If you could choose between being happy and being right, which one would you choose? Think about that for a second and then dive into Session 39: Awareness: Our Greatest Asset.
Video transcript:
Dr. A: Good morning, everybody! This is Dr. A, and this is the Conscious Forum. I’m very excited about today, and you probably thought when you got your notice today that it was changing from 12 to 10—that was an April Fool’s joke, but actually, it’s not. If you can look and see, I am actually up in the mountains getting ready to go heli-skiing in a few days. The training right now—we just got dumped a whole ton of snow, and so they really wanted me to get out early for first tracks to get some intense practice in.
I appreciate you all. We will have this recorded, and it will be at its normal time. The great thing for you guys, though, those of you who have shown up, is you can ask questions. So that’s kind of cool. This will be an opportunity to maybe get a little more questions and an opportunity, because the Conscious Forum, as you know, is a place, meeting, or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged.
This forum, being the Conscious Forum, refers to the state of being aware of your surroundings, your thoughts, and your feelings. So, as we go through this today, I’m going to touch on a really fundamental piece that people throw the word around: mindfulness, and really get down to it in detail because I want to give you the construct. We’ll be talking in the months to come about this intense way that you can actually go into yourself and really learn how to separate our personal mind, or our ego, from what’s really happening around us. This will help you, obviously, with your fulfillment, your happiness, your success, your ability to focus, and your suffering. Because suffering is optional, as we’ve talked about for several years now.
Pain and things that happen in our life actually happen, and we have to deal with them, but suffering is totally optional. Suffering is when we create cognitive-emotive loops and put ourselves into position where we get going on something, and we just ruminate on it, it churns inside there, that voice in your head, and it won’t go away. So it’s suffering, and there’s no reason for it. We’re going to start off today basically talking about awareness; this is our greatest asset. And I have to tell you, in the electronic leash, and it’s getting worse, with our phones, because our phones are so advanced now that I went out to dinner the other night, and there was a family there with parents and four kids. I sat over and looked, and no one was talking to each other through the whole dinner. In fact, when they were eating, they all had their phones out. The kids had their iPads. The young kids were watching something on their iPads and basically, no one was communicating. There was no human interaction. There was no bonding, no sharing of ideas, no sharing of feelings, no sharing of love and caring. And we’re distracted. We’re in the most distracted times of our life. Most people spend their time unaware, in an unconscious state. And actually, they’re letting this greatest asset sit on the sidelines. So we’re going to talk about this in detail.
But the question I have for you: If you could choose between being happy and being right, which one would you choose? Think about that for a second. And I mean that seriously. Because most people are suffering throughout their day, they’re suffering throughout their life, and it’s because the ego needs to be right. It needs to know what’s going on; it needs to control the external environment. And as you know, there are 8 billion people out there; you’re one of them—one of 8 billion. And most of the time, what’s happening around you, you have little or very little control over. What you do have complete control over is what happens inside and how you respond to that. And the outcome is determined by that.
So why don’t you make the choice to create happiness? Because it’s right in front of you; it’s inside of us. And I mean that [unintelligible 00:04:02] for all—not just for some of us, not just for me because I’ve studied it and spent time studying it for years. No, it’s right there in front of you, and we’re going to explore how we think, our mind, our feelings, and how that works and put you in a position to start working on this. Because as I always talk about, we know we need to go to the physical gym to stay in good shape, especially as we get older. Muscle and strength are an incredible part of longevity. I mean, you don’t want to live—it’s not our lifespan that matters, it’s our healthspan. And our healthspan is determined by our muscles, our strength, our balance, but even more importantly, it’s determined by our emotional well-being. How do we handle our world? How do we experience our world?
So, for most of us, why don’t we make the choice? Because your ego is running your life. It runs your life, and it runs it every day. It’s got a program up there, it’s in charge, and it’s created the stories you make up. It’s the things that you desire—your likes and dislikes. That’s all determined starting when you were really little. You program yourself, and when the world responds, it’s kind of like a broken clock, right? Two times a day it’s right, but the rest of the time, it isn’t. There’ll be times when you feel great because the world fits your ego’s model of what the world should be like, and that can apply to everything: politics, food choices, going to restaurants, relationships, talking to people. It’s all determined by your ego, putting a personal mind in the way things should be. Bottom line: our perceptions, our choices, and our behaviors are the only things we can change.
So, we’re going to talk about the other way. There’s another operating system that’s already in you that you can use to guide yourself, and you can learn this. We’re going to talk about the fundamentals of it today, and then over the next several months, we’re really going to dive into it because it’s really cool, and it can actually put you in a position to change everything in your life.
So awareness: it is helping you discover that there is, inside you, the ability to be effortlessly mindful. It’s actually removing stuff, the barriers of our egoic mind, removing the barriers of our programming, our stories, our identity. All those things can be modified over time, but you’ve got to be able to go to the mental gym and do that. So, I’m going to give you some ways to do that today to get started on it, and we’re going to take this journey together.
There is in you this effortless awareness that is already mindful and attentive. So, there’s an area in there that, if you think about it, we’ve all experienced it before. I can tell you that, as a kid, I remember we lived in Savannah, Georgia. My father was in the Air Force. Back then, you’d go out in the morning in the summertime and say, “I’ll see you at dinner time.” You’d go out and you wouldn’t worry because there wasn’t too much—plus, I was on an Air Force base—but this base had runways on the other side of the base that were out in the middle of the swamp and there was a fence so nobody on the outside could get in, because of security to protect the runways. So, I could go out in the morning on my bike, go out into the middle of the swamp, and sit there and observe nature all day and have fun. I was in those effortless mindful experiences where I was fully engaged in that, and it was such joy. I remember the time going, just like that [Dr. A snaps his fingers]. It would be hours and hours, and sometimes I’d be late for dinner and get in trouble, but that was that period where I was just totally connected—no ego mind going on, no judgment, basically just really enjoying.
