In this session, we talk about how to put yourself in a position to organize your life around what matters most to you and at the same time, build consciousness so you can become the Dominant force in your life.
Video transcript:
Dr. A: All right. Well welcome, everybody. This is Dr. A and we’re getting ready for another edition of our Conscious Forum. I’m very excited today. I’m coming to you from down in the lower Bohemian chain. I’m on my boat and really enjoying this new ability to communicate. It’s amazing. Our technologies have advanced so much that I’m able to do this from anywhere now, which makes it great. It allows me an opportunity to organize my life around what matters most to me, which is being here in the out islands with nature. We have been catching our own dinner. I had hog snapper the other night that was just delicious. Right out of the ocean, and so it’s a beautiful way to be able to be in a really cool area and yet still come and do the things that I love and the Conscious Forum is one of my favorite things. I’m just kind of rambling as we get started. Give everybody a chance to settle in, but I love this.
I love the idea of helping people really put themselves in position to organize their life around what matters most to them and at the same time become that dominant force in their life and building consciousness, the work that we’re talking about today, this work is becoming more and more important. You know, AI is kind of taking people sleepwalking through life and pretty much telling you what you’re going to buy, what you’re going to eat, what you’re going to be, and it’s usually based on what someone that owns some company wants you to have versus what you want for yourself.
So, what we’re going to do today is we’re going to focus a little bit on our thoughts, then I’m going to open it up and give an opportunity for you guys to ask questions. So just as a review, I like to review this, basically, what is a forum? A forum is a place, meeting, or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged and so I’m going to do a little start here, shorter than usual, because I want an opportunity to really answer your questions. So the thought today is, we’re going to explore how our thoughts run our lives and I don’t know if you thought about that but it’s really, really, really important that we understand that our thoughts are not us, and so I’m going to spend a little time going over how our thoughts actually create kind of the scenario that we— our playbook that we run our lives on, and so, what’s consciousness? Consciousness refers to the state of being aware of one’s surroundings, one’s thoughts, and one’s feelings, and we’re pretty much this first one, right? Awareness of other things, of basically, like looking at this vase that’s external to us [Dr. A is referring to a slide on screen].
So when we focus on it, we may not see it by the way, if we’re caught inside the thought process in our mind and our mind is racing in a cognitive emotive loop, we may not even be aware of what’s in front of us, and we’ve all experienced that, right? You know, when you’re driving your car home and you’re on a hands-free phone call and you’re going, stopping at lights, turning corners, making proper directions and you’re very, very, only mildly aware of your surroundings. You’re programmed to know when the red light appears, you stop, but other than that you’re pretty much going on automatic and we’re not even aware of our surroundings. Well one of the things that’s important, just like that vase, right now, I’d love all of you to take something that is near your screen and look at it and say, “Okay.” Like, I happen to be looking out at my dinghy, which is out on the third level here and that’s clearly not me, but when we get to our inner world, our awareness of our thoughts and our feelings, we have a tendency to actually kind of encapsulate that in thinking that our thoughts and our feelings are us. They actually are who we are versus just things that are happening in our mind. Just thoughts or feelings we’re having.
So we’re going to spend some time today talking about that because it’s so critical that you start to realize that you are not your thoughts, you are not your feelings, and you certainly aren’t— I’m not my dinghy, which is sitting eight feet from me right now. So intrinsic motivation, basically, willful thoughts. Willful thoughts, these are things that intrinsically motivate us when we have these thoughts and things that are important to us, and so there are multiple ways we have willful thoughts. First, auditory. You can say right now, if you just spend a moment, you can go inside and say, “Hello.” You can say, “Hello,” to yourself, right? You can say, “Hello,” and you can hear that thought, right? We usually express it, we talk with other people, but we can actually create that thought, we can also create a visual like I can create that I’m on a boat next to an island and I can create a different boat visually, and create that in my mind, and those are willful thoughts.
I’m actually taking the time, focusing, and using my prefrontal cortex to do that, and that area is brilliant. That’s the area, that’s why I’m able to do this call from the islands today is because of Elon Musk and his team of technologists have figured out a way to put these low orbit satellites— and by the way, it’s happening, a couple of weeks ago I was in an out island and we were sitting there looking up at the sky and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, came a series, it looked like Invasion. An invasion of aliens. It was like a series of about, I think it was 15 or 20 small, little white dot lights that were coming up through the sky and at first they looked kind of wild because it’s something that’s not natural, and then you realize it’s a launch. They’ve launched a spacecraft and it deployed this series of satellites and then they’re moving the satellites out into space.
So that requires a brilliant mind, it requires a lot of brilliant minds, and our mind is so, so brilliant when it works that way, and it’s creative. So when we’re in the space where we’re able to consciously focus, we don’t have that background noise, which I’m going to talk about in a second. We’re able to do brilliant things. They said that Einstein spent very little time doing anything other than creating and he wore the same shirt day in and day out. He spent very little time thinking about his personal mind, as far as what people would think and spent all this time tapping into this beautiful area. Well, most of us spend most of our time being ruled by automatic thoughts.
These are spontaneous thoughts that occur. They occur all the time. They’re happening and we don’t even know, and all of a sudden they’ll happen, and so what I mean by that is, we’ll look at something like, automatically generated, they just come from nowhere, and they’re the voice in our head. They are made-up stories that we’ve made up, and they’re self-concepts. We have, since we were very little, we’ve been gathering the way the world should be, how we protect ourself, and we were four or five. This prefrontal cortex hadn’t been developed so when our parents or grandparent, somebody, said to you, “Hey, you’re stupid,” versus, “Hey, that might not have been the smartest thing to do,” we didn’t know any better, they didn’t know any better and at that time we would think, okay we’re stupid, and then we would spend all our time trying to prove that we’re not, even into adulthood. So a lot of us have stuff inside of us that’s made up. We made it up. We are the chief architect and that is in essence what we call the personal mind or we call your ego, and your ego is running the show.
