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TMHS 777: How to Eat Smarter & Live Healthier

TMHS 256: Achieve Peak Performance & Stop Settling for Average with Jairek Robbins

In the words of Lauren Hill, “It could all be so simple… but you’d rather make it hard.” The action steps to creating the success we want, be it in our health, our career, our finances, or anything else, are unequivocally simple. But, every-single-day many of us fall flat on our faces trying to execute on the actions necessary.

Here’s the thing… nobody tripped us. Nobody pushed us down onto the floor. Dare I say, we actually trip ourselves? It’s like walking along throughout the day knowing that our shoes strings are untied. It’s just a matter of time before we stumble. Self-sabotage carries many different faces, and one of the most sinister is the face of unpreparedness.

On your path to achieving what you want, stuff is going to happen. It is what it is. And, if you’re not prepared, then you are metaphorically looking down at your shoes strings blowing in the wind as you decide to take off on a dead sprint. Face plant, here I come!

We’re typically not prepared to follow through on the simple action steps to get what we want because we have glaring holes in our game. Today, more than ever, those holes lie in one (or more) of five major categories – nutrition, fitness, mindset, sleep, and stress management. If you are not cultivating competence in these five key areas, it’s only a matter of time before you waive the white flag and forfeit your goals that are totally obtainable.

This simply doesn’t have to be your story. Learning the art and science of peak performance is the key to executing on the actions you need to take each day without conking out. Today we have on expert performance coach and bestselling author Jairek Robbins to give you the tools you need to live your best life and stop settling for average results.

In this episode you’ll discover:

  • Why your peer group is a huge determinant on your success in life.
  • Why asking a successful person to mentor you is a terrible idea (unless you do this one important thing).
  • How being too attached to outcomes can sabotage you.
  • What it means to be an example or a warning.
  • Why having an average life is not as good as you may think.
  • How tracking metrics in different areas of your life can dramatically improve your results.
  • How our emotional state is driven by choice.
  • Incredible insights and encouragement you can use to change your habits.
  • What it means to “turn towards” in your relationships.
  • Why it’s a good idea to create a backup version of your daily routine.
  • The truth about how to influence the people you care about to make positive changes.
  • Why many of us are treating ourselves like hostages each day.
  • How mindset, nutrition, breathwork, and exercise all play a crucial role in your success.

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Items mentioned in this episode include:

Thank you so much for checking out this episode of The Model Health Show. If you haven’t done so already, please take a minute and leave a quick rating and review of the show on Apple Podcast by clicking on the link below. It will help us to keep delivering life-changing information for you every week!

Transcript:

Shawn Stevenson: Welcome to The Model Health Show. This is fitness and nutrition expert, Shawn Stevenson, and I'm so grateful for you tuning in with me today. When we're talking about health and fitness, this is much bigger than our exercise program. It's much bigger than the food that we're eating. This is about performance in all areas of our lives. So bringing a top level performance to our vocation, to our career. Top level performance into our relationships. A top level performance into our spiritual practice even. You know and all these things matter, but if you're like me, we've fallen short in one or more of these areas from time to time. And today more than ever we really need a strategy to be able to bring some health and wellness to all of these things. And so that's why I'm so grateful today to bring on one of the top performance coaches in the world, alright? He's a good friend of mine and we're going to talk about how to really take your performance to a whole other level. Before we get to that I want to talk about my peak performance today, which was fueled by my Four Sigmatic mushroom coffee. Now this is something I bring- literally I'm on the road right now. I just left from speaking at an event in Vancouver, I'm in Los Angeles right now, I'm about to fly to New York City right after this, and then finally back home to go to Marvel Universe Live with my kids. But when I'm on the road, it's just like that old commercial, I never leave home without it. I'm always bringing Four Sigmatic with me. I've got it right here. So today I had the lion's mane blend. And lion's mane - and this is according to the University of Malaya - has neuroprotective effects. This is one of like a handful of things that have ever been discovered that can literally protect your neurons. It has specific nerve growth factors that can literally regenerate your neurons. So really powerful stuff, but it doesn't matter if you don't use it. So pop over, check them out. It's www.FourSigmatic.com/model for 15% off. That's www.FourSigmatic.com/model you get 15% off of the mushroom coffees, the mushroom elixirs. So many cool things, and again, never leave home without it. Alright so head over, check them out. On that note, let's get to our special guest and our topic of the day. Our guest today is the incredible Jairek Robbins, and at only 23 years old he was awarded the Congressional Award gold medal from the United States Congress. And he's conducted trainings for a variety of companies and organizations including the United States Marines, Air Force Special Forces, UVS, BMW, Remax, and members of the US Olympic team. He's a trusted advisor and board member to a variety of different companies, and has founded two companies of his own. Today at 33 years old, over a decade of performance coaching experience, he continues to unlock secrets for maximizing performance and organizational success, and he's just getting started. And he's an innovator, and Jairek is applying his own philosophy and living a life of adventure, philanthropy, and entrepreneurship. And whether it's cage diving with great white sharks, hanging with silverbacks in Rwanda, whitewater rafting down the Nile, working as a volunteer in underdeveloped regions, Jairek is out living life to its fullest, and loving deeply, and striving to do something that matters. And I'd like to welcome my friend Jairek back to the show, Mr. Jairek Robbins. How are you doing today, man? Jairek Robbins: Yeah doing good, man. How about yourself? Shawn Stevenson: I'm doing great. So happy to see you, man. We actually bumped into each other randomly last night at Erewhon. Jairek Robbins: Yeah. Shawn Stevenson: I wouldn't say that that's a coincidence actually. Jairek Robbins: Pop quiz, how do you spell Erewhon? Shawn Stevenson: Dude, okay. E-R-E-W-H-O-N. You're welcome. I just did that. I looked it up yesterday to make sure I posted the correct name. Man, well it's really great to see you. And you know, we just finished wrapping up together you and I working on a project together, and not only is it a passion of mine to be able to teach, but also learning, and I continue to learn from you. And one of the things in the program that you covered, and I think it's just so profound, is the importance of a peer group. And I know this has been like revolutionary for you as well, so let's talk a little bit about that. Why does our peer group matter? And there's actually a certain name about this in science. Jairek Robbins: Yeah, so what's interesting- I'll start from the beginning on why we chose this. There was a recent study done by Harvard that found the number one determining factor for longevity, for success as whoever the person determined to be feeling successful, and as well as fulfillment in life, to really enjoying your life came down to the only thing they could cross-reference between all of these different people was their ability to create and cultivate a powerful peer group over time. Meaning friendship, community, people who care about you, people who you care about them, knowing that someone has your back. And so this concept is so important, and a lot of the people I tend to work with, and just that target audience is a 35 to 45 year old male entrepreneur who owns one to five companies, who has zero to three kids, who's in a significant relationship, they're just busy and their main focus is life. If you look at their life day to day it's like work, work, work, work, work, work, work, breathe. Work, work, work, work, work, work, work, breathe. And the concept of that, so often there's simple things that appear we cognitively understand them, we get it. We just understand the concept of, 'Yeah you should have a support group. You should have a peer group.' There was another research study done when people sign up for gym memberships, if they do it by themselves, they have like a 43% or 47% chance, something like that of actually staying consistent. Versus if they sign up with a spouse, significant other, or partner, it jumps up to like 97% of consistency. Shawn Stevenson: Amazing. Amazing, yeah. Jairek Robbins: It's like whoa, just bringing that extra person along, all of a sudden elevates the percentage of follow through and consistency with it. It's amazing. And so if you look at everything you're doing, I looked at this concept and I remember hearing this way of doing it. Because I hear so often people are like, 'Well find the people you want to be like, and track them down, and become friends with them.' And so you get the nicest worst thing someone can do. Shawn Stevenson: Right, right. Jairek Robbins: Which is, 'Hey it's such a pleasure to meet you. How can I be of service?' And this sounds nice, and it's coming from the right place, it's horrible because if you're a busy professional, someone shakes your hand and says that, you're like, 'I don't know. I'm busy. I have stuff to do. Now I've got to stop what I'm doing, I have to ask you what your skillsets are, I have to look at my entire organization and situation and figure out, 'Where the heck can I apply that?' Then I have to test to see if you're any good at it, and then I've got to go see if you can actually do it. You just added like seventeen things to my list of stuff I've got to get done today.' So more often than not I'll be like, 'I'm good,' and just keep going. And you feel like, 'Oh I led with giving, I led with caring.' The problem is you didn't do your homework. And I remember I met a guy named James Altucher, and we talk about this in the program, James and I were hanging out and he taught me how he made- I think it was his first like $10 million, and it was using this principle. And I was like, 'Really? How'd you do this?' And he said, 'Well at the time I was all hyped up over stocks. I really liked Jim Cramer, really liked what he was doing.' James had this formula that helped him connect with Jim Cramer, and what it started was he sat down every day and he asked himself, 'What are ten pieces of value I could add to this guy's life?' Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. Jairek Robbins: And so some of the stuff was not that great, he just tossed it, some of the stuff he really kept and used, and one of the things he came up with was helping him develop better content was one of the things on his list. So he sat down with that, and said, 'Okay what are ten pieces of content I wish they would write on their show because I would love to read it?' So he wrote down the topics, he researched the topics, he came up with SEO friendly titles for the topics of the blog, then he researched all the content and research he would want in the article, and he bullet-pointed it all out, and then emailed it over and said- I don't know what the email said but something along the lines of, 'Hey I'm a big fan of your show. I read everything on your blog. I love what you cover. Here's ten articles I wish ya'll would write.' And he got an email back in like thirty minutes that said, 'Wow we love it. Would you be willing to write these articles for us?' Shawn Stevenson: Boom. Jairek Robbins: All of a sudden now the show that he loved, he's a collaborator with, he's writing articles for their blog and their show. While he was there he looked around and he was like, 'What are ten ways I could make this better?' And he looked, and looked, and looked, and looked, wrote his list, wrote his list every day, wrote his list, he found something. He went and developed an app around it, he came back, showed it to Jim and the team, they bought it from him for $10 million. Shawn Stevenson: Wow, that's bananas. Jairek Robbins: Talk about creating a peer. Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. Jairek Robbins: Like you're creating so much value that they ask you to be a part of their team. You're creating so much value that they literally buy something from you for $10 million and are happy and stoked about it. And it's the concept of his ability to ask the simple question, 'What are ten ways I could add unique value to this human's life?' And not just once, and not just throwing out like, 'Hey I wish you wrote an article on these kind of stocks.' No like he did the homework, he did the research, he figured out how to do it. He actually added value to the point that they wanted him on board and they wanted him to be part of the team. And so that concept- and there's three areas to look for as far as who to make in your peer group. And I follow the kind of learn it, live it, give it principle, which we're huge fans of and it's the core philosophy we live by. The people you can learn from, and these are people who might be five or ten steps ahead of you. They've done it. They're really kicking butt at something and you can learn from them. So you can add value to their life and hopefully learn from them in the process as well. The people who are at the same moment in life as you, they're going through the same battles, the same struggles, the same situations. If you're a new parent, they're a new parent or they might have someone- a little one that's a couple years old. Someone who you can trade stories with of what's working and what's not. Very helpful. And then you know, just from the heart, someone who might be three, five steps behind you. Someone you can help, someone you can share. And when you share, it's really important to instead of being like, 'This is what you need to do,' no one likes that. Instead be like, 'Hey this is what worked for me, and if it's helpful for you, use it. If it's not helpful, don't use it. But really, here's what worked so see what's useful in there and take what you can.' Shawn Stevenson: I love that, and I love the statement that when you teach it, you get to learn it twice. Jairek Robbins: Yeah. Shawn Stevenson: You know, you become even greater at that. And what you were talking about earlier man, it's so fascinating and James calls it developing an idea machine, right? Jairek Robbins: Yeah. Shawn Stevenson: And if you think about that, if there's a certain- by the way, what Jairek’s been talking about is called the Peer Effect, right? And if anybody wants to go to Dr. Google and check it out, really fascinating studies that show that the people in our lives who really, really do impact our quality of life in a very significant way. But if you want to change your peer group, and you're coming to them like- for a lot of people, and you know marketers kind of mess stuff up in a way, but it's just like a lot of times you want to take. You know? You want to come to the person that you admire and you want to take something from them. So marketers were like, 'No you need to lead with value.' But it's tough because you have to straddle that line of like truly giving and also being able to create a container so that you can be able to be given back to. So what I want to say is that at the end of the day if you can lead with what Jairek’s been talking about by finding a very specific way to add value and not be so attached to the outcome. Jairek Robbins: Oh that's important. Shawn Stevenson: That's powerful. Jairek Robbins: Because here's what you've got to remember about giving. There's demanding a response like, 'Hey I gave you something, why didn't you call me back? I texted you something, I helped you. That's rude that you didn't hit me back.' That's like a two year old, like you're demanding something from them. You're not giving, you're trying to get something and you're just dangling some bait out there to try to get what you want. Number two is trading. Like, 'I gave you something. Hook me up. Get me back.' And that's okay, people do it all day long. And number three is giving. You know that third level is like, 'I'm giving it to you and I get pleasure out of sharing this with you, so I'm just going to share it with you. And that's all I wanted. Like I'm good. I'm good to just share that with you and walk away, and if you never hit me back.' Going back to James, he told me because it happened both ways for him. It happened in the way the first time where he hit up the stock show, Jim Cramer, and they hit him right back. He said he also did it with self-publishing on Amazon. He wrote the same thing for Amazon, he wrote up the letter, emailed it over, didn't hear anything back. Nothing. He just let it go. He said, 'Hey I added value. If they want to hit me up, they'll hit me up.' I think it was six months or a year later he got an email out of nowhere from the executive team of the self-publishing department at Amazon. They said, 'Hey this was really valuable. Would you ever be open to coming into the office, and looking around, and seeing if there's anything else you might see that we could improve?' Shawn Stevenson: Wow. Jairek Robbins: He's like, 'Sure.' Got on a plane, flew himself out there, walking around the office with the executive team just looking for stuff that might be able to be improved. He was like, 'Hey I didn't make anything out of it, but long-term I got some real good friends on the inside of a big company.' Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. I love it, man. Jairek Robbins: And again, creating that peer group, creating that team, connecting with people he wants to be able to connect with by really adding value. But the neat part was- and I loved when he said it, 'Didn't hear back from them for over six months or a year. I was good with just adding value. Like I was pumped just to be able to know that I shared something of value with those people, and hopefully it helps.' Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, you know with the peers- with our peer group, our desired peer group, you also talk about something where there are examples or warnings. Jairek Robbins: Oh yeah. Shawn Stevenson: So let's talk a little bit about that. Jairek Robbins: So this is big because there's lots of people who look at certain people they want to be connected with, and they think this person walks on water and does backflips in their sleep. They're like, 'They're perfect! They're amazing, that person.' And you know genuinely when one of your friends crosses paths with someone who does something big for their life, you know your friend has met this person because they don't shut up about them. They're like, 'Oh you've got to read their book. You've got to listen to their podcast. You've got to see their show. You've got to come to their event. Look, they're in town.' You're like, 'Dude I don't know who this person is, I don't know if I want to at this point because of how much you frickin' talk about them. They sound great and all, but you just like fell off the deep end.' So if you have a friend like that, that's okay, just love on them. Just let them have their moment. And what you've got to remind everybody though, everyone has the strongest points in their life. These are places where they're an example. Now how do you figure out where someone's an example? Look at the goals, and dreams, and desires you have, and then go to that person and say, 'Hey.' Are they an example of what to do in order to be on path to achieve that goal, to live that dream, to get to that vision, to get to that point I'm aiming for? Or are they a warning of what not to do? And every person you meet is an example and a warning in some area of their life. I guarantee it, if you dig deep enough, you will find a place that even the worst person is a beautiful example of something that's amazing, and you'll look at them and go, 'Wow I can use that in my life. I can do that.' And even the best person on earth- the media loves these ones. You know, they don't like finding the good in the horrible person, but you know the best person on earth, I guarantee they're a huge warning in some area of their life. There's something they do that you're like, 'Whoa, I need to make sure I never do that, because if I do that, I'm toast.' And so it's figuring out, not judging people. There's a difference here because lots of people hear this and they start looking around their life and being like, 'Example. Warning. Example. Warning.' You don't judge people, you just look for it and say, 'Hey where's the beautiful example in this human that I could learn from and I could apply in my life?' And then practice it. And second, where's the big warning in this person that I could make sure I don't do in my life? Shawn Stevenson: Wow, love it. It's so powerful. So simple, but it can be a powerful North Star for us. Jairek Robbins: Game changer. Shawn Stevenson: So- and I know you know this, but I think that we glance past just how important this is. But success is really a series of things done incrementally. It's