Podcasts about okay well

Okay… Well, that was a LOT! In many ways, this last Tuesday & Wednesday in Wrigleyville (let's call it LOCAL H DAYS 2024) was a culmination of everything that's been in the works since that day when Scott got the call that Helmet was cancelling the tour — just BEFORE he'd received the call that the LIFERS movie was getting a release date at the Music Box (see episode #186). Of course, one could argue that this H convention had been building up since the movie was shot at the Metro almost 3 years ago (to the day — just shy a month!). And that same person could also argue that it all started with the original WHATEVER HAPPENED TO P.J. SOLES? release 20 years ago — while the zen hippie across the room is babbling about how Scott's entire LIFE has been leading up to this! And they'd all be right. Whatever the case — there is a lot to say about the LIFERS world premiere at the Music Box and the finale of the WHTPJS? 20th anniversary tour at the Metro — BUT!!! Not on this week's episode. Instead, Ben has put together a… uh. Vibe? A mood piece? Ah. Here's what it is: A chunk of audio verite constructed to capture a moment that is already starting to fade from memory like a far-off and hazy dream. Go to bed, Scott!

Tiff and Dana lay out the most critical piece when it comes to communicating with patients during treatment planning: Focus on the patient's health, not money or insurance. Episode resources: Reach out to Tiff and Dana Tune Into DAT's Monthly Webinar Practice Momentum Group Consulting Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Become Dental A-Team Platinum! Review the podcast Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:01.506) All right. Hello, Dental A Team listeners. We are so happy to have you back here with Dana and I, my most prized possession when it comes to recording podcasts. I truly love our time together and getting this time in when we're recording is one of the only times that we get to spend so much time together. So I love it. Thank you, Dana, for being here with me today. It's super special. And thank you, you guys. You have been like celebrating me today and   you, just had your celebration and it's huge. And it's so funny that there's so many of us right now at this time within this company. and so many years have gone by that we've all just spent so much amazing time together. And when I podcast with you, it just reminds me how much I appreciate having you here on our team. and a part of our community, I think our team is incredibly valuable and incredibly important. So Dana, thank you for being here with me today and congratulations to you. I'm celebrating you today.   You have been with us now for three years. That is huge. That is incredible accomplishment. And it's just a testament to the amazing opportunities that you've provided to so many of your clients. You've worked with a lot of people over those three years and just helped them grow so much. So Dana, hats off to you. Thank you for being here today and congratulations on your three years. How are you today?   Dana (01:28.703) Thanks for such a warm welcome. You always make me smile in these introductions, so I appreciate that from you. I'm doing good and I, you know, get to celebrate you today too and I think that like I'm just so glad that I've been able to be a part of your seven -year journey with DAT.   The Dental A Team (01:32.533) Good.   The Dental A Team (01:45.654) Thank you, thank you. I am happy to have you here. And I'm excited to talk about today's topic. We've talked a lot about relationship building with our patients and within our team and the effects, the positive and negative effects that communication can have on one another. And today, I really, really wanted to look at that communication as far as treatment planning goes. How does it look from the treatment planning standpoint and really how that relationship affects the way that we think as well.   And Dana, I know you work with a lot of clients constantly and I know we work on handoffs and all of those pieces and treatment planning and we have systems and steps and processes. And sometimes I know when we were prepping for this, I talked about a client that I wanted to speak on and I, and sometimes we just get to watch it land for them. And it was really close. We're on a video call and I was talking about NDTR, which all of our listeners should know what NDTR is. If you don't go find a podcast, we'll talk about it again in the future. I'm sure.   We're doing NDTR, we're doing all of the pieces and I started reviewing treatment planning processes as far as problem solution problem, which is a system that I think we all implement with our practices, but it's something that I thought a couple of years ago just made so much sense and makes such a difference when it comes to really speaking to the patient about the issue rather than the solution. It's very easy for us to get caught up   treatment planning a crown, treatment planning a filling, treatment planning an implant, which is something that's outside of our bodies. It's unrelatable. It's not ours. It's not, it's like where I'm buying a tube of lipstick. It's not mine. And I can make the choice emotionally to disconnect from that tube of lipstick, right? In the moment I'm like, this is the color I need. It's going to change my life. I'm going to look so much better. But by the time I get to the front of the store, most of the time I've emotionally disconnected from the result and I'm ready to put the tube of lipstick back.   and not purchase it. So when I'm thinking about treatment planning, all of these solutions, treatment planning, the crown, there's not an emotional connection to that. And this is a space, unlike the lipstick, this is a space where you really need to be emotionally connected to that purchase because it's for your health. And when patients are treatment plans and we're not keeping that in mind, we're not keeping that emotional piece at the forefront of our minds and keeping that as an important factor,   The Dental A Team (04:08.81) I truly think we're doing them a disservice. If I can do everything I can to ensure my patient is healthier when they leave my practice than when they walked in, I know I've done a dang good job today. We buy things on an emotional standpoint, like emotions. You know, I taught something the other day that was like, here I am saying like, I'm not going to buy anything. I'm saving all my money. I'm not buying anything. And then there's a 50 % off discount. And I'm like, I have to buy that. That's an emotional purchase.   everything is based off of emotions. So when I had this conversation with this doctor and I'm like, we're focused in on the problem. I'm not selling you a crown. I'm selling you a fix to your broken tooth, to your decayed tooth, to your infection. I'm selling a healthier tooth, not a crown. Her eyes just like blew up. But she was just like, my gosh. And this is a doctor who's really struggling.   treatment planning and treatment planning definitively because she feels like her patient base can't afford it or she feels like she's just after money and like all of those negative self -talk things that everyone in dentistry feels she's overloaded with them constantly and when I took it and said you're not are not selling a crown I'm not asking you for a thousand dollars for a crown or two thousand dollars in California I'm asking you to let me fix your tooth   She was like, my gosh, I'm so excited to go implement this because this is a game changer for me. You just changed how I feel about treatment planning and Dana, I think a lot of our clients feel that way. think dentistry in general, we feel really like we're taking advantage of people and the perception of dentistry infiltrates our minds and we become that. And we are so scared to help   that we hold back a lot, especially when we're not towards the end of the year and we're like, there are benefits. We start holding back from telling people the truth about what they need. And that's doing people a disservice. Dana, I know I've got my story and I know you've got a million stories of clients that you've worked with as well. But how do you see in your world as a consultant that focus on the problem rather than the solution?   The Dental A Team (06:24.063) really comes into play and helps benefit your practices that you're working with all the   Dana (06:29.939) Yeah. And I think it's focusing on the problem and solution and then ideal outcomes too. Like you as a practitioner know and team members too. So this is for TUP too for treatment when it comes to like ideal treatment planning is you know what will also give the best result for the patient as far as longevity, as far as function, as far as, and patients don't know what they don't know. And so it is challenging yourself to not just look at problem cause solution, but ideal solution, best   The Dental A Team (07:00.322) Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that. And I love that you said they don't know what they don't know. And, they truly don't. Our jobs are to inform patients of what's wrong and that we can fix it. Or if we can't fix it, someone we know can, we can refer them somewhere else. And our jobs are, are to find those issues, celebrate the win, celebrate the healthy, find the issues that they're having and ensure that they know the path to success for a healthier   and a healthier version of themselves. That gets lost a lot of times. And honestly, Dana, I think it's really easy to lose it, like to lose that focus when we are focused on goals. You know, we're focused on the production and the collection and the treatment plan case acceptance and these black and white non -emotional results are the focus that we're looking at. But we have to remember that there are systems and underlying pieces that get us to those   And when we lose that piece of what we're working on, that's where I think we get lost in the minutia. So some of the pieces that really, really, really helped my doctor stay focused on that problem to my two favorite solutions to that is to forget everything, you know, about finances and cost. Don't think about their insurance. Don't think about their social standing or what you think they have in the bank account or what you think that   patient base can or cannot afford. I know in my practice years ago, I had a man come in who looked like he walked straight in off the street. He looked like this man has no money. We diagnosed him all kinds of treatment. He had got like $40 ,000 worth of treatment that he needed, but we did our due diligence and we said, this is what you need. This is our best place to start to get you out of pain, to get you moving towards healthy. The next day.   this man walked in with a grocery bag, okay, a grocery bag from like Safeway or Fry's or Kroger or wherever, a grocery bag full of cash to pay for his whole treatment. He'd just been waiting for the right place to invest that money and he decided that he was the right place. But had we gone off of our initial gut feeling of what this man could or could not afford, we may not have diagnosed everything that he needed. Or we may have said, you know what, this is a lot, let's start here. And only   The Dental A Team (09:26.593) treatment plan five grand and left the other pieces to piece no later. So when we can forget the money aspects of it, insurance and cost aside and really just focus on the patient's health, I think that makes a huge determining factor. Like cancer patients or Dana, you've been through this. Like what if your doctor didn't tell you everything or tell you every option that you had to get healthy because they felt   this is a more expensive route, you should go through this one because it's more affordable. You're not gonna get potentially the results you want or it might take longer, but this is the more affordable path rather than this one over here that's gonna cost you more. From your experiences, things fly in my mind, but what would that have been like for you as a patient not being able to make the decision for yourself because somebody made it for you ahead of   Dana (10:20.169) Yeah, I think it would have been really obviously frustrating, right? Frustrating, I would have probably lost trust. And I probably would have gone somewhere else in that instance. And I think sometimes what is the eye opening, I just talked to a doctor about this the other day, he's been doing some more like larger cosmetic cases, and he's been getting really excited. And, and we were just talking about how it used to be like, okay, well, what are my options? And it's it's bonding, right in those front teeth. And then, so we were just talking about how ideally, right, when it even comes to finances,   some things that we do to protect patients finances or we think that that's what we're doing, right? Well, if I am rebonding you every six months and I have just done those veneers from the beginning, it's actually like sometimes an aha moment and that what we think is financially best for the patient when we make that decision truly isn't. And in the long run, they spend more money on the bond and bond and bond and bond than they would have just spent on the veneers and crowns had we started from the beginning with   The Dental A Team (11:19.356) Yes, I totally agree. I love that. Or the bridge, the bridge, the bridge when the other two teeth were fine or maybe just needed fillings and they could have done an implant and making sure that they have those choices. And I think that's the next step in the process for getting the money. Forget the finances. You have options. Okay, doctors, like you have options. You don't need to worry about them. Your team knows them. Your patients will find them out. So forget the money.   Doesn't matter what the cost is and forget the insurance. You need to think about what's best for your patients. Give them the options. Here's the caveat to options guys. I have worked for doctors. I have worked with doctors. Dana has worked for and with doctors that give way too many options. This is just the case because you guys are in a world where you're making decisions for people. You're truly making decisions for people and a dentist beside   might make a different choice in that same decision, they might have a different opinion. That's just the facts of dentistry and that's okay. That's okay. What do you think is going to be best? When we give a patient too many options, it's confusing. When things are confusing and there's not a clear path, we lose trust. So then all of a sudden we're like, well, if I need all of these things, do I really need any of them? Or is it okay? Because this just sounds like everything that could happen.   