Picture of Wayne Andersen

Wayne Andersen

Session 36: Consciousness for the Next Revolution Around the Sun

What will you do differently during this revolution around the sun?

Video Transcript:

Dr. A: All right. Well, welcome everybody. This is Dr. A, and welcome to the New Year! Welcome to our next revolution around the sun, we’ll talk about that in a minute. I hope everybody had a great holiday with their families and got to spend time socializing and having fun. You know, one of the great things about being a human is that we have our ability to make choices, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today. As we go into the new year—am I aware of what’s going on?

The Conscious Forum is a place where we can interact and spend time together. I love it because it’s an opportunity, I do a little teaching in the beginning, and kind of set up, and then you guys then explore how things are working for you—your feedback, and that’s how we continue to grow and work at what I like to say is “The Human Experience,” because in our world, I mean, AI has gone just crazy. Technology continues to advance and yet human interaction—Human Condition, I like to call it, “Human Transformational Technology,” kind of lags behind, and so this is our way of coming together as a group—and spending time, and hopefully we’ll expand that this year. I have a new book coming out, it’s going to be launched on the 18th of January. I’ve been working hard on it, but as I go through and look at what we can do to help each other, it’s a bunch, and so I’m going to open up the forum now and just kind of go over what the deal is.

Consciousness is the state that refers to being aware—really being really present—and we are so distracted in our society. We’re so distracted by technology. We’re so distracted by everything around us, and a lot of times we actually escape. We actually get away from our current reality because we’re suffering, and we’re suffering for multiple reasons, and what we want to do is explore our surroundings, our thoughts, and our feelings, and how we can get better. So, a forum, as I mentioned, is a place, a meeting, where we can share ideas and views on a particular issue, which is a great way to learn. It’s my favorite way to learn. So, as I mentioned, today—and Consciousness for the Next Revolution Around the Sun. A year is one revolution around the sun. Imagine that. We revolve, our planet revolves, we see the moon come up, go down. We see the sun come up and go down, but we’re in this big huge revolution that takes 365 days most years, and one of the things I want to reflect on today, as we start the new year is: is this year going to be the same as last year? Am I going to continue to be reactive to all the stuff going on? I mean our world is—every day there’s something that comes out—just the craziness of who we are and what we do, or are we going to reflect and really kind of take back control of that?

So, we’ll talk about that, and at the center part of it I think all of—you know, I’m a physician. I spent the first 20 years of my career taking care of critically ill people. People that were really close to talking to their maker, and helping them, and because of the training and the experience I was pretty good at it, but I never really got anybody healthy. I just simply kept them from dying, and so the last 20 years I’ve actually gone the other way and that is, what can I do to help people awaken to the possibilities, and give them back control, and give them a plan, the strategies to be able to change their health in their life?

And so, our health matters so much. I had a friend, a good friend, who was very, very well known, a leading writer, he was in his early 50s and he got pancreatic cancer and as he was going close to meeting his maker, he said to me, he had young kids. He said, “You know the person that’s said, ‘You got your health, you got everything?’ Nailed it.” and I remember that. I’ll never forget that. And our health is so dependent on here [Dr. A points to his head]. Emotional mismanagement is the leading cause of death in the world, and we’re all kind of suffering, and what we want to do is find ways to alleviate that, and really become the Dominant Force in our own lives. So, this is a collage of external versus internal control [Dr. A is referring to a slide on screen], and all the things that come up. It’s decisions. It’s being a victim. It’s success. It’s where’s the control? Is it luck? And so what I want to do is really start off with this thing because we think the world should be a certain way, and our ego wants it to be a certain way, and if we can just get the world to be a certain way, we’ll be fine. So we need things, and those are basically that desire for things, whether it’s, “If I get the new job I get the corner office.” “I have another baby.” “I get the car I want.” It goes on and on and on and when we’re looking outside of us to have things a certain way and get control, we find over time the more we get the stuff, the more we don’t really want it.

So the real point there is that it’s about becoming whole and what I’m finding in my own life, you know, I live a comfortable life. I’ve worked very hard for it, but I more and more—just like over this last couple of weeks, as I’ve been grinding to finish this book, and really putting in long, long hard hours and I’m with my family up in the mountains and they’re skiing, and I’m skiing a little, I went skiing some, but I was actually focused on getting this book done and it brought me great joy because I think by putting this work in I’m giving back things that I’ve learned, and I think that that’s what creates wholeness. That purpose and the ability for us to give more to others is so critical. It’s part of what connects us, that human connection, and with the hedonic way that our society’s become, with people wanting—and TikTok, and all this stuff with influencers. We’ve kind of lost our way because the reality is, we’re at our best when we’re with fellow humans. Helping each other do more.

If you go back 100,000 years ago, to our tribes, basically we worked very closely together. We were very synergistic and all of our programming, our genetics—even stuff as simple as our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. Our faces were designed to be in a high vagal tone, which meant very communal, very much working together, and we would have a smile on our face. It’s kind of like if you watch a domestic dog. I mean they’re almost always wonderful. You could be gone all day and you come home and their tails are wagging. I mean that’s how we were—oxytocin released, and all the stuff brought us together and we became whole, and I think it’s important for us to get back there.

So it really starts with true inner growth. You know, the connection between our heart and our mind, that connection is so, so powerful and it starts with being aware. Really being conscious of what’s going on around us. Getting to the point where we can self-manage ourselves, and we can self-regulate, and basically then forward and be there with others. So we’re going to talk a little bit more about that. So basically, when we lose control it’s because we give control away. The locus of control is either outside of us—and if it’s outside of us then we can play the role of the victim, and 95% of people in the world are in the Drama Triangle. They’re the victim. They’re, “This world is happening to them.” You know, we have a new president. This president’s bad, the last one was good, last one was bad, this one’s good. I mean it goes—when we look outside for help, the inflation is there, “She doesn’t love me anymore.” When we play the victim, we give away control. We give away the power and we are no longer in control of our life, and so it’s really important to become that Dominant Force, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today because it starts with awareness.