I had an experience. I’m out in the Rocky Mountains in Vail, and two days ago, I was up skiing and really working on perfecting my craft because I’m going to be jumping out of helicopters in British Columbia next week. There was a period where my instructor—we were working on some things, we’d skied together for years, and he’s actually coming with me heli-skiing–and I came around a bend, and it was really tough terrain, but I handled it really well. I came around the corner, stopped, and all of a sudden, I looked up and there were these huge bowls in Vail, which make it incredible for skiing. And all of a sudden, for the first time in a while, because I had been so focused on what I was doing and how I was learning, I looked up, and the sun was out. I saw the huge terrain and the magnitude of the Rocky Mountains, and there was a period where I was just standing there by myself. It was just that flow. It was that state of being in the full experience, and I’m spending a little time on that because I’m trying to put it in perspective.
You’ve all experienced it. It might have been a sunset. It might have been a time when you were playing sports, you know, the “flow state.” But we all have it inside of us, and what we want to do is learn how to bring that out and have that eventually become part of your humanity, part of your human connection, how you interact with relationships, how you deal with stressful events, how you’re able to now use your mind as this incredible tool that we can use it to help build happiness and joy into our lives.
So, what is mindfulness? Well, basically, the psychological practice involves paying attention to the present moment with acceptance and without judgment. So it’s about observing, paying attention to your thoughts, your feelings, your sensations, and any external stimuli. Obviously, as you sit there and look around the room, that’s the easy part, right? Although we miss it a lot, and we miss what our kids are saying and stuff, because we’re so distracted. So, it’s about becoming aware, in the moment. Second, describing—putting words to these experiences without judging them. So, as we look at something, an event or behavior or something, rather than judge them, we just simply observe them. Accepting, letting go of judgment. This is so important and so hard for us as humans, and simply notice what’s going on and then. And then of course, being present—focus on being here and now, rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. We have absolutely no control over either, and the present allows us to actually build a miraculous future if we’re willing to pay attention to the things that are important to us.
So, you know, one of the things we talk about is, “leading from the future, acting in the now.” Figure out where you want your life to go to give you this compass, and then, basically, in the now, be saying no to the things that aren’t moving you toward it, and make sure you’re saying yes to the things that are. Being this highly conscious state, rather than reacting to what’s going on and getting derailed all day long. So important. Mindfulness exercises include, you know, we use meditation, we use breath techniques, we use body scans, and we use guided imagery and it can be cultivated through going to the “Mental Gym,” as we’ve talked about.
[00:11:01] Okay. Why is it so valuable? Well, first of all, let’s first talk about mindlessness, because I think mindlessness kind of puts in perspective why it’s so important to become mindful. Mindfulness, or the lack of mindfulness, basically comes in many forms, as I mentioned: distraction, compulsions, being in denial, and reactive, these are states of the mind that can take over [unintelligible 00:11:29] and here’s something, a study that I found, that’s pretty amazing: they took college students and looked at them and asked the question, “What percent of the time are you focused, and what percent of the time do you have, so to speak, an unfocused state?” Basically, 50% of the time, these college students were totally unfocused—in other words, they were mindless, they had mindlessness. During those times, what percent of the time were you happy or unhappy? The study was incredibly revealing. 90% of the time, when they were unfocused, they were unhappy. Because when the mind is distracted, and we are distracted, we have a—the human mind is a wandering mind, it’s unhappy. So being able to become focused, develop attention, because when they were focused, they were usually in a state of happiness and sometimes in a state of bliss.
So, that’s why we want to become mindful, because if we’re more attentive, we’re less distracted, less impulsive, and less unconscious. It’s possible to learn this, and that’s kind of what we’re doing today. We’re setting you up to make sure that you understand, and hopefully, if you’re having issues with what I’m saying, make sure you’re ready when I finish to ask those questions. I really want to understand what you’re thinking about and how we can help that.
As a child, you all remember moments of freedom, right? We talked about it with my experiences, and you have the same experiences. But we had moments of freedom, like I said, when I was out in the swamp. And then, we had moments of contraction and suffering, where something would happen—maybe we were at school, and someone bullied us, and suddenly we went into a contracted state, and we weren’t very happy. We all know that.
So, remember that what we want to do is get you in the present moment without judgment. You might take notice and be aware of your mind, your body, and your surroundings. Mindfulness basically aims to help you become more self-aware—feeling calmer, less stressed, feeling more able to choose the response to your thoughts and feelings, cope with difficult or unhelpful thoughts, and be kinder towards yourself. All these things are so important, and we have a tendency to really judge ourselves and beat ourselves up. That’s not what we want.
So, bottom line is levels of mindfulness, and this is interesting because, if you think about it, there are multiple levels of mindfulness and what we want to do is take you all the way from mindlessness to effortless mind. But, if you think about it, one of the important things about building these qualities is stress management, right? Being able to kind of take the computer—you know, meditation is the one we usually use and the one we think of. We can use breathing too, but taking your computer offline—because your voice in your head is going all day long, and it’s full of thoughts, feelings, and actions. And so the idea of mindfulness is to take your computer offline and get yourself in position. Because if you’re willing to do this and build mindfulness, it’s actually better than taking a nap or listening to music. It really clears the agenda. It kind of clears all the clutter and the noise going on.
