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Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimised practices for waking, working, learning, eating, training, playing, sleeping and sex
Aubrey Marcus
Revolutionise your life one day at a time with this empowering handbook designed for men and women which provides simple strategies for each element of your day. Marcus Aubrey, author of the book is CEO of Onnit, a human performance company that he has built into one of the fastest growing companies in the world.How can we get the most out of our body and mind on a daily basis? Want to change your life for the better?Aubrey Marcus answers these questions in this handbook that guides the reader to optimise each moment of the day. With small, actionable changes implemented throughout the course of one day we can feel better, perform more efficiently and live happier. And these habits turn into weekly routines, ultimately becoming part of a lifelong healthy choice.From workouts and diet to inbox triage, mindfulness, shower temperature and sex this groundbreaking manual provides strategies for each element of your day. Drawing on the latest studies and traditional practices from around the world, this book delivers cutting-edge life hacks, nutritional expertise, brain upgrades and fitness regimes.Own the Day presents a path to change. It guides readers through a single 24-hour day of positive choices and optimal living that will form the groundwork for all their days to come. From foundational elements like workouts, diet, and mindfulness, to more routine opportunities to optimize your choices, such as shower temperature and inbox triage, readers will learn to make the most of every moment.Ultimately, Marcus creates a choose-your-own-adventure guide to living that brings the reader's mind, body, and spirit to life. It is a promise delivered on the back of real, concrete strategies for better living. And the all-encompassing results are what make this book's simplistic approach so successful. By focusing on optimal decision making for just one day —by making several small, key changes in your daily approach—you end up addressing your health at every level. And owning your day.
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_bc04da9c-eed1-55ba-960a-27b400ff031b)
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First published by in the USA by HarperWave, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
First published in the UK by Thorsons, an imprint of HarperColllinsPublishers 2018
FIRST EDITION
© Warrior Poet 2018
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Cover photographs © James Law Photography
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780008286415
Ebook Edition © April 2018 ISBN: 9780008286422
Version 2018-03-15
This book contains advice and information relating to health care. It should be used to supplement rather than replace the advice of your doctor or another trained health professional. If you know or suspect you have a health problem, it is recommended that you seek your doctor’s advice before embarking on any medical programme or treatment. All efforts have been made to assure the accuracy of the information contained in this book as of the date of publication. This publisher and the author disclaim liability for any medical outcomes that may occur as a result of applying the methods suggested in this book.
Please note the ‘"If You Want to Get High, Now’s the Time’ is based on the author’s experience and is not to be treated as medical advice. The author lives in the US and has written this section from a US perspective, on the basis that marijuana is legal/decriminalised in some states. Marijuana is illegal in the UK and many other countries.
DEDICATION (#ulink_4df8f7cd-3345-5185-b847-4af1f257c660)
Dedicated to your future self
CONTENTS
COVER (#ua6fe4eaa-66db-5c7f-906c-d9550cfd380c)
TITLE PAGE (#u40bdd691-83f6-5617-829d-03c810a9cd2b)
COPYRIGHT (#ulink_3768daf9-5a7d-536e-b00a-6b2b8b776dec)
DEDICATION (#ulink_a077da83-5a0a-5ad6-9eda-46eb78a978a9)
INTRODUCTION (#ulink_2042eefa-d0dd-5640-966f-231d937cdbc5)
1 Water. Light. Movement (#ulink_35a2c07a-a1c9-5c69-9ba2-6aa0c6da3d4f)
Morning Mineral Cocktail (#ulink_20212577-a62d-571e-ac41-c384693e8b38)
2 Deep Breath, Deep Freeze (#ulink_77e8d5bc-68b0-5fd3-b347-8f659d0e202f)
3 More Fat, Less Sugar, or Don’t Eat
Classic Breakfast with Greens
Bone Broth and Avocado
Choco-Maca Magic Shake
Açaí Breakfast Blast
4 Essential Supplements
5 Drive Time, Alive Time
6 The Power Plants
MoMatchajito
7 Doin’ Work
8 Eat a Weird Lunch
Chipotle Beef Bowl
Probiotic Ceviche
Bacony Asparagus with Sauerkraut
Garlic Green Beans with Cashews
Turmeric No-Tato Salad
Sautéed Garlic-Mustard Dandelion Greens
Chia Pudding
9 The Binaural Power Nap
10 Training
11 Reset and Reconnect
12 Eat Dinner Like a King
Sensual Steak Salad
Sourdough Garlic Bread
Love Pasta
Game-On Stew
Jammin’ Tandoori Salmon with Tzatziki
Spicy Creamy Greens
Mashed Potatoes
Popcorn with Grass-Fed Butter and Chocolate
13 More, Better Sex
14 Turn Off, Tune In
15 Sleep
Emergency Sleep Cocktail
16 Bring It Home
NOTES: HERE COMES THE SCIENCE!
