PODCAST - how training every morning for 75 days changed me
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Athlete with Asthma Show. I'm your host Johnny Ha, an ultra runner endurance athlete, and yes, a guy who's had an inhaler prescribed since birth. Despite doctors telling me I could never play soccer nor run a marathon, let alone a hundred K ultra. I prove them all wrong. This show is where I share everything I've learned from breathing techniques to mindset shifts to help you become the athlete and the person you truly want to be.
So if you're ready to achieve your goals, despite limitations, let's get started.
I worked out first thing in the morning, 75 days in a row, and I'm gonna share with you today how this has changed my body and my mind. And these [00:01:00] weren't 75 days of intense workouts. This is 75 days of mindful movement in the morning, where some days I would only be moving for five or 10 minutes. The first result is probably the reason why I can't stop doing this.
My brain craves working out in the morning. Or craves that morning feeling. This is what Chad told me to call this, that morning feeling, because I'll tell you this, this morning. Basically what has happened is my brain has made a connection between feeling good after doing a workout in the morning. This is called joyful anticipation.
When you create anticipation of an action of an activity that you are doing. And you create a joyful response to it, something that makes you feel good, then you're more likely to do it. I actually look forward to getting up early and working out. Now some background. I have been an athlete with asthma since I [00:02:00] was born, and when I was four years old, I was told that I would not be able to be an athlete and I should avoid all these things.
Well, 30 plus years later, I am an elite ultra runner with asthma. And even though I have loved working out every single day for a long time, I hated doing it in the morning. I would actually do it after work as a transition from working to my life, to my personal life. And I thought that this was a great thing for me.
Every single day I did this because I'd be so stressed by the time I finished work every day, that this was a great way for me to unplug and get rid of the stress. But what I didn't realize is that I was stressed all day. So I was starting my day, stressed, working all day stressed, and I finally unplugged once I would work out.
But now I have flipped this whole thing for the last 75 days. Now I joyfully anticipate working out. Every morning I work out and I start the day in much more abundant mindset. I'm no longer in survival and scarcity [00:03:00] mode. I am now. In abundance and prosperity mode, and I'm in this mode all day. I used to only get into this mode after work.
So I would be abundant and prosperous in my personal life, but I'd be so stressed or thinking about how stressed I was all day that I would fall out of this. But now I joyfully anticipate putting myself in abundance and prosperity every morning, and this causes me to keep working out and it waterfalls into all these other results I'm gonna share with you today.
Result number two. My mood has increased, or as one of my favorite authors, Dr. Benjamin Hardy talks about my floor has increased Throughout his books, Dr. Benjamin Hardy talks about if you are going to become your future self that you envision in your mind that achieves your impossible goals, then you need to increase your floor.
What I have really noticed in [00:04:00] working out first thing in the morning is that my base mood has increased. So even my bad days, like today was a lower day. But if there was a scale, if you're watching this on YouTube, you can actually see this scale. I just drew a line, a vertical line, top to bottom. There's a scale.
We'll call this the mood scale, if there is a scale from complete joy and complete depression. Then over the past 75 days, I have increased my baseline mood. So instead of, let's say, my baseline mood being in the middle, now my average mood is somewhere around here, which if you're listening to, says a podcast, it's gone from the middle to really the middle of joy in the middle.
It has increased significantly. What this has also done is this means that my lowest mood has increased significantly. So instead of being all the way down here with depression, when I wake up on the wrong side of the bed, I'm [00:05:00] actually closer to the middle. So this is amazing. When you increase your floor, you increase everything else.
'cause it's your hardest days that really define you. So if you are able. To add something to your life like I have done here to increase your floor, you probably should. The potential is exponential because this compounds did you know that like 90 to 90% of your thoughts are recycled day to day. So when you increase your mood like this on a day-to-day basis, you are increasing your.
Thoughts preaching your positive thoughts, your joyful thoughts. You're moving higher on the spectrum. You're moving higher on the skill. That's why this result has been so powerful to me with working out 75 days in a row and why I'm so addicted to it. Because the joyful anticipation for having a higher floor for my mood is so powerful.
Me in my relationships, in my life, for how I show up in my businesses, how I serve you. Everything improves with the floor of my mood improving.
Hey, friend, I wanted to take a moment to ask you a [00:06:00] quick question. Are you struggling to lose weight due to your asthma? If so, I get it. I used to run marathons and still kept gaining weight. It wasn't until I learned about the three pillars of healthy living that everything changed,
so I put together a healthy living guide that you can access absolutely free by clicking the link in the description. This guide shares these amazing three pillars of healthy living that you can easily integrate into your life. To start losing weight and live healthier today. Click the link in the description or go to athlete with [00:07:00] asthma.com/healthy-living-guide to grab your free copy.
