Consciousness refers to the state of being aware of one’s thoughts and feelings. The more aware we are, the more we can consciously influence our thoughts and feelings and help others. Watch the second session to know what the Conscious Leaders Forum is, and the perspective of consciousness, both as individuals and physicians.
Video Transcript
Dr. A: Welcome to our conscious leaders forum. I’m going to be facilitating this. This is our second monthly call, which is at high noon on the Eastern Standard time on the East Coast. I’m really excited, I just came off of being with a group of leaders that are helping lead the movement, to make conscious change in ourselves and create health and well-being and had an opportunity to talk a lot about some of the things we’re going to talk about. I’ve added some special things because I want to make sure that as we develop this and work together, that we kind of have a common language that we’re working from.
So, what is a conscious leader forum? Well, a forum is a place, meeting or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged. The idea here is to kind of build this culture, where we’re working on ourselves and helping others awaken themselves and become more conscious. Today I’m going to spend time really talking about: What is our consciousness? Because it’s very confusing, I mean it’s interesting because neuro— interpersonal neurobiology, Stanford University, PET scan, CAT scans, far-infrared scans, the ability to look at the brain, the ability to assess with warm imaging, where certain areas of the brain light up, we’ve learned a lot about the brain and yet the corpus callosum which puts the brain right smack it in half.
Each side of the brain has certain things it does and actually has its own consciousness. It’s kind of wild but we can’t really define that. So, how we define consciousness has to be an individual thing, it has to be about us as one person because basically you can’t describe what’s going on in someone else’s head. [laughing] We put a lot of stuff in our own heads and we’re going to talk about that as well today.
But consciousness really has to be experienced and understood through the observer, through ourselves individually. We always ask the question: “Who are we?” Well, we’re not our things so if you say “Well, I’m a lawyer” or “I’m a doctor,” that’s not who you are, that’s your occupation. We identify with things to give us foundation and we’re going to talk about how our thoughts and our feelings, how that works and really, what consciousness is if we distill it down to how it works for us. Because whether the corpus callosum separates the brain and creates inner pathways, it really doesn’t help us when we go out and we’re upset about something, right? So, we’re going to talk about, from the perspective of consciousness, from the perspective, as a physician, but looking at what it really is to us individually. Hopefully, that’s helpful.
[00:02:39] Let me just define it as it’s defined: consciousness refers to the state of being aware of one’s thoughts and feelings. The more we are self-aware, the more we can consciously influence our thoughts and feelings and respond in a resourceful way to help others. Resourceful way is so important because if we think about it, basically our lives are one big conversation. Conversations with other people, conversations between countries, between citizens. Conversations between ourselves, you know that voice inside of us, that we’re going to talk a little bit about today, basically understanding what that voice is and what it’s doing.
If we look at awareness, we’re looking at a flower pot here, right? Or a plant pot. That’s a vase that we’re looking at and when we look at it, it’s pretty clear: that’s a vase, because we’re the subject. I’m sorry, we are the observer and that’s the object we’re looking at, or subject-object relationship. So, when we look at that— and it’s irrefutable: that is a vase, it has a plant in it, and there’s no question about that. We don’t really argue with that.
If we look at how that works for all our senses, we have five senses. Five sense organs, I’m going to use the one of the eye, when we see that plant vase we actually see it, we see it inside. It doesn’t need to be translated, we don’t need to say “Oh, that’s a vase and it’s probably this big and that big,” we look at it and we see everything we need to about that vase. Bird chirping, we hear that. We have ears that conduct that sound energy into our brain and we hear it, we specifically hear it.
Cookies baking, man, that smell used to drive me crazy, in fact it still does! My girls know if they bake chocolate chip cookies, I don’t want to be in the building because man, they are great and they bring back childhood memories. I was a football player in high school, my girlfriend used to make chocolate chip cookies and they’d be warm and I’d smell them, on the night before the game, and so there’s a lot of memories that would come with it. I’m pretty much, you know, it’s kind of like AA for alcoholics. It’s something, if I’m around them, I’m going to eat them. I always ask them— and then they do that sometimes I think, just to mess with me. [laughing]
Also lemon, basically taste, right? The lemon has— you never forget the first time you have a lemon, that tart taste that you get that identifies with it. And of course, a hot plate. Hopefully it’s not too hot or we get burned, but a hot plate, when we touch it. These are pure form things we see, we’re aware of them, we’re conscious of them.
Now, consciousness in our inner world is a very different thing. If you think about it, events, people, something happens and what happens, it comes into our brain and it’s filtered by our brain, by our mind, because our mind doesn’t think we can handle reality as it actually sits. So our ego takes over and is in charge and it creates thoughts, it creates emotions and feelings, and we get this cognitive emotive loop and we start thinking.
Let me give you an example, let’s say Sally is walking by, your friend Sally, and you haven’t talked to her in a while and you say “Hi” and she doesn’t say anything back to you. It could be that Sally didn’t hear you, or Sally might have been deep in thought because we all get into our inner thoughts, our inner voice. And all of a sudden your ego takes over and says “How dare her not say something to me.” Now we have two mechanisms, we’ll talk about how that works to our advantage in just a moment, but those two mechanisms are designed: one is fight and one is flight. Those are the two main, we can also freeze or fall, that would be the other one.
[00:06:17] Those are what animals do in nature when they have a real threat, they do one of those four things to protect themselves. Well, the same thing, that’s what our ego does, it does one of those things. So, fight, you may run after Sally and say “How dare you Sally, not talk to me” and now your stuff, all your garbage inside of you, now you’re getting into her garbage. You have a discussion and you know it could turn into what the next thing is: the drama triangle and it usually does. That’s why 95% of the world, 98% of the time, are in the drama triangle. It’s kind of how the world’s run right now, and it’s not a very pretty sight.
Then, what happens is if you suppress it rather than go fight it and you flight from it, and you put it away, you start thinking about it more and more and then you project. You start projecting: “Well Sally, how dare you do that” and then the next day you’re on a Zoom, you see Sally on the Zoom and by now you’re so upset you can’t even listen to the speaker because you’re so much— your thoughts are consuming you, and your thoughts aren’t you. That’s how we filter reality.
So if we look at this, something happens “What am I making it mean?” We do this all the time, we make things, and our ego thinks it has to interpret in a way, and narrate it in a way to make you more comfortable with the world around us. That’s why we want the world, and why the fixed mindset, we want the world to be a certain way. Hopefully that makes sense.
The other part is that voice in our head just starts churning in our thoughts and our feelings and it creates cognitive emotive loops. That’s why when you lay down because of all the stuff that happened, usually most people don’t sleep well. In fact, I can’t— it’s unbelievable how many friends I have and people I know that really talk about their sleep. What is happening is you’re not going to sleep because you’re not shutting off all those gears going in our brain.
