Living in the Present: A Chat with Lee Eldridge on Energy, Habits, and Purpose

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What's the one, one thing that we do every

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day that pushes us forward?

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And once we focus on that, and once we get that done, that

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allows kind of the next process.

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The next is to have a realization that.

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The time you spent out of the business can be just as important as

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the time you spent in the business.

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Are you ready to break free from your old habits and create a better life

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for yourself and those around you?

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If so, welcome to Unshakable Habits.

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The podcast dedicated to helping men be better husbands, fathers,

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and leaders by prioritizing their physical and mental wellbeing.

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Each week we'll look at health from a 360 degree perspective with

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inspiring stories and practical strategies for building unshakable

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habits that'll transform your life.

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Join Stephen Box, a board certified health and wellness coach, and let's change

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the world together one habit at a time.

Stephen Box: 00:01:10

Hey everybody.

Stephen Box: 00:01:11

Welcome to the Unshakable Habits podcast.

Stephen Box: 00:01:14

I am your host, Stephen Vox, and this is the podcast where we help men to.

Stephen Box: 00:01:19

Live healthier lives so that they can be the father's, husbands and

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leaders that they are meant to be.

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And today I have a special guest who is going to, Talking to us about something

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that's a little bit different, something that most of us don't really account for.

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Uh, what he does is he helps busy dads, busy working dads.

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Uh, so whether that's you working for a company or whether you have your own

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business and, uh, He focuses on instead of time management, which we've all heard

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about, is this idea of energy management.

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Uh, so very interesting conversation that we have ahead of us today, and

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I'm looking forward to jumping in.

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So without further ado, allow me to introduce my guest

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today, Lee Eldridge Lee.

Stephen Box: 00:02:08

Hey there to the podcast.

Stephen Box: 00:02:10

Thank you so much for having me.

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So, Lee, you kind of have a little bit of a unique perspective here because

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not only are you a, a working father yourself, not only at some point did you

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find yourself in the exact same position as the men that you help, but you also

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have coached professional athletes.

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So you kind of have this different perspective on the idea of what

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it takes to perform at a high level on a consistent basis.

Lee Eldridge: 00:02:37

Yep.

Lee Eldridge: 00:02:37

Yep.

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So, kind of a bit of a broad spectrum in terms of experience in professional sports

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and also in high performing business.

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And high performing business for me doesn't mean, you know,

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fortune 500, it can be in, in any category from that point of view.

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There are some amazing founders out there or, or people running small

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companies that are performing.

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At high performance or or high performing people, basically.

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So yeah, it doesn't really matter kind of where you are, the level you're performing

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at, but more the performance in itself.

Stephen Box: 00:03:09

Yeah, it's, it's kinda like the concept of, of exercise, right?

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Where, you know, when we say lift heavy, you know, lift heavy

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is a very broad idea, right?

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It's all relevant on where you are in your own skill level and in your own life.

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So I.

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High performance doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be Fortune 500.

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It can literally be a solopreneur.

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Yeah, exactly.

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Wearing all the hats in their business.

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Matter of fact, that might be even higher performance.

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Right?

Lee Eldridge: 00:03:35

Yeah.

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And, and to kind of touch on that, that everyone's talking about high

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performance and peak performance, but inevitably, if you, if you use

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that terminology high and peak, there has to be dips in your performance.

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You, you know, You can't perform highly all the time, otherwise

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you're not performing at your max.

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There's always a little bit more to, to do, basically.

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So it's a, it's an interesting area that's or of interesting topic,

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topic of conversation at the moment.

Stephen Box: 00:04:00

Very interesting.

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Very interesting.

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So, we'll, we'll kind of touch on that here in a little bit.

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Can we maybe start with your, your own story.

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You were coaching Min already and, and you were kind of helping them with

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some of these concepts and then, There came a point where your daughter said

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something to you and it was kind of this light bulb moment for you that you

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had kind of fallen into the same trap.

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Could, could you share a little bit about that with us?

Stephen Box: 00:04:24

Yeah,

Lee Eldridge: 00:04:24

so kind of just after post pandemic kind of have

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fancy a change in terms of working.

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From, uh, being in professional sports and then also being in a performance company

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and dipping back into professional sports.

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And then I think it was a Saturday morning and my daughter was like,

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daddy, daddy, daddy screaming at me basically to play Lego with her.

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I think that was, um, and at that current time I was kind of on my phone,

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I think LinkedIn, trying to connect with somebody regarding my business.

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And I just thought to myself that this really isn't the way to do it.

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And there must be other dads out there.

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And from my previous, you know, experience, I'd sat opposite c o c-suite

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individuals, predominantly males who were kind of talking to me about this, this

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challenge that they were having and how although they had everything in terms

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of a career, in terms of a title and the trappings that come with that from.

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Financial responsibility, different opportunities, traveling, et cetera.

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They just didn't really feel very happy in themselves, um, as a father, as a

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husband, and, and as an individual.

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Um, and then I.

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I kind of thought to myself, right, okay, there must be a different way of doing it

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and I must be able to look back in terms of my previous experience in professional

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sports and how I can adjust that.

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So one area in professional sports is as a performance coach.

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Before you kind of even step into the gym or onto the pitch

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to work with the athletes, you've pretty much done a needs analysis.

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And a needs analysis is we look at the sport, we look at all the research that's

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gone past, we, you know, watch games.

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We talk to athletes, we talk to coaches to get an understanding of the physiological

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demands of the sports, the mental demands, the emotional demands, and you.

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So that we can go in, um, and basically start to work with those athletes or those

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coaches to improve the team's performance.

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So I was like, right, okay, I need to do a needs analysis.

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And there wasn't much out there regarding business dads.

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So I decided to interview dads.

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So got onto like LinkedIn and YouTube and just started to

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try and have interviews or.

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I was thinking right, this isn't gonna take too long.

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Um, and it's to get to 50 was my number and took me probably around

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six to seven months to interview business dads about their kind of

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challenges and their fears and.

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It took a long time and it's still ongoing, the research, I'm still

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speaking to dads and kind of getting a better understanding, but my two

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biggest questions to them was, you know, what's the biggest challenges

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that you're facing in your business and as a dad, and you know, what's the

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biggest fear from those challenges?

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And kind of bore out was basically the three big areas that most of them kind

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of spoke to me about was one, this kind of feeling or this lack of time.

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Second was this idea of lack of engagement.

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You know, being in the room but not really being in the room because you're

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too busy thinking about something else.

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Um, and lastly was this whole kind of definition about success.

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You know, My company doesn't make this much money, or I don't get this role,

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or however it may look from a company point of view, that, and how that

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defined me as a, as a dad basically.

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And in terms of kind of the fears, the big fears were, you know, I, I

Lee Eldridge: 00:08:00

don't get to see my kids grow up.

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I don't create great relationships with them.

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Um, and then on the flip side is that, you know, I can't push my

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business forward enough to a level of.

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Success or what I believe is success.

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So once kind of doing that and putting the two together, really

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kind of start to think about, right, where do we look at it?

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And, you know, how can we not necessarily improve the amount of time that we

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have because we, we can't do that.

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So how can we improve our energy?

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So it's not necessarily how many hours in the day, it's what we put into

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those hours and how that fluctuates.

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And we can talk about that a little bit more.

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How can we improve our engagement so that when you're in the

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business, you're in the business.

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When you're a dad, you're a dad.

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When you're a husband or a partner or whatever it might

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be you, you are that person.

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So we know that when we perform our best or when we look at kind of flow

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state research or when we're like, yeah, just in that moment and we're just.

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At a peak performance level, we're always just thinking about one thing.

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We can't be thinking about others, and there's loads of professional

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athletes that this, this has hit home to them in terms of, you

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know, they've kind of struggled.

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And story for me is when working in rugby and with a international athlete,

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And we hadn't changed anything in his training and or his performance.

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And it just started to dip and it just started to kind of go down slightly.

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And we were a bit concerned and we are really looking into our

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training programs and recovery.

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And then we had, I had a conversation with him and basically he was about

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to go through a breakup with his wife and how that was gonna affect the

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family and all this kind of stuff.

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Kind of hit me that.

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Not only what happens inside the training ground or on the

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pitch affects performance.

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It's so holistic.

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It's kind of outside.

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If we relate that now obviously to, to business dads, that that

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makes complete sense basically.

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And then the last thing is like, right, how do we define that set success?

