#44 – James Swanwick: Special Sunglasses Can Improve Your Sleep

You are at the intersection of wealth, health, and happiness. Welcome to the Wealthy Wellthy Life.

Hello, and welcome to the Wealthy Wellthy Life, the show about becoming wealthy without sacrificing your healthy. Each week, I interview a counter-cultural thought leader to bring you a unique millionaire mindset. I’m Krisstina Wise, bestselling author, millionaire coach, and your personal guide to money, health, and happiness.

Today, I tackle money wealth and health wealth with James Swanwick. James is a former anchor on ESPN Sportscenter. He’s the founder of the broadcasting company, Crocmedia, and he’s the host of the top-ranking podcast, the James Swanwick Show. He’s been a successful print journalist of over 20 years, contributing to the likes of the associated press, ESPN, Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney Daily Telegraph, and Loaded Magazine. He’s also authored the hit book, “Insider Journalism Secrets”, and he teaches a course on how to become a journalist where he instructs aspiring writers on how to find success. Most recently, he’s the creator of the 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge, an interesting detox program focusing on high performance. Finally, he’s the creator of the wildly successful product, Swannies, blue-light blocking glasses for improved performance and sleep. This was such a fun episode that truly touched on both the money and health side of the equation. If you’re ready to learn this week’s millionaire secret, you’ll want to listen. Enjoy.

Well, James, thank you for being here today. It’s so much fun. You and I met at the Bulletproof Conference, and you were there selling your Swannies and talking to everyone walking by with your great personality. So, it’s fun to be able to do this.

Well, thank you Krisstina. That’s very nice of you. You’ve made my mother very happy. She loves it when people speak glowingly about her son.

Well, and I loved it too because you’re so passionate about what you’re doing as opposed to so many people that have their booths sort of behind there waiting for people to come up to them, and you were right out in the crowd saying, “Hey, come over. Let me talk to you about what I’m doing. Or, what do you think of the Bulletproof Conference?” Anyway, so much energy and just a really bold, fun personality. So, it was really great to meet you and I might not have really stepped up and talked to you otherwise.

Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that. Maybe we should do a whole thing on people skills and engaging with people instead of health stuff.

No kidding. I think you and I could go many different directions. Well, what we’ll get into today wearing these silly glasses that, for those of us watching, and we’ll talk a little bit about blue light, and sleep, and glasses. But, before we jump into that, you have a really interesting story. You interviewed celebrities early on, and then you were an anchor for ESPN, and you’re an athlete, you’re sort of a health nut. You’re an Aussie, so tell us a little bit about your journey. Where did you start and what got you to where you are now?

Yeah, well I’m Australian-America. I grew up in Brisbane, Australia. When I was 23, I left and went to London and I got a job as a sports journalist for Sky Sports, which is like the British equivalent of Fox Sports. I lived over there for four years and I did something really silly and fell in love with a British woman who broke my heart. I was upset at the break-up, so I got on a plane and I flew to Los Angeles. This was in 2002 – September 30th, 2002.

I didn’t know whether I was going to turn left or right out of the airport and I ended up living in the Hermosa Beach Hostel for about $15 a night for about 90 nights, which was as long as the American government gave me as a tourist on my tourist visa, figured out a way to come back on a work visa and interview movie stars. I just cold called Warner Brothers, Fox, Sony, and said, “Hey, I want to interview movie stars and sell the articles and the interviews overseas. How do I do it?” One of the studios taught me how to do it. I ended up interviewing Jack Nicholson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, all of those kinds of famous celebrities, which was a lot of fun.

Got a little bit too greedy, and in 2008, I built this PR company on Sunset Boulevard and thought I was like the king of the world and driving around in a cool car. But then, the financial crisis hit and I lost that business pretty quickly. Ran away to Argentina for six months to learn Spanish and lick my wounds from the financial crisis. Then, I came back, I quit drinking. Not that I was drinking a lot anyway. I was a social drinker, but I just decided to make some big changes.

I got my dream job hosting Sportscenter on ESPN for a couple years, and then in the last few years, it’s very much I’ve gone down the path of being an entrepreneur in the health industry. So, trying to create products that help a lot of people. I created a program called 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge, which teaches people how to reduce or quit alcohol, and then of course, a sleep company, I’m wearing these blue-light blocking glasses.

So, that’s kind of just a quick little summary of how I got here and living in this wonderful country.

Yeah, and you have a few different brands and a podcast. I mean, you’re doing an amazing job getting the word out. Your brand is really focused, or appears, to me, on peak performance, this idea of peak performance, the health aspects, the motivation piece, very philosophical and practical. From all of this work, what is your experience? What are some of the keys to peak performance? The Alpha Male, the different things you’re doing, what are you noticing differently about the peak performers you’re interviewing on your own podcast for the business people that you’re in business with, and then everyone else that isn’t quite meeting their peak performance?

Yeah, I’ve had the benefit of being able to interview some of the world’s most successful people, whether they are the Hollywood movie stars that I’ve talked about, or whether it’s athletes like Tom Brady, David Beckham, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant. From each person that I interviewed, I always ask them, “What’s your success habit? What’s another tip that you can give for peak performance?” Some of the answers were not that exciting. They were just good, solid habits, and a habit is something that you do consistently.

So, I got to meet Elon Musk, the billionaire who owns Tesla, and Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox and 20th Century Fox and a few other things. All these people, they all say the same things. It’s just being consistent in good habits. So, some of the things that I do, I’ll be happy to share a few of them that other people have brought onto me. But, from an emotional point of view, expressing gratitude every morning is huge.

I have a journal called “Five Minute Journal”. Some friends of mine created it. It asks me every day, “What are three things you’re grateful for?” and I just spend a couple minutes writing those things down, and I find that really gets me into peak performance state during the day. But, before I go to sleep each night, I always get my exercise clothes ready the night before and I put it on the floor at the end of my bed so when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I see are the exercise clothes, and that visual cue makes me put the clothes on, which then ultimately sends me out the door to go and do exercise. That helps me to create the peak performance of regular exercise, if you like.

Then, when it comes to good food and nutrition, it’s a similar kind of philosophy as seeing the clothes and the visual cue. For me, it’s like if I remove the visual cues, I’m less likely to eat crap foods. So, in my kitchen and my pantry, I’ve removed crackers, and breads, and processed foods, anything that would not serve me. I just get it out of the house. I only have, in my house, healthy foods, and that way, when I’m hungry, I just go to the fridge. The only thing I can eat is healthy foods.

It seems so simple, doesn’t it? It’s not like this, “Wow, that was an incredible interview you did with James Swanwick, and he revealed this big top secret thing.” It’s just basic simple stuff, but done repeatedly creates amazing habits, which ultimately leads to peak performance.