So let’s talk about that for a minute. That voice in your head. So you’re in your car, you’re going somewhere and you’re thinking about— you just came out of a meeting and you’re driving. You’re thinking, why did I have to say those things? And what happened was you were in a meeting, you got upset about something, the limbic area of your brain took over, those automatic thoughts came out, and your ego says, “Wait. We need to defend ourselves. We’re at risk here.” You know, what was 10,000 years ago is critical to protect you against being eaten by something or being bitten by something, now is mostly perceived threats. Where we needed to defend ourselves and we actually did these automatic behaviors and we responded directly and usually it’s negative thoughts and what we do is focus on the things we don’t like. They’re destructive thoughts and they are things that our ego says is so important, and it starts in the morning.
So if you think about it, when you get in the shower in the morning, bottom line is, the one thing your ego is doing to protect you is adjusting the water, right? Unless you have one of the new technologically advanced systems that puts you in the perfect temperature, you have to modify, if it’s a little too hot, I think I’ll cool it down a little, too cold, and your ego is actually helping you create the proper conditions for you in the shower, but after that, katy bar the door, you’re actually then talking about all the things you’ve got to do today, and what is this person going to think, and I need to talk to this person, and my daughter or my son came home late last night, what were they doing? It goes on and on and on and most of it’s destructive. It’s really not helpful.
So where do those thoughts come from? Well, basically, they are unfinished mental and emotional patterns. They’re stored negative energy that came sometime in our life and we didn’t want to deal with it at the time so we repressed it. We resisted thinking about it or if it’s something we really like, we clung on to it and instead of just letting the experience happen and move away— so if you think about it, if you’re driving your car, you don’t think about the white lines, right? You may think about it when you go to pass, do I have the white lines that are solid where I can’t pass or are they the ones that are dashed so I can pass? But other than that you don’t spend a moment of time beyond that, but you might have been thinking in that car about something that happened with your spouse, or with your child, or at work, and you’re digging that and thinking about it, and resisting it, and getting into this cognitive emotive loop where your emotions are getting into it.
[00:10:10] We spend all this time on something that is actually just a made-up story and what happens— it’s like a tea kettle that gets to a point where it boils and then it releases, and that’s what happens to us. We get so caught up in one of these concepts and we put so much energy in it, and eventually, it releases, and all it needs is a little trigger from someone saying, “Hey, why didn’t you eat all of your lunch?” Or innocently asking, “Hey, I was talking to you, you didn’t hear me,” and we — boom — react to it and we respond in a way, we wonder why we did that. We did that because we are not fully present in the moment. We are letting our emotions and those cognitive emotive loops, that voice in our head, take over.
So basically, all our stuff is in our personal mind. It’s all stuff we’ve created and because you resisted or clung to it, it’s trying to release itself. That’s why you get upset about these things because it’s somehow triggering something inside of you. You know, someone didn’t call. Right? Someone didn’t call you when you expected and then you’re thinking the worst. If it’s your child, you’re thinking, “Did they get in an accident?” All of a sudden we build a whole story around it which is not helpful. It doesn’t in any way help us. It puts us in position to let this voice in our head control our life.
So there’s always a reason why your mind creates one thought versus the other and as most of you know, I created Stop. Challenge. Choose., exactly for this reason. If we have something going on it’s important for us to stop, create some space. Challenge why we’re feeling that way, and then choose an outcome that moves us forward. It’s so critical to understand that, and so basically, if we think about it, just in review before we open this up for questions because we’re going to be talking a lot about this in the coming months, is something happens. We’re moving along, we’re conscious, in the moment, an event, a person, something happens which comes in, usually visually, can come in auditory, and it hits our personal mind. It hits that stored energy and the next thing you know, we’re creating automatic thoughts and those thoughts go on. They have multiple scenarios. Most of them are not real. They’re actually things that we’ve made up and what that leads to is the emotional feelings and the negative energy which feeds back, and now you have that feedback loop and what ends up happening is we project onto someone else what we’re feeling.
If you’re looking at someone saying, “Why are they like that?” Actually, that’s a projection from ourselves onto someone else, and what we want to do is become open, curious and look at that. Same thing, either that or we resist or we cling to something that we want to happen. I was here many years ago, in this very area, my kids were going up, and with my wife, and you know I could look at this area and feel melancholy about it or I can remember and smile at the great adventures we had here, and that’s my decision to make those choices, and when I mean ‘becoming the dominant force in your life,’ that’s what we want to help you do, and so now I’d love to just open this up for basically, understanding that we’re going to focus on, our thoughts and feelings in the coming months and really start to understand how we become the master and the dominant force of that. So Rachel, let’s go ahead and open this up for Q&A.
Rachel: All right. First up we have Vicki.
Dr. A: Hey, Vicki.
Rachel: Hey, Vicki.
Vicki: Hello. So, hi Dr. A. Thank you for allowing me to come on. My question is that after being on my health journey for the last four and a half years I’ve changed my whole life and I’ve grown a lot as a person. How do I get my spouse to support the changes that I’ve made?
Dr. A: Yeah. You can’t get anybody to do anything they don’t want to do. Let’s be really clear about that. The best way to benefit— I’ll use the example of my mom. You’ve probably heard me say this before, but you know my mom and I are both strong personalities and I mean, I’ve always loved her to death, but she would come and visit and we could take about three days of each other and we would start doing this [Dr. A pumps his fists together], and it was kind of a joke, you know like they say that guests are like fish after a few days they start smelling. I mean that’s not necessarily the most attractive thing to say, but the point is that we’re used to certain ways of behaving and when someone is put in the position where you’re having to deal with them more than that, then if that relationship isn’t really healthy, then it starts to show, and those are symptoms that we have to grow, and so my mom is 91 now and over the last 10 years in development I’ve learned to really listen. Be open. Be curious. What if the opposite was true?
