Emergent processes are processes that allow you to move forward in your life. They’re updatable. They’re exciting. This month we talk about repetitive patterns, emergent processes and how you can put yourself in the best position to continue to grow in your life.
Video Transcript:
Dr. A: So let’s get started. As you know, this Conscious Forum is designed for us to get together and really talk about consciousness and how it affects us, building psychological flexibility, and putting us in the best position to thrive in a crazy time. We know that modern America is chaotic. It’s full of all kinds of ambiguity, and we’re having struggles as a whole. In fact, if you look at the quality indices and look at people as far as their mental health, and how they’re doing, most people are struggling. So, we’ve kind of put this together as an opportunity for us as fellow humans to come together and connect.
Today I’m going to kind of create a little introduction and then we’ll go into what I think is the best part, and that is answering your questions and sharing your comments. So we’re kind of collaborating here together, and I love the way we do this. This format is great for me to learn from you, and I think it’s great for all of us to learn together. So, let’s go ahead and get started. This is one— we do this every, the first Tuesday of the month. Sometimes it gets modified because of my travel schedule, but as a whole all of these recordings, all these sessions, go up on drwayneandersen.com. On my thought leaders site, and you’re welcome to use them. They’re all free of charge. They’re all here to help us learn, and grow, and if there’s something that you need to listen to again, then great! We’ll put that up for you to do that again.
So, let’s get started with today’s subject: How Do We Break Our Unhealthy Patterns? You know, I call it the Groundhog Day phenomena, and many of you may have seen the movie with Bill Murray, it was a movie where he would get up, he went to see the groundhog to see if it saw his shadow, went into this little town, and every day he got up and it was exactly the same over, and over, and over again, and everybody went through their behavior and he had to deal with it. He had to basically, it was driving him crazy because it was the same repetitive patterns. So, we’re going to talk about that in relation to your life. How much of your life is repetitive patterns that don’t update themselves, and how much is actually emergent processes? Emergent processes, by that I mean processes that allow you to move forward in your life. They’re updatable. They’re exciting. They put you in the best position to continue to grow in your life, and I like to say that we’ve been put on this planet to basically evolve our soul. I think when we start, we’re in survival, like everybody is as little kids, and then as we grow we can either stop and stay in that fear-based, reactive state, which we talk about the knee-jerk reflex, or we can continue to grow as a person, and become more, and evolve our soul. So, our soul— basically, our ego becomes in service with our soul.
So that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. So, I want to break down the process of life, and you may think, “Wow. This is heavy. How does this apply to me?” It applies to all of us and so in essence, there’s two important aspects of the process of life. The first one, as I mentioned, is creating an integrated life. It’s actually realizing that every day you can get a little bit better as long as you focus on the things that you want to bring into being. Becoming the Dominant Force in your life, which you’ve heard me say for many, many years, and then organizing your life around what matters most. Actually taking control. Looking into the future that you want and then making sure that during the day you’re doing the things that allow you to continue to grow. Even if it’s small, little amounts, be able to grow in the areas that really matter in your life. So in essence, we think of that as an emergent process. Emergent process, I mean, there are things that have a future. Things that if you do these things, and if you’re in the patterns of these things, and through these processes you’re building a future, you’re building relations, you’re building your relationships.
Your relationships aren’t stagnant. They’re becoming better. What we’re learning now is that relationships are not a fixed process. Just think about it with your family, with your kids. Depending on how the dynamics of how you interact, whether it’s in a positive form, and we’re working together. Those relationships can either get better and update, and emerge, or they can become stagnant and repetitive, and the same thing happened over and over again, and if you think about it, when we get out of that reactive state, we can build things that are warm. We’re connected and we can update them. We can continually get a little better every day, and that’s so very important for us.
Well, there’s another process, basically, called the repetitive patterns. These are the things that don’t update. They’re stagnant processes. They happen over and over again, and if you think of them, there’s no updates. There’s no development, and this can be in many areas of our life. Our thought patterns. How we think. Do we think the same thing over and over again or are we growing? Our emotional patterns. Do the same things keep triggering the same outcome each time? Behavioral patterns. Are we doing things the way they need to be done? And as we know, the world is changing dramatically, and if we’re not adapting to the new things that are happening and evolving, and growing, then we’re going to find ourselves beautifully equipped to take care of a world that no longer exists. Our relational patterns. Are those growing? You know, are we continuing to add value to our relationships or are they the same thing over and over again the same discussions.
Our family patterns. You know, in a bigger level. The dynamics of our family. When we have Thanksgiving dinner, or Christmas, or a holiday, and we get together, is it the same repetitive behavior or are we injecting new? I know you guys that are studying this, you go into those environments and basically, you know, you’re having to deal with people that are in that repetitive, no development, no update and then you’re at dinner talking about something and you’re being sometimes put down because it’s kind of like the crabs in the pot. You’re trying to get out of the pot and grow and emerge to become more, and they try to pull you back down, and you cannot let that stop you because the bottom line is, with that you become reactive in that family pattern. Work patterns, you know, how am I at work? How is my work doing? Am I staying the same? Am I caught in a rut or am I injecting new things? Am I growing? Am I learning more? Am I open and curious? And generational patterns. That’s so important, but, you know, do I have generation patterns? Where generation after generation, that I have things like depression in my family, or obesity, or all kinds of other things that can happen that basically stay the same unless we make a difference.
So these are the stuck patterns that we’re going to be talking about. It also occurs at the Macro Level because remember, wars, conflicts, social levels, global level, they’re individuals working together in positions of power, and these apply to them too. Are we stuck, because right now, not to spend any time on it, but what’s going on in Gaza is not a new problem. It’s a repetitive problem that’s been going on forever, and I’m not going to get into the geopolitics, I can only say that this is nothing new. It’s just simply another expression of something that’s in a repetitive, stuck pattern, and the only way we’re going to improve, and grow, and basically, save this planet is if we, as individuals start to understand, to start think thinking more from an emergent process and less from this repetitive stagnant process.
