The Morning Routine That Sets Up Your Entire Day | Andrew Huberman | Raj Shamani Clips

0:02 If I give you a 25 year old someone okay right now today and your only job is to make them mentally dangerous in next 10 years >> mentally dangerous >> dangerous like >> could you define dangerous >> like how do you how can they have this unbreakable unshakable mindset like an elite performer mindset that they can they will never collapse under pressure like someone who can handle everything in their life and they choose and pinpoint what to do and then be able to do that because here's a problem what I feel a lot of young people like me we watch uh people like you we understand and learn everything from you and then half of the things we are like Monday we're

0:47 excited when we watch you and then by Thursday we're done like nothing works out we don't change our life very easily right a lot of people don't do that so if I give you someone like this 20-year-old right now and your job is to make them me mentally extraordinary or mentally dangerous in next 10 years. Where would you begin? >> It's a great question. Um, so my answer is at first going to sound a little um basic, >> but I think it's very important to understand the principles behind what I'm going to say as opposed to just the specifics. In fact, this is a broader theme I believe people should take to any discussion about health or performance, which is there going to be many many protocols. Do this, do it this way, do it then, don't do it that way,

1:32 don't do it then. But the real question is what are the principles that are anchoring those statements? Why do I say this? Well, because ultimately new protocols will come along, new peptides will come along, new podcasters will come along. And the most important thing, the most important thing is to be able to place what you hear into a framework of, okay, that makes sense. There's a mechanism to support that or look, we don't have any knowledge of how that would work, but I'll try it and see if it works, provided it's safe, and so on. The most important thing for this 25-year-old hypothetical person to do is to understand that there are a few non-negotiables in their physiology and psychology that are directly linked that they have to obey as often as possible.

2:18 Notice I didn't say every single day, but as often as possible in order to get the most out of their life. >> What What are those? Well, as weird as it may sound, the most important thing to do is to ensure, and there are ways to do that we can talk about in a moment, to ensure that you have high morning cortisol levels, >> the so-called stress hormone, which is not a stress hormone. We'll talk about why it's involved in stress, but cortisol is involved in much, much more. You want to take steps, simple steps that I'll describe to amplify your morning cortisol in the first hour or two of your day. and to make sure that in the last hour or so of your day, most days, your cortisol is low. Now, why?

3:04 What? What? What in the world? Like, okay, but if you were going to build a human machine, okay, and I'm not talking about psychology now, but you wanted to build a human machine. Actually, let's make it a happy >> quote unquote dangerous machine, you would say, get that morning cortisol peak as as high as you can. Get your nighttime, last hour before sleep cortisol level as low as you can. Why? When you do that, it sets this person up to have vastly higher levels of daytime energy, focus, ability to learn, resilience to stress when stress comes along, and ease in falling to sleep, deep sleep, rapid eye movement sleep. These are the things of repair of the body, repair of the mind, consolidating learning,

3:50 removing the emotional load of previous day experiences that might have been, you know, difficult or stressful, taking off the emotional load so they can go into the next day and they can continue to show up for their family, their work, their health and so on and so forth. It also turns out this pattern of high morning cortisol, low nighttime cortisol is the pattern that men, women, people of all ages should have to optimize their immune system function. So, we're talking about getting sick less and on and on and on. In fact, I've never really discussed this on the podcast, but if I only had 5 minutes to talk to somebody, I would say, "Look, this is the best thing you can do for your health and well-being and performance. high morning cortisol, low nighttime

4:37 cortisol. So, how how do we do this? People are probably immediately wondering. Um, before I answer, I'll just add one additional fact. Most people have heard of melatonin, this hormone that we secrete at night in darkness that light suppresses. It helps us fall and stay asleep. Most people don't realize that in order to get sufficient melatonin release, you need limited light exposure to your eyes. So, that's why it's good to dim dim dim the lights. You also want your body temperature cooling. Your core body temperature going down is what brings melatonin up. Cortisol and melatonin are on opposite cycles. High cortisol inhibits melatonin indirectly, but it doesn't. So, if your morning cortisol is high, your morning melatonin from the night before will be lower, more alertness. If your nighttime cortisol is

