If I said, morning, good morning. Wow, straight off the bat. We don't even rehearse this stuff. No. OK. 21st of January. Ask yourself the following first thing in the morning. What am I lacking in attaining freedom from passion? What for tranquility? What am I? A mere body, a stakeholder or reputation? None of these things. What then? A rational being. What then is demanded of me? Meditate on your actions.

How did I steer away from serenity? What did I do that was unfriendly, unsocial or uncaring? What did I fail to do in all these things? Epictetus. Wow. We're gonna talk about the morning routine and it gets a lot of grief, but if you are working in sales, you have to be at the top of your game with your mindset and all of these things. So what could winning the morning looked like?

We do very similar things, but you go and wrestle a load of blokes and I just go for a run. You've got to plan the day. So if you're in a cell where it's going to be hard, there's going to be rejection. It makes sense that probably the morning should have something in it that's a bit hard and you get things moving a little bit. Now it's got to sound trite. It's going to sound roll of the eyes cliche. Me and Jack got a little ice bath in our gardens. Yeah, not together.

Together we have our own separate ice baths. And I found getting up and getting in that is brutal. So hard. But the Stoics did the ice baths. The Stoics did the ice baths as a prescription for depression. So I think in Seneca, maybe in Seneca, he's talking about how he was feeling a bit blue and he'd gone to the doctor and the doctor gave him a prescription of cold baths.

That's mental. That's what he'd said. And what I found, so the story was you were developing the habit and I love this story because we were, we have a shared Airbnb account for the business and we were going away and you messaged a guy and said, I'm building a habit for cold water, which I think is a great way to think of things, not is there any cold water nearby? I'm building the habit and like you're being very self-aware. and we went and did it and the con, the amount that I could concentrate throughout the day.

It like I'd gotten my dopamine release early and I was just, I was just on fire. was like, I'm really kind of in the room, very present. It brought me down. So we started that and we both have that habit now. I think it's something powerful. I'm not saying that everyone should go out there and buy an ice bath, but starting the day was something hard. Some people like to call it eat the frog. It's as the day goes on and life throws its hardships at you.

Well, you've already done something. You've already got something so strong on your evidence shelf that's going to get you through the day that when you revert it back, well, I started the day hard. I can get over this. Exactly. Exactly. And when I'm when I'm in, I everyone's different in the way they cope with it. When I'm in the ice bath, I'm trying to get my mind onto. actually close my eyes and I try and concentrate on this bit of my head, which then that sounds weird. And I try and think of nothing. I try as hard as I can to think about absolutely nothing. And can I get while there's so much

tension and trying to, your body wants to gasp and like, Oh, this is horrible. Can I actually just completely calm down and get my brain on thinking about nothing? Because then I might rely on that later on in the day as a bit of evidence, something tough's happening. I want to kick off. want to chuck my pen against the door, whatever it may be. Well, in that moment, I've taught my brain early on in tough times, it's also possible to just think about nothing. Exactly. Exactly. You know, and then what I like to do, I've got, um,

I either I'll lift weights twice a week and then I'll go and do jujitsu three times a week. Something physical, something physical. But what I liked about jujitsu is it's problem solving. It's fitness, but it also is that is doing something tough. Like when I first started doing it, I'd feel nervous on the way in. I think there's a lot of big scary blokes there. Don't get me too excited. But I'm going to get there and it's going to be people ready to tear each other's head off. And I'm not going to do it. It's going to be about survival.

What it's, what it actually became was solving problems gradually and incrementally better. And also can you focus on someone not choking you out? And if you can get over that and leave feeling like, there's a little wind that didn't get choked out quite as quick today. Are you in the car on the way to work? Well, that tough conversation you've got to have at 10 o'clock suddenly doesn't feel quite as hard. Absolutely.

The other thing that I'm not too sure I think that you've dabbled in this, but one of the things that I also do is journaling. Yes, you're big on that, aren't you? I've never done it. So why I think journaling is good and I think that you probably don't not necessarily don't need to, but I think you're very good at asking yourself the questions. But journaling works as a reminder of every morning I ask myself the questions because they're written down. So I follow a formula. So rather than just sitting there and going, OK, what am I grateful for? Which is a habit that you build, but it's written down.

Like what? What's the question? So like, what, what is my, how am I feeling today? So just being in touch with, well, okay. I'm, I'm low energy today. Why is that? Okay. I'm up. Okay. Maybe I need to question. Maybe I need to do that. What am I grateful for today? So I'm trying to practice some gratitude early on in the day. What, do I want to achieve today? So if we're thinking about salespeople, you're thinking what, what, what wins do I want to day? I've had days at work within the business where you go home and you're like,

was a bit of nothing day. Nothing really happened. And you go home, you're like, that was a bit. And there are always going to be those days, not days where you necessarily feel rejected or lose, but days when not much happens. So it's like, what are some early wins that I could do? And that's where the morning routine, well, if I go to the gym and I do the ice bath and stuff like that, but what is something that I can do upfront when I need to have that difficult conversation with that person or I need to call that person, or it might even be something that you enjoy doing. So you just start to...

plan out your day because I think people that are planned, like we talk about it, that just expect to coast through the day, it doesn't really work like that. But knowing, going into the day, whether you do it the night before or the morning of, these are the things I'm going to do. It makes the day easier to achieve. Yeah. I don't think you can just arrive expecting to turn up. No. Got that? I like that. it. Thanks, mate. But there's so many things that you could put...

into a morning routine. I think doing something hard, doing something vigorous, doing something that makes you think, asking yourself these questions or there's so many things you could do with affirmations and stuff, but just having some kind of positive self-talk and planning your day is super useful for achieving the day. Something hard, something you've got to be present for, something you've got to be a bit reflective on.

That's going to be good, but it's not to say here's the one to definitely follow. Like everything it's about finding what works for you. And probably it's a prescription for if you're finding that you're showing up inconsistently, that's probably when it's time to, well, how do I start my day? If it's already working fine, you might not need it, but I've just found it's been really beneficial for me. the majority of people, they're honest, probably do work best with the routine. So having the routine.

And there's nothing to say that actually on a Sunday, you don't need to stick to it. But you know that when Monday comes around, you're doing your thing. I'm there. Hard things. Life begins. I've been Jack Frimston. I've been Zach Thompson. Remember you will die. Wow. What's that on the top of your head?