You are not your thoughts. You are not your feelings. In this session, we take a look at three simple modalities you can start using today to help you grow and become more aware.
Dr. A: All right everybody. Welcome to the Conscious Forum. We’re going to get started in about a minute. We’ll give an opportunity for everybody to settle in and you can see the topic today: Is it time for a reboot? Changing your operating system. We’re going to spend an hour going over what we can do now to kind of change the trajectory of how we’re operating inside of here. So just give a moment for everybody to settle in.
Welcome. It’s great to have you guys and we’re gonna have a lot of fun today. One of the things you’ll want is as we’re going through this, is if you have questions or things you want to discuss, make sure you put that in the chat and Rachel will contact you and get you set up so you can ask your questions and state whatever you want to. So hopefully everybody’s having a wonderful day and observing, and quieting your mind, and this is an opportunity for — it’s a psychological safe spot. I am not a psychotherapist. I’m a physician and a student of consciousness and been studying it for quite a while and helping people awaken and take responsibility for themselves, for their health, their well-being and that’s kind of what this is about.
It’s a great place for us, as fellow humans, to come together at a time when AI, artificial intelligence, and all these corporations are literally looking to program us, and if we’re unconscious, you know, we’re— most people are sleepwalking through life. We’re just kind of going through the motions mostly in an unconscious, kind of a habitual state, and this is really about rethinking our habitual habits. Many of them which cause us to suffer. So with that, let’s get started.
Basically, is it time for a reboot? Changing your operating system, and as I mentioned, the Conscious Leadership Forum is a place, meeting, or medium where ideas and views can be exchanged and so I’ll sit here and do a little beginning part that will create some content, and some context, and then we’ll open it up for questions and hopefully this will be helpful for you. So I wrote this down because rather than just saying it sometimes it’s better when you read it, but basically the exploration of self. People may say, why are you doing this? Why is this work important? I actually think this work is more important than anything I’ve ever done as a physician, you know, I help people from dying. I’m a critical care physician by trade. I helped pioneer that specialty many years ago and I helped a few people each day from dying from disease states and when I left that and started focusing as a position on creating health and wellbeing over the years, over the last 20 years, I’ve kind of followed the breadcrumbs up to the point where now I’m clearly confident that the work that’s the most important for us to do is the work on ourselves.
It’s actually exploring ourselves because, as I just mentioned, AI is coming into the world just like overnight, and it’s accelerating, and all that knowledge, all that intelligence is created by computers. It’s created by databases. It’s created by mining information, sorting it, and putting it in a certain context, but it doesn’t have the heart of a human being and if you’ve been sleepwalking through life up to this point and in other words, what I mean by that is just kind of going through your day, not thinking, or going on your automatic programming, now that’s going to become dangerous because these companies will literally feed into you and give you objects in front of you that will have you do what they want you to do versus what’s in your best interest.
So I think it’s never been a better time. I think it’s actually the most important work that I’ve ever been involved in and certainly the work I’m going to continue because so many people are suffering. The leading cause of death in the world is emotional mismanagement. It’s the inability for people to truly thrive in their lives anymore. People are lonely. Loneliness is up dramatically. This incredible technology we have, machine-based technology, and IT, and internet and all the other things that are coming out are really isolating us from each other and from ourselves and so the exploration of self, which is really in essence your mental health, is vital to the quality of your life and it’s essential to take steps to maximize it. I just can’t tell you how important it is for us to work on.
So, let’s look at both parts of that. This is the ideal of where you want to go. The ideal is if you’re thriving, you will experience a crystal-clear vision. Feeling powered to create your life the way you intend and see a life full of opportunities and that’s how I feel. So I’m not telling you this theoretically. I’m saying in actuality, although I’ve always been successful in my life with hard work, I basically, now at this point, by studying consciousness and really understanding my own mind and how it operates up here is made life incredibly just amazing. My days are full of such joy and so little suffering. Yeah, things happen, we have scratches on our car, we have delays in travel, we have irritations. I’ve had some big things happen. Those who know me personally over the last four or five years that were pretty, pretty drastic and dramatic, but you know, how to be agile, how to adjust and be flexible in your life so that you can move on, certainly aware of those things, but the— I love the word equanimity. It’s a hard word to say, but in essence, means that you can be aware of all the things that are happening around you, but you are not overwhelmed by them. You’re able to handle them. It’s like water on a duck’s back. It can roll off. So you’ll be working enthusiastically towards your goals and your dreams. Doing what you love and feeling grateful for your life and for yourself and that’s what I want for everyone. And the nice thing is it is possible. It’s not like you have to go out and get a Ph.D. or a fellowship in critical care to be able to manage it. You can work on this now and we’re going to spend some time today really focusing on some of the techniques and modalities you can use right now to start on this journey and I’m excited about that.
On the other hand, if your mental health is being compromised, you may feel knocked down by life’s challenges, lack of clarity and focus, feel scattered and uninspired, and you’d be more volatile to your emotions. So that’s the state most of the worlds in. We talk about the Drama Triangle. We talk about how everybody’s either the villain, the victim, or the hero, and it’s a cycle of a cognitive emotive loops, where we’re stressed out and we feel the tension and you know, I’ve heard several stories over the last week when we were together as a team, and then on a virtual call, a Zoom we did last night about the angst and the anxiety and all that is stored trauma inside of us from our experiences, and we don’t have to have it and we’re going to talk today, about how to get rid of some of that.
So here’s the ideal. I love this because it shows the balance. You want to have internal stability. So as I mentioned, you can handle anything that comes in and you are relatively calm. You’re not chaotic. You’re not rigid. You’re able to be flexible and adjust to the, you know— I like this, you talk as a sailor about changing the sales to adapt to the storms, to the conditions, so that we inside have that stability and that gives us external equilibrium because our life is not about just us, it’s about our interaction with people, and the joy, and the human connection is what brings most of our pure joy. Whether it’s with our family or our friends, colleagues, people we associate with, but having that dynamic, external equilibrium, starts from the inside.