Well, when you say that. It’s funny. I have very similar practices. I have a journaling practice that starts with gratitude every day. I actually put out my workout clothes in my closet and lay it there, and I usually dress in my workout clothes every day. So, regardless of what time I go work out, I’m in my workout clothes, and I really design my lifestyle that I can wear workout clothes wherever I am. And just like you said, when I put on a dress because I have a certain meeting or something, I usually don’t work out that day. So, you know, you’re right. I hadn’t really thought about it. I have some of those, maybe, similar cues, or really, the lifestyle design that is really conducive to, maybe, some better habits.

But, regardless, something as simple as not buying junk foods and having that in the house that, otherwise, you might cave. These sound so simple, so why aren’t more people doing this? What is your observation with all the people that you coach?

The human mind, inherently, is lazy. It wants to protect itself. So, it doesn’t want to actually exert glucose in the brain. It wants to protect it because it’s in survival mode. So, it’s easy when you walk past a pizza place to go, “Ah, food. I’m going to go in there and eat pizza.” You don’t have to think about it. It’s easy when you’re paying for gas in the Chevron gas station when you’re in that store when you see the Kit Kat, and the Snickers, and the Doritos, and the Coca-Cola. It’s like, “Oh, food. I’m in survival mode. Oh, sugar, that gives me a dopamine and serotonin release.” Okay, great. It’s very easy to just get that. It’s hard, or it’s seemingly hard to create the self-discipline to not partake in that kind of food. We’re actually fighting against tens of thousands of years of evolution. So, how do we fix that? How do we conquer that, if you like? It’s just creating good habits, and that is eliminating. If it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind.

For example, in my 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge Program, people who are social drinkers, they come in, they join. They want to quit alcohol for 30 days, and then afterwards, they might go back and drink a little bit. But, for the most part, they’ve completely reduced their alcohol. I tell them instead of driving home past the liquor store every day after work, take a different route. Just don’t even go past it. If you’re going into a supermarket, and ordinarily, you would go clockwise around the supermarket and you would end up in front of the liquor stand or the wine stand, go counterclockwise. Go the other way and just do not go down the aisle with the alcohol.

So, those little things, you can set yourself up to win, or you can set yourself up to definitely not lose. It’s as simple as that. You don’t need to rely on brute willpower because you’re fighting against our own laziness. But, if you just set up little things, like just little techniques where you remove visual cues, you take a different route. Even with the gratitude diary, I deliberately place the gratitude journal on my kitchen table where I will sit and have a glass of water each morning. So, when I sit down, it’s there. I’m not having to like reach into a bookshelf to find it. There’s a visual cue, so I instinctively do it.

So, that’s why it’s hard, because we’re inherently lazy. But, once you just put those little structures in place, everything becomes a lot easier.

Yeah, I think what you say there is so important, because it’s not that we’re bad people, or we’re not disciplined, or all these things that we can call ourselves. It’s just biology that we’re fighting against biology, and this stuff is ingrained. So, once we realize that, we can use these techniques, or create cues, or habits, behaviors to interrupt that biology, to actually lead the biology versus us just caving to it.

Yeah, we all have a reptilian part of the human brain, and it’s towards the back of the brain, and that thinks the following. It thinks food, sex, fight or flight, and that’s pretty much it. And that’s in our brains. So, we’re all walking around going, “Okay, I need food, I need water, I need to have sex, there’s danger so I’ve got to get out of the way.” That’s our reptilian brain.

But, of course, over tens of thousands of years, we’ve developed this – I’m going to get the word wrong – the pre neocortex, I think it is here, where it’s in the front of the brain, which is our ability to think. Things get in the way, like we start to rationalize, we start to think, and that’s when we start to get into a few problems. So, it’s this constant fight between the reptilian part of the brain and then the logical thinking part of the brain. When we can understand that, and then we can just put little structures, just very simple little habits in place, or systems in place where we create good habits, then we can start living whatever life we choose, really.

When you’re interviewing the Elon Musks of the world, you’re hearing the same thing, that they’ve organized their life around some tools and some habits they use consistently?

Yeah, when I interviewed Rupert Murdoch, he just said, plain, flat-out, “Just create good habits. It’s what you do consistently that that’s the difference between success and failure.” It literally can be as simple as get enough sleep, eat well, express gratitude, get some sunlight, have a vision. That’s very clear. Like, have a vision for what you want, whether it’s in business, or health, or relationships. Let go of the outcome. So, trust the process but let go of the outcome.

For example, if you’re playing a basketball game, don’t think, “I’ve got to win. We’ve got to win this game, we’ve got to win this game.” No, just try and play each play in that game as well as you can. In fact, I interviewed Will Smith, the Hollywood actor. I was interviewing him for the film, “I Am Legend”, in 2007, and we were at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, and he said to me, “If you want to build a wall, have the idea of the wall and then let it go,” and then he said, “Don’t focus and obsess over building the wall. Focus on laying each brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid and then you will have a wall.”

Whether it’s him, or whether it’s Kobe Bryant, or whether it’s some of these people that, as a society, we celebrate. We look to them as being successful in their crafts. It’s all the same. It’s all just fundamental, simple, simple things. Arnold Schwarzenegger, I was able to hang out with him at his home a few months ago, and he calls it “sets and reps”. So, in the gym, it’s just like doing lots of sets of lots of reps of moving the muscle. He said that’s how you achieve greatness. It’s just sets and reps. It’s not sexy, but it gets the job done.

Well, and there’s so much of that of wanting the sexy, or the latest and greatest. The latest gadget, the latest shiny penny that there’s some magic bullet out there when, at the end of the day, it really does come back to these sets and reps over and over again in establishing what those are that enable us to be at our peak performance. So, you’re saying these habits really — peak performers have these habits. What other sort of simple things that we’re missing are part of this? Food, sleep, sex. What other elements? Like, how important is food? How important is sleep? How important is meditation or some sort of mindfulness?

So, let me answer by just giving you a few examples of how I’ve set up my own home here. I do not own a television, and I have my living room set up in a way where the living room faces a bookshelf. In 99% of American households, you’ll have the living room and the sofa face the television set. Mine faces a bookshelf. So, what happens is I sit down on the sofa at the end of the day, for example, and what do I see? I see a bookshelf, I see books. So, therefore, I’m more inclined to pick up a book and start reading versus pick up the remote control and start watching the TV.

I’ve trained myself to read a book a day on the days that I read a book. So, I don’t read seven books a week, but when I read a book, I can read an entire book in about an hour. I’ve learned that art of speedreading. That, for me, has just downloaded so much information into my brain that I’ve been able to use in all areas of my life. So, two things there. One, for me, learning how to speedread has been huge because I can digest some of the world’s best authors and knowledge into my brain. Two, I’ve set my living room up to have the visual cue of books, which means I get to learn.

