Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside personal growth. This is Greg voisen, the host of inside personal growth and joining me. Where are you joining me from Nick

Nicholas Stewart
I am in Boston, Massachusetts, okay? And I must, and I must say, when I began this journey down the road of sleep, I never knew that I'd end up in Australia, in the UK, in South America. So I'm meeting people all over the world.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, definitely, because sleep fitness, which Nick wrote a book? Nick Stewart, MBA, CSSC, what does that stand for? One of the rare

Nicholas Stewart
certifications in sleep so it's a certified sleep science coach.

Greg Voisen
Okay, it's

Nicholas Stewart
like 2025, after that, you can't hire me. Okay,

Greg Voisen
well, we got you for another couple, almost two years, so I appreciate you being on inside personal growth, and if we were commenting before, you know, and I'm going to get let the people know a little bit about you from your bio. You know, you say on, on Amazon when you go look for the book, and I encourage all my listeners go out and just type in sleep fitness says this book won't bore you. It's not going to put you to see it sleep. It won't waste your time, and it won't and it isn't filled with useless junk. And I would say that's absolutely true. Nick, did you want to add another one. I'm going to

Nicholas Stewart
delete some parts at the end of the book and release it, but I think you're right, I'd say, and the other thing that I would say is that, for your listeners, for an entertainment value, it's already gotten me into trouble. Awesome. I've already upset somebody as of today because of something that's in the book. So So trust me, the rest of the sleep books, they're all very politically correct, and no one wants to step on anyone's toes, and that's not what this book is doing at all. Well,

Greg Voisen
that's good to know now for my listeners. So did you know a little bit about Nick. He already told you that he was a CSS SSC. He's a certified sleep coach who helps busy professionals improve their sleep and perform better at work while having more time for their professional lives. Look, all of us know we have gadgets that measure our sleep, and I know that I have a little dog that gets me up twice a night, and I get interrupted sleep, and it's not the best thing in the world, but we all have situations where this happens. So more ovaries train clients to master their sleep as a significant health transformation, getting them more adequate downtime and unleashing a newfound vibrancy and energy in their work and home life. And I would say, you know, look, when you have issues sleeping, your energy levels really drop. And we're going to get into that as a professional level transformative coach. A year before his run in with sleep the sleep devil, he integrated sleep health into the foundation of clients seeking internship at Fortune 500 companies. He's often debated for seats offered at Google, Google with less than 1% chance of attaining an internship still with sleep at the foundation of their performance, Nick saw three of his mentees succeed in reaching that Google opportunity three years straight, that was the start of an observation about the Forgotten powerhouse high quality sleep fitness that can produce across every area of a person's life. Nick's journey to overcome his sleep troubles was a challenging one, but he refused to give up and overcome his own and overcoming his insomnia through the years of research and testing, he developed a powerful strategy that helped him get the rest he needed and paved the way for others to benefit from his experience. Well, you got an inspiring story, Nick and well,

Nicholas Stewart
let me, let me add a couple things to that, Greg. One is for people who are like, how did you get into this? I almost forgot, like, oh my god, years and years ago, I'm coaching these young adults who want to get these fortune 500 internships, and after a while, I sort of would be given the high performers on the IT floors who were probably going to get the seat. And in each case, they trim their sleep to try to be able to go to the part time job, to go to the daytime training, to go see their girlfriend, to then have family dinner, to then do all the homework. And in each case, their managers all peg pegged me, and was like, you know, Greg's looking a little pale the last couple of weeks, and I'm less confident about sending him to Google. And the funny thing was, is I sat down with my coaching group and let's one of the guys came in. I looked at him, was like, Oh my God, this guy's pale as a ghost. And I basically said, everybody, go to the tech lab. James, sit down and back. Then, I was really sort of a planner, right? Like, how do we plan and schedule your day so you can perform at a high level? And there's a great book of if you haven't read it, it's great. It's called The Power of full engagement. Have you read that book? Yeah, that's an old book. Yeah, it should be required for all companies, but I basically was applying that concept, right? Like, where do we find little rejuvenate, rejuvenation spots? And so I literally, out of having no idea what I was doing, just grabbed the first book on a bookshelf that had sleep in it, started using it and help these guys get their sleep fit. And in weeks, they were good to go. And they they ran with it. I never thought about it ever again, like just never thought about it. The second thing that I was going to mention is that over the past, like six months, I'd say some of my work has become more specific, so there is a focus more on emergency repair. I have sleep terrors. This is something I can't bear anymore, versus being like, yeah, my sleep quality is not that good. I would like it to be better. And so I'm taking more people who are like IT professionals, because I'm comfortable with them, you know, nurses, healthcare professionals, and anyone else who's just working insanely long hours. And so there's a repair component to it, and then there's the like, let's get it repaired, and then let's get it awesome. And we can talk about that in a bit. The second thing I'd mention is that in doing, like, a year and a half ago, and I was like, I gotta, like, start doing some practice coaching sessions. It's been some years, what I found was I would do these one off sessions with clients from all over the world. And I'd be like, yeah, if you know, if this little strategy session works out in four weeks, write me a testimonial. That's all I you know, that'd be great, and I would follow up with them. And Greg, I wasn't ready for the response. It was the fact there's a testimonial I'm not even sure I can use, because it seems so over the top that maybe, like aI wrote it, you know. And this guy's message came through with kind of represents several people, which was like, Nick, oh my god. Like, I was engaged all day, which is what I wanted, right? But then I got home and I had the capacity to be engaged with my kids and my wife. Like, this is amazing. So I was like, it is really, like, Greg, I always sort of imagined myself as a repairman, right? Like, bringing the car. This is the the oil pans busted. We'll put one on there, and then we'll send you out. It's really, it's really, let's