You know, stuff’s going to happen. They say every five seconds or so, some new event happens. Something changes in our life, and we may be calm and collected and—boom—then something happens. We read something, someone interacts with us, we get a text, we get—and all of a sudden it kind of sets us off. Our ego looks at it and says, “Whoa! This is not good. This is a perceived threat. This means this could happen to me. I could lose this or that.” And so then we have those thoughts, and then those thoughts then create these emotions, and we create what we call a Cognitive Emotive Loop and then, very important to understand, that is not us. That and our thoughts and our feelings are not us. If they were then how could we be aware that we’re having them? Right. So they are not us. They are simply a reaction to processes going on, thought processes and emotional processes, and so what we normally do, because they hurt and we don’t want to feel them, we get in the Drama Triangle and then we project out to the person, like, “Oh, they’re not being very nice, or they must be thinking that…” Rather than internalize that, anything we project out is really something we’re feeling inside of us, or you can see we can suppress it.

So when we’re having a bad feeling or something—we were taught we’re little to be safe. We should really be quiet and not complain, so we suppress those things and those things get suppressed and they continually interact with us. So let’s go right back to the basics. We were spinal animals, and what I mean by that, when something happens we want to respond to it and if it’s dangerous like it was 100,000 years ago, basically, and I like to use the analogy, if you’re going down the trail and there was a snake, you would immediately jump to the side—before you even thought about it, because if you didn’t, you went, “Oh look at those pretty patterns and look at that thing in the back that’s going—” [Dr. A mimics a rattlesnake tail with his finger]. If you did any of that you would be dead, right? Because it would bite you and you’d be dead. So there was design. We have twin amygdalas in our brain and they’re kind of the center of the limbic nervous system, and they react, and they react immediately, and so back then they were very protective of us. They kept us from real threats and so stimulus-boom-response. Well today, in our world today, it’s mostly perceived threats, you’re walking down in your business and you say, “Hi” to somebody and they don’t they don’t respond to you and you think, “Well, what are they thinking back?” And then you start building inside of you, that Cognitive Emotive Loop, and pretty soon you’re thinking, “Well, Sally was—how dare her,” and then you go down to talk to her and Sally goes, “I don’t know what you’re talking about” because she didn’t hear you and so we create that stimulus and response and so we respond without processing.

[00:11:09] It’s helpful and sometimes, yes, that reflex, when you’re about ready to have a car accident, although technologies help with that if you aren’t quick enough, then the airbag and the seat belt protects you. So technology is kind of taking away some—a lot of the real threats, but we still have the perceived threats, and so this is really what we like to call below-the-line thinking and it’s being closed, defensive, and want to be right, and so what happens is, we have a stimulus and it goes up into the emotional, the labrador part of your brain, or the limbic part of your brain, and we respond to it. So you see it never gets up to human thinking. The prefrontal cortex, this area here, never gets involved because you just responded to it. And we do that a lot of times during our day because our ego wants to protect us. So what that leads to is the Drama Triangle, and this is the way most people conduct their life and they’re either the victim, you know, “It’s being done to me,” or “it’s not fair.” Remember, as a kid, we always would say, “It’s not fair”? We could be the villain where, “Who’s at fault? I blame you. I blame them, or I blame myself.”

Being the villain or the hero. The hero is the other side. I’m here to save the day. I am enabling victims because I don’t want to deal with the pain of someone else so I’m going to help them, and we cycle around in those. We take one position and then we move to the next position, and part of it is—and why people stay there, like the Jerry Springer Show and stuff, is because they get juiced. They get adrenaline. They get buzzed, and upset, and angry or scared or mad or pissed off, and so they feel alive for that short period of time. But that release, all the epinephrine, norepinephrine, and the cortisol, all those things that are released temporarily make you feel good. They actually, long-term, that’s the emotional mismanagement that leads to disease and to stress. The metabolic syndrome, to being overweight, to depression, because basically, you use those transmitters and then they’re gone and then there’s that low of almost that depressive state. So none of these things are good. So we want to talk about how we get out of it.

So first of all, is it normal to go below the line? Yeah. Yeah, it’s normal, because we’re humans, and we have lots of stuff that goes on, and you know, I spent a lot of time working on it, but there were a couple of things—like when I was out skiing with my girls there were a couple things that happened where someone cut in front and almost knocked me down or hurt one of my girls, and for a moment you get upset and you just think, “Okay. Let me process that,” and that’s normal, and when that happens—90 seconds—it takes about 90 seconds to feel the feeling all the way through, rather than repress it, suppress it, and then for the rest of the day be thinking, “How dare they do that.” That serves no purpose. That’s all cost and no benefit. So, yes it happens, and it’s not about being above the line all the time. It’s about recognizing when you’re below the line and then clearing that. Getting it taken care of.

So, this is part of the coherence. We have a state of physiologic, of emotional, of cognitive and of coherence between all three systems. So you know when you’re in the flow, or you’re having a really great day, or you got off the phone and someone told you how much you helped them, and all of a sudden we kind of feel that resonance going on, right? And then we have the days when we say we’re having a bad day. When we’re out of sync. When things aren’t just working right. It could be because we didn’t sleep well. Sleep is so important, such a key ingredient in our health. If we don’t sleep well, we have a bad night’s sleep, it could be because we’re kept up because we have a crying baby or a grandkid or a sick child at home. It could be because we have a deadline for something, but any of those things take us out of sync and when that happens, there’s lack of coherence, and so one of the things we want to do is know that when we get triggered that will take us out of coherence, and it’s important for us to have the residual, what do we do when that happens? When we get that “icky sauce”? So that we’re able to now move back into coherence, so we can perform, because when we’re out of sorts, as you know, we don’t do well with our relationships, we don’t do well with our own physical health. That’s when we eat unhealthy. That’s where we potentially go to one of our addictions, you know shopping online, surfing, whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. Drinking too much, doing medications, drugs, whatever it is, that happens because we get out of sync and we don’t like that feeling and so we look—rather than to do what I’m going to talk about, we numb ourselves to it.

