122 The Key to POWERFUL Sleep for Ultimate Human Performance with Shawn Stevenson

"Sleep is something that our genes expect of us." - Shawn Stevenson If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, links Shawn mentions, and more at www.lewishowes.com/122. Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 122 with sleep expert and bestselling author Shawn Stevenson. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Want to introduce you guys to the man of the show. His name is Mr. Shawn Stevenson. Very excited about this episode because I was just, you know, obsessed with learning about all the facts that Shawn knew about sleep. And I can't wait to talk to him even more. I'm going to probably hire him and bring him out to my, my place and have him actually set me up with a sleep sanctuary. Something we're recovering on this show and he's going to be talking about all the different things that I need to do to optimize my sleep. So that I can run more efficiently throughout my day and really achieve greatness in everything I do. For me, my goal is to have it all, to have it all in business and health and relationships and be able to give back.

• 1:15Lewis Howes?

  And I realized that sleep is such an important, critical factor to achieving that greatness and to achieving, getting to the next level in everything we do and constantly progressing and growing. We've got to sleep to grow. Shawn's got a very interesting story. He was 20 years old and he was diagnosed with an incurable spine disease, actually spinal condition, degenerative disc disease. And that's when his process and journey began about how to basically heal himself. The doctor said he wasn't going to be able to, and he used the next 10 years plus years, learning about how to master his body.

• 1:56Lewis Howes?

  And realizing the importance of nutrition, health and sleep to heal himself. So important and valuable. I'm very excited to dive into this episode and introduce you to the one and only Shawn Stevenson.

• 2:17Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. I've got my man Sean Stevenson's on. What's up Sean?

• 2:24Shawn Stevenson?

  Hey, what's going on Louis? How you doing, man?

• 2:26Lewis Howes?

  We're both in cold weather right now. You're in St. Louis, 10 degree weather, you said. I'm in New York, 20 degree weather, snowing, but we've got warm hearts today, man.

• 2:35Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:38Lewis Howes?

  You know, you know why we've got warm hearts? It's because we're sleeping well.

• 2:41Shawn Stevenson?

  Oh yeah, man. It's all about the good sleep, man. The vitamin S for sure.

• 2:47Lewis Howes?

  I like that. I'm excited about this. I actually did an episode, probably a year and a half ago, about sleep with Amir. You know Amir?

• 2:58Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah, yeah, he's a friend. Yeah.

• 3:01Lewis Howes?

  And I felt like I got some great insights at that point. I felt like I got some good habits in place. I learned a lot. But then as I was diving into your information in your book, I realized there's so much more to learn about sleep and, and reconfirming the importance and power of sleep for the rest of our lives. And if we want to achieve real greatness in our, and have it all, sleep is one of the foundations for that.

• 3:27Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah, absolutely. You know, the, the reality is that it's something that our genes expect of us, you know? So we're talking about something at a deep, deep level, a part of our evolution, you know, and you know how it is today. We've got like a thousand things going on. And if sleep is one of them, that tends to be the thing that we omit, you know, not understanding that by lacking on that high quality sleep, we're actually going to be just demolishing our ability to achieve at a high level in everything else, you know? So it is definitely a secret sauce, man. And the thing is, not at one point in the book do I say, you know, you need to get blank hours of sleep. It's not about getting nine hours of sleep or eight hours. It's about improving the quality of sleep that you are getting. And that's really where I focus on is what are the leverage

• 4:12Shawn Stevenson?

  points that we can use to make sure that we're getting into that deep stages, three and four sleep more frequently so we can get up and live our life to the fullest when we're awake?

• 4:21Lewis Howes?

  So you say three and four stages. How many stages of sleep are there?

• 4:25Shawn Stevenson?

  So in the, in the common conversation, there's four stages of sleep. Stages one and two, that's known as REM sleep or rapid eye movement sleep. This is when you're getting your dream on. This is where your, your short-term memories get converted into your long-term memories. So REM sleep is really, really important that you just being able to take the stuff even you're learning right now and it becoming a part of you. Right? So that's stages one and two. Stages three and four, that's known as deep sleep or non-REM sleep. This is known as the anabolic state, right? And anabolic means building up of. Catabolic is the opposite. Catabolic is the breaking down of. Just being awake is catabolic, period, Louis. If, even if we're just sitting around watching television, our body is breaking down rapidly.

• 5:10Shawn Stevenson?

  So we need this anabolic state to keep things balanced. And so this is when your body's producing all of the growth hormone, the human growth hormone in particular, and the repairing hormones, enzymes to rebuild you and make you better.

• 5:24Lewis Howes?

  This is stage three and four, you said?

• 5:25Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah, this is stages three and four. So this is where we want to focus on what can we do? And what does the research show that we can do to get ourselves, get ourselves in stages three and four more frequently? And that's really the secret sauce right there is, and leveraging that every single day. And it's really quite simple, actually.

• 5:43Lewis Howes?

  Break it down for me.

• 5:44Shawn Stevenson?

  All right, so let's, let's go. All right, let's, I'm just going to give everybody a real powerful tip they can walk away with today. So there was a study done at Appalachian State University and they took exercisers, right? So exercise is important in this equation, too. They split them up into three groups. Group number one exercised at 7:00 AM. Group, group two exercised at 1:00 PM. Group three exercised at 7:00 PM. What they discovered was that group A, who exercised early in the morning, spent up to 75% more time in deep sleep, right? I, that's the, that's the data, so exercising in the morning.

• 6:20Lewis Howes?

  Why did I work out at 10:00 PM last night?

• 6:24Lewis Howes?

  That's probably why I couldn't sleep.

• 6:26Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. Many people have that same experience. You know, that's you're turning your body on. You know, exercise is it's it's you've heard of this, you know, it's a big catch word now. Everybody's talking about cortisol. Right? Cortisol, this stress hormone. It's not that it's bad. It's just when it's out of balance. Cortisol is the opposite. It's the antithesis. It's the arch nemesis of melatonin. Okay, so melatonin is like the get good sleep hormone. So if you're up exercising cortisol is high, melatonin is rock bottom. Right? So it's gonna take some time for your body to sort that out. So but here here's the thing. This does not mean that you need to get up and hit the gym in the morning at all. This is not what I'm saying.

• 7:06Shawn Stevenson?

  You just need to do some form of physical activity in the morning. So this could be doing some yoga. This could be doing some rebounding. Since it's cold here in the S T L right now, I've got my rebounder in my office and I hop on that in the morning for 10 minutes.

• 7:18Lewis Howes?

  You're talking about you're talking about a trampoline.

• 7:20Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah, mini trampoline according to NASA, the best form of exercise and they're literally rocket scientists, you know.

• 7:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 7:26Shawn Stevenson?

  So.

• 7:27Lewis Howes?

  They're not that smart. They're just rocket scientists.

• 7:28Shawn Stevenson?

  Right, exactly. So, you know, you can do something like that. You can do Tabata, which is just four minutes of exercise. You can do this could be when you hit the gym, you know, it's just what we're doing is we're helping to reset your body's natural, normal cycle of cortisol. And we're designed, we've been we've been evolving to have a big spike of cortisol in the morning for the sole purpose of doing activity. You know, so we want to encourage that because this will make it go down in the evening so we can get better sleep. So it's just one strategy, you know, we've got 21 in the book and just making it all real life, doable, easy things for people to implement.