All relationships start for how you handle your inner world. It’s so important. So true freedom only comes when you decide you don’t want to suffer anymore. That’s more important than any technique I’m going to go over today. Your ability to basically respond to what the world throws at you in a way that you don’t want to suffer anymore. That’s more important in the intention to say what I’m raising my hand, I’m going to start working on this. I’m going to go to the mental gym. I’ve developed on my website, I’ll show you at the end there. All these resources, I’m building more resources. They’re all free. They’re there to help anyone that wants to develop some insight and start working on themselves. So decide you want to enjoy your life and remove the fear, inner pain, and stress and you can say, “Oh, yeah. That’s easy for you to say.” No. It is easy for me to say because it’s very true. All those things that we have in here. I’m going to show you three simple modalities to start using into your life which will help there and then we’ll go over in the coming months, we’ll go over with people that are using these and how they’re helping them because they do work.
So I like to use this, basically, become aware. Become the witness. Put on your lab jacket and your goggles and you start being aware of what’s going on in your inner world. So, so critical and your emotions, your thoughts, and your emotions, we want to start studying those and seeing how they’re affecting your overall wellbeing. So in essence we can call this by many names. It can be called your personal self, your ego, your psyche, but it’s basically the experiences of your life and the preferences you develop as a result of that. So we take the longest of any creature on earth to be independent of our family. In other words of our upbringing, we’re very dependent when we’re young. So we developed self-concepts or ways that we think the way the world should be to keep us safe and so psyche is really non-physical. It’s inside of you. You’re the only one that has it. No one when they look at you can see that. That voice in your head that’s going on inside, that’s your psyche. That’s your dialogue going on based on your experiences and what happens when we’re younger, it could happen 10 years ago, 50 years ago, depends on how old you are, obviously, but things happen to us over our life that are painful and so we handle those in different ways and most people handle them by repressing. They kind of stick them like coiled springs, and they push them down, and I’ve talked about this before, but for those of you it’s your first time on here, I want to make sure you understand it.
So I’m going to show you a couple pictures as we go forward here to explain where we are but, you know, you’ve assigned your psyche, your ego, an impossible thing: to make everyone like you and to make my life just as I wanted. In other words, how do I make the outside world so that everybody likes me and my life is just as I want it? It just isn’t possible. If that’s the operating principle you’re using now, you’re not going to be very happy. You’ll be happy occasionally, you know when the person that you’re with says something that makes you want to love them because it’s exactly what you want to hear, or say, or do, but the other times you’re not going to be particularly happy. The same thing with material things. You buy a new car and it’ll get a scratch on it and when you bought it, you’re happy for a few moments, and then the first scratch, and then you’re unhappy, or where you live. All those things that we try to get the outside world to do can make us happy for a short period of time but over time, because if we’re not right, if we’re not right inside, because we have this stored trauma, these stored experiences that our psyche uses to operate with, we’re gonna have issues and we’re going to suffer.
So fear is a thing. It’s a feeling and so many people are fearful in this day, and age and they’ve lost hope. It’s caused by your blockages you know you can recognize you have it and work to release it. That I have these things inside of me, that I’m not right. I’m worried about these things. I have these things. Or you can keep it and try to hide it, and most people are doing exactly that. Every time it comes up and they start to get stressed, they try to get their psyche to make it right. We avoid fears. We don’t want to have fears so we basically repress these things, and so what we’re going to talk about today is: that attempt to protect yourself makes it worse. Have you ever noticed that you want to make sure certain things happen, like you know, you’re having a big event on the weekend and you want to make sure the weather is a certain way so you can have this event outside, and I want to be really clear with it, and we’ll talk about this in just a few moments. The weather you have no control over. Or you want to keep certain things from happening. You want to avoid things, and actually, you have so little control over the outside world. So you develop these endless loops of thoughts and feelings, of trying to either change the past, which by the way, the best gift you can give yourself is stop trying to have a better past because you can’t do anything to what happened in the past, or the anxiety of what’s going to happen in the future.
If you’re anxious about the future you also have very little, very, very little control of that. What you have control over is the present and in the present, if you can quiet that limbic area, that emotional area, the area with all that stored trauma. Having it stop pinging you and pulling you down into that emotional thought, emotion loop, and actually just observe what’s going on, then this part of your brain, which is the brilliant part of your brain that basically creates all the wonderful things in your life can operate, but when you’re down in it, and we’ll talk about this in just a moment when you’re down in it and you’re not observing it you basically can’t manage it. So if you just observe and know it’s okay to feel inner disturbances and realize they are not you but only your psyche-stored trauma, everything can change, and that’s what the rest of this day is going to be about.
I’m going to go over a couple things but you want to stop fighting with life. Start living life. Stop trying to get the world in the past or in the future to be the way you want and start becoming this incredible liver of life. You know, we’re only here for less than 100 years. Most of us, hopefully with the Habits of Health, you’ll live over a hundred, but bottom line, 100 years in the scope of the planet being here over 4.5 billion years is just a little— you’re a little dot. A little moment in time, but the key thing for you to enjoy while you’re here is to remove these blockages.
So blockages are kind of like a thorn in your side. You gotta move them out of there. So how do you do that? How do you free yourself? Well, we’re going to spend— there’s three modalities I’m going to talk about that if you’re willing to apply these over time it can change everything. It basically will allow you to stop all the stuff that’s inside you being trapped and life is here to help you. These situations and stimuluses that happen, that trigger you and get you into a state, they’re the obstacles. They are the things that allow you to grow and become more and it’s really important that we appreciate that. So I’m going to go over three modalities. First one: switching thoughts. So our mind has a lot of experiential stored trauma which creates negative energy and things happen which create negative thoughts. There’s two types of thoughts, there’s willful thoughts, when I say, okay I’m going to visualize a boat, and since the thing that’s happened recently surrounding the sub on the Titanic, I can visualize the Titanic, like from the movie The Titanic, and I can make that. That’s a willful thought that I’m creating, but most of the thoughts we have are not. They’re automatic thoughts.
