Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimized Practices for Waking, Working, Learning, Eating, Training, Playing, Sleeping, and Sex

Aubrey Marcus has written possibly the greatest health/fitness/personal development book that I have ever come across. From the first chapter to the last, the quality of the content is consistently engaging, all the way to the end. There's never a point where you start to feel the author ran out of something worth saying. Where most authors would promise the world, then overcomplicate their advice for readers Aubrey is straight forward and lays everything out in easy to understand chunks. Each chapter is written so that the reader will not only understand the subject, but then gives REALISTIC advice to take action and implement what they learn. This is one of those books you'll always want to keep around to look back to, anytime you feel you're not owning each day.

Lots of principles that will elevate your life!

Arrived Fast, Well Packaged and a Great Read

Jesse Waters talked about the book so I bought it. The book was longer (thicker) than I expected but the print was larger so it was not too long of a read. Not being a big reader myself, I enjoyed it cover to cover and read it over a few days and evenings. Filled with a lot of common sense things you already know (but are good to hear again) and some new things I had never heard of like salt in water is good. My criticisms are the author used the “F” word way too much and it could have had more depth (maybe these things are correlated). The three keys at the end of each chapter are nice to summarize topics. He was the owner of a vitamin company but the book is not a sales pitch at all- which was nice. It was a good book!

I just finished the book yesterday—and although I considered myself pretty enlightened when it came to a lot of this...I take cold showers at the end, do burpees in the morning, already had a lot of lemon water in the morning, often wear blue blockers at night and for computer screens, etc—I learned a TON in this book.Here are my 10 things I’m adding to my daily schedule from the first reading of the book:1. Morning cocktail: add salt to my lemon water and make it room temperature, the night before.2. Do Wim Hoff breathing technique before the cold shower, increase length of time for cold shower.3. Be outside when sun comes up, can do it with my journaling, meditation, exercise. 10 minutes of sunshine minimum.4. Use scent in office and workspace to help get into flow. Set an environment to focus and get after it. Essential oils for focus and productivity.5. Create your own ethos, your own mantra, “Go hero go,” as example.6. Evening playtime. You earned it. Best time for “me” or “we” time. Schedule Laura time.7. Specific supplements and food help with very specific needs. Ginger, chocolate, wine at night. Aww, yeah.8. Use driving mindfulness techniques. Wide gaze, take it all in. Use as practice to lengthen time between stimulus and response. Exercise in the time when anger is usually the worst.9. Pro usage: aura rings for sleeping, lights for the ears, special yogurt, onnit supplements, get a rebounder for the morning.10. Body weight exercises like the bear crawl, sit throughs, 23 burpees are enough.11. 4 things to do for yourself: I love you, I’m sorry, I forgive you, thank you.Yeah, it’s 11. I’m not bound by limits.👍

I've read hundreds of personal development books... Hundreds and Aubrey's Own the Day Own Your Life is by far one of the best that I've ever picked up.I've been following Aubrey for about a year and regularly using Onnit supplements so I had high hopes going into his book and I'm happy to say that I wasn't disappointed.After getting frustrated with the current state of the self help industry with its focus on "90 Days to Success" and "6 Months to 6 Figures" it was refreshing to see a book that simplified living a good life down to a 24 hour period. This book is about LIVING fully right NOW. Not working your butt off for 20 years so that you can live fully some time in the future.Even as an avid fitness and health junkie I found dozens of studies and new information within this book that I'd never heard of and there were plenty of actionable tactics that have already helped me #ownmyday.If you are looking for a kick@$$ read that's based on science and research that you can implement as soon as tomorrow, then this is the book for you. Aubrey's no b.s. take on living a great life is the kick in the pants that you've been looking for and his witty humor and quirky personality make this book a fun read that feels like the love child of Mark Manson's "Subtle Art", Darren Hard's "Compound Effect" and Craig Ballantyne's "Perfect Day Formula" (And I mean that as the highest sense of flatter since those are my three favorite self help books!)

Could’ve been reduced in page’s by half and still been to wordy. I mean do you really want to read about the author playing grab-ass naked with his girlfriend.

There is no shortage of self help books, biohacking books, Mindset books, fitness courses, recipes books, or anything in between. There is a shortage of books that cohesively bring them together in an actionable manner.Do I have to do everything in this book no? Can I pick and choose what I do? Yes. Will I have results? Yes. Will I have a plan? Yes.Want more energy in the morning, this will show you how and has real life examples. Want to sleep better, here is a plan. Want to redesign your entire daily routine, you can...I look at this book as more of a scripture than a book. It’s loaded with principles that I can implement all at once into my day or piece by piece while I study often to continue to elevate my understanding of optimizing my day.Basically, this book is the best I have ever seen with pragmatic advice that will change your life.

