Our 5 Factors Year in Review: Mindset, Sleep, & Connection (Part 2)

The Full Listener's Guide

We wrap up our annual Five Factors Year in Review with Mindset, Sleep, and Connection - the three factors that often get deprioritized but quietly determine everything else.

You’ll learn why winning the morning actually starts the night before, how to build emotional resilience without suppressing your feelings, and why deepening friendships as an adult requires the same intentionality you’d give to training. Plus, we share the small daily practices that keep us grounded - from Patrick’s four check-in questions to Ben’s Sunday brain dump ritual.

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🖐 5 BIG IDEAS

1. Winning the Morning Starts the Night Before

You can’t hack your way to a great morning. If you want to wake up with energy and clarity, you have to engineer the evening that makes it possible.

Ben’s family now has a nine-hour sleep window: lights out by 9pm, wake at 6am. That might sound extreme, but work backwards from what it requires. To be in bed by 9, you need to start winding down at 7:45. To wind down at 7:45, dinner needs to be ready earlier. To have dinner ready earlier, prep needs to start around noon.

The insight isn’t just about sleep - it’s about how deeply interconnected your entire day becomes when you take health seriously. You can’t casually optimize one piece. When you commit to something like a nine-hour sleep window, it reorganizes everything upstream.

2. Being Healthy Today Requires Being Counter-Cultural

Here’s a sobering reality: 150 years ago, you didn’t have to be intentional about health. You ate real food because there wasn’t an alternative. You moved all day because most work required physical labor. You slept when it got dark because there was no electricity. You were surrounded by your tribe because that’s how life worked.

Today, the default path leads to dysfunction. Drift along with everyone else - eating convenient food, sitting all day, staying up late, isolating behind screens - and you’ll end up where most people end up. The estimates now suggest 70-80% of people are living with at least one chronic disease.

Being healthy isn’t about optimizing every biohack. It’s about swimming against the current just enough to not drift downstream. At minimum, grab onto something at the edge of the river. Don’t let the default path carry you where you don’t want to go.

3. Emotional Maturity Means Returning to Center - Fast

Ben deleted an entire website he’d spent weeks building. One wrong click, and it was gone. His reaction? About six seconds of frustration, then: “Okay, let’s go.”

That’s not about suppressing emotions. It’s about not letting external events hijack your internal state for longer than necessary. The goal isn’t to never feel frustration, disappointment, or anger. It’s to return to center quickly - like driving through a tunnel. You’ll drift toward the walls, but your energy goes toward steering back to the middle, not hitting the walls harder.

This is what “think like a warrior” actually means in practice. Warriors don’t throw down their swords when something goes wrong. They adjust. They adapt. They keep moving. As the seas get rougher, the captain gets calmer.

4. Adult Friendships Require Aggressive Intentionality

Ben set a goal this year to deepen his friendships. Not a vague aspiration - an actual goal he worked toward with the same intentionality he’d bring to training or business.

The result? He made a new friend (Dr. Rich), scheduled regular training sessions together, did a guys’ trip to Mount Washington, and created recurring time for connection. None of this happened by accident. As an adult, especially as a busy adult, meaningful friendships don’t maintain themselves.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: if you’re waiting for friendships to naturally develop, you’ll be waiting forever. Your calendar is full. Your energy is limited. Connection has to be prioritized and protected, or it gets crowded out by everything that feels more urgent.

5. Connection Through Service Strengthens Relationships

Ben started doing all the laundry for his family this year. On the surface, it’s just a chore. But the deeper insight is about what happens when you take something off your partner’s plate without being asked.

When you lighten someone’s load, you create space. Space reduces stress. Reduced stress creates more capacity for joy, presence, and connection. The relationship gets stronger not because of grand gestures, but because of consistent small acts of service.

This isn’t about scorekeeping or expecting reciprocation. It’s about recognizing that connection isn’t just quality time and deep conversations. Sometimes it’s doing the unglamorous work that makes life easier for the people you love.

🤔 3 REFLECTION QUESTIONS

1. What would have to change if you committed to a nine-hour sleep window?

Don’t just think about bedtime. Work backwards through your entire day. What would dinner look like? What would your afternoon require? What would you have to say no to? The exercise isn’t about whether you’ll actually do it - it’s about revealing how much of your day is currently organized around things other than your health.

2. How quickly do you return to center when something goes wrong?

Think about the last time you faced an unexpected setback - a mistake, a disappointment, a plan that fell apart. How long did it take before you could think clearly again? Six seconds? Six hours? Six days? The goal isn’t to never get knocked off balance. It’s to reduce the recovery time.

3. What relationship in your life needs more intentionality right now?

Maybe it’s a friendship that’s been on autopilot. Maybe it’s a family member you keep meaning to call. Maybe it’s your partner, where the relationship is fine but not thriving. What would it look like to treat that relationship with the same intentionality you’d bring to a fitness goal?

🔑 1 KEY TAKEAWAY

Health has to be your organizing principle - or everything else will organize your health for you.

Most people structure their lives around work, then try to fit health into the gaps. They finish the project, then exercise if there’s time. They handle the urgent tasks, then sleep whatever hours remain. They respond to everyone else’s needs, then connect with friends if energy permits.

The result is predictable: health becomes whatever’s left over - which often isn’t much.

The alternative is to flip the script. Start with the non-negotiables: sleep enough, train consistently, eat well, think clearly, connect meaningfully. Then fit everything else around those stakes in the ground.

This sounds simple, but it’s genuinely counter-cultural. Your boss doesn’t care if you slept eight hours. Your friends don’t care if you need to leave early for your bedtime routine. No one is going to protect your health priorities except you.

And here’s why it matters: without health, nothing else works. You can’t do great work when you’re exhausted. You can’t show up for your family when you’re depleted. You can’t pursue what matters when your body and mind are breaking down.

Making health your organizing principle isn’t selfish - it’s foundational. It’s recognizing that everything you want to do and everyone you want to serve depends on you having the energy, clarity, and resilience to actually show up.

So ask yourself: Is health currently organized around your life, or is your life organized around your health? The answer reveals everything about where you’re headed.

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