In this conversation, Dr. Stephen Sideroff discusses the concept of resilience in the context of aging, emphasizing the importance of self-relationship and the nine pillars of resilience. He explores how self-criticism can hinder personal growth and the significance of healing the inner child. The discussion also covers the role of safety in resilience, the impact of mindfulness and neuroplasticity, and the necessity of joy and purpose in life. Additionally, the conversation highlights the importance of courageous conversations in relationships and the shift from binary thinking to a more expansive, quantum mindset.
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Takeaways
* Resilience is an exponential issue in aging.
* The relationship with oneself is foundational to resilience.
* Self-criticism can undermine personal growth.
* Healing the inner child is crucial for self-acceptance.
* Safety allows for recovery and resilience.
* Mindfulness practices can enhance neuroplasticity.
* Joy and purpose are vital for a fulfilling life.
* Courageous conversations foster deeper relationships.
* Quantum thinking opens up possibilities for growth.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Resilience and Aging
03:16 The Nine Pillars of Resilience
09:27 The Importance of Self-Relationship
22:12 Understanding Evolutionary and Developmental Mismatches
27:00 Finding Safety in a Stressful World
29:23 Rewriting the Code of Safety
32:37 Neuroplasticity and Childhood Patterns
34:05 Reprogramming the Brain for Safety and Connection
35:52 Creating from a Place of Love
38:16 The Pursuit of Joy
40:43 Finding Purpose and Meaning
42:40 Courageous Conversations in Relationships
45:29 Stepping Out of Comfort Zones
47:26 Tolerating Discomfort for Growth
48:22 The Limitations of Language
51:11 Vibrating at a Higher Level
53:33 Internal Validation vs. External Validation
54:55 Binary Thinking vs. Quantum Thinking
58:40 Goodbye
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(01:53):
Welcome everybody.
have the honor and privilege of being joined by Dr.
Steven Sidoroff.
Dr.
Sidoroff, who you heard previously, is a very accomplished physician and I had thepleasure of meeting him in person at RadFest in September this year.
And we, hit it off and exchanged books and a couple of hugs and thought we'd do a podcasttogether.
(02:19):
So here we are.
Steven, welcome to the show.
Thank you.
Jeffrey, it's a pleasure to be here.
So Stephen, tell us a little bit about this book you've written.
It's really quite fascinating.
It's a fascinating topic, right?
When you think about resilience and you think about the fact that in the aging process,resilience keeps getting cut in half over and over again, every eight, 10 years, something
(02:44):
like that, it gets cut in half.
so
It kind of outlines the exponential issue that aging is.
It's not a linear problem.
It's an exponential problem.
And so in your book, you talk about nine pillars, if you will, of building resilience.
And why don't we just kind of walk through those?
Cause each of them is quite interesting.
(03:05):
And we've also kind of interlaced things that I wrote about in my book with things thatyou wrote about in your book, but a little bit from different vantage points will be
interesting conversations.
yeah.
Absolutely, absolutely.
So when I wrote the book, the book is really the culmination of over 40 years of work inthe field of optimal functioning, managing stress, resilience, and really how to live your
(03:36):
best life.
So I've tried to look at every possible
variation of the theme here, so to speak, in my nine pillars.
So the first three have to do with relationship.
And the first is probably our most important relationship, which is our relationship withourselves.
(03:59):
Yeah, massive.
How we treat ourselves, how we talk to ourselves, how we react when we make a mistake,things like that.
The second pillar is our relationship with others.
Are we able to discriminate healthy relationships from toxic or harmful relationships?
(04:20):
When we're in a harmful relationship, are we able to protect ourselves from absorbing thatnegativity?
The third pillar is our relationship with something greater.
And this has to do with spirituality.
It has to do with meaning and purpose in our lives.
something that connects us to the larger community and the world itself, recognizing theinterrelationships in the world.
(04:50):
The next three have to do with organismic balance and mastery.
So the fourth pillar is physical balance and mastery.
And here's really at the heart of some of the greatest challenges to longevity, which hasto do with
what I term autonomic dysregulation syndrome that we all face with or all faced withbecause we have an evolutionary mismatch, we have a developmental mismatch, and then we
(05:23):
have conditioning factors that cause us to activate our nervous system way more than werecover from that activation.
So I talk about that in my fourth pillar.
The fifth is mental balance and mastery.
And here we're talking about having a positive perspective.
(05:44):
We're talking about having a growth mindset.
So if you notice a shortcoming in yourself, you don't go, look, I have this shortcoming.
We go, okay, how do I learn and develop to outgrow this, literally outgrow thisshortcoming?
The sixth pillar is emotional balance and mastery.
(06:07):
And here we're talking, I'm talking about working through unfinished emotional business,wounds, hurts, traumas that actually cause greater dysregulation of our body on all kinds
(06:28):
of levels, biochemical, psychophysiological, et cetera.
And so it's working through emotional wounds, unfinished emotional business, and focusingmore on gratitude and positive emotions, which we actually know have a direct impact on
our physiology.
(06:49):
And then the last three have to do with how we engage in the world.
Presence, am I aware of my surroundings?
Am I noticing and
being able to take in what's going on.
But in my model, presence has two directions.
So that's what we receive.
But also, what energy do I project out into the world?
(07:12):
What messages do other people receive from me?
And I like to highlight the fact that if you and I, Jeffrey, were standing next to eachother and I was to monitor your brain waves,
I'd be able to pick up aspects of my heart rate pattern in your brainwaves.
(07:34):
heart and our our heartbeat is so powerful that it can be picked up.
Now, if I'm frustrated, upset, my heart rate pattern is gonna have one look of chaos.
If I'm in a place of gratitude and love, it's gonna have a more coherent heart ratepattern.
(07:55):
So you're picking up those differences.
unconsciously.
So that's emotional, that's presence and what I project out.
Then flexibility is am I able to make adjustments when I'm faced with obstacles?
If I'm trying to achieve a certain goal and there are obstacles, can I make adjustments?
(08:17):
Can I be flexible?
Maybe change my goals so that I have a greater opportunity for success.
Flexibility also is about flexibility of
perspective.
Can I put myself in your shoes?
I see a situation from many different angles so that I have a greater ability to handlewhatever that is?
(08:40):
finally, the ninth pillar is power, which I define as the ability to get things done.
So the more we are able to get things done, the more confidence we have in ourselves andthe fewer situations in our lives
we experience as dangerous or stressful.
(09:01):
So all of these contribute to our mind-body functioning in the most optimal way, digestingour food in the most optimal way.
You know, having the kidneys function in the most optimal way because I'm not expendingall my energy in a defensive mode with the world and I'm giving myself that opportunity to
(09:25):
recover.
That's the whole picture of my model of resilience.
Yeah, I love it.
It's great.
It synchronizes really well with the life energy circle that I know you're familiar withnow from reading the book.
Yes, yes, I appreciated that, Jeffrey.
Yeah, so let's go back to the first three, relationship with self, relationships ingeneral, right?
(09:49):
So.
You know, my experience in dealing with people is that there are a lot of people with alot of self-flagellation going on.
A lot of people that don't really love themselves, I would say, in a really unconditionalway.
And I think it creates a lot of hardship for people, right?
(10:12):
They never really feel loved.
my thought is that, and you can weigh in on this, my thought is you can never really loveanybody else more than you love yourself.
Like if you're in a relationship, it's difficult to actually have truly, you know, freeflowing love for another person if you haven't figured that out for yourself.
(10:33):
so it seems like to your point, this primary relationship is the one with ourselves.
do you want to talk a little bit more about that in terms of how you, see people gettingto a point where they can have unconditional love for themselves and they're not so self
critical all the time.
Well, I like to say that that is a process just like all of these other areas where wewant to improve on.
(11:00):
It's all on a continuum.
So I ask people to monitor and pay attention to how they talk to themselves because thelessons of our childhood, all of those lessons get funneled into the voice that we hear 24
seven.
That's sort of like our internal parent, so to speak.
(11:25):
And what I find with most people is the way we talk to ourselves, the way we treatourselves is much too negative, judgmental and critical.
And we're not sufficiently accepting of ourselves.
You know, I like to say that we're all on this journey through life.
And at any time we're somewhere along this path.
(11:48):
What happens with most of us is we're here, but we feel we should be here.
Whenever we say, should have done better, I shouldn't have made that mistake, all of thesejudgmental comments we make to ourselves are really undermining because they're saying
that there must be something wrong with myself that I'm here and not further along thepath.
(12:13):
so I identify what I consider the
the basic qualities for a healthy relationship with ourselves.
And those qualities are coming from a place of love, acceptance, support, care, and joy.
(12:34):
Yeah, I agree with that.
And so I ask people, and I can ask your audience to start monitoring, how do I talk tomyself?
First of all, I guarantee any time that we're feeling upset,
We're feeling worried, scared.
If we trace it back, some message is coming from our judgmental internal voice that'striggering those feelings.
(13:01):
And so I invite people to pay attention.
Notice how you're treating yourself, how you're talking to yourself, how it might becritical, judgmental, negative.
And then I invite you to switch into a voice that
comes from those qualities that I just identified, that's the healthy internal parent thatyou want to develop.
(13:26):
Right.
That when you hear the critical negative, you go, no, no, you're not supporting me, you'renot helping me.
And then switching into this other voice that you develop.
Yeah, I think for me, I agree with that.
completely.
think for me, the way that I've gotten there has been through imaging, if you will, havingstrong images of myself when I was small, two years old, three years old.
(13:59):
you know, being a parent, I saw my own kids when they were two or three years old, right.
And so
You know, I mean, they're just so cute.
They're so lovable.
mean, my gosh, they're so amazing, right?
Full of potential and life and joy and fun and, you know, curiosity and all the thingsthat make life really wonderful.
(14:20):
And I think, yeah, I'm that little person.
I'm that little person.
So lovable, so incredibly lovable.
What's not to love, right?
What's not to love?
And so in that moment, it's like, there's massive love for me coming from me, right?
And I think
Part of the hero's journey for each of us is to realize that nobody had perfect parents,right?
