Latest / Gladden Longevity Podcast / Resilience: A Longevity Lever That Heals, Strengthens, and Optimizes Your Youngest Self - Episode 267
Transcript
- 1:53Welcome everybody.
- 1:54have the honor and privilege of being joined by Dr.
- 1:58Steven Sidoroff.
- 2:00Dr.
- 2:00Sidoroff, who you heard previously, is a very accomplished physician and I had the pleasure of meeting him in person at RadFest in September this year.
- 2:11And we, hit it off and exchanged books and a couple of hugs and thought we'd do a podcast together.
- 2:19So here we are.
- 2:20Steven, welcome to the show.
- 2:21Thank you.
- 2:22Jeffrey, it's a pleasure to be here.
- 2:25So Stephen, tell us a little bit about this book you've written.
- 2:30It's really quite fascinating.
- 2:32It's a fascinating topic, right?
- 2:34When 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
- 2:44like that, it gets cut in half.
- 2:46so
- 2:47It kind of outlines the exponential issue that aging is.
- 2:50It's not a linear problem.
- 2:51It's an exponential problem.
- 2:53And so in your book, you talk about nine pillars, if you will, of building resilience.
- 3:01And why don't we just kind of walk through those?
- 3:02Cause each of them is quite interesting.
- 3:05And we've also kind of interlaced things that I wrote about in my book with things that you wrote about in your book, but a little bit from different vantage points will be
- 3:14interesting conversations.
- 3:15yeah.
- 3:16Absolutely, absolutely.
- 3:18So when I wrote the book, the book is really the culmination of over 40 years of work in the field of optimal functioning, managing stress, resilience, and really how to live your
- 3:36best life.
- 3:38So I've tried to look at every possible
- 3:43variation of the theme here, so to speak, in my nine pillars.
- 3:48So the first three have to do with relationship.
- 3:52And the first is probably our most important relationship, which is our relationship with ourselves.
- 3:59Yeah, massive.
- 4:01How we treat ourselves, how we talk to ourselves, how we react when we make a mistake, things like that.
- 4:09The second pillar is our relationship with others.
- 4:13Are we able to discriminate healthy relationships from toxic or harmful relationships?
- 4:20When we're in a harmful relationship, are we able to protect ourselves from absorbing that negativity?
- 4:29The third pillar is our relationship with something greater.
- 4:32And this has to do with spirituality.
- 4:36It has to do with meaning and purpose in our lives.
- 4:40something that connects us to the larger community and the world itself, recognizing the interrelationships in the world.
- 4:50The next three have to do with organismic balance and mastery.
- 4:54So the fourth pillar is physical balance and mastery.
- 4:59And here's really at the heart of some of the greatest challenges to longevity, which has to do with
- 5:08what I term autonomic dysregulation syndrome that we all face with or all faced with because we have an evolutionary mismatch, we have a developmental mismatch, and then we
- 5:23have conditioning factors that cause us to activate our nervous system way more than we recover from that activation.
- 5:34So I talk about that in my fourth pillar.
- 5:37The fifth is mental balance and mastery.
- 5:40And here we're talking about having a positive perspective.
- 5:44We're talking about having a growth mindset.
- 5:47So if you notice a shortcoming in yourself, you don't go, look, I have this shortcoming.
- 5:53We go, okay, how do I learn and develop to outgrow this, literally outgrow this shortcoming?
- 6:03The sixth pillar is emotional balance and mastery.
- 6:07And 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
- 6:28of levels, biochemical, psychophysiological, et cetera.
- 6:32And so it's working through emotional wounds, unfinished emotional business, and focusing more on gratitude and positive emotions, which we actually know have a direct impact on
- 6:47our physiology.
- 6:49And then the last three have to do with how we engage in the world.
- 6:53Presence, am I aware of my surroundings?
- 6:56Am I noticing and
- 7:00being able to take in what's going on.
- 7:02But in my model, presence has two directions.
- 7:06So that's what we receive.
- 7:08But also, what energy do I project out into the world?
- 7:12What messages do other people receive from me?
- 7:17And I like to highlight the fact that if you and I, Jeffrey, were standing next to each other and I was to monitor your brain waves,
- 7:28I'd be able to pick up aspects of my heart rate pattern in your brainwaves.
- 7:34heart and our our heartbeat is so powerful that it can be picked up.
- 7:40Now, if I'm frustrated, upset, my heart rate pattern is gonna have one look of chaos.
- 7:48If I'm in a place of gratitude and love, it's gonna have a more coherent heart rate pattern.
- 7:55So you're picking up those differences.
- 7:58unconsciously.
- 7:59So that's emotional, that's presence and what I project out.
- 8:03Then flexibility is am I able to make adjustments when I'm faced with obstacles?
- 8:12If I'm trying to achieve a certain goal and there are obstacles, can I make adjustments?
- 8:17Can I be flexible?
- 8:19Maybe change my goals so that I have a greater opportunity for success.
- 8:24Flexibility also is about flexibility of
- 8:27perspective.
- 8:28Can I put myself in your shoes?
- 8:31I see a situation from many different angles so that I have a greater ability to handle whatever that is?
- 8:40finally, the ninth pillar is power, which I define as the ability to get things done.
- 8:48So the more we are able to get things done, the more confidence we have in ourselves and the fewer situations in our lives
- 8:57we experience as dangerous or stressful.
- 9:01So all of these contribute to our mind-body functioning in the most optimal way, digesting our food in the most optimal way.
- 9:13You know, having the kidneys function in the most optimal way because I'm not expending all my energy in a defensive mode with the world and I'm giving myself that opportunity to
- 9:25recover.
- 9:27That's the whole picture of my model of resilience.
- 9:30Yeah, I love it.
- 9:32It's great.
- 9:34It synchronizes really well with the life energy circle that I know you're familiar with now from reading the book.
- 9:40Yes, yes, I appreciated that, Jeffrey.