(you don’t want to do cold immersion when you’re sick or already under a simultaneous acute stress load). Contrast is not necessary, but for me it seems to produce the best effect. Listen to your body, not to your mind. Learn to distinguish the voices of resistance and prudence. After all, wrapped up in this concept of hormesis, of exposure to good, acute stress, is recognizing the appropriate dose. A hormetic stressor is only as good as the body’s ability to fully recover from the resistance it overcomes. If the body can’t, then the stressor isn’t promoting growth, it’s toxic and it’s prompting decay.Chronic stress is literally killing us, and the traditional medical model offers us very little help to deal with it. Counterintuitively, one of the best ways to deal with chronic stress is to seek certain forms of acute stress. Through a process called hormesis, acute stress will help you adapt and become stronger. Cold exposure is one of the best sources of acute stress, and can be accessed in showers, cold tubs, and cryotherapy. The cold also offers the opportunity to practice an essential life skill—what I call “mental override”—the ability to make yourself do something you don’t want to do. The breath, when used in accordance with the Wim Hof method or other forms of intentional deep breathing, is an invaluable tool to modulate and adapt to acute stressors like cold shock, while also helping to melt away chronic stress on its own.It was the Buddha who said, wisely, “To keep the body in good health is a duty, otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.”There are two primary reasons to supplement: to remediate potential deficiencies, and to gain access to unusual or hard-to-find nutrients. You don’t need to think of supplements as something that comes in a capsule, either. Getting the right amount of sun, sleep, and food is itself a kind of supplementation, and the first line of defense. The key things to consider supplementing are greens, probiotics, B vitamins, krill oil, vitamin D, and additional minerals.Psychologists even have a term for it: narcotizing dysfunction. In fact, the more you follow the news, in some cases, the less likely you are to be an active, involved citizen, because you’ve confused consuming information with acting on it.To combat the potential negative impact of the commute, as well as to practice greater presence and peace of mind, use conscious breathing techniques along with mindfulness practices like the wide peripheral gaze.Nootropics have been proven to assist with memory and cognitive performance. Huperzia serrata is a great place to start and is a part of one of the most rigorously tested formulas on the market.Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.Laughter is the diffuser of intensity.Anytime you are pushing the boundaries of what you are capable of, it will be work—hard work—because you are coming up against the internal points of resistance within your mind and your soul. If it wasn’t work, it would be a problem, and I’d be worried.sleep is not a binary thing, awake and asleep. There are all different shades of parasympathetic activation that help the recovery process for mind and body.An ideal workout trains multiple power systems, including mobility, flexibility, endurance, cardio, power, and strength.Being in close-knit groups is what being a human is about. We’re social creatures—and even though many of us have hyperactive digital social lives and flesh-and-blood social connections, the fact is that at no time in human history have so many people felt so alone. Our bodies can feel and sense this loneliness, and they are responding the only way bodies know how: by making us sick more often; by sinking us into deep depression; by throwing off our hormonal balance; and by making us find chemical substitutes for the human contact that we so crave.The first thing you do when you come home from work, or emerge from the “productive” part of the day, is reset.at a certain point we stop making really great new friends. In the absence of rituals like school and sports, we don’t take the time to forge deeper connections with people. Whether it is having an all-night bender in Vegas, or a ten-day journey in Peru, extreme experiences have the potential to form the deepest bonds.Loneliness kills. But combating loneliness doesn’t mean having just anyone around you. It’s about forging deeper connections, with yourself first, and with your tribe. To connect with yourself, don’t be shy about creating a little state shift.To connect with others, collapse the judgments that separate you by seeing them as you living a different life. Then play some music, have a laugh, but most important, make the effort to cultivate the sense of community around you.There’s a reason sex is always everywhere. We’re never having enough of it. So we crave it, and we jump at every tantalizing suggestion of it—a fact that advertisers and media conglomerates are fully aware of, and use to their advantage.So why aren’t we better at sex? The answer is actually shockingly simple: we’ve never been taught. As a culture we are absolutely devoid of any kind of practical sexual education, both for teens and adults. What do we have instead? Well, we usually start with lectures on how dangerous and bad and frightening sex is.Everyone is different. Everyone likes different things. No matter how skilled you are (or think you are) as a lover, you will never truly know your partner unless you communicate. What are their desires, fantasies, boundaries, insecurities? What are yours?Get out of your comfort zone, but always be ready for feedback. Great lovers aren’t born; they are made out of good listeners.The tongue is the most important sex organ on the body. Not because you lick with it, but because you communicate with it. Let down your ego. Talk to your partner about your likes, dislikes, and fantasies. Laugh if something you didn’t expect happens. Don’t take it too seriously. Your sex does not define you. If you enjoy your sex, you are going to have more of it. The more sex you have, the healthier you will be. Limit your indulgence in pornography, explore power exchange, be adventurous, and level up your sex game by mastering the squeeze.The cell phone has become the adult’s transitional object, replacing the toddler’s teddy bear for comfort and a sense of belonging.Writing things down also reduces the instinct to go over that thought again and again in your head, making it easier for you to relax. Knowing that you won’t forget anything, because it’s written down right there for you, also smoothes your transition into sleepy time and makes waking up to own the day a pleasure instead of a panic.The reality is, there are four phases to sleep: awake and resting; light sleep; deep sleep; and REM sleep. And while each of these phases is helpful, the two most important are deep sleep and REM sleep. In deep sleep, you release all the hormones to repair and rebuild your body. In REM sleep, you are basically rebooting the mental hard drive. A typical sleep cycle lasts ninety minutes and transitions from awake and resting, to light sleep, to deep sleep, finally ending in REM.Knowing what to do and why to do it are a big part of owning the day. Before you implement what you have learned, you are inevitably going to face a force called resistance. It will hit you from the outside and from within, so you need to acquire the tools to overcome it. You need to learn how to forgive yourself for past failings, how to motivate yourself to keep going, how to visualize your success, how to give yourself a pat on the back, and how to let your tribe know about your journey so they can support you in the struggle and celebrate you in success. Do it for them as much as you do it for yourself.The reason this whole thing has to start with forgiveness is that your choices will never be perfect. Maybe you got frustrated in the car this morning, or sat too long in one position at work this afternoon, or ignored your kids when you got home tonight. That’s okay. Your day is never going to be perfect. If there is anything about your day or your life that you need to own, it’s that.What’s worse, if we allow the inner critic to punish us every time we fail to meet the standards of perfection, we’ll stop trying altogether. We’ll decide that it is better to pretend that it’s someone else’s fault, hiding behind excuses and rationalizations. If we know that when we fail, we will forgive ourselves, then we get to play from inspiration rather than fear. We’ll be able to look our mistakes right in the eye, take the medicine, and move on. It’s what any good coach does for his players.No one is an island. And while all the individual, personal work I’ve talked about in this chapter is essential to conquering resistance and owning the day, it’s not yet enough, because we are tribal creatures, and we need the support of our tribe to truly thrive. Psychologists agree that there are four keys to compelling positive action:(1) know what to do and how to do it;(2) believe it will work;(3) see the value; and(4) get support from your community/tribe/family.Part of the problem with our current condition is that there is a ton of conflicting information. When people are confused about what they should do and how they should do it, they don’t do anything at all.The Hawaiian kahunas (shamans) have a practice for radical forgiveness they call Ho’oponopono, the purpose of which is to get you to a completely clean slate, a state of mind called the zero state (also the title of a book by Joe Vitale). It is a simple dialogue you have with yourself or a loved one, which requires you to say four things. We’re going to focus it on yourself for now, but keep this in your medicine bag when you need to resolve a conflict with anyone else.“I love you.” Love is the appropriate bond that can unify all aspects of yourself. To express this love sets the foundation for all the communication to follow.“I’m sorry.” This is to clear you of any guilt you may carry for the times you’ve done yourself wrong—from negative self-talk to forcing your body to cope with way too much cheap tequila.“Forgive me.” The humble act of asking for forgiveness, when sincere, is not often opposed. Grant yourself the forgiveness you seek.“Thank you.” This is an expression of gratitude to your body and your mind, not only for the forgiveness but for everything it has given you. It’s gotten you this far, after all, right? Say it to yourself: I love you, I’m sorry, forgive me, thank you.The hero is simply someone who does battle with his demons every day.Creating an ethos is a shortcut to mastering mental override. It prevents you from the anguish of deliberation over your choices and starts to define the person you want to be. Create your ethos and support yourself with positive self-talk. We are social creatures, designed to live in community with others. It is no surprise that accountability and support from our tribe is essential to creating any form of lasting change. Pick the day you want to own, begin the process, and let everyone you love know about it. Ask for their support, hold yourself accountable to your word, and you won’t just own that day, you will be setting yourself on the path to owning your life.