LIST OF SEARCHABLE TERMS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
INTRODUCTION (#ulink_f6aba588-8423-59b0-a718-0298de6db8a3)
Nothing is worth more than this day.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Nutrition, mind-set, productivity, performance, fitness, sex, sleep—when we look through a keyhole at these areas of focus, we forget that they are interconnected and interdependent. They are spokes on the wheel of the day, every one of them necessary to ride the twenty-four-hour cycle into a life worth living. Because a day isn’t just about what you put into your body, how you look in the mirror, or how much production you can squeeze from eight hours of work. It’s about how you feel, whose lives you connect with, and how much fun you have along the way.
We have to transcend the tendency to place all of our effort on one thing at a time, instead of one day at a time. Just look at the flood of transformational programs out there: twelve days to detox, twenty-eight days to skinny, forty days to enlightenment, ninety days to astronaut. What do they give you? A diet that statistically fails 95 percent of all people or some email batching tips that are magically supposed to make you more productive. If you’re lucky you’ll leave with one or two takeaways that you actually implement in your life for a week or two. But real transformation? Unlikely. What is more likely is that everything else falls out of balance while you doggedly pursue your eight-pack abs.
So we are going to flip the script and recalibrate. We are going to focus on that single indivisible unit. That twenty-four hours. Just one day. You gotta walk before you run, and a day is the first step. To own your life, you gotta own the day. You’re going to read this book, and then prepare to live one single day completely optimally.
Mark it on your calendar, get your head right, get your food right, and do it. You won’t live every day like this right away. You may never live another day exactly like this again. But owning just one of them will be the catalyst to meaningful, demonstrable change. Maybe it’s your morning routine, maybe it’s how you prepare for sleep, or how you spend your drive to work. Maybe it’s how you work out, or how you eat. Maybe it’s everything! But one of those things is going to click first, and when it does, every day after that will be different. I dare you to read this book and not find things that substantially change how you live, and how you look at life. Maybe that will seem small at first. But small things, when compounded over time, tend to have big consequences. That, after all, is the essence of evolution.
Tipping Points and the Process
How many choices in your daily life are essentially toss-ups? Pizza or home cooking? Soda or sparkling water? Netflix or a night out? Should I go to the gym or not? Every day, nearly all of these choices are a fifty-fifty call. You could just as easily land in one place as the other. If you changed one thing you do within the first twenty minutes of waking up (I am going to give you three), however, or you had just a little bit more energy from a high-fat, low-sugar breakfast, maybe you’d choose differently. Maybe it would cease to be a question at all. Of course you’re going to the gym. Then, because you went to the gym, you find yourself less stressed that night. So you have sex. Then you sleep better. Then you wake up more vibrant and with more energy. And you have set in motion a positive cascade of choices. The tipping point was one small change in breakfast. You exchanged your Apple Jacks for an avocado, and all of a sudden your day was different, your week was different, maybe your whole month was different.
Nick Saban, possibly the greatest coach in the history of college football, tells his players to follow what he calls “the Process.” He tells them that the average down in football lasts about seven seconds. If they want to win an SEC championship, or a national title, they should focus on that smallest unit of measurement. Seven seconds. Don’t get lost in the big picture, he says, and risk taking your eye off the prize. Focus on what’s in front of you, focus on something you can chew and swallow. Focus on the micro, in other words, and the macro takes care of itself.
That’s the approach we’re going to take: The way to own your life is to own your day. Today. Because that’s all you have.
The samurai master Miyamoto Musashi told students in his Book of Five Rings, “When you freely beat one man, you beat any man in the world. The spirit of defeating a man is the same for ten million men. The strategist makes small things into big things, like building a great Buddha from a one-foot model. The principle of strategy is having one thing, to know ten thousand things.”
To live one day well is the same as to live ten thousand days well. To master twenty-four hours is to master your life.
Everyone Has Room to Improve
All human beings, every single one of us, have in some way taken a detour off the blueprint of optimal living. We can’t help it, it’s the world we live in. So we have to take measures as strong as the forces opposing us, or else we struggle.