Now let's get back to the rest of the show.
Result Number three, my productivity has increased. This morning's another great example. I woke up not wanting to work. I had no desire. I actually had no desire to go run or anything, but then I started thinking about the joyful anticipation of how I would feel on the other side of my run.
When I did that, I actually went outside and I. And after running, I actually decided that I would do a weight workout. 'cause I already started feeling a little better on this scale. And since I was feeling a little better, I had more energy to do more. So I decided to lift and then I went even higher. So I went higher on the scale, higher on the scale, and I got to a point where I actually was able to tackle my goals for the day.
Every single day. I have three main goals. Take this from [00:08:00] another one of Dr. Benjamin Hardy's books, the Gap in the Game that he co-wrote with Dan Sullivan, best entrepreneurship coaching organizations that exist. I went from probably getting nothing done today to getting everything I wanted to get done today.
And this started with taking a run. Now, I also, if you've been following me for a while, I have other things that I do in my morning routine, but the basics that really gets everything flowing is my run. If I don't run, then I don't feel like taking a cold shower when I stack running and then I lifted and then doing a cold shower.
I really got things going and my run wasn't very long this morning. It was like a 20 minute run, which for me isn't that long of a run. I raced a hundred K Ultra. So a two mile run, a 20 minute run isn't really that long. So for you, what can you do? That's five to 10 minutes to really get yourself going?
You may see your productivity increase as well, because once you start moving, once you get [00:09:00] momentum, you get productivity result number four. Now when it's 17 degrees out, I don't care. Mental toughness becomes automatic. I really didn't wanna work out this morning when I first got up. I was like, oh my God, it's so cold outside.
There's no way I'm doing it. But then I started thinking about the joyful anticipation. How am I gonna feel after? What is this gonna do for the rest of my day? Why is that important to me? 'cause I have huge goals, huge impossible goals, and I know that the only way to get there is, is by taking action from the goal.
If I don't take action from the goal, I'm not gonna get to the goal. I'm not going to achieve the goal. So I told myself that I don't care how cold it is out. There. I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna run, even if it's half a mile. Mental toughness. I didn't care because of the joyful anticipation. Joyful anticipation is more powerful.[00:10:00]
It is greater than discomfort. When you are joyfully anticipating something, you don't care about the discomfort to get there. I knew it was gonna be uncomfortable to go out there and run. I knew it, but the joyful anticipation got me through it, and I was really only uncomfortable for a couple of minutes.
It's the same thing that taking cold showers has done for me, because I'm only uncomfortable for about 90 seconds, and then I feel like I'm on top of the world. Joyful anticipation trumps. Trumps thwarts, whatever you want to call it. Discomfort result five. This is probably the most important one, is I have more time with family.
Why? Because instead of using the time after work to work out to have this transitionary period that I need to, to get rid of the stress so I can show up for my family, show up for my friends, I [00:11:00] have already done that in the morning. And this energy sets me up to this abundant mindset throughout the day.
I get up earlier, I do the thing for myself early so that I can show up and spend time with the people I love later in the day. This has been amazing 'cause now instead of going and doing my thing around four or five o'clock and not being available until six or seven o'clock to spend time with my fiance, spend time with our dogs, spend time with my parents, spend time with my friends.
I'm available at like four o'clock and I can hang out. With the people I love, I can show up and I'm not only showing up for them, I'm showing up for them in a very powerful state, an abundant state. 'cause when I start the day with this amazing activity that I love. It creates momentum. It creates wins throughout the day.
It creates all these wins. I finish all the things I want throughout the day. I'm not stressed throughout the day. I'm creating abundance throughout the day. I'm working from abundance throughout the day, and then I'm entering my personal life in abundance as well. So it's not just more time, it's more quality time with my family.
[00:12:00] With my friends. Now, if you wanna take this to the next level, I have the three pillars of healthy living. I wanna share with my free healthy living guide. It is linked in description below if you're watching this on YouTube or on the show notes. If you're listening to this as a podcast, you can also go to www.athletewithasthma.com/healthy-living-guide to grab your free copy.
The three pillars are movement, what we talked about today, tracking and accountability. When you install all three of these into your life, you're taking control of your health, of your wellness. It actually empowered me these three pillars to lose 40 pounds in 90 days and keep it off and live an exponentially healthier life when a hundred K ultra marathons.
And to show up here with you today to serve you powerfully. I'll see you in the next episode.
Thanks for tuning in to the Athlete with Asthma Show. I hope today's episode inspired you to overcome any perceived limitations you may have. Remember, your health and wellness journey isn't about perfection. It is about [00:13:00] progress. So I invite you to take a small step right now towards your goals, and if you found something helpful here, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast with others on a similar path.
Until next time, keep challenging yourself and redefining what's possible.
