Master the goal of leaving suffering behind with three easy modalities. Learn more with this month’s Conscious Forum.
Video Transcript:
Dr. A: All right. Well, welcome everybody. This is Dr. A, and this is the Conscious Forum. Very excited to be moving into February. The second month in our revolution around the sun, which takes a year. We’ll give it an opportunity for everybody to settle in here and then we’ll get going in about 30 seconds. I hope all of you are enjoying—I don’t know what the weather’s like up north. The weather down here in the south is just gorgeous. I’d forgotten the weather has been so bad. I’d forgotten what Florida was like anymore with our climate change. So anyway, today we’re basically going to be talking about something which is near and dear to me and something that I’ve been teaching and working on myself now for over 10 years and that is going to the mental gym.
It’s actually spending time working on mental gymnastics and I mean that in a very positive way. In learning to explore—kind of putting on our lab coat and exploring ourselves or mind, because if we’re not in control and we’re just letting the world happen to us in this day and age, with AI, the media, complete connectivity all over, you know, you’re seeing everything that’s happening. We’re going to be in big trouble and so it’s really important. And today we’re going to talk about something that I think is really, really something you can use and start doing daily to help yourself. So just to kind of refresh everybody’s memory, consciousness refers to the state of being aware of our surroundings. Aware of what’s around us. Aware of our thoughts. What’s going on in here, and our feelings or mostly our emotions, is how we think about them, and all three are critical. Awareness of our surroundings, obviously a lot of times we’re on this [Dr. A holds up his phone] and it’s amazing, like on planes or cars or just in restaurants.
I mean, it seems like nobody’s actually aware of their surroundings and they’re glued to their phone. So they’re in the digital—kind of have the digital leash, and so being aware. You know, one of the things I love is, I love the water. So I made my house all wide open so I can see outside and stay very connected, and that connection is really important. I’ve written a new book which will be released in a couple of weeks. It’s going to be released to our coaches this Friday and I talk a lot about that, about being conscious. Being aware. It’s so critical. It’s important for our sleep, that we wake up in the morning and we get outside. We’re an indoor species but getting out in nature, in the sun is so critical. So consciousness, really, is being aware of these states. Not being so connected inside or distracted so that we start to understand those in more detail.
So this again is a forum. It’s a place, meeting, or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged. Today I’m going to be talking about some exercises you can do in the mental gym, and then we’ll open it up and so as you’re listening to what I’m talking about, jot down notes and then Rachel—you can contact Rachel if you would love to share something or if you have any questions for me because I find the interactive part is what really allows me to continue to grow at being able to help people with this, kind of guide them and coach them to increasing their vertical development or consciousness and then I learned so much from it.
So please, if you have any questions, anything comes up, anything you’re working on, then we want to talk about that. So today we’re going to talk and as you see, I’ve kind of shaken up the slides a little bit here to get a little more energy into it. Are You Going to the Mental Gym? And, you know, I’m a fellow human, and that’s the title I put down here because one of the things, the beauty of the things I’m talking about, every single one of you can do these things. They’re not that difficult. They’re just not usually what we do. We kind of went on an automatic programming, and we’ll talk about that in a minute, about our ego and our personal mind that kind of runs the show. So most of the time we’re really in an unconscious state or a subconscious state, where we’re not really fully connected to what’s happening in our mind and even in our life. So we’re going to talk about that today.
So if you could choose being happy, would you? You know, you may think, “Well, yeah. Of course, I want to be happy.” But our actions, the things we do, the things we don’t do, not working on the metal gym, leads to considerable suffering and suffering—as I’ll end this presentation—is optional. Life happens. We have good things, bad things, we have people that we care about die, get sick. We have accidents. We have loss of all kinds of things. We have adversity, and that’s part of life. I mean, if you look at nature, most animals don’t make it very long because they end up getting eaten by somebody else or there’s a drought. Well, we’ve technologically advanced ourselves, we protected ourselves against much of the natural threats. What we haven’t protected are the perceived threats. Our egos, our ability to negotiate with other people, our ability to be in control, where we’re not letting everything bother us and so that’s what I mean by, ‘if you could choose being happy.’ Because happiness is a chosen state. It’s something you choose to be and I’m not saying things don’t happen to us. They do, but how you choose to respond to them determines the outcome.
So this is something that is really interesting. You’ve probably seen old books and probably paintings from the Renaissance and different areas, and people like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, and a whole bunch of scholars, they would usually have a skull, like the one that they’re being held there [Dr. A is referring to an image on screen], and I think actually, back then, it was a real human skull. I don’t know where they got them, but they would be on their desk, and it was what the Italians call, or in Latin, “Momento Mori,” and it means, that moment—perceiving that moment of death, and the importance of that is that when we’re aware that we’re only here as a speck, basically, for a very short period of time, we’re like mist that evaporates—we’re here and then we’re gone. Hopefully, with learning the things that I teach, you can live your full, long healthspan, and not so much lifespan but healthspan, where you’re healthy for a long time and with technology today and the devices we have, there’s no reason why we can’t live to our late 80s, 90s, and possibly, I know some people that are over a hundred that still have a quality healthspan. So an important part of that is being curious, open, and wanting to grow and recognize that we’re only here for a short period of time and we should appreciate that and not take it for granted anything that happens.
Looking out at the sky, we see a beautiful sunset and it startles you into the beauty, but we should be doing that every day. That’s one of the things that will help us be happy. So basically, how would you rate your last year? Your last 12 months of life. I mean, was it spectacular? Were you stressed out to the max? Were you unhealthy? Were you sick? What were you feeling? Were you suffering a lot mentally? Ask yourself because, you know, who is in charge during that period? What happened to you in the last year, because the only three things really that we have control of are perceptions, how we look at reality, our choices, the choices we make, and our behaviors. How we act and how we act day in and day out.