- 9:43Yeah, so let's go back to the first three, relationship with self, relationships in general, right?
- 9:49So.
- 9:52You know, my experience in dealing with people is that there are a lot of people with a lot of self-flagellation going on.
- 9:58A lot of people that don't really love themselves, I would say, in a really unconditional way.
- 10:07And I think it creates a lot of hardship for people, right?
- 10:12They never really feel loved.
- 10:14my thought is that, and you can weigh in on this, my thought is you can never really love anybody else more than you love yourself.
- 10:22Like if you're in a relationship, it's difficult to actually have truly, you know, free flowing love for another person if you haven't figured that out for yourself.
- 10:33so it seems like to your point, this primary relationship is the one with ourselves.
- 10:40do you want to talk a little bit more about that in terms of how you, see people getting to a point where they can have unconditional love for themselves and they're not so self
- 10:49critical all the time.
- 10:51Well, I like to say that that is a process just like all of these other areas where we want to improve on.
- 11:00It's all on a continuum.
- 11:02So I ask people to monitor and pay attention to how they talk to themselves because the lessons of our childhood, all of those lessons get funneled into the voice that we hear 24
- 11:18seven.
- 11:19That's sort of like our internal parent, so to speak.
- 11:25And what I find with most people is the way we talk to ourselves, the way we treat ourselves is much too negative, judgmental and critical.
- 11:35And we're not sufficiently accepting of ourselves.
- 11:39You know, I like to say that we're all on this journey through life.
- 11:43And at any time we're somewhere along this path.
- 11:48What happens with most of us is we're here, but we feel we should be here.
- 11:54Whenever we say, should have done better, I shouldn't have made that mistake, all of these judgmental comments we make to ourselves are really undermining because they're saying
- 12:06that there must be something wrong with myself that I'm here and not further along the path.
- 12:13so I identify what I consider the
- 12:17the basic qualities for a healthy relationship with ourselves.
- 12:23And those qualities are coming from a place of love, acceptance, support, care, and joy.
- 12:34Yeah, I agree with that.
- 12:36And so I ask people, and I can ask your audience to start monitoring, how do I talk to myself?
- 12:43First of all, I guarantee any time that we're feeling upset,
- 12:48We're feeling worried, scared.
- 12:51If we trace it back, some message is coming from our judgmental internal voice that's triggering those feelings.
- 13:01And so I invite people to pay attention.
- 13:04Notice how you're treating yourself, how you're talking to yourself, how it might be critical, judgmental, negative.
- 13:11And then I invite you to switch into a voice that
- 13:16comes from those qualities that I just identified, that's the healthy internal parent that you want to develop.
- 13:26Right.
- 13:26That when you hear the critical negative, you go, no, no, you're not supporting me, you're not helping me.
- 13:35And then switching into this other voice that you develop.
- 13:39Yeah, I think for me, I agree with that.
- 13:43completely.
- 13:44think for me, the way that I've gotten there has been through imaging, if you will, having strong images of myself when I was small, two years old, three years old.
- 13:59you know, being a parent, I saw my own kids when they were two or three years old, right.
- 14:04And so
- 14:05You know, I mean, they're just so cute.
- 14:07They're so lovable.
- 14:09mean, my gosh, they're so amazing, right?
- 14:11Full of potential and life and joy and fun and, you know, curiosity and all the things that make life really wonderful.
- 14:20And I think, yeah, I'm that little person.
- 14:23I'm that little person.
- 14:24So lovable, so incredibly lovable.
- 14:26What's not to love, right?
- 14:27What's not to love?
- 14:29And so in that moment, it's like, there's massive love for me coming from me, right?
- 14:34And I think
- 14:35Part of the hero's journey for each of us is to realize that nobody had perfect parents, right?
- 14:41Every parent, and I certainly wasn't a perfect parent, everybody's parents doing the best they can.
- 14:46And so it's no surprise that the messaging you got from your parents wasn't spot on necessarily.
- 14:52It never was for anybody.
- 14:53So, you know, welcome to that club.
- 14:56But I think part of the hero's journey is us becoming the parent to ourselves.
- 15:02you know, as we actually become more mature and how we think about this.
- 15:05And now we realize, there's myself, I'm two years old, I'm three years old.
- 15:09my gosh.
- 15:10I feel this unconditional love for little Jeff.
- 15:13Let me nurture him, celebrate him, encourage him, know, comfort him, you know, all the things that a parent would do for a two year old.
- 15:21Right.
- 15:22And when you start to focus that kind of, when, when I have that imagery, right.
- 15:26And I start to focus that kind of energy on myself, it becomes super easy.
- 15:31to see how lovable I am and to see how lovable I will always be.
- 15:36so anyway, that's been one of the ways that I've been able to kind of make that real for myself.
- 15:41So I think that's great.
- 15:43And that's a great approach.
- 15:46When I do some things similar with clients that I work with, unfortunately, they don't see that lovable child.
- 15:54They see a child who's not.
- 15:58They don't remember being that young, right?
- 16:01They don't remember they can't.
- 16:02Yes.
- 16:03So go ahead.
- 16:04So there's a healing process that many of us need to go through to get to where we can appreciate that little child and have that love and compassion toward that little child
- 16:20and then to basically transfer that to ourselves in the present moment.
- 16:26Right.
- 16:27You know, when you talk about making mistakes and us being critical about making quote unquote mistakes, another thing that I've done is to reframe everything as being either a
- 16:42wise choice or a choice that led to wisdom in a way.
- 16:46In other words, everything has a purpose.
- 16:49Every decision has had a purpose.
- 16:51And it's important to understand why we made decisions that we made.
- 16:55and to learn from those things, but it's not about beating ourselves up.
- 16:58There's no value in beating ourselves up over it.
- 17:01There's only value in what can you learn from it and how do you grow and how do you come to understand the things about yourself that everybody else in the room can see, but you
- 17:10can't see yourself because you've so normalized it as part of who you think you are.
