Coaching Through iPEC’s COR.E Dynamics: Physical Influencers

This episode includes our interpretations of copyrighted works done by the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching or iPEC. 

Alex Cullimore: When you don't get enough sleep, it's definitely like, mental focus becomes more difficult, which can also be anywhere from not being able to focus on tasks at hand, or not having as much ability to jump into something. 

[INTRODUCTION] 

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human, where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives. 

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that’s with our families, co-workers, or even ourselves. 

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens. 

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni. 

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore. 

HOSTS: Let's dive in. 

Authenticity means freedom. 

Authenticity means going with your gut. 

Authenticity is bringing a 100% of yourself. Not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you. 

Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself. 

It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true. 

Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be. 

It's transparency, relatability, no frills, no makeup, just being. 

[EPISODE] 

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back, Cristina. We are here in our core dynamic series, continuing our influencers' work. This time, we have one of the fun, but fairly straightforward, thankfully influencers, physical influencers. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. It's nice to get to the physical one, because you get a little break from the deep look in the onion that all the demons are sitting at. 

Alex Cullimore: I think you just guaranteed, we're going to end up finding demons in the physical. 

Cristina Amigoni: No, no. No demons in the physical. It’s very straightforward. You sleep, you eat healthy, you exercise, and you do some breathing and you're good. 

Alex Cullimore: I don't even know what we're doing. This is going to be the shortest podcast episode ever. So simple. 

Cristina Amigoni: Let's see how quickly that house of cards falls down. 

Alex Cullimore: Well, you highlighted the key points here, where you think about physical as well, but your well-being and your readiness. Are you healthy? Have you slept enough? How do you feel about your own body image? How do you feel about your fitness? How much have you exercised and how is that helping, or hurting you? Are you an injury? Do you have illness? Are you really focusing on nutrition and hydration? Are you in touch with your breathing? All of those things that are really the physical portions of our existence that influence, of course, all the other influencers, as well as they have the ability to influence our ability to show up with full energy, or deplete energy. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. I like the physical piece, not just because it's an easier one, most of the times, but it's because you start seeing all the connecting dots. It's like, “Oh, I haven't slept last night, which is going to impact my concentration and focus,” which is a mental influencer, “which is going to impact how I emotionally react to things, because, well, lack of sleep. I may just react, instead of pausing and respond, because I don't have the energy, the physical energy to pause. I may not want to talk to people today, because I'm half zombied out from not sleeping.” 

All those things start connecting the dots. Then like, “Oh, well. I don't want to talk to people today. One of my values is human connection. Then tomorrow, I'm going to be mad, or depressed, or sad, or all of the above, because they didn't have any human connections a day before, because I didn't sleep the night before.” That's where the ball gets rolling pretty fast on all the influencers connecting to each other. 

Alex Cullimore: That's where you start somewhere physical and end up with demons and onions. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Demons in the onion layers. 

Alex Cullimore: I just have this vision of demons with onion breath. It's a really just extra layer of like, “I'm not sure I want to face this.” 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. My vision is more of a tiny little evil Shreks in the middle of onion layers. You peel the onion layers and there's a bunch of tiny little evil Shreks. Ogres in onions, you're peeling onions. They smell like onions. 

Alex Cullimore: Pixar, or maybe it was Disney, I don't know. Dreamworks, whatever did Shrek, sponsored this episode. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. We're going to have onion soup for lunch after this. 

Alex Cullimore: It's going to remind us of the deep layers that we have done back. 

Cristina Amigoni: The easy influencer. When it comes to things like the physical influencer, we think about things like sleep, health, exercise. This is where it's a great place to think about all the language that we use when we use things like should, have to, need to. I need to eat better. I should work out more. I have to get out and exercise today. 

