Momentum Podcast: 63

Movement Creates Momentum

by Alex Charfen

Episode Description

Movement is crucial for Evolutionary Hunters. For millennia we existed on the move, chasing something down, and going on the hunt. Movement is as natural for us as oxygen is for the rest of human beings.

Unfortunately today we get a fraction of the movement that we used to get throughout history. Many evolutionary hunters like you and I spend a lot of time at a desk, in a car, or in meetings where we move very little. This can cause constraints that can create a body aches and pains, inflammation, irritability, and rob us of our momentum.

 It is important that we remember who we are, and move. Here are some strategies I use in order to incorporate movement throughout my day and maintain, or more importantly increase my momentum.

 These are simple suggestions, but the vast majority of the world doesn't pay attention to them and will not have the unfair advantage that you will. Whether you are working on your own, navigating a conflict, or even just having a meeting with someone, movement can be a game changer, here's how.

Full Audio Transcript

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 and 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.

Welcome to the Momentum Podcast for the Entrepreneurial Personality Type. This is episode 63. I'm excited to be here with you. This is an episode entitled Movement Creates Momentum. I want to define what I mean by that. When we as evolutionary hunters don't move, we start to experience physical constraint, physiological constraint. We start to feel that slow down of not moving. We start to feel that lack of movement as constraint. When we don't move, it can actually cause us body aches, and pains, and reactivity, and frustration, and irritability, and all kinds of other stuff.

Now, here's the challenge for you and for me and for most of us these days. We don't move enough. Evolutionary hunters for millennia got up in the morning, decided what they were going to hunt, gathered their little tribe of hunters together and went out and killed something, made something happen like felt the energy, the emotion, the physical connection to the hunt and we don't do that anymore. We're in this time period now where most of our hunts happen right here online, on the phone, in an email, in a messenger, on text and we're not moving as much as we used to. In fact, you could make the argument that we move less today than we have at any time in human history because we don't have to do as much. It's easy to get things done for you. Food has become easier. Going and getting things has become easier. Heck, you can stay at your home and order food. All the products you need to sustain your house, you don't even have to go out of the house anymore. With companies like Amazon, you can get literally anything you need to your home.

What has this done? It has cut down on the naturally physiological movement that we engage in as entrepreneurs. Here's the challenge. When we start feeling constraint, what do we do? We press harder. When we start feeling constraint, what do we do? We double down. We put our shoulder down. We push against it. When you're feeling constrained and you're stuck at a desk working, you're in some type of a conflict or you're in a meeting or interaction, that is when physiological constraint will turn into mental constraint, slow us down, take away our momentum and stop us from moving forward.

Let me go through those three scenarios and show you how you can start to infuse movement into your everyday. Let's start when working. First, sitting is the new smoking. If you look at the research behind sitting in a normal chair, if you're sitting in a normal chair, I've got news for you. It's killing you, literally killing you. When you sit down in a normal chair and you bend your body in half at the waist, there is this entire series of biomechanical issues you create and chemical issues you create. You shorten the psoas. You sit down. You cut off the circulation of the body. You cut off the lymphatic system. You end up having unnatural pressure on the low back through the shoulders, through the spine. You shorten the hamstrings. You lengthen the quadriceps. There's so much more that goes on when we sit down and when we're working.

How do you counteract this? How do you use this tactic, movement creates momentum, when you're working? I have some suggestions for you. In my office, I have a standing desk that's adjustable. In fact, I'm sitting now. I can take it all the way up. I can take it down and it allows me to adjust so that if I want to stand and work, if I want to stand and type, if I want to walk around and come over and add something to the computer every few minutes, that helps me, that movement, that stimulation.

Also, I don't sit in a normal chair. I use an ergonomic chair called the HAG Capisco, but it's a leaning chair and it allows me to be much more active. It's not a normal chair with a normal back. In fact it keeps you sitting up straight most of the time. When you want to lean back, you lean back in an ergonomically correct position and having a functional chair will change everything for you.