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So how do you build out a vision, a value, a purpose?

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What are your big pillars in your life?

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And how are your foundations of performance?

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You know, how are you, how are you as a human being in terms your overall.

Lee Eldridge: 00:10:11

Wellbeing, you know, sleep, eating, movement, thinking,

Lee Eldridge: 00:10:15

feeling all those different areas.

Lee Eldridge: 00:10:17

And that's kind of it in a, in a short term basically.

Stephen Box: 00:10:22

Okay.

Stephen Box: 00:10:22

So sorry, we just dump, sorry, that's a long answer.

Stephen Box: 00:10:25

No, no, you're good.

Stephen Box: 00:10:26

You're good.

Stephen Box: 00:10:26

We, we just, but we did just dump like a thousand gyms on people.

Stephen Box: 00:10:30

Right?

Stephen Box: 00:10:30

So let's, let's kind of go back through and, and break these down a little bit.

Stephen Box: 00:10:34

So a couple things that stood out for me there.

Stephen Box: 00:10:36

Number one is you talked about this idea of.

Stephen Box: 00:10:40

Things being connected yet separate.

Stephen Box: 00:10:43

Right.

Stephen Box: 00:10:44

And I think this is something that a lot of people struggle with.

Stephen Box: 00:10:46

Um, you know, for a lot of the guys out there, it is that issue of when

Stephen Box: 00:10:52

I'm trying to spend time with my family, I'm thinking about work.

Stephen Box: 00:10:55

Or when I'm at work, I'm stressed out by things that are going on at home.

Stephen Box: 00:11:02

On top of that, those things also affect things like our physical health, right?

Stephen Box: 00:11:07

We, and then maybe we're stressed out, we're tired.

Stephen Box: 00:11:10

That leads to poor nutritional choices.

Stephen Box: 00:11:12

You know, we're not sleeping well and emotionally, mentally, we're,

Stephen Box: 00:11:18

we're drained and, and all these different areas of health really start

Stephen Box: 00:11:23

to have an impact on one another.

Stephen Box: 00:11:27

So I think for a lot of people it's this idea that, okay, if all these

Stephen Box: 00:11:31

things impact each other, but how do I focus on one thing at a time

Stephen Box: 00:11:37

without neglecting the other things?

Stephen Box: 00:11:39

Yeah.

Lee Eldridge: 00:11:41

So it, it really becomes down or comes down to the fact of,

Lee Eldridge: 00:11:45

first of all, knowing what that one thing is that you've got to focus on.

Lee Eldridge: 00:11:48

Um, and business, it, it can be a challenge.

Lee Eldridge: 00:11:52

You know, there's so much happening and everyone's kind of running

Lee Eldridge: 00:11:55

around, but for me it's like, right.

Lee Eldridge: 00:11:58

Um, and I love the work of the, of the One thing book where basically, you

Lee Eldridge: 00:12:03

know, we talk about 80 20 all the time.

Lee Eldridge: 00:12:05

You know, 28% of our results come from 20% of what we do.

Lee Eldridge: 00:12:08

But really if we narrow that down and think like, right, what's the

Lee Eldridge: 00:12:11

one, one thing that we do every day?

Lee Eldridge: 00:12:14

That pushes us forward.

Lee Eldridge: 00:12:15

And once we focus on that, and once we get that done, that

Lee Eldridge: 00:12:19

allows kind of the next process.

Lee Eldridge: 00:12:21

The next is to have a realization that the time you spent out of the

Lee Eldridge: 00:12:27

business can be just as important as the time you spent in the business.

Lee Eldridge: 00:12:32

So, you know, it's impossible for us to be on from, you know, 6:00 AM

Lee Eldridge: 00:12:38

on a Monday all the way through 6:00 PM on a Friday and, and perform at.

Lee Eldridge: 00:12:42

The highest percentile ever.

Lee Eldridge: 00:12:45

And if you put that physically, you know, if I said to an athlete, right,

Lee Eldridge: 00:12:48

we're gonna change from, we're gonna train from 6:00 AM on Monday morning,

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all the way till 6:00 PM on Friday.

Lee Eldridge: 00:12:53

Everyone would be like, you're nuts.

Lee Eldridge: 00:12:56

It's just not gonna work.

Lee Eldridge: 00:12:58

By Wednesday I'm gonna be, you know, dead basically, or too tired

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to train or injuries, et cetera.

Lee Eldridge: 00:13:03

But in our heads, we believe that's what the brain can just cope with

Lee Eldridge: 00:13:07

that amount of cognitive load.

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But we know now it can't.

Lee Eldridge: 00:13:11

So what I'm saying there is when you are a dad, it's like, right, okay.

Lee Eldridge: 00:13:16

Yeah, I'm dad now and.

Lee Eldridge: 00:13:18

This is my main focus and this allows me to to, to problem solve

Lee Eldridge: 00:13:25

things in the back of my head that I'm not really thinking about.

Lee Eldridge: 00:13:27

But we know, so for example, we know that sleep, especially kind of

Lee Eldridge: 00:13:32

REM sleep, is ipro I important for memory learning and problem solving.

Lee Eldridge: 00:13:37

You know, that idea that lots of your.

Lee Eldridge: 00:13:39

Problems you solve are actually at night, and then you wake up in the

Lee Eldridge: 00:13:42

morning and then you're walking along.

Lee Eldridge: 00:13:43

You're like, oh yeah, I know how to fix that now.

Lee Eldridge: 00:13:45

And that hasn't happened just then.

Lee Eldridge: 00:13:47

That's happened probably while you were sleeping.

Lee Eldridge: 00:13:49

So,

Stephen Box: 00:13:53

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:13:53

So one thing that I find interesting here, uh, just to

Stephen Box: 00:13:56

give a, a quick example of this.

Stephen Box: 00:13:58

So the other day or a couple weeks ago, I was watching, uh,

Stephen Box: 00:14:02

American football, uh, game.

Stephen Box: 00:14:04

I know, I know you coach what we call soccer here in the us,

Stephen Box: 00:14:07

which I'll call it football.

Stephen Box: 00:14:08

Uh, so I was watching, uh, my 49 ERs.

Stephen Box: 00:14:11

I'm a San Francisco 49 ERs fan, and after the game they asked Nick Bosa,

Stephen Box: 00:14:15

who's our, our star defensive end.

Stephen Box: 00:14:18

You know, when you're chasing after the quarterback, what are you thinking about?

Stephen Box: 00:14:22

What goes through your head?

Stephen Box: 00:14:24

And he paused for a second and he goes, really Nothing.

Stephen Box: 00:14:27

I'm just, I'm literally just thinking about running in front, running

Stephen Box: 00:14:31

through the guy in front of me.

Stephen Box: 00:14:32

Right?

Stephen Box: 00:14:33

And it's this idea that, you know, here you have someone who's probably

Stephen Box: 00:14:38

going to be named defensive player of the year in the N F L this year.

Stephen Box: 00:14:43

All of his mental focus throughout the week.

Stephen Box: 00:14:45

He's watching film, he's practicing technique at practice.

Stephen Box: 00:14:49

He's doing all these things and there's a lot of awareness and

Stephen Box: 00:14:52

consciousness all through the week.

Stephen Box: 00:14:55

But on game day, he's just showing up and letting instincts takeover.

Stephen Box: 00:14:59

He's not thinking about it.

Stephen Box: 00:15:01

He's not.

Stephen Box: 00:15:02

He's not worried about it.

Stephen Box: 00:15:03

And I think for a lot of guys, this is kind of the step that they miss, right?

Stephen Box: 00:15:07

It's they think either they're just gonna automatically do it without

Stephen Box: 00:15:11

putting in the awareness work, or they worry that they're gonna have to

Stephen Box: 00:15:16

constantly be focused on the awareness.

Stephen Box: 00:15:18

And the idea here is we work on these skills, we build them up,

Stephen Box: 00:15:23

and then at some point they become ingrained enough in us that we no

Stephen Box: 00:15:28

longer have to think about them.

Stephen Box: 00:15:29

They just kind of happen naturally.

Stephen Box: 00:15:31

Correct.

Stephen Box: 00:15:32

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:15:33

Yep.

Stephen Box: 00:15:34

So another thing that you kind of touched on earlier was this idea and, and I

Stephen Box: 00:15:38

think you kind of touched on it a little bit too, with this idea of like, if I

Stephen Box: 00:15:41

try to train somebody Monday through Friday, you know, all day long, I.