All that work has led me to have an amazing relationship with my mom, and now what happens is when she starts this, see I’m not there. I’m down here, and so there’s nothing for her to push against and so it just dissipates and so that’s the same advice I would give you.
It’s worked really well, Vicki, is that I just look to be kinder. I look to understand. I’m curious, you know, why are they acting that way? And then just support them because they’re doing the best they can and do. So you’ve spent a lot of time working, it’s kind of like going to the gym. If you’re going to arm wrestle with friends and you go to the gym for two years and you come back, you’re going to beat them arm wrestling if they haven’t done any of that. The same thing here. You are now building the emotional flexibility, the agility, to be able to basically take anything that happens and you can respond in a way that determines the outcome because you’re becoming the dominant force in your life. So the first thing is just to appreciate them and to look to understand. To be curious about that behavior and to not judge them, and over time, as long as it benefits them that you’re being a kinder, more supportive spouse, then that behavior will change.
If you are projecting — so this goes back to projecting — if you’re projecting, why are they acting like this when you know I’m acting like that? Then that’s not being conscious. That’s actually getting in the Drama Triangle with them and making yourself a hero and they’re the villain. Does that make sense?
Vicki: Yeah.
Dr. A: Yeah. So that’s not the answer you wanted. You wanted me to wiggle your nose and be able to convert them. I got that, but the whole point is you just start being in that moment with them, and really, rather than judge them because that is not being open, curious, and wanting to grow, and assuming that you spend the time and give space— give space to those times when there’s any kind of confrontation or something. Just give space to it and what you’ll find is you will dissipate that energy. If there’s negative energy coming out of them or something that you particularly would love to change, the way to change it is through you changing.
Vicki: Okay. So here’s just a quick example, so before I started on program I was a Pepsi-holic. I was drinking like four or five regular Pepsi’s a day. So when I made the decision to start on program, the first thing I had to do is quit drinking Pepsi, which I did end up doing over for a couple weeks. Before I actually started on program, and now, he still drinks Pepsi and he always has his Pepsi on ice sitting around so I have to make that conscious effort to make sure that I just don’t go to take a drink of it and stuff, and I tried to talk to him about that. Especially when I go back on plan because right now I’ve been back on plan because I put on some weight. So anyway, I told him you know, he used to smoke, and I said, if I was sitting here smoking a cigarette, that would bother you, and I said, I have problem with Pepsi and you’re sitting here drinking Pepsi all the time, and so that’s something that I have a problem with or that it makes— I shouldn’t say I have a problem. It just makes it challenging for me and the same thing when I make a healthy meal, very seldom does he ever try it, which I’ve just gotten used to it now, that that’s his choice, but those are all just ways that he’s not necessarily supporting me and stuff. So, I mean there’s a lot more other things too, but that’s…
Dr. A: No, no. I get that. I get that, but it’s important for you to know that when that happens you are, at that moment, going below the line, and you need to realize that, right? Because you’re not his caregiver. You’re not his keeper. He didn’t sign up for you to be his boss. You’ve made a conscious choice to create better health and so here’s the full responsibility, this is what I mean by becoming the Dominant Force, yeah, it’s harder if you’re sitting there and there’s something that at one time you were addicted to and it’s in front of you. Clearly you wish it wasn’t there, and I get that, but for him, basically, it’s something that he hasn’t made a decision and so here’s the really fundamental thing, I think is really important for you to— once you really become this, you are becoming a healthy person, right? You’re not smoking. You’re not drinking Pepsi. So those are choices you’re making and you’re actually changing your standards. So you’re at a point now where you’re now deciding you don’t drink Pepsi or smoke because you’ve now— your identity has now evolved, and now you’re a healthy person, and a healthy person doesn’t drink Pepsi, and doesn’t smoke cigarettes. That’s what a healthy person does and so the more you focus on that part, is that you are simply making the choice and you’re not judging him or trying to get him— see, you have no ability to change the outside world.
[00:20:16] The sooner we— it’s kind of like the Serenity Prayer, right? For alcoholics. You need to know what you can change, what you can’t change, and know the difference, right? And so in this all you can hope is over time that he’ll come around and you can do things to make him more aware, but if he perceives that you’re trying to change him, to change to make it easier for you, that’s basically you making him the villain and you’re in essence putting yourself as the hero, right? So that’s just part of your growth. That’s part of being curious about that, why am I feeling like that? And knowing that that will not serve you because someone convinced against their nature is not is not going to create a long-term change. So what you’ve got to do is basically awaken him to the possibility where he knows it’s in his best interest, and right now he in essence hasn’t made that decision, so anything that you’re saying to him he’s going to move into the Drama Triangle because that’s what you do, and when you’re in that space, when you’re tit for tat in that space, nothing productive happens, because remember, it’s reactive. It’s fear-based. It’s anxiety. It’s all the things that are things that you’re working to move beyond. Make sense?
Vicki: Yeah.
Dr. A: All right. Rach, who do we have next?
Rachel: All right. Wanda, can you come on camera? There you are.
Wanda: Here I am!
Dr. A; Hi, Wanda!
Wanda: Hi, Dr. A.
Dr. A: There you are!
