figure out how to help her with. It was like early, early days. And I come up with an idea and a plan. So I started talking about it. And then he, I don't even remember, I wish I remember the words, but he just said something in just a few words that like literally just, like it just threw me back. I was blown away that this young guy had said something so much more impactful than anything I had come up with for that particular thing. that's something I probably would have never come up with because he's different generation.

1:17:11He's actually part of the same generation as she is from the same country. So they shared a lot of things that I might know, but I never understand. And so just being aware that, you know what? I'm out, I'm not this, you got it. Go do your thing. Whatever you feel is right in that moment, you're doing it. Because that is like, I got to write that down. That was really good. You know what I mean? So it's just understanding how all those things really interact and that you can learn so much from each other in a good and bad way. So be very, very careful who you love in that circle.

1:17:42Shawn Stevenson:This is amazing, man. I've enjoyed this thoroughly. I've gotten some great insights myself prior to even meeting you, just reading the book and studying you and your wisdom. You just express that wisdom again. Like I don't have to be the guy, right? And just being able to understand the value of a team. And when it really boils down to it, in this life experience, like you've literally had the experience of not having that team, like to the extreme that most people would just, I mean, I don't even have the words for it. Most don't survive that. So again, I'm grateful that you were able to share that.

1:18:21Shawn Stevenson:And I'm grateful that you were able to survive that and to figure those things out. But truly in this lifetime, the thing that gives us the most value, the thing that really helps us to have the life that we desire and deserve to live are the people around us and that team that we create. And we create these different teams and these different kind of social constructs. But we are a reflection of that. And your insight of like, who is your teammate associating with? Exactly. These are getting to those layers. Like, man, I mean, you were dropping some serious insights and for things for, again, if we're gonna stack conditions to where our environment is making these things automatic for us, like, man, it's so rich, so powerful.

1:19:09Shawn Stevenson:So I appreciate you so much. Can you tell people where to pick up a copy of The Pressure Code? Yes, sir. Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me and all those nice words. I really appreciate that. The Pressure Code, yep. It's probably the easiest way to just go thepressurecode.com. Got my website. There's links for that. There's a newsletter you can sign up to. I'm just sharing insights, sort of behind the scenes of what I'm up to, what I'm thinking about. It's probably the easiest way. And it's available all around the world online already. It's rocking and rolling, baby. I'm excited.

1:19:39Amazing, man.

1:19:39Shawn Stevenson:I'm very grateful, very grateful. So - Thank you for sharing that. Last question. What is the model that you're here to create for other people with how you live your life personally? Whoa. What is the model? Say that one more time. I like that. What is the model or the example that you're here to set or to create for other people with how you live your life personally? I think know what you stand for and be sure that everything that you do aligns with that. So live what you say, lead by example. And for me, the biggest thing is, you know, be there in service of others because that all comes around for you.

1:20:18And if everyone had that same mentality that I'm here for you and you had that same mentality for me, then it's gonna be a win-win-win no matter what goes on. Good morning. So yeah, that's what I say. Amazing. Thank you so much, man. Of course, man. Thank you for having me.

1:20:31Shawn Stevenson:This is awesome. The one and only Jason Stacey, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. If you did, you already know what to do. Share this out with the people that you care about. Share the inspiration. There's so much hot mess out there that's getting shared abundantly. Let's share some hot goodness. All right. Share this on social media. Take a screenshot of the episode. Tag me. I'm at Sean Model. And tag Jason as well. I know that he would love to see the love. And of course, you can send this directly from the podcast app that you're listening on.

1:21:06Shawn Stevenson:Write to somebody who you care about. All right. Again, keep the positivity going. Keep the conversation going. Listen, we've got some epic masterclasses and world-leading experts coming your way very, very soon. So make sure to stay tuned. Take care. Have an amazing day. And I'll talk with you soon. Thank you.