Every meaningful transformation in your health, in leadership, in relationships or your identity requires one thing, and that’s the willingness to stay present when things get uncomfortable.
Video Transcript:
Dr. A: As everybody is joining us, I want to welcome you. I hope everything’s going well. Hope you had a nice weekend and kept warm. It’s pretty cold all over the country. You can see I’m up here in Colorado and keeping warm by the fire. And speaking of that, holding the fire, is going to be the theme today. So we’ll get into that in a minute. But just for those of you who are just joining us for the first time, the Conscious Forum is designed, basically, as an interactive piece for people to get together, humans being more, so to speak, in terms of getting together and sharing things that have to do with our level of psychological flexibility, our awareness, our presence. And we know that psychological flexibility is our superpower. It’s so critical. So a forum, just for review, is a place, meeting, or a medium where ideas and views on particular issue can be exchanged, and so I’m going to do a little overview here and then we’ll open it up for questions and that’s my favorite part, and that’s the part where we all learn, where we share our thoughts, our concerns, things we’re struggling with, things we’ve created success with, and just really interact at a level of humans really looking, how can we help bring more joy, more abundancy, into our own lives. And we’ll talk now about our subject, which is holding the fire. So, you know, again, welcome everyone.
You know, this isn’t about learning something new. It’s really about remembering something that’s ancient, and it’s so ancient. It’s like 100,000 years ago. And if you’ve read any of my books, my new book, My Prescription for Life, just came out last month, but I always go back to where we started, like 100,000 years ago. How were we designed over all those eons and what are the parts and how did they work today? I mean, I just came back from being in Spain and looking at people that lived to be over a hundred and, you know, asking the questions, being curious, what do people do that allow them to live longer in a healthier state? And as we talk about that, living longer only makes sense if you have health span. And health span means basically your longevity or your biological age, your chronological age and the quality of your life are equal almost to the point where you die. And unfortunately, in our country, because of the food we eat, you know, ultrarocessed, unhealthy, ultrarocessed food, way too much stress and inflammation, many of us have — 90% plus — have metabolic dysfunction as a result of that, and a lot of that, by the way, has living in the world we are now because there’s so much stress for us that that’s kind of why we’re going to talk about this today.
So holding the fire really is about every meaningful transformation in your health, in leadership, in relationships or your identity requires one thing and that’s the willingness to stay present when things get uncomfortable. We grow through discomfort. When we ignore that and we try to move away from discomfort, we don’t grow. We get closed. We get defensive and we get kind of fixed. So I like to call this today, “Holding the fire.” And what I mean by that is, you know, fire transforms, it forges, it illuminates, and conscious humans don’t avoid discomfort, they learn to work with it. And we think about that in many different ways. You know, the obstacles the way from the Stoics, we talk about psychological flexibility, being able to know that things are going to happen, events are going to happen, how you respond to them determines the outcome. And all these are part of the growth mechanism, and knowing that life isn’t always going to be comfortable, but it’s in those uncomfortable moments where we learn and grow. So, I think that’s really important for us to keep that in mind as we basically go through the talk today.
So, why is change so hard? Most people don’t fail because they don’t know what to do. They fail because they leave the moment when discomfort shows up. They basically — change always comes with instability. You know, it’s our nervous system. It reads instability as discomfort. It whispers, “Go back to the familiar. This is too hard. Do it tomorrow.” That’s biology. That’s not weakness. Your nervous system seeks safety, not fulfillment. And living in the world we are now, because most of the threats we have are perceived threats, they’re not real threats, learning how to feel that discomfort, stay within that discomfort, is so critical. So people go, “Well why would I want to be in discomfort?” Because discomfort, basically, when we are discomforted we basically soothe ourselves, we distract ourselves, and we quit. You know, we use food, scrolling, busyness, blame. Your nervous system seeks comfort, not fulfillment, and I can’t repeat that too many times because it’s during those moments where you really learn. Where you really grow. You know I’m up here and I happen to be skiing and I have an instructor that I go out with many times, and we’re working on something right now which is not easy for me. It’s a difficult thing. I ski really well, but I want to get to the next level. I want to get better. So, it basically is having me do something that’s very uncomfortable for me to do, but I do it. And as I do it, and then by the end of the day — and then we put it together, then I learn from it. But during that discomfort, I could go back to what we normally do as humans, we go back to what we’re comfortable with. That’s why when people basically get in discomfort, they go back to their old habits. That’s why something happens in their life. They stop being healthy. They go back to the way they were before.
So basically, every time we exit our discomfort, we teach our nervous system that the moment is dangerous. So next time it gets louder. We’re actually reinforcing the wrong thing. We’re saying, “Oh, okay. You know, this is discomfort. I need to get away from it.” And that was really important 10,000 years ago when you were on a trail and there was a snake there or a poisonous, you know, spider or something. Your brain, your neurological development, your emotional management was all about the limbic system getting away from those things. Yet, it’s that discomfort where you can learn and grow, especially when things are perceived. You know, it’s like the thing you think about the discomfort when you’re younger and you’re, you know, going to the sock hop or the dance for the first time and you’re uncomfortable. You know, as a young adolescent, male or female, you’re uncomfortable talking to the other sex. It just doesn’t feel comfortable to you. So, what do you do? You go sit in the corner like a wallflower. That doesn’t work. That’s not how you grow. You grow by being able to hold that discomfort and really learn from it and grow.
So understand, the more we avoid the things — and I’m talking about things that are important for us to learn, one of those is becoming a healthier person. So let me define strength. Strength is presence. Power is not control. Power is staying. Basically staying with cravings, staying with uncertainty, staying with hard conversations. This is emotional fitness. It’s what allows us to go through and forge under the fire stronger relationships. I mean, I’m watching, there’s a dialogue in one of the series on TV, and the dialogue is about having really strong conversations with each other. Not disrespectful, but ones that basically open up the possibility to learning more about each other and being true and not avoidance. We have a tendency with discomfort to avoid those difficult conversations. And as long as we avoid them, we’re going to become more fearful as I mentioned earlier. And if that happens, that’s how we end up getting so that we don’t, you know, we have a discussion at Thanksgiving dinner and it turns into two family members not talking to each other for the rest of their life because it becomes more uncomfortable versus having the real conversations. So basically, staying with cravings, staying with uncertainty, all these things help you move forward.
