September 13, 2025 • 38 mins
What if the path to optimal health isn't found in a gym or supplement store, but in the space between your thoughts? In this captivating reunion conversation with returning guest David Amerland, we explore the fascinating intersection of mind, body, and spirit that forms the foundation of true wellness.
The power of visualization takes center stage as we discuss remarkable research showing how athletes who simply imagine their rehabilitation exercises recover at nearly identical rates to those performing physical therapy. This isn't mystical thinking—it's backed by neuroscience. When we visualize an action, our blood chemistry changes, cellular activity increases, and our metabolic rate rises. Our bodies respond to our thoughts in measurable, powerful ways.
David introduces the concept that our brains don't simply think independently—they "think with the world." We're constantly processing environmental feedback that shapes our perception and physical responses. Microsoft's specially designed "quietest room" demonstrates this dramatically, as people experience vertigo and nausea when deprived of all external sensory input. This reveals how deeply our nervous systems are integrated with our surroundings.
We delve into the emotional roots of performance blocks, whether in elite athletes, executives, or creatives. As Eastern philosophy states: "What is within will be manifested without." Our conversation explores how childhood trauma shapes neurological processing, affecting everything from stress responses to physical health outcomes. The pandemic forced many to confront their authentic selves when external identity reinforcements disappeared, revealing how exhausting it is to constantly perform different versions of ourselves for different audiences.
The health implications are significant—people living inauthentically experience higher rates of heart disease and chronic stress conditions. David offers a powerful closing thought: "If you find ways where you're true to yourself always, then you reduce the energetic load of your day-to-day living," creating margin to handle life's inevitable challenges.
Whether you're seeking to optimize performance, overcome health challenges, or simply live with greater authenticity, this conversation offers insights that bridge ancient wisdom with cutting-edge science. Ready to discover what's really blocking your potential?
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy
Living Podcast.
I'm your host, joe Grumbine,and today I'm kind of tickled.
I have a returning guest and Ilove it when this happens.
This is David Amerlund, and, ifyou remember, he came on I
don't know, I guess it was backin April or May and we were
(00:23):
talking about his new book,built to Last.
David and I share a lot incommon and he's an accomplished
author.
He's published several books,he's got an amazing health-based
platform and I've been able toexperience a little bit of that
(00:45):
and I plan to go deeper into it.
But, most importantly, we sharea lot of common experiences and
ideas about the road towellness.
David, welcome back.
I'm so glad to have you backhere on the show.
How are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I'm doing great and, joe, I'm actually thrilled to be
back talking to you.
Last time, as you said, thesynergy was great.
I left the conversation feelingbuzzed.
I'm doing great and, joe, I'mactually thrilled to be back
talking to you.
Last time, as you said, thesynergy was great.
I left the conversation feelingbuzzed.
I'm really excited to see whatwe're going to cover today.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yeah, and the last time we talked I was deeply
battling a big tumor stickingout of my neck, and today we're
in a much better place than thatand I've traveled this crazy
roller coaster of Westernmedicine and holistic approach
and spiritual practices andenergy work and all of these
(01:33):
things that you're so familiarwith.
And I know you're actuallytalking to us from the beautiful
country of Greece and I'm kindof curious to see what is Greece
like this time of year.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
It's actually pretty hot.
It was 36 degrees centigradetoday.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
All right.
Well, there's no big firesburning or anything right now,
though right.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
No, at the moment.
No, and there was a bit of ascare, like a couple of months
back in July.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Right, I remember.
Yeah, but that sort of has blownover now, so we've been
relatively quiet out here inCalifornia too, as always,
there's wildfires burning everyday, but not like some of the
big ones we've had.
There's still some activity.
Well, and speaking of wildfire,you know we deal with health,
(02:23):
right?
The idea of our body and mindand spirit's potential Is that
kind of how you see health.
I mean, to me, I see the targetas what are you capable of,
right?
That's your goal is.
You know?
Maybe we could try to be thebest we can.
What do you think about that?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Absolutely, and I'm very glad you sort of bring
things together like body, mind,spirit.
Um, frequently we tend to focuson the body because the part of
us that we actually see right,and when we work on that we see
some changes and we think, well,you know, that's all there is.
But essentially it's a muchbigger picture and what we know
(03:03):
from neuroscientific studieswhere the body and the brain
have actually been looked at intandem, whatever the brain
images, the body can actuallybecome, so true and um, there's
um in in traditional literatureespecially, especially in
martial arts, the whole body ofwork where you have advanced
(03:27):
practitioners sitting and sortof contemplating and in their
mind they're going through veryspecific techniques and they're
working through and focusing onthem.
And within the literature it'ssaid that advanced practitioners
they need to train as much in adojo because they could
actually do it that way.
And it sounds like a little bitairy-fairy, it's sort of.
You know, you think this is notgoing to happen, right, but we
(03:51):
have actually done fMRI studieson this.
Now we know that if you imagineyour body moving in a
particular way, or if youimagine your body responding in
a particular way, theneurochemistry of your blood
cells changes.
In response to that, bloodtemperature goes up, cellular
activity begins to increase.
The metabolic rate of theresting body actually shows an
(04:14):
increase.
Now that increase is not of thesame order of magnitude if
you're actually engaged in thatphysical activity, but
nevertheless everything isactivated in the same way, but
to a much smaller degree.
And this is a connectionbetween body and brain, the
imaging part of us where weactually visualize what we want
(04:37):
to become and we help our bodyto actually reach that.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Oh, it's absolutely true.
In fact, in my studies, just inmy health studies, there's been
actual case studies done.
They were all injured and theywere in recovery and one of them
(05:07):
, physically, was going throughthe efforts to rehabilitate and
going through the physicalactivities but not doing any
mental work on it, and one ofthem was laid in a hospital bed
and visualizing going throughthose very same activities and
(05:28):
the third one did nothing.
And so this was, you know, Ithink they were doing brain scan
studies as well, but this wasjust watching the physical
progress of it and they saidthat the athlete that laid in
his hospital bed but visualizedthe same efforts and exercises
(05:50):
and therapeutic techniques asthe athlete that actually was
doing them had a very similarrate of recovery.
And the one that laid in hisbed and did nothing had a
dramatically reduced recovery.
And it was really astounding tosee that that in action.
And I come from a number ofspiritual traditions where
(06:13):
visualization is part of aprayer, and I've witnessed
myself the clearer you canimagine a thing, the quicker it
happens, and it happens more orless just like you imagine it.
It's really incredible.
And a final point, before wejump further, is something that
(06:33):
I've always brought to people'smind is that everything you see
that was ever made by man orfrankly, in nature, I believe,
all started out as, as a thought, like there isn't a piece of
furniture, a house, a car, apiece of clothing, anything that
somebody didn't see first intheir mind before they created
(06:55):
it.
And I think absolutely tounderstand that is like, oh well
, why am I not spending?
And then you think about whatam I doing in my mind, you know
scrolling through social mediaarguing about stupid things.