Here's how I look at movement. Movement and stimulation are very close. One of the things that I do is under my desk I have mats made out of natural rocks. I went to the hardware store and bought tiles that normally go in the bottom of a shower and I have six of them laid under my desk so when I put my feet down, they're on a multi plane natural surface. When I'd move my feet around, I'm doing it right now, it feels fantastic. It feels like I'm massaging them. It feels incredible and it makes me feel that stimulation, that momentum of movement. When you're working, these are easy ways to create movement.

If you've been working for a while, here's my rule of thumb. If you're hyper hydrating based on the earlier podcast I did on water, you're probably getting up to go to the restroom about once an hour and that is the minimum you should be getting up. You should never sit for more than an hour whether it's in an ergonomic chair or not without getting up, walking around, creating that movement and creating that momentum.

Now, let's take the second scenario I talked about. Now, this is a big one, in a conflict. I'll share very candidly with you. When I'm in a conflict or I feel conflicted or frustrated or like I want to go after someone or I'm angry with someone, I often will stop moving. It's this juxtaposed scenario where I'm in a conflict and what I need more than anything is to move around, to let it go, to work it out, to work it through. But because I'm in a conflict, I'll stop moving. I'll isolate. I'll pull back. I'll get inside my head and I'll stop moving. This is exactly what you should not do. I'm admitting this openly to you because I want you to know if there's anyone who needs all of the coaching I give on this podcast or anywhere else, it's me. I'm the one who needs help with movement. I'm the one who needs help with avoiding conflict. I'm the one who follows all of the advice I give you because in so many ways I feel like I'm hypersensitive and that's why I've been able to figure a lot of this stuff out.

When Cadey and I have an argument or a conflict, I will often find myself sitting in the comfortable chair in my office but not doing anything. What I've realized now is if I feel conflict, if I feel a challenge, if I feel frustrated or angry with something, when I get up and I walk around, if I go outside and I take as little as a 10 minute walk, my entire perspective changes. Sometimes the conflict itself just melts away as I'm walking. Sometimes it takes care of itself. Sometimes I have a totally different perspective or opinion on how to handle it. I can tell you that in 100% of cases if I'm feeling frustrated or conflicted and I get up and walk around, it dramatically improves the situation.

Now, here's the last one. What if you're in a meeting or an interaction, an important business meeting? I've shared often that for most of my career, what I did was I was in a meeting with someone else and it was usually the most important meeting of their career. I watched a lot of people, entrepreneurs, and business owners, and executives go through incredibly stressful meetings. Sometimes meetings will last for one or two hours and, sometimes longer than that, the challenge is you don't get a lot of movement in a meeting. In fact, if you do get up and move around, you'll look like the weird guy sometimes.

Here are some suggestions in meetings. One, I just look like the weird guy. I will tell everyone, "Hey, I have trouble sitting. I'm just going to get up and stretch my legs. Does anybody else want to do it with me?" You'd be shocked. If you've got five people in a meeting, at least two or three will get up and move around with you. That's one of my tactics. The second one is if I'm in a meeting or an interaction, I will often excuse myself to go to the restroom. When I do, I'll go to the bathroom, use the facilities but then I'll go find a quiet place. For 30 seconds, I'll squat against a wall. I'll do some wall squats or I'll jump up and down or I'll walk back and forth in the hallway breathing deeply to get that movement, that reconnection mind and body so that my physiology knows that I'm creating momentum and moving forward.

I used to think that it was weird to do this. I used to think it was odd in a meeting to say this but more and more, maybe it's because of the reputation I have or how many meetings I've been in, when I ask anyone if they want to get up, they come with me or they will move around, too. I think that what often happens for people like us is we become so hyper focused on the outcome, the destination, the kill of a hunt, however you want to refer to it, that we can neglect ourselves in that scenario, in that situation. We're so focused on what we want, what we want to accomplish, what we want to achieve, what we want to get out of what we're doing right now that we forget if we just get up and take a few steps around, things will change for us.

