21 Jun, 2022

Pete Cohen 0:00
Happy, beautiful, amazing day. It is the Future Self podcast. Pete Cohen Today's episode is called 5 Surprising Habits That Are Harming Your Health. I will see you after the theme tune.

Pete Cohen 0:41
Guten Morgen Hello. Happy beautiful healthy incredible day. Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of the future self podcast. You know not long ago we changed the name of the podcast. Why? Well, why not? You know we are evolving all the time. We are growing. We are moving forwards. But where are we going? This is the thing. I'm so interested in our future our relationship to our future. How's your future looking? You could also if you want you could go and see someone who's maybe got a crystal ball or a clairvoyant who maybe can tell you how your future is going to turn out and some people actually want someone to tell them. How many of you want someone to tell you how your future is going to turn out. A lot of people do horoscopes and I have who hasn't looked at a horoscope before and you know thought all my lucky day to day or done. I don't know angel cards, these things where you kind of do a reading. I've always been fascinated by that. I've really been interested in someone telling me what's going to happen to me. I remember many years ago I was living in Cheltenham I was my first proper relationship with someone you know the first time I kind of lived with someone and one of my friends who sadly passed away recently while I wasn't expecting to talk about this wasn't on my plan but there you go. I'm just gonna run with it guys stay with me. And his mum was a Claire a clairvoyant. She was from Jamaica. She was probably in her late 70s. And I went to go and see her. And I sat down and she and my friend Mikey was just my keep my friend Tony sorry, was just listening in. I said, he said, want me to listen. And I said yeah, yeah, of course no problem. And halfway through her telling me about where I was and what was going on and telling me about myself and my future. She said, Hmm, you're in a relationship right now. And you know that it's not working and you know, it's not right for you. And I saw Tony look at me and he knew my partner at the time he shared and his eyebrows kind of just raised and I was thinking alone one second. She's just told me something that I know deep down that she's right. And I'm thinking how does she know this? You know, which is maybe we could do another podcast on that and maybe you end up becoming a clairvoyant maybe as you realize your future you can see yourself being a clairvoyant in the future. And she was right. And the the relationship did end it was pretty traumatic, and we kind of got on with our lives. But then I saw my then girlfriend, and she really had changed you know, I thought she'd really changed and I'd really changed and

Unknown Speaker 3:20
guess what? We got back together again.

Pete Cohen 3:24
And then guess what I did? I went back and saw the lady again. And honestly, I promise you she didn't remember me. She did not remember me because it was she was quite old. And it was maybe two years later. And the first thing she said to me, she said, you know your partner. This really isn't right for you. And maybe she said that to everybody. What is the power that we actually have to see our future dt can you see your future or do you want someone to see it for you? I mean, ultimately, Look, we all know what the future is the future is. However, we see I believe our personality is the person that we're choosing to become. And most of us are just choosing to become who we are right now and then who will be tomorrow is going to be very similar to who we are today. Unless we stop, just stop. Stop and take a moment to look at where we are, you know not to not to judge where we are per se. But you know, just to look at greater things that are stuck in some you know what is inside your head? What are the great ideas that you have? I love this music that was made specially for our podcasts so what is stuck inside your head? I think a lot of people have great ideas. A lot of people have things they want to do, but they'll never do them because they're stuck. They're stuck in habits which may be answering them and today I want to talk about you and some surprising habits five I want to talk about today that I believe is seriously harming your health and I think this everything I say today you're already going to know you're not going to know this but perhaps you'll get a different perspective on this. Perhaps you'll look at this differently and then you'll go out and make a change. Perhaps you'll even join the Stop One Start One program and actually make a real effort. Make an announcement. This is something I'm going to stop doing. You know our goal and what everything we do right now is help people identify who you want to be and go out and pursue that person. Who do you want to be with your health, your energy your relationships if you had your own clairvoyant attributes or abilities or skills. Imagine your future self coming to see you in a year's time. Who is that person? If you decided to maybe stop something, start something? Who would you be? Could you be Who would you like to be? See? It might seem crazy, but I honestly believe that our future self is talking to us all the time. It's just we don't actually listen. I believe that the future self is literally calling you out. It's just not picking up the phone. You know, you're just literally ignoring. Ignoring that voice, you know. And sticking with your present self sticking with your current narrative and continuing with habits that maybe aren't serving you. But maybe I convince you, I could convince you to pick up the phone and have a conversation to your future and realize that the future could be very different to how life is now. So let's look at these five surprising habits. I say Surprise, surprise. Well, let's look at number one. The first one is task switching. So multitasking does it work. Can we melt? You know have you heard someone say I'm a really good multitasker. What is that? exactly does that mean? It does it mean that you're able to do two or three things at once and do them well? No, because you can't it's impossible. You can't do two things at once and do both of them extremely well. Unless of course it's someone like walking and talking. You know, that's there's always exceptions to everything. But most of us don't realize even right now chances are you're listening to me but you're doing something else. Maybe because you have to maybe you're making breakfast or who knows what you're doing maybe driving