- 17:16So, yeah.
- 17:17So in my book, I go through a process to help people let go of mistakes and
- 17:24regrets that they still carry with them.
- 17:27Yeah, and it's a process of number one.
- 17:31Okay, you have feelings about it.
- 17:33Maybe you're angry at yourself.
- 17:35So you give yourself the opportunity to express that although You have to be careful when you express anger toward yourself that you're not undermining You could be angry at a
- 17:47behavior, but you don't put yourself down That's right.
- 17:52And then you
- 17:54recognize that there was a cost to that mistake.
- 17:57So now we want to find the lesson, the benefit, which is the lesson that balances out that cost so that the next time you'll do a better job.
- 18:09And then finally, you want to let go of the regret.
- 18:14You want to let go of the anger toward yourself because it's only holding you back, only hurting you.
- 18:21And if your goal is to
- 18:23proven life, then it's an necessary step to let go of past mistakes.
- 18:30So in my book, I take people step by step through a process of actually letting go of regrets and mistakes.
- 18:38Yeah, I think that's great.
- 18:41I do think that when you look at it through this perspective that everything that ever happened to me actually has led me to this moment here today.
- 18:49It's like I wouldn't be who I am today if I hadn't
- 18:52done the things that I'd done or experienced the things I experienced, right?
- 18:55And so when you look at it through that lens, there really is no good or bad experience.
- 18:59It's every experience ultimately contributed to your wisdom in this moment, right?
- 19:04Your deeper understanding, your deeper empathy, your deep, if you hadn't gone through some of these things, you wouldn't have empathy for other people in those situations, right?
- 19:11And so it's, I find all of it, quite honestly, is nothing's lost.
- 19:16It's like going to medical school.
- 19:17People were saying, well, I don't really want to learn this.
- 19:19I'm never going to use it.
- 19:21I wanted to learn everything.
- 19:22It's like none of that information is ever lost when you understand embryology or biochemistry or whatever.
- 19:27like, it's always in there, even though you can't necessarily recite everything.
- 19:32like, it changes the way you think and feel about things.
- 19:35So actually going back and healing those experiences, accepting them as this is part of my positive journey, right?
- 19:42It's not a negative thing to be cast aside.
- 19:44It's actually to be folded into helping me create the wisdom that I have today.
- 19:50Well, I appreciate that.
- 19:52And you are demonstrating one of the important lessons that I teach in my book, which is about flexibility of perspective, being able to see it in finding the positive way to see
- 20:07whatever situation you're in.
- 20:10And that's a tremendous ability.
- 20:15absolutely.
- 20:16Yeah.
- 20:17Yeah, it's one that I've, you one that I've cultivated.
- 20:20Quite honestly, you know, I mean, I used to beat myself up.
- 20:22I used to be the hardest on myself and all that sort of things in my 20s.
- 20:25I used to be, you know, the most critical and I've gone down that whole path.
- 20:29Right.
- 20:29So I know it very well.
- 20:32And it took some life events for me.
- 20:34You know, one in medical school, you know, there was always somebody smarter.
- 20:41Right.
- 20:41So the question is, OK, there's always so I wish I was smarter.
- 20:44I wish I better this, better that, whatever.
- 20:46And then I got to a point where I realized, you know what?
- 20:49I'm smart enough to do anything I'm actually interested in doing.
- 20:52And that's all I need.
- 20:53I'm good.
- 20:54And I stopped comparing myself again to anybody else.
- 20:57like, no, I'm actually smart.
- 20:58My gifts are good enough to do anything I want to do.
- 21:01You know, that's a blessing.
- 21:03Let me just run with that.
- 21:04That was one insight.
- 21:05The other one was when my son was born and I was welcoming him into planet earth.
- 21:15my gosh, I felt unconditional love for another human being like I didn't even know existed.
- 21:19Like I'd never felt that for another human being.
- 21:22It was life changing.
- 21:24It's like, my gosh, I never got that.
- 21:26I never felt that as a little kid.
- 21:27Why don't I give that to little Jeff?
- 21:29Jeff deserves that just as much as little Chris does, right?
- 21:32So anyway, those were life experiences that kind of helped me to reshape this.
- 21:37So if you're listening to this, you might look back on life experiences where you felt the most love, you know?
- 21:42felt the most love for yourself or you felt the most love coming towards you from somebody else, you know, or nurturing and kind of internalize those things.
- 21:51You know, it could be anybody, a parent, a sibling, a teacher, you know, whomever.
- 21:55Right.
- 21:55So, Very good points.
- 21:59Yeah.
- 22:00So let's talk about let's talk about the second set, the second trio there.
- 22:07Sure.
- 22:08Sure.
- 22:08Yeah.
- 22:09So, you know, I
- 22:12We have structural problems just being born into our lives.
- 22:20The first one is an evolutionary mismatch.
- 22:23So we evolved to perfectly match the hunter-gatherer environment.
- 22:30Sure.
- 22:31But our society has advanced so far from that so quickly while our bodies have not made the appropriate adaptation.
- 22:42So whatever we're dealing with in our day in our lives, be it a bill we're worried about paying, a conflict with somebody in our lives, a deadline that we have to do, any of these
- 22:57things, we have one stress response that mobilizes for all of those, even though the fight or flight response is not appropriate for most of the stresses in our lives.
- 23:10So we're continually mobilizing and from your longevity perspective, you know the consequences of the mobilization of the body and the using of resources and having to
- 23:25replenish those resources.
- 23:27So we activate the nervous system, but how many stimuli in our day, in our lives trigger safety?
- 23:35Tell us we're okay, we can relax.
- 23:39Almost none.
- 23:40So this creates the first mismatch in which we're continually activating our stress response, our nervous system, and not recovering with the parasympathetic, the recovery
- 23:53branch.
- 23:54That's right.