So, everyday mindfulness is the first level. That’s the level when we meditate, or we think in terms of general ideas. It starts with mindlessness—where most of us, or 95% of us, over 50% of the time, are in a mindless state, which means we have no level of true mindfulness. We’re not aware of much going on. We’re simply reacting to the day. It’s kind of like when you’re driving your car home, and you’re on the phone. You are basically mindless. You’re not paying attention. It’s actually not safe. But, unfortunately, we’re in that state quite a bit. At least we’re hands-free, hopefully. But everyday mindfulness is the things about, what’s going on? Do I want to take that turn or this turn? That mindfulness is everyday mindfulness.
Judging mind is the ego mind. The ego mind, to present an example, would be you’re listening to someone talk, and they’re saying something, and you’re not really in agreement with it. But you sit there and you go, “Well, I could say something right here, but I’m not going say something.” And you actually let them talk, but that’s your judging mind. You’re actually judging them. That’s not the mindfulness we’re talking about. That’s the mindfulness where you, as an ego, understand the environment. You observe what’s going on, so you’re aware of the level. But you’re aware of the level that’s judging people. It’s judging things. It can be judging watching a movie, judging watching a sporting event, judging watching politics, or judging watching religion. It doesn’t matter. But it’s where your set of premises, your operating system, is looking out and it’s aware, but it’s basically deciding whether it’s going to interact or not, and your ego is in charge of that.
The next level is where we start making the difference: the observing mind. The observing mind means that at this point, you’re able to move back. I’ve talked about this for a long time, and it’s really important. It’s the first real step in building true mindfulness. It’s when we’re able to understand that we have a thought process going on, but we’re able to move away from it and not necessarily engage. So you might say, “Well, I really should,” in this situation, in the ego mind, “I really should intervene here.” In the observing mind, you simply sit back and rather than react to it, and say, “Well, yeah, I’m not going to say anything.” Instead, you’re just observing it. There’s no emotional attachment to it. You say, “No, those are your thoughts,” and your thought may say, “I want to do something,” but you don’t need to even respond to that because you know that’s just something you’re thinking, something you’re feeling, and now you’ve moved back to the point where you’re aware of your feelings, but you have distance from it and you’re able to focus in a deliberate way.
You can basically move back to the point where you are going to—the observing mind is the subtle mind. It’s the mind where we’re able to detach ourselves and actually hear or observe the thoughts going on, either ourself or someone else, and just because you don’t act on it, because you don’t feel the attachment to it, so it’s basically detachment, right? It means that you’re able [unintelligible 00:18:27], so the stories you’re telling yourself suddenly are not part of identification. You start to see your compulsions, addictive behaviors. This mindful move, the stepping back or detachment, is about becoming the observer, right? And it’s so important because when we can do that, all of a sudden, we become a witness. And as a witness, this brings insight, right? It’s called, in psychology, “open monitoring,” but you’re able to actually look back and discover that you’re not your thoughts, your story, your conditioning, which is a tremendous relief and an important insight. Because at that point, you don’t need to suffer—because you can see that these are just things that are going on, things that are happening, but they’re not me, right? I’m separate from those. So, those are great.
Then, the fourth level of mindfulness requires one more move. So the move—moving from your everyday mind and your judging mind, or your egoic mind, to your observing mind. The move you make is to move back from it, detach from it, and that brings tremendous insight into your life. It allows you to make decisions that are based on logic, on the rational brain. But all of these, up to this point, are about the content of what’s going on in your life. Effortless mindfulness is the next level. It’s the next move, and that’s where everything opens up, and we’re going to talk a little bit about that.
[00:19:55] So, let’s move back here. What is it first? Well, it’s the natural next stage in meditation. Right? But you don’t have to meditate, you don’t have to be a monk or an infatuato of meditation or consciousness to develop this. This is really moving to a place where you’re going away from what’s happening and you’re observing this awareness that you have at a very different level. And it’s a level of context, so you see everything with logic, you see everything clearly. It’s like the experiences you have—like the one I had in the swamp or on the slopes the other day. This one’s a little more difficult, but it’s a way of shifting your consciousness and your attitudes. It’s not about trying to be a better person or avoiding bad habits. Basically, it’s about actually learning to read in terms of mindfulness.
You know, when you first learn to read as a kid, your programming changed, right? Overnight. Once you learn to read, it’s a whole new world. Well, the same thing happens as we develop effortless mindfulness, which was developed in Eastern philosophies a thousand of years ago. It’s basically a spacious embodiment. And, you know, right now, I’m not going to go into tremendous detail, but we’re going to be talking about it in the next several months because it’s really the state you want to reach, and it’s actually easier—it’s simple and simply available to all of us. It’s an opening in the ability to lead a full life.
So, just to kind of explain what I’m talking about: if we look at this practice, it allows you to unhook from the ego center. You put your ego center to the side, and you’re no longer looking at things in relationship to traditionally how your personal mind perceives them. So, everyday mindfulness, judgment or egoic mindfulness, and even observation—the conscious witness—are all about observing what’s going on around you and from your orientation. In other words, from how you sense and feel it, and even when you’re doing conscious observation, it’s still looking at it, it’s sensing it in an objective way, but it’s still coming from the center of you.
Here, you’re unhooking it, and you’re really getting to the central theme of humanity. It’s actually getting to the point where everything becomes just an incredible state of bliss. So, in essence, the awakeness you’re seeking is already here. It embraces all of you—your personality. So, it’s not about getting rid of your thoughts, it’s not about getting rid of your emotions. It’s about observing everything but doing it from the context of you, as a fellow human, connected to everything. This is a high state, but it’s actually an easy state to reach.
