448 | Strengthening Your Emotional Stability – Part 2

Chris LoCurto 0:00
Boosting your emotional stability, that is coming up next.

Chris LoCurto 0:14
Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show where we discuss leadership and life, and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Welcome to the show, folks. Before we get into today's episode of last week, we opened registration for the Next Level Leadership Live Event. And we're so excited to see those of you who grabbed your tickets already. Now, if you've missed out on the big discount, have no fear-right now, extreme early bird pricing is available and saves you 30% off regular ticket pricing. So guys, I know that I'm hyping the heck out of this event on recent shows. But there's a reason for that: first, leaders have to always be growing themselves. Second, you need this specific information, because it's the exact playbooks we've used to help leaders to get free from overwhelm, and finally start leading their teams to greater success and bigger revenues and profits. This is going to be three days worth of phenomenal teaching, with a heavy focus on giving you the major elements that the people in our coaching programs and mastermind groups are learning right now. They're the major elements are the huge transformations that have been helping the companies that we lead and teach. This is the stuff that we have been helping our clients do and understand for a long time. This is the stuff I've been doing for years and years and years. So this is going to be elements of our greatest ever content, the stuff that's really helping people get past some of the biggest struggles that they've had in business, some of the areas that they're just banging their heads against the wall, some of the revenue issues that they keep coming up against, and the team issues that they keep coming up against. We're going to help you to tackle all of this. Now, before I continue, here's what you need to know, we just launched this bad boy. And we are currently in extreme early bird. So head on over to chrislocurto.com/nextlevelleadership, all one word, and grab your tickets today. Okay, so, folks, if you are joining us after having listened to last week's episode, then you know, we've been talking about your emotional fortitude, you know, how do we strengthen that? How do we know where we are the first two things we hit, we're one making sure that we actually recognize our current condition. Right. So if we're gonna understand what our emotional fortitude is, we have to first recognize what our current condition is. Self-awareness is powerful for us to know exactly what we're experiencing, what we're struggling with, what causes issues, what strengthens us all that kind of fun stuff. The second thing is, and this is crazy powerful, we have to recognize our daily contributions, right? Whether they are negative, or they are positive, we have to recognize what is contributing to a lack of emotional fortitude or what is contributing to us building that up. Today, what we're going to do is we're going to do a deeper dive into boosters, things that will help you and strengthen your emotional fortitude. And I'm going to tell you, some of the things that we're going to hit you've heard them from a 30,000 foot view from people all the time talking through, "Oh, these are smart things to do." But they never really get into why they're so incredibly important. And we're going to hit some of those things today. So we're gonna hit some stuff that affects you emotionally. Even though a lot of these things are physical. So we're gonna dive right into that when we come back right after this.