And you think about what am Idoing in my mind, you know,
scrolling through social mediaarguing about stupid things, and
you're like what am I creatinghere all day long?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Right, yes, it's funny.
I should say that we tend tothink that we think with our
brain, because we are the directobservers of our thoughts as
they take place on aself-awareness level.
But there is the external mindtheory which says that,
(07:37):
essentially, the brain thinkswith the world.
It needs the external input inorder to process the signals
which will give rise to emotions, which will create thoughts,
which will lead to actions.
And if you're separated fromthe world, well sure, you can
have some kind of thinking for awhile.
But we know from people whohave been put in incarceration
(07:58):
and they have had to be put inan isolation cell that within 24
to 48 hours they begin tohallucinate and within 72 hours
they lose touch of reality andsometimes they lose touch of who
they are themselves.
And when I was writing Built toLast, one of the things which I
(08:19):
looked at is the quietest roomin the world, which is created
by Microsoft.
Now, microsoft has created anincredible room, and I can't
remember the cost of it, butit's hundreds of millions of
dollars.
Essentially, it rests onparticular sensors and it's sort
(08:42):
of surrounded by differentlevels of insulation, and when
you're in that room, nothingfrom the external world comes in
no sound, no vibration, noairflow, nothing.
And people who enter that roomexperience vertigo.
They feel that suddenlysomething changed and the
(09:03):
transition is that, even thoughyou're in a building that's
relatively quiet becausenobody's shouting, that building
is subject to vibrations.
It's subject to a whole lot ofsensations which come from the
external world.
We don't consciously understandthat we're processing those
vibrations, but they still makeus feel connected to that world.
(09:26):
They make us feel part ofsomething, even though we're not
consciously aware of it.
And the moment you enter that Ithink it's called room 52, which
is not very imaginative youenter that place and there's no
vibrations, nothing coming fromthat external world.
There's nothing coming from theearth, nothing coming from no
vibrations, nothing coming fromthat external world.
There's nothing coming from theearth, nothing coming from
traffic, nothing coming fromairflow, there are no variations
(09:48):
in temperature.
And suddenly you realize howmuch work your senses are doing
all the time, connecting you tothings around you which make you
feel part of something bigger.
The moment you're in that roomand people feel nauseous, they
feel like they're going to throwup.
Some people can't actuallystand up straight because
there's no feedback from fromthe planet.
(10:08):
You know, normally, if we standup and try to balance, there's
a call, we're not aware of it.
Yeah, yeah, exactly yes, so soit's fascinating.
But that comes back to what youwere saying.
But you know, the brain itselfis getting a lot of stuff from
around us Nature, things we see,things which we think, we
imagine, and a lot of the thingsand thoughts which we create
(10:31):
are the result of input signalswe've processed from somewhere.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
And that constantly goes on.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
That's one of the problems that they need to solve
with deep space travel.
You know, even if they canfigure out how to put a human
into, you know, some kind ofsuspended animation and keep
them there for a while.
What do you do with the brain?
You know, and if you put a bodyto sleep, is the brain sleeping
(10:58):
or is it still trying toprocess things?
And what it's going to dowithout that feedback?
There's a lot going on, I thinksome of it I wasn't aware of
this room you're talking about.
I could imagine the completedeprivation would have such a
negative effect.
(11:26):
You, you, I think aboutisolation as going to nature
where you're not bombarded withall the signals.
You know the 5g and the.
You know the, the, theradiation and the sound waves
and the, all the things, evenjust the, the words and the
noise and the.
You know the, the, the, thewaves that everybody's putting
out just from their own aurafields.
You go up into the high Sierrasor some remote place, for you
(11:47):
know, you go hike for an hourand sit up on a rock and all of
a sudden, you know, you feelthis connection just to the
earth and it's a differentfeedback and generally, for me,
anyways, it's very positive.
You know, you feel the earthunder your feet, you feel,
probably, the magnetic field,you feel whatever energy the
(12:09):
rocks and the trees and theanimals around you are putting
out, but it's a different typeof energy than you know a bunch
of angry humans are putting out,and I think that there's
definitely a healing that comesfrom a type of isolation for a
period of time, but not acomplete isolation Like you talk
(12:32):
about, in a prison environmentwhere you go into a solitary
confinement that is designed toisolate a person's spirit and
humanity and break them down theway it does I mean, it's made
for that and it works so wellwhereas you can spend time in
nature, I think, for a whilebefore it gets to you, probably
(12:55):
get to you eventually.
But um, and I, you know, Idon't believe we're designed to
be by ourselves for longer thansome brief period of time, days
or weeks, whatever that is.
But yeah, I think that there'sdefinitely this line, just like
everything, we come tounderstand the layers and,
(13:17):
frankly, when I say weunderstand, I speak from an
animal point of view.
Really, we don't understandshit.
You know, we talk about God andI'm like how do you even think
to mention a word like that whenwe don't even understand, I
think is important to havediscussions about, because it
(13:45):
opens up the notion thateverything's so much bigger than
you know, our perception of itis.
And when you're talking aboutbody, mind and spirit, I think,
more often than not, the bodywhich we glorify so much and we
give so much attention to isoften just a barometer of what's
really going on.
You know, when you find, youknow you work with clients all
(14:07):
the time and I'll bet more oftenthan not you find there's a an
emotional or spiritual or mentalcore to a problem that's being
shown with physical symptoms.
What's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Absolutely Every time , always, there's in the canon
of Eastern philosophy there's aline that says what is within
will be manifested without.
And that's exactly what we'reseeing every single time
Athletes who are blocked, eliteperformers who are blocked in
(14:43):
that performance they have anemotional knot to work their way
through.
We see top-level, top-flightCEOs in companies who can't
actually physically do their jobproperly because emotionally
they're blocked somewhere.
So every time we experience umany kind of dysfunction at a
(15:06):
physical level whether that isattentional stress related,
physical performance related,anything which tends to stymie
us and hold us back it has aroot cause in the emotional
aspect of our of ourselves.
And unless we can work throughthat, through a clearer
(15:26):
understanding of our identity,our goals, our purpose, we most
times fail to get past it and wereach a ceiling until the next
level.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Absolutely.
You look at a professionalathlete, that's a world-class
athlete a pitcher, a batter, aquarterback, whatever, a
basketball player, a soccerplayer, it doesn't matter.
Everybody sometimes findsthemselves in a slump where they
go from performing consistentlyin all manners of challenge and
(16:02):
obstacles and different youknow a boxer, you know whatever
left-handed, right-handed, highaltitude, low altitude these
guys just performing and all ofa sudden one day they stall out
and they can't do anything right.
And you know, they talk aboutthe slump, they talk about all
these things, but the truth isthere's something blocking them.
(16:23):
A writer, a prolific writer allof a sudden they can't come up
with five words to put togetherAn actor, a performer of any
kind.
So you deal with people on aregular basis.
People come to you looking toimprove their performance or
solve a problem, and how do youaddress that?