(14:41):
Every parent, and I certainly wasn't a perfect parent, everybody's parents doing the bestthey can.
And so it's no surprise that the messaging you got from your parents wasn't spot onnecessarily.
It never was for anybody.
So, you know, welcome to that club.
But I think part of the hero's journey is us becoming the parent to ourselves.
(15:02):
you know, as we actually become more mature and how we think about this.
And now we realize, there's myself, I'm two years old, I'm three years old.
my gosh.
I feel this unconditional love for little Jeff.
Let me nurture him, celebrate him, encourage him, know, comfort him, you know, all thethings that a parent would do for a two year old.
Right.
(15:22):
And when you start to focus that kind of, when, when I have that imagery, right.
And I start to focus that kind of energy on myself, it becomes super easy.
to see how lovable I am and to see how lovable I will always be.
so anyway, that's been one of the ways that I've been able to kind of make that real formyself.
So I think that's great.
(15:43):
And that's a great approach.
When I do some things similar with clients that I work with, unfortunately, they don't seethat lovable child.
They see a child who's not.
They don't remember being that young, right?
They don't remember they can't.
Yes.
So go ahead.
(16:04):
So there's a healing process that many of us need to go through to get to where we canappreciate that little child and have that love and compassion toward that little child
and then to basically transfer that to ourselves in the present moment.
(16:26):
Right.
You know, when you talk about making mistakes and us being critical about making quoteunquote mistakes, another thing that I've done is to reframe everything as being either a
wise choice or a choice that led to wisdom in a way.
(16:46):
In other words, everything has a purpose.
Every decision has had a purpose.
And it's important to understand why we made decisions that we made.
and to learn from those things, but it's not about beating ourselves up.
There's no value in beating ourselves up over it.
There's only value in what can you learn from it and how do you grow and how do you cometo understand the things about yourself that everybody else in the room can see, but you
(17:10):
can't see yourself because you've so normalized it as part of who you think you are.
So, yeah.
So in my book, I go through a process to help people let go of mistakes and
regrets that they still carry with them.
Yeah, and it's a process of number one.
(17:31):
Okay, you have feelings about it.
Maybe you're angry at yourself.
So you give yourself the opportunity to express that although You have to be careful whenyou express anger toward yourself that you're not undermining You could be angry at a
behavior, but you don't put yourself down That's right.
(17:52):
And then you
recognize that there was a cost to that mistake.
So now we want to find the lesson, the benefit, which is the lesson that balances out thatcost so that the next time you'll do a better job.
And then finally, you want to let go of the regret.
(18:14):
You want to let go of the anger toward yourself because it's only holding you back, onlyhurting you.
And if your goal is to
proven life, then it's an necessary step to let go of past mistakes.
So in my book, I take people step by step through a process of actually letting go ofregrets and mistakes.
(18:38):
Yeah, I think that's great.
I do think that when you look at it through this perspective that everything that everhappened to me actually has led me to this moment here today.
It's like I wouldn't be who I am today if I hadn't
done the things that I'd done or experienced the things I experienced, right?
And so when you look at it through that lens, there really is no good or bad experience.
(18:59):
It's every experience ultimately contributed to your wisdom in this moment, right?
Your deeper understanding, your deeper empathy, your deep, if you hadn't gone through someof these things, you wouldn't have empathy for other people in those situations, right?
And so it's, I find all of it, quite honestly, is nothing's lost.
It's like going to medical school.
People were saying, well, I don't really want to learn this.
(19:19):
I'm never going to use it.
I wanted to learn everything.
It's like none of that information is ever lost when you understand embryology orbiochemistry or whatever.
like, it's always in there, even though you can't necessarily recite everything.
like, it changes the way you think and feel about things.
So actually going back and healing those experiences, accepting them as this is part of mypositive journey, right?
(19:42):
It's not a negative thing to be cast aside.
It's actually to be folded into helping me create the wisdom that I have today.
Well, I appreciate that.
And you are demonstrating one of the important lessons that I teach in my book, which isabout flexibility of perspective, being able to see it in finding the positive way to see
(20:07):
whatever situation you're in.
And that's a tremendous ability.
absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's one that I've, you one that I've cultivated.
Quite honestly, you know, I mean, I used to beat myself up.
I used to be the hardest on myself and all that sort of things in my 20s.
I used to be, you know, the most critical and I've gone down that whole path.
(20:29):
Right.
So I know it very well.
And it took some life events for me.
You know, one in medical school, you know, there was always somebody smarter.
Right.
So the question is, OK, there's always so I wish I was smarter.
I wish I better this, better that, whatever.
And then I got to a point where I realized, you know what?
I'm smart enough to do anything I'm actually interested in doing.
(20:52):
And that's all I need.
I'm good.
And I stopped comparing myself again to anybody else.
like, no, I'm actually smart.
My gifts are good enough to do anything I want to do.
You know, that's a blessing.
Let me just run with that.
That was one insight.
The other one was when my son was born and I was welcoming him into planet earth.
(21:15):
my gosh, I felt unconditional love for another human being like I didn't even knowexisted.
Like I'd never felt that for another human being.
It was life changing.
It's like, my gosh, I never got that.
I never felt that as a little kid.
Why don't I give that to little Jeff?
Jeff deserves that just as much as little Chris does, right?
So anyway, those were life experiences that kind of helped me to reshape this.
(21:37):
So if you're listening to this, you might look back on life experiences where you felt themost love, you know?
felt the most love for yourself or you felt the most love coming towards you from somebodyelse, you know, or nurturing and kind of internalize those things.
You know, it could be anybody, a parent, a sibling, a teacher, you know, whomever.
Right.
So, Very good points.
(21:59):
Yeah.
So let's talk about let's talk about the second set, the second trio there.
Sure.
Sure.
Yeah.
So, you know, I
We have structural problems just being born into our lives.
(22:20):
The first one is an evolutionary mismatch.
So we evolved to perfectly match the hunter-gatherer environment.
Sure.
But our society has advanced so far from that so quickly while our bodies have not madethe appropriate adaptation.
(22:42):
So whatever we're dealing with in our day in our lives, be it a bill we're worried aboutpaying, a conflict with somebody in our lives, a deadline that we have to do, any of these
things, we have one stress response that mobilizes for all of those, even though the fightor flight response is not appropriate for most of the stresses in our lives.
(23:10):
So we're continually mobilizing and from your longevity perspective, you know theconsequences of the mobilization of the body and the using of resources and having to
replenish those resources.
So we activate the nervous system, but how many stimuli in our day, in our lives triggersafety?
(23:35):
Tell us we're okay, we can relax.
Almost none.
So this creates the first mismatch in which we're continually activating our stressresponse, our nervous system, and not recovering with the parasympathetic, the recovery
branch.
That's right.
(23:55):
It's an excellent point.
We've already talked about the developmental mismatch where we learned lessons as a childthat don't serve us as adults.
Messages unintentionally
given to us by our family and surroundings.
(24:16):
And so more we may grow up in an environment that's dangerous.
And so as an adult, we start out our day expecting something to go wrong.
And so we start out our day mobilizing a stress response.
And then finally, another interesting
(24:37):
aspect to this imbalance is that if you think about all the stress all of the successes inyour life, I Guarantee that all or most were associated with stress So our brains have put
those two things together Mm-hmm.
you know, the stress didn't necessarily cause the success but because our brains put thosethings together we literally are Adapted to want
(25:07):
to find stresses in our lives.
So all of those things create this mismatch and imbalance between the two branches of ournervous system.
And resilience is about finding the way to keep those in place of balance.
Right.
So I agree with you.
I think for me, a lot of it devolves down to this question of safety.
(25:30):
Right.
And even the things that we were instructed.
by our families about what's safe, what's not safe, what we're supposed to do, what we'renot supposed to do, you know, all around a sense of safety or a sense of conformity.
I think, you know, when you think about it, anxiety, stress, even to some extent,depression, think anger for sure, frustration and even greed, I think, in many respects,
(26:00):
boils down to people not feeling safe.
And so when they don't feel safe, then they feel empowered to take it out on somebodyelse, to act aggressively, to do lots of different things.
And I think one of the big misconceptions in life that I learned is that there's nothingexternal to us that can ever make us feel safe.
(26:24):
So I don't care where you went to school, who your family is, how much money you make orhave, what country you live in.
I mean, if history has taught us anything.
It's that everything could be taken away, right?
There's nobody's nobody's immune to that.
Even health can be taken away.
Right.
So so then it becomes a psycho spiritual question of actually, how do you give yourselfsafety in any circumstance?
(26:45):
Because when you actually crack that code, then you can wake up calm every morning.
Right.
Knowing that you're safe.
Right.
If you're if your safety depends on things going right or things happening or whatever,you know, that's a.
That's a that's a no-win proposition as far as I can tell right I mean it's gonna fallapart at some point so well so I Definitely agree that safety is an important component
(27:12):
here in fact Whenever I tell people to practice a relaxation exercise I Have them startout by saying that I right now I'm safe and for the next 15 minutes when I do this
relaxation
I'm safe, I can let down my guard.
(27:33):
And I ask people to look in their day, in their lives, for zones of safety, times andplaces.
They can say right here, right now, I'm safe.
And in particular, before they sit down to a meal, I ask them to go into a place of safetyand I'm safe for the next time that I'm gonna eat this meal because
(27:59):
You know, so much of the GI problems, gastrointestinal problems are because people aresitting down to eat, which involves digestion while they are feeling stressed and focusing
on a problem which tends to shut down the digestive system.
So, yes, safety is very important.
(28:21):
It is what allows us to engage that recovery parasympathetic response.
And in fact, I tell people, know, your body has two choices.
It can go into defend and protect or heal and maintain.
And so we want to find as much of our day of our lives that we can say I'm safe so I canlet down my guard and go into heal and and maintain.
(28:50):
Yeah, I agree with that completely.
And I think you can get to the point.
You know, we talk about meditation.
or mindfulness, which is really what you're talking about here.
If you're going to sit down before a meal or you're going to sit down for 15 minutes andgive yourself safety in that moment, it's really an act of mindfulness that we're talking
about on some level.
Right.
And then you kind of feel into that safety.