Pete Cohen 7:16
but the reality is multitasking doesn't work. And I remember when I first really got into productivity that was something that we started teaching people because and then I really studied the work of Dave Allen who's probably one of the most not the comedian Dave Allen. But the productivity guru gt a GTD getting things done. And I really looked at and I unpacked all of his work literally because I was so curious around and then this this word of multitasking came up and I remember hearing people say I'm a really good multitasker and then some of the research on this is fascinating. Because it does show that women tend to be met at better multitaskers than men. Now why might that be? Well it might be to do with that was a skill, that back in the day when men were predominantly out hunting and women were childbearing, looking after children supporting each other they needed to be able to multitask. Now, who knows whether that's true or not. I don't really think it's that important. But the fact of the matter is that our IQ, our intelligence drops when we multitask, it just shows that women's drops less than men. But this is what I want you to do. See, we computers once upon a time, they only had one way of proof. They could only really process one thing at a time. Now computers have a dual processes so they can do multiple things. I've got a computer in front of me here. I'm sure I could go and see that it's doing multiple things, but if it was doing one thing, would it do that thing? Better than everything else would it? Who knows? I don't know. Maybe that someone could tell me again, I'm not really interested. I'm happy with my computer but with me with my supercomputer that is me. Waking up to the fact that tasks switching is you know, multitasking is a myth. It's just an absolute myth. And this is how I want to prove it to you think about this. I want everyone right now to count from A to J ready and see get a stopwatch or use your phones. You ready? I want you to count to a to J and see how quickly you can do it. Let's go a b c d e f g h i j or what's about one second and a half a b c d e f g h I J I feel like going ABCDEFG and then stopping at GE because I don't know why but that's a habit that I have ABCDE f g h i j k, j j j k I didn't I didn't say anyway, I've gone past it but it says 1.5 Okay guys, let's ready for the next test. You're ready. Count to one to 10 see how quickly you can do that. Ready? Here we go. Go 1-234-567-8910 Probably a little bit quicker. So we can do a to J maybe 1.5 seconds and one to 10 1.5 seconds. Now put them together. You're ready. Here we go. ABCDE f g h i j 1-234-567-8910. Now what we tend to find is it takes people longer to do both of them. You know that if you try and do it now if you go a and then then one and then B and then two and then C and then three and then D and then E and now that doesn't make sense but go from one to the other. Ready? A one b two c three. E? I've been gone. I'm gone guys. I'm sure some of you could do it a lot quicker than me. What about if you were going to do them backwards? You ready? Go from j to A? Ready

Pete Cohen 10:32
I'm struggling.

Pete Cohen 10:34
We have an incredible brain and our brain is being overloaded all the time. Now, if you're the sort of person who really wants to do a great job and you want to do you want to do create quantum leaps in what you do. I'm sure we all understand

Pete Cohen 10:55
the power of focus.

Pete Cohen 10:58
What's the most valuable commodity in the world? I would say there's a few things. One of them is health.

Pete Cohen 11:08
Another one is leadership.

Pete Cohen 11:10
Taking the lead, you know deciding what's important deciding who you want to become.