Wanda: Thank you. So, I’ll preface that I’ve been on a health journey for over two years and I’ve lost a significant amount of weight and last year, or about a year and a half ago, I got to a point, I was very proud of the scale, but as I looked into the mirror, my body was not evolving in the condition that I had hoped for after being morbidly obese since childhood. My skin was just all over pretty, pretty bad and that image, you know, you got to look at yourself every day kind of thing, really began to disrupt my progress, and then we had a few life things happen that were very challenging after that and what evolved was, for about a year, binge eating, and I would continue on my weight loss journey and do really well, and lose some weight, and then I would binge eat more and gain weight back, and that pattern happened pretty consistently and I still lost about 20 or 30 pounds over the last year, and I have about 20 to 30 to go, but I’ve had to pause in the weight loss phase right now, and I’m in counseling, and I’m also seeing a health coach who specializes in eating disorders, but my question for you is, what I’m noticing about myself is right now is very significant with my weight loss, but finding that I have a really hard time regulating my own thought process in that I’m either really fastpaced, going all in, or I’m stopping or going backwards, and I see that with my business as a coach, I see that with our finances and shopping, and so I’m having a really hard time figuring out how to regulate and slow down at a pace that gets me where I want to go, without all this constant disruption of on again, off again, or I almost feel like a race car driver who goes really fast in the long stretch and then slows down for the curve or crashes and then has to start back again, and I’d really like to learn how to slow myself down, to regulate my own system and thoughts so that I can be consistent. Does that make sense?
Dr. A: Yeah.
Wanda: In moving forward and becoming healthy in all the areas.
Dr. A: Yeah. No, that’s great, and thank you for sharing that. What you’re talking about is an oscillating structure and what I mean by that is you have emotional conflict. I’ll give you a simple example, and you’ll appreciate this, and then what I want to do, Wanda is kind of have you change your orientation because right now, you’re in a reactive state and what you do is, for instance, let’s just say you decide, I need to lose — I’m just going to make up numbers — 50 pounds, because you saw a picture, you looked in the mirror, you know, it doesn’t matter what it is, but there’s something in there that you’ve said, “Okay. I’m emotionally upset. I need to lose weight.” Okay. If it’s an emotionally driven process you’ll lose some weight, you’ll look at yourself, you’ll feel better, and then you’ll stop doing what you were doing to lose weight because it’s a reaction, right? You’re oscillating back and forth. What we want to do is change that to the creative process, and what I mean by that is, what is your desired outcome? It’s really important in the key areas, whether it’s your business, your health, your relationships, is that you look in— by the way, I want to just to add something in there, it’s great that you’re going to counseling. It’s great that you’re getting therapy from professional therapy because you know, binge eating, all those things are significant in us, and you want to have counseling from people that are professionals. This forum is to create some orientation perception, help us maybe change our perspective. Give us some things to work on, but I want you to continue doing what you’re doing because those people can really help you.
One thing I can help you with is learning how— the first leadership habit that we created when Helen and I sat down six, seven years ago was, ‘lead from the future, act in the now.’ Right? Do you recognize that? Lead from the future, act in the now?
Wanda: Yes, sir.
Dr. A: All right. So that principle is the principle of what structural dynamics is. In other words, the desired outcome, leading to the future you want and then what is current reality? And current reality is just as important as knowing right where you are versus where you want to go, and when you put current reality and desired outcome, that creates structural tension, and with that, that then creates a series of things you will do that will lead you towards your goal. So your goal is, and this is really important for you, is what do you value the most? Do you value most? Reaching a healthy weight? Being successful in your business? What of the key parameters and values, what is the most important thing you value? More than anything? Would you say?
Wanda: Probably right, now peace of mind, because I feel a lot of turmoil and conflict.
Dr. A: Anxiety and turmoil. Okay. All right. So if you can create calm and the ability to go through your day in a relatively calm state, that would be good, right? So how that occurs is that you have a path and a process where you know what to do. So let’s just take it all the way down to Stop. Challenge. Choose. So let’s just say part of the— so what you’re in essence saying, you’re assessing that, I’m losing weight, I’m doing well, and then all of a sudden I’m binge eating, right? And then I’m not doing well and so I’m all upset about that. So if we make the decision that creating health is one of the key things you want to do, and it sounds like it is right?
Wanda: Yes sir.
Dr. A: Okay. Now don’t you, “sir me.” [Dr. A and Wanda laugh].
Wanda: I just have a lot of respect for you.
Dr. A: That’s fine. That’s fine, but right now, I don’t want you to look at me as being up one, down one. I want you to look at me as being one human to another human conveying in you some things that you can use. You don’t have to be like me, to use them, you can be like you and use them. Okay? Does that make sense, Wanda? Okay, because you can do this. This is not something that, “Yes, sir. I’m going to try.” This is us talking. One human to another and knowing that, yeah, I’ve helped some people and I’ve helped myself. I’ve helped— just like I was talking about with my mom. My life is better today because I’ve done this work myself and I continue to do this work, and this work will free you, it will take the suffering, remember, I always talk about suffering is optional, pain is not. There’s going to be things that happen in our life, events that occur, they’re going to affect us and there are things we wish wouldn’t happen and they’re going to happen. It’s how we respond to them, and you have full control over those, you just have to practice, right? So that’s what we’re going to talk about. So in terms of your health, bottom line is, if you look in the next 12 months and you said, “Okay, how do… [unintelligible 00:29:28] …a week and incrementally continue that then lose 15 pounds, and then gain 10? And the reason why you go back is because you were emotionally saying, “Okay, I’m doing well,” and then you beat yourself up and then you go into a feeding frenzy, right? What I’m saying is that if you have so strong in your mind, leading from that future, that I’m going to become a healthy person. I’m going to become a healthy person, and that you make choices, and then when you feel that icky sauce coming on like, “Oh, I’m about ready to eat a bag of M&M’s,” you stop, challenge yourself, and say, “No. I’m becoming a healthy person,” and then choose, in that moment, before it cascades, to have some grapes.