Greg Voisen
discuss it. Because look, the listeners that are out there listening right now, they all listen to my podcast, and then they obviously listen to a lot of other podcasts, and in in frequent and many months I've been listening to, you know, Dr Peter or TIA. You listen to Tim Ferriss. You listen to all these people that are talking about, hey, I'm going to endorse this bed that makes it cooler on my side, or you're going to take melatonin, or you're going to do all these various things. And, you know, the environment in which we're in. So there's so many elements here. You know, since Apple and all these people started measuring how we sleep. I'm curious as to your take on this, because the reality is, prior to probably 10 years ago, none of this existed. It just didn't exist. It started existing when people starting having sleep terrors, right? It's like, Man, I can't even and when I go into my room, I'm just so afraid I don't even want to want to go to sleep, because, you know, I got so much to do, right? Or, or I'm or they're burned out, right? So what this question is around about? It's a two fold question. The first part is, yeah, what do you think about this progression in the last 10 years? Obviously, you're a coach. As a result of it, 10 years ago, you weren't thinking about being a sleep coach, that for certain. And then secondly, and then secondly, where is this really all headed for everybody? And what are some of the practical things that you could tell our listeners like right now?

Nicholas Stewart
Yeah. Yeah. So the first thing around the metrics part is, and Mike, I warn my clients up front, like, I'm going to be honest with you, like, even if you don't want to hear it. So the answer really is mixed. Back I've had experience where I've created the training where, in the first two weeks, we're doing that data collection using the metrics and whatnot. Some of them are really problematic. Greg, if you're not spending $300 or more, you're getting crappy data on top of that. For some people, right? They're coming into this experience uncomfortable and upset, and now we're going to track their crappy data, which all it says is what they already know, which is this isn't good. And so for some people who are anxious, they don't like it. So I'm I'm right now, sort of like get to know the person, figure out what the issue is, and then figure out, do we need to track certain things and do or should we not be tracking certain things? I've seen articles that go back and forth about it. I think one of the great advantages about tracking the metric is this, and you say, what's gonna happen in the future, I think there's gonna be a huge push for a metric called heart rate variability.

Greg Voisen
Well, it's already there. One of my clients has own source.io, and on your iPhone or your Android, you put your finger on the camera, and it measures HRV inside with people working in companies. So is this a push day? Is it a rest day? Is it whatever the whole HRV thing has like gone crazy, right? But the reality is, you said in the book, and you have a chapter, the secret to sleep is that there isn't any secret. And I'm not going to push you on this, but I'm going to say so then what? So why is everyone so damn caught up in what the secret is? Take more melatonin, lift, more weights. Exercise. Look at your chart. I mean, what's the deal here, dude?

Nicholas Stewart
Well, let me give you two answers. One, I'm going to finish the answer you originally asked is, where is this all going? Yes, sadly, Greg and I've got the credit card debt stubs. I'm happy to send them to you if you want to, you know, maybe make some donations, but, but, but for six years, this is not a joke. This stuff is starting to come out. I tested every energy and product I could get my hand on, and my closet became an insane catastrophe. And I was working with a business partner, and so we were like, Let's set up a database. Spend 20 minutes a day categorizing this stuff, Greg, I got to a little over 81 products, and I hardly had anything that showed being effective, and I estimated is probably over 100 so you're looking at around a 90 to 95% total fail rate in terms of what the products are. Now, you told me to bring things. I don't normally wear these glasses. But here's a product that might last. These are, this is from a company called Swanwick, and they're the best light it's called blue light filtering glasses that you can get. And believe it or not, they're not the most expensive. So for those of you out there, I just did a forward for a guy for another book, very interesting, called the light doctor. So light plays a big factor into your sleep, and we'll get into that about the daytime. But I just wanted to show you guys those and put my regular glasses back on, and then the future. Geez, like you said, there's so much coming in. And just the other day I read the projections, I think we're in two to three years. The Sleep industry, the economy, is going to be around 6 billion.

