In this episode, I discuss why I think working on your physical self is the most important cornerstone to work on for your inner circle success.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, where my goal is to give you 10-minute lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones.
In today’s episode, I’m going to talk about the importance of growing your physical self. Today I stand at 6’3” and weigh about 195 lbs. I would say I’m pretty fit but it wasn’t always this case. When I was a kid, I was overweight. I remember being in the sixth grade and being 5’5 and weighing 190 lbs. So I was 10” shorter but only weighed 5 lbs less. One of my favorite sayings and I have a lot, is that the mind follows the body and the body follows the mind. When I was overweight, my mind took a big toll. My self-confidence wasn’t that high and I was shy and nervous to talk to other people. I think it took a big toll on my mindset for many years to come where I get self-conscious about interacting with other people but it has gotten a lot better over the past four years. Mentally, I feel fantastic because I know I am fit because I choose to workout 5 to 6 times a week, I watch what I put into my body, and I strive for 8 hours of sleep a night. If I feel strong and healthy, then I’m going to act strong and healthy.
My body is the only vehicle that will carry me through life. If I treat it like a rental, it’s going to break down faster than I need it to last. I was reading Warren Buffett’s biography snowball, which is an excellent book for people to check out. In the book, it talked about how Buffett took care of his mind and his body. He took care of his body with exercise like racquetball and kept his mind sharp with playing bridge and reading. At the end of the book if talked about how 16 years get asked from a genie on what type of car do they want. The only stipulation is that they have to keep that car for the rest of their lives. If you have to keep a car for the rest of your life, you’re going to take time to wash the car, regularly get maintenance on the car, and be reckless with driving it because you might crash it and now it’s totaled. This was a metaphor for the human body and we should start taking care of our body as soon as possible. I’m lucky I had a growth spurt right before the eighth grade that caused me to become more skinny but I was not as fit as I am today. I was really into going to the gym and working out when I had that growth spurt and would start running. I never wanted to go back to that lifestyle again because I know mentally I feel so much better.
Now that I’m older, it is so much more important to work on myself because things are starting to hurt. When I was in the Marines, I was medically discharged for having one ruptured disk in my lower back and two more that were herniated. I know my back will start aching if I don’t put in the time to work out and I could end up on bed rest. There are few things that suck more than throwing out your back and having to crawl to the bathroom to go pee. It sucks. I don’t want to be 70 years old and not have the ability to move around and stay active. When I have grandchildren, I want to make sure I can keep up with them or even beat them in a foot race. I can only make that dream a reality if I keep working on making sure my diet and exercise routine is aligned with that goal.
I love to sleep and it crucial for performance. If you miss one hour of sleep a night, it will decrease your brain’s functional capacity by 14%. In today’s competitive environment, I have to make sure I’m a well-oiled machine. If I’m operating at a 100% and I’m going against someone that is only operating at 86% for the year because they don’t believe sleep is important, that different will accumulate over 5000% after one year. If I had over 5000% more brain capacity for the year than my counterpart, just imagine the difference I can make. I know I’m going to write more, develop better content, and be a better person. In the book, outliers, Malcolm Gladwell talks about how it takes 10,000 hours to become a master in your subject. Then Greg McKeown from his book Essentialism expanded on that and said the real masters got around 9 hours of sleep a night. The rest was the difference. Athletes that perform at a high level get around 10 hours of sleep a night. I feel so much better when I take a nap and get a full night’s sleep. It helps with everything.
Out of the four cornerstones, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, the physical self is the most important one to work on first. It’s the foundation for who we are as people. So if you don’t know how to work out, go see a professional and get a workout routine down. I just ride the bike for 25 minutes, do 20 minutes of resistance training, and then I stretch for five minutes on most days. I also do takes some classes like Orange Theory with my sister or a Yoga class. For eating, I would just check out the slow carb diet and see if that works for you. Sleep, there’s a book by Shawn Stevenson called Sleep better which offers a lot of great tips. When it comes to your physical self, it’s simple but it’s not easy because there are a lot of distractions out there that want you not to be healthy and once you get good at saying no to those things and yes to your physical self, you’ll be on your way from going from good, to great, to unstoppable.
I want to thank you for listening to today’s episode.
To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
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