to my tooth, you're trying to do something on it. So we lose trust in them. So our hard fast like standby is two options are always best. Three is the most. And three is like, you could do nothing. You could do an implant, or you could do a bridge, or do nothing, do multiple implants and a denture. Like that's my three options in most cases.   Dana, how do you run that with your practices that you work with when it comes to options? Do you to do two? I like two because it's like chocolate vanilla juice. That's very easy. But I am, you know, I'll go up to three. But how do you feel that benefits your clients when they start utilizing a similar structure?   Dana (13:25.577) Yeah, I agree with you. I'm like a two, three person, like, let's go in with ideal, right? We've got one backup plan. Because two, like when we give too many choices, patients will always default to the easy one. When they're confused, when they don't trust, when they don't understand, like they will always default to what is easiest. Now for every patient, that's going to be different as far as it is it easiest financially? Is it easiest time? Is it easiest to understand? Right? But they're going to go into default mode, and they're just going to pick the thing that they   The Dental A Team (13:48.09) Thank you.   Dana (13:54.119) understand or fits best in their budget or whatever is easy for them at the moment. And so I think understanding that, that like when we overwhelm with choices, patient is always going to default to something that is easy and that's typically not what gets them the best result or is ideal.   The Dental A Team (14:11.29) Yeah, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. I love everything you just said. You're 100 % on track. We as human beings are going to choose the easiest route. I think dentistry, like dental professionals, we think the easiest route is whatever is going to last the longest. So you're going to get longevity out of it. But honestly, as a consumer, sometimes the easiest route is whatever is going to get me the results I need right now, because I don't have time or finances in my mind to think about   future. So I'll deal with it when it comes back up again. But for right now, this is the option I'm going to choose to handle it today. So I totally I do that. Like I have done that in my life. I do that. That's why there's credit card debt. You guys. That's why there's debt in this country, because it's easier to choose that in this moment to satisfy whatever need emotional or physical we're looking at. And we're not thinking about the longevity and what that's going to look like in the future. Nobody looks   Purchase on a credit card that I know I don't know a single human being that looks at the purchase on a credit card and thinks Okay Well if I spend this $500 for this thing on my credit card by the time I pay it off It would have cost me then by then it's gonna cost me 700 no one thinks about that in our minds It's just 500, but that's not the case. We're getting the added, you know percentages They're not thinking if I do a filling today at $300 it's gonna cost me   potentially six months even as soon as six months, it's going to cost me in whatever time period it looks like another two grand on top of that 300 to get the crown or five grand for an implant of the extraction and an implant and an implant crown. They're not thinking that. So if we're not saying it to them in ways that make sense and like Dana said, making it easy for them, we're doing them a disservice. And the reason I say   is to express the reason like Dana and I speak like this is to express the importance of understanding. And that's part of that relationship building we talked about. It's not fair for patients to leave confused, in my opinion. And we have the opportunity, the space and the knowledge and the education to make it really simple for them. A lot of doctors will argue and say, I mean, they need to know everything.   The Dental A Team (16:34.219) And I agree, I think they do need to know everything. That's where the options come into play, but they are not capable of making the choices and the decisions that you've been trained to make. It is your responsibility to make sure that we're looking at what is the most important thing, what is the most important factor for this patient and what's gonna be the best for them short term and long term and give them those options.   Money aside, insurance aside, like delete all of that, forget all of it, focus on what's best for the patient and the patient's health, and then give them the options that they deserve. Again, we like two to three because it cuts down the confusion and makes things super easy for them. In my opinion, this is really, really, how you treatment plan for patient needs.   on the flip side of that transferring to your front office and your treatment coordinators and making sure that they understand going back to that problem, right? That problem cause solution, problem solution, problem, like sandwich it. Make sure that the person who's reviewing the financial aspects knows why the patient needs that treatment as well. Cause they're now selling a crown, but they're not, they're still selling the solution to the problem. And I want you guys talking about the problem.   because that's the emotional piece that patients need to connect to to understand how important it is that they get healthy. It's not to get them to where they say yes every time. Like they're still not gonna say yes every time, but you've done your due diligence to ensure that they are tied to their health, not just tied to purchasing something from you. I've heard dentists and I think it's amazing say all the time, even if you don't get it done here, I don't care.   I just want you to get it done. want you to be healthier. And that to me is caring. That's the relationship. That's the piece. And that's when patients are like, okay, maybe I should believe you. Like maybe, maybe I should go get a second opinion or maybe I should believe like that's pretty ballsy to say something like that. Like maybe I should invest in this. But those are those pieces you guys where they've deleted and removed some financial aspects and focused in on that patient's health.   The Dental A Team (18:48.455) So here's your tips for today, actionable pieces that you can take away. Always transfer the reason, the why. Transfer the problem to the patient and to the next person. Focus your treatment planning chair side with your patient and financials on the actual problem and tell them you've got the solution for that. So we're focusing on the problem and we're giving them the solution. Always, always, always.   forget the cost, forget the insurance, forget the money, and put the patient's needs and health at the forefront of everything you do. I think if you can implement those three things right away, or one of those three things right away, you're gonna see a change. And I hope it helps you feel better about your position and helps you feel more purposeful in what you're providing your dental patients across the country. So Dana.   How excited are you for these doctors to implement these pieces? We've seen it. We've seen it work. We've seen it work with hundreds of practices, just in our own consulting separately, and then also our group consulting. We see it work constantly. How excited are you for our listeners today to get this bundle of information, go implement it, and completely change how they think?   Dana (20:03.343) I am so excited because I really feel like this is a game changer and a final piece I just wanted to say as far as like building confidence in doing this. If you go to like anywhere as a consumer and you go to the electronic counter, right? And you ask, Hey, what is the best X, Y, or Z? Right? You are expecting them to tell you.   better or best, not just okay or good or will do. And so if your expectations on your interactions with people in any service industry or what they're going to recommend is better best, hold yourself to that same standard.   The Dental A Team (20:38.533) That was beautiful. Hey guys, and on that, we are wrapping up. are closing with that, Dana. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here. Thank you listeners for being here. As always, reach out to us. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. We are happy to help work through this. Again, we have systems for it. We can pop them over to you. We do have group coaching, group coaching and consulting that work on this kind of stuff constantly together. So if you're interested in any of that, please don't hesitate to reach out. We are here to help everyone.   in the best ways that we know how to. Thank you and we'll talk with you soon.  

Matt George, Locked on Kings & ABC10

(0:00) - The boys open the show reminiscing of when apps were a “moment" - (3:03) - The boys recap their night out together in Tacoma and attending Emo Nite - (9:26) - The boys discuss their hotel accommodations while staying in Tacoma, “Bruh … My tub didn't drain, none of my outlets f**king worked, I didn't have lightbulbs by my bed” - (13:38) - The boys debate the recent improvements to The City of Tacoma, “We need take a page … A single f**king page out of Japan's book” - (20:29) - The boys breakdown why the extension to Tacoma's trolley system has primed it to become the next big city in Washington, “Like, Tacoma's not just so tight that it was attracting people all the time”   (28:00) - The boys discuss the concept of “social artifacts,” starting with the example of the homeless crisis - (35:04) - Daryl breaks down how the hiring tactics of IT companies are contributing to homelessness, “They should just get rid of the real estate and build low income housing … But they won't do that” - (44:24) - Daryl moves the conversation into the next example of “social artifacts” with electric utility companies and their role in major wildfires, “If you could see the problem coming and you did nothing … You need to be slapped with all of the d**ks” - (51:30) - Sammy brings in the final example of “social artifacts” with a discussion on how we're treated as consumers in a capitalist market, “My bill has gone up, needlessly, three bucks, every month, for a year”   (57:36) - The boys discuss the history of Socialism in America - (1:02:45) - Sammy describes how America has cherry picked socialism and how the concept of “socialist towns” in the 1800s reminds him of Fallout - (1:09:09) - Sammy breaks down the way early American colonizers stole the socialist structures of Native Americans to survive, “Old legacy herpes, dawg … You can't get this s**t no more” - (1:15:00) - The boys talk about the origins of International Workers Day, AkA May Day, and what May Day used to be like every year in Seattle, “Okay … Well either way, f**k them cops” - (1:19:58) - Sammy points out the ways that government, specifically the FBI, has tried to destroy American socialism, “The socialist and civil rights movements of America, have been DP'd by the deep state every step of the way”   (1:28:10) - The boys discuss the timeline of events that lead to Trump's 2020 election indictment - (1:30:35) - Daryl explains how America's perception of money has made Trump a “social artifact,” “He succeeded to the extent of his incompetence” - (1:33:40) - The boys discuss Special Counsel Jack Smith's handling of the indictment, “I think Jack Smith understands that the thing that you can't let Trump do is get momentum” - (1:41:48) - Daryl points out that Biden could of ordered Attorney General Merrick Garland to prosecute Trump as soon as he got in office, “He's got Merrick Garland f**king convicting his son anyways” - (1:45:24) - Daryl explains how Trump's place as a “social artifact” is a direct result of reality TV culture and success culture, “Much like Emo Nite is an artifact”

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Hi everyone, this is Dan Thompson with wise money tools video. Thanks for joining me today. If you recall in our last video, we were talking about another video out there called the index card. It was done by PBS or something like that. Basically it was an index card with a list of 10 items that basically everything you need to know to have financial success or to create a financial plan that would actually work. And the list looked like this. If you recall, number one was saved 10 to 20% of your income. Number two, pay your credit card balance in full every month. Number three, max out your 401k and other retirement savings accounts. Number four, never buy or sell individual stocks. Number five, buy inexpensive index funds or ETFs. Number six, make your financial advisor commit to a fiduciary standard. Number seven, buy a home when you're financially ready. Number eight insurance - make sure you're protected. Number nine, support the social safety net and number 10, Remember the index card. Okay? Well, in the last video, we went through the first five, and we're gonna finish up on these next five. But just as a quick little recap, because I think some of these things are important. Remember, number one was save 10 or 20% of your income. Again, no brainer, got to do it. Number two is also an easier one. Make sure that you pay off your credit cards every single month. That's a very good practice to get into now. Number three, maxing out your 401K and IRAs. That's something that you may want to review. Go back to the last video. It's something that you can't assume or just take for granted that it's a good move to make. Number four and five. We finished up where we left off, don't buy individual stocks and buy ETF. Well! maybe understanding what's really gone on there. We'll change that around just a little bit. Again, you're gonna want to review those steps because there's a lot to unpack there and honest, we could do a whole video on each one of these steps. Okay, but let's go to number six. Number six, make your financial advisor commit to a fiduciary standard. So we really need to understand this for just a second. What he's saying is that there's kind of two sides of the Wall Street world so to speak. There's brokers and financial advisors, and then there are what are called registered investment advisors and they also tout this title called fiduciary. Now the reason he says that you need to insist that your advisor commit to a fiduciary standard is because when you pay a fiduciary. You're supposed to be paying a fee for a service and the advisor is not supposed to have any bias and do what's best for you. Well, In the end, that's really what it means it means the advisor is supposed to put your interest over his or her interests. Okay? So first of all, if you even have this smidgen of a doubt for a single minute. That this person that you're sitting in front of isn't gonna do what's best for you get out of their office, move on. If you're doubting their integrity, and the purpose that you're there to