So really we’re talking about what we call the capacity loop. We want to feel what’s here. That’s presence. And we talked about it last month. Being aware, being present, holding that moment, really understanding in that moment what’s going on. Getting out of your head of all the thoughts of, “Oh, I know what they’re thinking. They’re thinking this.” No, you don’t know what they’re thinking. Only they know what they’re thinking. But feel in the moment where you are. I’m right here. Stay, instead of escaping. Stay in that moment. Even if it’s discomforting, you know, unless it’s something again, if obviously, you know, a typical response would be we learn when we’re little, don’t touch a hot stove because it hurts. So boom, we avoid that. That’s the limbic system working the right way, keeping you — having the feeling, the discomfort in that. That’s very different than the discomfort of moving from eating unhealthy food that you’re addicted to to being able to move in to start eating healthier food. And you want to choose for your future self. One of the leadership habits I built for our leaders years ago was basically, “Lead from the future, act in the now.” Decide what you want for your future. What does your identity look like? What does your health look like moving forward? What does your success look like in your business? What are you doing in terms of your relationships with your family? And from that place, stay, feel, be in the moment and basically expand your capacity. So, choose the outcome that allows you to grow as a person.
[00:10:04] Thematically, this is similar to what we talked about last month, which you can go back, by the way, and review the videos on my website, drwayneandersen.com. But, bottom line is learning to stay in the discomfort — the obstacles are the way. These are the areas that help forge in the fire, basically allowing you to grow and learn, and it grows through presence. So, identity is built here, in this moment. You don’t grow by thinking differently. You grow by staying with the hard moments. That’s how you learn. That’s how you grow. That’s like, you know, that discomfort of working out. You know, you go to the gym and you work out. The growth in your muscles occurs in the discomfort. It occurs during that period when it’s a little tough. If it’s really easy to lift the weight, you’re not going to grow from that. Your muscles aren’t going to grow. The same way is with your presence. You don’t grow by thinking differently. You basically grow by staying in those moments. An identity is built when you’re willing to feel. Leaders hold uncertainties. Healers hold presence. Conscious humans hold emotional waves. This is where your 3.0 self gets developed. This is where you learn to grow and build that capacity.
So, I want to do an exercise right now. Just a couple minute exercise. To do this, hopefully you’re present, and really paying attention. But in this exercise I’m going to have you close your eyes, breathe slowly. Notice the discomfort. Stay with yourself. Feel your body and choose presence. Okay? So we’re going to do this together. I want you to start off, get yourself comfortable. Make sure you’re not distracted. Hopefully you’re in a quiet space where you’re fully present for this talk. And make sure that anybody needs any help, the dog needs water or whatever, that you’ve taken care of that. And I want you to close your eyes. So, we’re going to get fully present, in the moment. When you take the visual away, the other senses are accentuated. So, what we want to do is close our eyes. And I want you to start breathing slowly. Actually, check where your breath is right now. You know, do you have some you anxious about something that’s going to be going on a little bit? Are you running short on time or are you fully present, fully breathing slow? Because your breath will tell you what state your autonomic nervous system is in. And you want to be in what we call the parasympathetic state, which is where you have high vagal tone and you’re relaxed, your heart rate’s slow, you’re breathing slow, you’re breathing from your belly. So, bottom line is, let’s go ahead and do this. Take the breaths and notice any discomfort you’re having. And I want you to do this. I’m setting you up for this, but I want you to start doing this during the day.
So notice discomfort, any discomfort you have. It can be anything. It could be that, oh, um, my legs are sore. I’m feeling anxious about something. I have a funny feeling in my belly. My jaw is clenched. It doesn’t matter what it is, but feel that and stay with it. Stay with it for a minute. And feel your body. Your body, your mind body connection, which you’ve been hearing now for decades is critical. And yet we spend so little time really understanding, you know, unless our body sends out huge warning signals like we have a bad headache or we hurt ourselves and it hurts when we walk, but other than that, most of the time we’re not paying that much attention to our body and our body will help us really sense where we are. So hopefully you’re feeling that. And do this exercise again. So take a screenshot of this. And what you want to do is you want to choose presence. Presence allows you to be in that moment. And if you do have discomfort, why do you have discomfort? Is it because you’ve been at your desk for an hour and a half and your legs are, you know, they’re kind of cramping. All these things are ways for you to now improve. That discomfort is a good way to learn. You know, one of the things I do when I’m writing or basically on Zooms, too many Zooms or doing lectures, I’ll get up and as soon as I feel discomfort, I’ll get up, you know, go up and down the stairs, go for a walk, do something like every hour to make sure I’m sensing, because if we don’t sense those things, then we’re not practicing how we’re present, and being present, holding that discomfort, and realizing that how to work through it makes a lot of sense.
Okay, so there’s a 90 second rule. Basically, once per day, we’ve talked about this before, but this is a really good practice, and I actually do it more than that. But notice discomfort, any discomfort you’re having, whether you physical discomfort, mental discomfort, anxious thoughts, breathe. Stay for 90 seconds within that. Don’t try to fix it. Just basically teach your nervous system it’s survivable. In other words, rather than every time some little thing — you know, one of the things I did as a kid, and I didn’t even realize it — it probably wasn’t the best thing, but I would note that if I was thirsty, you know, rather than get up, like if I was on my bike or something, rather — and it’s probably not the best example because we do want to stay hydrated — but it taught me how to stay with discomfort and, you know, rather than running immediately when I was hungry or immediately when I was thirsty, I would sense that, stay with it, you know, for a little while, and then of course, you know, drink or get something to eat. And I did that naturally, and it built a resilience, and a resilience that basically allows you to start building emotional fitness, where you can handle anything. And that’s the goal. The goal is, hey, life is intrinsically unstable. There are things that are going to happen in your life. We’re going to have loved ones get sick, loved ones die. We’re going to have things happen financially that are up and down. Our health may suffer in some way, but most of those things if you stay with them and understand how to be present, you can fix them. You can actually fix them over time. You’re not fixing them in the moment, but you’re actually building that resiliency so that rather than moving away from it as soon as it happens, which we have a tendency — now, with a hot stove, absolutely, you want to use that nervous system. You never want to forget and you never want to touch a hot stove again. And for most of us that’s very true and we could probably even remember that when that happened when we were really little, and you see it happen all the time with kids. But bottom line is, understand that as you build resilience in your nervous system, it makes all the difference.