I picked up this book after seing Aubrey's interview on JP Sears Awakening group. I felt like Aubrey was a hard working man but with the heart of a child. I can relate to that and told myself I might learn something out of his book. I've been applying some of his ideas (morning routine, positive self-talk, etc.) Now I feel like it is a good complement to JP's work and I am ready to Own The Day! Date's on the calendar; working on a mantra and we're good to go! I'll update when it's fully implemented into morphing my lifestyle! Thanks!

Buen resumen de las practicas para incorporar en tu dia. El tio es genial, lo sigo hace mucho tiempo con sus podcasts. Recomendable tanto el libro como su Podcast: Aubrey Marcus Podcast (cubriendo bastante la parte de desarrollo personal/espiritual (ayahuasca, etc.). Lo conocí por Tim Ferriss y ahora lo sigo mas que a Sr. Ferriss.

Questo libro è fantastico, l’ho letto tutto d’un fiato nonostante l’enormità. Dà un sacco di spunti molto interessanti che ovviamente bisogna riadattare alla propria vita e rendere propri, come tutto ciò che ci viene proposto, alla fine. Ho adottato delle “routine” e tecniche consigliate da questo libro, e devo dire che la mia vita è migliorata sotto molti aspetti. Ve lo consiglio, soprattutto se siete in grado di leggerlo senza mettere alcun filtro ai vostri occhi, e anzi con la massima versatilità possibile. Rendetelo vostro, può darvi tantissimo.

Thought the book was a great collation of useful tips, organised into an easy to access way. Has been quite an inspiration and practical to follow too. OK doesn't go into overwhelming amounts of detail or the science, but do you really need that? Just follow the practices! It got me to implement the tips, and was a fun and interesting read.I have read a fair few books on fitness, well-being, hacks etc, this is well worth it.