Greg Voisen
So look there, obviously, for all these people that jump in, just like electric bikes, where it's 25 30 billion, and everybody wants to buy it, there's got to be something driving it. So at the core, when you meet with these clients who want to get better nights rest, what are the three or four components that are missing? Because you said there is no one size fits all here. Okay, I get that. Everybody's got a little bit of a different problem. Yeah, and you say introducing a little anarchy into sleep solutions. Can you help the listeners either find the balance between trying some structured sleep plan or allowing for flexibility in some kind of personalized plan, what? What is it that you actually doing? What are the common characteristics that a sleep certified sleep coach like yourself is saying, hey, look, I took your intake. Here's some of the things you're doing that you should either stop doing or you should modify Absolutely.

Nicholas Stewart
So I think to answer your first question about the secret part, I there's another coach from India and I who are going to do a seminar on meditation to help with sleep. And we couldn't be more on alike, except for when we shared with each other our stories, it was like, Oh, my God, We're like twins. And he his story is, I think, in answer to your question, which is what we call the pill trap, he spent months, if not over a year, going doctor to doctor, where is the pill? Where is the pill? I think society wise, we're still in the medication solves all things kind of world, and that drives that like, well, there must be some thing that can find that will fix it. But with sleep, it's so much messier. I think people wanted, like, we talked about melatonin, and we can break that down a little bit, because I've got mixed thoughts on that. People thought, Oh, well, if I just take melatonin, I'll sleep. Well, it's like, there's no research that says the melatonin helps you fall asleep faster. There's no research that says melatonin keeps you asleep while your dog wakes you up, Greg. So that can't that, that can't be it, right? So there's these. There's multiple forces, biochemical, hormonal, and then we talked about light a little bit, where they're all They're all intersecting, kind of like when people study the atom and they like, got way down to the bottom, and they finally found like, oh, there's no there's no core, it's just a vibrating circle. And I think that's helpful to think about with sleep, and it's also a way to give, give in. I think that's part of my objective with the book was to give some people some concepts where they could relax down if they were in emergency. So like, for example, chapter three is called the body is designed to stay awake for a few days.

Greg Voisen
People are like, I know this off the wall question, but I have a lot of questions for you. We won't get through them all, but doesn't matter. We're exposing my audience to something's very important in your book, which is going to episode two. So here's my thought. Look, in the industrialized world, with the fast pace that we all live in computers, AI, you name it, fast cars, whatever. Yet, you go to this Dan Buettner was on here, and it's the blue zones. And you really look at these people that are living to be 100 longevity, because in the end, and you look at the sleep that basically is purported that that happens. It's completely different than in our country. So if you take a little island in Greece where somebody is you know what their keys are, what they eat, how much they exercise during the day, which is usually a ton, how much community they're involved in, what their spirituality is, right? Sure, look at these factors. In other words, am I spiritual? Am I meditating? Am I doing yoga? Am I doing whatever, or am I just a guy who's out in Greece picking grapes at the end of the day, and I work really hard, and at the end of the day I sleep like a log, right? And so these people now are 100 years old, right? And you're thinking to yourself, we live in this world that is so effed up that everybody's running around like a chicken with their head cut off, and then at the end of the day, they're going, I'm so amped up I can't sleep. Yeah, number one, you didn't exercise enough. You didn't get enough done, meaning you didn't really, actually have output, and you're not tired enough. I had a guy that was on here this morning, you'll get this. And his wife tells him, because he's run 100 Meyer mile events and triathlons and all this, she says, Please go exercise, because you're a better husband and you sleep better when you exercise. So you know, in other words, his wife gave him prescription said, Just go out and just keep running. Just run, because otherwise you're a nervous wreck, right? And

Nicholas Stewart
just and for your listeners, she gave him one of the top three activities proven to impact the quality of sleep. Running, by a long shot. Yeah, yeah, big time.

Greg Voisen
How about cycling? Anything?

Nicholas Stewart
Yeah, I think there's some, like, some exercises, they're better for a certain phase of sleep. Some are for the other. You know, the kind of thing that I would look up with somebody, you know, to

Greg Voisen
figure out there used to be this thing, Nick and you, and then we'll get back to you answering the question, yeah, would you rather be physically tired or mentally tired. I'm like, I'm just paraphrasing here, and I will tell you at the end of the day, I'd rather be physically tired any day of the day than I would mentally tired.

Nicholas Stewart
Yeah, that's we're gonna have to circle back on that, because

Greg Voisen
you have enough time to address that winner. Well, well,

Nicholas Stewart
one of the things like I was saying with some of this feedback, even the guy who wrote the forage of the book, started giving me these like signals that excessive energy was still there. So when you say that to me, Greg, I've talked to a couple high performing guys, you know, big corporate guys. And I say, Do you sleep so that each night you fill the tank up, and the next day you use the gas and then you refill the next night? Or have you gotten to the point where you're sleeping consistently, day by day, week by week, month by month, that like a bond, like a good investment vehicle, you've got an excess of, let's say, 2000 bucks in physical energy that you've gotten from sleep. Well, what if the next day you only use 500 of it? Well, now you're in an excess of 1500 you're starting the day with a capacity for energy. This is why I started going, geez, this is like a competitive advantage in today's super competitive marketplace. You know, to be able to have that.