The thoughts we have, you know, you get up and you get in the shower and rather than sitting there just working on making sure you get your hair and your body clean, all the stuff floods and those are all things you’re not controlling, they’re just coming up. So basically, what we want to do when we’re having one of those thoughts, and I like to use, I’ve used it many times, but I think it’s good because we all have had to deal with it and I had to deal with it just yesterday and I kind of smiled at myself because they’ve used it so much as an example it’s easy for me now but basically I have a road that comes out where I live on the island, and the traffic through certain areas is 40 miles an hour and, you know it’s a two-lane road. You can’t really pass, it’s a solid road because there’s residentials on both sides and you know, I got behind somebody, an older person, driving like I think it was 28 in the 40, and you know, I kind of want to get home. I’ve been out of town and looking forward to getting back to my place and I realized I was starting to go down that path, right? Below the line. Starting to get a little irritated. I said, you know, it’s okay. They’re basically doing the best they could do and I don’t want to agitate them or scare them, in the meantime I’ll just kind of reflect on my last weekend, gathering with a whole bunch of people and just feeling so much love, and just thinking how important that is, and is part of my life, and I’ve turned it from a negative. I took an automatic negative thing that was going on a little bit irritation and consciously, willfully, generated positive thoughts. So that’s the first thing we can do and you can do that with everything. You can really just change it up and actually install inside something that you’re focusing on now, which is positive.
Second is a mantra. This is really training your mind to repeat a single word or a phrase over and over until it gets stuck in your mind. Just like a song. So we have multiple layers of our mind and how we think. We can be listening to someone, talking and thinking about someone else. So there’s multiple levels. What a mantra is, in essence, is basically repeating a word or a phrase. It can be something as simple as, you know, if you have if you are a religious person it can be “your savior,” it can be “God,” it can be anything. You’re just repeating it, or if you want to do a non-religious one it can be, “everything’s okay.” “It’s all right,” or I like to say, “just relax and don’t resist.” “Just relax and don’t resist,” and what you’re doing is you’re actually creating a layer in your mind where you’re now repeating this and it could be so therapeutic. It’s basically— what you’re doing is you’re giving your mind a vacation. You’re giving that voice in your head a vacation from all those thoughts and feelings. You’re simply repeating something that makes sense over and over again and you can remind yourself throughout the day using your phone, but basically taking this and actually using that to kind of calm the mind, give you a little respite, and just think about it, if you’re having a crazy day and something comes up, you’ve heard me talk about Stop. Challenge. Choose., which allows you to make a different choice.
Here you can also use a mantra and a mantra then you can do it quietly inside in your inner voice or you can say it out loud, depending on the social situation you’re in, but you can do that if you’re getting ready to get on a call which you anticipate could be stressful. You can say your mantra over and over for a few minutes in the morning. You get up and say it and as you say it over and over and you quiet that voice in your head you’re kind of giving that a rest and focusing on your mantra you’ll just feel a common peace come on. Even as I think about it I can feel the peace it creates for me in situations because there is stuff. Life is intrinsically unstable. There’s going to be stuff that’s going to happen throughout your life, throughout each day that’s going to stress you out and now you have something you can rely on. It’s pretty cool, and then the third, this is the interesting one, because the first two, switching and mantras, are both actually taking your mind, in the switching you’re actually changing your thought process and going from a unconscious, repetitive, automatic thought, negative thought to a positive thought. So that requires brain power and then the mantra also, you’re layering your mind with it, basically the mantra, or this thought that you’re creating. So both of those require the mind.
The witness conscious is actually not. It’s not doing anything with your mind. It’s simply observing your mind. This is the most advanced. This is the one that’s the deepest. This is the one that’s going to create the most benefit, but you’re going to need to go slow. You’re going to have to go— and baby steps, and we’ll talk about that in just a moment. It’s so important for you to realize that if you can relax and release, in other words, you’re simply separating yourself as the subject from the object you’re looking at. So just for a moment here, pick something in front of you. I’m looking at a chair. I’m still just looking at the chair, not thinking about the chair. not putting any of my psyche, putting color into that and filtering it, but just looking at the chair, and then I can look away, and then I can look back and I can look directly at the chair. I’m observing it. I’m not putting any dialogue, any story with it, and that’s what we’re talking about doing. It’s literally putting yourself in position where you can relax and release. You’re just releasing and you’re staying separate. So let me show you now, you’ve seen me use this before, but I think it’s really important. So our stored trauma— okay there we go [Dr. A shows a photo of a river on screen]— so our stored trauma are like, if you think about— up above, you can see on this river, it’s flat and then you go into an area where there are rocks and it creates eddies. Those are the internal disturbances. That’s the stored trauma. Those are the negative experiences that your psyche is storing.
The preferences of how you want the world to be and how the world needs to be and each one of those creates eddies and it creates these internal disturbances which create the negative emotions. So if you simply decide that, rather than being pulled down and navigating through these cognitive loops and getting stuck inside because if you’re observing, you’re putting yourself away from what your mind’s thinking. You’re not your mind. You’re not your feelings. But when you get called down in it, if you’re in the middle of this, you can’t possibly be the conscious witness. The observer. You’re actually involved in it and so the key thing is, I’ve shown this picture, but I think it’s so powerful, is you get out and be like the curiosity of a young child. You’re outside and now you can observe. You can observe what’s happening. You can observe the motions. You can observe the thoughts you’re having and instead of getting into it and engaging and trying to fix your mind, you’re simply observing. This is the key to all success. It’s— your mind may not shut up— but if you get outside and just calm and do like we did with the object, looking— me looking at the chair. I can look at that chair without saying, “Oh, that chair is brown and it’s got some dimples in it” and “Oh, gosh. There’s a scratch there. Maybe I need to get a new one.” That’s all the color that our psyche puts to it through our preferences, the things we want, and the things we don’t want. You know, if you’re sitting there and you wash your car and in the back wheel, right in the very back, because you went over a little bit of water and it sprinkles up and you’ve got a little bit of dirt if you’re sitting there obsessing about that, you’ve got stored trauma in that area and these are great. Every one of those is a great opportunity to basically stop, observe, and not get involved in it, and over time this mechanism will become easier and easier for you.
So it’s kind of like this. You’re the observer. You’re sitting outside. You’re looking at your thoughts, your emotions, and your form. It’s easy for you to look at a form. So you can look at the physical world and if you stop for a moment and you— that’s a great way to start practicing because you can just look at it rather than putting color, and filtering, and start thinking more about it like, oh, I’ve got it, like there’s a plant over here, oh if I look at the leaves though, I could probably dust that, or does it need water? And I think, versus just observing this gorgeous plant that I have. That I’ve had with me for 20 years and just observe how it’s alive and growing and just flourishing. I start putting all the stuff. So that’s a great way to start the same things with your emotions and the same things with— your thoughts are the closest. That voice in your head is running non-stop. That’s why a great way to start is if you have something negative going on switch it to something positive, use your mantra, or once you’re capable of, see that thought, realizing you’re moving yourself away. So relaxing, releasing, will allow that to become a reality.