talk with him for. Then you really shouldn't stay even, like I say, even a minute longer, okay? I don't need to slap a title on my desk or on my forehead with this big bold word fiduciary to make me do what's best for my client. So the irony is this, just because they say that they're putting your interests ahead of theirs has no bearing on whether or not you'll make any money. Whether or not you'll lose money, or whether or not the advisor is a complete moron. Moron might be a tough word. But seriously, morons can be fiduciaries. And sadly I see him all the time. I think more important than a title is to find out if the advisor has a clue as to what they're doing. If they have a plan or a strategy, that's not the same old thing that everyone else is doing. Does the advisor or the person you're talking to have a way to protect your money on the downside and make you money on the upside, and better yet even make you money? No matter what the market environment is doing? That's better than a title. So folks, listen to me. A title or a designation does not make that person a genius. A fiduciary, a CFP, a CLU, even a CPA is not an absolute given that they're gonna be smarter then a three year old, they just know how to pass tests. So let me It kind of reminds me of a story back in high school, right? I used to date this girl and hope she's not listening. But she could sit in a class and understand the lecture. She did great on tests. And she was a straight a student. She always did her homework and passed with flying colors. The problem was, she was about a smart as a post I'm gonna to really take some flak on that one. Yeah, let's just say she wasn't the brightest bulb when it came to common sense and real life situations. If you taught her how to do a math problem, and it was given to her well, she'd probably be able to do it. But if she had to figure out things like, you let's take some financial things like a price earnings ratio or how much revenue a company made. Or what does a large manufacturing company need to do to be profitable, you know, things like that we had to kind of think through it. Well, she'd be totally lost. And I see the same thing so often with some of these fiduciaries, or CFP, whatever, they're really good test takers, right? But I wouldn't give them five bucks to manage, right? They just don't seem to understand how to formulate and look for things outside of the box. So just remember, insisting that someone commit to being a fiduciary is not gonna make him or her any better or smarter when implementing a strategy. And finally, if mutual funds are their answers, in other words, you walk in and the answer is to buy five different mutual funds. Well, you really need to look elsewhere because they haven't figured it out yet. Now, I have no problem with fiduciaries don't get me wrong to my partners, our fiduciary they fit that bill and man, they are extremely smart. There are plenty of them out there that are smart. And I can assure you that these guys aren't gonna sell you a basket of mutual funds and then charge you fees for the next 10 or 20 years. As if they have any control over those funds or the markets for that matter. So please get the picture, a title is worthless. Ask them how they're gonna protect and grow your money and see how they answer it. Then ask how much money did your clients lose over the last month, right? And then finally ask how much of my money are you willing to lose? And by the way, if that's even above zero, yeah, again, you might want to walk out. So that's gonna give you a lot more peace of mind and a lot more realistic expectations than a particular title. Now, again, I understand what he's saying. He's saying, find somebody who's gonna do what's in your best interest. Well again, If you got a good solid advisor, they're doing that with or without a title. So let me just talk real quick about fees again, some fees are worth pain. I mean, if they can protect your money on the downside, make you money on the upside, that might be a fee worth pain. If you're just writing the ups when the things are going great and then you'll lose money when it's going down. What are you paying for? You could do that by yourself just investing in indexes or ETFs without paying fees. You know, just this morning, literally driving around. I was listening to a talk show morning talk show. And the guy happened to be talking about fees. Now he was a fee based advisor. And what he was doing is he was getting all over another advisor who is getting paid commissions instead. And he was saying that the Commission guy, all he wants to do is sell you a product, lock your money up for 10 years and take his 6% commission. And I got to thinking, Hmm, well, what does the fee-based guy want? We came right down to it. He wants to sell you his product, lock your money up for 10 years or so, and then get paid a fee every single year that you have your money there. There was really no difference. The only difference was the final product. And I have no problem with somebody arguing whether this product or that product works better, right? But he was such a hypocrite, because he wanted the same thing that he was accusing the other advisor of wanting. He just charges differently. But he still wants the same thing. Then I got to thinking just kind of in my mind real quick, then I had to run back to my office and calculate this. But let's just say the client was gonna invest $100,000 and suppose this guy, the other advisor did get a commission of 6% or $6,000. That's it and then he has to to basically work with that client over the next 10 years without any further compensation. So what is the fee based guy get? Well, most have sliding scales on fees. And the more you put in the lower the fee, but at $100,000 from the scales I've seen in very familiar with. Most advisors are gonna be right about 2% in that range. If he sells you a mutual fund, that you can pretty much count on another percent and half, maybe even more for the fund manager as well. So he's stacking his fees on top of the mutual fund fees that are already gonna be there. All right. Now let's just use the proverbial 10% growth rate, which is not likely to happen after market corrections, taxes, volatility, all that but we're gonna use it anyway. So without fees, and a straight 10% per year if you just had $100,000 got 10% on it. No fees, you'd have about $259,000 in 10 years. Okay? Now if we just take out the advisor fee of 2%, the account would net after fees $216,000. So in other words, this advisor charges the client $43,000 in fees. So you kind of have to ask the question, who's really the fiduciary now? Interestingly enough, the advisor who was paid the commission, he wasn't even paid by the client. In other words, the company that took in the money, paid the advisor, and 100% of the client's money went into the investment. So it wasn't like the client was paying $100,000 and then $6,000 went over to the other advisor. Anyway, the point is the fiduciary. The fee based advisor made 700% more compensation. Then the other advisor that he was accusing of being such a dastardly dude. That's why I call the fee, an annual commission, because that's what exactly what it is. Wall Street just is disguised it to hopefully make you feel all warm and cozy that you'll pay $43,000 out in fees during the same period of time. But fee based advisors have been making a killing over the last number of years, some might deserve it. But seriously, most of them are simply collecting fees and not even managing your money in the first place. They send it off to mutual funds or to an index and then just hope that the markets do well. And that you'll keep paying their fee as because they're gonna call you up every once in a while and say, hey, look how good we're doing. Well, worse than anything, guess what, you probably lost money to these fee based advisors this year. Maybe even as much as 30% and guess what's gonna happen now, you're still gonna pay the fee. So you're down 30% and they're still gonna take out their fees. So when you see that there's one famous commercial out there. It's about fee based advisors. And they have this fancy tagline that says, we only make money when you do. Well that is just hogwash. Their tagline should be, we make money even when you don't, because that's exactly what's happening. They're gonna make their money, they're gonna charge you the fee no matter what. Okay, so that's a lot for one item number six, sorry about that. But it's an important one, because the fleecing of America is happening in many cases due to fees. All right on to number seven. Number seven, buy a home when you are financially ready. Once again, I can buy into this principle good principle. But let me just take it one step further. If everything you make each month goes into your mortgage payment and your living expenses, and you can't save a penny above that, where you bought way too much house. So going back to principle number one that we have to implement today this moment, and that's pay yourself first and at least 10%. So if you can pay yourself 10% and by the house awesome, you did a probably a very, very good financial thing. Don't get house payment poor, be able to comfortably make the house payment and save your 10%. But where we live, I just somehow lucked out that housing turned out to be a really good investment. And since you have to have a roof over your head, it's not a bad idea to build some equity along the way. But also be able to save and save that money outside of your sticks and stones. Don't put all your wealth inside your house. Okay, number eight was a more insurance oriented and it was saying make sure you're protected, again makes common sense good financial sense. And we're not talking about just life insurance here but we're talking about car, home and health insurance. And one thing to consider is to have insurance be there for your catastrophes and your major expenses, not the little stuff. So oftentimes, it's so much better to get high deductibles and low premiums and being able to cover those smaller expenses of $200, $500 even $1,000 that are out of pocket. Seriously, if you'll save the difference between the premiums of a low deductible and a high deductible insurance policy. In other words, go get some quotes. See what car insurance as an example, see how much the premium is each year. For a $1,000 deductible or even a $20,500 deductible, and see how much the premium is for a $250 deductible, and you're gonna see a pretty wide spread of premium. And if you would just take the higher deductible, save the difference, you're gonna put away that 500 or 1000 bucks in no time. And be able to handle those kinds of expenses and unforeseen incidences. Now for medical, if you're not covered by your employer, and you're paying for your own Medicare, medical insurance, there's some group share programs that you might want to look into them. Some are pretty good and some are very inexpensive and it's not technically insurance. It's more groups, but look into it. The other thing you might do is get that deductible up there, maybe 5000 10,000 or even more and once again, if you'll save the difference between the premiums. And you start to save that deductible and get it put aside, you'll be surprised how fast you can put that money away. It is a good idea to have access to your deductible, just in case, right? You may not be there in the first year so, but you'll get there. And the money that you'll save by having high deductibles you tuck it away, you'll have plenty for the deductible down the road. So don't invest that deductible somewhere where you could either lose it or you lose access to it. In other words, an IRA is not a good place to put your insurance deductibles. Interestingly enough though, life insurance that's building high cash value may be a good spot for it. Because not only will that cover your life insurance needs potentially, but access to that cash as well. So when you keep your deductibles high, it's eventually gonna save you more money in the long run. Now, we're almost done because I don't have to spend much time on numbers nine and 10. Number nine is support the social safety net. Now this is just another way of saying, be charitable giving, you know, local charities and churches can often be the first ones on the scene to help others out in your community. In the book, The Richest Man in Babylon, great book, if you haven't read it, you gotta go read it. The first two principles are pay yourself first, at least 10%. And then give away 10% that could be to a church or a charity or a school or just anywhere where you're helping out others. And I think being charitable is a great way to give back. But it makes you not only feel good, but it's a win-win for the charities and the communities and being able to help others as well. Sadly, someone seems to always be hitting a rough patch, and hopefully you can be there with some of your funds to help them out when you can. Number 10 Lastly, remember the index card, right? So I think this is kind of a play on Warren Buffett's two rules. Warren Buffett's rules are this rule number one, don't lose money. Rule number two, don't forget rule number one. And so I think number 10 is kind of doing the same thing. It's saying the idea is, if you're a believer in these concepts, then don't forget them, use them, put them into your financial strategies and implement. So at the end here, let me say, there are some great strategies that you can implement that will adhere to the important aspects of these principles or these 10 rules, if you will. Overcome the challenges of the ones that don't make a lot of sense. Make some adjustments on those. But keep your money growing and keep it safe and even keep it tax free. If you do things right. You might be genuinely surprised when you see what safe money strategies can do. When you implement Einstein's formula of y=a(1+r)x exponentially growing or squared, right? The squared or the exponential growth is what so many people are missing. Even we missed it for years. We had to build it from scratch. And I think when you start looking outside the box and how other people are generating their wealth, you can figure out some of these things. And what I love to do is figure out how are people generating wealth or return and doing it with the least amount of risk? Well, if you want to see how that might fit into your situation, then just click on the time trade link below and we'll have a quick strategy session. Always feel free to comment below. If you have any questions, shoot them to questions at wise money tools.com. I'll answer them as quick as I can. And for heaven's sakes, don't forget to subscribe. Don't want to miss a video. Always good to have you with me. Thanks for joining me today. Until next time, take care.