Stephen Box: 00:15:47

Is we can't just always be at the top level, right?

Stephen Box: 00:15:51

There has to be dips in, in the schedule in order to allow us to recover.

Stephen Box: 00:15:56

So can you touch on that a little bit more about why it's so important that

Stephen Box: 00:15:59

we not always try to be performing at the, at that peak level of energy?

Stephen Box: 00:16:05

Yeah.

Lee Eldridge: 00:16:05

So, you know, let's think about kind of how we are as a human being.

Lee Eldridge: 00:16:09

We have peaks, natural peaks and troughs of, of kind of cognitive

Lee Eldridge: 00:16:15

awareness and physical awareness.

Lee Eldridge: 00:16:16

You know, we, we wake up hopefully after a decent rest.

Lee Eldridge: 00:16:19

We have kind of, you know, some hormones that kick in to kind of

Lee Eldridge: 00:16:23

help us focus and get up and running.

Lee Eldridge: 00:16:26

And then there's normally like what we would call a postprandial dip.

Lee Eldridge: 00:16:29

So after lunchtime it's a natural people.

Lee Eldridge: 00:16:32

Yeah.

Lee Eldridge: 00:16:32

Feel a bit tired or, or you, for, you know, and that can

Lee Eldridge: 00:16:36

change depending on who you are.

Lee Eldridge: 00:16:38

So, you know, if you're an early bird, then yeah, that might happen.

Lee Eldridge: 00:16:41

But, you know, if you're a, um, and kind of more of a night owl, then the

Lee Eldridge: 00:16:45

mornings might not be so great for you.

Lee Eldridge: 00:16:47

Late afternoons, early evening might be better for you.

Lee Eldridge: 00:16:49

And it really does depend on you as an individual and Yeah.

Lee Eldridge: 00:16:53

And how you kind of operate.

Lee Eldridge: 00:16:56

For me it's like right, we're.

Lee Eldridge: 00:16:58

Similar in that respect, but slight differences, slight variations.

Lee Eldridge: 00:17:01

And then what I'm saying to people is, right, what are you putting in

Lee Eldridge: 00:17:03

those chunks of time to make sure that you get the best out of it?

Lee Eldridge: 00:17:08

So, you know, a big thing is Monday morning meetings, you know, nine

Lee Eldridge: 00:17:14

to 11 or you know, morning meetings and I'm like, well, this is kind of

Lee Eldridge: 00:17:18

the real, it's not great habit to do because in theory, again, really.

Lee Eldridge: 00:17:26

Four or five hours from once we've woken up, that's kind of

Lee Eldridge: 00:17:29

our perfect time to be doing work.

Lee Eldridge: 00:17:31

And what we don't need is a meeting that isn't really kind of what I would say

Lee Eldridge: 00:17:35

is your most important tasks of work.

Lee Eldridge: 00:17:38

Yeah.

Lee Eldridge: 00:17:39

So once we figure that out and we start to put in those building blocks

Lee Eldridge: 00:17:45

of focused work around one thing or, or or two things that we need to get

Lee Eldridge: 00:17:50

done, we kind of get the sense of we actually have achieved something.

Lee Eldridge: 00:17:54

Whereas a lot of people I work with who are kind of back to back

Lee Eldridge: 00:17:57

meetings, you know, they get to the end of the day and they're like,

Lee Eldridge: 00:18:00

well, I haven't really done any work.

Lee Eldridge: 00:18:01

All I've done is just been in meetings.

Lee Eldridge: 00:18:04

And you know, Microsoft Labs did some amazing research where they looked at

Lee Eldridge: 00:18:07

back-to-back meetings compared to people who had slight pauses and slight breaks.

Lee Eldridge: 00:18:12

Five minutes in between each meeting and.

Lee Eldridge: 00:18:15

Lots of the metrics for lots of the data in terms of kind of like stress reduction

Lee Eldridge: 00:18:19

and creativity and all those nice things that we talk about happened basically.

Lee Eldridge: 00:18:23

So what I do with a lot of dads I work with is we sit down and we say,

Lee Eldridge: 00:18:28

right, okay, what's, if you could do one thing today for your business, one

Lee Eldridge: 00:18:32

thing today for your family, one thing today for yourself, what would it be?

Lee Eldridge: 00:18:38

Plug those in in your week.

Lee Eldridge: 00:18:40

Cement them in.

Lee Eldridge: 00:18:41

Create these habits.

Lee Eldridge: 00:18:43

'cause what we know is that habits build routines.

Lee Eldridge: 00:18:46

Routines build consistency, and then consistently builds performance.

Lee Eldridge: 00:18:50

Once that's done, then we can start to kind of build from there, basically.

Lee Eldridge: 00:18:55

Yeah, it's,

Stephen Box: 00:18:56

it's always an interesting point that you bring up there where

Stephen Box: 00:18:59

people think about habits as the end goal.

Stephen Box: 00:19:03

Right.

Stephen Box: 00:19:04

And I've, I'm also a firm believer that habits actually are, Not necessarily

Stephen Box: 00:19:10

the, the first step because I'm, I'm a big believer that developing the skills

Stephen Box: 00:19:15

is actually the first step, right?

Stephen Box: 00:19:17

Because we need the right skills to be able to develop the habits,

Stephen Box: 00:19:20

but people think about, oh, I need to get more consistent.

Stephen Box: 00:19:23

No.

Stephen Box: 00:19:23

What you need to get is the ability to start building habits.

Stephen Box: 00:19:27

Habits help you become consistent, consist leads to routines, right?

Stephen Box: 00:19:31

And, and at least to results.

Stephen Box: 00:19:33

And so when you are.

Stephen Box: 00:19:37

Consistent at something, that's when you start to get the results.

Stephen Box: 00:19:40

You know, a somebody who shows up every day and gives a B effort, well outperform

Stephen Box: 00:19:48

somebody who shows up once a week and gives an a plus effort every single time.

Lee Eldridge: 00:19:52

Yeah.

Lee Eldridge: 00:19:54

Simple.

Lee Eldridge: 00:19:54

You know, and if we look at it from a business perspective,

Lee Eldridge: 00:19:57

it makes clear understanding.

Lee Eldridge: 00:19:58

It makes clear sense.

Lee Eldridge: 00:20:00

Um, you know, Social media is one of it.

Lee Eldridge: 00:20:03

Everyone talks about it.

Lee Eldridge: 00:20:04

Just be consistent.

Lee Eldridge: 00:20:05

Just be consistent.

Lee Eldridge: 00:20:06

Just be consistent.

Lee Eldridge: 00:20:07

Um, you know, and that's, that's if, if you look at, you know, the N F L for

Lee Eldridge: 00:20:16

example, or any professional athlete, all they've done is they've stayed really

Lee Eldridge: 00:20:20

consistent over a long period of time and just got a little bit better each year.

Lee Eldridge: 00:20:27

On year on year.

Lee Eldridge: 00:20:28

And so that, that's, that's where they're at basically, because

Lee Eldridge: 00:20:32

that consistent work has gone in.

Lee Eldridge: 00:20:35

And it can be tough because you can look back.

Lee Eldridge: 00:20:39

I move that far on from where I was this time last year,

Lee Eldridge: 00:20:44

or you know, six months ago.

Lee Eldridge: 00:20:47

But you're still moving.

Lee Eldridge: 00:20:48

You're still kind of getting better, you know, and we know that mastery is

Lee Eldridge: 00:20:52

not a linear process, unfortunately.

Lee Eldridge: 00:20:54

Otherwise I think that everybody would be, yeah, super fit, healthy, you

Lee Eldridge: 00:20:59

know, financially free, whatever you want to call, because it'd be kind of

Lee Eldridge: 00:21:03

plain today, plain to see that you, you're moving in the right direction.

Stephen Box: 00:21:08

Yeah, I actually have this concept that I teach and, and this is

Stephen Box: 00:21:11

something I completely made up on my own, so I don't have any name for it.

Stephen Box: 00:21:14

I should probably put a, a name on it.

Stephen Box: 00:21:16

Um, but I, I just kind of roughly call it the, the ten eighty ten principle.

Stephen Box: 00:21:21

And this is this idea that anytime that you're learning something new or you're

Stephen Box: 00:21:26

trying to make a change to something, the first 10% of your effort is really hard.