Just know that this is baby steps. You have been doing this for your whole life and it’s not going to happen overnight. So take the low-hanging fruit. The things that are real easy, like the weather. You have no control. So start adapting and being able to flourish as the weather changes. The same thing, like in traffic, and stop lights, and things that are little irritations you have that turn you sideways start practicing and standing back from them and using these three behaviors to help you with that.
So again just in review. Switching, basically taking something that you’re having a negative automatic thought in your head, change it up to something you willfully add. Second, mantra. Start taking the time to take something that resonates with you and repeat it over and over until it kind of dominates and quiets the noise of that voice in your head, and then witness consciousness. Actually, take the areas where you feel that icky sauce and actually let it come up. Now when it comes up— it went down with pain and when it comes up, it comes up, and relax and release. You’re actually releasing these things that are stored in there and as you release them you’re going to start feeling this huge weight being lifted from you and it’s an incredible feeling and an incredible thing to have. So hopefully that was helpful. We’ll open it now, Rachel, to Q&A. Let me stop this and let’s go, guys!
Chris: And Dr. A, just to make you aware, the slides are a little distorted, but that’s okay. I’m gonna fix it after this is all done. We can see most of it, but I’ll get it fixed after this.
Dr. A: Thank you. That’s what I love about you, Chris. You make me look good even when I look bad.
Rachel: All right. Our first question is from Jennifer. Jennifer, can you come on camera?
Jennifer: Yes. Thank you. Good morning, Dr. A.
Dr. A: Good morning. How are you?
Jennifer: I’m good. It was so wonderful being with you and my other 7,000 friends. It does make us all look good. So great, and I think actually, through this conversation, you’ve just already given me some tips that I think I can apply to my life. I’ve done a lot of the— done a lot of those mental push-ups. I’ve spent time with you and Dr.— and Helen Irwin and TLDP? and have really moved the dial. I’m so, so grateful for you and for all of these tips that have allowed me to respond differently from stored trauma and just how I want to show up in the world and create the best version of me. But my question for you today has to do with, and again, I think I’ve just gotten some really good tips with you, from you, but some of the more truly sub, sub, subconscious, so back in December I was behind my kid’s car. My oldest daughter and my youngest son, and watched them get hit by a drunk driver. I am so grateful because they’re okay and there’s so much to be grateful for, however, since December the trauma that I think subconsciously has started to come, my body hasn’t responded well to.
I have since been diagnosed with Epstein-Barr. There’s so much inflammation. There’s no energy, and in my habits, which I’ve been working on now for years, thanks to Optivia. Again, so grateful for those habits, but there’s so much that feels out of control in my world and honestly even in my body. The fatigue. The constant emotions and honestly, we know that sleep is such a foundation to all of our other habits. What I’m finding is I’m not sleeping a lot and I haven’t for the last eight months and I kept thinking time would heal. I’m afraid to go to bed because what happens almost on a nightly basis are those, there’s three scenes from that night that keep replaying, and it’s really hard to get them out of my mind, and when I wake up in the middle— when I’m going to bed and when I’m waking up in the middle of the night with these scenes, and when I’m just driving every day. I can feel that heightened sense of, you know, the fight or flight, and I know it’s contributing to now the inflammation of my body reacting to poor habits. I’ll take ownership for sometimes going back to food for comfort and I’m like let’s change that one. Especially after the support from this weekend and the encouragement. So I’ve got goals and I’m excited for August, but it is those unconscious like things at night that I feel, or sometimes even when I’m driving that I don’t know how to respond to. Although what you were just talking about, maybe that’s the key. Is the first of all just breathing and maybe trying to focus somehow on some of these other things. Anyway, what advice can you give me today that could assist me in some of those really unconscious, subconscious areas?
Dr. A: Well, thank you, Jennifer, for being so vulnerable and basically just putting it all out there. First of all, you know, post-traumatic stress, what you’re going through is real, and your amygdala, the emotional area in your brain has been triggered pretty significantly and you saw something in your love of your kids and the potential of what could have happened is real. So these are real things and they’re very recent and what I suggest right off is, yeah, you can do all the things I talked about, but you might consider, and I would highly suggest getting some professional counseling that— you know I’m not a psychotherapist. When you have things that are real like this, that are at that level, it’s really important to see a professional and just spend some time, and they can go through, and they’ll do very similar things to what we’re doing, but it gives you a background to sit there specifically and focus on it and be taken care of by someone that’s trained in a [crosstalk 00:31:01] and all the different modalities that are there to help you. So yeah, everything— so it’s kind of like, well you would be like, even with working on your Habits of Health, emotion it’s— you do the things yourself but if you want to, you get a professional to help you to fine-tune that.
In this case, because of a real event, this is not something you’ve imagined, it’s something that really happened and you’ve already got a background which has probably helped you, but you’re dealing with a real entity and I highly suggest you know, it’s really beyond the scope of this call [crosstalk 00:31:34]. And then if you want you can, I certainly would love to follow with you, but I would love to see you get some professional help and just allow you to almost, again, you’ve got recent stored trauma that’s significant and all the techniques we talked about can help, but by having a professional releasing that and having that conscious observation that you can have by having a professional work with you can accelerate that process because you want to get it out of there and since reality is what could have happened, didn’t happen, right? So the reality is that you’re dealing with security. A security issue in our mind, which is our fundamental constructs that are a part of our very being. Our limbic area was developed to protect us and so now this is something that— and there’s probably some other things that are connected to it that you can work with somebody and get beyond them, and so that’s what I would suggest.
Jennifer: Okay. I kept thinking I can be the dominant force.
Dr. A: No, no, no, no always [crosstalk 00:32:35]. The answer is, yes, you can, but in this case, it’s great to have a professional that can guide you that has lots of experience with post-traumatic stress. I think it’s, you know, the syndrome’s real. I mean you get— your neuro trip wire got tripped hard, and you felt it, and you observed. Listen, my kids and I almost died in a boat fire a couple years ago and I, you know, I helped them, but I had them both get professional help. To help them with that [crosstalk 00:33:8] I was at a point where I was okay because I’ve been doing it a long time, but they needed it. So, I’m telling my own family, don’t listen to Dad, you know, listen to someone that’s a professional in this area. Does that make sense?