(29:10):
Again, I think experiences of these things are so transformative.
mean, things got things got wired imprinted into our brains through experiences.
Right.
And I think in order to rewrite that code, we can cognitively think about it.
But I think it's experiences actually help us rewrite that code to where we actually dobecome safe.
Right.
So I think cognition is enough of saying, okay, I need to go have this experience.
(29:33):
And so what you're talking about now is your people actually giving themselves a sense ofsafety so they can experience that.
Right.
And then if you do that repetitively, you start to overwrite the software and you start torewrite the code to where you can then actually start to move into that place of feeling
safe.
Right.
And so I think that's very powerful.
I think meditation can, can definitely, help with that.
(29:56):
So I think if you're listening to this and you, you're starting a meditation practice ordoing it, think one of the key elements is to, enable yourself to go into this place of
just absolute safety.
I am connected.
I, this is the universe.
What an amazing place.
I feel so connected to love and goodness here.
It's like, when you go to that space, it's like, are safe.
(30:17):
Even for meteor hits, like I'm fine.
Right.
So
(32:34):
on to the next thing.
So, Yeah.
And I focus on the process of neuroplasticity in my book because the lessons of childhoodgo in so deep and at such an early age that they really form the neural networks in our
brain.
So the childhood patterns that I refer to as our primitive Gestalt patterns are sopowerful, but balancing that out, we have tremendous neuroplasticity.
(33:07):
And I agree with what you were saying.
One of the keys in that process is when we make a change, when we do something that helpsus, when we do something and it works out, that we literally take a moment to have the,
make the cognitive connection.
This worked.
(33:28):
I can keep doing it this way.
time we reflect on a success, we reinforce and we
put a spotlight on literally on the neural networks that we are actually rewiring in thatmoment.
Right.
Yeah, I agree with that.
I think it's so important to actually understand what's the task at hand.
(33:51):
And if you're listening to this, the task at hand is to reprogram your brain.
That's really the task at hand.
How do I actually rewrite the software so that I get rid of the messages that are nolonger serving me and I actually step into a space where I
I am safe and I can feel safe and I can feel connected and I can have great relationships,right?
I think it's really about rewriting that software, a great relationship with myself whereI can love myself, things like that.
(34:15):
So yeah, I think it's really important to clarify what it is you're going for, right?
It's rewriting the software.
Absolutely.
can't just be, I want to let go of this.
Right.
Because then it's, well, where am I going to?
Exactly.
That's why I...
identify those qualities of a healthy internal voice, internal parent, so that someone haswhere they want to get to and are continually speaking from that place to reinforce and
(34:46):
rewire their brains.
That's right.
You know, interestingly enough, I've had some some really deep meditative experiences, not
in the two different paths, quite honestly.
And one of those really profoundly deep meditative experiences, I got in touch withconsciousness, right?
Just like directly in touch with consciousness.
(35:07):
And it was just pure, pure, pure love.
Like the kind of love, like if you haven't experienced that, even that unconditional lovefor my son, wow, more than that, just pure love.
And as I was sitting in that meditative space, you know, I was
I was experiencing it and kind of thinking about it little bit at the same time.
(35:29):
And it was like out of love, love loves to create.
Right.
And hence we have the universe.
have this ever creating new creating.
Right.
And we're made in the image of consciousness.
Right.
We're conscious beings.
So we love to create.
And then what does creation do for for for consciousness?
What's the feedback loop there?
Why create?
(35:50):
Well, it brings great joy.
It brings great joy.
And so I started to internalize this.
I'm running this by you as much as I'm sharing it with you.
And that is for me, my purpose in life now is to reside in a very loving, profoundlyloving place.
And from that place to create, it could be a business, it could be a book, it could be apodcast.
(36:11):
It could be a product.
could be a relationship.
It could be anything.
It could be a, you know, athletic experience, but in creating
The feedback loop is joy.
And the only reason I'm creating this create joy.
We think it's for money.
We think it's for this.
We think it's for that, but it's not.
If we just went through life and think about from this loving place, I'm here to createand to create joy.
(36:35):
we've just added to glad and longevity.
We've just added a chief joy officer, right?
Somebody that wants to help all the clients and all the staff experience joy and createand live into this joy.
Right.
And I think.
For me, it's just very clarifying.
That's really kind of what it's all about for me.
That's for me.
And if that resonates with you as an audience, then feel free to adopt it.
(36:59):
But you may find your own kind of unifying principle as to why you're here and what you'redoing.
And I found, I will just say this, that in the creation, this came to me the other daywhen I was playing the guitar.
When you play music, and I played the guitar since I was 10, when you play music, it's allabout tension and release.
tension and release.
(37:19):
So I'm writing a new song, you're creating tension, and then you release the tension,right?
That's what music is, tension and release.
And I started to think about that.
It's like, you know, in the creative process, there is tension, and there's release,right?
There's the tension of not knowing exactly how so we take on the stress of that, so tospeak, but it's a hormetic stress.
(37:40):
It's not one that destroys us.
And then there's the release as we find the solutions and the creativity to solve theissue or whatever it is.
So when you're listening about this, it's not that you're going to live your life in thisplane of there is no stress or there is no tension, so to speak.
Even in the creative process, there is tension and release, but ultimately it's to bringforward joy to the world.
(38:01):
So that's kind of where I'm at at the moment.
Well, I will tell you that I had love, compassion, acceptance, support and care as myqualities of a healthy internal parent.
Yeah.
And in this last year, literally this last year, I added joy.
(38:24):
Yes, joy.
One of the one of the things that led me to that is that as I looked at how peopleapproach the world and their lives, you know, there's this wide range of experience with a
middle point that's baseline.
And then what's below the baseline is negative.
(38:45):
And what's above the baseline is positive.
And what I found was so many people were just trying to get up to baseline.
wanted to get at the end of the day, they wanted to realize nothing bad has happened.
And so they're always just hoping that they'll be at baseline.
(39:06):
And that's when I started sharing with people, no, the goal is to be above the baseline.
That's right.
Joy, step into joy.
Yeah.
And a lot of writing about this notion about setting your intentions to be above thebaseline.
And one of the ways is to experience joy.
(39:26):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
In fact, I've started using joy and peace as kind of, and I'll say joy, quite honestly,because there can be tension before there's peace.
But really using joy is kind of a North Star.
I'm not, if there's not joy,
for me in doing this podcast, then I probably shouldn't be doing it, right?
(39:48):
If there's not joy in, you know, what I'm doing relationally or on a business front orwhatever else, then I shouldn't be doing it.
And I back away from it.
If something brings me joy and enables me to spread joy, right?
Not just for me to enjoy, but to spread that joy.
And I end up with a sense of peace about how this is going forward.
(40:10):
Then I know that's where I'm supposed to be.
And so
I think a lot of people don't know where they're supposed to be.
It's like, well, I think I should be making money.
I think I should start a family.
I think I should have a job.
I think I should do this.
I think I should do that.
But they haven't really solved that question of how do I actually measure, you know, whereI'm supposed to be?
Is it my bank account or is it something else?
(40:32):
Right.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
And my third pillar, relationship with something great, greater, addresses meaning,finding meaning in your life.
Exactly.
finding purpose in your life.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
All those are absolutely critical.
I think you really kind of hit on so many of really critical topics.
(40:55):
Yeah.
And I think, you know, when I talk about purpose, one of the things I like to say ispurpose is the ultimate and use it or lose it.
That if we think about
from a genetic perspective that we're designed through the evolutionary process to live tothe age we can reproduce and then to live until our offsprings become independent.
(41:25):
We would realize why so many of our biological markers start to head downhill, you know,around 30 or 40 years of age.
But we have this amazing notion of epigenetics.
how our experience can affect the expression of our genes.
(41:47):
And I believe that one way is for us to have purpose in life.
That if we have an important purpose, like we want to help others, and that's our purposeand mission in life, we're sending our biology a message.
We have an important reason to be on this planet.
(42:08):
You better support that need.
That's right.
I'm, this is vital.
You're vital.
Let's vital together, right?
Let's be vital together.
Yeah, exactly.
No, I love that.
Yeah, I love that.
You know, one of the other things in relationships, that I'll circle back to that I'velearned is that, relationships require what I call courageous conversations in order to
(42:33):
actually thrive.
A lot of times we think that a relationship is about getting to a state of equilibrium,right?
And I think a good relationship is the same as the relationship with ourselves.
think, yes, we want to get to a place of equilibrium, but to your point aboutneuroplasticity and growth and a growth mindset, we're constantly growing as individuals,
constantly growing into the next level of this and that.
(42:55):
Right.
A good relationship should be doing the same thing.
It shouldn't just be, well, we've kind of figured it out and we, you know, we make love onThursdays and Sundays and we, you know, go to the theater on Wednesdays or whatever.
And we kind of in this pattern.
It shouldn't really be about that.
It should be about growth.
How do we actually stimulate growth for each other?
Yeah.
Well, if equilibrium becomes too important, it constrains growth because it constrainsdoing the very things, challenges in life that are going to take you out of equilibrium.
(43:31):
But that's where growth occurs.
That's right.
doesn't occur by just staying in equilibrium and trying to
constrain yourself to stay in equilibrium.
It's where you allow for change and then you adapt to change.
It allows for challenges and then you learn how to handle those challenges.
(43:52):
So the real equilibrium is not like this, but it's more like this.
Yeah.
You can't see his hands, but he's showing from a level to actually it's kind of undulatingup and down, if you will.
Like you're taking on risk.
It's scary.
Like these courageous conversations, I will tell you, when I have them, sometimes you havethat sensation, you're standing outside yourself, looking at yourself saying, I can't
(44:17):
believe I'm gonna say this, but I'm gonna say this in a loving way.
I'm gonna bring this up.
This is on my heart.
I need to bring this forward.
It's like, I have no idea what's gonna happen here.
But you bring it up and the other person, if you're with a good partner, they're listeningto you from a loving place, not a judgmental space.
And then it creates when you actually process those things and you can process that goingbi-directionally from both sides.
(44:41):
my gosh, you build intimacy like and knowing, right?
