A number of times in my life I’ve run across this tribal ritual that is very popular in New Zealand and is used on the New Zealand rugby team quite often. It’s a ritual called the haka. The purpose behind the haka is two-fold, one is to intimidate the enemy or to intimidate your rival. The other is to pump you up, to pump up your team, to pump up your tribe and get you jacked for the battle ahead. Now, you may be asking why I bring this up. Well, it came to me today while I was listening to my book on my morning walk. The author put it in my head and it hit me that this is a tool that everyone can use in their daily life.

Tony Robbins calls it priming. You can call it getting jacked up, getting pumped up, whatever. The truth is, we don’t use this concept enough to set ourselves up for success throughout our day. I do some form of priming every morning to wake my body up from sleep, to get me going, to get my heart rate going, even before I take my walk, and it really does set me up for success. There’s always opportunities throughout the day as well. As I’m going into a meeting that I think is going to be challenging or maybe even combative, I will use different techniques that I will to explain in a minute that you can use. They are very easy and they should be very familiar to you.

I’m going to post one of the many, many video links of the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team doing their version of the haka prior to a match against, I think the team’s France in this video. It’s just an amazing thing to watch. It always brings me goosebumps and always just gets me fired up from watching it. That’s one way you could do pump yourself up, watch something like that that inspires you. Anything that inspires you will get you ready for that kind of a challenge. There are other ways of getting ready for the challenge ahead, change your physiology, change how your body moves, get out of your chair, if you’re sitting in an office chair. If you have an opportunity you can dance around. You can do a few fist pumps in the air. Whatever feels good to you and appropriate for the moment ahead.

For some really good moves that don’t involve a lot of action and are very effective, first and foremost there is the Superman pose. Think about that classic picture of superman that you’ve seen on every Superman movie, you see on every Superman comic. It’s what you think of when you think of Superman. He’s standing there chest puffed out, his chin up a little bit and his head back and his hands on his hips. I’ll post some examples below. Trust me, you do a Superman pose, stand tall like that, breathing deep into your belly and chest for 5-10 breaths and you’re physiology will change radically for the better. Setting you up for the challenge. The longer you do it, the better you’ll be. If you don’t resonate with Superman, try Wonder Woman. She represents the same posture and energy.

There’s your tip for today. It’s like something you can use every single day multiple times a day to get you ready for a meeting, for a phone call, for a conversation with your spouse, your kids, a family member, family holidays, birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving. Whatever the challenge ahead, use these tools to ensure you are in a positive, powerful state, and you won’t go wrong.

New Zealand All Blacks Haka: https://youtu.be/yiKFYTFJ_kw