For most, their ego is in charge, and what I mean by that is your personal mind. You’ve been creating a script since you were very little about the way the world is and how it functions, and how to keep yourself safe, and your ego kind of runs the show and when we’re in that state basically, it’s very hard to be healthy all the time, because you’ve assigned your ego responsibility that is impossible. “Make everyone like me and make my life just as I want it.” So in other words, we want to make the outside world conform to what we want and if we have that attitude and we have our ego there to protect us, we’re going to be stressed out all the time because very, very rarely is the world the way we want it to be. The world is going on in its own momentum and its own way, and we’re just one little part of that. So it’s really important for us to understand that.
So there’s two very distinct ways of living and living, being influenced by the outside world, and being weighed down by all the things that are happening or being influenced by the inside world and lifting yourself up to truly be happy and really enjoy. I’m not talking about blind optimism. I’m talking about taking pretty much everything and appreciating the obstacles that come on, knowing that they’re the way that can help teach us and be open and curious and want to grow versus being closed, defensive, and wanting to be right.
So, am I okay? And the bottom line is, for most of us, the answer to that is, no. I’m not okay. “If I have the new house.” “If I get the new job.” “If I get the corner window in my office.” “If I make another $3,000 a year or a month,” whatever it is, “Then I’ll be okay,” and the reality is, you’re not going to be, because the same stuff that’s inside, energy that’s in there that’s stored from our past, keeps getting triggered and keeps weighing us down and creating stress in our life. So how do you get there? Well basically, that’s what we’re going to be talking about today—going to the mental gym. So choosing joy over the need to be right, basically is the idea of the taming of your ego. Our ego needs to be right. In any situation, in any conversation, it’s important for us to be right and our ego wants to make sure because if we’re not right then basically it makes us look bad, and so we’ve created this whole dialogue, this voice, this chatter, this taming of the shrew, so to speak in our mind that we want things to be the way we want them to be, and when they are, great. When they’re not, they’re not. And they’re not going to be great most of the time because we’re not in charge of the world. We are simply in charge of our perceptions, our choices, and our behaviors.
[00:10:27] So, do you really want to be happy? It really comes down to that. Do you really want to be happy? And I can tell you that I’ve always been relatively happy. I’ve gone through the trials and tribulations just like everybody on here, had some bad things happen, but I’ve chosen always to look at them as learning experiences and to grow from them and I would say that majority of the time—and I’m just moving into my new house, and you know how moving is. Some marriages end by building a new house or moving. I’ve been relatively happy. Some things have not gone the way I’d like them to, but as a whole, I’m very excited and very happy, and I choose to be.
So becoming conscious, becoming aware, and being fully alive requires daily work and so we’re going to spend the last part of this, before we open up for questions, talking about the mental gym. So just to refresh, you can see we have three brains. We have the lizard—the automatic brain that just reacts. The labrador brain, which is our limbic area, which responds to emotions, and then we have our human thinking brain, which is the rational part. The part here, where we make choices based on what’s in our best interest, and actually prolong out in time, rather than making decisions instantaneously all the time, and I’ve given you the technology, and for several years now of Stop. Challenge. Choose.
So what we want to do, rather than just have something happen and we respond and go off the—you know, someone says something to you and you get pissed off. Somebody cuts in front of you in traffic and it ruins your day. That’s where we want to intervene and stop, challenge–why we’re feeling it, and re-engage this and make the choices that support long-term. Long-term health, long-term wellbeing, long-term relationships, and all of that basically starts with three modalities that you can use when you Stop. Challenge. Choose. So I’m going to learn and master the goal of leaving suffering behind with these three modalities. The first one, switching thoughts. This is the easiest one. This is the one where you replace your automatic, negative thoughts, you know, things when something gets you upset, with consciously, willfully, generating positive thoughts. So the one I like to use because we deal with it all the time—I was just dealing with it yesterday afternoon. I had a meeting to go to. I did not plan right and I was running a little behind. I’m on the A1A, the speed limit is 45 and the senior citizen in front of me, with a double line, was going maybe 30, maybe 28, or something. I think it was 28, couldn’t go, and I basically thought, okay. I’m late for this. I’m late. I’ll be there, but it’s a little stressful. Rather than getting angry and stressful, I said, “Okay. I can’t go, I can’t pass. There’s lots of traffic. I’m going to go ahead and think about the meeting I’m going to be in and how I’m going to respond to that meeting.” So I switched it up. I thought about the positives: being with some people I haven’t seen in a while, and switch it from a negative to a positive. And you can do that instantaneously.
So when something—you spilled milk. Then say, “Okay, great opportunity. Let me clean the floor right around here,” or anything. It doesn’t matter what it is, but it’s so easy to do. Take something that’s negative and turn it into something that’s positive. Something else, so switch your thoughts. That’s the easiest thing you can do that turns off that cognitive emotive loop that’s got you upset, and then you get pissed, and then it starts cycling, and then for the rest of the time in the car, you’re anxious, you’re more anxious, you maybe do a bonehead thing and cut across the double line into oncoming traffic or gut up on the guy’s bumper. All ridiculous things that aren’t safe, and the cost-benefit ratio certainly isn’t worth it. So that’s the easiest one.
Second one is a mantra, and this is also relatively easy. Basically, when our—we call it our “monkey mind” or “our voice in our head,” is just cranking along. Basically, this is a great one to do in the evening too, it’s like a type of meditative thing you can do. So when your mind’s really racing like that, you’ve got this flight of ideas and it’s all just going crazy—think of a mantra. Think of training your mind to repeat a single word, or phrase, over and over until it’s stuck in your mind. Just like a song. So you can take—I have three or four, “I love the wind,” you know, “I live on the ocean,” and “I’m a sailor and I love the wind,” is one of the ones I use sometimes, and I love the wind, and I’ll say it multiple times, and when you say it, start focusing, and you say it in your mind. You don’t say it out loud. You say it in your mind, and as you do, all of a sudden, your synaptic endings are now getting in resonance, and with that harmony, it could become something that you just enjoy. It could be part of your faith. It could be saying, “I love God,” or whatever works for you. It doesn’t matter what it is, but basically, it helps get in resonance and it shuts down all that. It’s a good one before you go to sleep. You know, people talk about counting sheep, but having a mantra that you just continue to say, and when your mind’s trying to take over, and thoughts are trying to get going, just come right back to it.