Chris LoCurto 4:08
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Chris LoCurto 5:06
Okay, so we are hitting five emotional stability boosters that you need to be tapping into for your health and understanding how they affect you in a positive way and in a negative way. And again, like I said, in the front bumper there, a lot of these you've heard before, but I want to explain some of these things in a deeper way of how they affect you. So let me warn you. While they seem simple, they're very powerful. And if you're honest, I think you're gonna recognize how some of these things are affecting you in a positive or negative way. The first thing we're going to hit is food, eating well, now, it amazes me how many people now I have had, I've been working on my physical body for 20 years, 20 plus years now, because I have had a lot of issues, one of those being high levels of lead. I've been working on getting led out of my body for quite some time. People always ask, "What, did you eat paint chips?" Because that's a great Chris Farley movie. No, I didn't eat paint chips. But I do believe if I go back to the mid 90s, that I lived in a house that was over 100 years old. And I believe all of the pipes were led. So every day I showered, every day I made coffee with this water, every day- I'm Sicilian, cooked a lot of pasta in this water. And it was always kind of funky. This is before we really started getting into a lot of bottled waters or definitely before a lot of water filters. Which again, how would we have known right? I did not know. So I would not have looked for a filter that would have filtered out lead. If I put a filter in there at all, I would have looked for one that was filtering out things like chlorine, right? So I've been working on this for a couple of decades of trying to heal my body, and I've gone through a whole bunch of crap well along the way. I've seen how it's affected other areas of my body. So how it's affected my adrenals, my kidneys, my liver, my thyroid, all of those pieces, right? How it's affected my stomach how, when I would get sick, then what would the doctors do? They would immediately put me on antibiotics, which would destroy the gut bacteria. All these things I've had to deal with for 20 years, I really started getting, I just kept feeling worse and worse and worse. And I started getting changed when I started following more of a functional medicine style of looking to natural things to discover what is the problem instead of pushing medicine into my body? I say all that to say I've actually been researching what goes into your body for decades. This is something I've worked on for a very, very long time. And I'm still working on it, we still don't have all the lead out. It takes an incredibly long time. And it's a big process. But I have discovered everything from what's happening in my gut, what's happening bacteria wise, what's happening in my liver what's happening everywhere, right? How is everything affecting me, I know which foods I can eat, which foods I can't eat. I know which foods affect my energy levels and drop my energy levels. I know which foods give me inflammation in a heartbeat. I know which foods can affect my sinuses and my my digestion in a heartbeat. I understand this stuff because I've studied it for a long time. Why is all that important to you? Because it amazes me how many people do not recognize that the stuff they are putting in their body is absolutely causing them to be sick. How many folks do not recognize the inflammation that they are creating by putting crap sugars, bad processed foods, stuff with good bacteria just heated out of it. All kinds of junk that they put into their acids, fake sugars, all this junk that they dump into their body and then don't realize that the food is the thing or a major thing that's having an effect on them. So and then what do we do we go out we gain a bunch of weight, we're struggling, we're feeling sick. And so we go on a diet, which that doesn't work either. Right? So one of the things that we have to understand is is how food plays such an important role in our emotions. Now, one big piece of this even if you don't know it, you subconsciously know this sugar has the same effect on the pleasure centers in your brain as cocaine.

Chris LoCurto 10:11
Let me say that again, sugar lights up the pleasure centers in your brain the same way that cocaine does. So one of the things you've probably noticed is, when you don't feel good that you actually spend time shoving sugar into your body. There's a lot of folks, it's funny people will come into Next Level Life knowing Hey, this is going to be an emotionally stressful day, this is going to be tough. And so they'll bring sugar with them. They'll bring candies, they'll bring, you know, m&ms. They'll bring you know, candy bars, whatever, or sodas, they'll bring heavy, heavily sugared sodas, because they know that when they don't feel good when they feel stressed out when they feel negative, when they feel emotional, that if they will shove sugar inside of their bodies, that a lot of those pleasure centers and they feel good for a while. Well, massive problems with that. First thing is, sugar is your worst enemy. When it comes to the gut bacteria in your stomach, you're supposed to have no more than 20% bad bacteria in your stomach. Well, when you're dumping sugar in there, guess what it's doing? It's