Jonathan Roberts Not Safe for Society
Jonathan Roberts Not Safe for Society
DR. Chelsea Grow : Healing Beyond the Diagnosis: A Neurologist's Spiritual Awakening
What happens when a board-certified neurologist with decades of experience begins questioning the very foundations of modern medicine? Dr. Chelsea Gro takes us on a powerful journey from medical authority to spiritual explorer, revealing how personal trauma shaped both her career success and eventual awakening.
After treating thousands of patients with conditions ranging from stroke to migraines, Dr. Gro confronted a stark reality: despite her extensive training, something vital was missing from her approach to healing. "We're band-aiding symptoms," she explains, "not truly healing to our full capacity." This realization, coupled with her own health crisis, launched her into exploring what medical school never taught her.
With remarkable vulnerability, Dr. Gro shares how childhood trauma – including her parents' divorce, her father's brain injury, and her own spinal cord injury at age 13 – created survival patterns that drove her impressive achievements while disconnecting her from deeper emotional truths. This "hyperindependence" and perfectionism, qualities celebrated in medicine, ultimately led to a breaking point that forced her to look inward.
The conversation ventures into profound territory as Dr. Gro unpacks how anxiety, depression, and even physical ailments often stem from a misalignment between our authentic souls and the identities we construct. She offers practical insights into healing through breathwork, meditation, community connection, and spiritual awareness – approaches largely absent from conventional medical training.
Perhaps most compelling is Dr. Gro's exploration of control versus surrender. "Control is a fear response," she reveals, describing how letting go of the illusion of control transformed her life and parenting. Her comparison of American achievement culture with more present-oriented societies challenges listeners to reconsider what truly constitutes health and fulfillment.
Whether you're navigating your own healing journey, interested in the limitations of modern medicine, or simply seeking a more integrated approach to wellness, this conversation offers both wisdom and practical guidance for reconnecting mind, body, and soul.
Chelsea, gro here, I said that, right, right, Gro, yes, yeah, I always panic Names are hard for me Neurologist and super, super interesting, because you've got the practical, you know, educational side of medicine and then some other stuff that we'll talk about. So I'll turn it over to you for a second 30 seconds. Just what do you do? Who are you?
Speaker 2:a second 30 seconds. Just what do you do? Who are you? So? I'm a neurologist, been practicing for over 20 years and treated thousands of patients from every neurological disorder you could think of and many psychiatric diagnoses as well. Anything from stroke, seizure, coma, end-of-life you know, end-of-life issues, other things like migraine, chronic headaches, parkinson's, sleep disorders like sleep apnea, insomnia, so pretty much it covers quite a variety of neuropsychiatric diagnoses.
Speaker 1:Okay and okay. So we've actually got to back up just a little bit to how you and I got connected. So you happen to be in Arizona, you happen to see one of our events. We're not going to talk about our events, but essentially, like I mean, I called you on a sales call is exactly what it was. I think I spoke to you that first time for like an hour, which usually, if I go over 10 minutes, I don't pitch because it's you're in the weeds and stuff and you're not going over to right. But I ended up connecting with you because I mean you were interesting and we had to like stay away from conspiracy theories and all this cool stuff. So, um, you were in Arizona.
Speaker 1:You've been practicing neuromedicine essentially is that a term which is basically brain, brain, brain functions, everything. That's right. How do you see, like, like the neuroscience? Like I mean, because it's not just the brain, it's your entire, everything connects to it. So, so we got connected because we have a lot of similar beliefs. I think you mentioned RFK and I was like all right, now I'm into this call, let's, let's see what you're talking about. We're okay. And now you're pushing into a coaching stream. Okay, why, like I'm trying to connect all that and there's a, there's a million different areas. So I'm kind of like, yeah, yeah, it's a lot.
Speaker 2:The long and short of it is I want to be able to help people in a way that I cannot do that now. Okay, and again, I've been in practice 20 years and a lot of what I do is, you know, there's discussions with people on a real heart-to-heart level, heart-to-heart level, and there's an intuition, there's a knowing that comes with the practice of medicine that they can't teach you in med school or in residency. And even with experience, you know, the longer you're in medicine, the more experience you get, you do get better with it. But still there's a separate something and it's that intuition part that I've always had. And now more than ever, you know the constraints of medicine, the way we, you know we operate right now. Unfortunately, we don't have the time to spend the one-on-one with patients the way we need to to actually heal them or to get to the root cause of what symptoms they're presenting with, what's actually underlying that. Okay, you know, besides just a label or a diagnosis and a medication and send them on their way, we're band-aiding, we're not really, in a lot of cases, actually healing and helping to the full capacity. Okay, and you know that's been something that's been brewing within me for a while now and I knew that I could help people more so from outside of traditional medicine. You know root cause.
Speaker 2:Getting to the underlying, you know root of physical symptoms, emotional mental disorders which are a biggie for me. You know a lot of times people get labeled disorders which are a biggie for me. You know, a lot of times people get labeled and the way I look at mental health is you know there's symptoms of the body first whispering and then later screaming to get your attention and usually we suppress it and we busy our way out of it and we block it to the point where we either physically or mentally break. But if we look at that and pay attention and teach people earlier on to listen to the bodies and what that sign is palpitations yeah, they might be cardiac, but you know they say, oh, anxiety, and dismiss it. Well, no, why are you feeling that?
Speaker 2:You know, is it? A lot of times there's an underlying pain or trauma or some type of root suffering that we trap and suppress from way back. That's never been fully dealt with, so it just lingers under the surface until it screams and then you know we have breakdowns or there's crisis or you know, there's other big things that bleed into every aspect of people's lives and you know, then it is rock bottom before they finally start waking up to. You know, what is this? You know, and people think they're, you know, broken in different ways, and they're not. They just haven't been guided in the right direction, and that's really where I want to help people.
Speaker 1:So let's hit that in a second. What? What I want to figure out, because obviously this is bigger to you than just a job like and I think for most doctors it's bigger than just a job, because if it was just a job, something like you wouldn't put yourself through med school and all of that. What made you decide to get into neuromedicine, to become a neurologist?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have no doctors in my family at all. My parents were teachers. I worked for everything. Every penny Mom passed away when I was 18.
Speaker 2:I had to make decisions at a young age and fad myself in the right direction completely on my own. And I initially wanted to do psychology. So I was thinking I was going to go down a psychological career path and then realized I liked biology and somehow ended up in med school to become a psychiatrist and then got into neurology and realized that I love neurology, just intuitively I love it, and you actually. I mean the brain is just fascinating and a lot of things that we deal with in neurology the brain and the spinal cord and all your nervous system is so tied into what we consider psychiatry or psychology. They're hand in hand. So I ended up going into it. You know covering the neuropsychiatric, you know umbrella, but I could do, you know, so much with that and help people get mind, body and soul connection with that background and, you know, get to again the root of what a lot of the suffering and the diagnoses are that we see how many years of schooling is that A lot? Yeah, like 12 months at least.
Speaker 1:And that's after high school.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Gosh dang.
Speaker 2:I was addicted to studying. Yeah, I literally like looking back. It's kind of like a weird thing to think of, but that studying was my at that point. My escape was it was in the mind. Luckily it was something that I, you know was helpful later in life. But you know school, the you know length of time, the residencies and some specialty training years. I had endless time at that point. I thought it did you know. So that was my, was my, you know, challenge against myself, I guess okay.
Speaker 1:So were you um a high performing student in like middle school and high school as well, or did you? Yeah, yeah, I was my parents.
Speaker 2:Again, they were teachers. So they always instilled, you know, at a young age, the importance of education. And so throughout the I just had that within me and again with a very strong, I've always been super determined and strong willpower. And having that and then imprinted the importance at a young age of education, you know, I just always it was, you know, a competition against myself. I was never one to care what the person next to me or the one around me was getting. If I had a 98, why didn't I get 100? So it was a very competitive mindset against myself. Nobody did that, it was me. And again my parents passed away. So it was just me, 18, 19, 20 years old.
Speaker 1:I'm like I had a—, so both your parents were gone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. My dad was in a car accident when I was young. He had a traumatic brain injury so he wasn't able I mean wonderful, intelligent, like super, you know, just amazing man, but you know frontal lobe injury so he wasn't able to fully. You know, in everyday life wasn't fully the same after that, how? Young were you then, ooh, so I was 18 for my mother she got a melanoma. So it was a couple years after that, okay, yeah, and they've been divorced after you know, years before that, anyway.
Speaker 1:But so do you think? I mean, did that with the frontal lobe injury and stuff? Did that lead you into neurology at all?
Speaker 2:or so if I this is where the interesting, you know, thing is people ask me about neurology and how and why I got into it, and from the mind standpoint I explain it in very logical terms. But I have no doubt that these events that happened younger in my life whether it was through my dad, his injury and things that I've been through there's no doubt that there was something beyond that I wasn't aware of that led me down that road and even to where I'm at right now.
Speaker 1:there's no doubt well, because I always like to back things up. When we spoke about this a little bit, um, especially with your background in neurology psychology, um, you can go back to freudian theory, yes, and you know you, you look back and I mean you almost try to disprove a lot of Sigmund Freud's articles and what he's published, and it's like it becomes difficult because you can, you know, go back there. So I always try to get people, when they were about six, eight, nine, kind of in that age bracket, like was there anything in that age bracket for you that possibly had you interested in the human mind and how it works? Like, was there anything in that age bracket for you that possibly had you interested in the human mind and how it works? Like what was your early, you know, elementary?
Speaker 2:life like, yeah, so interesting. The way I answer it now is very different than I did maybe three years ago, because in the last couple of years I've actually really dug deep into a lot of things within myself that I wasn't even aware of. I'd done work on myself which was interesting, and went down the spiritual path and the inner child wounds and traumas that I honestly did not even know were there, which I find it fascinating because it was not based on anything they could have taught me. Based on my neurology experience with psychiatry, it was something, it was just a path that just. There's no doubt God had his hand in it. But at a young age, I just remember I was different in terms of my mindset. Even then I remember, you know, they labeled me as gifted, which I thought was nerdy, and I was like no, I'm not. Because they'd pull me out of class to do like kind of what my son would say like stop, mark the classes, and I'd roll my eyes, give them, the nerd glasses, I'm so nerdy.
Speaker 2:I did not identify with that. I was like the just opposite. Just, you know, out there doing my own thing, kind of kid. But I think, looking back at that young age, what I didn't recognize but played a huge role in my you know what led me in the teenage years and beyond that was there was a disconnect. You know, when my mom and dad got divorced I cannot tell you from a logical, I cannot tell you from a logical or, you know, from a remembrance of feeling pain or being sad, because I mean I think I was like three years old, I don't remember it, but I do remember looking back at both of them and it was almost like I felt their pain and it was a real again.