• 8:04Lewis Howes?

  Now, is there a strategy for how to or when to work out in the morning? Let's say I'm gonna do a five minute workout, yoga, stretching, rebounding, something five to 10 minutes around. I'm assuming that's kind of like the timeframe that you could do for this to be effective. Is it like, okay, right when I wake up, roll out of bed, go next, you know, go next to my bed and start doing pushups and rebounding? Or is it, you know.

• 8:28Shawn Stevenson?

  It could be, you know, if that's if that feels sexy to you.

• 8:33Lewis Howes?

  Sure. Is it, is it okay to like wait an hour or two?

• 8:36Shawn Stevenson?

  Well, what it really boils down to is, and you know this too, and you've probably had many people on your show talking about this, is just creating that morning ritual. You know, so if it feels good to you to roll out of the bed, you know, like a ninja, like a karate man and start doing pushups right next to your bed, go for it, you know, if that feels good to you. But for me, you know, I probably get to the exercise portion, maybe forty five minutes into my morning. The first thing I do upon rising is I do what we call having my inner bath. You know, so this is where I go and drink about a liter of high quality structured water. And I've been doing that ritual for about ten years, maybe longer. And from there, I'll use the bathroom, then I'll do a little bit of reading, meditation, and then I'll get to my exercise.

• 9:19Shawn Stevenson?

  And so that's kind of how my day starts every single day. And, you know, it just kind of puts me on that, on that template for a powerful day, but also setting me up for high quality sleep that night as well.

• 9:29Lewis Howes?

  And how important is hydration for your body to sleep and recover?

• 9:33Shawn Stevenson?

  Wow. I mean, this is, this is where we really get into the, into the game here. You know, it's the real basic, simple things. You know, we have this common idea in our, in our world today, in our, even in our lexicon, that water is just H two O. So H two O, whatever water it is, it's just H two O, but it's not just H two O, it's H two O with other things dissolved into it. So water is known as a universal solvent, right? So water can basically become anything that it's exposed to. Um, for example, this is why if you put some Kool-Aid, like you put some Tang, I don't know if they still have Tang, but they put some Tang into your, into your water and it kind of like changes its color, becomes, it integrates itself. That's what water does with us. It becomes us.

• 10:18Shawn Stevenson?

  You know, it's so powerful to understand this. So the quality of water you're drinking is of the utmost importance.

• 10:24Lewis Howes?

  Really? So you can't just have tap water?

• 10:26Shawn Stevenson?

  You can, but I'm not saying it's the right thing to do, you know, as a matter of fact. I did a masterclass on this very subject on my show and really breaking down and talking about this because according to the research, and this was just done a couple of years ago, about forty nine million Americans, um, they, they studied their water supply and this is ranging from like San Francisco to New York. And what they discovered was that They have about forty different known medical compounds are coming through their water faucet. Okay, so we're talking about antidepressants, we're talking about chemotherapy drugs.

• 11:00Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 11:01Shawn Stevenson?

  We're talking about things like Lipitor, cholesterol lowering medications. And this is a result of a process called, you know, of runoff. So basically, people are consuming these drugs, then they're pissing it out, and it's making its way back through the water cycle and then coming through your faucet. Now, this is not going to be alarming because, you know, the conventional media is just going to say it's not in in doses that are high enough to affect you. But still, I'd still want to know if I'm drinking someone else's chemotherapy medication.

• 11:29Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 11:29Shawn Stevenson?

  You know what I'm saying? So just understanding that, that the tap water system here, we, it's, it's definitely a great gift because you can go to your water and you can drink it and not die, for sure. But the, the standards right now need to be elevated because we're dealing with things that have never existed before. You know, so that you could definitely do things better. So I highly encourage people for your, your, your home faucet, definitely get yourself an RO system, reverse osmosis system. Or, you know, you can do, upgrade things and maybe get spring water like we have here, here at our office. We get it delivered from Mountain Valley. Pretty much anywhere across the country is going to have somebody who can deliver that. And spring water is coming from an aquifer, which is like an underground lake, right? And it's never been tampered with by man.

• 12:14Shawn Stevenson?

  So that water is more alive and vital than the very processed water that's coming through our faucet. So I hope that makes sense.

• 12:20Lewis Howes?

  And what about just bottled water?

• 12:23Shawn Stevenson?

  Bottled water, that's a, another great thing to kind of dive into is just, you know, there's, there's, there's good and then there's not so good when we come to the bottled water. If anybody gets serious about their health, they've probably been one of those people like myself that will literally go to a vending machine and buy bottled water, right? Because we think we're doing the healthier thing. But what the research shows is that currently, there's something, there's a compound called bispenol A or BPA that's found in a lot of plastics, right? And again, water is known as a universal solvent. So if water is exposed to this plastic, this BPA in this plastic, it's going to become that substance, right?

• 13:05Shawn Stevenson?

  So and if you've ever like left a water bottle in the car for a while and you drink it and it's kind of warm and it tasted differently. That's because you're drinking, you're tasting the plastic.

• 13:13Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 13:14Shawn Stevenson?

  Now, plastic doesn't biodegrade, it photodegrades. So just light hitting the plastic will break it down. You're basically drinking a plastic tea because water is a solvent. So here's the issue, Louis, really, really quickly is that bispenol A is a xenoestrogen. Okay, so it's literally like you're consuming an estrogen supplement or an estrogen drug. It attaches to estrogen receptor sites in your body. For women, this can lead to estrogen dominance or estrogen-related cancers like breast cancer, fibroid tumors. Okay, we see a lot of that in my clinic. For men, this can depress your secondary sex characteristics. So lighter voice, decreased size of your, of your testicles, uh, loss of body hair,

• 13:57Shawn Stevenson?

  belly fat and fat ending up on weird places on a, on a male's body. So like your butt getting really big. Um, so these kind of things, you know, it's just, we've accepted them as normal, but they're not normal. So if you're getting bottled water, you want to get something that's bottled in glass ideally. And don't freak out if you have to drink something that's in plastic, but just don't make it a habit. You know, and I'm just, just sharing the, what the research shows and, you know, just kind of stacking these things in your favor can really help to give you that little one to two percent edge that, that everybody's looking for.

• 14:27Lewis Howes?

  Every advantage matters, man, that's for sure. I mean, if you want to achieve greatness, you gotta, you gotta have all the edges. So let's talk about fat loss and the importance of sleep with fat loss. First off, you say that, you know, sleep, sleeping more and exercising less is actually going to get you better fitness results. Can you speak into that?

• 14:48Shawn Stevenson?

  Absolutely. So it was a study, it was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. And they had individuals, they, they separated them into two groups. Group one was the control group. They slept eight hours, eight plus hours a night. And they had the same exact diet and exercise. Group two, same exact diet and exercise as group A, but they sleep deprived them. They got less than six hours of sleep each and every night. What they discovered over the course of the study is that group number two, who was sleep deprived, lost far less weight and far less body fat than the control group. And the only difference was the amount of sleep they were getting. Same exact diet, same exact exercise.