feeding the daylights out of the bad bacteria and killing off the good bacteria. So the bad bacteria continues to grow and grow and grow. And what does that cause? Digestive issues. The inability to process food well, the inability to digest food well. It cranks up inflammation inside of your body. It creates an environment that allows cancer to thrive. There's all kinds of horrid things that happen inside of your body. When you dump sugar inside. Here's a surprising thing to a lot of folks. Go and take a look at the normal can of soda that actually has sugar, not the fake crap, that's actually even worse than sugar, aspartame and stuff. Go ahead and take a look at a can of soda, it usually has somewhere around 38 to 40 grams of sugar per can 38 to 40. How many people drink multiple sodas in a day? A typical packet of sugar in the US. And I know that we have a lot of people that are listening around the world, I don't know what you if you have sugar packets, or how you get your sugar. But a typical packet of sugar in the US contains contains two grams of sugar. So what does that mean? That a typical can of soda that has 38 to 40 grams of sugar in it is actually 19 to 20 packets of sugar per can now, if I stacked up 19 to 20 packets of sugar in front of you, and said, just go ahead and then put that in some water stirred up and drink it down. What are the chances you're going to do that? Hopefully slim to none. Right. And then people do that multiple times a day multiple cans of sodas or whatever, or eating candy bars, or eating even health bars that have tons of sugar in them, or bad vitamins that have tons of sugar. When you look all around, what you will discover is as you're dumping this toxic waste into your body, it's creating toxicity in your body. So let's take a look at other bad things. What about processed wheats, or processed corns or genetically altered products? Right? Only France has done a a an extensive study on GMOs and Roundup. And here's what they did. They did a two year study on this and what they discovered and they did this in rats because they have the closest structure to human bodies, molecular structure, whatever it is. And what they discovered is is that after continuously feeding these rats, GMO products, especially with Roundup in them, what happened is their body size doubled with tumors. Their body size doubled. They weighed twice the amount as the rats that didn't have the GMO and the Monsanto which is now bear, the ground up in them. Twice the size with tumors. Now. Why is it that we don't have a study like that being done in America that's I can get off on that track, like crazy. So here's what you have to ask yourself, if you're putting genetically altered foods into your body, if you're putting Roundup, Monsanto the stuff they spray to kill the weeds into your body, and it is absolutely destroying your body. It's making the environment heavily toxic and, and creating a phenomenal environment for cancer to grow. Then you have to ask yourself, why? Why are you putting that crap in? What is it doing to you? How does that affect you? Right? And we can go on and go on and go on the foods that you're eating. If you're putting stuff into your body, tons of carbs, way more than your body can process, which means that your liver is not processing it correctly, it's turning it into sugar. If you are not processing all of this food, well, then what does that mean for your emotional state? Well, if we're having to put things in to make us feel happy in or at least feel good, during stressful times, that means that we're not experiencing the stressful times, not the way that we should, which means that instead of doing something like putting in healthy boundaries, or recognizing how toxic the situation is, instead, we're getting ourselves through it by putting crap in. If we are emotional eating, I used to be one of those folks. Back in the again early to mid 90s was my if it was a tough day I didn't I didn't do sugar I would do a bowl of pasta. Right good Sicilian, I'd eat a bowl of pasta, I feel better about myself, because what does that turn into turns into sugar later on, right? If we're putting crap in because we're emotionally eating, then it's affecting our emotional fortitude. It's keeping us from experiencing what we should be experiencing, and allowing ourselves to put healthy decisions into place. If we're putting a bunch of sugar, a bunch of processed foods, a bunch of GMOs, a bunch of Roundup glyphosate in our body, and it's destroying our gut, it's destroying our digestive system, it's destroying the way that our liver responds, our adrenals respond, our kidneys respond our thyroid response, then guess what? It's also creating heavy amounts of inflammation. Well, what is directly tied to inflammation? Depression. Yep, you can go out and discover, if you do enough research on it, you can find a ton of studies, they're finally releasing a ton of studies that people have known for a long time, that depression is linked to inflammation. Whenever you find depression, you find inflammation, it is very rare to actually find depression that doesn't have inflammation in the body, like extremely rare. It's so uncommon, right? So what do we know? If we're eating unhealthy diets, and we're creating inflammation, and we're destroying our gut, and and and, and and what is it leading to? A lack of emotional fortitude.