- 23:55It's an excellent point.
- 23:56We've already talked about the developmental mismatch where we learned lessons as a child that don't serve us as adults.
- 24:05Messages unintentionally
- 24:09given to us by our family and surroundings.
- 24:16And so more we may grow up in an environment that's dangerous.
- 24:22And so as an adult, we start out our day expecting something to go wrong.
- 24:28And so we start out our day mobilizing a stress response.
- 24:34And then finally, another interesting
- 24:37aspect to this imbalance is that if you think about all the stress all of the successes in your life, I Guarantee that all or most were associated with stress So our brains have put
- 24:51those two things together Mm-hmm.
- 24:55you know, the stress didn't necessarily cause the success but because our brains put those things together we literally are Adapted to want
- 25:07to find stresses in our lives.
- 25:10So all of those things create this mismatch and imbalance between the two branches of our nervous system.
- 25:17And resilience is about finding the way to keep those in place of balance.
- 25:23Right.
- 25:24So I agree with you.
- 25:26I think for me, a lot of it devolves down to this question of safety.
- 25:30Right.
- 25:31And even the things that we were instructed.
- 25:33by our families about what's safe, what's not safe, what we're supposed to do, what we're not supposed to do, you know, all around a sense of safety or a sense of conformity.
- 25:45I 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,
- 26:00boils down to people not feeling safe.
- 26:03And so when they don't feel safe, then they feel empowered to take it out on somebody else, to act aggressively, to do lots of different things.
- 26:12And I think one of the big misconceptions in life that I learned is that there's nothing external to us that can ever make us feel safe.
- 26:24So I don't care where you went to school, who your family is, how much money you make or have, what country you live in.
- 26:30I mean, if history has taught us anything.
- 26:32It's that everything could be taken away, right?
- 26:35There's nobody's nobody's immune to that.
- 26:37Even health can be taken away.
- 26:38Right.
- 26:38So so then it becomes a psycho spiritual question of actually, how do you give yourself safety in any circumstance?
- 26:45Because when you actually crack that code, then you can wake up calm every morning.
- 26:50Right.
- 26:50Knowing that you're safe.
- 26:51Right.
- 26:52If you're if your safety depends on things going right or things happening or whatever, you know, that's a.
- 27:00That's a that's a no-win proposition as far as I can tell right I mean it's gonna fall apart at some point so well so I Definitely agree that safety is an important component
- 27:12here in fact Whenever I tell people to practice a relaxation exercise I Have them start out by saying that I right now I'm safe and for the next 15 minutes when I do this
- 27:28relaxation
- 27:30I'm safe, I can let down my guard.
- 27:33And I ask people to look in their day, in their lives, for zones of safety, times and places.
- 27:43They can say right here, right now, I'm safe.
- 27:45And in particular, before they sit down to a meal, I ask them to go into a place of safety and I'm safe for the next time that I'm gonna eat this meal because
- 27:59You know, so much of the GI problems, gastrointestinal problems are because people are sitting down to eat, which involves digestion while they are feeling stressed and focusing
- 28:13on a problem which tends to shut down the digestive system.
- 28:17So, yes, safety is very important.
- 28:21It is what allows us to engage that recovery parasympathetic response.
- 28:28And in fact, I tell people, know, your body has two choices.
- 28:32It can go into defend and protect or heal and maintain.
- 28:38And so we want to find as much of our day of our lives that we can say I'm safe so I can let down my guard and go into heal and and maintain.
- 28:50Yeah, I agree with that completely.
- 28:52And I think you can get to the point.
- 28:54You know, we talk about meditation.
- 28:57or mindfulness, which is really what you're talking about here.
- 28:59If you're going to sit down before a meal or you're going to sit down for 15 minutes and give yourself safety in that moment, it's really an act of mindfulness that we're talking
- 29:06about on some level.
- 29:07Right.
- 29:08And then you kind of feel into that safety.
- 29:10Again, I think experiences of these things are so transformative.
- 29:14mean, things got things got wired imprinted into our brains through experiences.
- 29:18Right.
- 29:18And I think in order to rewrite that code, we can cognitively think about it.
- 29:23But I think it's experiences actually help us rewrite that code to where we actually do become safe.
- 29:28Right.
- 29:28So I think cognition is enough of saying, okay, I need to go have this experience.
- 29:33And so what you're talking about now is your people actually giving themselves a sense of safety so they can experience that.
- 29:39Right.
- 29:39And then if you do that repetitively, you start to overwrite the software and you start to rewrite the code to where you can then actually start to move into that place of feeling
- 29:49safe.
- 29:49Right.
- 29:50And so I think that's very powerful.
- 29:53I think meditation can, can definitely, help with that.
- 29:56So I think if you're listening to this and you, you're starting a meditation practice or doing it, think one of the key elements is to, enable yourself to go into this place of
- 30:06just absolute safety.
- 30:08I am connected.
- 30:09I, this is the universe.
- 30:10What an amazing place.
- 30:11I feel so connected to love and goodness here.
- 30:14It's like, when you go to that space, it's like, are safe.
- 30:17Even for meteor hits, like I'm fine.
- 30:18Right.
- 30:19So
- 32:34on to the next thing.
- 32:35So, Yeah.
- 32:37And I focus on the process of neuroplasticity in my book because the lessons of childhood go in so deep and at such an early age that they really form the neural networks in our
- 32:53brain.
- 32:54So the childhood patterns that I refer to as our primitive Gestalt patterns are so powerful, but balancing that out, we have tremendous neuroplasticity.
- 33:07And I agree with what you were saying.
- 33:09One of the keys in that process is when we make a change, when we do something that helps us, when we do something and it works out, that we literally take a moment to have the,
- 33:24make the cognitive connection.
- 33:26This worked.
- 33:28I can keep doing it this way.
- 33:31time we reflect on a success, we reinforce and we
- 33:37put a spotlight on literally on the neural networks that we are actually rewiring in that moment.