• 15:28Shawn Stevenson?

  So that tells us right there in black and white that sleep is really the force multiplier. You know, it's the, it's that thing that can really help to get the results from the, from the nutrition and the, and the exercise that we're doing. Because, and you know this too, like just being an athlete, when we walk into a gym, we're actually in better shape when we walk in the door. Hmm. Right? When the workout is over, you're in worse shape than when you came in. Yeah. Right? Because you've broken your body down. If I was to take you in and get a, a full blood panel done, a hormone panel, it would look like your, your, your bio, your biomarkers for inflammation would be sky high, your stress hormones would be off the charts. I might even get you diagnosed with a disease or an illness, but all you did was just do

• 16:13Shawn Stevenson?

  a great workout. Right. Right? The change that happens with your body doesn't happen while you're in the gym. It happens while you're asleep. Right? And again, this is where, and this is the biggest takeaway for everybody is that sleep is the anabolic state. This is where you get all the leverage point and all the secretion of anabolic hormones to keep you youthful. And when I mentioned human growth hormone, just really quickly, this is so important. HGH, when people hear that, they tend to think of like Barry Bonds, right? Marion Jones. This hormone is secreted by your pineal gland. It's an endogenous hormone. Your body can produce it. Right? But it needs the right conditions to do so. When we reach about the age of 20, we have a big decline in HGH. This is known as a youth hormone.

• 16:58Shawn Stevenson?

  This is why kids have so much freaking energy. Right? Just the other day, like, no, this morning, my son, I'm just standing there in the kitchen making my lunch and he comes in and he's stabbing me with his Ninja Turtle size and he's running in the room. He runs out and he comes back and does it again like 20 times. It's like, how does he have so much energy? He's got HGH pumping through his body like crazy. We don't have to have that decline happen. Right? But what we do is, it's not that it, it stops producing, gets, getting produced because we get older. It's because when we get older, we stop deciding to sleep. Right. It's like, Mom, you can't tell me I'm not gonna go to bed anymore. You don't have control over me anymore. And we're like, I'm this big adult and I'm just gonna stay up and watch every episode of my favorite show on Netflix ever.

• 17:43Shawn Stevenson?

  Right. It's just like, we just try and break the rules when these are not rules of your parents anymore. These are rules governed by nature, you know, and if you don't follow the laws of your body, you're going to get pain. So just to kind of wrap all that up, um, one of the biggest issues with people, you know, really wanting to get into the shape that they want to be in is dealing with cravings. Okay?

• 18:05Lewis Howes?

  Love that sugar.

• 18:06Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah. And it's just, here, here's the, the most profound insight about this is that just 24 hours of sleep deprivation leads to about a 6% decrease in glucose reaching your brain. Okay. So basically, when you're sleep deprived, you get dumber, right? We start to make poor decisions, uh, our, our ability to process information is, is hindered. All right. And so there was actually a study, they did a physi- a physician study, okay? And they found that they had the physicians do a certain task. Sleep deprived them for 24 hours, had them do the same task, it took them 20% longer. And they made 14% more errors doing the same exact thing, but now they're just tired.

• 18:49Shawn Stevenson?

  So this leads to the, it's not about just doing work, it's about being effective. Right? And we tend to put sleep off so we can get stuff done, not understanding that we're, we're doing a crappier job at it. So when your, when your brain is deprived of this glucose, if you've ever had a muffin, if you've ever had a Twinkie or a, a, any chips, if you've ever had any cookies, your brain remembers that it can get a very viable and powerful source of immediate carbohydrates from that source.

• 19:18Lewis Howes?

  Energy.

• 19:19Shawn Stevenson?

  Yes, to get that sugar back to your brain because with your biological evolution, with your brain losing that, that energy, this could mean death. Because you might be unable to procure your food or to avoid, uh, danger, you know, or, um, just to protect yourself because you need to be sharp. So this will lead you to going and grabbing those snacky type foods, you know, because nobody ever, if you, if somebody out there has done this before, please tell me, because I've never met a person like this. Nobody's ever been up at two o'clock in the morning like, you know what? I want a salad. Go and make a salad at two in the morning. People just don't do that. You know, you go for the cookies or the or the chips or something like that.

• 20:02Shawn Stevenson?

  You know, and this is talking about Louis, our willpower versus our biology. So, and it was as simple as you you retired. You know, and you're trying to make sure that you stick to your New Year's resolution and you're getting in shape and taking care of your body. But if you're fatigued, you're gonna find your hand in that bag of Cheetos and you got orange fingers.

• 20:23Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 20:24Shawn Stevenson?

  So it's really about stacking the conditions in your favor again, so that you don't have to put your willpower versus your biology, because your biology is gonna win out in the long run.

• 20:34Lewis Howes?

  This is fascinating stuff. Can you speak into coffee then? Is coffee and caffeine, I should say, support us and living optimally? And helping us sleep at night if we drink it in the morning, let's say, or do you think it's doesn't support us?

• 20:51Shawn Stevenson?

  I'm a fan. I'm a fan of caffeine. I'm a fan of people enjoying their their go to source of caffeine, which could be chocolate, could be coffee, could be tea. I just had some delicious yerba mate tea right here. So I'm I'm coming from a place of love and admiration for this this compound. The reality is that there was a particular study that was done, and I cited this in the book as well. And I talked to people about having a caffeine curfew, and this was published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. So they had individuals consume caffeine literally right before bed, three hours before bed, and then six hours before bed.

• 21:31Shawn Stevenson?

  What they discovered was that even out at six hours before sleep, they had measurable loss of their ability to get into deep stages of sleep. So measurable loss of time in stages three and four. And remember, that's our goal is to stay in it's to get into stages three and four more frequently and stay there. So even drinking caffeine out six hours beforehand could inhibit that. So what do we do about this? Number one, simple fix is that you have a caffeine curfew. Right? You just back up the time that you have your caffeine fix. So have it earlier in the earlier part of the day. Why this is so important and why this even matters, Louis, is that Our bodies have something called a half-life of about eight hours with caffeine.

• 22:16Shawn Stevenson?

  So what does that mean? Well, this means that after eight hours, half of the caffeine that you consumed is still in your body. Okay, so if you had a large Mocha Smoka latte.

• 22:26Lewis Howes?

  Love those Mocha Smokas.

• 22:29Shawn Stevenson?

  If you have a large one of those, just say it's 200 milligrams of caffeine. Eight hours later, it's 100 milligrams is active in your system. And it's a very powerful nervous system stimulant. So even if you go to sleep, part of your body is going to be still lit up. Right? So you're not going to get into stages three and four.

• 22:45Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 22:46Shawn Stevenson?

  All right. And so, and by the way, everybody's metabolism is slightly different. So eight hours is the average. So somebody might have a faster metabolism for caffeine. Uh, somebody might have a slower metabolism and they just can't even handle it, period. You know, and they don't understand why they're not getting the sleep that they want. They just need to lay out the caffeine, period. But my biggest recommendation is just to have a curfew for it. You know, I recommend people, uh, if you're trying to get to bed around 10 or 11, cut off the caffeine around two o'clock. All right. Or even earlier preferably. So I tend to have mine in the early part of the day. Uh, but it's still, it's a wonderful, great tool and, and gift that we've had for thousands of years. But we need to respect it because it is a powerful stimulant. You know, so, um, caffeine is good.