So, what is that voice in our head? It’s mental dialogue. How much of it is true? Very little of it is true. In fact we make stuff up and actually I was talking to someone a couple weeks ago and they were telling a story and I actually used the story last weekend, but the husband, well the wife was in love with the husband. Love each other and the wife was trying to get a hold of her husband and she noticed a couple days before, when they were out at a party dancing, that he seemed to be attracted to this one woman and he danced with her. So she already had the voices go in her head and she didn’t address it. She could address it on the way home, but she didn’t and she started building up inside.
Three or four days later she’s trying to get a hold of him and usually he answers his texts and he can, and during the day, the voice is saying more and more “Whoa, I wonder,” and it builds up. Eventually it— “Is he having an affair?” And she’s really going, she’s really going inside. When she gets home from work, she goes in, and she’s ready to tell him off. She walks in the door, the lights are off, she goes “What is going on?” She’s even more fearful. Then the next moment, the lights go on, and her husband had spent the day getting ready and he planned an amazing birthday party for her. And everybody’s there, a surprise, and that’s why he didn’t want to talk to her, because he was afraid he didn’t have a good poker face. Basically [unintelligible 00:09:28] so he didn’t think he’d get away with it.
So, anyway, all day long, her voice in her head is telling her stuff that’s made up. It’s not only wrong, it’s incorrect and it’s— actually if she listens to it, it puts her in a place where she’s going to be attacking her husband in the next moment, which is then going to build up his stuff and then we’re going to be in the drama triangle.
We know we do this every single day, in so many ways and it’s lying to us. It’s not the truth but yet the next morning we’re back listening to it, like it’s okay. If your friend did that to you, or your child did that to you, or someone else, you would no longer be reliable. Yet, that next morning we’re using that same voice in our head for financial advice, what clothes we should wear, I mean it goes on and on and on. It’s just so important to know that it is made up. Most of life will unfold in a way that are forces outside of you and the mind has a lot to say about it but has very little it can actually do.
[00:10:25] So with that, let me use this as an example of how the brain— why this happens. It’s like a tea kettle. Something happens and we build up, and it builds up, and then the voice in our head starts processing and interpreting it in a way, because we can’t handle the truth. Our ego doesn’t think we can handle the two so it makes it up, to make it more palatable.
So, here’s a cute little puppy and we all go “Ah, isn’t that cute?” And we feel joy because there’s nothing cuter than a cute little puppy. But if in the next moment behind you, you were in a park looking at that puppy, there was a rattlesnake that showed up and you could hear it, you would immediately, as soon as you heard it, you would jump out of the way. You wouldn’t turn around and use your regular mind and your thoughts, look and say “Oh, I’m curious about that rattlesnake. Bottom line, it has interesting colors, it’s got this thing on the back going like this, I want to know more about it.” No, you’ve already moved 10 feet, 20 feet, you might have run a half a mile before you stop, right? Because that’s how we were programmed.
We have the limbic area in our brain that instantaneously creates emotion, which is energy, which gets us the heck out of the way. That’s how we were designed. Unfortunately, most of the things we deal with in the day now, in the modern world, is not real threats. They’re perceived threats, and the ego loves it, man, the ego is in charge, doesn’t want you to think. In fact, for many people the ego is so ensconced in that conversation that we’re not opening to listen, to be curious to anything.
We’re pretty much— the ego tells us how things are. We’ve made a belief system about it, this is the way the world can be and if the world isn’t like that the ego is going to build more stories of it. Hopefully this makes sense. We have fear, and fear runs throughout us, it’s almost always security, anger or fear are the main emotions that take us down the rabbit hole.
If we look at that, we have two worlds: one world is the calm world we have when we’re fully conscious, when we’re not allowing these cognitive motor loops. That’s the beautiful woman with the sunset, fully observing that, in that moment, feeling very connected spiritually to, you know, whatever is important for you. But feeling that energy of being part of this crazy planet, that’s turning around quickly in the middle of nowhere, and we’re connected to all that, versus this unbelievable geared up system that’s just churning out all this info and all these stories, and we’re making up stories left and right.
What we want to do is we want to work and what we’re going to talk about and we’re going to answer questions on today is, how do we become unfiltered? Where we’re not making up stuff because when we really find out, if we really look and where our issues and problems, it’s not outside of us, it’s inside of us. We are our biggest critic, that inner critic, that voice inside. Now you can have thoughts, normal thoughts that you have “Oh, I better remember to take my keys when I go out” or “I better remember to turn off the stove” one.
Those are all things that help us. So, the voice by itself is not the issue, it’s when we turn the voice with our ego to be this critic, the critic or voice inside of us that just gets us going and keeps us not being present very much of the time. If we can focus on that, it will really make a difference.
I want to use the analogy: to a river and to a stream. If you look upstream, it’s calm and that’s a default mechanism for our brain. We really— our mind should be calm, we should rest on a calm mind and if you think of water as the analogy, when there aren’t rocks in it, you can see where there’s starting to be a few rocks here. [referencing a slide] The rocks cause the “Eddie,” the rocks can create this turmoil. Sometimes, it’s just a little bit, we’re wondering, “Boy, it better not rain tomorrow.” I mean, who do we think, because I’m going camping, it better not rain tomorrow? Who do we think, we have any control over that? We have no control and actually our meteorologists don’t give us such great advice all the time either, so then we blame it on them. [laughing]
[00:14:31] The whole thing is, we don’t want to take ownership, we want to look outside of us and see what we can fix because we think inside of us, that basically, we’re okay. We are ego even if you think you have guilt, you have anger, you have any of these emotions. They’re all these rocks, these conceptual rocks, that did service and they’re pure, if there’s a rattlesnake. But don’t service, because we happen to look and somebody didn’t say “Hi” to us. Very different situation.
If we think about it, it’s calm and the rocks are what caused this, the turbulence, the disturbances that are inside our mind and as you can see, we try to navigate these cognitive emotive loops. We don’t have a kayak, we just have ourselves, drowning in this. What happens is we try to do it and once we try to do it, if we get caught in that cognitive mode of a loop, once we’re going down the rabbit hole, it’s too late.
The key thing we’ll talk about is just a moment. The key thing is to recognize when you have that “icky sauce,” when something doesn’t seem right and you want to— we use: stop, challenge, and choose. It’s a tool that I kind of evolved almost two decades ago to help people when they start to sense there’s something going on before they’re even conscious of it. They stop, they recognize, and they find out what the emotion is, what the thought is, and then let it pass. Recognize it’s not you, it’s just like that vase I showed earlier.