Because for me, a great relationship is knowing and being known and loving and beingloved.
And so that's an ongoing process to know more deeply, right?
And to understand more deeply ourselves and the other person.
I find that that's been very stimulating to creating great relationships.
(45:02):
And you find that some people are capable of it and some people are not.
Some people are in that equilibrium mode and they're comfortable there and that's justwhere they want to be.
And that usually though, they're also fearful of 100 percent.
It's fear.
They're there because of fear.
They're there because of fear.
They just don't have the courage.
And that's why I say it's a courageous conversation, because I think one of the number onethings in life to actually
(45:29):
learn and grow is to be courageous, right?
It's not easy.
When you look at that cliff you're getting ready to step off of, it's not easy to step offthat cliff.
You gotta trust that the parachute's gonna work, right?
That you're gonna figure it out before you hit.
Yeah, I totally agree with you, but one of the things that was my intention in my book wasto realize that people do need to step out of their comfort zone, is what we're talking
(45:55):
about.
But what I've done in my book is I've done it in a gradual way.
Yes.
So that people are not stepping off the cliff.
People are taking steps that are doable.
And they're learning from the steps that they do and succeed at that, look, I can handlemore than I thought I could.
(46:20):
Each increment of that gives them the courage to take the next step.
That's right.
It's that's the growth process that I encourage in my book.
That's right.
What I'm going to say to that though, is that when you're in that place of equilibrium,even that first step feels like a cliff.
You know, it still feels like it's going to take some courage for me to do that.
(46:43):
Even though it may be a quote unquote small step.
If you're, if you're in that equilibrium mode and you're listening to this, that firststep, it's going to be a challenge.
It's going to take some courage to do that, right?
Whether it's walking up to a stranger or doing something else, you know, it's.
it's going to have that feeling.
So just don't be surprised by that.
Just understand that's part of the that's part of the game, if you will.
And you kind of learn to thrive on that.
(47:04):
Right.
So, you know, the lessons of childhood set up these psychological boundaries about what'sOK and what's not.
Right.
And so we're talking about doing taking steps to to move those boundaries out or to stepoutside of them.
That's right.
(47:25):
And
really what it involves is tolerating discomfort.
That's it.
Which is tolerating really ambiguity.
It's like, I don't know how this is going to work out.
I find that people that can really manage ambiguity well have the most growth potential.
So, yeah.
Well, what I what people feedback from people that I appreciate the most about my book isthat they
(47:56):
they've stepped out of their existing boundaries and they report to me, thank you formaking it possible for to be able to do that and change my behavior and change my thinking
patterns.
And I didn't think that that was possible.
Right.
Yeah, I want to bring up a couple of other things that you've touched on and some thingsthat I think about as well.
(48:20):
One is
This is you haven't touched on this one per se, but I think you'll get this.
And this is that I think language is a poor form of communication.
Right.
Simply because I don't know if you've had a telepathic experience, but I've had sometelepathic experiences with consciousness and my gosh, I mean, the energy transfer, the
(48:41):
information transfer is just instantaneous and complete.
And yet we're dribbling out words to try to, you know, Define for the audience what we'rethinking in this and that.
Right.
It's very slow.
It's kind of like Morse code.
And the other thing about it is that in our psyche, many things can be true at once,right?
We can love something, we can hate something, we can be scared to death, we can beexhilarated and we can be happy and joyful and other things all simultaneously.
(49:09):
And yet it's almost impossible to convey that in a single sentence, right?
And so when I know that about language,
then it makes me think much more like a therapist in a sense of you said this, I think youmean this.
Tell me more about that.
Is there more to that that you'd like to share?
(49:29):
You know, things like that, because you know, inside somebody's psyche, there's a lot moregoing on than just that one sentence or that one comment.
Right.
So I think that's given me a lot of insight, really, in terms of building relationshipswith people, whether it's clients or or people I'm close to.
So really want to get to know them and deeply understand them and appreciate how difficultit is for us to actually adequately communicate just in words.
(49:56):
Yeah.
Well, you know, we communicate in more than we actually do communicate in more than justwords.
100 percent.
Our posture, our facial expressions, the tone of our voice.
All of these things project some aspects of our emotional mental state.
(50:17):
That's right.
The other person unconsciously picks up and maybe feels more attracted to a person becausethose unspoken messages were positive or feels more like, I need to keep my distance from
this person because those unspoken physical tonal messages are negative.
(50:41):
That's right.
Or fearful or worrying to them.
Yeah.
No, exactly.
You know, we talk about five senses, but I've known for a long time and I think manypeople have that really we have six senses and that the six senses that and some people
say we even have more seven, eight senses, nine, but certainly six.
And that is we read each other's energy all the time.
(51:02):
Right.
We read each other's energy.
Somebody walks into the room, you read their energy immediately.
Right.
And that's definitely a sense that we have.
And you're, kind of commenting on that.
That a lot of communication is nonverbal essentially and it's the energetic of the otherperson I think we can also pick up when people are vibrating at different levels, right?
(51:22):
So if somebody's vibrating at a high level from a loving caring generative joyous place wefeel that right when people are vibrating a lower level of anger and frustration and you
know despair or whatever we feel that too, right?
So I think one of the things that I'm conscious of is what level am I vibrating on?
And I found that almost in every situation, me consciously vibrating on a higher level,always is the best solution.
(51:47):
It's never failed me yet.
I've been playing with this now for some months and it's like, okay, I'm going to walk in.
I walked into a hotel the other night.
I went to Chicago for a charity event.
It turns out I walked into the wrong hotel.
had a reservation at another hotel, right?
There was some mixed up in the communication with my staff.
So it's eight 30 at night.
I'm tired.
I'm fatigued, right?
(52:08):
It's like I've been traveling busy day, you know, and I thought to myself, what level am Igoing to vibrate at?
And I thought, okay, I'm going to vibrate a very high level.
So I started joking with the staff.
I started doing stuff.
I texted my assistant, you know, we checked it out and you know, 20 minutes we had itsorted out.
I got a room at that hotel.
But the point is that life throws you all kinds of things.
(52:31):
The question is, how are we going to actually deal with them?
And I think a lot of it is
What level do you want to vibrate at?
And that's actually, you can choose that.
So I think that's another piece of it.
Yeah, you know, someone came up to me in one of my talks and said, you know, I've beenworking on this stuff for years.
Does it ever get any easier?
(52:53):
Yes, it does.
It gets effortless, actually.
And what I said was, you know, all of us look outside of ourselves for grounding.
You know, what is that person thinking about me?
What are they going to do or say?
And I said, when you start to come from an internal sense of groundedness, that's right.
(53:17):
That's when it gets easier.
That's right.
let go of some of these judgments and criticisms of yourself that we've been working onand you shift over to this positive way of treating yourself and you ground yourself in a
healthier
foundation, that's when it starts to get easier.
I agree.
It's internal validation versus external validation.
(53:40):
know, and quite honestly, the people externally, you don't really give a crap.
They just don't.
I mean, they're just being who they are.
They don't I mean, they may like you to some extent or whatever, but they don't reallycare.
You know, when I stopped worrying about what other people were going to think about me,which was like decades ago, my life got so much simpler.
It was all of a sudden like, OK, I'll let them worry about me, but I'm certainly not goingto worry about them.
(54:02):
Yeah, but the basic the basic ingredient here is what's within my control and what's notin my control.
That's right.
And let me me focus my energies on what I have control over and what I don't have controlover.
I need to let go of 100 percent, 100 percent.
Yeah.
And I think that brings you back to the meditative space when you're there and you'refeeling safe.
(54:25):
You can also think about what what energy level do I want to vibrate at?
I to vibrate up at love and joy.
Really, this is the highest energy there is or where am I going to be?
So it's another way to practice that.
Very cool.
Yeah.
And all of these are about learning and growth.
And for any learning, any growth, you have to be present in the moment to be able to makea choice.
(54:50):
Otherwise, you're on the automatic pattern.
So you're on autopilot.
That's right.
It's being made for you, quite honestly, by the software that's already been programmed.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, there's one last thing I'll bring up, which is this concept I have, which wasn'tin the book, developed it since about binary thinking versus quantum thinking.
(55:13):
And I think a lot of us get trapped into binary thinking.
think we go through our life.
This is about growth mindset.
We go through our life thinking it's my job to find my answers.
It's my job to find my answers right now.
Now I have answers for this.
I have answers to that.
I know how I'm going to eat and I'm going to play who my partner is and blah, blah, blah.
I have these answers, right?
And yet I found that all growth basically comes from the questions that we're asking.
(55:38):
So I think in life, it's really more a question of finding the questions that are going tocontinue to fuel your growth into your neuroplasticity, right?
Than it is finding your quote unquote answers.
Because once we find our answers, we tend to get married to those answers and then we getdefensive about them, right?
And that creates binary thought processes.
I'm right, you're wrong.
I don't believe in that.
I believe in this.
(55:59):
I think what you're doing is not good, blah, blah, blah, right?
So we end up in this binary thought process instead of a growth mindset, which is muchmore quantum where there's a plus one, a minus one, a zero, a sphere of all possibilities.
And in that sphere, we can now find the best solution with this person at this time forthis situation, right?
So it's when you move out of that
being married to your answers into married to your questions and this growth mindset, itopens up a brand new, my gosh, it's like a playground where you get to grow and experiment
(56:27):
and try and do all kinds of stuff.
It's really the greatest joy.
Yeah.
I appreciate you bringing up quantum because I've been fascinated by that recently aswell.
And the quantum computer and how that works and.
In fact, I will be starting my own podcast in the next couple of months called QuantumLeadership.
(56:51):
great.
So it's up on the qualities of good leadership.
So great.
Well, invite me on.
I'll be happy to chat.
So good.
Good.
Yes, definitely.
All good.
Well, Stephen, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you.
Any last words of wisdom you'd like to impart to the audience or?
Well, I yes.
(57:14):
just want to hold up my new book.
yeah.
Yeah.
The nine pillars of resilience.
The proven path to master stress, slow aging and increased vitality.
Yeah.
And it's available everywhere online in bookstores.