Stephen Box: 00:21:32

It's completely new to you.

Stephen Box: 00:21:34

It's something that you're having to teach yourself.

Stephen Box: 00:21:36

You're having to override those existing habits that you have

Stephen Box: 00:21:40

that aren't as productive.

Stephen Box: 00:21:43

That middle 80% is actually where the majority of growth happens.

Stephen Box: 00:21:47

You know, at this point you've kind of gotten through the hard part.

Stephen Box: 00:21:50

Things are easy.

Stephen Box: 00:21:51

You're, you're making mistakes still, but you're learning from them and

Stephen Box: 00:21:55

you're able to adapt a lot easier.

Stephen Box: 00:21:57

And there's just a ton of growth.

Stephen Box: 00:21:58

And for most people, honestly, they never get past that 80% that, and

Stephen Box: 00:22:04

that's plenty good enough for, for them.

Stephen Box: 00:22:06

For the people who want to go to the next level, there's that last 10% and that 10%

Stephen Box: 00:22:11

is mastery and people don't realize that.

Stephen Box: 00:22:15

In that first 10%, you can't grow from 1% to 10% overnight.

Stephen Box: 00:22:21

It's a, it's a more slow, tedious process because you're learning new things.

Stephen Box: 00:22:25

And then at the end of it, because you've already developed so many skills, because

Stephen Box: 00:22:29

you've already gotten so many things in place, that last 10% is extremely slow.

Stephen Box: 00:22:34

Like that's where we start getting like a half a percent increase

Stephen Box: 00:22:38

is actually a great thing.

Stephen Box: 00:22:39

Right.

Stephen Box: 00:22:40

And that's.

Stephen Box: 00:22:41

A lot of times you mention professional athletes, that's kind of where they get

Stephen Box: 00:22:44

to where they're already in that last 10% because they've consistently put

Stephen Box: 00:22:49

in the work in that 80% and now they're just trying to master it and, and I see

Stephen Box: 00:22:54

people all the time, they, oh, I'm gonna go do this workout that this actor did to

Stephen Box: 00:22:58

go play a comic book hero, or I'm gonna go train like a professional athlete.

Stephen Box: 00:23:03

It's like, no, you have to put in the 80% work before you ever get to that.

Stephen Box: 00:23:08

You can't just jump to the last 10%.

Lee Eldridge: 00:23:12

And if I remember, there's kind of four steps and

Lee Eldridge: 00:23:14

I, I'll try and remember, but the first one is conscious mistakes.

Lee Eldridge: 00:23:19

Mm-hmm.

Lee Eldridge: 00:23:20

No, sorry.

Lee Eldridge: 00:23:20

Unconscious mistakes.

Lee Eldridge: 00:23:22

So you make mistakes, but you dunno why you made mistakes.

Lee Eldridge: 00:23:25

And the next step is conscious mistakes.

Lee Eldridge: 00:23:27

So you know why you're making those mistakes.

Lee Eldridge: 00:23:30

The next step is conscious.

Lee Eldridge: 00:23:34

Performance, so you know why you're doing really well.

Lee Eldridge: 00:23:37

And then the final is unconscious performance where you don't

Lee Eldridge: 00:23:39

think about anything and you just go off and perform basically.

Lee Eldridge: 00:23:43

And we have go through that, that learning process.

Lee Eldridge: 00:23:47

And even we've gone through that learning process.

Lee Eldridge: 00:23:48

You know, the 0.5 percents.

Lee Eldridge: 00:23:51

The one percenters are the ones that kind of we talk about

Lee Eldridge: 00:23:55

now, especially in the UK or.

Lee Eldridge: 00:23:59

In the Olympics, there's a guy in the UK called Sir David Brailsford,

Lee Eldridge: 00:24:04

and he came up with the whole area of what we call marginal gains.

Lee Eldridge: 00:24:09

So he took on board the British cycling team when they were doing, they

Lee Eldridge: 00:24:15

hadn't won any gold medals, nothing.

Lee Eldridge: 00:24:18

And he imposed this idea of marginal gains where he would go round and look for

Lee Eldridge: 00:24:23

simple or easy, you know, one percenters.

Lee Eldridge: 00:24:26

Basically the idea that, you know, if we can be 1% in everything, it's

Lee Eldridge: 00:24:30

gonna improve our performance by five.

Lee Eldridge: 00:24:37

Painting the, the tour bus white, completely bright white so they

Lee Eldridge: 00:24:41

could see any dirt that could, um, cause infections in the athletes.

Lee Eldridge: 00:24:45

Getting doctors to teach athletes how to wash their hands properly, so after food

Lee Eldridge: 00:24:49

that, you know, they wouldn't pass germs into their mouth, you know, traveling

Lee Eldridge: 00:24:53

with mattresses and pillows the same as the ones they had at home, and all those

Lee Eldridge: 00:24:57

types of little things to kind of add up.

Lee Eldridge: 00:25:00

And in the UK it kind of, you know, especially from a business world, it,

Lee Eldridge: 00:25:04

it brought loads of kind of traction.

Lee Eldridge: 00:25:06

For me, that's great.

Lee Eldridge: 00:25:08

But if we look at your foundations, It's really difficult to grow

Lee Eldridge: 00:25:13

by half a percent or a percent.

Lee Eldridge: 00:25:15

If you are not sleeping well.

Lee Eldridge: 00:25:16

If you are not eating well, if you have no movement or you're not feeding your

Lee Eldridge: 00:25:21

body with movement, if you are not doing any type of, you know, stress tolerance

Lee Eldridge: 00:25:27

or mental training, if your cognitive performance is suffering you, you're

Lee Eldridge: 00:25:31

just never gonna get anywhere basically.

Lee Eldridge: 00:25:33

So it's good for me when I go in and work is to step back and reinvestigate

Lee Eldridge: 00:25:38

those foundations basically.

Stephen Box: 00:25:41

Yeah, and I, I love the fact that you bring this up, right?

Stephen Box: 00:25:44

Because I'm sure there's somebody out there listening to this right

Stephen Box: 00:25:48

now that is saying, okay, Lee, this sounds great, but I don't have time

Stephen Box: 00:25:54

for anything else on my plate, right?

Stephen Box: 00:25:57

I can't add anything and everything that's on my plate.

Stephen Box: 00:26:00

It's super important, and I can't let any of it go right.

Stephen Box: 00:26:06

I, I see, I see you laughing for, for, those are only listening right now.

Stephen Box: 00:26:09

Like you, you just kind of got this like big smile on your face

Stephen Box: 00:26:12

because you're like, I, you probably said this yourself at some point.

Stephen Box: 00:26:15

Right?

Stephen Box: 00:26:16

And I, I think this idea that we're not asking you to let go of a lot of stuff.

Stephen Box: 00:26:23

We're not asking you to add a whole lot to your thing, to your plate.

Stephen Box: 00:26:27

It's really just this idea of what small thing can you actually do.

Stephen Box: 00:26:32

It's going to help you start to get better in those areas, right?

Stephen Box: 00:26:35

What's gonna help you build that mental strength?

Stephen Box: 00:26:38

What's gonna help you sleep better?

Stephen Box: 00:26:39

What's gonna help you eat better?

Stephen Box: 00:26:40

What's gonna allow you to start getting movement into your life?

Stephen Box: 00:26:43

Right?

Stephen Box: 00:26:43

And.

Stephen Box: 00:26:45

You don't need to do all those things at once.

Stephen Box: 00:26:47

You just need to do one.

Stephen Box: 00:26:49

And it's really about figuring out which one of those things is the most

Stephen Box: 00:26:53

important for you to do right now.

Stephen Box: 00:26:55

And there's not a right answer for that.

Stephen Box: 00:26:57

There is no one size fits all.

Stephen Box: 00:26:59

This is the thing that all of us need to do today.

Stephen Box: 00:27:02

Right?

Stephen Box: 00:27:03

Correct.

Lee Eldridge: 00:27:03

Yeah.

Lee Eldridge: 00:27:05

The odd I'd go back and say, you know, if people are saying, oh,

Lee Eldridge: 00:27:08

everything's super important, then.

Lee Eldridge: 00:27:10

I question that if, you know, if what I would suggest people do is they write

Lee Eldridge: 00:27:15

down all the things that are important and then like once you get probably, I

Lee Eldridge: 00:27:19

don't know, 20 or 30, whatever it is, I'm sure there you can identify the five

Lee Eldridge: 00:27:23

things that are actually really, really important and they're the things that

Lee Eldridge: 00:27:26

you have to consistently do all the time.