I’m having to give you a better version. There’s an app that I just came across a couple of weeks ago, Krisstina, called Blinkist, and it actually gives you the best parts of the book in like 10 minutes of notes. So, it gives you the notes of the book and you can read it in 10 minutes, or you can listen to it. I think it’s about $7 a month, or maybe $70-something a year. But, in terms of getting information in your brain, that’s pretty damn good if you don’t want to do what I do, which is read an entire book.

Then, you’re asking about sleep. Obviously, sleep is everything. If you sleep well, you’re going to improve your looks. They did this study in UK that showed if you have a poor night’s sleep, then you have 47% more visible wrinkles on your face, which is pretty incredible. So, if you want to look better, then you want to definitely get a good night’s sleep. It also keeps your hormones in check. If you sleep well, you’re able to burn fat, your metabolism is in check, you’re happier. Because you’re happier, you tend to make more money, because you make more money, you tend to be happier, because you’re happier, you tend to attract greater relationships in your life.

So, I make sure I get sunlight first thing in the morning when I wake up so it sets my internal body clock, my circadian rhythm. I make sure that I use a pair of blue-light blocking glasses about 90 minutes before I go to sleep to block the light from electronics like a cellphone or a computer. I wear a sleeping mask so the sunlight doesn’t wake me up in the morning and there’s no light that disrupts me. I sleep in a cool room. 65 degrees is the perfect temperature. I do everything I can to make sure that I’m sleeping as well as I can because I know it impacts every other area of my life.

I think sleep is the one thing that we sacrifice and we’re not really thinking about it. It’s like, “Okay, let me get up an hour earlier or go to bed an hour later,” and not really realizing. I think the science is really even just starting to show how important sleep is that we go into this whole different state that really does detoxify, and our body rejuvenates, and our cells cleanse and repair, and muscles cleanse and repair.

How many hours a night do you get?

I’m usually seven to eight, but I used to be like four to five.

What was the change you made?

Well, my biggest change was I got really sick and my lifestyle was not sustainable, and I’ve had to really learn to sleep again, but it was probably the last thing that I valued, and now I value it more than anything. For someone, it’s the first thing to go that’s now the thing that I value most. But, a lot of it just comes from some of the work you and the others are doing is understanding how important sleep is. And same thing, the mattress I use, the SAMINA bed, and blackout curtains, and my blue-light glasses, and your blue-light glasses that I have on, and just a grounding mat.

These things, they seem silly, but for me too, if I get the few nights now that I don’t sleep very well, I notice it performance-wise. I mean, I just notice it looks-wise, like circles under my eyes or whatever, like I know it. Performance-wise, I’m tired. Especially, as we get older, I know sleep starts to be influenced. In fact, I had lunch with a gentleman yesterday that I’ve known for many years. Most of my audience is really between like 40 and probably early 50s.

So, hitting the 40s, the body is finally where we start noticing these effects of the body breaking down, and the person that I had lunch with yesterday, he’s mid-40s, and he said, “Krisstina, I just can’t sleep. I have no energy,” and this is a high-performing dude. He’s very well-known in Austin, he runs a lot of restaurants, he’s an entrepreneur. But quietly, he confides to me, “I’m dying here. I just don’t feel like I’m up to my game,” and sleep is one of those things. So, I think so much is starting to realize how important these fundamental things are to long-term performance. It’s one thing when you’re in your 20s and 30s. It’s something different and we have to take care differently once we’re over 40.

Yeah, I’m 41 as we’re recording this, and I’ve noticed that I’m — I don’t want to say I’m slowing down a little bit, but I’m noticing that I need a little bit more of a recovery from things. To be honest, I’m actually lifting heavier than I’ve ever lifted before in the gym, which is great. I’ve got a personal trainer. Here’s another great habit hack. It’s so obvious, but get a personal trainer if you can afford one, because it pushes you an extra 15%, I would estimate, than if you’re doing it yourself.

I noticed now I’m 41. I need a little bit more sleep to recover. I’m less likely to do the six days of exercise a week now. Now, I’m kind of like four or five and I take a little break in between, which is actually great. It’s not because I’m slowing down. I don’t want to be slowing down. I want to be going harder and faster, but I’m now appreciating how important sleep and rest is in recovery. So, that’s great that you’re doing all those things. Tell me a little bit more about the mattress and the grounding mat that you talked about. I’m interested in that.

Yeah, it’s called SAMINA beds, and it’s Claus Pummer. In fact, he was at the Bulletproof Conference.

Oh yeah, I met Claus, yeah.

Yeah! I studied a lot of beds and mattresses and spent a lot of time with him before I bought his mattress, and it’s changed everything as far as even sleep quality. Then, with the SAMINA beds, they also have the grounding mat as part of that bed system. It’s multi-layer. It’s a full bed system, basically. So, you might check into it, especially with the work that you’re doing.

Yeah, great. Thank you. I’m always looking for new little sleep things. I’ll tell you, I came across a great company the other day a couple weeks ago. I was talking to Dr. Michael Breus, and he is the America’s top sleep doctor. He’s been on the Dr. Oz show like 30 times, and Rachael Ray, and Today Show, a few of those things. He wrote a book called “The Power of When”. And he put me onto this company called Lighting Science, and they do these light bulbs called “GoodNight” light bulbs. They’re pretty damn expensive. They’re like 25 bucks, I think, for a light bulb. But, it emits a very, very low blue light.

So, you and I are both wearing my product at the moment, these Swannies blue-light blocking glasses, which block the blue light. His light bulbs emit light of very, very low blue light. So, I actually bought 10 of them. I spent like 250 bucks and I just changed all the light bulbs in my place here in West Hollywood in California, and it’s made such a big difference because the light is not harsh.

Most people are sitting under those fluorescent light bulbs and those harsh white light bulbs not knowing that what it’s doing is it’s suppressing your body’s ability to create melatonin, and melatonin is what you need to be able to sleep well during the night. We’re geeking out on sleep stuff here, Krisstina, aren’t we?

Well, I think it’s one of those missing pieces too. We’re not thinking about how important sleep is, because I think we just haven’t really realized it and haven’t valued it, and now just lifestyles with our computers, and our TVs, and the being in either fluorescent or bright white LED lights every single day, it’s just slowly and surely nicking away at our ability to sleep and our body to do its natural things.

With that said, you talk a lot about peak performance. With a lot of your work too, you’re teaching people how to beat procrastination and eliminate some of these really life-sucking habits. What do you have to say to that? Where are people getting stuck and why is it a tendency to procrastinate against our performance?

Well, there’s a lot of reasons. A lot of it’s fear of failure. A lot of it’s fear of success. I mean, I remember in 2010, I went to audition to be a Sportscenter anchor on ESPN, and it was being a television host was something that I’d wanted to do for 20 years, and when I got there into the audition, I had a panic attack not because I feared failing, but because I feared succeeding. That was such a wake-up call for me, because what I feared was like, “Oh man, if I get this job, then I’ll be on TV, and thousands of people will be watching me and maybe they’ll realize that I’m actually not that good. Or, maybe I’ll have to move. I’ll probably have to move because I’ve got to be close to where ESPN is based, and that will mean I’ll lose my friends. And if I get on TV, and maybe I have like some level of mini-fame, maybe my friends will get jealous and they won’t want to talk to me.”

