Maintain Mind — Body Connection

Sooner or later, every business owner, it doesn't matter who you are, has a few stressful days. In fact, that's where I am. Since last Friday, it's now Tuesday. It's been pretty stressful. There's been some serious challenges in our company, but there's one thing I remember today when I am in a high-stress situation that I wish I had known 25 years ago.

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 and instead of just daydreaming 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.

This is going to be a quick podcast tonight because we have a ton going on in our business. In fact, in the past few days, we found out some really challenging team member of information. We found out that one of our senior team members, who has been with us for a while, had a ton of responsibility within our company, was actually violating our no gossip policy in a really dramatic way. In a way where it's about the most flagrant violation, we've ever seen. In addition to that, we found out that another team member, who recently left our company, has been soliciting in our clients. We are dealing with some annoyances and frustrations and even though I'm an expert in building teams, even though this is what I help other people do, this happens to all of us.

A few years ago when Cadey and I were talking about building a coaching company and building a company around our content and building a company where we showed entrepreneurs how to grow and scale teams. And then when we finally kicked it off in July of 2017, I said to Cadey, "If we're going to do this and we're going to build a company around growing and scaling businesses while we grow and scale a business, that I'm going to share everything that goes on in our business. I'm going to be transparent. I'm going to tell people what's really happening." Because far too many people give entrepreneurs a false sense of what being an entrepreneur is. It's not perfect all the time. It's not fun all the time. In fact, it's filled with stress and transition and frustration. And it can be incredible. And that's really how it's been for us the past week.

But what I've learned is that when I'm going through a high-stress situation like this, I have to rely on my routines and my habits to keep me mind-body connected. Because here's what happens when I find out that somebody has acted in a deceptive way. When I find out that somebody has lied to me. When I find out somebody is deceived me. When I find out somebody has made me feel exposed and vulnerable, I've always joked with people that, "Yeah, sure, there's a fight or flight response. My flight was always broken." I am a fight.

Ever since I was younger, I studied martial arts, I studied fighting. I have never been able to turn that off. When I get frustrated. When I get upset, I just want to go to war and clash and go bang with somebody because those feelings bring out the evolutionary hunter in me that literally wants to go and take action. But in today's world, we can't do that. That's just not an option. You can't just go find someone and take care of things anymore. That doesn't even make sense, and as a business owner, if I'm walking around all day triggered and upset and frustrated and reactive, it's not good for me. It's not good for my family, it's not good for my team, it's not good for the clients I coach.

So I've learned over time how to take that massive frustration and feeling of wanting to go take care of things and calm it down and get back into my body, mind-body connected and still be productive. And that's what I've done for the past few days. And there's a lot that goes into it. First, getting up and taking that 20-minute morning primal walk. If you're not doing that yet, you've got to go back to some of the primal walk episodes of this podcast and listen. A 20-minute walk in the morning without electronics, breathing in and out through your nose, the bilateral stimulation on the body calms the body, calms the nervous system. Brings you back to mind-body connection, and it's massive. But here's the biggest one. I meditate. I still do my morning routine. There're all kinds of stuff that I do, but if you are in a situation where you feel frustrated or upset or stressed or triggered or there's too much going on, the biggest tool that you can use, the biggest change that will be made is through hydration.

Sitting down and taking some deep breaths, that will help as well, but making sure you maintain hydration all day is a game changer. Because when you're fully hydrated, you're better mind-body connected. When you're fully hydrated, your body actually functions better. See if your body's under stress it's releasing stress hormones like I know mine has been for the past few days. If your body's under stress and it's reactive like I know mine has been for the past few days, it needs water. In fact, every function in the body doesn't just want water. It requires water. Everything that your body does from detoxification to digestion, to thinking, to breathing to every circulation, every function, 100% of what your body does requires water in order to be effective and efficient.

What happens to us when we are in a high-stress situation, especially when like I've been where you are in that fight or flight mode, the body actually shuts down your thirst instinct. Because if you're about to fight or have to run away, evolutionarily, the fight or flight instinct actually stopped our digestion. It slowed down digestion. It stopped hunger, it stopped thirst because the last thing you want to do is take on a bunch of water or a bunch of food and then have to go fight something. So your body will actually turn off the instinct that tells you to drink. You have to override that instinct through hyperhydration, which is drinking 16 ounces of water or more so that you maintain your hydration levels and when you do this, here's what will happen.

Drinking the water is actually a trigger to get you out of fight or flight. Drinking the water is actually a modality that when you take on the water, your body will actually calm down, so see if this makes sense. When you're in fight or flight, your body turns off your thirst instinct because it thinks you're about to have some type of a confrontation where you don't want to have anything more on board than you absolutely need. But when you stop and you take a couple deep breaths and you drink 16 ounces or more of water, it actually shows your body you're not in fight or flight. Physiologically you use the body to calm the brain by taking on the water and letting it know there is no fight or flight. There is no danger. I'm drinking water and things can calm down now, and that's not all that happens.