(16:45):
I think that this is animportant little piece of the
puzzle here.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
It is, and we always go through a very simple process
where we try to understandwhat's really important to that
individual.
And most of the times peopleconceptualize, they use
cognitive processes to sort ofthink of what they want to do,
because they have thisperception of how they should be
seen, how they should beperforming.
(17:11):
But none of those things aretrue to who they are.
And the moment we start peelingback the layers of what does
that person want to do, and thenwhy do they want to do it, then
it becomes a lot clearer,because then the true values
come to the surface, the truepurpose comes to surface, the
(17:31):
true focus of what they shouldbe doing, and then it becomes
very evident why they can'tperform the way they can.
And sometimes, you know, due tocircumstances, they reach a
natural ceiling.
They can't get past what theyhave because the circumstance is
now holding them back and theyneed to change them, usually by
changing jobs and changingcareers or or changing
(17:54):
approaches.
But that process, that verysimple process, is pretty brutal
.
You have to face yourself.
You have to be truthful, that's,and we we lie to ourselves all
the time oh, constantly,constantly.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
I I think that's huge .
You know, we talked in our veryfirst conversation about
accountability and, um, you know, that's really, I think, what's
underneath all of this.
You know I was telling you I Iwork with with a lot of healers
from around the world and I knowit's kind of a fashionable
thing, but I've been doing thisfor my whole life and lately
(18:30):
I've been spending some timewith some plant medicines that
have really held me accountable.
So when you spend all nightlong, you know, in a fire and
working with these medicines andsinging and praying and just
really putting your attention tothis one thing, you get shown a
(18:51):
truth.
And most of these times it'snot something you necessarily
want to see, or it's somethingthat you already know but you've
been sort of pushing aside, ormaybe it's something you didn't
even realize and all of a suddenit comes gushing out of you and
you're like whoa, I didn't evenget that.
But it's that truth, thataccountability that I think is
(19:16):
instrumental to our healing,regardless of what the problem
is, to our healing, regardlessof what the problem is.
And so when you deal withsomebody, you know you're
looking at, basically going backto basics, and saying, okay.
Well, what brought you here?
Right?
What's what's your goal?
What are you doing right?
What is what's your point here?
What are you doing right?
And they'll.
(19:36):
That's usually pretty easy tocome upon.
Oh, I'm trying to do this.
So my goal I'm you know I'm.
You beat the goal into your headfor so long, but then, when you
come to okay, well, how did youget here?
You know what have you done andyou know why are you here.
What's in your way?
You start looking at thesetruths.
And we spend so much timemaking excuses for things or
(19:59):
convincing ourselves that it'sokay, you know, to put up with
this or to allow ourselves that,even though we said we weren't
gonna, we come up with reasons,excuses for just about anything
and everything.
I know I have the ability to dothat.
And when I hold myself to thefire and say, no, you said
you're going to do this.
(20:19):
All of a sudden it's like, okay, it's not easy, but all of a
sudden the road starts going.
Instead of going zigzagging andup and down, it gets a lot more
straight and narrow and yourealize, you know, if I just do
the thing I said only and ownthe consequences of what I don't
and say, oh well, I got this,but then look, I did that.
(20:42):
It becomes a lot easier in thesense of the confusion and the
how did I get here and I don'tknow why, I don't know, and it
becomes more just a matter ofchoices and accountability.
(21:03):
What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Yeah, I mean most people, without exception,
struggle with some kind of lackof clarity, and the lack of
clarity comes from that initialinability to focus on the things
that are truly important to us,and most of the time we don't
(21:26):
understand what is trulyimportant to us.
We kind of receive messagesfrom the external world that
tells us to focus on specificthings, behave in a particular
way, be a particular type ofperson.
But the moment we actuallyfocus on what is important to us
, then we are better able toprioritize.
If we prioritize our actions,we're actually putting a lot of
(21:49):
energy into things which we'regoing to do, and that begins to
reflect our values, and it's thevalues that actually help us
understand the range of choicesin front of us and which choice
we should be making.
So once we sort of break itdown like this, it becomes very
straightforward and self-evidentand obviously it is not
(22:10):
anything like that.
It is really really difficultand and he said he said earlier
that you know how difficult itis to actually deal with that go
through, peel back the layers,ask why and get some answers and
then keep on asking why untilyou get to truly basic answers
and what comes from that is thatin most cases we fail to
(22:38):
understand our initialconditions, the trauma we have,
the growth we need to undertake,and growth is what makes us
adults.
We start out as children andregardless of how well-placed we
are in the world as children,we're going to receive some kind
of trauma.
This is inevitable.
(22:59):
And then the childhood traumato some extent will determine
our initial phases as youngpeople.
But from then on, the adultingpart of us, the part of us which
says you know you're an adultis the part that actually takes
that trauma, understands, itbegins to put in place processes
(23:19):
that help you overcome it, sothat your reactions, your
thoughts, your thinking, yourvalues are not rooted in the
trauma that initially shaped youtotally.
That includes your mental aswell as your physical health.
You know if you are, forexample and then we've seen it
before people who are reactive,they're reactive because you
(23:39):
know they came from a childhoodhome perhaps where everybody
around them reacted in reallyways.
So their neurological processes, the way that the process
signals from the outside world,have a higher arousal, have a
lower arousal threshold, whichleads to higher reactivity to
external stimuli, which meansthat they experience a lot more
(24:00):
stress in their life.
They're more anxious, they'reless able to focus their
attention, they experience morechronic conditions because of
stress, they make bad choicesbecause they can't focus their
attention.
They tend to be overweight,they tend to be unfit, they tend
to get into long, wrongrelationships.
You know the whole list ofthings and you say, okay, you
(24:22):
know how do we fix that Right.
And the moment you realize that, hey, you know, I don't have to
be like that, I don't have tobe reactive, I don't have to be
anxious about everything, and ofcourse, you obviously need to
realize why you're anxious andreactive in the first instance.
Then you begin to change yourbehavior.
If you change your behavior,you change your neurochemistry
(24:45):
and your homeostatic balance andthat has a whole lot, an entire
cascade of positive healthoutcomes which then lead to
better choices.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
I've got a question In some of the work I've been
doing with some of the differentpeople from different
traditions.
Many times it comes to goingback and visiting yourself as a
child and saying, all right,well, let's go back and see if I
can get in touch with who I wasat that time and try to
(25:17):
remember.
You know you go back tomemories that are implanted,
that you are, you know there'sfix you.
Most of your life I don't thinkyou remember is mostly a blur,
but there are certain thesecertain milestones, these points
where you can go.
Okay, I can go right back tothat Christmas morning or I can
go back to that one time whenthat thing happened and just
literally go back and livethrough those lives.
(25:40):
And some of the work that I'vebeen doing with some of these
people and whether it's in asweat lodge or in a different
type of a ceremony settinginvolves going back to a
traumatic moment, moment andmeeting that person who is you
(26:03):
and accepting them and andacknowledging that you see them
well.