Pete Cohen 11:18
But I would also say our attention our ability to focus

Pete Cohen 11:27
what happens when we task switch there's something now known as attention residue. My coach used to say this to me all the time. You know when my coach came over from Dallas and we used to spend time together we used to go rent somewhere and just cut ourselves off. He observed me sometimes like going on my phone and he didn't have a mobile phone. And he'd watched me and then he'd said you know what you're doing and I'll be speaking to someone in America. And I remember him saying to him once he said are you aware that when you speak to that person in America, there's a part of you that's in America then you come back to here and I don't have your full attention because a part of you is still there. It's called attention residue. So if you were task switching, you were I don't know, doing emails while you were writing something. And then you went from one to the other to the other. It's like this residue, there's something that's holding you that you were so to be able to focus your attention. And again, let's just be brutally honest about this. We live in a world right now where your attention is being sold to the highest bidder. There's a huge addiction in the world and one of them is social media. You know it right we're all part of it. Most of us are anyway. And the addictive nature of scrolling. And if you go from that to doing something the world is never going to see the greatest view. And I think that the future we're going to see two types of people we're going to just see the type of person that clearly has made the decision to focus on what is important and get it done, and feel that they are in control of their life and people that have just zombies just literally they're just not there. The lights are on and nobody home it's like the film Wally. I don't know how many of you have seen that cartoon where human beings have destroyed the earth. They can't live here anymore. They go live on these big spaceships, and you're all these people that have just overweight, looking at screens consuming soft drinks. They forgotten how to move. They're just not moving. And I honestly believe that's the way that the world is going. I think that's where the world will go with the metaverse. I'm sure there'll be good things that come out of this, that our attention is being sold. You know, it is and it's us. It's up to us to be sold on who we want to become. That's why this podcast is called the future self podcast is what would it be like if you could build a relationship to your future self? You know, and that when you thought about it, and you really took some time to think about it, that there was something that started to happen

Pete Cohen 13:59
I'm gonna feel good feeling deep inside the best of you is still to come. There's things that you want to do that you put your attention on them because we're also sold this idea of like instant life you know instant success instant everything. Yeah, we all know that. There's no substitute to focus your attention on something. So maybe you could just wake up to the reality of where your attention is going. You know, we mentioned this in a previous podcast. Imagine there's a reporter, he's with you for the whole day and he can see what you're doing. He can see where your attention is. That's why I get up at four o'clock in the morning. That's where I do my greatest work my deepest work and again, we can we can look at this but some of the studies that show that if you get a good night's sleep and most people aren't most people need around eight hours sleep a night.

Pete Cohen 14:57
You know, I'm pretty guilty of that. I might get six and a half, seven hours. So you know, there's still work to be done there. There's always something to be done. So, that's the first one the first you know is about task switching, just waking up to the reality of where your where your attention is. That's the first habit that is harming your health. It's harming your attention. The second is sitting. I mean, right now I am sitting, who invented sitting by the way. I mean, someone must have invented a chair to Hey, hey, look, look at this. This is a chair. What do we do with that? We just sit in it. And what do we do? Nothing. We just sit in the chair. I mean, I'd love to meet the person who could maybe someone could send me a message or something and tell me who invented the chair? Because obviously now you could go and google it. You could multitask right now and go and look at that, but you don't need to. I mean, some of you probably now think it was an interesting one. I'd like to go and find out who invented the chair. We can maybe ask Siri Maybe he knows Be careful. When you say that because they might come alive. Because they don't always want to hear from Siri or Alexa because they're always listening. But who invented sitting? And what impact is that had? I think most of us know? Imagine if you said to you as a child, can you just sit there please and not move? How many of you would say I'm not saying you want to move? Because what is life? Life basically is his motion. And if you again if you want to do which again, a lot of people don't want to do they don't want to take responsibility don't want to wake up to the awareness of the impact that sitting is having on your life. You know, when I was a personal trainer, you know, many years ago I used to watch you know, some of really rich clients. I had one you know, literally would just drive to the gym, walk in exercise, go home drive home and sit down and not do anything. And you know that's better than doing nothing but you know, the research around this really is people are healthy because not because they go to the gym. Not that there's anything wrong with going to the gym. They're healthy because they move life is motion. And I'm going to kind of share a couple of things around this with you again, you know, yesterday, I was recorded a podcast talking about the Apollo mission. You know these rockets that go into space that how many miles is it to the moon, you can Google that if you want to as well. But it's quarter of a million right so it's 250,000 miles to the moon. And for every half an hour. The Apollo rocket will be on track for about a minute. So most of the time it's off track. So how do you bring yourself off track I love that analogy, don't you? That the fact that most of us are on track or off track all the time. And unless we decide the track that we want to take who we want to become what we need to stop doing what we need to start doing then we're in trouble. We'll we'll find ourselves moving off track lead us not into temptation. Don't eat fruit from the forbidden tree. There's so much temptation everywhere. But what's really fascinating about astronauts and I remember reading about this years ago that literally for every 10 years from the age of about 18 I think that we will lose 1% of bone density every 10 years, right. That's why as we get older doing weight bearing activity is important. That's why as we get older our diet becomes more important. Because it's flash. We die. We're all dying right now, but at the same time we're living as we're dying. We've all got the opportunity to have more life. Because life is motion. Every cell of the body is charged through movement. You know it I know it? You know, literally you probably don't feel like exercising so you probably won't do it. But you know after you've done it, even if it's just a walk, your body is going thank you and your brain will reward your body for that. So fascinating. The brain wants you to move. It's just your body doesn't want to move because your body doesn't feel good about moving and we're designed to conserve energy. But the only reason we move is because there are things that we want. i That's how I think of it what do you want what's important to you? Most of us have substituting the things that would give us the greatest satisfaction, the things that give us a hit, hit a dopamine hit of endorphins, rather than something more Not that there's anything wrong with endorphins or in dolphins dolphins swimming around your body. The thing is, where do you want to go? Who do you want to become? And how much of that is going to happen from you sitting down? I mean, sitting down right now I'm speaking to this microphone. And I appreciate the fact that I can do it. But this is really important because we're the astronauts that go into space, because there's a lack of something called gravity. I'm sure you've heard of that when we leave the gravity in a week. They can lose 1% of their bone density because there's no gravity. So what's happening to us? Of course, when they come back down to earth, you know that they go through a vigorous regime to get their bone density back. But how much of a sedentary lifestyle what's it really cost costing you? And there's a great acronym called NEET and E A T which is non exercise Activity Thermogenesis, right So, basically what this refers to is it's not necessarily like not going to the gym just walking getting up standing still, that these activities increase thermogenesis which is increasing the the rate obviously thermogenesis is heat, creating some heat. Let's turn up the Turn down for what