[00:20:11] I was talking to Dave Blanchard who’s a fellow conscious leader and working on these things. I was talking about something as simple as if you grow up in an environment where you’ve eaten like the traditional American fair, and people are eating Milky Ways and Snickers and all the stuff if you are on the program now, and you might even be using one of the new weight loss drugs, it doesn’t really matter, but if you can, in the moment, grab a series of grapes, and I use grapes because they’re so amazing, and if they’re in the refrigerator they’re cool and rather than going and grabbing something that you would traditionally do you have grapes there or an apple sitting out on your desk or whatever, and you grab that and you start tasting it, just the texture and the crunch and the taste, it’s more subtle. It’s not like having an injection of Godiva chocolate, but the subtleties of that, and you start practicing that, and you do that every day.
Over time those are the choices you’ll make because the overwhelming effect you get from nutritionally polluted food creates such— that’s why it’s so voracious and why you binge is because it raises your blood sugar off the planet and the next thing you know you’re cycling back and forth, and you’re back to the addictive brain. Does that make sense?
Wanda: Yes. It does. Well, I will say, so we only have, probably 90% of the food in our home is healthy because we’re all on program and I have a daughter with Down syndrome and she’s 25, and if I have those foods in our home then… so I would say that the majority of our food is completely healthy and so my binging actually, has been on healthy food like granolas and nuts and are great, like I will just consume 6 to 800 calories in 20 minutes.
Dr. A: Well, at least— okay, so I want to change how you talk to yourself, okay? First of all, you buy your willpower at the grocery store. So that’s smart. You’re buying— six MacroHabits, right? Surroundings. You’re creating an underlying structure that is relatively healthy. Now, once that’s happening and you’re eating like that, you’re no longer eating for taste. You’re no longer eating for flavor. You are eating because you’re in an emotional, a cognitive emotional loop, and you’re just doing this, and you do it until you’re full. Fortunately, you’re eating things that are more energy— or less energy-dense, and have more volume. So that part’s better, but it has to happen before that. When I showed you the picture, you need to— when the event occurs, when you start drifting, that’s when you have to call the timeout. There can’t be— once you’re sitting down there with an enormous thing, into the process, because now you’re in the limbic area of your brain. You’re in the reactive area of the brain, and it’s just going to kind of do that because what’s happening is you’re in essence, your rational mind, in your relationship, thinking about your future and being healthy.
This part is the Dominant Force in your life, when the ego takes over and the personal mind says, “Nope. You know what, Wanda? You deserve to eat anything you want. That’s what we do. That’s what we do, Wanda. We do this,” and you sit down and start doing that, it’s too late because now your ego’s taken over. So you’ve got to create, what are the triggers? What are the things that do that? And stop, and if you have to, get out and go for a walk. Go into a different room. Get away from the kitchen. Immediately intervene and what you’ll find is by making the interventions and stopping, challenge while why you’re feeling that way, and then choosing the outcome, you’re starting to create small little confidence boosters. I can control this. I am in the place to do this, and this is what I choose because I am becoming a healthy person and a healthy person doesn’t eat this stuff. Not because they’re resisting or they’re not doing it because “I’m so tough.” No.
They’re doing it because you’ve made a decision that leading from the future you want, you want to be healthy, and by the way, I can tell you that the change dynamic, change in your health, when you mentioned one of the things when you looked in the mirror, that’s your personal mind. That’s your ego saying to you, “Oh, look. You’ve done these things to be healthy, and you know what? You don’t look as good as you need to. Let’s go back and eat, what the hell. It doesn’t matter.” That’s all that voice in your head that we talked about earlier, and that’s not in charge. You’re in charge. You’re, and the way is intentionally to know when you’re in these situations, what you will do. So if you’re in a situation, I’m sure that the people that are working with you also are talking about things like this, you want to get yourself out of that harm’s way and then you want to put yourself in environment where you are the Dominant Force. You want to keep this part of your brain engaged. This part knows better. The limbic area is going back to your personal mind. Does that make sense?
Wanda: Yes.
Dr. A: So start with little things, by the way. Don’t start with huge stored energy because of something happened in your childhood. Start with the little things and realize that your thoughts, your feelings, are not you. You are the dominant force that is aware of those things and move those away from you so you can now make the choices that are important to you, and not be guided by those does. That make sense?
Wanda: Yes. It does. Thank you.
Dr. A: Start, yeah, and start with little baby things. Just baby steps, right? That’s all it takes. Over time you’ll get better, and better, and better, and better, but the most important thing to understand, there are two types of motivation. There’s conflict manipulation, which is when you’re letting your emotions guide you to do these things, and then there’s the cognitive part, when you make a conscious decision that this is leading from the future. This is who I’m going to be, and this is informing me of what I do and I don’t do, because I’m becoming this, right? Does that make sense?
Wanda: It does. Yes. I printed a body image— I did this body image in a course this week and I’m filling in the lines of things that, on this body image picture, things that I like. The outcomes that I like, and the outcomes that I want. Just to kind of clear my head.
Dr. A: Good
Wanda: That image that I look at every day, that I don’t like, I start my day looking in the mirror and so I’m creating that to actually put in the kitchen. I’m going tape to the cabinet of these are the things that I like, and these are the outcomes that I want, and I know how to get them. Working out, those kinds of things. So I’m trying to retrain my thinking about my image of myself.
Dr. A: First of all, get rid of “try.” Do. You know?
Wanda: I am.
