Sleep Hygiene and Showing Up ft. Kvon Tucker

Episode Summary:

In this episode, Rich sits down with Kvon Tucker, his leadership coach and friend, to discuss the importance of sleep and its impact on various aspects of life. Kvon shares his personal journey of prioritizing sleep and how it has transformed his relationships, work, and overall wellbeing. 

They delve into the concept of sleep hygiene and provide practical tips for improving sleep quality. 

Notable Quotes:

• "When I'm well-rested, nothing bothers me. I can see my little daughter and I'm like, 'Oh, wow, what a beautiful little toddler she is.' When I'm tired, I'm like, 'Oh, my God, will she please stop?' I don't want her to experience me as frustrated." - Kvon Tucker
• "Almost 100% of the time, when someone shows up cranky or frustrated, it's because they're not well-rested. It's amazing to see what happens when people really begin to feel well-rested and the impact it has on their leadership across their life." - Kvon Tucker

Resources:

• Consciously - Kvon's company

To listen to the full episode and gain valuable insights on the importance of sleep and practical tips for improving sleep quality, tune in to the podcast. Stay tuned for more enlightening conversations on Find More Balance.

Subscribe to Find More Balance on YouTube: @findmorebalance

Transcript

[TRANSCRIPT]
0:00:07 - (Rich): Y'all, I am so excited for this conversation that we're gonna have today and even over the next few episodes, because I'm getting to talk to someone who has been instrumental in essentially all my journeys, really since 2020, when I made the decision to quit alcohol. And even before that, he's been my leadership coach, a lifestyle coach. He's been all different types of coaches to me. If you heard my other podcast, you've heard me talk about Kayvon in multiple episodes. And as I thought about launching the Find more Balance podcast, and I was thinking about the people who had the most impact on my life.
0:00:45 - (Rich): And honestly, when it comes to Kayvon, this is a brother. He's the single most important black man in my life. I can proudly and confidently say that. So to be able to have him on the podcast, to talk about a topic, sleep was one of the first things that we talked about, and it's something that he's been an advocate of for as long as I can remember. Even when I knew it was a thing, still didn't quite believe it was a thing, started getting some of it fell out of it. He has still been there on top of the sleep topic. And I figured for this podcast, rather than just having experts come on and talk about their books and shit like that, I want to talk to the people who've actually helped me, who are experts in their own rights, and talk about the things that we've discussed that have helped me improve in different areas. And a lot of what I've worked with Kayvon on has also influenced how I coach the clients that I work with and how I move and how I show up in the world. So I am Hella excited to introduce y'all to my leadership coach, my friend, also the best man at my wedding, Kayvon Tucker. Kayvon, welcome to the Find more Balance podcast.
0:01:51 - (Kvon): Wow. Wow, man, what an honor. What an know. We talked about coming on your podcast years ago, a couple of years ago, different podcasts at the time, and you and I talked a bit before, like, this is the right time. I'm just tremendously honored to be able to come on here, talk, share. I'm tremendously honored to be in your life, to serve as leadership coach, lifestyle coach, brother, best man. Being in your life is a privilege and an honor, my man. Being on your podcast is a privilege and honor. So I'm just looking forward to whatever comes out of this conversation and whatever comes out of our relationship in the future. It truly is an honor.
0:02:31 - (Rich): Yes, for sure. And if you're listening to the audio version of this, you don't see that we're both bald brothers who almost had on the exact same headphones until I started having a technical issue. So I encourage you to go over and check out the video version of these conversations that are going to be over on YouTube. So Kivan, we met at Google. I know a bit of your background and story, the coaching context when you get asked to tell me about yourself because I already told people a bunch of things as far as what you mean to me. But when you get asked to tell me about yourself, question, how do you like to lead with that? Who are you, brother?
0:03:07 - (Kvon): Yeah man, I appreciate the question. I always respond differently first. I like folks to know that I'm a father to a two year old daughter named Ayanna. She's going to be three soon. I'm a husband to Jessica who's also my business partner. I am a leadership coach, learning and leadership development professional. These are things that I like to spend my time on. I'm a growth junkie. And one of the things, the reason why you and I are here is not because I'm a sleep expert. I am a sleep practitioner. And over the years I've become obsessed with the importance of sleep which has grown out of leadership development. And so a lot of know my background is in organizational psychology.