• 23:31Shawn Stevenson?

  We just need to have that curfew.

• 23:32Lewis Howes?

  And some people abuse it and they have, you know, three, four cups throughout the day.

• 23:36Shawn Stevenson?

  Right.

• 23:37Lewis Howes?

  And then they rely on it. And I've been, you know, for many years, I guess, well, I should say my whole life, I've never really been into caffeine, except for when I was a kid, I would drink lots of pop. And I guess we say soda in St. Louis, uh, but pop in Ohio. Um, I drank a lot of pop and then decided in college to just cut all caffeine out. And what I noticed, you know, I don't know the studies behind this, maybe you can speak into it. But what I noticed is that my body didn't need it anymore. Once I cut it all off and I felt like I had this unlimited amount of energy whenever I wanted it. I could just tap into my natural energy of passion and inspiration for what I was up to in my life and, and live in that space as opposed to,

• 24:19Lewis Howes?

  I need something to give me the energy to then do something.

• 24:23Shawn Stevenson?

  Wow, that's powerful. Yes, that's definitely a reality is because your body. So what's happening with caffeine, honestly, it's just, it's like a false stimulant. You know, it's not you. Uh, and people can get dependent on that feeling. And what happens is, When you're just without caffeine, as you go through the day, your body is breaking down, is producing a compound called adenosine. Okay, so adenosine is the product that our body produces. As we just kind of go through the, through the day. And as this happens, more and more these levels go up. We start to get tired because they fit into certain receptor sites to say, I need to relax, recover, so I can come back even better. When you're using caffeine, it fits into those receptor sites.

• 25:08Shawn Stevenson?

  So your body just keeps producing more and more of this compound, but you never stop. You don't stop to relax and reset. You know, so you get this false sense of being alive and vital, but it's not real. You know, and people know this because when they go cold turkey off of the caffeine, they have all these physical ailments, headaches, extreme fatigue, and just don't want to deal with the world, you know? And versus what you experience is which, which is the real vitality that internal vitality. And also sounds like, of course, you were tapping into a powerful and beautiful mindset about life itself, you know? And we can get dependent on these things so easily, man.

• 25:49Shawn Stevenson?

  Um, so I just want to commend you for even doing that because it's, it's quite a step.

• 25:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and I'm definitely not perfect. I mean, I, I'll have like a cappuccino every now and then. I love the flavor of it as well. And, you know, I would say I'm, I haven't been able to let go of the cravings of sugar. There are definitely times where I'll have more of it and other times where I have less. But that's something I would love to have a better balance of. And eventually let go of refined sugar all in all at some point. I want you to walk me through the perfect sleep system for a human being. From when they wake up to when they go to bed, what their routine should be, what they should or shouldn't have for foods or drinks. The types of workouts they should do and just give a general sense if you want to,

• 26:36Lewis Howes?

  but give like a routine from wake up time to sleep time and then also the conditions of your sleep environment. I know you talk a lot about the habitat you sleep in and the importance of being in a completely dark space and all these other things. So if you can walk us through like, what would the perfect human being look like if they slept and lived like X?

• 26:59Shawn Stevenson?

  Wow. Well,

• 27:01Lewis Howes?

  I'm just gonna say there's no perfect, but I mean, what would it be like the perfect pattern for someone to be able to get the optimum amount of sleep that could set them up for the best advantage?

• 27:10Shawn Stevenson?

  All right. Uh, this is quite a challenge, you know, because everybody is different.

• 27:14Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 27:16Shawn Stevenson?

  But I'm gonna walk you through what an ideal day could look like.

• 27:19Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 27:20Shawn Stevenson?

  All right. So most importantly is understanding that we are a part of nature. You know, contrary to popular belief, we are not elves or orcs or whatever. We are humans, right? And, and we exist here on this planet as a part of this whole kind of synergy of what's going on with the globe. And by the way, uh, just to get people like a more tangible understanding of this, it really helps to point towards, uh, women in this feminine feminine energy and just understanding their cycles and how it just lines up with nature automatically. And how also when women are, are living in the same space, their cycles will start to line up.

• 27:58Lewis Howes?

  That's so interesting. Girls always say that, that their friends, they start to have the same cycles, right?

• 28:03Shawn Stevenson?

  Right. This is, this is the like, this is well known, but we don't really dive in and look at that any deeper because what's going on is your body is synced up with the circadian or durnal patterns of the globe and its rotation around the sun. And this is really, really important to understand because you are part of this. You can't take yourself out of the system. So to line up more with nature, we would normally be getting up earlier, you know, and some people are going to be hearing this like, nah, I'm a, I'm a night person and that's all good, you know? However, just, I'm taking you through what the ideal situation would look like. So we'd be waking up early in the morning.

• 28:38Lewis Howes?

  Can you give me a time of time range?

• 28:41Shawn Stevenson?

  So I'd say somewhere around six o'clock, right? And but this is even going to vary depending on the time of year. You know, the the how far you are from the equator. There's so many little factors here, but just generally right around six o'clock. And I don't like to get into definites with anything because everything is is open and on the table for people to choose from. So you get up, you get up early in the morning. And of course, we do the dehydration, the superhydration inner bath. We do a little bit of meditation. And by the way, this is so critical, not just for your sleep health, but for your success in your life. You know, today we live in such a busy society. We're constantly on. There's so much coming at us. We need time to decompress and to process.

• 29:25Shawn Stevenson?

  This is why meditation is so valuable. And I don't even call it meditation often. I call it brain training. You know, we cited studies in the book from UC Berkeley and just showing what's going on with the brain. You know, when you're when you're sleep deprived and also when you're when you're meditating. And what's been shown is that individuals who meditate in the morning sleep better at night. All right, so doing a little bit of meditation can help to improve your sleep quality in the evening as well. Ideally, you get some sunlight, some sun exposure first thing in the morning as well. And this helps because, again, it's helping to set that dural pattern. When your body is exposed to the sun, we're we're kind of like plants, Louis. Like we're we're not like into the ground, but we're like walking, talking. We do photosynthesis.

• 30:07Shawn Stevenson?

  Sunlight, we convert that into vitamin D, right? And here's something cool is that sunlight is turning what into vitamin D? It's turning cholesterol in your body into vitamin D. All right, so cholesterol is super important and super valuable. And a lot of people are in fear of this cholesterol whole phenomenon. But we can come back and talk about that if you want to.

• 30:29Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 30:29Shawn Stevenson?

  So we get some sun exposure. Then we go into our day. And of course, oh, I'm sorry, don't want to leave out the exercise. We do some physical activity. Then we go into our day, create, do work, do good work, share time with our family, have a little bit of caffeine, preferably before two or noon. And then from there, moving into the evening, we'd start to kind of wind down. And this is, this is important to have a transition, right? So we can find many, many different ways to decompress. I would recommend right around, and matter of fact, let's not even chance this. Rensselaer Polytechnic did a study.

