Pt 2: How to Stop Hating Your Job and Find Meaningful Purpose | Sahil Bloom
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January 28, 2025
TLDR: Sahil Bloom discusses three types of wealth (Time, Social, and Physical) in part 2. He suggests reframing a job you hate, emphasizing the need to invest in relationships like finances, and listing three requirements for good physical health.

Podcast Host: Sahil Bloom
Episode Title: How to Stop Hating Your Job and Find Meaningful Purpose | Part 2
In this episode, Sahil Bloom delves into the first three types of wealth: Time, Social, and Physical wealth. He discusses how to reclaim time, build relationships, and prioritize health to cultivate a more meaningful life. Below are some of the critical insights from the conversation.
Understanding Time Wealth
Audit Your Time and Energy
- Time Audit: Start by examining how you spend your time. Recognize that saying "yes" to one commitment often means saying "no" to something more important.
- Energy Management: Identify activities and relationships that energize you versus those that drain your energy.
- Actionable Exercise: Every day, categorize your activities into three color codes:
- Green (Energy Creating)
- Yellow (Energy Neutral)
- Red (Energy Draining)
- Over a week, analyze where your energy comes from and make adjustments to enhance your life.
Making Time for What Matters
- Reassess commitments to carve out time for activities that bring you joy, like kayaking.
- Reflect on the trade-offs of your decisions: Are evening events worth missing precious family time?
Building Social Wealth
The Importance of Relationships
- Structural Isolation: Society has become more isolated, with people feeling lonelier than ever.
- Social Media Impact: Studies indicate that social media usage has reduced face-to-face connections significantly over the decades.
- Investing in Relationships:
- Treat relationships as investments; prioritize them like financial assets. Being there for others during tough times is the key to strong social connections.
- Be proactive in your friendships rather than waiting for others to initiate contact.
The Ripple Effect of Kindness
- Simple acts of kindness, like complimenting someone, can boost their confidence and create a positive ripple effect in their day.
- Challenge yourself: For one week, reach out to friends and share positive thoughts about them.
Prioritizing Physical Wealth
Simple Steps for Better Health
- Three Pillars of Health: Focus on Movement, Nutrition, and Recovery:
- Movement: Engage in 30 minutes of physical activity daily, whether it's walking, dancing, or playing a sport.
- Nutrition: Adopt a diet rich in whole, unprocessed foods at least 80% of the time. If your grandmother would recognize the ingredients, it's probably good for you.
- Recovery: Aim for 7-8 hours of sleep each night to enhance recovery and overall energy.
Mindset Shift
- Achieving physical health requires commitment and the recognition that meaningful change takes time.
- Daily Practices: Treat health like an investment where you make small daily deposits leading to substantial life changes over time.
Summary and Takeaways
- Reclaim Your Time: By auditing your time and being mindful of commitments, you can find more time for enjoyable activities.
- Invest in Relationships: Foster deeper connections with friends and family through intentionality and kindness.
- Prioritize Simple Health Strategies: Embed physical wellness into daily habits without overcomplicating it.
In conclusion, Sahil Bloom emphasizes that redefining wealth goes beyond financial measures; investing in time, relationships, and health leads to a more fulfilling life. By applying these principles, listeners can enhance their overall well-being and find a deeper sense of purpose in their daily lives.
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Happy New Year Stompers. I'm thrilled to share that a brand new edition of my book, The Mind Manual, is out now. It's a reimagined, stripped-back version. Rather than a book you keep on your shelf, it's a pocket guide to mental fitness. It's easy to carry with you so you have it whenever you need. The link to buy the new edition of The Mind Manual is in the show notes or available at all good bookstores. Don't wait. A new life is waiting for you.
