Move To Create Momentum

Every entrepreneur I've ever known, including me, has heard, "Sit down, stop moving, stop wiggling, sit still, and stop making everyone else uncomfortable." The challenge we have is, if we hear these things often enough, we actually will stop moving. And as physiologically sensitive momentum based beings, we have to remember that we have to move to create momentum.

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 greatest contribution. Sure we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will.

We don't accept our destiny, 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. Instead of just day dreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and 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.

It's about 8 o'clock in the morning and I'm batching some podcasts and getting ready for my day. And already I've been on our vibration power plate, I've been on our small trampoline, I've been down in the gym working with one of our speedbags, a supple speedbag to open up my shoulders, so I've done a ton of movement already before I've even gone on the morning walk with my kids which is coming next. Every day I make sure that I move, because here's what I've found: Movement creates momentum. When I define the entrepreneurial personality type, here's what we tell people.

The EPT, the evolutionary hunter, is a physiologically sensitive momentum based being that is highly reactive to constraint. That means we feel the momentum we are experiencing. And we are reactive to constraint of any kind and here's the challenge, every one of us has been told to, "Sit down, stop moving, stop wiggling, stop talking, stop asking so many questions, stop making everyone else uncomfortable." We've experienced this entrepreneurial suppression our entire lives of people trying to make us stop moving, stop being who we are, so that everyone else can feel better. Here's what happens, eventually it catches up to all of us.

In fact, it's even caught up to me. Where I get to the point where I don't move. Where I do sit still. Where I do stop wiggling. And that actually stifles my momentum because as entrepreneurial personality types, we grow, we learn, we expand our thinking, we expand our consciousness, all in part through movement. So if we're not moving we're actually slowing ourselves down, creating constraint, and stopping ourselves from creating momentum. In fact if you look at some EPTs today, what you see is an evolutionary hunter that gets up in the morning, seat-belts themselves to a desk and doesn't move at all throughout the entire day.

Maybe to go to the bathroom, maybe to get water, but both not that frequently because so many people today just lock in and don't move at all. Then we look up at the end of the year and we wonder, why didn't we accomplish the goals that we had? Why didn't we do more? Why couldn't we put more out there? Why didn't we make a bigger impact? Well I would present to you that there is a very high likelihood that the reason you're stagnated or plateaued or not growing like you want to, is that you aren't moving.

You're not physiologically activating your body, physiologically activating your thoughts, and physiologically activating your imagination to see a better future. What is it that we do as entrepreneurs? We go into the future, we imagine a new reality, we come back to the present, and we insist it becomes real. And what helps us like crazy is movement. So there's basically three areas that I'm sure to move every single day. Whether I work out or not, these are three areas where I'm conscious of, and I think of, and I know that if I move here, it will create momentum.

So let me share them with you. First, I mentioned it earlier. Every single day I go on a primal walk with my kids. I make sure I'm out of the house, and we get out there in functional shoes so that we can feel the ground, and we walk in the grass or on a multi-plane surface, and we go on at least a 20 minute walk every single morning. Now, if you're sitting there thinking, "Oh I go to Crossfit, or I run five miles," or there's something else that you do where you feel a walk is insignificant, here's my message to you.

Getting up and doing a 20 minute walk may the single most important thing that you do every single day as an evolutionary hunter. Here's why. See as an EPT, as a person who's driven to do more, to be more, to put more out there, you are already predisposed to being in fight or flight mode. In fact you probably know this about yourself. You're more reactive than most people. You have more energy around things than most people. And you do get into fight or flight mode and stay there longer than most people.

So getting up in the morning and going for a primal walk changes everything for people like us. Here's why. The more that we are in fight or flight, the more that we have the wrong types of chemical hormone messaging in our body. If we're in fight or flight, we are living off of our adrenals, our sex hormones, our thyroid. We are over-clocking the entire body which leads to cortisol and inflammation. The longer we are in fight or flight, the more the body becomes accustomed to fight or flight, the more we are running the engine on red line and just not getting to the place where we can be fully present and aware.

When you're in fight or flight, you're perspective narrows. You're hearing narrows. Possibility narrows. The vision you see of the future, it starts getting dimmer and closer and not as far off. You just can't do what you need to do as an entrepreneur as well as you can when you're out of fight or flight. When you're present, when you're aware, when you transition from adrenaline and thyroid to dopamine and serotonin. Getting up in the morning, going on a 20 minute walk, breathing in and out exclusively through your nose to calm the nervous system, does the following:

One, it shows your body you're not in fight or flight. When you start walking and breathing slowly, you physiologically convince your body there is no wooly mammoth. Second, the bilateral stimulation of walking left and right and left and right, will actually calm the nervous system even further. Help you release trauma, help you get back in your body. Third, if you do your walk in functional shoes and you walk on a multi-plane surface, you will be shocked at the level of tension released from your body. From the shoulders, the low back, the mid-back, the neck, all of the muscles that tighten up during a fight or flight response will start to relax.