I mean, these are the times where you can find those blocks of where that influencer is dragging us down, or it's creating a different mental block, or clouding our clarity. Then it can be filled with all kinds of limiting beliefs, things like, “Well, healthy food just doesn't taste that good, or it's too expensive, or I don't have time to exercise,” or whatever our beliefs are that end up coming up around our physical influencers, this is the chance to unpack those and understand what helps us show up best in terms of physical influence and what helped – what might detract and how can we change those when they are detracting. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. All of that. I'm thinking about onion soup right now. I would never have onion soup, because it's too high sodium. I mean, I don't actually function well in high sodium. There's a whole circling back to the physical influencers and knowing myself. 

Alex Cullimore: Interestingly enough, that's an interesting example, because you could potentially change the sodium levels since onions don't come with sodium themselves, that you could probably influence the sodium level in that and then have a totally different relationship to what could potentially be very bland onion soup. 

Cristina Amigoni: Indeed. Yes. Should we get coaching? 

Alex Cullimore: Sure. Let's jump on into it. This one's a quick one to think about. You want to coach, or coachie? 

Cristina Amigoni: Up to you. 

Alex Cullimore: All right. I will coach then. If you were to think about a time when your physical influencers were causing stress, resistance, maybe some lower engagement, what were those circumstances? 

Cristina Amigoni: Well, I've already mentioned two. Lack of sleep. That definitely has a huge impact on performance of any level, especially concentration and focus. If I have to do heads down work, it's very difficult if I haven't slept that well. I also usually sleep really well. I think we've talked about this in some of the spiritual and other influencers on how if I am not sleeping, then I have to figure out what's causing the non-sleeping. Sometimes it is maybe another physical influencers, like pain, or an injury, or illness. That's very straightforward and easy to navigate. 

Sometimes it's values mismatch, or more brain and heart stuff that's keeping me up and making me think. Lack of sleep. Sleep is a big one. From a nutrition and hydration point of view, I'm also pretty strict. Took me a long time to learn how I can be more optimally best, or at least less hulky, if that's a word. 

Alex Cullimore: Just skip past hangry and go straight to hulky. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. If I can keep Hulk to be smart Hulk and not old Hulk, nutrition is a big one for me, and hydration. For example, I drink a gallon of water, or tea a day, and that's the minimum. As soon as I have less, I will get headaches and I will just feel disturbed, physically disturbed, which then goes into mental fogness and mentally disturbed. In the hydration piece, I also have to fairly strictly, well, I'll say very strictly, because I never do is making sure that I do have the gallon before I start having any alcohol. Alcohol at lunch, it's not a thing that I do anymore, because it's pretty hard to drink a gallon of water before lunch time sometimes. It takes a lot of effort and a lot of bathroom breaks. 

Alex Cullimore: Different physical influencer, feeling the pain of the bladder, yes. 

Cristina Amigoni: Even in the alcohol, I went from drinking pretty much anything, beer, cocktails, whatever, to now sticking only with wine. I think we actually – we were in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Southeastern Missouri, which was actually beautiful and not a place that I ever thought I would go to. We were out at a restaurant and it was a local restaurant, and so wine wasn't exactly the top of the list, or even the middle of the list. It wasn't the thing to order. Let's just say that word. 

I ordered a beer, which was probably the first time I ever had beer in at least seven to 10 years. I knew that I had to pace myself and not drink at all and do certain things to not have the beer effect on my sleep later on that night. 

Alex Cullimore: It's all excellent awareness of whether the things that you've already done, and something you've already gone on a journey on a number of these angles, whether it's hydration, nutrition, sleep, understanding the impact. Also, a great description of sleep being a spiritual influence. Something is messing with some values that'll lose sleep. That loss of sleep then creates a mental fog, so that you got four influencers compounding on each other, which is why we talked about spiritual often being such a deep one. 

You've got all kinds of great structures in place, systems, understanding of yourself and what will help, what has been a positive, or what has helped at least keep you even for all of your physical influencers. If you think about the things that you can do physically, that particularly enhance your energy, what comes to mind? 

Cristina Amigoni: I would say, the nutrition, the hydration, the sleep, but also, I don't know if it's a physical influence. I guess, it's a physical activity. I will slap it in. It could be something else influencer, too, but meditation. 