Speaker 2:This is just in the last few years I've really tapped into this and I think I've carried that with me and you know, as a child you don't always, you can't put things into words, you just see what's going on in your environment around you and it does, it shapes you and then, if you don't talk through it, we hold onto it and then it affects us later in life and at the age of seven you know the onto it and then affects us later in life, and at the age of seven, you know, the self and our identity starts forming based on those things. So I think that at a young age I felt this pain in my parents because they love each other more than anything. And my mom did have the, you know he had a head injury. It was terrible. She stayed with him but he had some you know impulsivity and some behavioral things that he couldn't control and she had to make the decision you know, to leave when I know she didn't want to. But looking back that pain that they carried as a child I felt that. And then my mom remarried.
Speaker 2:We moved away when I was 12. From the only family that I had were my grandparents Super close with them. And so then I was, I don't want to say pulled away, but you know I was into this new environment where I felt very disconnected from family because I didn't really have it, and I think I carried that pain from a young age with me, had a stepfather that did not get along at all, and so I was rebelling, 12, 13 years old, by escaping and being wild and with all the wrong people, which at the time I thought was fun, but somehow I kept my grades going while doing that. But looking back it was more of a. It was an escape.
Speaker 2:I was trying to escape and I you know, because I didn't feel fully loved and I felt the pain that was there from my parents that I couldn't understand or express. And my mom was busy. She had two, my two younger sisters then. So I was more alone, more than ever, at those ages that are so important 12 and 13. And then I had my accident when I was 13 and no telling like traumatically that probably just shut off that part of my brain where it's like a pace survival.
Speaker 1:Okay. So when you were 13, that age bracket going through this, do you think at that point in time like you felt more alone, or were you still feeling your parents' pain? All of it, all of it.
Speaker 2:All of it.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:All of it, but then it was only. The worst thing in the world is that, you know, as a kid, you are feeling these things. You can't verbalize it, our family did not really express emotions really well, even though I was a very sensitive emotional child, but there was no outlet for it, so I just dealt with it, you know, and then escaping with friends that were probably not the best group to escape. That, which then led to you know this crazy trauma you know of all, and I had a spinal cord injury at the age of 13, which is like like really the thing that you're escaping now. That happens.
Speaker 2:So now push further into isolation and survival, because I was, you know, months, you know two hours from my family and my mom and so I didn't see her. So I pretty much, you know, at 13, I just went inward and it was a mind thing, I think that's where the there was a superpower. It was solidified then because I it was like I don't remember thinking that out loud, but looking back I'm sure that's what happened. You know, it's like that do or die, like you either have to like wall up and push forward or just sink into complacency, which was never, me anyway.
Speaker 1:So you're kind of already lost at this point, 13 years old-ish. So you're kind of already lost at this point, 13 years old-ish. Stepdad didn't get along with, started to rebel a little bit. Spinal cord injury, I mean that would put a lot of people out, yeah. And then you talk about going inward. I mean, did you go find yourself more at that time? Or tell me, I mean, now I'm more interested than when we started.
Speaker 2:Not that I wasn't, but now it's yeah and it's again I. Until the last couple of years I literally, I think I well, I don't think I know, even from a psychological standpoint I disconnected. So when people have a trauma, now this is the neuro and the psych knowledge that I have. Looking back at that, it's almost like I look back and I don't have the emotion at that moment. I'm sure it was super traumatic, I mean it was, but I literally can't feel it, which I used to think.
Speaker 2:If you can think of something and not get choked up talking about it, you've healed from it. Like I used to believe that, but I don't think that's true anymore. I think if you've had something that's so traumatic that you literally it's like your survival kicks in and you disown it, so you don't even recognize it because it threatens your survival. That's what I did. So I literally separated my mind from the identity that it even happened. I just did. And so when I said go inward, it was more of Do you have much memory from that time of your life? You know not much, which that's how I know the trauma was heavy with it, because I only have bits and pieces, you know.
Speaker 1:Do you remember more 12th, like, let's say, 7 to 12? Do you have more memories in that part of your life?
Speaker 2:Even younger, which is interesting. I just tapped into this in the last couple of years. So I have more vivid memories living with my grandparents in the country in Pennsylvania, on a farm when I was 5, six, seven, eight years old. I remember conversations with them very vividly when my mom remarried and you know my stepfather, he lived a couple hours away when we had to move out of my grandmother's house, out of the country. From there on it gets kind of blurry. It gets kind of blurry and then at the you know 13, that time frame it gets really like, like very. I can picture like the theme of the next five or six years, but not the details, so much which is which is, I mean, that's trauma.
Speaker 1:But yeah, so I mean there's a lot of, uh, repressed memory and trauma. Have you ever tried to go discover it? Hypnosis, anything crazy like that?
Speaker 2:I say crazy.
Speaker 1:But I'm like I kind of like this stuff now.
Speaker 2:Right, so I literally again that was my detachment from it. I did not think that there was any concern or any reason to do any of that.
Speaker 1:You thought it was healed. This was like I'm fine.
Speaker 2:I have a great life.
Speaker 2:I have a great job, I have great kids, I have all the things. I'm like everything is great and I really believed it until I didn't. And then I was like, okay, a couple of years ago. Then it was like, not by chance, but I had a health issue that came up. Literally, I look at it as God was putting me in, like if you won't stop, I'm going to put you down to be still, because I would go, go, go, I mean just driven. Whatever people said they could do in a year, I'm going to do it in three months and I'm going to do it, you know, 10 times better. Like that has been my mentality.
Speaker 2:But to the point, I was taking too much on from that role and that mindset and that identity, which is hyperindependence, you know, from survival, which is a validation, and have to make sure I'm taken care of. But I took it to the extreme and it started taking a toll on me physically. And then I had a, you know, had a couple surgeries that didn't go the way they should have. Long story short, I was down for like four or five months just like, literally still in bed with myself, and that's when I started going down the road of all, like digging inward, because I didn't realize all the physical symptoms that I had been blocking and disconnected from. I was forced to meet them, feel them and I didn't know what to do with them because I didn't believe being in the medical world. I didn't believe in going to a psychologist or psychiatrist. I didn't think they would help me. So I started going online and that's how I fell into all of these things which have been so amazing Different types of breath work, meditation, spirituality and different somatic work, everything that basically heals your nervous system and inner child wounds. All the things I didn't know were even a thing.
Speaker 2:And in my entire lifetime I learned. In the last year, year and a half, there was no one course, there was no one person, it was just throwing myself in it and trying the different techniques and finding that there was something to this that I didn't even know existed. And then the more I did it, then the more it would uncover and the more it would uncover I learned more about me that I did not know, but through all that I realized. You know we talk about the psychology, but the Freud, ego and identity, my entire existence. We all have an identity.
Speaker 2:Mine was built on that survival and being in the medical profession. It's like the worst thing you could do if you are that identity because they praise that and you just work more and work harder and we work like two days in a row with no sleep but that's what you're praised for Like and you're successful. That's great. So somebody that's trying to get out of survival or doesn't know they're in it, you will literally break yourself down going that road. So by doing the healing and doing the work, I realized that's not. I mean not that I. You know I'm proud of my career but that's not who I was meant to be and the purpose and calling now is something completely different and it's it's from the healing, but it's from the healing of myself and the knowing and knowing that there was a bigger plan that God had that I did not see. And now there's a knowing like that's now behind everything I do.
Speaker 1:Okay, do you remember med school much.
Speaker 2:I do, but it was, I mean intense studying. I feel like it was even more than everybody else, because I would lock myself in my apartment or anywhere. I mean from seven in the morning to like midnight. I literally did not.
Speaker 1:Would you say you're still in like survival mode at that point in time? No doubt. So you've been in survival, you were and still trying to overcome but like do you think the survival mode? When do you think it started, or have you always been that?
Speaker 2:So I think it was leading up to again 13 is the accident. So I used to think that that was the I mean, obviously the trauma that it started there and went forward. But looking back, it was probably a few years before that, because there was an emptiness or pain within me, even as a child, that was leading me to do those things. I mean, you know, as a 13-year-old we were out, I mean, with people that were. I just shouldn't have been to those places but that was my escape from not feeling loved and not feeling that. You know that the child should have those bonds and connections and I didn't. So it was probably, you know, right when my mom remarried and we had to move away from my grandparents because I feel like they were my last, like wholesome, loving, like you're safe connection, and then after that it was just different degrees of survival and it just compounded on one another.
Speaker 1:And did the accident change your perspective on life or anything, or was it a numbness at that point in time that you were getting through?
Speaker 2:There was. I mean again, the ego and the mind will play tricks on you, it will tell you things. So I wasn't consciously aware that I was or why I was going in the directions I was going in, but it was a protective mechanism Because, if you know, I feel like it was survival. But I knew whatever I put my mind to do, I could do it. And so, for me, I wanted to be something big. I wanted to make sure that whatever I did, it was going to be big and I was going to be able to financially take care of me, no matter if I'm. It was just me. So that was the mindset. And then, you know, I lived from that. But I was completely detached from the feeling and the emotion behind why I was doing it, from the feeling and the emotion behind why I was doing it. So it wasn't coming from.
Speaker 2:If you have I don't even know what there's no perfect family but if you have a family, you know that, you know you know you're safe and there's loving and you could talk, learn how to communicate and talk through things and emotions and voice your, you know your thoughts and feelings. That's one thing. And you become something big If you are repressed and disconnected in family. You know, either because you can feel safe, you can feel the love. Then later in life you look for validation, to support. You know I want, you know I'm worthy or I'm good enough. And that's a dangerous place. If you become an adult that is successful and that's a dangerous place if you become an adult that is successful but you still have that core wound that I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy.
Speaker 2:Because that and that's where I believe is the heart and soul so many like the suffering and illness and pain because people they don't understand. They're like I have everything, but why? And then there's shame and guilt that you know attach that. Because you're like why am I unhappy? Everybody else? You know there's shame and guilt, you know, attached to that Because you're like why am I unhappy? Everybody else? You know there's people that have it much worse and you know you go down that road but it all goes back to like people just want, you know, to feel safe, you want to feel accepted and you have to be vulnerable to get there. But you have to face those wounds and those traumas which it's so hard to do it. Most people don't do, it Don't, or they do, you know, and it's just, it's so painful, they quit before they pursue and get the other side.
Speaker 1:Okay. So there's definitely, you know, I would say, and I think probably you've discovered a lot of your past has pushed you into it, because most people aren't going to push themselves as far as you have the hours, the stress, the pain. You know I mean your level of independence. You've got great freaking kids. You're very highly successful. I mean you've checked every freaking block you're supposed to check. I mean you've checked every freaking block you're supposed to check. Okay. So you went through something, you know some medical stuff, a couple years ago or so and then that changed your perception of medicine a little bit, or what happened there. Because you said about three years ago, yeah, it did I already.
Speaker 2:I mean there's a few different reasons why I mean at that time I was changing as a human because I was healing myself and it was the beginning of that journey. I didn't know that I needed to be healed and I didn't even know that I had all those things inside of me, like I was completely unaware. Some people say you have blind spots and you know, you know that's why we could see things in other people, but we can't see ourselves. That was my awakening, like I had no idea that I had these things and so as I went down that road and, you know, uncovered more and more things about me that I didn't know and tried healing it. I also, at the same time, was realizing what we were doing in medicine, which I already it wasn't truly helping to the extent that I know we could. And then by learning how to you know how deeply inner child wounding and traumas are embedded in our body and nervous system and how it can be healed, because I've gone through it and I realized like it's powerful and it introduced me to a world out there there is, you know, our communities that actually you know this is embraced. But it made me recognize more and more what I already knew that in my medical practice I don't do them justice, or at least I don't feel like I can, because I can't fully address all those things that they, you know they're non, you know, they're not traditional.