So let’s talk more about this for you individually. I like to call it the “Groundhog Day phenomena” and again, after the movie, it seems that a lot of our life, or at least part of our life, is the same repetitive patterns. Automatically, every day. Day in and day out. So let’s look at these differently. Let’s actually take a moment, let’s take a deep breath, and let’s examine this, and this is for each and every one of you to kind of think about your own life, you know, one of the things— I’m here— you might be able to tell I’m up here in the mountains and basically, I’m working up here, but what’s great is I’m skiing, and I’m getting ready to go heli-skiing in April in a very difficult area up in British Columbia and so I want to be ready. So I go out with my ski instructor and I listen. I listen to everything, and I’m now a pretty good skier. I mean, I heli-ski, but we had a big dump of powder, and bottom line is, we went into some really gnarly stuff. I mean stuff that I’d never done before, with big crevasses and stuff, and I had to be on my game, and there’s still some things that get uncovered that I’m not as proficient at as I need to be, but rather than you know, try to put it to the side, I’m fully open. I’m listening. I’m saying, “No. In this period, let’s really work on this, and let’s work on getting to that next level where I can handle this,” because when I get up to British Columbia there are no ski trails. It’s just wide open mountains and they drop us off at the top of a mountain and you go down through the wilderness, through all kinds of stuff, and you better be ready.
So, I’m open, because I want to look at some of the things I do. One of the things I do, I don’t turn enough down the mountain. So I’m not torqued enough, and so basically, I’m really looking at that and saying, okay, what do I need to do every single time I make a turn to make that difference? The same thing is with our life. With all the things that are important. So first you have to ask yourself the question, you know, what is happening repetitively in your life? What are the thoughts, the feelings, the actions, the interactions with your family, your spouse, in your work that are basically happening over and over? Without updates, without development, they’re staying the same, and be non-judgmental as best you can in these. You just want to write them down. So ask yourself, and you should do this, you should make a little note on this now, and then do this today if you have time, or this evening, or as soon as you have time, because this is the part that will start putting you on a different path, a different energy level, and starting to break these cycles that are keeping you stuck.
[00:09:29] So we want to create more space around these things, and we want to be more aware because for us to change these repetitive patterns, we have to be aware. So how do we practice this? Well, going down— I know most people struggle with this, but I can’t tell you how important journaling is in every aspect of your life. So start journaling. Take your journal and during the day write down the repetitive patterns. The things that happen over and over. The things you’re stuck at in terms of how you think. Are you in a cognitive emotive loop? Where you keep thinking about the same thing. Write those down. What emotional patterns, when you see something, or act, you’re in an environment, the emotional things do you get? What about the physical patterns? That feeling you have in your chest or in your jaw? And then the behavioral patterns. What are the things that you do again, and again? And each time you regret doing them, and write them down. Write them all down, because what we want to do is look through a different lens. We want to look through the lens of being open, curious, and how can I start to create some space? You know, this feeling of [Dr. A takes a deep breath], and just kind of let it be. Things within myself. You want to do things within your relationships. Even in your culture. Maybe your political views, your religious views, you know, things that you may be struggling with or something that’s keeping you from seeing the whole picture, and what’s missing. What is missing in these areas? And just take notes on this.
This is a process that we’re going to want to do for the rest of our life, and you’ll find it very effective. So when you create that space, then do an open inquiry, you know, “Let me look at this differently.” “What if the opposite was true?” You know, “What if I’m really seeing this one way, but there’s other ways of looking at it?” And you want to reflect on that, and then you want to notice these patterns you’re having. Not trying to get rid of them, or fighting them, but just putting them in perspective. Where you’re starting to be aware, because if you become aware then you can spend some time.
So, now take one pattern. This is your assignment for this week. Take one pattern in your personal life, something that all these things— that you write down, that are in your journal— take one of them from inside of you, or it could be someone close. A relationship that’s maybe been dysfunctional, and take that one, and just write it down, and then spend some quiet time and create a bit of a space, and then tune into that pattern and start thinking about what happens. How does that present itself? How does it present in my body? Do I get anxious? Do I get closed? Do I get open? Do I want to spend no time thinking about it? Do I want to learn more? And just start thinking of it from the stand that you’re building new insights. Maybe take a few deep breaths and kind of look at it, and then just let it go, and the process is that awareness, and now starting to have inquiry at a deeper level will allow you to now start working on it and over time that will help you.
So as we kind of complete today, something that happens every day in your life, there are two types of processes that are occurring in every one of our lives. They’re either emergent. Ones that are updating, they’re getting better, and it may be slow progress, but you’re seeing some growth. You’re excited about it. Something’s happening. It could be something you’re building. It could be something you’re doing. Maybe, it could be getting ready to go for a trip. It could be something that you’re being more successful in your business, or in your physical health, your physical health is getting better, and all those basically are emergent. They’re processes that are allowing you to grow to become a higher version of yourself and as you do that, you’re excited about it. Takes you right out of those ruts. Takes you out of that repetitive part, and really puts you in the right place, and then there’s things that you’ll notice that you do that are the same thing over and over just like Groundhog’s Day, and those things, just notice them. Write them down, see which one you want to work on. Work on one at a time, take the low hanging fruit. The ones that are not as difficult first, and then start working on it. And this is something that I would love you to focus on this month until we come to the next month, and actually put yourself in position where you start to recognize, “Do I want more of the same? Do I want that default future, which is what my past was or do I want to start to grow and build more? And it’s a matter of awareness. Addressing these, and then basically focusing on the things that can move you forward. So hopefully that was helpful. Let’s open it up to Q&A now, Rachel.