0:03:50 - (Kvon): Went and got my master's right after getting my bachelor's in psychology. I got my first big boy job working at Southern California Edison and learning and development and did all sorts of things. And then I had an awakening that came out of a suicidal depression which led me to therapy through the gentle nudge of my now wife. And that led me on this crazy journey of developing my self awareness which led me to found this company called consciously get into coaching, work in tech, meet wonderful leaders like you and then build this business that I'm now running full time called consciously where we're centered on supporting other leaders to learn more about who they are and what they want to do with their lives and fulfill their life purpose. Because we know that when you do that, you create more good for yourself, the people around you and the planet. So personally, I'm now on this mission of just living the life that I want to live and helping others do the same at the most simplest level.
0:04:45 - (Kvon): But doing that creates tremendous positive change and that's where you and I are on the same journey and aligned and making it happen.
0:04:55 - (Rich): As you were talking, something reminded me to tell people that I also described you as a black futuristic like as you're describing your life and this is a man that lives very true to his word, everything he in. Also you live in Costa Rica so that's another thing you relocated with your family to Costa Rica. I say you live on a compound and I know you're trying to get other people to come over there and I'm like, I know what this is. It's a positive version of things that we've seen in the past. I'm not going to call it what it sounds like you're building, but I.
0:05:29 - (Kvon): Know we're building a collective, not a cult. Yeah, one day we're going to get more and more folks either out here really. You don't need to come to Costa Rica, right? That would be great to have more and more people of color to come to a like this and live the lives that they want. But that's not what I need. What I want is for people to live the lives that they want to lead. And that might be Costa Rica, that might be Barbados, that might be in the United States somewhere, it might be somewhere else. But I am a practitioner. First of all, the things that I talk about, all the things that I preach, I am a practitioner and that's really important to me from an integrity standpoint. I don't talk about anything that I don't do for myself.
0:06:11 - (Rich): I love that also that you distinguish practitioner meaning that you do it where sometimes I hear practitioner, most of the times when I hear practitioner I think doctor or somebody with a formal certification that you're a medical practitioner, you have some type of formal certification and you're saying I practice the habits I practice, what I preach is the type of practitioning that you're talking about.
0:06:36 - (Kvon): Everything consciously living, leading and loving. It's all a practice for me.
0:06:42 - (Rich): Love that. And you mentioned being. I don't know if you said personal development junkie, self improvement junkie. I consider myself a personal development junkie. Been one for as long as I can remember. I can sort of understand more now about why I've always gravitated toward that stuff as I've been on my own journey. I'm curious for you, where did that fascination interest in personal development? Because even that shows up in l and d in some ways in some of the earlier work that you were doing and how you help others show up or learn pick up information. So where did the self development, personal development focus come from?
0:07:16 - (Kvon): That's a great question man. So there's two parts to that. One is just a genuine curiosity. I remember in undergrad taking a class in learning. So it's like learning about learning. And I was fascinated. There's a video of a squirrel running through an obstacle. Some people may have seen this video. You could probably find it on YouTube. But watching animals learn how to navigate courses was just so beautiful to me. I was like, wow, this is amazing. And then learning the processes, the internal workings of the mind and the body and how it all works together was just fascinating for me. So from that point, I was like, I'm doing something with learning because this is just so cool and so interesting.
0:07:59 - (Kvon): And then I could get even more spiritual about it, right? It's like learning is the nexus of evolution, and it's like how we grow as human beings. So it's like the nugget is learning, and then it just creates so much more. So learning is like the foundation for everything. That's one part. The other part. You asked me to come on here so I might get deep quick.
0:08:18 - (Rich): I know what I'm in for, and I know what we're in for. So take it where you got to take it.