It was all this nonsense in my head, but it was the fear of success. So, you ask, “Why do we procrastinate? Why do we get in our way?” Two of the big reasons are fear of failure and fear of success, and it can be crippling to the point where it’s like paralysis by analysis. We stand still. We’re kind of like a deer crossing the road stuck in the headlights. It freezes, right? It doesn’t know whether to move forward, it doesn’t know whether to move back. So, what does it do? It just stands still. But, what happens to the deer that gets stuck in the headlights? Bang! It ends up as roadkill, doesn’t it?

That’s a huge thing. A lot of times, people get overwhelmed by how far they need to go in order to achieve this thing, so they won’t take that first step. There’s nothing that I can really tell you or inspire you to do other than what you’ve already heard, which is you’ve just got to take the first step. You just got to take the leap of faith.

Where people go wrong is that they go, “Oh, I got to lose 20 pounds. Oh man, it’s going to be so much work. 20 pounds, I got to do this.” No, don’t focus on losing 20 pounds. Focus on getting rid of the crap food out of your house, that’s it. Then, the next day, focus on signing up with a personal trainer or joining a group. That’s it. Then, the next day, call a friend and say, “Hey, do you want to go exercise with me? We’ll do it on a regular basis,” and that’s it. Then, day four, and so forth, and so forth.

So, people get hung up on this like, “20 pounds is going to take me forever.” Just concentrate on what’s one tiny, little, simple actionable thing that you can do right now in this moment. Now, I don’t mean tomorrow, I don’t mean in an hour. I mean right now. What’s one thing, now, that you can do? Just one. What happens is that if you just do that one little thing, you feel good because you’ve accomplished something, and because you feel good, you get momentum, and when you’ve got momentum, it becomes a lot easier to then take the second step, which then leads into the third step.

So, again, this is nothing new. You’ve heard people say this 100 times, but they say it 100 times because it works, and that is don’t focus on the finish line. Just focus on taking the first small step and then just keep taking those small little incremental steps along the way.

So, what you’re saying is really important because there is this real gap between uber high performers and, let’s say, everyone else. Really, you’ve spent so much time with these celebrities, performers, athletes at real, real peak performance. What they do differently is they create habits and they’re consistent with these habits, and they’d probably procrastinate too, but they take the one step and they just bust through it and do it anyway. Yes, they’re also afraid of failing and they’re also afraid of success but they do it anyway. So, would you distinguish these really are some of just the basic differences between the high performers and, let’s say, everyone else?

I mean, it can be as simple as the difference is that high performers are willing to feel the fear and then just say, “Eff it, I’m going to do it anyway.” I mean, it can be as simple as that. Whereas a lot of people will say, “Oh, I feel the fear. I’m not going to do that,” and that’s it. That’s the only difference. Here’s the thing. You will never ever eliminate fear. I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how to eliminate fear. I have no clue. I mean, I speak on public stage and I’ve done it so many times now. I still get nervous every time I go up. To the casual observer, they would go, “Oh, look at that guy. He’s so confident up there and accomplished in terms of his public speaking.” I’m still nervous, but it’s just a matter of like, “Well, you know what? Yeah, I feel the fear. Whatever. I’m just going to do it anyway.”

Someone gave me a quote the other day. I hope I get it right here. I wish I could claim it as my own, but it was someone else on my podcast. Someone came onto my podcast and they said — what was it? It was something about the difference between people who get things done and not is that there’s someone — man, I’m going to butcher it here. Someone’s like frozen in time — no, I’ve lost it.

Well, you have to look it up and send it to me.

I’ll see if I can find it while we’re talking here.

There’s also these stories we tell ourselves too that, “I’m not smart enough. I’m not as smart as Elon Musk, or I’m not tall enough, or I’m too tall, or I’m not pretty enough, or I’m not handsome enough, or I’m not young enough,” whatever. So, we can easily tell these stories, I think, and how much the story is really in front of the procrastination that really leads to the fears. “I’m not enough in some category that keeps me from being able to do what those people are doing.”

Have you gone through a situation like that? What’s a story that you once told yourself, Krisstina, that held you back, and then what happened?

Well, I noticed, like you, I tell these stories all the time, but I think the difference is I just do it anyway. So, the fear is always there. I mean, I’m nervous before this podcast interview with you and everyone I interview because I interview some uberly successful people, and that story still circles in my head, “Oh my gosh, who am I compared to them?” and, “What if I sound totally stupid to them when I’m interviewing them?”

These stories, it can just totally stop me or anybody else in our tracks, or keep us from doing these things. But, it’s just besting through it and doing it anyway, and then every single time, I practically laugh at myself like, “That was such a great interview and I have a new friend. I’m so glad,” as though I never had that fear in the first place.

So, I just think these are important things to talk about and share with others, because I think sometimes, there’s this common belief that you reach a point where you have no fears. No, every single interview, those little butterflies still pop up in my stomach, but I do the interview anyway, right? That’s the difference.

You just got to do it anyway. I mean, I say to myself — I won’t use profanity on your show, Krisstina, but I say, “Eff it.” But, I spell it out, I pronounce it out, and I was like, “Let’s just do it anyway,” and that has held me in good stead. Now, I got to tell you, sometimes I fall prey to it that I don’t say, “Eff it,” and do it. Most of the time, I do. But sometimes, I’m like really freaked out and I might delay taking action. I think, rarely now, do I not take action.

But sometimes, I’ll delay it. Like, I’ll delay, delay, delay, delay, and that’s not good because then there’s something always just eating away at your soul. Like, you know you should do it, and the longer that you don’t do it, the more it eats away at you. Do you feel like that? Do you ever get that?

Oh, absolutely, and I’m like you. It’s delaying it, actually, and then finally, it’s learning to laugh at myself too. Like, what am I so afraid of? Like, Krisstina, get over yourself and let’s just do this. If you fall flat on your face, it’s totally okay. You’ve done that a bazillion times and you’re still here, so let’s just get to it. But, it’s a lot of story, and it’s just crazy, these things that circle.

I think getting around a good group of people, like having a good group of friends and acquaintances, it doesn’t always have to be friends. Like, just acquaintances can be really great. To give you an example, I went to a seminar in San Diego in October called Thrive. A friend of mine called Hada was running it, and there were some amazing speakers. There was Jack Canfield, who wrote the Habits of Highly Successful People. James Altucher, who has a very successful podcast. Who else was there? Grant Cardone, the sales guy, the very brash sales guy, the author of Sell or Be Sold.