In fact, one of my clients, Ryan Lee, said after just a couple weeks of primal walking he got rid of back pain and shoulder pain, and all types of pain and inflammation that he had in his body that had been present for years. In fact he had seen specialists and gotten treatment, and done all kinds of other things. As soon as he started walking in the morning it went away. The second way that I move intentionally every day, is I fidget. And this might be one of those things that you haven't even thought about. But on my desk, I have magnets and fidgets and spinner toys and all types of different things.

When I'm on a call or when I'm focusing on something, I can occupy my body and allow it to move, and allow it to fidget, and to wiggle. I'm a physiologically sensitive being. When I move around, I actually get more creative. When I fidget I think more clearly, it helps me work through things. So I am not in the slightest bit embarrassed that my desk looks much like you would imagine maybe a third grader's desk, or even younger, with all the toys and the fidgets and the spinners and all the other things that I have.

But, here's what I know. If I'm on a call and there's nothing here for me to fidget with or to manipulate with my hands or to continue moving, I get antsy and distracted. And the more I can fidget and manipulate something with my hands, and just allow it to move around in my hands, even if it's a spinner or the magnets that I have or any of those things, it keeps me more present. It keeps me more aware, and it keeps me more in the moment. So I have no issue with not just having fidgets when I'm here at my office, but I travel with them. I throw a couple in my briefcase so that any time I'm thinking through something or brainstorming or writing something out, I make sure my hands have something to fidget with. That physiological sensitivity is activated while I'm being creative, while I'm creating something new, while I'm accomplishing what I'm accomplishing, or while I'm connecting with somebody.

And then the third area that I make sure I'm moving on a daily basis is, I move as needed but I do it strategically. And here's what I mean by that. If I have a long call coming up with my team, like today I have a strategic meeting followed by our weekly meeting, so I'm on the phone for two solid hours, and I believe I even have a call after that so I'll be on the phone for three solid hours. Here's what I'll do: Before that first call, I'll get up and go on a quick 10 to 15 minute primal walk. It might only be five if I don't have time. But I make sure I move around before I get on the call so I'm physiologically activated. While I'm on the call, I'll be fidgeting, moving around, and I also have a standing desk so I go from standing to sitting to standing all the way to perching on the edge of my desk to moving around. If I'm on an hour call, I might move the height of my desk 5 to 10 times.

Then as I go through the call, the second I'm off the first one, if there's five minutes in between, I spend that five minutes moving. I spend that five minutes walking outside, getting a breath of fresh air, getting some natural light and making sure that I'm moving throughout the day. See I think one of the biggest issues with entrepreneurs feeling constraint, not creating forward momentum, and feeling like they're stuck in place is because they actually are constrained, not creating momentum, and stuck in place physiologically.

See if we are physiologically bound in place, and we don't do anything to move it around and we don't do anything to move ourselves around, we can end up having that physiological constraint transferred from physiological to cognitive, where then mentally we feel constrained. But if we're willing to get up, and move around and activate, so often what will happen is that activation itself opens up our cognitive constraint. It gives us more vision of the future. It helps us connect to what we're really trying to do.

So if you are in a place where you are grinding and getting as much as you can done, and you are in a place where there's a lot going on in your business and you're accomplishing a lot right now, one of the things I want to make sure you do not forget to do, is move. Do not physiologically condition yourself to being still. Do not allow for physiological constraint in your body. Move in the morning, fidget when you're on calls, do what you need to do to keep moving and move throughout the day tactically. Before long calls, before sales interactions, before something that's strategic for you, one of the best things that you can do is move, and you will be that much more activated going throughout your day to all the important meetings and events and interactions you have.

If you're ready to start physiologically activating your body in an entirely different level and planning out your life so that you know exactly where you're going, let us help you. We take a holistic approach to helping entrepreneurs. Our product, Momentum Master Class, will help you strategically plan your personal life and where you are going so you no longer feel like you're letting the people around you down. It will help you understand the keystone habits that have helped entrepreneurs throughout history achieve the impossible and change the world. And it will also put you into a community of people who are just like you and I. Every day looking to optimize, get more done, create momentum, and make things happen in the world.

Go to MomentumMasterClass.com. You can check out the product and see if it's something that you're interested in, because if you're ready to do more, create more, and have a structure where you no longer feel overwhelmed, MomentumMasterClass.com will change everything.