E291: Unbroken Warrior Daily Challenge | Trauma Healing Podcast

What does my daily routine look like?

It's one of the number one questions that I get all the time from people like, how do I maintain?

What's up, Unbroken Nation! I hope that you're doing well wherever you are in the world today. Very excited to talk to you about something brand new called the Unbroken Warrior Daily Challenge.

So, as you may know I have an app called Think Unbroken in the app store and on android if you're watching you might be able to see this and there's a free course when you first download the app that you can take, it's free, it's a seven-day course but I want you to do something else. I want you to join the sixty-six-day Unbroken Warrior Challenge, and this challenge is very simple, I mean, I literally made it as simple as I possibly could and first, I'm gonna tell you how to download it real fast and then I'll tell you how you can join the challenge.

So, first what you need to do is go into your app store whether it's android or on the apple store and SEARCH for Think Unbroken, so it'll look just like the Think Unbroken logo just like what I have on my jacket if you're watching, if you're not it's Think Unbroken it's a TU and you're gonna download that app. Now when you download that app, you're gonna create a profile, very simple, your name, email you've done this before. When you get in its initially gonna throw you right into the seven day challenge, right? That's not what you're joining with the Unbroken Warrior Daily Challenge. So, when you go on the app, you're gonna hit settings and it's gonna say enter and invite ID and you're gonna click enter an invite ID and you're going to type in UWDC – the Unbroken Warrior Daily Challenge, you're gonna hit submit and it'll say congratulations you've joined Think Unbroken.

Now let's talk about what this actually means so people are always asking them about my routine. How I stay focused? How do I stay mentally prepared? How do I manage the facilities of the day to day of all the different ways that I'm being pulled in all the different direction? And it's actually this challenge that I do every single day that gets me there. So, you guys may know my backstory story, about having a whole bunch of journals, recently I switched over to journal in an iPad which I really, really enjoy and then I've been journaling on my paper notebooks for years, I got five of them over there right now. But I thought to myself you know, what if I could give you guys the same thing that I do every day? And then I said to myself, what if I did something even better where I gave it to you where you could come in every day for free into the Think Unbroken app and more importantly be able to do the things that I have discovered and then I hope you will discover as well better have change my life.

And so, it's segmented into two parts. You get a notification in the morning and a notification at night, these are the same things I do every single day literally every day. In the morning, gonna say morning, it's very simple, there are eight prompts, this starts my morning. Every single day I put my feet on the ground, I tell myself, I am in control of my life, that's where we start, you're just gonna every day just put your feet on the ground say; I am in control of my life. There's little prompt here it tells you to do that but what this is you're creating these synapses in these firing in your brain to help solidify positivity as ascend as soon as you wake up because one of the things people do all the time they always say, I'm not in control of my life, my life is chaos, that is not how we start our day guys, that's not how we do this. What you do, you put your feet on the ground and say I am in control of my life; automatically that's an affirmation and it's a reminder of the same thing that I always tell myself. If I wanna have the life that I want to have, it's no excuses just results. And so, that comes from being able to put myself in a position to be successful literally the second I get up. And we get in questions, the first question you're asked yourself every day and this is a tracker so you're gonna be able to look at the data that you're putting in every day, and this is where it's gonna get interesting for a lot of people. The goal is to do this every single day. Period. To push yourself to do this every day for sixty-six days. Why? Because when you go look at research, it points to sixty-six days really being the fine-tuned bare minimum entry level to creating habitual changes in your life. Now, I know you've probably heard of twenty-one-day challenges and thirty-day challenges and seventy-five hard all these things which are phenomenal and great and they're all about one thing – it's about accountability. But I always felt like, they were kinda missing the mental health aspect of this and that's why I created this challenge because I want you to think about, are you actually setting yourself up for success every single day? And for many of us unfortunately and I would obviously put myself in that category from time to time that answer is, no. But when I started doing this years ago everything changed because I realized like, I had to do this day and day out no matter what, right?

And so, very first thing you've gotta challenge yourself to not hit the snooze button. Do not hit the snooze button. I know how much you wanna hit it, it's warm and it's cozy and maybe you're cut up to next to somebody, I get it respect but someone told me something that I'm gonna tell you that was like a baseball bat to the face for me and they told me hitting snooze in the morning is hitting snooze on your dreams. And I was like, whoa that's heavy and that changed things for me in ways I cannot even explain because I realized like, wow, I am hitting snooze every day, wow, I'm not actually giving myself the ability to be successful. I remember not that long ago was hitting snooze like, four or five times a day. You go rewind a decade ago four or five times a day, that's thirty minutes of my life gone forever, right? If you hit snooze or hitting snooze on your dreams.

