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What if the habits that make you the most successful… look a little unhinged from the outside? In this solo episode, I’m sharing the wellness rituals I swear by, the ones that might seem extra, quirky, or unnecessary, but have completely changed my energy, focus, and ability to stay grounded when life is full. Because I’ve learned this the hard way: success isn’t strategy. It’s capacity. It’s nervous system support that lets you hold more without cracking, lead without spiralling, and show up with clarity when the calendar is packed and the stakes are real.

Inside, I’ll walk you through what I actually do behind the scenes to protect my sleep, reduce decision fatigue, and make my days feel cleaner and calmer. I’ll share a few of my most “unhinged” ones, plus the simple nightly reset that makes tomorrow easier before it even starts. If you’ve been doing all the “right” things and still feel tired, stretched, or one small inconvenience away from snapping, this episode will give you practical, permission-filled ideas you can start using immediately.

In this episode we chat about:

• Why success has nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with capacity (1:27)
• Why Nick and I sleep in separate rooms (2:08)
• Why a hard stop bedtime is non-negotiable (4:50)
• How my “amber cave” creates deeper sleep and faster recovery (6:23)
• My full sleep stack you’ll want to try (8:21)
  
• The phone setting that protects my energy (11:24)
• The breakfast hack that eliminates decision fatigue (13:23)
• Why I never do hangry meetings and how it changes everything (14:47)
• The nightly “closing shift” that sets up tomorrow for success (16:15)

Episode resources:

• Work with me (use the code 2026 for $500 off your first session)
• Mastering Your Mean Girl by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Open Wide by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Comparisonitis by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Time Magic by Melissa Ambrosini and Nick Broadhurst (book)
• Bon Charge Low Blue Light Bulb (use code Melissa for 15% off) 
• Bon Charge Blue Light Blocking Glasses (use code Melissa for 15% off) 
• Oura Ring (website)

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

[00:00:00] The Melissa Ambrosini Show. Welcome to the Melissa Ambrosini Show. I’m your host, Melissa bestselling author of Mastering Your Mean Girl, open, wide, comparisonitis and Time Magic, 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. Beautiful.

Hello and welcome back to the Melissa Ambrosini Show. I’m your host, Melissa, and I’m so excited for this episode because if you have been around here for a while, you will know that I am obsessed with all things health and wellness and biohacking, and today I am sharing eight Unhinged Wellness Hacks.

That I do [00:01:00] that actually make me more successful. And when I say unhinged, I mean things that look a little extreme from the outside. But on the inside they’re just how I protect my nervous system, my energy, my ability to show up as the woman I want to be. So this is not medical advice, it is not a prescription, it’s just what works for me.

So take what resonates, leave what doesn’t, and let’s dive in. So. Why am I even sharing this in the first place? For a long time, I thought success was mostly strategy, better plans, better execution, better discipline. But the deeper truth is this success is capacity. Your ability to make clean decisions, to stay regulated, to follow through, to be creative.

To lead, to be present with your family, to not snap at your kids or everyone because you are [00:02:00] running on fumes. So these wellness hacks, they aren’t cute little extras. They’re how I protect my capacity. So let’s kick off with number one. If you’re not driving, you may wanna write these down. So the first one is Nick and I sleep in separate rooms on purpose.

And I was actually a little bit nervous to share this because I know people are going to judge me for this, but we sleep in separate rooms because we take sleep very seriously. We wanna perform at our peak. Nick is creating the most beautiful music. I wanna serve my community, my clients, to the best of my ability.

I wanna show up as the best mother that I can be, the best wife, the best friend that I can be. We wanna feel good, we wanna think clearly. We want to do our best work every day. And to be honest, there are some nights where we’re already getting woken up by our kids. Not every [00:03:00] night, but some nights. For example, if Prince is teething or Bambi just wakes up, so why add the extra wake up by moving or accidentally waking each other up?