It's getting emotional just eventalking about it, but you know
we go through our life notthinking about who we were,
where we came from, because youdon't want to remember these
(26:23):
things sometimes and you know,for me I had a relatively mild
childhood.
But you still go back and youremember as a child, well, the
things that today don't seemlike they were a big deal maybe
at a time they did and you knowyou live in a much smaller world
.
When you're a kid and somethinghappens to you then and you're
like, well, that just rocked myworld and I I didn't even
(26:44):
remember that.
And you go back and you, youtell that kid, you're going to
be all right and I love you andand um, something about you sort
of connects with that andre-establishes that as a part of
(27:04):
you.
Like you are who you arebecause of what you've done.
And have you dealt with peoplesort of acknowledging their
younger persons I hate to usethat term inner child because I
think that's more of a concept,of a way of thinking, rather
(27:26):
than the actual person who isthere at the time.
And you know I don't know howtime works I think maybe
something in the past is stillhappening on some weird level.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Um, but the child is always uh, the child is always
present in us.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Right.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
It's never really gone away.
And you're right.
A lot of the times we live in astate of denial.
We think, well, I'm all grownup now, I'm all responsible now.
And you think, well, where doesthat come from?
What does it even mean?
What does it mean grown up,what does it mean responsible?
And you need to peel back thelayers.
You know we use words withoutthinking those words actually
(28:05):
have meaning.
That meaning has a certainburden of um behavior and that
tends to lock us into stateswhich sometimes are not natural
to us, so we end up fightingourselves pretty much always.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Pretty much always.
We're always our worst enemy, Ithink.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yes, I think during the pandemic it was the biggest,
which is, you know, from acertain perspective, the
pandemic became a global socialexperiment.
Sure, suddenly I mean 2019, Ihad a lot of traveling to do
with my consulting work,especially in terms of social
(28:46):
media, marketing and search, anddealing with executives and the
C-suite execs from differentglobal companies, and that 2019,
I traveled 55,000 air miles.
You know, I was crisscrossingthe globe.
Yeah, it's crazy.
And then the pandemic, thepandemic hit and, of course, all
that died, like that, and we'relocked in.
(29:08):
So then we ended up having Zoomcalls and it was fascinating
because you know you're havingZoom calls with people who are
the same people.
You know they have the certainkind of executive power, they
still run certain teams, theystill have a certain level of
corporate authority, except nowthose people are working from
home with their wives and kidsand a dog Right, and they're
(29:28):
falling apart.
Yeah, because there's nothingthere to shore up who they are,
to give them the status theyhave, to reinforce the identity
they had of the projection thatthey were putting out, which was
meeting the expectations of theworld around them.
So then we had to say, okay,what do you want to do really,
(29:50):
and so meetings that weresupposed to be about one-to-one
sometimes two-to-one it wassupposed to be about reshaping
corporate strategy and reworkingmarketing, messaging and all
those things and understandingthe dynamics that were.
In effect, it ended up beingkind of psychotherapy, because
(30:13):
we had to go through that first.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
It always ends up that way, right.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Yeah, before they could actually, um, then focus
on work and feel comfortableworking from home, in that
environment, and still feelingthat they had the authority in
the, the power that they hadwhen they were at work.
That's crazy, but alsoeye-opening, right, because it
(30:38):
showed us how much we tie intoexpectations, how much we
respond to expectations, howmuch we behave to an expectation
which is then reinforcedbecause we met it.
Somebody expects you to be,let's say, somebody expects you
to be, a Sergeant Major you knowkind of caricature we see in
films and you actually come outand you behave like that you
(31:02):
dress the part, you look thepart, you sound the part.
This is not you, but if that'swhat I'm expecting from you and
you give it to me, I'm going tothink you are great yeah.
I think you're great.
And now, what have I done?
I've locked you into that.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
You can't say to me, hey david I'm not really like
that.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
I'm a really nice guy .
I'm going to do it differentlybecause I expect you to be that
way and now you're going to towreck that.
Yeah, so so you know, thisactually happened in the
pandemic.
You know, the external worldsuddenly came to a stop.
People had to really dig deepto find the resources they
needed to understand who theywere in order to do their basic
day-to-day job from a distance.
That was an eye-opener Icouldn't agree more.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
What a what a game changer.
I mean it.
It it killed a lot ofbusinesses.
It it took a lot of uh, peoplefrom a higher point, lowered
them down, you know, you knowwhatever from a, from a
socioeconomic point of view.
And yet some people found theirniche inside of this place and
(32:07):
began to thrive and created somenew opportunities and some new
tools and techniques.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Exactly.
It forced a lot of people toactually become real, because
that is really powerful.
If you are you always, well.
I only have two options here Ican either accept you or reject
you.
That's on me, right.
So if I reject who you arebecause you don't click, well
that's it.
But it's not on you because youare you.
(32:37):
But so that's a very real, verystrong connection.
If you're not real but you'reprojecting to what I think you
need to be, you're trapped intothat and I'm sort of trapping
you with my expectations andthat's a very fake kind of.
It's very draining.
It doesn't help me because I'mnot really getting the real you.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Yeah, yeah, the connection is sort of lost in a
third party somewhere.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Exactly, exactly.
And from your perspective it'sso tiring because you know you
have to be this for me.
You're going to have to besomething else for somebody else
.
You're going to have to besomething else for somebody else
.
Then the question that's beggedis who are you really?
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Right.
You lose touch with who you areif you're performing all the
time.
I think yes.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
And it's stressful.
Actually it's reflected inhigher people who are in that
kind of mode.
They have higher incidences ofheart disease, cardiovascular
illnesses, chronic stressdisease, cardiovascular
illnesses, you know, chronicstress.
They have sort of all thosethings which are associated with
high stress levels and anxiety.
Because you're constantlyperforming and your brain is
(33:49):
constantly alert, you know sortof trying to look for clues.
What do I expect you to be sothat you can give it away?
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I couldn't agree more .
Well, david, I knew this wasgoing to happen.
We're going to get jumping downa rabbit hole and have a great
conversation Next thing.
I know I've gone over my timeand it's all good.
I was hoping it would happenthis way and it did beautifully
and naturally.
I think that we've reallytouched on some very important
(34:18):
points.
I'd like to give you anopportunity to kind of wrap it
up into a thought, if you can.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
I think that we've really touched on some very
important points.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
I'd like to give you an opportunity to kind of wrap
it up into a thought, if you can.
Absolutely yes.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
And remind us how we can get a hold of you and some
of the latest work you've beendoing.
Thank you for this.
Okay, so here's an easy way tomake life simpler.
If you find ways where you'retrue to yourself always, then
you reduce the energetic load ofyour day-to-day living and that
makes life infinitely simplerbecause you have more margin to
deal with emergencies.
They're still going to happen.
(34:52):
You're still going to meet acrisis.