Town in the Crown, or Frown in the Pound......? Sushi or Sex State or Debate

I am planning a Security Summer for my listeners.  I will have some free courses.  I will also introduce you to some of the software that I use for my clients and how you can use it too.  So watch out for announcements on those. Is our society changing? What part is social media playing? Listen in today for more on this. What can Open Source do for you? Why Open Source may change your life. More on this today. Are we really ready for Autonomous Cars? or Is the technology expected to perform faster than it is actually ready?  Interesting questions we will be discussing today. What is going on with Google?  G-Suite and Titan are both having issues. Microsoft has another problem and it is a big one. More on this. Do you have a Mortgage?  You need to hear this! For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Transcript:  Below is a rush transcript of this segment; it might contain errors. Airing date: 06/01/2019 Cyberbullying, Security summer free courses, First American Hack, Google Bluetooth titan hijacking ---- Hello, everybody, Craig Peterson here. We have ignition and boy do we have a show for today and then some. You know a little bit about cyberbullying, I am sure. Well, I'm going to tell you about something that I experienced this weekend, something that your kids may be experiencing in a much more critical way. You know, we mentioned last week about the suicides and tied into this Netflix show. Well, we'll get into this a little bit more. For those of you who are wondering how software is getting developed, nowadays and what you might want to do for your business for software development. We'll talk a little bit about GitHub and this whole open source revolution and how It has come into the mainstream, now. We have some security warnings from our friends at Google. A massive hack. I don't think I saw this anywhere. Frankly, we'll talk about what Krebs on security had to say about this. Tesla. Got to throw this in because what's a week without talking about Elon Musk. Consumer Reports is calling the automatic lane change feature on Tesla's navigate on autopilot, far less competent than a human driver. So, it kind of makes you wonder, should we be messing with this? Is this the right thing to do? Frankly, I think it's an excellent question. Well, I commented last weekend in one of the articles up on the website, and as you know, I post articles every week. It's usually just a real quick synopsis of like the first couple of sentences from the article, and then I'll give you a link to it. However, this last week, really, for the first time in a couple of years, we sat down and wrote some articles. We had mentioned something because again, I select the pieces that I am going to cover.  I go through what the strategy is with my team and talk about the salient and essential points, and then they go off and write the article. So, this particular one was about anonymous, and it's still up on the website. And we take those articles, and we tweet them, we put them up on the social media sites as well.  Well, the guy that we had mentioned in the web article claimed to be part of the hacking group Anonymous. He spent time in prison because of some of his activities, and he was a little miffed with me. So I got a little bit of a whiff of him not being pleased about me and what I said in that article. I thought that it was rather interesting because this is the first real hater I've had in quite a while, frankly.  Well, I've got to tell you, this feeling I had in my gut was, you know, people describe this, this feeling of butterflies and things and here, I was wondering, what did I do? What did I do to hurt this guy's feelings? Or, what, right.  I can only describe it as a Wow thing. Well, in reading a little bit further into what he had said was that the that he remembers, I think it was in his warrant, it mentioned the FBI infragard program. And I'm an infragard member. He probably looked me up, and I'm easy to find after seeing the article, which was perhaps triggered by a Google search or maybe a Twitter search or something. And that made me feel a little bit better. But man, brought back all the feelings of the first time there was an attack on my systems.  And that was again, you might remember in the early 90s. And I had these questions running through my mind, what should I do? How do I do it? How do I respond? What? What's going on? I remember when I discovered the hack, who do I call, right? What do I do? And what's going to happen, Right? In my case, it's what's going to happen to everything that I have built, right? Here I am sitting there with a company that I had founded years before, and remember it's the early 90s and I was still a relatively young guy. But I'd been working on this company for over a decade by that point in time. And that feeling I had could only be described as horrendous. It was quite something, and it reminded me of this by having this guy from anonymous, you know, going after me kind of the cyberbullying thing, right? Hey, they're not sitting there trying to wait around for any logic or reasoning or anything else. It is a type what you feel without thinking reaction. Think about people that you've had to deal with probably yourself before. So what do you do? Well, that made me do a little bit of re-evaluation, you guys know, if you listen to the show, for a long time that I do a lot of training, I offer a lot of free training for people on cybersecurity. And just thinking back again, made me remember helped me and let me just put it that in perspective. Remember, that feeling I had in my gut when my first hack attack occurred.  When I realized someone had violated my trust, someone had broken in. Someone was potentially going to take my entire business away from me. How helpless I felt, and I had no idea what to do. Questions like: What should I do?, How can I do it?,  Who do I call?, What's going to happen to my business?, What's going to happen with my clients?. Of course, that was almost 30 years ago now. But this brought all those feelings back. So here's what I'm going to do for everybody out there. Because I know I'm not alone. Some of you are maybe 30-40 years behind me on this journey. I admit I was a pioneer out there. I got arrows in my back, right? I was out there on the Internet early, getting people online, when it was first legal to do so. I was one of the very first people. You weren't, Okay, I understand. You were running a business, and maybe you were not even born yet, okay. But I am committing now to build what I'm calling a security summer. And the idea is that throughout the summer, and I'm probably not going to be able to start this until late June, early July. But throughout the summer, I'm going to offer a course. So you know you know what to do, and you'll know how to protect yourself, right? Because you have to start at the beginning, before the bad guys get in, how to detect it, once they are in what to do about it, the forensic analysis that you're going to have to do after the fact, to clean this thing up, right? I don't want you to have that feeling in your gut that I had before. Thirty years ago, when my first hack happened. I've had a couple of times since and not nearly as dramatic, okay. Because I had dealt with it before and I knew what to do. I had moved into a position where I was pretty much at the forefront at the time in security. But then I went on to run my business. But I don't want you to have that feeling your gut. Right? What do you do? I am sure some of you have had it before. I know you've come into the office in the morning, the computers aren't working. And your first reaction is there in your gut.  Your first thought is -- Oh my gosh, what do I do now? Then that turns into anger. It's anger towards your vendors. Right? Well, I have Norton. I bought that Sonic wall. How did this happen? I should be all set, right. And so now you get on the phone, and you start yelling at vendors, you start yelling at your people who are supposed to be taking care of the IT side. I don't want you to feel that way. We're going to have some free pieces of training this summer. If you're interested, send me an email, and let me know what security subject you're particularly interested in having me cover. That I can make sure we have some free training for you on that during the summer. I want to make it a summer of security. It's our security summer. Brought to you by Craig Peterson, my team and I am getting to work on it, as we speak. My wife is going to put her heart and soul into this effort.  I think I know what you need, and I think I know what you want, but it is essential to hear from you so that I can give you what you feel you need. So, email me at Craigpeterson.com Craig Peterson. com. We're also going to be talking about it on this radio show on these podcasts and on YouTube side, etc., etc. I got my first real hater this week in a long time. And it brought back memories and made me more determined to help you guys out. So, What was one of the first things I did.  I shut down my website and made sure everything was patched up, right? Because I didn't want him to try and hack into my site. After all, anonymous is a hacktivist group, and that's what they do. So, that's what I'm going to do for you guys. We're going to have a security summer this year. Okay, so let's get into a couple more of these articles before I run out of time. This one, I thought it was just totally appropriate. I got a couple of articles that are appropriate for this week, and you'll see those up on my website, and one or two of these articles were written up with my team.  My wife does a lot of this stuff too. So, kudos to her. You will find these up on craigpeterson.com, This is from an article that initially appeared in Pro Publica, and I found it on Ars Technica myself.  It is a fascinating article and written by a couple of people here, Renee Dudley and Jeff Cow. It's talking about the some of these companies here in the US that you can hire to help you out of ransomware, tight spot. Think about some of these we have read about, lately, The city of Atlanta, Georgia,  Newark, New Jersey, the Port of San Diego, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in LA. Atlanta, online water service requests and billing systems were down for over a month. Colorado Department of Transportation, they called in the National Guard, all because of cyber attacks. Apparently what has happened here is that the companies and in these cases, government institutions and hospitals, went to professionals and said, hey, what should we do now? The response from the FBI from the government, in general, is don't pay ransoms. Well, guess what happened here? The FBI said that the criminal actors were out of the reach of US law enforcement. But they were not apparently and out of the reach of this American company called Proven Data Recovery out of Elmsford, New York. It appears that these guys regularly made ransom payments to Sam Sam ransomware hackers over more than a year, according to Jonathan Storfer, who is a former employee who dealt with these ransom payments. Now, Bitcoin transactions are somewhat anonymous and difficult to track. But I know in talking with some secret service agents that they have tracked people through public records and got convictions because of being able to track down some of these Bitcoin coin payments. Pro Publica was able to trace four of these payments, and this article goes on and on. Another US company, Florida based company, Monster Cloud also professes to use their data recovery method, but turns out they were paying ransoms sometimes without informing law enforcement or the victims, this is bad. Again, from Pro Publica, both of these companies charge their victim's substantial fees on top of the ransom amount, and they offer other services such as sealing breaches to protect against future attacks. Well, that's what I do for a living, Right? I don't try and do the recovery and no do I pay any ransom. There are many pieces of free recovery software out there that work in most cases. But, sometimes if you don't have a good backup, you're just out of luck. So, keep that in mind. Going to one of these companies, if you have ransomware on your computer is not going to solve the problem of ransomware. Because, some of these account companies, at least two of them in this case, according to Pro Publica, are making deals with the ransomware criminals, which is, in my opinion, not right. So, we talked a couple of weeks ago about our friends over at Equifax and how they took a huge hit here. It cost them over a billion dollars, probably I would guess close to one and a half billion, but I don't know for sure. They haven't disclosed all of the numbers. This week, they did reveal that they had to do a bit of a write off of about a little more than half a billion dollars. But there's another one out there, and It is crazy. It is the one, I mentioned, from Krebs on security, concerning the website for First American Financial Corp, a Fortune 500 real estate, title insurance giant.  I mean giant, billions of dollars in annual revenue. First, America Corp leaked hundreds of millions of documents related to mortgages going back to 2003. Krebs on security found this leak, and they went ahead, and they fixed it.  Isn't that nice of them, after the horses got out of the barn. So, these are digitized records that included bank account numbers, bank statements, mortgage statements, tax records, social security numbers, wire transaction receipts, driver's license images, were all available without authentication to anyone with a web browser. I find that incredibly unbelievable that a company that employs 18,000 people, you'd think they'd have some security people on staff. And they brought in more than 5.7 billion. There you go. That's the number from Krebs article. Now Krebs found out a bit about it because of a real estate developer, out in Washington state, who said he'd had little luck getting a response from them. It just goes on and on, just like last week with what happened with Intel. And the reports of their colossal security problem. And they, it sounds like, literally tried to buy off the people who reported this massive bug in the Intel chips. It's just amazing. So it goes on and on the earliest document number available on the site wasn't document number 75. The dates and documents get closer to real-time each forward increment in the record number. I have the article up on my website, we've got a link to it if you want to see it.  