- 33:45Right.
- 33:46Yeah, I agree with that.
- 33:48I think it's so important to actually understand what's the task at hand.
- 33:51And if you're listening to this, the task at hand is to reprogram your brain.
- 33:55That's really the task at hand.
- 33:57How do I actually rewrite the software so that I get rid of the messages that are no longer serving me and I actually step into a space where I
- 34:05I am safe and I can feel safe and I can feel connected and I can have great relationships, right?
- 34:10I think it's really about rewriting that software, a great relationship with myself where I can love myself, things like that.
- 34:15So yeah, I think it's really important to clarify what it is you're going for, right?
- 34:21It's rewriting the software.
- 34:23Absolutely.
- 34:24can't just be, I want to let go of this.
- 34:27Right.
- 34:27Because then it's, well, where am I going to?
- 34:30Exactly.
- 34:30That's why I...
- 34:32identify those qualities of a healthy internal voice, internal parent, so that someone has where they want to get to and are continually speaking from that place to reinforce and
- 34:46rewire their brains.
- 34:48That's right.
- 34:49You know, interestingly enough, I've had some some really deep meditative experiences, not
- 34:56in the two different paths, quite honestly.
- 34:59And one of those really profoundly deep meditative experiences, I got in touch with consciousness, right?
- 35:05Just like directly in touch with consciousness.
- 35:07And it was just pure, pure, pure love.
- 35:11Like the kind of love, like if you haven't experienced that, even that unconditional love for my son, wow, more than that, just pure love.
- 35:20And as I was sitting in that meditative space, you know, I was
- 35:25I was experiencing it and kind of thinking about it little bit at the same time.
- 35:29And it was like out of love, love loves to create.
- 35:33Right.
- 35:34And hence we have the universe.
- 35:35have this ever creating new creating.
- 35:38Right.
- 35:39And we're made in the image of consciousness.
- 35:41Right.
- 35:41We're conscious beings.
- 35:42So we love to create.
- 35:44And then what does creation do for for for consciousness?
- 35:48What's the feedback loop there?
- 35:49Why create?
- 35:50Well, it brings great joy.
- 35:52It brings great joy.
- 35:54And so I started to internalize this.
- 35:56I'm running this by you as much as I'm sharing it with you.
- 35:58And that is for me, my purpose in life now is to reside in a very loving, profoundly loving place.
- 36:05And from that place to create, it could be a business, it could be a book, it could be a podcast.
- 36:11It could be a product.
- 36:12could be a relationship.
- 36:13It could be anything.
- 36:14It could be a, you know, athletic experience, but in creating
- 36:21The feedback loop is joy.
- 36:22And the only reason I'm creating this create joy.
- 36:24We think it's for money.
- 36:25We think it's for this.
- 36:26We think it's for that, but it's not.
- 36:28If we just went through life and think about from this loving place, I'm here to create and to create joy.
- 36:35we've just added to glad and longevity.
- 36:38We've just added a chief joy officer, right?
- 36:41Somebody that wants to help all the clients and all the staff experience joy and create and live into this joy.
- 36:48Right.
- 36:49And I think.
- 36:50For me, it's just very clarifying.
- 36:51That's really kind of what it's all about for me.
- 36:54That's for me.
- 36:55And if that resonates with you as an audience, then feel free to adopt it.
- 36:59But you may find your own kind of unifying principle as to why you're here and what you're doing.
- 37:05And I found, I will just say this, that in the creation, this came to me the other day when I was playing the guitar.
- 37:12When you play music, and I played the guitar since I was 10, when you play music, it's all about tension and release.
- 37:18tension and release.
- 37:19So I'm writing a new song, you're creating tension, and then you release the tension, right?
- 37:24That's what music is, tension and release.
- 37:26And I started to think about that.
- 37:28It's like, you know, in the creative process, there is tension, and there's release, right?
- 37:34There's the tension of not knowing exactly how so we take on the stress of that, so to speak, but it's a hormetic stress.
- 37:40It's not one that destroys us.
- 37:41And then there's the release as we find the solutions and the creativity to solve the issue or whatever it is.
- 37:47So when you're listening about this, it's not that you're going to live your life in this plane of there is no stress or there is no tension, so to speak.
- 37:55Even in the creative process, there is tension and release, but ultimately it's to bring forward joy to the world.
- 38:01So that's kind of where I'm at at the moment.
- 38:05Well, I will tell you that I had love, compassion, acceptance, support and care as my qualities of a healthy internal parent.
- 38:16Yeah.
- 38:17And in this last year, literally this last year, I added joy.
- 38:24Yes, joy.
- 38:26One of the one of the things that led me to that is that as I looked at how people approach the world and their lives, you know, there's this wide range of experience with a
- 38:40middle point that's baseline.
- 38:42And then what's below the baseline is negative.
- 38:45And what's above the baseline is positive.
- 38:48And what I found was so many people were just trying to get up to baseline.
- 38:54wanted to get at the end of the day, they wanted to realize nothing bad has happened.
- 39:02And so they're always just hoping that they'll be at baseline.
- 39:06And that's when I started sharing with people, no, the goal is to be above the baseline.
- 39:13That's right.
- 39:14Joy, step into joy.
- 39:15Yeah.
- 39:16And a lot of writing about this notion about setting your intentions to be above the baseline.
- 39:23And one of the ways is to experience joy.
- 39:26Absolutely.
- 39:27Yeah.
- 39:28In 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.
- 39:38But really using joy is kind of a North Star.
- 39:41I'm not, if there's not joy,
- 39:43for me in doing this podcast, then I probably shouldn't be doing it, right?
- 39:48If there's not joy in, you know, what I'm doing relationally or on a business front or whatever else, then I shouldn't be doing it.
- 39:55And I back away from it.
- 39:58If something brings me joy and enables me to spread joy, right?
- 40:03Not just for me to enjoy, but to spread that joy.