0:08:22 - (Kvon): Yeah. Well, the growth junkie part. There is a part of me that sees this obsession as a little bit of a sickness. It's like, I can't let it go. As hard as I've tried, it's really hard for me to just be still and not be trying to grow. And that makes me very uncomfortable to be thinking about, like, oh, I'm not developing myself in some way. And some people would be like, that's a great thing, and it has served me. But sometimes it has also caused a lot of challenges in relationships. People around me, people get tired of me always changing and growing and doing things.
0:08:56 - (Kvon): I worked at Netflix for 16 months, and I worked at Amazon for 18 months. I worked at Google for four years, and I moved to Costa Rica. It's like, I could chill. I don't have to do all the things all the time, but I love the learning. I love the learning about myself and what I'm capable of and what my family is capable of. So there's a part of me that you can grow to a point where it's not always helpful and healthy for you and the people around you. So I do look at it and I try to watch it, but even still, it is a part of who I am. And I love learning and growing.
0:09:28 - (Kvon): I love the process.
0:09:30 - (Rich): As someone who also loves learning and growing and knowing that there are a lot of other people listening who love learning and growing, how do you distinguish or define the point at which you stop learning and start acting. And I say this in the context of folks who, as a personal development junkie, consuming books, content, just feeling good, just consuming, consuming. Like, this is great. I'm getting all these perspectives.
0:09:57 - (Rich): But I know for me, even while I was a personal development junkie for all of those years, there was a lot of advice that I didn't take, not because I didn't believe in it, but just because I wasn't taking action. I was just listening and consuming. And consuming. How do you think about going from, even with therapy, people have different thoughts about being in therapy your whole life versus having a stretch where you're not in therapy and you're out there actually living and going about it. So how do you think about that from the PD perspective?
0:10:23 - (Kvon): I think phases. So there was a phase of my life where I was really centered on consuming information. I read all the leadership development books. If there was one, I read it and I read it quickly. I would often be reading two or three leadership development books. While listening to two or three leadership development, I was consuming all of it, right. And actually, my therapist at the time, who sometimes plays coach, he was like, kayvon, you know, the answers that you're looking for aren't in books.
0:10:55 - (Kvon): And I was like, okay, I had to sit with that. I was like, where is. It's not in books.
0:11:02 - (Rich): Is it in movies?
0:11:03 - (Kvon): Yeah. Where are the answers? It's not in books. Obviously, we know where the answers come from, and if you don't know, it's from yourself. Just to be clear, then I got a coach. And when I got a coach, the work that I was doing with my coach was so centered on the answers coming from me and on action. Right? So you get a coach, it's like, well, what do you want? What do you think? What do you want to try to do? And then, okay, well, let's go try it. Right? So after being in this heavy, deep, kind of learning, information accrual phase, I started shifting to action. So now I'm much more in an action phase of my life. Not to say that I don't still spend time consuming information and learning, but it's not how I spend most of my time.
0:11:49 - (Kvon): Most of my time is spent on action. And then there's learning in the action. Right? Like, oh, I went and did the thing. Let me reflect. How did it go? What went well? What didn't go well? Okay, there's learning there, but it's not the consumption of information. It's learning from experience. And to me, that's the place to be, right? Like, go do some shit, reflect on it, and then you'll learn. You'll probably learn a lot more than you ever could from a book.
0:12:16 - (Kvon): Having an informed approach helps, but it's actually not a requirement to go do the things that you want to do.
0:12:25 - (Rich): The going and doing is the scarier part, though. The reading and consuming is easy. I could read all the books or I could listen to all the books, but the actually taking those steps, and I think that's a struggle for a lot of us, too, because going back to what you said, we have the answers. Even if it's from the book, we have the answers, but then it comes down to how we apply them, and that even comes to things segueing into what we're going to be talking about. This portion even around sleep, oftentimes knowing what it is that we need to do, but not necessarily doing it. And so I'm curious when, I'm sure you told me this somewhere along the way. I'm curious for you. When did sleep become a priority, become a focus?
0:13:06 - (Kvon): I may or may not have told you this story. I know exactly where I was, where I was at in my life. I was living in Seattle, working for Amazon, and I read this book that I've told you about, peak performance. I can't remember the author's names. Always forget the author's names. But go find the book. I think you got a copy.