Then the third one, the one that is the most difficult, and the one that becomes the bread and butter over time is when you feel when you react. When you start to feel that “icky sauce” you’re actually, something’s going on and you look and something triggers you. It could be from your past. It could be a thought, a relationship. It could be anything, and when it comes up and we feel it, normally what we have a tendency to do is we resist it. We say, “No. I don’t want to think about that,” and we bury it back in. We don’t let it come up or we basically repress it, or we project it on someone else and say, “Oh, god. Look how stupid they look,” rather than admit that we’re actually thinking—projecting something about ourselves that we’re failing. But when you actually feel it—emotions take about 90 seconds. They don’t take that long and each time—and start with little things. Little thoughts, energy, thoughts that have been buried in there, that are negative energy, and let them come up, and yeah, it’s going to hurt when it comes up, but you’re going to get it out of there and then just let it come up and release, and I can tell you, there are so many things—I just finished writing this book and all the deadlines, all the delays, all the things that had to be redone, I handled it, and actually, very much enjoyed the process, and it’s the first time I would say the process—I mean, I love writing and I love helping people, but this process was relatively painless because I just didn’t let that energy, those negative triggers get in the way. I’d look at them and say, “Whoa. Here’s an area to actually make it better.” I’d use the combination of changing a negative to a positive and then say, “Well, let me rework this. Let me make sure this works better. Give me feedback. Tell me what could be better.” It’s not that I want to be right. So my ego has become much more in control and I just kind of relax into that and then you release it.
So this is the one takes—and you don’t start off with major trauma. Like, dad or mom issues or issues as a kid or self-worth. You don’t start with the huge stuff first. You start with the easy stuff, like being in the car, like getting cut off in traffic. Like somebody saying something to you. Like the weather not being good. A good one is the weather, right? When I moved in last week was horrendous here. I mean it was 40 knot winds. It was raining. It was cold. It was in the 40s. Now, I know if you lived up north it was much colder, but it wasn’t great, and so instead we said, well, let’s make sure we have the tarps. Let’s do this, and actually, we’ll stay inside all day and just work because you don’t want to be outside.
So, it’s actually: events are going to happen. It’s basically how you respond to them that determines the outcome. So you can reframe everything, and reframing is everything. So anything that happens you can reframe it and put it in position. Just like the obstacle is the way. Where, you know what? I’m going to learn from this and I’m going to grow from this, and I can tell you that you’ll feel your stress level come down, your activity go down, and you will start to enjoy your life much more. So pain is part of life. It’s going to happen to us. Suffering is optional. So let’s open it up for Q&A, Rach.
Rachel: All right. First up we have, Eric. Eric, can you come on camera?
Dr. A: Hey, Eric.
Eric: Hi! How are you, Dr. A?
Dr. A: Fantastic.
Eric: So, I’m looking for a way of dealing with self-sabotage. So I’ve been on this health journey for over six years. I’m in probably the best health I’ve been in the last four decades, but I seem to take five steps forward and one step back, so I’m improving in my health but I can’t seem to stop that self-sabotage. I’ve been able to get the moment shorter, where I’m right back to compass north, but I’m really trying to figure out some things I can work on to get to the root of that problem, I guess.
Dr. A: Okay. All right.
Eric: If that makes sense.
Dr. A: Yeah, no it makes perfect sense, and so you’re still in an oscillating structure. So my dear friend, Robert Fritz, are you familiar with him?
Eric: I don’t think so.
Dr. A: Okay. All right, well he talks about the creative process and there’s two types of motivation. There’s the motivation that’s driven by trying to get away from things you don’t want. Okay, and then there’s the motivation driving towards things you do want. The motivation, getting away from things you don’t want, is self-limiting because and the great example, and the easiest one, is with weight. You know if you—let’s say you see something, that’s it, just takes you to the point where you’re at your breaking point. Let’s say you say see a picture of yourself on vacation with your belly hanging out or your doctor says, “Hey, you’ve got pre-diabetes.” It doesn’t matter what it is, but it’s something where you all of a sudden, emotionally, feel like, oh, I’ve got to do something about it, and so what you do is you say, “I’m going on a diet,” right? So you go on a diet and you lose 10 pounds. You look better or your pre-diabetes is less and so then you have less pressure, and then you stop doing it. So that type of motivation doesn’t last. It’s oscillating. So what happens is, as you go further—so this is where you want to go and this is where you were. It’s like having two rubber bands around your waist on both ends, as you pull more towards this, this one gets tighter, and it’s going to eventually make you come back. Okay?
[00:21:35] The other thing to keep in mind is there’s usually when we’re working on our health or working on our fitness, and then we slip back, like you said, three steps forward, one step back, is that there’s some reason why you want to go back to that old behavior. It satisfies something inside of you. So that’s going to require you to put on your goggles. First thing I do is I focus on the first part, which is the creative process. Look what your desired outcome is. What do you want in terms of your health? And I would take it and build what we call structural tension, and the Habits of Health is designed around that. Is that, what’s your desired outcome? And look at all the key areas. I would look at all the key areas in the Habits of Health. I would look at, you know, all the MacroHabits. Right? I would look and say, okay, in terms of what—and actually, in the new My Prescription for Life, coming out, I do advanced stuff on that.
So that’ll be great for you too to have and basically, you know, my body composition—okay, so do you measure your body composition? Do you know what it is?
Eric: Yes.
Dr. A: Okay, and has your body composition improved?
Eric: A lot.