Speaker 2:Well, we don't even have the time in a visit to address all those things that they, you know they're non, you know, they're not traditional. Well, we don't even have the time in a visit to address all of it. You know, because it's, you know, not a label and a pill and on your way, it's deep-seated work that you know, has to be done daily and there's a spirituality to it too, regardless of religion that's underlying it. If you feel that and know that there's something bigger, beyond just our 3D existence, your entire perspective on your life changes, because it's not attached to the things anymore, or the validation or chasing things None of that really ultimately matters and you tap into knowing that you're already enough. You're already where you have everything within you. You just embody it and it's like you then will attract the environments and situations where you can share that purpose or calling without having to, you know, push or hustle through it. It's more of an embodiment.
Speaker 1:Have you always been a religious, spiritual person?
Speaker 2:Not to the extent I am now. We were raised Catholic, so we went to church. We believed, I believed. But until the last couple of years, everything I've been through it's night and day. It's like now, at the core of everything that I do.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, because a lot of people and not a lot, but a lot of people, especially doctors end up losing religion. But what you'll see is later in life they pick it back up. So that's why I was asking that. I mean even people like Einstein. There's the book Einstein Jesus out there, where he was not religious basically his entire life until the later years. And then I mean almost through science has proven in some sort of religion that even Elon Musk says it is like there is a higher probability that there is some sort of creator than there is not, because there's so much random probability in the universe that it wouldn't make sense to not be a creator. So how do you connect, like religion and modern medicine?
Speaker 2:so again, I think more people get tripped up when they hear religion and and then that's where the polarity and separation and people kind of shut off when we go there. But but if it's you know, the spirituality side or it's just divine, like there's a different, you know creator source, whatever, just it's a knowing. If somebody believes there's something beyond, so spirituality and a lot of people I think it is midlife. I think that's at the heart of likelife awakenings or midlife crisis. Ego dissolution and dark night of the soul is when, literally, it's our soul. We recognize our soul. It's the disconnect between the identity and ego which serves us to keep us safe in the world, but it keeps us in validation and worth and all these things. But we realize it hits people at different times. But when your soul is then evident to yourself, like you feel it, and you start recognizing what that truly is, it's an inner knowing and that's where the spirituality, in midlife especially, I think, starts really. Where people have these, you know their life is turning. You see them like upside down or major changes in who they are. It is that inner spiritual soul, you know, that's starting to really surface and they accept it, because a lot of people that are either in medicine or you know different, whatever you know career path, they and I too fell into that. You have a hard time accepting something that you cannot see, touch, feel, prove, Like, if I don't and I was guilty of that before, I believe, but I didn't fully if I couldn't rationalize it, but that's the mind again, the ego, like I have to know, prove it to me. And if you can't, I'm a little bit suspicious. When you have that, literally it's the awakening and you know that God is literally connected to your heart and soul. It's a knowing and that is the heart of the awakening in lives and in medicine. You know, look at other cultures that are outside of Western medicine. I mean, this is some—they're so ahead of us in that regard.
Speaker 2:You know, having a spiritual knowing within you, whatever the religion, we can heal so many things within us. When you're connected to spirit or to God, literally there's a healing. And then when you have that within you, we start healing each other. Which is even crazier because I before think oh no, it's real. When you are in the right rooms and you know, when somebody's spiritual or their heart is, they shine a light you can't even. It's like an energy. You can't even put it into words. It's a healing energy and that spirituality and that healing, we could do so much more and we will, not only for physical disorders but mental health, anxiety, depression, bipolar whatever label we use, physical symptoms like chronic fatigue, atypical chest pressure, chronic pain all of it is a majority of it.
Speaker 2:It's a disconnect between your soul and the mind or your identity, and there's a misalignment.
Speaker 2:I believe that, no doubt, and until you actually allow yourself to go back to your heart and connect, which to fully do it, not just say it, but be vulnerable and let all that out and let people see the sloppy and messy, all the baggage and all the stuff that most people want to hide and they want to put in a filtered package.
Speaker 2:Now I'm so much more media out there, no, be like, let them know. The more you do that it's like you heal a little bit at a time of yourself the more you would go down that road. But we need to do that as a whole in medicine because we could heal the physical, which is, I mean, the extension of the soul and the mind. You know it's we're all mind, body, soul. We can't compartmentalize and I think that's the biggest thing that medicine we do not do or haven't done well until now, I think. Now, I mean, there's such a push for it that you know people are screaming for help and for answers that are non-conventional because they're not getting the answers to the questions in a typical office visit.
Speaker 1:Do you think America's in a mental health crisis or epidemic right now? Absolutely no doubt.
Speaker 2:How do you think we as a society, or you or whatever micro macro level you believe, how do you think it could be start turning the other way, reversed worked on? Yeah, the first thing is the. It's like a stigma. We have to, we have to have people know that it's okay. So if they have a physical symptom and go to the doctor, say for chest pain, they're okay, coming back home and telling their family about their cardiac workup and you know, the doctor recommended this or that. If they go in and the doctor says we've got all your heart testing done, stress test, everything's normal. And they say you know, the doctor recommended this or that, if they go in and the doctor says we've got all your heart testing done, stress test, everything's normal, and they say you're just having palpitations, you're stressed or you have anxiety, we want to refer you to a psychiatrist or psychologist. I'm in the room with people that they immediately you can see that they shut down because there's a stigma. They almost rather have a diagnosis that's physical than hear that word like a mental health problem. So they either are embarrassed or they're shame-tied, so they don't want to get the help and they don't. So that's the first thing we have to, like just erase that, you know, negative association with having any type of mental health problem, like, just take that away. And we do that. It's not easy because that's the way we've been practicing for so long, but it's by educating and letting people know that again, it's mind, body and soul. So we're all one connected being. So we're all one connected being. And when we start approaching it from that respect and letting them know like you actually can heal, like give me a pill and I'm on my way.
Speaker 2:Now I have a label, now I believe that's what I have, now that a whole diagnosis in my lifestyle completely goes down that road, when maybe those were the symptoms of something in my life. The way I'm living is I'm disconnected, I'm not living from my true purpose or I'm not living in alignment with you know who I truly am authentically. So if I'm, you know, a very, you know, spiritual person or very, you know, like artistic, but I'm in a job that puts me in a very structured, rigid environment because my parents said I have to be, you know, an accountant or something like that, you know, and I'm doing it because I'm, you know, that's what I'm supposed to do. That's now my identity, but my soul is not in alignment with that. You're going to have the physical symptoms which manifest as the anxiety and depression. So if we look at that as a symptom, the anxiety and depressive symptoms, as something that is underlined spiritually, that's not right. Your alignment isn't right. The way you're living isn't right. There's underlined spiritual. That's not right. Your alignment isn't right. The way you're living isn't right.
Speaker 2:And getting people into situations where there's community, you know, where they're safe Safe community is the biggest thing when there's, you know they can not only be grounded, you know, with the outdoors, you know walking, running, sunshine, sun exposure, all that outdoors, you know walking, running, sunshine, sun exposure, all that but also have a community of people where they are, they feel safe, seeing and heard without being judged, which is ultimately what, you know, everybody wants. I think that would, I don't say cure, but pretty much a big part of what we, you know, look at mental health as it's. Instead of doing you know, they come in and we give them a prescription and see us in six weeks for anxiety, depression. If we gave them a prescription for a community and you know meditation group and a yoga group or you know a diet, like, as far as you know, exercise and a workout regimen and just how to restructure their day-to-day basic life. That would heal so much of what we think is, you know, a disorder, mental health.
Speaker 1:So I love what you're saying because I completely agree with you on 90%, but you talk a lot about giving them a community and what I see is there's a lot of communities revolving around mental health right now forming, but there's also a lot of communities that seem like they're just accepting it and they're you know, you're kind of able to join this community or this, this group, and it's almost just a bunch of people whining and crying in there about their problems and how they need to be treated specially Like. How do you see that as a type of community?
Speaker 2:That's not great.
Speaker 1:That's not the community we're talking about.
Speaker 2:Okay, no, because it's almost again. Once you label it's you now identify? And I mean this is anything, the words you speak. You know a child, even if you say you know you're not good enough, you're not smart enough that they now identify, or if they start speaking it, that is who they think they are. What you speak is powerful.
Speaker 2:So communities that are based on labels that only feed more into that as your identity you're not going to heal from that. It's only going to more solidify that diagnosis into who you are. So when I say community, it's more of as far as open, safe places. Some of it can be religion, but some of it, you know, just groups of people. It does not matter who you are, your backgrounds, what diagnosis you have or don't. It's a place where people come together where they're accepted and safe and they're not judged, where they can, you know, be accepted for who they are and not worry when they leave. That somebody's going to be, you know, talking about them and judging them. You know somebody's going to be, you know, talking about them and judging them.
Speaker 2:You know there's different ways to go about it, but we see this, you know, in a positive way. You know, across the country, different movements. You know Bible study groups or different groups of women with womanship or men with you know brotherhoods where they come together and they're like we got you. Even if you don't have you know, know you don't even have to tell us right now, you could feel like their energy, you know, and it's like there's a healing that goes on in a room. Even if you don't speak, you know that you're safe. That alone, just it inspires people, brings them up, it lifts them and it helps them get out of that. You know where they're feeling disconnected and it gives them belief again. And having belief, belief goes back to you know, you believe and you have faith. You can do anything, you know. So it's those kinds of communities that you know. We need more of that, no doubt.
Speaker 1:Okay. So and this is cool for me because I mean I'll tell you off camera but I mean I've got a VA disability rating and I was told I shouldn't do this, couldn't do that, and you know, there's times where maybe things are a little bit harder, but it's also just not the I don't want to live a life by a piece of paper that someone told me. I was like, yeah, crap happens, but you got to move on. So, like, for people who are, you know, maybe tired of modern medicine or tired of being on beta blockers, or you know what that's doing is making them feel numb or just not working, or even going in the other area, like, if you're out there looking for a community, what are you looking for? What should you be asking? What should you be searching? Because I think a lot of people just don't even know where to look. Like they're like this isn't right. I don't feel here. You know numb is easier than chasing, but, like I think a lot of us I mean, especially since there was the flu in 2020 or COVID, whatever they called like Americans and I think the whole world, we were in this area where we're like they gave us everything we want.
Speaker 1:They gave us our cell phone. They said stay in your freaking basement, don't go out and make friends, like stay away from people, which is what everybody had wanted to do. And then all of a sudden the government tells you you got to do it. And we're like no screw that. I want to be part of people. So I think, post-covid, one of the best things that came out of it is humans for the most part realize that they are tribal, that they do want to be involved, but we had separated so much because of MySpace, facebook, instagram, just everything at your fingertips. And I mean heck. I was talking to your son earlier about video games. I remember being his age playing video games, like you used to have to invite people over to your house.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And then all of a sudden, like you never had anybody at your house because it was all online, and then we wanted it back. So like I think there's a lot of people that want to find communities, they just don't know how to make friends.