So, your future isn’t created by big moments. It’s created by small uncomfortable ones you stop running from. Okay? You don’t need to become someone else. You need to stay present long enough to become who you already are. When the fire shows up, hold it. That’s where your power lives. It’s building the psychological flexibility that whatever happens, all these slight little discomforts, that you can handle them that you know that you don’t have to stop — and here’s one biologically, we have a hold where our bladder reaches a certain level and there’s a threshold and it’s sending signals saying, “Oh, I have to urinate.” Yet you have 300 to 400 cc’s more volume that you can handle before you really really have to go and when your bladder gets too big and is really expanded. So, that’s another thing, you know, rather than every time, you know, I’m talking with some that have obviously a normal prostate and normal physiology, but there’s an example where you can literally hold and not respond to it immediately. And in that discomfort, you’re building some resilience and the ability to wait for a while. So, that’s really important. You probably know people that anytime they need anything, they stop what they’re doing and do it. Okay? That’s not a recipe for building that emotional fitness, that ability to handle anything. Stay with it. So, with that, hopefully that was helpful. Rachel, let’s take this down and answer any questions.
Rachel: All right. We don’t have any questions quite yet, but Chris does have a question and then I think we just had one pop in.
Dr. A: Okay, great. Awesome.
Chris: Bear with me just a second. Chris is having difficulties. Here’s Chris. Hi! So, Dr. A, I have a question. Speaking of growing through discomfort, I do Ninja Warrior a couple days a week. And, I don’t know if you can see this growth on my shoulder right now, but I have a red light therapy device on because I tore my rotator cuff. It’s kind of a vital component in the Ninja Warrior journey because I’m hanging from stuff. And so I’m trying to figure out how this is for me, as opposed to, you know, something I can hopefully resolve. I don’t want to get surgery. I know you’re not a medical professional in this respect, but I’m curious, what would you recommend? How can I get through this without losing my freedom?
Dr. A: Yeah. Okay. And you know, again, discomfort pain is the body signaling that there’s something off, right? So I’ll just use my own personal experience because I basically tore my meniscus and my median collateral ligament. Now it’s been about three months. And so in the beginning, that pain is splitting you for a reason, and that’s to get — so when it first happened for you, right, it gets the swelling down, immobilizes it. But here’s two things, and specifically the shoulder joint is more important than anything. Maintaining your range of motion. We have a tendency to — and they used to put you in a sling and the sling was to immobilize you so it could heal. The problem with the shoulder specifically is you get this thing called adhesive capsulitis and the shoulder is one of the most mobile joints. It doesn’t have a lot of protection, unlike, let’s take the hip joint, right? The ball and socket. It’s inside a ball and socket. That’s why when people get hip replacements, they recover almost right away because it’s a really well protected, functional system that rotates inside a ball and socket. So, it doesn’t have a lot of instability except for one area, but I’m not going to get into that. But the point is, you want to first immediately splint the stuff you did initially. Use ibuprofen or something to decrease inflammation. In you’re rehabilitation, and I’ll tell you what I do, I’d use red light therapy, which is good. It helps with deep healing. I alternate ice and heat. And basically I’m up skiing. I’m doing some, you know, traditionally they would have made you sit out the year, but instead I’m up skiing.
[00:21:10] And what happens is — and I have physical therapists that I go to after skiing, like a couple days a week. But the range of motion, increasing it, there is some discomfort when I ski, but it’s not like it’s not excruciating. It’s not my body telling, it’s telling me that, yeah, you’re sore, but by moving it more, the body functions in a much more brilliant way because the lymphatics work better. The range of motion starts building stability. It starts reconnecting the fibers that have been torn. They start reproducing. Fiber blasts come in. So basically, movement, and going to the threshold of discomfort again in that case is something you want to do and avoiding surgery most of the time is a good thing. They wanted to work on my meniscus, and I basically said, “Hey, my meniscus is in there, and yeah it’s torn, but bottom line, that meniscus is a cushion that I want to keep.” I don’t want them taking that out. And I’m at a point now where I’m increasing the strength in the leg and the leg’s working well and meniscus is doing fine in there and it it doesn’t heal like regular because it doesn’t have the vascularity but the muscles around it are compensating keeping the balance there and allowing the feedback mechanism so that you maintain and I have full use. When I went for a walk last night, and I can walk fine, and it used to hurt and it doesn’t hurt when I do that. When I get done skiing, it is discomforting, but basically, put ice on it and go through it.
I want to apply that to life in general because discomfort in a relationship, we have a tendency to do avoidance. So rather than, and it’s what gossip is. All those things are, you know, you should basically not say something that you wouldn’t say if the person isn’t in the room. We have a tendency with other people because it makes us feel good that we communicate. But basically, gossip is us now saying something that we don’t even know to be true. We’re just doing something that we’re not even sure is true. So if you have an issue with somebody like in a relationship, staying with the discomfort and doing it in a respectful way. The other part of this is we’re building our relationships, because relationships — internal stability inside, that we can handle anything. External equilibrium, which means in our relationships we can grow. Most people live in the Drama Triangle. One person attacks, you know, either the villain, the victim, or the hero, and they kind of are doing something, attacking, blaming — all you have to do is go on TV and then the other person responds through being the victim and now nothing. There’s no growth. The victim moves away and basically the villain blames it on someone else. The hero tries to come in and save the day because they don’t want to be around that discomfort, rather than actually being fully present and having a discussion where, “Hey, you know, I’ve noticed in this situation, this is what happens. I would love to— can we can we talk about that,” and so then you move beyond because if you don’t, when you avoid, avoidance creates more avoidance and then the nervous system is saying, “Hey, you’re uncomfortable now in this conversation,” and then you just move away from it. And there’s times if you’re upset, yes, that’s not the time to get in a discussion.
But in those calm areas, where you haven’t you haven’t triggered the emotional part of your brain and you can sit down and have a discussion. I had a discussion with my daughter who’s here over the weekend skiing with me. She’s in vet school. And we had a discussion about finances. You know, she’s going to be a professional and she’ll have, but right now she doesn’t have her own money. And basically I said, “Hey, I’d love to just sit and talk to you about, you know, understanding the value of certain things.” And we were cool. And then she sat and she got I could tell she was getting— I said, “Now Erica, let’s just basically go over, you know, what are you concerned about? Why are you starting to feel that way?” And we just talked about it. And when we left — when she left, basically we were closer than we’ve ever been. That’s what we want to do. We want to learn to stay in that discomfort so we can grow. All our growth occurs when we’re open, curious, and we want to grow. And when we’re holding the discomfort and not letting it trigger us so that we move away from it. That’s how we build dialogue. That’s how we have great conversations. That’s how we work through. That’s where we build resilience, where you’re not, every time you go, “Oh, I want something to drink.” You know, that’s what happens, by the way, with food. You know, we’re a little upset— “Oh, I need to eat something. I need to…” you know, and that is us trying to avoid or we get on the internet, right? And we go to TikTok or we do whatever we can to avoid whatever it is that’s actually triggering and creating this discomfort when we really want to learn to manage it. And the best analogy, and almost all of us have gone through it, is exercising. You know. Whether it’s exercising cardiovascular or it’s doing weight resistance training or even stretching and things, all those things. When you stretch, there is some discomfort.