I know from experience. Before I built Onnit into a movement that touches the lives of millions of people, I was stressed, depressed, and suffering as a consequence. Wild blood sugar swings from poor diet choices were exhausting me. I hurt my body with all sorts of toxic substances. I was sick … a lot. Then one day near my thirtieth birthday I made a commitment to be better. It was so significant that I decided to adopt my middle name as my first name, Aubrey, and to strike out from that moment as a better human being. I didn’t have a perfect plan yet, like the one contained in this book. I wish I did. But I had choices, and I started making them. Good ones. I chose to take responsibility for my life. To own it. I chose to accept that whatever happened was on me. I would not hide behind the cozy blankets of relinquished responsibility any longer. I researched furiously, talked to everyone I could, and experimented tirelessly until I found the tools and practices that could bring me total human optimization. These hard-won understandings formed the nexus of a company with the mission to help bring these tools and techniques to the world.
This company, Onnit, has been as great a success as I dared to dream. Based in Austin, Texas, we’ve been honored to be of assistance to some of the most impressive people in the world: my partner from the word go, quintuple threat Joe Rogan; drummer Travis Barker; platinum rapper and actor Ludacris; Olympic gold medal downhill skier Bode Miller; three-time NHL Stanley Cup winners Duncan Keith and Jonathan Toews; US women’s soccer team member Lori “Lightning” Lindsey; Allison Holker of Dancing with the Stars; and mixed martial arts champions Cody Garbrandt, Tyron Woodley, and Michelle Waterson, among many others. You’ll meet some of them in the book.
You know what we find when we sit down with them? They’re not perfect either. They have the same struggles as you and I do. Maybe it’s not getting enough sleep. Maybe their nutrition is off. Maybe they’ve got a bad habit, or they feel foggy all morning. Maybe they have some nagging injury that bothers them through the day. They are almost always dealing with stress, and they too sometimes doubt themselves.
The first thing we do with them is the first thing I’m going to do with you: examine your day. What do you do when you wake up? What do you eat? Are you getting enough of this vitamin or that one? Are you seeking good stress and avoiding the bad? Are you taking advantage of dead time when you travel? How do you wind down after a long day? Are you having enough sex? These little things add up. The little things are the big things—even for some of the most accomplished people on earth. If you fight in a cage for a living or dance live on television in front of millions of people, those smallest details can be the difference between success and failure. If you are the everyday kind of superhero, the one who works hard to support a family or build your career, these details are the tipping point between a life of passion and zeal and a life of gray monotony.
A Guide to the Book
To help guide you through the process of owning the day, we repeat the same formula in every chapter. We begin with a section we call “Getting Owned.” We’ve all been there, getting pummeled by the waves of life, never seeming to catch our breath. Then we move on to “Owning It.” Owning it is a matter of having the knowledge and the specific prescription needed to create positive, repeatable habits. We’ve tried to make this process as affordable as possible, but in the case where there are cool biohacking or performance techniques that cost a little more out of pocket, we have broken them into sections called “Pro Tips.” Those are nonessential additions to owning the day. When we geek out on the science, you might see a section called “Deep Dive.” Like the hundreds of citations at the end of the book, those are purely educational pieces for those of us with an inquiring mind. A section called “Caveat” will warn you about any non-obvious risks associated with a particular practice. All of this leads up to the section called “Prescription,” which is the detailed specifics of how to accomplish what we are telling you to do. This leads to the most important section: “Now Do It.” If we did a fraction of what we already knew we should, we would be in pretty good shape. Sometimes you just need a reminder and a kick in the ass to get it done. Finally, as a nod to my years spent on the basketball court, we end with a section called “Three Pointers,” three important takeaways you need to remember from each chapter.
Ultimately, we are building toward one single day for you to plan, in advance, to completely own. It could be next week or next month or next fiscal quarter, but as you read, feel free to employ any of the techniques you find in these pages as you go along. That will only help you troubleshoot and be fully ready for that very first fully owned day. But make no mistake about it, your goal is to prepare and own one full day, like a total boss.
Are you ready? Then let’s go hero, go!
1 (#ulink_724e7897-f695-5216-a3a8-4308f6812c6f)
WATER. LIGHT. MOVEMENT. (#ulink_724e7897-f695-5216-a3a8-4308f6812c6f)
Well begun is half done.
ARISTOTLE