Speaker 2:They just don't like what do. Yeah, if you use it for the wrong ways. But I had been living in the same place for you know, 15 years. I had the same people around me doing the same things. I'm like I need something else. Now what that something else was. I didn't know what. You know what, where, who, what. And, as a fact, that was the first group I found. It was a women's group. Womanship was their thing and it was empowering women but connecting through acceptance, safe place, vulnerability. It wasn't about who you were. They didn't know who I was. They didn't know anything about my background. I just showed up and that was the very first group that I found.
Speaker 2:It was online, went there by myself and again it's like interesting, because I've been in all kinds of situations, been in different rooms, all kinds of things. But when you go into a place by yourself, it's awkward because you're like, oh, I don't know anybody here and I don't know about this. You're going in with a vulnerability and you know, as you're going in there, that's actually what I need. So, but it's awkward doing it. But that was the first time you know went with a group of these women, that it was such a cool environment I was. I never had done anything like that before, but I remember thinking, okay, this is, I need this. Like this doesn't exist anywhere around me because every other group or friendships that I had been in were based on what I do, what I do or what status. And I'm like I have that, but that's not who I am, you know. And so I think in the last couple of years, I mean I definitely have found online one thing led to another.
Speaker 2:But groups and communities that are built on that acceptance, they word it differently, you know some will be more towards you know, meditation groups or spiritual groups. Some are just, you know, where people are coming together in safe places. They word it differently. But people, there's a knowing that in those environments. You're going there completely vulnerable and there's a healing once you're there that you know. It's like you're shedding that identity where it used to be exhausting to exist in that identity in everyday life, little by little, the more you feel accepted. It's like you're rewiring your nervous system in those communities because they're seeing you as like your true human soul that you are and it literally starts healing you from the inside and then you start radiating it into other people that you see need it, you know it's, it becomes.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've been doing it now the last couple of years when I'm in different places. I see the people that are already on that path and I could feel the ones that are having it but need it. It's, you know, because when people are still living from the walls and the mass and identifying the ego now, they don't know that at that point. But the ones that are just like, trying to hang on and just need acceptance and need to be, you know, just know that they are not being judged. Those people, I mean they're so.
Speaker 2:I mean everybody wants to be, you know, part of something and they want to be, you know, feel like they're safe and accepted for who they are. We can't get enough of that. But that's what we need instead of polarity and separation and all that kind of stuff and the divide which, you know, that's what the world that's. They like to push that message. But if we kind of break that, you know, which isn't easy, but break away from that, the ego, the identity, and like, okay, this is who I am, take it or leave it Be authentic, sloppy, messy, I always say that I'm like, whatever it is, people, your people, you know they're going to find you and your people are going to love you. The ones that don't, that's okay.
Speaker 1:So how do we get away from the divide? Because I think that's 90% of our mental health issues in this country is you're picking either far left, far right, far this, far that, and you can't just meet in the middle and realize that you're here.
Speaker 2:So when you, you know the spirituality side of it yes, and there's a higher level of consciousness, which is another piece of the neuroscience component, but it ties into spirituality, not religion, not religion it's a realization that once you step back from it, you realize that the ego or the identity, whichever we want to call it, keeps us somewhat separated and paranoid from one another and it keeps us also disconnected from ourselves. So, in reality, keeps us also disconnected from ourselves. So, in reality, once you shed that ego and you realize that we're all souls, we all have the divine calling and that we've all actually been living from a lens that we've never created, but we take it for a fact that I'm right, because I see it this way. Now you might see it differently, you're wrong, I'm right. Polarity, and then we, you know, don't agree. So you know, there's this separation between us. But when we realize that reality is just our own perception, so it's just based my experiences are going to, you know, I see it this way because I've been through this past you see it differently, based on your past. When we realize that it's just our past experiences that are just blurring how we're interpreting things, and you might see it one way and I see it different. That's okay, but at the end of the day we're all humans. We're all here for the same thing and to connect.
Speaker 2:You know people are living out, you know, even the most adamant about certain opinions and views they're living, but that's from an identity that's so ingrained in their nervous system, going back to childhood again, that they don't know that. So they're going to fight for it tooth and nail. But it's tied to some underlying survival mechanism that kept them safe. So they'll cling to that tooth and nail because it's control. It's scary for that person to let go of that intense belief because that was tied to their survival.
Speaker 2:So if you could get people to understand our viewpoints there's no wrong, there's no right. You know I mean who's wrong, who's right? Who am I to say that? You know I could have looked at something five years ago and I've done that and I was dead set in my opinion that, oh, this is right and this is how to do it. And now I look back I'm like I was so blind I had no idea Because I was seeing it from that identity. Of that I was in survival and very walled up. Now who I am now, which is from more of a healed. From the heart and soul, I look back and I'm like, oh, I was so wrong. And from the heart and soul, I look back and I'm like I was so wrong, you know. So what wrong and right is is all just based on our lens and our perception, based on experience.
Speaker 1:One of the hardest things for us to do is challenge our own perception.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:And be able to have to potentially admit that we might not know and we might not understand and we might be completely wrong about something.
Speaker 2:And it's some people never do it. They can't. You know, I look at. There's different levels of consciousness and awareness. We have people that are blind and don't know. They're blind, meaning they're completely unaware.
Speaker 2:Things don't exist in their world and those people I would never try to push or change that because they can't. They have to have their own awakening, if they do, and when they do, and be ready for it. You can't. But then you have the people that are they're aware and they're aware, but they're not sure what, but they're open. But they're open and to be open. They're the ones that have the capacity to grow and to heal and to realize that. You know there is no exact wrong and right. It's. You know, I might be the problem. You know, just like in patterns I kind of laugh about that Like situations they all have been situations like patterns that repeat behaviors, self-sabotage, procrastination or relationships like the same. You know that's a toxic person that keeps showing up in your life, just a different face after a while. You're like, hmm, is it really this person or is it? Yeah, I might be the issue.
Speaker 2:So I'm like all right, yeah, okay, it was before. You know I was guilty of that kind of stuff. I'd be like I can't believe this happened. You know it's like the victim mentality too, how it happened to me again.
Speaker 1:Yeah it keeps happening to me. Why is this other person? Why is everything like this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then after wow, once you go through it and again you have to be, it's actually you, I thought. At some point I'm like, oh wow, I didn't heal this part of me, okay. That explains it.
Speaker 1:So, and I've had to do many things like that in my life and honestly, I think it's one of the best ways to almost because I mean I've I mean still suffer with anxiety for sure, depression, and a lot of times I have to think to my life like what is it and what am I going through? What is it different? And like I've come to this new thing that I've gone through, where it's, uh, the book's sitting on my desk. I wish I could quote it right now, because I was like quoting whatever I'm stealing, but uh, I can't think of it right now. But it basically talks about, like, in your current state, like where you and I are, there's really nothing other than we're just sitting here talking bullshit and having fun, but there's nothing stressful in our lives right now. Ac is blowing, it's 110 outside, it's 74 in here, like having some fun. Like if I were to worry about anything in the past, that's always going to be to my depression. If I start fixating on my potential future, that's going to be my anxiety, but realistically, like nine times out of 10, where we're at in today's world, everything is just fine and I really.
Speaker 1:I spent a year in Afghanistan and I'm very grateful for this because I tell I share this with a lot of people when they ask about, like the Afghan people, I honestly think they were happier than most Americans because and to relate to your story a little bit they were almost happier than most Americans is one, because they were essentially in a basic survival mode and therefore they had to have the minimum you know requirements of life, met A little bit of safety, food, love, relationships and like it was much more focused around that than it was focused around who just got the new Ferrari on Instagram. You know, what is this guy doing? What is that guy doing? Because I mean, I even see it to myself sometimes where I'm like you know I'll have a really good week, a really good month. I'm like, oh, did I do enough? Did I earn this, did I get that? And like I almost lose my identity. And I did for years and years. I lost my identity, money and just how much. You know it's a platinum card getting paid off every month Like how much can we spend? How much can we do more than the Joneses?
Speaker 1:And like you almost start connecting with those group of people and you just realize that you're trying to constantly buy dopamine rush rushes, whether it's scrolling through Instagram for your dopamine rush, buying a hundred thousand dollar cars, million dollar homes, like whatever it is like you're constantly chasing this dopamine.
Speaker 1:So I frame that because it's like I mean, that's a huge part of like what helped me with anxiety I guess you could say depression. I've never really labeled it that because anytime someone said it could be depression, I'm like I'm not fucking depressed, because once you say you are, then you're going to start looking for reasons to be right. So, like I've almost done this thing where, yes, I mean there's times where, like I don't want to get out of bed or like the day just seems like it's going to be a living hell to go through, or you're having the chest pain and you know the breathing and the blood pressure and whatever else happens to your body, but like I almost try to see in my life every reason that it's not that, if that makes sense, um and what? I'm getting free medical advice right now. I'm just kidding Kind of like I love podcasts because you could just like I'm going to steal some shit from you because you're excited.
Speaker 2:I love this topic.
Speaker 1:So what is it like if you have that? Because I think most people do, when most people decide you know what I don't want to know. Now, let me let me say it this way If you're the type of person that's works nine to five, you know what I don't want to. Now, let me say it this way If you're the type of person that works nine to five, you've got the family, you've got the white picket fence house and you're truly happy on the inside. I'm actually jealous a little bit If you can find true happiness in that and not having the materialistic things and not having that. You've got the family. You've got the basic necessities covered, a little bit extra. There. You're making memories Like I truly think that's amazing.
Speaker 1:However, I believe most people on earth feel like they're built for more than they're currently doing. So I think any sort of transformation or any sort of push you're going to do like you either stay miserable here. For most people, you stay kind of miserable here. You have the depression. You're not hitting goals, you're not achieving big things, you're not, you know, taking yourself to another level. But to accept that and then to make a move, there's going to be anxiety, there's going to be pressure, there's going to be stress, your cortisol levels are going to go through the roof.
Speaker 1:Like, what would you say if, if, if? You've tried a lot of things in life, if you've tried to escape your current handcuffs and you're trying to create this new version, you're trying to find all this One, I would say, knowing you have to know and understand that those are just part of human emotions, human anatomy. All of that's going to kick in and go. What do you do at first, after acceptance of that? You're going to go through these things, just like everybody else, to go through these things, just like everybody else. What do you go through to? You know, not go get yourself on Zoloft, or not get yourself an Adderall prescription, or like, how do you prep yourself?