Hello and welcome to part two of the Stumpcast. This has been a phenomenal conversation so far. So we're going to kind of pick up now on two or three of those, depending on how much we get done in part two of those types of wealth. I thought we would kind of pick back up the time a little bit. I think you've explained very well this idea of how important the time is, as an example, with your parents and things. I guess what people
often say, well, by the time I go to work and I do all these different things and do my responsibilities, I don't have time. How do I create time? It feels like something we're always chasing. And I guess, from that perspective, how can someone even begin to start acknowledging or
thinking about how they're spending their time and perhaps drawing some of those questions of, well, what can I do about it? How can I get that balance back? If kayaking is what you enjoy, we only go twice a year. How do I go five times a year? You know, where can someone start?
I think the first thing most people need to do is truly audit both their time and their energy. And I'll make the distinction. So auditing your time means really looking at the things that you were saying yes to in your life. And recognizing that every time you say yes to one thing, you're saying no to something else. And so asking yourself that question, what am I saying no to by saying yes to this thing? Most of us default to saying yes to things.
We say yes to every social request and commitment for our time. We say yes to every single meeting, phone call, coffee chat, all those things professionally. And every single time you do that, you are saying no to something else. Recognizing that starts to make you think a little bit differently about your time. I have to recognize it very clearly now with a young son and with my wife, because any time I say yes to something, I'm saying no to them.
Making that clear in my mind makes me say no to a lot of things that I probably would have said yes to. Because I reckon I see their face when I think about saying yes to something, if someone invites me out to some fancy party or something, I know that that means that I don't have bath time with my son in the evening. So is that a trade-off that I'm willing to make? Sometimes, maybe it is, but oftentimes it's not.
So recognizing that and actually asking yourself those questions, you start to trim back on some of the things that you have defaulted to yes around, which creates time in your life that you can redeploy into your favorite things, whether it's kayaking, it could be sitting on the couch watching Netflix and unwinding, it could be anything. But you start to realize that a lot of the things that you're saying yes to that are making you feel so busy, that are making you feel that sensation of being on a hamster wheel in your life, are not actually creating a whole lot. They're not actually doing the thing that you want to do.
The second thing that I said is energy. When you spend time on things that are energy creating for you, meaning they lift you up, they make you feel good, you do your best to work. And when I say work, that could be actual professional work, or it could be family work, it could be engaging with relationships, it could be your physical work actually working out doing things. When you spend time on things that lift you up, your life gets better. But most of us are very out of sync with what our energy actually looks like during the course of the day.
The exercise that I did that I love to have people do is at the end of a calendar day, go back and look at your day and mark things according to whether they were energy creating, mark them green, color code them.
If it was energy neutral, make it yellow, and if it was energy draining, meaning you felt drained physically, mark it red. If you do that for a week, at the end of a week, you have a very clear perspective on the types of activities that were creating energy, that were uplifting the type of people as well, by the way, that were creating energy for you, and the things that were draining energy from your life. If you can slowly make changes to those things.
Start pulling yourself away from some of those things that were draining, some of the people that were draining energy, and start focusing more on the things that are creating energy in your life. Your weeks start to feel magical. It starts to feel like this dramatic shift. And those changes, by the way, don't have to be huge. So people will say, oh, well, I don't have control over that. I started doing this when I was working an 80 to 100 hour job in investing.
And I made simple changes. I knew what I learned was that phone calls and Zoom meetings were very energy draining for me. What I know is that doing a call on a walk like this, much more energy creating. So I took half the phone calls I was doing and shifted them to being out on a walk while I did them. Suddenly my week felt much better. At the end of the week, I was not as disastrously drained as I had previously been. It made me feel a lot better about what I was spending time on. And as a result,
I actually showed up better on those phone calls than I would have if I was feeling drained during them. So you make it start shifting and having this mindset shift around these subtle changes that you can make to your days and weeks that compound and create this momentum that makes your actual life feel significantly better.