It's it is just stunning. So, who knows what happened has happened here, again, we have an example of a company that did not keep track of the security problems. And what do you want to bet they did not keep track of data x filtration, and what the criminals stole? Big deal. Big problem. Now Google's got a couple of warnings out this week too. Is this getting old to anybody? I hope you're learning from this, and I hope you can apply it in your own life and your businesses. Take time to learn from these things. But, Google exposed that their G Suite, which is the Google suite where you as a business, you can pay for Google Docs, Google Sheets, etc. If you're a business and you're trying to use it, they want you to pay for it. That's what the city of Atlanta found out when they got hacked. All of their email accounts were down, and they couldn't do spreadsheets, they couldn't do anything. So, they all signed up for Gsuite accounts. Google promptly shut them down two weeks ago for doing that, because they're supposed to pay. Then Google worked out a deal with them. However, it turns out they were storing plain text passwords on its servers for the last 14 years. It is a very, very big deal. So Google is saying that they have fixed the issue and that they've seen no other improper access or misuse of the affected passwords. They've got reasons why they did it. No, everybody makes mistakes in security, okay. I'm giving you that. But these two cases are for companies that should know better, they have big enough department, and they are going to lawsuits. And like Equifax, it's probably going to cost our friends over at First American Financial Corp over a billion dollars. It is something that they can maybe afford to pay a billion dollars in fines and fees. But how about you as a small business. So we've talked about two-factor authentication many times on my show. And we always set up two-factor authentication when it comes to our clients to keep their data safe. You know, some of them have to have to fall under the rules that are in place for federal military contractors, federal contractors, HIPAA records, etc., etc. So you have to have the right kind of two-factor authentication in place, you have to have the correct type of training, the right kind of databases, etc. And the people are getting ripped off right, left and center, these companies that are selling some of these things, they don't care. They are just trying to sell you something another point product and other point security, that is not going to help you out. Can you tell I am getting a little pissed today? Excuse, My French. But here's what's happening. Google has something they call Titan, and we've talked about it on the show before. It is a security key.  It was leading edge, and I'm glad they did it. They've been using it internally for all of their logons. So, it's something you have along with something, you know. Now, you know. I have been promoting Yubikeys. I don't have an investment in any of these companies. We do use them when we are trying to get a company secured. The idea behind the Yubikey and Titan security keys is that it's a little USB fob, you plug it into your computer, you type in your password, you're off and running. Okay? Well, Google's warning that for the Bluetooth Low Energy version of the Titan security keys it sells for two-factor authentication are vulnerable to hijacking by nearby attackers. Google says if you have them, contact them. And they'll give you a free replacement device that fixes the vulnerability. It has to do with Bluetooth pairing protocols, and that means that anybody within 30 feet can carry out an attack, against you. These are $50, which is about the same cost as a Yubikey. I, personally, would go with the Yubikey. But there now you know about the Google Titan. There is nothing particularly wrong with it, except that it's one version is susceptible to hack. If you check the back of your Titan key, if you pull it out right now, it's probably on your key ring, it's a nice, small thing looks like your USB thumb drive, almost. If it starts with a T1 or T2, it is susceptible to attack and eligible for a free replacement. We're not going to have time to get into the rest of these things. So let's get into cyberbullying. I think this is an important one. And I want to talk about internet mobs because that's kind of what happened this week to me. And because I was reported on some security stuff, right, and they, they use almost anything they can against you. And recently we've seen real problems with cyberbullying against kids. According to a survey and a completed study,  It reported online bullying affected 43% of kids. One in four has said that happened more than once. 70% of students reported seeing frequent bullying online. Over 80% of teens use a cell phone regularly. I think these numbers are probably higher than what this study showed, in 2014, I bet you they come close to 100%. Now, most of the teens ignore it. You know I talked about that terrible Netflix show "13 Reasons Why" where a teenage girl committed suicide and left behind 13 cassette tapes explaining her 13 reasons for killing herself. It has led to a 30% increase in teen suicides in the 30 days after that show came out. So there, there's been a correlation drawn on that it did not, by the way, affect adults, it was mainly the 10 to 18-year-olds that it touched. But, we have kids that are thinking about suicide and committing suicide because of cyberbullying. There have been well-publicized criminal cases about this. Now, how about an internet mob? How about if one of these groups decides to come after you, and the group is just the cheerleaders at school? There's a great story that CNN shared this week about a young lady, named Dominique Mora. She's from Southern California and went to school in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is 23 years old and was attending on a softball scholarship. So she thought it would be great to take a job at Chipotle to help make ends meet. Well, she was working at the store, and a group of teenagers came in ordered food, went to pay for it, and their debit card didn't work. That group of teenagers ran out of the restaurant with the food. They stole it, right. The manager gave them a little coaching and told them here's what they should do. What happened next was another day a group of teenagers came in, and she recognized two of them as being part of the group who had ordered food with the bad debit card before running off with the food. They never paid for it. They called the police and explained that these two teenagers were there and they did not want to serve them. We want them evicted from our store.  Here is this young woman, 23 years old, and she asked them to pay first. They pulled up a cell phone, and she didn't realize they were videotaping her and started accusing her of racism because she was a white person caught in the act of doing something labeled racist. Which obviously, there's no racism involved in this at all, they had stolen food from this store, and it was on video, there's surveillance video, it had these two guys on it, according to what CNN is reporting. They dumped this video of her as a racist "B" online. The video of her November confrontation was watched at least 7 million times retweeted at least 30,000 times within two days, and media covered it. Chipotle fired her after it went viral. Now here she is, having done nothing wrong, the police not responding in a reasonable amount of time. It sounds like they never really did respond. It is a case of confirmation bias, these black guys were calling her a racist and the video they presented made it look like she may have been. It is now being used to paint her falsely as a racist. She lost her job and now is worried about what will happen, what she could or should do, and what she should not do.  Those are the same questions I opened the show with today that went through my mind 30 years ago and ran through my mind again this week. Very, very, big deal.  I think w have got to spend some time with our kids talking about this.  Helping them understand the whole act of bullying, what cyberbullying is. That they should report it to the authorities at school, report it to your teacher, report it to the principal, I guess the vice principal is the one who's usually dealing with these types of things. The most common places where it's happening, and this is from stopbullying.gov, they have a lot of great information. Social media like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, SMS, you know, your text messages, instant messaging, which includes email provider, app services, social media, and of course, email at self. We've got to be careful because the content that we share online, you can get these internet mobs, this mob mentality where everyone jumps on board and starts attacking people. It can drive not just our teens, but almost anyone to suicide, and we don't want that to happen. Sit and talk with them. You know, I was severely bullied as a kid as well. But you know, I could leave it alone. It was happening on the way to school, at school, on the way back from school. At least there were brackets or definitions surrounding it. But nowadays, there aren't. All right, I want to send you to my website Craigpeterson.com, because you will find more information about all of these topics today. A very, interesting one on hackers. About anonymity that was once critical and how that's now changing. I might try and get into that next week. A little bit more here on the show. Also, the Consumer Reports thing about Tesla. Don't count on their autopilot people. Be very careful. The automatic lane change feature is reported to be far less competent than a human driver. So, don't use it. Be concerned about cyberbullying. I'm working here this summer. I'm going to make this a security summer. I'm going to be doing some free courses. We're going to help you guys out with lots of free information. I give these little webinars. They're not I'm not trying to upsell you or anything else. I'm trying to inform you so make sure you attend. Let me know if you're interested and what topics you think I should cover. So if you are interested,  email me. me@craigpeterson.com That is P-E-T-E-R-S-O-N Peterson with an O. Until next week, everybody. Take care. Have a great week. Bye-bye ---  Related articles: Our New Society: Social Media Results In Judgement By Mobs Open Source Is Changing The Way We Approach Everything Autonomous Cars — Are they ready for Prime Time? Why Are We Still Trusting Google? Running Windows? Be Sure You Patch! You Need Two-Factor Authentication Even If Google Screwed It Up Got a Mortgage? Your Information Might Be Included In Massive Hack ---  More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

With so many different potential approaches to helping your relationship, how do you choose the one that’s right for you? And how do you make sense of them all together? John and Julie Gottman, Sue Johnson, Esther Perel, David Schnarch, Stan Tatkin, Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson, Terry Real - they’re all describing different ways of getting the same thing - a loving, thriving, passionate relationship. Today we’re going to tackle how it all fits together, so you’re better prepared to steer your own relation-ship. To help us integrate in a way that makes it practical and clear, we’ve invited Dr. Keith Witt back to the show. Keith Witt is an integral psychologist, which gives him a unique perspective in making sense of all these roads that lead to Rome. His most recent book, Loving Completely, details his approach to bringing all of the essential parts of you to your relationship. Along with having written 7 other books, Keith has conducted more than 55,000 therapy sessions with his clients! If you’ve been wondering how to make sense of it all, this episode is for you! Also, please check out our first three episodes with Keith Witt - Episode 158: Loving Completely,  Episode 80: Bring Your Shadow into the Light and Episode 13: Resolve Conflict and Create Intimacy through Attunement. As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Sponsors: Along with our amazing listener supporters (you know who you are - thank you!), this week's episode has two great sponsors, each with a special offer for you. For a unique gift to discover meaningful stories from the life of someone important to you, visit Storyworth.com/ALIVE for $20 off a subscription. Share the memories with your family, and preserve them in a beautiful hardbound book. It’s a perfect Mother’s Day gift! Want to experience a Luxury Suite or VIP Box at an amazing concert or sporting event? Check out Suitehop.com/DATENIGHT to score sweet deals on a special night for you and your partner. Resources: Check out Keith Witt’s website Read Keith Witt’s new book: Loving Completely: A Five Star Practice for Creating Great Relationships Check out Keith Witt’s other books as well! FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide - perfect help for handling conflict… Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Relationship (ALSO FREE) www.neilsattin.com/integrate Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Keith Witt. Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out Transcript: Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. And if you can hear it in my voice, I'm particularly excited for today's conversation. Of course, we've had so many different viewpoints represented here on Relationship Alive because there are so many roads that lead to Rome, the Rome of romance and romantic partnership, and how we sustain loving, thriving, monogamous relationships, and it's not always that one road works for any one person. And this has come up several times in the show, this question of, well, “so and so says their way is the way and they sound so convincing when you're talking to them, Neil, so what do I do when it doesn't work?" And this happens sometimes. Neil Sattin: So, if you've tuned in for a while then you know that the reason that I have all these different voices on the show is because I really believe strongly that it's whatever works that's important. And I suppose for myself I might put some boundaries around that; what I'd be comfortable with or where I'd feel a little edgy or stretching, but for the most part, I think that it's up to you to really get informed about what's possible and then make choices that really align with you or maybe stretch you in a direction that feels like a light way to be stretched. At the same time, they all form part of this big puzzle that makes sense. And so, I wanted to have a conversation today about how we integrate as much as possible the way that we think about all of these different methodologies so you can see how they all fit together, they don't exclude each other, for the most part. They actually all find a place in the big picture of how we make relationships, what we want them to be. And as much as some of the people on my show might want you to think otherwise, this is my personal belief. Neil Sattin: And so to have this conversation, I've invited one of my favorite guests to have here on the show who also happens to be someone who's very good at integrating all these different approaches. His name is Keith Witt. He has been here before to talk about his books, "Loving Completely", "Shadow Light", "The Attuned Family"; and he is an integral psychologist among other things. And so the integral perspective, I think will help us understand how all of these different pieces fit together in a way that actually does make a coherent whole, it makes sense. So, Keith, thank you so much for joining us today on Relationship Alive. Keith Witt: I am always happy to be on your show and it's one of the pleasures of my life, our conversations. [laughter] Neil Sattin: Awesome, well, the feeling is mutual. I do want to say before we dive in deep that we'll have a transcript of this episode. If you're interested in downloading it, you may want to read it a few times, you can visit neilsattin.com/integrate 'cause we're going to be integrating everything today. Or, as always, you can text the word "PASSION" to the number 33444, follow the instructions and you'll be able to download the transcript to today's episode. So, Keith, let's start with maybe where you orient in terms of this conversation. And before we got started, you were talking about this sense of, as we talk about all these different schools of thought, we're really talking about the founders of modern relationship theory. So, where do you put yourself and how do you make sense of where you are in this conversation about how we're tying all of these things together? Keith Witt: Well, first of all, being a founder is a peculiar thing. I've developed various systems, all of them interrelated generally, under the integral umbrella. And integral has worked for me greatly. [chuckle] The reason why integral has worked for me greatly is the integral is a meta theory, not a theory. And so, I had actually generated systems and written some books about systems before I encountered integral. But then the integral, looking at the world through the objective and the subjective, the individual and the collective; looking at the world through types of people, states of consciousness, through people being at different developmental levels, including therapists, I realized that when you put any system into that, including the systems I developed, it expanded. And it made me just fascinated with the commonalities that affective systems, particularly of relationships and of love because I think everything's relationships is. Keith Witt: And so, one of the things that's different for me and other founders is that, even though I've... If you look at my eight books, there's essentially seven different systems interrelated of doing psychotherapy and of doing couples work. I'm not particularly invested in any of them. Those systems are useful, they're coherent, they have a lot of technical and theoretical interconnections with everybody else and with the research. But I agree with exactly what you said. Ultimately, when a couple or an individual wants to love better, they come in, it's the goodness of fit with the therapist and it's how effectively they move forward, and there's an alchemical experience that happens with that, that can only be described in the intersubjectivity of the session. And meta research on psychotherapy has shown this again and again, and one of my favorite meta-analyses, which they took lots of studies and put them together, they found out a couple of very fascinating things. One, therapy helps people, okay? That's good news for everybody. Neil Sattin: Good to know. Keith Witt: The second thing that the variance of change was explained by 40% in this meta-analysis, 40% of the variance of change was client variables; how resilient they were, what kind of social networks they had, what kind of resources they had; 30% of the variance of positive change was the relationship, what was the solidity of the intersubjectivity of the alliance between the clients and the therapist; 15% was placebo effect. If you go to somebody, give them a bunch of money and they expect to change, you're going to change. [chuckle] Keith Witt: In fact, that's something that has completely confused the field when it comes to the whole psychotropic thing. Probably 30% or 40% of the effect of most antidepressants is placebo effect, 8%-12% is probably the drug. Okay, so 15% placebo effect, 15% method of treatment. Okay, well, method of treatment 15% is significant. In poker, 7% is skill and the good poker player always wins but that 15% isn't as big as the client variables and it isn't as big as that 30% of the alliance. And so, I'm aware of that and so I hold my systems lightly, even though I love them. And so, I look at the other systems and I look at my relationships with the other systems, and I get a lot out of all of them. But also, I noticed that as we moved through the fields, our own little blind spots tend to affect how we absorb systems, how we enact systems, and how we integrate them. And I find that interesting because every time I find a blind spot, that's an opportunity to wake up. And this is where our conversation went when we were talking about this. So, how do they fit together? Well, as it turns out, even though they look very different from the outside, most of them fit together quite well in terms of the constructs that the various therapists bring to bear with couples and individuals for that matter and what they have to do in a session to help people move forward. Keith Witt: So, that's pretty much it. My Loving Completely approach is approach that I love a lot, and you can check it out in my book, "Loving Completely". And my book, "Waking Up" that was the first book that I wrote after I had my integral awakening, is one of the first texts on integrally-informed psychotherapy, and it has sections in it around integrally informed sex therapy and marriage counselling. And I'm quite proud of that, and I think that works a lot, but are those more effective than Gottman's approach. Schnarch's approach, or Perel's approach, or Tatkin's approach? I don't think so. I think pretty much you have a good therapist, who's enacting their system and is attuned to their clients, they're going to do pretty well. And this goes for me, all the way back to my doctoral research. I was always interested in this, and so my doctoral research was I took three different kinds of systems and researched them in terms of how much they enhanced the health of clients. Talking plus touching, talking without touching, and touching without talking. And I found that the people got better equally, which led me to conclude that in psychotherapy, people have a natural healing style. Keith Witt: And what you want to do is you want to identify it and enhance it and let it and help it grow as you grow throughout a lifetime. And I think that's probably the best way to go, as a psychotherapist and as a marriage counselor, and certainly when I train people and supervise people, that's my perspective. What's your natural healing style? How can we help you expand that and grow within that natural healing style? And that natural healing style has to involve, not just your style expanding, but you expanding. If we don't grow as individuals, we're limited as clinicians. Neil Sattin: Yeah, that's... I really appreciate your saying that and it's making me think about that problem of when someone comes to me and says, "I tried. I found an EFT therapist and that didn't work, or I found a Gottman therapist and that didn't work." I wonder sometimes if that might be, because the particular therapist isn't necessarily 100% aligned in terms of their healing style, which you just mentioned, with the system that they've learned. It may be that they believe 150% in the effectiveness of that system, but if it doesn't tap into their own natural alignment and integrity and how they create resonance with their clients, then I could see it falling flat at times. Keith Witt: Oh yeah. Before, let me see, probably 2000, I've been doing this since I first started studying therapy in 1965. I mean, I've been studying bazillion systems. And so for me, until I was around 50, every time they discovered a new system, I go, "Oh, damn." Because I knew that I was going to get disintegrated. I was going to learn this system and it was going to disrupt my understanding of the psychotherapeutic universe. I would have to climb into this system and enact it until I could actually enact the system naturally, I could answer questions from the system. And I knew that it would re-organize my understanding of the universe, and it was a lot of work. So, every time I found a good system, I go, "Oh Jesus, not another one." And then I would study it and I would... Sometimes for years, and it was always difficult in the beginning because it would destabilize, and that's very much how development goes on any developmental line. You expand into the current world view, and something comes and causes that world view to not quite be enough, and so the old one disintegrates and you go through that period of disintegration before you re-integrate into a more complex system. And I kept hoping that it would be the end of it. I'd finally get a system that was so great that I wouldn't have to have go through that experience. Keith Witt: And then after I was 50 and studied integral and wrote about integral, I realized that I was enjoying the process now, that when someone came up with a new idea, like EMDR that it actually was... EMDR is wonderful in certain situations dealing with trauma. And so that was great when as soon as I identified it as a great system, I saw a research that persuaded me, I dived in and I had a lot of fun learning and acting EMDR until I could bring it into my repertoire of theoretical and practical understanding. Now, what did that reflect? That reflected my consciousness changing. Keith Witt: I shifted from being more egocentric in my understanding to being more open, so my unconscious was actually aware. Keith, there will be great systems that will happen and when they arrive, they'll help you grow and be a better therapist, they're wonderful. And so, my subjective reaction to them shifted from, "Oh, no," to "Oh, boy." And this is how you notice that you grow. You don't notice that you grow particularly because you have a new idea, you notice that you grow because you have a different natural reaction to something that you had a different reaction to before. And it's very difficult to notice a shift of world views from the inside. It's easier for other people to give you feedback about it until you get to a certain level of development in the integral, we call that the "second tier" and then it's just easier to see that kind of stuff. And so that's been my experience with this over the decades. That's my current experience with it. Neil Sattin: Great, yeah. And just to give you listening, a full sense of what I'm bringing to this conversation, I mentioned in the introduction that a lot of this is about you finding tools that work for you. I also have another bias that comes from my position of being able to talk to so many of the founders of relationship theories, which is... And it comes from my upbringing I think, which is this kind of like, "can't we all just get along" mentality. In an ideal world I'd be having this conversation, Keith, you would probably still be there and we would have everyone on a stage as a panel, but the express purpose of that conversation would be like, "Let's figure out how we can all work together." And my understanding is that, that's been challenging in the field to bring everyone together like that, but that's another thing that... My own agenda that I bring to this conversation is, I want everyone to get along and to commit to the overall betterment of how effective we can be in our lives or as therapists or coaches, or people who help others. It's really important to me. Keith Witt: Well, Amen. [laughter] Neil Sattin: And some other things that you were mentioning made me think immediately of John Gottman. And I can't remember if he mentioned this actually in our first interview, if it was part of what I recorded or if it was just part of my conversation with him. But he talks about how important it is for him to know when he's wrong. He keeps a very detailed record of all the ideas that he's ever had and I think he might have said that he's wrong more than half the time. Keith Witt: Yes, he says that. More than half of his hypothesis have been proved false. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Right, right. And so for him, this is one of the things that he stakes his claim around is that, he's distilled a body of work that statistically has been shown to work more than 50% of the time I think, in fact it's like 86 or something percent of the time. And that being said, he's also... What I love about that statement is one, his embrace of the willingness to be wrong, which is so important at any level of relationship, relationship to an idea, relationship to your spouse, so I really appreciate that. And also it seems to be his major critique of people who would use other systems that maybe haven't been empirically proven to be effective because what if you put it under a scientific scrutiny and found that it only worked 10% of the time, like your best placebo on its, without; or sorry, your best drug without the placebo effect. So, that's where it gets confusing for people I think, because they're like, "Well, if my local shaman hasn't undergone scientific study, what do I do with the fact that it's actually been really helpful for me? Versus going to my Gottman-certified therapist? Keith Witt: John Gottman is the only founder that I know of whose psychotherapeutic approach and theoretical approach literally arose out of his research. That's not true for any of the rest of us. Everybody else was doing stuff that worked really well for them in certain situations and they saw how things fit together, and then they fitted it together with other stuff that they found out and created a structure. That's not a bad thing. That's how theories historically have arisen, in my opinion, except for say, physics. And John Gottman started out as a mathematician. Keith Witt: I went to a three-day workshop with him and Julie, and at the very end, I went up to him, I said, "You know, John, I've done a lot of this stuff, okay? And your system has the most amount of good stuff and the least amount of bullshit than any other system that I've seen." And he laughed because he got it. Another thing that endeared me to him, and I gotta say I am biased towards John Gottman, I love that guy, I think he and Julie are great. Keith Witt: In a conference where everybody's talking about how their system is the best, he went up on stage and says, "You know, I think about my treatment's failures." And I thought, "God, John, thank you." I think about my treatment failures too, what the fuck. What can I do different. What's the new stuff? He is a researcher. Now, I use a lot of his research to validate my approach, I've changed things that I've done in response to some of his research. I've changed some of my understandings in response to some of his research. Why? He's just the best and most comprehensive couples researcher around. In terms of my approach, almost every psychotherapist and all couples counselors to a certain extent through psychoeducation, you're basically teaching people about themselves and about how relationships work. Keith Witt: The nice thing about Gottman's approach is that he didn't really, in most of his work, he didn't really have confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is what most founders bring to their research, if they do research. Okay, well, if you're doing research to show that your system is great, that's confirmation bias. Now, human beings, when they develop, when they develop from fundamentalist, which is I'm going to enact the EFT system or the crucible system exactly how it's supposed to be, and I'm not going to really think about whether it's working or not, that's a fundamentalist system. I'm going with the structure, but because it's the structure. Keith Witt: When you go to a more rational system, a rational system is, "Well, I want to cross-validate things and see how they work, and if they work better, I'll shift into a new system." In between that conformist and that rational system, there's an in-between stage. Susanne Cook-Greuter and Beena Sharma who studied developmental stages, they call it the 3-4 stage 'cause 3 is conformist and 4 is rational; they called it the 3-4 stage. In that stage, people experience themselves as open to input, but actually they have confirmation bias, they're looking for data that support their preconceived notions and they very much resist change. Keith Witt: You know, back in the '90s, I went to a David Schnarch workshop. And so, David Schnarch was all about differentiation, a concept he obviously lifted from Murray Bowen and never gives him any credit for, which pissed off Dan Siegel enough in the conference so Dan Siegel called him out on it. It was one of those little conference snafus that happen, it fascinated everybody. So I went up to Schnarch, I said, "You know, I think there is a more fundamental construct than differentiation." He said, "What?" I said, "I think it's health." He said, "That's too broad." Now, maybe he's right. Maybe my orientation towards what's healthy and not healthy is a too broad concept. But his immediate reaction was dismissal. He didn't want to consider that there might be a more fundamental organizing principle than his, okay? There was confirmation bias. Now, he's a good counterpoint, to me, to John Gottman. John Gottman doesn't like people making assertions without doing research, but I don't care, I still love John Gottman. Keith Witt: David Schnarch spent minutes on stage during that workshop warning people to not use his stuff 'cause it's all trademarked and I found him arrogant and narcissistic, and to this day, irritating. Now, what is that? Both of them have their own critiques. Why do I find myself really liking John Gottman and irritated with Schnarch? Even more importantly, whenever you get irritated with someone, there's a tendency to dismiss what's great about their system. And this is what is beautiful about integral, integral says, "Everybody gets to be right, nobody gets to be right all the time." And Schnarch's concept of differentiation and holding on to yourself and the whole crucible approach to couples is a really good approach. Okay, that is very effective, particularly with some couples where they keep trying to move out of the container and you keep them in the container until something pops, and out of that pop come something new. And sometimes that newness is a new discovery of love for each other. Now, Esther Perel does a similar thing, but she's more of a practical romantic. I see Schnarch and Susan Johnson as more practical moralistic, in that they seem to literally have moral disgust for other people who disagree with them. [chuckle] Keith Witt: I go, "Okay." [chuckle] Maybe that's what irritates me about them. Like Susan Johnson says, "If you do your work, you have to be slow and soft." Okay, well, that works for her with couples. But you know, as people might have noticed so far in our conversation, I'm not a particularly slow and soft guy, okay? So, my natural healing style, sure, I can get really gentle with people, and I actually was critiqued by Gestalt therapists in the '70s by being too nice to my clients. "You're too nice to your clients, Keith." "Oh, I'm sorry. Just because Fritz [Perls] is an asshole doesn't mean I have to be an asshole when I do therapy." [chuckle] Keith Witt: And so, sorry, Susan, slow and soft is not my natural style, okay? It's alright. Now, does that make me less effective than her with a couple? Probably with some couples, I don't know. Neil Sattin: Right, and it would probably make you less effective if you were implementing her system. Keith Witt: Yes, that's exactly right. And when you learn a system, it's good to implement it. Now, even though I love John and Julie, John and Julie, when they talk about implementing their systems, they use a lot of their research tools. They give people like questionnaires, they give them cards and stuff, and they have their structured things that they recommend people doing. I'm sorry, I don't like doing that stuff. [chuckle] Keith Witt: My clients don't like doing stuff like that, but even if my clients liked it, I don't like doing it. If you go to a risk management workshop, they give you a five-page thing your clients are supposed to sign about all the horrible things that they can report you for and that the therapy does and doesn't do. I'm sorry, I don't do a five-page thing. We all have our different styles. Now, that being said, I just love that guy, love him, and every time he gets a new thing out... I studied his last book from the beginning to end several times, and except for the math, just found it utterly fascinating. And I see him as a practical scientific guy. He is a true scientist. John Gottman will change an opinion on a dime if you give him persuasive data. And that's just not true for many people. Neil Sattin: Yeah, so, since you've brought up David Schnarch, and unfortunately, he hasn't been on my show yet, so we haven't had the benefit of being able to hear from him directly. I still... I reach out to him every so often and I'm hoping that one of these days he will. That being said, it's funny. I have my own bias when someone doesn't want to be on my show. [chuckle] I'm like, "Well, what's your problem?" What you just mentioned about your experience with him, that seems in some respects, to make sense given that he's staked his claim on differentiation, that that's where he's coming from, differentiation being that sense of holding on to you and your sense of who you are no matter what someone else is throwing at you. And so in preparation for this conversation, I really dove into his passionate marriage work, which is sort of the lay person's approach to crucible therapy, which is what he calls his work in the therapeutic realm. And I found myself really appreciating it, in fact, and it got me irritated because even... I was listening to this one recording of him and he said something that was dismissive of attachment theory and... Keith Witt: Yes. Neil Sattin: And I love what attachment theory brings to the conversation about relationships, both how you come to understand your own dysfunction in a relationship or how you come to understand the function of the dyad, what that does for you. And concepts of safety and how that enables you to differentiate. I love that, and it kind of bridges into Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson's developmental model too, which we can talk about in a little bit. But that all being said, when I heard him talking about the importance of knowing who you are, and at the same time being able to remove your distortions of who you are. And he talks about part of crucible being that your partner being there, that's a great way for you to learn where you actually aren't who you think you are, just as one example. Or you get to, through self-reflection, see some of the dysfunction in who you are, and actually work towards growth and improvement. But when he talks about differentiation, he talks about some things that I think are key. You talk about, not only holding on to who you are, but also your ability to self-soothe, so to take responsibility for yourself when you're triggered. How many times have we talked about that on the show? He talks about getting over your reactivity, so taking responsibility for not freaking out at your partner when they trigger you. Neil Sattin: Again, so important, and fits right in. And then, he talks about, and I love this concept, the idea... And this is a place where I feel like he's kind of unique, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, Keith, 'cause you have a broader perspective, perhaps, than I do. But he talks about... He names his approach as a non-pathological approach. In other words, if things are going wrong, then nothing is wrong. It's like, that's what you would come to expect. And that part of what he holds as an ideal in a relationship is the ability to hold onto yourself, to self-soothe, to not get reactive with your partner, and to hold the container of a relationship when things get uncomfortable. And that does seem so important, being able to grow with your partner. If you're so focused on fixing things and one of you capitulating to the other, it's not that there's never a place for compromise, but it's like, I think, and so many couples rush to that, they overlook the actual growth potential that happens in truly experiencing themselves as separate individuals with different ideas about how to live and how to be in the world, or how to be with each other. Keith Witt: It's a wonderful approach. It's a wonderful understanding. I like it. And I use those concepts and those understandings, and have, ever since I learned the system. That the system has great efficacy, practically speaking. Now, that being said... So let's just expand. Okay, so it's great to say it's a non-pathological system. Okay, fine. And basically, effective therapists operate from that perspective. Here's two people, they want to change, they want to grow. That power of a human consciousness wanting to change and wanting to grow is so robust that there's a lot of details of self-regulation and moderation and holding on to yourself and understanding. But there's that basic core of power, of human consciousness wanting to grow. That's true, and psychopathology has existence. If somebody has a personality disorder, there's no couples approach that is going... In my experience, maybe I'm wrong, because I've been doing my own work. My lab is my practice. I've done 65,000 therapy sessions. And so, I take stuff into my lab, so to speak. So psychopathology has existence. Sometimes you need to go into that to help people grow. You have tell somebody, like, "You have a distorted view of the world," and need to have some individual work to deal with that, or, "You