First question is…

Did you hit snooze?

I'm going through this real-time with you guys, I wish you could see this if you're watching it's kind of blown out but I'm gonna hit now because I did not and then I'm gonna hit save, it's the same thing you're new, this tracks every single day, so, you're gonna see in your dashboard that this pops up, tells you what you did.

Number two…

Did you make your bed?

I know their how silly sounds and people go, why do you wanna make your bed? Because if you can make your bed, you have already. And I've talked about this on this show many times, so, I won't go too deep. But if you can make your bed every single day you've already set yourself up for success. Most people will not make their bed and it is the little things in life that matter because how you do anything is how you do everything. And so, challenge yourself spend literally the thirty-six seconds that it takes to make your bed, it'll change your life, so, I'm gonna hit yes and I'm gonna hit save.

Now we get into kind of the moving aspects of my day to day. So, every single day after I wake up, I put my feet on the ground, get out of bed before snooze, make the bed and drink water, this isn't that, I'm not gonna be like, drink all your water, do all your exercise, right? We will get there but not yet, right?

What you’re gonna do instead here’s where I start my day.

Meditation for ten minutes.

And ten minutes go so fast and people always like, well, I don't how to meditate? I'm gonna tell you how to meditate, right now in one sentence. Sit down, focus on your breath and when you get distracted come back to your breath; that's meditation. It's about focus, it's about creating an avenue of focus in which you are controlling what is happening.

So, I did an experiment in April and I said to myself, I'm actually not going to meditate for the month of April and I could feel the chaos and ensuing, right? I can feel the letlet G of life, kinda getting me the unmotivation, the place I'm like, God I don't wanna do this, I don't wanna show up for myself and I did not successfully make it the entire month of April without meditating, I had to, I just couldn't make it. I was so frustrated, I was so antagonize, was just feeling not like myself and so, I made a decision, I gonna go back to meditation because it works, because it helps you do something very simple especially if you're like me or just you've had a lot of traumatic experiences in your life it just brings you back to center and so it's about for ten minutes, did you meditate? And you just put it in there, you put on the time, I meditate from five, fifteen to five thirty this morning? I should say, A.M. and you can count it in here, boom, hit save, piece of cake, very simple. And then that'll track your goal is ten minutes that's it and then next so you know, I talk about this lot journal like, journaling is a huge, huge part of my life even when I wasn't meditating a journal; that to me is arguably the most important thing that I do because it just gives me a place to dump whatever is on my mind that day and the day is gonna vary, it's gonna be different.

So, one of the things that we did is we created a space where you can journal in your phone. So, right here you can just press in there, it says write your answer and you can just type, just go in there. I actually like that especially if I'm traveling or if I forgot a notebook or something but generally I'll go to the iPad and just write in there for ten minutes, it could be anything like, it sometimes I'm writing poems which are not nonsensical let me be clear about that, sometimes I'm writing poems, sometimes I'm just writing ideas, sometimes I'm just writing about my emotions, sometimes I'm writing about past events, doesn't matter, it's just about taking some of the weight of your brain and getting it out and just putting it on paper or here and then so after that. I go to reading and I read at least for ten minutes every day, generally speaking it's longer than that, I'm normally around half an hour a day. I wanna consume, I wanna learn, I wanna educate myself. And so, you'll ask it, I read for ten minutes then you'll move to gratitude.

Go look at all the research and gratitude I won't get into it here because you have probably heard this a brazilian freaking times but you know the research on gratitude is so potent because it's true like, when you can be in a place gratitude you cannot hold other emotions in the same space. And so, if you're happy, if you're excited, if you're like, I'm grateful for water, I mean like that's gratitude. Do you know how amazing it is that usually just good water, you can just go to your kitchen and turn it on? It that's unbelievable, to me like, have gratitude for that, have gratitude for friends, for family, for yourself, for showing up, for I don't know chopsticks, it's weird like, like gratitude doesn't have to be these big grandiose things it just has to be a reflection on what you have in your life that you're grateful for. And it's so easy to not be grateful, it's so easy to be like life is so bad and the world hates me and everybody is against me, I get it, I've been there. But trust me when I say, if you just sit here and you come up with three ideas in the morning, easy, they could be one word you just say, what am I grateful for? I'm grateful for water, for chopsticks, for air, like that's gratitude. Be grateful because those things keep you – chopsticks don’t keep you like it might keep me alive but not most people.