Greg Voisen
Well, look, if you are not the hero, because you said you don't need a hero. But the fact is, this book, and like you said, you're not going to find anything useless, you're going to only find useful content in this book. And you said in chapters, and your chapter, you don't need to have hero. You emphasize results over searching for a hero to solve the sleep issues. Well, there's people out there all day long that are going to doctors to get a pill, or they're going to sleep studies, or they're getting CPAP machines because they snore or whatever the hell in me, and there's just, there's so much of this. How can individuals take ownership? This is the key, right? It's like I'm sitting out here listening to Nick How do I get your book take ownership my sleep fitness and journey without relying on these quick fixes or external validation from my Apple Watch, which tells me I didn't get enough sleep every night, because I woke up twice with my puppy to let him out and go potty. Right?

Nicholas Stewart
You know the answer, the answer that I thought I would have a year ago when I started interviewing guys on podcasts that came from the neuro technology product design world, I tried to trick them and be like So Greg, if you had to pick a product to give to your family that's not the one that you're selling, what would it be? And the two brightest guys, one who has been in the sleep coaching industry for like, 40 years, working with teams, and he's like, you know who Phil Jackson is? I'm like, yeah, he's the most winning coach in NBA history. Oh yeah. He called me one night and was like, we're stuck at the airport. How do we get these guys to sleep? Like these guys know what they're talking about, and both of their answers, what education?

Greg Voisen
Education?

Nicholas Stewart
I was shocked. And I've come over time to and I'm working kind of on a series, is that there, there's a huge amount of assumptions, and what I would call old world knowledge about sleep that's become outdated. But most people think like, Oh, I know enough about sleep seven to eight hours like they think they know, but it's like, no, there's some things that have changed, in fact, that are so important that they might inform how you then, to your point, make a plan that makes sense for them Now that they're informed about what that is and what's going on. So that is like, I hate the answer, because I want to come up with this awesome, sophisticated, methodological answer about this. But it's really about like, are you just as someone who who wants to be an informed person in the world? Are you? Are you exposing yourself just enough to get the education you need. You don't need to be a master, you know. So like a lot of my clients, Greg, one of the rules that we have is it's in the book, is stop reading about it. Stop it. This guy from Canada who gave me review was like, Well, I'm really glad I didn't read chapter nine, because I wouldn't have gotten through the book. And I now understand all this stuff. And you know, and my point, and Michael Brynn from via neuroscience, his point about the book, which was, was very nice of him, was that the Information Age happened, right? And it was like, oh my god, we're gonna have answers to everything. And then it was like, oh my god, we don't really have any, like, boxes to put things in, and categories, and things are actually kind of more confusing, you know. So what are we going to do about that? And so, like, one of the things I think, that I've really been, I guess, touched on a personal level, is that some of the feedback about the book is that it's done that for people where they've gone. Boy, I have a I'm like, a registered sleep whatever. You know, they're like in an institution. And I had a lot of scattered information about sleep, but that chapter on X gave me like a little category, like a little vehicle where I went, Oh, I can put that all in here now, and that's going to make my that's part of my journey, an easier step. Yeah, you give

Greg Voisen
people, well, I think what the book does is you give the people a lot of not just information, but things that certainly can work. And one of the things you say is that you, I mean, I That's why this book is a bit contrarian, because you say there, there is no perfect sleep. It's it's unattainable, that it's really more about consistent improvement with what you mentioned. So how can those listeners out there right now, and What recommendations would you have them or setting realistic sleep goals that avoid this perfectionism track, I will tell you I know I was on earlier with with pre interview, and I told the guy that I was 70 years old, and he goes, you're 70. And he goes, you know, you can't be so I said, Yeah. He said, Well, you're from California. You just look great. And I was like, I was like, Hey, I'm 70 years old. Believe me, trust me. He didn't. He didn't believe me at all. And I said, as I've aged. Okay, I know this is, this is I sleep better? Now. I know other people have said as worse, they sleep worse. Yeah, because, because you would probably say, as a fitness coach, you probably get older people that go, I can't sleep. I wake up at midnight night and I'm and I'm taking a pee or I'm doing whatever, whatever it is, right? And here's what I would say, and I'm not here to train or advise anybody. The first thing is, is that I always do my gratitudes in the morning and my gratitudes at night before I go to bed, I attempt to, actually, from a light standpoint, move the light rheostat down like slowly. Now, I know this may sound weird, but it's what I do. Okay, and from a comfort position, my wife and I sleep with two little dogs, so I have to position the dog right so that the dog isn't interrupting the sleep, but oftentimes I'll have to push her this way or whatever. But here's my point. I think when you're feeling at peace and you're feeling comfortable and you feel good about your life overall, and you're not worried about tomorrow, and you're not bringing tomorrow's into today. That literally, when your head hits the pillow, the only thing you have in your life is grateful for everything that's around you, and you literally sleep better.