Rachel: All right. First up we have Cynthia and Jeff Jolly. Or Jeff [Cynthia is not on camera with Jeff].
Jeff: Good morning my friend.
Dr. A: Hey, how are you?
Jeff: Life is wonderful. So, I recently noticed that— I was watching a bunch of French detective movies/series, and a couple days later I noticed that I had, in the background, my thoughts, that French cadence of language, but I don’t speak French and it made me realize whatever you’re consuming is feeding your subconscious and it is really important, and I was curious, what do you do that feeds your growth and desire to be healthier and positive mindset, knowing that that is always occurring?
Dr. A: Yeah. So that’s a great— and it’s so true, because you can only process and be aware of so much at a time, and the rest of it just goes into your subconscious, as you said Jeff, and for instance last night, I’m up here at my place last night, you know, you can see the side, a huge TV, I could have sat here and did a mind melt and just watch something on TV, and I do that sometimes, but instead I reflected on my day of skiing I took notes on that. I knew I was going to be doing this today. I read a couple of chapters in a couple of books that I’m reading right now that are all about improving consciousness. This morning I had a surprise call about an hour ago. Jim Dethmer, a dear friend of mine, a leader in consciousness as well, called me. He was going for a walk and was thinking about me and we had a 20-minute discussion. An incredible, just full of energy, and dynamics, and all emergent thought, right?
So, we pick and choose what we put inside of us, and I’m very intentional on that. I don’t— you know, that’s funny because one of my daughters loves to watch horror films. I have no interest. If they want to watch it I tell them, go to your own room. You know? I don’t want to see it. I don’t have any interest in that, and we think it’s not really going to bother you, but it does. The stuff that’s recent, and so you know, when we talk about an emergent process, that process— and as you know, we talk about lead from the future, act in the now. About 80% of the stuff that we have stored in here is not useful to take us to that emergent self. To that point where we can actually become the Dominant Force in our life, and so I do a lot of un-whittling and then maybe not just the input you’re getting from the TV or from what you’re listening to, but also from your relationships. You know, if you’re in toxic relationships sometimes you have to minimize those. You have to put yourself in position where you’re still cordial, but you don’t go out of your way to spend time in those environments because I like to be around people, like Jim was a great example. I mean, I was excited about doing this call, and that just added such value. We talked a little bit about what I was talking about today. He talked about one of the things that he’s doing right now, and just that synergy that occurs is explosive because what it does is it opens up the prefrontal cortex, which is the creative area.
[00:17:26] It’s the executive centers. It’s the part where we collaborate. It’s the area where we can create, and it takes us so far away from back in here, the limbic area, which is reactive. And in the baseline, as I was showing with culture, and with society, and with all the stuff going on in the world, it’s important to know what’s going on, but it’s important to also realize in your sphere, what do you have control over. It’s kind of like the serenity prayer for alcoholics, right? You’ve got to know what you can change and what you can’t change and have the wisdom to know the difference between the two. And so if you actually— and it’s a discipline because remember, our design 10,000 years ago, and as you know all of my work, I go back to the way we started on this planet and where we are now, and it’s a very different world. The physical threats that were so prevalent, that required us to stay focused in that high alert, negative bias environment are no longer here. Now they’re perceived threats, and because we’re a global society now, if you take the input that’s going on in Europe and Asia, and The States, and every city in the United States, and you let that consume you, you’re going to be in a high reactive state and this area isn’t even going to work, and so you wonder why you’re so anxious and so frustrated. So, it’s a process of literally removing the stuff that doesn’t work, and adding more of the stuff that does, because remember, if your cup is already full, you can’t add more to it. So it’s about getting rid of about 80% of the stuff that doesn’t work for you.
Jeff: Perfect. Thank you.
Dr. A: You’re welcome. All right, Rach. Who’s next?
Rachel: All right. Next up we have Wanda. Wanda, can you come on camera and unmute yourself? There you are.
Dr. A: Hi, Wanda.
Wanda: Hi. I thank you for this morning, I was just burning up my pen taking notes [crosstalk 00:19:24].
Dr. A: You know, Wanda, not to interrupt before you get started, I just want to— you know, we get so caught on the hamster wheel every day, right? We forget to realize the big picture. You know, we only have— we’re here– we’re like mist that’s here for a short period of time and then we’re gone. If we’re lucky and take good care, around a hundred years max. Right? For most of us, if we’re lucky. And basically, you know, do you want to go through it reactive, and not thinking, and conscious of [unintelligible 00:19:51], going or do you want to take control and become the Dominant Force in your life? So you’re absolutely right. I’m glad you’re taking notes because the other part about that you know, these are recorded, and I have to tell you, this is an important thing of learning, when I’m watching something that someone’s doing that I find value in, I’ll go back and watch it six, seven times, and I’ll take notes on that. So that’s really— because each time you’re learning at a deeper level. You’ll find something that you didn’t get before, and then the main thing to do is to start practicing it right away.
Wanda: Right. Absolutely.
Dr. A: So, go for it.
Wanda: That’s what I did in November. I came on and I shared some things with you about my family and how I’ve been on this journey for two years and getting really, really healthy in my own life. I shared with you that we had seven adopted children that we work closely with and creating independency for them was hard for me as this healthy version of myself, you know, because everyone around you kind of expects you to be who you’ve always been, and you gave me some tips, and you asked me to come back and share with you how it was going, and so I applied those things in some key relationships in November and December. It was hard. There was some resistance, but there’s a lot of freedom now. I’ve let some responsibilities go and back to their proper place, and it has freed me up and I want to celebrate this. In January my husband and I got in some spaces with some leaders in our lives and focused on this year, and on February 1st we paid off all of our unsecured debt.
