Cathleen Beerkens, Founder of A Wellness Revolution & Author

Cathleen Beerkens, the founder of A Wellness Revolution, and author of the new book, YOUR CREATOR MATRIX: How to Use Optimal Wellness and Quantum Healing to Master Your Story and Create Your Reality, talks about how quantum physics and the emerging sciences of epigenetics, glycobiology and nutrigenetics can support optimal health.

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
This is What's at Risk with MikeChristian on WBZ Boston's news radio. Hi,
Mike Christian. Here of What's atRisk. First up on tonight's show,
we present an encore edition of What'sat Risk. Katie Milkman, behavioral
scientist and professor at the Wharton Schoolat the University of Pennsylvania, shares creative

(00:22):
and strategic methods for overcoming common barriersto change. And In our second segment,
Kathleen Beerkins, the founder of aWellness Revolution and author of the new
book Your Creator Matrix, How touse optimal wellness and quantum healing to master
your story and create your Reality.She talks about how quantum physics and the

(00:45):
emerging sciences of epigenetics, glycobiology,and nutrigenetics can support optimal health well Hello
everyone, great to have you withus today. We have Katie Milkman,
who is a behavioral scientist and professorat the Wharton School at the University of
Pennsylvania. Over the course of hercareer, she has worked with or advised

(01:06):
dozens of organizations on how to encouragepositive change, including Google, the US
Department of Defense, and the AmericanRed Cross. Her research is regularly featured
by major media outlets such as TheNew York Times and The Wall Street Journal
and NPR. Katie, great tohave you today, Thanks for joining us,
Great to be here, Thanks forhaving me. Maybe a good place
to start would be for you justto tell us about your life's journey and

(01:29):
how you got to the spot.Oh gosh, sure, let me just
go back to I'll go all theway back to college, because that as
an academic, that's sort of animportant moment when you start to figure out
how you can make a contribution andwhat topics interest you. As an undergraduate,
I was really interested in engineering.Actually, I wanted to use mathematical

(01:51):
models to make progress on important problems. And I wasn't enamored with economics when
I first encountered it. I founda lot of the assumptions inherent in it
to be realistic. I thought Iwould be an economics major, but actually
ended up going into summer school soI could switch and become an engineer.
And interestingly, I think that connectsto a lot of what I do now
because it took years. It tookuntil graduate school, late in graduate school

(02:14):
to sort of discover this field thatI'm a part of which is behavioral science
or behavioral economics. But what itdoes is it tries to solve human problems
with a recognition that the traditional modelof how people make decisions that were optimizers,
which is what economics assumes we cansort of take in all of the
inputs in the world and calculate theperfect solution, decide how much to save

(02:34):
for retirement and when, and howmany calories to eat and when, and
what job to take and why,and which partner to pick and how that's
going to work out. Behavioral economicssays no, actually, we can't make
all those calculations optimally. We mightneed a bit of help, And it
starts to put parameters around what arethe mistakes we make when do we make
them? So I started as myjourney as an engineer and found my way

(02:55):
to behavioral economics after pursuing a graduatedegree in computer science and business and got
really focused on the challenge of behaviorchange and how can we help people make
healthier decisions about well first their physicalhealth but also their finances, their education.
How do we help people make thosechoices that they'll look back on with
pride in the long run and feelthe right decisions were made with an understanding

(03:20):
of the limitations of human nature.So it really actually as an engineering problem,
and it goes back to the rootsof what I was interested in.
It just took me a while toput it all together. That's pretty interesting.
What inspired you to shift over tobehavioral change, particularly that aspect of
helping people through their own changes inlife. Yeah, so I got really
interested in just fundamentally understanding human decisionmaking and understanding all the mistakes we make.