It’s a thing that’s different from us, and if you don’t really believe that, just think “If it is me, then how come I can see it?” Because you can’t see yourself, right? You’re removed from it. It’s not you and your emotions aren’t you, your thoughts aren’t you, but if you’re going down the rabbit hole, you’re in trouble. The key thing is to get out of the rapids because you can’t give yourself advice when you’re upset. When you’re into that upset state, because if something’s bothering you, you can’t give yourself good advice.
The key habit, the micro habit, we’re going to talk about here, is getting out of the water. It’s literally getting back and— I love to use children because children have child-like curiosity, it’s wonder. They don’t really care. They just want to figure out what’s going on in front of them and the joy they get out of doing that brings them so much. They love— think about when they have a sleepover and they’re with other friends and they’re getting to do things they haven’t done before. They stay up all night talking because it’s so exciting for them. It’s not getting out and just sitting there, it’s getting and observing everything around you.
Start taking the rocks out. That’s the key part. How do we do that? Well, there is no one giant step, but it’s a lot of little ones. It’s taken however how old you are, it’s taking you that long, through all those experiences, all those things, all those conclusions you came to, all that stuff you made up. It’s got to come out and it’s going to take some time but if it went down— in other words, what we do is we suppress that. We actually suppress it many times because we don’t want to deal with reality.
That thinking about Sally, goes down in there, and then depending, it could be a relative, it could be someone you met, they haven’t seen in years and it creates all kinds of disturbance. Not just in our own mind, but in our relationships, in our work and our ability to be successful of what we want to do. All of it is involved and it’s all introspective, looking inside.
The first thing we want to do is start thinking about “Okay, my thoughts, my emotions, and the form.” What I mean by form, that vase, I’m looking outside at the water, those things are not me, those are things I’m observing. Pure consciousness is me observing those things and the better we can get it recognized, our thoughts aren’t our own, our emotions aren’t our own, we have elevated them to take the world outside of us and make that the problem, and that’s why we’re in the victim mentality. That’s why we feel like we’re a victim to all the things around us.
So taking full control back is actually getting to the point where you can observe your thoughts, observe your emotions, and observe obviously the external world. Just like I showed earlier, with the woman looking at the sunset and seeing that pure image across her brain. We’re able to calm our thoughts, quiet the water and put ourselves in position where we can have wonder and fun, just like kids. Actually, it is such a powerful thing if we’re willing to go to the mental gym every day. Over time we can make all the difference, to the point where nothing’s too big, no rocks are too big once we get them out.
[00:19:01]You can be surrounded with stuff outside of you that caused dysfunction, and we certainly have. Life gets in the way and the idea is something’s gonna happen, right? There are events that occur, it’s how we respond to them that determines the outcome. If we’re able to get back to the point where we can keep ourselves calm, if we have issues we address them, feel the emotion that comes with it, obviously we lose the love and we’re going to be sad for a while and we’re going to grieve. But recognizing that then not having it fully consume us by releasing it, by actually releasing it, feeling its sense and releasing, not trying to suppress it. It’s where everything starts and you know what I like to call this is, we have internal stability where we’re able to take that information coming in and then external equilibrium means, in essence we have our relationships with the things that happen to us and we now conduct ourselves in a way that creates an outcome that actually allows us to continue to work on our health, work on our well-being, work on our relationships, and working on our success. Whether it’s in our business, in our relationships, or in a relationship with ourselves. Hopefully that’s helpful.
I’d like to open it now for Q and A. Rachel let me take the— stop to share and let’s answer some questions.
Rachel: All right we have Shawna, can you come off mute? Perfect.
Dr. A: Hi Shawna.
Shawna: Good morning, Dr. A. How are you?
Dr. A: Good, how are you?
Shawna: Good. I have been— a little bit before I started program, I was digging into my, I guess conscious work, which was so profound that this is something we’re focusing on. And I’m learning, I can see myself learning and the shift happening where those, especially in the mornings I wake up and I’m like the list is so long, and I get overwhelmed. So, I’m flipping the script early in the morning and telling myself “We’re gonna have a great day” and “These aren’t life altering things that have to be done.” But I’m also getting into— there’s a lot of subconscious work yet to be done. What are some things that you can recommend?
Some things that I found are like with ROM DOSrom dos or the abundance code and I want to get deeper into that because I think there are some root things that I started believing early on and I don’t know how to find them and get rid of them.
Dr. A: Great, awesome. That’s a great question Shawna and congratulations on doing this work. This inner work we do on ourselves, getting inside our inner self and really working on it. Most people are afraid to do it and the egos there, man, it’s just resisting. So recognizing that relationship you have with your ego. Eventually, over time we want our ego to be in service of our soul and what I mean by that— I read that several years ago and I always thought that was very appropriate, because in the Eastern religions they talk about totally exercising your ego.
I think your ego is really important once it’s serving your soul authentically, what you really want, not the voice in your head, but, really is important to you. So it’s now starting to make that change and that change occurs by how you interpret experiences. And really, we have a whole bunch of experiences and so one of the— and when I showed the filtered versus the unfiltered, if you can actually spend some time— and so the three things, there’s three ways that you can spend some time.
[00:22:23] The first is turn that inner critic, turn it into positive energy. For instance, I use the analogy over the weekend to the leaders, someone’s driving in front of you and they’re driving 35 miles an hour in a 45 mile an hour zone. We all know what starts happening in our minds, right? You know if you can’t crawl, I mean, if you can go around them great, if it’s the dotted lines, it’s not a solid line, then great go around them. But, certainly don’t let your road rage get like what happens a lot nowadays, it just shows you how out of control that inner voice is.
Where people zoom in front and put on the brakes. I mean, instead change it and say “Oh, maybe that’s an old person, maybe that’s someone—” and “You know what, it’s really cool that they’re out” and “I understand” and just, “Do I really need that extra two minutes it’s going to take to get where I’m only going down the road two miles to the grocery store? Do I really need to be there two minutes earlier?” You know, “Is it okay that this lady or guy is having a— enjoying themselves and being safe because they happen to be older?”
So, first thing is turn into something positive, not make something up, because we’re saying “This is a stupid person, what are they doing on the road? Da, da, da.” Just change that. We can flip the script in our minds, just like that, once we become aware of what we’re saying. The second part is a mantra. Just something, rather than, you know, I showed the gears, all the different gears going, like you said, you have all the stuff going on in the morning. [gestures gear movements]
What if we just had a mantra in the morning to get up and say, “You know what? I am calm, I am calm” or you know, “God” [crosstalk 00:23:54]
Shawna: I got one, yeah.
Dr. A: Yeah, abundance [crosstalk 00:24:55]
Shawna: Yeah!