I mean, you want to make sure you know the difference between dynamic and static stretching, and I go through that in My Prescription for Life, but bottom line is, you want to use discomfort to grow as an individual because when you grow, you build fulfillment, if you avoid discomfort you don’t grow. You stay the same. And what happens, is over time, you’ll find you come very fixed, very close-minded. And that’s one of the issues going on in the world right now is people, they don’t like discomfort. So they point to the other person, blame them, say it’s all on them versus everything. We’re all humans sharing the same planet together and we better be kinder to each other or we’re going to find out we’re going to be like the dinosaurs. So anyway, was that helpful?
Chris: Yeah, it doesn’t fix my shoulder. My shoulder still hurts, but I’ll try and use my hips more.
Dr. A: Your shoulder. Well, no. Well, the point is your shoulder hurts. But the one thing you I hope you learn is you want to make sure you as soon as possible, you get back to full range of motion.
Chris: Yeah.
Dr. A: That’s the key part. Range of motion, because as long as you have that, over time, as the discomfort goes down, you’ll be able to slowly add more weight resistance training and it’ll be fine. If you have adhesive capsulitis because of the discomfort, you said, “No, I’m not going to work through that. I’m not gonna work on my stretching.” Then you’re gonna find out you’re gonna have a decreased range of motion and you’re going to be terrible at ninja.
Chris: Well, I’m already pretty bad, but it’s working out okay. But thanks Dr. A. I appreciate that.
Dr. A: Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Okay. Rach, we got anybody?
Rachel: Yes, we have a bunch. We have Melanie up next. Hi, Melanie.
Dr. A: Melanie!
Melanie: Hi, Dr. A. Good morning.
Dr. A: Good morning.
Melanie: So mine is kind of a mindset question, at least I think it is. So I have great difficulty in finding the balance between using data, like from the recent Metabolic Reset Challenge, and see right away, I see, okay there’s areas that I need to focus on and improve on so I can become better versus being satisfied with, for instance, my renfro numbers are all green. Okay, I found out you can get some darker green and you know being satisfied where I’m at. I’m always looking at that little measurement. You know, when I would get a 98 on a test, I’d look at, what did I miss and how can I get better. And my coach is working with me, bless her heart, on looking at this and trying to find some satisfaction and reframing that. And you know, I hear you say things, you heliski and you know, you’re still taking lessons, still trying to get better, but where do you find those times of satisfaction?
Dr. A: That’s a good question. I really like that question. First of all, you used a word that I would like to have you eliminate from your language, and that is: trying.
Melaine: Okay.
Dr. A: It’s either you’re doing or you’re not doing. Trying is the most demoralizing word in the English language. It means, “Oh, I’m giving it an attempt.” You either do it or you don’t do it. And if you’re going to do it, you go to — and that’s where discomfort, working through the discomfort to get the goal you want. So let talk about one thing to make sure this is not what I’m saying. Perfectionism. You know, John Wooden, one of the all-time UCLA basketball coaches used to say, “We practice to be perfect, but we never reach that goal.” They, in fact, they practice harder than — their games were easier than their practice. He made sure they practiced to become as good as they could be. Not to be perfect. Perfect is actually a fault. It’s being obsessive about something trying to reach a level of it and you’re making it all about you. Okay? So bottom line is, you don’t want to be perfect. You want to continue to grow, because that’s — and in health, which is what you’re talking about in terms of your metabolic health, the key thing to understand is that we have this thing called father time and we all are subjected to it.
[00:30:34] We have a birth date and we have a death date and in between, as they say, is the dash on your tombstone. The dash is where you live life. The key thing in life is to understand that as we get older, our body’s ability to recuperate, to recover, the hearing capacity to heal itself starts diminishing. And so, it’s really important. It’s that, if you’re in the green now, great. You want to continue that growth because you’re getting older. We’re all getting older. I know that that’s why I’m learning some new moves in skiing because I know I’m getting older and as you get older, you need to be abl— I ski with my 25-year-old daughter and I ski as fast, and is all the same stuff as her. But I’m smarter than her. She’s 25 years old and she wiggles her little pelvis like, you know, all over the place. And that’s not where I am in life, right? I’m almost three times older, but I ski as good because I’ve learned the techniques necessary to be able to do that. The key part here is health span versus lifespan. So basically health span is to stay as good as you can be for as long as you can be. So I’ll give you an example. You know, I travel a lot and I can tell you that more and more younger, mostly women, but also some men, older men that can’t do it, but they can’t take their bag and put it in the overhead. So, I end up helping them. But basically, some of these people are in their 40s. They’re not that old. You want to make sure that whatever you want to do, that’s why functional exercise is so critical. Make sure that you’re doing things that assimilate real life because you know there’s a lot of people now in their se 60s,70s, and certainly by the 80s, they can’t get up without their arms. They can’t stand up without their arms. If they fall on the floor — and as soon as you start losing your strength, your flexibility and your balance, you put yourself at risk. So a lot of the things we’re doing, it’s not about being perfect. It’s about making sure I have enough strength to be able to do the things that are critical so I can do them as long as I can, because if you happen to see the Galicia film that we did in Spain, I interviewed a 102 year old lady and she basically doesn’t use a walker. She has two canes, now she’s 102, those hips, she’s done a lot of walking. She worked on a farm so she’s been active her whole life. So she, you know, the human body wasn’t designed to live 100 plus years. So, yeah, she’s got some probably some worn out hips and stuff, but the point is she uses two canes and she does it herself. She’s self-reliant, okay? Versus what happens, I mean, I see people, you know, at Walmart and different places, they’re in their 30s and they’re basically already using the little carts, right? The little electric carts. So, it’s really important to understand it’s not about being perfect. It’s about making sure you’re staying in the range. So the most important of all the things you can check is your V.O2 max. In other words, what’s the maximum oxygen consumption that you can make and this is the thing, you can go to a spa or a gym. You can go to, as long — for anybody that’s listening — you want to make sure your cardiovascular health, you always want to make sure you’re checked out by your physician, your health care professional. But basically, you can increase your V.O2. I know that I’m at 8,000 ft here and I can ski non-stop all the way down. I didn’t used to be able to do that, but I’ve increased my cardiovascular endurance, decreased my visceral adiposity down to my same waist as I was when I was in college. Basically, I feel great and those things will allow me to be more capable of living longer in that state because the goal is and I’ve been saying this you know Louise Calment lived to be 122, and I always kid around, I want to be 123 and jump sideways into my grave when they’re putting the dirt on it. The message there is health span equal lifespan. You want to biologically and chronologically become as healthy— there’s different scales now that it’ll actually measure your biological, your metabolic health and you can look and see where we are compared to — but you want to always make sure that you’re continuing in those areas. So in all the key parts all the six MacroHabits. Does that make sense?