And it gives you a blueprint like a it's a handbook for living your best life step by stepabout how to be on the path.
(57:40):
And then
I was offering for your audience my resilience assessment booklet, which is an ebook thatdescribes my model, but it also has a questionnaire that a person can take, self score,
and get their own personal resilience profile along my nine dimensions.
Nice.
I love it.
(58:00):
I love it.
Great.
And where do they find that?
Well, your staff will make that available.
Okay.
It'll be in the, it'll be in the show notes for them.
But they can also go to my website, drstevensideroff.com and they can get it there aswell.
Okay.
So Steven is spelled with a P H and Sideroff as S I D E R O F F.
(58:25):
Correct.
So just so you have that Dr.
Steven Sideroff.
Great.
Well, Steven, such a pleasure.
Thanks for taking the time to chat.
Yeah.
Thank you as well, Jeffrey.
It has been enjoyable.
Thank you.
my pleasure.
Welcome everybody.
have the honor and privilege of being joined by Dr.
Steven Sidoroff.
Dr.
Sidoroff, who you heard previously, is a very accomplished physician and I had thepleasure of meeting him in person at RadFest in September this year.
And we, hit it off and exchanged books and a couple of hugs and thought we'd do a podcasttogether.
(02:19):
So here we are.
Steven, welcome to the show.
Thank you.
Jeffrey, it's a pleasure to be here.
So Stephen, tell us a little bit about this book you've written.
It's really quite fascinating.
It's a fascinating topic, right?
When you think about resilience and you think about the fact that in the aging process,resilience keeps getting cut in half over and over again, every eight, 10 years, something
(02:44):
like that, it gets cut in half.
so
It kind of outlines the exponential issue that aging is.
It's not a linear problem.
It's an exponential problem.
And so in your book, you talk about nine pillars, if you will, of building resilience.
And why don't we just kind of walk through those?
Cause each of them is quite interesting.
(03:05):
And we've also kind of interlaced things that I wrote about in my book with things thatyou wrote about in your book, but a little bit from different vantage points will be
interesting conversations.
yeah.
Absolutely, absolutely.
So when I wrote the book, the book is really the culmination of over 40 years of work inthe field of optimal functioning, managing stress, resilience, and really how to live your
(03:36):
best life.
So I've tried to look at every possible
variation of the theme here, so to speak, in my nine pillars.
So the first three have to do with relationship.
And the first is probably our most important relationship, which is our relationship withourselves.
(03:59):
Yeah, massive.
How we treat ourselves, how we talk to ourselves, how we react when we make a mistake,things like that.
The second pillar is our relationship with others.
Are we able to discriminate healthy relationships from toxic or harmful relationships?
(04:20):
When we're in a harmful relationship, are we able to protect ourselves from absorbing thatnegativity?
The third pillar is our relationship with something greater.
And this has to do with spirituality.
It has to do with meaning and purpose in our lives.
something that connects us to the larger community and the world itself, recognizing theinterrelationships in the world.
(04:50):
The next three have to do with organismic balance and mastery.
So the fourth pillar is physical balance and mastery.
And here's really at the heart of some of the greatest challenges to longevity, which hasto do with
what I term autonomic dysregulation syndrome that we all face with or all faced withbecause we have an evolutionary mismatch, we have a developmental mismatch, and then we
(05:23):
have conditioning factors that cause us to activate our nervous system way more than werecover from that activation.
So I talk about that in my fourth pillar.
The fifth is mental balance and mastery.
And here we're talking about having a positive perspective.
(05:44):
We're talking about having a growth mindset.
So if you notice a shortcoming in yourself, you don't go, look, I have this shortcoming.
We go, okay, how do I learn and develop to outgrow this, literally outgrow thisshortcoming?
The sixth pillar is emotional balance and mastery.
(06:07):
And here we're talking, I'm talking about working through unfinished emotional business,wounds, hurts, traumas that actually cause greater dysregulation of our body on all kinds
(06:28):
of levels, biochemical, psychophysiological, et cetera.
And so it's working through emotional wounds, unfinished emotional business, and focusingmore on gratitude and positive emotions, which we actually know have a direct impact on
our physiology.
(06:49):
And then the last three have to do with how we engage in the world.
Presence, am I aware of my surroundings?
Am I noticing and
being able to take in what's going on.
But in my model, presence has two directions.
So that's what we receive.
But also, what energy do I project out into the world?
(07:12):
What messages do other people receive from me?
And I like to highlight the fact that if you and I, Jeffrey, were standing next to eachother and I was to monitor your brain waves,
I'd be able to pick up aspects of my heart rate pattern in your brainwaves.
(07:34):
heart and our our heartbeat is so powerful that it can be picked up.
Now, if I'm frustrated, upset, my heart rate pattern is gonna have one look of chaos.
If I'm in a place of gratitude and love, it's gonna have a more coherent heart ratepattern.
(07:55):
So you're picking up those differences.
unconsciously.
So that's emotional, that's presence and what I project out.
Then flexibility is am I able to make adjustments when I'm faced with obstacles?
If I'm trying to achieve a certain goal and there are obstacles, can I make adjustments?
(08:17):
Can I be flexible?
Maybe change my goals so that I have a greater opportunity for success.
Flexibility also is about flexibility of
perspective.
Can I put myself in your shoes?
I see a situation from many different angles so that I have a greater ability to handlewhatever that is?
(08:40):
finally, the ninth pillar is power, which I define as the ability to get things done.
So the more we are able to get things done, the more confidence we have in ourselves andthe fewer situations in our lives
we experience as dangerous or stressful.
(09:01):
So all of these contribute to our mind-body functioning in the most optimal way, digestingour food in the most optimal way.
You know, having the kidneys function in the most optimal way because I'm not expendingall my energy in a defensive mode with the world and I'm giving myself that opportunity to
(09:25):
recover.
That's the whole picture of my model of resilience.
Yeah, I love it.
It's great.
It synchronizes really well with the life energy circle that I know you're familiar withnow from reading the book.
Yes, yes, I appreciated that, Jeffrey.
Yeah, so let's go back to the first three, relationship with self, relationships ingeneral, right?
(09:49):
So.
You know, my experience in dealing with people is that there are a lot of people with alot of self-flagellation going on.
A lot of people that don't really love themselves, I would say, in a really unconditionalway.
And I think it creates a lot of hardship for people, right?
(10:12):
They never really feel loved.
my thought is that, and you can weigh in on this, my thought is you can never really loveanybody else more than you love yourself.
Like if you're in a relationship, it's difficult to actually have truly, you know, freeflowing love for another person if you haven't figured that out for yourself.
(10:33):
so it seems like to your point, this primary relationship is the one with ourselves.
do you want to talk a little bit more about that in terms of how you, see people gettingto a point where they can have unconditional love for themselves and they're not so self
critical all the time.
Well, I like to say that that is a process just like all of these other areas where wewant to improve on.
(11:00):
It's all on a continuum.
So I ask people to monitor and pay attention to how they talk to themselves because thelessons of our childhood, all of those lessons get funneled into the voice that we hear 24
seven.
That's sort of like our internal parent, so to speak.
(11:25):
And what I find with most people is the way we talk to ourselves, the way we treatourselves is much too negative, judgmental and critical.
And we're not sufficiently accepting of ourselves.
You know, I like to say that we're all on this journey through life.
And at any time we're somewhere along this path.
(11:48):
What happens with most of us is we're here, but we feel we should be here.
Whenever we say, should have done better, I shouldn't have made that mistake, all of thesejudgmental comments we make to ourselves are really undermining because they're saying
that there must be something wrong with myself that I'm here and not further along thepath.
(12:13):
so I identify what I consider the
the basic qualities for a healthy relationship with ourselves.
And those qualities are coming from a place of love, acceptance, support, care, and joy.
(12:34):
Yeah, I agree with that.
And so I ask people, and I can ask your audience to start monitoring, how do I talk tomyself?
First of all, I guarantee any time that we're feeling upset,
We're feeling worried, scared.
If we trace it back, some message is coming from our judgmental internal voice that'striggering those feelings.
(13:01):
And so I invite people to pay attention.
Notice how you're treating yourself, how you're talking to yourself, how it might becritical, judgmental, negative.
And then I invite you to switch into a voice that
comes from those qualities that I just identified, that's the healthy internal parent thatyou want to develop.
(13:26):
Right.
That when you hear the critical negative, you go, no, no, you're not supporting me, you'renot helping me.
And then switching into this other voice that you develop.
Yeah, I think for me, I agree with that.
completely.
think for me, the way that I've gotten there has been through imaging, if you will, havingstrong images of myself when I was small, two years old, three years old.
(13:59):
you know, being a parent, I saw my own kids when they were two or three years old, right.
And so
You know, I mean, they're just so cute.
They're so lovable.
mean, my gosh, they're so amazing, right?
Full of potential and life and joy and fun and, you know, curiosity and all the thingsthat make life really wonderful.
(14:20):
And I think, yeah, I'm that little person.
I'm that little person.
So lovable, so incredibly lovable.
What's not to love, right?
What's not to love?
And so in that moment, it's like, there's massive love for me coming from me, right?
And I think
Part of the hero's journey for each of us is to realize that nobody had perfect parents,right?
(14:41):
Every parent, and I certainly wasn't a perfect parent, everybody's parents doing the bestthey can.
And so it's no surprise that the messaging you got from your parents wasn't spot onnecessarily.
It never was for anybody.
So, you know, welcome to that club.
But I think part of the hero's journey is us becoming the parent to ourselves.
(15:02):
you know, as we actually become more mature and how we think about this.
And now we realize, there's myself, I'm two years old, I'm three years old.
my gosh.
I feel this unconditional love for little Jeff.
Let me nurture him, celebrate him, encourage him, know, comfort him, you know, all thethings that a parent would do for a two year old.
Right.
(15:22):
And when you start to focus that kind of, when, when I have that imagery, right.
And I start to focus that kind of energy on myself, it becomes super easy.
to see how lovable I am and to see how lovable I will always be.
so anyway, that's been one of the ways that I've been able to kind of make that real formyself.
So I think that's great.
(15:43):
And that's a great approach.