(03:43):
When I was a graduate student,because I was pursuing a PhD in
computer science and business, I thought, you know, the Internet seems like
this is now taking me back twentyyears right. Understanding this new technology and
its application for decision makers patter wouldbe really interesting. And I encountered behavioral
economics as a a field while Iwas taking PhD level classes and thought that

(04:04):
this looked like a really cool wayto start understanding the way the Internet and
new technologies were interacting with consumers.So I studying decision making. I got
a job as an assistant professor atthe Wharton School, which is where I
still teach now. I was exploringa lot of different fields, and one
of the places I wandered was overthe medical school at the University of Pennsylvania,
and I saw a talk there thatreally did change my life trajectory.

(04:28):
It was by some researchers at thenursing school, and they were talking about
the percentage of premature deaths in theUS that are due to different factors,
and they showed this pie chart thatbroke down what fraction of premature deaths in
the United States are due to thingsthat you might have an intuition would be
very large, things like genetics,things like accidents, environmental risks, and

(04:49):
so on. But one of thewedges in that pie chart was the percentage
of premature deaths that are due tobehaviors we could change. And what blew
my mind is that that was actuallythe biggest wedge. Forty percent was the
estimate of premature deaths in the UnitedStates are due to behaviors we could change.
And these are behaviors around whether wesmoke or not, whether or not

(05:10):
we eat healthily, whether we exercise, whether we buckle our seat belts when
we get into cars. And thedegree to which that added up and had
major consequences I had not appreciated untilI saw that graph, and as someone
studying decision making, I saw abig opportunity for impact there. I sort
of said to myself, look,I'm already studying the mistakes people make.
What if I could use these insightsto make a dent in that massive and

(05:31):
important problem. And at the sametime, the recognition that these small decisions
we make on a daily basis accumulatesso much to affect our health made it
clear to me that the small decisionswe make in other domains must accumulate more
than I appreciate too, whether it'syou know, whether to study for this
test, whether or not to savethis paycheck or spend it. It seemed

(05:53):
clear that this cumulative calculus that wasbeing depicted in that graph would matter in
many settings. And that's really whatgot me. Late are focused on applying
the tools of my discipline to thetopic of behavior CHANGEH got it. It's
really interesting the forty percent that youreference, that's a staggering number. You
think, it's very remarkable, andI think you know estimate today would put
it higher, especially if you lookat things like the opioid crisis, which

(06:15):
hadn't even begun at that point,and certainly as about the decisions we make
so with of course, you know, lots of structural inequality contributes to all
of this as well. I don'twant to say that is a huge fraction
of the forty percent, but tothe extent that we can use our understanding
of what leads to daily decisions,both structurally and psychologically to tackle this,

(06:36):
I think there's a big opportunity totake a step back and just look at
maybe this self improvement part of change, where so many people are focused on
self improvement. Right, I'm goingto stop drinking, I'm going to work
out more the whole gamut of thingsthat people always talk about what creates that
sort of underlying tension to think aboutchanging all the time, because I think

(06:57):
most people think about I got toget better, I got to get just
get better, whatever your name.Yeah, what do you think creates that
tension? That interests me a lot. I think it's really interesting too.
I think there's a few things goingon. One thing is that we are
imperfect. This is like a majortenant on which religion is based. But
it's also a fact if you lookat the way people make choices, we

(07:18):
make a lot of mistakes. Weare actually wired in ways that trip us
up. We're wired to take shortcutsthat gets us to a faster solution,
so that can be very efficient,but it also means it's an imperfect solution.
We are wired to be fairly impatient. In general. We overweight instant
gratification over long term rewords. Andyou can see why that might have evolved

(07:38):
to be a reasonable strategy. Right, if you have an opportunity to eat
a whole lot and you're not surewhen you'll next get to eat, gluttony
would be a really good idea,right. But in the modern environment,
some of these features of the humanoperating system are not optimal, and as
a result, we make a lotof decisions that we regret, and that
leaves room for us to always wantto grow and get better and think,

(07:59):
well, next time, won't beso glad this. You know, Next
time, I won't procrastinate as muchon this assignment. Next time, I
will, you know, not takethe shortcut, but rather solve this problem
perfectly. So, because there's agap between perfection and where we land as
human beings, I think it's verynatural for us to aspire constantly towards improvement.
Some reflections on the power of habit. We all know old habits die