So hopefully that makes sense. So really this is a major “Aha” moment for all of us. Our emotions are generated when our core energy gets blocked and it produces a negative feeling. So let me show you a picture of that. See, you have Pure Energy.  We have this resonance like I said, you’re watching a beautiful sunset with a loved one, you go around the corner and there’s a cloud formation, your grandkid or your child comes up and gives you a big hug and tells you how much they love you, and we have all this good energy, but then what happens—and we’re in flow and life is beautiful, right? But then we have a blockage. We have this stuff that we’ve stored inside, stuff that triggers us. It can be anything. It’s usually from our childhood, but it doesn’t really matter, but there’s a lot of stuff in there that are basically blocked energy that’s there, that’s been suppressed. It’s like coils that have been pushed down and they’re down inside there and they’re just looking to be triggered, and you may not even know why you’re triggered, but then that blockage causes you to have this sensation and this negative feeling and those are all just reactive behaviors and we have control over it. Becoming the Dominant Force in your life. I talk about that all the time. It is so critical. You know, I was coming back last night, my flight was delayed three different times. The deadline to get this book done and basically, then I get in, I’m waiting for my luggage, and I’m waiting an hour and I was hoping—I actually had an Uber I was taking back to my place, which is two hours away. I’m already late, it’s already very late, and I have all these deadlines, and I’m standing there and waiting for the luggage and actually I just got my computer out and I’m doing some edits, because what else am I going to do, sit there and get progressively more upset?

It’s either going to come or it’s not going to come. Now the worst part is my driver goes, “Well, we’re still good unless they close the gate,” for the entrance where the luggage comes out, and sure enough, 10 minutes later, the gate gets closed and he goes, “Well it looks like your luggage isn’t here,” and so I got to go over to the little office there and I go in there and the there’s a guy there and I go, “Yep, so I need you.” He goes, “Oh yeah, we’ll take care,” and he was a really nice guy. You could tell he’d been through the holidays, he’s been working really hard with all the problems, people yelling. He was really nice, and we had a playful conversation, and bottom line is they gave me a tag, and I had to gave my little strip from my piece of luggage, and I just left it, and rather than getting upset about it, I, bottom line, got in the car and just started working away and actually the driver says, “Wow. You really handled that well.” and I’m thinking to myself, “What?” I could have taken that hour and gotten more festered, more upset, and it would have served nothing, and instead I used it, got some work done, and moved on, and then, for the next two hours I worked on the way, in the car. But the point is, we have the opportunity to intervene and not get triggered by that stuff.

So how do we move forward? You know, most people, basically, they sit and they go into the victim mode. They put their head down and they feel sorry for themselves. What we want to do, what I hope that you’ll come out of this saying this year, “This revolution around the sun, I’m going to organize my life around what matters and I’m going to become. I’m going to take the full locus of control.” My friend Jim Dethmer talks about it as radical responsibility. I am in charge and as me being in charge, I’m going to organize my life around what matters most and I’m going to move forward this year. Figure out what are the things I really want, not the things I think I get. What are the things I really want.” And I’m not talking about having a house on the beach, I’m talking about being in control, creating better health. Making better health choices. Making better choices in what I do. Making sure I’m not letting people distract me. Making sure that I want to lead from that future that I want and then organize it so it informs me every day to make the choices, and say “No,” to the things that don’t move me to where I want to go and say “Yes,” to the things that do.

[00:20:16] So, how do we do that? How do we regain it? Well, it starts with a being aware and regaining our thinking brain. So I created this many years ago and it’s so helpful; Stop. Challenge. Choose. You’re going to have—and just practice this. Just today. Just decide that, “You know what? I’m going to become the Dominant Force and today, when I feel that icky sauce, when someone’s starting to trigger me of something—it could be an event, it could be something you’re watching on TV. Something someone says. It could be out in traffic doing your shopping. It could be paying your bill. Whatever it is, when you start to feel that “icky sauce,” stop in your tracks. Recognize and challenge, “Why am I feeling this way? What is really going on here? Is it real or perceived?” And then choose a different outcome. So, you know, you’re upset. Your boss comes and says, “Well, you were off for 10 days over the holidays, I want you to get this—you need to have this done by the end of the week,” and they’re not that nice to you, and you look and say, what are you going to say? So you say, “Okay,” and then rather than—because you’re getting upset, grabbing—because you have chocolate or your neighbor, you can go in the—what do you call it?—the lunchroom and you can grab some chocolate or get something self-soothing, instead you say, “You know what? I’m going to take some deep breaths. I’m going to go outside for a little walk.” Unless you’re up north right now and it’s freezing, so instead go to the water fountain, take a walk around the inside, go up and down the stairs, do something. Let it out. Let that energy and relieve it, “I’m pissed.” Okay, great. Be pissed for 90 seconds. Relieve it, and then say, “You know what? That doesn’t serve me,” and then go back and decide, “Okay. Now how am I going to get this done?” That’s regaining.

If you look on the right side, that’s where we’re not letting the Labrador brain take over and reacting in a responsive, or unresponsive way, where we’re getting someone pissed at us, we’re upset with a relationship or we do something self-sabotaging like grabbing food out of the refrigerator or eating something that’s not good for us. So instead, we’re basically stop, challenging, and choosing the outcome we want. So this is what it looks like, right? So instead, we’re responding in a way because we’ve let that—you know, and it’s there, like I said, you’re below the line for a minute there you’re upset, but rather than letting it take over, right, and now immerse you in this anger, rage, sad, whatever it is. You’ve now felt that feeling and now you’re going on to choose what you need to get done in that situation. Okay?

So about building emotional agility, it’s taking back control. It’s becoming the Dominant Force. It’s going from the survival contracted state, which we talked about, to this new creative, expansive state. The state of empowerment. Bottom line is, rather than being the victim, I’m the Dominant Force. I’m the creator. I’m in charge of what happens in my life and I’m going to create my new story. This year, 2025, there’s going to be a new story. I’m going to respond differently. I’m going to break the patterns and you’re not going to be perfect at it. It’s going to the—you know, I like to call it, it’s going to the mental gym. It’s the emotional, it’s starting to sense, put that lab coat on, your goggles on, and start looking around and then when something does happen, because some of it’s going to slip by because it’s just your pattern and your routine. You’re going to look back, take a moment and reflect on it, say, “What triggered me?” “Why did that happen?” And then start becoming that Dominant Force. So moving from the victim to the creator or moving from the villain to the challenge where “I’m open and curious to learn why that happened.” Rather than blaming. I hear it all the time. Well, you know, that’s who did it or didn’t do it. I honestly—and it happened during our time together, you know, with the girls and their friends and stuff. They’ll be like, well, you know, “It’s not my fault, they…” and I said, “I’m not interested in putting blame, who did this or didn’t.”