The speakers were great and I learned a lot from the speakers. But, actually, having conversations with people who were attending the seminar in the corridors outside of the main conference room during the breaks was actually more inspirational to me. It gave me more energy, to be honest, because I realized that I had a lot of acquaintances. There were people there that I’ve met before a few times. It might only be a five-minute conversation. Maybe it’s 10-minute, maybe have one dinner with them, I don’t see them for another year

But, what I’ve learned is that your acquaintances can be vastly more powerful than your friends in terms of their ability to teach you something, for their ability to be able to connect you to other people in their network, and their ability to just keep you inspired and energized. So, certainly, controlling your environment, controlling who you spend time with is a huge beneficial factor.

Absolutely, and getting outside of the small circles we tend to feel safe in and putting ourselves out there, it’s constant practice. I know it’s practice for me. So, here at Wealthy Wellthy, my message is really about money and health, like how money and health are related. Part of my message is that money matters and we need to get good at money, and I teach “how to money”. But, part of that in what makes the way I teach money a little bit distinct and different is I say, “Our body is our number one asset.”

So, our biggest investment needs to be in us and our physical wellbeing, our emotional wellbeing, our psychological wellbeing across the board. But, we tend to sacrifice our health for our wealth, we tend to maybe martyr ourselves to make other people happy and all sorts of things that is just part of living. But, it sounds like you believe the same. So, based on even your podcast, I think you say something very similar, that part of your podcast is getting to the bottom of health and wealth and happiness and love. So, in your opinion, how is one’s body a powerful asset? Do you see the same thing?

It’s everything, really. If you have a healthy body, then your chances are you’ll have a healthy mind, and if you have a healthy mind, then you’ll attract healthy-minded and healthy spiritual people into your life, and everything just builds on top of that. If you’re healthy, you’re confident, and if you’re confident, you’re happy, and if you’re happy, then studies have shown that you will make more money, you will have a bigger impact, you’re more likely to attract happier and wealthier people into your life, because like attracts like.

So, it all starts with the fuel that you put into your body. This is an overused analogy, but you don’t put diesel fuel into a Ferrari, right? If you do that, it’s just going to sputter along, it’s not going to work. Likewise, you’re not going to put any kind of gasoline into a Tesla, into an electric car, otherwise it just starts to struggle. So, with that analogy, why would you put Cornetto ice creams, and Doritos, and Kit Kats, and Snickers bars into your body, because then your body is not going to work.

Now, I quit drinking alcohol back in 2010. I was a social drinker. I was never an alcoholic. I drank a few drinks during the week, a few more on weekends. But, I put on a few pounds. I put on like 30 pounds and it just crept up over the course of a year or so, and because I was drinking, I was eating burgers and fries, and because I was eating burgers and fries, I was more inclined to have some more drinks. It got to a point where I was like a little bit out of shape. And if you want to see just how out of shape I was, just go to 30daynoalcoholchallenge.com, and in the video that plays there, you can see a photo of me and Jennifer Aniston. Jennifer Aniston is the actress from Friends, and you can see just how puffy I am in the face and you can compare it to how I look now.

But, I took a 30-day break in 2010, and after 30 days, I lost 13 pounds in 30 days just from quitting drinking, just from the calories and the crap food that I was eating with the calories. I felt so good. I said, “You know what? I’m just going to keep on going.” Then, I got to 50 days, and I felt amazing, gotto six months, felt amazing. I got to a year and I was like, “Should I keep going or should I just say, ‘A year is good.’?” and I just kept going. I haven’t touched alcohol since, since 2010. Since then, I’ve lost like 28 pounds, I’m fit, I started going to the gym, I have amazing relationships, I made more money than I ever thought I would, I live in where I want to live, I’m doing what I want to do, and I’m happy doing it.

That’s not to say I don’t have issues and problems, and bouts of depressing days and things and setbacks. But, for the most part, because I didn’t put crap into my system, my health, my wealth, my love, and my happiness all improved. So, I think that was the kind of like theme of your question. Why is body important? Well, it’s everything. I mean, it just influences so many areas of our lives other than just our physical health.

Man, that is so well-said. Absolutely. Well, I love your 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge. Except for a special occasion now, I’m the same. I drink very rarely, and when I do, usually it’s really worth it. Because, I know there’s a consequence. I already know one glass of wine or one drink, I’m not going to sleep as well, I’m going to feel it the next day. I do not drink when I have to perform the next day because I know it will absolutely affect my overall abilities. It took a while. It’s sort of like sugar. When you break that sugar addiction – I don’t know if you ever had a sugar addiction, but I had a huge sugar addiction and I was a social drinker.

But, now I don’t really crave sugar and I don’t crave alcohol. Like, once you go a while without it, you realize — like I don’t even necessarily like this. I like myself better when I’m off these substances. But then, once we’re clean of it, it’s realizing it, “Oh my gosh, you really can feel the difference between a system that’s had alcohol in the last 24 or so hours and not,” and come to appreciate how good feeling good really feels.

Yeah, I spoke at the Bulletproof Conference in 2015, and my talk was called, “How One Drink a Day May Be Slowly Killing You.” It’s amazing. If you have a glass of wine tonight, or a beer, or a vodka, or one drink, it will take your body 7 to 10 days to get rid of the toxins from that one drink. The toxins stay in your body that long, 7 to 10 days. It’s pretty amazing when you think about that. People are like, “Ah, it’s just one drink. It’s no big deal.” Or is it a big deal?

Because if you have one drink and that affects your sleep tonight, just a little bit. It doesn’t have to affect it a lot but just a little bit. Maybe you get 15 minutes less sleep or maybe 15 minutes less quality sleep, and because of that, you wake up in the morning feeling just a little bit irritable, and because you’re just a little bit irritable, you snap at your kids, or your husband or your wife, or you’re two minutes late leaving home to get to work and then you’re cursing at traffic, and then you get to work late by two minutes, and now you’re stressed because you’re late. Then, it just sets this tone for the rest of the day where things start to sort of regress or go downhill from there. That’s all it takes.

Now, I want to be clear. I’m not saying that you should never drink alcohol. I’m not saying alcohol is the devil. My 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge is for social drinkers, and the people who join are not alcoholics, but they know that drinking is holding them back. Some of them just a little bit, some of them a lot. If you can take a 30-day break from alcohol just to see how it feels, just to see how your body reacts, just to see how you are mentally, it will change your life. Then, after 30 days, if you want to go back to drinking, it’s okay. It’s fine. But, I’ll tell you this, the people that go through my 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge Program, most of them who go back, they become occasional drinkers only. Then, some of them just quit and stay quit.

Once you notice the difference in how you feel, and even food, alcohol is something we put in our bodies that it’s poison, really, that our body has to process and try to eliminate. But, even things, like me, like I love cheese. I mean, I love good cheese. But, my body does not agree with cheese. So, sometimes, we order or have a cheese plate, and very high quality, delicious cheese. I indulge, but I know that I’m going to pay the consequences the next day. So, it’s an indulgence occasionally, I know.