Lee Eldridge: 00:27:28

Yeah.

Lee Eldridge: 00:27:29

Um, and you know, if I work physically with some athletes, you know, if they

Lee Eldridge: 00:27:34

send me their programs nine times outta 10, I never add anything in.

Lee Eldridge: 00:27:38

I always take things out.

Lee Eldridge: 00:27:39

Because I much prefer people to do less exercises, for example, really,

Lee Eldridge: 00:27:45

really well, and, you know, truly engaged, be truly focused than lots

Lee Eldridge: 00:27:49

of different types of exercise.

Lee Eldridge: 00:27:51

Um mm-hmm.

Lee Eldridge: 00:27:52

And that's the same, you know, in, in life is like, right, what's, what,

Lee Eldridge: 00:27:56

what's the, those one or two things that you, you need to do basically.

Lee Eldridge: 00:28:00

Um, and then the caveat to that is like, look, if you are not sleeping, if you

Lee Eldridge: 00:28:06

are not recovering from anything that you are doing, Um, You, you're at a

Lee Eldridge: 00:28:11

disadvantage already from the word go.

Lee Eldridge: 00:28:14

And unfortunately, you know, the stats are not great.

Lee Eldridge: 00:28:17

You know, early 19 hundreds, most of us were sleeping nine hours,

Lee Eldridge: 00:28:21

and then some guy came along and invented the light bulb.

Lee Eldridge: 00:28:24

And as soon as the light bulb were invented, you know, we were

Lee Eldridge: 00:28:26

able to work later in the day.

Lee Eldridge: 00:28:28

And then now I think, 18.

Lee Eldridge: 00:28:32

In America's studies, the average sleep time is six and hours.

Lee Eldridge: 00:28:37

So we've lost a huge chunk of, and probably close to a sleep cycle or two

Lee Eldridge: 00:28:42

sleep cycles, which are really important.

Lee Eldridge: 00:28:45

Um, and if we think about it, that kind of everything leads, everything's in

Lee Eldridge: 00:28:52

intertwined, but sleep, you know, if.

Lee Eldridge: 00:28:54

If you had a good night's sleep, your nutrition choices are better.

Lee Eldridge: 00:28:57

We know that you are probably, you have more energy, you're probably

Lee Eldridge: 00:29:00

thinking, right, maybe how can I fit a quick workout in here?

Lee Eldridge: 00:29:04

How can I get to the gym or walk more?

Lee Eldridge: 00:29:08

You know, my mood has improved, my relationships with my kids,

Lee Eldridge: 00:29:12

with my wife and partner, with my people at work are be better.

Lee Eldridge: 00:29:16

And then it kind of all feeds in really.

Lee Eldridge: 00:29:17

And then, you know, if you eat well, you are gonna sleep a

Lee Eldridge: 00:29:20

little better if you move well.

Lee Eldridge: 00:29:22

You're gonna sleep better, you're gonna eat it.

Lee Eldridge: 00:29:24

It's all kind of linked in from a holistic point of view.

Lee Eldridge: 00:29:26

So there's not one thing that you have to do.

Lee Eldridge: 00:29:30

It's like, right, what's the smallest change that I can do today to,

Lee Eldridge: 00:29:33

to support me in moving forward?

Stephen Box: 00:29:36

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:29:37

And I think, you know, for me personally, We said there's not really like ASEP

Stephen Box: 00:29:42

thing, but if I were to kind of put a hierarchy on where I would look at

Stephen Box: 00:29:46

first with people to make sure that they're getting those things, most

Stephen Box: 00:29:50

of us, especially when it starts to come into energy and health and

Stephen Box: 00:29:54

everything, the first two things we focus on is exercise and nutrition.

Stephen Box: 00:29:58

But I'm actually a big believer that the first two things that we need

Stephen Box: 00:30:01

to work on is sleep and mindset.

Stephen Box: 00:30:05

'cause those two things I think usually are, are kind of the building blocks.

Stephen Box: 00:30:09

'cause as you said, if you're not sleeping well, you're not recovering well.

Stephen Box: 00:30:15

And you mentioned the idea that if you're only getting six and

Stephen Box: 00:30:18

a half, seven hours of sleep, you're missing a full sleep cycle.

Stephen Box: 00:30:23

You know, maybe even two.

Stephen Box: 00:30:25

And those last sleep cycles are really where a lot of your

Stephen Box: 00:30:29

recovery actually happens.

Stephen Box: 00:30:30

We're actually missing out on the most important.

Stephen Box: 00:30:33

Sleep cycles.

Stephen Box: 00:30:34

So it's not just the fact we're missing them, it's the fact we're missing out

Stephen Box: 00:30:37

on some of the most important ones.

Stephen Box: 00:30:39

And I think for a lot of people, that has a resounding impact, right?

Stephen Box: 00:30:45

Where it's.

Stephen Box: 00:30:46

You're tired now you make poor decisions.

Stephen Box: 00:30:49

And whether those are about your nutrition or your exercise or they're,

Stephen Box: 00:30:55

you're sitting in that meeting and you come up with a bad idea or you make a,

Stephen Box: 00:30:58

a rash decision because you're tired and you're not thinking straight.

Stephen Box: 00:31:02

Right?

Lee Eldridge: 00:31:04

Yeah, correct.

Lee Eldridge: 00:31:05

You know, and for me, you know, people talk about mindset all the time.

Lee Eldridge: 00:31:10

It's, you know, it's everywhere basically, but, You can really improve your

Lee Eldridge: 00:31:15

mindset by having a good night's sleep.

Lee Eldridge: 00:31:17

It's amazing what you, how, how, how much you can take when you are rested

Lee Eldridge: 00:31:22

and, and, and ready to go basically.

Lee Eldridge: 00:31:25

And you know, to talk about those sleep cycles, those.

Lee Eldridge: 00:31:29

We miss a kind of heavily weighted to REM sleep and REM sleep is important

Lee Eldridge: 00:31:33

for memory learning, problem solving, which 90% of us really need, you know,

Lee Eldridge: 00:31:42

most of us are cognitive based in the work that we do and not physically

Lee Eldridge: 00:31:46

based in the work that we do.

Lee Eldridge: 00:31:48

Um, yeah.

Lee Eldridge: 00:31:49

And for.

Lee Eldridge: 00:31:51

You know, I, the challenge that there'd be lots of dads thinking, well, yeah,

Lee Eldridge: 00:31:54

but I've got young families, you know, they wake up, they, they disturb me in

Lee Eldridge: 00:31:57

my sleep and how do I get around that?

Lee Eldridge: 00:31:59

For me, it's, you know, just the way that for a kid that we would have, I.

Lee Eldridge: 00:32:05

A pre-bed routine, you know, we would, you know, bath, bottle, bed, whatever

Lee Eldridge: 00:32:11

it is, you, you get into a routine so that your kid are like, right, okay,

Lee Eldridge: 00:32:15

now it's time for me to calm down.

Lee Eldridge: 00:32:17

Now it's time for me to, you know, think about going to sleep.

Lee Eldridge: 00:32:20

But as an adult, we're a bit naive and we just think, right,

Lee Eldridge: 00:32:23

we can do whatever we want.

Lee Eldridge: 00:32:25

Shut the laptop, turn the tele off, get into bed and fall straight to sleep.

Lee Eldridge: 00:32:30

Um, and for me it's like, well, no start to build in.

Lee Eldridge: 00:32:35

A pre-bed routine, very similar to a morning routine, which everyone

Lee Eldridge: 00:32:38

hypes on about, you know, ice bath, me journaling, meditation.

Lee Eldridge: 00:32:42

Yeah, I, I, yeah, whatever you want.

Lee Eldridge: 00:32:43

Whatever you do, whatever you need to do to get you, you know, in that

Lee Eldridge: 00:32:48

frame of work or whatever it might be.

Lee Eldridge: 00:32:50

But I'm like, what, what can you do before bed in terms of like,

Lee Eldridge: 00:32:55

to give you the best opportunity?

Lee Eldridge: 00:32:57

Because if your child is gonna wake up at two 3:00 AM.

Lee Eldridge: 00:33:01

Try and get some good quality sleep before that because you

Lee Eldridge: 00:33:07

know, they'll disturb the sleep.