The emotional technology that allows us to grow is, what happened? Okay, what was missing? What should happen? I should have made that call. We should have left earlier, that’s why we’re late, and then, what’s next? Well, how do I do it better? And that becomes a very constructive—that’s called upset technology, that allows you to move forward and really start taking control, and then the last, rather than being the hero, be the coach. You know, I like helping others get better, but I’m going to empower them to take responsibility for themselves, not do it for them. As soon as you enable them, you now create a codependent relationship whether it’s in your relationship with your family, your spouse, or your friends, you want to break that pattern this year and really put yourself in position to be able to have really co-committed relationships that are based on being synergistic with each other.

So here’s kind of the Drift Shift Model, you know, basically you’re present for a moment and everything seems fine and boom, something happens and you start drifting, and if you let it take you, that emotion, and you take grip of it, and it starts going, “thinking and feeling, and I’m getting more pissed. I’m thinking more about it.” You’re going to go right down into the Drama Triangle. So instead, when you start to drift and you can feel that “icky sauce,” what do you do? You Stop. Challenge. Choose. You actually—it’s a great break. It’s like this break system to create a gap between stimulus and response. As that widens, you have that period in the middle that allows you to challenge while you’re feeling it, and then choose the outcome that moves forward and keep you, and I can tell you just as soon as you trip, the sooner you get used to feeling it, and you’ll know it! It’s the “icky sauce,” it’s that—I was feeling great and now you pissed me off. Yeah. Okay. Remember, if you’re fully responsible, if I’m letting you piss me off, that’s about me, not about you. I shouldn’t, you shouldn’t allow anything outside of you to be able to make you do something, whether it’s get mad or get angry, get sad. Those things are all about us taking responsibility for it, and by using Stop. Challenge. Choose., you can make that correction so much quicker. Just when you start to drift, move out of it. Go through that 90 seconds of feeling that feeling all the way through, and then move on back with your life.

You’ll find that you’ll see yourself not getting self-sabotaged and not getting yourself in the struggle. This suffering that occurs. There are going to be things that happen every day in our life, and certainly every month, and every year in our life, that are life events and life is intrinsically unstable, and things are going to happen that don’t make us happy. They’re not what we want, but it’s how we respond to them that determines the outcome. Just like last night, losing my life luggage—I still haven’t got my luggage! But I couldn’t even shave today because I don’t have a razor at home, but, I’ll get over it, and if the luggage doesn’t come, I’ll go out to the CVS store, one of the stores, and I’ll buy a new razor because bottom line, it just isn’t that important in the big scheme of things.

So this is what I want you to start thinking about, go from that Drama Triangle to empowering yourself this year. Be open, curious, and want to grow. Put on that lab jacket and make the changes. So let me just show you, so this is kind of showing—this is our heart rate variability [Dr. A is referring to an image on screen]. See it on the—you can see the squiggly lines, right? And you can see over time. So, bottom line is, if we start getting the “icky sauce,” see it starts happening, and our heart rate goes up because remember, 10,000 years ago it functioned very well for you. It—boom—you jumped off and you either ran away from that snake, you froze, or you fought. If you thought you could win, I mean that wouldn’t be a good thing unless you had a big old club, but the point is, your body is getting ready to respond instantaneously to get you the heck out of there. Release epinephrine, all those things, cortisol, to have you feel really strong and—boom—move out of the situation. It’s like when you hear about people lifting a car, someone, a car falls on them or something falls down and they can lift up way beyond because our body is designed to do that, but when it happens multiple times a day with these stimulations, it’s so bad for us. So you can see our heart rate goes up, and all you need to do is shift, shift to appreciation, that you know what? This is happening. It’s happening for a reason. It’s outside of my control, but how can I respond in a way—so it becomes almost like a test. You know, it’s the ancient stoics, the Greeks, and the Romans talked about the obstacles, the way stoicism, and it was about being observant and being resilient to change, that when something happened that’s negative, I can use this as a learning piece.

[00:29:03] You know if life was perfect, if every day was like in that movie—I forgot the movie, but it was with, anyway, it was about the world being perfect, right? And in that world, if it was like that every day, you would be bored out of your mind. It’s the stuff that happens that makes life exciting and being able to respond to it. But you can see the coherence that occurs when you shift and take the deep breath. Stop. Challenge. Feel that through, and all of a sudden you come back into resonance, into coherence, which is so important for our overall health. So it creates this common, this connection, right? Between our emotions, our heart, and our brain. We feel that resonance that comes along and you know, it’s really—there’s a word that has been used for thousands of years—equanimity. Which means we’re in this state of balance, where whatever happens—I like to think it’s like water on a duck’s back. It starts raining and the water just kind of drips off and then it doesn’t have any long-term effects. So with that, I always like to end with what this is all about. We want to create internal stability. Where we’re able to handle whatever life gives out. May not make us happy. There’s going to be things that make us sad. We’re going to have people get sick. People die, and all these things are part of the human experience and to live it fully, we want to be able to put it in perspective so it doesn’t overwhelm us. It doesn’t create chaos, and it doesn’t create rigidity. It allows us to be flow with that. And external equilibrium is with our relationships. We want to be the one in the room that when stuff’s going crazy people can look at you for that stability. Then you can build that dynamic.

So with that, Happy New Year! Let’s get ready, have a great revolution, and let’s open it up for questions now.

Rachel: All right. First up we have Jennifer.

Dr. A: Cool.

Rachel: There you are.

Jennifer: Happy New Year, Dr. A!

Dr. A: Happy New Year. How are you?