Dr. A: Yoda sitting there with Luke, with the spacecraft, right? He couldn’t lift it because he was trying instead of doing. You have full control of that. That’s number one. First of all, you’re a beautiful woman. You got a great smile and what your personal mind is doing, it’s looking to sabotage you because it’s losing control. Look at the smile on your face right now. You are the Dominant Force in your life and once you recognize your personal mind, your ego, are just thoughts from your past, they don’t define your future. They don’t define your present. They’re simply things from the past that now you’ve decided to make the changes. You’re actually raising your standards. You’re raising your standards. A healthy person does not eat a thousand calories in a sitting. A healthy person grabs a—if they’re feeling a little hungry, they grab a natural something either a complex carbohydrate, or a balanced protein, or fruit, or vegetables, or something that tastes amazing, and then they move on with their day. Okay? And the other thing is, by the way, this is going to blow you away, but you’re not your body. Your body is simply the vessel that holds this brilliant consciousness that is you. Okay? And you determine, that consciousness determines your perceptions, which is how you frame things, second your choices, and third your behavior.
You have full control over all those. Those are the only three things we have control over and the more you become and really understand that you are the Dominant Force and these are things you do have control over— see, you can change your perception immediately with food and the reality is that you know processed food is not healthy. It’s just like the other lady who was talking about her husband, if she smoked in front of him, yeah, processed food in many ways is just like cigarette smoking, it creates inflammation, it can be devastating. It’s just not good for us and it’s something, because it stimulates the nucleus accumbens in our brain, our pleasure center, it causes addiction and it is specifically designed because 10,000 years ago, when we sniffed out energy-dense food like a berry bush, we sat down and ate it all because it was critical for our survival. You know now that you have a 100% chance of bagging food when you go into that refrigerator, right? And so first of all, you’re doing some of the right things. You’ve already changed your surroundings. So that you buy your discipline at the grocery store. That’s great. Now it’s time to take it the next step, is that you’re the one that decides your body is not you.
[00:39:55] You are the awareness, and in your awareness, you’re making a decision to become a healthy person and as a result of that, that’s not what a healthy person decides to eat. It has nothing to do with, “No, I’m not going to do it because I’m trying to get healthy or no, I’m resisting. I really want it, but I’m resisting it.” No. It’s actually in the big scheme of things, you’re doing it because you have decided that you are a healthy person. Make sense?
Wanda: That’s so good. Thank you.
Dr. A: You’re welcome, Wanda. Good luck. Let me know how you’re doing, okay? [Wanda nods]. All right. Good. Okay, Rach, who’s next?
Rachel: All right. Next up we have Kathy. Kathy, can you come on camera?
Dr. A: Hey, Kathy. You’re muted.
Kathy: Truly not my first time on Zoom! Anyway, how are you today Dr. A?
Dr. A: I am fantastic.
Kathy: Awesome. So my question to you is a little bit in a different direction. It has to do with something that’s near and dear to my heart and that’s my children. I’m going to try not to get too emotional.
Dr. A: Well, you’re a mom first of all, so go, get as emotional as you want! I mean your kids are, you know, if you had to pick the most important things in your life, would it be your kids?
Kathy: Yes.
Dr. A: Yeah! Hell yeah. Get emotional. That’s fine. There’s no— get emotional. It’s something that’s dear to your heart, it’s important. So let’s go.
Kathy: Okay. So just to give you a little backdrop, I’ve been a mom since I was 19 years old. All of our children are grown and out of the house. I’m in my second marriage, and our marriage is now combined families. So my stepchildren became my children at a very early age, and the one that I’m most concerned about is the one that became my step-daughter at age four. So she’s been with us forever and we never have considered our family split, or step-sister, step-nothing. In the past, probably four years, I have learned how to control my thoughts and really become such an amazing, better person with the way I think about stressful situations. Except when it comes to my kids. So in the past couple years, there has been a lot of controversy between my children to where they actually stopped talking to each other, and then at one point one of my children stopped talking to me because I was communicating with my stepdaughter. She has quite a bit of psychological stuff going on and she gets very distant and pulls away from us all the time, and it goes from not speaking to her birth mother too, and it can go on for a year, to not speaking to my husband, and that can go on for a year, and then she starts talking to her mom again and then I’m like the mediator, and my husband’s always saying, “Well, did you invite her to this? Did you call her for that? Did you text her for this? This is what she should do.” And I’m like— I’ve tried so many times with her and I keep trying, and I keep on putting effort in to let her know that we’re always here for her, but she does not respond.
She doesn’t respond by phone. She doesn’t respond by text. Her, my youngest son, who’s my birth son, is getting married to her friend in November and she hasn’t communicated with him since they became in a relationship, and that’s been two years, and her reason for that was that she needed time to get adjusted to the fact that her little brother was going out with her friend, right? And then it became, “Well, he doesn’t text me anymore and ask me about my day,” and I’m like, well everybody grows up, and so I always am trying to be the fixer, and mentally it wears all myself and my husband because I try to keep myself quiet about how I feel, but I no longer am going to ruin relationships with my other children because she doesn’t want to communicate. So how do I handle— how do I— I just don’t know what to do because [crosstalk 00:43:47]…
Dr. A: I have a couple of questions, Kathy. I want to make sure we have enough time, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I just want to make sure because I got enough information to kind of set the stage. So first of all, how old is this young lady?
Kathy: She’s 34.
Dr. A: She’s 34. Okay. So you realize that legally, once they’re 18, they’re no longer your kids? Did you realize that?
Kathy: Yes.
Dr. A: Okay. So she’s 16 years beyond that point. Okay? You have no jurisdiction over her. All right? And unless she wants you to give her advice, you have no business giving her advice, and you certainly have no business, because all your kids are grown up, right? [Kathy nods]. Yeah. So you are playing the hero. So let’s just get back— and by the way, I want to go back all the way to something you said, so you said, “I’m a much better person now,” it’s not that you’re a better person now. You are more skillful and adaptive and you have more emotional literacy so you’re able to, in most situations, handle yourself and respond in a way that the outcome is more desirable for what’s important for you in your relations. So you’re building self-growth, becoming more open, curious and want to grow. You’re building relational health with people where you’re able to respond, but for some reason, you think that because they’re either blood-related or by nature, legally, your kids that you somehow have jurisdiction over them and you don’t. You don’t have any. So when you say to me, “Well, I’m not going to do this at the risk of my other…” You’re still very much in the hero, being the hero, and it’s not helpful. It’s not helpful for you. It’s not helpful for them.
