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What if there were a handful of simple, everyday actions that could lead you straight to an exceptional life?

In this eye-opening episode, we delve into the world of underrated yet incredibly impactful habits that can dramatically reshape your health, happiness and performance. 

These aren’t your typical, run-of-the-mill tips. They’re powerful practices that, while simple, are often overlooked or underestimated — and when applied consistently, they can work wonders.

Press play to learn: the #1 skill to amplify your productivity, the magic of ‘microdosed movement’ (especially if you’re pressed for time), why creating before consuming can radically transform your output, the non-negotiable habit that’s directly correlated with peak performance, and how to magically free up time for the stuff that matters to you.

Each of these habits is easy to integrate into your daily routine, and most importantly, they all lead to real, tangible results.

So if you’re eager to elevate your life in simple but genius ways that DON’T take up a heap of extra time, then press play now…this one’s for you.

In this episode we chat about:

• Why focus is a force amplifier that can help you do just about *everything* better, faster and more productively (1:22)
• How to ‘microdose’ your movement to achieve excellent health, even when you’re pressed for time (2:40)
• The life-changing magic of creating before you consume (4:47)
• Want to perform at your peak? Prioritize this surprising habit, stat. (7:02)
• The most effective way to free up hours each day — and make massive headway on your goals (12:04)

Episode resources:

• SheLaunch (join SheLaunch)
• Mastering Your Mean Girl (book)
• Open Wide (book)
• Comparisonitis (book)
• Time Magic (book)

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The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy.