Alex Cullimore: It's exercise? Yeah. Oh, nice. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Meditation is a big one. I started TM, so transcendental meditation over four years ago, four and a half years ago. One of the challenges that I made for myself was to meditate at least once a day, and then for the first year or so, twice a day, for 23 minutes each. I have only missed one day, because of an airport delay. Actually, yes, an airplane delay. I was counting on meditating on the plane and then it never happened, and then it missed. Meditation, which is a physical, mental and spiritual activity, so it's everything. And emotional activity. It's all the influencers at once. Even just taking the time to do that as a physical regiment has made a huge difference in my performance in how I show up. 

Alex Cullimore: I'm going to stack questions here, because I think the first one is easier. But I'm curious, and first question, what made you pick 23 minutes? That's a very specific number. Second question is then like, what are those? You just talked about the benefits of that, so let's get deeper into that and what those benefits are and what you noticed. First, I'm just generally curious about that 23 number. 

Cristina Amigoni: It's actually not – I didn't pick it. Part of going through the TM process is you actually go through a coaching, a group coaching session to be able to do TM, or at least this is when it was happening. They teach you about it. They explain how it works. In that process, they actually tell you, “This is how long we want you to meditate.” I think it's based on your lifestyle, your current level of stress, the things that are bothering you and not bothering you, your ability in different ways, there's a huge questionnaire that they go through. Then they say, “Okay, we recommend the 23 minutes twice a day.” I have gone down to most days, I do once a day, but when I can, I do twice. They also give you a mantra. Then, you have these given things. Then after that, you understand how it works, because they walk through the process, and that's basically it. 

Benefits. The benefits pieces tons. It's interesting. When you go through the course, the TM course, they explain it as when things happen, you become a hard rubber ball, basically rolling down the street. Before TM, or before meditation, you're much softer, which means every pebble that you hit and every little grain, or every big rocks, it makes a dent in the ball. Or it becomes lodged in, it becomes part of the ball. The more you do meditation and TM specifically, or at least this is the analogy they use for TM, is that ball becomes harder and harder and harder, so that you may feel the pebble, or the rock, but it doesn't become part of you. You just keep going. 

It's one of those things where it's like, trust the process in coach training, where you're like, “Okay, I get the words, but I have no idea. The feeling is not quite there. I have no idea what you're saying.” But this was the same when they were explaining. I'm like, “Yeah, that sounds awesome.” Sure. I'm not quite feeling it. I understand that with words, my logic understands it, but my heart is not quite getting it, until you get it, until you start experiencing and you notice that things that in the past may have bothered you and become part of your reactions and part of the ball in the past, now you're just going like, “Oh, that went quickly. Okay. Well, I guess, that's done.” That's a huge benefit. 

Some of the coaching aspirations, actually, meditation really helps with non-judgment. In the meditation, you stop judging your own stuff, and so that helps you to judge others less. General, I mean, TM specifically, they've done a ton of studies and they keep doing them on the physical benefits of that, which are much lower blood pressure. They've actually have tons of studies on PTSD. People with PTSD, they actually are able to pass, or to not cure it, but to manage it much better. People with high blood pressures, or heart problems, there's a lot of physical evidence that TM helps with that. 

I would say, yes, just generally speaking, even things like my stress, shoulders and neck pains, they're usually causes of stress. I rarely have them and I used to live with that. Yeah, those are some of them. 

Alex Cullimore: That's really cool. First of all, I like the description of how you got to the 23 minutes, because that's such a – just to call it out specifically. Great frameworks for thinking about how to build things into your life and new, especially new practices, like, “Hey, how much do I really have time for?” I mean, you can read a blog on exercise. It'll tell you need to work out an hour a day, or something, but how realistic is it to jump into an hour a day if you're in that habit, or if you're not that close to that? 