Guys, we actually had to pause there for a moment because you could hear a bit of barking in the background and it ended up that two dogs that were usually friends ended up having a rather big argument. We had to kind of go and do a bit of separating. So we're all okay. Well, sorry about that. Everything happens in the summer class. Clearly we've had many different situations, but there we are. We broke up to two dog best friends that were having a bit of a fallout. Anyway, we're back on to different types of wealth. They need to focus on their social wealth, clearly.
to focus on the social wealth indeed and being friends. I really like that description of thinking of the time and the energy and you know especially well actually both of them equally to be honest but really thinking about that kind of boundary thing where when you're saying yes to things you don't want to do you're actually saying no to the things that you do want to do and that over time
It's like that thing of like when you live a life that's not according to your values or what you care about. You're feeling this, I'm not, you know, you're feeling this, it's like when you're asked to go, we've all had it. You're asked to go to something, you know, a party or an event. We don't really want to go. We say yes at the time because we were like, felt that we should. And then it comes the day of it and you're like, oh no.
And I used to do this a lot. I still do it sometimes, but I used to do it a lot. And the way that I got a bit better at it, as a bit of a vice I was given, is that when someone asks you, because often they'll ask you months in advance, when you're not there, you're not facing it, they say, play it forward to the morning and think, if I had to get up today and go and do this, would I be happy to? If I am fantastic, then say yes for the big smile. If you're thinking, actually, I'll get to the day and be like, damn it, why did I agree to do this? Then politely decline.
and I found that really useful. The energy point is really an interesting one and actually I'm going to really, so I've worked on that other side of the time a little bit, the energy one's really good. Thinking about when I spend time with certain people or do certain things or activities, is it going to make me feel better, medium or like neutral, or is it dragging me down? Because all of a sudden if your week is full of things that are dragging you down, how can you feel good?
Yeah, understanding how people impact your energy, different people in your life, impact your energy, is a very simple yet powerful consideration that you can use to make adjustments. Because if we spend time with someone and they consistently make us feel bad about ourselves,
Your body does not lie to you. Your body has a physical reaction to how you feel when you're around someone. And if your body is telling you that someone is making you feel physically not great, feeling drained, feeling not well, feeling like you need to take a nap after you spend time with them, that is a very good signal that that is not someone that you should be giving a lot of your energy or time to.
And that's almost like what you're talking about is the gut instinct in a way, right? You always say that, like a gut instinct on things. Your body is your gut is telling you something. And when you ignore it, that feeling becomes stronger often. And there's more and more science now that the gut instinct is actually a real thing too, right? In the microbiome and the way that it actually impacts your body. But I truly believe that if we tune in a lot more to our energy, our weeks get
much, much better. And as I said, when you spend time on things that are creating energy in your life, you produce the best outputs. You produce the best outcomes. When you lean into things that are truly giving you energy, you create the best work. You create the best version of that. And as a natural byproduct, you end up having more success.
I could have chased my life in the financial world for a long, long time. I never would have been that great at it because I didn't get energy from the work. There wasn't anything about it that truly was lifting me up. They gave me energy. I could have been OK at it. But now I get to stand in real purpose. I get to stand in things where I feel like I get so much energy from sharing these ideas, from creating, from writing, that the outcomes are much better.
And all of a sudden, the more you do the thing, the more energy you have, the more you want to do the thing, and the better you get. Because it's like that idea is that if you enjoy something, even as a hobby, if you get some enjoyment from it, you're probably going to get better at it than if you're doing something you hate. If you're playing tennis and you hate tennis, you're probably not going to get good at tennis. But if you kind of enjoy it every time you go, it gives you a sense of dopamine or whatever, you're going to get better. Absolutely. The other important nuance to this is
Oftentimes, when I say this to people, the pushback you get is like, well, I don't like my job. I had a great conversation during my research for the book with a man who works at a factory on an assembly line. He puts together widgets. He puts together things all through the day.