not like this mother load moment, like this magical explosion, and all of a sudden I'm successful. So let's talk about how important developing our habits are. Jairek Robbins: Oh, game changer. So the easiest frame of reference for people is really simple. If you take out a pen and paper, just real simple, and you draw yourself a little chart, and you put yourself in the bottom corner of starting, and then you put- do you want ordinary results in life? Like average results? And remember if you live in the US, average results for humans, they're overweight, unhappy, on depression medication, on the verge of divorce, and they hate their job. So if you want an average life, go for it. Shawn Stevenson: Right. Jairek Robbins: But most people I cross paths with, even in the worst situation, you ask them, 'Do you want those results?' They're like, 'No! No one wakes up dreaming of that in their life.' And they're like, 'No I want extraordinary results. I want phenomenal results. I want world class results. I want to be able to travel somewhere. I want to be able to have a happy family. I want to be able to love my spouse for a long time and not want to kill each other every other day. I want to have healthy kids.' Like these things are extraordinary, and it's sad to have to say that that's unique and special to have all those good things, but it very much is. And so in that concept, if ordinary stuff is down here, and then you draw up on the scale and extraordinary stuff is way up here, you've got to ask yourself a big question. Because there's like living your dream life, and then living this average life that most people get frustrated with. And if you want these results, first big question, do the habits you have meaning what you do every day in your health, is it moving you towards this extraordinary life you're trying to have? Like if you just take it and multiply that habit every single day over the next day, week, month, year, ten years, five years, twenty years, does it actually add up? Or are your habits taking you to that normally incredibly struggling life even though you're dreaming of this? Because that's where people really get messed up. Up here, they're dreaming of one thing, but their feet are moving a whole different direction. And so it's a concept of taking it to physical mastery where you know these things. Not only do you know them up here, but you physically apply them every single day, and every single day you're moving one step closer towards that extraordinary dream life that you've painted out. That's another thing we talk about in the program, we tell people paint that vision. You know, if you ask most people, 'What do you want twenty years from now?' They're like, 'Well I want to have this amazing life. I want to be super healthy. Or I want to be super in love.' And you're go, 'Okay great. Well what does that look like? Give me details.' And they're like, 'I don't know, it'd be a great relationship.' You're like, 'Okay how do you know it's a great relationship? What are you doing?' They're like, 'I guess we love each other.' Shawn Stevenson: 'I guess.' Jairek Robbins: 'I guess.' I'm like, 'Okay if you wanted to have a great business twenty years from now, how would you know it's a great business?' And all of a sudden metrics come out. 'I'd be making this much profit, this much net profit, we'd have this much satisfaction of customers, we'd be delivering to this many people around the world.' Like they know all the metrics in business. You go, 'Okay go back to love. What are the metrics for love to have an extraordinary love relationship?' Shawn Stevenson: That's tough. Jairek Robbins: And they kind of stare at you funny. And like this is the importance of habits, because if you don't know what habit to take and what metric to measure, how are you going to get an extraordinary love life? You know metrics in health, sometimes they know these things. 'I want to be able to do the splits at seventy years old.' Okay champion, that's a good goal. Shawn Stevenson: Perculator, let's go. I've got an example for this real quick because even right now as I'm on the road, I've only been gone for a few days. Jairek Robbins: Yeah. Shawn Stevenson: But my wife, I love her so much, she's my best friend. She made it known today that I've not been contacting her enough when I've been gone. And even though I thought I was doing great. Like sent a little- because I felt it, not because like, 'I'd better get my six messages in.' But I need to make sure that I message her, let her know I'm thinking about her. I was like, 'I love you so much,' and I sent her- you know, I got off stage at this event, and I sent her a picture immediately. I called her, they were all- like her and my kids were watching a movie or whatever. And you know, I'm just thinking I'm crushing it. And I'm doing the- sending her- you know, she runs operations for us a lot of times too. So I was sending her work projects, she's been like, 'You need to get this in.' So I'm thinking I'm killing it, you know? And then she let me know I'm not killing it. But I have to see that, I have to acknowledge like it's not about me and what I think I'm doing. It's really about her and her perspective and finding that balance. Of course I'm pleading my case, but then at the end of the day, I just need to love her more how she wants to be loved. Jairek Robbins: The dude who came in was pleading his case. Shawn Stevenson: Right, yeah. Jairek Robbins: He was two steps behind. 'But if I just would of, or could have, or might have, or kind of.' You're two steps behind the gold. And that concept though, what you're doing is a great representation of something that's magnificent that most people miss, which is if you want someone to be better, you've got to measure it consistently. You have to. And most people have no measurement in other areas of their life; relationships, emotions. How do people measure their emotions? Do you have a way to track how you feel every day? There's a cool app called a Mood Meter that throughout the day you can just run your finger around all these little dots, pick a mood that you feel, and then it asks you why, and it asks you a simple question. Do you want to stay here or do you want to change it? That's it. That's it. If you do it a few times a day, research shows you're able to increase how you feel about life. You feel better by acknowledging where you're at, not get mad at it, just acknowledging it, and choosing, 'You know, what would have to happen for me to go from comfortable to elated, or joyful, or passionate, or determined, or excited, or jubilant?' Shawn Stevenson: Do you remember the mood rings? So this is like the 2017 - 2018 version that can help you change your mood. Jairek Robbins: That's right. Shawn Stevenson: I love that. I think that's great. Jairek Robbins: And so- but that's the thing. If you ask someone, 'Twenty years from now, how do you want to feel emotionally?' They're like, 'I don't know. Good?' Shawn Stevenson: Right. Jairek Robbins: Same thing as the relationship like, 'A good one? I don't know.' It's like my dad taught me this a long time ago. He said, 'Most people have like ten emotions they feel every day. That's it. Every day, every week, every month, ten in one. And like seven of them are really bad. Stressed out, annoyed, frustrated, angry, fearful. Dude, if you get to choose from hundreds and hundreds of emotions every day, why not choose jubilant, excited, passionate, determined, blessed? You know? Shawn Stevenson: Why? Tell me. Tell us. Jairek Robbins: Well here's the key. We're just not thinking about it, and these are things that are habits. It's a habitual emotion people go into, and so again if you go back to your little chart and say, 'How do I want to feel? I want to feel happy, excited, loved, passionate, determined, curious,' all these things. What do you need to do every day emotionally to actually feel those things five years, ten years, twenty years from now? What do you need to say to yourself? How often do you need to check in? And I'll tell you if you're having one of those days where you're depressed, frustrated, angry, tired, pissed off, and sore, you might need to get the Mood Meter and every hour say, 'Hey how am I feeling right now?' And go, 'Okay if that's where I'm at, I want to change it, what has to happen for me to go from frustrated to at least content?' Make the change. Now I'll tell you, you could change your body, you could change working out, get them endorphins kicking. You could go do a random act of kindness. That will kick off some chemicals in your body and make you feel better. You could go on YouTube and watch silly videos and just laugh. Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. Jairek Robbins: Like there are so many things you could do to change how you feel so quickly, you know? You can go play with your kids. You can go write a love letter to someone you care about. You can go write a thank you letter to someone you're appreciative of. You can sit down- here's something you can do right now while watching this. You can take a deep breath, hold it, let it bear down, count to five and drop it out. Try it two more times real quick. Take a deep breath, hold it, bear down, count to five, let it out. One more time. All the way in, hold it, bear down, let it out. So you can do that to reset your nervous system. You feel differently, huh? Shawn Stevenson: Oh yeah, man. Yes. Jairek Robbins: Everyone does. Resets your vagus nerve. Resets your whole peripheral nervous system right there, three breaths. Then from there you could think real quick what are five things you're very appreciative about in life right now? Little things that are going right in your life? And there's always stuff going wrong, but what are the five things you're most appreciative going right in your life right now? It could be your family, it could be this moment, it could be having fun, it could be working out this morning. And then if you think about those five things, take one and think about two more things about that specific thing that you're very grateful for. And people so often say, 'Because that happened. That's why I feel this way.' And they're living in reaction, but I would say you can choose how you feel each day, and then multiply that out and say, 'Wouldn't it be cool to wake up curious about something exciting that's going to happen today for the next twenty years? Wouldn't it be cool twenty years from now at forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety years old to wake up excited about life?' I saw a beautiful picture this morning, I'll see if I can send it to you, and it's a picture of all the care dogs that are waiting outside their little children's door. Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, I saw you post it. Jairek Robbins: For the kids to come out so they can care for the kids all day. And I looked at that, and my thought was, 'I hope every single person who watches this is that excited to go out and try to make a positive difference in the world today. Like you're sitting there anticipating, waiting for that moment that you can cross paths with someone and do something good for them. Just one thing, little thing, big thing, it doesn't matter, just something you can do to light someone's world up. Shawn Stevenson: So powerful. Jairek Robbins: But you look at that, if you did that every day as a habit for the next twenty years, how would you feel twenty years from now knowing that every day you made one difference in one person's life for twenty years. There would be a lot of people at your funeral to say thank you. Shawn Stevenson: You know, I've said powerful like ten times today because these things- this is profound knowledge that if we just apply these simple things, we see such a transformation in our lives. I think that gratitude is almost like a cure for sadness in a way, you know? And we always have access to it. And I like to remind people that no matter how bad things may be going, there's always somebody who's doing a little bit worse than you. And I think another part of getting out of that, like you mentioned the random acts of kindness, I want to come back to that though, I don't want to talk about it yet. But just getting outside yourself and giving, and also just remembering how blessed you really are, you know? Because if you're listening to this right now, you have some advantages in life, you know? For sure. And so before we get in and kind of talk about this amazing program that we created together, which is just- I mean, I don't think there's anything else like it in the world. Jairek Robbins: It's cool. Shawn Stevenson: But I want to talk about- you travel quite a bit, you know? And the last time we saw each other, you popped on a plane and headed to St. Louis. But I'm curious, what do you do to make sure that you stay on top of your habits when you're traveling? Jairek Robbins: So one thing that's neat, and I think my dad got me hooked on this when I was like 14 years old, so I've been doing this 14 to 33, what is that? Shawn Stevenson: Wait who is your dad for people who don't know? Jairek Robbins: Got it. So I try to keep this one under the radar just out of respect for him in all honesty, how hard they work and everything they've built. But my dad is Tony Robbins, so he's pretty well-known in this space. And there was a program when I was a kid that I listened to when I was like 14 years old, and it's called The Ultimate Edge, now it is, it used to be called Get The Edge. And I listened to it at 14, and I just saw millions of people having their lives changed, and getting all these experiences, and having all this stuff happen in their life. And at the time I was like a B, C, D student, just 5'9", 225 pounds, like kind of a weenie of a man at that stage. Like I'd always find a way to hurt myself instead of perform, and for some reason I decided to put this disk in and just listen to it. And I set goals, came up with a morning routine he talks about, learned about relationships, and health, and business, and finance, and all this stuff he covers, and I started applying it. And what's interesting, that year was going into high school, I started applying, applying, applying. My senior of high school went from like a B, C, D student to a straight A student, lost all the weight, started performing better in sports. I eventually ran a marathon, went and earned that gold medal from Congress. And that gold medal, it's important that it's not won. It's not something that they picked me out of something. It's earned meaning it's a youth award at a certain age of life, I think it's up to the age of 23 and below, within a two year period of time, it can't be less than two years, you have to do 400 hours of community service, you have to do 200 hours of personal development, 200 hours of physical development, and then live in an environment unlike your own for a minimum of four nights. I like to overachieve, so I went and did three months in a village in Uganda. And so you have to earn it, and you earn it, you have to tick it off, have a mentor, you've got to earn the bronze, the silver, then the gold certificates. Then you've got to go back and you've got to re-earn the bronze, the silver, and the gold medal. And then you get to fly to Congress and your congressman presents you the medal and says, 'Congratulations for doing the work.' Shawn Stevenson: That's amazing. Jairek Robbins: And so I did it from 21 years old to 23 years old, in exactly two years, I completed all of those things. And looking back, that was not something that was part of me when I was younger (really young). It's something I learned, thankfully to dad kind of being my mentor there not only as a dad but also my mentor and helping shape me through that tape program that he offered there. And I listened to it, and I tried to get my friends to listen to it. And this is where I tell people, 'You know when your friend is hooked on something,' because I was walking around like, 'You've got to listen to this. You've got to listen to this. You've got to listen. Like come to my house, we'll all listen to it together.' And they would sit there like- they were not into it, but I was. And I started getting up at 6:00 in the morning every morning at fourteen years old. 6:00 in the morning I'd go for a two mile walk before school, before practice for football, and I'd walk around and I'd be saying this incantation building my selfesteem up. I'd be envisioning my future, I'd be saying my gratitude out loud. So for nineteen years I've had this routine, this habit of every single morning no matter where I am on the planet, starting off my day by taking a walk, doing some breathing to oxygenate my body. Super hydrating, getting lots of water in, and then out loud saying everything I'm grateful for. And just saying it out loud, it's different between saying it out loud and feeling the vibration in your body than just thinking about it or just writing it down. So I'll go walk outside. If you're in Mission Beach, San Diego, you'll see me walking outside, and I do it with my wife now. And so we'll walk together in the morning, and we tell each other back and forth everything we're grateful for about each other. And my goal is to fill our love tank, but to fill my tank up about everything I'm grateful for. From there the next piece is everything we're excited about. So I ask my wife, 'What are you grateful for?' She goes, 'I'm grateful for your snuggles, I'm grateful for your kisses, I'm grateful for your loving, I'm grateful for how much you take care of us.' And I'm like, 'Well I'm grateful for your cooking, I'm grateful you're so good-looking, I'm grateful we have so much fun and we laugh all the time, I'm grateful you're so funny, I'm grateful you have a great butt.' Little stuff, little compliments, little admirations there, and we pile it on for like ten minutes. And then after that we'll say, 'Well what are you excited about?' And she'll tell me, she's like, 'Oh man I'm excited about that we get to travel and help people. I'm so grateful and excited that we get to do all this fun stuff for our family. I'm so grateful.' Like this last year we surprised my grandparents by taking them on their dream trip to Europe out of nowhere. We just surprised them for Christmas. And so like we'll talk about everything we're excited about like that, and then from there it's finding a phrase that kind of solidifies who you are on the inside up here and in here. And you know mine is- I started thinking about and I say out loud not only the phrase of- my phrase is I'm an open channel for God and love flows through me, fills the room, fills the hearts, touches the souls of everyone around me daily. Now say it again, and again, and again, and again. And I'll imagine myself being a vehicle to allow God's love inside or whatever to flow through me and just get to that person who needs it wherever they are and whoever they are. I don't know who they are, but I hope it gets them. The other piece though is that then work backwards. And this is something I've practiced now for probably like five years where I'll think out in the future and out loud I'll state the key points of my twenty vision, ten year vision, five year vision, one year vision. And so working backwards, I'll be like, 'I'm so grateful, twenty years from now I'm healthier than the majority of twenty year olds in the world. You know I'm strong, flexible, fit, powerful in who I am as a man. I'm so grateful that emotionally I'm passionate about my life, living on a mission to enjoy every moment life has to offer. My wife, I'm so grateful that we're passionately in love. Our love and passion for each other grows daily. When we're together anything is possible. Then I'll go into business, and finance, and spiritual life, and giving, and these are key things- like these are phrases that represent paragraph of exactly what my life is going to look like twenty years from now work backwards to the day, and then one phrase that sums up that twenty year chunk of my life for that one category. And then what's interesting, when you sit down and you look at that backwards, now you know why you're doing what you need to do today. Because if I say, 'Why do you exercise?' And you're like, 'I don't know, because I'm supposed to.' Shawn Stevenson: It's so powerful. Jairek Robbins: Versus 'Why do you exercise?' 'I exercise to sculpt my mind, body, and soul so that twenty years from now I am the healthiest, strongest version of myself.' They're like, 'Whoa.' 'Why do you take time to say what you're grateful for today?' 'I don't know, someone told me it was a good idea,' versus 'I'm sculpting my soul, I'm sculpting my emotions so that twenty years from now I wake up feeling passionate about my life.' That doesn't happen on accident. You don't meet people who one day just get the results. People talk about overnight success, but the truth is if you follow any of the trails back to overnight success, it was always little things done consistently again, and again, and again. So traveling, to bring this loop back in, that's part of my morning and evening routine that stay with us everywhere we go. And a lot of the stuff we talk about in the program is stuff I've learned. Like in relationships, there's seven things you do scientifically proven that over- it was a study done, 3,000 couples over thirty years, and they found out there's seven things you do, and if you do these seven things, you become what they call a master of relationship. If you screw up these seven things, you are what they call a disaster of relationship. Seven things, and they're simple. One of them is like turning towards. What does that mean? When you're in the middle of an important project. You're working, working, working, working, working, working, and your spouse goes, 'Hey babe, look at this.' That's a bid for attention. You have two choices. One is telling the person, 'Something else is more important than you right now, so just a minute. I'm almost done.' That's what you just told them. 