What a great way of having a bunch of different questions to answer, so that you can figure out like, what's realistic? What would help and what can I actually fit in that will help me develop this as a practice, so I can try and see some of the benefits and then live with this long enough to move past the logical understanding of being over ball and into the more emotional understanding of like, “Oh, okay. So, if I'm hardened, that's what this feels like. It doesn't feel like it's bouncing in. I don't notice this as much.” You get this whole journey that goes in there.  

As you look into the future and you've got all these, all these systems in place and we're not saying there's any that would have to be added, but are there any things that you're curious about adding to some of your physical regiments that maybe, just you're curious about trying to see what the benefits might be? 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. The one piece that I – it's on and off the wagon and I'm not too happy about. It's one of those shoulds that becomes a would like, that becomes sometimes, that becomes back to a should, and yes, it's the exercise piece. I haven't quite. I love walking. I do that quite a bit. Not as much as, again, I should, or I would like to. Definitely, have to be better at have to. I'm using all the words. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, and here we are. This is the example. 

Cristina Amigoni: Stepping into all the potholes. I would like to, actually. I want to figure out what kind of exercise. I struggle with I see types of exercise that I'm like, “Oh, yeah. I really want to do that.” I used to do yoga all the time. Not all the time, but I did yoga for quite a bit. Then I stopped. The thought of yoga to me is really good, but then the motivation to actually sit on a mat in some dark basement room is zero to none. Going to a class, it's even less. I'm not a class person when it comes to exercise. That's why I love walking and being able to do the walking. I tried running and then joints started getting painful, and so, I stopped that. 

There's various pieces of activities that I would like to do more. then there's mental constraints where they don't get passed to make them happen. For example, if I could, and I know I can, if I actually got out there and figure it out, but tennis is the sport that I've always loved. I could play tennis for hours every single day. The main thing that's stopping me now is the fact that you can't play tennis alone. Then it requires the effort of, now I've got to find somebody who can play tennis with me at the same time that I can. Now we're talking about the weather, and is it too hot? Now it's just snowy and now it's rainy and there's no tennis courts. It's not easy enough to just do whenever I want it. The exercise piece, I'm still trying to figure out is like, how do I get there? 

Alex Cullimore: That makes sense. You got to get awareness of the things that you like, pretty much so, you already suggested some of the things that maybe are difficult. Like yoga, you don't want to do classes. Totally makes sense. Have you considered exploring, or were there any other ways you would explore yoga outside of a classroom, or changing some of the – I totally understand the feeling of like, “I don't want to do this in a dark basement room.” That makes sense. I think, that might not be the most inviting. It might not feel it's the most comfortable, and it might not be the chance to give it the fair shake that you might want to give it. What kind of situation would be ideal to try something like that? 

Cristina Amigoni: That's a good question, because I've also tried it with a yoga teacher and well, I liked the discipline. It was too long. I'm also like, besides walking, which I could walk for hours. I mean, one of my goals when I go to New York and visit is to walk 10 miles a day, because I want to walk every single day all day long. Outside of that, anything that's more structured as in staying in one place, staying in one room, following instructions, those things outside of tennis is I have about a patience of 20 minutes, 15 to 20 minutes. 

When I tried with a personal instructor, it was more 50 to an hour, and I was like, “I can't. That's just not –” It starts breaking up the day. Now, that before and after it becomes an hour and 15, an hour and a half, and then it becomes a problem with scheduling and meetings. 

There's just all sorts of other things that I integrate to make it more difficult, because I know there are things that I could move aside, but I don't. Which also tells me I'm not passionate enough. Because as I said, if you were tennis and it was their court P person weather, I would do it every day all day. I can't remember what the question is, but what else I could do? I love the outside, being outside. That's an element of if I look at exercising every day in some form, being out in the fresh air is a requirement, unless it's snowing and I can't, or raining. Which also prohibits the yogas and the Peloton and these other things that I've started and stopped and started and stopped and started and stopped. 

