The 7 Doctors That Brought Us Back to Ourselves

lessons, expert wisdom, and practical tips to help you stop sleepwalking through life and start living it on your terms. You ready to wake up and thrive? Let's go. Hello. You are tuning in to a wakeup call, your weekly dose of wisdom and energy with us. I am Tess, a practitioner of positive psych and well-being. And you are? I am Lane, a seven times world champion surfer and a champion for mental wellness and co-founder of Awake Academy. So, we are a home of mental and emotional fitness tools, science, and most importantly, a way of living that makes you feel happier and more confident within yourself. So today we

calling it a challenge is we're inviting you to engage with each one of these doctors for the next seven weeks. So this isn't just any challenge. This is a challenge that has transformed my life and transformed yours too, right? Yes. Where did you learn about this? So these were tips and tools and habits that I implemented after I won my sixth consecutive world title. So it's uh a variety of different and very easy, simple, accessible tools that helped me maintain my health and wellbeing.

us and it has to it has to be overwhelming and over complicated. where in actual fact these seven doctors or these seven principles for health and wellbeing are really simple, really applicable, but quite transformative and we all have access to them every day. So the purpose behind this challenge is to teach you the importance of the simple things but also encourage you to start habit stacking. And we don't have to compartmentalize. We actually have to embrace the whole

100% guarantee you you are going to feel better. Everyone that does this feels a lot better. It unlocks a better version of yourself because when you prioritize these seven doctors, you're really prioritizing yourself. And when you prioritize yourself, you're saying to the world, I'm ready. And I'm worthy. And that was your theme of the year. I'm worthy. The word is alignment. And these these seven doctors, these principles help align me with my health and wellbeing, my vitality, my energy. And I want to bring more energy and vitality to this world on a day-to-day basis. And that means doing the little things cuz when you're willing to do the little things, it it means that you're actually willing to invest in yourself to generate or create the big results. So these are your 1%s. These are my 1 percenters. And we all hear about that in the athletic world, but now we can incorporate it into just being a human being. If this is lighting you up, we are going to do this as a 7week challenge within the Awake Collective. So, jump on awakeacademy.com.au/seven doctors and you can join us for 7 weeks. There's going to be challenges and prizes along the way, but mostly you get to do it with a like-minded community because we know that people need accountability. So, we give these to people as like ground rules. If you get these seven doctors right, your life will improve so that you can then look at what else you need to do to improve your life. So from a seven doctor's perspective, we're going to kick off with your favorite one. It's the easiest, most efficient way to boost our vitality, cleanse our mind, and make ourselves feel a whole lot better. When we name the doctor, ask yourself how are you currently tracking with this doctor? This will give you a baseline

liters a day, but that doesn't take into account our size, our exercise, whether in menopause, whether you're sweating a lot. There's a lot of environmental challenges or issues that we need to take into account. But essentially, let's simplify it. We're going to give you a formula that you can use to determine how much water as an individual you need to drink to be cellularly hydrated. But there's so many benefits to drinking more water, but primarily improved cognitive function, decreased appetite, elimination of toxins. And the body tricks you into thinking you're hungry when in actual fact you're thirsty. If you wake up hungry, that is actually an indication that you may be dehydrated because we lose almost a liter of water a night just through our breathing. So, start your day with a big glass of water. I changed my day because of this. I used to wake up and down a liter of coffee. I've changed this to increase my water and my hydration, but I put a crack of sea salt in the water cuz I know that that will absorb in my body better. So that has dramatically changed my I used to get quite a lot of brain fog. So, that has been a big build for me. And now Chris is bringing me a glass of water with sea salt and a coffee in the morning. So, I love him even more. So Kirk and I start every day with a big glass of water with some magnesium powder in it because that helps with muscle cramps and stress. And then he also puts a bit of mineral salt or sea salt and some hydration powder in there and some creatine powder. Like he started turning it into a whole miracle water. What we're inviting everyone to do is start your day with a glass of water. add a bit of magnesium to it or a bit of sea salt because it eliminates the the cognitive fog. Um, activates the digestive system, eliminates a lot of those toxins, activates your immune system, just gets you functioning properly and it's a really great way to be healthier and happier. It's actually quite simple. And I like to finish drinking large quantities of water before 4:00. Otherwise, you're up all night. So, challenge one is water. Drink 2 liters of water a day. Trust your thirst. It's there for a reason. Doctor number two is exercise. So,