[00:00:00] In episode 548, we are doing a deep dive into the five underrated habits for an exceptional life. Grab your pen and paper and let’s dive in. Welcome to the Melissa Ambrosini Show. I’m your host, Melissa, best selling author of Mastering Your Mean Girl, open wide, comparisonitis. And I’m here to remind you that love is sexy, healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word.
Each week I’ll be getting up close and personal with thought leaders from around the globe, as well as your weekly dose of motivation so that you can create epic change in your own life and become the best version of yourself possible. Are you ready beautiful?
Everyone wants an exceptional life. But there are some things that you [00:01:00] do in your day to day life that are not going to guide you towards your exceptional life, and in fact, they are going to. hinder your progress towards your exceptional life. I have five underrated habits for living an exceptional life that I want to share with you today.
Without further ado, grab your pen and paper, and let’s dive in. Okay. So habit number one is focus. Focus is a power skill. It can improve your efficiency, radically increase your creative output, and propel you towards your goals. Focus is what’s known as a force amplifier. Whatever you’re doing, if you simply bring some extra focus to it, you can amplify your results, often exponentially.
Even better, because so many people don’t prioritize this skill, if you can improve your focus, even by just a smidge, you’re going to have [00:02:00] a huge competitive advantage over your peers. If focus is something that you personally struggle with, start with the basics. Find a quiet place to work, put your phone on silent and out of sight, and close all of those extra tabs in your browser, including your inbox.
This is a great place to start if you want to get better at focus. Remove those distractions and start there. And it’s like a muscle. The more you do it, the better and better you will get at it. So, that is number one, the most underrated habit for exceptional life, focus. Okay, let’s move on to habit number two.
Microdose your movement. So you’ve probably heard the words exercise is good for you a billion times before. I think I’ve said it many, many, many times, especially on this podcast. But as far as magic habits go, you [00:03:00] can’t get much better than this one, so it would be crazy of me to not sing the praises of daily movement, seriously.
So that said, to ensure that this advice is still as useful as possible, because my goal with these episodes is for them to be genuinely useful, so I’m going to offer some unconventional advice about exercising. Start snacking. So, bear with me. A recent study show that interspersing short bursts of physical activity known as exercise snacks throughout your day can lead to significant improvements in metabolic health, endurance, stamina, as well as counteracting many of the negative habits of being a keyboard warrior, aka sitting at your desk for hours on end.
So Nick is awesome at doing exercise snacks. While he has his proper dedicated workout scheduled every day, he’s also amazing at filling in micro doses of movement [00:04:00] wherever he can. So he’ll be doing 20 push ups after a recording session, or he’ll do a set of squats while he’s on a meeting, or foam rolling, or something like that.
Or a bunch of chest presses while he is walking past his favorite exercise bands. He is always doing things like that. And I know life can get full, so start implementing these little exercise snacks just whenever you can. I know as a working mama, just do it. Run up and down the stairs with your kids. Do some squats.
Do some star jumps. Get them involved. Something is better than nothing, my friend. And the mental benefits that you get from movement. are so huge. This is going to lead you towards your exceptional life. Okay, let’s move on to the next one. Habit number three, create before you consume. So be honest with yourself.
When you wake up each day, do you reach for your phone and immediately start scrolling? [00:05:00] If you are nodding your head right now, Don’t worry, you are not alone. But unfortunately, starting your day by consuming information, be it the news, emails, social media, text, whatever, it can leave you feeling overwhelmed and directionless.
So to counteract this, one of the best hacks for an exceptional life and for making massive headway towards your goals is to wake up every morning and create before you consume. So I do this two ways here. I also do my morning routine, I fill myself up, I take care of myself before I touch my phone. So the first thing I do is meditate for 20 minutes, always.
And then I go and move my body. Then after that, I will turn my phone on and I will always create something, write something, whether it is a post, a newsletter, an idea for an episode, I will always write something [00:06:00] before I consume, always. And that really helps me. And this means that you are doing your most important work, whatever that means for you, before you start filling your brain with other people’s ideas.
It also doesn’t put you in reactive mode. As soon as you open your phone and start responding to things, you then go into your day reacting, constantly reacting to these beeps and Notifications. You want to get your needle moving work done first. Fill yourself up first before you go into consuming. Now, when you prioritize creating over consuming, you set a productive tone for the day.
This not only boosts your output and your sense of accomplishment, it also ensures you’re not merely reacting, like I said before, to external stimuli. Which, I know for me, if I get in that cycle of reacting, I then just stay on that treadmill. And it’s like react, react, react. So don’t [00:07:00] react, consume first.
The next habit is habit number four, actively prioritize your sleep. I have had over 500 experts on this show and almost all of them mentioned the importance of sleep at some point. So, our culture. often glamorizes sleep deprivation, equaling it with hard work or dedication. And I see this a lot, even as a new mom.
It’s like, Oh, the sleep deprivation. And it’s always this negative tone around it. And society often glamorizes it. And in reality, consistently skimping on sleep can be detrimental to your health, your performance, your well being, your mood, and so much more. So in our household, we protect our sleep like it’s a precious resource because it is.
It truly is. For us, this means that [00:08:00] we do not watch TV. We don’t actually own a TV. We haven’t owned a TV for years, and that is very intentional. If it’s there, you’re so much more likely to watch it. We don’t have a TV. We actually don’t have a couch at the moment as well. We haven’t had a couch for a couple of years as well.
Because, we sold all of our furniture when we moved out of our last place, and then we moved into the house that we just knocked down. So we didn’t take any furniture with us, so we just chilled on the floor. We have lots of cushions and rugs and things like that. So we sold our couch and our TV that we had in that house.
We moved into the house that we recently knocked down and we are building on there. So we’re currently renting at the moment. And so we’re not buying a couch and a new TV for this house because we’re building our dream home right now, which does not have a TV and it doesn’t have a couch. Well, [00:09:00] let me explain.