Alex Cullimore: Those are all great awareness pieces. You know there's some external things that you'd want to be able to address with tennis, being able to have the court, the weather, the person to go play with any time there is someone in tennis. Those are some potential obstacles. That would be the place to look at, if you wanted to rearrange some of the situation and remove some of those externals. Then also, the time constraint on something like, yoga. An hour is too long to commit to try the passion to do that, which surely makes sense. It's not a practice that's important enough to devote an hour to. 

We all have choices we have to make with our time. Absolutely, that would be too much time, especially if it's not something that feels like it's important enough to like, hey, I really want to make that hour commitment. Yeah, so we have options. We can either continue to discuss ways to remove some of those externals around tennis. We can talk about some of the internals in yoga, or we can wrap with the idea that this is the incremental progress. I want to get your opinion on where you'd like to go. 

Cristina Amigoni: Let's leave the demons in the onions and move on. 

Alex Cullimore: One last thing though, if you would be open to a suggestion, would you be open to a suggestion? 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. 

Alex Cullimore: One thing that really helped me is Peloton has little workouts that are 10, 15, 20 minutes. That was the only way that I could get into any strength training. Because forever, I was like, “Yeah, I should try and lift.” I don't do it now, so this didn't last forever, but it did last for about a year. I could only do it when I was like, “Oh, yeah. I could just do a 20-minute class.” Because then it wasn't like, “Oh, yeah, let me try and slot in an hour here.” And, “Oh, nope. I just got called. I guess, this is what I’ll have today.” Those are the one thing I found that helped. I'd say, it would help. If you're interested, that is the only thing that I've helped. I found that removed some of that time constraint, because I was like, it's 20-minute, and they'll give you a beginning, middle and end and you'll be done in 20. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. No, that does help. I've done some of those as well. I have to balance and find the ones that I – one, don't get bored with. Two, don’t end up being either too hard, or I push more than suggested, which then turns into, I'm sore for the next three days, which then makes me quit. Because I'm like, I don't want to be sore every single time I exercise. There's all sorts of things. Also, the general. That doesn't mean that – I know that there's a solution. I need to be more dedicated to finding the solution. 

Alex Cullimore: I feel you on that one. I didn't get past that first stage, where I'd push too hard and then end up hurt for three days, or a week and, like I’m never coming back to this. I kept hitting that wall over and over again, until eventually, I signed up for half marathon and had to keep going, and was like, okay, this is just better be incremental then, because I can't kill myself every week and then hate this. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. I've actually found that – because I was using the Peloton bike for quite a while. I found that that was better in the sense of I was much better at pacing myself, so that I wouldn't get sore and quit. I did that. That one, I did for a while, every other day. It was fairly consistent. Then I went traveling, life happened, got bored. I get bored. I think that's probably the biggest thing. Walks, skiing, tennis are the things I don't get bored doing. Everything else, I get bored. 

Alex Cullimore: Makes sense. Good awareness. 

Cristina Amigoni: All right, shall we reverse? 

Alex Cullimore: Sure. Let's reverse this. 

Cristina Amigoni: All right. When you think about the list of physical influencers, or areas that help you reach peak performance, which ones are your shoulds on that list? 

Alex Cullimore: Sleep is always a should. I keep having an unhealthy relationship with sleep. When I do get enough of it, I can feel the benefits. I often either stay up later than I should, or I'll sleep in then on the other side a little bit more than I should, or I'll just cut it out and then just have a short sleep cycle, which occasionally is doable, but it's increasingly less doable, especially if I do that often. I think that's one thing that definitely feels like it comes up as a should a lot. I should sleep better and I don't. 

Nutrition, I've actually been making some good progress on, I like to intentionally move towards things, like plant-based diets. There was a little bit in there earlier in the year where I was not nearly as focused on that and definitely fell off that wagon. In the last about month and a half or so, I've particularly gotten back into like, hey, this as an intention is where I'm going. If I happen to be out at a good restaurant and something happens to have meat and it looks particularly like it’s a special or something that you're not going to get again, I'm not worried about having that then. Overall, and especially when making food at home, we haven't brought me into the house for a while. This is definitely making some good progress there. I think sleep. Then that dovetails into some exercise, where occasionally, I get into like, I should be doing this more. I know that I should be and don't necessarily get there. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, very insightful, especially the sleep piece that you've brought up multiple times. There's the should all over the sleep. 