Dr. A: Awesome. How does that feel? How does that feel?
Wanda: Oh, freaking amazing! We are in a whole different place in February than we were in December, and I really believe that applying the things that you shared with me, among other things that we’re learning. It gave us space to kind of pull back away from the things that we were micromanaging, that weren’t ours to micromanage and begin to manage ourselves, and really apply ourselves, and we’ve been working on being debt-free since 2018. It’s been a goal for that long, and we embarked on that in February, and I believe had we not released ourselves like you encouraged me to, and let some of our kiddos have their small wins and victories instead of depending on us. We were able to focus on us, and now we’re teaching them how to be free by becoming free ourselves. So thank you. It was what I needed in November and it resets some trajectory in my life, and we’re celebrating some great freedom. So what you’re teaching works!
Dr. A: Great. Thanks. That was awesome. Okay, Wanda. Wanda! Okay, Rachel. She got me. Wanda had me [Dr. A is emotional].
Rachel: Okay. Next up we have Kelli. Hi, Kelli.
Dr. A: Hi, Kelli.
Kelli: Hi, Dr. A. How are you?
Dr. A: Good.
Kelli: Good. Your heart just pours out when you get emotional, and it just touches me just as much as it touches you. Today is my nine-year “coach-aversary,” since I became a coach full-time, and I look back at my posts, my Facebook posts, from back then and I am such a different person since I became a coach. More than just in health, but in mind, body, and soul, and I just need some suggestions from you. I have a very toxic relationship with my oldest daughter and I’ve tried a lot of things to rectify that, and there just doesn’t seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel. So, I just wondered if you could just offer some suggestions. Maybe I’m trying too hard or maybe I just need to make it a little bit more simple.
Dr. A: Yeah. Well, no. That’s great, and thank you, and I’m glad this is really helping you, and you know, I like to say, you’ve grown so much you have to get a telescope to look back to see where you were, right? And that’s cool.
Kelli: For sure!
Dr. A: You know, both that, and also what Tanya was talking about, those are emergent processes. I want to make sure I give you practical examples, and you guys are giving them to me. Emergent processes is when you take something and now you apply it to your life and you stop the repetitive patterns, and you start evaluating, how can I do things better? Right? How can I improve? And journaling is so important for it because you’re actually documenting. Sometimes we fool ourself during the same, say, “Oh, it was okay,” but just like Tanya, and just like yourself, you need a telescope to look back to see where you were because you’ve changed so much, and because you’ve done the work. Okay, now we— and I don’t know your daughter, but I probably would guess she hasn’t done any of this work, right? So, she stayed the same.
She has the same repetitive patterns, and in that basically, the same dynamic. So that’s the family dynamic between you and her. So that’s a great example, and she’s stuck in “Groundhog’s Day.” Okay? You want to help her so much because at multiple levels. It’s not like it’s just a client. This is someone that’s your flesh and blood. Someone you care about and you know you could help her so much, but right now she’s not open to that. So the only thing you can do is by example. Decrease so that this is what happens. You’re here and she no longer has anything to conflict with, right? So you’re removing that, and eventually over time, she’ll give up and she’ll either do one thing, she’ll just stop. You know, she’ll realize that she’s not triggering you anymore, and that’s what happens by the way, in the Drama Triangle, when we get going. We’re triggering behaviors. We’re triggering unconscious stored trauma that we have, and it just repeats itself, and you have a lifelong relationship with her because she’s known you as long as she’s been alive, and so basically, she has preconceived notions of what that is, and what it isn’t, and she’s not open for you to tell her how she can get better. Only observationally.
So stop trying so hard. Don’t try to kill it. Just observe it. Ask open-ended questions that don’t trigger negativity about her life, how things are going from the standpoint of you just care, and come at her from love, and that’s it. And know that sometime along the line, she sees her mom getting better and better, and better, there’ll be a point when she’ll most probably acquiesce and you’ll have that breakthrough, but it’s not going to occur— you can’t force it. You can’t make it happen. You can simply make sure that when you show up you don’t put any energy into that repetitive cycle process. You’re only providing love and care for her, and when she engages in that, just let her say it, and say, “Honey, I understand.” Remember, listening to somebody doesn’t mean you agree with them. It simply means you’re hearing them, and she wants to be heard, and leave it at that.
Kelli: Thank you so much. I appreciate you.
Dr. A: You’re welcome. Cool. All right, Rach. Who else we got?
Rachel: All right. Next up we have, Jan.
Dr. A: Oh, there she is! Hey, Jan.
Jan: Hey, Dr A. Thank you so much for these wonderful forums!
Dr. A: You’re welcome.
Jan: I don’t miss them, and they have changed my life. I just finished— I just celebrated my 14 year “health-aversary.” So I’m so grateful for everything that I’ve learned through this time.
Dr. A: Good. Congratulations. By the way, see, if I looked at your— I showed the emergent process versus repetitive patterns, okay? I would say that if we look where you started, and where you are now, if we did a percentage, that percentage is fully reversed now. You spend most of the time, most of your day— and life gets in the way. You’ve had family stuff, you know, as we all do. You know, life— it’s so important that people realize it. People say, “Oh, I wish that I had their life.” Everybody has the same life. It’s how we respond to the things that happen that determines the outcome which moves us forward, and like what Jeff was saying, the more we put ourselves in position to learn and grow, the more resilient we become. The more— I truly believe the most important superpower you can have is psychological flexibility, because you can take the things that happen in your life and rather than being the victim to them, now you’re adding value.
Just like the last lady. She wants to help so much. And you know. You know what you can do, what you can’t do, and now you have the breath, and you’re an incredible leader, and coach, because you spent the time, and what comes from you is love, not judgment. None of that victim, drama stuff. It’s pure love, and love, by the way, is the highest level of motivation.