'Something else is more important than you right now, I'm going to focus on something else. Give me a minute. I'll get to you.' Or you could tell your spouse, 'You're the most important thing in my world.' Stop, physically turn towards them, 'What's going on? Show me. Wow that is unique. That is cool. Okay, awesome. Wow that is awesome.' You can put them first. That's one habit in your relationship, one little tiny thing you can do, and it's hard. It's real hard. Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. Jairek Robbins: That's like a battle of every bone in your body wants to be like, 'Just a minute, I'm busy.' But if you can practice turning towards them and putting them first, imagine doing that for twenty years. Twenty years of putting your partner first every moment you could. What do we do on travel? We look at all of the research around the different categories of life, and figure out how to squeeze in as many of those as possible. Now here's the game. How can we get as many as possible into today? Now this is different. So we look for stuff like working out. There's certain stuff, like if you get certain things done- I think you taught me this actually. I learned it from you. Like Tabata. So you know if I can't get to the gym to get my workout in, I can walk in place in my room, and I can say out loud what I'm grateful for when my wife's getting ready and doing her hair in the bathroom. I can then say what I'm excited about out loud. I can then do my Tabata. Google Tabata on YouTube. I figured out there's a bazillion versions. Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. Jairek Robbins: Just pick one, do it, and while I'm doing it I can be telling myself in my head, 'I'm so grateful twenty years from now, I'm healthier than the majority of twenty year olds. Every single day I'm getting stronger, healthier, more flexible, more limber.' I can say these things to myself in the morning while I'm doing my Tabata. And so it's figuring out how do you squeeze in what I call a backup or travel version of your routine? And so first is sitting down and identifying what would your ideal daily routine be? And then kind of scrunching it saying, 'Okay if I only had- if that's an hour, what if I only had ten minutes? What are the three pieces of that routine I could get in ten minutes no matter what? It doesn't matter if I'm tired.' And I'll tell you one that was really interesting. I went to a hotel in the middle of Ireland out in like the cow field, and there was no gym, and it was like negative bazillion degrees outside. And I did not pack properly for working out outside, and so I put like five layers of clothes on, and I was doing laps around the outside of the hotel doing this stuff in the morning before I was going to speak, and the attendees were showing up and like just staring at me. Because they were running to get inside to get warm, and I'm doing laps around the building. They're staring out the window just kind of like looking at me funny. But that was my mini version. I can get twenty minutes in. So it's figuring out what's the minimum version of that routine. Figuring out the ideal, then what's the minimum you could do anywhere, anytime, no matter what? Shawn Stevenson: I love it. Backup plan. I love that, man. So I mean there's so much there to unpack and it's just brilliant. What I really heard was your affirmations anchor in your habits. Jairek Robbins: Yes. Shawn Stevenson: And I've actually never thought about that, to put that in those terms of having our affirmations. So getting that process built of affirming the life that you want to create can help to really create a foundation for you to be consistent. I love that. And so also one thing I want to point out is that when I'm traveling, making stuff easy, that's really the key. And having already- before you get there if at all possible, knowing the situation you're going to be in to have your structure, but then to be flexible within that structure. You know, and so when I went to Vancouver recently, somebody jumped in to take the reins on my training, which is a friend of mine, Luka. He was like, 'Okay so we'll do this, we're going to hit the gym this day, we're going to do this this day.' Cool, so I already had it mapped out. Like that's done. But if he hadn't contacted me, I would have pre-figured out like where's the closest gym? Or should I go to the hotel? Just asking, 'Do you guys have a gym?' Maybe I need to do something in my room. Maybe I need to hit the wild streets of Vancouver, you know, whatever the case might be. But also in my traveling, and my green juice, right? Green juice can be a little bit difficult to find some places. Here in LA, not so much. Jairek Robbins: Everywhere. Shawn Stevenson: I mean you could literally throw a rock and hit a juice place. But this is why I also travel with Organifi. And even the crew here, the team here, they work with Drew and the team over at Organifi, and I absolutely love those guys. The big reason that I use Organifi and that I travel with it, and this is key- and I know people have asked you this before. People ask like, 'What kind of multivitamin do you take? You know, you've got all this energy, what kind of multivitamin should I take?' And people would come in my clinic asking me this question like pretty much daily, and I'd be like, 'None. Actually none.' It's because most of them are synthetic, and the ones that are using kind of earth grown nutrients, they are missing a really important key which is how you interact with the nutrition. Right? There's a part of healing, even if it's a placebo, which placebos are 33% effective in clinical trials, by the way. With you interacting with that nutrient, interacting with your palate, and mixing with your enzymes in your mouth, your amylase, and your digestive enzymes, the digestive secretions in your saliva, your DNA and your RNA before it hits your belly and just explodes in a pill that opens up, right? And so this is a big reason why. And plus if you look at something like Organifi we're talking seven times more vitamin C than oranges, seven times more potassium than bananas. Jairek Robbins: Wow. Shawn Stevenson: We're talking two times the amount of protein that's in milk. Four times the amount of calcium that's found in milk. And this is specifically from moringa, which is just one of the things that's in this formula. Moringa, spirulina, chlorella, ashwagandha. And so guys, make sure that when you're on the road traveling, pack up the goodies to bring with you so that you have these things as an insurance policy for your health. Head over to www.Organifi.com/model for 20% off all of their green juice formulas, red juice, turmeric supplements, all the good stuff that they have over there. And also an incredible protein blend, by the way, that my kids love. So head over there, check them out. So that's one of the things I do, make sure I have these insurance policies on the road. But back to- there was another piece that you wanted to add in here. Jairek Robbins: Yes. So one thing I'd add in is the concept, like you said, of making it easy. And so something that people can do right now if they're listening to this is think this through. If you took out a pen and paper and asked yourself the question, 'What are five things I could do?' And I'll give you some criteria. You could do them anywhere, anytime, anyplace, does not take other people to do them, and it would lead to feeling happy, it'd lead to feeling loved, it would lead to feeling excited, it would lead to feeling passionate about your life, whatever you want to feel every day. So five things. Again anywhere, anytime, anyplace, other people are not having to be involved meaning you can do it by yourself anytime, anywhere, anyplace. If you can come up with five options to do that and use that as your morning routine, now there's no excuse. Shawn Stevenson: Yes. Jairek Robbins: Because you just said you can do it anytime, anywhere, anyplace, and no one else is needed to make this happen. It's just you stepping up and doing it. And so if you come up with options ahead of time, like you said, you come up with a plan in advance and you have this list, and that way if you want to feel great to start off the day, go to your list and these are your five to ten options you can do anywhere, anytime, anyplace. It doesn't take anyone else except for you to show up, and there's magic in that. Shawn Stevenson: Eliminate excuses. I love it. So when you were initially talking about using the affirmations to anchor in your habits, you mentioned learning this portion from your dad. Now I want to talk about this because there are a lot of parents even listening right now that are like, 'How do I get through to this kid?' You know, so talk about what it took, because I know you probably weren't like, 'Whatever you say, Dad.' You know, so let's talk a little bit about that. What's the best strategy to help to connect parents that want to help their kids to really get on some of these higher level performance things? Jairek Robbins: I'm going to refer to Gandhi on this one. Be the change you want to see in the world. Walk your talk, because when I look at him as a human being, he's someone who he'll talk about how caring about other people makes such a difference in your life. And it sounds good, but then you see him doing something right now with his new book 'Unshakeable,' where he's literally on path to donate a billion meals to his partnership with Feed America over this ten year period of time. And he's about two and a half years in, and he's already donated over 250 million meals. It's like, 'Whoa, that dude shows up.' And even in the little stuff. You talk about showing up to your relationship, doing what's right, taking care of people you care about. My mom was struggling with her health and last week- this dude's busy. Like he uses his jet like people use a frickin' car. And he'll be- like I remember one time he was talking to somebody, or his assistant was talking to somebody. They were like, 'Oh what have you guys been up to in the last few months?' She's like, 'Oh we were in New York for a meeting, then we jumped up to Boston for a meeting, then back down to New York real quick, flew over to Philly for QVC, back up to New York for a quick meeting. Then we flew to San Francisco to meet with Green Day, then we flew up to Washington to do this meeting, then we flew to LA, and then tonight we're going to Fiji.' He's like, 'Wow that's a busy month.' She was like, 'Dude that was the last four days.' Shawn Stevenson: What? Jairek Robbins: And so 'busy' is an understatement. Like he's maxed out two and a half years in advance. Like people plan stuff for him and it's all calendared out. It's crazy. He heard my mom wasn't feeling well, he stopped everything, got on a plane and