Nicholas Stewart
And if you want to, if you want to go, silly, right? No, because Greg, first of all, like, half the time when I'm working with a client, I laugh at myself and go, I can't believe this is the thing that we're going to do, because it sounds silly and it's and it's like what you're talking about, but the the thing that was going to mention was that, in terms of, you know, like, how do you balance things that are custom to you? Greg, oh, I know, as I say, the biochemical thing, the gratitude stuff that you're doing, it releases oxytocin, Greg, you're gonna sleep better.

Greg Voisen
No, I just this is an argument

Nicholas Stewart
that I make against racists, where I'm like, you're having a hard time sleeping. Become a more compassionate person, because you'll sleep better. Based on the research, I

Greg Voisen
now there you hit on something. Okay? I hope everybody heard what Nick just said, because the Dalai Lama has been saying this for years. You know, we ever said, Oh, we got such a divisive world. The only thing that's really going to fix this is that we become more compassionate for one another and have more understanding, and I will tell you, the less resistance you put up to the world, the better your sleep is. Absolutely, the more resistance you put up to the world, the worse your sleep is. So when we're young and we're running and we have a young family, because I raised a young family, right? You go through this, Hey, you're gonna have a family. You gotta make money, and you gotta blah, all these things you gotta do, and so your mind is filled with all the stuff. And so when you go to go to sleep, no, you're not thinking about sleep, and you're thinking about all the stuff, and it's running around your brain. And I know the meditation people, because I'm a meditator, will say, you know, that's the monkey mind. Well, that's

Nicholas Stewart
the top that. That's the top three client issue. Yeah, monkey, Mike, no, they'll say it in different I'll say it that way, but the they'll say it in different ways. Like, hey, I think I'm like, I think I'm repeatedly thinking constantly about maybe I'm in trouble at work and it keeps going and I'm in bed, you know. Like, it might come out like that.

Greg Voisen
So let me ask you this. Do you get clients that ever feel how to frame this question? For you, they feel they enter their sleep chamber, whatever it might be, bedroom, whatever doesn't matter, but they actually feel like they're somebody's going to smother them, or that they're not going to be able to make it through the night. They're actually afraid, so afraid that they can't sleep. Yes, they're, oh, they're afraid of some external, something that's affecting their mental process. Then, instead of actually sleeping, they get up and they go down, and they go to their computer and they type on the keys, or they do whatever, until they get tired enough that they walk their ass back up to bed and they put it in there and go to sleep. Is that a common thing?

Nicholas Stewart
Yeah, Greg, this is one of the reasons why, like, I literally, I don't like to make rules for people, but I only have, like, two program rules. The first one is no suffering in bed. So if they're doing the six week program with me for that six weeks, and I've asked them, I said, Tell me when you walk by that bed at night, you know, before bedtime and you and you see it? Do you think to yourself, that is where I suffer and and this is where it gets emotionally upsetting. I can hear in their voice that the answer is yes, and that they're sad and that it's upsetting. Doing that is a very violent, immediate rip cord pull to start decoupling your association with that bedroom being about sleep and suffering. I had one lady that I offered it to who helped me out with some business stuff, and I caught up with her, like, a month later, and she was like, Nick, oh, my God, I had insomnia for 10 years, and then you told me no suffering in bed. So if it was like, I looked at the clock and I was like, shoot, I've been in here for two hours, I realized, Oh, I'm suffering. I gotta go grab I gotta go hit the couch in the living room with a nice book on fiction and a candle and just spend my time in an in a in a warm kind of way. And if I get tired, I go back and you keep doing that, people think, Oh, my God, I'll have to do 100 times. I've never met anyone who's had to do that 100 times ever right now. But to your point, yeah, that becomes, it becomes an association of, like, this is my doom space.

Greg Voisen
Well, yeah, it almost like a claustrophobic feeling. I don't know how to explain it, but I've had it, and I understand what it feels like. And it feels very confining, very challenging. Like, hey, you're lost, you're you, so you got to get up and do something just to get away from that. And and, you know, here's another thing in Chapter Eight of the book, you talk about this connection between daytime habits nighttime sleep quality. So how does it that what we do during the day directly impact our ability to sleep at night? Because I think people okay, hey, you could call it a habit, a routine. I've had tons of people on here talking about, you know, the guy from Stanford who's written all the books on tiny habits, right? So you get so you look at it and go, Hey, I have a habit. I exercise in the morning, I meditate, I do this, I go to work, I come back, I play with the kids, I watch a little TV, and then I go to bed. Okay, what are the habits that could actually help one change, that they could change, that would have the biggest super impact on their sleep?

Nicholas Stewart
That's easy, but let me give you a sneak answer to the How does day treat night night? This is, this is one of those chapters where I had a guy who was a 20 year sleep technologist read the chapter and turn around and be like that. Just gave me license, understanding, permission, embracement of when I get home from the night shift, I go outside in the woods, and I'm with my dog and within the sun, and all of a sudden he realized, like, Oh, I'm working on my sleep right there. That's what's happening. So like, biochemically, for example, in this Greg seriously for if you have a listener who's like, knows your listener might not have this problem, but if they know someone who has insomnia like I did, I can guarantee that if some professional had said to me, Hey, Nick, just make sure that you get out side before 10am take a walk for 30 minutes in the sun. Don't stare at it, but let it come into your eyes that will create the serotonin that magically will stay in your system until the sun goes down and converts into melatonin. Greg, I think that would have saved me a year and a half of insomnia.