Jan: Well, I’ve learned so much about that through this process, and I just wanted to tell Kelli that with her daughter, I’ve had a similar situation, and if you follow this— the pattern that Dr. A is sharing, and just keep at it, it will turn things around, because I’ve had breakthroughs with mine, and you will with yours too. And Dr. A, I just wanted to ask a question and share just a little bit of an insight as a coach working with clients. The Habits of Health Transformational System, I have found, over the years, as I first read it and learned it, it just connected the dots so much in my mind and helped me understand what it was that I needed to do to be able to get into that emergent pattern, rather than stay in that repetitive, stuck pattern, and I found that— we all know that when clients come in, it takes time for them to realize the value in The Habits of Health Transformational System sometimes. They say they will at first and then they kind of, oh, you know, it takes extra time. It’s this and that, and the other. What I’ve done lately is I’ve leaned into — there’s a group of them that I’ve really leaned into, and said, “Are you willing to test this out? Are you willing to feed the mind first, and see what the body does after?” And so we’ve set up this plan where they really lean into their Lifebook, and to the community, and into our Facebook groups, and they’re really working with me, and we’re working on them sharing and using all these different parts of their brain to get the information in consistently over time, and I cannot even begin to tell you the difference in their success and what they’re experiencing. It has been so powerful, and I just wanted to have you— I’ve heard you do it before, it’s so powerful, I just wanted to ask if you could go through the science behind what happens in the brain that actually moves those neural pathways and helps to change that, because this is the pattern for change, and I’m seeing it, and I’m living it, and I just want everyone to be able to experience it. So, would you be able to just kind of do that again?
Dr. A: Sure, sure, and before I do that, you just gave a perfect example of when I talked about what an emerging process is. Remember, I said it has a future, it’s warm, it’s connected, and it’s updatable. You just described all four of those, and what happens relationally when we’re changing the pattern, when we’re evolving the pattern, and we’re working collaboratively. The fear, the anxiety, all these things that are current from the default future, which is the negative bias we have, start to evaporate, and we build the confidence and feel about it, and the way our brain works is— in fact, they’re finding out now, even in your 90’s, we have neuro-generation, where we actually develop new neurons, and new connections, and you know, what we wire together, fires together, right? And so, if we’re firing it, thinking this new way, just like Jeff was talking about, if you put something in there that’s negative, that’s not what you want, it will disrupt that and it’ll create more of those repetitive patterns.
[00:32:09] To break those repetitive cycles requires us to have a desired outcome and when we’re focusing on the desired outcome, which is Optimal Health and Wellbeing, and being the Dominant Force in our life, what happens is we now no longer feel irrelevant, and in this world today, with AI and everything going on, these simple human connections— and I call it human transformational technology and have for the last three or four years. This is the strength of us working together. Is that, at a time when basically, chat GPT, and all this stuff can create all kinds of factual information, the heart and soul of what makes a human a human, the purpose that drives us forward is the part that awakens our soul and actually reprograms ourselves. I talk about if you have a negative thought going on and process like, you know, I always use the example of the — because it happens all the time, it happens to me where I live in Florida, because I have a 25 mile an hour, or 35 mile per hour road, and we have some elderly citizens that are going 25, or sometimes less, so I have to use it all the time, and I always smile because I use it as an example, but I could get into that negative space like, “Oh, my goodness. I need to be somewhere,” or I can switch it out and put a positive thing in there, and just by doing that what’s happening is, it’s starting to program, and there’s a halo effect in the brain as well. As we work on something in a habit that is emergent, it actually affects all the other areas.
So, in The Habits of Health Transformational System, there are six MacroHabits, and if you’re working in small, little baby steps on all of them— that’s why, by the way, people right now, there’s a fad going on with the medical weight loss drugs, and I think they really are a great scientific advancement to stop cravings because the food technology industry is doing things that are full of all the things that create cravings. You know, the Ruffles potato chip with the crunch, and the salt, and the flavor, and the sugar in them, and so those things in some, for people that are highly susceptible, they fulfill a role, but creating health and wellbeing is something very different than that. It’s actually what you’re doing. It’s learning the six MacroHabits. Learning how to reprogram our brain, and then— actually, we have now videos, and work done that show actually, in live, watching those news synapses occur, where the axons and the dendrites— and the dendrites are reaching out, and you have new neuronal patterns being formed in the brain.
So that’s when people get focused on their patterns. Their patterns are based on the past. It’s repetitive things from the past when you become emergent, and that becomes your goal, you’re creating new, and when you create new, those build new neural pathways. So no matter what happened in your past, what your mom, or dad, or an environment that happened in your life 30 years ago— it’s fine to recognize it. It’s now fine to reconstruct it in the fashion that, “I learned from that, and now I’m going to build the future I want.” Every single one of us has the opportunity to do that. We just have to make the decision. Stop focusing on looking back, because that’s an anchor that’s pulling you, and start propelling yourself into what really matters. And if we look and see what we value most, and use that as our compass— you know, if you look at Dr. A, the symbol from my logo, there’s a North Star there, and that’s my goal. My goal is to give people the direction for them. That’s not what I want for them. It’s what they truly want for themselves, and to put them in that emergent process so they can go out and create that. And you’re absolutely right, your brain changes. It’s dramatic the changes that can occur, and basically if you no longer feed those negative thoughts, that stored trauma, and you let that release, you can totally construct a new life and a new future.
Jan: I love that. I love that. Just that idea of reframing. That everybody is able to do it.
Dr. A: Everyone is.