Dr. A: Yeah! It’s just something that resonates with you. Say it, and if it resonates with you, you get in harmony and that energy starts cycling and what it does— it’s not meditation. That’s not the lack of thought but you’ve now taken it down to one thought, and as one thought, all the other thoughts will quiet, they’ll kind of go into the noise in the background. That’s a nice way to kind of wrestle it.
Then the third way is just surrender to it. Let it go, right? Let it go, because it’s not serving you. There’s no way it’s serving you. It’s not serving you at all, it’s just making you miserable and churning you up. By the way, since— I started down the path you were talking about, we’re spending more time. Yeah because, over 20 years, leaving critical care and focusing on health and well-being. It started with people being overweight and needing to lose weight, but the real core is emotional mismanagement.
It’s actually how we conduct ourselves with that inner critic inside. If we can get to the point where we can quiet and look— Also, by the way, if you have beautiful things you can look at stop during the day, a great way to see, to test yourself is: sense your breath. Is your breath slow, deep, coming from your belly where your belly goes out. Or is it frantic up here? In the upper chest, and it’s shallow. That’ll tell you, because your autonomic nervous system, which is really most of the time automatic, and autonomic because it’s in charge and it works behind us. We don’t have to think about our breathing but we can, and our breathing will do two things. The first thing is, it’s a diagnostic, it tells us whether we’re stressed, whether we’re having all these feelings and tense. Or, are we calm?
Then the second part, you can actually use your breath as one of the solutions. You can actually take some slow centering breaths, making sure your belly is expanding. Feel the breath all the way through and then you’re using your breath to come to grips and then eventually wrestle your emotions and the things that are going inside to help quiet you and put you centered. Because we want to be, I showed the one slide with thoughts, feelings and a form. We want to actually remove ourselves from those thoughts. Being able to stand on the side just like that little kid in the rapids, to the side and become in wonder “Oh, I wonder why I’m thinking that,” Right? The idea is, we’re not about psychology, we’re not about becoming psychotherapists, this isn’t that.
Psychology is about the study of human behavior, which is dysfunctional because of all that stuff. That’s not our role, that’s not our job, we’re not trying to fix that. We’re simply looking to observe it, quiet it and the only thing we have control of, people would love, you know, I always tell people, the best gift you can give yourself: stop trying to have a better past. Also, stop worrying about the future. Lead from the future, so you have a blueprint and a direction to filter your everyday actions to become more. Do you want to be upset with your coach or do you want to help that coach be more successful to help us on a mission? Of course it’s the second one, but if we’re not standing out of the river and we’re still in the middle of the rapids we cannot function at a high level and we do stuff.
[00:27:02] Just ask the people on murderer’s row, right? There was a moment right before they committed these shameless crimes where they could have stopped. They were all aware of it, but their emotions, they let it take over. They didn’t— you know what, it’s like habits, if you’re not practicing and in that moment once you go down the rabbit hole and you’re really in it, it’s hard to navigate, you just can’t navigate it. And that’s when you drowned and do bonehead things, that’s when you eat M&M’s, that’s when people drink too much, they do drugs, whatever it is. They do something to try to quiet that voice inside but it never does that. Is that helpful?
Shawna: So helpful, yeah and I look forward to just getting more into that subconscious level. Thank you.
Dr. A: Yeah, and by the way, you don’t need to clear your subconscious but if it comes up and something hits you, right? You get that trigger. You want to sense, what is it? Anger? Is it fear? What is— and then basically let it come up and it’s going to hurt, it’s going to be painful. If you repressed it or suppressed it because it was painful, when it comes up, it’s going to be painful as well. But if you recognize it and stand on the riverbank and let it [crosstalk 00:28:08]
Shawna: Is that the surrender? That’s the surrender?
Dr. A: That’s the surrender. Surrender to it and let it just go through you and don’t let it have any energy. Don’t connect to it. If you don’t connect to the thought or to the emotion, you just simply observe it. It can’t take you into the drama triangle, you’ve taken back total responsibility and you’re looking at it as being a thought or an emotion which is no different than this phone. [shows a phone] They’re things that we’re observing, they’re not us, our pure consciousness, our inner self, our self-awareness. When it’s pure, unfiltered, is— makes your day’s brilliant. It’s a process, it’s probably the hardest thing you’ll have to do, it’s also going to make that beautiful mountain view with the calm water that we showed earlier.
Shawna: Thank you.
Dr. A: You’re welcome. Okay, who else?
Rachel: Okay, we have Stacey.
Stacey: Hi Dr. A.
Dr. A: Hey Stacey.
Stacey: Hi. I have a question on— as we are working through all of this personal development and we’re working on trying to stay above the line and bring awareness [crosstalk 00:29:17]
Dr. A: First of all, I have to stop you right away. Language is everything, stop trying to stay above the line. Stay above the line.
Stacey: Stay above the line. As we [crosstalk 00:29:25]
Dr. A: and when you go below the line, recognize it before you get down. Like in those rapids where you’ve lost it, right? So as soon as you see the first ripple, you see that, that’s time to move off the river. I’m using a metaphor but, basically stay away from it, look at it, observe it, okay? And being above the line is consciousness, you’re conscious. I want to make sure they’re all related. I use consciousness because that’s you as an individual. The commitments and what the Deffner group did, Jim Deffner created, was a line to show us as leaders, or leading ourselves, or being around other people. Are we above the line or below the line?
It’s as simple as that, that location, we’re always in one of those two places, right? If we’re above the line, where just like we were talking— where you’re removed from it, you’re able to see it, and then you can shift yourself with your breath, with your posture. Then you shift back out of it, you don’t go down. Once you get in the drama triangle, it’s like being in those rapids, you can’t, it just happens, and you can’t— in fact the best thing you do then is get the hell out.
Stacey: [Laughing].
Dr. A: Stop what you’re doing. It’s just like, I was talking to the folks over the weekend, it’s like a young kid and you’re teaching them to read. Do you have kids?
Stacey: Yeah, I do.
Dr. A: Yeah, okay when you were teaching them to read, when they were little and they’re going to bed. They’re reading their book before they go to bed. As soon as they make a mistake and they get a little frustrated, stop, because what will happen is, they’ll make more mistakes, because what they’re doing is they’re circling the rabbit hole. They’re starting to have those things “I’m not worthy. I’m not good. I’m not…my mom’s going to be upset with me.” All that stuff starts as soon as it happens. Stop, give him a big kiss, tell him you love him and put him to bed. That same thing we have to do with ourselves.
So anyway, I didn’t interrupt you. I just want to make sure right from the beginning you’re not saying when you’re trying to be above the line. You need to recognize, and you may not be ready, you may not be ready to go above the line in this particular thing but be curious about it. It’s okay if you’re not, 80% of the time you want to do it but you’re not willing to do it. It takes time, it takes effort, it’s just like chocolate chip cookies. I basically, if they’re warm and they’re in the air, man, I have to get the heck out because if they’re sitting there I’ll find that, I’ve got one and I’m eating it, and I don’t even know I went to the kitchen and got it, right?