You're still going to have somesome problem to deal with, but
now you have more energy toactually deal with that, as
opposed to always operating tothe very edge of your capability
and then anything extra happensis too much and it can cause
you to crash and burn.
I still put out a lot of stuff.
I put out a lot of studies.
(35:14):
These days, I tend to link tothe studies and sort of put in a
couple of uh sentencesexplaining them.
So you'll find this on mywebsite at davidammermancom, and
you can find my social media aswell, because I put them out
there as well wonderful, welldavid, as always.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Um, I knew when I met you the first time we talked,
before we even recorded ourfirst episode, I go, man, this
guy needs to be a regular and Ireally appreciate your way of
thinking and I know you'rehelping a lot of people out
there and I look forward to ourcontinued conversation.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Same here.
Thank you so much for theopportunity.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Beautiful.
Well, thank you all to thelisteners, and this has been
another edition of the HealthyLiving Podcast.
I'm your host, joe Grumbine,and we will see you next time.
Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy
Living Podcast.
I'm your host, joe Grumbine,and today I'm kind of tickled.
I have a returning guest and Ilove it when this happens.
This is David Amerlund, and, ifyou remember, he came on I
don't know, I guess it was backin April or May and we were
(00:23):
talking about his new book,built to Last.
David and I share a lot incommon and he's an accomplished
author.
He's published several books,he's got an amazing health-based
platform and I've been able toexperience a little bit of that
(00:45):
and I plan to go deeper into it.
But, most importantly, we sharea lot of common experiences and
ideas about the road towellness.
David, welcome back.
I'm so glad to have you backhere on the show.
How are you doing today?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I'm doing great and, joe, I'm actually thrilled to be
back talking to you.
Last time, as you said, thesynergy was great.
I left the conversation feelingbuzzed.
I'm doing great and, joe, I'mactually thrilled to be back
talking to you.
Last time, as you said, thesynergy was great.
I left the conversation feelingbuzzed.
I'm really excited to see whatwe're going to cover today.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yeah, and the last time we talked I was deeply
battling a big tumor stickingout of my neck, and today we're
in a much better place than thatand I've traveled this crazy
roller coaster of Westernmedicine and holistic approach
and spiritual practices andenergy work and all of these
(01:33):
things that you're so familiarwith.
And I know you're actuallytalking to us from the beautiful
country of Greece and I'm kindof curious to see what is Greece
like this time of year.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
It's actually pretty hot.
It was 36 degrees centigradetoday.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
All right.
Well, there's no big firesburning or anything right now,
though right.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
No, at the moment.
No, and there was a bit of ascare, like a couple of months
back in July.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Right, I remember.
Yeah, but that sort of has blownover now, so we've been
relatively quiet out here inCalifornia too, as always,
there's wildfires burning everyday, but not like some of the
big ones we've had.
There's still some activity.
Well, and speaking of wildfire,you know we deal with health,
(02:23):
right?
The idea of our body and mindand spirit's potential Is that
kind of how you see health.
I mean, to me, I see the targetas what are you capable of,
right?
That's your goal is.
You know?
Maybe we could try to be thebest we can.
What do you think about that?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Absolutely, and I'm very glad you sort of bring
things together like body, mind,spirit.
Um, frequently we tend to focuson the body because the part of
us that we actually see right,and when we work on that we see
some changes and we think, well,you know, that's all there is.
But essentially it's a muchbigger picture and what we know
(03:03):
from neuroscientific studieswhere the body and the brain
have actually been looked at intandem, whatever the brain
images, the body can actuallybecome, so true and um, there's
um in in traditional literatureespecially, especially in
martial arts, the whole body ofwork where you have advanced
(03:27):
practitioners sitting and sortof contemplating and in their
mind they're going through veryspecific techniques and they're
working through and focusing onthem.
And within the literature it'ssaid that advanced practitioners
they need to train as much in adojo because they could
actually do it that way.
And it sounds like a little bitairy-fairy, it's sort of.
You know, you think this is notgoing to happen, right, but we
(03:51):
have actually done fMRI studieson this.
Now we know that if you imagineyour body moving in a
particular way, or if youimagine your body responding in
a particular way, theneurochemistry of your blood
cells changes.
In response to that, bloodtemperature goes up, cellular
activity begins to increase.
The metabolic rate of theresting body actually shows an
(04:14):
increase.
Now that increase is not of thesame order of magnitude if
you're actually engaged in thatphysical activity, but
nevertheless everything isactivated in the same way, but
to a much smaller degree.
And this is a connectionbetween body and brain, the
imaging part of us where weactually visualize what we want
(04:37):
to become and we help our bodyto actually reach that.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Oh, it's absolutely true.
In fact, in my studies, just inmy health studies, there's been
actual case studies done.
They were all injured and theywere in recovery and one of them
(05:07):
, physically, was going throughthe efforts to rehabilitate and
going through the physicalactivities but not doing any
mental work on it, and one ofthem was laid in a hospital bed
and visualizing going throughthose very same activities and
(05:28):
the third one did nothing.
And so this was, you know, Ithink they were doing brain scan
studies as well, but this wasjust watching the physical
progress of it and they saidthat the athlete that laid in
his hospital bed but visualizedthe same efforts and exercises
(05:50):
and therapeutic techniques asthe athlete that actually was
doing them had a very similarrate of recovery.
And the one that laid in hisbed and did nothing had a
dramatically reduced recovery.
And it was really astounding tosee that that in action.
And I come from a number ofspiritual traditions where
(06:13):
visualization is part of aprayer, and I've witnessed
myself the clearer you canimagine a thing, the quicker it
happens, and it happens more orless just like you imagine it.
It's really incredible.
And a final point, before wejump further, is something that
(06:33):
I've always brought to people'smind is that everything you see
that was ever made by man orfrankly, in nature, I believe,
all started out as, as a thought, like there isn't a piece of
furniture, a house, a car, apiece of clothing, anything that
somebody didn't see first intheir mind before they created
(06:55):
it.
And I think absolutely tounderstand that is like, oh well
, why am I not spending?
And then you think about whatam I doing in my mind, you know
scrolling through social mediaarguing about stupid things.
And you think about what am Idoing in my mind, you know,
scrolling through social mediaarguing about stupid things, and
you're like what am I creatinghere all day long?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Right, yes, it's funny.
I should say that we tend tothink that we think with our
brain, because we are the directobservers of our thoughts as
they take place on aself-awareness level.
But there is the external mindtheory which says that,
(07:37):
essentially, the brain thinkswith the world.
It needs the external input inorder to process the signals
which will give rise to emotions, which will create thoughts,
which will lead to actions.
And if you're separated fromthe world, well sure, you can
have some kind of thinking for awhile.
But we know from people whohave been put in incarceration
(07:58):
and they have had to be put inan isolation cell that within 24
to 48 hours they begin tohallucinate and within 72 hours
they lose touch of reality andsometimes they lose touch of who
they are themselves.
And when I was writing Built toLast, one of the things which I
(08:19):
looked at is the quietest roomin the world, which is created
by Microsoft.