He does not like his job. He doesn't like doing that. That's not a particularly fun job. But what he does do, which is so powerful that so many of us can learn from, is that he connects his job on a daily basis to something on a higher order that really matters to him. He feels so strongly about his role as a provider for his wife and children.
that he is the type of father that he never had, that he shows up and he provides for them, he coaches their teams, he's able to do those things because of his work. So every single day when he goes to this job that he doesn't like, he connects it to this higher order purpose. And as a result, he gets energy from it.
because it means something to him. It's not putting widgets together, which he doesn't enjoy. It's in service of these other people that really matter to him. And there's this common narrative that you have to get. Your job has to be your purpose. You have to feel purpose in your work. You have to love your work. And for most people out there that is simply never going to be the case, it's very challenging to find it's very rare. And that's okay.
You can give yourself some grace from that, but what you do have to do is think about how you can connect the thing you were doing for work to whatever that higher order purpose is. Whatever that thing is that might create energy in your world. So if someone is saying, I'm doing the line to five, it's okay, I don't mind it, kind of like my colleagues, but I don't love it. How could they, what kind of things could they look at?
to connect it to their purpose. Say there's someone, for example, that something that's very important to them is helping others. So perhaps they really feel a great deal of reward by doing things for other people. What kind of steps could they take? What could they think about to try and connect those things if they can't get that on the day-to-day of work, I guess?
If you were the type of person that loves helping other people and you have a nine to five that you don't necessarily like, think about on a daily basis how that work that you are doing is allowing you to earn the money necessary to give you the means to help for other people. That's a simple example, but it's one where I'm saying, okay, this is a means to an end that I do really care about. I might not like the means, but that's okay because it's allowing me to fulfill this higher order purpose that I have. And similarly,
If you love art or you love music and you love creating music, but you can't do that for your job because you don't think you'll be able to pay the bills with it, well this job allows you to pursue these hobbies. You're able to go to concerts, you're able to attend gallery openings, you're able to do these things that really engage that purpose, that feeling. You're able to contribute, be a patron of the arts so that other artists can share their work with the world. You can do those things through
the role that you currently have, that you may not love, that may not be your main thing. And so it's thinking creatively about how the thing you're currently doing is able to contribute to that. In my early years, my 20s, and for many people in their 20s, my purpose was to build a foundation for the rest of my life. I might not love my job, but if I'm learning things, if I'm growing, if I'm able to engage my curiosity,
That is fulfilling that purpose. I'm building. I'm creating a foundation around it. So it's kind of looking at ways that perhaps you're doing stuff that I'm realising you're doing. And people think, well, well, I've heard it said before a lot where people kind of go, when I've talked about me being a doctor, they're like, oh, that's a really purposeful job. I wish I had more purpose. And you find out about their job, and they don't even see the ways in which they
are adding values, other people's lives, or helping other people, or that they're playing that important part of the wheel. You're actually not giving credit to what you're already doing. And perhaps that's quite a human thing, is to kind of put down your own contribution a lot of the time. This is, by the way, this is, I would argue, one of the most powerful things of this entire book and this entire concept.
is that there are so many people out there that do not feel wealthy by the traditional definition of wealth, because they're not making a lot of money, that are incredibly wealthy on this new definition. I have a dear friend who is a substitute teacher. He maybe makes $40,000 a year. Traditional definition, not wealthy, not doing so great in life, sort of wasted a college degree, not really doing great. New definition,
He has the free time to coach all of his kids sports teams. He lives close to his entire family, sees them. They have incredible loving relationships. He has two beautiful children. He's married very happily. He works on things he loves. He loves being a teacher. He loves helping the children. And he's extremely fit. He gets to be outside all the time. He hikes all the time. He has all of these outdoor activities that he loves. He is extraordinarily wealthy in my mind.
But under the traditional definition, he didn't feel empowered in that way. He didn't feel like he was doing well. And he actually felt this sense of malaise as a result. Like, oh, I'm not really doing as well as I should. And when you show someone that actually life is this bigger picture, it's this full circle. Financial wealth is a piece of it. And yes, maybe there are steps you could take where you could earn more, a little bit more in certain ways. But really, you're doing quite well on this overall scorecard of life.
fascinating and sometimes back to the message there is that we need to look at what are the goals, what's the goal we're aiming for? We've moved the posts in the wrong direction, do we need to think about and reframe and understand what is it that really matters in our life? Because again, you can chase the things that don't matter so much.