- 40:06And I end up with a sense of peace about how this is going forward.
- 40:10Then I know that's where I'm supposed to be.
- 40:12And so
- 40:13I think a lot of people don't know where they're supposed to be.
- 40:16It's like, well, I think I should be making money.
- 40:18I think I should start a family.
- 40:19I think I should have a job.
- 40:20I think I should do this.
- 40:21I think I should do that.
- 40:22But they haven't really solved that question of how do I actually measure, you know, where I'm supposed to be?
- 40:30Is it my bank account or is it something else?
- 40:32Right.
- 40:32So, yeah.
- 40:33Yeah.
- 40:34And my third pillar, relationship with something great, greater, addresses meaning, finding meaning in your life.
- 40:42Exactly.
- 40:43finding purpose in your life.
- 40:45Yeah.
- 40:46Yeah, exactly.
- 40:48All those are absolutely critical.
- 40:49I think you really kind of hit on so many of really critical topics.
- 40:55Yeah.
- 40:56And I think, you know, when I talk about purpose, one of the things I like to say is purpose is the ultimate and use it or lose it.
- 41:08That if we think about
- 41:11from a genetic perspective that we're designed through the evolutionary process to live to the age we can reproduce and then to live until our offsprings become independent.
- 41:25We would realize why so many of our biological markers start to head downhill, you know, around 30 or 40 years of age.
- 41:36But we have this amazing notion of epigenetics.
- 41:41how our experience can affect the expression of our genes.
- 41:47And I believe that one way is for us to have purpose in life.
- 41:51That if we have an important purpose, like we want to help others, and that's our purpose and mission in life, we're sending our biology a message.
- 42:04We have an important reason to be on this planet.
- 42:08You better support that need.
- 42:11That's right.
- 42:11I'm, this is vital.
- 42:13You're vital.
- 42:13Let's vital together, right?
- 42:14Let's be vital together.
- 42:16Yeah, exactly.
- 42:16No, I love that.
- 42:17Yeah, I love that.
- 42:19You know, one of the other things in relationships, that I'll circle back to that I've learned is that, relationships require what I call courageous conversations in order to
- 42:33actually thrive.
- 42:35A lot of times we think that a relationship is about getting to a state of equilibrium, right?
- 42:40And I think a good relationship is the same as the relationship with ourselves.
- 42:44think, yes, we want to get to a place of equilibrium, but to your point about neuroplasticity and growth and a growth mindset, we're constantly growing as individuals,
- 42:52constantly growing into the next level of this and that.
- 42:55Right.
- 42:56A good relationship should be doing the same thing.
- 42:58It shouldn't just be, well, we've kind of figured it out and we, you know, we make love on Thursdays and Sundays and we, you know, go to the theater on Wednesdays or whatever.
- 43:06And we kind of in this pattern.
- 43:08It shouldn't really be about that.
- 43:10It should be about growth.
- 43:11How do we actually stimulate growth for each other?
- 43:14Yeah.
- 43:14Well, if equilibrium becomes too important, it constrains growth because it constrains doing the very things, challenges in life that are going to take you out of equilibrium.
- 43:31But that's where growth occurs.
- 43:33That's right.
- 43:34doesn't occur by just staying in equilibrium and trying to
- 43:38constrain yourself to stay in equilibrium.
- 43:41It's where you allow for change and then you adapt to change.
- 43:46It allows for challenges and then you learn how to handle those challenges.
- 43:52So the real equilibrium is not like this, but it's more like this.
- 43:58Yeah.
- 43:58You can't see his hands, but he's showing from a level to actually it's kind of undulating up and down, if you will.
- 44:04Like you're taking on risk.
- 44:06It's scary.
- 44:07Like these courageous conversations, I will tell you, when I have them, sometimes you have that sensation, you're standing outside yourself, looking at yourself saying, I can't
- 44:17believe I'm gonna say this, but I'm gonna say this in a loving way.
- 44:20I'm gonna bring this up.
- 44:21This is on my heart.
- 44:22I need to bring this forward.
- 44:23It's like, I have no idea what's gonna happen here.
- 44:26But you bring it up and the other person, if you're with a good partner, they're listening to you from a loving place, not a judgmental space.
- 44:33And then it creates when you actually process those things and you can process that going bi-directionally from both sides.
- 44:41my gosh, you build intimacy like and knowing, right?
- 44:44Because for me, a great relationship is knowing and being known and loving and being loved.
- 44:49And so that's an ongoing process to know more deeply, right?
- 44:54And to understand more deeply ourselves and the other person.
- 44:58I find that that's been very stimulating to creating great relationships.
- 45:02And you find that some people are capable of it and some people are not.
- 45:05Some people are in that equilibrium mode and they're comfortable there and that's just where they want to be.
- 45:11And that usually though, they're also fearful of 100 percent.
- 45:16It's fear.
- 45:17They're there because of fear.
- 45:18They're there because of fear.
- 45:20They just don't have the courage.
- 45:21And that's why I say it's a courageous conversation, because I think one of the number one things in life to actually
- 45:29learn and grow is to be courageous, right?
- 45:32It's not easy.
- 45:32When you look at that cliff you're getting ready to step off of, it's not easy to step off that cliff.
- 45:37You gotta trust that the parachute's gonna work, right?
- 45:40That you're gonna figure it out before you hit.
- 45:43Yeah, I totally agree with you, but one of the things that was my intention in my book was to realize that people do need to step out of their comfort zone, is what we're talking
- 45:55about.
- 45:58But what I've done in my book is I've done it in a gradual way.
- 46:03Yes.
- 46:03So that people are not stepping off the cliff.
- 46:06People are taking steps that are doable.
- 46:10And they're learning from the steps that they do and succeed at that, look, I can handle more than I thought I could.
- 46:20Each increment of that gives them the courage to take the next step.
- 46:26That's right.