Jennifer: It does. Thank you. I will go do that and continue this great work.
Dr. A: Yeah. Yeah, and then in the background just keep working on it. As you said, on the mental gym. Work on these three modalities, which will help. They’re all going to help you. It’s all part of it, right? It’s all part of it and it’ll also help make you— again, the obstacles are the way. These large events that happen can actually be springboards to dramatically improve our consciousness. They could be tremendous and it can be a great, great gift that you’ve been given to help you in your development and that’s the way [crosstalk 00:33:38]
Jennifer: And that’s what I want [crosstalk 00:34:02]
Dr. A: You can’t always figure it out yourself. Sometimes you need [crosstalk 00:34:06]. You need somebody— you need a conscious observer outside of you to help guide you and reflect so that you can work on it.
Jennifer: Yeah. I’ll do it.
Dr. A: Cool.
Jennifer: Thank you, friend.
Dr. A: You’re welcome.
Rachel: All right. Next up we have Cassie. Cassie, can you come on camera and unmute yourself?
Cassie: Can you see me now?
Dr. A: I cannot.
Rachel: We can’t.
Dr. A: We see a black screen.
Cassie: Okay and I don’t know how to fix that.
Dr. A: Well just talk to me. I don’t have to see you. I mean, I’d love to see you, but can’t fix it. I can still hear you.
Cassie: I had been trained that if a dream doesn’t make you nauseous it’s not big enough. So right now I have one that is big enough to make me nervous every time I talk about it, every time the subject comes up. So how can I deal with that to be able to achieve that dream because when the nerves hit in and the butterflies start flying around I tend to freeze up and not move towards that.
Dr. A: Okay. Well, generically, because we’re not actually talking about what it is, this is what I would say. Break it down into the components that you can do right now. Remember, it’s great to have a huge vision for where you want to go, but basically, if you’ve made it so hard like for instance, I’ll give you an example, so I would love to fly. I think it’d be so cool to fly but no matter what— well I could fly in a plane, I mean I live on the beach. There’s a guy that comes down and sits in a chair with a big fan on it and a parachute and parachutes, but I’m not physically ever going to be able to fly. So, you’ve created something that’s so large that you’re not even sure you can do it, so you can’t even go into action. So you want to break that down into smaller increments so that you can handle it because if you don’t, you’re just basically, you’re actually more of wishing, or almost to the point where— you’re not delusional, but you’re creating a fantasy world, right? If it’s so big that you don’t even know where to start on it, break it down to something, whatever it is that you want that’s so big, it’s built-in components. You know, I flew over, on the way home from Atlanta, I flew over Cape Kennedy and I saw the launch pads, right? For all the rockets and you know, you look at the countdown that occurs for that process and all the people involved in it, and there’s a lot of moving parts to put a rocket into outer space, right?
There’s a lot of moving parts that could be part of your big, hairy, audacious goal that’s so big that you don’t feel capable or have the capacities to actually become it. So if you think in terms of the stored trauma. The stored trauma that’s having you get so scared, the butterflies, will indicate some of the things that are in the way from you making that reality and so you use the same techniques that we just talked about where you basically move back from it and understand what is it that when I think about it creates such angst for me that I’m not able to actually do it. Does that make sense?
Cassie: Yes. It does.
Dr. A: And get that video fixed so I can see you! [Dr. A and Cassie both laugh]
Cassie: I tried. It’s not my normal computer so that may be part of the issue, so.
Dr. A: Well think more about it. If you want to do that and then let me know next month how it’s working.
Cassie: Okay.
Dr. A: All right?
Cassie: All right. Thank you.
Dr. A: You’re welcome. Okay. Who’s next, Rachel?
Rachel: All right, next up we have Sal. Sal, can you come on camera?
Dr. A: Hey, Sal. How are you?
Sal: Hey, Dr. A. It’s great to see you. Thank you for taking my question. So I’m a little nervous but I guess what I really, I want to share is, my question is, how do you stop previous trauma from kind of creeping into your life? I’m 52 years old and one of the things that really hit me, especially over this last week was, you know, my parents got divorced at a young— when I was between, I think 8 and 17. We lived together in the same house. There was lots of drama inside the home with this back and forth with both parents being so close and I just, I heard someone speak over the weekend and just talking about you know, you can’t help other people until you really love yourself, you know, and this idea of maybe not being lovable. This imposter syndrome. Like how can you stop that? Because I see it cropping up with my wife, and with my relationship with my own kids and for years I just said— I just don’t want that, and that was what I—whatever it was, I just did the opposite and I realized it really didn’t serve me like I thought it would.
Dr. A: So, yeah. You’re exactly what we’re— that’s great. Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing Sal, but yeah. You’re basically, you have things that you have stored in you experientially that your psyche is dealing with, and your psyche, your ego, is trying to keep you from suffering. So if you built all these defence mechanisms and things there, but you didn’t get rid of the trauma. It’s still there, So the reality is, you just need to relax and release. Just even right now, just that, just that, standing, standing back from— first of all. Let me ask you something, something that happened 30 years ago in your life, do you— what purpose, what good, what even— if you look at cost-benefit ratio, right? As a physician, we talk about all the different drugs and stuff and I actually changed to helping people create health and wellbeing because the drugs have side effects, right? So, there’s always a cost-benefit ratio or in your occupation, there’s a cost-benefit ratio and if there’s a heavy cost and little benefit then you shouldn’t do it. So I’m just going to appeal to your prefrontal cortex here for a minute. Okay, why would you spend a moment of time focusing on things that happened 30 years ago? Does it have any benefit at all? Does that have any benefit?
Sal: None.
Dr. A: None. Zero. Zero. Okay, so let’s get out of the limbic area where we start feeling sorry for ourselves. We’re feeling feelings or feeling, “Oh my goodness,” the victim and start thinking in here [gestures to head]. Do you want to be a great dad?
Sal: I do.
Dr. A: You want to be a great husband?
Sal: I do.