Greg Voisen
Great tip. I mean, there's a lot of people that don't get out in the sun in the morning. I know my wife and I walk our dogs every morning for almost 45 minutes, and usually the sun's up. I live in California, so we have a lot of sun. But the point is, is, you're right. I mean, I think just being outdoors period is a big point. And that leads me to this you were talking about just few minutes ago, people that work night shifts or work irregular hours. I get it that would have to be tough. I never did that whole graveyard thing. I'm not certain that I could. I'm sure I could adapt, and that's where I want to talk to you. How can they adapt the principles of fixing the day, because we have some out there that are listening to improve their sleep despite these horrible, non traditional schedules, nurses, doctors, guys that are working in factories over you know, nighttime shifts, whatever it might be,

Nicholas Stewart
I think, I think it's a three part thing. One is however much time you have between you getting off shift and then getting home and it's bedtime, that you're maximizing activities, thought processes that are going to really impact sleep quality. That's going to be different for everybody, right? That's where the custom part comes in. The second part is, do you have a sleep issue? Do you have a sleep problem that we need to look at for during the day, when you are sleeping? So we need to get that fixed. And then lastly is, however much time you have before you have to start your shift again? Can we come up with a more appropriate, lighter set of routines and activities that also maximize the sleep, you know, and those things could be different for different people. Like, one example is, and it's totally weird. I tested it if you take a walk in the evening, like, you know, like when the sun is going down. When you get home, your blood pressure is down. It's like, shouldn't it be up? I just went for this long walk, but it's a soothing, transitionary type of walk that that does that. So, yeah, so I would say that, and that does help, Greg really well into your question about how do, how and why do I balance this idea of custom routines with everything can't be custom, and you're absolutely right. So, you know, for example, I was working with a guy with with night terrors, yeah. So I have a six week curriculum. I would never teach someone mindfulness meditation who's from the United States. In week one, they'd be like, What is this fruity meditating off from crap. I would never do it. It's like in week four or five that I do it. But for him, it's, it's mission critical number one, right? It's just start to learn how to psychologically disassociate. How do we learn tools for when he has the night terrors? How do we build up his capacity for mindfulness meditation? That's like, we got to go there first, and then we can line up the blocks. So it's different with different people. You know, another guy just started talking to, I talked to you before he kind of realized, shoot, I'm I think I impulsively ruminate, I'm a ruminator. So for him, we looked at what are the best little tactics to help get the rumination down enough to help you sleep. Because this is I've told other people, I'm not medically licensed to do this. It's not my job to do this, but I'm not here to figure out why Greg is anxious. Greg has come and gone. I need to sleep. So whatever we got to do to get me to sleep, that's fine. If you want to go to therapy and unpack your years with your parents in high school and why it's led to your anxiety, then go, be it, but it's my job to supersede that and get you over it, right? Get it makes sense. So a lot of the methods, a lot of the things that we do, they're the same person to person. It's just usually how much modification specialization do we need to work on for that, that that repair piece, and then what's a nice flow of building up from there, and those things are all the same. And I would think, I

Greg Voisen
think what you're doing, though, Nick, is you're just even bringing awareness to the fact that the sleep patterns people have are not as good as they could be. So let's repair. You said you were like the repairman in the car. Okay, so maybe my left window goes down when I hit the electric button, but the right one doesn't, or the back or the hood doesn't go up, or whatever. The point is, you're taking all those little things that people have just decided to live with, and you're saying, look at it. Your car can run a lot better, and I can show you ways to make it run better. And all I need to do is a few tweaks here and put a couple electrical cords in. Now, I interviewed a guy recently that I really liked. His name was sage Rader, and he is a neuro acrobatics and it's somatic breathing. So you said, Hey, I Well, I don't introduce meditation until the third, fourth week, but it's a common practice today for people to when they're anxious, look at their reading right to take in a deep breath. Let it out, take in another deep breath. Question it. I need one right now. Why? Just from being interviewed by me? So I was going to ask you, are you working with people on sleep habits to actually change their breathing habits, which change their heart rate variability, which would also change all the other functions that are going on? I was just, it's just an off the wall question for you, Nick but Are you, are you working with people on their sleep actually looking at their breath?