Melanie: It does. You know, I’m hearing you say keep working to be better, but focus less on perfection, more on health span. You know, I’m on a mission to show what we can do as we age. [00:35:18 crosstalk].
Dr. A: Well, no, for yourself. But here’s the thing. Here’s the thing. I want to make sure— it’s not a mental game. The mental game is involved in it. It’s actually that you want to be as healthy as you can be for as long as you can be because when we have and part of that, why I spend time with a conscious forum is this part, emotional management and mismanagement is the leading cause of death in the world, because when you suddenly say — like going back to Chris for a minute, and he’s a pain in the butt, you know, I’ve known him for years and I love him to death but he’s a pain in the butt, I mean, “Well, it didn’t make my shoulder better.” No! You don’t to come back on! [The video changes to Chris] You don’t get to come back. You had your chance. Bottom line is, yeah, “It didn’t make my shoulder feel better.” Yeah. What I did tell him though was, I gave him the most important piece of advice from seeing, if you basically want to stay athletic, and he’s an athletic guy and he’s doing sports and everything, but you want to make sure that you work through. That you’re making sure your first priority is getting your full range of motion. Not to the point, you know, and in physical therapies, I know with my knee, don’t work to the point where you have severe sharp pain. Soreness, and a little bit of discomfort is okay because your body’s now — and it doesn’t want, because if our mind, we haven’t worked and avoided, “Oh, I don’t need to go get up and go to the bathroom right that second. I don’t need to drink water right that second. I can wait five minutes.” That’s not going to make a difference. Bottom line is, those little exercises, what I’m saying is, staying with the discomfort, that’s what the theme is today, same thing with working out.
Yeah, you want to work out. Not to lift the most weight ever lifted by your age. You want to do just a little more because a little more means you’re stretching the muscles. You’re allowing them to break down the fibers and then they’re rebuilding. And that process means you’re involved. Happiness in life comes from involvement. Soon as we let discomfort take over, our body, our neurological surveillance system will basically start having us do less and less and less and less. People start staying home and doing nothing because they don’t want to go out into the world. And so we have to build this human transformational technology because technology, machine-based technology, AI, now all these things basically make it easier to do nothing. And if we do nothing, we are going to have a huge decrease in our health span. And we’re going to find out that, you know, there was a Star Trek episode a long time ago, and I always thought it was kinda funny, it showed these people on the planet, they had huge heads, right? They developed their intelligence but their bodies were so frail that someone from a different planet came that was not very smart and killed them all because they made themselves fully vulnerable. So to keep yourself from being vulnerable, you want to look at your scores. You want to look at your metabolic dysfunction. You want to minimize, get yourself in the greens. Stay in the greens, because if you look over time, as aging occurs, if you don’t stay that active, you’re going to deteriorate faster and you’re going to, your health span will then start deteriorating and you won’t live in a healthy state.
Living to 100 is an awesome thing if you got your mind, you’ve got your physicality, you can move, you can do all the things because a lot of cool things are going to happen in the next 25 years and I don’t want to miss any of them and I want to be able to interact with them. So yeah. It’s not a narcissistic thing about making yourself look pretty. It’s about making sure you keep your body in shape. You know, it cracks me up. I’ll see people stop at the 7-Eleven. They’ll put only high test, you know, premium 94% gas in their car and then I’m watching them eating a yo-yo. So, you’re making sure you’re spending extra to make sure your Porsche runs right, but you’re eating pure garbage, right? Same thing with our emotion. Motion, sleep, stress, all the things. Being able to handle discomfort, being not totally reactive to everything around us is a really good thing.
Melanie: Well, thank you. I love being on this health journey. I appreciate your insight.
Dr. A: Awesome. Okay.
Rachel: All right. Next up, we have Blake. Hi, Blake.
Blake: Hey. Hi, Dr. A.
Dr. A: How are you?
Blake: I’m always so excited to learn from you because when I listen and implement it, my life gets better.
Dr. A: I love that. I love that, you’ve got to send me an email and we’ll put that up on the website. I love that. And you know what? That’s the joy I get right because you know being a student and learning to share that with others and do it in a way where I rather than, even though I know, like with Chris I was kidding around with him, but I know the anatomy, I know the physiology, I know the structure, but doing it in a way that makes sense — common sense, right? Versus just acting like, you know, I’m standing in an ivory tower talking about it. I love to share. So what do we want to do today?
Blake: Yeah. So I’ve worked a lot on mindset in the past couple of years and also mental fitness. But last year I realized there was a component I didn’t understand which was the nervous system. And I couldn’t outthink my body. I kept thinking I could change how I think, but that didn’t — I kept hitting a wall. I kept hitting resistance, that there was some kind of internal set point I couldn’t move past. And then I figured out, “Oh, my nervous system is hijacked.” So when you are bringing people like we did back to presence, when you put in the pause, I’m trying to figure out how all this works together because people teach separate components, but how is it working together? Is it the pause that is bringing people back to the present? that we’re not spinning the past, we’re not spinning the imagined future, we’re here, that allows us to feel our emotions and be in the discomfort that also regulates the nervous system and I guess it gets a little jumbled up in my brain, and I just, I want to hear you say it so I understand it more.
Dr. A: I got it and it’s a really great question, Blake. So understand, the brain— the kidneys, the brain, the heart, but the brain specifically, the CMRO2, which is the consumption of oxygen and fuel, glucose or ketones, or whatever the brain is using at the moment, depending on what our fasting state is really high. And what, over the eons, we’ve learned is that by blocking events into chains, we can avoid having to think all the time. So let me give you— an easy example is driving your car. When you first learned, bottom line is, it was tough. There’s a lot of stuff going on, right? And you’d never done it before. And that’s why, you know, I always use that as an analogy about, you know, helping people create health in their life. You got to put them in the driver’s seat because you can’t teach an adolescent to drive by driving them. You can show them in the beginning. You got to put them in the driver’s seat, right? Okay.