5:24 low, your melatonin peak can go higher. many issues related to falling and staying asleep become trivial under those conditions. They just kind of disappear. So, we should ask ourselves, what are the things to do to boost our morning cortisol levels? And notice I'm saying morning, I'm not saying 6:00 a.m. because one thing that is very important is given the flexibility, some people really do best waking up between 8 and 10:00 a.m. and going to sleep later. Some people do best waking up between 5 and 7 a.m. >> and going to bed earlier. And some people are kind of someplace in the middle. Like for you for instance, what is your if you could control everything about your sleepwake schedule, what time would you go to sleep? >> Like two, >> right? Yeah. >> Like 1 or 2. >> And what time would you wake up?

6:10 >> 9 10. >> Great. So let's call 10. 10 a.m. is your morning. 6:30 a.m. is my morning. That doesn't make me a better or worse person. Doesn't make you a better or worse person. We're just different. But when I say morning, I'm not giving a clock time. I'm giving a within the first hour or two of waking. Okay. All right. How do you boost your morning cortisol? We're building this ultra dangerous person. >> Okay. >> Great. >> But be before we actually build this, why did you start with morning and not the night before? >> It's a good question, but the answer is that this peak in cortisol cause because it's on a what's called a negative feedback loop. it actually inhibits itself so that once you create that peak, it ensures that the afternoon and evening cortisol is low. And I'll explain why that is in a in a few

6:56 minutes if that's okay. Um, so getting that morning peak going, it's like a wavefront that starts the 24-hour cycle. >> Okay. >> Okay. So, let's assume you go to sleep anywhere from 6 to 8 hours the night before. >> Okay. Um when you are in your deep deep sleep, so two or three hours into your sleep, your cortisol is at its very lowest just naturally. Okay, your cortisol intrinsically with no input from the world starts to climb in the hours afterwards. Slowly, slowly and then faster and faster and faster. So that in the third uh phase of your sleep, if we just divide your sleep into three blocks, in that last third, your cortisol is rising very fast and so is

7:42 your body temperature and then at some point you wake up. Now it could be because of an alarm clock. It could be because you wake up naturally. That is literally called the cortisol awakening response and it is the reason you wake up. So when people say cortisol is a stress hormone, you don't want your cortisol too high. That's true for the evening and night time. It's not true for your morning. You want your cortisol basically spiking first thing in the morning. So you get up, cortisol is now elevated. Cortisol's main job is not to deal with stress. That's just one of its jobs. Its main job is to deploy glucose and lipids from areas in your body that give you energy. It's an energy deploying hormone. >> Okay. >> Okay. So that cortisol peak is rising

8:28 very very fast. The best way to spike that morning cortisol is to get bright light in your eyes within the first 30 to 60 minutes of your day. In fact, you have a unique opportunity at that time to spike your cortisol up to 50% 50. Now there's two ways to do it. The best way to do it is to go outside, take off any brimmed hat you might have or sunglasses. Eyeglasses and contacts are fine. Look in the direction of the sun. Now, you wake up later than I do. So, when I wake up, the sun is just coming across the horizon. That's great. If it's higher in the sky, that's fine, too. Never look at the sun um in any way that that makes it too bright to look out, blink, in other words, to protect your eyes. But you can squint. You can look a little bit off and away from the sun. But that bright light from the sun is full spectrum. It

9:15 includes the short wavelength, medium wavelengths, and long wavelengths that are optimal for getting this cortisol peak. In fact, if you do that, you'll get a big peak in cortisol within 5 to 10 minutes. On cloudy days, on overcast days, it's especially important to do that because you're going to likely be spending more time indoors on overcast days. Okay? Ideally, 5 minutes or 10 minutes. Keep in mind, you can drink some water during this time. You can drink your morning tea or coffee if you like. You can do other things that, believe it or not, hydration boosts cortisol. Caffeine further boosts cortisol. If you can exercise in that first hour, great. Most people don't jump right into exercise, but this simple behavior is going to boost your morning cortisol levels. That essentially establishes the the