morning or whenever you wake up. And the brain and the neck store a lot of your toxins as it's processed through the night. So, moving your body straight up actually eliminates all of those toxins through your body. It gives you energy. It gives you clarity. It gives you focus. It is the body's natural anti-depressant. And exercise is probably our number one. It is my number one doctor. You never regret an exercise. And I love how you say get up and do it first thing in the morning. You don't have to if you're not a morning person. But the challenge is if we don't schedule the time and honor that time and guard that time. Then if that time ultimately gets hijacked by something, then we suggest to ourselves, oh, I'll do it at lunchtime or I'll do it at the end of the day. and then we run out of the time and then we haven't done our exercise. That's okay. Get back on the wagon and do it again tomorrow. If that's the case, then start incorporating incidental or incremental exercise into your day. Take the steps instead of the elevator. Have a one-on-one meeting walking around the blocks. Get outside and get some fresh air and get your body moving because that's the way that we're going to help eliminate a lot of the mental fog and also the anxiety and the tension that builds up throughout our day. And we do this work with corporates and the fact that they've just switched Zoom meetings to walking meetings improves their connection because they're getting outside more, they're connecting with nature more and sunshine, but most of all they're boosting their endorphins throughout the day and that keeps you energized. That is doctor number two. Exercise and or movement. Do it with joy. I think people see exercise as you have to go to the gym and thrash yourself for 30 minutes. That is not the case. When I was my most broken and depleted, I hated going to the gym. It just reminded me everything that I wasn't. and I needed to remind myself everything that I was and focus on what I could do so I could go for a walk. I couldn't go for a run. So, I really enjoyed the process of I can. I wanted to reinforce the message around measuring your expectations, being realistic about it. When you are broken and depleted, don't project yourself into the future. Just honor where you are right now and do what you can. You didn't fall out of shape overnight. You're not going to transform your vitality in one move in one moment of exercise. It's a consistent habit that builds over time. And we speak with a lot of people who are going through an injury and even mental illness like that is a silent injury and they say, well, I used to go for hourlong runs and now I can't do any of that. So focus on what you can do and start small. So, a 20-minute walk, a couple of stair runs, and soon you'll be doing Stacy Sims sprint program with LB at the beach. And the thing is, if you don't like exercise, find something that you do enjoy. Because it doesn't have to be a gym workout, it doesn't have to be hard. It just needs to be enjoyable cuz that's what's going to motivate you to keep going back and doing it again. Do you know what the best benefit of exercise was for me this year? So I've been going to F45 for many many years before injury after injury and I used to really avoid connection with people because I really struggled with connection with myself. So joining that community and the friends that I've made there have just transformed my life. It's given me a place to belong and some really beautiful friends in there. So, don't be afraid of joining a gym and doing a challenge cuz you will meet some people that could change your life. high performance athlete goes with the biggest loser coach to get her exercise. I go with the community. All right, doctor

1972 due to the high cost of food. So, it's not a very productive or practical model to follow. In actual fact, we've turned it upside down since then. But understanding what to eat, when to eat, how to eat is customized by the individual. So what I'm going to refer to from my personal experience when it comes to having a healthy diet is the importance that I found, especially as I'm in menopause and getting older, is the importance of incorporating more protein into my diet. Now, I learned this as an athlete, that if I have protein at breakfast, I sustain my energy and I don't have sugar crashes in the afternoon.

drinking espressos. What were you doing? I was having scrambled eggs with chives and goats cheese with a green tea and some avocado with the eggs. So I had healthy fats, healthy oils and lots of protein. And you definitely weren't doing this bag bowl before performance day, were you? I was not carbing it up. I was protein loading, not carb loading. So, you've been doing this for many, many years. When I reflect on moments in my career, there were times when I fell off on one of my waves, which cost me the win. And I know it's because I failed to fuel my body. Now, as women, we've been subscribing to this belief that less food is better. And I've been able to incorporate more fuel, which gives me more energy, which enables me to train harder for longer. So, I am a wholehearted believer and subscriber to the Stacy Sims model of fueling the body before I go to the gym and then fueling my body after exercise to ensure it replenishes and rebuilds and I don't lose all that lean muscle mass. cuz in menopause I was so tired. I was so exhausted. I was fasting and I lost a lot of lean muscle mass and I was just depleted all the time. So eating more protein has absolutely changed my life. So I grew up with the saying by Kate Moss, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Let's change that to nothing tastes as good as strong feels. So it's not about how you want to look, it's how you want to feel. Do you know what I love about when we work with corporates, we actually get a hold of the menu of the day. And we change the whole menu and how people eat to sustain themselves throughout the day of a conference. Cuz often you're in a dark air conditioned room. You're taking on a lot of cognitive overload. And then you're eating a big carby lunch falling asleep at 3:00 and then eating the caffeine hit and the sugar hit. So, if you want to increase your energy, your brain power, your cognitive function, and stabilize your emotional response, and I always say an emotionally regulated home is a happy home. If you can try and strip out all the processed foods, if it comes in a packet, don't eat it. And try and eat more whole foods and protein in your diet. So, I actually think we need to change the doctor to healthy nutrition instead of diet. starting your day with protein curbs food cravings, late night snacking, and afternoon sugar crashes. A high protein diet increases fullness, reduces hunger So that was doctor number three is healthy nutrition. rank that. How are you currently tracking against nutrition in terms of energy? Strip out one thing. Don't change everything.