[00:42:43] So, your brain is designed, your mind is designed to basically create habits, chains of events that happen automatically. So, you know now, you don’t even think about it when you drive your car anymore, right? You’re just basically driving. Next thing you know, you’re home, you have to open the garage door, right? Because how did I get here? So as a whole, the brain wants to do— and by the way, stereotypes, why we categorize, it’s a natural mechanism the body uses because it wants to say, “Oh, that’s comparative. That’s just, ah, I know what that is,” that way I don’t have to think because thinking requires energy and oxygen consumption. So the mechanism is designed for specific reasons, but what’s happened is we’re on autopilot. Autopilot is good for mundane things, right? But it’s not good for things that require interaction. So if you’re creating a threat and it’s a perceived threat, if it’s a real threat, yeah, just like the, you know, the analogy I was using about discomfort, the first time you touched a hot anything, a curling iron, it doesn’t matter. You learned your lesson. And that’s your brain working the right way. It’s discomfort, threat, boom, you learn it and you don’t you avoid it. Okay, that’s good. In relationships, what happens is we perceive threats because our personal mind, we are the sum of our life’s experiences. You, your personality, who you are, the things you think, the things you prefer are all decided as you grow up. So, when you’re really little, when you’re 5 years old or so, your prefrontal cortex is not developed yet. That’s why little kids do dumb things. They just don’t know. But the emotional part is there. And so that’s why, you know, when I was growing up, I can’t tell you how many times I was probably told I was stupid, because our parents didn’t know. I mean they only know what they know. And so, fortunately, I didn’t get scarred by it and I didn’t really care. And maybe that was my resilience. I don’t know. But bottom line is, a lot of people, we have these things, and there’s this thing called ideal, belief, reality. I wrote a book called Identity with Robert Fritz. And in that book we talk about it.
If you basically think inside that you are a stupid person what you have a tendency to do is to compensate for that and try really hard and you will work really hard and you can you know, let’s say you get all A’s and you get the National Honor Society, you may even win the Nobel Prize, but none of it is good enough if you think you’re stupid.
Blake: Mhm.
Dr. A: The idea is to understand and recognize that, “Oh, I think I’m stupid. So what? Now, let me go on and build the life I want.” Right? Because it’s not real. It’s a stored energy of something, a negative experience that happened to us and it’s down inside of us. The key thing is, when it starts coming up is not to repress it, not to suppress it. Let it actually come up. Identify it. And this is where Stop. Challenge. Choose., and “the gap” comes in, because typically, it’s painful. You immediately avoid it. And so your neurological system stays the same. And here it is. Oh, I’ve got this stored energy of I think I’m stupid and someone just made me look bad in public in a conversation or said, “What are you thinking about?” Or da da da da. And what you do is immediately avoid it and suppress it back down, rather than focus on it. When the reality is, everything is about presence. Take in the breath. Let it come up. Sense what it is, and don’t even do anything about it. Just sense it. Say, “Oh, okay. This is another example where I think I’m stupid.” Right? Okay. Does that make sense? [oo:46:36 crosstalk]. Yeah. And so the gap that we create, in other words, stimulus response is that we don’t want discomfort. It served you. You don’t want to burn your finger on a stove. So, you want to take it off, and that we’re pretty good at that. If you think about it, you’re pretty good. If the water’s scalding hot or whatever, boom, you’re like this. You’re not, you know, in the shower, right? Boom. You’re like this. And then people on the other side with cold plunges are basically letting their nervous system have this huge adrenaline rush and they’re getting off on it and they’re actually tolerating. I don’t have any desire to ever do that. And you could say what you want, while it’s healthy, there’s many other ways to create health and they can be really— including the other side, using a sauna. Being in a sauna. Raising your temperature does very similar things physiologically.
So the point I’m making is that your nervous system has an emotional component, the limbic system, which is designed to have you react. Think of energy. Emotions— E=energy. There’s energetics involved in it because it was designed to avoid things that could hurt you, right? Right now. Right now, and so anymore perceived threats are almost all our threats. I mean even to the point now, where in a car, unless you get in a horrific car accident, we’ve got everything is — you look at an old car, the steering wheels were hard plastic. The dashes were metal. There were no seat belts, no restraint system, no airbags. And so you had to really pay— and no seat belts! So if you got projected, you were going to hit something hard and you were going to get hurt pretty bad, right? So what we’ve done is we’ve taken about 90% of that away where most of the things between the airbags and all the stuff that’s happening, the collapsible front end, all the things we’ve learned, we’ve made pretty much most things pretty safe. So the real perceived — I mean, obviously you have to pay attention, and that’s why we don’t want you hands-free. We don’t want you driving and holding onto a cell phone and certainly not texting, right? Because then you’re missing the key components. But the point is that most things in our life are perceived threats. So we need to learn to be able to have that moment of presence, where we’re feeling a little bit of discomfort and staying with it. So you’re telling your nervous system, “Hey, it’s okay. I can handle this.”
Blake: So the moment, the pause is what helps you create the inner safety, because it is the perceived threat, the neutralizing…
Dr. A: Yes.
Blake: Creates the space where you have the capacity to deal with the discomfort.
Dr. A: Yes. This is all about capacity. That’s what I was showing in the slide. It’s all about feeling it. Feeling it all, and feeling your feelings all the way through.
Blake: Mhm.
Dr. A: You know, typical example is in high school playing football. You know, I remember, you know, guys don’t cry. I mean, it’s ridiculous stuff. If you ever see me on stage and talking, I cry all the time. You know why? Because I’m fully feeling the expression and the gratitude and the emotions which make us human. You know, those aren’t things you want to avoid. Now, on the other hand, there’s a difference between feeling discomfort and rage. Okay? A little bit of feeling a little bit of anger is telling you something. There’s a need for change there. But going into a rage and sitting there the rest of the day with your jaw clenched is just messing up your body. You’re creating massive cortisol release, epinephrine, nor epinephrine, and you are what was designed 10,000 years ago to let you get the heck out of there, right?