Speaker 2:to become the new you in a healthy manner. So it's a process and you know it takes a lot of work. And the first thing, like you said, it's self-awareness, because if you're not aware, people can kick, scream and do whatever you will not start. So it has to be an awareness where whatever it is in your life doesn't have to be rock bottom, you know, but you're just, there's that nagging something inside you like, and you might not even know what it is. Again, I had it. I'm like I have everything, but like I'm not to a point where I could. I was just just I didn't know what it was, I didn't people, you know, because is it hormones? Is it depression? Do I need a different job? Do I need a, you know, different relation, whatever, like. And when I, you know, get to the point where I don't have that answer, like there's not a fix for it, because normally I could fix everything I thought I could, I was like what, what is this? So becoming aware that, okay, something here isn't right, I need to do something different. I don't know what it is, but I'm not settled or I'm not happy, whatever. I don't know what it is, but I'm not settled or I'm not happy, whatever. So that is the biggest first step and then after that, that's where it's a process and there's not an exact, you know, an exact blueprint, but there is a formula and it's how you approach your life, which didn't, for me, happen overnight. I fell into it, but what it was was becoming aware, okay, and then it's meeting why I'm not.
Speaker 2:For me it's a misalignment. It's a misalignment with what I'm doing in my life every day, no matter how it looks to everybody else on paper, I'm not living in alignment to who I'm supposed to be. So it's a spiritual. It goes back to your heart and soul and what your purpose is. If you are not fully living from your God-given purpose, from your everybody's got one, your specific calling, there will be a misalignment.
Speaker 2:Now, a lot of people, they don't understand what that means. It's that unsettled, it's the anxiety, it's the depression, just no matter what. You're just not happy and you have to feel that misalignment and then know that, okay, what is that? What does that look like? What does that mean? Okay, I have a job, I have all these things, my purpose. I don't even know what that means, what purpose.
Speaker 2:So then you got to go back. You got to go back before you catapult forward. So then it goes into what am I holding on to? You know, now we say limited beliefs and things like that. Yeah, that's part of it, but there's a pain and it's always, you know, repressed, suppressed emotions from childhood. We've got to go back.
Speaker 2:There's different ways to do that, but you got to go back and give you know, give love basically to the parts of you that didn't get it, that are holding you stuck. So again, if it's somebody that doesn't feel worthy because they never got that from their parent or they never felt, you know, good enough, or they didn't feel loved, it's like you have to go back and give love to that version of yourself and heal it. You don't want to read those stories again and again because you will get stuck in your past and that's not productive. Again and again, because you will get stuck in your past and that's not productive, but just enough where you can literally as the adult, and you look back to a little child and say you didn't have it, then I got you, I have your back, like. It sounds at first a little bit strange because I thought this is kind of, you know, inner child work completely works the more you do it, because you're integrating instead of suppressing, you're loving those parts of you that needed love. If they don't, they run under the you know, subconscious programming, which is 95 of everything that we do. It's there and it lives in your nervous system. So you've got to do the inner child blur and then, at the same time, you don't want to get stuck, you want to heal now, but you have to implement every day, while you're doing that, something.
Speaker 2:It's the discipline of you know, if it's 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes at night, something that grounds you Meditation. You know, go for a walk, it's a gym, whatever it is, and actually, and then time to just sit with yourself. I never believed in meditation before. I haven't. I'm the biggest believer. Like I used to think it was just yoga and you know this, you're stretching and you're relaxing. No, there are meditations where basically connect you inward to your soul, which I never a knowing. It brings about a transformation over time, where you literally become a different version of you and you start healing your nervous system by doing these daily practices.
Speaker 2:And then, when you do the mindset work, which is, you know, becoming aware, but it's also like okay, what don't I like about? Like the 3D world, what things do I want to change? Okay, well, I don't. You know I don't like when I do this. I don't feel good when I hang out with this group of people or I get really mad at myself when I don't follow through on this or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:You have to be aware of all the things that you're subconscious. You know that you don't want in your life. You have to become so aware of it that anytime you consciously start making changes in your life that if you start slipping back like you've kept yourself, it's not that you won't, you will You're going to fall back because it feels really weird when you're making all these changes. Like you don't feel like. You feel like you're the imposter, like you're living a new identity, even though you're not fully feeling it within your heart and soul. So your mind will play tricks on you and you know you're not, you know this isn't who you are and da-da-da-da and all the self-talk in your head and it's like shut up and just do it anyway. You know it's like that kind of stuff. You know you have to be conscious of the unconscious and anytime you get tripped up, it's okay, breathe reset and just keep at it.
Speaker 2:So it's like, little by little, you start overriding, from the mind perspective, those default programs that are, you know, subconsciously embedded in your. You know, in your mind and in your nervous system. You can override it. You can't you just every day. You work at it and you have to be intentional of not living in the future. But you want to know what it is that you do want, not necessarily all the details, but you know I want to be in a place of, you know, free of time and locations. If I want to travel, you know I want to be able to do that. I don't want anybody telling me I can't.
Speaker 2:Whatever that looks like, keep visualizing it. And when you do your meditations, you visualize it and then you feel it. What would it look like? What would it feel like? And then you start embracing that feeling. So the thing that you want you meditate on, you feel like you have it now. So then you're coming from abundance, not, you know, scarcity and lack. You start reprogramming yourself.
Speaker 2:So, because you know, while you're doing the work on, you know, on yourself from the inner child wounds, and then you know implementing discipline in your life, whether whatever that is running, or a group, you know, the gym, whatever it is, it has to be a structured mind, body and soul reset, reprogram and then, as you do it, you will override, because all those things are just like, they're invisible. I said the cages would keep them. You know they're not real. We feel like it is. You know, like sometimes you're like it's like a hyperventilating I'm like there's not a tiger or lion chasing us. That's what I tried to.
Speaker 2:You know, analogy wise, I'm trying to think about it like we're sitting here calmly in a room but sometimes, like when anxiety or pt, you know, ptsd it's like you're literally dying inside. It makes no sense like this is, this is dumb. I'm not being threatened right now, but your body thinks it is, it's your nervous system. So it's going in and doing the nervous system, breathing, breath where resetting, training your nervous system to kind of be safe, and then it's, with time it does, it changes you and then again having the community you need.
Speaker 2:You can't live in isolation. That's the other big part of it. While you're doing the mind, body and soul work, you have to have support. Um, I think that was one of the biggest things that I learned I've always done everything so independently that I didn't realize it was probably not healthy, like it's a hyper-independence, because I'm like, ah, by the time I explain it, I could just do it and I could do it better. And, like you know, I get annoyed like because people don't think as fast as I do. So I'm like, all right, but that's not healthy, because I learned to just do everything in isolation, that being around people, I mean not that I didn't want to, but you know it was kind of like I felt like people were weighing me down, which might have been the ego thing again.
Speaker 2:But to heal fully, you need community, you need people that are like accepting of you, that'll be there for you and not just, you know, from the. You know, having a group of friends. I mean we all need, need friends, but they have to be in a place where they're building and they may not, you know, they nobody has all figured out but they're on the same or similar road, that they're wanting to better their lives and they're coming from a similar background. Because if, if I show up in the same rooms, I used to with the same people not that there's anything wrong with them we're're night and day different people. And so you literally start reprogramming every aspect of your life, recreating everything, everything. Because your old relationships, your old habits, your old lifestyle is the old you. And so if you want a new, better you, you have to create it, but it has to be. You can't do it alone. We can, but you're always going to be burnt out in survival. You know you got to find your people.
Speaker 1:So a lot of what you relate to goes back to and I'm glad I framed it in earlier like Sigmund Freud, the ego and the id acceptance, understanding and really awareness of it. Why do you? Why would you believe? Because that's what's what I mean. Everything that we're talking about seems to be rotating around that theory. And what is that? Early 1900s, late 1800s? Correct me if I'm wrong, or roughly around I think it's like 1920s or something like that yeah, why do?
Speaker 1:are we not? Do you believe we're not taught? Like? I never even heard a segment before until I was working on dropping out of college and I was taking a psychology class, because I'm like, oh, that's interesting. And then now getting into sales, since I suck at sales, I actually have to study how sales works and not just wing it every time. And now I'm super interested into, like neuro-linguistic programming and just a bunch of things, not only selfishly for myself, but so I could do my job a little bit better. But like, why don't we teach that? Why isn't it something that's common, like understanding self, understanding your identity and your ego and how to balance them? Because it could go both ways. It could be overtaking your life.
Speaker 1:Like I mean, you were saying being in survival mode where it was just hey, I've got to be successful, I've got to make money, I've got to do this, where you know you forget and lose everything. It ends up handcuffing you there and then some people allow the identity you know it's. You know the big pharma commercials. Are you tired? Do you feel? You know chest pain? Are you overwhelmed? It's like, yeah, that's just called. I did some shit today. Yeah, but like, if you hear that over and over and over again, you're going to start brainwashing yourself of what was a bad week. So maybe I do have this tendency. And then you take that identity that you've been given and fed and you start finding reasons to dive deeper and deeper into it, which opens it up. Why isn't that in your belief? Why don't you think we talk about that more as a society? Because in Eastern medicine they do quite a bit, from my understanding.
Speaker 1:I'm not an expert in Eastern medicine in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting Again, I, from the medical standpoint and my training and I mean I have four board certifications, my training, and I mean I have four board certifications, Knowing what I know now and what I've experienced in the last couple of years, it blows my mind that we how could we not? But then again I look at as a whole the way the medical system is right now it is. Medical system is right now it is. We do not look at people as one being. It is a very you know. If you have a limb falling off or if you're having a heart attack or you know you're hemorrhaging out somewhere, yeah, go to the hospital and get checked out.
Speaker 2:But like we do not teach they didn't teach in med school anything about wellness or prevention or what a healthy life look like, like no idea. We learned some of the psychological terms and things like that and I could tell you anything about neurochemistry and all of that. But the things that are more, you know, nebulous or kind of vague, which now are the exact ways that we know we can heal people, and the things that there are communities across the country that are just popping up everywhere that teach us that we can heal mind, body and soul. When we approach it from a lifestyle and human connection standpoint, we just it's not something that was ever introduced. Which blows my mind, because now I'm like I literally want to. I want to like shake up the way everything is done within the medical profession, but even the school system. So, whereas a few years ago even my thinking was very regimented, very black and white School. You had to go to school, get all the degrees you could get, I told my kids that just a few years ago. And now you know, I want them in class to have time out. No, they don't do this. But I wish where they can do meditation or they can do yoga, learning self-regulation, like that would be amazing. I mean adults, I didn't know how to regulate myself. I thought I did. You know, I know everything. I'm learning now with breath work, I'm like, okay, I feel a little bit anxious, I don't know why, and I literally can reset myself wherever I'm at in a few minutes. But if we could teach that to the kids, like that would be amazing, because but we don't. And teaching them what healthy living looks like, what you know exercise Luckily my kids do, but they don't or what you know what and a healthy you know grounding and playing outside and all those things. But they don't teach that.
Speaker 2:And now more than ever it's labels, which is even only going to feed what we already have 10 times worse because they're labeling at a younger age. So now kids are going to have labels and identities, whereas I mean, when I was a kid I don't even know that we had any of those diagnoses, like it wasn't a thing. And if they did, we're like we just dealt with it. You know, not that that was great either, but like I now imagine what I know and I see it in 9-, 10 11-year-olds. They're just forming themselves, like their sense of their identity and being. That's, you know, trying to be healthy.