Jan: And want to say one last thing, after we got the new 2.0 of The Habits of Health Transformational System, a couple years after I read Atomic Habits by James Clear, and it’s a great book, but it was so interesting to me to realize that all the things that he was suggesting in that book, you have put in practice through this Habits of Health Transformational System, and I just— I’m just so grateful that you’re staying that cutting edge, right above it. Right in front of everything, so that we have the tools to be able to really serve these people and it’s made such a huge difference in my life, and I just love and appreciate you so much.
Dr. A: Thank you. Thank you, Jan, so much. And you know, that reminds me of something I saw yesterday. So, I’m doing some pretty advanced skiing with my, who’s a great friend of mine, instructor and we had just done this kind of a ledge and went off, and we were coming, and there was a gentleman that, he was a quadriplegic, or he couldn’t use his legs, and he had a little craft he was in that had a sled, and he can guide it, and he was going across and he came down to the lift right next to us, in parallel to us, and he had this big smile on his face, and he’s out doing it and having fun. He’s not letting the limitations in his life get in the way. It’s pretty cool.
Jan: Love that. Thank you so much.
Dr. A: Thank you, Okay. Where are we at? We have lots of time. Rach?
Rachel: Yes. Next up, we have Barb. Barb, can you come on camera and unmute yourself? There you are.
Dr. A: Hi, Barb.
Rachel: Oh. You’re still muted.
Dr. A: You’re still muted girl.
Barb: Got it! Okay. Yeah. So my instant question I suppose, would be, why is it that I am so happy, and feel great, and I’m sharing it with everyone, and I’m still always second guessing, did I do that right? Is somebody gonna catch the excitement that I have? You know? I know how to work my brain, but when I’m doing all of these things, and trying to share, I’m just always second guessing.
Dr. A: So that’s a repetitive pattern. In fact, that’s the one I suggest you work on, okay? [crosstalk 00:38:32]
Dr. A: Good. Awesome. So let’s work on that a little bit. So what I want you to do is give that some space, right? Just give it some space, and what you’re doing is, you’re judging yourself, and you’re putting yourself in position, which really, it sounds like isn’t accurate. It sounds like you’ve evolved, you’ve grown. The people you take care of apparently enjoy being with you, and you’re making it about you. You’re making it part of your identity. See the idea is to— for us to grow and become everything we want, is to progress our identity by raising our standards and as our standards raise, and you’re basically doing more of this work, and you’re seeing the benefit from it— you know the book by Hardy? Gain in the Gap, is that you’re seeing all these gains occur. You have to basically say that factually these are the gains that are occurring, and this second-guessing that am I doing it, right? Is an old pattern. It’s a pattern from your past.
[00:39:33] We’re at a point when sometime in your life, it doesn’t matter whether it was when you were 5 or 40, that you basically were told that you were not worthy. Your self-worth was low, and honestly, it doesn’t matter what someone told you, or even what you think about yourself. The reality is what you do. Right? You don’t have to believe. You just have to do, and do creates efficacy, self-efficacy, because you get results, and so when you sense that, you need to stop. Really isolate yourself with yourself, and just start creating space. Don’t try to kill it. You know you have it. Don’t try to kill it, because you know about it. Just be with it. Right? And sense it, and because right now you get it, and then it creates conflict like this inside of you, and you get this anxiety from it, and this feeling lack of self-worth, and it’s a repetitive cycle, and it’s honestly, it’s all made up. It’s totally made up. It’s not real. So the way to be able to move beyond it is to just be aware of it, and create space. You know, actually, Jim this morning was talking about, you know, on his walk, this feeling of spaciousness.
It’s the feeling of calmer spaciousness. When you’re no longer judging yourself. You’re no longer needing to be right about yourself. You’re simply recognizing that, I have this tendency from the past because repetitive patterns started previously— see they don’t update themselves. That’s why they’re called repetitive patterns. You’re not adding new information, but now you are adding new information, and as you sit with that, in that spaciousness, start thinking, how does this affect my body? How is it affecting my emotions? What is it making me think about, and is it really real? Because you know, one of the things— actually, Jim’s work— what if the opposite was true? What if actually, what you’re saying, you don’t know if you’re doing it enough or your self-worth— what if you have too much self-worth?
I’m just making that up, but the point is, the projection that you have and the withdrawal that you get when you do that is no longer helpful, and the key is space. It’s recognizing it. Being there with it. Not trying to get rid of it. Not trying to dispose of it. Just simply be there with it, and start to realize it doesn’t really have any effect on you. That’s something from the past. You now have grown. You said you’re happy. You feel fulfilled. You love what you’re doing. That’s enough. That’s where it is, and to the point where, at the highest level of consciousness, you no longer let that personal mind— see, your personal mind is made up. You created your personal mind. You did it since you were a little kid, and that is not serving you anymore. What’s serving you is this level of awareness that allows you to become everything you want to be and to be aware. Like yesterday, we were skiing really hard, but the light was refracting off of the snow and there were little crystals, and I sat there on the lift going up and the wind was blowing. It was chilly, and I could have said, “Oh, God. I’m cold.” Instead, I diverted that from my body and looked out at this incredible scene in nature, right? With these, just a billion diamonds in the snow. That’s what you do. You simply— when you start having a negative thought, you basically give it space. Allow it to become open, and then basically project that, “You know, I just did an amazing job.” That client or the person you just talked to, just made great— that’s why you saw me with Tanya. Why I was crying, because this works. The stuff works, and to get that feedback that the work, works, brings great joy to me, and that those are tears of joy. They’re not— I’m not going, “Oh, I’m the brilliant doctor. I got to sit here.” No. I’m experiencing that, and feeling that, because I’m at a point now in my life when that’s what makes life worthwhile. You’re doing all this wonderful work, so stop trying to sabotage yourself, and beat yourself up. Okay?