[00:50:26] Those things being released, basically your clotting system, all those things getting prepared for if we were damaged. The human body is incredible. The human mind is incredible. I mean, there’s more neuron connections than there are galaxies. I mean, that’s how brilliant our bodies and our minds are. But we have a tendency to totally take them sideways and use them improperly. So, the whole idea of that moment, of presence in space, is to regain control because your limbic system has hijacked you and you’re not thinking straight. That’s why with little kids, you do not want them, you know, you’re sitting there. I remember with my girls, they would be reading, learning to read, and they were doing fine, and then they’d make a mistake. And one mistake would be okay, but then they’d make another one, and I’d see them getting frustrated. So rather than say, “No, no, you’re doing great. Keep going.” No, let me give them a big hug, tuck them in, say, “You’re really doing awesome.” And let it go. Because once their limbic system — and you know how emotional kids can get — once that’s activated, they’re not listening to anything up here. Nothing. Same thing with us as adults. Things are going to happen. For us to be able to stop, challenge, why am I feeling? What am I feeling? And then choose the outcome you want.
And typically, food addictions, and food, you know, having emotional eating is all about that, and all you really need to do is stay in the moment and that moment will pass. And that’s how you train. Just like you train your muscles to be stronger, you train your mind to be stronger, to be able to be present and feel that emotion. It’s telling you something. It could be telling you something real that this person and I need to work on a relationship because this is the third time we’ve gotten into an argument. And then when you walk away from it and your emotions are back to normal, you think that was a ridiculous discussion. I got upset about that? Right? But the whole idea is if you’re using this technology of Stop. Challenge. Choose., in the moment, it’ll avoid you from doing things. In an extreme, I can guarantee the people on death row wish they knew Stop. Challenge. Choose., because in a moment of emotion, of rage, of passion, anger, they did something really bonehead. They totally let this go away — and here’s the thing, when they interviewed them, they actually knew they were doing something wrong, but they had lost — it’s like this storm of response that they weren’t able to overcome. If they had just stopped, took a moment, they would have been able to avoid it. And I mean, that’s the ultimate because people, now you’re going to die or be in jail for the rest of your life because of some bonehead thing that you did in a moment of not controlling yourself.
And that’s why, as an example, and I want to make sure I say this correctly, because obviously we want to stay well hydrated. So I’m not saying avoid drinking for hours at a time. What I’m saying though, is in the moment, you don’t have to, if you’re in the car going somewhere, I’m starting to feel a little thirsty. You can say to your spouse or to whoever you’re with, hey — if you’re going to be, most of the time we’re going to be — and you can wait. So rather than say, “No, no, I got to stop and get some water.” Right? Or you can have your water with you all the time. But rather than that, learning just that little, it creates your ability to navigate through the world so much better when you have resilience. That 102 year old lady, one thing she was, she was independent, dramatically resilient, and we can all learn that. There’s nothing — we’re not different, like, “Oh, I’m just thirsty all the time.” Yeah. You know, I mean, what, you have different physiology? No. Okay.
Blake: Okay. Thanks, Dr. A. Appreciate the clarity.
Dr. A: You’re welcome. Okay.
Rachel: All right. Next up, we have Brooke.
Dr. A: Hey, Brooke!
Brooke: Dr. A, how are you today?
Dr. A: I am fantastic.
Brooke: Well, all of this already has helped answer a good chunk of my initial question, but it leads to me— I’m aware that I am— I’m creatively avoiding, and I heard you say avoidance creates more avoidance, but kind of where I’m leading to is, really my question about, I’m avoiding even committing to specifically with my business, I’m avoiding committing to a higher level. I’m doing the work. I am growing and my business is growing and things are going great, but I’m not committing to be all in to the next level. And I know that there is some fear, discomfort like you were talking about, that is holding me back. But how do I shift it to truly committing and to be able to embrace the resilience that I know I have, that I’ve experienced, but yet, I can’t get myself to commit?
Dr. A: Yeah. So, it’s — yeah, and so it’s again, it’s holding the fire. I mean, I made that up but what I mean by that it’s basically within — okay, so a good example is just take any aspect of your business, right? You know what the standards are. You know where your current reality — by the way, commitment — I use commitment, I learned this from Jim Dethmer actually, the use of the commitment. Commitment is what you’re actually doing. So if you’re 50 pounds overweight, you’re committed to being 50 pounds overweight. That’s what you’re committed to. If you’re, let’s say you’re at a junior level in your business. That’s what you’re committed to. It’s not saying, “Okay, I’m basically going to do more.” It’s you actually doing more. It’s not saying anything. It’s actually what you’re doing. Okay? So, think of it this way: your identity. Your identity in your health, in your relationships, the kind of person you are, your business, your identity is determined by your standards. Your standards determine your identity. So if you want to change your identity and become a healthier — I’ll just use health because it’s a really easy one. If you’re an unhealthy person and you say, “I’m going to go on a diet and I’m going to avoid eating pizza.” And every time you go to the mall or whatever and you go by and say, “Yep, I’m avoiding eating pizza. I just really want that pizza, but I’m not going to have a piece.” Eventually, you’re going to have a piece because you’re an unhealthy person that’s doing something that’s restrictive, but you’re not actually changing your identity. You’re not becoming a healthy person. It’s actually conflict resolution.
So, normally what happens is people are overweight, they go to the doctor, they say you’re pre-diabetic, they say that you’re going to need to go on blood pressure meds — it doesn’t matter what it is — you see a picture on vacation and you don’t recognize yourself in your swimsuit and so you create this emotional response. And so what you do is you decide to act on it. The emotions create actions, and you feel bad. Let’s say you just don’t feel good. Let’s say, I’m going to lose 50 pounds. So you start losing. You lose 10 pounds and you feel better. You look a little better. People say, “Wow, you look better.” And so you don’t have that intense emotion anymore. So then you stop doing it. And so that’s why people yo-yo. That’s why — doesn’t matter whether you’re using GLP-1 drugs, whatever it is. If you’re dieting, if you’re not learning to create health, that’s why the Habits of Health system, all the stuff I write is about you becoming the Dominant Force in your own life, taking responsibility, and then becoming everything you want for yourself. We’re each going to be different. We have different priorities. We have different values. But if you pick the things you value the most and you focus on those, you don’t need as much motivation because you do them because you want to do them.