Pete Cohen 20:23
and the last thing I want to say on this because we could be talking about these five surprising habits that are harming your health all day is the amount of steps that you do. How much steps do you do but before we do that,

Pete Cohen 20:41
come on everyone. Let's turn up the heat. Turn down for what turned down for your future. Turn down. Let's get moving. So I remember reading Kelly McGonigal his book The joy of movement What a fantastic book that is. And she talks about the step, the step threshold that if you do less than a certain amount of steps, you are more vulnerable to depression and anxiety. Right and that number I have no idea how this was worked out. 5649 Isn't that incredible? 5649 steps. If you do less than 5649 steps, you aren't more prone to depression and anxiety. What's the average amount of steps that people take? In the world today? 4961 What did COVID do for a lot of people make them even more sedentary even to the point of not traveling to work, not walk into the water call out going out for lunch. We don't move. We don't move. One of the members of Stop One Start One Dr. Baker was telling me just yesterday that in seeing patients as a doctor 40% of people that are coming in, have issues with their mental health. Because if we don't move, you're going to have some issues. It's just that's how it is. And I remember being involved with some studies myself when I was studying sports science and then reading about this that studies that got people to stop exercising and people that stopped exercising for a week. Right after two weeks this one particular study 88% of people had a dissatisfaction for life. You know life is motion but we we many people have the habit of just not being active. And even if they started to be active, they're going to feel some form of resistance to it. This is a part of the MacGo that's not me. I don't do that. This is where the reinvention comes in. This is where we can turn things around turn down Let's move. Let's do some body popping now. Everybody come on. Fine body popping right now. I started body popping in 1985 I actually got quite good at it but when I got good at it everyone stopped Oh yeah. So that's number that was the second one. What's the third one again, this probably won't surprise you but if you've ever heard of something called Sugar what impact is sugar having on your health and your well being again, you know, it's fascinating because sometimes when you start talking about this stuff, people don't want to go there. But it's like this is so important. You know for years growing up I remember I didn't think people we didn't think sugar was bad. You know if it was my work in the weight loss world. I remember think reading the food pyramid all those years ago and you know that we should all be eating lots of carbs. And the food pyramid was designed by the department of agriculture in America. It wasn't designed by the Department of Nutrition because there was a lot of money in grains and that's why we had Frosties and conflicts and we drank apple juice and orange juice and react loads of toast. And really this is one of the biggest challenges in the world. The biggest is obviously the obesity epidemic and the epidemic around you know diabetes and you know what impact is sugar having on I mean, I wrote down these statistics the other day again from people don't want to know this, but I'll tell you anyway, just looking at them here in America. 97.3% of Americans are unhealthy by four basic measures. 50% are diagnosed with chronic illness. 68% are obese. 70% are on prescription medication. By the time they're 60. They're on five medications. 80% of Americans are mentally emotionally challenged and they're not flourishing. That's 97.3% not maintaining healthy habits. 75% of healthcare goes on preventable diseases. So what impact you think it would have if people stopped eating sugar? You know, I mean, let's face it, sugar is just very addictive for most people. And when we look at this like one pound of sugar is 454 grams, I believe and what's the average consumption of sugar? For most people, the average consumption is 152 pounds a year. 152 pounds a year. I think that's 185 grams a day. 300 years ago. It was about 51 pounds a year which was 6.35 grams. Yeah, 1000 years ago, the average kind of sugar consumption was zero. So you know what impact is sugar having on the body? I mean, it's pretty obvious but the thing I wanted to point out here is we all know I would imagine the impact it has on the body with metabolic disorders.