Because our subconscious, we were talking in the last— person about, Shawna, about your unconscious part, right? We have a ton of stuff we’ve gathered in there and most of it just isn’t true. The things that we didn’t like, we press them down inside and they’re like a coil and if you’re not careful you trigger one and it’ll come up and it’ll just take over the whole conversation. So anyway, what do you really want to know? [Laughing].
Stacey: Well, that actually probably answered my question. Now I was wondering, when there are so many other people around you who are in the drama triangle and cannot seem to find their way out of the drama triangle, it gets wearing, you know trying to— being the person who stays above the line when everybody around you is stuck in the drama triangle. I’m wondering if you have some tips to help navigate that.
Dr. A: I do have a really good one. It’s called, it’s not mine, but it’s Upset Technology. It’s using “Okay, how do we calm this brain?” That the voice is like a tea kettle, right? It’s just building, and building, and building, and building, and the mind doesn’t want to take ownership of it. When someone’s in the drama triangle they are unconscious and they don’t even recognize, many times, they’re in the drama triangle. They are so caught, and what happens is that thought, their consciousness is now connected to that thought and they’re no longer conscious.
[00:33:12] They’re unconscious because when they’re conscious they would see that, in fact one, of the most important things and you’re working on yourself and you’re now at the point where you’ve learned the habits of transformational change and leadership and the things that are necessary you’ll actually find you’ll start laughing at yourself when that ego tries to come up and do that stuff because you know “Oh, why do you think you need to be heard right now?” Why not listen? You know what I’m saying?
There’s a— it’s called Upset Technology and there’s four questions, usually we use three but I’ll give you all four questions you can do. So, to that person, first, ask them what happened, okay? What did you expect to happen? What was missing? And What’s next? You can take any emotionally upset, charged, person and by asking those questions, in wonder not in judgment, in wonder of why. You know “I’m curious” What you could even say? That “I’m curious, what happened” or “What did you expect to happen differently?” and you do it from a sense of, not judgment because if it’s in judgment and they’re down there.
So, the questions have to be really reflective questions you’re asking. But, if they answer those four questions, you’ll feel that pulls them out of them, out of the drama triangle and has them refocused because they can’t even think. It’s like The Jerry— I keep saying— I don’t even know if it’s on TV anymore, but The Jerry Springer show. Where they would get on and tell each other off and really go at each other because it’s juice, it juices them, they get their stress response, they get that fight mechanism going on, and it feels— they feel alive during that period.
What they don’t realize is they’re tearing their body up completely and they’re turning their mind up, they’re ruining their relationships and creating dysfunctional surroundings for themselves. We have such— when we take full responsibility and full ownership we now bring the locus control inside and at that point, then we can help do it in a rational form. Being above the line, conscious for your creativity, for collaboration are critical in any time you’re with somebody or working in a group. If it’s about you, you can’t truly be collaborative and creator. You’re really more focused on showing up, being right and proving we’re right. Does that make sense?
Stacey: Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you.
Dr. A: Good, awesome. Okay, who else we got?
Rachel: If you’ll come off mute.
Julie: Hi Dr. A.
Dr. A: Hi Julie, how are you?
Julie: Good. Thank you for doing this, it just means the world to us, but here’s my question, I’m very much a creative individual. I create decor and everything imaginable, use things out of context in good ways, and I’m known for that, and I think I live above the line much of the time. I just reread Element 24 this week, you know, those four levels of consciousness. I respond, I don’t react, pretty even, good with people, but the problem comes at night. I feel like my subconscious takes over. We just moved from Pennsylvania to Virginia, so, big life change three months ago. My business, things like that, but I find myself waking up in the night with sometimes even panic and terror and these elephants sitting on my chest and it’s not rational.
In my mind, during the day I can handle that. I can choose to go about above the line or silence those voices but at night, it seems like sometimes they come alive and just really get me and then I can’t sleep. What is your thought on that? As far as— am I, is there other people like that? and what is my best bet to even out the night time too, so I sleep better.
Dr. A: Yeah, and it’s a good time for me to say this. I’m not a psychotherapist. I’m a physician that’s focusing on helping people create health and well-being, so I can’t give you a diagnosis, but I can give you some things to think about. You are really good, you’re really good during the day. I think of concealing all your stuff, I think you’re actually concealing your stuff because when you sleep at night, you’re still— there’s a relationship between your conscious and unconscious self. Sleep is just another form of consciousness, so you don’t suddenly— you’re not Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
You have those things in there, you just have done a really good job of suppressing them, pushing them, and resisting them. You don’t give them any energy but you still have those things, and you’re just seeing— when you don’t have that master control, [unintelligible 00:37:49] the reason why I say that’s probably what’s going on because if you don’t have this stuff inside there that does that, because you’re doing great with your consciousness, then you wouldn’t have it because it’s experiential, it’s just that at night you don’t have the the caretaker.
[00:38:10] You, the strong caretaker that has strong will and suppresses all these things, and resists these things is coming out so you do have them. What I would do is, now, in the day, start doing exactly what I said for everybody else. You’re just like— we’re all, by the way, I’ve been working on this for several years, I’ll be working on it for the rest of my life but I can tell you, my relationships with my family, with my kids, with my mom. My mom and I used to fight like the cats and dogs, she isn’t on this course to change and she’s in her way. She’s in great shape and has a good life. But we’ve become extremely close over the last three or four years because we used to do “this” and now I don’t do “that” and she has nothing to do with— and so it’s dramatically, dramatically improved our relationship.
So, I think you’re fooling yourself Julie, and I’m just— you’re giving me permission and, by the way, again two things you’re giving me permission, when you get on here and ask that. I hope that was alright, I should have asked you first.
Julie: No, that’s fine. A couple of things is sometimes it turns in a really good way, when I’m creating at night, in my subconscious and I come up with like “Oh, that’s what to do with that,” and it just— even for my team, you know, and AFTER VIA and and the other thing is, it’s been a stressful time, these three months especially, with us moving and the doubt that’s created as far as “Can I keep this thing going?” But that’s a really good way. I’m reading quite a bit on books on the mind just to shore up that area but I’ll have to think further on that. Thank you so much.
Dr. A: Yeah, before you go to Julie [crosstalk 00:39:39]
Julie: Yeah.
Dr. A: [unintelligible 00:39:38] I want to make sure exactly, what I like to do is give people perspective, because you can’t see yourself and to have a different perspective you can start becoming that observer and really watching that. So, a couple things, if it’s just happened in the last couple months because you just moved, if it’s not normally there, then that could be the reason why. I didn’t know that information, so that— oh you did say it, but I didn’t think about it that way.