Alex Cullimore: All over the place. 

Cristina Amigoni: Should have a better, a healthier relationship with the sleep. I should go to bed earlier. I shouldn't sleep as much the next day. It's, yeah, it's just there's two words in those sentences, sleep and should. If you think about that one, what is the impact of the unhealthiness of your sleep cycle? 

Alex Cullimore: It's usually a ripple effect itself. I mean, first of all, when you don't get enough sleep, it's definitely like, mental focus becomes more difficult, which can also be anywhere from not being able to focus on tasks at hand, or not having as much ability to jump into something, as well as it becomes sometimes harder to have emotional regulation, at least as strong as I would like it to be, or no, it can be. If you haven't slept enough and you're really tired, occasionally it's easier to lose the patience, or just be like, “Look, I don't have time to unpack this with you. I'm exhausted. I don't have it.” 

It doesn't help with like, it can be harder on finding places, like the coaching headspace and getting into being able to help people and having that space of curiosity and non-judgment can be harder to get to. Then also, if I'm staying up too late, there's a good chance, there's a 90-plus-percent chance that I'm doing that on the couch, crunched up, watching Netflix at which point I'm going to wake up stiff and I'm already in a weird position sitting on a couch for too long. Then that, if I sleep in, or if that causes – I’ll just be sleepy the next day. Either I will try and sleep a little bit later and thus, miss the chance to work out, or do some exercise, which usually gives some energy, or I will work out without that energy and feel depleted and it's not a great workout. It's not a great experience and I've had less sleep. There's a nice myriad of little ripple effects. 

Cristina Amigoni: Just as many as the shoulds – 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. 

Cristina Amigoni: - around sleep. If you think about your ideal relationship with sleep, what would it look like? 

Alex Cullimore: The ideal-ideal is being able to pause time, get as much sleep as possible, and then wake up and be ready. 

Cristina Amigoni: How about the humanly on earth today ideal? 

Alex Cullimore: Within the laws of physics, fine. 

Cristina Amigoni: For now. You never know what comes up tomorrow, but as of today, we haven't figured out to stop time. 

Alex Cullimore: If I could get at least seven hours of sleep and ideally, occasionally, eight, I'm messing around with what the ideal is. I know that for some people who have taken much more deliberate time to practice with this, that they get answers that are all over the map that they can do well with seven and a half, or they really are ideal at eight and a half. Those tend to be the limits that you mostly see people in. I'd like to get at least consistently seven. I do that fairly well now and it's getting better than it was before. I used to be mostly at six. 

Ideally, I'd get that and probably go to bed sometime around 11, wake up between 6.30 and 7, and that would give enough time in the morning to do things like, go for a run, or do whatever else, or have a time to just sit and do reflection, or journaling work, which is the other cost. If I lose that morning time, I don't have the time for reflection into that personal development time that has been traditionally especially helpful in reducing mental clutter and just feeling more energized in the day. I would be probably falling asleep around that 11.00 and then getting up around 6.30 to 7 to really be ready for having a nice little space in the day to get ready, center myself and dive in. 

Cristina Amigoni: Good self-awareness, especially on the other side of the shoulds is like, if you can get to that waking up at a certain hour, then it impacts some personal development and exercise and other physical influencers, which will then be influencing the rest of your day and the other performances. What's stopping you from going to bed at 11 and waking up at 6? 

Alex Cullimore: Interestingly, one of the things that gets to that – first comes to mind is as you know, I live in basically a five-story walk up. We have a very tall townhome, narrow tall townhome. Our bedroom's on top and the living room's on the bottom. Doing things, like sitting and watching Netflix tends to happen in the living room. Then you think about the actual physical effort of climbing yourself two flights of stairs when you're already tired, the couch starts to feel more appealing, even if you're slowly accruing more and more of that debt. There's part of that. Then also, knowing the things that will have to be done once you get upstairs, saying, “I want to shower before I get a bed. I want to do this.” 