Pete Cohen 25:37
And insulin and inflammation is now a term in the medical literature called inflammation. Which means as we get older, we're more prone to inflammatory challenges which obviously the ripple effect of that's where disease comes from. So what what impact you think you would have if you cut sugar out of your diet, but this is where it gets really interesting. Really, I think it gets really interesting is the impact it's having on your brain. You know, researchers now there's now a new term called diabetes type three which is a lot of people are calling with dementia. Simply because of what sugar is doing. Sugar really shrinks the brain it affects memory affects mood, mood regulation. It shrinks, it really affects the part of the brain is known as the hippocampus. Again, you don't need to know all of the science around this. It's just if you really wanted to improve the quality of your life. I remember I tell the story a lot of my friend who used to play cricket with his habit of eating. He was a cricketer. If you've ever played cricket, there's always a feature to a game of cricket. It's called cricket tees. And we're literally you'd have lots of bread and you'd have lots of biscuits and cake. And I just would watch his plate and it was just absolutely full. And I must admit I'm hugely addicted to sugar. I'm the sort of person in the past. I couldn't just have one piece of chocolate, you know, if there was a bar of chocolate, it's all got to go. Whereas my wife, she could have one piece and just put it away. But that's not me. So one of the biggest changes I made was talking to my future self. My mum who almost passed away a year ago, to the day when she was dying and I was looking after I took solace in sugar who who has ever done that before took solace in alcohol or drugs or whatever it is. You're in pain, you want to get out of pain. It was something sweet that was putting in my body I wanted my mum. I couldn't have her so I just I don't know why but that's why I turned to that's why I turned to when I was a kid. You know, I was rewarded with with sweets and I was punished by not having them. So my relationship to food was probably like so many people. And I was eating chocolate in the middle of the night and I just was walking because we got to the point where we needed a carer to come in. And I just I'd stopped on my tracks. I know where I was. I just stopped and I actually felt like my clairvoyant future self was talking to me saying, Pete, what are you doing? Both of your grandparents had diabetes, do you want diabetes? And that was enough for me to make the decision in that moment and I just stopped you know, and I haven't eaten any chocolate for and I'm really proud of myself. Because my future self doesn't eat it. As much as I have always enjoyed it and ice cream, haven't seen any of it. That's my choice. Because I want a future that I can be proud of. I don't want to end up in hospital. You know, what about you? You know these are things I'm not saying they're easy to do. But the power that comes from it and the focus that comes from it or being left feeling that you're in control of your life. So look, that's number three, and I'm going to go through the the final two. So we've looked at you know, five surprised when looked at first three so the first is task switching multitasking. The second is sitting now we've just been talking about sugar. And now I know all about this, I've helped, you know 1000s of people lose weight over the years and the people that are able to cut down or cut out sugar for most people. That's the thing which makes the biggest difference. Number four is snoozing, right? We've all heard that quote right? You snooze, you lose. What is it about snoozing? When again, you know someone like me who's interested in magnificent health. You know, we created the Magnificent Seven for health and for those of you that do our Stop One Start One program you'll have access also to the Magnificent Seven, which is about eat right drink right think right talk right? Who or poop as they say in America, and try and drink right looking to get balance around these seven things to bring your best self forward. And obviously sleep is massively important. But what happens is that we tend to sleep in cycles. And those cycles can be anything between 60 and 90 minutes. So if you wake up, and you press snooze, and you go back to sleep for 10 minutes, and then you wake up again and you do that three or four times. There's a part of you that still asleep. And that's why for a lot of people like that. They just say I'm not a morning person. What does that actually mean? What does that mean? I'm not a morning I find it so fascinating when people say that it's just a habit. None of us are designed. We're not owls, you know we're not badgers who can literally see in the dark. That's not our time. Our time is the day and that's when we're at our best and for most people, their best energetically and psychologically for the first after after about half an hour after waking for about two hours.