Chris LoCurto 18:18
If we are depressed, how in the world are we going to be able to emotionally stand up to the situations that we need to, make it through the situations that we need to, stay productive during these situations, make right decisions? We don't. What do we do? Instead we struggle, we become depressed, we become victims. We continue to shovel more crap into our bodies, and it affects us horribly. Chris, this is such a positive episode. Listen, I've had to learn these things over and over again. My wife has had to learn these things over and over again. The reason you know the folks that come here for Next Level Life or for Stratplan, or our retreats with our Next Level Mastermind, folks, they get healthy food for a reason. We don't want to put the crap on our bodies. Am I saying that I never ever put anything bad it No. You know, once in a great while I'll travel and I'll eat something that you know is not the best, but I understand the consequence. It's just something I don't choose to do on a daily basis. Instead, I choose to put healthier stuff in my body. Number two, and man. I am a what is it, a habitual offender? Is that the term? I struggle I suck. That's what I was gonna say. I was gonna put struggle and suck together. I struggle. There we go. struggle. I suck at this. Number two is sleep. Folks. I am like a lion. 51 years old. And my wife says that I am like a little baby who will not just go to bed that I will fight it and fight it and fight it. And why? Because there's so much that we do in a day and so much creativity that's used and so much effort that's used in a day that when I get to nighttime, I don't want to go to bed. Why? Because that means that when I wake up, we start all over again, I want a little bit of time, just let me just let me relax, my wife calls it mowing, I don't still don't understand what in the world that means or where it actually came from. But I want some relaxation time, I want to be able to chill for a little bit, I want my brain to slow down, right. And what I have discovered is, and she has so proven this to me so well, that if I will go to bed earlier, because I get up pretty early, I get up about five 30, I'm up, I'm awake. If I will go to bed earlier than I will actually get a much better sleep score a restful night. And she's proven it to me over and over and over again, that if I will actually get in bed, sometimes even 30 minutes or even an hour earlier than I have a much better night of sleep. Well what happens? Almost every single time I wake up, I've lost weight. I feel better. I have more energy that day. You know, obviously if I do good healthy routines after I wake up, I have more energy, I can think more clearly. There's all kinds of amazing things that happen if I will just get my butt to bed. But I remember, in my early years, I used to go to bed at a decent time. But I remember people talking about, "Oh, you don't need that much sleep. You actually you know your body will do well on four to six hours." Let me just call that bull. That is incorrect. Now I'm not saying that this is every single person or there's some people that can operate on six hours of sleep. Everybody can operate on six hours asleep. But can you do better if you get eight? Heck yeah, absolutely. No, do I make it to eight? Rarely. But if I can get a seven or seven and a half in, you know, cuz sometimes I'll still wake up earlier. I just snap awake sometimes. But sometimes I make it through sometimes I get eight and a half hours. It's just stunning. Right? When I do, I do so much better. So can I operate on six hours? Sure. There's many times depending upon what health regimen we are working on to try and get the lead out of my body. I only get four hours I wake up, I'm awake. That's it. I can't get back to sleep. I struggle and man it sucks. I'm telling you, it doesn't work really well for me. What am I saying? Get your butt to bed. But Chris, we only have so much time while then make adjustments. Do things to change how you get quality sleep. By the way. While my wife has pointed out that I am like a little baby and I will fight like crazy, I have had to help my wife understand that incredibly loud train like noisy fan actually base your sleep worse. Some of you asleep with these incredibly loud fans or in loud noises or your TV's on or whatever. And what you discover is is that's actually affecting your deep sleep, it's affecting your REM, it's not allowing you to get fully into great sleep. But some people are like, well, I can't get to sleep unless I have a noise. Well slowly start to back that down. And what you will discover is you get greater quality sleep now you can test this for yourself. But if you're going to do it, give yourself a legitimate test. Don't try and prove it you know to make it work so that you can keep your loud train sized noise in your bedroom. Right. So if you are getting more sleep, more quality sleep oh by the way, there are things you can do to make your sleep even more quality. Things like not drinking alcohol before bed. Not eating sugars before bed. Sometimes, for me, what I have discovered is there's two things that do actually help me get deeper sleep. When I feel like I need them. One of those is a quality organic cottage cheese because it's got a protein, casein protein will actually last longer. I actually do pretty darn well and do pretty I get some pretty decent deep sleep and thank you Gil Borman that's helped me out with his tart cherry now, tart cherry does have sugar in it and I know That sounds contradicting. But here's his GATT, I don't know if it's the poly phenols, or what it is specifically in tart cherry. But there's some, there's some elements of tart cherry that actually help you get a more restful night of sleep. So this is a situation where the whatever else is in touch area actually overrides the sugar, and helps you to get a deeper sleep. So the more quality sleep that you get, the stronger you feel the next day, the better your mood is, the better you make decisions, you're not struggling as much you can think more clearly. And when you have poor or inadequate sleep, it can cause irritability, it can cause stress, it can cause you to not feel good, not feel happy, not feel like you're ready to face the day. So when we see chronic insomnia, then what we see is the risk of people developing mood disorders, such as anxiety or depression, why? What happens when you get into deep sleep and when you get into REM, those processes it and even believe it or not light sleep has a restorative process, the sleep levels actually are working on repairing different parts of your body, whether it's your mind, your physical body, whatever it is. So guess what, when you are not getting quality sleep, you can build up a whole lot of inflammation, you can create a whole lot of anxiety and depression. So sleep is superduper important to making sure that you are able to handle things better in an emotional situation that you are you have a greater emotional fortitude. Number three, exercise, but exercise better. Now. Once again, I told you some of these things sound simple. But here's the important thing that you have to understand our exercise or the lack thereof, it can absolutely be the bottleneck to our well being. Physical activity. I don't care if you're just getting your butt outside and walking multiple times a day, whatever it is physical activity. And now overdoing this does the exact opposite. Overdoing it can cause pain and inflammation, all kinds of issues. So we're talking about better exercise, physical activity can greatly enhance our emotional well being well what do we know? So we know that when we exercise, we kick in the happy hormones. dopamine, which tends to be the most widely known serotonin, which is super important, and also something that we create while we're sleeping as well and is important for our sleep, and endorphins. These are things that help us to feel better, right? To feel better about ourselves. As we exercise, what's one of the things we kick out of our body? Yep, you guessed it, inflammation. So when we're just even if we go for a brisk walk, it increases our mental alertness. Even if we just go for, you know, a decent walk, then what we're helping ourselves to do is have a more positive mood, and it's being done. Naturally, we are actually boosting our energy, our mood, naturally, we're not putting in crap in there, we're not putting in stuff that's going to cause us to be depressed. Instead, we're going to be doing things that are creating the hormones that help us to feel better, stronger, more positive, and more capable. When you are regularly physically active, then it increases the way you feel about yourself in a positive way. And it reduces stress and anxiety. So I'm not saying you got to go out there and you know, pump 1000 pounds of weight. What I'm saying is you got to do something, you got to get out there. You got to make things happen, right? Even if it starts with just walking, right, get out and walk on a regular basis. Don't do like so many people do. They go out there and try and lift a whole bunch of weight, then they end up hurting themselves then they choose not to go back and exercise and what their answer is always well I tried that but it didn't work for me. No, don't overdo it. This isn't a race. This is you getting the best workout you can even if that means just going for a brisk walk. Alright, when we come back the other two boosters to your emotional stability.