Now, microsoft has created anincredible room, and I can't
remember the cost of it, butit's hundreds of millions of
dollars.
Essentially, it rests onparticular sensors and it's sort
(08:42):
of surrounded by differentlevels of insulation, and when
you're in that room, nothingfrom the external world comes in
no sound, no vibration, noairflow, nothing.
And people who enter that roomexperience vertigo.
They feel that suddenlysomething changed and the
(09:03):
transition is that, even thoughyou're in a building that's
relatively quiet becausenobody's shouting, that building
is subject to vibrations.
It's subject to a whole lot ofsensations which come from the
external world.
We don't consciously understandthat we're processing those
vibrations, but they still makeus feel connected to that world.
(09:26):
They make us feel part ofsomething, even though we're not
consciously aware of it.
And the moment you enter that Ithink it's called room 52, which
is not very imaginative youenter that place and there's no
vibrations, nothing coming fromthat external world.
There's nothing coming from theearth, nothing coming from no
vibrations, nothing coming fromthat external world.
There's nothing coming from theearth, nothing coming from
traffic, nothing coming fromairflow, there are no variations
(09:48):
in temperature.
And suddenly you realize howmuch work your senses are doing
all the time, connecting you tothings around you which make you
feel part of something bigger.
The moment you're in that roomand people feel nauseous, they
feel like they're going to throwup.
Some people can't actuallystand up straight because
there's no feedback from fromthe planet.
(10:08):
You know, normally, if we standup and try to balance, there's
a call, we're not aware of it.
Yeah, yeah, exactly yes, so soit's fascinating.
But that comes back to what youwere saying.
But you know, the brain itselfis getting a lot of stuff from
around us Nature, things we see,things which we think, we
imagine, and a lot of the thingsand thoughts which we create
(10:31):
are the result of input signalswe've processed from somewhere.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
And that constantly goes on.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
That's one of the problems that they need to solve
with deep space travel.
You know, even if they canfigure out how to put a human
into, you know, some kind ofsuspended animation and keep
them there for a while.
What do you do with the brain?
You know, and if you put a bodyto sleep, is the brain sleeping
(10:58):
or is it still trying toprocess things?
And what it's going to dowithout that feedback?
There's a lot going on, I thinksome of it I wasn't aware of
this room you're talking about.
I could imagine the completedeprivation would have such a
negative effect.
(11:26):
You, you, I think aboutisolation as going to nature
where you're not bombarded withall the signals.
You know the 5g and the.
You know the, the, theradiation and the sound waves
and the, all the things, evenjust the, the words and the
noise and the.
You know the, the, the, thewaves that everybody's putting
out just from their own aurafields.
You go up into the high Sierrasor some remote place, for you
(11:47):
know, you go hike for an hourand sit up on a rock and all of
a sudden, you know, you feelthis connection just to the
earth and it's a differentfeedback and generally, for me,
anyways, it's very positive.
You know, you feel the earthunder your feet, you feel,
probably, the magnetic field,you feel whatever energy the
(12:09):
rocks and the trees and theanimals around you are putting
out, but it's a different typeof energy than you know a bunch
of angry humans are putting out,and I think that there's
definitely a healing that comesfrom a type of isolation for a
period of time, but not acomplete isolation Like you talk
(12:32):
about, in a prison environmentwhere you go into a solitary
confinement that is designed toisolate a person's spirit and
humanity and break them down theway it does I mean, it's made
for that and it works so wellwhereas you can spend time in
nature, I think, for a whilebefore it gets to you, probably
(12:55):
get to you eventually.
But um, and I, you know, Idon't believe we're designed to
be by ourselves for longer thansome brief period of time, days
or weeks, whatever that is.
But yeah, I think that there'sdefinitely this line, just like
everything, we come tounderstand the layers and,
(13:17):
frankly, when I say weunderstand, I speak from an
animal point of view.
Really, we don't understandshit.
You know, we talk about God andI'm like how do you even think
to mention a word like that whenwe don't even understand, I
think is important to havediscussions about, because it
(13:45):
opens up the notion thateverything's so much bigger than
you know, our perception of itis.
And when you're talking aboutbody, mind and spirit, I think,
more often than not, the bodywhich we glorify so much and we
give so much attention to isoften just a barometer of what's
really going on.
You know, when you find, youknow you work with clients all
(14:07):
the time and I'll bet more oftenthan not you find there's a an
emotional or spiritual or mentalcore to a problem that's being
shown with physical symptoms.
What's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Absolutely Every time , always, there's in the canon
of Eastern philosophy there's aline that says what is within
will be manifested without.
And that's exactly what we'reseeing every single time
Athletes who are blocked, eliteperformers who are blocked in
(14:43):
that performance they have anemotional knot to work their way
through.
We see top-level, top-flightCEOs in companies who can't
actually physically do their jobproperly because emotionally
they're blocked somewhere.
So every time we experience umany kind of dysfunction at a
(15:06):
physical level whether that isattentional stress related,
physical performance related,anything which tends to stymie
us and hold us back it has aroot cause in the emotional
aspect of our of ourselves.
And unless we can work throughthat, through a clearer
(15:26):
understanding of our identity,our goals, our purpose, we most
times fail to get past it and wereach a ceiling until the next
level.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Absolutely.
You look at a professionalathlete, that's a world-class
athlete a pitcher, a batter, aquarterback, whatever, a
basketball player, a soccerplayer, it doesn't matter.
Everybody sometimes findsthemselves in a slump where they
go from performing consistentlyin all manners of challenge and
(16:02):
obstacles and different youknow a boxer, you know whatever
left-handed, right-handed, highaltitude, low altitude these
guys just performing and all ofa sudden one day they stall out
and they can't do anything right.
And you know, they talk aboutthe slump, they talk about all
these things, but the truth isthere's something blocking them.
(16:23):
A writer, a prolific writer allof a sudden they can't come up
with five words to put togetherAn actor, a performer of any
kind.
So you deal with people on aregular basis.
People come to you looking toimprove their performance or
solve a problem, and how do youaddress that?
(16:45):
I think that this is animportant little piece of the
puzzle here.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
It is, and we always go through a very simple process
where we try to understandwhat's really important to that
individual.
And most of the times peopleconceptualize, they use
cognitive processes to sort ofthink of what they want to do,
because they have thisperception of how they should be
seen, how they should beperforming.
(17:11):
But none of those things aretrue to who they are.
And the moment we start peelingback the layers of what does
that person want to do, and thenwhy do they want to do it, then
it becomes a lot clearer,because then the true values
come to the surface, the truepurpose comes to surface, the
(17:31):
true focus of what they shouldbe doing, and then it becomes
very evident why they can'tperform the way they can.
And sometimes, you know, due tocircumstances, they reach a
natural ceiling.
They can't get past what theyhave because the circumstance is
now holding them back and theyneed to change them, usually by
changing jobs and changingcareers or or changing
(17:54):
approaches.