went and saw her for the night. I was like, 'Wow. Like dude who not only talks about caring and being there for people you care about. Something goes wrong, everything stops and he puts people he cares about first.' It's like wow. Like giving, caring, you keep going. And if you watch his feet, his feet walk more than his words do. I mean he says lots, I mean dude talks for fifteen hours at a time on stage, but if you watch his feet, his actions speak so loud that you don't even have to listen to a word out of his mouth to know who he is and what he does. And so it's neat. If you're a parent trying to get through to your kid, allow your actions to speak so loud that your words don't matter. And if they watch your action, they know, they see the difference in what happens in life. They see what it adds up to and they're willing to observe that and go, 'Oh I get it,' and they'll see what happens. Doesn't mean they're going to choose it. Shawn Stevenson: Yeah, exactly. Jairek Robbins: So the second piece is the choice is theirs. You know it's no one's right to be like, 'You need to be like this. You need to be like that.' But if they see you doing it, and they're willing to observe it, and they want to make that choice, the only way you're going to get them to do it is if you're doing it yourself. Shawn Stevenson: Right, and chances are something is going to stick, you know? And it might not be next week, or twenty weeks, or ten years from now, but something is going to stick, so I love it. Jairek Robbins: The other piece I'd throw in there, and this is one of the greatest gifts, loving them no matter what they choose. That's a game changer because when someone feels judged, you can't get through to someone if you're judging someone. If you're judging them, there's a wall up versus the moment you stop judging your kid for doing something, for not doing something, and you just choose to love them regardless, you can get through to them because they can feel that love. They can feel that connection of like, 'Wow they're not judging me for my choices. They're allowing me to choose whatever I want, and they'll love me regardless of what I choose.' I remember when I was a little kid, my dad told me, he was like, 'Dude I will love you no matter what you do. You end up in prison, you do something really- I will not approve of whatever you did, but I will love the hell out of you through it.' And it's that concept of when you give someone that much love and freedom to allow them to choose, they don't feel like they have to do something one way or the other. They feel like they can choose it, and if they choose it, it's ten times more powerful than if you try to force them into something. So if you want to be a great parent, number one, love the heck out of them. Give them all your love no matter who they are, or what they do, or how they show up. Number two, ask great questions. Let them discover what they think they should do. Third piece? I mean simple conditioning. When you see something they're doing that's really great, celebrate it. 'Yeah good job, way to go! That's amazing, give me one of these. Oh my God, I'm so proud of you, come here.' Like really light them up, and if they're doing something you don't like, just don't acknowledge it. Just let it be. Just tell them you love them. Be like, 'Hey that's your choice man, but I love you. Do what you do.' Shawn Stevenson: Powerful. Thank you, man. So one of the reasons that we got together, and I saw you not too long ago, was creating this incredible course, and it's about performance for every area of our lives. And I'm curious- the people that are in this course together with us, the teachers, it's just mind-blowing. So I'm wondering for you, why did you choose these components and these particular teachers? We've got mindset, we've got nutrition and exercise, we've got breath work, we've got sleep. Why? Jairek Robbins: Based on my fourteen years of one-on-one performance coaching, I'm always filtering through what helps them, what doesn't with our clients, and our clients are doing big things. Like if I went down a list of what our clients achieved over these last couple years, between two of them, they raised over $500 million for their startups. That's a lot. Like people raise $1 million, they're out of their mind. These people raised over $500 million- half a billion dollars for two startup companies. Shawn Stevenson: That's nuts. That's nutty buddy. Jairek Robbins: Yeah between- one guy, he showed up and he was like, 'I want to work less and make more.' And my response was like, 'Dude those are not the correct correlation.' And he had five companies, and we sat through and we figured out where he invested his time, how he felt about these things, and the quality of life he really wanted, and his income. And we did all the numbers, and we figured it out, and the things we included in this program were things we focused on. What his twenty year vision was like, what his ten year wanted to be, what his five year wanted to be, what his one year wanted to be, and who he had to be every day in order to be on track to get there. What things we needed to stop doing, what things we needed to start doing. So it required us, for him to work less and make more, we had to sell off one of his businesses. It was a headache and it took a lot of time. Then we had to get him into a different type of business, slightly, just adjust where he was focused, and we had to help optimize those businesses. Here's what's wild, he took a five day vacation Wednesday through Sunday every month for twelve months straight, and took his personal income from $500,000 net, like take home in his pocket after taxed income, to over $750,000 that year working less, making more. Little adjustments because he knew where he was going, he knew what habits were necessary to take him there, and we were carving the path and measuring every piece to make sure he was on track. So I'll give you another one, this one's wild. This one touches my heart. Similar concept, we knew what his vision was, this is a good man, he's only in his early thirties, he's married, has beautiful children, lives in Texas we'll say. I won't use their information out of privacy. He wanted something similar. He wanted to grow his business, make more, expand what he was doing, have a bigger reach. And we figured out after analyzing his twenty year vision, figuring out the habits- and this dude used to have fitness gyms. Like personal training centers, he had a bunch of them. He was doing really well, really, really well financially for his age, like crushing it. And we analyzed what he ultimately wanted twenty years from now, he wanted more time to spend with his family. He wanted more time to be there with his kids growing up. He didn't want to be that dad that's always working. He wanted to be the dad that could like go to a baseball game, and throw the football, and do stuff like that for his boy. And so in that concept, we looked at it and we were like, 'Dude your dream is up here, your habits are here. Like it's not going to add up. You're not going to magically get more time based on the business you're running.' We had to actually get him to start a business in an entire different industry, leverage the tar out of it to his team, and then eventually sell off and roll off his other businesses so that he's only focused on this other business. Here's what's wild, as we did that all of a sudden he was like, 'Dude, I didn't know I could have this much free time.' And I got an email from him probably about a week later, and it said, 'Oh man, you'll never guess what happened. My wife went in for a checkup and it turns out she has cancer.' And all of a sudden we figured out why these transitions were needed. And he was like, 'This breaks my heart to have to see her go through this, but we're going to do the chemo, we're going to do this stuff.' And months later after he'd gone through it all, he wrote back and he said, 'You know, if we didn't cross paths, and we didn't figure out what my vision was, and we didn't figure out that my habits weren't lined up, and we didn't figure out who I wanted to be every day for my family, and how I wanted to show up for them, if we didn't make those transitions over the last so many months, I wouldn't have been here.' He was like, 'This is the greatest gift I could ever have right now, which is to be able to take my wife to every single appointment she has to get better.' It was like, 'Wow being there for the ones you love by adjusting what you're doing is simple based on your vision, daily habits, line them up, making sure you're doing it to really have the things, have the life you really want, and be there for the people who matter to you most. The beautiful part, she made it through, cancer is gone, which is awesome. But he was able to be there for her when she needed him most. That's just the first couple modules; mapping out your twenty year, ten year, five year vision for your life. Mapping out your one year goals, your six month results you want, and then your daily habits, and how it leads up to those. Moving from there, we look at emotionally purpose in your life. And I tell- I don't want to ruin it for people, it's a good one. I tell a couple stories, the difference between a man who's so fulfilled, so alive, so passionate, and all he does is sweep leaves for a living. Versus the difference between a dude who's got a net worth of let's say upwards of $100 million, and he feels empty every day. And people think, 'If I can just get that result, then everything in my life is going to be amazing.' But it's figuring out how do make every step amazing along the way? So how do you add purpose to what you're doing every day so you feel fulfilled in your journey? Keep going from there, we look at the foundational pieces. Like these ones will make or break every single human. You know this, you taught me some of this stuff. And it's the concept of- I always say in a wartime scenario, you take a human being, put them in a wartime scenario which hopefully we don't have to be in, but if you are, it happens. You get captured by the enemy, and they want to torture you, like really jack you up. What are the first three things they take away? Number one, they go for your gold, they take away your sleep. Why? They put you in a room- if they want to torture you, they put you in a room with bright lights, buckets of water, keep you up 24 hours a day, don't let you sleep for days on end. Anytime you try to fall asleep they wake you up with loud music. That's called psychological torture. That's crazy. Shawn Stevenson: But we do that on the weekend. Jairek Robbins: Yeah and we call that partying. But it's psychological torture. Then from there, notice there's no like superfood goji berry, lion's mane coffee in the cell next door. No, they give you like- knock on wood, I've never had this happen, I hope to God I don't ever have to go through it, and for