Dr. A: Okay. So you know what is the endpoint of what that looks like. So complete health, you’re talking about complete health, and health and wellbeing, because I always combine the two, it’s your physical health, which is your body, but it’s also your mental health, right? And that’s why I spend— do the Conscious Forum, is because I know this: your mental health, your ability to cognitively lead yourself forward and arrange your life around what matters most is all in here. Your body is just going along for the ride. Now you want—there’s many reasons, and in the new My Prescription For Life I really talk a lot about the stuff we’re learning about in metabolic health. We’re learning more and more about insulin, insulin resistance, and how probably half the world has insulin resistance, and about 75% of Americans, because of our diet, our lack of activity, our stress levels, and the inflammation we have. They’re all creating insulin resistance.
So look and see, what would those things look like if they’re ideal? What would my body composition look like, ideally? What would be my ideal weight? How do I get my BMI under under 25? How do I get my v.O2, so my exercise, my aerobic fitness? How do I get my strength, my grip strength, my ability to lift weight so that I’m not just maintaining my muscles, but I’m strong? How do I get my sleep to eight hours a day? And I would put each one of those into a category and then across those, look and assess yourself, and look where you are in relationship to those, and the that way you’re creating current reality, where you are now in that particular area, and then where I want to go to? Because as long as you’re looking here, this is where I want to go to, and this is where I am that creates structural tension, and that will keep you moving forward, and as soon as you do that, the concepts that are down here will start being minimized because you’re focusing on where you want to go. You’re actually cutting the rubber bands down here and you’ll move towards what you want. So does that make sense?
Eric: It makes perfect sense.
Dr. A: Yeah, and the one to start with is your metal one. So the bottom line is, since most of it is mental, go to the gym. Use those three exercises that I just gave you and start using them every day because I know you’re not okay, because nobody is, and because we—our ego always wants to say, “Oh, you got this figured out,” or my dear friend, Jim Dethmer, he wrote a book with Diana Chapman, who are both dear friends, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, I know you’ve read that.
Eric: Yep.
Dr. A: And everybody says, “Yeah, I’ve read that. I get it. I know that.” No. It’s not knowing it. It’s being it. There’s a big difference between no, I know I’m going to go below the line here. No, that’s not how it works. You can’t qualify that. You have to become it, and we all go below the line because we’re humans and that’s why I started off with I’m a fellow human. I do the same stuff. This is not me on a soapbox talking about it. It’s something that happens every day in our lives and the more we work on it the happier we’ll be. The more content, and by the way, your psychological flexibility determines more than anything, your emotional management, and your emotional management determines your organic health, convinced of that beyond everything else. So you can go to your doctor, to the repair shop, think you’re a car, or you can actually start doing those exercises and change everything. Cool?
Eric: Thank you, Dr. A.
Dr. A: You’re so welcome. Go get them, Eric.
Rachel: All right, next up we have, Ray. Ray, can you come on camera? There you are.
Ray: Yes.
Dr. A: Hey, Ray.
Ray: Thank you so much for all of this and I just—one of my questions is, so since getting healthier, I can recognize that some of my habits are causing fluctuation in my weight. Is there a specific weight fluctuation that is still considered healthy for someone to have?
Dr. A: So, I’m going to be surgical with you here, okay? No. The bottom line is, you want to—the only fluctuation you want, you want to lower your fat body composition down to a healthy weight, a BMI of 25, and the only way you want your weight going up is because now you’re building more muscle. Period. Weight oscillation is not healthy. That’s why I wrote this book by the way, My Prescription for Life is because we have 10 million people, and 30 million on the way, to taking these shots, and they are going to destroy their health if they don’t have a strategy, they don’t have the tactics, and they don’t have a plan. So I specifically wrote My Prescription for Life going through the five areas. Number one, basically the world hasn’t changed. The world is more toxic than it’s ever been. Between the food, the processed food, sedentary lifestyle, stress, all the different parameters. Second is, the weight loss revolution is here. On revolution, we now have drugs that actually can help you lose weight. The third is, and they’re helpful for some people, especially people that are addicted to highly processed food. Third, are the drugs right for you? Because you don’t need them unless you do need them. If you do need them, great. You’re going to decide after we go through the pros and cons of their benefits, their risks, and then basically you’ll decide whether you want to use them. If you want to use them, then great. Prescription for now is part four. You’ll then take them during the period knowing that they have a half-life of about a year and so we’re going to, during that year, we’re going to start teaching you the fundamentals of key behavioral changes. If you don’t want to use them then basically go right to Prescription for Life, which is part five, which is half the book, which goes over all the key areas to stay healthy. And then the last part is your future optimal health, where I’m keeping you apprised of all the other things with technology, with technology hacks and things we can do to help maximize our health and our wellbeing.
[00:20:03] So, but the answer is the only fluctuation you want now, a couple pounds, because of water weight of course, but I’m talking about you want to reach a healthy weight because everything gets better, and by the way, just talking about it, the idea of fat prejudice and people having fat stigma around being overweight or obese needs to go away, but the response to that was healthy at any weight, and there is no such thing. If we’re overweight, we’re at—even if we don’t have metabolic syndrome yet, within the next five to ten years, we will, because if we’re overweight it says that our insulin resistance is already occurring, and so eventually you will become unhealthy. So the goal should be, no matter what, to be nice to people that are struggling, but at the same time, encourage people to take personal responsibility and get down to a healthy weight. Cool?
Ray: Great. Yes, thank you very much.
Dr. A: You’re welcome. Cool. Okay. Who else have we got?
Rachel: Next up. We have, Kelly. Kelly, can you come on camera? There you are.
Dr. A: Hi, Kelly.
Kelly: Hi, Dr. A. How are you? I am fantastic. I do have to say, this is the best you’ve ever looked. And I’ve known you for a long time.