[00:45:38] The bottom line is you should be responding to each one of them as a full adult and an adult conversation. Much of your jurisdiction as the parent is over. These are human beings— in fact, one of the things I work with, and one of the things I work with myself with, was that even when they’re little, they’re humans. They’re not just our playthings that we’re up one, down one. Yeah, we’re there for parental authority. To help guide them so they stay out of harm’s way and they learn to be socialized so they can interact in society, but that is your decision that you’re still trying to intervene in that, and so part of that is you have to ask yourself, and I think the reason why you cry about it is because you love them and you want to do the best for them, but it’s not your job anymore. You need to fully realize, Kathy, that is not your job. Your job is simply when you interact with the individuals is to show your love and be there for them, but not tell them what to do. Remember, they’re not living— are any of them living with you?
Kathy: No.
Dr. A: Okay, so 99% of the time they’re making all these decisions and you’re not there.
Kathy: Correct.
Dr. A: The 1%, when you’re interacting with it, whether it’s in a call, an email, text, or whatever, in that you’re still trying to give your opinion and trying to be the hero and fix it. You need to drop it. I mean totally, and it’s for their best interest. It’s not for your best interest. It’s for their best interest. They need to be empowered beyond you and you’re getting caught in the middle as being the hero and because you have kind of this jurisdiction, because you are the mom, or stepmom, to them, that somehow you’re going to figure out these dynamics. Those dynamics are long gone. Your son, your natural son, is getting married. You need to focus on being there in celebration with that and not trying to get someone who right now, it’s all about themselves, to get them to then do something because you think it would be better for them. They’ll choose to come if they want. That’s not your decision, your choice, and it may be in the best interest that they don’t come if they’re not coming with the right attitude. So things happen for a reason. I hope this is making sense to you.
Kathy: It does.
Dr. A: I mean, I know it’s smack across the face, but I know you already know it. I know I’m just saying something you already know and it’s time for you to enjoy, now that you’re an empty nester, for a while, it’s time for you to maximize and experience, and organize your life on what matters most to you, and yes, one of those things would be if you could live like Cinderella and have one big happy family with the sparrows coming by and putting the dresses on, you know, but that’s not life. Life is a series of making decisions that allow us to thrive at a time when the world’s changing rapidly and you’re way beyond the period— you did your duty. It sounds like you were an incredible— you took a blended family, how many were there total at one time in the home?
Kathy: We have five.
Dr. A: Yeah, you have five kids. That’s— I had two and I don’t know how Lori did it. If it wasn’t for Lori, but bottom line, you have five. Okay, and you took two families, blended them, did the work. Stop beating yourself up. That’s not your job now.
Kathy: So let me ask you this…
Dr. A: Before you ask me another question, is that sinking in? I want that, just for a moment, I want that, is it your job to do that?
Kathy: It does, and I truly have to say, through learning, and really knowing myself, and asking myself the questions, and doing all the actions, I’ve gotten better with that. I really truly have. I think the hardest part for me now is because it’s coming closer to the wedding, right? That my husband— I feel so bad because my husband would like nothing more for her to be at the wedding and I said it’s not up to us to make that decision, she separated herself from our family, and so we can’t make that decision for her. I feel bad that he’s going to be at this wedding knowing that she’s not there. Like, that’s where the heaviness in my heart is now. It’s not the fact that I’m trying to change her because there’s nothing I can do for her now, like I know that, but you know, I still live with my husband. I’m not that much of an empty nester. He’s still here.
Dr. A: No no no. I don’t mean an empty nester. No.
Kathy: No, I know. I was just making a joke [crosstalk 00:50:11].
Dr. A: Okay, but here, wait wait wait. I don’t have a lot of time with you and I want to make sure we get a couple things really straight. So this is your husband’s daughter, natural daughter?
Kathy: Yes. Yes.
Dr. A: Does he talk to her?
Kathy: No.
Dr. A: No! He wants you to do his work for him. Are you out of your mind?!
Kathy: No no. He tries. He also tries as well and then he’ll say…
Dr. A: The bottom line is then he should know, and here’s the point, I’m not a marriage counselor, but I can say this, is that for your own sanity, she’ll decide to come if she wants to come. There’s nothing you can say to her. There’s nothing you can do. Be in a healthy relationship with your husband who you love and care about and say, you know, “I would love her to be there too, but bottom line is, the focus is not on her. The focus is on my son and us making sure we provide an incredible, drama free— there was a movie called, Anyone But You, did you see that movie?
Kathy: No.
Dr. A: It came out and it was about this couple who were fighting, and someone else was getting married, and the focus was going to them. It’s your time for your son and his wife, for you to celebrate and be part of that. You’ve got an amazing time to heal with your husband and say, “This is the focus. I hope she shows up, but here’s where our focus and where our attention’s going. This is their time. Not her time. Yes. It would be nice for her to be there. We certainly invited her. We’d love to have you show, but nothing I’m going to say is going to convince that, and my relationship with you, and being there in this dynamic, for this beautiful event, this celebratory event, which can heal so many things, because it’s a time of creation and a marriage.” Just focus on that and let the rest, let it go.
Kathy: Okay. Thank you, Dr. Andersen.
Dr. A: You’re welcome.
Dr. A: Thank you.
Dr. A: You’re welcome. All right. I have time for one more, Rach.
Rachel: All right. We have Shelley up next. Shelley, are you there?
Shelley: So good to see you.
Dr. A: So good to see you.
Shelley: My question also has to do with kids. I remember last month you were talking about wanting implies lacking and with my kids, I want to be such a loving and kind mom, and I am sometimes, but then I let myself stay in the reactive state with my kids.