And then the last question, to me is one of the most important questions of my day is…

What are five things that I can do today that move me towards my goals?

Five things are not that many things, you know, so I'll give you context just breaking it down in terms of what's happening in real-time.

I've got one major goal in my life – end generational trauma in my lifetime through education and information by any means necessary.

So, that another kid doesn't have to have a story like mine, right? That's my goal. I think to myself every single day, what are five things that move me towards that? Now your goal, can be anything, your goal could be to you run a marathon, your goal could be to read a book a week, your goal could be to lose five pounds, your goal could be to gain five pounds, your goal could be to go do stand-up comedy, your goal could be you you'll go on three dates like, I don't know like, everybody's goal is different but I'm always saying myself like what are five things that I can do today that move me towards my goal?

So, if my goal is to end generational trauma and every single day, I need to do five new things, I ask myself okay, what do those need to look like? And so, this morning my five things were I need to record a podcast, I need to coach my team, I need to go and build out this aspect of the app called the Unbroken Warrior Daily Challenge, I need to make a video about the Unbroken Warrior Daily Challenge and then I need to give it to my team, so that they can produce it, those are five things that I needed to do in order to move me towards my goal and that's it; that's how you start your day. If you are paying attention to yourself and you if you're following through, if you're executing then honestly you can do this in about thirty-six-minutes, you probably do it a little bit sooner. But I don't want to cut corners like those ten, ten, ten – the meditate, the journal, the reading like those are so important and I know what you're thinking like who has that kind of time? You do, if you choose to and the only way that you're going to choose that time is you have to make a decision about your life and what you're willing to do to have the life that you want to have. And if having the life that you want to have been about showing up every single day no matter what then that means that you cannot make it excuses than that you need to find the time. So, if you have to get up at four o'clock in the morning, you may need to contemplate getting up at four o'clock in the morning. There's always excuses guys, I get it, I've made them all. You know, I don’t end up at three hundred and fifty pounds, smoking two packs a day, drinking yourself the sleep because you're not making excuses this, I promise you.

And so, find a way, how important to you is it that you live life on your terms? How important is that? Because if it's not then just stop listening this, stop was in the podcast, stop being part like it doesn't matter because if it's not important you'll never accomplish it. You have to decide that it's important to you to show up every single day no matter what.

So, that's the morning like, I said you do that about half an hour, you have half an hour and night, if you don't have half an hour. I teach this to my clients all the time, if you don't have half an hour, you don't have a life. It's that simple and you must go and create that, so that's the morning.

Let's get into the evening.

The evening for me of always been about reflection. The evening for me has always been about taking inventory of what's happening. And the evening is just a series and a set of prompts of five questions, it's very simple you can run through these in three or four minutes, right before you get ready to get into your nightly routine that's what I do. Now normally what I would suggest is that you sit down and quiet, with a cup of tea, with the lights dim and like get into a zone where you can reflect. Now it's gonna be different for everybody and sometimes that reflection is super-fast and it's eight seconds you're like oh, I need to do this. This is about accountability, there is no tomorrow, I wanna be very clear about this.

I talk about it all the time.

People will wait till tomorrow and they will never move towards being who they could move towards being and then one day they come to realize the truth, there are no more tomorrow and then you die with regret if you have not done the things, you said you were going to do. This is about accountability in your life, it’s self-accountability. Not accountability to me, I can't see any of this information or your answers, not accountability to your friends, not accountability to your family, accountability to you first because when you serve yourself first, you're able to better serve your family, your community, your children, your partner, your job, your church like, everything.

And so, this is about showing up because there's gonna be nights tired, this is gonna prompt you every night, it's gonna send you a ding, a reminder and you're going to have to make a choice. Are you going to ignore your life or are you going to follow through with the promise that you made to yourself? Right? And since this is free like this is what's interesting, here's what I know about human nature…

People will not do things for free they will not do things for a hundred dollars; they won't even do things that cost them ten thousand dollars unless they decide. So, you make a decision right now because when you get them this night this is my favorite part actually prefer the evening part of whole challenge.

The first question…

How has I broken today?

How did you show up today?

How did you show up in a way that was about your future about betterment, about not being broken, about being the opposite of everything everyone always told you? And it's often very simple, it's these incremental changes of our life that become monumental, right? It's not these giant leaps forward it's what did I do today, what was the one thing today.

How did I show today that I was unbroken?