If that's the case, and knowing there's another 15, 20 minutes, or whatever on top of climbing up two flights of stairs doesn't help. A couple of times, recently, actually, I've worked out in the afternoon, or something and I'll shower then. If I can clear out some of those things ahead of time, it's a lot easier to be like, okay, I just have to get up and walk up to bed. Or I can just sit upstairs and have an evening upstairs, instead of going to the living room. Either of those, I think, would help move the needle a bit and make that a lot less internal resistance to get to bed on the time that I'd like to get to. 

Cristina Amigoni: What would you think that internal resistance comes from, besides the five flight of stairs and the 20 minutes to shower and brush your teeth? 

Alex Cullimore: I think part of it's just not wanting to miss out. It's a hangover from previous times in my life, where I've spent, at the job that we met at, I would spend frequent days where sometimes I'd be working until 2 in the morning. Now when I get these opportunities, just to have evenings where there's an evening, I'm really – I hold on to it and I want to experience as much as possible in that time. I think at this point, it's now tilted the balance, where it's not just experiencing those things. It's now taking away from the next day by doing that. Just maybe acknowledging that and knowing that there's internal attachments to trying to soak up as much as possible in the evenings, but understanding that that is coming at a cost for other evenings maybe would help even that out and not make it just not end the story at, “No, I want to do the most with this current evening. But remember that there's evenings before and evenings after.” 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Sounds like good self-awareness and the block of missing out could have a big influence in the not wanting to walk up the steps and get to bed in time, which is totally, perfectly normal. Makes total sense. When you think about in the past times when you actually have succeeded, even for just a couple of days, or for multiple days to get the type of sleep that you need, what were those circumstances if they exist? 

Alex Cullimore: They do. It's not a 100% of the time that I even done healthy sleep habits. Just 80%. 

Cristina Amigoni: You think about the 20%. What happens to the 20%? 

Alex Cullimore: That's better than 90. It's really times when I've given myself permission to listen to myself. Like, I know that I'm tired, I know that I need this sleep, I know that I could stay up if I wanted, if I forced myself to, but this – I'm feeling that pull towards, I'd like to go be in bed now. Listening to that has made the difference. 

Or, knowing, hey, I really want to get to X in the morning. There's a pool near my house that I like to swim at occasionally, and there's only certain hours where it's not super busy. It's not a very big pool, so it doesn't take much to get busy. I prefer swimming in a lane to myself, when possible. Knowing what times that's available, it's either particularly early, or right when people are going to have to go mostly go to work since I live close to it, I can walk there. Knowing that I'm going to have to make this timeline helps too, because I know that if I'm going to get this seven hours of sleep, that's backing that out, I need to go to bed now. 

Listening to, hey, every time I run myself ragging on this, I end up regretting this. What can I do to not do that? Have both been probably the most key influences on the 20% where that does go as I would ideally like it from general energy patterns. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, that definitely make sense to have what's happening on the next day, or what I want to accomplish after I get a good night sleep piece. What would you need to actually start a healthy sleep routine? 

Alex Cullimore: I think I've already begun it. I think one thing that would help, probably helps keep it a bit is maybe documenting, “Hey, it probably would be helpful to start actually keeping track of how many hours I sleep and then track that against what is the feeling the next day and try and get to what is an ideal actual amount of sleep.” Right now, I'm just guessing at what mostly feels well. I haven't really done a lot of experimentation with that. Part of it's keeping track of that. That's the first one that would be – I guess, most important is experimenting and being more aware of what really is the necessary amount. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Understandable, especially since you already use journaling and you see the point of journaling and self-reflection, that's a type of self-reflection. Oh, and what happens after I actually get the right amount of sleep and I go to bed at the time and wake up at the times that are most optimal for me? How can you turn that ‘would like’ to a, ‘I'm going to do it’? 