When I do some things similar with clients that I work with, unfortunately, they don't seethat lovable child.
They see a child who's not.
They don't remember being that young, right?
They don't remember they can't.
Yes.
So go ahead.
(16:04):
So there's a healing process that many of us need to go through to get to where we canappreciate that little child and have that love and compassion toward that little child
and then to basically transfer that to ourselves in the present moment.
(16:26):
Right.
You know, when you talk about making mistakes and us being critical about making quoteunquote mistakes, another thing that I've done is to reframe everything as being either a
wise choice or a choice that led to wisdom in a way.
(16:46):
In other words, everything has a purpose.
Every decision has had a purpose.
And it's important to understand why we made decisions that we made.
and to learn from those things, but it's not about beating ourselves up.
There's no value in beating ourselves up over it.
There's only value in what can you learn from it and how do you grow and how do you cometo understand the things about yourself that everybody else in the room can see, but you
(17:10):
can't see yourself because you've so normalized it as part of who you think you are.
So, yeah.
So in my book, I go through a process to help people let go of mistakes and
regrets that they still carry with them.
Yeah, and it's a process of number one.
(17:31):
Okay, you have feelings about it.
Maybe you're angry at yourself.
So you give yourself the opportunity to express that although You have to be careful whenyou express anger toward yourself that you're not undermining You could be angry at a
behavior, but you don't put yourself down That's right.
(17:52):
And then you
recognize that there was a cost to that mistake.
So now we want to find the lesson, the benefit, which is the lesson that balances out thatcost so that the next time you'll do a better job.
And then finally, you want to let go of the regret.
(18:14):
You want to let go of the anger toward yourself because it's only holding you back, onlyhurting you.
And if your goal is to
proven life, then it's an necessary step to let go of past mistakes.
So in my book, I take people step by step through a process of actually letting go ofregrets and mistakes.
(18:38):
Yeah, I think that's great.
I do think that when you look at it through this perspective that everything that everhappened to me actually has led me to this moment here today.
It's like I wouldn't be who I am today if I hadn't
done the things that I'd done or experienced the things I experienced, right?
And so when you look at it through that lens, there really is no good or bad experience.
(18:59):
It's every experience ultimately contributed to your wisdom in this moment, right?
Your deeper understanding, your deeper empathy, your deep, if you hadn't gone through someof these things, you wouldn't have empathy for other people in those situations, right?
And so it's, I find all of it, quite honestly, is nothing's lost.
It's like going to medical school.
People were saying, well, I don't really want to learn this.
(19:19):
I'm never going to use it.
I wanted to learn everything.
It's like none of that information is ever lost when you understand embryology orbiochemistry or whatever.
like, it's always in there, even though you can't necessarily recite everything.
like, it changes the way you think and feel about things.
So actually going back and healing those experiences, accepting them as this is part of mypositive journey, right?
(19:42):
It's not a negative thing to be cast aside.
It's actually to be folded into helping me create the wisdom that I have today.
Well, I appreciate that.
And you are demonstrating one of the important lessons that I teach in my book, which isabout flexibility of perspective, being able to see it in finding the positive way to see
(20:07):
whatever situation you're in.
And that's a tremendous ability.
absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's one that I've, you one that I've cultivated.
Quite honestly, you know, I mean, I used to beat myself up.
I used to be the hardest on myself and all that sort of things in my 20s.
I used to be, you know, the most critical and I've gone down that whole path.
(20:29):
Right.
So I know it very well.
And it took some life events for me.
You know, one in medical school, you know, there was always somebody smarter.
Right.
So the question is, OK, there's always so I wish I was smarter.
I wish I better this, better that, whatever.
And then I got to a point where I realized, you know what?
I'm smart enough to do anything I'm actually interested in doing.
(20:52):
And that's all I need.
I'm good.
And I stopped comparing myself again to anybody else.
like, no, I'm actually smart.
My gifts are good enough to do anything I want to do.
You know, that's a blessing.
Let me just run with that.
That was one insight.
The other one was when my son was born and I was welcoming him into planet earth.
(21:15):
my gosh, I felt unconditional love for another human being like I didn't even knowexisted.
Like I'd never felt that for another human being.
It was life changing.
It's like, my gosh, I never got that.
I never felt that as a little kid.
Why don't I give that to little Jeff?
Jeff deserves that just as much as little Chris does, right?
So anyway, those were life experiences that kind of helped me to reshape this.
(21:37):
So if you're listening to this, you might look back on life experiences where you felt themost love, you know?
felt the most love for yourself or you felt the most love coming towards you from somebodyelse, you know, or nurturing and kind of internalize those things.
You know, it could be anybody, a parent, a sibling, a teacher, you know, whomever.
Right.
So, Very good points.
(21:59):
Yeah.
So let's talk about let's talk about the second set, the second trio there.
Sure.
Sure.
Yeah.
So, you know, I
We have structural problems just being born into our lives.
(22:20):
The first one is an evolutionary mismatch.
So we evolved to perfectly match the hunter-gatherer environment.
Sure.
But our society has advanced so far from that so quickly while our bodies have not madethe appropriate adaptation.
(22:42):
So whatever we're dealing with in our day in our lives, be it a bill we're worried aboutpaying, a conflict with somebody in our lives, a deadline that we have to do, any of these
things, we have one stress response that mobilizes for all of those, even though the fightor flight response is not appropriate for most of the stresses in our lives.
(23:10):
So we're continually mobilizing and from your longevity perspective, you know theconsequences of the mobilization of the body and the using of resources and having to
replenish those resources.
So we activate the nervous system, but how many stimuli in our day, in our lives triggersafety?
(23:35):
Tell us we're okay, we can relax.
Almost none.
So this creates the first mismatch in which we're continually activating our stressresponse, our nervous system, and not recovering with the parasympathetic, the recovery
branch.
That's right.
(23:55):
It's an excellent point.
We've already talked about the developmental mismatch where we learned lessons as a childthat don't serve us as adults.
Messages unintentionally
given to us by our family and surroundings.
(24:16):
And so more we may grow up in an environment that's dangerous.
And so as an adult, we start out our day expecting something to go wrong.
And so we start out our day mobilizing a stress response.
And then finally, another interesting
(24:37):
aspect to this imbalance is that if you think about all the stress all of the successes inyour life, I Guarantee that all or most were associated with stress So our brains have put
those two things together Mm-hmm.
you know, the stress didn't necessarily cause the success but because our brains put thosethings together we literally are Adapted to want
(25:07):
to find stresses in our lives.
So all of those things create this mismatch and imbalance between the two branches of ournervous system.
And resilience is about finding the way to keep those in place of balance.
Right.
So I agree with you.
I think for me, a lot of it devolves down to this question of safety.
(25:30):
Right.
And even the things that we were instructed.
by our families about what's safe, what's not safe, what we're supposed to do, what we'renot supposed to do, you know, all around a sense of safety or a sense of conformity.
I think, you know, when you think about it, anxiety, stress, even to some extent,depression, think anger for sure, frustration and even greed, I think, in many respects,
(26:00):
boils down to people not feeling safe.
And so when they don't feel safe, then they feel empowered to take it out on somebodyelse, to act aggressively, to do lots of different things.
And I think one of the big misconceptions in life that I learned is that there's nothingexternal to us that can ever make us feel safe.
(26:24):
So I don't care where you went to school, who your family is, how much money you make orhave, what country you live in.
I mean, if history has taught us anything.
It's that everything could be taken away, right?
There's nobody's nobody's immune to that.
Even health can be taken away.
Right.
So so then it becomes a psycho spiritual question of actually, how do you give yourselfsafety in any circumstance?
(26:45):
Because when you actually crack that code, then you can wake up calm every morning.
Right.
Knowing that you're safe.
Right.
If you're if your safety depends on things going right or things happening or whatever,you know, that's a.
That's a that's a no-win proposition as far as I can tell right I mean it's gonna fallapart at some point so well so I Definitely agree that safety is an important component
(27:12):
here in fact Whenever I tell people to practice a relaxation exercise I Have them startout by saying that I right now I'm safe and for the next 15 minutes when I do this
relaxation
I'm safe, I can let down my guard.
(27:33):
And I ask people to look in their day, in their lives, for zones of safety, times andplaces.
They can say right here, right now, I'm safe.
And in particular, before they sit down to a meal, I ask them to go into a place of safetyand I'm safe for the next time that I'm gonna eat this meal because
(27:59):
You know, so much of the GI problems, gastrointestinal problems are because people aresitting down to eat, which involves digestion while they are feeling stressed and focusing
on a problem which tends to shut down the digestive system.
So, yes, safety is very important.
(28:21):
It is what allows us to engage that recovery parasympathetic response.
And in fact, I tell people, know, your body has two choices.
It can go into defend and protect or heal and maintain.
And so we want to find as much of our day of our lives that we can say I'm safe so I canlet down my guard and go into heal and and maintain.
(28:50):
Yeah, I agree with that completely.
And I think you can get to the point.
You know, we talk about meditation.
or mindfulness, which is really what you're talking about here.
If you're going to sit down before a meal or you're going to sit down for 15 minutes andgive yourself safety in that moment, it's really an act of mindfulness that we're talking
about on some level.
Right.
And then you kind of feel into that safety.
(29:10):
Again, I think experiences of these things are so transformative.
mean, things got things got wired imprinted into our brains through experiences.
Right.
And I think in order to rewrite that code, we can cognitively think about it.
But I think it's experiences actually help us rewrite that code to where we actually dobecome safe.
Right.
So I think cognition is enough of saying, okay, I need to go have this experience.
(29:33):
And so what you're talking about now is your people actually giving themselves a sense ofsafety so they can experience that.
Right.
And then if you do that repetitively, you start to overwrite the software and you start torewrite the code to where you can then actually start to move into that place of feeling
safe.
Right.
And so I think that's very powerful.
I think meditation can, can definitely, help with that.
(29:56):
So I think if you're listening to this and you, you're starting a meditation practice ordoing it, think one of the key elements is to, enable yourself to go into this place of
just absolute safety.
I am connected.
I, this is the universe.