Dr. A: Thank you. I appreciate that, and you know what? I feel that way. I feel great. I mean, I just can’t—I’m not asking people to do something that I’m not doing myself, and I just can tell you that the beauty that you have when you say to your ego, you know what? You’re on the sidelines. You’re out of the game, right? And then you start laughing at all the stuff that used to bother you. You know, when people say something or someone says something and acts like before you might have thought, well they’re making me look stupid. I don’t care. It’s kind of like in the movie, The Fugitive, when they were—what’s his name? I forgot his name right now—was bringing in Harrison Ford, and he goes, “I didn’t kill my wife,” and the guy, the marshall, says, “I don’t care.” That’s not his job. His job wasn’t to know whether he was guilty. His job is to bring him in. Same thing with our ego. Our ego’s job—we need to fire our ego. Set it on the sidelines, awaken ourself, do those three exercises and start really enjoying our life. So thank you. Enough about me. Let’s talk about you.
Kelly: Yeah, so last year I had lots of family drama affecting me emotionally, mentally, financially, physically, and I’ve tried to overcome it, but I just can’t seem to do that and it’s carried into this year, and January has not been fun, and I need to break that cycle. So I need a little bit of advice on some things I can do to not let it bother me when it’s your family.
Dr. A: Yeah. Well, you know even they’re human beings, fellow human beings, and just in the evolution, one of the things that when I work with moms or dads, you’re talking about little kids and they’re frustrated, is that even a little person, even though they’re little, they’re basically a fellow human, right? And we need to teach. We can’t control them, now we have to guide them, keep them safe, but we need to set some boundaries, and not helicopter over them, right? And the reason why I’m saying that is we have a tendency, with our family, to treat our family differently than we do anybody else. It’s almost like, well you’re stuck with me. Right? And so they will do things to you, and you will do things to them that you wouldn’t to your friends, right? And so you have to look and ask yourself, okay. In this situation, because obviously you’re on here, you’re learning and you said the word ‘try’ and actually, someone else said it too. Try. There’s no such thing as “try.” Try is the most demoralizing word in the English language. You either do or you don’t. In Star Wars, Yoda—Luke tried to lift the spacecraft and he goes, “I’m trying,” and Yoda goes, “You either do, or you don’t. There’s no try.” Try means, oh. I’m trying. Doesn’t work, so you have to sit down. Okay, what are the guidelines? What are the things that are happening? Why am I getting upset about it and then look and say, “What is reality? What do I have control over and what don’t I have control over?” So first of all, know this, you have control over only one person, and who is that?
Kelly: Myself.
Dr. A: Yeah, you have full control. And when you take back the locus of control, when you—in other words, rather than look outside and say, “My family’s upsetting me. My family’s doing this,” when you take the locus control and say that, “I’m the only one that can upset me. No one else can upset me. I can only upset me,” that’s where it starts, and the bottom line is, not saying you’re not human, and not saying you don’t get frustrated, and depending on what the situation is—and we don’t need to get into that, but whether it’s got you pissed off or got you sad or got you frustrated, it’s not about you. It’s their choices of what they’re doing, and if they’re not open and curious and want to grow, if they’re ensconced in their egos, they’re not going to change and you can’t make them. No matter how many of these Conscious Forums you come on, you can’t make them do something they’re not willing to do. All you can do is look for edges for where there’s potentially a teachable moment. That’s all you can do, but when you leave that situation—like, you know, there’s frustration. I have two daughters. They are diametrically opposed, I mean they—and we were together, and I was writing this book, so we were together, up skiing, and I had to have my headset on writing most of the time, and I could just, I was watching their behavior without listening to them, right? Because they’re in the room, and it just amazes me how different they are, and both of them—one of them is—I’m not going to throw any of them under the bus. One of them is more receptive than the other one, although the other one is now getting more receptive. You know why? Because they’re looking and hearing me. They heard me do the Forum. They know that I’m helping adults. They know that I really have their best interest and I’m not picking on them, and so they’re starting to soften. One of them more than the other, but even the one that was more bigger ego, right—is softening now and actually listens to me and that actually, I’m surprised when we’ll have a conversation. She won’t get defensive. I used to say, “I know, Dad. Stop. Challenge. and Choose.” You know? And that was the end of the conversation because she was not interested. So what I’m saying, your family’s been with you a long time. They’ve known you their whole life. You’ve known them your whole life. So there’s a lot of liberties we take with our language, with our body types, the behavior we do, and you just don’t have any control over that. So come to peace with that, and then when something frustrating happens, Stop. Challenge. Choose., an outcome and look for the windows. Like we always say, you can’t make a horse drink but you can salt the oats, right?
Kelly: Yeah.
Dr. A: Does that make sense?
Kelly: Yeah. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Dr. A: You’re welcome. Cool. All right, Rach, what do we have?
Rachel: Next up we have, Larry. Larry, can you come on camera? Larry, are you there? There he is.
Dr. A: There’s Larry.
Larry: Hey, good morning. Thank you, Dr. A. Appreciate everything you have to say. One thing I find for myself that I’ve been dealing with a lot is when it comes to the overthinking and the ruminations, is pinpointing where the source is coming from, and I find that I deal with a lot of physical effects that come along with that as well. Sweating, shakes, things like that. So I can turn my brain around, but how do I help with these physical effects that come along as well?
Dr. A: Yeah, no that’s a great question, and thanks, Larry, for sharing. So that is what we refer to when we say cognitive emotive loop. Cognitive is the thought process that’s going on and the emotional part is the loop, right? So your thoughts create emotions, and your emotions, basically, are energy and motion, your limbic area, in your brain, that area I was talking about, the labrador brain, is designed to protect you and evolutionary was one of the developments so that when you were—100 thousand years ago, if you were walking down a trail and there was a snake, the bottom line is, you jumped. You felt this surge of fear and you jumped to the side before you even thought about it because if you didn’t have that area, and you thought about it, you’d say, “Oh, look at the pretty variegations on the snake, on the scales, and oh look at that interesting thing in the back going like that,” and you’d be dead. So that’s how you’re wired. You’re wired to do that and when you have a thought that’s disturbing to you, it’s going to create the emotions. So, the emotions are the release of epinephrine, norepinephrine, cortisol. Those were normally designed to get you the heck out of the way, have you freeze, have you fall, play dead, or have you fight, and so you’re just sensing the “icky sauce” that comes because you’re having some type of thoughts in here that are disturbing to you. So the way—and once that loop’s going and you’re feeling that, it’s very hard to stop it.