(08:22):
hard. And Charles Reed said,so an act and you reap a habit,
So a habit and you reap acharacter. So a character and you
reap a destiny. And Aristotle hadthis to say. Moral excellence comes about
as a result of habit. Webecome just by doing just acts, temperate

(08:43):
by doing temperate acts, and braveby doing brave acts. And so we
have an awareness of the fact thatwe could do better, but don't necessarily
always do that. That's right.And of course this can lead to lots
of unhappiness, and so maybe weneed therapy to get through some of our
our unhappy witness with the state ofwho we are and where we'll be able

(09:05):
to get. But I also thinkit's healthy to be striving. Goals are
generally one of the things that makepeople happy. When we have a goal
to focus on, we achieve more, and it can be very satisfying to
be pursuing it. It gives yousomething, you know, to wake up
in the morning and get excited about. So even though you might say,
well, we should just learn tobe happy with who we are, I

(09:26):
ask I think there's real benefits tothe striving that comes with human nature.
So you wrote a bestseller, howto Change the Science of getting from where
you are to where you want tobe. Maybe you can talk a little
bit about the science behind that book. The premise of the book is that
there are a series of different limitationsthat we faced. Rather than trying to

(09:46):
say there's a one size fits allsolution to any goal you want to pursue,
it's really important to understand what arethe barriers you're up against. Whether
or not the reason you're not,say, taking your medications reliably is because
you're forgetting, or because find itunpleasant to do so, or because you
lack confidence that it will work.What's the actual barrier? Maybe you aren't
going to the gym because you can'tfit it into your schedule, or maybe

(10:07):
you find it miserable to be there. The best solution actually is going to
differ, and the best science willdiffer on what prescriptions it offers. So
what the book does is it sortof breaks down the internal barriers to change
into a number of big categories andtalks about the science in each, and
those begin with the challenge of gettingstarted. So how do you just motivate
yourself to begin. Once you seta goal and there's something you want to

(10:28):
change about yourself, or your lifeor your productivity, how do you actually
get over the hump and begin Italk about laziness, which is also related
to habits. So how do weovercome those bad habits, the routines that
aren't necessarily serving our goals? Andthen there's the barrier of confidence. If
you don't believe you can do it, you're not going to make progress.
And finally, conformity. And thissort of starts to straddle the internal and

(10:52):
external. But when we are surroundedby people who suggest a certain type of
behavior is desirable and feasible, thatcan shape us. So those are the
barriers. How do we slip intothese bad habits? So many things we
know are not good for us.You know, you're working out when you're
a young person, you're in greatshape, and then over time you just
slip into a bad habit. Isit those barriers you reference theirs? They're

(11:13):
a deeper reason for it. Yeah, it's a good question. Bad habits
do normally come from some positive reinforcementwe get when we engage in the behavior.
So if you think about something likenail biting, which is a common
bad habit. The research on habitssuggests that evolves because we're getting some satisfaction,
some anxiety reduction from say, nailbiting. When you're in a situation

(11:33):
you don't know what to do withyour hands. At some point you put
them in your mouth and that gaveyou some relief because you knew what to
do, and then you sort ofrepeated it, and the relief continued,
and then eventually it's stopped being thatyou needed the relief. But once you've
built that habit through repetition and reward, it's sticky and really hard to break.
So a lot of bad habits evolvedbecause they initially serve some function.