Julie: Yeah, no it’s not like for years it’s certain [crosstalk 00:40:01]
Dr. A: Yeah, so, it does bring up— there are things, you have security issues, safety issues, they’re things that probably— I talk about expanding the window of tolerance. Most of us take two tacks, we’re either rigid and we keep things very much the way they need to be, and then on the other side is reactive, where we just kind of react to everything around us. I want to make sure the voice in our head isn’t a bad thing. As I said earlier, or— and also, when I talk about the model morning and the twilight hour, the twilight hour is a great time to think about the things that you you’re leading from the future of what you want to create you know next week, next month, next year, and then “What am I going to do tomorrow?”
When you think about it, at night, and put it in your thoughts, those thoughts then sit inside there and they percolate, so when you get up in the morning you already know what you’re going to do, you’ve already thought that through. You don’t have what we call “choice fatigue,” you’re ready to go, you know what needs to happen and you focus on the process of getting that done during the day. That’s the first, and you are a creator and when you know what your desired outcome is, right? Where you are in current reality.
You get into that generative spirit and you get stuff done so you’ve got lots of the creative process in you. What I want to focus on is, have you with the creative process focus on fully becoming filter free? Where it’s you’re removing yourself and you’re actually experiencing everything and you can start off small with things since you like to create. Be really observant and make sure you’re looking at it directly. Over the weekend, I had the folks look around the room and when I looked out at the room, I see the whole room, I see everybody, I see all the different outfits, the faces, the smiles, sometimes the frowns, if they don’t like what I’m saying. And it’s all right there.
If I have to filter it and go through, and look at each individual, it would take hours to process that room, right? That’s the difference. So you probably aren’t even aware that you’re filtering some things. Maybe you’re filtering— you’re feeling a little nervous of where you are, you’re feeling a little uncomfortable, or you’re feeling a little shy, it usually is— we’re bringing it back something inside and then what your brain’s trying to do and your mind is trying to do at night is just work through it. It’s trying to process.
Just like like when you think about things creative and then the next day you’re ready to go, that’s why I like the shower. Or going for a walk on the beach with yourself, can be a great time to free ourselves. We don’t have all those voices in our head and we’re fully getting back to that awareness, we’re experiencing that, and then if we’re aware, what we want to create then it gives us the right format to be able to do that.
Julie: Okay, thank you. It’s very helpful.
Dr. A: Welcome. Yeah, okay who else?
Rachel: All right, next up we have Margaret.
Dr. A: Hey Margaret, you’re muted.
Rachel: Can you unmute yourself? There you go.
Margaret: Okay, can you hear me now? Sorry about that. This is great stuff, thanks for doing it, it’s really something to practice every single day. I’m curious, you gave that analogy of the river, which is a great visual and there’s the calm part and then there’s where the rapids begin, right? And so, I’m curious, why is it, in some areas of your life, it’s easier to stay like that? The calm river and be in a state of flow? But then in other areas of your life maybe, day-to-day tasks, working your business, or whatever, accomplishing tasks, it’s a little bit more challenging, to be like that river and calm and just organically flowing. Because there is a huge disparity for me.
When I’m active or if I’m, whatever, mastering an athletic sport or whatever, I can go to someplace else in my brain, where I find it more challenging to do that on a daily basis. Does that make sense?
Dr. A: Yeah, no, and it’s really simple. It’s your stuff, it’s not touching your stuff.
Margaret: [Laughing].
Dr. A: If it’s touching your stuff then your ego is going to take over and create a filtered version and make a story out of it. If it’s not touching your stuff— if I say to you “Two plus two equals four,” does that touch your stuff?
Margaret: No.
Dr. A: No, but if I said “Margaret, bottom line is, you’re not gonna like this, but Margaret, I really missed you last weekend.”
Margaret: Yeah, I missed you too by the way yeah.
Dr. A: No, but no, but you know what I’m talking about. It touches your stuff. I’m using that as a real life example because that’s what happens, it touches our stuff and we shouldn’t let it touch the stuff. We should take it and wonder “Why did he say that?” “What did he say it?” and I’m actually doing it for two reasons because I did miss you last weekend and the second thing is I know that would touch your stuff, so that’s the point—- and our stuff, it’s all made up.
[00:44:57] Just like I talked about, the lady was jealous about her husband because she happened to see him dancing at a party. They were just hanging out and it meant nothing to him but the day when she couldn’t get a hold of a man, it started touching her stuff and jealousy is our stuff, it’s our emotions and the things we have inside us. By the way, what has affected us sometimes and others? Because along the journey there’s stuff that happened that you’ve suppressed that’s down there. It’s just looking for a reason to come up and it just reinforces that’s why people in the same family can basically just go at each other because of different political views or finances, and 50% of marriages end up because of finances.
I was telling the group over the weekend in 1929 executives, CEO’s of companies, brilliant people, jumped off of skyscrapers because it touched their stuff in such an impactful way they couldn’t deal with it. It’s all about that. So anytime it’s touching you, just be curious about it. Get— and again the reason why the room, the water is calm, is there’s no rocks in it. When the rocks— the rocks is your stuff and when your rock is in the water it’s going to cause the wavelets getting to be rocks and sometimes they’re huge boulders that get in the way like when something catastrophic happens to you.
Right, so bottom line is: all touches your stuff and as soon as it touches your stuff the job is to— again stuff happens. It happens to all of us. We’re all born and we die and all the people important to us are born and die. We have Covid, come out of the middle of nowhere, right? We have this stuff happen, it’s how it touches us. Now I’m not saying, listen, if you lose a relative or a loved one to Covid you need to— you’re going to be sad and I’m not saying that I’m not being— it’s not a naivety it’s that I’m going to now say I’m sad, I’m grieving, but I’m not going to let it overwhelm me. There’s sadness and then there’s depression, right?
There’s where we let it consume us, because we have all those gears going and they start building that drama triangle, “Oh, woes me,” and all of a sudden, rather than— we still spend time on our stuff from when we were a child. It’s not helpful. That’s why I say “Stop trying to have a better past,” for any of us, I’m going to talk about you directly, I’m just talking in general. Then when we have something, be curious about it, say, “Oh, that rock,” then not trying not trying to fix it, but to experience, and let the rock come up. Let that thing come up and experience it, feel it, go through the pain, because then it’s gone, and it’s the same way when we’re coaching other people as clients or coaches, we need to become better at not trying to get them to be a certain way.
We need to be an investigator, like Inspector Clouseau where we’re finding out, “Okay, there’s—” We don’t want to touch their stuff, we want to free and create rapport, security and safety. Where they feel open, so they can start working on that stuff with us. That’s the whole idea. Does that make sense?