Speaker 2 30:09
“Freedom, it's so powerful.”

Speaker 2 30:09
“I felt rejuvenated, almost renewed.”

Speaker 2 30:09
“I just felt so welcomed and loved and accepted for who I am, and not an ounce of judgment. So I was very comfortable there, that had a really big impact on me.”

Speaker 2 30:09
“It's going to be worth it. It's going to be hard. But it's going to be even better on the other side.”

Speaker 2 30:09
“For me, it was just very refreshing. And I want to say life giving, for me, it really was.”

Speaker 2 30:09
“You know, I would go through Next Level Life again, and probably again, and probably again, because it's so powerful.”

Chris LoCurto 30:09
I want you to ask yourself a question. Could you hear the sense of hope and freedom in their voices just then? I want you to know, that could be you. Look, it's easy to get trapped in old habits, negative thought patterns, and unhealthy relationships, it's gonna take some work, but yes, there is hope for you. If you want to experience the same kind of life transformation, the same kind of self-awareness and freedom that they have or maybe you're just curious what the process would look like for you, then head on over to chrislocurto.com/nextlevellife.

Chris LoCurto 31:01
Okay, looking at number four, the fourth thing that you can do to boost your emotional stability is to meditate daily. Now, I know I know, the word meditate, for me still is one of those funky words, we're not talking about going and doing any weird stuff, right? What we're talking about is just the definition of meditating, which is focusing your mind for a period of time. It could be in silence, or it can be in you know, reciting passages, we love to recite the passages of, you know, the Old Testament, the book of Psalms, it's taking good you it can be in silence, it can be just sitting in not focusing on things and allowing your brain to just be still or it can be putting things in that are quality, like, you know, Scripture passages, Psalms is a great book to be to read and focus on. So meditation, can again, I even hate saying the word because it's got such a bad connotation from weird, crazy, spiritual stuff from back in the day, it can give you a sense of peace, it can give you a calming response, it can cause you to feel really balanced, right?