Dr. A: Okay. So, it starts by doing the work we’re just talking about. Every time you start, well, first of all, the easiest thing to do is when something happens, and start with the easy stuff, like we were talking about, right? The big stuff— I’m not saying overnight you’re going to wiggle your nose and everything is going to be fine, but, so you start with the small stuff. What you’re doing is you’re practicing. You’re practicing the switching. You’re practicing when you start to feel overwhelmed in a social situation, with your family, with your wife, that you’re doing your mantra. You’re doing things to calm you, so you no longer, you’re taking the edge off. You’re giving your mind a vacation. Okay? In those situations, and as you feel more comfortable, you start to handle the bigger stuff and the bigger stuff is when you start feeling one of these feelings coming up. You simply relax, stay away from it, and start looking at it.
Yeah. Just what you’re doing right now. Even as I’m talking to you, I’m watching you take some deep breaths. I see the smile on your face. You were white before. Now your color is coming back into your face. You are not those thoughts and the feelings. Your psyche stores these experiences from the past inside and it thinks it’s doing you a service by distracting you from them. Pushing them down. Resisting them and like you said, you can do whatever you want, it ain’t gonna get better till you decide to accept it and release it. That is not part of your life anymore. The only residual part is the stored trauma that’s lingering. It’s time to let it bubble up. It’ll come up in all different ways and let it release and every time it releases, take a deep breath, look at it, sense it, feel it and just let it go, and it’s going to hurt by the way, as it comes up, just like it hurt when you were talking about it. But you can’t hide from it. You can’t hide from— if you hide from it your whole life will be suffering. If you’re willing to face it in small, little baby steps, let it come up, let that, because all that energy down there, the reason why you start crying or getting emotional is because it’s blocked energy inside of you that your stored trauma is holding and your personal mind is pushing it down to keep it from coming up because it’s trying to keep you safe.
You need to give your personal mind, your ego, and say, you know, I’m gonna fire you. I’m gonna fire you. Really, if you think of it, that voice in your head that says all that— I like to use the analogy of a roommate. If that was a roommate and was talking to you like that all day long, every day, what would you do? You would fire that roommate. You would get— you would dump that roommate on the first day, right? [crosstalk 00:43:44]. It’s not doing a thing for you. The cost-risk benefit is 100 cost, I mean, and risk, and no benefit. Zero benefit. Zero benefit. So your decision has to be with full intention. See, you’re comfortable with it. It’s this thing inside of you and you know, kind of soothes you, right? You feel bad and then you push it down and then feel a little better, and so you’re having this cognitive emotive loop that kind of this thing inside of you. It’s your psyche that’s playing that has its preferences and tries to say, “Well we need to make the world a certain way so you don’t feel these feelings.” It doesn’t work. You cannot ever, ever overcome it until you make the decision that you intentionally, really want to grow. You want to move beyond it. You want to stop suffering. Does that make sense?
Sal: Very much.
Dr. A: Okay.
Sal: And thank you.
Dr. A: Yeah. So I want you to start, you know, take all three of these techniques, apply them where they seem appropriate, and then I want you to start practicing and I need you to do it every day because the only way you change your habits— I’m pretty good at understanding habits, right? Would you say?
Sal: That you are!
Dr. A: The only way that happens is if you consistently, persistently, now substitute. Either switch the thought from an unconscious negative thought to something positive and start with the baby stuff. Start with the traffic. Start with the weather. Start with the things that are really easy. Second of all, build yourself right now, today, a mantra. Whatever works for you. You can either be within your faith or within your spirituality or just something very practical like, I’m okay. You know? Or I’m relaxing, or I accept this, it doesn’t matter what it is but find something that resonates with you. You’ll feel it, work in with your breathing. Say it multiple times a day, get used to using it. Anytime you have an opportunity which you’ll start feeling a difference, where your breathing will become— instead of being shallow, from up here, it’ll start being deep and from your belly. Your belly coming out and feel it. Feel how it— that you one breath. You feel the difference? You’re starting to become the student of your mind and you’re going to help your mind now release all this psyche stuff from the stored trauma and let it come up and allow you to now focus on this beautiful prefrontal cortex and build the loving relationship. The love you have inside. The care you have inside. Build your future for the things that are important to you using this and eliminate— basically, you’re going to fire your personal mind and start living life truly in the moment. Not based on something that happened 30 years ago, which basically you have no control over, other than now you can release it and get it out of your current life because it’s haunting you. It’s the demons inside. It’s creating that voice in your head into suffering and it’s not even real anymore. It has no influence over you, if you don’t give it any influence, and the way you do, you consciously separate and become the observer of those thoughts and just sit there and notice them and then just let them pass. They’re just like clouds in the sky, by the way, they come and they go and they’re not you. They’re echoes of experiences from the past. Make sense?
Sal: Awesome. Thank you so much, doctor. I always appreciate you.
Dr. A: Awesome. Let me know how that helps.
Sal: I will.
Dr. A: All right. Yeah. Who else, Rach?
Rachel: All right. Next up we have Cathy. Cathy, can you come on camera and unmute yourself?
Cathy: I’m trying to get my video up also.
Rachel: We can hear you.
Cathy: It says you cannot start your video because the host has— okay, here we go. There we go. [crosstalk 00:47:34] Hi, Dr. A, how are you?
Dr. A: I’m great Cathy. How are you?
Cathy: I’m good. So this— I like listening to everybody else. I had such heaviness in my chest and listening to, listening to them share their stories, but a little bit about me, my back story, I think it might be what affects me now. But I got married at a very young age and unfortunately, it was a very abusive relationship. I did have two children out of it and brought them through that and you know, divorced, and I met the most amazing man, got married again and we’ve been together for 30 years, but I always said that that part of my life was something that always made me stronger and helped me to raise two very strong boys to be able to love and respect people. I have severe OCD and one of my main struggles is everybody’s had to live up to my expectations as far as— my kids have always said, well we just didn’t do it because we knew we wouldn’t do it right because it’s not the way you want it to be, and an example of that is I have the most amazing husband. He’s so giving and so loving and he takes a lot from everybody and he would do anything to make anybody happy and I feel like I go out into the world and I’m like this bubbly person from everything that I’ve learned from you and from this wonderful, amazing community that we’re in.
I can go out and be kind to everyone around me and love on people, and share, and encourage people, and even with my clients, I can encourage them, but then I find myself in my own world when I come home. Like coming home from convention this weekend, I got to the front door and I’m like, okay just get your mind clear. The house is probably not going to be the way you left it. There’s probably going to be some things that are going to upset you. Just stay calm, stay in the moment. Your husband did the best that he could when you weren’t here. Just breathe through it. I walk in the door and the very first thing I saw was just something so small that most people would be like, oh whatever, but I have dogs and my puppy totally ripped the back side of my recliner off while I was gone.
