903 - Final Episodes 4 of 6 Radical Optimization

Speaker A: This is the Momentum Podcast. Welcome to the fourth of the final six episodes of the Momentum Podcast. Gosh, it's bittersweet every time I say that. Katie and I are having, like, one of the most extraordinary times of our lives since we announced the closing of the business. And it still gets a little different every time I say it's going to be final episodes. And today I wanted to take the fourth of six episodes to talk about something that I think is so crucially important. And we don't pay enough attention in the entrepreneurial world to how we actually create success, and how we actually create long term success, long term happiness, long term achievement of our goals is through taking care of ourselves and through optimizing and not just getting healthy, but radically optimizing. I might make some suggestions that you haven't heard before. I might make some suggestions in this episode that you have heard before. But the point I want to get across is that as, uh, entrepreneurs, as the highly sensitive individuals that we are, the more we optimize, the more we take care of ourselves, the more we make sure that we are fully present and aware, the more success and happiness we create.

Speaker B: I'm Alex Charfen, and this is the Momentum Podcast. Made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our great contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules,

Speaker A: but only so that we can bend

Speaker B: them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will.

Speaker A: We don't accept our destiny.

Speaker B: We define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate. There could be a better future. And instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and experience exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world, because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution. And we always will be.

Speaker A: As entrepreneurs, we are highly sensitive people. And sometimes I'll say this to entrepreneurs and they say something like, oh, I'm not sensitive. I can put up with stuff. I can deal with a lot. And yeah, every entrepreneur can. In fact, so many of us are actually Chasing stress and chasing pressure, noise, and chasing, like, these heightened states of stimulation because we're addicted to those things. And we can put up with a lot. We can put ourselves through a lot. But here's what I've come to understand about us as entrepreneurs and how we can truly create the lives, the success, the relationships with our kids, with our spouse, with our friends, with the people who are important to us, where how we can truly create everything we want in our lives is by taking radically, and I mean radically, good care of ourselves. I think that in the entrepreneurial world, there's this quote unquote, self care that we talk about. And for some people that means, oh, I had a protein shake today, or, you know, I went on a walk today. And if you're just starting out on your journey and that's the thing that you're doing, then I want to congratulate you on starting. But I also want you to know that it takes so much more than that. As entrepreneurs, you should really have two focuses. Uh, uh, about yourself. It should be growing your business, but that should be secondary to growing yourself, to building yourself, to taking care of yourself, to optimizing yourself. And in the entrepreneurial world today, if you've heard my podcast, you've heard me say this, the dogma, the culture, is that success is only achieved through self destruction. You have to work all day, you have to strap yourself to your desk, you have to put up with all kinds of stuff, you have to literally destroy yourself, and then you'll create success. That is the silliest argument that there is. And I'm getting a little animated here because in the past few weeks, I've had conversations with entrepreneurs who are in a place where they've gotten to a destination they didn't really want, and they are in a place that they're not really happy with. And they are confused and frustrated and irritated and feel constrained, and they're having all types of symptoms and challenges come out. And when I look at the summary of the conversations that I've had, here's what they amount to, is that it's entrepreneurs who have subjected themselves to far too much stress, far too much noise. They haven't taken care of themselves. They've been pushing on this thing called a business, pulling it up a hill, pushing it up the hill, doing everything they can to grow it. And they look up one day and they're like, hey, I'm actually not happy, and my business has grown and there's more money there, but I am not happy. I'm not enjoying what I'm doing. If you pay any attention to social media, you've seen tons of entrepreneurs, not just me, but tons of entrepreneurs, shutting down their businesses because they're in a place they've arrived at, a place that they never aimed for. They didn't really want to feel the way that they feel. They didn't really want to do what they did. And for us as entrepreneurs, it's hard to see the correlation. But the more pressure and noise we are dealing with in the moment, the less our capacity to make the right decisions for ourselves shows up. The more pressure and noise we are dealing with in the moment, the more our, uh, intuition is absent and we don't hear it and we run past it. And the more pressure and noise we have in the moment, the more we have a shortened view of what's possible, and we have less options and we have less of a focus on the future because our nervous system is in a huge response. And so when we take radically good care of ourselves, when we optimize at a 10 out of 10, we actually tune this instrument called our body, which is truly the way we navigate the world. See, most of us, including me, for most of our lives, feel like we navigate the world with our minds, with logic. And I've definitely done that. I've been crazy logical for most of my career, and I've ended up over and over again at a destination that I didn't want. I've ended up quitting what I'm doing more than once because it's too much pressure and noise. It doesn't feel right. It's not exciting for me anymore. It's not fun for me anymore. I'm in that situation right now. The reason I got out of this situation is because I have radically optimized. I'm obsessed with this stuff. I'm gonna give you some pointers in a second. But for over a decade, I've been obsess with optimizing my body, optimizing my physiology, with feeling my body, with getting into my body, with taking care of my body, getting the right body composition, and feeling, like, extremely healthy, not healthy, but feeling vital, like I can take on any challenge in any situation. And I spend a lot of time really in contemplation and in meditation and what I call time in neutral so that I can be present in my body. Because here's what happens when I do that. The wisdom, um, of my body helps me make decisions. I feel decisions in my body. This morning, I got a text message from someone I know asking me to speak in an event at the end of the year or at the end of the month. And I read the text message and I felt it in my body. And it was a no. It certainly wasn't a yes. It was a no. I don't really want to speak. Um, I just closed my company. I took some time off. I don't want to go open the door back up and go get on a stage and have people ask me a whole bunch of questions that I don't have solutions anymore because my company's closed. And I felt it immediately. I didn't even have to logic it. I could just trust my body. And when entrepreneurs that I've coached are willing to lean into