(11:54):
We repeat the behavior, we getthe reward, and then they become just
a routine that we repeat without thinkingeven when there's no longer a benefit.
And is forming a good habit mostlyfocus and discipline. I know she have
Angela Duckworth. She wrote the introductionto your book and the preface to your
book, and you know I loveher book on grit. Does it take
grit to change yourself? And someof these cases are there are other techniques

(12:16):
you alluded to. Other techniques before, so I guess it's a two part
question. Actually think that if youtry to rely on grit when making change,
that's the hardest approach. It's theleast intelligent in a sense approach.
It's the least wise strategy. Nikelikes to say, just do it,
and most of the research suggests thattrying to push through pain is exactly the
wrong way to create change. There'sa wonderful research study that was done by

(12:37):
isle At Fischbach at the University ofChicago and Caitlin Wooley at Cornell University showing
that if we find it unpleasant topursue a goal, the act of pursuing
the goal isn't fun in and ofitself, we quit much faster than if
we are enjoying it. This makesa lot of sense, but actually most
people make a mistake when thinking aboutgoal pursuit. They look for the most
efficient path to success as opposed tothe path that will be enjoyable, and

(13:00):
that leads to a lack of persistence. So, in general, when we
want to make a change, findinga way to do it that won't require
grit, that isn't fighting an uphillbattle, ends up being much more effective
instead of having these high aspirations,should you modify your goals to step into
a greater goal over time on goalsetting does suggest that it's important to have

(13:20):
stretch goals as opposed to really easygoals, because if your goal is trivial
and you're going to achieve it regardless, then it's not going to serve any
function. The function of a goalis something that's an attractor that you're focused
on that's changing your behavior. Soif you think about a goal, a
lot of us have a lot ofus where say step counters that jingle when
we get to ten thousand steps.There are many nice things about ten thousand,

(13:41):
right, It like it was amarketing ploy. The person who came
up with ten thousand. It's anice round number. It is a stretch
goal for most people naturally, ifthey weren't pushing themselves, would not get
there. I think some of theresearch suggests a goal that's maybe ten to
twenty percent harder than what you donaturally is ideal. So you don't want
to have trivial goals. You dowant to do when you think about setting

(14:01):
goals actually is break them down intobite sized pieces. And this is a
mistake a lot of people make.They might say I want to run a
marathon leader this year, or Iwant to get my GED or my undergraduate
degree or this certification, and that'sa big goal and that sounds great,
you know, or I want toget in shape, But you actually get
much further if you think about whatis a concrete step I need to take

(14:24):
this week? What's the proximal bitesized step I need to take, and
how will I do it? Ithink I read this is a comment from
you motivate yourself in a consistent way. Maybe you can describe that a little
more. One of the things that'simportant to understand about change, and that
relates to that quote of motivating yourselfin a consistent way, is that too
often people think that they can geta quick fix. So let me give

(14:46):
you a really concrete example of atool that has helped me and has helped
many other people, and that ourresearch shows can be helpful in many contexts.
That I call temptation bundling. Sosome of us the barrier to getting
things done is we don't enjoy ourpursuing our goals. We talked about that
already a little bit for me,A a good example of this is exercise.
I don't particularly find it fun tohop on the elliptical at the end

(15:07):
of a long day, even thoughI know it's really good for me and
it makes me feel better and ithas all the benefits. But I'd rather
sit down and binge watch TV.That's what I'd rather do at the end
of a long day. But temptationbundling actually flips out on its head.
A temptation bundle in this case wouldbe what if I only let myself binge
watch my favorite TV shows while I'mexercising on the elliptical. Now, at
the end of a long day,I'm going to come home and I'm going

(15:28):
to actually crave getting on the ellipticalto find out what happens to my favorite
characters. I'm not going to wastetime watching TV when I should be doing
something more productive, and time willfly while I'm exercising. So that's an
example of the strategy for changing behaviorthat sort of tries to use the science
of making it more fun to pursueour goals effectively. Well, the problem
is, it's still not fun togo to the gym. The only reason

(15:50):
that you're going to the gym isthat you sort of tricked yourself and you've
created something that makes it joyful.But if you abandon that strategy, problem
still exists that the gym isn't thatfun. And if you can binge watch
TV and your favorite show while you'resitting on the couch at home, guess
why you're not going to go tothe gym. So I think an important
thing to understand about any of thestrategies that science has proven can help us

(16:11):
overcome the barriers to change is thatthey're not one and done. They're permanent.
You need to use the strategy foreverbecause you will always find it more
pleasant to sit on the couch andbinge watch TV then you will find it
to get on the elliptical. AngelaDuckworth, author of Grit, The Power
of Passion and Perseverance, also wrotethe forward to Katie Milkman's book How to

(16:33):
Change the Science of Getting from whereyou are to where you want to be.
Duckworth says, have a fierce resolvein everything you do. Demonstrate determination,
resiliency, and tenacity. Do notlet temporary setbacks become permanent excuses.
Use mistakes and problems as opportunities toget better, not reasons to quit.