That’s how we see it. So we are very grateful to have a spare room. So we use it. And I just wanna normalize this. It’s not a relationship problem, it’s actually a recovery strategy. We can be deeply connected and we actually are deeply connected. We are the most connected we have ever been, and we also prioritize sleep, like our life depends on it because honestly, some days it does or it feels like that.

Anyway, there’s a lot of research linking poor sleep with worse attention, reaction, time, memory, judgment, and executive function and creativity. Basically the exact skills you need to run a life, a family, and a business, and you don’t need to be pulling all-nighters for it to matter, [00:04:00] even sort of tired.

That adds up. So you can try this if you’re curious. You don’t need to jump straight into separate rooms. Start with separate blankets, or sometimes we will put a pillow in between us just so we are not rolling onto each other or like pulling the blanket off each other. It just makes such a difference.

Or you could even just do a couple of nights a week where you sleep separately just to make sure that on those nights you’re getting the best sleep possible. So that is the first thing we do. We sleep in separate rooms. And it doesn’t always happen because, for example, last night, my mom was here, she slept in the spare room, so we were slept in the same bed last night.

And when we’re traveling, we sleep in the same bed. But if we are at home and the spare bed is available, we’re gonna use it. Number two, we have a hard stop for bedtime. All devices are off by a certain time. Our children go to bed at seven. Then that [00:05:00] is when we spend some time together, we connect, we chat, we do a little ritual every night.

Sometimes we might watch something, but we have a hard stop at around eight o’clock where the device goes off and we are in bed reading. This is so simple and it’s also wildly unhinged in today’s world to have a hard stop. Not just like, oh, I’ll just quickly check my phone before we go to bed. No, no. One more scrolling.

No. Let me respond to this message. No, we don’t do it. We actually don’t open social media in the evenings. The evenings for us are about connecting together, and sometimes that means watching something funny. I like lighthearted funny, easy to digest stimulation. That is not going to make me angry or.

Scared or anything like that. I like lighthearted because the moment that I keep letting the day leak into my night, my sleep quality drops, my wind down disappears, and tomorrow me [00:06:00] really pays me for it. This is one of those boundaries that makes everything else easier. So you can try it. All you have to do is pick a time that you and or your partner can actually commit to, even if it is 8 39, 9 30, whatever it is, treat it like brushing your teeth.

Not a debate, just a ritual. So that is number two. Number three, my house turns into an amber cave at night. If you walk past our house at nighttime, it is an amber cave and I love it. If you’ve listened to our home episode where we share about building our dream home, we talk about the circadian lighting that we have in our house, and I absolutely love it.

I also wear blue light blocking glasses because if I look at my phone or if I look at a screen, I don’t wanna be affected by the blue light in those devices. Why do we do this? Like I explained in the Dream Home episode, short wavelength, blue light in the evening can interfere with [00:07:00] your melatonin production, the hormone that helps signal to your body that it is time to sleep.

And people ask me, how do I get both of my children to sleep at seven o’clock? This is one of the hacks. We have amber lights in our house, so as soon as you have to turn a light on and it gets dark. It’s all amber. My children go to sleep at seven o’clock every night, and there are studies showing that wearing blue light blocking glasses in the evening can improve sleep in people with insomnia symptoms, which I find so amazing because it’s such a low effort intervention.

Just put on a pair of blue light blocking glasses and you could sleep better. Like the ROI is amazing, so it makes it easy for my body to do what it already wants to do, which is power it down. So you can try this. You don’t need to rewire your whole house with circadian lighting. If you wanna do that, go for it.

But what you can do is start with a couple of the Amber Bon charge [00:08:00] lamps. They’re amazing. Get some blue light blocking glasses, dim the screen. Put night mode on all of your devices as soon as it gets dark, and you are. Wanting to wind down. Do this for two weeks and just see how you feel and watch the difference in your children and take note of how much better your sleep is.