Jennifer: I’m good. So grateful for you and your continued pouring into us as we learn and grow and become that Dominant Force. My question today in relation to your topic, I think I shared with you on a Conscious Forum about a year and a half ago—two years ago, that I had a traumatic event in watching my kids get hit by a drunk driver and just what it did psychologically, and I’ve had to still continue to work a lot on that because I feel like the last couple years I’ve kind of just been on the verge of almost always wanting to cry. Separate from that I had the pleasure, what five, six years ago? Of working with Helen and doing the whole TLDP program, the Transformational Leadership Development Program, and what you’re talking about today, we worked so intensely on. On recognizing the planets and the point of views that we’re receiving all this information in and I’m so grateful because I think I have come such a long way in that, and finding that equanimity, and not reacting. I can really see, especially with my family, in really close relationships where the things I remember that used to trigger me and I would go below the line, being able to see that so quickly now and just feel like I live here. But my question today is a thought I’ve been having lately and noticing, is have I gotten so good at, just kind of that balance? That—I don’t know how to phrase this—part of me feels like I’m a little numb [crosstalk 00:32:50].

Dr. A: Yeah.

Jennifer: Like I’m a little like not as—I don’t know, and I’m a fairly joyful person, just a natural, but part of me wonders, am I not wanting to feel because I still maybe feel a little of the underlying just sadness or feelings inside about the trauma, but also, is it just that I’m like nothing’s phasing me? It’s all good, whatever, but I’ve kind of noticed that maybe some of that joy is out and so I’m like is, this equanimity or is this something else going on? Does that make sense?

Dr. A: Yeah, it makes great sense, and you actually touched on—I was going to stop you, but I wanted you to finish. Like three minutes ago in the conversation you said, “I felt like crying but I didn’t,” and I caught right up on that. So yeah, you’re not—you’re actually blocking. You’re repressing. There’s a big difference okay. Bottom line is, the trauma of the accident is real and it should make you sad and you should cry and just like—you know, I lost my wife several years ago now and there’s times when I’ll have a memory, or my girls and I were together over the holidays, and we have—and then we turn it into laughter or how silly she would be, but there’s a sense where you you feel sad and you want to make sure you feel those feelings all the way through. So that’s what I think you need to make sure. Jennifer is that, “Oh, I can handle it.” See that’s your ego!

[00:34:28] I want to be really clear. That’s your ego. That’s your ego saying, “Hey, I can handle”—and actually, even what you discussed, you said, “Well, I’m so good at this now.” It’s not about getting good at it, it’s about being fully present, and when you’re fully present you actually should feel those things incredibly more intensely. They shouldn’t be numb. They should be more and more—now, everyday, silly, stupid things? Yeah. Those things, they shouldn’t bother you, because they’re not an important part of life, you know? Everybody gets up—and even if—you know the people that have not done any work and they’re fully unconscious. They’ll get up and they’re your friends and they’ll have a conversation and they’ll pretty much tell you their whole day, “Oh, I got up. I spilled some milk in the refrigerator…” and da, da, and they’ll go with all the stuff thinking they’re center of the universe and you just don’t spend any time on those little things anymore, because they’re not important, but the big things, the things are that—it’s easier, just so you know, it’s easier to repress them and to numb yourself to them, and it doesn’t have to be with alcohol or distractions, it can be yourself where you said, “Okay. Well, I get this I’m not going to let that bother me.” When it actually does bother you. So, I think the more important thing is get back to the very root of it, which is being aware and awake and present to the moment.

Jennifer: Yeah.

Dr. A: Yeah, because, actually, I can sense inside of you right now. See, you’re about ready to cry. No, I know it, and that’s good because what you’re doing is you’ve gotten so good at understanding this technology that you’ve used it—your ego has used it to weaponize it to keep you from having to experience these things. Listen, we are humans. We are the human experience. See, you’re getting me sad [Dr. A and Jennifer are crying]. Not sad, but just feeling. I can feel you suffering. You’re suffering inside and you’re trying to be the big girl, and I’m not—listen, I’m not a psychotherapist. I’m just a fellow human and if you need help from that, then go get it. Because that’s not what I do. I’m just simply sharing some of my observations and that is that your ego, see what happened is your ego kidnapped you. They basically kidnapped you and said, “Yeah, she’s trying to be conscious and do all this stuff,” but you know what? I’ve got it figured it out. I’ll just tell her how good she is at this now and how nothing bothers me.” And that’s what you’re doing is actually separating where your ego is taking back control of you. Does that make sense?

Jennifer: It does. Thank you.

Dr. A: Yeah.

Jennifer: Appreciate you.

Dr. A: Okay.

Rachel: Great. Next up we have Terry.

Terry: Hi. I’m going to start the video.

Rachel: There you are.

Dr. A: Hey, Terr. How are you?

Terry: Good! How are you? Happy New Year!

Dr. A: Happy New Year!

Terry: I am brand new. I have yet to actually make it to fatburn. I think I’ve started over 10 times. So you were just talking to her about consciousness and obviously, I need to hear about tips on willpower because…

Dr. A: Well, first of all, let’s talk about that. Okay, because willpower—okay. Let me just—willpower is discipline. Discipline requires a whole bunch of stuff in order for it to be strong. What you’re really talking about is your standards. It’s your identity of who you are, right? So until you make a decision, if it’s external to you, and the theory or the thought of getting healthier is there, but when you go to do it, you keep self-sabotaging yourself, then you’re not really committed to being healthy. So you have to ask yourself—it really starts with that. It’s not like tips to—it’s not like I can give you 10 tips to make you stronger mentally. How you get stronger is you become connected to reality and once you understand reality—so in your reality, you said you—it sounds like you wanted to lose some weight, right?

Terry: I have 10 pounds and I just over and over and over and—

Dr. A: But why do you want to lose 10 pounds?

Terry: It’s vanity. I’m turning 70. I go to water aerobics almost every day. I’m in a swimsuit, in a crowd. I know that a lot of the people here have lost a lot of weight and I’ve been watching, thinking, well, if they can do that, if they can lose 100 pounds, 200 pounds, I need to get my willpower or get in the right space to be able to lose 10 pounds. I mean—10 pounds! It should be that hard.