Let's talk about social, because I think this is something that is very important, and I see it a lot in research now, and even on conversation discourse online, that people feel less connected than ever, that young people are lonelier than they've ever been. And it's a fascinating thing, because we look at the studies being lonely, so having a lack of quantity of quality of connection, or both.
can have as much harm to your health as smoking. And I think that often people are like, what when you hear that? But it's profound. We are not meant to feel isolated as human beings. So where have we got it wrong? Because my dad talks about this when he was young, he grew up with lots of brothers and sisters. The family was all kind of together. They were like on the farm or whatever in his childhood.
You were in it together and you were talking about how you'd have family coming over, the uncles and aunties and everyone's in it together. Whereas now we seem to be living very isolated lives, probably more than ever. So, from what you've heard, what you've learned, how have we got to this place and how do we realign ourselves on that social wealth scale? Social media has certainly accelerated the struggles of loneliness.
I think all of the science bears this out now. Jonathan Haidt published this great book, The Anxious Generation, which talks about social media use and smartphone use in children and all of the detrimental effects it has. The most recent statistic I saw was that teenagers in the United States are spending 70% less time in person with their friends than they were two decades ago. Terrifying, 70% unbelievable to think about.
And think about the lack of texture that you have in your life when you don't have that in person connection, being able to sit, stay in face to face with someone. And when you think it in the present about your closest deepest relationships that you have, the people that you truly love, that depth was built through hardship. It was built through people that you sat in the mud with during the hard times in your life or the hard times in theirs. It was not built through
being apart from them texts, being on social media, liking things. It was built through being there for each other during those challenging times. And we're in a world now where fewer and fewer people are prioritizing that, which leads me to the most important point. You need to invest in your social relationships in the same way that you invest in any financial investment.
We don't think of relationships that way. We don't think of the fact that your deepest relationships actually compound value in your life better than any other investment that you can make. Being there for people during their tough times is the single best way to guarantee that people will be there for you during your dark times. People complain about the fact that they don't have anyone, any deep connections in their life, any close friends, be a close friend to someone else.
You get what you put out into the world. You receive back and return the energy. So rather than just kind of going like, oh, you know, I've not been, I don't get invited to things. When's the last time you invited someone to something? Or do you, do you reach out? Are you the person that goes? Do you want to go for a walk on Saturday morning? It's so true. We kind of often, I think friendships often something we expect to receive rather than to give.
transactional right it becomes transactional this quid pro quo feeling of like well i haven't gotten anything so i'm not going to reach out or like you sometimes like my my wife will say like oh well you sent too many texts in a row to one person like i don't care like if someone if i feel strongly about someone they're my friend i will let them know how i feel about them and the exercise that i ask people to do which is like a two second thing is for the next week
Every single time you think something nice about someone, let them know. Send a text. Call them. Say it to their face. If you're on the street and you like someone's shirt, tell them that. These tiny little things have ripple effects. When you compliment a stranger, think about how they go about the rest of their day. They're more confident. They stand up a little bit straighter.