0:13:23 - (Rich): I'm literally finding the book while you're talking. For those who can't go get a.
0:13:27 - (Kvon): Book, I'll keep telling the story. Read this book. And it's basically a book where the writers, the authors did research on all these high performing people, from ceos, entrepreneurs, founders, athletes, all these people who have accomplished amazing things. And in that book, one of the things that is literally, like, repeated, I don't know how many times through how many chapters in one way or another, was sleep and recovery. Those two things combined.
0:13:57 - (Kvon): And so after reading this book, I'm like, wait, you mean everybody who's high performing, sleeps well and focuses on recovery, at least over a sustainable amount of time, right? Okay, everybody. I don't know how many times that lesson was repeated in that book, but I remember walking away from it like, oh, that's the thing. That's the thing for me. And at that point in my life, I was trying to lose some weight and get in the gym. And I remember sacrificing sleep to make it to the gym.
0:14:27 - (Kvon): I will wake up at 430 every day no matter what. No matter how tired I was, I was like, I'm going to the gym. What I started to realize is that that wasn't helping me as much as I wanted it to. It wasn't serving me as I was going to work tired and I wasn't getting the gains that I wanted. Like, things were taking longer.
0:14:44 - (Rich): You didn't necessarily enjoy getting up and going and working out in the morning?
0:14:48 - (Kvon): Not when I'm dead tired. I will wake up at 430 every day, no matter what. No matter how tired I was. That was my goal. I was like, no, I'm getting up. I'm going to do this. These days. I was dead tired and I would still go, right? I don't know how many hours I was. This is before I had a know. I wasn't tracking my sleep or anything like that. So I was like, yeah, I'm a goat. And I would go dead tired, then I would be at work tired, and I would have some miserable days, some good days, but some miserable days.
0:15:15 - (Kvon): But that's when I was like, okay, kayvon, you got to get your sleep together. And I think it was around that time that WHOOP came out. And so my wife and I both got WHOOP and I started tracking my sleep and I started learning more about sleep, and that's when I started to become a little bit obsessed about sleep. But that was the beginning of my journey. When I first started working at Amazon was 2017. So sometime between 2017, 2018, which is now I'm looking at, it's like, wow, it's like six, seven years ago.
0:15:41 - (Kvon): That's when I first started getting serious about sleep.
0:15:44 - (Rich): I didn't know you were on the WHOOP wagon that long.
0:15:47 - (Kvon): Yeah, I don't know if it was out then, but I've had it for a minute. So it may not have been then that I was using WHOOP, but it was then when I started focusing on my sleep.
0:15:55 - (Rich): Yeah. And for those.
0:15:57 - (Kvon): Been a minute.
0:15:58 - (Rich): Yeah, it definitely has. And for those that aren't familiar, WHOOP is another one of the health trackers is what I'll call it, a wearable tracker. I love it because it seems like it's geared toward athletes and folks who are, I'll say, more serious or folks who are maybe more competitive or have a certain level of drive. I mean, it really does act like a coach and know that they aren't paying any of us for this.
0:16:21 - (Rich): They should love it. They should. So if you're like, well, what's a WHOOP? I encourage you to go look that out. But going back real quick to why I asked you about the work it out in the morning, it's because I used to say, and a lot of us used to say, oh man, I hate working out in the morning, I feel like crap. It's just afterwards I get to work and I'm exhausted. Like, I'd rather work out after work. But in listening to you, I'm realizing that sometimes maybe the reason that we feel that way is because it's not that we're working out in the morning, it's that we weren't rested and I was interpreting it as working out in the morning makes me feel like shit as opposed to working out in the morning after I'm. Well, it's a completely different game, right?
0:17:06 - (Kvon): Completely. And so now fast forward to today. I will sacrifice some exercise for sleep. I don't use an alarm clock. I go to bed at a pretty consistent time, usually in bed between 830 and nine, or I'm usually asleep between 830 and nine. And I let my body do what it does. We co sleep with our two year old daughter so that disrupts sleep. But she sleeps pretty good. My wife sleeps like a rock for the most part.