improves your mood and energy for the day. We're constantly looking for these magic pills, but really it's about magic outdoors. We like to say if you feel blue, touch green. that really is about getting outside and really feeling sunshine on your body, on your skin. And it lowers blood pressure. Elevates your mood, lowers blood pressure, strengthens your bones. why wouldn't you want to get more sunshine? So, I incorporate sunshine breaks into my day. every to 3 minutes to reset your whole body and improve your cognitive function throughout the day. So, settle your nervous system. Our challenge on this one is to get sunshine breaks into your day. And that means you can walk to work, ride to work, have sunshine breaks with your office colleagues, to have those outdoor meetings, get your lunch away from the computer, away from the office desk. The bravest people I see are the ones who are eating lunch outside off their phone. So, how are you tracking against sunshine? At this point, we encourage habit stacking. So, go outside, close your eyes, take a deep breath, have a glass of water with a bit of cracked sea salt in there, and enjoy your sunshine break. One thing we forgot to mention with the water challenge is that alcohol, soda drinks, energy drinks, juice, coffee, black tea, they don't count. Coconut water does though. Coconut water and straight mineral water or just straight water. Okay. Doctor number five. One of my favorite

overwhelmed. When I surf and I fall off, I learn to giggle in that moment because it detaches me from the story that I'm about to subscribe to. It stops me from going into this long-term story about, oh, someone's probably watching me, judging me, and criticizing me. I just laugh and go, that was ridiculous. But laughter is a good medicine because if we think about how much we laugh, kids laugh about 400 times a day. The average adult laughs about 15 times a day. We need to bring more laughter into our lives. Life doesn't have to be so serious all the damn time. Do you know who taught me how to laugh more? Bluey. You know I'm a voice in Bluey. Season 1, episode 26. laughter actually builds resilience. And I think about this as we raise a generation who are called the anxious generation for a reason because everything is so serious. You're watching content that you shouldn't be exposed to from a very young age. And when we come up against all of these stresses to be able to laugh in it, not out of spite or not acknowledging what happened, but you and I sometimes just go, what the? And just laugh at it cuz it decreases your energy load and your emotional load in that moment. And actually that's where you regulate. Cuz it activates the parasympathetic nervous system which is the pause, the play, the relaxation response. Otherwise, you stay stuck in the sympathetic nervous system, which is the freeze, the fight, the flight. And if you're always on that, then you are elevating cortisol, adrenaline. so laughter is the quickest way to deactivate stress. So, our challenge for laughter. how often do you laugh? How often do you schedule in moments of laughter? So, how do you schedule moments of laughter? Well, you put in a movie that makes you laugh. you send each other memes. You actually actively change your algorithm on your social media to serve you comedy content or someone that makes you laugh. if I have needed some joy and laughter in my life Chris watches Seinfeld or Ricky Gervais whereas I like to watch the funny dog videos on YouTube. So schedule in joy and laughter into your life because it increases our dopamine which are our natural painkillers.