Barb: Yes. All right. That’s very helpful.
Dr. A: Good. Thanks.
Barb: Thank you.
Dr. A: Okay, Rach?
Rachel: All right. Next up we have Cheryl. Cheryl, can you come on camera?
Cheryl: Hello, morning.
Dr. A: Hi, Cheryl. How are you?
Cheryl: Hi. Really great. I think you might have just answered my question, but I’ll ask it anyway. It’s funny how we’re all of one mind anyway. My question was, is balancing between doing the self-inquiry, to see what’s in the way of me being the Dominant Force in my life, versus doing the work to prove you’re the Dominant Force in your life— because sometimes there’s this mentality of, “There’s no pain, no gain. Just go out and push through it,” and I find sometimes I’m just frozen if that happens, and then there are times when I’m sitting on the couch being in my comfort zone, and I do need to kick off. I need to kick myself in a little bit of a push. I was thinking about the guy on the slope. You said he just had a big smile. I’m sure it took something to get up there and he’s just loving it, and I know there are these times when just a little push, and I’m like, “Oh, I am amazing. This is great,” right? Because otherwise I’m in the story about myself, and so I’m wondering if you have an answer or and you might— you just said being present in the moment, I was like, yeah that’s probably it, but balancing between these different ways of motivating ourselves, and [crosstalk 00:45:09]
Dr. A: Yeah. Yeah.
Cheryl: So that you’re not frozen and you’re actually moving ahead in life.
Dr. A: Well, you said something, a word that’s like nails on a blackboard to me. Okay. So, I’ll start there. You don’t have to prove yourself to anybody. Stop trying to prove yourself. Stop looking for approval. Stop trying to prove yourself, and basically get on with the joy of this thing called life. Right? And life is— today I kind of introduced something new that we haven’t really talked about before, but, the emergent process. Absorb yourself in the emergent process. Every day look and see, how much of my day is in the emergent process, and how much of it is in the repetitive pattern? Because the repetitive pattern doesn’t update. It doesn’t develop, and it continues to create the same suffering, and those thoughts you have are all part of that repetitive process. So the goal really, is to remove that repetitive process through awareness understanding, which you’re starting to have, and just be there with it. Right? Stop trying to kill it, because you want to kill it. You don’t want to kill it through your knowing, you want to experience it and start to develop insights, and what’ll happen is the taste or the flavor of that repetitive pattern will start to change because you’ll start to say, “Wow. This is not something, it’s not only not serving me, it’s not me.” Because it isn’t you. Remember, if you’re focusing on doing things that are in the process of emergence, you are changing every day. You are a little more evolved today than you were yesterday, and that’s the evolution.
I think we’re put on this planet to evolve our soul. To become everything we want to be and then share that with others, and I think that is what creates the warmth. The connection. That’s what life’s worth living for, and it’s not how well you’re doing. It’s not, you know, certainly you want a feedback loop, and you want to have mentors to help you in the areas that you may have scotomas or blind spots, but it’s not about approval. It’s not about proving. You don’t need to prove yourself to anybody. You’re the most fantastic, and everybody on here, you have everything inside of you. It’s actually not adding stuff, it’s letting go of all these preconceived notions that we have about ourself which inhibits us because of our personal mind getting away from fully experiencing every moment of life. You know, because I can tell you that my experience now, and I’ve been doing this for a while, I gave you three examples of the emergent process, me and my skiing, observing nature yesterday, being in joy of watching an individual who has some challenges.
You know, life creates traumatic events. Life is unstable. It’s how we respond to it that determines the outcome, and when you get to the point where it’s like water on the duck’s back, and you can take it in— and you know what? It’s like eating energy bars. Any obstacle gives you fuel to help you become more and you look at life that way. Think about it! If life was perfect, and we lived in Utopia, we’d all be drug addicts, because we would be so freaking bored that we would just be looking to get away from it. It’s kind of like one of those movies. I forgot the movie, with Jim Carrey. I forgot. There was a movie— anyway, there’s a movie where everything was perfect in the world and it was all fake. It was a studio and that’s not what life’s about. Life is about taking these things— and by the way, crying when someone passes, seeing a movie that makes you laugh, it’s about fully expressing the full gamut of emotions because our emotions aren’t something to suppress. We’re not going to be happy all the time, but we can be fulfilled all the time. We can be fulfilled in dealing with someone’s illness. We can help be part of that, and experience, and build emergence within that relationship, where we spend the time together, right? So, you’ve got it all. Just go focus on the things that you want to bring in and stop trying to do a report card on the way. All right?
Cheryl: Thank you so much. This was awesome. I appreciate you. I appreciate this, and it just reminded me of the lunch last year where we could just be present with the emotion and it disappeared in like 90 seconds.
Dr. A: Yeah!
Chery: And just letting it go. So, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Dr. A: Yeah, and one more thing on that, Cheryl, is that when you feel the emotion, process it fully, it goes away, and there’s a charge of energy that went through you, right? And you feel it. It may be one of joy. It could be one of sadness. Fear. It’s okay. Hey, listen, yesterday I standing on the edge of a cliff, right? Where we had to go down and shoot, and there was fear, and I embraced it and said, “Okay. Yeah, I’m nervous. Let me make sure I’m precise here.” It’s not like I could sloppily just go wherever I wanted. So those emotions are part of life, but they’re 90-second deals. They’re not— when you grab on to them and don’t let it go, or you suppress it down and don’t release it, then it becomes a neurosis. Then it becomes something that’s not real. Then it’s not the proper response of responding to a stimuli in the environment. Then it becomes a cognitive emotive loop. Then it becomes the stored trauma, and then it becomes something that every time something stimulates that, like if you saw a snake, and now you see a rope on the road, you’re suddenly, totally neurotically not going into your garden because you’re worried there might be a snake there, right? I mean, then life becomes retracted, contracted, versus spacious. So, all right. Go get them, girl!