Chris LoCurto 32:28
It can really help you with your emotional well being all over. And also, when you spend time, there's plenty of research out there that shows that when you spend time in meditation, it can actually help you physically, your body responds better, you reduce stress, right? And we're not talking about you got to go spend all day long, chanting things, spend some time, right, spend some time just clearing your brain or putting good quality stuff in or, again, something that my wife suggested to me years ago, was to do what's called a brain dump. For a lot of you now for me, my brain dump doesn't work the same way as a lot of esthetic people does. A lot of folks can get up, grab a pencil and a paper and write down the stuff that's in your brain. Get it out, get it out right away. Right. For me, I like to go into prayer time, that helps me a lot. But for a lot of folks, at least get it out of your brain, right? There's things to talk about with God and talk about him. If there's things you just got to write it down, it doesn't matter what it is. I know, there have been times my wife has just written down, I have nothing on my mind. I can't think of anything. And it has helped her to get her brain in a better spot for that day. So, for me, I like to pray. I like to spend time I love spending time and Bible study every single morning. That for me is a big piece of getting my mind straight. But if all you're doing is spending time being quiet, or if all you're doing is just spending time reading specific scriptures out of something like the book of Psalms, do whatever you want. Spend that time because it helps you to get rid of a lot of stress and anxiety in your life. One of the things that they have discovered is that people who actually spend quality time meditating have a better response to medical conditions. So powerful stuff. Number five, structure your life. Now. structure. This is a great barrier against chaos. Now some folks say that they thrive in chaos. Some folks don't have a problem with chaos. Well, here's what I'm gonna tell you. I handle stress pretty darn well. My wife has told me and other people have told me that they don't really see me stress out and I think that hilarious because I'm like, I stress all the time, I experienced stress and they're like, Well, you, you deal with it well, and that's because I truly follow the things that we teach, right, I put healthy things in place, I put healthy boundaries in place. But an amazing thing. And this is something I can struggle with, as well. Not greatly, but from time to time. If I don't have structure in what's happening, then I can feel a little anxiety, I can feel a little out of control, right? Because I know that when I do have structure in my life, when I get things organized, when I when I when I know exactly what I'm going after, and the things that we're focusing on and the things we're trying to accomplish. And all the things that I'm not doing. So one of the things that I do, I think really well is if I can't get it done, if we can't do it with excellence, we just don't do it, I'll push it to the side. You know, I can't tell you how many money making schemes I've passed on that people like, you've got to do this. And I'm like, Nope, we're busy with what we've got to do. And what we're doing is more important. So if I can't do that with, with excellence, I'm just not doing it. Right. And that allows me to structure the rest of my time focusing on what's the most important stuff. What is most important, and Chris LoCurto His life? Well, you if you don't know by now, God, God is the most important thing in my life, and I have to structure my life around him, right? If I'm doing it correctly, I'm structuring my life for him, including him, spending time with him spending time in His Word, spending time helping other people to get to know him, right? All those things. When I do that, it gives me greater clarity. It gives me greater vision and destination of, of where I'm heading with what I'm doing, right. And it allows me to kick a whole bunch of stuff out. So if you're going to structure your life, you have to start with the what's important. What are the things that are most important? And what are the you know, what are the things I'm going to say no to? You've heard the saying over and over again? Every time you say yes to one thing, you're saying no to something else, right? So start saying no to a lot of things. Start getting a bunch of crap out of your life that doesn't belong there. And by the way, parents quit making your kids do 47, sports, and theater and all types of activities in a week. You're the one who wants them to do all of that stuff. Right? What are you driving them to do? That if their life isn't full of activities, they don't have worth?