When you drink 16 ounces or more of water in a hyper-hydration, it is like a miracle what happens in the body. First, your metabolism goes up 30 to 50%. You're actually physiologically boosted. When your metabolism goes up, you think clearer, you are definitely more mind-body connected. You're more connected to what you're doing. You have more energy, you have more stamina, you have more presence, more awareness. It's crazy what just drinking that water will do. It's also crazy what happens when you don't. Because when you don't drink water, as your body starts to dehydrate, there's now studies that show that even mild to mid-severe high dehydration causes a lack of attention and awareness that is similar to having a few beers, to being a little bit buzzed, and that's without all the fun of the beers. I quit drinking 15 years ago. I just want to make that clear, but who wants to have the impairment of drinking and not even have had anything to drink?

That is one of those things that if that happens to you, you don't even know it's happening, but you are impaired. You don't even know it's happening, but you don't have the judgment you should have. You don't even know it's happening, but maybe you're not working in the right mindset. You're not working in the right direction you should. You're not putting together the unique connections that you could be, and so a lack of water completely challenges every part of your body. The same way that your entire body needs it when you don't have water, your entire body is challenged by it. And the place where your body uses the most water, the rate of highest exchange of water in the body is in the brain.

So when you look at being in a stressful situation or when you are an entrepreneur, like me, and you're in constant transition, you're always going, your days are packed. You can't get everything done. You're always trying to push to one more thing. What happens is so often all of those conditions will stop our natural thirst instinct from triggering and you know you've been there because I know I have, where you go all day and you look up and it's 4 o'clock in the afternoon and you haven't had any water at all. And you wonder why your joints are aching and your back hurts and you have a slight headache and your eyes are a little blurry because all of those things happen from dehydration too.

So when you are in transition and challenge, you have to hyper-hydrate and maintain the 10-day natural thirst protocol. The Get Thirsty Now protocol that we put out and we've had thousands of people go to getthirstynow.com and learn it, and here's a shortcut. I want you to go to getthirtynow.com, sign up for the videos and watch the videos on natural thirst because it will indelibly change your relationship with water for the rest of your life. But here's the shortcut. There're three rules.

Number one, hyper-hydrate when you get up in the morning. Before you drink anything else, before you eat anything, before you expose yourself to electronics, go get 16 ounces or more of water and go for it. I drink about 30 to 40 ounces first thing in the morning every day that I get up, room temperature water. That hyper-hydration kicks off my metabolism. Lets my body know that we are in good shape. It gets me mind-body connected. It cures the dehydration that happens overnight. That's number one.

Number two, keep water with you all day. If you're in a high-stress situation, find a water bottle that you love and keep it with you all day so that it's always there and water is always proximal to you, so anytime you need water you can get to it and drink it.

And then three. Now, this is the important one. If you think drink, now, I want you to just remember that if you think, drink. If you think, drink. Here's why. If you think about water in any way, if you look at your water bottle, if you look outside and there's a puddle of water, if you're in any way attracted to or referencing water, that is your body telling you you are thirsty. So if you think about it, pick up a glass and drink. Here's what will happen. If you do those three things; hyper-hydrate in the morning, keep water with you and if you think, drink, you will drink more water than you ever thought possible. And if you go through the 10-day natural thirst protocol where you drink nothing but water with some specific instructions, it will change your relationship with water forever.

And here's my promise to you. Water is a gateway drug to success. When people say that they think I'm joking, when I say that to people, they think I'm joking. But far too often here's what I've seen. We take one of our clients that's been working hard, doing a ton of stuff. We teach them the water protocol. They start drinking water, they get more mind-body connected, and suddenly everything in their lives elevates. It's not too far off to think that if we get better mind-body connected, if we stop toxicity in the body if we make the body run more efficiently, why wouldn't everything get better? So if you're ever in a situation like I am or if you're just an entrepreneur that's making it happen every day, make sure you are staying fully hydrated, mind-body connection, and it will help you make everything that you want to happen in your life happen.

And if you're ready to take the 10-day challenge, go to getthirstynow.com, and do me a favor. Before you start the 10-day challenge, take a selfie of your face because here's what you will see in just 10 days. From before to after, you will see a major change in your skin. You may see some weight loss, you will see a major change in the presence and awareness you feel throughout the day, and you will feel so much better. It is a complete game changer. Check out, getthirstynow.com, hyper-hydrate, get your mind-body connected and you will feel momentum like possibly you never had before.