Where did I show up in a way that I had before, because I've been doing the work, because I've been healing? And that could be very simple, I got into an argument with someone at work and I didn't yell at them because I paused for a moment, and I took a breath and I realized it's not that big of a deal; that's being unbroken just changing in the behavioral patterns.

And then what was the best part of the day? Find it.

There was something about today that was phenomenal, that was magical, that made you feel great about your life, own it, own that because you deserve to. So, often we don't give that to ourselves. Oh, today wasn’t alright – today was amazing! If you choose to look for that.

The third one and I know this is gonna be difficult for a lot of people but it needs to be in here, it's difficult for me sometimes and that's why it's in here.

What is one thing that I am proud of that I did?

Not thirty-seven thing; one thing.

What is one thing that I'm proud of that I did today? There's something. You find it. You seek it. You pull that out of yourself and you write it down because it matters, because guess what? In sixty-six days, that's gonna be sixty-six things that you are proud of, that's a lot, right?

Number four…

What could I have handled better today?

There's always something that we could have handled a little bit better, right? And this is not about beating ourselves up, let's be clear about that it's just about noticing, about paying attention, about seeing where we can step up our game a little bit. Just for clarity this is about some massive honesty with yourself, massive honesty, so get clear about how you could handle today better.

And then what is one way that I can improve for tomorrow?

I always ask myself, who do I need to be today for tomorrow? And because I'm like, reflecting on that frequently by the end of my night masking myself, what is one way that I can improve for tomorrow? What is just a little bit, incremental, just a little bit of an improvement like what can I do? What can I do? And then the last part of all this as well, I said there were five questions. There's one prompt, you're gonna write your goals, you have three of them, four of them, five of them, twenty of them it doesn't matter, write your goals.

I write my goals every single day no matter what because I know what I'm moving towards when I'm doing that and so you're gonna write your goals.

Then what's really interesting about this challenge it's a rinse and repeat, so every day, you have your unbroken challenge morning, your unbroken challenge evening and that's it. And look, I thought for a long time, I ponder this was like, should I charge people for this? I mean, I have to pay for the company to host it, I have to do all this stuff you know, should I charge and I thought to myself, no, this is an area, I don't wanna charge people because I want you to create accountability for yourself and I thought about it like, this isn't like if you had to pay for this there are people are gonna be like, I paid for it so I'm accountable to the money, I paid for it so I'm accountable to Michael, that's not how I want you to look at this; this is about accountability to yourself.

And so, what you're gonna do is you're gonna go on the iTunes store or the android store, you're gonna look up Think Unbroken, you're gonna download the app, you're gonna create an account, it's gonna automatically throw you into the seven-day challenge, that's a free challenge that's in there, that is not the same as the sixty-six-day Unbroken Warrior Daily Challenge, so let's be clear about that.

What you need to do is hit the settings icon at the bottom.

Go to invite ID and type in UWDC Unbroken Warrior Daily Challenge, alright? That's gonna get you access to this and it's gonna start immediately and your goal is to show up and do this every single day and I know it's gonna sounds boring but I promise you if I could point my finger to the one thing that has changed my life more than anything.

And so, many people talk about this, I mean go read, you know James Clear Books Atomic Habit, he points to go look at Tom Bilyeu, he’s manifesto he points that, go think about all these people who do this – Tony Robbins, one person who comes to mind who I love Mel Robbins, go gonna look at Mel Robbins Daily routine, her wife was crazy for a while, look at Marie Forleo daily routine like, all these people and you don't have to do this you don't have to. But if you wanna go to the next level, if you really want tap into what it means to be unbroken, this is it.

And BONUS you're gonna get put into the unbroken challenge community in the app where you're gonna be able to go back and forth with all the people that are in there and this is free and if you wanna do it again at the end of sixty six days because you love it, you'll get do it again then as long as the app in the app store, as long as we're doing Think Unbroken this is gonna be here for you because we want you to come together like yes, it's gonna be difficult, yes there's gonna be days that you forget, but guess what? You don't get to give yourself that space of forgetting.

You have to make a decision.

When you go download this app, you join this program, you're making a decision, you're choosing to do this, you're deciding that is for your betterment and for your future because you want to be unbroken.

So, again check out the app store, just go to Think Unbroken in the app store iTunes or android it's super easy. Download the app. Register. Click settings. Put in the ID UWDC and you'll get access to the challenge.

Thank you so much for being here my friends.

I appreciate you greatly!

Please, Be Unbroken.

I'll see you.