They engage with someone a little bit better. They are a little bit nicer to their spouse or their children. It creates this incredible ripple effect where you have the power to create that change through a tiny action that costs you nothing to just let the person know whether it's a stranger or whether it's a close friend. The one thing that you really think is nice about them, me sending Alex a text saying, oh, I really liked the way that you
ran over and helped that lady who was struggling. I thought that that was wonderful. Tell the person that. Don't keep it in your head because the lack of that appreciation, the lack of that recognition is where relationships go to die. It's so true, isn't it? And we end up in this strange world where we think nice things. We won't actually go and tell anyone that you don't confirm or you don't. And so much of it is because so much of our communication now is through text that we just don't
we just don't make that step to do it and also I think there is often this thing that it feels like especially at the moment where so much for communication with our friends is through text and stuff. Everything is also so to the point we like removed all the kind of what we call soft skills or soft touch around it kind of like even like the non-verbal cues, the kind of the hug and the pattern of shoulder or like man you're looking great or if you're doing really well we just don't have that everything's very much like how are you doing yes fine
like if you're lucky it's like see for coffee on Saturday or something it's especially with blokes it just feels very transactional it's just kind of like we've removed all the niceties in a way yeah and when you remove the niceties you remove the vulnerability and the sharing of the struggles and for men in particular
The lack of relationships where you can open up about the struggles is an enormous challenge that people don't talk about enough. I think about during my challenging times in my own life a few years ago, I had plenty of friends, but I did not have people that I really felt like at the moment that I could open up to, that I could truly sit with and talk to about those things. Whether rightly or wrongly, I didn't feel that. And so it's a reminder that even in a crowded room, you can feel lonely. It's not about
the number of people you have around you, the number of friends, the number of followers, like any of those things. You can feel lonely in a crowded pub just as much as you can sitting by yourself at home. Even more so. Even more so. And it applies to romantic relationships in a really deep way. And I think social media, again, has contributed to this challenge of we focus entirely on falling in love and not enough on growing in love. And what I mean by that is falling in love is very, very easy.
It's the social media photos of the beautiful day, the vacation, the filtered images, all of those things. Growing in love is very, very hard because growing in love is the hard conversations. It's the sitting in the mud with someone. It's working through those struggles and those tensions and those anxieties.
And in a world where all we are celebrating is the falling, we lose sight of the growing. And the growing is where real deep relationships are built. And so you live in this world that we're celebrating the wrong things. We're propping up the wrong things. And as a result, what do we get?
You get the wrong things. It's kind of like what you were saying right at the beginning where, you know, you and your wife had to kind of work through a time with difficulties conceiving and, you know, it's kind of that recognition that when you go through something difficult together and you've worked through it together, there is not just a lesson that you learned coming out of the site. There's like a unity, like a deepening of the bond, I guess. So do you think that perhaps we also
I think a lot of these days is kind of swipe left, swipe right culture of like, oh, they're not the right person to move on immediately. Didn't we give up on people too quickly? Absolutely. It's the reduction of friction that we accidentally reduce a lot of the meaning in life as well by doing that. It turns out that friction actually created a lot of the texture that made life meaningful.
And so in a world where technology has allowed everything to become easier, we've made it impossible to get rejected by a girl because you've already decided they've opted in or out. So you don't have to go up to a girl at the bar and just say hello and strike up a conversation. We've made it easier to get to anywhere. You don't have to go on an adventure. So you no longer have the crazy stories of like, you know, you're
weren't able to get a cab or a bus and you got stuck in the rain. That doesn't happen anymore. All these things that we've reduced as a result of technology, it turns out actually added a lot of the meaning to our lives. And we know this about relationships. Shared struggle builds bonds. Shared struggle releases oxytocin in our brains, which creates these feelings of love and connection that we have. And so in a world where you say, like, I'm not willing to struggle. I'm not willing to have that hard thing.
That's the cost of entry to building the relationship that you want. All of these things that you want in life, every single one of them comes with a price tag. And the price tag is that challenging thing that you don't want to do. And if you're willing to pay that price, if you're willing to pay that cost of entry, you can build the life that you want on the other side. You can build the relationships you want on the other side, the body you want, all of these things. But you have to be willing to pay the price. If you're going to say a definition of social wealth,
you know, being truly rich in your connection. What does that look like? Having the depth of connection with a few people that you can call in the middle of the night when you have a problem, when something, when you're down and out, when your life isn't feeling where it is, and then having the breadth of connection to something bigger than yourself.
that feeling that you are connected to something that goes beyond just the people that you know, whether it's a community or religious institution or local, regional, whatever that thing is, a feeling of connection to something bigger than the self. The combination of those two things is what contributes to a life that is rich in social wealth. I think that's an incredible definition. So let's talk now about this move into kind of looking at physical health.
