Gratitude journals, Surrender Sundays and family huddles: The breathtakingly cringe admissions by property developer Tim Gurner who branded Aussie workers ‘arrogant’ – and said he wanted to see unemployment soar to 50 per cent

Controversial property developer Tim Gurner has given insight into his incredibly regimented daily routine, which involves waking up at 5am, writing a gratitude journal, doing breathwork and spending 10 minutes with his children every morning at a family meeting.

The Rich Lister, who has an estimated fortune of $990 million, is no stranger to making headlines.

He caused a global stir in 2017 when he claimed that Millenials should not eat a smashed avocado on toast if they wanted to buy a house.

Last year he stoked further controversy when he said the pandemic had made workers arrogant and lazy, adding that he wanted to see unemployment rise to 50 percent to create more productive workers.

Now Gurner, 52, has revealed how he ‘does the same thing every day’ after getting up between 5.15am and 5.30am – depending on whether he goes to bed at 9pm.

‘I’ll go straight down and get my lemon water and Celtic salt. Then I’ll have my coffee,” he told the newspaper Australian Financial Statement.

‘Every morning I keep a gratitude journal. It’s something I started about four years ago.

‘[I include] the things I’m grateful for, which on the positive days isn’t as effective, but on the days when you’re not feeling so good, it’s actually really important for me to do.”

He also tries to get 30 minutes of emails in before his kids get up, but it’s unclear how he fits that into his gratitude journal.

“Right after that, I’m going straight to the gym,” he said.

“I spend about 15 minutes doing stretching and mobility work. Then I do about 45 minutes of strength training. I do strength training on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday. Then I do cardio on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

“And then I have what I call Surrender Sunday on a Sunday.”

Mr Gurner, who revealed he has not had alcohol for almost 18 months, said he was “very focused on recovery and anti-ageing”.

“I have a PEMF bed, which is a pulse electric magnetic field bed, with a red light therapy coming over my body and a red light on my face,” he said.

“I do that for about twenty minutes while doing breathwork.”

After his morning exercise session, he has a ten-minute “family chat” with his wife Aimee and their three children before getting them ready for school.

His workday starts at 8 a.m. and he limits himself to just 2,900 calories a day and eats the exact same fruits and vegetables.

“I have lunch at 1 p.m., 3:30 p.m. is a bit of breathwork and relaxation,” he added.

“It’s quite regimented, and I would say, for most people, quite boring. I do the same thing every day.’

Mr Gurner “wants to live to be 500 years old”, according to one of the staff at his anti-aging wellness clinic in Melbourne, Saint Haven.

While you don’t have to be a billionaire to join the exclusive club, with fees costing $23,000 a year, you do have to be wealthy and go through a five-stage interview process.

Since his father died of cancerMr. Gurner wants to live the best and longest life he can, to the point that it has become “an obsession,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald‘s Good Weekend Magazine in September.

He gets an injection of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) every morning and takes 40 tablets a day, including boron, taurine, creatine and peptides that he says were invented by the Russian military in the 1980s to protect soldiers from radiation.

At home there is circadian lighting that reflects what the color of the sun would be at different times of the day.

It is orange first in the morning, then yellow for most of the day and orange again before sunset.

From 7:30 p.m. until he goes to bed, Mr. Gurner wears goggles with red lenses to block blue light. About a third of all visible light is considered blue light, most of which comes from sunlight, but smartphones and LEDs also emit blue light.

Some studies have shown that blue light can affect your sleep and possibly cause illness.

However, the search for eternal youth does not pause when he goes to bed. He sleeps with a Chilipad – also recommended by Oprah Winfrey’s sleep doctor – to keep the bed at 18 degrees.

Before he goes to sleep, he also tapes his mouth shut to ensure he only breathes through his nose.

He told reporter Tim Elliott that ‘mouth breathing is very bad… it has changed the structure of our jaws’.

Mr. Gurner’s desire to live a long and prosperous life dates back to setting up his first business over twenty years ago, and the traumatic event that followed almost immediately afterwards.

He started My Well Being, which offered yoga, massage, pilates and personal training, when he was just 21.

But six weeks later his father died of multiple myeloma.

He became terrified of dying and has since spent his life trying not to get sick and die. He said his goal became, “How do I live the best life possible for as long as possible with the fewest risks?”

Mr Gurner also has the phrase ‘flow of life’ tattooed in Morse code on his left arm.

However, his pursuit of a longer life isn’t just a personal obsession for him and other multimillionaires looking for ways to spend some of their money.

He also firmly believes that living longer would benefit the entire country.

“If we can extend everyone’s age by 20 years, that would be the best thing for the economy,” he said.

‘Twenty years of more taxes and spending, plus all the savings you would realize in health care. You could use all those profits to combat poverty.’

Between making a name for himself with his views on the price of smashed avocado toast and his desire to live a long life, Mr Gurner accused Australian workers of becoming “arrogant” post-Covid.

“We need to see pain in the economy,” he told the Australian Financial Review’s Property Summit a year ago, adding he wanted to see unemployment rise by 40 to 50 percent.

‘We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around.’

Mr Gurner focused mainly on tradies, claiming productivity had fallen since the pandemic.

“People decided because of Covid they didn’t want to work as much and that created a huge problem with productivity,” he said.

‘Tradies have certainly reduced productivity. They have paid a lot over the years not to do too much, and we need to see that change,” he said.