Dr. A: Okay. So are you ready for this? Are you listening to me? So first of all, they can’t get you to lose 10 pounds. None of them. I don’t care if the person lost 500 lbs. They can’t get you—that 500-pound weight loss, that’s a tremendous story for them, that can’t help. That doesn’t help you. What helps you is deciding, do you really—are you committed to losing 10 pounds? Is it important? Listen, we all enjoy being complimented, it’s who we are as humans. We want to—we look at our primordial survival needs. One of them is belonging, and when we’re accepted, then we’re belonging. So if you look back, all the way back, 100,000 years ago, into our history, we wanted to be accepted and belong and so we wanted approval. We wanted those things because it kept us safe. Okay? So now at this point you—first of all, you look great. You’re almost 70, you look great. So you need to understand that your perception, well, I’ll take you back the other way, extrinsic motivation, basically, you can never have enough of it. So those models on Fifth Avenue, right? They’re going to the—they’re beautiful. Aesthetically pleasing and they’re going and getting more surgery, because for them, they don’t look good enough, right? And they have this self-image and right now, by the way, with TikTok and all the changes you can do with cameras and stuff, we’re creating, unfortunately, for our young people, that same thing, right?

[00:40:58] Where they’re looking to be—they don’t think they’re pretty enough, and body image, and all this stuff. I talked about it like in our Forum last month, but the point is, you have to decide that it’s important enough that you want to do it because it’s what you want. In other words, organize your life around what matters most. What I would say, if you connect it to as you’re getting older, the healthier—like 50% of us have metabolic syndrome. We have insulin resistance because of what we eat, and the bottom line is, we are—our health suffers because of that and if you really want to lose the weight and get healthier, tie it into your metabolic health, because your health span is dependent on metabolic being healthy, healthy mitochondria, being energetic, feeling when you go to the gym that you’re in your best possible state, and that should be an intrinsic thing, not—because you don’t need to lose 10 pounds. Ten pounds, aesthetically—so what little difference. You have to make the decision inside of organizing your life. “I value being at a healthy weight and I’m going to do it because it really makes a difference.” Because you know what? You can get away with 10 pounds, you can get away with it, right?

Terry: I know I’m healthy. I mean I eat healthy most of the time. I work out. I know that for my age, yes, I’m taking care of myself, but… [crosstalk 00:42:32]

Dr. A: I’m going to take you along quickly, what about Ultra Health? Okay. I can tell you this [crosstalk 00:42:39] Ultra Health, being as healthy as you can be. That’s a goal. That’s the creative process. That’s your desired outcome. You want to be ultra-healthy, okay?

Terry: I do.

Dr. A: That’s what you want to be! Not lose 10 pounds. Losing 10 pounds doesn’t mean a damn thing to you. Being ultra healthy does, because here’s the deal, if you’re ultra healthy, you’re going to live longer in a healthier state. Your health span, not your lifespan, but your health span, which is the most important—so we have two things, we have our health span, we have our lifespan. In the last 15 years of life, because people have become obese. They build metabolic syndrome. They build chronic diseases. They’re developing debilitating diseases like Alzheimer’s, and cognitive decline. They’re getting those things because they’re saying, “Oh, I’m doing okay,” and, “This is what I’ve always done,” and what they’re doing is they may live to be here, but the gap is 10 to 15 years where they have poor quality life. Okay. Where I am, I just skied basically the best of my life. In fact, my buddy is the ski instructor, we ski together, and I didn’t ask for the compliment, he said multiple times, and my daughters were actually saying, “Where does Dad get all that energy? Kick in our ass.” Okay, because I choose that because I want to live. I want my health span right up to the point—I always kid around, Clament lived to be 122 years old, right? 

Terry: Because 21 was a big deal, so at least 121.

Dr. A: So my thought is okay, I want to beat that. So I want to be 123. I want to slide sideways into my grave while they’re throwing the dirt on it. Okay? Before that, I have no desire to, “Oh look how I’m doing or look what I was.” I’m looking—and to stay healthy and young, open, curious, and want to grow, continue to learn. So what I’d love you to do instead, Terry, is say, “You know what? I’m focusing this revolution around the sun on Ultra health. I’m going to become as healthy. I’m going to improve my VdotO2, my aerobic exercise. I’m going to start doing high-intensity interval training, if I haven’t, and I’m going to get better, I’m going to check and get assessed. I’m going to look at my body composition and I’ve decided to go from 18 to 14 by the end of the year and I’m going to become ultra healthy.” That’s what will get you going. All right?

Terry: Alright! That’s great. Thank you so much. I appreciate you.

Dr. A: Welcome. All right.

Rachel: All right, next up we have, Brittany. Brittany, can you unmute yourself and come on camera? There you are.

Dr. A: Hi, Brittany!

Brittany: Hi, Dr. A. It’s nice to see you. Happy New Year, and Terry, what a great question because my question was kind of similar to that in a sense. I was really, really my question was kind of about fear and just kind of overcoming that emotion of fear. Not necessarily within myself, I think just empowering some of my clients and coaches maybe with that too, and like what strategies and things that you would maybe suggest to help people overcome fear. Like fear of success, fear of failure, fear of jumping in full force. Kind of what you were talking about with Terry too, because man, people reach out to me because I live my health out loud and I feel like I’ve been able to overcome fear on my own very well. I came to the program, lost over 200 pounds, I’m gearing up to run the Chicago Marathon this year, but I don’t think people see the actual action that it takes that I’ve been doing to overcome my own fear, and I guess I just need suggestions on how I can—I don’t know, help other people do that, or show that.

Dr. A: Yeah. No. I love that. So let’s really talk about fear for a minute because fear is a very powerful, but a very important, emotion. Okay, 10-100,000 years ago—and by the way, I’ve switched from 10 to 100,000 years because around 12,000 years now, we’re finding that we started building agriculture, and we started making food, and that’s kind of when we started our demise. Before that, because the way we were designed we were out, we were nomadic, we were hunters and gatherers, we had to work very hard. We were very active and social. So 100,00 years ago, that’s where our program occurred. Fear, just like I talked about with the rattlesnake, is an important part of survival, right?

Brittany: Yeah.

Dr. A: And what it does is it creates this tenant where we get to understand stuff and it creates comfort and anything outside that comfort was designed to create fear so that you wouldn’t go do stuff that could put you in potential danger, but the ration—and that was designed by our—they say that the human species been around for around 300,000 years, but the primates have been here for a million, 100 million years. So in that programming that was the initial intent was to keep us safe, and you know, I went and took the girls and went Gorilla trekking up in Rwanda a couple years ago, and they are living like they did 100,000 years—50 million years ago. They’re hanging out together and it’s pretty much this same environment they’ve been in forever, right? And that environment—now, they don’t have the ability to adapt. So if it’s taken away from them, they’re going to be gone like the dinosaur.