mask, and all of those things. And they do matter. But where we find the biggest cut through is when people plan active rest. Your brain cannot work all day and all night. So, we go from work screens to home screens and then we're on double screens. Our brains do need time to recover. if you've ever worked in the creative industry, they have pool tables or ping pong tables, that's actually there as a creative force. It's to give the mind a break. And as Einstein and all of the biggest inventors of our time thought about things and then they let them go and they rested and that is where the solution to the problem lies. So how do you active rest LB? I active rest through baking, meditating, gardening, napping, coloring in. Anything that's mindful, anything that mentally is still stimulating but not physically too overwhelming because if we are consciously solving problems all the time, there's only so much bandwidth available to us. And so rest allows your subconscious mind to be activated and that's where the solutions come from. So, when you rest, you lower your cortisol. You incubate new ideas. You allow a moment of insight. That's why good ideas happen in the shower. I like to schedule rest every Thursday. Thursday is my day of being a stay-at-home wife. It's the day I take off with Benji to be proactive with him. So baking is one way I step into that role really quickly. If I've had a busy week, my baking is awful. the number one trait of burnout is perfectionism. So I have learned to let that go in my rest. It doesn't have to look perfect. It can be baking in chaos. It can be going outside and gardening even though you've never picked up a garden tool in your life. it's just about giving your brain other ways to decompress. We are into our last doctor.

in a way that is free and safe and easy for you. Kirk, my husband journals in his phone every day, but it's more of an account of what happened yesterday. So, we have a reference point. his journal has become part of the INXS archives. Because he has literally documented every day of their entire career. journaling is a really good way to boost our immune system, clear the mental clutter in our heads. it's a great way to just dump and let go of. I call it get it out, don't take it out. I started journaling when I was a kid. I eb and flow with my journaling practice as well. I have a journal next to my bed as a reminder and accountability partner. It helps me sleep better if I journal at night. But then if I've got things going on in my head that I can't seem to let go of or can't seem to make sense of, then I often go back to our coursework on the on your truth course. I go back to the stories framework. I write out my story. I rewrite the story and then I journal from there. I tend to journal when I'm feeling an elevated sense of emotion. It can be elevated happiness or elevated sadness. Either way, I love to just brain dump and let it out because there's only so much we can carry. And it's liberating to let it go. And it's amazing how quick once you just write it down and let it go, you move on and you're no longer harboring the emotions. what I love about journaling and dumping and getting it out is the clarity you find after. It's like the solution finds itself and you no longer hold on to those words that drive those stories that drive that frustration and you get to see a side of yourself which is with more grace, more self forgiveness and more self-love. So our challenge is 5 to 10 minutes of journaling daily. if you join the awake collective, you actually get a journal prompt every day for the whole week and we see huge transformations cuz everyone talks about gratitude and it is so important that we talk about gratitude, but it's the feeling you get and that you associate for what you're grateful for and we take you through that process. You have this thing about anchor management and gratitude. with gratitude. we're so quick to be flippant about gratitude. I'm grateful for the lights in here today. I'm grateful for you. But if you don't anchor in the why, then it

intrinsically motivated to do what they do versus extrinsically motivated, which continues to eb and flow and change all the time. when you're intrinsically motivated, you're always holding yourself accountable to show up as your best self.

that actually will help us sustain the busy periods. He also said to do it outside a kitchen, too, so that you can narrow in even in the chaos and the noise of life. meditate outside the kitchen because if you can maintain focus and clarity in the craziness of life and the sounds, that's when you really get the most out of meditation. Kirk and I were flying somewhere and one of my favorite ways to meditate is the minute I sit on a plane I put my headphones in and meditate. But it was before the days when we had earpods. We still had the ones with cords. And I put one in his ear and one in my ear and put on the meditation. And Kirk literally said, I can't do it. It's too busy. It's too noisy. I said, that's exactly why we're doing it right here, right now. And we persevered. My meditation teacher taught me in those moments, you focus on the tip of your nose and you just slow down because you can still hear the noise outside of you. But if you're focusing on the tip and on your breath, it brings you back to center. So, this is for you guys now to either rank how you're going on all of the seven doctors and then start the challenge yourself or join us at the awake collective slash seven doctors challenge and you will join a very big like-minded community. So, the Seven Doctors Challenge kicks off on January 28th. we encourage you now to sign up for that or just pick one doctor that you ranked the lowest on. Often it's the journaling or the laughter that a lot of people need to improve on. No judgment here. Tag us at Awake Academy. We love seeing you guys out there taking on the challenge. Bring a loved one on the journey with you and make this year about fun growth, not about doing things that are about discipline. connect with how it makes you feel because if you feel better, you're going to be better for everyone around you. So, make this year the best year for yourself so you can live your best life. And we will see you next week on a wakeup call. Thank you for joining us.

worthy. I'm worthy. So, let's do this together. Please share this episode if it resonated with you. And join us at awakeacademy.com.au. And we'll see you next week for more tips and tools on how to live your best life. Thanks everyone. Beautiful.