getting healthier, suddenly they start making better decisions. And when they're willing to lean into really optimizing taking care of themselves, suddenly everything in their lives gets easier. And their business, their relationships, everything that they care about starts moving in the right direction. Because when we're in a place where we are not taking care of ourselves, and when we're in a place where we are abusing ourselves for an outcome, we actually move into the challenge of self criticism and self abuse and self punishment. In fact, so many entrepreneurs today, and I say this with some hesitation, but so many massive thought leaders today, are leading from a place of self loathing. They're leading from a place of self flagellation. They're leading from a place of self frustration and self judgment and self criticism. They say things like, you need to get up and go sit down and get to work and keep going and blah, blah. And all that energy is not loving self energy. All that energy is not encouraging self energy. All that energy is actually punishing self energy. We punish ourselves into success. We threaten ourselves into success. We criticize ourselves into success. Here's what I want you to know. It doesn't work that way. You can't punish and criticize and beat yourself up into success. You might be able to punish and criticize and beat yourself up that you work so hard that you make some money. And you might be able to punish and criticize yourself so hard that you grow a business and you grow a team and you help some people in the world. But as long as you're in that place of punishment and self criticism and self abuse, what you build may look successful to the outside world, but I can tell you from personal experience that it will not feel successful for you. And when, uh, you do it the opposite way and you start leaning into what you want and you start thinking about what would really make you happy and what would be exciting on a daily basis and what would be energizing for you and what would be thrilling for you to achieve. And you start leaning into those types of that type of thinking. Instead of asking the question, how do we do this? You ask the question, how do we do this easier? And instead of asking the question, how do I get this done? We ask the question, how do I get someone else to get this done? And we really start maximizing our time here on this planet by being more present and aware. And what I recommend for all entrepreneurs. When I say radical optimization, here's where I would start. Number one, drinking water. I'm obsessed with water because hydration is so crucially important. It's one of the first things that throws your body off. It's one of the first things that'll make you symptomatic. Another thing you can start doing today is eating whole foods. I eat some processed foods every once in a while, but it's probably 10 to 15% of my diet. I look at some people that I know and processed foods are 80 or 90% of their diets. You should keep it down below 20%. Movement. Getting up every day and walking and moving around, doing some cardio, lifting. Heavy things will change how your body reacts for you. You will get more in touch with your body. And getting a functional medicine doctor. Opt out of the traditional medicine system. Get out of the traditional medicine system. I can't say enough about how broken and challenged and funded by the pharmaceutical companies it is. And the pharmaceutical companies and the tobacco companies and the food companies. Go look it up. They're all one in the same and they're all moving towards the same outcome. So they feed you food that makes you sick and then they have pills on the back end to make everything better. Opt out. Go find a functional medicine doctor at the very minimum. Get your hormones checked so you know where you are. I started getting my hormones checked in my mid-30s, and I wish I had data from my 20s. 20s, and it doesn't matter how old you are. Get your first hormone test now so you understand where you stand on all the hormones that are running your body. And get a food sensitivity test. So many of us are eating foods on a daily basis that are causing pressure and noise in our body. They're causing distraction and frustration and rashes and eye twitches and autoimmune and stomach issues and IBS and all kinds of other stuff just from eating the wrong foods. And we have technology now that tells us what foods we shouldn't eat. We should use that because as an entrepreneur, when you commit to optimizing, not just self care, but optimizing, when you start spending some time in neutral and having no input for your brain and just getting in touch. Brain, body, when you hydrate and move and do things with intention, this tool you have called a body that holds so much wisdom. I believe our bodies hold the wisdom of all of our ancestors. We just don't know how to access it because we're going too fast, the world is too noisy, we're not connected to ourselves enough. But when we connect to ourselves and we start feeling decisions, not logicing them, and we connect to ourselves and we start actually trusting our gut because we feel the sensations in our gut. And when we start taking care of ourselves and we allow for the time and space of intuition to flow through, that's when everything in our lives changes. That's when our lives get easier. We start moving in the direction we want. We start creating this actual thing called happiness along with success. And we start creating the connection and the relationships and the fulfillment and the satisfaction that we've always wanted out of life. Because if you've heard my podcast, you've heard me say this before. I know way too many people who are so poor, all they have is a bunch of money. I know way too many people who have a bunch of money and don't have their health and they're spending everything they can to get it back. And so right now, you as an entrepreneur can get an advantage on the majority of our entire culture, our entire group, the whole world of entrepreneurship. If you're one of the few who's willing to not just take care of yourself, but optimize and put time, effort and energy here, you will have an advantage over anyone else out there who isn't doing that. And this is absolutely life changing. And I want to share it with you because it's a resource that we're leaving up, even though we're shutting the company down. I have a program called the 10 Day Natural Thirst Challenge. We'll show you how to drink water, how to remain hydrated, how to really hydrate yourself in a way that your body's telling you how much water you need. And you can go to getthirstynow.com getthirstynow.com, download the 10 day natural thirst challenge, and within a very short period of time, you'll be drinking more water than you ever thought possible. But what you'll also feel is the strength and conviction and grounding and mind body connection that hydration brings. And for so many, this 10 day challenge has been a gateway to taking care of themselves, to loving themselves, and to radically optimizing so that they create the success in the world they really want. And I would love for it to be the gateway for you too. Gettherseynow.com thank you for being a podcast listener. Thank you for being here with me today. Two more episodes left. I'm looking forward to sharing them with you. And if you have any questions about anything that I said today, make a post on social media, tag me in it. I'll look for it and I'll answer your question. Look forward to helping you optimize, understand your body, get into your body and make the decisions that are going to move you in the direction you've always wanted.