We have primary-secondary choices. You know, for me, I heliski in the spring. So, I know, starting in the fall that I need to put my gym shoes on. I mean, I work, I stay very active and I work out, but I know that when I jump out of that helicopter, if I’m not in top shape, I’m going to hold up other people and I could get hurt or I could go off a cliff or something. So, I make sure it’s not at that moment. And I don’t really like to exercise. I do it because it supports the things that are most important. And now, as I’m chronologically getting older, I’m upping — I put a gym in my new house and I’m doing things more intentionally because I want to maintain. I don’t want to lose any ground and I want to maintain for as long as I can. And that’s secondary choice. So what do I value? I value what I just did two days ago with my daughter, my 25-year-old. She started skiing when she was in diapers and I can still ski with her. And I wrote, when I wrote the first Habits of Health in 2008, I actually, that’s one of the things I mentioned. I want to make sure by the time they’re grown up, they’re not just asking me for the credit card and seeing me at dinner, but actually we’re skiing together. And that, you know, profound prophecy is true because I’ve done those things and I didn’t want to do those things. I did them because they support me.
So, in terms of your business, you have to say, what do I really want? Okay? What does that entail? What’s the strategy I need to take? What are the tactics? What are the actions? And how do I need to work with myself, my team, with my mentors? And how do I make that work? And then specifically stay to that and stop saying, “Oh, you know, I really want to do it. I’m trying to do it.” No, that’s not what you do. You specifically know. And then what you do is in an iterative process, you increase your standards. A great example of that is, I make my — and I didn’t used to do this. You know, years ago, I saw the video on the admiral that was talking. I think it was at either — it was probably at the Naval Academy. I think it was at the Naval Academy. He was talking about: make your bed. Every morning. Make your bed. Now does it really matter that I make my bed? No. I live alone. But I know I make my bed and if I don’t do it something comes up and I can’t, I go back and I make my bed every morning. Why? Because that’s the standard. That’s the standard I’ve set. Becoming a healthy person, you don’t want pizza. You may have it occasionally. I had a piece of pizza over the holidays because of my girls, over during Christmas. Basically, I had a piece of pizza, and it was okay. It tasted okay. It was good, but I haven’t had one since. Don’t need it because I’m a healthy person.
A healthy person doesn’t choose to eat one of the most unhealthy things you could eat. Why? Because I choose to be healthy. I choose to be able to not be out of breath when I ski. I choose to be able to fit in bibs, in a ski outfit, because basically, I feel better, and I ski better because those are the things that really matter. So for your business, figure out, okay, what is the next strategic level I need to go in my business? What does that look like? What does that entail? And also, how much money will I be making when I do that? Because then you — and then how does that translate? So, you know, I’m not a big, I mean, I love nice things, but I never have done anything in my life, in medicine, or certainly in anything else I’ve done, I’ve never made money the priority. That’s always been, bring value to the marketplace and get paid well. So that’s not my priority. My priority is doing exactly what we’re doing today. I love to help people and I love to — people have such potential, but I’m I’m I only want to help the people that raise their hands. I’m not here to — I’m not a hero. I’m not here to enable someone and hey, oh yeah, let me do it for you. No. I’m here to help you understand how your business becomes more successful. And it does by knowing what that entails. What will that bring in my life? What are the results leading from that future? What will my life look like? So your projection, your vision because most people if they do CAT scans — do MRIs, functional scans, they light up the brain for the present. They don’t light up, if you have them, think five years from now, they light up the same area that they are now. That’s because most people don’t think that the things I do today determine what happens to me later.
That’s why I’m talking so much about health span now and metabolic health, switching that because by improving your metabolic health, you help everything. And that’s an ongoing process. You know, if tonight I go out and have pizza, a whole piece of pizza and a hot fudge sundae, my metabolic health tonight, I won’t sleep as well, So that hurts your metabolic — and by morning I won’t be functioning as high. And you do that for a couple weeks and you’ll start undoing everything you’ve done. It is an ongoing process because your identity is that I’m increasing my standards where I’m a successful businesswoman and every week, okay, I did 10 calls this week, I’m going to do 12 next week. It’s not these monumental breakthroughs where you jump stages. It’s simply being able to hold through the discomfort. It’s just like if you can lift 50 pounds, do a bench press with 50 pounds right now. Oh, see, you can go do 50 pounds all you want, right? But I’m going to do next week or my next workout, I’m going to do 55 pounds and then you do 55, and it’s going to be discomforting. It’s going to hurt. Going from 10 to 12 calls in a week is going to be a little discomfort. You won’t be able to watch the Netflix show you want because you had to do the two extra calls. But all those things incrementally will increase your standards. You increase your standards, you increase your identity, and you will become a successful businesswoman to the level you decide to become. Does that make sense?
Brooke: Yes. Thank you very much.
Dr. A: It’s not — remember in the one slide I showed. It’s not about intelligence. It’s actually about going through, being comfortable in your discomfort so you can then make the strides to break through to the next level. You know, I mean, the stupid little things you see in gyms or in football, “No pain, no gain.” In essence, that’s what that’s saying. Same thing in your business, same thing in your relationships. Sit there, you know, sit there when your loved one, someone says something and sit there in that discomfort. Don’t quip back at them right away. Sit in the discomfort and say, “Let me just sit here for a minute in this.” And then basically let’s say you say something nice to them or something that I’m not talking about enable them, but I’m saying, “Hey, in that reflection I could see where you could have thought that way.” You just improved your relationship with somebody versus needing to be right. That works in every area of our life. Believe me. It’s the most — psychological flexibility, which in essence means stuff’s going to happen. When it happens, hold the moment. Reframe, one of the other ladies was talking about that. Everything is about reframing. So rather than think, oh god, I’m just stuck and I can’t be as successful, but I’m doing okay… but. No. Reframe it. Reframe as, you know what? Bottom line is I need to increase my standard.
I need to increase my standard in what I’m eating, how much I’m sleeping, how many calls I’m doing, am I spending time really acknowledging — by the way, acknowledging what someone says is different than agreeing with them. We need to acknowledge that we hear what someone else says. We don’t have to agree. That’s one of the major reasons of what’s wrong right now in our society. Everybody you know, basically, aren’t listening to each other at all. They have their position and they’re just yelling at the other side. What we need to do is listen to the other side and find out, how do we make this work because we’re more similar than we are different. Cool?
Brooke: Yes. Thank you so much.
Dr. A: You’re welcome. And we ran over. Sorry about that, guys. So that’s the end for today. I hope you guys have a great week. Hopefully — remember when something’s a little discomforting, unless it’s something dangerous, I mean, you know, if you got a prick, a sticker in your hand, yeah, get it out. But in your relationships, in the things you’re doing, sit with a little bit of discomfort so that you let your brain know that I’m not going to die cuz the person over there, who I don’t even know, cut in front of me in traffic. It’s not worth getting killed and going into rage. See you guys. Bye.