It allows you to drop into your heart, because, you know, we have this relationship between our brain, our mind, and our heart and it allows you to create this calm flow state, so even when things are stressful—and one of the things, as a critical care physician, I was really good at was being able to—now, this was an observing mind, this was not effortless mindfulness because I was involved with really sick people that were in the operating room or in the ICU, who were close to dying. I was able to see it very clearly and not sense or get emotionally attached to it, but actually be able to do my job and be able to help these people from dying. That separation—that’s the part I want you to think about today. It’s the point where you’re dropping in and living an embodied experience where your heart—basically you’re living from your heart, and you’re living from what’s most important. It allows you to organize your life, and even in difficult times, handle those times because you have this sense of balance.
So, if we look at that, it’s really, we have what we call coherence. We have physiological coherence, emotional coherence, and cognitive coherence. Coherence means everything is in sync with each other. Those are the times when you’re in the flow state that we’ve been talking about, that embodied consciousness, that effortless mindfulness, where everything is flowing. And we’ve all had periods like that, and we them during our day. What we want to do is teach you how to have those all the time because when we’re out of sync, we’re in a reactive state. We want to move you to where you’re in sync. Because if you look at it, if you’re frustrated, you can see what happens to your heart rate, it becomes—heart rate variability, you can see, when you’re frustrated, it really affects us. And by the way, emotional mismanagement, I’ve been saying for a decade, is the leading cause of death. If you’re stressed out about everything throughout your day, you’re releasing cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. You’re really messing with your adrenal axis. You’re messing with your insulin. When you’re stressed you’re going to develop insulin resistance, and we already have enough insulin resistance from the processed food we eat. We want to help you relax and not resist. And you can see, when you can move to a different state, this effortless state, you move into appreciation, and your whole body system goes back into coherence. And when we’re in coherence, we’re in a very healthy state, that allows us to live longer in that healthy state.
So, basically, why do we want to do this work? Because it increases our happiness, it increases our state of consciousness, and it creates the word described by equanimity—which basically means there’s a sense of calm. You can go through your day. The things that happen during your day is like water on a duck’s back, it just rolls off, and you’re able to function at a high level. And that’s what I want for you. I work every day on that state for myself, and it’s the gift we can give each other, and as I mentioned, it’s simple, and it’s simply available to all of us. So [unintelligible 00:25:58] you sit here today, you can observe this and take notice of it from an intellectual level, or you can make the decision that, “I really want to be happy. I would like to improve that part of my life. I can be a better spouse. I could be a better mother or father. I could be a better co-worker. I could be a better leader. I can actually improve my health and wellbeing.” So, it’s important to make that choice, and becoming conscious requires daily work. You have to decide to go to the mental gym.
In essence, for today, one of the things I’d like you to think about is: Do I really want this? Is it important to me? And if it is, make the decision to start working on your mindfulness. Start at the basic level. Your first goal is to become the conscious witness. Being able to start meditating, and meditating allows you to focus down so that all the distractions go away, and you know, I talk about that, the easiest step, as we’ve mentioned many times before, is to substitute something if you’re stressed out and there’s a negative thought pattern, change it to a positive one—and something that’s real. The easiest one would be if you’re in your car and you’re frustrated because the person in front of you is driving 5 miles per hour or 10 miles per hour below the speed limit and you can’t pass them. Change that and say, “Hey, what can I do now? It’s going to take me five more minutes to get where I’m going. Is it important? What can I do? Can I listen to a podcast? Can I think about what I’m going to say when I go to this meeting?” But turning it into a positive.
The second would be to do a mantra, which is to find a saying that you like, whether it’s “God,” “I love the still of the wind.” It could be anything, and repeat it in your mind—not out loud, but in your mind and it will take away the chatter and the voice in your head. And the third is reach the point—and it’s the more difficult one—where you become the conscious witness and you’re able to see everything and realize that the thoughts I’m having, the feelings I’m having, the things that are going on are not me. They’re simply my response to it. They’re probably not even real. And I’m gong to be able to look at it, smile, and have the insight so I can make the proper choice. With that, let’s open it up to Q&A. Rachel?
Rachel: All right. First up, we have Jeff. Jeff, can you come on camera and unmute yourself?
Dr. A: Hey, Jeff.
Jeff: Hey, Dr. A. How you be?
Dr. A: I’m great, buddy. Thank you, guys. I appreciate all of you that are on early, and made the adjustment. That’s part of psychological flexibility, right?
Jeff: Exactly. Yes. I’ve been re-listening to Jim Dethmer, your close friend and mentor, and talking about emotions and feeling it—what the bits are doing in your body and locating them. When the question comes up to me, I think, “Nowhere. I’m so shut down.” Even after years of trying, I still cannot locate those feelings and I know that when you suppress one feeling, you suppress everything across the board. So, I’m having less joy in my life, along with less anxiety or whatever and so instead, be able to process it. So, what do you recommend, becoming more aware of the sensations, or how to locate them?
Dr. A: Yeah, okay. So, first of all, you said a word in there that just, like, it’s like nails on a blackboard. You said, “No matter how hard I try.” “Try” is a really demoralizing word. It misses and says, “Well, I’m giving it a chance,” but, focus—you either do or you don’t. Okay, so the reality is, your emotions and the response where that is in your body is because emotions and feelings are a physiological response to the limbic area in your brain. Right? So there’s an area in your brain, as you know, that basically produces those things, and they can be in different areas depending on where that energy is stored, and so, usually, it’s a response to energy that’s been stored there and has a negative influence on you.
[00:30:12] Right? So the whole idea is, if you’re not really… if, when you feel the feeling, it’s being produced somewhere, whether it’s in the heart area-—like in the jaw, if it’s in the jaw, it’s usually anger, you’re stressed. If it’s in the gut, it’s usually that you’re scared. There are only five basic emotions, as you know. Everything else is a derivative of those five emotions. So, usually, if you sense it and feel it, you can actually kind of start isolating it and finding where it is, based on—what are you feeling? If you can identify it’s fear, then probably I would start focusing on your gut. If you’re hurt and you’ve had an emotional hurt because of, you know, in the area of joy, which is usually connected with our relationships and love, the love area, it’s usually in your heart.