0:17:35 - (Kvon): So my sleep is pretty consistent. But I decided maybe a year or two ago that I really wanted to prioritize sleep over exercise. And so now I only work out as much as I can after getting the sleep that I need. Also part of the reason why I built a home gym, because now if I wake up a little later, I'm like, oh, I got 30 45 minutes instead of 60 75 minutes. I can still do something right because the gym is right there. I can still get something in to take care of my body after being fully rested rather than sacrificing the sleep for exercise.
0:18:11 - (Rich): I think the get something in part is really important because sometimes if we saying we, but I'm talking about my damn self, I'm thinking about where, yeah, I have 2 hours in the morning to work out. Something comes up that 2 hours is now an hour. I'm frustrated. Screw it. You know what? I'm just going to move this workout to tomorrow. I can't even do all the stuff that I wanted to do, like just that quickly versus, okay, maybe I don't have the full time, but I can still do something.
0:18:45 - (Rich): I can still do a modified version. I can still do something even if it's not the exact way that I wanted to do it.
0:18:52 - (Kvon): Absolutely. That's for me the key for consistency. Right. And you and I have talked about showing up making sure you're showing up consistently. And that's for your sleep. That's for your exercise as well. You can always do something for your body. I have another client that she and I are working on her physical fitness as well. And the question that we're talking about is, like, what have you done for your body today?
0:19:17 - (Kvon): Right? And that's, have you slept well? Have you ate well? Have you moved your body well? What have you done for your body today? Right? And that's a question anybody can ask themselves at any point in time, and there should be multiple answers, but it's about helping people think about their body a little bit more intentionally. And for me, sleep is foundational for that.
0:19:39 - (Rich): How do you feel sleep has enabled your ability to show up more effectively?
0:19:45 - (Kvon): First thing is, with my family, I'm a better husband, I'm a better father. When I'm well rested, I have a toddler. And toddlers can be trying. They can really test your patience. And when you're tired and you got a toddler next to you repeating your name or yelling or screaming or just doing regular toddler stuff, if you're tired, you're going to lose your patience, or you probably don't have any patience. Whereas when I'm well rested, nothing bothers me.
0:20:18 - (Kvon): I can see my little daughter and I'm like, oh, wow, what a beautiful little toddler she is. Doing toddler shit. It's not a problem. When I'm tired, I'm like, oh, my God, will she please stop? Right? And I don't want her to experience me as that. I don't want her to experience me as frustrated. I don't want her to experience me as being tired of her. I'm not tired of her. I'm just tired. It's the same with my wife, right? Like, my patience for her just being a human being is a lot shorter when I'm tired.
0:20:48 - (Kvon): My love and acceptance that I can extend to her is a lot less when I'm tired. And I know there's some behavioral things that, for me, show up when I'm tired. Like, I tend to nitpick and I'm like, why is this here? And why is this there? Like, I get kind of cranky when I'm tired, and I don't want my family to experience me that way. So for me, first and foremost, showing up well for my family is important, and being well rested and energized is a big part of that.
0:21:12 - (Kvon): The other is being a coach. I want to show up well for my clients. Right. And my business, the revenue depends on how well I show up for my clients. If I show up to my sessions and I'm tired and I can't listen to my clients, or I'm not self managing well because I'm tired or I'm asking memorized questions versus being really present, my clients feel that, and I know that too. I'm like, fuck, I want to be here, but I got to do this damn thing. I love coaching, but I don't ever want to feel like I don't want to show up for my clients. So being well rested and having my sleep together is important for that.
0:21:49 - (Kvon): So it's a lot, man. I could go on, but those are the two things. Big, important things for me, like showing up for my family, showing up for my clients, because also, my business depends on that.
0:21:58 - (Rich): Yeah. And how are you to yourself when you don't get sleep?