Nicholas Stewart
There's two ways, one that you already know and one that I just started experimenting with that is so cool. One is obviously the mindfulness meditation stuff, right, right? That that's first and foremost. And we can, and we can kind of dial into that a little bit later. The second thing where I'm getting deep breathing is something that I just experimented with a client who kind of didn't do great in his first two weeks, kind of didn't follow through with the mini plan that we set out. And Greg to our earlier conversation, why? Because he was in the perfect trap. If I don't do the activity that we've talked about and then do the one after it, it's not perfect, so I better not do it at all. Right, right, right, right. So again, that's still informing our culture big time. So what I did with him was I said, we're gonna we're gonna use AI right now to customize a routine for you that is short enough that you'll do it easy enough that your brain knows I can do that and is going to elicit some of that deep breathing parasympathetic system, non anxiety system. So Greg, I literally share the screen with him. We pulled up AI and we started playing with it and going. We started with five minutes of mindfulness meditation. I said, Hey, why don't we just let's bring it down to three. And then we started putting in things like, give me a three part meditation, one minute each that emphasizes deep, diaphragmic breathing and the vagus nerve. And, you know, with some trimming here and there and playing with the AI, we came out with this little three minute meditation where the first minute he went outside and he did the traditional part of practicing what I taught him, and he's like, I can do it for a minute. The second was a sun meditation, which he loved, because he loved being on the sun. And the third, as you had talked about earlier, is it was kind of a nice little minute of, like they call forest bathing. Have you heard of forest bathing? Oh

Greg Voisen
yeah,

Nicholas Stewart
it's kind of, it was basically like one minute forest bathing, where it's like, listen to the leaves, listen to this, listen that it's only three minutes, you know. And it was like, Do you think you can handle this for two weeks, you know? And it's, and we call it, we put down his name. We're like, the such and such a name, custom three minute morning meditation, you know. So that's where we can even customize all the way down to that even, yeah, which is really cool.

Greg Voisen
Well, you, you know, in kind of summon up the interview here, because I want to, we'll probably invite you back for a part two, because I know there's a lot more we can talk about. So let's put that on

Nicholas Stewart
right team. Give me, give me a page and a half of questions.

Greg Voisen
I know, but we also know that people's attention span is like, literally, Nick we watch the drop off on the podcast where people like, oh, they hit minute, 1718, 1920, and it goes because they just, they can't, they can't handle it. So what we're going to do is wrap this one up. We're going to invite you back again for certain, because you've got a lot to let people about. But let's talk about, you know, sleep fitness, the the book. You know, most people would say, hey, well, that's relatively new. Well, it is relatively new. Well, how do you envision sleep fitness becoming as an integral part of kind of people's lives today, because we're all wearing one of these, most of us, or we've got some aura ring or something that we put on, and it tells us our sleep is, whatever what needs to happen for the listeners out there to shift, for That to basically to occur, because, look, there's a lot of people that don't wear an aura, don't wear an Apple Watch, don't track their sleep, could give a shit less. And then there's gazillions of people that have bought into all the technology. They're wearing, the aura ring, they got the Apple Watch, they're taking the melatonin. They're doing it, but

Nicholas Stewart
they're doing it,

Greg Voisen
but they're doing it because everybody said, do it, you're gonna sleep more, and they really haven't improved their sleep whatsoever. So in looking at where this is all going, I'm not asking you to be a prognosticator and tell everybody this is what's gonna happen, but in your humble opinion, water the items I could integrate today to improve my sleep, no matter who I am, whether I have the oral watch or ring or the Apple Watch or not. And two, where do you see this headed? Two part question. Sure.

Nicholas Stewart
Yeah. So number one, every sales and marketing meeting I went into for a year and a half all came to the same statement to me. So for those of you who care about business, following my opposite example, they were like, you can't name it this. It will fail. No one will know what it is. You are doomed. In a way, they were right. However, because of my personal experience, and part Greg of that book got put together in that more concise way of like, let's feature 10 things, because I had a friend who, at age 40, because of sleep apnea, some insomnia, a little depression, and then led to a cardiac died, and I realized, Oh, my God, it's too late. I've been working on Lord of the Rings trilogy. On this issue, I need to get something that's faster and gets to people quicker and can educate them about angles and things that are just not in other sleep books and and if I could write it, thinking of him reading it. Would it be helpful? And so I think the sleep fitness part became, I it's not a copyrighted term or whatever, but I just basically looked at our history, right? Medical doctors were like Jesus, obesity and sleep health has gotten out of control. We need help. What happened? Greg, we have physical trainers. We got clothing stores, we got Lululemon, we got every fitness program ready to take your money and put you on the Cycler. I mean, we've got a serious industry that's totally built out as a secondary industry, because the medical profession really can support the demand of the problems. So I don't really care, honestly, if sleep fitness is a word that dies, it's just a word that I think denotes and suggests that there's a possibility for things like Efren and research, right? Who they're like, Oh yeah, the guys who do research down in the sports center, they're connected to these guys who are on the teams, and they have these research questions, and then they test them for six months. Greg, that does not exist in the sleep community. It's not there. So we really, to me, if we're going to solve the problem a we need something that unifies the idea in a way that makes sense to our culture, and then also would make it so people who do have power or a special gift can partner and connect with other people to create solutions that to your earlier question, where is this all going? Only they know you know, like that's for the future to behold.