What an amazing place.
I feel so connected to love and goodness here.
It's like, when you go to that space, it's like, are safe.
(30:17):
Even for meteor hits, like I'm fine.
Right.
So
(32:34):
on to the next thing.
So, Yeah.
And I focus on the process of neuroplasticity in my book because the lessons of childhoodgo in so deep and at such an early age that they really form the neural networks in our
brain.
So the childhood patterns that I refer to as our primitive Gestalt patterns are sopowerful, but balancing that out, we have tremendous neuroplasticity.
(33:07):
And I agree with what you were saying.
One of the keys in that process is when we make a change, when we do something that helpsus, when we do something and it works out, that we literally take a moment to have the,
make the cognitive connection.
This worked.
(33:28):
I can keep doing it this way.
time we reflect on a success, we reinforce and we
put a spotlight on literally on the neural networks that we are actually rewiring in thatmoment.
Right.
Yeah, I agree with that.
I think it's so important to actually understand what's the task at hand.
(33:51):
And if you're listening to this, the task at hand is to reprogram your brain.
That's really the task at hand.
How do I actually rewrite the software so that I get rid of the messages that are nolonger serving me and I actually step into a space where I
I am safe and I can feel safe and I can feel connected and I can have great relationships,right?
I think it's really about rewriting that software, a great relationship with myself whereI can love myself, things like that.
(34:15):
So yeah, I think it's really important to clarify what it is you're going for, right?
It's rewriting the software.
Absolutely.
can't just be, I want to let go of this.
Right.
Because then it's, well, where am I going to?
Exactly.
That's why I...
identify those qualities of a healthy internal voice, internal parent, so that someone haswhere they want to get to and are continually speaking from that place to reinforce and
(34:46):
rewire their brains.
That's right.
You know, interestingly enough, I've had some some really deep meditative experiences, not
in the two different paths, quite honestly.
And one of those really profoundly deep meditative experiences, I got in touch withconsciousness, right?
Just like directly in touch with consciousness.
(35:07):
And it was just pure, pure, pure love.
Like the kind of love, like if you haven't experienced that, even that unconditional lovefor my son, wow, more than that, just pure love.
And as I was sitting in that meditative space, you know, I was
I was experiencing it and kind of thinking about it little bit at the same time.
(35:29):
And it was like out of love, love loves to create.
Right.
And hence we have the universe.
have this ever creating new creating.
Right.
And we're made in the image of consciousness.
Right.
We're conscious beings.
So we love to create.
And then what does creation do for for for consciousness?
What's the feedback loop there?
Why create?
(35:50):
Well, it brings great joy.
It brings great joy.
And so I started to internalize this.
I'm running this by you as much as I'm sharing it with you.
And that is for me, my purpose in life now is to reside in a very loving, profoundlyloving place.
And from that place to create, it could be a business, it could be a book, it could be apodcast.
(36:11):
It could be a product.
could be a relationship.
It could be anything.
It could be a, you know, athletic experience, but in creating
The feedback loop is joy.
And the only reason I'm creating this create joy.
We think it's for money.
We think it's for this.
We think it's for that, but it's not.
If we just went through life and think about from this loving place, I'm here to createand to create joy.
(36:35):
we've just added to glad and longevity.
We've just added a chief joy officer, right?
Somebody that wants to help all the clients and all the staff experience joy and createand live into this joy.
Right.
And I think.
For me, it's just very clarifying.
That's really kind of what it's all about for me.
That's for me.
And if that resonates with you as an audience, then feel free to adopt it.
(36:59):
But you may find your own kind of unifying principle as to why you're here and what you'redoing.
And I found, I will just say this, that in the creation, this came to me the other daywhen I was playing the guitar.
When you play music, and I played the guitar since I was 10, when you play music, it's allabout tension and release.
tension and release.
(37:19):
So I'm writing a new song, you're creating tension, and then you release the tension,right?
That's what music is, tension and release.
And I started to think about that.
It's like, you know, in the creative process, there is tension, and there's release,right?
There's the tension of not knowing exactly how so we take on the stress of that, so tospeak, but it's a hormetic stress.
(37:40):
It's not one that destroys us.
And then there's the release as we find the solutions and the creativity to solve theissue or whatever it is.
So when you're listening about this, it's not that you're going to live your life in thisplane of there is no stress or there is no tension, so to speak.
Even in the creative process, there is tension and release, but ultimately it's to bringforward joy to the world.
(38:01):
So that's kind of where I'm at at the moment.
Well, I will tell you that I had love, compassion, acceptance, support and care as myqualities of a healthy internal parent.
Yeah.
And in this last year, literally this last year, I added joy.
(38:24):
Yes, joy.
One of the one of the things that led me to that is that as I looked at how peopleapproach the world and their lives, you know, there's this wide range of experience with a
middle point that's baseline.
And then what's below the baseline is negative.
(38:45):
And what's above the baseline is positive.
And what I found was so many people were just trying to get up to baseline.
wanted to get at the end of the day, they wanted to realize nothing bad has happened.
And so they're always just hoping that they'll be at baseline.
(39:06):
And that's when I started sharing with people, no, the goal is to be above the baseline.
That's right.
Joy, step into joy.
Yeah.
And a lot of writing about this notion about setting your intentions to be above thebaseline.
And one of the ways is to experience joy.
(39:26):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
In fact, I've started using joy and peace as kind of, and I'll say joy, quite honestly,because there can be tension before there's peace.
But really using joy is kind of a North Star.
I'm not, if there's not joy,
for me in doing this podcast, then I probably shouldn't be doing it, right?
(39:48):
If there's not joy in, you know, what I'm doing relationally or on a business front orwhatever else, then I shouldn't be doing it.
And I back away from it.
If something brings me joy and enables me to spread joy, right?
Not just for me to enjoy, but to spread that joy.
And I end up with a sense of peace about how this is going forward.
(40:10):
Then I know that's where I'm supposed to be.
And so
I think a lot of people don't know where they're supposed to be.
It's like, well, I think I should be making money.
I think I should start a family.
I think I should have a job.
I think I should do this.
I think I should do that.
But they haven't really solved that question of how do I actually measure, you know, whereI'm supposed to be?
Is it my bank account or is it something else?
(40:32):
Right.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
And my third pillar, relationship with something great, greater, addresses meaning,finding meaning in your life.
Exactly.
finding purpose in your life.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
All those are absolutely critical.
I think you really kind of hit on so many of really critical topics.
(40:55):
Yeah.
And I think, you know, when I talk about purpose, one of the things I like to say ispurpose is the ultimate and use it or lose it.
That if we think about
from a genetic perspective that we're designed through the evolutionary process to live tothe age we can reproduce and then to live until our offsprings become independent.
(41:25):
We would realize why so many of our biological markers start to head downhill, you know,around 30 or 40 years of age.
But we have this amazing notion of epigenetics.
how our experience can affect the expression of our genes.
(41:47):
And I believe that one way is for us to have purpose in life.
That if we have an important purpose, like we want to help others, and that's our purposeand mission in life, we're sending our biology a message.
We have an important reason to be on this planet.
(42:08):
You better support that need.
That's right.
I'm, this is vital.
You're vital.
Let's vital together, right?
Let's be vital together.
Yeah, exactly.
No, I love that.
Yeah, I love that.
You know, one of the other things in relationships, that I'll circle back to that I'velearned is that, relationships require what I call courageous conversations in order to
(42:33):
actually thrive.
A lot of times we think that a relationship is about getting to a state of equilibrium,right?
And I think a good relationship is the same as the relationship with ourselves.
think, yes, we want to get to a place of equilibrium, but to your point aboutneuroplasticity and growth and a growth mindset, we're constantly growing as individuals,
constantly growing into the next level of this and that.
(42:55):
Right.
A good relationship should be doing the same thing.
It shouldn't just be, well, we've kind of figured it out and we, you know, we make love onThursdays and Sundays and we, you know, go to the theater on Wednesdays or whatever.
And we kind of in this pattern.
It shouldn't really be about that.
It should be about growth.
How do we actually stimulate growth for each other?
Yeah.
Well, if equilibrium becomes too important, it constrains growth because it constrainsdoing the very things, challenges in life that are going to take you out of equilibrium.
(43:31):
But that's where growth occurs.
That's right.
doesn't occur by just staying in equilibrium and trying to
constrain yourself to stay in equilibrium.
It's where you allow for change and then you adapt to change.
It allows for challenges and then you learn how to handle those challenges.
(43:52):
So the real equilibrium is not like this, but it's more like this.
Yeah.
You can't see his hands, but he's showing from a level to actually it's kind of undulatingup and down, if you will.
Like you're taking on risk.
It's scary.
Like these courageous conversations, I will tell you, when I have them, sometimes you havethat sensation, you're standing outside yourself, looking at yourself saying, I can't
(44:17):
believe I'm gonna say this, but I'm gonna say this in a loving way.
I'm gonna bring this up.
This is on my heart.
I need to bring this forward.
It's like, I have no idea what's gonna happen here.
But you bring it up and the other person, if you're with a good partner, they're listeningto you from a loving place, not a judgmental space.
And then it creates when you actually process those things and you can process that goingbi-directionally from both sides.
(44:41):
my gosh, you build intimacy like and knowing, right?
Because for me, a great relationship is knowing and being known and loving and beingloved.
And so that's an ongoing process to know more deeply, right?
And to understand more deeply ourselves and the other person.
I find that that's been very stimulating to creating great relationships.
(45:02):
And you find that some people are capable of it and some people are not.
Some people are in that equilibrium mode and they're comfortable there and that's justwhere they want to be.
And that usually though, they're also fearful of 100 percent.
It's fear.
They're there because of fear.
They're there because of fear.
They just don't have the courage.
And that's why I say it's a courageous conversation, because I think one of the number onethings in life to actually
(45:29):
learn and grow is to be courageous, right?
It's not easy.
When you look at that cliff you're getting ready to step off of, it's not easy to step offthat cliff.
You gotta trust that the parachute's gonna work, right?
That you're gonna figure it out before you hit.