- 46:27It's that's the growth process that I encourage in my book.
- 46:31That's right.
- 46:32What 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.
- 46:39You know, it still feels like it's going to take some courage for me to do that.
- 46:43Even though it may be a quote unquote small step.
- 46:45If you're, if you're in that equilibrium mode and you're listening to this, that first step, it's going to be a challenge.
- 46:51It's going to take some courage to do that, right?
- 46:53Whether it's walking up to a stranger or doing something else, you know, it's.
- 46:56it's going to have that feeling.
- 46:57So just don't be surprised by that.
- 46:59Just understand that's part of the that's part of the game, if you will.
- 47:02And you kind of learn to thrive on that.
- 47:04Right.
- 47:04So, you know, the lessons of childhood set up these psychological boundaries about what's OK and what's not.
- 47:14Right.
- 47:15And so we're talking about doing taking steps to to move those boundaries out or to step outside of them.
- 47:24That's right.
- 47:25And
- 47:26really what it involves is tolerating discomfort.
- 47:30That's it.
- 47:32Which is tolerating really ambiguity.
- 47:34It's like, I don't know how this is going to work out.
- 47:36I find that people that can really manage ambiguity well have the most growth potential.
- 47:42So, yeah.
- 47:44Well, what I what people feedback from people that I appreciate the most about my book is that they
- 47:56they've stepped out of their existing boundaries and they report to me, thank you for making it possible for to be able to do that and change my behavior and change my thinking
- 48:10patterns.
- 48:11And I didn't think that that was possible.
- 48:13Right.
- 48:15Yeah, I want to bring up a couple of other things that you've touched on and some things that I think about as well.
- 48:20One is
- 48:22This is you haven't touched on this one per se, but I think you'll get this.
- 48:25And this is that I think language is a poor form of communication.
- 48:29Right.
- 48:29Simply because I don't know if you've had a telepathic experience, but I've had some telepathic experiences with consciousness and my gosh, I mean, the energy transfer, the
- 48:41information transfer is just instantaneous and complete.
- 48:45And yet we're dribbling out words to try to, you know, Define for the audience what we're thinking in this and that.
- 48:51Right.
- 48:51It's very slow.
- 48:52It's kind of like Morse code.
- 48:55And the other thing about it is that in our psyche, many things can be true at once, right?
- 49:01We can love something, we can hate something, we can be scared to death, we can be exhilarated and we can be happy and joyful and other things all simultaneously.
- 49:09And yet it's almost impossible to convey that in a single sentence, right?
- 49:13And so when I know that about language,
- 49:19then it makes me think much more like a therapist in a sense of you said this, I think you mean this.
- 49:25Tell me more about that.
- 49:27Is there more to that that you'd like to share?
- 49:29You know, things like that, because you know, inside somebody's psyche, there's a lot more going on than just that one sentence or that one comment.
- 49:37Right.
- 49:38So I think that's given me a lot of insight, really, in terms of building relationships with people, whether it's clients or or people I'm close to.
- 49:48So really want to get to know them and deeply understand them and appreciate how difficult it is for us to actually adequately communicate just in words.
- 49:56Yeah.
- 49:57Well, you know, we communicate in more than we actually do communicate in more than just words.
- 50:03100 percent.
- 50:04Our posture, our facial expressions, the tone of our voice.
- 50:09All of these things project some aspects of our emotional mental state.
- 50:17That's right.
- 50:17The other person unconsciously picks up and maybe feels more attracted to a person because those unspoken messages were positive or feels more like, I need to keep my distance from
- 50:31this person because those unspoken physical tonal messages are negative.
- 50:41That's right.
- 50:41Or fearful or worrying to them.
- 50:45Yeah.
- 50:46No, exactly.
- 50:46You know, we talk about five senses, but I've known for a long time and I think many people have that really we have six senses and that the six senses that and some people
- 50:55say we even have more seven, eight senses, nine, but certainly six.
- 50:59And that is we read each other's energy all the time.
- 51:02Right.
- 51:02We read each other's energy.
- 51:04Somebody walks into the room, you read their energy immediately.
- 51:06Right.
- 51:07And that's definitely a sense that we have.
- 51:09And you're, kind of commenting on that.
- 51:11That a lot of communication is nonverbal essentially and it's the energetic of the other person I think we can also pick up when people are vibrating at different levels, right?
- 51:22So if somebody's vibrating at a high level from a loving caring generative joyous place we feel that right when people are vibrating a lower level of anger and frustration and you
- 51:32know despair or whatever we feel that too, right?
- 51:34So I think one of the things that I'm conscious of is what level am I vibrating on?
- 51:39And I found that almost in every situation, me consciously vibrating on a higher level, always is the best solution.
- 51:47It's never failed me yet.
- 51:49I've been playing with this now for some months and it's like, okay, I'm going to walk in.
- 51:53I walked into a hotel the other night.
- 51:55I went to Chicago for a charity event.
- 51:57It turns out I walked into the wrong hotel.
- 51:59had a reservation at another hotel, right?
- 52:02There was some mixed up in the communication with my staff.
- 52:05So it's eight 30 at night.
- 52:06I'm tired.
- 52:07I'm fatigued, right?
- 52:08It's like I've been traveling busy day, you know, and I thought to myself, what level am I going to vibrate at?
- 52:15And I thought, okay, I'm going to vibrate a very high level.
- 52:17So I started joking with the staff.
- 52:19I started doing stuff.
- 52:21I texted my assistant, you know, we checked it out and you know, 20 minutes we had it sorted out.
- 52:25I got a room at that hotel.
- 52:27But the point is that life throws you all kinds of things.
- 52:31The question is, how are we going to actually deal with them?
- 52:34And I think a lot of it is
- 52:35What level do you want to vibrate at?
- 52:37And that's actually, you can choose that.
- 52:39So I think that's another piece of it.
- 52:41Yeah, you know, someone came up to me in one of my talks and said, you know, I've been working on this stuff for years.