[00:38:57] So what you need to do is get better at sensing it. So you’re at a conscious state. We’re sitting here. You and I are talking. You’re listening to me and then let’s say over to the side, I don’t know, somebody you know does something, you look and you see it, and all of a sudden you can’t focus on me anymore. Okay. As soon as you see it and you start to feel—you’ll feel that energy shift, and as soon as it starts to shift, that’s when you have your drifting, getting ready to go down into the Drama Triangle. That’s when you need to shift. Stop, challenge why you’re feeling that way, and think of something—I would do either the switching thoughts. You can use the mantra, or you can actually let the feeling that you’re starting to have come up, and release. Identify. There are only five major emotions. Identify what emotion you’re feeling and then let that kind of bubble up. Takes about 90 seconds for it, and then let it release, and then you won’t get into that loop, and you’ll be—once you’re in the loop and you’re pissed off? It’s too late in that case. Drink some water. Go for a little walk. Get out of the situation that’s stimulating it. Let yourself cool down and learn from it. Be open, curious, and want to grow. Curious, what happened there?
Listen—I used to do this—so I was a critical care physician. I also was a cardiac anesthesiologist. I was the chairman of my department, and bottom line when something would happen they would call me when someone was in trouble, and I would go into the room and save the day, but that wasn’t the important part. The important part is I would grab the anesthesiologist or the nurse anesthetist or the surgeon and after the case I’d go and sit in my office and we’ go over what happened or what didn’t happen because what you want to do is you want to learn from those situations. You can’t learn from them when you’re in them. If you’re in them—if you’re in the rapids, the rocks and the rapids are all these negative thoughts that we have. These negative stored energy. When you’re in the rapids, you’re just fighting to keep yourself from getting caught in the eddie and drowning. You need to get out of the rapids and be able to observe it, and the best way to do that is go to the mental gym every day, as soon as you start feeling that energy shift. So right now you’re in a good spot, right? You’re listening to me. We’re having a great conversation. You’re learning. You feel very calm. Soon, as you feel—and you know it, because you’re telling me you let it go all the way, and you get into those thoughts, and then your emotions, and then you’re feeling the physical things as a response.
That means you’re letting that loop gather energy and it’s just getting you completely off kilter. As soon as that happens, just like—this is what I tell moms and dads when they’re reading to their kids, you’re on the bedside and your four-year-old is reading and they’re doing a pretty good job and then they make a mistake. As soon as they make a mistake, you don’t go, “No, no, you’re doing great. Keep going.” As soon as they make a mistake you give them a hug and say, “Great job,” and you put them to sleep because as soon as they make a mistake they start to get frustrated and that’s the same thing going on then they think, “Oh, I’m not that good. I’m stupid,” and then they get emotional about it, and as soon as that loop happens, this part goes brain dead. This goes away. So it’s really important. Does that make sense?
Larry: Absolutely. Yes.
Dr. A: Yeah. So start there and just do it, and I’d love for you to come—kind of work on it, maybe for the next month, and maybe come back on next month and tell me how it’s working for you.
Larry: I will be here.
Dr. A: All right. Sounds great, buddy.
Larry: Thanks, man.
Dr. A: All right. Cool. Who else do we have?
Rachel: All right. Next up we have David. There you are.
Dr. A: Hey, David.
David: Dr. A. How are you?
Dr. A: I am fantastic. You know, it’s interesting. I’ve got more guys coming on today. I love it. I love it. [crosstalk 00:42:53] You know, we’re usually so tough, we have—nothing’s going on with us, right?
David: It must have been the inclusion of the word Jim in the promo this week. I wanted to just kind of pick your brain a little bit about the modality of meditation, and mindfulness meditation, or mindfulness-based stress reduction as a modality for the practices that you were talking about.
Dr. A: Yeah. No, listen anytime—so meditation, really, is understanding that you’re not okay, right? Because you’re actually shifting on something and then you create a before and after in your mind where you sense that, and the more you can regulate and get your body back into coherence—so, we have three types of coherences, we have physiologic coherence, we have emotional coherence, and we have cognitive coherence, and when those are in sync everything runs great and it doesn’t matter where you get out of sync, because I mean, a great example is, let’s just say you have an incredible athlete that’s in the Olympics. I’ll give you an example that happened three or four Olympics ago. There was a—I can’t remember his name, but he was a high hurdler—oh, no. It was a female actually. She was a high hurdler and she was incredible and all year getting ready for the Olympics she kept getting better and better and better, and she was going faster and faster. So she’s in the Olympics and she’s in one of the races, the 440 or something, and she’s actually, the announcers are saying, “Oh my God. She’s going faster than she’s ever gone in her life. She’s never—she’s ahead by the sixth hurdle.” She was so far ahead and the next hurdle she said she thought mentally to herself, wow, I really need to focus on making sure I get my leg up because it seems like those hurdles are coming faster than I thought. As soon as she had that thought, boom. She hit the next one and was down, right? So in here, we can affect our whole body, and even at the highest level.