Unsurprisingly people that you've talked to have said I want to be physically healthy and I guess what is really interesting and I was just kind of pondering about this the other day because I was in hospital at the beginning of the year I had like a throat infection with Quincy and I was in a hospital once twice and I think it was a real realization when I was lying in bed and I couldn't swallow and couldn't eat and it had to have drips in my arms to give me my fluids and antibiotics and all this stuff that I was like we often only realize the value of our health when we're sick. It's like you're never more grateful
or wishing or appreciating not having a headache more than when you got a headache. It's like when you're feeling nauseous and you want to vomit you're like why don't I walk around so happy that I'm not nauseous all the time and it's really difficult because it's hard to carry that forward and to remember it because even a couple of weeks later I've forgotten what it's like to feel sick.
It's not surprising that people value their physical health, but I guess what the challenges is, how do we actually make that a reality? Like, how can we live our value and our physical health? What have you found and what do you think on that? What you're referring to is something I think about a lot, by the way. A healthy man wants many things, a sick man only wants one thing.
You just basically said everything I said and much better. Yeah, I love that. I just love that saying. I think about that a lot. That's amazing. And it's very true. Part of that is gratitude, by the way. It's like we don't stop to say, wow, I feel good today. You never do that. You only recognize when you were below the baseline. And so you don't say like, oh, I feel I actually feel good today. And that recognition of gratitude is a powerful thing. Health is a very funny world because
The world of social media and the world of online discourse around health has convinced you that it is extraordinarily complex and expensive to live a physically wealthy life, to be healthy, to look good, to have a six pack, or to look the way that you want to look, or to feel the way that you want to feel as you get older. Because the things that get clicks and the things that sell courses and the things that sell books are the fanciest solutions, right?
whether it's Brian Johnson and his pursuit of living until he's 200 years old. All the different protocols that people are doing for their health. And I contribute to this. Cold plunges and saunas and red light therapy, all of these things. That's what you're talked about. That's what's sold. And what that does is it creates this unbelievable intimidation for a normal person that's just starting out. Because it convinces you that you have to be on level 100 in order to achieve any benefit.
cryotherapy and all this kind of stuff. And it's just not true. It's just false. If you are just starting out or if you were anywhere on the journey, all you really have to think about is being at level one. Because level one of this game gets you 80 or 90% of the benefit. You will live a much healthier life. And fortunately, level one is basically free.
and it's accessible to anyone. And you don't need cold plunges and you don't need saunas, that's not a part of it. Level one is basically three pillars, movement, nutrition, and recovery. And for movement, just move for 30 minutes a day. You can walk in the park, you could run, you could jog, you could dance, you could ski. Do whatever it is that you like, but move for 30 minutes a day. Nutrition level one, just eat whole unprocessed foods 80% of the time.
You'll get way further in all of your nutrition. You don't need all the fancy diet books or all sorts of recipes or things. Just do that. Eat real foods that your great grandmother would know the name of on the ingredient label. That's a great tip. If your grandmother wouldn't know it, then it means probably not good for you. It's a whole bunch of chemicals. It's totally true. If you look at an ingredient label and you were to show it to your grandmother, and she was able to understand and know what all of the ingredients are on there, it's probably okay for you.
You know, Mike speaking with my dad again, like he always talked about growing up, that his great grandmother or grandmother would always like cook for all the people the farm workers, people coming on the farm, right? So they would make a big soup basically to feed everyone. We call it Welsh dish called cow, C-A-W-L. And basically it's got carrots, potatoes, some leeks, whatever meat is seasonal, then whole foods. Literally the stuff that you can look out the window and say it was growing out there. And he said that,
You'd eat this stuff most day and those days and you felt good. You didn't have crashes of energy. You felt very balanced. And if you think about it, it just makes sense. You're eating. You can look at something and know I know what that is. And I literally know where it came from. You know, I'm not saying people can grow all their food outside, but the point is, you know, you understand what it is you're putting in your body and surely that's better than looking at it and going, I have no idea what this is.