10:01 relationship between cortisol, melatonin, and your circadian clock. So the next day, your morning cortisol will start to rise in anticipation of this peak. It's becomes what we call entrained. So I'm listing off some protocols. Morning sunlight, but it takes 5 10 minutes. and you hydrate and you drink some caffeine, maybe you move your body a little bit, take a walk, some jumping jacks or something light like that. You can bring uh your spouse or your kids or whatever and you can just enjoy that time. Try not to look at your phone during this time. Do not stay in bed and look at your phone. Okay, this has also a forcing function on not doing certain things. Now, if you are able to get some physical exercise in this hypothetical situation, I'd take this 25-year-old and I'd say, "Listen, I know you don't like to work out first thing in the morning, but you're going to either do some

10:46 cardiovascular training or some resistance training, [snorts] one or the other for six days a week. One day a week, you can get complete rest. Okay? And I can explain later what the optimal protocol for s uh for excuse me for exercise I believe is for the typical person wanting to be strong and have endurance and and build resilience as well brain plasticity and so on. Okay. The long and short of this is if somebody were to do that in the first hour to two hours of the day the cortisol then starts to drop gradually around let's say about four or five hours after they've been awake. drops drop just naturally it just drops. Now let's say you get a disturbing text a you've got a deadline you're stressed cortisol will get deployed but the peak

11:32 in cortisol will be very brief. Okay. Now, as that person heads into the evening, probably still working. We'll talk about this. It maybe some bright lights. You can't control the environment. You you are now buffered against some of that. You're protected. And then at night, in the final hour before sleep, it's dim the lights. Obviously, avoid caffeine in the final 8 hours before sleep. Most days, I'm drinking a little caffeine now cuz I got up very early today and it's late in the day now, but I can have a little bit. That's me. Some people might not be able to. You want to really emphasize lowering your cortisol. Long exhale breathing is great if you find yourself too stressed and you're kind of getting ready for bed. Why long exhale breathing? There's so much that's been made of breath work and meditation. But just to encapsulate all of breath work

12:18 which you know I long before it came to the United States in scientific form people in India have been doing breath work of various forms. So I want to acknowledge that. But there's something called respiratory sinus arrhythmia, which is just a fancy term for when you inhale with vigor and you extend your inhales, it speeds your heart rate up. Why? Because the diaphragm moves down, the heart gets a little bit bigger in volume. Blood within the heart moves a little more slowly and the nervous system sends a signal to speed the heart rate up every inhale. When you exhale, especially if you deliberately extend the exhale, because the diaphragm moves up, the heart gets a little bit more compact or smaller in volume. Blood in there moves more quickly in that smaller

13:03 volume. And the vagus nerve, which connects the body and brain in both direction, sends a signal to the heart to slow your heart rate down. This is the basis of so-called HRV, heart rate variability. for people wearing an aura or a whoop or using an eight sleep or any other device and you say high HRV is good, right? What is high HRV? High HRV is your parasympathetic nervous system, this relaxing arm of the of your autonomic nervous system hitting the brakes on your heart rate. [sighs] If you want a higher HRV, you can exercise. You know, another great way to increase your HRV, do five extended exhales during your day. Just anytime you just You're slowing your heart rate down in your sleep. Your heart rate, your HIV

13:49 will be HRV will be higher. Most people don't realize it. Significantly higher. You're teaching your nervous system to slow your heart rate down just by five exhales a day >> or three or one long one before sleep. [snorts] When you do an extended deliberate exhale, you slow your heart rate down. You lower your cortisol levels. Takes a few minutes to lower your cortisol levels. and you calm yourself down. When you hold your breath or you move about your day and you're inhaling a lot and you're on average you're inhaling more vigorously than your exhales, your heart rate's going to be climbing up. So throughout the day, your heart rate's doing this, it's doing this. HRV, if you think, well, that's weird. Why would we want our heart rate variable? Shouldn't we want it nice and even? No, no, no, no. Because the HRV