Dr. A: Yeah. That would have upset me too! [Dr. A and Cathy laugh]
Cathy: I was like, what happened? And he’s like, it happened when I wasn’t home. I don’t know. Like, you know, the dog sitter came over blah, blah, and I literally went from one to a thousand and I was so excited to see him when I came home. I was so excited to be back and share all the wonderful things and in that moment I reacted and I hated myself for it and I was so mad at myself later on and he was like, “I’m just going to take a walk,” and I was like, I was just so angry. I’m like, I talk to myself the whole way home that I was gonna be good, and I was not gonna let anything cause me to be reactive, but yet I couldn’t control it, and I hate when I get that way, and I get so hard on myself afterwards that it actually gives me so much anxiety and so much pressure in my chest that I feel like inside something died for an instant, and then I have to really work hard to get it back. So it took me like all that night and then the next day and you can’t take words back, and you can’t take things back to somebody who treats you with so much love. It’s so hard to get that back. So I feel so terrible for days, it lasts me a couple days inside. Even though we’re good and everything is fine and we’ll fix the couch, get a new one, whatever, but my inside. I feel it just eats at me for a couple days until I can breathe through it. So I just want to know like, I’ve learned so much from this community. I’ve gotten so much better and from you, but what steps can I do to prevent that from happening every single time? Because it really is like so disruptive to me and my spiritual side and I don’t want to keep on being that way.
Dr. A: Yeah. Okay, but yeah. Thank you. First of all, thank you for sharing. Second of all, you’re textbook. Okay? You are textbook and actually the things that you have going on are so, I won’t say easy, because you have to do the work, but they’re so simple. So let me ask you something. You know, Stop. Challenge., and Choose? Right?
Cathy: Yep.
Dr. A: Okay. So when you started with someone, you saw the couch, right? Did you Stop. Challenge., and say, okay that got hurt, but that’s the scheme of things. Like, I’m here, some things are positive, my husband, my kids, whoever, the dogs, even the bad dog, things you love so much, did you Stop. Challenge., and say, yeah, there’s something, but let me choose something that I really want. Because what you did was you projected. Okay? You immediately projected and you took it classically from one thing— you would, by the way, I have to say, I wouldn’t be, just so you know, there’s a difference between— again, events happening and being a little upset because your favorite couch or my favorite something I have, you know, it’s okay, but it’s to recognize that rather than going down the rabbit hole, right? And then everything’s wrong in the room, and everything’s wrong, and see you went down the rabbit hole.
So, the first thing you need to do is be aware. You know who you are. You’ve done the work on that part, you just haven’t done the practice. You haven’t done the becoming. You haven’t become any of those things yet. You’re aware of them, on knowledge, but you haven’t— you need to practice them. So you need to start with small things. You need to— today when you walk out of— the next thing you see, because first of all, that you care— I’ll give you an example. I remember this years ago, basically Lori, my wife, this is like when the kids were younger and they had pets and they wouldn’t take care of them as well as they should, and so Lori would take care of the pets, and so really it got to the point where we had this conversation, she was just so upset. Just like you are about the pets. About not taking the kids, not taking care of the beds, and I said, Lori, they’re not the kid’s pets. They’re your pets. Okay? Those aren’t your family’s desires. Those are your desires and you’re projecting. You love your family and you’re allowing your projections of your own internal critic, your own psyche, and you’re projecting it out. Trying to get everybody else to be the way you want them to be because you want them to be perfect because these are the things that you say make you perfect.
That’s not what makes you perfect, by the way. First of all, there, is no such thing. Being perfect— perfectionist is a fault, right? It’s a lack of self-esteem, where you think you need to have everything, right? It’s actually being closed, defensive, and want to be right, versus being open, curious, and want to grow. So you knew that when you came home, that your home would not be— when you’re the queen sheriff in town, your home is done a certain way, but when you’re not there, it’s not important to them. So you’re taking and predicting what’s important to you, to them. Now obviously, if the couch gets, or the chair gets destroyed, you know, that’s something we wish hadn’t happened, but the point being is they’re just not that important. Listen, I deal with it all the time. I’m kind of meticulous about my place and when my girls are here you know, there’s certain things I ask them to do. They do them sometimes and they don’t do them other times, and when they don’t do them, I note that and basically, if there’s some consequence to that, then basically I have them be responsible for that, but I don’t try to project the way I want onto someone else.
So for instance, Savannah, right now, my daughter, is living with me. Her room is a mess, but she’s living in that room and although I suggest to her you know, just like the thing where we talk about, make your bed first thing in the morning, right? I’m sure you do that, is that starts your day off in a positive constructive way. She doesn’t make her bed, and you know what? I could get upset about it. As long as she stays in her space and makes a mess or whatever she wants. Every time I get a chance I’ll mention why she might want to become more organized. As far as in her life, but if she does that down in the common living areas, yeah I fix it, and then we basically talk about it. So it’s important to recognize that you— the world is going to be the way
the world is, and everybody has their own feeling of how they want that world to be.
You have very little control over those things and so for you, the same three things. When something negative happens, think of the positive. Wow, the house is still standing, it didn’t burn up while I was gone, right? And the other things can be just like you said. Yeah. Look at you smiling now. Look at the change when all of a sudden you start laughing and you observe, those thoughts are ridiculous. They’re not helpful in my relationship with my family. Yeah. It’s easy for you to do it with people outside because basically, you don’t go home to them. You can be your coach and be the person you want to be and it’s meticulous because it doesn’t directly involve you and you don’t have to deal with the con— but when you look at your internal structure of your family, you think you’re responsible as the mom, and if anything’s happen you’re being a bad mom, and you’re not organizing, and you’re projecting all those things of what it is to be a good or bad mom. They love the hell out of you and basically, they’ll get over it and your husband’s smart enough to get the— what he’s doing is Stop. Challenge. Choose., get the hell out of the house, let you calm down, get your limbic system under control. What we want to do is get your limbic system before you drift down and go into the Drama Triangle. That’s what Stop. Challenge. Choose., is about.