But, I know my body now. Before, when I was oblivious to it, I thought those effects were just natural. So, I think so many of these things, like food elimination diets and your 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge, it’s just locating and spending time with ourselves, like, “How do I feel? What is the difference in how I feel? Am I a better person? Am I a better performer? Am I a better wife or husband? Like you said, maybe I’m not as irritable.”

So, it’s just trying these different things so that we can reflect on ourselves and our own behaviors to get closer to what you talk about, that love and happiness piece that some of these little things, like the wrong food, or alcohol or some different lifestyle choices might be that short little distance between us and that love and happiness that we’re all seeking.

And it’s all experimenting, like just experiment. I’ve chosen just to not drink alcohol and I haven’t drunk in six years. But, for you listening or watching, you don’t have to do it like that. Maybe you like getting drunk on a Sunday watching NFL with your buddies and you like doing that, and you’re willing to put up with the hangover on the Monday and you don’t think it holds you back that much, then just keep doing it. If it gives you happiness, then double down on it and keep doing it.

But, here’s the issue. The moment that you realize that there’s an opportunity cost, the moment you realize that you doing that is holding you back from another area and that causes you pain in your life, or it’s holding you back somehow, that’s when you want to reexplore getting drunk on a Sunday watching NFL. That’s it, really.

So, again, I don’t want you to think that I’m saying, “Give up alcohol. It’s the devil. It’s bad.” No. Just explore what are your habits around it. Not just alcohol. Your lack of exercise, your eating processed foods, when you have pizza, when you eat Skittles or Kit Kats, what you say to your loved ones, how you turn up on dates and romantic dates. All those kinds of things, if you just experiment and change some little habits around that, it’s amazing how you can improve your life pretty quickly.

Yeah, one thing that I say to a lot of my clients is, “I’m not going to tell you not to eat the Doritos. I’m just going to ask you to be mindful when you eat the Doritos.” Like you said, just that awareness and experimentation.

Doritos are damn tasty too.

I know, gosh darn it!

I love it. I’ll tell you what my weakness is. I like Oreos, and there’s a Chevron gas station down the road from me here on Sunset Boulevard, and I have been known, on occasion, to go down and buy one of those King Cone ice creams. You know those King Cones? I know it’s bad, but I do it anyway on occasion. So, here’s the thing. You’ve got to enjoy life as well. It’s alright. Go and indulge sometimes, but if you create the habit of indulging, that’s when problems can arise.

Exactly. Mine is cupcakes. So, if I walk by a cupcake store, it’s game over. So, I have to walk around, take a different direction because I’ll always cave in front of the cupcake store.

So, I’ll never take you to Magnolia Bakery in the West Village of New York and never walk you past a Sprinkles in Beverly Hills, got it.

Exactly right. Alright, so we’re wearing these funny glasses and we’ve talked a little bit about sleep, but what was the story behind co-founding Swanwick Sleep? There’s got to be some sort of catalyst or story there.

Yeah, so a couple years ago, I went to Palm Springs and I went out to dinner with a friend of mine called Mark Dahmer, who is a health coach here in Hollywood, and he was wearing these big ugly Uvex safety goggles. You know the kind that are like orange safety goggles that you might wear if you were at a gun range, or workmen use when they’re mowing lawns and things like that? And we were in a pretty nice restaurant. We were in a hotel restaurant and I was like, “Why are you wearing those things for? Get those things off. You look ridiculous,” and he’s like, “No, man. I’m protecting my eyes from the blue light,” and I said, “What blue light? What are you talking about?” and he said, “Well, the light from the light bulbs here, at night time, they’re hitting our eyes and it’s preventing my body from creating melatonin, and that means I won’t be able to sleep well tonight, so I’ve got to wear these orange lenses so I can block the blue light and therefore, my sleep will be okay.” I’m like, “Well, that sounds interesting but you still look like an idiot.”

So, anyway, I went back to Los Angeles the next day and I thought, “I’ll test out this thing that Mark was telling me about.” Reached into my cabinet and I pulled out an old pair of ski goggles, and the ski goggles had these kind of like yellow lens tint to them, and I remember putting them on and I went to my computer and I started watching reruns of the AMC TV series “Mad Men”. Remember that show with Don Draper and things like that?

Anyway, I started watching this show with these goggles on, and what I realized, after a few nights of doing this, was that I started to feel myself getting sleepier quicker, and after I’d removed the goggles and went to sleep and woken up, I’d realized that my sleep was just a little bit better. Now, there was placebo effects, right? I thought, “I better try this for a few weeks.” So, I tried it for a few weeks and my sleep noticeably improved.

Here was the problem. On a Friday night about 9 pm, I got a text message from some friends of mine who were around the corner at the Laurel Hardware Restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard and they texted me and they said, “Hey James, around the corner. Come around. We’re going to have dinner,” and I’m sitting in my apartment in L.A. wearing these ski goggles not wanting to take them off because I wanted to make sure that I got a good night sleep that night. That’s when the idea hit me. I thought, “I wonder if I could somehow take the orange lens that blocks the blue light and stick it into a fashionable enough frame that I could then wear them out to a restaurant with friends at night time and not have people go, “You look weird. What are you doing?”

So, to be clear, they couldn’t be sunglasses because people look like douchebags when you wear sunglasses at night time, right? You don’t want to look like that. So, I specifically tried to design a pair that kind of looked like reading glasses, that kind of looked like glasses that you could wear out at a dinner table amongst friends, and people would look at them and go, “They’re interesting. Tell me about those,” as opposed to, “Why are you wearing sunglasses at night time?”

So, after a few different prototypes, I settled on the frames that you and I are wearing right now, Krisstina. We launched it on Black Friday last Friday of November in 2015, and it’s just been a huge rise, really, out of nowhere. Like, people start to really have resonated with the product to the point where there is now this growing understanding about the dangers of blue light and how it affects our sleep. Then, because these glasses are stylish, people actually want to wear them.

Half the battle is trying to get people to wear glasses because they look ugly, the orange lens one. But, because these are stylish enough and I’m just vain enough that I want to look good wearing them, you want to wear them, and because you want to wear them, you do wear them, and because you do wear them, you block that blue light at night, which means your body creates melatonin, which means you get sleepier quicker, which means you sleep well, which means you spend longer in that deep REM sleep during the night, which means you wake up feeling refreshed, and energized, and clear-headed, and happier, and we all know what happens to happier people. They make more money, and they get happier, and they have better relationships, and they lost more weight. So, yeah, that’s how the idea came about and how we’ve got it to this point.

Well, that’s a great story, and it’s so true that I had my blue-light blocking glasses before my Swanwicks, and I wear them at home and in the privacy of my own home, but if we had people over, and we have, in our kitchen, is very lit for dinner parties or whatever, or we’re meeting friends out, or just the two of us, my husband and I to go to dinner, that we do occasionally, of course, I would never wear those things out. So, already, in my mind, I thought, “Okay, I’m going to have more trouble getting to sleep tonight, and that’s okay.” Again, it’s the compromise. But now, I can wear these babies out and people don’t even ask me. They just think they’re regular glasses actually. Occasionally, I’ll get asked, but it’s very rare. They just think I’m wearing my glasses.