Pete Cohen 30:34
So just be mindful of snoozing, but if you if you did press new if you didn't press news and you got up your life will be massively different. It will be so different. And you probably think that's not me and you thought I was really tired and you and that's the last one I want to talk about which is the narrative that you know the habit the fifth surprising habit that's harming your health is the narrative and it is surprising for a lot of people because they're unaware of the narrative. They're unaware of the story that they're telling themselves. We're all talking to ourselves, right? Many of you know that. I've written a book called Shut The Duck Up and you know, I'm quite well known for you know, the duck in your head that quacks away but I've kind of pushed a duck to one side of retiring on the duck there's lots of pictures of me with a duck on my head and it's like you know what? I don't really want to be known for Shut The Duck Up. But that's okay. I don't mind it's just I'm evolving. I want to be known for my future self and my future self. Really doesn't listen to what the duck says. My future self is someone I'm really proud of becoming is Stephen Bartlett, who some of you know very famous podcast a diary of the CEO when he was 15. He said I know who I'm pursuing. Let's go out there and pursue the person who you want to be. But with that narrative, just start off and be curious about the story that you're telling yourself. I'd really encourage you not to take it personally, to see that. Most of the time we're convincing ourselves to behave in a way that we've always behave and who we are is not who we have to be who we be is really up to us. So let me just do a quick summary. And I want to thank you for listening to the podcast, please subscribe to it but more importantly, just get involved in what we've created. Don't hesitate. If you want to go from a lack of focus and procrastinating being distracted. Do the greatest thing you'll ever do. Which is invest in your future self and join the stock one stock one challenge is absolutely free for 14 days you get access to my 30 Day Kickstart program. You get access to our app, and so much more series of master classes and let's go let's go let's go. Let's go to a place that we've not gone before. You know to boldly go where no man has gone before. Most of us would not watch Star Trek if they kept going to the same place all the time. So the first thing we talked about was task switching which multitasking it doesn't work. Be mindful of your attention where it's going. Then we talked about sitting, the danger of sitting get up and move. Start doing more steps more than 5649 steps a day and see how your mood starts to change. And then we talked about sugar just be mindful of where the sugar in your diet is coming from. We were sold this illusion remember about cereals and really looking at what cereals are all cereals are is some sort of wheat or corn that is literally just been stripped down to like cardboard and then they just spray it with sugar and some fortified vitamins and minerals. It's not food, it's food like strip sugar from your diet was cut it down. Then we talked about snoozing, just see if you can get out of the habit of snoozing and see if you can get into the habit of just creating space to do some deep work a little bit in the morning as you stop the things that are holding you back. And the last is just your your narrative. You know, just be mindful of the narrative that you're telling yourself because you know what I think it's time for you to become unstoppable.

Pete Cohen 34:32
It's all about getting on a streak you know, with everything that we do and everything that we've created. It is simply about helping people get to a point where what was once difficult to do is just what you do. I've seen people do amazing things and I believe in you. I believe in who you are. And I would love to believe in who you're becoming. That comes down to one thing. What is that one thing? It's the word called choice. That's what Jim Rohn spoke about all those years ago. One of the forefathers of personal development. We're the only animals as far as we know, that have the dignity of choice. I appreciate you listening to the podcast. And I look forward to being a part of where you're going. Because you don't have to go alone. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next time.