Cheryl: Thank you.
Dr. A: Yeah. Okay. We have time for one more I think.
Rachel: All right. Next up we have Ruthie. Ruthie, can you come on camera?
Ruthie: It’s saying no. You cannot start your video because the host has stopped it.
Dr. A: Well, that’s a bad host! Chris!
Ruthie: There we go.
Dr. A: There you are.
Ruthie: Yay! It worked. Okay. Wow. I love this forum, Dr. A. I just love it. I’m so grateful for you and everything that you offer to us. I’m glad you may have— I don’t know. I don’t want to answer the question for you. I’ll just let you answer it.
Dr. A: Go ahead and answer it. Save me some time!
Ruthie: So, you were talking about with one, I think it was one of the first people that came on, and you were talking about the things, basically what I heard was the mental diet. Like what we allow in, you know? We have to kind of make sure that we’re paying attention to that. I love personal growth. Personal development. I come here every month. I love learning about this kind of stuff and I’m starting to notice, I collect a lot of things to listen to, read, watch, that kind of thing, and potentially to the point where I can’t actually absorb and apply it, and I was just wondering, do you have a rhythm, or a pattern, of consuming something new? Because it sounds like you’re reading books faster than anybody. I want to be able to read more, but anyway, I just wondered if you had a rhythm, as far as consumption versus integration or something?
Dr. A: No, that’s a good— and I’d like you in general, think of your life, right? Build an integrated life into input versus output. Okay? So your place on the planet isn’t just to be an observer. It’s to be a contributor, right? And so that’s the goal for all of us, whether you’re contributing to one child or contributing, you know, hopefully at a level— my goal is to be part of a group of conscious leaders that help change the planet. I mean, that’s the goal. That’s the goal. Not to do it on my own. It’s to do it fully collaboratively with a bunch of conscious people, and that is the output. So though yes, when I do input, I basically pick things that allow me to enhance my future, or the future that I want for my role on this planet, but I take a lot of time off, and I do things that basically contribute to other people, whether it’s individually with my daughters. Whether it’s with coaches. Whether it’s with leaders. Whether it’s with giving lectures like this. Whether it’s learning on the slopes, and I don’t, it’s not that I just want to absorb, absorb, absorb. I create a kind of a menu. A time block to that. Right? So when I do read, I’m not reading fiction. I mean, if I want to relax totally, and just melt, I’ll watch a good movie or I’ll watch something occasionally on Netflix, although I don’t really like to do that because then it’s usually a series and then it, you know.
Ruthie: You get sucked in?
Dr. A: You get sucked into it, and then, yeah, and because I’m curious. So, as a whole, when I’m learning things on increasing consciousness and growing as a person, I’ll specifically take things that allow me to grow. I don’t read things— most of the stuff out there, from what I’ve read so far, about 80% out there is just the book has one idea, and then they make a whole book about one idea. Well, all they need to do is learn that one idea, and there’s many quicker ways to do that. So you don’t want to get yourself overwhelmed. What you want to do is apply. So, journal and apply. You know, the whole idea is— and to raise— your identity evolves, and it’s on your standards. So the things that you do— like just I’ll pick my skiing since we’ve been talking about that today, but yesterday, my instructor said the last two days were the best two days I’ve skied in my life, and I’ve been sking for 40 years, right? So the bottom line is, even an old dog can learn new tricks, and the same thing with it’s about applying it. In fact, how you really, truly, learn something is three parts. It’s a [unintelligible 00:55:43] of encoding, which means you take it into something you already know. Second is space repetition, and the third is recall, right? You recall it. So, when I write, when I read a book, I underline everything and then I’ll be in a situation just like today, everybody that’s talked I’ve applied some of the things that beginning talk I gave, examples of how that actually is in nature, because theory and and processes, without practical examples don’t allow you to apply them into your life. I’d rather have you journal the areas that you need to work on. Pick specifically one thing in there and start applying it, because without space repetition, without recalling it like, I’ll have something where I cannot remember a name of something and I’ll spend the time to make sure I figure it out. Without looking it up, because that’s called recollection. That’s recall. That allows you to take the association areas in your brain and pick something out of your memory, and then make it work. So you want to use all the parts of your brain and input is only one of those. The output needs to be balanced. So you need to do things and apply those things. Does that makes sense?
Ruthie: So that you can recall it. I think what you’re saying is part of the learning is actually practicing it, sharing it [crosstalk 00:56:53].
Dr. A: Yeah, and if you look at emergence, as I showed, it’s connection. It’s warmth. It’s updating your future. It’s updating your relationships. It’s updating and improving those things, making them more proficient, not less. Don’t take relationships for granted. Add value into them, and that will pay you back in an incredible way. Cool?
Cheryl: Thank you.
Dr. A: You are welcome! All right, Rach. We’re out of time. I know we’re going to start doing something new. We’re going to put at the end of this one, what next one’s about, the next month, and one of the things we want is you to share this with all your friends and people you know, way beyond our health network, and let’s go. Let’s get more people working on this, on going to the mental gym. So with that, why don’t we put up the slide that says what we’re going to be talking about? So in March we’re going to be talking about: How to Build an Integrated Life. Today we mostly talked about repetitive patterns and how to start unraveling those, and moving forward, and basically, creating an emergent life, and that’s what we’re going to focus on next time. Is about building an integrated life. So get everybody you know on the call on March 5th, and we’ll have a bunch of fun, and you guys take this, do your journaling. Take down those repetitive patterns. Find one that you really want to work on. Give it space. Give it room to expand, and understand. Get some insight, and then basically let it go. God bless you guys. Have a great week. Bye.