Margaret: It does. And just so I make sure that I have clarity, on a day-to-day basis, when you feel like the stuff— and by the way, I had a fabulous past, but in your day-to-day. [crosstalk 00:48:11]
Dr. A: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, so you just made a statement, that’s your ego. Because the bottom line is you had a fabulous past in general but you’ve had things that created emotions that you probably dealt with by partially suppressing. We all do, I have a fabulous past too, but I had some big issues happen. I just want to make sure how we talk to ourselves, okay? Because you’re a competitor, right? And you’re— that’s your ego saying you had a— you know what how— what judges whether you had a fabulous past or— and I know you had a great mom, so I get that part. That’s not what I’m saying, but stuff happens to us, I remember I was in the— my father was in the air force and every three years we had to travel so I would lose all my friends and have to go make new friends. That touched my stuff.
I remember being in Gibraltar on October 31st, on Halloween. In Gibraltar they don’t celebrate, well and they do now, everybody celebrates Halloween now, but they didn’t back then and I remember sitting out on the balcony of our place overlooking Gibraltar, overlooking the mediterranean and over to the left. Well, I was feeling sorry for myself, I had my stuff touched, I wasn’t able to dress up and be with my friends for Halloween because we just gotten over there. Bottom line. I look over and there’s a barbary ape looking at me and making this goofy sound while he’s eating a piece of fruit and I looked over and thought, “Wow, that is really cool,” and immediately I said, “You know what? I have the opportunity and am turning it.” Like I said to the other lady, positive.
[00:49:44] And looked and said you know “I have a real ape I’m looking at right here,” versus going and making up Halloween. See what I’m saying? It’s understanding we all have stuff, we all go below the line. It’s not so much about going below the line, it’s that we catch ourselves when we start working on the habit of transformation, where we’re now getting beyond it. We’re getting— we know the only problem we ever have and by the way, that voice inside our head, it always has a problem.
It’s always got something going on and you can’t fix something outside. You’ve got to work— go inside and work on yourself, not on the outside. Now if, you’ve heard me say this before, but if the there’s a leak in my ceiling and the plumbing has got a leak then yeah, I need to stop what I’m doing, go up, turn off the water, call the plumber and then go back and not ruin my day with “Oh, my” and it touched my stuff “I feel so sorry for myself today.” Instead, say “Good, I’m glad I caught it and I was sitting here because if I hadn’t been here the whole place would have been ruined.” Turn it into a positive and then basically deal with it and get on with it. We’re all have our stuff, it’s how we handle our stuff.
Margaret: Right. So, on a daily, from a day-to-day basis, because I just want to be clear about this. When you feel like you’re getting into that rough water on a daily, day-to-day basis, let’s say, working in your business, you start to think about something, that emotion wells up. Are you saying, just be aware of it, don’t connect with it, just be aware of it?
Dr. A: No. Yeah, yeah the answer is, yes and no, and what I mean by that, you don’t want to connect and associate with it because it pulls you right down the rabbit hole [crosstalk 00:51:21]
Margaret: Okay.
[Dr. A] And once you’re in the rabbit hole, and you’re in the drama triangle, you’re done. You can’t give, you can’t give a crazy person advice, and you’re not no longer rational when you’re in the drama triangle. What you want to do is be aware of it, observe it, be curious about it, and let it pass. It’s just like a cloud in the sky [crosstalk 00:51:42]
Margaret: Okay.
Dr. A: Here, and then it’s gone. You don’t attach to it, and you don’t— it’s not psychotherapy. You’re not trying to figure out the meaning of how it affected you when you’re a child, you’re simply— I have an emotion right now, it’s been suppressed in there, it’s got to come back up.
That’s why I said the most advanced you start with, just turning into a positive thing. It’s the first thing. Second thing, mantra’s help. The third thing, the more difficult one, the one that takes longer and will come over time as you practice it. Is surrender, it’s actually letting it go. Let it go. If there’s something, some person that’s bugging the heck out of you, if they’re open for it— but if they’re unconscious and not open for it, let it go. Don’t let it affect you. Don’t let it occupy any of your time [crosstalk 00:52:31]
Margaret: Okay.
Dr. A: You’re missing— I’d be missing, I’m doing an hour focused attention on something that’s creative, what we’re doing here, but when I’m done, I guarantee I’m going to go for a walk on the beach. Like you do many times, because I want to be outside and that re-centering to nature is so important for that.
Margaret: Without a doubt, the most important. Yeah.
Dr. A: Great.
Maragaret: Thank you, I appreciate that and appreciate this as a gift, thank you.
Dr. A: You’re welcome
Maragaret: And I missed you. I missed you too, by the way.
Dr. A: Okay, who’s the next? You had to say that didn’t you? That’s your ego. All right, who’s next? [Laughing]
Rachel: Okay, we have Dominique who’s next. Can you come off mute, please?
Dominique: Hey, Dr. A. How are you?
Dr. A: Dominique, how are you?
Dominique: Hi again, right? So yeah, this has become my favorite part of being a coach. But, my question for you real quick is, and you kind of answered it a little bit already in the previous show, but anyway, as we are transformational coaches, we’re not weight loss coaches any longer that’s way, way back. So, obviously we ask our clients, you know, “What’s going on, what’s in your mind today,” and a lot of— I can sometimes feel that they’re really getting into a spin tail. So, what I’ve been doing with them and I would like for you to see, if you have any other suggestions. It is what you taught us in the life book, I have them ask, I ask them, “What do you feel, what emotion, where do you feel it, in which part of your body?” and then breathe through it.
That’s kind of my way of helping them a little bit because we’re not psychotherapists, right? But, is there anything else? Because it doesn’t seem to stick always. I wanted to teach it to them, so they can do it on their own, but you next time it’s the same scenario, in the same scenario, in the same scenario. So, what would you suggest?
Dr. A: Yeah, those are great questions and I want to say a couple things. I want to say once again and I probably should put it up front. We are not psychotherapists. None of us, even though I’m a physician, I’m not a psychotherapist. I have not been trained on psychotherapy. That’s not my specialty, actually my specialty now is helping people create better health. It just so happens that one of the things that we can create is a healthier mind, by knowing some techniques and things we can do and a better understanding because knowledge, doing and becoming, allows us to change our thoughts, our feelings and our actions. So, none of our coaches, and so this is not intended for that, this is intended—And by the way, this is not just for coaches, this is for everybody.
[00:55:09] I built this forum because then I’m going to be having on, especially starting next year, I’ll have on thought leaders in this space that aren’t part of our program. So for your clients, a good thing is to get them on these calls, right? Get them on these calls, because they can maybe learn something. They can’t— maybe they’re too close to you or they’re— and the other thing is you can’t get them, you can’t change, I want to be really clear, you cannot change someone else’s behavior.