Go back into the books and look and see every five seconds, something’s going to happen in your life, and you’ll have a tendency to drift. If you drift and go all into the Drama Triangle, once you’re down in there like you said, the chair got torn up and I’m in the Drama Triangle, and I am the villain, and I’m gonna blame everybody for what’s wrong. You’re classic. Man, you’re classic, I could use you for one of my films [Cathy laughs]. You have the full control. I just gave you the three mechanisms that take care of all that, but start with the little things. Start every day and I know you’re not practicing Stop. Challenge. and Choose., 20, 30 times a day. I know you’re not doing your mantra, 10, 20 times, 30 times a day. I know you’re not switching and I know you’re not being a conscious observer. You told me you unleashed a patent of holy hell on the family when you walked in the door. Okay? So if you want those things to change, do the work.
Cathy: Okay. Thank you.
Dr. A: Cool?
Cathy: Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you so much.
Dr. A: Let me know how it’s going, alright?
Cathy: Okay. Thank you so much, Dr. A.
Dr. A: All right, so we’re almost out of time. Maybe one more before we call it. Is there somebody else ready, Rach?
Rachel: Yes. We have Sherry.
Dr. A: Okay. This will be the last one [crosstalk 00:58:50]
Sherry: Okay. How do I get myself seen here?
Dr. A: There you are. I see you.
Rachel: There you are.
Dr. A: Beautiful pastel green. You look great, what’s going on?
Sherry: Hey, Dr. A. Thank you so much. Just a couple— just a quick question. I think, and I’ve loved what everybody’s talked about before and I love, been practicing. I’ve heard you say it before, about the gift of letting the past be the past and I’ve actually taken that to a step of the past being, I’m grateful for the past because it makes me who I am in this moment and I love the tools that we have for being present in the moment, but my question is, future. When we talk about the lead from the future act, in the now, the seeing what’s you know— having the future draw you forward and things like that and when life shifted for me in a way I didn’t expect this last year and so the dreams, the visions, the thoughts I had, the things that were like my big “why,” for or even wanting to be healthy all shifted. How do you, it sounds trite to say, how do you dream again? But how does dreaming, future fit into this don’t worry about the future, don’t worry about the past? Be present in the moment. What do I do with the future?
Dr. A: Okay. So it’s not that, when I say don’t worry, I’m talking about operating principles, okay? Your past, like you said, you have had a great past and wonderful things happen. Some people are not that fortunate. Some people [crosstalk 01:00:21]
Sherry: No, no, no, it was a rough past. Don’t get me wrong.
Dr. A: Okay.
Sherry: Very, very, rough past. But that’s okay. I’ve learned from it.
Dr. A: You’ve learned from it. Yeah, and that’s what you know, basically, life is intrinsically unstable. You know, unfortunately, I guess Barbie just came out but, Cinderella and Snow White, you know, they’re all these projections of the fairy book life and life just isn’t like that. Life— life. We’re all born. We all die. Many of us get sick. We lose people. We have traumatic things happen. It’s just part of life and it’s just that you’re on a planet but it’s the perspective you have that makes all the difference. My perspective has always been, and I’ve had you know, I’ve lost important people in my life. I’ve had pretty traumatic things happen, but I guess I’m so grateful every day that I’m here that I want to make sure I experience it because I don’t know how long I’m going to be here and I want to make sure I make the most of it, right? Because you know— and not getting into religious or afterlife— but you know if there is, great, that’s a bonus. I’m ready for a lot more, but if there isn’t, I’m damn well gonna make sure I loved and lived with minimal suffering and maximum joy, every day on the planet. So whatever happened in your past and then the evolution that’s occurred over the last period of time, were maybe things that you had as part of your future you were going to build and are not there, sounds like that’s kind of where it is, right?
Sherry: Yes.
Dr. A: So, now you get an opportunity that’s again, these are lessons, everybody that interacts in your life, including Sal, talking about his childhood, those are great lessons that allow you to evolve. I really believe that we’re on this planet to evolve our soul and to become everything it is to become a human and being able to help others as well. So now that you are the complete Dominant Force in your own life, figure out what brings you joy and then go for it. You’re gonna make you again. It’s like adjusting your sales. Some of the players in your life have changed, and things have changed, and now it’s to look forward to you. I lost my wife five years ago. That was my sailor maid and my best friend, and on, and on, and on, and you know, obviously, I think about her all the time, but I had to make the adjustments and fall into the things that I love in life in order to make sure that I’m not spending any time with regret or the victim or feeling sorry for myself, and so I made the adjustments. You know. I sold my sailboat. I’m now basically, I have a, I’m building a boat that’s got a motor because I still love being in the ocean and making all those different adjustments. Working on this work. It started off with the Habits of Health, more with the physical body. Now my work has evolved to this work, which I find is the most effective and meaningful, and that’s what you have to just start going forward and don’t dream again. Actually, open up your consciousness to what brings you joy. What brings you joy in the moment? In the day? And don’t have self-styled obligation of what you should do, could do, ought to do. Instead, what do you love to do? What do you desire to do? And guide yourself into the future by using that language. What we value the most is really easy to do. When things we don’t value we have to do, we don’t want to do it. To figure out what you value most in your life as you move forward and go for it.
Sherry: Thank you and it has been a gift to watch. I became a coach just before you lost Lori and I have watched you over these last five years navigate all of that emotion and letting it release and it’s been a beautiful gift. Not only to myself, but I’m sure to all of us. So I’m grateful to you. Thank you.
Dr. A: Awesome. Now, do it for yourself. All right?
Sherry: All right.
Dr. A: All right. See you guys. All right, so I want to end with one last slide if I still have it. I still have this, yeah I do, let me just share this. So I just want to show this slide because basically, for all of you know, this forum is set up for anybody that wants to focus on their mind and build themselves into the future. So you can go to drwayneandersen.com, all these videos and all these sessions we do are all stored there and start working on this. For the one lady that basically was saying that she came home and all hell broke loose, you got to do the practice. It’s great to get on these and listen but please incorporate it, and today we talked about three really practical things you can do. Make sure you watch this video over and over again and this video, this forum is designed for anybody. Doesn’t have to be a coach or a client. Anybody in the world! Again, there’s eight point plus billion people and most people are suffering internally and they don’t understand that they can do something about it. So with that, thank you, guys, for your participation, being vulnerable, and let’s go out and let’s create less suffering and more joy in people’s lives. God bless. See you guys.