Yeah. I mean, can I pick it? Can I hunt it? Like, if you can say yes to those questions, generally speaking, it's good stuff. And then the third one is recovery. And the only thing you need to think about there is just try to sleep for seven hours a night. You don't need to do the cold plunge sauna, red light therapy, all those other things. That's level 50 or level 100 or whatever the higher level is. Just sleep seven hours a night. Eight hours, if you're really ambitious, maybe is like level two.
If you do those three things, you are well on your way to a life of physical wealth. The point is, they are daily investments. It's not, yeah, I did it once and then I didn't move for the next four days and I'm going to try to do it again. It has to become a part of your daily investment ritual in your life. The same way we invest in financial instruments or we're going to invest in our relationships, you have to invest in your health by making the daily deposits in that way.
That really just makes me think about my kind of journey, like I know that word used a lot, but you know, two and a bit years ago, you know, I was 21 stone, I was drinking a lot of so unhealthy, so out of shape and everything. And actually people look at me and go, oh my God, you've lost like seven stone, you're like so fit, you're running on this half marathon, you're doing all these things.
But that has taken me a long time. It hasn't been like a month and then you're changed. It is like, don't get me wrong, I was noticing improvements within literally a month. But it is about a dedication over time. I basically made a promise to myself. I was like, I don't want to end up in this day again. So I'm going to promise myself that this remains a priority. It's just something I do every day.
And as soon as I stop thinking of the end goal, I need to get to this feeling so far so this place. And I realise like, no matter what, I'm going to eat generally good, I'm going to move, I'm not going to put things in my body on the whole that are going to cause problems, I'm going to try and sleep well. And it's interesting as exactly what you're saying, it's like over time, it's like a dividend almost like a compound interest, like over time, it pays results.
and it rewires your brain. It starts to remind you every single day that you are someone that takes an action and creates an outcome that is positive in your life. It literally rewires how you think about yourself. So if you are feeling lost or you're feeling stuck in your life, it's a catalyst for all sorts of other change. You're the type of person that shows up and does this hard thing every single day that you previously didn't do. Well, that type of person goes and takes actions at their job that they didn't previously do.
They're more committed to their relationships than before. They show up in other ways in their life. And so it starts to remind yourself, it creates a catalyst that has a ripple effect into all of these other areas. And there's something raw and primitive as well, when you go for a run or you're lifting weights, you're doing a workout class.
It's hard and it's hard. Whether I go, it's funny, I thought I'll get fitter and then it'll be easier. It's still hard. I'm still like dying, running. I'm like, oh my God. You have to go through some of the mental challenges. Of course it does get a little easier. But you have to go through the challenge of doing something difficult. And I think that really teaches you something in your life, doesn't it?
I know it's quite a thrown around phrase of like, I can do hard things, but it's actually true. Like if you can go to and do a run and you're running along and you can push through that barrier perhaps or push that distance, you're teaching your brain that when you face challenges you can overcome challenges. And that must rewire your brain to degree.
I think there is developing science that shows this, that it actually does rewire the way that your brain works. But even just psychologically, just as you said, I mean, I've mentored and counseled hundreds of young people at this point. The vast majority of whom feel very lost in their life and are trying to find their purpose, trying to find their way, trying to improve their financial means, all of those things. The first piece of advice I give them is for 30 days, wake up at 5 a.m. and go work out.
And that has nothing to do with your job success or any of these other areas. What it has everything to do with is convincing yourself that you are someone that can do hard things, that can endure upfront pain to achieve a long-term reward, that you can delay gratification. If you do that for 30 days, I guarantee your life will change.
Because it's very, very hard. And you're the type of person now that can do that. And the type of person that does that does a whole lot of other beneficial things in their life. So what's what you're saying before by that knock on effect? Guys, we're going to pause there for a moment. We're going to end part two. We'll pick up this conversation in part three. See you in a moment. Goodbye.
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