Speaker 2:You know individuals in this world. Their parents are busier than ever. The parents are stressed, parents are with labels, so they're barely getting by, exhausted. The kids are probably reacting to the parents. I'm guilty at times when I come home and I'm stressed out, you know, but the kids are acting out like normal kids should, but now they're being labeled and DADD or whatever because they're hyper. No, they're hyper because they don't have an outlet. They're in school and they're not physically active. They come home and they want to run it off, but no, mom says no, you have to. They actually give iPads to the kids so they don't have to deal with the kids.
Speaker 2:It's just this whole spiral of, you know, disconnection from who we are, who we're supposed to be, and having a healthy outlet for it, from who we are who we're supposed to be and having a healthy outlet for it. You know like we need to teach that, like shake up the whole medical community, the way the school systems are. I mean, I would not have thought that a few years ago, until this thing, everything come full circle. Because, you know, we went to Spain, you know, for the soccer tournament. I was so blown away.
Speaker 2:The people just live and breathe differently the way they act, and it doesn't matter who they are, what their background is, whether it was somebody at the airport, the uber, which is a person that worked at the hotel they were just embodying. This. Presence is the word. I'm big on the word being present. Present because in the US we're not Everybody's, like I could be sitting across from somebody, somebody, one of my friends, and they're sitting there next to me, but I feel, and people know when somebody's present, they're not present because they're worried, they're thinking about what's happening tomorrow. They're doing that like so exhausting, so I just yeah, but the people over there are very present in the moment and that is what you feel. The difference in other countries that are living from a healthy mind, body and soul type of perspective, and they're happier and fulfilled.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. So how do Americans get that Someone's going to eventually like, watch this, like what do you? I mean because you said I love what you said about you know you used to three years ago you would have told your kids you know, study everything, learn everything, make sure you get into Hawkins or wherever the heck they want to go Harvard, yale, one of those schools and I kind of used to be on that path. But lately, like I had an argument with my 14-year-old about a month ago, she got some grades that were not what she typically gets and she's a smart kid. She's just lazy, she knows she's smart, she can half-ass classes and get A's and B's easy. And she looked at me because I was like Ryan, you got to, or whatever. You can have my name in there, her name in there, ryan, you've got to, actually. And she's like dad, you didn't get good grades and you're doing well. I'm like, damn it, yeah, that's the mirror.
Speaker 2:That's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and my biggest thing was like, well, yeah, but you're 14. Wait till you're 18 to make that decision. If you want to go to college, by all means, like I mean, they have their school paid for if they want, it's not going to be an stress like I did. They're not going to, you know, they want to pay for it on their own. So it's like Ryan, you have all this opportunity, but you need to make that decision at 18. And you don't need to screw up a decision now when you're 14, that's going to make that decision at 18 more difficult.
Speaker 1:Um cause, I mean the way I look at it. If they want give back to society in some sort of positive manner, like don't be milking the system, or whatever but at the same time, I don't know if the university system is, I know it's not, you know what it used to be, or I believe I mean we can go back into, like when the Rockefellers took over the education system, but I tell people this if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer guess what? You got to suck it up and do it. There's no other way around it. But other than that, I mean, I truly think it hurts entrepreneurs, I think high level ADD, quote unquote. Like individuals, I think the school system actually hurts them because and then I know there's just like the average person that goes to college, you know, earns a little bit more.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, because there's this like demographic in the world um, I call it lazy motherfuckers, and they're lazy so they barely get through high school. If they do on that, and they're definitely not going to college. But you could give them an mba from princeton and they're still going to fall into that category. They just happen to never make it to the other category. So, like, in certain circumstances, I think it hurts. Yeah, like quite a bit, because I mean, today, if you're motivated, you can learn so much from a simple Google Heck. I could probably perform brain surgery if I stay on chat GPT long enough. Might not be the best, don't advise me to do it or not but like I mean, how do you navigate with your kids through this life when your education level and your understanding of what you're going through like that's? That's a complete different perspective. I'm just an idiot that tries really hard and works too many hours.
Speaker 2:No, it's like again, it was literally like it would have been a different answer. So, security I wanted to help people but I also wanted I almost want to say it was like a sure thing. And that sounds really weird because I've thought about this before Because, again, coming from the reason I was fine locking down in a room for 12 years and just studying day and night is I needed to make sure that I had something that I could take care of me no matter what happened, and I knew that I could do big things. So I was okay locking down, you know, and studying like the way I did. I told the boys, you know they're very different personalities. I'm a 16-year-old too. He's more like that, but I realized the last couple years the more I would push him and get on him if he got like a B and not an A and all that, the more he would like. You know, there's that tension and resistance there. And then finally, through my this journey of awakening, I realized you know what I want, them things I'm learning now about being able to be happy with yourself, being having a spiritual, you know, knowing that there's a purpose and you have a. What your purpose is is very different than anybody else's. I'm not going to force him to go down some road or path that I was on. He's his own person and you know, whatever that looks like, which, again a few years ago, you know, be a cardiologist or be an orthopedic surgeon. That's not who he is and that's okay. You know. I want them to be grounded, good humans and live, you know, connected with purpose.
Speaker 2:And the more I started weaning back and not being so like pushy and realizing I was trying to literally like some parents do you know, we relive through our kids I was like I don't want him. He's not where I came from. Like I don't want him. Mine came from survival. His isn't, thank God, and he's a very different personality. So when I did that, he now is, he's doing better in school. He doesn't know what he wants to do, but he's getting involved. He joined the youth ministry which I would have never seen that coming.
Speaker 2:I'm like thank God, you know, but it's by me being a different human or, you know, living even a better, you know, as a better example in every aspect, not just you know the neurologist, which is, you know, I don't, sometimes I almost talk about it like it's not, you know, a big deal, it is. I worked, you know, really crazy long hours to get that. But there's more to life than just your title. And so, by the last you know year doing work on me and you know wanting to pour out from service and different things like to people and communities, and I really want to help people in other ways. They see me living that life. So they're now living it and embodying it.
Speaker 2:And so, you know, I told them as a mom to boys. I told them I said this again and again I'm like you have to learn how to communicate. I'm like you could be, you know, have all the braids in the world, but you can't communicate with people. And I said, as young men, you have to look them in the eye, shake their hand, like the basics right and communicate. I'm like you can do those. You know few things. Be a leader, which is basically being confident and believing in yourself. You can do anything you want. It doesn't matter, I don't care what degree somebody has. If you are able to. You know it's about other people making them feel good, letting them know like you know, building them up. While you know you're confident in who you are, you can do anything.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Yeah, it's funny you say that because we had the same thing with Orion, you know, grades were kind of slipping. She went from basically straight A's half-assed in classes, never, I mean kid never did homework, but she could get by and like I always tried to kind of feed her. Becoming an attorney because that's kind of what was on my mind If I could suddenly get motivated in life and get through school and like an attorney is a great position. I mean, you're literally a salesperson but you get to bill people for trying to sell them. Like I've actually got to close deals. They get to bill people for trying to close deals.
Speaker 1:Um, and she kind of started to fight it there for a little bit and then I just, you know, backed out. It was the same thing with, like swimming. I was always pushing her in swimming. I'm like you know what. Just go off a little bit. Her times got better. She, you know, was going through this thing where she didn't want to go to college and then just recently she had some surgery performed and she connected well with the anesthesiologist. Because they're all just motivated drug dealers, they all have a goofy personality, they're all kind of fun to be around.
Speaker 1:They know that you know you're the guy that's the happy dude. And then she comes out of the surgery, you know, a few days later or weeks later, and she decided she wanted to be an anesthesiologist now and you know they started school for a month. Her grades are back up and you know now she's actually looking at you know potentially what universities to go to, and I just realized like wow, when I wasn't pushing, she found something that she enjoyed. And like we as parents, I mean I think we have to open up and show them the potential for what life can be about and like what success can be. It doesn't always mean monetary, I mean definitely if you show a monetary thing, there's, you know, a little bit of living.
Speaker 1:Like people get mad at me. It's like why do your kids always fly first class? And I'm like because when they do, they'll never want to fly economy. Wait till they're 18 and they fly across the country by themselves one day in economy They'll they'll get pissed off enough to do it. But it's like you show them these things are possible, you give them these experiences in life and if, if, if you like those experiences and money can buy it. Okay, you're going to have to figure out a way to contribute to society enough that someone, something somehow, is going to return a form of money to you. But I've noticed, when you let them be open with what they want and their level of passion and stuff, they'll chase it a hundred times further than just doing what they got to fall into. Because, yeah, I mean I kind of went through this and I just resisted everything.
Speaker 2:I was just like yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't want to do that stupid studying like I went, gosh, I went until my late, mid, late 20s thinking education was I never read a book, like in my 20s like, shoot, I didn't read a book in high school, I just we had spark notes back then. Whatever, give me a c, I don't care. Um. And I was always told like, hey, you're not gonna have a, you know you're're going to have a crappy job, you're going to mop floors or you know, hammer nails and stuff like that. And I was just like yeah, I don't look like I was an idiot. I was like I don't believe you guys, like I'll figure out.
Speaker 1:You had the mindset even that yeah, like okay, I was like, yeah, I don't believe this shit, but whatever. Um, but like I look back in my childhood and like, what if someone told me I could do whatever I wanted? Like would I be further along where I'm at? Or maybe I needed to get my ass kicked a little bit, maybe I needed to go through the struggle and, you know, joining the military to, you know, finally lock in some discipline. Very grateful for that, because that helped me become an adult, because I definitely wasn't. I was a child at 20 years old. I don't know, though, but I love what you said about kids, because I think a lot of parents I think we take our anxiety and we take our identity and almost feed it to our kids and, unintentionally, like we all screw up our kids. Yeah, like we really do, you know it, yeah.
Speaker 2:And we mean well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we try to do the right thing we do.
Speaker 2:You know it comes from a good place but're it's a hard pill as well, because I mean, I've acknowledged it you know it's hard being a parent and you don't have like a guide and you do the best that you can. But you know, the more I realize like they are their own individual little humans with their own little. You know soul and they take in and absorb everything. And you know again, I want to be the role model what I've learned again recently. More than ever, I want to show them you know what certain areas of life you know should look like as an adult. But I'm also very open. When I screw up, you know, and I'm not one of those that tries to hide things, I'm like, look, this was a really bad decision I made. But I'm human and you know I don't filter things with them. And I think that's also important because you know me growing up never saw my parents argue, fight like nothing. I wouldn't, and that's not normal either. You know, if you don't talk about things and everything's like, everything's fine, I'm like that's really weird. Mine don't have to worry about that, because I'm like, maybe a little too much. I'm like, ah, you know, but all over, I'm like everybody needs to be heard, let's talk about it. But yeah, you know, they will figure it out.
Speaker 2:And I think the nice thing about this journey in the last year I call it surrender and in some ways I did With everything in life. Everything shifted, living from the heart and soul, living from purpose, once God literally got into my life and just everything changed. I let go of the control aspect of my life, which is how I lived up until the last couple of years. I mean, everything was planned to the minute of every day, of what we were doing, and I thought that was great because everybody you know you're so organized and you can multitask and do all these things. That was a fear response, like I had no idea.
