KETO CONVERSATIONS are an opportunity for you to gain valuable insights from the leading experts in the Prüvit community. In this episode, CEO Brian Underwood speaks with Jairek Robbins about BETTER methods to balance your body, mind, and emotions during disruptive times.

BRIAN UNDERWOOD: I have a special guest with me today for everyone in Prüvit Nation, a great friend of mine for nearly 15 years. He’s dedicated his entire life to learning how to overcome or become something better, using mindset and physiology strategies to achieve peak performance. And peak performance is easy to perform when all the conditions are right, but what sets leaders apart is being able to achieve when conditions aren’t perfect. And I believe Jairek Robbins is one of those people.

JAIREK ROBBINS: Thank you for having me, it’s always great to hang out. And I love what you said about persevering through tough times. This actually leads me into one of the topics I wanted to cover today, which is “Winter is Coming.” And what I mean by that is hard times are coming, whether it be financial winter, emotional winter, or life winter. But using winter as an example, some people may actually freeze to death if they’re not prepared enough for the hard times ahead. 

Now, isn’t it also true that other people go snowboarding during the winter? So what is the key difference between these two groups? Some people think money but watch this. If you had all the money in the world, and you’re sitting in an empty room, snowed in with no supplies, how valuable is that money? Not very, you can only burn so much money for warmth. 

So what you actually need during that tough time is creativity. When you have access to that creative part of your brain, you can solve any problem. Now fear will short-circuit that part of your brain, it will put you in fight-or-flight and you won’t have access to that ability. We want to get rid of that fear and elevate to feeling empowered. Because once we feel empowered, we can do something about the problem. 

Empowerment is simply tapping into that inner power that we all have. A state of certainty, a state of ability. But the only way we can elevate from that state of fear is to drain it. So we think positive, we focus on positive, and we say positive things out loud. Now I don’t know about you Brain, but if you’ve ever been in a state of fight-or-flight, simply saying to yourself “it’s going to be okay” doesn’t work. 

Research shows that if you’re in a conversation with a loved one, and they say something that sparks you, your heart rate jumps up to 95 beats and will stay there for the next 20 to 30 minutes. You enter a physiological state of fight-or-flight and your prefrontal cortex shuts off. You’re literally no longer able to comprehend what the other person is saying. 

Now, the way we overcome this fear in our minds is actually in the opposite order. So we start with the body first. Start with your breathing.

UNDERWOOD: Let me ask you a question Jairek, I know for some people this might be a muscle they need to build. For example, maybe focusing on your breath for 4 minutes a day, then 5 minutes next week, and so on. 

ROBBINS: Definitely, and there are actually apps you can use to train this. I’ve used meditation tools, breathing tools, training tools, cold showers, and we’ll talk more about those soon. But what I’ve found to be the most effective in calming my nervous system is simply controlling my breathing. Because I can’t stop what I’m doing in the middle of the day and meditate or take a cold shower, but I can always take minutes to control my breathing. Now, let me show you something that’s important, and then I’ll come back to this in a second. 

One of my clients used to train Navy SEAL snipers, and he took their graduation rate from 20-30% to 100%. He did this using positive psychology because, in his assessment, these guys had been beaten up enough in boot camp. At this point, they needed to be rewarded and guided to their best selves. Later, he would build a 20-million dollar business. He told me the two things you have to absolutely master: Being laser-focused and yet aware of the chaos. And the best way to achieve that is with breathing meditation. Now here are a few “performance-boosting breathing patterns.”

• Box Breathing — 4-second inhale, 4-second exhale, 4 times
• Big Hold — 60 seconds
• Reset Breathing — big inhale, hold for 5 seconds, big exhale

How do you feel sir?

UNDERWOOD: I feel good! It feels nice.

ROBBINS: That resets the vagus nerve, it resets the peripheral nervous system, and it instantly resets how we feel. OK, now that we know how to calm the body. What about emotions? Everyone knows how it feels to see red, to be so mad you can’t think straight. Emotions can cloud your vision and make everything into something worth getting angry about. 

Now I’ll let you in on a secret, big events in our lives make us go back to our emotional home. And your emotional home is whatever emotion you feel most comfortable with. Scared people get scared, angry people get angry, worried people get worried. And so, big events in the world can become an excuse for us to go back to our emotional homes. 

Now, how do we center our emotions during these fearful moments? With questions, the key to our emotions is powerful questions. And what that does is give your brain something to solve. Your brain will come up with answers. By asking questions, you will begin to feel like you have the information you need to move forward. You’ll begin feeling empowered by your own answers. And eventually, you can even steer your brain towards whatever emotion you want to feel by asking yourself leading questions in that direction.

And the final piece is centering the mind. Now how do we train the mind, to get it to be more creative? We have to look for opportunities. You have to train your brain to look for opportunities. 

So if you’re in a cabin, paralyzed by fear. You have the power to take control of your breathing, take control of your emotions, and set your focus to looking for opportunities. And that’s how you can solve the seemingly impossible.

UNDERWOOD: Absolutely. We’ve been talking a lot about how you can give yourself certainty in uncertain times, and those tools are exactly what a lot of people need. And I would like to challenge everyone to practice these breathing exercises and practice where they put their focus every day.

Jairek, let me ask you this, what do you do every day to keep yourself centered and focused?

ROBBINS: I’ll tell you 5 things I do every day to make myself happy. And these are based on research that shows us that happiness leads to success. And this research is based on 200 studies of over 275,000 people. The results showed that a happy person, on average, does better with surgery than a neutral person. A happy person does better in leadership roles, in sales, in almost everything.

One of the things I’ve been doing every day is meditating for just 10 minutes. The benefits of meditation are based on research by over 120 institutions. It’s proven to lower anxiety, lower pain, help with depression, help with ADD/ADHD, and help overall with regulating emotions. 

Another habit for happiness is getting good sleep. That means at least 7 to 8 hours of quality sleep. 

The 3rd one on the list is “have something to look forward to.” Your brain needs something to look forward to, and that can be something as simple as a vision board. 

The 4th habit of happiness is “random acts of kindness.” This one is important because when you do a random act of kindness, it ignites all this biochemistry in the brain and you get really excited. It also makes the person that is receiving the gift feel great, and anyone watching also gets a boost of oxytocin. And the final piece is exercise, and you only need to do this for 30 minutes to start seeing benefits.

UNDERWOOD: That’s awesome, I wrote all of those down and we should all do that. I would challenge everyone, including myself, to do all 5 of these for 5 days. And I would add one more, which is to eat quality food and drink ketones! *laughs* I appreciate all your time Jairek.

To watch the full video conversation, click here.

‡These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.