But that process, that verysimple process, is pretty brutal
.
You have to face yourself.
You have to be truthful, that's,and we we lie to ourselves all
the time oh, constantly,constantly.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
I I think that's huge .
You know, we talked in our veryfirst conversation about
accountability and, um, you know, that's really, I think, what's
underneath all of this.
You know I was telling you I Iwork with with a lot of healers
from around the world and I knowit's kind of a fashionable
thing, but I've been doing thisfor my whole life and lately
(18:30):
I've been spending some timewith some plant medicines that
have really held me accountable.
So when you spend all nightlong, you know, in a fire and
working with these medicines andsinging and praying and just
really putting your attention tothis one thing, you get shown a
(18:51):
truth.
And most of these times it'snot something you necessarily
want to see, or it's somethingthat you already know but you've
been sort of pushing aside, ormaybe it's something you didn't
even realize and all of a suddenit comes gushing out of you and
you're like whoa, I didn't evenget that.
But it's that truth, thataccountability that I think is
(19:16):
instrumental to our healing,regardless of what the problem
is, to our healing, regardlessof what the problem is.
And so when you deal withsomebody, you know you're
looking at, basically going backto basics, and saying, okay.
Well, what brought you here?
Right?
What's what's your goal?
What are you doing right?
What is what's your point here?
What are you doing right?
And they'll.
(19:36):
That's usually pretty easy tocome upon.
Oh, I'm trying to do this.
So my goal I'm you know I'm.
You beat the goal into your headfor so long, but then, when you
come to okay, well, how did youget here?
You know what have you done andyou know why are you here.
What's in your way?
You start looking at thesetruths.
And we spend so much timemaking excuses for things or
(19:59):
convincing ourselves that it'sokay, you know, to put up with
this or to allow ourselves that,even though we said we weren't
gonna, we come up with reasons,excuses for just about anything
and everything.
I know I have the ability to dothat.
And when I hold myself to thefire and say, no, you said
you're going to do this.
(20:19):
All of a sudden it's like, okay, it's not easy, but all of a
sudden the road starts going.
Instead of going zigzagging andup and down, it gets a lot more
straight and narrow and yourealize, you know, if I just do
the thing I said only and ownthe consequences of what I don't
and say, oh well, I got this,but then look, I did that.
(20:42):
It becomes a lot easier in thesense of the confusion and the
how did I get here and I don'tknow why, I don't know, and it
becomes more just a matter ofchoices and accountability.
(21:03):
What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Yeah, I mean most people, without exception,
struggle with some kind of lackof clarity, and the lack of
clarity comes from that initialinability to focus on the things
that are truly important to us,and most of the time we don't
(21:26):
understand what is trulyimportant to us.
We kind of receive messagesfrom the external world that
tells us to focus on specificthings, behave in a particular
way, be a particular type ofperson.
But the moment we actuallyfocus on what is important to us
, then we are better able toprioritize.
If we prioritize our actions,we're actually putting a lot of
(21:49):
energy into things which we'regoing to do, and that begins to
reflect our values, and it's thevalues that actually help us
understand the range of choicesin front of us and which choice
we should be making.
So once we sort of break itdown like this, it becomes very
straightforward and self-evidentand obviously it is not
(22:10):
anything like that.
It is really really difficultand and he said he said earlier
that you know how difficult itis to actually deal with that go
through, peel back the layers,ask why and get some answers and
then keep on asking why untilyou get to truly basic answers
and what comes from that is thatin most cases we fail to
(22:38):
understand our initialconditions, the trauma we have,
the growth we need to undertake,and growth is what makes us
adults.
We start out as children andregardless of how well-placed we
are in the world as children,we're going to receive some kind
of trauma.
This is inevitable.
(22:59):
And then the childhood traumato some extent will determine
our initial phases as youngpeople.
But from then on, the adultingpart of us, the part of us which
says you know you're an adultis the part that actually takes
that trauma, understands, itbegins to put in place processes
(23:19):
that help you overcome it, sothat your reactions, your
thoughts, your thinking, yourvalues are not rooted in the
trauma that initially shaped youtotally.
That includes your mental aswell as your physical health.
You know if you are, forexample and then we've seen it
before people who are reactive,they're reactive because you
(23:39):
know they came from a childhoodhome perhaps where everybody
around them reacted in reallyways.
So their neurological processes, the way that the process
signals from the outside world,have a higher arousal, have a
lower arousal threshold, whichleads to higher reactivity to
external stimuli, which meansthat they experience a lot more
(24:00):
stress in their life.
They're more anxious, they'reless able to focus their
attention, they experience morechronic conditions because of
stress, they make bad choicesbecause they can't focus their
attention.
They tend to be overweight,they tend to be unfit, they tend
to get into long, wrongrelationships.
You know the whole list ofthings and you say, okay, you
(24:22):
know how do we fix that Right.
And the moment you realize that, hey, you know, I don't have to
be like that, I don't have tobe reactive, I don't have to be
anxious about everything, and ofcourse, you obviously need to
realize why you're anxious andreactive in the first instance.
Then you begin to change yourbehavior.
If you change your behavior,you change your neurochemistry
(24:45):
and your homeostatic balance andthat has a whole lot, an entire
cascade of positive healthoutcomes which then lead to
better choices.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
I've got a question In some of the work I've been
doing with some of the differentpeople from different
traditions.
Many times it comes to goingback and visiting yourself as a
child and saying, all right,well, let's go back and see if I
can get in touch with who I wasat that time and try to
(25:17):
remember.
You know you go back tomemories that are implanted,
that you are, you know there'sfix you.
Most of your life I don't thinkyou remember is mostly a blur,
but there are certain thesecertain milestones, these points
where you can go.
Okay, I can go right back tothat Christmas morning or I can
go back to that one time whenthat thing happened and just
literally go back and livethrough those lives.
(25:40):
And some of the work that I'vebeen doing with some of these
people and whether it's in asweat lodge or in a different
type of a ceremony settinginvolves going back to a
traumatic moment, moment andmeeting that person who is you
(26:03):
and accepting them and andacknowledging that you see them
well.
It's getting emotional just eventalking about it, but you know
we go through our life notthinking about who we were,
where we came from, because youdon't want to remember these
(26:23):
things sometimes and you know,for me I had a relatively mild
childhood.
But you still go back and youremember as a child, well, the
things that today don't seemlike they were a big deal maybe
at a time they did and you knowyou live in a much smaller world
.
When you're a kid and somethinghappens to you then and you're
like, well, that just rocked myworld and I I didn't even
(26:44):
remember that.
And you go back and you, youtell that kid, you're going to
be all right and I love you andand um, something about you sort
of connects with that andre-establishes that as a part of
(27:04):
you.
Like you are who you arebecause of what you've done.
And have you dealt with peoplesort of acknowledging their
younger persons I hate to usethat term inner child because I
think that's more of a concept,of a way of thinking, rather
(27:26):
than the actual person who isthere at the time.