anyone watching, I hope you don't either. But in the movies you see the bowl of slop with like one pea in it, and like a piece of bread, and they're like, 'Good luck.' I don't think it's that bad, but seemingly it could be. And like notice they don't give you the high performance fuel to keep your body and mind at its absolute best, because they want you to break down. They don't want you to be your best. They don't want you to feel strong, and powerful, and alive, so they take away your nutrition and cause your body to start to break down and be weak. Not only that, if you look in the cell, there's no like treadmill cell two cells down, at least from what I've seen on TV. Like you don't get the weights to go pump some iron every day in the morning to feel good, and powerful, and get your blood pumping, and the adrenals kicking in, and get your endorphins fired up. Like you don't get any of that stuff. You're just in a little tiny cell. They take away your movement, because if you take away someone's movement- you taught me this. If you don't move it, you lose it. Shawn Stevenson: Exactly. Jairek Robbins: Like it goes away, atrophy there. And so if you think about those three things, those are the first three things busy people give up when they get busy. Shawn Stevenson: Right. Jairek Robbins: We call that torture in a wartime scenario, but we do this to ourselves every single day when we're too busy to get our workout in, we're too busy to eat the right stuff. Some people I've seen, and I've done this myself, there will be food sitting on my desk and it's like, 'Oh time to eat. Dang, I've just got one more email I've got to power through. Just one more phone call, just one more email, just one more meeting.' And like hours go by, and the fuel is right there. So I give this example for someone just to think it through real quick. Let's say you did real well in life, like real well, and you somehow cashed out and you had the ability to go buy one of those Gulfstream 650s. I mean it's like an $80 million jet. And you go there, you're in New York City, you show up to your jet, you're walking on board and the pilot goes, 'Oh Mr. Stevenson, here's the thing. We've only got enough fuel to get to like Missouri, and I know we're going to Los Angeles today, but I'm going to wait until we land in LA, then I'll top it off and refill it.' You'd look at him and be like, 'Excuse me?' He's like, 'Yeah we've only got enough fuel to get to Missouri, but we're going to fly this thing all the way- we're going to coast it all the way into LA, and as soon as we land we'll go ahead and fill it back up.' You'd smack that pilot upside the head. Like, 'We're going to die. You can't fly a jet on nothing. Like you're trying to coast.' Shawn Stevenson: You can't fly on hopes and dreams? Jairek Robbins: No you've got no fuel in the tank. But we do that to ourselves every day. 'Oh shoot, I've just got this meeting real quick. I'll eat afterwards. I'll just eat after the meeting.' You're flying your $80 million jet across the country on an empty tank hoping to just coast it in and not die along the way. PS if you ever try that in a Gulfstream, you will fall out of the air and blow up. Like you'd die if you try that. But seemingly as humans we're like, 'I'll eat later. I'll get my nutrition later. I'll get my fuel later because somehow I think I can coast.' Shawn Stevenson: Or even worse, what most people do is we'll bypass that time and get to a place where we're- instead of putting that proper jet fuel in, we'll go ahead and pour in some Kool-Aid. Right? Jairek Robbins: Put some sand in it. Shawn Stevenson: No, not even Kool-Aid. Flavoraid, alright? Like off brand KoolAid. Jairek Robbins: The pink stuff. Shawn Stevenson: Yeah the purple stuff. The purple stuff. Anyways man, so with the program, because I really want you to highlight who we have in the program talking about the nutrition and exercise part of it. Jairek Robbins: Cool so we've got Ben Greenfield in the program. He's ridiculously smart with what we had him. We had him come in for nutrition and movement, and there's a reason we picked him. For movement I looked at moms, dads, students. I looked at the way our life is dayto-day, and I looked at the fact that most of us have to show up like an endurance athlete all day. We've got to wake up early and we've got to perform at very high levels for long periods of time all day and stay at our best. I was like, 'Wow bodybuilders don't do that. They've got like spikes and drops. Sprinters don't do that.' I was like, 'Who does that?' And I'm like, 'I need an endurance athlete. I need someone who does long things and can stay at peak levels during very long periods of time.' I was like, 'And someone who can explain it really well.' That's an interesting mix there. A lot of people can do it but can't explain it, or can explain it but sure as heck can't do it. You know, and so I needed someone who did both, so we picked Ben. And this dude's I think a gold medalist in triathlons and endurance races. Shawn Stevenson: It's something crazy, man. Jairek Robbins: He's insane. So we sat with him and I think I went into a mind coma when he was explaining this stuff technically. But it was really cool, he put together a short episode explaining how to optimize your nutrition for endurance and how to optimize your movement for long-term endurance and strength. And so the neat part, he was saying most of the workouts he did for- it's a twelve week workout plan, none of them are more than twenty minutes long. Just quick stuff you can get in every single day, and it is really simple based on longevity and based on endurance and based on strength. Shawn Stevenson: Yeah. Jairek Robbins: Like nice. Meals? Quick and easy you can do anywhere. He did a twelve week meal plan every week, every day, here's exactly what to eat and the exact time to eat it. It's solid. Shawn Stevenson: Incredible. And also, you know it just really gets to the nuts and bolts, the simplicity. Of course I went through the course myself being a part of it. So let's shift gears, sleep. Jairek Robbins: So from there we've got sleep. We've got this amazing guy, I don't know if you've heard of him, but this dude is smart, he's good-looking, he's strong, he's powerful, he's right here. Shawn Stevenson: I was going to say, 'Stop, stop, no.' Jairek Robbins: 'Stop, stop.' And Shawn, so thank you so much for being a part of the course. We're thrilled to have you there, and I've learned over time working with my clients, fourteen years of one-on-one performance coaching, high end entrepreneurs who are crushing it in life in all different areas; financially, emotionally, physically. Sleep is a game changer. You take away their sleep, their businesses dip, their emotions dip, their family life dips, everything- finances dip. It jacks up everything, and so you came on and shared a handful of tips on how to optimize your sleep. And again, nuts and bolts. We show you what to do and how to do it. There's no like, 'You should sleep better. Good luck.' Like we told them, 'Here's exactly what to do, and exactly how to do it, and here are the worksheets, and make sure you do it.' So we have you with sleep, we have Ben Greenfield with fitness and nutrition. For endurance and longevity there, Mr. Wim Hof. He's our buddy, he's cool. "The Ice Man." What is it, like 21 or 23 world records. I mean this dude like climbed the base camp of Everest in a pair of shorts with no shirt on. Shawn Stevenson: That is bananas, right? Like please think about that for a second. We're talking Mount Everest. People bundle up and clock out all the time trying to brave that mountain. He did it in shorts. Jairek Robbins: Yeah. Shawn Stevenson: I mean almost buck naked, man. He was almost buck naked. Amazing. Jairek Robbins: He did a marathon over the Arctic line just wearing a pair of shorts up in the freezing cold. Shawn Stevenson: Crazy. Jairek Robbins: He holds the world record for the longest distance swam under an iceberg wearing a pair of shorts. The wild part, when they filmed it, you see dudes wearing like those dry suits to stay warm, and he's there in a pair of shorts like, 'Yeah let's go.' And so what's wild though is people are like, 'Okay I can be cold.' But what are the effects on the body? The reason we brought him in is for health reasons and performance. So optimizing what my friend, Dr. Andrew who runs the neuroscience lab at Stanford says, what he's doing is accessing a kind of super performance by getting all the positive benefits of fight or flight without any of the negative side effects through his breathing in cold exposure. Here's the other crazy thing, and this is a documented study that was released recently, he went and he had the ability to clear bacterial infection out of his body. They put in E. coli into his body, and through breathing and cold exposure, was able to push it back out with zero side effects. They called him an alien, they called him special human, special, unique. He said, 'No, no, no I can teach this to people.' They took forty people in the study, they taught them for like five to seven days how to do this, they had all of them do it, and then at the end they all volunteered to put live E. coli right into their body, all forty successfully pushed it out with zero side effects through using the breathing and the cold. So for anyone who's struggling- and it's not a cure-all for everything, but it's something to help prevent bacterial disease from building up in your body. You can prevent it and push it out. Shawn Stevenson: Yeah so much more, as well. Jairek Robbins: So much more using stuff like this. And act as super human mental and emotional performance by using the breath and cold exposure. So we've got Wim Hof, Ben Greenfield, Shawn Stevenson, and then we did a cool partnership with a couple different companies. One is for mindfulness. So for busy people today, we have so much on our mind. You've got work stuff, kid stuff, family stuff, spouse stuff, personal stuff, emotional stuff, a million things on your mind. And in order- a client and friend of mine, he used to train the snipers of the Navy SEALs, and in his book, I think it's called 'Total Focus' is his newest book that came out. He was talking about the concept of you need to train someone in this position to do two things. Number one, have total and absolute focus on the task at hand. And number two, stay completely aware of all things around them. I'm like, 'Dude that's like the opposite.' He's like, 'Well watch this. If you're on a rooftop, and you're not aware of the environment around you, someone walks up behind you and takes you out, you're dead.' I'm like, 'Okay that's life or death.' And he goes, 'And if you don't pay attention down your scope of what you're doing, someone else could take out your team that you're supposed to be protecting or scoping for. They're dead.' I'm like, 'Dude that's a stressful position.' So the ability to stay laser focused