We do kind of have a couch. It is a sunken lounge, which is made out of the concrete. So our polished concrete goes down into a sunken lounge area, which is so beautiful and then we’ll have cushions all around it. So we actually don’t have a couch, that’s why we’re not buying one and we are not having a TV in this house because for us, we don’t want that to be the focal point of when you walk into our home, which it is for a lot of homes.
And if it’s there, it gets watched and we also don’t want our children to say, can I watch the TV? It’s not there. They don’t watch it. So that’s our personal choice. Anyway, I digress. We do not watch TV. A lot of people stay up late watching TV. We would prefer to prioritize our sleep. We also don’t consume coffee or alcohol because those things are stimulants and they keep you awake at night.
We dim the lights, we wear our blue light blocking [00:10:00] glasses as soon as the sun goes down and we have to turn the lights on, and we have set times for when we go to sleep and wake up and we treat our bedroom like a sanctuary. Now that’s just some of the things that we do to prioritize our sleep. But truly, you cannot live an exceptional life if you are sleep deprived, if you are not mentally in that good space.
So prioritize your sleep. And if you are going through a life phase right now where uninterrupted sleep is a distant dream. Perhaps you are a parent or a caregiver, please know that I absolutely see you, and I know how tough it is, and this is another reason why I go to bed so early. So Bambi goes to bed at 7 and I go straight after her, usually 7.
30, sometimes 8, depending if I’ve got a few more things to do around the house. And this is intentional because I don’t know what my night entails. Last night she woke three times because she had a blocked nose and she couldn’t breathe out of her nose. [00:11:00] And she would wake up and she would kind of make some noises and then it woke me up.
So I got woken up three times last night. I don’t know what my night entails. So for me, if I go to bed early, at least I’m getting more sleep. But if I go to bed at 10, 11 o’clock, and then she wakes up three times, then, whew, I feel it the next day. So if that is you, if you are a parent or a caregiver, just like I said, know that I see you and it is tough and it will pass.
Okay? It will pass. And be gentle on yourself and nourish yourself in whatever ways that you can, big or small. And take action on the aspects of sleep hygiene that you can control. For example, choosing not to scroll right before bed or avoiding caffeine after midday. Whatever you know is going to affect the quality of your sleep, stop doing those things and do more things that are going to support your sleep.
And then just know that this season will [00:12:00] pass and you’ve got this. We have got this. Okay, so the fifth and final habit is limit your phone usage. So this final hack is so close to magic, it’s basically straight out of Hogwarts. Consider this. The average person spends 12. 8 years of their life on their phone.
Let that sink in for a minute. The average age that someone lives to is 79 years and 12. 8 of those years are on your phone. Are you okay with that? I definitely am not okay with that. So imagine if you could reclaim even just a fraction of that time to invest in activities and things that you love, whether that’s reading or writing or crafting or dancing or simply spending quality time with your loved ones and doing so.
This will immediately make you feel so much richer in [00:13:00] your life. Let’s take that 12. 8 years and do more things that really light us up. If you reclaimed that full 12. 8 years of living that gets spent on your phone, what would you do with it? Imagine the mega impact that you could make on the world. Now, the most effective strategy that I’ve ever used to curb phone usage is to set a timer for how long you want to use it.
So for iPhone users, the Screen Time app lets you set boundaries on both overall usage and specific apps. And for Android users, the Digital Wellbeing app does a similar thing. So once you reach your set limit A warning will pop up and then that will remind you to reconnect with the real world and refocus on your life’s priorities.
So I love it when this pops up for Instagram. I go, okay, cool. I’ve spent my limit on Instagram today. No more time on there. [00:14:00] It’s so powerful. And then you can be really honest with yourself and then you’re not wasting your time, you know, you’re not. Letting your exceptional life just slip through your fingers.
And just a little hot tip for you guys, if you want more high impact strategies to reclaim hours of your life each day, I highly recommend reading Time Magic, the book that Nick and I wrote together, and you can get that at timemagic. me. We talk all about how to reclaim your precious, precious time. You know, we’ve only been gifted one life in this lifetime, in this earth suit, and we may as well make the most of it.
So there you have it, my friend. the five most underrated habits for an exceptional life. And by mastering these five underrated habits, focus, micro dosed movement, creating before consuming, prioritizing sleep, and mindfully using technology, you are laying down the foundation for an [00:15:00] exceptional life one day at a time.
And consistency by repeating these habits day after day The results that you will see, just magic, absolute magic. Now just remember that you are worthy of living a life beyond your wildest dreams and we have to do things each day. Our daily actions will help us manifest that. So thank you for being here.
I hope you got a lot out of this conversation. And if you did. Please subscribe to the show and leave me a review on Apple Podcasts, because that means that we can inspire, help, support, and educate even more people together. And it also means that all of my episodes will just pop up in your feed so that you never have to go searching for a new episode.
Now, come and tell me on Instagram, at Melissa Ambrosini, what you got from this episode. I absolutely love connecting with you and hearing from [00:16:00] you. Come and tell me your favorite hack out of these five. I would love to hear. And before I go, I just wanted to say thank you so much for being here. For wanting to be the best, the healthiest and the happiest version of yourself and for showing up today for you.
You rock. Now, if there’s someone in your life that you can think of that would really benefit from this episode, please share it with them right now. You can take a screenshot, share it on your social media, email it to them, text it to them. Do whatever you’ve got to do to get this in their ears. And until next time, don’t forget that love is sexy, healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word.

Thank you so much for listening. I’m so honored that you’re here and would be SO grateful if you could leave me a review on Apple podcasts, that way we can inspire and educate even more people together.

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P.P.S. Please seek advice from a qualified holistic practitioner before starting any new health practice.