It's Kobe Bryant.

And you may say, "Why Kobe?"

Well, it's Kobe because when I first met him, we talked a lot about sleep and meditation.

And he told me how he used to sleep for three or four hours.

And then he realized that, in fact, sleep and meditation are performance enhancers and he would do anything to be his best at the game.

And far from what our culture makes us believe, that there is actually a trade-off between sleep, meditation, and productivity and performance, there isn't.

And Kobe proves that.

[Kobe Bryant: The importance sleep and meditation]

Let's get to it!

Lesson one, get an additional 30 minutes of sleep a night.

Take it as a challenge, try to find that space, quiet your mind, and get your 30 minutes of sleep.

And you'll see it makes a really, really big difference.

My sleep habits were horrendous, to say the least.

I've always had a hard time sleeping.

I couldn't figure out how to shut my brain off.

What made the light bulb come on is that I went out there and played a game and I played like crap.

And I was like, "Why am I playing like crap because I've been practicing these same moves over and over and over?"

But yet, I couldn't execute them properly.

I was feeling sluggish, I was feeling lethargic and I knew it wasn't because of my training.

Because I'd trained obsessively.

So then I started looking at other things.

That's when I came to the realization that hey Kobe, you're not 21 years old anymore, buddy.

Maybe the fact that you're sleeping you're sleeping two, three hours a night.

Maybe that has something to do with the fact that you're playing like crap.

And that's when I started really evaluating those things.

And I'd say lesson two would be just five minutes of quiet time.

Five minutes for you to be mindful.

And to just sit and find that inner voice and just kinda listen to the self.

Preferably would be in the morning as you start your day.

I meditate every day.

I meditate everyday and I do it in the mornings and I do it for about 10 to 15 minutes.

And I think it's important because it just sets me up for the rest of the day.

It helps me, it's like having an anchor.

If I don't do it, I feel like I'm constantly chasing the day as opposed to being able to be controlled and dictate the day.

Not that you're calling the shots on what comes forward, but the fact that I am set and ready for whatever may come my way.

You know, I have a calmness about whatever comes my way and a poise.

And that comes from starting the morning of through meditation.

For me, it's really just listening to my inner self.

That's basically it.

Like you sit in silence, and you just allow these thoughts to come forward, and you get a chance to observe the self.

And things that may be lying beneath the surface that if you don't have that time to sit quietly on your own, you'll never pay attention to.

'Cause if you think about it, the reality is that we're paying attention to so many things that are going on around us.

We're constantly taking selfies, we're constantly taking pictures to post on Instagram and all these other things that we're constantly observing everything that's around us.

But we don't take the time to really observe what's going on inside of ourselves.

And that's what meditation is for me.

In 2000, we had a new head coach that came to the Los Angeles Lakers, by the name of Phil Jackson.

And Phil was just coming off of winning six championships with the Bulls.

And he was really big on mindfulness and really big on meditation.

And it wasn't an option for us.

So we'd sit in our film room and he'd turn the lights out.

And we would meditate as a group.

And he'd teach us mindfulness.

And it really connected with me because he was teaching mindfulness through something that I was extremely passionate about which was the game of basketball.

So it was told through the lens of this is going to help you here.

So I had this curiosity about it.

And that was my introduction to meditation.

And then seeing the poise that we played with.

The fact that we can be in a hostile environment with fans yelling and screaming, and you know, pressure situations.

And it having no effect on us, because we were "never too high, never too low."

We were just in the moment and felt very secure in who we were.

And that was my introduction to meditation.

I had a great experience which really I learned a lot about meditation through this experience.

I was on a jet ski and I took the jet ski out in the ocean and I just kinda sat, and I just let the current just take me wherever it was gonna take me.

And I really saw a lot of meditation through that moment because I wasn't trying to control the moment.

I wasn't trying to force myself upon the waves and dictate where I was gonna go, I just let the waves take me there.

And there was a lot of peacefulness involved in that.