Lee Eldridge: 00:33:09

You'll struggle to get back to sleep.

Lee Eldridge: 00:33:10

You'll get back to sleep, and then, you know, the alarm goes off and

Lee Eldridge: 00:33:13

then you've got to, you know, go to work, whatever it might be.

Lee Eldridge: 00:33:17

So that's one area that I try and push, push, you know, fathers to do, is

Lee Eldridge: 00:33:22

really trying to get to sleep as soon as possible because you know you're gonna

Lee Eldridge: 00:33:27

wake up, especially with young families.

Stephen Box: 00:33:30

Yeah, you've gotta, you have to be intentional about that too, right?

Stephen Box: 00:33:32

It's not just like, oh, I'll go to bed, you know, I'll try to go to bed

Stephen Box: 00:33:37

at this time, or I'll, I'll force myself to go to bed at this time.

Stephen Box: 00:33:41

Because, uh, a concept that I'll introduce the, the audience to here that I actually

Stephen Box: 00:33:45

learned about last year, that kind of blew my mind that this was even a thing

Stephen Box: 00:33:49

and then I realized that I do it is this idea of revenge procrastination, right?

Stephen Box: 00:33:55

Our sleep revenge, procrastination, where the idea is you've been doing

Stephen Box: 00:34:02

stuff for other people all day long, and now is your time and.

Stephen Box: 00:34:09

This is where like, you know, you should be going to bed.

Stephen Box: 00:34:11

You might even feel tired.

Stephen Box: 00:34:13

But you sit down on the couch, you turn on the television, and you watch your

Stephen Box: 00:34:16

favorite show, or you watch the game or whatever because you've earned in your

Stephen Box: 00:34:21

mind, you've earned that time to yourself.

Stephen Box: 00:34:24

And we convince ourself this is our time to kind of unwind.

Stephen Box: 00:34:29

And this is our method for unwinding.

Stephen Box: 00:34:32

But we know through the research, That, especially if our unwinding

Stephen Box: 00:34:37

period involves screens, that that's actually having the opposite effect.

Stephen Box: 00:34:42

That that blue light actually affects the quality of our sleep.

Stephen Box: 00:34:44

So even if you fall asleep pretty easily, uh, 'cause I've had, you know,

Stephen Box: 00:34:49

people tell me why fall asleep watching tv so it can't be keeping me up.

Stephen Box: 00:34:53

Right.

Stephen Box: 00:34:53

It's like, no, that's just 'cause you're that tired.

Stephen Box: 00:34:55

Um, so it's one of those things where we don't realize the way that that

Stephen Box: 00:34:59

kind of stuff impacts our sleep.

Stephen Box: 00:35:01

So could you kind of maybe dive into a little bit, maybe even

Stephen Box: 00:35:03

share, like what is your nighttime routine that you, that you use?

Stephen Box: 00:35:08

Yeah,

Lee Eldridge: 00:35:08

so just the, the screen stuff.

Lee Eldridge: 00:35:10

Um, you know, I think it's more that you are just opening yourself up to.

Lee Eldridge: 00:35:20

Netflix or whoever you, whatever provider, Amazon or whatever,

Lee Eldridge: 00:35:23

you know, they're clever people.

Lee Eldridge: 00:35:24

The, the shows they're designed to, you watch them and then if you

Lee Eldridge: 00:35:28

notice, the last kind of 10 minutes is, is where all the action happens.

Lee Eldridge: 00:35:31

And then it gives you a little bit, and then it's like into the next episode and

Lee Eldridge: 00:35:34

before you know it, Whatever it might be.

Lee Eldridge: 00:35:38

And for me, one thing I try to do is, or I get people to do, is if they're

Lee Eldridge: 00:35:42

really poor, you know, they set an alarm, you know, so their alarm goes

Lee Eldridge: 00:35:45

off and that's either 90 minutes, an hour out from, from when they're trying

Lee Eldridge: 00:35:49

to get to sleep and they realize, hey look, this is, this is my time now,

Lee Eldridge: 00:35:52

this is for me to kind of go through it.

Lee Eldridge: 00:35:56

And I'm not a great fan of screens in general, you know, I don't

Lee Eldridge: 00:36:02

very emails, you know, after.

Lee Eldridge: 00:36:05

8:00 PM at the latest, basically, because again, an email is probably normally

Lee Eldridge: 00:36:10

somebody asking you to do something or a problem, and all that's gonna do,

Lee Eldridge: 00:36:15

if you imagine that we're, you know, we're trying to go down the brain waves.

Lee Eldridge: 00:36:20

We're trying to go into our delta waves where we're trying relax.

Lee Eldridge: 00:36:23

We're not really thinking of, we are thinking, but we're not

Lee Eldridge: 00:36:25

really kind of actively thinking.

Lee Eldridge: 00:36:27

So I don't really want a

Lee Eldridge: 00:36:32

sling.

Lee Eldridge: 00:36:35

For me in terms of how it looks, is it's quite calm.

Lee Eldridge: 00:36:40

And you know, as soon as my daughter goes to bed around 8, 8 30, I'm like,

Lee Eldridge: 00:36:44

right, okay, this is, this is the time to kind of start switching down.

Lee Eldridge: 00:36:48

Basically.

Lee Eldridge: 00:36:49

I enjoy reading at night and I find that kind of really helps to, to kind

Lee Eldridge: 00:36:52

of get everything going, basically in terms of from a sleep point of view.

Lee Eldridge: 00:36:56

Um, and then a morning routine is, It is what it is in terms of, I have

Lee Eldridge: 00:37:01

a young son, so you know, he's not a consistent wake upper, so sometimes

Lee Eldridge: 00:37:05

he'll be up at six, sometimes quarter to seven, whatever that might be.

Lee Eldridge: 00:37:09

So I try to get in 20 minutes at least of, of whatever that

Lee Eldridge: 00:37:14

might look like in the morning.

Lee Eldridge: 00:37:15

Whether that's some guided meditation or mindfulness or journaling, whatever.

Lee Eldridge: 00:37:19

It's for me, people are like, oh, you know, I can't do this hour,

Lee Eldridge: 00:37:23

hour and a half in the morning.

Lee Eldridge: 00:37:24

I'm like, look, I don't it.

Lee Eldridge: 00:37:29

You, for me, it's like what, what do you influence before you go to bed and

Lee Eldridge: 00:37:34

what do you influence when you get up?

Lee Eldridge: 00:37:35

So even if it's 10 and 10, so 10 minutes before you go to sleep or, and 10

Lee Eldridge: 00:37:40

minutes when you get up in the morning.

Lee Eldridge: 00:37:42

Just getting that consistency of doing something similar.

Lee Eldridge: 00:37:47

You know, this, the science out there in terms of gratitude and journaling and

Lee Eldridge: 00:37:50

that kind of stuff is, is, is getting much kind of solid now, basically.

Lee Eldridge: 00:37:55

So once you do that and you build that consistency in, it just helps

Lee Eldridge: 00:37:58

you to kind of set a bit of a stone basically in terms of what you're doing.

Lee Eldridge: 00:38:02

So that's it really from a, you know, a big evening, morning routine

Stephen Box: 00:38:06

person.

Stephen Box: 00:38:08

Yeah, I know, like for me, I'm, I'm a night owl and for me, what I've

Stephen Box: 00:38:14

learned is, I can't schedule important things that need to be done like

Stephen Box: 00:38:21

physical things in the morning, right?

Stephen Box: 00:38:24

Mentally, even though a lot of my thought is more subconscious, I

Stephen Box: 00:38:28

think in the mornings I tend to do better with like kind of mental

Stephen Box: 00:38:32

task first thing in the morning.

Stephen Box: 00:38:34

'cause what happens for me is I'll sit down and I'll just kind of go, you

Stephen Box: 00:38:39

know, have a little meditation time, a little prayer time, and I think

Stephen Box: 00:38:43

about my day, and I think about what things do I want to get accomplished.

Stephen Box: 00:38:46

And it's my strategic time.

Stephen Box: 00:38:48

And for me that's really helped a lot because it allows me that by the time

Stephen Box: 00:38:55

I start to really wake up, by the time my body starts to really come into full

Stephen Box: 00:38:59

awareness, I already have a plan for the day and I'm ready to rock and roll.

