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Rest and Resilience

I wanna share with you some research about why we believe this is so important that we look ahead, especially when we can see a challenge coming toward us. And by the way, challenge doesn't always have to be negative. I'm facing a challenge right now, personally. Again, I'm as transparent as I can be with all the audience. But starting yesterday about eight, 7:00 p.m., I started making different choices about what I did last night to be as prepared as possible as best as I can be for you. All the way to, the choices I made for what I ate for dinner last night. I mean, again, transparency. What I ate for dinner last night, I would not have touched before a long distance triathlon. And what I eat before a long distance triathlon or marathon I wouldn't touch before a seminar. Totally different needs. The movie that I watch or the documentary that I watch or the series that I start on a seminar night, won't start a series, 'cause I don't know if I can't stop. The books, the magazines, the ...

articles, the research. Here's the research that we found that really surprised me. This is a chart, obviously. Down the bottom axis here, we have the time of the day. So zero represents early morning. So whatever morning you start your day. Who starts the day about 8:00 a.m. in the morning? And then who starts their day a little bit earlier in the morning? And a little bit later in the morning? For those of you online, about when do you start your day? That'd be something you could really easily put into the chat box. No matter when you start, just kind of imagine to yourself going through the day. Well here was this study that I wanna bring to you. And this is back in 2010, 2011. Researchers followed eight judges over the course of 10 months as they made more than 1,100 case decisions. By the way, the case decisions were whether or not the person in front of the bench was gonna be let go on parole or go back to jail. To me, this is a big decision. To me, this is something significant. That if I know someone who's going to a judge to ask that judge for parole, that I would want the judge to be making that decision based on legal precedent. I would want the judge to be fair and unaffected by around the courtroom stories. I would want that judge to be looking at that person and make a yes, no, should she or he be let go on parole or not. I would not want that decision to be based on when the last time the judge took a break. 'Cause that's what the research showed. That the first few cases in the morning, the first few people who came to see the judge to get parole in the morning had more than a 70% chance of getting parole, until it was time to take a break. And at about 10:30, 11:00 in the morning, that person who came to ask the judge for parole, had a near 0% chance of getting released. Now if this was something that happened over the course of a couple of weeks and it happened with one judge and it happened eight times, okay, maybe we can take a look. 1,100 cases, 12 months, eight judges. How many of you in the room today, how many of you online right now have any kind of business where you're working with other people who have to make decisions that you want to be in your favor? And my hand goes up high. So to this day, if I'm working with someone or about to work with someone and they ask me for a meeting, and they say, "Jason, what time would you like to meet?" Using this research, can we meet at 9:30 in the morning? Can we meet at 1:15 in the afternoon? Ah, no Jason, the only time I can meet you is at 11:45. Okay. (audience laughs) I don't know about you, but if I'm going to get a yes from somebody and I know the research, what is it that I can do ahead of time to prepare that person, to prepare that situation. People make different decisions based on the big three. I call 'em nutrition, rest, and movement. Now by the way, I've substituted three words. As I study resilience as I teach resilience, I've substituted three words and you're gonna see that I've kicked these out of our lexicon, our vocabulary. I do not talk about sleep, diet, or exercise. 'Cause the moment I talk, especially exercise, the moment I talk about exercise, I just start to draw a chasm between you and I, because you have this fitness routine and I have this fitness routine. You follow that method and I follow this one. If I ask you how are you moving your body, we all win. How are you resting your mind? By the way, rest is an interesting one, 'cause I've known people, I'll look around the room as I say this next one, I've known people who have slept a lot and woken up more stressed out than when they went to sleep. And I ask them, well what were you doing? 