Greg Voisen
Well, one of the things the listeners can do Nick is, right now, they can go to your website at sleep fitness coach.com the cool thing about Nick's website is you can get it in the nighttime view or the daytime view, which he's got it right there. So depending on what, what your, what your, whatever suits your fancy, you can actually go and do a coaching session with him, and you can sign up right there. On there, you can read more about the book. He's got sleep trainings, which is the touch up the sleep fitness 101, training program, and then he calls it limited and selective full immersion week, which would be the end person, I guess, in Boston. Is that correct? Yeah. Well,

Nicholas Stewart
I used to have an Airbnb that was completely retrofitted for sleep, but my neighbor wrecked it.

Greg Voisen
Oh, okay, so

Nicholas Stewart
listeners half listen to Greg. Something happened to my website. I'm going to send him my links. My home is at LinkedIn, and I did want to mention that for between now and the end of 2024 if I'm just offering people free sleep assessments, so I'll get referrals and get on a call with someone, and it's just like, let's talk about what your options are. And they might have nothing to do with me, but I like to leave them with a mini little strategy going forward. So please at LinkedIn you know, definitely track me down if you just want to have a conversation. And I can't, I can't help everybody. Greg, I had a guy a couple weeks ago who has Restless Leg Syndrome genetically since he was a child, you know. This is a very ignored subject matter, you know. And I have, of course, have done my best to help him, but I don't have an option and an answer for him totally, because this is really uncharted territory. And then, you know, the last thing I would say is, with the sleep fitness book, one of the stronger feedback points was how much time it saved people, I got like, several comments of like, oh, geez, I'm glad I read that chapter, because it saved me two and a half hours of thinking this when I really only needed to do this. So it's a definite time saver, that's for sure. Well,

Greg Voisen
one of the things I look at is your reviews on Amazon. This book's only been out since May. You have all these reviews and and literally, you've got five star ratings. So you did something right with this book. And I'm going to read just a quote from a lady who had insomnia, and she says, as somebody who battled with restless sleep for years, I appreciated that the author drawing from personal structurals and extensive academic research, provides a freshly realistic approach to sleep, instead of offering cookie cutter solutions, this book delves into the complexities of sleep issues, emphasizing that there is no universal remedy. The personalized approach resonates deeply, especially when traditional methods have consistently fallen short. So, you know, people like that that are writing this time and time again about you, Nick, congratulations, because these are great testimonials for people out there that are thinking about and having a restless night. Definitely. Go get this book. Go check out his website. Check him out on LinkedIn as well. We'll put him there. We're also going to do a volume two of this. We'll have Nick back on again to discuss. As he said, he held up the questions, some of those other questions that we didn't get to so hard. Greg

Nicholas Stewart
was on me. He was so hard on me that once I thought I was ready, I flipped the page over and was like, there's a question 12. Oh, my goodness, but I think

Greg Voisen
you did a great job today, and I appreciate it. Any last words for the author, the listeners, before we actually truncate our call here?

Nicholas Stewart
Yeah, I think you know, one thing that I just go back to is that education part. So if, if you don't do anything else, something that I started, and it's free on LinkedIn, is a newsletter called the energy and sleep newsletter, and it's been a really helpful source for people to get current information, and it's free, and it comes to your email box, so definitely sign up there and check it out. It's just a free resource and and I do put a lot of time and thought into it and do special features and whatnot like that. So I think you know for everybody, it's just, it's really about learning and getting caught up with some of this, and to your point originally, with some of those testimonials, you know, the same with some some social media posts that blew up, Greg, I can see now that people, at least in the States, they're tired of going, okay, Greg, here's our book on The Sleep prescription seven days to unlocking your best rest. This author is going to sue me now. And the fact is, Greg, you probably don't fit into box one. You don't fit into box three, with the arrows all pointing to all these things, right? Right? And so I really, I think the thing this year, you know, I think two things I walked away this year was, one, wow, people are sick of being put in boxes, and they want to be treated like people. And the second thing is, for those listeners who are like, Oh, my sleep's okay, you're selling yourself so short. Yeah, that's, that's definitely, that's old. That's old sleep thinking. I've had to spend more time this year convincing people who will even come back to me a year later and be like, I'm ready, but they needed to hear like, Greg, it's okay if your quality, I can't get you a new job. I can't get you an extra 75 grand, but I can give you a capacity for energy in your life that enriches the quality of your life, that you enjoy more, that you feel more engaged in, and that alone is worth the trip. Well,

Greg Voisen
you know Nick, I would just tell people this is a old, little cliche. If you're tired of being tired, okay, go to Nick's website. I know that so many people, they'll say, how you doing? They're going, I'm tired. It's like, No, you don't want to answer. I'm tired because then you're programming and subconscious as well. So go see Nick, go get this book. Hey buddy, we'll have you back on again for volume two. Thanks for this time, namaste. I know this is a Eastern tradition, and maybe for all of you, it doesn't freak out any of my guys, because they know me. Thank you, namaste, for being on inside personal growth. It was a great podcast. Take care. Nick, Yeah,

Nicholas Stewart
you too, Greg, that was really my honor.