Chris LoCurto 37:34
Come on? Where's the quality family time? Where's the time of being able to not have something to do and using their imagination? Where's the time of getting out into nature and enjoying walks and hikes? Where's all of that? Instead? What do we do? Throw them in a car, run them all over the place shove fast food in their bodies, and wonder why when they grow up? They can't make good quality decisions. No, that's not the only reason why people can't make quality decisions. But I think you get the point that I'm making. That's a very unhealthy structure of life, of running around and cramming every waking moment with an activity for your kids. Listen, you do not have to do that. And you shouldn't feel guilty by people who tell you that you have to do that. Alright, structure quality time with them. Time with you, the family time with God time with doing healthy activities and time with things like sports or, you know, theatres or you know, whatever drama or whatever it is that they do you know, gymnastics, whatever. It's okay to have passions and things. But where's their time to rest? Where's their time to slow down and stop? Where's the time to not be creative, right? So structure that time in there. Here. One of the things that we teach all the time is how to close out your day. We use a tool around here called Asana, which I would I always tell people, it's a project management tool. And what we teach our leaders and business owners and team members is to close your day out to make sure that when you get to the end of your day, even if you're going to continue working, you know, let's say I'm probably planning on work until seven o'clock tonight, but it's you know, 430 I want to brain dump all the things that I have not gotten done yet. Right. Hopefully I've gone through and cleared a bunch of stuff out of my to do list. But I want to put all the things down that need to get done tomorrow and then I want to prioritize the daylights out of them. What's most important, what am I going to hit? What am I going to hit it? Because this gives me the ability to actually structure day after day after day with what's most important. And then when I do that I become incredibly more productive there are research studies that show that people can gain two hours back in a day by structuring this and those studies actually point to you structuring your day at the beginning of the day, we tell people do it at the end of the day. Why? Because it's all that stuff is still fresh in your brain, get it out, don't take it home, and then have to pick up your phone like I used to do and during dinner and send yourself emails, the things you got to do the next day, right, brain dump, get it all out. That way, you can go home and spend time with your family. That way you could go home and be clear, without having to think through a whole bunch of work stuff. So another great thing you can do as far as structuring your life, get rid of junk, there is a whole bunch of junk that is just holding your brain hostage. But one of the things I did years ago, the very first time I came in, on the weekend and cleared up my whole entire office. Some of you've probably heard that story before. But I cleared everything out threw away the things that were trash, organize the things that needed to be organized delegated the things that needed to be delegated. When I came in on Monday, my brain was so clear, it was amazing. And I have never allowed myself to get back to that place. That's been 20 ish years. It's been a long time. And I do not allow myself to get back to that place. Why? Because I realized how it helped me immediately, like my brain operated better. By getting rid of stuff that was just junk, right? I do the same thing in my home, I get rid of things that I'm not using. I don't I don't hoard a bunch of junk, and I want to get rid of stuff. But I'm like, hey, somebody else can use this, like you need to get rid of this thing. Another thing you need to do is get rid of notifications, things that are constantly telling you that there's something super urgent, right? I you know, with my team, I tell him, get rid of them. The email notifications that pop up on your screen, the text, notifications, all these things that keep telling you there's something urgent, because what happens is, is that this thing says come pay attention to me you click on it, you stopped doing the thing that you're doing and what do you notice? It's actually not urgent. I mean, it's actually not important. It's urgent, because it says, Hey, pay attention to me. But when you get to it, you're like that thing totally could have waited for another couple of hours. That wasn't that important. So get rid of things that are distracting your time and telling you that they're urgent, you got to pay attention to them. Another thing is, and we talked about this a little bit earlier, but get rid of unwanted noise. Or actually we talked. Another thing is and we talked about this in the last episode, get rid of unwanted noise, get rid of the stuff that is garnering your attention. That is just crap. If the social media that you're following is not helpful, it's not beneficial. It's not edifying. Get rid of it. If you find yourself scrolling through tons of social media picture after picture after picture, quality, or quarter, whatever the crap it is, and you look up and you've lost parts of your day, and there's been nothing beneficial, get rid of it. If the unwanted noise is bad, horrible TV, or movies or music or whatever people get rid of it. Get rid of the unwanted noise, get rid of the stuff that is not helping you. So these are things that you can do to boost your emotional stability. They can help you to feel grounded that could help you to feel better equipped to handle the struggles that you're experiencing. And maybe you're not experiencing a lot of struggles right now. But you know what it's like when you go through them. They can help you to face your day stronger, they can help you to just feel better. But most importantly, if you don't have a relationship with the one who made you, then you're still building your life on shifting sand. No matter how strong the house, no matter how strong the house is, when the storm comes, it's still gonna fall down. So here's what I want you to do. Let me invite you to speak to your Father in heaven. Ask for his help lean on him expect him to answer one way or another. Whenever you call out to Him. Jeremiah 33 Three says, and this is from The Message version. This is God's message the God who made earth made it livable and lasting, known everywhere, as God called to me and I will answer you. I'll tell you marvelous and wonders things that you could never figure out on your own. So folks, here's what I want you to do. Let him be your strength. Let him be your rock. Let him be your stability.

Chris LoCurto 44:58
All the things that I've told you do our things that you're doing in your strength, and they will help. But I can tell you, I don't face a single day without spending time with my gun. I don't spend a single day without talking to him without focusing on him without meditating on him. Not one. Why? Because I have discovered it changes how I face every single day. It gives me strength. He gives me strength, he gives me abilities. So let them be your strength and be Iraq. Let them be your stability. Well, folks, hopefully this has helped you today. Hopefully this has helped you to create a greater emotional fortitude. Hopefully this has helped you to handle situations better. Hopefully this has helped you to make better decisions on how you face every aspect of your life, whether it's eating, whether it's sleeping, exercising, meditating, or creating structure. What we want you to do, as always, is take all of this information, change your leadership, change your business, and change your life. And join us on the next episode.