Speaker 2:Control is a way of dealing with fear and you actually are coming from a place of like scarcity and fear mindset when you let go of the control, because we really don't, it's an illusion, nobody has control. It's like really, oh, that's right, we don't, sounds kind of crazy, but we really don't, it's all an illusion. And so once I started letting go of the control that I had which was restricting our life, and like possibilities which I would have never understood, that because control kept me safe, if I knew what was coming, if I could control it. I'm safe and when I went through this journey, I'm like you know what, not controlling or surrendering in the sense like I'm like woo, like hippie, and I don't know what happens. Not that way, but it's coming from a place of you know what.
Speaker 2:I trust you know, instead of looking at the world as scary, I trust the universe. I trust you know. Instead of looking at the world as scary, I trust the universe, I trust the world. Good things happen, there's good people and I'm in the place I need to be at the right moment and I just trust what's happening is to bring things into my life that I know I need and I trust God that you know, no matter what, it's for a reason and night and day everything turns around, because then the possibilities that you don't even know exist start showing up in front of you in ways that you couldn't even define and appreciate, things you don't know you needed. And I would have been like there's no way I would have went down that road if I was still in that planned, controlling, holding the grip onto reality. I let it go. And once you let it go. It's like it's happening.
Speaker 1:It's funny you say that because that was a huge part of like me going to what I'm doing now and coaching and all that is like I've tried to control every little thing in my life from, you know, parents divorce, oldest brother of three joining the military, you know, doing well there, getting into sales, getting an executive. It was all about control. It was all about how how well you could manipulate the time that you had to work with and what you could get done. And, you know, control the family. And I don't even mean to. My wife talked to me about this like three years ago. She's like you control everything. I'm like I don't want to be that guy, that's a bad guy. And she's like, yeah, but you do these little things and I'm like I am kind of a piece of shit and you have to surrender to the control because the control is just handcuffs to yourself. It is, and when you're handcuffed to that, you're controlling your identity. You're controlling every little aspect of everybody else around you. Yes, when, like you want to help.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:But you're actually taking something that you hurt yourself with and you haven't gone through yourself and you're putting it on to someone else. So I have personally had to relax a little bit more and not try to control. I mean, I gosh, I'm bad. It's like every minute of my life, every play, and if anything goes wrong you lose all control and then, yeah, yeah, then you're, then you're a wreck spiral.
Speaker 2:It's like, literally it could be like the smallest thing and I still I can't remember because I still, oh yeah, like the dumbest little thing and it'll spiral me and it makes no sense. It is that control it's tied to that. At some point we were not safe and we learned that that safety issue felt so bad Again. Everything is like tied to survival in our lives. So literally our nervous system sensed it was a threat to survival. So the way we keep ourselves safe is our identity is saying I will keep you safe by controlling, by planning and everything around me. You know, that's where the you know even OCD tendencies and anxiety tendencies. We want everything. Perfectionist traits. This is my life.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I was like I used to think it was a great, like a superpower. It doesn't have to be that way and it actually, I mean it's there to keep us safe. So from that standpoint, you know you can acknowledge it and say thank you for keeping me safe for these many years. But I don't have to live like that. And when you let go, it's like so freeing. And then it actually like even being in these groups where I see people take action so quickly.
Speaker 2:I look back because everything was so planned out of control, even my medical career, I realized I was afraid to make a move at any point in the way because that was scary and risky to me, whereas now, getting outside of that lane that I've been in, I see people just boom, boom, boom, just start making decisions and acting on it, executing even if you're not, because before I'd be like no, I have to. You know I've made it perfect, I have to rethink it. And then it's like analysis, paralysis, you stay in your head and I see people like jump in and just doing stuff.
Speaker 2:I'm like oh, wow, okay, you can just do things. I want that, like why have I? Because I've been a perfectionist. And once you do, you see how it can literally like change everything else in your life Once you let go of that tendency, you know.
Speaker 1:So why and this will kind of be my last question, unless I think of something else, because I'm listening to you know I'm thinking of a lot of stuff right now and why do you think in America we have this like epidemic? Because, if you really think about it from a logical standpoint, we're post-industrial era, post-modernization era, post-dot-com era. We're going into this like AI era right now, where humans aren't going to have to do a damn thing. And because of that, I mean I truly believe AI is the best thing in the world right now, because I believe it's going to give humans the ability to become artists again and find our inner self. But I do worry that a lot of people are so tied to not being them that they're going to struggle going through this process which is going to open up, you know, new jobs we're going to.
Speaker 1:You know I used to give all the influencers out their crap of like you idiots are making, like I knew some of them were making great money Mr Beast and stuff, and I like what he does for the most part, but I'm like that's the dumbest job in the world, but I'm like that's what the world's going to go to. Is this like art boom so in the United States. I know we're not one at everything, but I like to think we are but like we're in a pretty safe community, like even the roughest part of the US would be amazing for other parts of the world, like yet we struggle, I believe, with more mental health issues. So like, why is there this connection between having the most and worrying the most?
Speaker 2:Because they're tied together and it's how the society is run, where, if you are in a community that values family or community and working together, we're all in it, then and that community we build each other and we are not competing. We're here from human connection. It's coming from a different place. You're truly wanting to be present and live and build each other. Wanting to be present and live and build each other In the United States and we're not alone, but we are formed to be goal-driven and look towards. We're always looking outside of us and it's always goal-driven. Which goals are great? Not that we don't want them, but it's the external validation and the go, go, go. And if you come from just that place, which we do here, of chasing the next thing, you get it. Okay, great, I have that. I'm not happy, right. So it goes back to the same thing you could have. It doesn't matter, I don't care what the dollar amount is, have it all and you can be the most empty, lonely, unfulfilled human and have all of that. So there's like it's how we are as humans, how we live as humans here. When we played in Spain I gotta bring that up because I could see culturally the difference the Argentina team came. I mean, they blew my mind. Not only were they amazing players, they were so—their heart and their passion and the way they took care of one another or anybody else.
Speaker 2:One day the bus left the US bus. I got down their lobby they had already left and they come down the hallway. They were going to get in their bus. None of them spoke any English and it was like the second day that I was there and I didn't officially meet the coaches or anything. Well, they saw me and so they knew that I was with the US team and they knew the bus had left. So they started talking. I didn't understand it. Then they're talking to the guy at the front desk. I was like what is he saying? They're like they want to take you on their bus and I was like no, it seems like it's no big deal thing. Oh, that's huge. It's their culture. Now, these were actually playing against them, right? Yeah, it was funny. Like I don't care, because I like people. If they're good-hearted people, they're my people. But I just was blown away Because the majority of the time most soccer teams they would just go right by. They'd get in the bus. They were going to go play the game.
Speaker 1:No, there'd be no way they'd pick up an opponent who?
Speaker 2:would do that. Right, yeah, don't. They insist. I'm like, no, no, I'm okay, I'm oh, yeah. So I was laughing the whole time. I was like, oh my gosh, when I show up to the stadium, we had all like the parents and all that, and I'm getting off of the Argentinean bus. I thought it was hilarious. I'm on the bus with them. It was the best 10 minutes not in my life, but it was a great experience. These kids are singing, chanting I mean amazing energy on this bus and laughing.
Speaker 2:I had the coaches up next to me and we're gigging and laughing and there was like one that spoke English, was telling me he's like, okay, now if we win, you have to come with us on every ride down because you're going to be on our good luck chart. Like they were just, like their energy just exuded, like you could feel it right, and so after that then we started doing lunch together. I went to dinners together because these people were so amazing. Majority had no money because the parents couldn't fly with them. Oh, but they had the coaches that were there. But the, the way that they are as humans translates on the field and everything they do. They're're just, they live differently and they believe as humans, like they help one another and they will like give you the shirt off their back. So they're raised differently culturally. We're all here together and how can we serve each other? We're not here to just. You know, when you're there just to win the championship, or, you know, the cup or the tournament or whatever. If it's just about that, you're going to feel that, like I've felt some of the other teams that were from different places, that weren't as warm, you can feel the difference in people's energy and how they embody life and they don't live for chasing a thing. They want to be the best version of themselves.
Speaker 2:And yeah, but I think you know the way we do it. We are raised to chase validation and things, and our society conditions us to think that that's going to make us happy and that's where our fulfillment and you know we're here on earth to do that. Now, if that's all, if you're successful and you're, you know you have a core knowing of who you are and you have a good foundation and you're getting back in other ways to the world, great. But if that's, all you're doing is living for things, you're going to hit a cap at some point where you're going to break. And that's usually in the crisis and before and after where you're just like what am I doing, you know? And that's where people like to wake up, or the enlightenment, or whatever we want to call it midlife crisis.
Speaker 2:No doubt it's because we've been chasing things outside of us the entire time and never have stopped to go inward. And that's the biggest disconnect here that, if you know, there are communities now that I think that are bringing light to that Like we need to live, you know, out of purpose and service, whatever that looks like, but helping humans become better humans outside of yourself, one person at a time, because we never know. It's like, literally, you could be talking to somebody just by acknowledging them or starting a conversation with them, even if you're introverted. I mean, I never used to just randomly start conversations and now I kind of do, because I'm like I did not realize like people that are, they like light up, because maybe they were having a really bad day and just, or maybe they're super shy and the fact that I started talking, you can just see that they start lighting up and it makes, little by little, now they're having a better day and that's how you know they treat their family, maybe that night.
Speaker 1:Well, I realized because I get thrown into like a lot of networking events and I don't like starting external conversations. But when you're the guy or gal there who doesn't like it, you're always kind of like sitting there like I wish someone would just freaking talk to me and make this easy. So sometimes when you actually take that first step, you're like, oh, thank God you did it and then they'll share the whole world with you because they're just hoping for it. But no, that's cool.
Speaker 2:It's wild. That's so true Because I used to never have it Like I wouldn't have to start conversations, I just did. I was always around people and we just started talking. And then this last year, when I started going to, I'm like go talk to somebody. And then I'm like talking to myself.
Speaker 1:Then I'm like no, this is embarrassing have all that chatter, but if they don't want to talk to me, oh, all this nonsense. We're here for the exact same reason, we're all thinking the same thing, but we're in our own head of like. Why is my situation different?
Speaker 2:It's so. Yeah, I'm like like it was like a mind reset. So I'm like, all right, and I do all the self-talk. I'm like, go in this room. You never have this night, ever again. You don't know who you're going to meet. Go and I start doing that and everybody, oh, where are you from? They love it.
Speaker 1:And then they're like, because I realized they were shy, they were thinking the same thing, and I had this hurdle where I thought every conversation I needed needed to be different, otherwise people would get bored of me Right? And then I had a realization. Wait, they've only talked to me once, so I could say the exact same thing, and it's new to them. It's just me that thinks it's boring. I'm like, oh, it's that easy.