Number four, it’s like a theme happening here, but my sleep stack is intense, so this is where it gets really unhinged. So I wear earplugs. An eye mask. I tape my mouth and I wear a nose strip so that I can breathe deeper and better. Yes, I take my sleep very seriously. It is a performance foundation. The earplugs and the eye mask are obvious.

They reduce noise and light stimulation. The nose strip helps airflow [00:09:00] through your nose because you want to be breathing through your nose, not your mouth, which leads me to the next point. I mouth tape. I have been doing this for about 13 years. Let’s just talk about this because there’s some early research suggesting that mouth tape may help snoring and mild sleep, disordered breathing in certain people, but the evidence overall is mixed, and sleep experts have raised safety concerns, especially if someone has undiagnosed sleep apnea, nasal obstruction, or breathing issues.

So let’s talk about it carefully. There is some research suggesting that it may help snoring sleep and mild sleep disorders. What it ultimately does is stops you from breathing through your mouth, which puts you in sympathetic. You wanna get into parasympathetic, which is what happens when you breathe through your nose, which helps your body down, shift down, regulate, and get into rest and digest.

So [00:10:00] if you have sleep apnea, nasal obstruction, or breathing issues, do not do this. Go see your doctor and chat to them. I’m not telling you to do it. I’m just saying this is what I do, and if you ever explore anything like this, do it responsibly. Like I said, talk to your healthcare provider if you have any doubts.

I’ve been doing it for years. It is a game changer, and Nick doesn’t need to do it because he doesn’t sleep with his mouth open. Sometimes my mouth falls open. And I end up breathing through my mouth. And on those nights where I have forgotten my sleep tape, I end up having a really bad sleep and my aura ring tells me that I’ve not had a deep rest.

So the data is there for me, and what I’m inviting you into is a bigger concept. I design my sleep environment and routines so my body can drop into deeper restoration because when I sleep well. I perform well. I’m a different woman. I’m a better business owner. I’m a better leader, I’m a better mother.

And if this all just feels like a bit too much, you [00:11:00] can just simply start with a stack of iask, earplugs, cool. Dark room. That’s it. That’s actually another thing. My room is very cool. Nick jokes that it’s like a freezer in there. He says, how do you sleep in this? It’s so cold. I love it. And I have a much better sleep when the room is really cold and dark.

So that’s my little sleep stack that I do. Number five, my phone is on night mode and notifications are off all the time. This is one of the most underrated success habits that I have because it protects my attention. There is research showing that night mode can reduce screen time and improve digital wellbeing because it literally makes your phone less rewarding, less shiny, less dopamine.

And on notifications, interruptions are not neutral. There’s classic research out there of uc, Irvine showing it can take around [00:12:00] 23 minutes to fully return to a task after an interruption. This is why when I wrote all of my books, I would lock myself in a room with no phone and no interruptions for a certain amount of time to get the book done.

And that is how I wrote Mastering Your Man Girl In Six Weeks. I wrote Open Wide in two months. I wrote Comparisonitis in a couple of months, and then we wrote Time Magic, which took a bit longer purely because co-writing a book together with your husband takes a lot longer then just writing it on your own.

So remember that 23 minutes to fully return to a task after every interruption. So every ding and every ping, 23 minutes, add that up in a day. That is a lot of interruptions and a lot of time you could have been doing something more needle moving in your life, in your business, in any area. [00:13:00] So if your phone is pinging all day, you’re not just distracted.

You are paying a huge cost in momentum, clarity, and output. So try this. If you want, turn off all non-essential notifications for seven days and if you’re brave, turn on night shift for a week and leave it on there and watch what happens. Come and let me know on Instagram how you go after a week. Number six, I eat the same breakfast every morning.

This one is not glamorous and it’s one of the most powerful. I literally eat the same breakfast every morning because decision fatigue is real. It’s a researched phenomenon where decision quality declines after making lots of choices. And as a woman, especially a mother and a leader and a business owner, we are making decisions from the moment we open our eyes.