For you, because you’re very intellectual, you might use the thought that you’re identifying that emotion and then helping identify the area and culturing that. Most people, it’s the opposite. Most people, they basically feel the feeling when it comes so hard and strong to them, and then they go, “Oh, my gut’s bothering me, I’m scared. There’s something scary going on,” right? See that? But in your case, it’s actually the opposite. So, you can identify it and then basically start focusing your attention. Because remember, that’s what body scans are about. I didn’t really get into detail, but your body scan is, at any given time, and not necessarily even when you’re having something that is really eliciting a strong emotion. But it’s important to start realizing that your body is going to tell you a lot about your state, your mental state, right? How are you breathing? Like, if you sense—and you know, this is all stuff we need to—we spend so little time—we’re in denial about our bodies. We ignore our bodies, and we don’t spend time with them, except for when we have designated time, like going to the gym or something.
But basically, throughout the day—and something that, you know, I’m very guilty of—I just never used to spend much time on. But now, as I’ve become really more attuned to effortless mindfulness, I’ll just stop, and I’ll do a body scan and sense, “Okay, how’s my breathing?” You know, breathing is a really good one because when we’re anxious, we breathe shallowly; we breathe from up here. When we’re relaxed and calm, we have great vagal tone, which the vagus nerve is our parasympathetic or calm state. It innervates the diaphragm, and we have slow, deep, very slow, methodical breathing, which is relaxed. And that’s why we counter that, in part of getting yourself from an anxious state, getting into a meditative state. That’s really about breathing because we take [unintelligible 00:33:12]. The autonomic nervous system. Your breathing goes on all day; you don’t think about it most of the time, right? But your breathing is controlled, but your breathing is going to be controlled to the state I talked about—physiologic coherence and cognitive and emotional—when you’re out of sorts, your breathing will respond to that and you can actually use that as a way, just like we were just talking about, of sensing, “Wow, I’m breathing—I stopped for a minuted and I’m breathing shallow and from up here—I’m anxious.” So, then, taking control, taking over, which is normally an autonomic system and now doing it manually—it’s almost like deferring when you go off autopilot and you go, “I’m going to drive the car manually,” right? Well, if you happen to have an automatic car, But basically, I’m going to take it. I’m going to take control of my breath, of my breathing, and I’m going to sense the slow rise of my belly, which means I’m now resuming deep belly breathing, which is autonomically stimulated by moving the diaphragm, which is innervated by the vagal nerve, and by doing that, it sends signals up to your brain, to your mind, and your mind starts relaxing. Does that make sense?
Jeff: So really, what I’m hearing is being proactive in your awareness versus reactive and waiting for a situation to happen, and it’s trying to find it, being proactive because those things are building up during the day anyway, and it just has a tipping point. And I’m waiting until that tipping point to try to find it when I should be looking for it beforehand and checking in.
Dr. A: Yeah, in fact, if you think about it, it’s kind of like—we talk about being able to, you know, events happen all day long in our life, when something happens, we have a tendency to slip down into the Drama Triangle. The whole idea of Stop, Challenge, and Choose—and why I created that—was to put ourselves in a position where, as soon as we sense something’s off, and you do sense that, you may not be able to locate where it is. As soon as you sense something’s off, become aware. Stop. Challenge—“Where am I right now?” and take control of it before it takes you any further. Hey, listen, we’re human. And, you know, I can sit here and say, “Well, you know, I’ve gotten really good,” and I have, but I can get upset because that’s part of our program. We’re human beings. It’s not the idea of being perfect or it’s not the idea—because we talk about going below the line, we’re all going to do that. When it happens, how quick can we be—and it all comes down to the whole topic of the Zoom today: awareness.
When we’re aware at a high level, and we understand that—and we’ve gone to the mental gym—so now, when that starts to happen, we don’t let it just go down on its own. Because it’ll dive all the way down into the Drama Triangle, and it will go quickly. Ninety-five percent of the world is in the Drama Triangle all day long, and they like it. And the reason why they like it is because you get an autonomic storm: this epinephrine, norepinephrine release, cortisol release. And we get a buzz from it. We become an adrenaline junkie. But it is so harmful for us, not just physiologically, not just on our bodies, but on our mind, on our relationships, and on our jobs. Learning how to take care of this is the most important thing you can do for your health and your wellbeing.
Jeff: I agree. Yes. So, thank you.
Dr. A: You’re welcome. All right, Rachel.
Rachel: All right. Next up, we have Jennifer. Jennifer, can you come on camera and unmute yourself? There you are.
Dr. A: Hey there, sweetie!
Jennifer: Hi! Happy spring in Colorado.
Dr. A: Thank you.
Jennifer: Well, I was hesitating to ask a question, but, you know, it’s been a while since we’ve talked, Dr. A, and I’m looking forward to seeing you again in Baltimore shortly. But, so, I’ve been going through something for the last few months that I am very unfamiliar with. You know that I’m an ICU nurse by career prior to being a full-time health coach. So, I kind of, you know, one of the things that an ICU nurse prides themselves on is that emotional agility in those high-adrenaline situations, right? Staying calm, figuring out the solution, being the resource, all of that. So, you know, and I was listening to you speak to… I’m sorry, I didn’t… I was so into it, I didn’t even notice his name, but, the man who just talking, but, recently, probably for the last, like, six months or so, I have had some—I don’t know if it’s from suppressing some stored energy, but there was an event, I lost my second mom, my mother-in-law, and, I was her nurse. We did home hospice, and that just really kind of triggered me, in sadness—in deep sadness, deep, deep sadness. And, I am just, you know, I feel like, after hearing you speak a minute ago, it maybe…there’s maybe grief.