We have the ability to adapt, and the ability to adapt is part of the human experience where the prefrontal cortex, we’re now smart enough where if we can rely on this, this can take us places because we’re able to see reality. Okay? So for you being what you do, you cannot project that onto anybody else. That’s your deal. That’s your thing. We as humans have to understand that most people that “fear factor,” which is simply nothing more than staying in a comfortable spot where there aren’t a lot of variables, right? And so, and by the way, things are simple as being overweight serve people and I’ll take just an extreme, just for a minute, but if you were abused as a child, a lot of young kids, they specifically gained the weight to protect them from further abuse. So there’s multiple—but what I’m saying is, there’s a lot of reasons things happen. There’s only one path out and that path is to awaken, become present, and then make the decision that this is where I want to go. So taking back control, helping them understand how that—what that means, not as a coach, not enabling them, not being the hero, which is so easy for us because we love people.

I mean, sometimes my girls, when there were a couple things going on that needed to be done when we were out skiing, they had to do them. They kind of looked and thought, “Well, Dad, will you do it” “No. I’m not doing it. I’m sitting here writing a book. You are on playtime. You take care of it.” Right? And that’s me empowering them to be successful, and then after they do it, then they feel good about it. So that’s one of the catch-22s of being a coach, is that your job is not to do it for them. Your job is not to tell them all the great things that you do. Your job is to help empower them to have small, little gains to build self-efficacy so that they can become better. Does that make sense?

Brittany: Yeah. I mean—and it’s just a challenge because I do have a lot of people that reach out to me that have big weight loss goals like I did because they’ve seen my story and I’m like—just to piggie-back off of Terry, it wasn’t a willpower thing. I had really big discipline, right? I had really big goals. I wanted to be healthy. I wanted to come off medications. All of those things and I try to empower those clients that are coming to me with really big weight loss goals, like 100 plus pounds to lose to kind of think about that, “why” as well, but I also don’t want to be the hero either, right?

Dr. A: Right. Well, and here’s the other part of it. I’m not, when I say it’s what you’re about is not what they’re about. What you’re about is you are an example, and what you’re an example of is that this can be done. Okay. So that’s validation. In the world we live in, where athletes and stuff get on TV, and they endorse a product, and they’ve never even used it, your endorsement is that you have pictures showing you before and after. So you are a great empowerment that it can be done. In other words, predictable transformation. That is what the whole system, that I created over the last 25 years, is. Including the new Prescription for Life. The new book. It’s about predictable transformation. There’s nothing in there where I discovered, “Dr. A’s magic formula, if you take this pill, you’re going to get healthy.” I’m simply taking the body of information for people that are successful, and when I started 20 plus years ago, I went to the National Weight Control Registry, which was just a place where people that had been successful at losing weight came and then the scientists took the information, found the common factors that they had in common, that could actually help, that happen, which then becomes science, which is like a hypothesis. Where we do this and it reproduces that result and so for you, you’re this Bastion, this light that it can be done. Now, it’s not, “Oh, this is what I did or didn’t do.” Here’s the system.

Brittany: Yeah.

Dr. A: That is the common predictable things that—running a marathon is down the path for somebody that’s 300 pounds overweight. Their marathon is hoping they can go down the stairs without getting short of breath. So it’s about awakening them in little baby steps to the point where they want to move forward, but they’ve got to become the Dominant Force in their own life. You’re there—and this other thing about belief; they don’t need to believe they can do it. They’ve seen you do it and you’re now empowering that. “I understand. I have the experience. I have the system. I have the tools and I can help you, and I know you can do it.” Right? You’re transferring your belief in them as a fellow human, which we all have, and you’re then moving them forward in baby steps, right? There is a book by—what’s his name? Hardy. About—The Gain in the Gap, right? Benjamin—the bottom line is, the gap is this, if you’re 300 pounds overweight and we are here, right here, 300 lb is a lot of weight and that’s a huge gap. So the chasm is this big. All you want to do is say, “Okay. Over the next month, we’re going to turn off your insulin response because you’re going to eat healthy. We’re going to use some fuelings. We’re basically going to do this systematically throughout the day. We’re going to avoid—you’re not going to do any of that processed food and we’re going to look and see, and then we’re going to start adding little baby microHabits as you go along.” And then, at the end of the week, when they’ve lost one, two, three, whatever pounds, you’re going to celebrate that and say, “Okay, This is the gain. The gain is, ‘I just lost three pounds.’ There’s much more to go, but we’re focusing on what’s in front of us.”

[00:54:29] You know a lot of marathon runs, just as advice, they go out and they’ll use something like telephone poles or power poles that are so far apart, and then they’ll look at them, and especially at the point when they’re getting towards exhaustion, they’ll look at just the next one. You know, it’s kind of like starting to do weight resistance training. You go as hard as you can until you can’t go anymore, right? And just because it’s a little bit more, allows you to expand your potential, and that’s what the gain is about. It’s about taking these people, not scaring the hell out of them and saying, “Yeah. You’re going to lose 300 pounds. No, let’s focus on this—we make sure we’re eating healthy. Let’s make sure that we’re not taking anything in our body that’s going to stimulate our insulin.” You know, insulin basically stimulates your hunger, right? So we’re not going to eat any Pop-Tarts today and we’re not going to do it because we have great discipline. We’re not going to do it because you’ve explained to them, as soon as you do that, you have all these hormones in your body that are very hard to regulate. Why are—and you know, what do you need the GLP1 drugs? Maybe. Maybe if you failed many times, and you have such a strong addiction, and you’ve gone to the susceptibility index that I wrote the questionnaire on, and you’re highly susceptible. Yeah, they might be here, but they’re not something that we’re going to then become your thing outside that’s going to fix you. They are simply a tool we’re going to use to help suppress that strong desire, to give you a little bit more control while you’re learning to eat healthy. Does that make sense?

Brittany: Yeah, that makes so much sense, and I think it’s taking me back to when I very first started too, because I never had a goal of losing 200 pounds. My goal was 50, right? It was like, I started. So, thank you.