'Cause you weren't resting. Maybe you were sleeping, but you weren't resting. And then the nutrition piece. So what I like to do now is to share with you a little bit about personally, what I do is I create my at my best when. I start off with the factors and the ingredients. I turn those then into mantras or statements. In another class that I teach here at Creative Live I talk about writing things down and then making it easier to see those later. Homework, should you decide to accept it, your homework out of this course could be to write your four, five, six at my best when statements. Your homework could be to sit down with a coach or a mentor or friend, spouse or partner, someone who cares a lot about your sustainable success and come up with the four, five, six things that when you do, increases the likelihood that you'll be a better version of yourself. I actually think that knowing when I'm at my best, because I know it, it's like a superpower. I mean it's almost like Wonder Woman's Truth Lasso or Superman's x-ray vision. (speaking in a foreign language) It's like knowing a second language. No one knows you know it until you need it. No one knows what I've done over the past 24 hours until at the end of the day, the go gosh, Jason, you still have energy. Yeah, it wasn't a mistake. Oh by the way, the other days, when I don't have to perform, different set of at my best when. Two questions I get quite often. Number one, Jason how often do you look at you at my best when? My suggestion to every single one of you, I would do it early in the day. For me if I look at my at my best when sometime in the nine, 10 o'clock hour, I still have hope. I mean did anybody put something down about nutrition, eating right, getting fuel? How many of you have something like that? So if you put something like your at my best when, I'm at my best when I eat, fill my whatever, however you frame that. If it's 9:30 and you haven't eaten breakfast yet, you have a shot. Go across the hallway, go across the street, get a cup of oatmeal, get a protein bar, get something in you. The second question I get quite often is, how often do you change your at my best when? And have two answers to that one. The first time I change or update my at my best when is seasonally. Now I'm from California, I live in Southern California, and seasonally things change. Like in the winter, it gets really cold. People watching from the East Coast are like laughing right now. No but seriously right, in the winter, it's like 50 degrees in the morning and so my idea of being outside on my bike is different than in the summer. But seriously, seasonally, we do have different sides of our business. In the summer I'm doing a lot more classes, in the winter I'm doing a lot more coaching and there are these cycles that we've tracked over about 15 years now. The second time that I change my at my best when is when shift happens. I got that from Seth Godan by the way. Thank you Seth. When shift happens and a new opportunity lands on my plate that I need to re-evaluate how I'm goin' about my life, that's when I update my at my best when. So quick example on this that just goes back to something that you've heard my talk about. In 2011 I met the publisher at Wiley over in Hoboken, New Jersey. They gave me a book contract and they gave me an accelerated due date. They gave me eight months to write the book. At that time I was going to qualify to race at the United States of America Triathlon, Olympic Distance Triathlon. And I had to make a decision, it was eight months. What was I gonna do with those 90 minutes a day and then those two to four hours on the weekend that I was training. And what Jody and I decided through a lot of conversations, a little soul searching, a lotta journaling, was that the 90 minutes a day that I was training, we were gonna move that to writing. So my at my best when I pulled back on one goal to push forward on another one. And then let me leave you with a short video. This video took one hour of work and it put it into a time lapse that you're gonna get to see, I think, something interesting. And I'll talk you through this. For those of you watching online, we'll see how this video keeps up with your bandwidth out there in the world. But this is a short video. This is Jody and I working together. This is me one color of Post-Its, Jody the other color of Post-Its and this is us lining up when we're at our best through the day. What do we need to have done in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, and before bed to increase the likelihood that she will be at her best, I will be at my best, we will be at our best. Now I've done this activity not only with married couples, I've also done this with teams in business. My favorite example's I got to work with a team of five in Sacramento, California. This was a finance group and we had five different colored Post-Its. We had the morning from 7:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. which was their normal work day and what was amazing was the differences between what people needed to do by when during the day. And for me, there's nothing better than being able to see hey, around 7:00 a.m., around 6:00 p.m. what do you need? Here's what I need. And least now we're on the same page. Let me leave you with one last tactic on this and then we're gonna move on to the next topic. Once you identify your at my best when inventory, my suggestion, hand write that, type it, print it, take a picture with your mobile phone or your tablet and make that the wallpaper of your phone. Make that the wallpaper of your device. Here's what I'm thinking, and I did the research on this for me personally, I read from my mobile phone 40 average times per day. Actually installed an app on my phone that tells me how many times I look at it everyday and it's 37 to 43 pretty much constantly. So for me, my thinking on this is, if I look at my phone to see what time it is, to check who emailed me, to look at the calendar for what I have to do next, and go look at some social media site, if I look at that 40 times per day and twice I make a different decision about what I was just about to do, if twice I make different decision to put myself in the position to be at my best, I'm winning. I'm winning.