[00:38:43] I think there’s definitely some grieving going on. But also, I feel like I have been projecting some emotions onto different situations and people. And I feel like I might be in a victim mindset right now. I’m not sure, but, I’m really just wondering, I want to hear you tell me some things about how these emotional seasons—and I don’t mean like the ICU kind of emotion, that I can handle—but like this deep-seated sadness that, anytime something comes at me right now, I feel like my go-to is like, “I’m just so sad right now. I’m just… I can’t snap out of it.” And, I think it’s just like, whatever. And I am doing all of the proactive things that I know how to do, which might not be the right things, but like exercising, and I’m eating well, and I’m sleeping well, and I’m spending time with my family, and I’m working diligently in my business, and things like that. But something is just still there, and I don’t…I— once you taste equanimity, it is really hard to be out of it for a long period of time. And I feel like I’m starting to kind of come out of this thing, but I just…yeah. I’m even doing therapy. I’m doing all the things.
Dr. A: Yeah, and that’s good. I’m glad you said that, because I’m not a psychotherapist. This, basically, the work that we present here, is an understanding of how things work. But when you have a deep-seated issue that’s having a profound effect on your life, that’s what psychotherapy is about. So, just to say that, I’m glad you’re doing that. Second part, though, some insights—maybe some things to think about—are that, as an ICU nurse, you were in that situation, and you were really good at it, right? And you did it every day. And as a result of that, it just became part of your day. In fact, you didn’t think twice about it. But you haven’t done it in a while, and you’ve been in a very different world—one of the creative process. Suddenly, real life—not in theory, but something very close to you—and, by the way, my thoughts and prayers go out to you for the loss, because those people are important. I mean, I know people whose dog is their best friend, and they’ve gone through it for years.
Jennifer: Oh, yeah!
Dr. A: What this has done is triggered something you did really well, and then something you’re not doing. In this case, you did the right thing. So underneath there, there’s some stored trauma, and it’s pretty significant. And so it was brought out in this situation, and because it was so emotionally strong, your ability—by the way—it’s not fixing it. You’re not broken. What’s happened is there’s something stored inside of you that started bubbling up during this period. And with a loss, a sudden loss created this energy that’s there and you’ve done all this work, and you’re so good at it all, and this is something that needs to come up. And so, it’s coming up in sadness, but the reality is, there’s something big and it’s something you need to not repress. So, rather than repress, deny—and actually, effortless mindfulness—what I’m talking about right now—is the ability to recognize that there is, inside of you, an awareness, an awake awareness, an embodied consciousness, a heartfelt embodiment, that needs to come up and needs to be fully present. This can actually be a great avenue for you to reach that next level of consciousness. So, as you’re coming out of it—but in the meantime, you have to be—no repression, no suppression, every time it starts to happen—and you know you have these big old cries, right?
You know, go into a corner. I mean, I can tell inside of you. I can just tell. I can just sense it. And you know, as one of your mentors, you know, it’s even resistant talking to me about it because you’re proud of the work you’ve done. All that is BS, girl. It’s all BS. What matters is the context of what’s happening here. And in the context, it’s not even actually the things that are happening. It’s the context. It’s awakened. It’s cracked into something stored deep in your soul, deep in your consciousness that you need to fully release because it’s blocking all your energy. It’s not allowing you to function at a state, and you’re able to act from a rational mind, but the level of emotional effect, so, you have significant emotional discoherance. You’re not coherent at all emotionally, and so you need to go in—well, first of all, not just with your—when are you going to see your therapist next?
Jennifer: I see her every week on Zoom.
Dr. A: Every week. Okay, so how many days before you see her again?
Jennifer: Tomorrow.
Dr. A: Okay, so today, what I would love you to do is spend time with yourself and just start letting this stuff bubble up. I mean, just let it bubble up. Don’t try to push it down. It’s like a coiled spring.
Jennifer: It’s like you know me.
Dr. A: Yeah, I know. I do. I do know you, and I know it’s like a coiled spring and you’re—nope, just like in the ICU, “Man. I can put my emotion”—no, you can’t in this case.
Jennifer: Go organize a drawer, go do something. Go take a walk. Go get out of here.
Dr. A: That’s not gonna do it. Exercise is not going to do it.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Dr. A: What it’s actually doing is, it’s cracked into something that’s the underlying structure of stored energy that’s happened sometime in your life. Doesn’t even matter.
Jennifer: I lost my parents when I was young, and so my husband’s mom became my second mom.
Dr. A: Well, there you go, there you go. But the point is, it’s the past. Okay, but it’s still having its impact on you because you never fully processed it. And actually, what Jeff was saying—one of the things Jim talks about is fully processing your feelings, right? You’re not fully processing; you’re actually trying to manipulate them because of all the skill set you have. This is not a time to be strong; this is a time to be grateful, a time to be fully sympathetic to yourself and allow this stuff to bubble up. I mean, just—I’m watching you. I’m watching you. You look a thousand percent better than you did five minutes ago. You’re smiling, you’re laughing, your face is lit up.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Dr. A: You know this. Let it go. In fact, what I would love for you to do is, for the rest of the day, if you have time, spend this day for Jennifer— not for your coaches, not for your leaders, not for your husband, not for anybody else. Spend this whole day, as best you can, for yourself. Just have some really good cries. Let it all flow up. Don’t resist anything. Don’t suppress anything, and it’s going to lead you to where you need to go. And then, basically, be fully conscious of it in a context, not just in content. We know the content—you’ve already told me what the content is, you just told me what happened in your life. But in the context of how it’s inside of you, how it’s blocking your energy, and let’s start working on releasing it. Then tomorrow, have a great—you’ll have the best time with your psychotherapist you’ve ever had, and then you’ll be able to process it, and they’ll help guide you through it.