Here's what I want you to think about over the next couple of weeks: movement creates momentum. Where are you stuck? Where are you not creating momentum? Where do you feel like you could use more? One of the tactics I use is when I get up in the morning, if I feel like I'm stuck or I'm working to an issue or a challenge or something that isn't going my way, when I do my morning primal walk, that 20 to 25 minute walk every morning, no electronics, functional shoes on a multi plane surface, I use that movement to give me solutions to create momentum. I'll ask myself the question right before I leave like wherever I'm stuck and I will work on it while I'm walking. Here's what I know for certain. If I do that, I will never come home with the same perspective, the movement, the chemical interaction in the body, the circulatory flush that it causes, the system stimulation that it causes changes my perspective, engages my mind and gives me clarity faster than just about anything else I can do.

For you, start thinking about this as you're working. How often are you sitting for an hour, two hours, three hours straight? How often are you driving without pulling over and stretching your legs and moving around and bending down, doing some air squats or some wall squats, getting the blood moving in your body? Because when you do these things, you create awareness, you create presence, you reconnect mind and body and you will create momentum. You are an evolutionary hunter, clearly the most important people in the world. When we move, we connect mind and body, we create momentum and we take on that magical effect we have in the world where we can create outcomes in the future, come back to the present and make them real.

What we do is different than what the rest of the world does. There is a higher level of stress. There is a higher level of challenge. There is a higher level of complexity in creating the future, so allow yourself movement. Allow yourself to engage mind and body. Allow yourself to get up, walk around and change your reality.

Thanks for being with me here today. I'm always excited to share with you. Because we're on the subject of physiology and because it's come up so many times recently, I just want to remind you of our hydration program, the 10 day Natural Thirst Challenge that will have you drinking more water than you ever thought possible typically within about 48 hours. In 10 days, you will create more energy, more momentum, more physiological change just from drinking water than just about anything you've ever done.

In fact recently, I'll just share a quick story with you, my good friend Ray Higdon who is just a monster in the multilevel marketing space, he's a coach and a trainer and he works with some of the top people in that world and he's really someone who reset my opinion of multilevel marketing. I had some challenges early in my career with MLMs and so I just wrote them off. But Ray sat down with me when we were together in Vegas a while ago or, well, just outside of Vegas and he explained to me that MLMs are these incredible place for entrepreneurs to get started. It's like a breeding ground for entrepreneurial activity and I totally agree with him. I bought in completely.

I shared some of my stuff with Ray and he recently went through the 10 day challenge. It was funny. The second day he sent me a picture of himself looking like somebody had beaten him up on the couch. Then he left me a voicemail on the fourth day saying he was experiencing some body pains and some aches and really felt like he was going to be a hard case. Then by the eighth day, he left me this incredible message where he said, "Alex, I'm feeling more energy than I ever have. My body aches and pains are gone. I feel like I've completely reset my entire system." I'm paraphrasing here, not quoting. He said he will never go back to energy drinks. He doesn't think he'll go back to coffee unless there's a special scenario. That he completely and totally reconnected with physiological momentum that water gives you. If it can work for Ray, I know it will work for you.

Go to getthirstynow.com, getthirstynow.com. You can do it right now from your phone or the computer that you're sitting in front of. Give us your information and we will put you into the 10 day Natural Thirst Challenge completely free of charge. I created this system for my clients to help them drink more water than they ever thought possible and I know it will work for you. Thanks for being here with me. I look forward to sharing episode 64 with you tomorrow.

Thank You For Listening!

I am truly grateful that you have chosen to spend your time listening to me and my podcast.

Please feel free to reach out if you have a question or feedback via our Contact Us page.

Please leave me a review on iTunes and share my podcast with your friends and family.

With gratitude,

Alex

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