(16:57):
Grit is passion and perseverance for verylong term goals. Grit is having stamina.
Grit is sticking with your future dayin and day out, not just
for the week, not just forthe month, but for years and working
really hard to make that future areality. Grit is living life like it's

(17:18):
a marathon, not a sprint.And what role do emotions play in this
consistency approach? Because it seems likeeverybody's emotional obviously, and it ebbs and
flows, and this is more ofa thoughtful scientific approach, but certainly emotions
are going to get integrated into theprocess. How does one deal with that?

(17:40):
Yeah, there are a lot ofdifferent emotions that come into play when
it comes to goal setting, fromdisappointment after a goal failure. There's something
called the what the hell effect,which I think is one of the best
names of named effects in all ofpsychology. Say you had a goal related
to health health eating, and yougo into the office and somebody's brought donuts
and you eat one for breakfast,and you realize your calorie goal for the

(18:00):
day is unlikely to be achieved giventhat you ate that donut. Well what
the hell effect is you throwing outyour hands and saying, well, what
the hell, It's hopeless, SoI might as well have seven slices of
pizza for lunch and pie for dinner. There's no point because I've already had
a misstep. So that's very emotional, the reaction to that small goal failure
that we have. That leads towhat the hell effect? And so once

(18:21):
you anticipate the different kinds of emotions, and you know there are emotions related
to shame, not believing I've achievedenough that can be important. There's happiness,
satisfaction after you do achieve a goal, the pride that you feel.
So all of these emotions have aplace and relate to goal achievement. But
then there are strategies that you canuse to sort of harness the good emotions,
harness that pride, like tracking yoursuccess, because if you weren't tracking,

(18:44):
you didn't know you'd achieved ten thousandsteps today, there's nothing to feel
pride over and you're not going toget the momentum from that. You can
still set a tough goal, likesay you want to exercise seven days this
week. That's a stretch goal ratherthan just saying five days this week,
but to prevent the what the helleffect from getting in the way, you
might want to give yourself two emergencyget out of free days, so if
you miss a day, you don'tsay, oh, I give up,
I can't get my seven days thisweek. And it turns out it's better

(19:06):
to set the goal of doing somethingseven days a week and give yourself two
emergencies that you can take. Thenthis is set what seems like the identical
goal of doing it five days thatweek, because you stretch yourself more with
that seven day but they get outof jail free goal. And that's also
better than saying, try to doit seven days, but no freebies,
because now you can avoid this sortof shame and spiraling and what the hell
effect. So all of these strategiesdo relate to emotions. It just depends

(19:29):
on whether you want to harness theemotion or whether you want to dodge a
negative emotion. We've been talking aboutgoals of working out and eating better and
all those types of things, butwhat about really dangerous habits like alcohol and
drugs and things like that. Doesthis process work for that? I mean,
there's a lot of other ways toget you twelve step programs in a
million other ways to try and addressthose. But this sounds like at least

(19:53):
elements of it could apply to that. Yeah, it's a great question.
These these tools have primarily been testedon non clinical challenges, right, so
what I'm talking to you about thesethese are not tested and proven methods for
necessarily tackling addiction, which is achemical dependency and is very different than something
like exercising more, eating healthier,or you know, working more productively towards

(20:15):
deadlines or saving more. So thereis something different and biologically different there.
One of my favorite studies in theliterature related to goals and something called goal
commitment device is within the context ofsmoking and does work. But I would
definitely say the most important thing forsomeone who's dealing with addiction is to get
clinical help where they're proven strategies thatare clinically applicable to that disorder. The