Yeah, I totally agree with you, but one of the things that was my intention in my book wasto realize that people do need to step out of their comfort zone, is what we're talking
(45:55):
about.
But what I've done in my book is I've done it in a gradual way.
Yes.
So that people are not stepping off the cliff.
People are taking steps that are doable.
And they're learning from the steps that they do and succeed at that, look, I can handlemore than I thought I could.
(46:20):
Each increment of that gives them the courage to take the next step.
That's right.
It's that's the growth process that I encourage in my book.
That's right.
What I'm going to say to that though, is that when you're in that place of equilibrium,even that first step feels like a cliff.
You know, it still feels like it's going to take some courage for me to do that.
(46:43):
Even though it may be a quote unquote small step.
If you're, if you're in that equilibrium mode and you're listening to this, that firststep, it's going to be a challenge.
It's going to take some courage to do that, right?
Whether it's walking up to a stranger or doing something else, you know, it's.
it's going to have that feeling.
So just don't be surprised by that.
Just understand that's part of the that's part of the game, if you will.
And you kind of learn to thrive on that.
(47:04):
Right.
So, you know, the lessons of childhood set up these psychological boundaries about what'sOK and what's not.
Right.
And so we're talking about doing taking steps to to move those boundaries out or to stepoutside of them.
That's right.
(47:25):
And
really what it involves is tolerating discomfort.
That's it.
Which is tolerating really ambiguity.
It's like, I don't know how this is going to work out.
I find that people that can really manage ambiguity well have the most growth potential.
So, yeah.
Well, what I what people feedback from people that I appreciate the most about my book isthat they
(47:56):
they've stepped out of their existing boundaries and they report to me, thank you formaking it possible for to be able to do that and change my behavior and change my thinking
patterns.
And I didn't think that that was possible.
Right.
Yeah, I want to bring up a couple of other things that you've touched on and some thingsthat I think about as well.
(48:20):
One is
This is you haven't touched on this one per se, but I think you'll get this.
And this is that I think language is a poor form of communication.
Right.
Simply because I don't know if you've had a telepathic experience, but I've had sometelepathic experiences with consciousness and my gosh, I mean, the energy transfer, the
(48:41):
information transfer is just instantaneous and complete.
And yet we're dribbling out words to try to, you know, Define for the audience what we'rethinking in this and that.
Right.
It's very slow.
It's kind of like Morse code.
And the other thing about it is that in our psyche, many things can be true at once,right?
We can love something, we can hate something, we can be scared to death, we can beexhilarated and we can be happy and joyful and other things all simultaneously.
(49:09):
And yet it's almost impossible to convey that in a single sentence, right?
And so when I know that about language,
then it makes me think much more like a therapist in a sense of you said this, I think youmean this.
Tell me more about that.
Is there more to that that you'd like to share?
(49:29):
You know, things like that, because you know, inside somebody's psyche, there's a lot moregoing on than just that one sentence or that one comment.
Right.
So I think that's given me a lot of insight, really, in terms of building relationshipswith people, whether it's clients or or people I'm close to.
So really want to get to know them and deeply understand them and appreciate how difficultit is for us to actually adequately communicate just in words.
(49:56):
Yeah.
Well, you know, we communicate in more than we actually do communicate in more than justwords.
100 percent.
Our posture, our facial expressions, the tone of our voice.
All of these things project some aspects of our emotional mental state.
(50:17):
That's right.
The other person unconsciously picks up and maybe feels more attracted to a person becausethose unspoken messages were positive or feels more like, I need to keep my distance from
this person because those unspoken physical tonal messages are negative.
(50:41):
That's right.
Or fearful or worrying to them.
Yeah.
No, exactly.
You know, we talk about five senses, but I've known for a long time and I think manypeople have that really we have six senses and that the six senses that and some people
say we even have more seven, eight senses, nine, but certainly six.
And that is we read each other's energy all the time.
(51:02):
Right.
We read each other's energy.
Somebody walks into the room, you read their energy immediately.
Right.
And that's definitely a sense that we have.
And you're, kind of commenting on that.
That a lot of communication is nonverbal essentially and it's the energetic of the otherperson I think we can also pick up when people are vibrating at different levels, right?
(51:22):
So if somebody's vibrating at a high level from a loving caring generative joyous place wefeel that right when people are vibrating a lower level of anger and frustration and you
know despair or whatever we feel that too, right?
So I think one of the things that I'm conscious of is what level am I vibrating on?
And I found that almost in every situation, me consciously vibrating on a higher level,always is the best solution.
(51:47):
It's never failed me yet.
I've been playing with this now for some months and it's like, okay, I'm going to walk in.
I walked into a hotel the other night.
I went to Chicago for a charity event.
It turns out I walked into the wrong hotel.
had a reservation at another hotel, right?
There was some mixed up in the communication with my staff.
So it's eight 30 at night.
I'm tired.
I'm fatigued, right?
(52:08):
It's like I've been traveling busy day, you know, and I thought to myself, what level am Igoing to vibrate at?
And I thought, okay, I'm going to vibrate a very high level.
So I started joking with the staff.
I started doing stuff.
I texted my assistant, you know, we checked it out and you know, 20 minutes we had itsorted out.
I got a room at that hotel.
But the point is that life throws you all kinds of things.
(52:31):
The question is, how are we going to actually deal with them?
And I think a lot of it is
What level do you want to vibrate at?
And that's actually, you can choose that.
So I think that's another piece of it.
Yeah, you know, someone came up to me in one of my talks and said, you know, I've beenworking on this stuff for years.
Does it ever get any easier?
(52:53):
Yes, it does.
It gets effortless, actually.
And what I said was, you know, all of us look outside of ourselves for grounding.
You know, what is that person thinking about me?
What are they going to do or say?
And I said, when you start to come from an internal sense of groundedness, that's right.
(53:17):
That's when it gets easier.
That's right.
let go of some of these judgments and criticisms of yourself that we've been working onand you shift over to this positive way of treating yourself and you ground yourself in a
healthier
foundation, that's when it starts to get easier.
I agree.
It's internal validation versus external validation.
(53:40):
know, and quite honestly, the people externally, you don't really give a crap.
They just don't.
I mean, they're just being who they are.
They don't I mean, they may like you to some extent or whatever, but they don't reallycare.
You know, when I stopped worrying about what other people were going to think about me,which was like decades ago, my life got so much simpler.
It was all of a sudden like, OK, I'll let them worry about me, but I'm certainly not goingto worry about them.
(54:02):
Yeah, but the basic the basic ingredient here is what's within my control and what's notin my control.
That's right.
And let me me focus my energies on what I have control over and what I don't have controlover.
I need to let go of 100 percent, 100 percent.
Yeah.
And I think that brings you back to the meditative space when you're there and you'refeeling safe.
(54:25):
You can also think about what what energy level do I want to vibrate at?
I to vibrate up at love and joy.
Really, this is the highest energy there is or where am I going to be?
So it's another way to practice that.
Very cool.
Yeah.
And all of these are about learning and growth.
And for any learning, any growth, you have to be present in the moment to be able to makea choice.
(54:50):
Otherwise, you're on the automatic pattern.
So you're on autopilot.
That's right.
It's being made for you, quite honestly, by the software that's already been programmed.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, there's one last thing I'll bring up, which is this concept I have, which wasn'tin the book, developed it since about binary thinking versus quantum thinking.
(55:13):
And I think a lot of us get trapped into binary thinking.
think we go through our life.
This is about growth mindset.
We go through our life thinking it's my job to find my answers.
It's my job to find my answers right now.
Now I have answers for this.
I have answers to that.
I know how I'm going to eat and I'm going to play who my partner is and blah, blah, blah.
I have these answers, right?
And yet I found that all growth basically comes from the questions that we're asking.
(55:38):
So I think in life, it's really more a question of finding the questions that are going tocontinue to fuel your growth into your neuroplasticity, right?
Than it is finding your quote unquote answers.
Because once we find our answers, we tend to get married to those answers and then we getdefensive about them, right?
And that creates binary thought processes.
I'm right, you're wrong.
I don't believe in that.
I believe in this.
(55:59):
I think what you're doing is not good, blah, blah, blah, right?
So we end up in this binary thought process instead of a growth mindset, which is muchmore quantum where there's a plus one, a minus one, a zero, a sphere of all possibilities.
And in that sphere, we can now find the best solution with this person at this time forthis situation, right?
So it's when you move out of that
being married to your answers into married to your questions and this growth mindset, itopens up a brand new, my gosh, it's like a playground where you get to grow and experiment
(56:27):
and try and do all kinds of stuff.
It's really the greatest joy.
Yeah.
I appreciate you bringing up quantum because I've been fascinated by that recently aswell.
And the quantum computer and how that works and.
In fact, I will be starting my own podcast in the next couple of months called QuantumLeadership.
(56:51):
great.
So it's up on the qualities of good leadership.
So great.
Well, invite me on.
I'll be happy to chat.
So good.
Good.
Yes, definitely.
All good.
Well, Stephen, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you.
Any last words of wisdom you'd like to impart to the audience or?
Well, I yes.
(57:14):
just want to hold up my new book.
yeah.
Yeah.
The nine pillars of resilience.
The proven path to master stress, slow aging and increased vitality.
Yeah.
And it's available everywhere online in bookstores.
And it gives you a blueprint like a it's a handbook for living your best life step by stepabout how to be on the path.
(57:40):
And then
I was offering for your audience my resilience assessment booklet, which is an ebook thatdescribes my model, but it also has a questionnaire that a person can take, self score,
and get their own personal resilience profile along my nine dimensions.
Nice.
I love it.
(58:00):
I love it.
Great.
And where do they find that?
Well, your staff will make that available.
Okay.
It'll be in the, it'll be in the show notes for them.
But they can also go to my website, drstevensideroff.com and they can get it there aswell.
Okay.
So Steven is spelled with a P H and Sideroff as S I D E R O F F.
(58:25):
Correct.
So just so you have that Dr.
Steven Sideroff.
Great.
Well, Steven, such a pleasure.
Thanks for taking the time to chat.
Yeah.
Thank you as well, Jeffrey.
It has been enjoyable.
Thank you.
my pleasure.
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