TypeEs drive a very high-performance physiology. As with any high-performance vehicle, it’s wise to learn how to maintain and drive it safely, without sacrificing its full capabilities.
Nearly all successful TypeEs practice these four strategies/habits on a daily basis. They involve nutrition, physical exercise, breathing and enjoying life. While the mechanics of how they impact the physiology are quite technical, their implementation is deceptively simple.
Though these ‘habits’ are good for all types of people what makes them so important for TypeEs and their particular physiology is that if they don’t practice them they crash and burn! And, if regular folks don’t do them they just may not have a good day….
Strategy 1
Eat Breakfast
TypeEs need the boost that complex carbohydrates bring to the neurotransmitter serotonin. It helps focus all that creative energy in a positive direction. If you don’t eat breakfast, you’ll feel a dramatic decrease in creativity and an increase in stress.
If the body is not fueled properly within three hours after waking, it shifts into an emergency mode. The fight-or-flight response engages and you will find yourself becoming reactive, instead of proactive, for the remainder of the day.
Eat Breakfast No Later Than 3 Hours After Waking – You’ll need to practice this way of eating daily for at least three weeks. It takes this amount of time for the body to return to its optimal level of physiological functioning.
Strategy 2
Exercise
Exercise Aerobically 15 minutes per day. Aerobic exercise helps to stabilize the EDR levels, which act as a shock absorber for the stress you encounter during the day. It also enables you to recover from stress in a much shorter period of time.
Exercise allows the TypeE physiology to maintain a healthy, resilient response to emergencies, instead of a stressed, reactive one.
Simple Aerobic Exercise
Find a set of stairs where you work or live. Once an hour take a break and walk the stairs until you can feel your heart rate increase. This exercise has the same positive effects as smoking a cigarette – increased alertness, relaxation and an increased ability to focus – without any nasty side effects.
Strategy 3
¡Remember to Exhale!
Practice Diaphragmatic / Belly Breathing – Successful TypeEs actually exhale. Other TypeEs are so busy enjoying the ride up or holding on for dear life on the ride down, that they always seem to be holding their breath. Chest breathing sends a stress alert signal to the brain unless you’re doing physical exercise.
Diaphragmatic breathing or belly breathing signals that everything is fine.
Belly Breathing Exercise
You can learn and practice diaphragmatic breathing by lying down on a couch, bed or the floor. Place one hand on your chest and the other hand on your abdomen. When you breathe, the hand on your abdomen will rise as you inhale and lower as you exhale, while the hand on your chest remains relatively still.
Once you are able to breathe lying down, try sitting up and repeat the same process. Eventually you will notice that you have begun to breathe diaphragmatically all of the time.
Strategy 4
¡Enjoy Life!
Present Moment Awareness It’s easy for TypeEs to get lost in a project once it is up and running, forgetting the joy and passion they experienced when starting the new project. Remember to enjoy your life now – not 20 years from now. Unfortunately, we are not taught how to enjoy the moment. We’ve got a myriad of techniques for acquiring something, whether it’s a new trophy or a moment of happiness, but few guidelines on how to enjoy what we’ve created.
By far one of the biggest challenges financially successful typeEs encounter is what to do after they have it all. Don’t let this happen to ¡you! Learn how to enjoy what you’re creating as you’re creating it.
Enjoying Life!
Enjoying life may sound like the simplest of the four strategies and often it is the most challenging. It has everything to do with present moment awareness and what we choose with each breath. We will spend much of the balance of the course exploring what enjoying life looks like for each of us and how to grow our capacity for maintaining our presence in each moment.