It’s Friday, 08:30AM on a glorious Friday morning in Stuttgart.

I’m about to be taken through my paces on a 45-min session with a personal trainer.

After this, we’re go through an ‘Animal Flow’ routine with one of the team’s partners.

Then we jump in the sauna for 20 mins to sweat it out.

(Interesting fact: Bryan Johnson saunas with an ice pack on his testicles for fertility - we did not do this)

This is not unusual for influencers like Nicolas.

In fact, this is his regular Friday.

Nicolas is one of the busiest people I know.

But he’s still ruthless in blocking out time for self-care, spending time with his wife and kids, and socialising.

How?

Well, let’s have a look…

This is how Apples’ CEO starts his day.

Up at 3:45AM responding to external e-mails before hitting the gym at 5AM.

Personally, I can’t think of anything worse.

Looking at a screen first thing.

Whilst ‘fuelling’ my body with chemicals.

All I can say is, I hope he tanks a tonne of activated charcoal to detox before hitting the hay at 8PM (unlikely).

For people that live in the real world…

(i.e that don’t have a nanny, and that don’t have a gajillion dollars to spend on assistants.)

You need something that’s much easier, and far more sustainable.

My first job out of Uni was selling houses.

Crappy dirt cheap houses to London investors who wanted to make 10% on their investments.

I picked up the phone.

Dialled the number.

And a woman answered.

What I thought I said was:

“Hey, this is Adam from 4Sale2U - I can see in my notes you may be looking into investment property.”

What came out was probably more like:

“Hey this is Ada frm 4shlth t…flllksaaaa”

She said:

“Do you want to call me back?”

I literally had no idea what was going on.

But after the second time it happened, when I also got tunnel vision, a headache and felt like I was going to pass out.

I realised it was migraines.

And I’ve been battling with them ever since.

Btw - I did call her back, and she rejected me, but at least she was nice about it.

Stress was my first trigger.

Not learning from my mistakes, using the money (and the knowledge about property hotspots) I made from selling houses - I bought my first home.

A 3-bed semi with garage and pre-landscaped garden for £85k (yup, that’s Northern property for you folks).

I’d been hitting the gym hard.

I’d got a personal trainer to look at my nutrition.

I’d been pushing myself at work towards higher and higher commissions.

I’d been holding myself to higher and higher standards - having to be the best of the best of the best - You know, the Top Gun of cr** property sales.

And I was living off a diet of lean chicken and brown rice.

I’d just moved in, it was the morning after the move, and I was sat in a fake pale blue directors chair, in an empty living room, with my face in my hands. Crying.

I had an infection running up my arm.

I was coming out of a pretty bad virus.

I had blood that was showing signs of anaemia with low iron.

My personal trainer (who wasn’t a dietician) had put my on just about the worse diet for my body / blood.

Talking of the worst diets - At Beijing 2008, Usain Bolt won 3 medals, but distrusted the local food and lived almost entirely on McDonald’s chicken nuggets. An estimated 1,000 over 10 days!

This would not have worked for me.

Diet was my second trigger.

And you know what a good way to boost blood iron levels is?

Yup - red meat.

Nicolas gets his from a farm a mile away from his house, raised and butchered by a fireman in his spare time!?

At one point in my career I was selling live agricultural monitoring systems to farms.

Yup, I was selling the tech that monitored the very chickens that end up in Usain Bolt’s stomach.

I’d sit all day in a makeshift office, with extremely intense artificial light directly above my head.

This was combined with staring at a screen literally all day (with maybe a 30 min break for lunch).

One day I was driving home.

My feet began to tingle.

My right arm started to go numb.

My mouth and tongue started to go numb as well.

Another migraine.

Poor fake light (or lack of light) was my third trigger.

Richard Branson plays tennis morning and evening and kitesurfs on Necker Island, claiming exercise gives him “four additional hours of productivity” a day.

Outside.

Whenver Nicolas meets with friends a colleagues, they run.

Outside.

This is the type of boring advice you see online every single day.

But you know what.

I don’t care, because I still have to remind myself of all of these things every day.

When the kids keep you up at night.

When you’ve a lot of client work on.

When you’re travelling a lot.

It’s easy to lose track.

So the best ‘hacks’ I’ve found aren’t really hacks.

They’re as simple as:

The above is the way Nicolas blocks his calendar (this is showing an hour behind as I’m in GMT and he’s in CEST).

Green = Exercise / self-case

Yellow = Family & Friends

Sometimes the routine is just as powerful as the activity.

Beethoven counted out 60 coffee beans per cup of coffee every day.

Probably not because 55 or 65 affected the taste much.

But because it was his ritual.

And with rituals come balance.

And with balance comes less stress, and more energy.

Simple.

So, that’s all for this week folks.

Hope it helped.

Adam

—

P.S - If you’re struggling with your health, or stress, hit reply and let me know. I’m not a doctor, but I have tried pretty much everything outside what modern medicine can’t help, so give me a shout.

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