So daily, when we meditate, we are in and even if you notice while you’re meditating that you’re basically still hearing the chatter, that’s okay, but you’re actually hearing the chatter. See most of the time the chatter—the voice in our head—is running our life, and we’re not separating ourself. We’re not becoming an observer. So meditation is a beautiful way to start to recognize that we have a voice in our head, and then that the voice in our head is not us. It’s thoughts, and then the same thing when we’re talking to Larry. He’s feeling actually the physiologic effects of the emotions. So he’s so buried in it, he’s feeling three levels down. So in everything we do the idea of Stop. Challenge. Choose., of using the techniques, using the mantra, using the switching thoughts, and of course, using the witness consciousness is to get ourself removed and be able to see that our thoughts are not us. Our feelings are not us, and certainly, this picture on my wall isn’t me. Right? We obviously know that. We know in consciousness that if I look outside of me, like if I look at this water, I know that that’s not me, right? We need to get to the point where we know our thoughts aren’t us either.
We can have thoughts, we can have auditory, and we can have visual, like right now if I asked you to tell me what’s in your refrigerator, right? You would create a mental picture. You wouldn’t be able to itemize it. You would create a picture. You look right at—I’m doing the same, I’m thinking, okay so I have coconut milk. I have mushrooms. I have—and I’m actually visualizing. The interesting thing, that’s a thought. That’s a visual thought I’m having, which is not me. If I looked at the refrigerator, I’m—again, if I’m looking in the refrigerator, I’m looking at consciousness from a physical level. If I’m looking at it in a mental picture, I’m creating a thought, but that thought isn’t me. So when you ask about meditation—a lot of people have trouble meditating. They can’t get the thoughts out of the way. Well, that’s a good start. Understand, you’re not going to be perfect. The mental gym is, you know, you don’t go in and—I’ve been moving, so I haven’t had access to my weights for a couple of weeks now and I’ve just been moving boxes and doing things to stay active, but if you don’t do it daily, you lose it. You’re going to go—you’ll go back to all your old behaviors.
That’s why My Prescription for Life, my new book, because if in that year you’re just taking that shot and you’re relying on that something outside of you—the shot—to lose weight, you’re in big trouble because if you’re not starting to do the habits that are necessary to create long term—if you’re not starting to learn how to eat healthy if you’re not learning how to exercise better, you’re not learning how to sleep, you’re not learning how to destress at the end of a year, those drugs stop working and you got to stay on them or you gain your weight back and you can’t come off them unless you’ve worked during that year on the things. The same thing is what meditation is. Meditation is a way of creating a separation so that now your thoughts are here versus in here. Does that make sense?
David: Oh, perfect sense. Yeah. Absolutely.
Dr. A: And that’s how you want to wield it, David. You want—I use more—it’s called glimpse practices, where I’ll just take a moment and I’ll look out at something. Like I’m looking out at a big column. I’m looking at that column and then I’ll ask myself, okay, who’s the observer that’s looking at that column, okay? My eyes are seeing the column. That’s the visual. The visual is going into my brain and that association is lighting up and showing me that. In my brain isn’t real, right? It’s just like a television. Think of your mind as being a television screen. Let’s say you’re watching Kansas City play football next weekend. You’re watching a picture that is digitally programmed onto your TV then it comes into your brain through your eyes. Through your perception. Comes in, it’s associated, but it’s not real. It’s a thought. It’s a visual pattern that’s being created.
[00:49:42] The same thing when you meditate. You start thinking, okay. I’m hearing—it’s creeping back in. I had this thought—whatever it is and it’s starting to creep back in. Recognize it and say, “Okay,” and then pick one of those three exercises to get you back so that you get rid of the thought or, if it’s important, and you’re sensing it, sense why I’m feeling that way, and then allow it to just totally relax into it and allow it to be. Don’t try to change it. Stop trying to change reality, because reality is reality. What we need to do is adjust to reality so that we become psychologically flexible enough so that when you go to sleep at night, and you’ve done the right things, if you don’t spend the hour in a ritual and you go to sleep, and the last thing you’ve done just as you close your eyes is look at this [Dr. A holds up his phone], you’re in trouble, because you basically, you’re going against your biological programming. You’re not looking at your circadian rhythm. We are organisms that have certain tendencies and we happen to be gifted and cursed with the prefrontal cortex. We get the emotional part like any animal. Listen, my labrador retriever—I could be gone all day and all he has was love and pure loyalty and he wouldn’t be pissed at me. He would be wagging his tail and just licking you and just happy as can be. Even if you were gone all day. They don’t have a prefrontal frontal cortex like we do. We’ve got this incredible gift, but it’s also our worst enemy.
David: I love it. Well, Dr. A. Thank you for the forum. Thank you for all the contributions you made to the world and wellbeing in general, but thank you for your contribution here.
Dr. A: I appreciate it, David. Thank you, so much. Cool. All right. We have nine minutes Rach. We have time for probably one more.
Rachel: All right next up we have Melissa.
Dr. A: Hi, Melissa. You’re muted. You’re muted so I can’t hear you.
Melissa: Okay. How are you?
Dr. A: I’m great.
Melissa: Good. So, okay, July 1st of last year I had a car accident and I suffered a concussion, some back stuff back, back and neck disc popped out or whatever, not popped out, but you know what I mean. They got displaced or whatever. So anyway, and then I had another. I was involved in another car wreck on August 18th. Okay? So due to that, like prior to that, my physical activity was on point. Honestly, seven days a week. These aminos have been amazing. I was in the best physical state that I had ever been in my life and from then to now, one thing that I’ve been very conscious of is keeping my nutrition on point because physically, depending on the treatments that I’m getting and stuff, I just had some PRP treatment on my lower back and you know physical therapy, all those things, I’ve not been able to be fully consistent with my workouts like I used to be. It’s been in and out and I have to—all the things, right? So, here we are seven months later, when I saw my physician for my yearly and explained to him what happened, just my blood work and stuff, and I explained to him what happened, he told me, he was like, “Okay. You’ve made big changes in the past three years, however right now, due to the things that you’ve been through, you’re in a chronic state of pain. Your cortisol levels could back up. Basically, everything that you reversed, you could see it start to come back in the next six months to a year.” So my question is, I refuse to let all this go down the drain, one. I’ve lost 62 pounds and have kept it off, and physically, just so much better and want to continue to grow in that. Will continue to grow in that. What can I do to safeguard that?