Jennifer: I appreciate that. I never thought about the blocking the energy piece.
Dr. A: Oh yeah, you’re blocking it big time because you are, you know, psychological flexibility. You know all these things. You can’t—see, if you really contextually look at yourself versus the content. The content you can just, like, in the ICU, you can take the content and work through it. This is context. This is actually your very embodiment of your soul. This is something that you repressed for your whole life, that, for whatever reason—and thank God, even though it’s a sad time, it’s actually a really important time for you, because it’s a time to take yourself to that next level, where you’re releasing it, because all that stuff that’s in there, you’re not okay. You can say you’re okay, but you’re not okay.
Jennifer: Yeah
Dr. A: And the whole idea—it’s not external work, it’s internal work. It’s pure consciousness, letting it flow and letting it come out. Cool?
Jennifer: Love you. Thanks.
Dr. A: Alright, you’re welcome. Alright, let me know how that goes. Alright. Rachel?
Rachel: Alright, next up we have Michelle. You’re unmuted. I need to turn on your video. If you can.
Michelle: I think it’s…should be good. Not. Hold on.
Rachel: There you are. Oh.
Dr. A: I saw you just for a second there, and then you went away.
Michelle: Sorry!
Dr. A: No worries.
Michelle: It’s slow.
Dr. A: That’s okay. Well, you can go ahead and talk while we’re waiting for you to come up live.
Michelle: Okay, yeah. It’s like a really slow lag time.
Dr. A: Yeah. I see you now.
Michelle: Okay. Morning. Story for taking the time, Dr. A. Good morning. So, I’m going through a giant transition…
Dr. A: I think you actually, maybe, should turn your video off because your data, your bandwidth isn’t too good, and I can’t hear you. So maybe try it with just the audio, because you’re not in a good…
Chris: We may have lost Michelle.
Dr. A: We lost her?
Chris: Possibly. Her connection is not looking so good. So why don’t we go ahead… [crosstalk 00:49:03]
Dr. A: Okay. You got somebody else, Rachel?
Rachel: Yes.
Dr. A: Then we’ll come back to Michelle.
Rachel: Yeah, we’ll move on to, Tanya.
Dr. A: Okay.
Rachel: And then maybe come back.
Dr. A: Okay. Hi, Tanya.
Tanya: Hi, Dr. A.
Dr. A: How are you?
Tanya: Good. I’ve been lying in with a granddaughter this morning, so I’m not in the best attire, but I love listening to you and these Conscious Forums. I’m curious: you talk a lot about heliskiing. Is that a passion you’ve always had, or is it something you developed and challenged yourself to do something that you found to be challenging, and then realized how critical it was to have mentorship and kind of paired that with your life journey? I find, being a health coach and helping people, that they don’t seem to want to find something that will challenge them and also something that they find is important to bring in, and have a mentor to come alongside them. And so, I find in their health, they really struggle to be able to see that it’s going to require both: somebody that’s kind of led the path in front of them, and to allow them to come alongside. I’m just wondering if—because I can imagine you at an expert level, in your education level, and where you’ve been in your life, that if you could just bring it in how it is for you, no matter what level you are, how important is it to continue to see that that’s a valuable asset?
Dr. A: Yeah, well, no, that’s great. That’s a great question, and the answer is: 10 years ago, I would have, if you told me I was going to go heliskiing, I would have said, “You’re crazy,” because I wasn’t that good of a skier. And one of the things is knowing reality. You know, Clint Eastwood in his movies years ago said, “A man’s got to know his limitations,” right? And it’s important to know the balance of what reality is. So, for me, I’ve always been open, curious, and wanted to grow. And so, that’s actually what we’re talking about, versus being closed, reactive, and wanting to be right, you know, and defensive. That’s a fundamental state of being that can be nurtured by everybody, and even what we’re talking about today, by becoming more aware, by becoming more cognizant, versus denying it. It’s easy to stay in your comfort zone, but it’s also really boring, and it’s actually a distractive state. So, the ability to grow—so, the answer is, I decided, you know, while I was going to college, medical school, internships, and residencies, I really had very little time to ski, and I would go maybe once a year, and I never had ski lessons. I never really got any better, and I would look down sometimes from the lift, and I’d see some of these guys skiing or girls skiing like really lights out, and I’d think, “Wow.” I would say to myself, “I wish—part of me says, I wish I had taken a year off between college and medical school and learned—come out and learned how to ski.” But I realized, in the whole scheme of things, listen, you know, skiing is fun; it’s a hobby I like. But where I am now, because of all the time I spend in training, and you know, unlike my fellow physicians, I trained through two fellowships: one at Cleveland Clinic, and then one at the University of Miami in Jacksonville Memorial. So, I didn’t even really get out into practice till I was 32, because I wanted to become the best at what I did.
[00:52:17] So, the answer is, once I had the resources and had the time, I had a fellow family that we went skiing with, he had a ski instructor that came over, and I built a relationship, and he was a much better skier than I was. So, I asked the ski instructor, “Can I get that good?” He had been with me all day, and I asked questions. He says, “Yeah, you’re one of the most curious, ego-controlled person. Everything I say, you listen to. You don’t argue.” Yeah, and so, there was this 10-year learning, growing, becoming more, asking questions, never being satisfied with where I was—not needing to be right or thinking that, “You know, I’m good now,” but actually saying, “How do I get better?” Including, by the way, what I’m going to be doing in, what, another 15 minutes? I’ll be out with not even my normal instructor—a different instructor—and I’m a good skier. I mean, I can ski anything on this mountain, but the bottom line is, I’m getting ready to go up to, to your point, one of the scariest things you can do, because they drop you out of a helicopter at the top of a mountain. There’s no ski resort. It’s just nature, and you’re there with a guide, and you ski stuff, and you have to be very precise.