0:22:03 - (Kvon): What a question to ask the coach. A hard question. I love it. Yeah, same. Hard on myself, man. I'm hard on others. I'm hard on myself. When I'm tired. It's like I get really. Just cranky is probably the best word for it. I can be mean to myself. I have my own saboteurs just like everybody else. I have perfectionist or the stickler. I have controller. So I tend to get really tight about life and myself when I'm tight. Like, oh, didn't wake up in the time that I wanted to wake up today. Like, fuck, not going to get the workout in, versus, like, oh, I woke up well rested, but now I have 45 minutes. Well, what can I do with 45 minutes? And it's very different versions of me when I'm well rested versus when I'm tired.
0:22:50 - (Rich): Yeah. And I selfishly asked that because I was thinking about the voice. Like, we've talked about this, like, the negative things that we say to ourselves when I'm tired, or if I've come into a session and I'm telling you I've been exhausted, and then I start going off through us, like, up. That's some fatigue, brother. You might want to prioritize some rest, because I find that that is when we say some of the nastiest and most negative things to ourselves is when we're not rested.
0:23:17 - (Kvon): Well, 100%, man. And this is why I got so passionate about it in my leadership coaching. I just started noticing a pattern where my clients would show up tired, and then they would be extremely negative about themselves and the people around them and projects and people and all these things, and I was like, so. It's so interesting. So maybe we talk about sleep. What's your sleep like? Right. And I know I've asked you that question. I've asked countless clients that question.
0:23:44 - (Kvon): And I want to say, 100% of the time, when someone shows up and they're really cranky or commudity or just frustrated, it's because they're not well rested. Like, almost 100% of the time, it's very rare somebody shows up, like, wow, I had a great night's sleep, and I'm really angry. It just doesn't happen, man. It's amazing to see what happens when people really begin to feel well rested and the impact that it has on their leadership across their life.
0:24:12 - (Rich): Yeah. So you ask people, how are their sleep? But to me, I also hear, how is your sleep hygiene? Which I didn't think, I mean, I knew sleep, get a certain number of hours of sleep, have the lights down. Cool. But I hadn't really thought about sleep hygiene. And I've said sleep hygiene to other people, thinking that I was the only one who didn't know. And I realized a lot of people haven't heard of the concept of sleep. Like, they have heard of sleep, but they haven't heard of the concept of sleep hygiene. So what does sleep hygiene mean to you? I know what you've told me it means, but now I want everyone else to hear it.
0:24:43 - (Kvon): I appreciate the question. I don't even know where I learned the term, but I love it. To me, sleep hygiene is almost like, kind of like rituals around sleep. It's the things that you do to support you sleeping well. If sleep were a thing in your life, how well do you take care of it? It's kind of how I look at it. So, for me, sleep hygiene starts in the morning. It's like so much of my life is centered around making sure I sleep well.
0:25:13 - (Kvon): First is waking up, getting some sunlight in the eyes. This is one of the things I've learned. Helps with circadian rhythm. So, sleep hygiene. Circadian rhythm are also really closely tied to each other. So I do my best, and I live in Costa Rica, so it's easy because the sun rises and sets almost the same time every day. I know you're on the west coast, so you don't have as much sun as I do, but doing your best to get some sun in your eyes as early as possible helps with circadian rhythm, moving your body, exercising. Doing those things regularly helps people sleep.
0:25:46 - (Kvon): Then we fast forward to eating. So the time that you eat, the kinds of foods that you eat. We my family tries to make sure we eat our dinner at least two to two and a half hours before we lay down in bed because we know that impacts sleep quality of sleep. So eating late night meals doesn't help but if you give your body time to process that helps and then some of the things that you already know. Right.
0:26:14 - (Kvon): So I have a practice, a personal practice of putting my phone away about an hour in a separate room. So I'm in my little office second bedroom here. Our bedroom is down the hall so phone stay in here. I put my phone in here around 730 every night. I usually don't hit the bed until 830 so an hour minimum, sometimes more, sometimes I'll stretch it to two but minimum 1 hour before bed no phone. And then my wife and daughter and I all have our own little sleep or bedtime routine.