14:34 reflects the pumping of the brake on your on your stress system. Okay? So in that final hour, you are ideally you're not drinking too many fluids because you'll wake up. But if you're a little thirsty, drink some fluids. No big deal. You're avoiding caffeine. You're dimming the lights. Why dimming the lights? Because light hits a specialized set of neurons in the eye called the intrinsically photosensitive melanops and retinal ganglen cells. Okay? Those cells connect directly to a little region over your hypothalamus which is your circadian clock which then connects to another nucleus in your hypo hypothalamus and so on and so forth and then inhibits the release of melatonin from your pineal gland. All this can be made very simple viewing bright light ideally from sunlight in the first hour of the day spikes your cortisol through a similar mechanis circuit with a little

15:20 twist and in the evening bright light will inhibit melatonin. So, bright mornings and days, dim nights or dark nights, that's the ideal situation. And we can really flesh this out even more. But I should say if you don't have access to sunlight for some reason, you would do well to um most people would do well to purchase a 10,000 lux artificial light. I have one when I travel that's about the size of a tablet. Um it looks a bit like the lights in this room. That very bright light is sufficient to boost your morning cortisol. Sunlight is better because it's full spectrum, but sometimes I don't have access to one, but I'm the guy on the plane looking at that light for a few minutes each morning. I have one in my home, even though I do go outside. So, when I wake

16:06 up and use the bathroom, I have one in my bathroom. I have one in the kitchen. So, I'm making my morning coffee or tea, I have it there. And so, I'm getting blasted with bright light early in the day. And then at night, I'm either in dim light or I generally don't use candle light because I worry about burning things down, you know, if I fall asleep with the candles down, but I everything's dimmed way way down. Okay, >> now this sounds extreme, >> but we're really talking about 5 to 10 minutes in the morning, >> things you would do anyway, >> right? Hydrate, caffeine, most likely, >> exercise, ideally that takes a bit longer. And then at night things that you need to turn off the lights at some point. You need to bring your level of activation down. Learning to turn your mind off. This is the key to long-term

16:53 resilience and becoming as you call it dangerous. If you are somebody who can push push push on the gas pedal, but you don't know how to turn your mind off, let's make it competitive. This will get people going. Give me two people. >> Both can work very very hard. vote both extremely committed to their goals and both have perfect circumstances in terms of access to to food and exercise and all the things. >> The person that can turn their mind off in the final hour of their day and get the better deeper sleep, I'm going to put all my money on that person within 5 to 10 years, far surpassing the other. How to turn off if someone super competitive is already feeling like

17:38 they've lost in some way because the internet has made them believe that they've lost it already. Right? So, they're in the hyper competitive mode. They just don't know how to turn off. >> How can somebody turn off and be >> and feel less restless? >> Yeah, this is a great question and and it's going to take us a little bit in the in the uh direction of psychology. Um, so I just want to make sure before we move on that I've closed the hatch on. Boost your morning cortisol by sunlight or 10,000 lux artificial light. Hydrate. Listen, do this every morning. But if you wake up on a plane and you don't happen to have this 10,000 lux light, open the window. If you can't do that, you're you're going to be fine. You'll you'll live a day. You know, [laughter] you'll live a day. You'll, you know, so do the other things. Hydrate, drink some caffeine. Like I don't >> you don't want to burn extra energy on

18:24 the neuroticism of trying to get everything right. that's making you weak, right? You need and I look at every opportunity to build resilience. This like like I we were saying before we started recording, I you know, yesterday I had far less sleep than I normally get. I feel great today. I have a practice for that which I can talk about recovering mental and physical vigor, but I really wanted to see my best childhood friend who's a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist do a neurosurgery and be there. And also I recorded yesterday and I very much wanted to be here and it meant flying yesterday and the flight was delayed. So instead of getting angry about the flight being delayed, I always ask myself one of two questions. Do I completely relax or do I continue to work? What I don't do is any in between.