Yeah, that’s amazing. They look great on you too. Good job.

Thank you. Yeah, I love them. They’re stylish.

That’s great. I love hearing those kinds of stories. I literally get emails every single day now, probably seven or eight emails a day, 10 emails from people who are saying, “Since I got my Swannies glasses, my sleep has improved, my eye strain has reduced, I’m no longer getting the headaches.” It works. It seriously works. By the way, I don’t want this to be just like a big plug fest for my glasses.

There’s a couple of really cool free things that you can do as well that you and your listeners and viewers can do. If you download f.lux onto your computer – you just type it F-period-L-U-X – what that will do is it will reduce the brightness level of your computer screen as the sun goes down at night. So, the closer you get to bedtime, the more the brightness level of your computer will go down, and that will lower your exposure to blue light.

The other thing is if you have iPhone, there’s a setting called “Night Shift”, and if you implement Night Shift, same thing. That will reduce the brightness level of your phone. I mentioned earlier on in the interview, GoodNight light bulbs from the company, Lighting Science. They’re really good. They’re about 25 bucks a pop. Then, wearing a pair of blue-light blocking glasses like these ones, like the Swannies from my company, Swanwick Sleep. If you do those things in conjunction, you’re really setting yourself up for a great night’s sleep.

Absolutely. So, real quick, everyone listening, not everyone listening really understands what is blue light and how is it affecting our sleep.

Yeah, so if you’re watching this right now on a computer screen, the computer screen that you’re seeing me talk on right now is emitting an artificial blue light. It’s essentially electronic light. It’s light that hits your pituitary gland and prevents your body from naturally creating melatonin which helps you sleep. If you’re listening to this on your cellphone right now, on your smartphone and you’re looking at your screen and you can see Krisstina’s podcast icon there, and you can see the volume and all that kind of stuff, blue light is being emitted from that smartphone that you’re watching or listening to this on right now, and that is hitting your eyes, and that is disrupting your melatonin production.

Now, to be clear, during the day time, it’s actually okay to be exposed to blue light. In fact, the sun is the highest emitter of blue light there is. You want to be exposed to some of that light because you want your body to understand that it’s day time, and when your body understands that it’s day time, it enables your body to naturally want to go to sleep at night time.

Now, here’s the problem. At night time, when your body wants to prepare for sleep, when your body wants to create melatonin, all of that blue light from your smartphone, your computer, your refrigerator lights, your bathroom light when you’re brushing your teeth, your television screen, your laptop, if you’re a late-night entrepreneur or you’re on Facebook, all of that light is hitting your pituitary gland, it’s preventing you from creating melatonin, and so it’s disrupting your sleep.

Now, even if you find it easy to fall asleep quickly, you’re still not spending as long in that deep REM restorative sleep throughout the night because you’ve been exposed to that blue light before you went to sleep. So, the best thing that you can actually do, the best thing bar none is sit in the dark. As soon as the sun goes down, just sit in the dark and never turn on a light switch and never use electronics. That’s the best thing we can do, because back when we were cavemen, when the sun went down, we would just light a candle, we’d light a fire, we’d eat some food, sit around, tell a few stories, and we’d go to sleep.

Of course, today, we’re not going to do that, are we? We’re not going to sit in the dark. We’re going to use our smartphone, and we’re going to turn on our light, and we’re going to look at a computer and TV, and we’re going to do all that stuff. So, the next best thing you can do is whatever you can to block that blue light, and that means download f.lux, download Night Shift, get some GoodNight light bulbs, grab a pair of blue-light blocking glasses, and that’s the best that you can do, which is, quite frankly, pretty good.

Really, the idea is that once the sun goes down is to put your glasses on, assuming you have any sort of blue light emission from your TV, your computer, your overheads, your lamps.

That is the best thing to do. I don’t do that myself because even I’m fighting against 10,000 years of evolution and laziness. So, what I do is I wear mine 90 minutes before I go to sleep, religiously. I put them on, and if I forget, I’ll just put them on as soon as I remember. So, sometimes, it might be the last 30 minutes of the night only, sometimes it might be an hour. But, for the most part, I’ll put them on 90 minutes before I know I want to sleep. Other times, when I know I’m going out for dinner, I’ll take them with me, I’ll put them on, and I’ll keep them on.

It’s not imperative that as soon as [5:30] rolls around, depending on what timezone you’re in and the sun goes down that, “Oh, I got to quickly throw on my glasses or I’m not going to sleep well.” Maybe, if you go to bed at like [7:30] or [8:00]. So, it’s not imperative. As long as you’re wearing them consistently for 90 minutes, two hours, an hour, somewhere around there before you go to sleep, it will have huge benefits to your sleep.

Great, thank you, and we’re approaching the end of our time together. By the way, I’m going to look into the GoodNight light bulbs. That’s the one missing piece is exchanging some of the bulbs. So, thank you for that recommendation. A couple more questions. We’ve talked a little bit about this already. Most of our listeners, I teach money and health, the intersection of money and health, and interviewing experts like you that tend to do well at both, basically, that are living a lifestyle saying, “Hey, you really can be healthy and build your success and wealth at the same time. You don’t have to sacrifice your health for your wealth, which is so much of our culture, or belief system, even. As an entrepreneur, I have to kill myself in order to be successful.” So, what is your money philosophy? How do you organize your life in a way that you can achieve this level of success? You’re an entrepreneur, you have several different businesses and brands. So, how are you doing that succeeding and not killing yourself. What is your philosophy behind that?

I believe in investing in education, and what I mean by that is investing in mentors and coaches. So, three years ago, I invested heavily. I invested, in fact, $25,000 into a coach with the specific goal of 18 months, I want you to teach me how to be an entrepreneur and how to build online businesses and systems. That almost gave me a heart attack investing that amount of money, because that represented a huge amount of change, huge amount of money that I’ve had that I’d saved up over many years. In fact, it was actually 31,000 AUD that I had to transfer from my Australian bank account to my U.S. bank account. I kind of got killed on the exchange rate.

That was the best investment that I’ve ever made because of the knowledge that I learned about building a business. I went on then to create the James Swanwick Show Podcast, which has had millions of listeners now over the course of the last two years. I created the 30 Day No Alcohol Challenge, which helps people reduce or quit alcohol. I created the Swannies blue-light blocking glasses, which helps people sleep. And because I learned how to build a business, and most importantly, I learned how to build a business that helps people and that solves people’s problems, and that makes me feel good, I’ve been able to have achieved a level of success with those businesses over just a short time over a few years.