0:26:46 - (Kvon): So go to bed, brush the teeth, dim lights, doing all the relaxing things before we hit the bed. And again consistency with the time that you hit the bed is also something that's a part of sleep hygiene for me making sure that you hit the bed as consistently as possible. So like I said I'm pretty consistent. I'm not perfect right. But I tend to hit the bed most days sometime between eight and 830 and I tend to fall asleep most days between 830 and nine like 30 minutes window pretty consistent.
0:27:21 - (Kvon): And that's like all I can do. It's not all I can do. There's more other things too. But when it comes to all the rituals I have that are part of my sleep hygiene those are the big things for me.
0:27:30 - (Rich): Yeah there's so many more things that people can do too if they want to. And I think it's important with sleep hygiene that just like with anything else people remember that it's for them what is the way that works for them 100% and understanding that it may take some time because I think sometimes we hear someone say something then we go do it but that's not the way for us right? So someone might hear this, they may 830.
0:27:57 - (Kvon): No hell I can't do that.
0:28:00 - (Rich): Phone in the other room at 730. I mean I got this and that. I got the shade room. I got to scroll. Well can I be on my computer then?
0:28:10 - (Kvon): 100% yeah. You got to find what works for you. It has to be something that you really want. You have to really want to feel well rested. You have to really want to feel better because making these changes like all this stuff I just rattled off to you is a culmination of, like I said, six plus years of me working it and fine tuning and trying different stuff and learning. Like, oh, this is not possible for me. So what is possible for me? I wasn't always going to bed at 830. I used to go to bed like everybody else, like 1011. When I first started focusing on sleep, my bedtime was like 11:00. I was like, all right, well, what am I going to do? And then 11:00 turned to 1030, which turned to ten, and so on and so forth. And now I'm hitting the bed at 830. That's over the course of six years, right?
0:29:01 - (Kvon): So if you're out there and you're going to bed at 11:00 don't try to go to bed at 830. It's not going to work. Coach enough people around this, it's not going to work. If you're going to bed at eleven, try 1030. Try 1045. Right? Like, take some baby steps and work your way towards whatever it is that you want.
0:29:19 - (Rich): I love that you said it's been a six year journey because that gives context to sustained effort over time, right. And that nothing good happened. That's not true. Some good things do happen overnight, but major lifestyle change that can also happen overnight. I guess what I'm trying to say is the things that are most impactful and most powerful often take time. Lots of time. Business. You didn't grow your coaching practice overnight. Everything takes time. So if you're listening, you're like, man, it's also easy when you're tired to find all the reasons not to do something. So to hear this and then find all of the excuses and reasons to not do it.
0:30:06 - (Rich): So if nothing else, at least for me, from this part of our conversation, and then we're going to have another conversation next week about some of the challenges we face as millennials and how to overcome some of those things. Also thinking about some of the mental health tools that you've incorporated, but as far as what folks can take away from this part of the conversation. So I'm thinking about the auditing, the sleep hygiene. But is there anything in particular for you that you'd want people to take away as far as.
0:30:32 - (Rich): Maybe it's what you just said, starting with that 15 minutes. But if there's anything else that you think would be helpful, and maybe from what you've spoken to other clients about, because I'm sure I'm not the only one who was on this four hour.
0:30:41 - (Kvon): Sleep flow, I know you'd be surprised most people like, I'm the weird one, right? Honestly, I don't meet a lot of people who are as serious with their sleep as I am. The last thing I would say is it is similar to what we landed on, man, is take your time. Like set goals that you can begin to see some progress with. You set a big goal and you get frustrated. But if it's 15 minutes, 30 minutes, just start chipping away and you keep doing that over the course of some years, then you'll see a transformation and you'll feel very different.
0:31:16 - (Kvon): That's what I want, folks, is just start taking that walk forward, start the action right. Make this small change, and then just build upon that over the course of time.
0:31:26 - (Rich): Love it. And that is a great place to leave it this week. So we will be back next week to talk a bit more about some of the things we as millennials face in particular and some strategies around navigating some of those things. So looking forward to next week's conversation. We'll be back then. Kayvon, thanks so much for being here for part one.
0:31:47 - (Kvon): Thank you so much, brother. Happy to talk about this stuff. Hoping this adds a lot of value to folks out there.