(20:40):
one thing that I think as kindof a neat tool that applies to both
addiction and other challenges is something calleda commitment device, which is literally you
can put money on the line.This is actually a cash commitment device.
There are many types, but youcan put money on the line that you
will forfeit if you fail to achieveyour goals. Essentially is incentivizing yourself,
which is a very odd idea.Right, you're used to your boss for
fighting incentives or the state instead ofyou know, you get a ticket if

(21:03):
you speed. But the idea ofsaying I am actually going to self penalize,
it's an odd idea. And yetthere's a really nice there's study showing
this can be effective with lots ofgoals. But there's one that I love,
in particular by Dean Carlin at NorthwesternUniversities and Northwestern University and several collaborators
showing that when smokers who wanted toquit had the opportunity to put money on
the line that they would have toforfeit if they failed a nicotine or cotenin

(21:25):
test six months later, that improvedtheir quit rates by thirty percent over a
control group that just got standard smokingcessation offerings. So some of these tools
may be applicable. I'd just say, you know, clinical expertise would be
valuable, and then there's no reasonnot to try layering some of these tools
on top of that. What aboutmindfulness? Does that play a role in
any of this, you know,visualization, those those types of techniques that

(21:48):
are sometimes used in sports and otherareas. Yeah, it's a really great
question. I think the closest researchthat I can think of is work on
the importance of confidence, which canbe a barrier if you don't believe something
can happen. And there's really strongevidence for a placebo effect where when you
believe, for instance, a pillyou're taking is going to make you healthier,
right, you actually see clinically improvedoutcomes when we believe something is going

(22:12):
to happen because we've been told it. Well, when we're confident, we
see better outcomes. And I thinkyou might argue that visualization could have a
belief element, but I don't actuallyknow of research specifically supporting the idea that
visualizing success improves outcomes. I loveyour scientific approach to this. There's a
million self help books, as youknow, and I don't think i've ever

(22:33):
quite heard this approach before, whichsounds very intriguing and hopefully very effective.
I know that probably ninety percent ofour listeners are going through some process of
trying to change something in their life. So maybe if you could leave them
with just one pearl of advice orone pearl of wisdom. Based on everything
we've talked about today, I thinkif I were to say the most important

(22:53):
thing, it's something we've already touchedon, which is that we are focused
on the here and now. Wecare dramatically more about the instant gratification we'll
get from our decisions than the longterm rewards, and recognizing that can give
you a lot of advantages. Itmeans that it's important to structure your goals
so that you will find them enjoyable, whether that's by temptation, buddling,

(23:17):
making it social to pursue your goals, or some other strategy. But once
you start to recognize that grit actuallyisn't the answer, I mean, we
need some grit, right, Youshould be gritty to the degree you can
be pretty great, But ideally you'dstructure your life so that no grid is
required, so that the easy path, the fun path, is the path
that will lead to good outcomes.So that's a major piece of advice that

(23:40):
I think a lot of people couldbenefit from. Look for a way to
make it fun and enjoyable to pursuewhatever your goals are, as opposed to
expecting yourself to just push through.That's great advice. Thank you so much,
Katie. After having used a lifetimeof grit with the limited success of
trying to make changes, I wishi'd heard this process a long time ago.
Appreciate it, I'm I'm sure thelisteners appreciate it. So Thank you

(24:03):
so much, Thank you so much. It was great to be here.
Charles Douhig, the author of thePower of Habit, had this to say.
Habits are powerful but delicate. Theycan emerge outside our consciousness or can

(24:25):
be deliberately designed. They often occurwithout our permission, but can be reshaped
by fiddling with their parts. Theyshape our lives far more than we realize.
They are so strong, in fact, that they can cause our brains
to cling to them at the exclusionof all else, including common sense.

(24:48):
We'll be right back after the newsat the bottom of the hour.