• 31:09Shawn Stevenson?

  And what they showed was that two hours of iPad use right before bed was enough to drastically kick people's melatonin right in the, right in the crotch. So your melatonin would get hit rock bottom by you being on the iPad right before bed. Right? And this is because of the blue light spectrum that's coming out of our devices. So I would recommend if you're trying to get to bed at 10 o'clock, for example, and I'm going to say why 10 is important just a minute, get off your devices before eight. Okay?

• 31:37Lewis Howes?

  No cell phone. What about TV, watching a movie?

• 31:40Shawn Stevenson?

  There's hacks for this, but generally, again, if you're

• 31:43Lewis Howes?

  Glasses, right?

• 31:44Shawn Stevenson?

  At a high level, yes, you know it. Exactly. And so we talked about that in the book as well, wearing these orange tinted shades. And our brains are always looking for ways to create neuro associations. When I put those shades on now at night, I get tired like immediately.

• 31:59Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 32:00Shawn Stevenson?

  You know, because my brain is just wired up that when these go on, it's time to get sleepy time happening.

• 32:04Lewis Howes?

  Where can I get these shades?

• 32:06Shawn Stevenson?

  Just go to Amazon, you know, go on Amazon, just type in orange tinted shades. There's like a thousand, you get the fancy pants, blue blocker ones, or you can get like some construction worker ones that are like five bucks.

• 32:17Lewis Howes?

  Which ones do you have?

• 32:18Shawn Stevenson?

  I have all of them.

• 32:20Lewis Howes?

  Which ones do you use?

• 32:22Shawn Stevenson?

  I use the mid-range ones. I, I use the blue blocker ones pretty frequently. They look a little bit cooler because before I had the construction worker ones, people would come at, you know, if somebody came over at night, they'd be like, are you, were you building a birdhouse? You know? So, yeah. And so I put those shades on if I'm going to be watching a movie or if I'm going to be, because of course, life happens, I'm going to be doing some extra work. I've got to attend to a client or whatever the case may be where I'm going to be on my device. But.

• 32:49Lewis Howes?

  But you just think if you're gonna be on your phone scrolling through things, have the glasses on.

• 32:53Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah. And also, there's apps that you can get on your devices.

• 32:56Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 32:56Shawn Stevenson?

  There's one called Flux, F dot Lux, and it.

• 33:00Lewis Howes?

  I'm downloading this right now.

• 33:02Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah, it automatically takes away that more damaging blue spectrum of light from your screen.

• 33:08Lewis Howes?

  Shut up.

• 33:08Shawn Stevenson?

  Continue to work. Yeah, and it's it's awesome. It just pulls it off and it does it automatically based on your time zone.

• 33:14Lewis Howes?

  What's it called? F L U X X?

• 33:16Shawn Stevenson?

  Yes. No, F dot L U X.

• 33:18Lewis Howes?

  F dot L U X. I'm downloading this as we speak.

• 33:22Shawn Stevenson?

  So Flux is awesome. It's another little hack that we can use. And so the reason I've been saying 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock to get to bed is it's what we call money time, right? So it's just, sleep is like timing and investment, right? It doesn't matter so much how much you invest. It matters when you invest. If you invest at the wrong time, you get pain, right? If you invest at the right time, even a smaller amount of money, you can get some great success, right? So what the research shows is that between the hours of 10 P M. And 2 A M. We're getting nearly double the impact of these anabolic hormone secretions, right?

• 34:03Shawn Stevenson?

  So if you're getting yourself in bed, you know, in getting some of that money time hours, you're gonna be getting twice the benefit in that timeframe. So this leans towards people, you know, instead of staying up late to finish something, getting to bed early than getting up early. So getting to bed early and getting up early to finish that task rather than staying up late. So that that's why the money time, why I keep on saying 10 o'clock is important.

• 34:27Lewis Howes?

  That's interesting. I just had a, you know, the previous interview on the podcast, we had Eric Thomas on. He said he goes to bed at nine and gets up at like 3 or 3:30 A M.

• 34:36Shawn Stevenson?

  That's extreme, you know.

• 34:38Lewis Howes?

  He's like, I get up earlier than everyone else and I go to bed earlier than everyone else.

• 34:42Shawn Stevenson?

  That's awesome, man. And the thing is, it's gonna show in the results in his life.

• 34:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:46Shawn Stevenson?

  You know, and many of the great people who are out doing powerful work have these kind of rituals, you know, and even Gary Vaynerchuk, I just heard something from him. He's like, people think that I'm like just grinding and crushing all the time. I am when I'm awake, but I'm getting my sleep. You know, I think he says he aims to get like seven hours of sleep a night or something like that.

• 35:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:06Shawn Stevenson?

  You know, especially as we get older and our hormones change. We've got to pay attention to this stuff and leverage this because it's not about the short game. If you're in it for the long game, having these strategies are so important to living a great, powerful life.

• 35:21Lewis Howes?

  So 10, 10 o'clock, lights out.

• 35:24Shawn Stevenson?

  I don't want to make it like prison, like lights out, shut the jail cell.

• 35:27Lewis Howes?

  Boardy, I'm back at boarding school, man.

• 35:30Shawn Stevenson?

  But ideally, yeah, you know, you're going to get to bed a little bit earlier. Now here, this is what I do personally, you know, I, I leave the door open for especially occasions. You know, I leave the door open for change, especially during the summertime, there's more daylight hours. So I tend to go to bed a little bit later, you know, and so I play around with that. But generally I want my day to be powerful. I want my day to be valuable and impactful and I want to feel good all day. So this is why I have my sleep pattern basically for myself personally. I go to bed at around 10:30 and I wake up at six or I go to bed. During the summer, I go to bed around 10 and wake up at 5:30.

• 36:08Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. Wow. What about the last, last time you should be eating or what should be eating or drinking before you go to sleep?

• 36:13Shawn Stevenson?

  That's a great question. This is going to be a.

• 36:16Lewis Howes?

  Cause I got those midnight munchies all the time, man.

• 36:20Shawn Stevenson?

  This is going to be a big game changer for a lot of people. You've probably heard this statement before, you know, if you want to lose weight, don't eat late at night.

• 36:28Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 36:29Shawn Stevenson?

  Right? So that made no sense to me whatsoever because when I recovered from my own kind of personal health challenge, you know, diagnosed with this incurable illness many years ago, which I'm fine now, but when I was diagnosed with this illness and then I, I recovered my health, I ate late at night all the time. And this was when I had the lowest body fat percentage that I've ever had, you know? So this was around 5% body fat and I ate late at night every night. And so just like that doesn't make any sense. And this is because, so here's what the data shows. Individuals that are of a normal or healthy BMI or body fat percentage

• 37:11Shawn Stevenson?

  that eat late at night or at any time when you eat, you get about a 5% increase in cortisol. Okay. So we talked about this already. Cortisol is like. The Joker and melatonin is like Batman, right? These are like mortal nemesis, you know, it's like, it's like they're enemies. But they're not really, but just to kind of paint that picture for everybody. So if cortisol is up, melatonin is down. Melatonin is up, cortisol is down. So when you eat a meal, if you're healthy, healthy BMI, body fat percentage, you eat a meal, you're going to get a 5% increase in cortisol. That's normal. Now, here's where the real issue is. If an individual is overweight or obese, when they eat a meal, they're getting about a 51% increase in cortisol.

