Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimized Practices for Waking, Working, Learning, Eating, Training, Playing, Sleeping, and Sex

by Aubrey Marcus

After the thirty to fifty breaths, or once you start to feel the tingling, draw the breath in one more time and fill the lungs to maximum capacity. Then calmly let the air out and hold for as long as you can at the bottom of the breath.

The Power Shower Turn the shower to hot and wash. Do Wim Hof breathing (thirty to fifty breaths, or until you feel tingling and/or mild light-headedness). Turn the shower as cold as it can get. Continue Wim Hof breaths until breathing calms. Hold at the bottom of breath until the gasp reflex kicks in. Optional: Repeat breathing cycle up to twice more, at your discretion, with cold water running continuously or with periods of warm water between cycles to create contrast. Total cold water exposure = ~3 minutes

The key things to consider supplementing are greens, probiotics, B vitamins, krill oil, vitamin D, and additional minerals.

In classic Zen training the masters proposed four very simple practices: archery, calligraphy, pouring tea, and arranging flowers. The goal was not to create an impressive result—a bull’s-eye, a masterpiece, the perfect matcha latte, a good-looking vase. The goal was the process itself. Could they devote every bit of their focus to the task at hand, without letting their mind wander? Could they take the perfect shot, make the perfect stroke, the one where 100 percent of their mind, body, and spirit was unified in the task at hand?

When I’m getting owned by my commute, I turn on the radio, then check my Instagram or email at every stoplight. By the time I arrive at work, I am as high-strung as a man on a wire. On the mornings I own it, I try to be present. This can take different forms, depending on a variety of circumstances, but most often it boils down to focusing on my breath, practicing a wide peripheral gaze meditation, and being hyperaware of my body and my surroundings. Sometimes I’ll just look at the different shades of green in the leaves, or see all the cars, the people inside, the street art, without looking at anyone or anything in particular. I’ll let my mind relax, free from all the decisions I am about to make. Call it Zen and the Art of Getting to Work. Best of all: it’s free, it’s easy, and it requires no commitment other than choice.

If you are going to own the day, you have to own the hour, and you have to own the minute. These minutes are precious things. They are the only currency we spend every day whose value fluctuates wildly. Spend your minutes investing in your future self, filling your emotional coffers, and building value and enjoyment, or spend minutes depleting your emotional bank account. Remember what Peter Gibbons wished for if he had a million dollars? To sit and do nothing. He had that opportunity every time he got in the car. His wealth was right there in front of him. We all have the same amount of the only currency that matters: time. To spend your minutes well—that is the only goal of a life well lived.

To expand your mind and gain actionable information during the commute, check out podcasts or audiobooks, which offer an opportunity to learn that is as valuable as any expensive education.

To combat the potential negative impact of the commute, as well as to practice greater presence and peace of mind, use conscious breathing techniques along with mindfulness practices like the wide peripheral gaze.

These plants are miraculous, powerful allies that can help you achieve amazing shit (sometimes literally), but they can also have power over you if you allow them to. If they are controlling your life, consider the well-established practice of harm reduction, and find ways to transition to a less harmful method or frequency to limit your downside exposure. To check myself, I’ll pause with them for a week or sometimes even a month.

Nicotine on its own can be beneficial to focus, attention, and the enjoyment of your day. The problems come with the delivery. Never inhale smoke! Instead, look for other means like vaping and absorption through the gums or the skin to get you in the zone.

Nootropics have been proven to assist with memory and cognitive performance. Huperzia serrata is a great place to start and is a part of one of the most rigorously tested formulas on the market.

My office is my sanctuary. I have a Zen fountain. I have my favorite candle burning. I have a mini trampoline, a foot massager, a fridge full of endless kombucha, and a couple different places I can sit or stand.

“54% made fewer errors when they could smell lemon, 33% fewer with jasmine and 20% fewer with lavender.”

There’s a great study where a researcher had two groups drink the same 300-calorie French vanilla shake (Mmmm, ice cream . . .). She made one group think they were drinking an “indulgence” shake—with higher calories and more sugar, like one you would drink from an old-timey diner. She led the other group to believe that they were drinking something more sensible with fewer calories, like something you would drink at a bourgie health spa. Lo and behold, just telling these two groups that they were drinking different kinds of shakes changed their bodies’ responses to it. The spa group demonstrated a stable hormone response, whereas the “diner” group had wild hormone swings, almost three times as high as the other group. Their bodies had been tricked by their own minds.

One of the most common digestive mistakes people make is consuming cold beverages while they eat. Any beverage dilutes the HCL in your stomach, making the overall acid concentration acting on your food weaker, while the cold slows down your digestion like a snake in a snowstorm. Leave the cold drinks for well before and well after your meals.

ensure good digestive enzyme activity is by adding digestive enzymes, or adding foods that contain natural enzymes like papaya or pineapple.

Ginger has the ability to speed up the time it takes your stomach to pass food to your digestive tract by up to 50 percent. Add ginger to your meal, and you can say so long to that full feeling in your gut and hello to that full feeling in your pants sooner. Ginger tea works, pickled ginger is great, or just a half thumb of peeled ginger boiled into a tea, or even raw, will do the trick.

The key to eliminating this kind of gas is simple: limit fermentable fibers like those found in legumes, Brussels sprouts, and asparagus. Focus on insoluble fiber instead, the kind found in salads and grains like popcorn.

some foods with high dietary nitrate levels that are easily converted into the biological signal of nitric oxide: beets, pumpkin seeds, Swiss chard, arugula, watermelon, red wine, dark chocolate. Eat as many of those as possible with dinner.

If you are going to cheat, do it well. Learn to minimize the cost of an indulgent dessert or a high-carbohydrate meal by timing it after a workout and taking steps to mitigate the ensuing blood sugar spikes, like by taking a walk. If you want to indulge in a few extra adult beverages, add molybdenum-rich foods, hydrate, and boost levels of glutathione.

The sleep messiah himself, Shawn Stevenson, likes English ivy, NASA’s top recommended air-filtering plant, and the perennial snake plant, which is nocturnal and releases oxygen during the night rather than the day.