Dr. A: Well, two things. Two things come to mind. I got this covered. I’ve got you. Are you ready?
Melissa: Yes.
Dr. A: Two things. Stay the heck out of cars. First [Dr. A and Melissa laugh]. Tongue-in-cheek. Tongue-in-cheek. The second is, don’t—and this is not me being— listen to your doctor as far as medications or medical advice. Listen to your own self, which I just heard in terms of your physical health, right? So you’re doing all—okay, so the bottom line is, you’ve had some setbacks. Chronic pain. The best thing you can do for chronic pain is, of course within reason, is work on increasing your activity level. No question. The worst thing you can do is let it splint you. So you’re dead on, you want to continue, obviously, do it so you’re not creating more pain, but your ability to maintain your muscle mass, your flexibility, your strength, are all critical for your long term, especially if you’ve got some—now you’ve created some semantic dysfunction where some of your skeletal parts aren’t quite the same, but it’s really important to do that, and to do both a passive and dynamic stretching. So dynamic stretching means you do something like callisthenics or something before you start working out, and then afterwards you do passive stretching, which basically is how traditionally you stretch, and so I talk about that in the new book as well, but that’s very helpful. Second of all, your nutrition is dead on. Make sure you’re eating nothing that can stimulate insulin because insulin, directly with the glucose going up, directly creates inflammation. So you want to minimize your inflammation. You want to maximize your strength and flexibility.
I love that you’re going to PT to make sure they’re working on balancing to make sure your extensor and flexor groups are working, right, and then keep that beautiful attitude you got right up here, Melissa, because you’re in charge, and actually when you were telling me what your doctor was saying it just kind of made me think of Debbie Downer on Saturday Night Live, right? Because the bottom line is, you have the ability—there’s people that have a lot worse injury than you that have made complete recoveries and or at least gotten themselves back so they’re functioning, I mean, when I go skiing and I see people that are like double amputees that are—they’re not saying, “Oh, no. You’ll never ski again.” They’re out there with a chair with a ski on it and they’re skiing. So you are the most powerful Dominant Force in your life. Your physical and mental health determine everything. Your doctor is there to provide reactive to the things that are wrong with you and I’m not in any way, because I’m not your doctor, and I don’t know what the facts are of your physical injuries, but I can tell you your mental health is your business and everything you’re saying—so make sure you get the new book because I go into a lot more detail on the things you can do as far as that and on the nutritional parts, but yeah, the more—and by the way, keeping your weight off, staying out of metabolic, insulin resistance, is key.
Making sure you’re sleeping well. Making sure, if you do need, if you’re having trouble sleeping, that you’re using only natural supplements. Don’t use anything else, because a tendency sometimes for doctors will be to put their patients that are having pain, because they can’t sleep well—don’t take sleeping aids. Just stay natural is what I’m saying, as much you can.
Melissa: Melatonin? Magnesium?
Dr. A: Magnesium is a good one. Theanine’s a good one. I mean, I don’t give medical advice, but you can go and there’s—yeah, and in a small amount, melatonin. I’d rather have you take magnesium, simply because it’s relaxing. It’s a natural element. Just use it within reason. Use it with the directions, but yeah, those are great, and the other thing is really go in, and actually, in the new book, I talk about your evening routine, or you can go back to the Habits of Health, get a routine, an hour before, so you get a good night’s sleep. Inflammation, basically sleeping, getting into a deep sleep, and I talk about it in the new book, that if you think about—we just found this out—more and more of the country is under cognitive decline. More people are getting Alzheimer’s and what we’re finding out now is that every night when you go to sleep and you get in deep restorative sleep, not REM sleep, but deep, the deep sleep your brain actually shrinks, and it’s like in a city where they have the street washer. Your CSF fluid goes in and bathes your brain, around your brain and takes out all the amyloids and all the towel products, and it cleans it. It kind of street washes your brain, gets rid of all the breakdown products which keep us healthy.
When you don’t sleep well that doesn’t happen and so we’re finding more and more there’s just so many things we’re learning, how important sleep is, how important proper nutrition is, getting your insulin in control, and we’re finding more and more we don’t measure insulin. We measure glucose when you go to the doctor, and we’re finding that about 75% of Americans have insulin resistance. They already have higher than normal insulin because of the processed food and the crap we’re eating. The lack of good sleep, inflammation, eating processed food, and they’re not getting natural GLP-1 released from their gut because the food is absorbed proximately. So all these things together add up. So do all the natural things and in a year, go in and show your doctor that no, you’re not getting worse, you’re getting better. And by the way, same thing with cortisol. Your cortisol level is supposed to naturally come up around 4 in the morning as you get ready for your day. It gets you ready for your day and it raises your blood sugar a little bit. If you’re not sleeping well, your cortisol rises later in the day and then it becomes dysfunctional for you. So all the things you’re doing, keep doing them. Make sure you do it within reason. Don’t—obviously, the areas that you injured and you’ve only been seven months, it takes about a year for most chronic pain to go away. From an injury takes about a year, so you’re not even there yet. So don’t give up hope and start thinking we’re on our way down, and let’s go do what you do best, okay?
Melissa: He told me that and I was like, I bet not!
Dr. A: I love it. I’m not arguing with your doctor. I’m just saying there’s a better way.
Melissa: Yeah. Thank you so much.
Dr. A: All right. Thank you, guys. All right. Well, we’re at one o’clock. It’s time. This was really great and it was great hearing from guys, as well as girls. Again, this forum is designed for anyone that’s interested in improving their consciousness and taking control. So I highly encourage you, get to the metal gym today. Start off slow. I’m not saying you should be doing it all day long. Find those moments. Find moments for yourself and when you feel that “icky sauce” coming on, stop, challenge, and start taking control, because you—all of us have the ability to take control of our health, our wellbeing, and our lives. So God bless you guys. Bye.