• 37:55Shawn Stevenson?

  So right there in and of itself is telling you, when you consume food and you're overweight, this is where we get into trouble about eating late at night because your cortisol is going to go sky high, melatonin is going to crash. So when you go to sleep, you're not going to get that high quality sleep that you want. And you're going to wake up and you're going to be tired. You know, it's really a tragedy that we're waking up tired, right? And so we're going to set our template for the day of wanting to eat more carbohydrates simply because we're not getting enough sleep, right? And it creates this vicious circle.

• 38:24Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 38:25Shawn Stevenson?

  So this is why we really want to pay attention to this, you know, as far as the timing of food. So with that said, I would recommend if you do have a goal of cutting off some pounds, you probably want to do, you probably want to have a little bit of a curfew for what you, for when you stop eating.

• 38:40Lewis Howes?

  Got you.

• 38:41Shawn Stevenson?

  Now, what foods do we?

• 38:42Lewis Howes?

  How many hours before you sleep?

• 38:44Shawn Stevenson?

  So if, again, trying to get to bed around 10 o'clock, I'd say be done eating, be done eating at 8 o'clock.

• 38:51Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, yeah.

• 38:51Shawn Stevenson?

  Okay. So now, what kind of foods do we eat? There's a lot of variation in the research as far as this goes, but I'm just going to give people some general things to look at. Number one, if you're consuming, for example, a higher carbohydrate meal, if you do that right before you go to bed, you say you eat a high carbohydrate meal at 9 o'clock, what's going to happen is you're going to get a big spike of glucose. And then while you're sleeping, you're going to bottom out. You can go hypoglycemic. It's going to, you're going to have a crash and that's can be enough to pull you out of sleep.

• 39:25Lewis Howes?

  Or you can wake up really like, you know, groggy or whatever, right?

• 39:28Shawn Stevenson?

  Yes, exactly. And also you can, for some people, this is going to maybe pull them out of sleep and then they go and they're, they're caught in that situation where they're looking in the refrigerator. You know, to kind of just get themselves back to sleep. They can't go back to sleep.

• 39:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 39:42Shawn Stevenson?

  All right. So that's one situation. However, if you eat carbohydrate, a high carbohydrate meal further out, you know, so two, three hours before bed, you can drop your blood sugar down and it'll stabilize and you can go to sleep just fine. So what I recommend is if you're gonna eat, be eating closer to your bedtime, eat a meal that's higher in fat. All right. So carbohydrates are basically like taking paper and putting it on your metabolic fire. It's gonna burn really bright, really pretty, really, really big, but just for a second. Okay, then it's gonna be gone.

• 40:15Lewis Howes?

  So have some bacon before bed.

• 40:16Shawn Stevenson?

  Bacon is cool. Bacon is fine. So fats are like putting a log onto your metabolic fire. You know, burns really slow and steady. It doesn't get this big spike, but it's gonna be there and just kind of keeping you nice and level.

• 40:30Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. That's interesting. You know, I actually had bacon last night around 10:30. And then I literally laid down. I thought I was gonna be awake because I was kind of going to bed before midnight and I'm in New York City right now, so it's kind of been going out a lot. And I started snoring within about 10, 15 minutes and I, I rarely snore, but I realized I was like dozing off and I was like, whoa, okay. So.

• 40:51Shawn Stevenson?

  See, I've gotta put a new chapter in the book now. Bacon.

• 40:54Lewis Howes?

  Bacon, bacon for bed.

• 40:56Shawn Stevenson?

  Bacon.

• 40:57Lewis Howes?

  Now here's another thing. Uh, I, I woke myself up a couple of times and then something triggered in my mind about what I wanted to create for today. And I started thinking and my mind started working and I don't know, I'm sure a lot of entrepreneurs are listening. They think a lot at night. So how does, and then it took me until about 3 a.m. to go back to bed. So how does, because I checked my phone and I started like putting notes down of what I wanted to create. I was messaging my team. So how does, if someone can't sleep, say they're like, they try to go to sleep every night, but it's just like hours and hours of agony or they're just thinking, what are some things that someone can do if they're having a trouble going to sleep?

• 41:36Lewis Howes?

  In the moment, and let's say, you know, let's say they didn't follow the, the patterns that you're supposed to do. But it's like, okay, now it's time to sleep. They realize they did everything wrong. Um, they, you know, they're still looking at their phone. Everything else is wrong. What is something that they can shift into to give them the best advantage?

• 41:53Shawn Stevenson?

  Okay, there's several things that you can do here. Uh, but you just said it starts with having the ritual in the first place. But if you get out of that ritual, there's a few things. So, uh, number one, I would say to utilize the anti-stress mineral. Right? So this is magnesium and people storied for many, many hundreds, if not thousands of years about taking Epsom salt, salt baths, right? It relaxes you, heals, uh, sore muscles. Um, just basically you're, you're pretty sleepy when you get out of, of a Epsom salt bath. So you can do that. You can go have, uh, take a bath in Epsom salts or I use a magnesium spray.

• 42:35Shawn Stevenson?

  And it's right there by my bedside. It's right there by our mutual friend, John Lee Dumas's bedside. I actually checked that out when I, when I went to his place. He's got it right there, right before bed, slather that stuff up on your body. And so what the research shows is that individuals who are diagnosed with, um, uh, is clinical somniacs, right? So these individuals with very, very strong, uh, sleep problems. Across the board, a hundred percent of the time, they're deficient in magnesium. Okay. In this particular study, so this is the mag, this magnesium is a, a mineral that helps to calm you down, calm your mind, calm your body. Right? So I would slather up with some of that. So that would be the first thing.

• 43:14Shawn Stevenson?

  Uh, second thing is I would employ some meditation, you know, and basically switching your mind to a different gear. It's wonderful to have that muse hit you because why you, when you got up, when you, you were inspired, that's wonderful. But also it's like going to bed every night before I go to bed, I stand there right by my bedside. And I thank, just I thank all of life for making this day possible and for all of the things that I've accomplished. But then I also, I close the day. I let everything be done right in that moment. This day is complete and I shut it all down and I get into bed. Now, that doesn't always mean that I'm going to stop thinking of ideas or thinking about different things, but generally I just created that that pattern.

• 43:58Shawn Stevenson?

  So if you find yourself in bed and just kind of tossing and turning, you got these ideas going on. This is a wonderful time to employ some meditation. And I actually talk about a brief meditation in the book that you can do while lying down. And it's like a body gratitude type meditation. And what that can do is you you won't necessarily fall asleep right away. For some people, they don't even make it to because you start at your toes and you work your way up up your body, focusing your attention there. But some people don't even make it five minutes without falling asleep. But what it does is it shifts your brainwaves into states that are closer to sleep, closer to what sleep looks like, right? So right now, Lewis, we're both in a beta mental state. Okay, so this means we're just kind of awake.

• 44:43Shawn Stevenson?