Stephen Box: 00:39:03

If you're a morning person, then you know, maybe it's the opposite.

Stephen Box: 00:39:09

Maybe you need to have a plan already in place before you even

Stephen Box: 00:39:12

go to bed for what is your morning actually going to look like.

Stephen Box: 00:39:16

And I think that kind of goes back to what you said before where

Stephen Box: 00:39:19

we all are very similar, right?

Stephen Box: 00:39:21

It's we all need a plan a.

Stephen Box: 00:39:25

Routine that we use at night to help us get to bed.

Stephen Box: 00:39:28

And we also need a routine to get us up in the morning to get a great start.

Stephen Box: 00:39:32

So, you know, I always hear people talk about the importance of morning routines,

Stephen Box: 00:39:36

and I don't think we talk enough about the importance of nighttime routines,

Stephen Box: 00:39:40

and it's something that not only helps you get to sleep, but depending on

Stephen Box: 00:39:44

whether you are a morning person or a night owl, that's also your time to

Stephen Box: 00:39:47

make sure you're gonna get yourself off to a great start the next day.

Stephen Box: 00:39:51

So, you know,

Lee Eldridge: 00:39:52

there's, you know, just see three simple questions

Lee Eldridge: 00:39:55

is like, what happened today?

Lee Eldridge: 00:39:56

What went well today?

Lee Eldridge: 00:39:57

What didn't go well today and what can I improve?

Lee Eldridge: 00:39:59

Just asking those three simple questions.

Lee Eldridge: 00:40:01

Um, and that's a little bit where kind of Covid has, or the pandemic has

Lee Eldridge: 00:40:07

hindered people a little bit because it was a great opportunity, for example,

Lee Eldridge: 00:40:11

when you're commuting back from the office or work or whatever, just to

Lee Eldridge: 00:40:14

run, play that out in your, in your brain before you kind of step in.

Lee Eldridge: 00:40:18

To your next, right?

Lee Eldridge: 00:40:19

I'm a dad, or whatever it might be.

Lee Eldridge: 00:40:21

But obviously now with lots of people working from home, you don't have

Lee Eldridge: 00:40:24

that commute, you don't have that kind of de-stress kind of bookend

Lee Eldridge: 00:40:28

the day and nine times outta 10, you might roll into the room next door

Lee Eldridge: 00:40:33

to you with all this stress going on.

Lee Eldridge: 00:40:36

So one thing I do encourage people to do is kind of a false commute.

Lee Eldridge: 00:40:39

Whether that's just, you know, walk around the block or whatever it

Lee Eldridge: 00:40:43

might be, just get out the house.

Lee Eldridge: 00:40:45

And walk for 10 minutes, go through that in your head and then come

Lee Eldridge: 00:40:48

back in and you're like, right, okay, now I'm into the next pillar.

Lee Eldridge: 00:40:52

I'm not gonna think about that one.

Lee Eldridge: 00:40:54

And again, once you start to think about business, when you, when you know that

Lee Eldridge: 00:41:00

you probably shouldn't be thinking about business, you create that awareness.

Lee Eldridge: 00:41:03

You are like, right, okay, look, I'll leave that till tomorrow.

Lee Eldridge: 00:41:07

I'll push that back to tomorrow, basically.

Lee Eldridge: 00:41:09

Because, you know, look at the, the amazing books where people on their,

Lee Eldridge: 00:41:11

on their deathbeds are like, right.

Lee Eldridge: 00:41:13

What do you wish you do more of?

Lee Eldridge: 00:41:15

Not many people say, well, I wish I worked harder or whatever.

Lee Eldridge: 00:41:18

Most people are like, right, I wish I would've spent more time

Lee Eldridge: 00:41:20

with my family or did this, or, you know, more exciting things.

Stephen Box: 00:41:24

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:41:25

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:41:25

I think, uh, you know, this is a, a classic example.

Stephen Box: 00:41:30

You know, we just, uh, went through the, uh, the Christmas season not too long

Stephen Box: 00:41:33

ago and, you know, the, uh, the Christmas carols of very popular, uh, story been

Stephen Box: 00:41:39

made into like 17,000 movie versions, but it's kind of the same concept, right?

Stephen Box: 00:41:44

We're, we're, Scrooge has really dedicated his entire life to money and work.

Stephen Box: 00:41:52

And you know, the really, the idea isn't just, oh, you need to treat people better.

Stephen Box: 00:41:58

It's that life is about more than just money at work.

Stephen Box: 00:42:01

It's about the connection that you have with other people.

Stephen Box: 00:42:03

It's about what you can accomplish in the world outside of finances.

Stephen Box: 00:42:08

And I think that's a really, a great lesson for all of

Stephen Box: 00:42:11

us to kind of take to heart.

Lee Eldridge: 00:42:13

Well, yeah, you know, I think the, I.

Lee Eldridge: 00:42:19

Present, I think is that, you know, they go to the grave and

Lee Eldridge: 00:42:21

it's like, right, you can't take your money to the grave, basically.

Lee Eldridge: 00:42:25

Yeah.

Lee Eldridge: 00:42:25

It's, you know, it's the relationships that you create with the people and

Lee Eldridge: 00:42:28

so yeah, it's a good, it's a good kind of thought process to have.

Stephen Box: 00:42:33

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:42:33

And I think for, for so many people, it's.

Stephen Box: 00:42:37

It's also tied into our societal norms, right?

Stephen Box: 00:42:41

I, I know there's a lot of dads out there that feel I have to be

Stephen Box: 00:42:46

the support for the family, right?

Stephen Box: 00:42:48

I have to be the financial support for the family, and that makes work, or your

Stephen Box: 00:42:53

business or whatever, take on such a larger than life importance because now,

Stephen Box: 00:43:00

It's like, if I don't answer this email at 11 o'clock, if I don't get this customer

Stephen Box: 00:43:05

that answer right now, in the next five seconds, they're gonna take their business

Stephen Box: 00:43:09

somewhere else and they're going to leave and I'm going to fail and everything's

Stephen Box: 00:43:14

gonna be horrible and my family's gonna starve and we're gonna be homeless.

Stephen Box: 00:43:17

Right.

Stephen Box: 00:43:17

It's like we, we just, we go there.

Stephen Box: 00:43:19

Right?

Stephen Box: 00:43:20

I mean, it's just, it's, it is what it is.

Stephen Box: 00:43:22

So, you know, real quick, could you maybe just kind of touch on.

Stephen Box: 00:43:28

If you have that kind of fear around letting go of some of the business,

Stephen Box: 00:43:32

setting some boundaries with your time, uh, what, what's one tip you can

Stephen Box: 00:43:36

maybe give guys to help out with that?

Lee Eldridge: 00:43:38

Um, it, it, it's, it's really to try and think about right.

Lee Eldridge: 00:43:45

Your, your, your vision and like, right, where do I want to be?

Lee Eldridge: 00:43:49

Um, and that's a bit of a, a key thing basically.

Lee Eldridge: 00:43:51

So once you have this idea of.

Lee Eldridge: 00:43:58

Kind of your boundaries.

Lee Eldridge: 00:44:00

Um, and if it's not a definite yes, then it's a no.

Lee Eldridge: 00:44:05

Yeah, I think that's hugely it, right?

Lee Eldridge: 00:44:06

If it's not, yes, it's no.

Lee Eldridge: 00:44:08

And it's quite a simple thing to do.

Lee Eldridge: 00:44:10

Um, and it goes back again to, there's a great book called If

Lee Eldridge: 00:44:16

It Makes the Boat Go Faster, and it's a story about a rowing team.

Lee Eldridge: 00:44:21

The uk and they weren't performing very well and they all kind of got together

Lee Eldridge: 00:44:24

and they made this term, it's like if the boat does it, make the boat go faster.

Lee Eldridge: 00:44:29

And every single decision that they made, they asked that question.

Lee Eldridge: 00:44:33

So, you know, if we, after training, if we go out as a group and have a few beers,

Lee Eldridge: 00:44:39

is it gonna make the boat go faster?

Lee Eldridge: 00:44:41

No.

Lee Eldridge: 00:44:42

Right.

Lee Eldridge: 00:44:43

We're not gonna do it.

Lee Eldridge: 00:44:44

So what I mean by that is it's like right, lots of things that we do.

Lee Eldridge: 00:44:51

Not actually kind of move us forward in there.