So, I’m at a point now where this trip going out is really the first time that I’m, you know, I’m nervous, because you need to be nervous. You need to be on your best game, but it’s at a point where I’ve done the work, and now I feel that I’m ready to take it to that next level. But that doesn’t happen by accident or willpower or the secret. That happens by doing the work. And so, the work within consciousness, this work, is so hard because you have inside of you this little parasite called your ego—your personal mind—that basically, at one time when you were little, served you well. Just like what Jennifer was… Jennifer has inside of her something that she’s repressed forever, and she’s gotten so good, it took an event like losing her mother-in-law to really unsurface something that’s been down deep, that’s ready to bubble up and so, for all of us, it’s really important to first be open, curious, and want to learn more, and then to be willing to learn and grow. With clients or coaches, to be able to set that up so that they want to do that. It’s like the analogy of you can’t make a horse drink water, but you can salt their oats. Our role, as fellow humans, is to be very conscious, non-judgmental, and in that open state—just observe and be there for other people, and help them in ways that we can. We should not tell them what to do, but open up their desire to learn and grow.
Being in the comfort zone is so easy, and most of us stay there. Like this morning, you were nice and cozy, which is a lot better than if you were going out right now, say, for lunch to a formal event, and you had to dress up, do your hair and makeup, put on high heels, and everything else, right now that would be very uncomfortable for you, because you’re just not in that mindset right now. The same thing for our mind in general. Our mind in general does not want to reach out and be in an uncomfortable state. That’s because it’s run by your ego and your ego’s first line of defense is to keep you safe in its own form. Most of the time, it’s doing you a disservice. So, the whole idea is to put your ego aside. It’s okay to have confidence. For me, my evolution has been—and being number one in my class in medical school, being one of the first board-certified critical care—there was an egoic part of that self-interest in wanting to be the best. It’s not that it’s wrong or right, because there’s really no wrong or right, but at that point, I was in charge—basically, with the nurses and even with the other physicians. I was in charge, and that was a very different relationship to where I am now.
Now, at this point in my life, I’ve never been happier, more joyful, or more in control of my world, because I’m now in a highly conscious state. That growth took years. In essence, my ego has moved from being in service of me to being in service of my soul. My soul is me, as a fellow human, being connected to the people I care about. I absolutely love—you know, one of the options would have been to not do this call, but I love doing this call because I know it’s helping people and I enjoy it very much. Just like I’m going to enjoy being on fresh powder in 30 minutes, I’m enjoying very much talking to you, Jeff, and Jennifer, because our souls—our souls are there, and if you’re inquisitive—I spend as much time as needed with people who are raising their hands, open, curious, and want to grow. I spend no time with people that are closed, defensive, and want to be right. Because if they want to be right, then I can’t help them—they’re not open. Their ego is running the show, and you can knock on that and say, “Hey, do you want to put your ego to the side?” They don’t even know what that is because their ego’s in charge, if that makes sense.
Tanya: No, it makes 100% sense and I think what you’ve said, to summarize that, is somebody—you asked if I could grow to that level, and they said, “If you’re open and curious,” I think that’s exactly the key, because that means that you will put in the effort.
Dr. A: You can’t—it’s not like… You know, the interesting thing is, in most businesses, like if you sell someone a car, they’ve got the car and they’re stuck with the car. Right? Whether they loved you or not, they’re stuck with the car. You can’t sell health and wellbeing; it’s an internal job. So you can awaken them, you can show them the potential, you can show them that there’s hope and there’s a direction. And we have, you know, a pretty big body of success in helping people, and then they can decide to do it. So, I don’t ever convince anybody to lose weight or get healthy. I basically open up the idea: “Are you willing to make that choice?” And I even come down to this: “If you could choose Optimal Health, would you make that choice?” If the answer is yes, then great, we can help you. But you’ve got to make that choice. You’ve got to decide that you’re open, curious, and you want to grow. What they are, to this point, is their past. Their current health is a result of their current mindset, their current program, and their current operating system. Until they’re ready to change that, there’s nothing external to them—there’s no fueling, there’s no pill. The shot, the GLP-1 shot, none of that is going to actually help them create health unless they’re willing to take control and command. And that’s actually, you know, I’ve just written a new book called, “My Prescription for Life,” which is all about that. Because we have so many people thinking they’re going to do something external, like take a shot and suddenly they’re going to have it all figured out. I mean, they may lose weight because they can’t eat, because their appetite is gone, and if they’re not doing it the right way, they’re going to lose the wrong kind of weight. They’re going to lose muscle, and they’re going to find out a year from now that they’re actually in worse shape than they were before. So, it’s all an inside job. If that makes sense?
Tanya: That’s like putting on your skis and getting dropped out of the helicopter and realizing it takes more than the equipment.
Dr. A: Yeah, you wouldn’t make it too far.
Tanya: Thank you!
Dr. A: You’re so welcome. Okay, we’re out of time—it’s basically 9:00 my time. Great questions today. Really enjoyed this. Thank you for all your input, and make the decision: do you want to be happy? If the answer to that is yes, then start working on this and work on the things. Review this—we have this online. You can go to drwayneandersen.com and review this video. I would do that, and let’s go out and change our lives. See you guys. Bye.