  So the next stage that we can kind of get to is shifting over to theta, which a lot of people that meditate get into theta within a few seconds. And when you get closer to theta and then and then alpha and delta with your brainwave states, this is getting you more and more anabolic hormone production. Okay, so even though you're not asleep, you can still get some of those sleep benefits from meditation. All right, so there's a couple of strategies right there. But generally, you just want to set yourself up for a good night's sleep in the first place by stacking the conditions, doing everything else. But I'm glad you asked that question because a lot of people was like, what do I do if I wake up?

• 45:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 45:17Shawn Stevenson?

  The biggest thing, matter of fact, none of those things were the biggest thing. The biggest thing is, don't worry about it. Don't be hard on yourself. Let it go.

• 45:25Lewis Howes?

  Breathe.

• 45:25Shawn Stevenson?

  You're up, it's okay. You know, our ancestors would wake up from time to time in the night. Maybe there's a noise, maybe there's some animals, maybe, you know, just even to have sex. You know, it's okay. And by the way, that can be a good strategy to get back to sleep.

• 45:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 45:40Shawn Stevenson?

  All right. Even if if you don't have somebody in your life, it's still okay. You could, you know, you can still take care of yourself. But, you know, if you've got a partner, I actually wrote a chapter about this and how having an orgasm for men and women is a powerful tool that, and this is why it's called, quote, sleeping together, right? And for putting your body into a different state and to for the purpose of falling asleep. So I don't want to take that off the table.

• 46:04Lewis Howes?

  Let me ask you about this. Is sex, ongoing dose of sex, let's say, is that valuable and important in your sleep? Or, you know, if you don't have sex or have an orgasm, is it going to hurt your sleep?

• 46:18Shawn Stevenson?

  Wow, that's a great question. So it's really interesting. I've looked at.

• 46:23Lewis Howes?

  And what's the optimal number?

• 46:26Shawn Stevenson?

  Well, I've looked at many different studies about this, and what the research shows is that initially not having sex can actually improve your sleep quality, but just for a short amount of time, you know? So, well, let's not even get into that. Let's first focus on why this even works. All right. So during orgasm, we release a cocktail of chemicals, both men and women. Norpinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin, and also a hormone called prolactin, right? And so this gives us like this cascade of feel-good hormones and help us to relax. And there was a study done that they actually, you know, this was an animal study. And they, when injected, they actually used mice in this study. When they were injected with prolactin, the animals immediately got sleepy.

• 47:12Shawn Stevenson?

  All right. So, and this is something that adults produce during orgasm, all right? And putting all this stuff together and understanding how powerful of a kind of a natural stress reducer, and for some people, a sedative, you know, can be, it's definitely a valuable thing. Now, how much to have? Honestly, the more sex you have, the better your health is going to be. You know, and this is just across the board. I know a lot of guys are like, yes, tell her I got to let my wife listen to this episode. But also women as well, you know, this helps with stress reduction. As a matter of fact, I cited in the study, I mean, in the book, there was a study done, conducted with 2,632 women. They found that 39% of those women that masturbate do it in order to relax and to improve their sleep quality.

• 47:57Shawn Stevenson?

  Okay, so across the board, this is healthy for everybody. And then for men, there's the added benefit of much, much lower incidence of testicular cancer as well. You know, so prostate cancer when having more frequent ejaculations. So there's so much benefit in having a healthy, happy sex life.

• 48:19Shawn Stevenson?

  You know, but at the same time, I mean, it could be one of those things that we leverage in order to, you know, uh, let our, let our partner know that, hey, this is going to improve my health, baby.

• 48:27Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. No, I love it. Yeah. Very cool. Man, there's so many more questions I want to ask you. I only get to a couple more. I feel like I could, uh, ask you about this and listen to you talk about it for, for days because this stuff is fascinating to me. What is your habitat like? Kind of go over it briefly. You don't have to go into detail, but like, talk about the room setting itself.

• 48:48Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah.

• 48:49Lewis Howes?

  And maybe even like the sheets, the type of bed, um, you know, does that all play a factor?

• 48:54Shawn Stevenson?

  Hmm. Well, you know that this is my, this is my craft. You know, this is where I've spent the last decade and a half in research, you know, and just understanding human psychology, human physiology, anatomy, and looking at ways to leverage this stuff and creating the life around me so that all this stuff is on automatic. I really, what I call it is Louis is, is stacking the cool, you know, stacking the conditions in your favor so that you can't help but get the result that you want. We are not just a product of our environment. We're creators of our environment. Right? And so consciously creating some of this stuff can really give you some huge leverage points. We just talked about sex. I've got to piggyback on that, right? By letting people know that, uh, what, what, what the research indicates is that couples

• 49:39Shawn Stevenson?

  who have a television in their bedroom have 50% less sex. Right? Right there in of itself is, is enough to, for you to immediately go get that TV out of your room. Um, and understand it's a distraction. It's a distraction from what's most important in our lives. You know, if you're in a relationship and you have a significant other, you have a husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, somebody that you care about deeply, and you've created your bedroom environment to be kind of like a workstation or somewhere that you watch television, it's a distraction from your relationship. And also humans, we have this very quick ability to create neural associations to things. So let me give you an example. Um, your brain is always trying to free up energy so it can do other things.

• 50:23Shawn Stevenson?

  Have you ever like left your office or left an appointment, Louis, and then you've, you've driven home and you don't remember like how you got home? You don't remember that drive?

• 50:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's just you were like, well, what happened?

• 50:37Shawn Stevenson?

  Right.

• 50:37Lewis Howes?

  How'd I get here?

• 50:39Shawn Stevenson?

  It this happens for a lot of us and this happens all the time is because once you've done that pattern a few times, your brain just puts that on autopilot. Right? It's always looking for things to match up and link up. So you can just free up space to do other things. Our brains do this very, very quickly with our bedroom environment. So if your brain has a neuro association that when I go in my bedroom, this is time to do work. This is time to get on my phone. This is time to watch television. This is time to argue. You're creating that neuro association in that space. So I encourage people to create. I call it a just a sleep sanctuary. Create a sleep sanctuary where the only two activities going on in your bedroom are the two vitamin acids, sleep and sex. Right? So get your daily vitamins in, right?

• 51:23Shawn Stevenson?

  So that these, these are the two things, the, the two conditions that should be met. So what does that look like? When you think of a sanctuary, what do you think of Louis?

• 51:33Lewis Howes?

  In terms of my bedroom or in general?

• 51:35Shawn Stevenson?

  Just a sanctuary in general.

• 51:37Lewis Howes?

  Um, a calm place, calm, loving, safe environment that you can create what you want from.

• 51:46Shawn Stevenson?

  Hmm. Love it. Love it. So what about physically? Are there any things in this sanctuary that you would see?

• 51:53Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. I, I think it depends on the setting of what specific sanctuary I'm creating, but in just a normal sanctuary, I would say, oh, just comfortable setting. Uh, somewhere I can relax comfortably, sit comfortably, easy colors on the, on the eyes, like easy mood. So neutral, more neutral or light than hard colors that distract me.

• 52:19Shawn Stevenson?