Dr. A: Yeah, and yeah, what you did is you just you took that huge gap and you took it down to what you thought was possible. That you can’t do. You cannot produce for them, and give them so they overcome their fear. They’re going to have fear. What gets rid of fear is success. I don’t believe in, I don’t believe in made-up affirmations either, “Oh. I’m 100 pounds lighter.” No, you’re not, and if you say that you’re lying to your brain. Now I can say that, “You know what? I have made the commitment to stay on this and do this because I know where I really want to go and the power of what I want to do with my life is more important than this little inconvenience, this getting out of my comfort zone, but what I’m really doing is…” Because what the real fear is, if I maintain being overweight and have extreme obesity, and my BMI is up to 35, the facts are—you’re going to die early over an unhealthy death. If you want to be concerned, not fearful, but concerned, and you have complete control to change that. Does that make sense?

Brittany: That makes so much sense. Thank you so much, Dr. A.

Dr. A: Yeah. You’re welcome. So stay in that zone. The zone you are is a guide, right? You’re not a caretaker. You’re not a hero. You are a guide with an amazing story, and congratulations on that!

Brittany: Thank you.

Dr. A: Yep. Okay. We have time for maybe one more.

Rachel: All right. Next up we have, Jackie.

Dr. A: Hey, Jackie!

Jackie: There we go. Okay. Hi, Dr. A. Thank you for this forum, and the system, and your commitment to people like me. I’m going to get what I call a yo-yo—so for the sake of time, my question is, do you have any tips for people who have chronic pain, and that becomes the “icky sauce”?

Dr. A: Well, the chronic pain isn’t the “icky sauce.” The chronic pain is something that you’re feeling, which is real. Okay. So it’s not—the “icky sauce” is when your mind and your thoughts, and your feelings are creating something which is not real. That’s the self-talk. That’s the voice in your head. That’s not real. Pain is real. So you have to decide—but, so tell me, is this—we’re talking about you?

Jackie: Yes.

Dr. A: Okay. So what do you want to accomplish? You have to tell me what you want to accomplish. I mean, why are you here today? What do you want to say to me today?

Jackie: To work through that pain. To be able to move freely, and to be happy.

Dr. A: Okay, so what are you doing right now to do that?

Jackie: Physical therapy. Trying to treat the pain. I do try to do all of the other things, as far as, Stop. Challenge. Choose. and not letting all of the other real “icky sauce,” grief, sadness, stress affect my pain, but I’d like the pain to go away.

Dr. A: Okay. So are you—I’ll ask you a couple of questions, are you at a healthy weight?

Jackie: Yes.

Dr. A: You’re at your healthy weight? Okay. Are you exercising daily?

Jackie: Not right now because of the pain. It’s a lower back pain that affects the sciatic nerve, and then I have pain all the way down to my feet.

Dr. A: Okay. So are you doing—you said you’re going to physical therapy?

Jackie: Yes.

Dr. A: Okay and they’re giving you stretch exercises and things for you to do? Are you doing all those things?

Jackie: Yes.

Dr. A: Are you doing them every day, conscientiously?

Jackie: No. Probably every other day.

Dr. A: Okay. So the—again, this, going back to the gain in the gap. Okay, if you’ve had chronic pain for a while—by the way, almost 30% of Americans have chronic pain and the things that you can do are making sure you’re eating healthy, you’re not stimulating—so, pain is partially caused by inflammation and inflammation is caused by eating sugary, processed food. So have you eliminated all processed food from your diet?

Jackie: No, and part of that I believe is because I get upset. Depressed if you will, and then I indulge in more eating.

Dr. A: Yeah. Okay. So that’s the—if I had to pick—so the two things I would pick, first of all, we know this with pain, we know that more activity makes the pain less. I mean that sounds kind of weird, but it is. The more you’re inactive, the more you’re not involved with dynamic stretching, static stretching, not active daily, not doing those things, the pain’s going to be worse. The pain always gets better when you’re more active. Okay. So if I were you, I would focus on two things, Jackie, and I don’t mean go run a marathon, right? I’m saying, make a decision to do two things in your life; one is work on progress. Not overnight, unless you can, but work on number one—eliminating processed food. Eat healthy. Eat lots of—do a fish oil, do anti-inflammatory—do olive oils. Try to eliminate the PUFAs, the polyunsaturated fats. Use olive oil instead, and then get away from processed food. Stay away from sugary food. Those self-soothe you, but they create progressive inflammation, and if you already have chronic pain, that’s going to amplify that.

[01:02:28] So that’s number one. And the second—so that would focus first on your diet. Really work on it. In fact, one of the things you could even focus on, and something that I use throughout the book is, if you have the resources to do it, is maybe even spend a month with a CGM. A glucose continuous monitor. Right. Have you heard of those?

Jackie: Yeah.

Dr. A: Yeah, so you can get one of those. I mean they were designed for diabetics, but I used it for research for the book, where I basically put it on and then everything I ate, including—I eat healthy, but I want to even get better. So rather than having any glucose spikes, I want to make sure I eliminate things that do it, and it’ll be fun for you because it’s immediate feedback, and I don’t mean to obsess about it, but just look and see, “Today I’m going to eat healthily,” and then look and see, because it checks your blood sugar all day long, and see, when did I spike? And then what’s neat about it, on the app you can actually, with that spike, look and see, where’s my level of pain? Does that make sense?

Jackie: Yes.

Dr. A: I just came up with this right now, but the point, by creating a feedback loop for you, real, not theoretically: if I do this, I get better, but if you can show a direct response, that when you’re eating these higher inflammatory foods, your pain is worse, then you’re going to stop doing it. It’s kind of like when you put a probe on, somebody stop it, right? That would be a beautiful way for you to start doing it. I’d love you to do that, and then I’d love you to come back next month and tell me how it worked.

Jackie: I will do that.

Dr. A: Okay.

Jackie: Eye-opening. Wonderful. Thank you.


Dr. A: Okay. Awesome guys! Well listen, we’re over an hour. I appreciate it. Let’s make this revolution around the sun the best we’ve ever done in terms of becoming the Dominant Force and organizing our life around what matters. Have a great, great week you guys. God bless.

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