19:10 I am perfectly fine just sitting there completely relaxing. Yes, let yourself scroll social media for a short period of time. Let yourself watch a movie, socialize, text with friends, call your mother. You know, I'm my mother. Sorry. call me more. So, but don't do a hybrid of the two or really focus in and and get some work done. At the airport yesterday, I decided I'd had a long day. I knew that today was going to be a long but exciting one. Decided to just get complete rest. On the flight into San Francisco, I took a brief nap, got to my hotel, got things settled, and I could feel my my mind going towards h I'm going to be tomorrow is going to what good does that do? And you always should be asking the question, is this in the left column or the right

19:55 column? And I'll explain what that means. A guy named Andy Stumpf, he's a a former what we call tier one SEAL team operator. He has a podcast called Clearing Hot. Um he's super impressive guy from his work in the SEAL teams and he went on to break two world records doing other difficult dangerous things. But he has this exercise that he shared with me which I do which is you take out a sheet of paper you do this about once a month and you write down in the left column all the things that concern you what people think of me the what I see I'm worries everything you put all that in the left column in the right column you put all the things that you can actually control what can you do exercise hydrate sleep practice turning your brain off call your mother you know [laughter] all the things that And what

20:41 you realize is that you really don't have any control over the things in the left column. And we all know this, but this exercise, it's so valuable. I'm so glad Andy taught it to me. He I read it about it first in his book Drown Proof, which is an excellent book, but then he described it to me directly for the month afterwards. You notice when things are in the left column or the right column. So last night I was thinking, oh god, like if and I even thought because this is the way the mind goes. Someone sets off a fire alarm or someone's loud in the hotel, I'm going to get even le. I'm like, can I control that? No, I can't control it. You notice how crazy the mind is with all these concerns and how few of those concerns you can actually impact. So that's the main way you do it. And every

21:26 opportunity to stress is an opportunity to practice stress resilience. Every opportunity uh to stress is an opportunity to let go of some component. These opportunities come all day long. You know, you don't have to be David Gogggins to be in the pressure test all day long. We are all in the pressure test. And even just keeping your mind in that right column. So I actually around our podcast studio and with my friends, we we're sort of have this saying now like that's a left column issue like don't like and and so it becomes this question. I think it varies culturally. Do you talk about it or does that build it? >> Maybe talking about things allows you to expunge it to delete it. I think it builds it. >> Stay in the right column. And when your mind starts drifting into the left column, great. That's a great

22:13 opportunity to practice getting your mind back over into the right hand column. How do you do that? You think about literal actions. You get extremely present. I can take a sip of water. Might sound trivial. I can smell what the air is like in here. Feels good. It's so quiet in here. I really like the background. quiet of this place. I've enjoyed meeting you. I learned about some new neuroche already based on the the devices on your temple. Like you can really get present and suddenly because of this is comes from my training as a neuroscientist. The brain works in what are called dynamic attractor states which I is not a way of trying to sound academic or fancy. Think of your thoughts and your emotions as a ball bearing on a flat surface. But as you think more about something, that surface starts to become concave. And as you learn more about it and you go into it

22:59 and you think about it, it becomes a trench. And now that ball bearing is locked in that trench. And typically it takes something very robust like calling a friend and them saying, "What are you doing?" or getting a good night's sleep or exercise or some great event to knock that ball bearing back onto its flat surface again. But you are in charge of your mind. And you know, at 50 years old, I finally realized that it's possible to control one's thoughts. It it really is. You can you can learn to steer your thoughts. You can't eliminate thoughts, but you can take your mind to where it needs to go. And there opportunities all day long to practice this. Right before I came in here, I went in the bathroom. Yes, I use the bathroom. And I have a practice of prayer right before I do or go on any

23:46 podcast. I ask for clarity. I ask for the opportunity to share knowledge that I hope will be useful to people. I offer up the opportunity for new unexpected things to come through. I did I did that. I do it every single time because I take you and I take this very seriously, right? People are giving us their time. I'm not a person who neurotically, you know, controls every aspect of of my life, but I take every opportunity I can to make my life better because in this case, I like to think that us having a a richer conversation will benefit people more. So, learn to turn it off. But that comes from practice and you're getting micro reps all day long. >> Thank you so much for watching this

24:32 episode till the end. We would love to know what you liked or disliked about this episode and which guest you would like to see again on this show or which are the new guests that you want to see. Let us know in the comments. Your feedback helps us improve and make every episode a little better. I'll see you the next time. Until then, keep figuring