Speaker 2:It really is. I laugh about it because I literally do these things like in my own mind, because our minds are like the thoughts that run through. They're not us but we. You know, if we identify them with them they will be. But it's just like this chatter and this noise and then you know, depending on the day, it's not as loud, then other days it's like oh, who are you to go there, you know, and I'm like I literally remove myself from it, like okay, these are my thoughts. This is really not even logical. Stop, stop and then, and then you like override it, and you know, and then you start doing it.
Speaker 2:I was talking to one of the guys the other night that were like maybe a little bit not as confident. I'm like look, go in there, even if you have to like trick yourself, because sometimes you do until you get into that momentum, you are the one that owns the room, just realize. I said, listen, you are the one that owns the room, just realize and go up to people, save them with a handout, look them in the eye. I said, just by you doing that they're already going to be interested because they know that you're showing up confident, even though right now you don't feel like you are, but that's how you're going to become confident and get momentum. By being awkward and doing the uncomfortable thing, you can do it. There's no again. There's no cage. It's it's our own mind, our silly nonsense. We tell ourselves it's like stop chatter there, chelsea, just do it and it's fine.
Speaker 1:So what do you want to talk about? Anything you want to talk about? Camera's still rolling. I mean, I could probably just go for eight hours random questions. Get for some free therapy lessons.
Speaker 2:You know, there we go I mean all this stuff I just love because I like when I'm very, but all the times it's like um, I don't know, I don't know anything else now, here's what you could do then, and I just anytime you do a podcast, the best way is just literally film and, yeah, cut out everyone's like, oh why?
Speaker 1:do podcasts look so perfect? Because we edit them? Yeah, so like look at the camera right now, introduce yourself and just tell people how they film and cut out.
Speaker 2:Everyone's like oh, why do podcasts look?
Speaker 1:so perfect Because we edit them so like look at the camera right now, introduce yourself and just tell people how they can connect on you. And it's the camera with the screen facing you.
Speaker 2:How they can connect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, instagram, whatever. Okay, so you get some call to actions out of this.
Speaker 2:Ah, okay, so you see how it goes. So you see that. Yeah, so you see how it goes, so you see that, that right there, that instant, like cause. I have to think of what I say and when I. It's so wild.
Speaker 1:See, now we're getting some training lessons on podcast.
Speaker 2:I'll put this in my next one.
Speaker 1:So here's really the best way to do it. Like I was saying earlier, you have to give like 10 times the energy. Hey, jonathan Roberts, here If you want to talk through something, you have to go through their computer screen, through their phone screen. It's crazy, because if they're watching us, they can fill the conversation right now you've got to speak to them okay that this is new to me.
Speaker 2:Okay, um, I'm just gonna say it. Hi there, I'm dr chelsea groan, board certified neurologist, the neuro doc. See, I'm not even used to marketing that. Okay, it is. That's my instagram, right I?
Speaker 1:don't know.
Speaker 2:You've got like six instagrams I know this, I'm like seven phone numbers, six instagrams.
Speaker 1:I'm like what one?
Speaker 2:see, I'm gonna. So that is my. I'm gonna program with the one thing, because I still, this is my identity, it's the neuro, that it's the online and then it's which one. Like literally, this is my see, see, but this is good, this is my sticking point. I'm learning it, like through it, I can do this all day and I'm like, okay, what am I plugging? Who am I? Hi, I'm Dr Chelsea Rowe. I'm a board certified neurologist. Come find me on the NeuroDoc on Instagram for tips on how to reset your identity and up-level your life. Perfect, that was pretty good. Yeah, it was very fun.
Speaker 1:It was smooth.
Speaker 2:That I have to get used to yeah.
Speaker 1:You have to get used to that new identity. You also have to get used to the identity that now you know as a doctor. People come to you and they automatically assume you know everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, unless you're a patient like me, then I'm like I don't trust any of you fuckers. Yeah, automatically assume you know everything. Yeah, unless you get a patient like me, then I'm like I don't trust any of you fuckers. Yeah, yeah, I just like I had a va appointment the other day and he's like why haven't you ever come to the va? And I told him the story of why I avoid the va and he was actually really, really cool, he got it. Uh, he kind of understood it.
Speaker 1:I'm like I don't trust doctors and I ended up having because I use trt. So like I'm getting my blood measured quite a bit and my white blood cells had up a little bit elevated one month. Next month they were elevated more and then they spiked on the third and a lot of my other blood, you know, took a, got rid of a lot of other things that it could have been related to. So I'm like, oh shit, cancer. So then I'm like, okay, this is going to get expensive. Maybe I need to actually go see it. And I remember my TRT clinic to get expensive, maybe I need to actually go see it. And I remember my trt clinic like, uh, do you have a pcm? I'm like I don't fucking trust doctors like you're an idiot. So I finally went in and luckily nothing came of it. But I needed a white blood cell smear or whatever it is that the trt clinic can't do. And um, yeah, he just like asked me. He's like, why don't you ever come? Like I don't trust you guys, I'm like. The one time I did I'm separating from the military. I think I told you this and you know I'm insomnia up for like four or five days, all my fricking problems, and I finally decided to go to the behavioral health clinic and I actually liked it. I was like, oh my gosh, I should have been doing this a long time ago.
Speaker 1:And then I came back the second time after I, you know, dropped my guard a little bit, like that helped a lot, but I'm still struggling to sleep. So like, hey, you know, we give you a sleep medication. I know you said you don't want any medication, but I'm, you know, I'm probably on a three-day binge right now and I'm like, whatever, fuck it. Like let's do something. And I think it was trazodone. They prescribed, yeah, and took it, slept, took it, slept. It was great. And then I was just numb all freaking day and I started to notice that. So I started to research trazodone. I'm like that's a fucking antidepressant, you, sons of bitches. And I just quit. I was like, well, I'm not going to take that, I've got to go figure something else out. And I read everything else and I didn't like the numbness feeling. So I lost all the trust in the medicine there and I was like I'll just ignore you guys.
Speaker 2:And then part of me trying to be financially successful is I don't system and I'm not the one as it is like, and that's where, like in the last year, what I'm finding by going dave osprey's group right, like I think I told you about that it is so mind-blowing because I was so tripped out by it, because here's me right I didn't go in there initially for any like motive, I was just literally two years ago. I was like I realized that I am so in a bubble. My entire life now was mom, which I still am, but I went from being the girl that could do everything to working at the same job, which I'm giving myself a timeline on it because I cannot stand it. I said six months, I could do it. Like tomorrow, if I get out, it's like I could get my income match. Now I mean I will cut ties in a heartbeat. Like I cannot stand it. And I know there's so many things online oh my gosh. Like I just need that implementation side. Like all the courses, all the things in my head that I can film and I know the doctors and the dentists and everybody that's going to buy these.
Speaker 2:I just but it's that limited mentality, like I'm scared, or I was scared to even, like, cut the cord, but I was so realizing I was like stuck in this lane, like I even stopped growing as, like a human, the same job, the same location and everything literally was the kids. I'm like, oh, I'm a great mom. I love my kids so much. Well then I'm like, nah, it's actually I'm going to do them a disservice if I do not. I'm like, nah, it's actually I'm going to do them a disservice if I do not. Like because they're at the age now that's not me. Like abandoning myself or just doing everything for the kids isn't good.
Speaker 2:But I started traveling by myself. I started going to these like you know, longevity and wellness places that I'm like I was so blown away. So not only did I grow as a human going through all this and started like healing, I also saw. I'm like, how is this in the United States? Like there are pockets where these people are living crazy healthy lives and it's polar opposite to anything. Like it's almost like a reality trip, like where you're quantuming, like going to different realities, like when I go and I'm in the pocket for a week at the biohacking or longevity, it's in either Austin or West Palm Beach and I'm with these people like we're all.
Speaker 2:I'm like whoa, like everybody's super smart and super healthy and like the stuff we're talking about. It's like normal. Whereas if I talk like this at home, people are like and I can't even hang out with anybody back home because it's so boring. I just want to sit down and do the drink and gossip and drama. I'm like can't do it. But yeah, they have like hyperbaric chambers. Everybody's got one in their house. Everybody's doing stem cells like somewhere along the way they're doing ozone, like it's a normal thing. I'm like I remember I was like I felt like I was like in a basement for 10 years or something when I started showing up to these places.
Speaker 2:I'm like, oh my God, I thought I knew everything about medicine Not really, but for the most part and I'm like I had no idea this existed. And how did I not know? Like this is here in the States. And then I started seeing them connect. Like there's places outside like doing international medicine. I'm like, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know what was in the books that were prescribed to you, what you knew what was in the books that were prescribed to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but all this other stuff like crazy.
Speaker 1:See and I went through the same thing like 10 years ago, separating military, and you know, I never really trusted medicine. I've always been in pretty good shape, you could say, realizing that I was in horrible shape back then and just killing my body. But you know, I was always felt okay. I didn't even feel okay looking back at it now. I just dealt with feeling like shit all day, Right. But you know, I was in good shape, I could run, I could do push-ups, I had a little bit of muscle mass, Like it was okay. Ten years ago I would have told you, like biohacking, all that is just hippie bullshit.
Speaker 1:I'm not dying my hair blue, leave me and then, like I, started to get around, like this culture that we're in, and open my mind and start I mean, the biggest thing is challenge your own damn thoughts, because if you don't challenge your thoughts, it's not an actual opinion or a theory. It's like you have to use. What's crazy is there's a scientific method I'm sure you've heard it once or twice but uh, we don't use it to ourselves. Right, we use it to try to explain everything else that we really can't control and we're just trying to figure out. But the one thing we don't is we don't, like, use a scientific method to challenge your thoughts, go through the exact same thing. Hey, this is what I believe, this is why I believe it. Then write a hypothesis on why you think you believe that, what you're trying to achieve, and then go find everything to you know, prove your point wrong and then see at that point in time if you still believe what you do, if it's adjusted at all, and then it's a true belief and it's actually backed by something. But we never do it. We just believe something, we stick to it. We're like, yeah, we're going to hold to our guns.
Speaker 1:So I guess, once I started to go through that I'm challenging my own belief, challenging my own opinion. Listening to my wife a little bit, I started to, like, once you go down this like health journey of taking care of yourself without modern medicine I've never really used modern medicine as, like I said, except for whiskey that's a good modern medicine, I'm kidding. But like once I found it like I take more stupid vitamins now than I ever have before and I'm really trying to you know, through, like genetic methylation, methylation tests, trying to figure out what that does. They're cold, plunge, hot the saunas, like you know. Some of of it, I think, is placebo, but if the placebo makes you feel, good, why the?
Speaker 1:fuck, not take the sugar pill, exactly um I mean, more sugar pills have killed depression than anything else. It's like, oh, I hope I get the real pill and yeah, I feel pretty good. It's like cool, well, you took the sugar pill.
Speaker 1:So it just it was a mindset shift and it's mind it's mind and it's also like the stuff that we put into our body that allows our mind to function correctly. Yes, and I know you're huge on that, but it's like I didn't know how much poison. And what's crazy is in 2010 is when I moved to Germany and I knew their food was like Germany. You go to McDonald's Delicious. It really is. It's like we love it. No-transcript.