So I remove decisions wherever I can. I’d rather spend my decision making on the things that matter, [00:14:00] like my business, my creativity, my leadership, my boundaries, my work, not on what should I eat this morning. So what you can do is try one breakfast that you genuinely like and repeat it for a week. Notice how it frees up your brain.

And I also wanna add that my kids eat the same thing as well, and my husband, however, on the weekend we mix it up. Sundays are for pancakes and Saturdays are for a muesli that Bambi absolutely loves making on a Saturday morning. And then she loves the ritual of the pancakes, and then she doesn’t mind eating the same thing Monday to Friday because she loves it.

I’ve found something that she loves. And I don’t have to think in the mornings. I just know what I need to do. So try that one. Number seven, I don’t do hangry meetings or calls or podcast interviews or anything like that if I am under fed, under resourced and pushing through because [00:15:00] it’s just a call. I’m not showing up as my best self.

So I will never book my calendar. So back to back that I miss lunch. I just won’t self abandon myself. I look at my calendar. I make sure there is space in between things so that I can have lunch always, because I am not gonna go into my, the second half of my day as the best version of me if I’m self abandoning and if I am undernourished.

This is one of those hacks that isn’t just wellness, it’s self-respect. It is leadership. The way that you treat your body becomes the way you treat your time, your boundaries, your standards. So what you can do is before any meeting or call, or podcast interview or whatever it is, make sure you have enough fuel in you.

You can ask yourself, do I have enough fuel to be clear, kind, and powerful and helpful and resourceful? And if not, [00:16:00] eat first. Or reschedule or better yet, do not jam pack your calendar so that you don’t have time for lunch. That is not dramatic. It is just wise. So that is number seven. I don’t do hangry meetings.

Number eight. I do a nightly closing shift for tomorrow. Me, let me explain. So every evening I look at the next day, I close any tabs. I make sure I know exactly what I have to do the next day, the moment I sit down to work. This is how I protect my nervous system from waking up into chaos or waking in the middle of the night going, oh my gosh, I need to do this, or I forgot about this, or whatever it is.

I do this ritual, this closing shift, so that tomorrow me, future me, thanks me, because when you start the day already behind your body gets straight into stress mode, and then you spend the day trying to claw your way back to calm. So I remove friction in advance. [00:17:00] So what you could do is five minutes tonight, open your calendar for tomorrow.

Write down the first one to three priorities. Close any open loops that you can close and leave a clear start here. Note for the morning, your future self will love you, will thank you, and will feel so held. So those are my eight Unhinged wellness hacks that make me more successful. Number one, separate rooms for sleep.

Number two devices off by a certain time. Number three, blue light blocking glasses and amber lights in our house. Number four, the full sleep stack that I mentioned. I mask, earplugs, mouth, tape, nose, tape, all of the things. Number five, night mode on my phone, and notifications off. Number six, same breakfast every single day.

Number seven, no hangry meetings or calls or podcast recordings or [00:18:00] anything like that. Number eight, the nightly closing shift. And I just wanna say this, none of this is about being perfect. It’s about being supported. Because when you are supported physiologically, emotionally, practically, spiritually, mentally, you make better decisions, you create better work, you show up with more patience, you feel more like yourself.

And if you take one thing from this episode, let it be this question. What is one unhinged choice that I can make this week that supports my capacity? Not your aesthetics, not your image, your capacity. I hope you got a lot out of this episode, and if you did, please subscribe and follow the show and leave me a review if you haven’t already on Apple Podcasts, and then send a screenshot of the review to hello@melissaambrosini.com and I will send you my wildly wealthy guided meditation as a thank you for [00:19:00] taking the time to leave that review.

I am so grateful to every single person who has left me a review, and if you haven’t already, please do that right now. I would be so grateful. And 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.

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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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