on the task at hand yet totally aware of the environment around you. I was like, 'Wow that sounds like something a father needs to be able to do with his kids, mom would need to do, a teacher would be able to do, a student would need to be able to do, an entrepreneur would definitely need to do.' You've got fires in your business all day long, but can you stay focused on the task at hand yet aware of all the chaos? And I was like, 'I wish there was some way to train that in people besides having them become a Navy SEAL and go to sniper school. Shawn Stevenson: Right. Good luck. Jairek Robbins: And we found it, this little meditation headband called Muse. It gives you feedback on how well you're able to stay focused on the chaos- I'm sorry, aware of the chaos, yet focused on the task at hand which is being present and aware, and it gives you actual feedback. It gives you little metrics and shows you how your brain did every session. So we partner with them for that to show people how to train themselves. The other one is state management. Inevitably we get hijacked every day emotionally. You're trying to do something, you're trying to get something done, something happens, someone says something, and bam it gets you emotionally. Most of us, men specifically, are not able to know when we're stressed. We feel good all the time. You can be under crazy stress, you're like, 'I'm good.' There's a little device from Stanford, it tracks your breath pattern all day long, stick it on your belt, it tracks your breath ratios and consistency, and tells you if you're calm, focused, or stressed. Now what's wild, I remember I was wearing it, I was talking to my wife about helping out a family member, all of a sudden it buzzed. I looked down, it says, 'You've been tense for seven minutes.' Like no, something's broken. Like I'm fine. But then I thought about it, and I'm like, 'Whoa I'm tense right now.' And the awareness of knowing where you go tense- because when you go tense, your brain gets hijacked in the fight or flight. Now you're emotionally reacting to a situation instead of logically responding. So if you think of the five worst decisions you've ever made financially in your life, and you got to reverse all five, I'll bet you and everyone else would have a lot more money in their bank account. I guarantee all five were emotional decisions. Your brain got hijacked and you said yes or no to something, and bam it cost you a lot. So the ability- we found with our clients this is true in business, and in finance, and in everything else in their life, emotions, relationships. So we used this device to help track them every day to make sure that they're calm and focused when making big decisions. And we can track it, we know, we can watch their breath, you can see it. It's amazing. They just did a study with LinkedIn to figure out the performance of their team based on their ability to stay aware of their breath, and it's pretty amazing what they found. So fast forward from there, we've got all this team together, the final few pieces are helping people find happiness every day. We don't know when our last day will be. You know, I've always used the story of you don't know if you're going to walk outside today and get run over by a bus. I've always said that for years. I have a friend who got off the trolley in Toronto, took one step out, smack got ran over by a bus. She has a picture with her little legs sticking out from underneath it, like the wicked witch from The Wizard of Oz. Shawn Stevenson: Oh man. Jairek Robbins: The house fell on her. She survived, her name's Theresa, she's up in Toronto, she survived. She still has a few more surgeries to go, so knock on wood she's going to be healthy and make it. But she told me, 'I wasn't counting on a bus to hit me out of nowhere that day. Like I was busy thinking about a million things. I'd just gotten home, I needed to get my conference ready and do all this stuff,' smack. And so my thought is in the program give people a handful of things you can do to find happiness every day so that if you happen to accidentally get run over by a bus, at least you were happy, and you were happy today, not waiting for happiness someday down the road when you finally got something or achieved something. So all this stuff is combined in the program. The final couple pieces, peer group, which we talked about. We give you exact steps and worksheets of how to go about identifying who you want to be in your peer group and how to go about connecting with them. And then the final piece is taking everything we talked about and turning it into a morning and evening routine. How you do it in the morning, how you do it in the evening to make sure you're getting it all done every day. Shawn Stevenson: This is- I know everybody listening is like, 'This sounds like an absolutely mind-blowing course, and it must cost like $500 or $1,000, but I just want to let everybody know you were very adamant about this, of making it affordable for everybody. Again, taking the excuse out of the equation. So I can tell you right now guys, it's less than $100, it's less than $90, it's less- I'm not going to keep going but make sure to head over to www.TheModelHealthShow.com/performance and get your hands on this amazing course with all of this life-changing information. We all really worked hard to put it all together for you guys, and I think you'll really, really enjoy it. So again, www.TheModelHealthShow.com/performance. Jairek, wow man, I'm just blown away by you. I love talking with you, and I always learn something, and I'm just very grateful for the energy you bring, and your perspective, and your tenacity. It's just really awesome to see man, so just thanks for being you, man. Jairek Robbins: Thank you. Thank you for having me back again. Thank you everyone for taking time to share a little life with us. Shawn Stevenson: Absolutely. Now final question, what is your model that you're here to create for everybody else with the way you live your life personally? Jairek Robbins: So it's interesting, it's very simple, and my model and my goal, the thing I want to do every day, it used to be reach a billion, change a billion lives, do all this stuff. And I thought about it, I'm like, 'If I really actually want to do that, how can I actually do that?' Because I meet so many people who spend five years of their life in a lab trying to figure out how to change a billion people's lives, and they walk by people every day that they can help. And I was like, 'Wow if I really want to be a model or example hopefully to some people,' I sat down and said, 'You know what? Here's my goal, here's my new goal, I want to reach one person every day, and I want to find one person with the message they need in the moment they need it most and get through to them that day.' And if I can do that every day, hopefully it will spark them and it's like popcorn. Like they'll spark, and they'll spark someone else, and they'll spark someone else, and they'll spark someone else. But my goal is real simple, find the person that needs this most to get through to them with the message they need at the exact moment they need it most. Now here's the crazy part. I wake up every day and that's my goal. I don't know who they are, where they are, what they need, or how I'm going to get it to them, but all I know is I set out each day to figure out how to do that. And the cool part is every day I get little messages from around the world of people on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook who just reach out and say, 'Hey I needed that today. Thank you.' And I don't know what it was, and I don't even know who they are or where they are, all I know is if I'm focused on making that difference each day, just finding the one person I can get to somehow, and just do good and keep pushing it out there, it'll find them. Shawn Stevenson: Love it. Thanks, bro. Thank you so much for being on. Jairek Robbins: Thank you, man. Shawn Stevenson: Everybody thank you so much for tuning into the show today. I hope you got a lot of value out of this. This is really what it's all about. You know it doesn't really matter much if we're doing a great exercise program or following a certain diet if we're not able to really expand our life and to pour into the lives of others and to create amazing relationships and to create success in our vocation, you know the career that we choose as well. That's really creating a complete life, a whole life, and life of real substance. And so that's what I really want for you, and for all of us, it's steps along the way. For me, food was really a catalyst or pathway to all these other things, you know? I had poverty in all areas of life; spiritual health, emotional health, physical health definitely, and also the health of my relationships and my career, which was nonexistent in a way. But thanks to having something hit me really hard, you know life hit me very hard and I hit rock bottom, and I had a choice to make. And thanks to that opportunity which came in the form of a very big challenge with my health, I was able to come out of that and to really devote my life to helping other people, and that's brought me more joy than anything I could even begin to explain. So I'm just grateful for you being along this journey with me, and what I want you to do from today, is I want you to develop an allergy. I know you're like, 'Wait, wait, wait I thought you were about getting rid of the allergies, Shawn.' I want you to develop an allergy. I want you to start to be allergic to average. Alright? Be allergic to average. Jairek talked about what it takes to have an average life. You know right now, disease is the average. Poverty is the average. Unhappiness in our career and our relationship, that's the average. It doesn't take much to hit that, so I want you to start to be allergic to those things and to go for- not even above average, but excellence. Alright? And that's what this is all about. So again, make sure to head over to www.TheModelHealthShow.com/performance to check out this amazing course. And we've got so much good stuff for you to come very soon. We've got some amazing guests and amazing show topics coming up, so make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon. And for more after the show, make sure to head over to www.TheModelHealthShow.com. That's where you can find all of the show notes, you can find transcriptions, videos for each episode, and if you've got a comment you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome, and I appreciate that so much. And take care, I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.

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  1. Hi Shawn and team!
    I’m wondering if you could provide the Stanford Study resource on peer effect? I have briefly searched google scholarly but have not found the study Jairek referenced.
    Thanks!
    Ryan

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