Lee Eldridge: 00:44:54

And that's external things that are, that are pushing the pressure on.

Lee Eldridge: 00:44:57

I think that's a big thing, a big learning from myself is

Lee Eldridge: 00:44:59

that what's the driver for me?

Lee Eldridge: 00:45:05

Mm-hmm.

Lee Eldridge: 00:45:05

Because comparisons to Thief for joy as we know, and all the things that

Lee Eldridge: 00:45:10

come about, but it's like Right.

Lee Eldridge: 00:45:12

Okay.

Lee Eldridge: 00:45:14

Where do I see myself and where do I want, want to be?

Lee Eldridge: 00:45:17

And by asking yourself that one question, you know, if

Lee Eldridge: 00:45:22

it's not a yes, then it's a no.

Lee Eldridge: 00:45:24

It really, it really helps me, basically, in terms of the decisions

Lee Eldridge: 00:45:27

that I make from a day-to-day

Stephen Box: 00:45:29

point of view.

Stephen Box: 00:45:30

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:45:31

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:45:31

And, and I love that 'cause it's like, you know what if right now, if your

Stephen Box: 00:45:33

focus is on business and, and that is the most important thing right now.

Stephen Box: 00:45:38

Then those yes, no que questions go to that.

Stephen Box: 00:45:41

If right now your goal is to become a better father, then

Stephen Box: 00:45:44

your yes no questions go to that.

Stephen Box: 00:45:45

Right?

Stephen Box: 00:45:46

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:45:46

It allows you to really focus on that thing that's the most important.

Stephen Box: 00:45:49

Yeah.

Lee Eldridge: 00:45:50

You know, I spend a lot of time in offices and you know,

Lee Eldridge: 00:45:55

free spaces where, or coworking spaces, and I look around and, you

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:00

know, no disrespect to these people.

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:02

A lot of people are wasting time.

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:04

Mm-hmm.

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:05

You know, it's like, Uh, you know, pinging pong tables, pool tables in offices.

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:11

I'm like, what?

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:12

What, what are you doing?

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:13

I'm like, right.

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:14

Get in, get focused.

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:17

Have a goal.

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:18

Work hard to, to do it.

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:20

Take breaks, but then work hard, take breaks, then work hard, then go home.

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:25

Be a dad.

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:27

Really hard.

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:27

Take breaks really hard, but, and then there you go.

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:31

It's like, you know, it's like people going to a gym without a program.

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:35

They walk in the gym and they're like, Hmm, what am I gonna do today?

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:38

And you're a bit like, yeah, you know what?

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:41

Machines free.

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:44

Whereas I'm like, right, go into a gym, five or six exercises,

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:48

35, 40 minutes, train hard.

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:51

Get it done, recover well train hard and that's, and you know, rinse and rinse,

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:57

repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat.

Lee Eldridge: 00:46:59

And then a year's time look back and be like, oh, hey, up.

Lee Eldridge: 00:47:03

This is how it's gonna be.

Lee Eldridge: 00:47:05

So it's gonna be tough.

Lee Eldridge: 00:47:07

You're not gonna like it.

Lee Eldridge: 00:47:08

You're gonna have to be very disciplined to a certain degree.

Lee Eldridge: 00:47:12

You're gonna have to say no to a lot of things.

Lee Eldridge: 00:47:13

To say yes to thing.

Lee Eldridge: 00:47:16

But for me, that's.

Stephen Box: 00:47:20

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:47:20

Yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:47:21

And I think that's really good advice, man.

Stephen Box: 00:47:23

Uh, Lee, I know we're kind of bumping up on, on time for you here.

Stephen Box: 00:47:26

Uh, you had a couple questions that you wanted to kind of give people that

Stephen Box: 00:47:31

will help them figure out what is that thing they should be focusing on first?

Stephen Box: 00:47:35

Uh, you wanna go and share those real quick?

Lee Eldridge: 00:47:37

Yeah.

Lee Eldridge: 00:47:37

So I think that, but what we just touched on there was,

Lee Eldridge: 00:47:42

is, is, you know, is it a yes?

Lee Eldridge: 00:47:43

And if no, it's a no.

Lee Eldridge: 00:47:45

What, what's a yes for me and what's a no for for me?

Lee Eldridge: 00:47:48

And then, you know, also, is it where I see myself going?

Lee Eldridge: 00:47:55

Mm-hmm.

Lee Eldridge: 00:47:56

Is it in line with the person that I am?

Lee Eldridge: 00:47:58

So my values and ultimately, is it what I want to be doing as my purpose?

Lee Eldridge: 00:48:05

So for me, kind of visions, values, and purpose are the big area that

Lee Eldridge: 00:48:09

push people to, to go forward and do what they're gonna do.

Lee Eldridge: 00:48:13

Yeah.

Lee Eldridge: 00:48:13

And once you start to do that, all the decisions that you need to make, if

Lee Eldridge: 00:48:17

they're covered in those three and it's a good decision, you move forward basically.

Stephen Box: 00:48:24

Love it man.

Stephen Box: 00:48:24

Tho those are, uh, really good and I just wanna kind of point out to people.

Stephen Box: 00:48:28

That this is not just things you're saying.

Stephen Box: 00:48:29

You've actually kind of lived this out today because when we first got on,

Stephen Box: 00:48:34

you kind of set the boundaries saying, Hey look, I need to be off by this time

Stephen Box: 00:48:37

because I have something that I need to do in my, in my role as dad, right?

Stephen Box: 00:48:41

Yeah, exactly.

Stephen Box: 00:48:42

Yeah, yeah.

Stephen Box: 00:48:43

But why you were here, you weren't thinking about that.

Stephen Box: 00:48:46

You were locked into, let me be present in this moment to making sure that I'm

Stephen Box: 00:48:50

delivering value to the audience and to the listeners out there, and then.

Stephen Box: 00:48:56

It's like, okay, now we've finished this, and that's like, you're

Stephen Box: 00:48:58

gonna switch it into dad mode and you're gonna be able to go do that.

Stephen Box: 00:49:01

So, uh, I just wanted to kind of share with people that you're not just

Stephen Box: 00:49:04

seeing these things, you are living them out in real time in the moment.

Stephen Box: 00:49:08

Yes.

Stephen Box: 00:49:08

We're doing, trying,

Lee Eldridge: 00:49:09

trying to, every day's a school day, unfortunately, or fortunately,

Lee Eldridge: 00:49:12

depending on how you look at it.

Stephen Box: 00:49:14

Yes.

Stephen Box: 00:49:15

Uh, so definitely appreciate your time today.

Stephen Box: 00:49:17

Uh, if you could, you're welcome.

Stephen Box: 00:49:18

Share with people real quick if they want to connect with you and learn

Stephen Box: 00:49:20

more about you, how can they do

Lee Eldridge: 00:49:22

that?

Lee Eldridge: 00:49:22

So LinkedIn's the best.

Lee Eldridge: 00:49:24

I'm, I'm on LinkedIn from a business dad's point of view, so it's just my name,

Lee Eldridge: 00:49:28

Lee Eldridge and my face will pop up.

Lee Eldridge: 00:49:30

Um, and website is Cognitive Athletes.

Lee Eldridge: 00:49:33

That's ww cognitive athlete co uk.

Lee Eldridge: 00:49:36

Um, and I'll send you over the details and you can share them with your audience.

Lee Eldridge: 00:49:39

But thanks for having me on.

Lee Eldridge: 00:49:41

It's been, it's been good fun.

Stephen Box: 00:49:43

Yeah, definitely appreciate it and that I will post

Stephen Box: 00:49:46

your links also in the show notes for anyone who couldn't, uh, catch them.

Stephen Box: 00:49:49

They will be available to you there.

Stephen Box: 00:49:51

Uh, so this is Stephen Box and I want to thank my, uh, guest today,

Stephen Box: 00:49:56

Lee Eldridge, and remind everyone that none of us are born Unshakable.

Stephen Box: 00:50:02

We can all become Unshakable.

Lee Eldridge: 00:50:06

Thank you for listening to the Unshakable Habits

Lee Eldridge: 00:50:09

Podcast with Coach Stephen Box.

Lee Eldridge: 00:50:11

Be sure to hit the subscribe button and help us spread the word by

Lee Eldridge: 00:50:15

sharing the podcast with other men.

Lee Eldridge: 00:50:17

If you are ready to create Unshakable habits, you can learn more and connect