  Hmm. I like that. I like the fact that you brought up the colors. So for a lot of people, when they think of a sanctuary, they think of green, like they think of plant life. You know, so that's one of the things that is actually implemented in, in my protocol, which is having some plant life, some plants in your, in your bedroom. And I don't do anything just because, you know, so I actually looked into it and again NASA discovered that there's a plant. It's, um, it's actually called a snake plant and that's one that I have in my bedroom. Will help to convert more, uh, carbon dioxide into oxygen at night. So it literally helped improve this, the air quality in your bedroom.

• 52:59Lewis Howes?

  I'm buying, I'm buying a snake plant right now.

• 53:02Shawn Stevenson?

  So that's just one. There's many other different plants that give the, they have this synergy with us. You know, so um, plant life and also uh, running water. Uh, so some people like having those little fountains, it's like magic for them.

• 53:16Lewis Howes?

  That's what I was gonna say, like having some type of fountain would be trickling waterfall, you know?

• 53:20Shawn Stevenson?

  Right. Or of course, it can be maybe something you play on an MP3 player with some speakers or something. Um, and I, this is not something I do personally, but for some people, it's like the secret for them. It's like the, the most amazing thing. It really helps them. Um, so starting to create more things that are in the environment uh, for a sanctuary. So, and also when it's dark, then it's dark. Right? So I highly encourage people, if you take one thing away from this today, is to get some blackout curtains for your bedroom. That was the number one thing that immediately boosted my sleep quality. And I had the connection, I was actually on vacation a while back. It was like, I think maybe it was my um, honeymoon, I believe.

• 54:04Shawn Stevenson?

  I think, yeah, it was my honeymoon. And so we had these blackout curtains at this nice hotel and you, I got the best sleep of my life. And we're of course thinking it's because we're, we just got married, we're on vacation, but quickly, as soon as we got back, my sleep quality got depressed again. And so partially, this is because your skin has something called photoreceptors, right? And this is, we, we tend to think it's just our eyes that see, but our skin can see. And we know this because again, it can pick up sunlight, literally change your skin color, right? So if there's light in your room at all, your skin is gonna be picking that up and sending messages to your brain to secrete more daytime hormones.

• 54:45Shawn Stevenson?

  Okay, so this could be light from the street light outside, your neighbor's porch light, um, even lights that are in your room itself. You wanna eliminate that stuff if you really wanna improve your sleep quality. And this is something that you don't have to change your whole life to do. Just get it dark in your bedroom, sleep whenever you want to. You don't gotta follow the money time things. Any of this stuff that I've said, just do that one thing. It's gonna immediately boost your sleep quality.

• 55:08Lewis Howes?

  Wow. I love it. Man, I could go on and on and hear about this, but I want to let people digest this, these vitamins and take it in because it's a lot you've covered here. And if people want to learn more, they can definitely pick up your book, which is called Sleep Smarter, 21 Proven Tips to Sleep Your Way to a Better Body, Better Health, Better Success by Shawn Stevenson. And also make sure to check out Shawn's podcast, which is called The Model Health Show. It's on iTunes. It's one of the top health podcasts. And I know you interview a lot of great friends of ours as well. So check out both those. Shawn, this is incredible. I appreciate it. I want to ask you two final things. First, I want to acknowledge you

• 55:51Lewis Howes?

  for your commitment and your dedication over the last 10 plus years to becoming a master at this. It's obviously evident of your experience through your own physical ailments, through your own physical challenges that you faced, that this was a calling for you and you are a true master at explaining it and sharing and making it easy for people to understand and accessible. So thank you for that gift that you've given to the world. I want to ask you two final questions. What are you most grateful for recently in your life?

• 56:26Shawn Stevenson?

  Wow. Well, Lewis, thank you. I appreciate that so much. What I'm most grateful for most recently in my life is, is my wife, you know, for sure. And just seeing her growth and seeing her passion and her dedication to just becoming a better version of herself inspires me so much. And she's just an amazing human being. She's an amazing woman. She's an amazing mother, amazing friend. And I'm just so grateful for her and just seeing her recently really just stepping into another level. And when she steps into another level, I'm automatically

• 57:07Shawn Stevenson?

  right there, following suit. So I'm very, that's the thing that I'm definitely most grateful for. It's actually hard to talk about. I'm very, very, very grateful for this right now.

• 57:17Lewis Howes?

  I love that. That's awesome. Final question of the show is what's your definition of greatness?

• 57:25Shawn Stevenson?

  Wow. Um, my definition of greatness would really, I think it would be two things. Um, first of all, living a life without regrets. Uh, I really feel that once you get to a place in your life that you are grateful for everything that you've been through, you know, the good stuff and the not so good stuff, you know, the, the, maybe the, the quote, bad things that have happened to you and you wouldn't trade it in for anything. You would still go back and, and say, I wouldn't change anything in my life because I am at peace and I am happy about the person that I am today. I think that that's greatness.

• 58:04Shawn Stevenson?

  And that's, that's part one. Part two is just every day growing, you know, at least just a little bit, you know, every single day making process because the reality is if you're not growing, you're dying. You know, life, there is no stagnation in life. So just every single day making progress in your life. To me, that's greatness.

• 58:24Lewis Howes?

  Shawn Stevenson. Thanks so much for coming on, my man.

• 58:27Shawn Stevenson?

  Hey, thank you, Lewis. It's an honor. I appreciate you, man.

• 58:36Lewis Howes?

  And there you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure to pick up a copy of Shawn's book called Sleep Smarter, the 21 Proven Tips. And you can get all this info back at the show notes at lewishouse.com/122. We'll have it linked up. We'll have Shawn's website linked up there and all of his other tips about sleep and then show notes of what we covered in this episode over at lewishouse.com/122. If you enjoyed this episode and these, this information, do yourself a favor and just start applying a few of the tips. Uh, do some of the things that Shawn mentioned. You don't have to do everything, but do something, you know, get the blackout shades,

• 59:17Lewis Howes?

  get, um, the sunglasses at night. Do whatever you gotta do. Go to bed a little earlier. Don't sleep, don't eat as late. Do whatever you gotta do to apply something tonight and make it a daily, or I should say nightly habit for yourself to take action on and create that ritual for yourself, whatever it is to help you get better. Start doing that right now. Apply this information. If you guys are just coming on here to consume and you're not taking action, you're missing the point, okay? So I want you guys to continue to grow. I want you to continue to progress in your life and your business and your health and your relationships. That's what this school of greatness is all about.

• 59:55Lewis Howes?

  So please do yourself a favor and apply one, two, three things that you can to support you with your sleep that really connected with you and landed with you from what Shawn was talking about. And go ahead and let me know over on Twitter at Lewis Howes what you're actually taking action on. Or connect with Shawn. We'll have all of his social media accounts linked up at lewishouse.com/122 and let him know what you're doing as well. If you enjoyed this, please share it with your friends. If you have a friend who is sleep deprived or has, you know, has to drink coffee all day long. They're at work, they're at a cubicle and they're not getting enough sleep. Send them this interview, please. Do them the favor as well. Give them the gift of sleep.

• 1:00:39Lewis Howes?

  LewisHowes.com/122. But you guys know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.