So, you ask me what my philosophy is. My philosophy is invest in a mentor, because it just cuts the learning curve, and because you have invested the money, you show up. Like, you don’t cut corners. Whereas, if you do things for free, you tend not to value it as much. I mean, everything that he taught me, quite frankly, I could have learned by going onto YouTube videos and getting free stuff from Warren Buffets, and Tony Robbins, and all that kind of stuff. But, I wouldn’t have valued it and I wouldn’t have done it. As soon as I invested that amount of money, I focused, I showed up, I did the work. Just like now, I’ve invested in a personal trainer in the gym. He pushes me 15, 20 percent more than I would do myself.

Then, I chose businesses that I knew a lot about and that I was passionate about and that helps people, and I get a lot of enjoyment from people emailing me, saying, “Thank you so much for your Swannies glasses. My sleep is better. I get enjoyment from you, Krisstina, reaching out to me saying, “Hey, I’d love to interview and talk about your glasses and sleep, and things like that.” That gives me a lot of energy, and because I have that energy and that passion, I’m more likely to keep going and persist in the business when things get tough. Because they do, they do get tough. I’m not pretending like three years has been, “I’m just this magical guy that’s done this amazing thing.” No, there’s been ups and downs. But, if you’re serving people and you get enjoyment from that, then you’re more likely to keep going.

I hired a fiduciary. A fiduciary is a wealth management advisor. They’re not allowed to sell you any programs, or mutual funds, or things where they would benefit. The fiduciary, basically, you have to give them all of your net worth, your figures, what you earned. It’s like that’s excruciating because you’re revealing your entire financial life to one person, but then that person figures out where you are, where you want to go, and then puts in motion a plan. So, I did things like I didn’t have a power of attorney, I didn’t have a will, I wasn’t investing in the indexes. All these things, I didn’t do. I said, “One day, I’ll get around to it.” The moment I got a fiduciary, I took action and I got those things in order. So, now I feel confident going into the future that not only will I have the ability to make money, but I’ll be able to manage that money effectively also.

Well, that’s brilliant, and you really are an example of you invest in yourself first with your own health, and education, and knowledge accumulation, and you invest in help, hiring experts that either they’re fiduciaries or coaches. But, reaching out and making, again, sort of that investment in yourself that those investments have clearly paid very large returns.

Yeah, I used to be the guy that would pride myself in going to seminars, and conferences, and getting a free ticket, or getting a discounted ticket, and I used to think I was the smartest person because I was weaving through the cracks and like, “Yeah, I got here for free. Awesome, I’m getting all this knowledge. But, what would happen is that after a couple days after is I didn’t really value it because I hadn’t paid for it. The moment I started paying for things, then I started valuing a lot more. I started paying closer attention. Because I paid closer attention, I got the results.

Yeah, and it’s so counterintuitive. You’re exactly right. So, one final question, and I ask this question of all my guests, and a little bit of what I like to do is a little bit of myth busting. There’s so much conventional mainstream wisdom out there that’s just not true and it’s defeating our best intentions, our best desires to reach peak performance and love and happiness, which you talk about. So, what’s a myth that you bump up against all the time, either personally or professionally, that you want to bust it because you just see that it’s untrue and it’s holding a lot of people back?

Well, the first thing is that people think, because I’m Australian, that I must be a surfer. “Oh, do you surf?” No, I don’t surf. I’ve never been on a surfboard my entire life. So, that’s the first thing. That’s definitely the first thing. The other thing I would say is that just because people are wealthy, doesn’t mean that they’re bad people. I always had a feeling that people who were super, super wealthy were somehow scammers, or in order to get the wealth, they had to be real assholes and treat people poorly, and kind of like conquer and all that kind of stuff.

But, I’ve been around a lot of wealthy people in the last few years just because I hired that business mentor and I started to move in those circles, and I can’t tell you one bad story from any of them. I mean, there’s people that I wouldn’t call up and say, “Hey, let’s go hang out,” but I enjoy their company in the moment. But, I don’t see any of the whole them treating people poorly or speaking down to people. I don’t see any of that. I just see successful, wealthy, happy, for the most part, people.

Now, maybe there’s stuff going on that I don’t know behind the scenes. But, this whole idea that money is evil, and that money is wrong, and that making a ton of it somehow makes you a bad person, that’s a myth that I think is being proven completely wrong.

Well, I love that one, and no one’s ever said that. That’s never been a myth to bust before, and I completely agree with you. So, thank you. Any final words? We’ll put a link to the Swannies glasses, of course, when we release the podcast. But, anything else you’d like to share? Any final words of wisdom?

There’s two phrases that I tend to live by, and they’ve both got three words in them, “Just do it,” and then, “Do it now.” So, just do it means like if there’s something you want to do, then just do it. Then, you always have to ask yourself, “When’s the best time to do it?” and the answer, invariably, is now, even though that’s usually the most uncomfortable time to do it. You just have to do it now.

Now, I am guilty of not doing it now a lot of times, but a lot of times, I do do it now, and because of that, I have achieved a level of success that gives me happiness. I’m not saying that I’m successful. I’m just saying, in my eyes, based on the standards I hold for myself, I’m more successful than not, or I feel successful. So, just do it and do it now, I write them down. I’ve got it on my notes in my phone, I’ve got it on my screensaver on my cellphone. I see it every day and it just constantly reminds me to take action and take action in the now.

Just on the sleep thing, if you or your listeners just want to get some more information on the sleep, I actually did do a little 7 Ways to Sleep Better, just a little mini-book, and if you’re in the U.S. or Canada, you can just text the word “Swannies” to the number 442-2222, and I’ll send you a link, and I can send that to you. Otherwise, just go to swanwicksleep.com, and you can get the book there as well.

Awesome. Well, you’ve been so generous with your time, your energy, and I really appreciate it. It’s been really fun to get to know you even better.

Thank you, Krisstina. I appreciate it. You’re a very good interviewer. You ask great questions, and I’m not just saying that because you’re wearing my glasses.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, and I look forward. I’m sure we’ll be bumping into each other again here very soon.

I’ll enjoy that, Krisstina. Thanks very much.

And so ends another episode of the Wealthy Wellthy Life. This was one more millionaire strategy that will make you wealthy while keeping you healthy. Before you leave, remember that if you want to get it all together, then make sure to sign up for a free online training session at howto.money. You will learn my signature formula for transforming your life from debt to multi-millionaire. It’s already helped thousands of others, and it can help you too, and it’s the only moneymaking system that makes your health your number one asset. So, if you’re curious how it all works, visit howto.money and sign up today. Remember, it’s free, so why not invest some time in learning “how to money”. Again, that’s howto.money. H-O-W-T-O dot M-O-N-E-Y. As always, be sure to subscribe to this podcast to make sure that you catch next week’s millionaire strategy. Signing off, this is Krisstina Wise, your personal guide to having it all. Here’s to living a Wealthy Wellthy Life. I’ll see you next time.