Alex Cullimore: I've started using the reminders app pretty religiously and that's been helping with clearing out just mental organization and just always having the more of – for a long time, I think it was viable to keep most of my to-dos in my head, but life has expanded in complexity beyond that again, or my mental capacity is dropped. I don't know. One of the two is true, or both. I don't know. Either way, I need these things written down. 

Cristina Amigoni: The lack of sleep has reduced your mental capacity. 

Alex Cullimore: Ironically, yes, that probably is a huge influence in that. Putting that in the reminders out of as part of like, I remind myself to journal every day. I remind myself to do things like, write a little bit and all of these. If I have to take just another reminder in the day that's also how much should you sleep outside, or track that, or maybe it's of two reminders, one before one, one at night and one, or post a note at my bed just trying to remember what time is it when I'm getting in bed and then keep track of when that – how long that is on the other side. 

I think a daily reminder, so that it just – it can be hard in the morning to remember when you fall asleep, or to remember to try and document that without some prompts, just because I'm not awake yet. Maybe that reminder would help just push that and may go, “Right. Yes. Okay. Now, that's really fresh in my mind. Here's how long it was.” 

Cristina Amigoni: When would you like to start that? 

Alex Cullimore: Tonight. I'll put that on my reminders. 

Cristina Amigoni: What could stand in the way? 

Alex Cullimore: The fact that we are going to help Rachel's grandparents put up a shelf tonight, which is usually going to be like, it's going to probably be a few hour endeavor and visits just to catch up with them. That could stand in the way of getting to bed on time, for sure. 

Cristina Amigoni: What kind of support would help you? 

Alex Cullimore: I don’t know if too much support is needed on this one. It’s just a reminder and checking in with myself as much as remembering externally that I'm – I'm not using this podcast now as a tattoo that I'm going to go do this. It's now my out-loud commitment. Feel more committed to it and just more aware of yeah, this is something that definitely is something that comes to mind immediately when you talk about the shoulds, like yes, definitely sleep. That would actually feel more like a, no, you really need to do this. You just should do it. It doesn’t you choose to do as soon as possible to go help your life. The importance feels there. It doesn't feel like it's an external obligation. It feels just an internal imperative. I feel pretty ready to go take that. 

Cristina Amigoni: All right. Well, let us know how it goes. 

Alex Cullimore: Sounds good. 

Cristina Amigoni: I am going to ask you the same question you asked me. Are there any other physical influencers you would like to unpack, or wrap it up? 

Alex Cullimore: I think I'm pretty aware of the other ones. This is a good example. I think, other ones would be another 20 minutes. 

Cristina Amigoni: The demons and the onions. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Then we're going to find all the ogres. 

Cristina Amigoni: We need another Shrek movie for that one, so we'll wait for that. All right. Well, thank you. 

Alex Cullimore: No, thank you. Awesome. That's physical influencers. When you think about these things, watch your own language around what your shoulds choose to use. How can you turn these into choose to use? What do you know that works for you? How can you create those circumstances for yourself? Those are all the helpful self-coaching questions that can put you in a good, physical space. Sometimes it's a great place to start any personal work, because it's fairly straightforward often to grasp what is physically happening to us. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yup, definitely. Thanks for listening. 

Alex Cullimore: Thank you. 

[END OF EPISODE] 

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you for listening to Uncover the Human, a Siamo Podcast. 

Alex Cullimore: Special thanks to our podcast operations wizard, Jake Lara, and our score creator, Rachel Sherwood. 

Cristina Amigoni: If you have enjoyed this episode, please share, review and subscribe. You can find our episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Alex Cullimore: We would love to hear from you with feedback, topic ideas, or questions. You can reach us at podcast@wearesiamo.com, or on our website, wearesiamo.com, LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook. WeAreSiamo is spelled W-E-A-R-E-S-I-A-M-O. 

Cristina Amigoni: Until next time, listen to yourself, listen to others and always uncover the human. 

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