All you can do is make them aware and present and basically stop, to challenge and choose, right? So with that, the best thing you can do is become a better model of it. So when they start seeing every time they’re on the call you’re, basically, you don’t have to agree with what they say, you just are acknowledging it. That’s part of building relational health, you’re acknowledging, where they feel safe and they’re not being judged and then they’ll start opening up. In fact, you’ll become the area where they’ll talk more because everybody else is taking them down in the drama triangle. They may be excited about having a conversation with someone else, but they’re being enabled, they’re not being empowered. As long as you don’t take the bait, right?
Never take the bait and eventually after three or four times, and that’s what people— my kids learn this, they know that they have a problem they can come to me but don’t turn it into a major megillah, a major issue. We’ll deal with it, you know “What happened?” You know, “What was missing, what did you expect and what’s next?” That I turned— I’ve always done that because it’s so critical and what you’re doing is, after a while they won’t start because they’re not going to get satisfied. It’s just like, if you’re teaching, I don’t mean this to be derogatory, but it’s stimulus and response. If you’re teaching a dog how to sit you use a reinforcement, right? You use something, a reward. Same thing here, the reward is that they actually feel that anxiety go away because you’re asking rational questions and you’re not taking the bait and going down the rabbit hole like I was talking to Margaret about. Does that make sense?
Dominique: Yeah, absolutely, thank you so much.
Dr. A: Okay, we have time for maybe one more question. We’re almost at the hour.
Rachel: Okay, we have Katie up next.
Dr. A: Okay
Rachel: Katie?
Dr. A: Hi Katie, I can’t hear you.
Katie: Hi, thank you so much for all this.
Dr. A: You’re welcome.
Katie: You actually answered many of my questions with these questions and answers, but I do have a question, why do our brains almost immediately go to make stories that are negative? And they self-sabotage, staying above the line, working on that consciously, but my brain and many of my clients’ brains immediately go to the negative [crosstalk 00:58:06] Even though we’re staying apart. But why?
Dr. A: If you remember back, did you see my slideshow?
Katie: Yes, it’s the fight or flight, but how do we? Why is it fight or flight— I just answered my question. [crosstalk 00:58:18] How do we get the fight? How do we stop it?
Dr. A: Okay, the reason why it happens to everybody, that’s your programming. You are programmed that way. It’s there, the only way you make it, is to ask yourself “Why do we do that?” Because it’s the natural process. Ten thousand years ago, we lived in a pretty hostile environment and there were a lot of bad things, saber-toothed tigers, cliffs, poisonous plants, all these things and so we were attuned to be a highly involved neural trip wire. Our amygdala, our neural trip wire, they’re designed so when there is any perceived threat, boom, it acts in advance of you using your rational brain. Because a rational brain is more deliberate but it thinks much slower. That’s why emotions are full of energy, that’s why they create all that angst and inside us.
[00:59:12] Because normally, physiologically, one of those four mechanisms, whether it is flight. Flight, you release norepinephrine and epinephrine and cortisol are all released and you use those things to fight somebody and actually you vasoconstricted so if you did get cut or hurt you didn’t bleed to death, so they’re all built into our program. It’s like, why, when I take my Tesla to the gas station, try to put fuel in it, it doesn’t work? Because it’s a different fuel source.
So you were designed to be protected against any real dangers. What’s happened today, we live in a world that’s extremely complex, technologically advanced to the point where we don’t use relational skill sets like we used to. Kids stay on their phones, you watch people at dinner, they’re all sitting there on their phones, no one’s talking to each other. We don’t use it a lot and it’s getting worse and worse and worse and we’re getting to a point where most people are closing down, they’re suppressing anything that’s new. They’re putting it down and having more and more angst and that’s why we’re having drug overdose, why people are eating everything that’s not nailed down, that’s why the alcohol consumption during Covid went up so dramatically, because people don’t know how to do this.
So rather, that’s why you do it, okay? Now, how you change it is a process? You have to be highly motivated. I can tell you, most people actually enjoy the adrenaline rush when they go to work and it’s dysfunctional because they feel competitive, they feel in the game, they’re trying to be better than someone else and it makes them feel alive. But it’s the worst thing they can do, and that’s why you have 50 year old widowmakers happening all the time because they’re stressed out completely they’re eating the wrong foods and doing all the stuff that’s not good for their health or their mind.
To work on this, we have to get back first with self-awareness. The key part is self-awareness: being able to be the observer and recognize that almost all the time your ego is going to take over and try to narrate the world with its own story that serves you, and it can be a very negative story. Because negative bias is already there, people tell 33 people something negative they only tell five people something positive.
Katie: Wow.
Dr. A: We have a negative bias and have perceived threats, the world is full of perceived threats and we’re not getting the socialization and the interaction like we did years ago. When your grandmother and grandfather, your parents were working, they were there for you, we lived together, we worked together. Technology, we didn’t move around, we— just like the one lady that is having stuff happen at night because she moved. She made a move, but the world is moving.
I made a statement over the weekend: “Change is occurring the slowest that will ever occur right now.” It’s going to continue to accelerate, so if we’re not taking control and A.I., by the way, has come on and what companies are doing is they’ve data mined millions and millions of people. They know what you’re thinking and they’re actually having you work for them and buy their stuff, because you’re not thinking, because you’re unconscious. This is the most important gift we can give to ourselves and work on together.
That’s why I wanted to start this forum and this movement and bring others on also because this work is so important for us individually. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a coach or a leader, it’s important for our clients, it’s important for everyone to realize if you don’t take back that locus of control and you continue to point outside at everything, at being the problem and trying to fix the problem, rather going and looking at the mirror and realizing that you are the person that’s causing this stuff to happen to yourself, and your thoughts, your feelings are not you. They’re just another process where you have a neurological thing that happens that we can harness and build buildings, and make amazing airliners and all the stuff when we process our thoughts in a collaborative, creative way. But when we’re left to our inner critic, we basically beat ourselves up insensibly. Worse than we would ever talk to anybody else.
Katie: True, we are our worst critics. Thank you.
Dr. A: Thank you. Welcome. All right guys, well listen again, thank you guys. I hope this is helpful and again we’ve designed this for anyone that wants to work on organizing their life around what matters most to them. That wants to be able to put their mind where they want, when they want, for as long as they want. And together we really can help ourselves and help our fellow humans be better parents, more conscious parents, community members, citizens and obviously help us change the world together.
So, thank you guys so much and I’ll see you in January, on the first Tuesday at noon. See you guys and let anybody know this is for anybody that wants to work on themselves. Thanks, bye.