- 52:50Does it ever get any easier?
- 52:53Yes, it does.
- 52:53It gets effortless, actually.
- 52:55And what I said was, you know, all of us look outside of ourselves for grounding.
- 53:03You know, what is that person thinking about me?
- 53:05What are they going to do or say?
- 53:09And I said, when you start to come from an internal sense of groundedness, that's right.
- 53:17That's when it gets easier.
- 53:19That's right.
- 53:20let go of some of these judgments and criticisms of yourself that we've been working on and you shift over to this positive way of treating yourself and you ground yourself in a
- 53:32healthier
- 53:33foundation, that's when it starts to get easier.
- 53:36I agree.
- 53:36It's internal validation versus external validation.
- 53:40know, and quite honestly, the people externally, you don't really give a crap.
- 53:43They just don't.
- 53:45I mean, they're just being who they are.
- 53:46They don't I mean, they may like you to some extent or whatever, but they don't really care.
- 53:51You 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.
- 53:57It was all of a sudden like, OK, I'll let them worry about me, but I'm certainly not going to worry about them.
- 54:02Yeah, but the basic the basic ingredient here is what's within my control and what's not in my control.
- 54:10That's right.
- 54:10And let me me focus my energies on what I have control over and what I don't have control over.
- 54:17I need to let go of 100 percent, 100 percent.
- 54:21Yeah.
- 54:21And I think that brings you back to the meditative space when you're there and you're feeling safe.
- 54:25You can also think about what what energy level do I want to vibrate at?
- 54:28I to vibrate up at love and joy.
- 54:30Really, this is the highest energy there is or where am I going to be?
- 54:34So it's another way to practice that.
- 54:36Very cool.
- 54:37Yeah.
- 54:37And all of these are about learning and growth.
- 54:42And for any learning, any growth, you have to be present in the moment to be able to make a choice.
- 54:50Otherwise, you're on the automatic pattern.
- 54:53So you're on autopilot.
- 54:54That's right.
- 54:55It's being made for you, quite honestly, by the software that's already been programmed.
- 55:01Yeah, exactly.
- 55:04You know, there's one last thing I'll bring up, which is this concept I have, which wasn't in the book, developed it since about binary thinking versus quantum thinking.
- 55:13And I think a lot of us get trapped into binary thinking.
- 55:17think we go through our life.
- 55:18This is about growth mindset.
- 55:19We go through our life thinking it's my job to find my answers.
- 55:24It's my job to find my answers right now.
- 55:26Now I have answers for this.
- 55:27I have answers to that.
- 55:28I know how I'm going to eat and I'm going to play who my partner is and blah, blah, blah.
- 55:31I have these answers, right?
- 55:33And yet I found that all growth basically comes from the questions that we're asking.
- 55:38So I think in life, it's really more a question of finding the questions that are going to continue to fuel your growth into your neuroplasticity, right?
- 55:46Than it is finding your quote unquote answers.
- 55:49Because once we find our answers, we tend to get married to those answers and then we get defensive about them, right?
- 55:53And that creates binary thought processes.
- 55:55I'm right, you're wrong.
- 55:57I don't believe in that.
- 55:58I believe in this.
- 55:59I think what you're doing is not good, blah, blah, blah, right?
- 56:01So we end up in this binary thought process instead of a growth mindset, which is much more quantum where there's a plus one, a minus one, a zero, a sphere of all possibilities.
- 56:10And in that sphere, we can now find the best solution with this person at this time for this situation, right?
- 56:15So it's when you move out of that
- 56:18being married to your answers into married to your questions and this growth mindset, it opens up a brand new, my gosh, it's like a playground where you get to grow and experiment
- 56:27and try and do all kinds of stuff.
- 56:29It's really the greatest joy.
- 56:31Yeah.
- 56:32I appreciate you bringing up quantum because I've been fascinated by that recently as well.
- 56:39And the quantum computer and how that works and.
- 56:43In fact, I will be starting my own podcast in the next couple of months called Quantum Leadership.
- 56:51great.
- 56:51So it's up on the qualities of good leadership.
- 56:56So great.
- 56:57Well, invite me on.
- 56:58I'll be happy to chat.
- 56:59So good.
- 57:00Good.
- 57:00Yes, definitely.
- 57:02All good.
- 57:04Well, Stephen, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you.
- 57:07Any last words of wisdom you'd like to impart to the audience or?
- 57:10Well, I yes.
- 57:14just want to hold up my new book.
- 57:17yeah.
- 57:17Yeah.
- 57:18The nine pillars of resilience.
- 57:20The proven path to master stress, slow aging and increased vitality.
- 57:24Yeah.
- 57:25And it's available everywhere online in bookstores.
- 57:31And it gives you a blueprint like a it's a handbook for living your best life step by step about how to be on the path.
- 57:40And then
- 57:41I was offering for your audience my resilience assessment booklet, which is an ebook that describes my model, but it also has a questionnaire that a person can take, self score,
- 57:54and get their own personal resilience profile along my nine dimensions.
- 57:59Nice.
- 58:00I love it.
- 58:00I love it.
- 58:01Great.
- 58:01And where do they find that?
- 58:03Well, your staff will make that available.
- 58:08Okay.
- 58:09It'll be in the, it'll be in the show notes for them.
- 58:11But they can also go to my website, drstevensideroff.com and they can get it there as well.
- 58:19Okay.
- 58:19So Steven is spelled with a P H and Sideroff as S I D E R O F F.
- 58:25Correct.
- 58:26So just so you have that Dr.
- 58:27Steven Sideroff.
- 58:29Great.
- 58:30Well, Steven, such a pleasure.
- 58:31Thanks for taking the time to chat.
- 58:33Yeah.
- 58:33Thank you as well, Jeffrey.
- 58:35It has been enjoyable.
- 58:36Thank you.
- 58:38my pleasure.