Dr. A: How old are your kids?
Shelley: My son is 10 and then my daughters are five and three.
Dr. A: Okay.
Shelley: So some days I do really good, and other days I live in that reactive state, and it’s just like I replay Stop. Challenge. Choose., and I’m like, “Forget it. I just can’t handle this anymore,” and I let myself go in a sense and I take it out on my kids and I’ve been trying to figure out why am I taking it out on the ones that I love the most and lately I’ve been…
Dr. A: You can, because you can. You can get away with it. You can’t get away with it with your friends, right? You do that to your friends and they’re saying, “Hey, see you later.” So I want, because we only have a little bit of time, I want to cut this into three parts. So you have ten, five and three? [Shelley nods]. Okay. They’re different, they are not grown-ups, right? Like we were just talking just a moment ago to Kathy, those kids are all grown-ups. They’re beyond. They’re in a different space. Your kids, your three and 5-year-old, they have not developed the prefrontal cortex yet, right? So they don’t know, they’re reacting to emotions, they’re reacting to their needs, okay? The 10-year-old is getting ready, it’s a male? A boy?
Shelley: Yeah.
Dr. A: Yeah. He’s in the point where he’s almost ready and may be pre-adolescent and basically, is undergoing changes as well. So you have three dynamic, reactive, little humans that are not grown yet and are not fully able to use this part. So you need to understand in this situation you cannot rationalize with them the same as you would with a fellow adult, okay? So, why you get frustrated is because you love the heck out of them, and your days may be busy, and things happen where they do something that you know it’s not in their best interest, but what’s the principle that of all three of those kids, that you want more than anything? You love them, right?
Shelley: Yeah.
Dr. A: You love them, and so you have things that are triggering you where you then respond to them in not the most effective way. Correct?
Shelley: Right.
Dr. A: Yeah so you just need to start dissecting that. You need— actually a really good thing for you would be to basically get a journal, or just a book, and start documenting those things. The best knowledge you can give is to move yourself away from the emotional sequencing when it’s happening because once it’s reactive like that, you’re going to do, and say things that come from a reactive mentality and that’s not going to be in their best interest. They need to see you as this calm, stable, monolithic mom that’s helping them negotiate through their three-year-old life, through their five-year-old life, and more complex, through his ten-year-old life. Does that make sense? And so for you to be that they need to feel number one, they can talk to you about anything. Number two, they trust you. That you’re not going to react or judge, and number three, that you’re going to give them advice that is best for where they are now in their lives, and that is in essence what parenting is. It’s simply providing the environment— you know, I used to have an osprey family that lived outside our house and my daughter, my younger daughter, studied them, took pictures and stuff and they would go through a sequence of behaviors to help those young osprey learn to become independent, learn to feed themselves, then be independent, then learn to fly, then learn to go fish, and all that was sequenced.
In essence, in a more complex way, because a human being has to interact in society, that is your role. Your role is not to be their friend. Not to be their helicopter parent. It’s to be there to help them negotiate, and be their guide, so they can assimilate into their progression in age to suit what focuses and allows them to be the most calm, the most collected. Learning how to handle those three-year-old temper tantrums. A five-year-old starting to learn those emotions, and at the ten-year-old, start to negotiate into a world where girls are about ready to come into his world. Competition with guys, bullying. All these things, and what you want more than anything is to be there knowing that they come to you and they look at you as being the person that’s helping guide them. You’re like the osprey. Okay? In a more complex way, and if you take that role, you realize it’s not about you in those situations, and you learn to Stop. Challenge. Choose., you can create the space so that rather than reacting, you can say, “Okay. Right now, please don’t put the fork inside the socket that’s going to electrocute you, because that would be very bad and you could die, and then we’ll talk more about that later,” and then keep that sense of when you start getting frustrated. Stop. Challenge. Choose., “I want to provide good advice. I don’t want to scar them. I don’t want them to push away from me,” and start mentally thinking about that so that you know— because there are different times, there’s probably different times in the day, it could be dinner time, it could be getting ready for bedtime, it could be all those environments and you can now, with your rational brain, when you’re not in the fray, start creating better environments for them and your relationship with them. Does that make sense?
Shelley: Yeah. So when you’re saying journaling, what…
Dr. A: Yeah. So journal. Yeah, just start picking up— because you’re not, by the way, what I just said is the end point of where we want you to go. It’s not gonna, I didn’t just wiggle my nose and put a little sword on you and baptize you as the perfect mom. Okay? There’s going to be an evolution that occurs. What I’m saying is that when something like that happens, journal while it’s still fresh. What triggered it? What caused it? What was the underlying, and how did I respond to it? And then basically, move away from it and when you’re not around them, then take— before you go to bed or in the morning before they get up, find some— I talk about the twilight hour or the miracle morning. In the morning, that morning hour, where you can spend time and look at that and say, “Okay, this is how I responded. This is what triggered me.” And then when you’re using this part, versus the reactive part, it’ll become so clear to you how you can perform differently.
Shelley: Okay.
Dr. A: Does that make sense? And you know what? The old standby, have a bottle of water, and when someone starts, before you even say anything, unless they’re killing themselves at the moment, you know take a drink. Right? Relax into the situation, and then do what you know is best for them.
Shelley: Perfect. Thank you. I love that.
Dr. A: You’re welcome.
Shelley: No, thank you so much.
Dr. A: You’re welcome. All right. Okay, we’re out of time. This was great. It was a very diverse day. A lot of cool stuff and hopefully this is helpful. Please share. This forum is designed for anybody who wants to work on themselves and help them navigate through the crazy world we live in and become the Dominant Force in their own life and allow them to now organize their life around what matters most. See you guys. God bless. Bye.
