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

by Aubrey Marcus

What you will find, once you embrace the grind, whatever your grind may be, is that all of a sudden it isn’t so bad. It is never pain that is the problem; it is the suffering caused by the resistance to that pain.

To accept is to embrace, to meet without resistance or judgment or preference. To enjoy is to move past acceptance and actually have fun while you are doing it. And enthusiasm sits beyond enjoyment, where you are bringing your intent, and your passion, into what you are doing.

Having lost our instinctual guidance, we have to make choices with our minds constantly. Some of these choices require willpower, and when life gets rocky, that’s when our willpower turns to Rocky Road. The decision to delay or restrict immediate pleasure for future gain or the greater good is controlled by a part of the brain called the frontal cortex.

Rather than counting your calories, focus on the nutrients you are putting into your body. You want to ingest plenty of macronutrients like proteins, fats, and fiber.

people snuck out after lunch and stopped working, it would have no visible impact on national productivity, because for so many people nothing gets done after lunch anyway.

Binaural beats are an auditory biohack designed to facilitate brain-wave entrainment.

conventional wisdom and conventional methods, seeking conventional results.

conventional is boring at best, and ineffective or harmful at worst.

the thing about enjoying your food is that if you are worried all the time about what you are eating, eating is gonna suck. And ironically, the more you worry about it, the worse the food will actually be for you. We’re going to get rid of this anxiety and make food fun again.

brands like Lily’s and Lakanto are offering dark chocolate without any added sugar and minimal dairy.

Your skin cannot mimic the probiotic environment of your actual gut, so it results in a lot of false positives.

In general, keep the sugar to less than 5 grams’ indulgence, but every once in a while give yourself permission

you need to pair any sugar you consume with something that slows its absorption into the body—and the two things that do that are fat and fiber. That’s why having sugar after a high-fat, high-fiber meal is great.

instead of sprinkling more sugar on your ice cream, try sprinkling on some psyllium, or chia seeds.

Ceylon cinnamon and apple cider vinegar.

“Cheater Shooter.” To make it, just mix one ounce of ACV and half a teaspoon of Ceylon cinnamon into three ounces of room-temperature water and send it down the hatch.

saying grace as an act of gratitude to be done not with words but with your senses.

If we broke our bodies down into the trillions of cells that they are, and imagined those cells as our loyal subjects, and our conscious mind as their ruler, what kind of ruler would we be? Most of us would be sadistic tyrants. We feed our cells things that aren’t helpful, we chastise them for the appearance they create, we force them into unnatural positions for long periods of time, and then we take all manner of drugs to shut out what they are trying to communicate with us.

writing down my mission and three main objectives for the following day,

at what point do you start sacrificing your greatness for goodness?

count how many hours of sleep you get in a night, but rather how many ninety-minute sleep cycles you get in a week (thirty-five cycles should be your target).

If thirty-five sleep cycles per week is the goal, that means the typical day should theoretically include four or five sleep cycles.

A thirty-minute nap like the one we talked about in chapter 9, which is only one-third of a full cycle, still counts as one point toward your sleep-cycle goal. It’s not extra or a bonus, it’s part of your sleep regimen. So if you sleep six hours at night, you get four points. If you take a thirty-minute power nap that day, you get an additional point, bringing you to five.

Emergency Sleep Cocktail 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar (dry spice) 1/4 teaspoon sea salt 1/2 teaspoon turmeric Dash of black pepper Mix ingredients in 10–12 ounces filtered water. Drink.

To own this day and own your life, you need to create an ethos of your own. Something that takes all the complex knowledge you’ve acquired from your failures and successes over the years, and turns it into a code.

Start with simple things, like When I promise people I am going to do something, I do it. That’s a pretty good start. I will always forgive myself if I’m doing my best. That’s another good start. I will choose one day and own it. That’s a great one!

choose a single phrase they can tell themselves whenever times get tough.

there are four keys to compelling positive action: (1) know what to do and how to do it; (2) believe it will work; (3) see the value; and (4) get support from your community/tribe/family.

“I love you.” Love is the appropriate bond that can unify all aspects of yourself. To express this love sets the foundation for all the communication to follow. “I’m sorry.” This is to clear you of any guilt you may carry for the times you’ve done yourself wrong—from negative self-talk to forcing your body to cope with way too much cheap tequila. “Forgive me.” The humble act of asking for forgiveness, when sincere, is not often opposed. Grant yourself the forgiveness you seek. “Thank you.” This is an expression of gratitude to your body and your mind, not only for the forgiveness but for everything it has given you. It’s gotten you this far, after all, right?