And you know I don't know howtime works I think maybe
something in the past is stillhappening on some weird level.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Um, but the child is always uh, the child is always
present in us.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Right.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
It's never really gone away.
And you're right.
A lot of the times we live in astate of denial.
We think, well, I'm all grownup now, I'm all responsible now.
And you think, well, where doesthat come from?
What does it even mean?
What does it mean grown up,what does it mean responsible?
And you need to peel back thelayers.
You know we use words withoutthinking those words actually
(28:05):
have meaning.
That meaning has a certainburden of um behavior and that
tends to lock us into stateswhich sometimes are not natural
to us, so we end up fightingourselves pretty much always.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Pretty much always.
We're always our worst enemy, Ithink.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yes, I think during the pandemic it was the biggest,
which is, you know, from acertain perspective, the
pandemic became a global socialexperiment.
Sure, suddenly I mean 2019, Ihad a lot of traveling to do
with my consulting work,especially in terms of social
(28:46):
media, marketing and search, anddealing with executives and the
C-suite execs from differentglobal companies, and that 2019,
I traveled 55,000 air miles.
You know, I was crisscrossingthe globe.
Yeah, it's crazy.
And then the pandemic, thepandemic hit and, of course, all
that died, like that, and we'relocked in.
(29:08):
So then we ended up having Zoomcalls and it was fascinating
because you know you're havingZoom calls with people who are
the same people.
You know they have the certainkind of executive power, they
still run certain teams, theystill have a certain level of
corporate authority, except nowthose people are working from
home with their wives and kidsand a dog Right, and they're
(29:28):
falling apart.
Yeah, because there's nothingthere to shore up who they are,
to give them the status theyhave, to reinforce the identity
they had of the projection thatthey were putting out, which was
meeting the expectations of theworld around them.
So then we had to say, okay,what do you want to do really,
(29:50):
and so meetings that weresupposed to be about one-to-one
sometimes two-to-one it wassupposed to be about reshaping
corporate strategy and reworkingmarketing, messaging and all
those things and understandingthe dynamics that were.
In effect, it ended up beingkind of psychotherapy, because
(30:13):
we had to go through that first.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
It always ends up that way, right.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Yeah, before they could actually, um, then focus
on work and feel comfortableworking from home, in that
environment, and still feelingthat they had the authority in
the, the power that they hadwhen they were at work.
That's crazy, but alsoeye-opening, right, because it
(30:38):
showed us how much we tie intoexpectations, how much we
respond to expectations, howmuch we behave to an expectation
which is then reinforcedbecause we met it.
Somebody expects you to be,let's say, somebody expects you
to be, a Sergeant Major you knowkind of caricature we see in
films and you actually come outand you behave like that you
(31:02):
dress the part, you look thepart, you sound the part.
This is not you, but if that'swhat I'm expecting from you and
you give it to me, I'm going tothink you are great yeah.
I think you're great.
And now, what have I done?
I've locked you into that.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
You can't say to me, hey david I'm not really like
that.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
I'm a really nice guy .
I'm going to do it differentlybecause I expect you to be that
way and now you're going to towreck that.
Yeah, so so you know, thisactually happened in the
pandemic.
You know, the external worldsuddenly came to a stop.
People had to really dig deepto find the resources they
needed to understand who theywere in order to do their basic
day-to-day job from a distance.
That was an eye-opener Icouldn't agree more.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
What a what a game changer.
I mean it.
It it killed a lot ofbusinesses.
It it took a lot of uh, peoplefrom a higher point, lowered
them down, you know, you knowwhatever from a, from a
socioeconomic point of view.
And yet some people found theirniche inside of this place and
(32:07):
began to thrive and created somenew opportunities and some new
tools and techniques.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Exactly.
It forced a lot of people toactually become real, because
that is really powerful.
If you are you always, well.
I only have two options here Ican either accept you or reject
you.
That's on me, right.
So if I reject who you arebecause you don't click, well
that's it.
But it's not on you because youare you.
(32:37):
But so that's a very real, verystrong connection.
If you're not real but you'reprojecting to what I think you
need to be, you're trapped intothat and I'm sort of trapping
you with my expectations andthat's a very fake kind of.
It's very draining.
It doesn't help me because I'mnot really getting the real you.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Yeah, yeah, the connection is sort of lost in a
third party somewhere.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Exactly, exactly.
And from your perspective it'sso tiring because you know you
have to be this for me.
You're going to have to besomething else for somebody else
.
You're going to have to besomething else for somebody else
.
Then the question that's beggedis who are you really?
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Right.
You lose touch with who you areif you're performing all the
time.
I think yes.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
And it's stressful.
Actually it's reflected inhigher people who are in that
kind of mode.
They have higher incidences ofheart disease, cardiovascular
illnesses, chronic stressdisease, cardiovascular
illnesses, you know, chronicstress.
They have sort of all thosethings which are associated with
high stress levels and anxiety.
Because you're constantlyperforming and your brain is
(33:49):
constantly alert, you know sortof trying to look for clues.
What do I expect you to be sothat you can give it away?
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I couldn't agree more .
Well, david, I knew this wasgoing to happen.
We're going to get jumping downa rabbit hole and have a great
conversation Next thing.
I know I've gone over my timeand it's all good.
I was hoping it would happenthis way and it did beautifully
and naturally.
I think that we've reallytouched on some very important
(34:18):
points.
I'd like to give you anopportunity to kind of wrap it
up into a thought, if you can.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
I think that we've really touched on some very
important points.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
I'd like to give you an opportunity to kind of wrap
it up into a thought, if you can.
Absolutely yes.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
And remind us how we can get a hold of you and some
of the latest work you've beendoing.
Thank you for this.
Okay, so here's an easy way tomake life simpler.
If you find ways where you'retrue to yourself always, then
you reduce the energetic load ofyour day-to-day living and that
makes life infinitely simplerbecause you have more margin to
deal with emergencies.
They're still going to happen.
(34:52):
You're still going to meet acrisis.
You're still going to have somesome problem to deal with, but
now you have more energy toactually deal with that, as
opposed to always operating tothe very edge of your capability
and then anything extra happensis too much and it can cause
you to crash and burn.
I still put out a lot of stuff.
I put out a lot of studies.
(35:14):
These days, I tend to link tothe studies and sort of put in a
couple of uh sentencesexplaining them.
So you'll find this on mywebsite at davidammermancom, and
you can find my social media aswell, because I put them out
there as well wonderful, welldavid, as always.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Um, I knew when I met you the first time we talked,
before we even recorded ourfirst episode, I go, man, this
guy needs to be a regular and Ireally appreciate your way of
thinking and I know you'rehelping a lot of people out
there and I look forward to ourcontinued conversation.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Same here.
Thank you so much for theopportunity.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Beautiful.
Well, thank you all to thelisteners, and this has been
another edition of the HealthyLiving Podcast.
I'm your host, joe Grumbine,and we will see you next time.
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