are so overwhelmed by your trauma history that you have to go resolve that trauma before you can experience sexuality and intimacy with your partner comfortably." Keith Witt: That needs to be normalized and there's a subtle bias. In integral, we would call that a pluralistic bias or a green bias, to treat everybody like they're the same. This is what causes David Deida to dismiss psychotherapy in general. Now, that's an interesting thing. I'm a psychotherapist, I teach psychotherapy, I write about psychotherapy, I've generated systems, I'm a founder of systems, I go to David Deida workshops. He generally puts down psychotherapy as being kind of a pluralistic, limp-wristed, egalitarian, second stage, you know, wimps, so to speak. And I still love the guy, okay? [chuckle] Keith Witt: Okay, so why is that? Probably part of it is because I see him as a kindred spirit, as a fellow warrior. But when you and I were talking about this earlier, but part of it is I probably have more projections with people like David Schnarch or Susan Johnson, like that moralistic... Maybe there's a part of me that has moral disgust that I don't like and I project onto them. I do that a little with Dan Siegel. I love Dan Siegel's work, I've studied his books, I've listened to his lectures endlessly, I've enjoyed his lectures. And every once in a while though on stage, he starts complaining about how somebody treated him badly or how somebody doesn't understand him or he had to push back, and I just find that icky. I go, "Dan, don't say stuff like that. That makes the rest of the cool stuff that you talk about. You know, you're a brilliant man, and you've changed everybody. Your book, The Developing Mind, was my foundation of neurobiology, interpersonal neurobiology." Keith Witt: Alan Schwartz is similar. He says everybody bow to evidence-based treatment. He's irritated with this American Psychological Association privileging the research of, particularly, cognitive behavioral therapy, I suspect because cognitive behavioral therapists and the labs around the country get a lot of money and other people don't. So there's a lot of personality that comes through and yet all these systems have wonderful things about them. So, Schnarch is more practical moralistic in that sense. Esther Perel is more practical romantic, she's practical. All the good therapists are practical. You're with a couple, we're going to help 'em move forward and understand them individually and as a couple, and we have a vision of good relating that's for effective therapists is similar. But she has basically a romantic approach. You have your own way of understanding yourself, and of love, and I support that as a therapist. And you have your understanding of what you want with this relationship and I support what you want. And your partner is similarly. And we deal with that and from an accepting standpoint and a practical standpoint, how can we move forward? Keith Witt: You feel enlivened by your secret affair that devastated your partner, I understand how you feel enlivened by that. I understand the draw of that. I understand your resentment at your partner for not being more cooperative and creating better love, the partner is outraged that you did this. Well, I understand your outrage. I understand your desire to love better. It's a very romantic approach, but it fits very well with all the scientific approaches, the moralistic approaches, with even David Deida's mythological approach. David Deida is basically a practical mythological approach. He draws from the wisdom, traditions of masculine and feminine. He used to teach the Shiva and Shakti scale, just brought it out of the Eastern traditions. And yeah, it's practical. This is how we can help you understand yourself, understand your partner, and understand how you enhance the polarity to have the intimacy and safety and love and the passion that you want. And if you get down to it in the psychotherapy session, if you watch any of us doing a session with people, you'd see very similar constructs that we're applying and you'd see very similar interventions. Neil Sattin: Yeah, it's so funny I was listening to the first season of Esther Perel's podcast that she put out with Audible. I think it's called Where Do We Begin? Or something like that. And one of the sessions I was like, this might as well be Harville Hendrix that I'm listening to, just in terms of how she was showing up for that couple and talking about safety and the way they were constructing their communication and it was like right out of his getting the love you want workshop practically. So that was fascinating for me and I think worth noting because if you're just a bystander and you're like, say, listening to the Relationship Alive podcast, you can be so persuaded by one person's viewpoint or the other. And in fact, I find myself, like you were mentioning earlier, Keith, persuaded over and over and over again. Keith Witt: Yes. Neil Sattin: Because everyone's system has so much merit to it, that you might lose sight of where they both offer you something important. Sue Johnson and David Schnarch, it's interesting that you've paired them together because, obviously, they're in some ways they would see themselves as being in opposition to each other. Keith Witt: Yes. Neil Sattin: And yet, how many times have I seen with clients how important creating safety is to them, taking a stand for who they are? And vice versa, if they're all about the safety and they never take a risk by being who they are, I've seen that be problematic too. So, it's like everyone is reacting to the... What's the word? The distorted, the extended version, like if you go way too far into differentiation, that's not going to be a relationship. If you go way too far into creating safety or your couple bubble, like Stan calls it, Stan Tatkin, then you might lose the edge or the eroticism, which is what Esther would hone in on. You've lost your sense of the other person as other, you're too safe. Neil Sattin: So, it's so interesting because even in just this past three sentences or so, you've heard me jump from one to the other to the other trying to show you, like, "Yeah, they all actually feed into each other." If you're really, really stuck, like a lot of people are, I think that's why Esther's TED Talk took off because so many people are stuck. I think she writes in "The State of Affairs" that sexless marriage is one of the top Google searches or something like that. Keith Witt: Yes. Neil Sattin: So, if you're in a sexless marriage, then when someone starts talking about how you feel too safe and you've come to not think of your partner as someone else. And so here are some ways to get you back to a more erotic, playful space with your partner, then you're going to listen and that's going to make sense to you. But it wouldn't make sense to you if you had no safety in your container and your partner was constantly texting other people and flirting with the waiters and waitresses at the restaurants, and if you were in a totally unsafe world, then that's not going to be a place where Esther's work might, or at least what you might initially think she's getting at. But again, this is just her TED Talk, you hear her in a session and she's talking about creating safety within a couple. Keith Witt: Exactly. That practically speaking, everybody comes from constructs that involve relational patterns, a developmental orientation, that people are influenced by unconscious influences and trauma programming. Everybody has a vision of happy relating for every couple they work with. No effective couples counselor doesn't do that. We all, if we have a couple, we immediately start having a vision of how they could be getting along better with each other. And all couples counselors are informed by the psychological and psychotherapeutic traditions, therapeutic relationship attunement, and that kind of stuff. Keith Witt: Now, when you look at it, for me, the breakdown between Schnarch dissing attachment theory and Susan Johnson saying, "I have the only couples therapy. We never had a theory before me." Okay? Well, look, if you say to a bunch of founders who have their own theories, "You never had a good theory of couples until me," everybody's going to get pissed off. So, Susan Johnson says that, I go, "Susan, you've got a good system, you got a good theory. You don't have to piss us all off by saying that. You can say, 'I got a couples thing that I prefer to yours.'" And so, John Gottman will go up in a workshop and say, "Well, we have our theory." You know he's speaking directly to that. Keith Witt: Now, that being said, Esther Perel and Schnarch make a point that a lot of other couples people miss, they go, "Look, sexuality is a big deal and it's been neglected by the field," and they're right about that. That was true. In the '70s, therapists wouldn't even ask their couples about sex, it just drove me crazy. I did a lot of sex therapy training in the '70s because I realized that to be effective with couples, I need to be really good at helping them have better sex, and integrated that into my work and have ever since. And David Deida's stuff has been priceless around that stuff. Keith Witt: And so, the field has grown to that. And to their credit, once again, John Gottman and Julie, they have their system of expanding the conversation about sexuality and the behaviors about sexuality because they've demonstrated from their research that it's not enough to just down-regulate conflict with a couple, you have to up-regulate good times. And as I make... The point that I make in my Loving Completely approach, a marriage is a friendship, a love affair and a capacity to heal injuries and ruptures. That love affair is a big deal. That first star, this erotic polarity between me and my partner, gets more space in my book than any of the other stars. Why? If that love affair isn't happening then there's a lot of problems that arise out of that, and that's that sexless marriage statistics that Esther mentions in her book. I wrote a book called "A Hundred Reasons to Not Have a Secret Affair", I couldn't find a publisher for it. And I read "State of Affairs" and I said, "Well, I like this a lot better than my book." [laughter] Keith Witt: And really I think that's a really good book about affairs and you can just feel that practical romantic orientation on her part. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and when you say romantic, let's just... Can you get more clear on what that means, just so we get you there? Keith Witt: Esther has... Now, this is just my reading of her, okay? And I've never talked to her. I hope I do some day. There's this sense for her about love. There's a mystery, a cross-cultural mystery about love, that there's love is, I want to be loved, I want to love and I want to do it in a way that works for me. And if it's not happening, I'm suffering and I want to make it happen. And if it's not happening and I'm suffering, I need to take that suffering into the world and into my own development, into my relationship and make love happen. And there's a certain mysterious quality about it. And yes, there's things that interfere with it like lies and abuse and all that other stuff. And to a certain extent, because she works an awful lot with infidelity and that kind of stuff, you can see our practices shape our theoretical understanding. There's that sense of, if we open that up, then love will happen. Now hopefully, it happens with us as a couple, but if it doesn't, okay. It didn't happen. Love, the relationship just because it ends wasn't unsuccessful, we lose each other, we move on and we find love some place else. Keith Witt: Okay, to me, this is very romantic. This is a subjective love-based, romance-based orientation towards eroticism and sexuality. And it's very effective because that's how in terms of the neurobiology of bonding, yes, we go from our various arousal systems, into attraction, into distracting attraction, into romantic infatuation, into intimate bonding, into life stages. Now, what I think Esther misses, because she doesn't seem to be as interested in the science, is that it's an apples and oranges comparison that early attraction, distracting attraction, romantic infatuation, sexual drives, with the sexual drives that exist in intimate bonding, okay. Keith Witt: In intimate bonding, I have discovered or it's been my experience, to go into those romantic infatuation circuits, it's very, very intricate and detailed and it's not nearly as easy as finding a new person that you don't know. And so you can't compare, "Well, it's very hard to develop romance and passion with my husband, but really easy with my lover." Well, of course it is. We're wired to have that be the case. That's not the point. The point is that... And now we're getting into an integral understanding of evolution of consciousness. As we expand our consciousness, as we get more world-centric and more compassionate and less bullshit, our relationships are more demanding. And so it's very, very difficult. I haven't found relationships where people have the depth of connection that they want, knowing each other and accepting each other and loving each other deeply, that they have that and that that container, which is powerful but fragile, can tolerate one of them going out and falling in love with another person. And also, that container suffers if they don't do what they need to do to take care of their love affair. They have a love affair that they believe in that they're sustaining with each other. Keith Witt: So, why is that fragile? Well, because it requires an awful lot of attention and knowledge and understanding and self-regulation. Why is it great? Because there's deeper intimacy available in that container than in previous containers over the last 10,000 years and it's more demanding. If you have a very, very primitive... Say you have a relationship that's pure conformist. We're getting married, we're going to have kids, we're going to do what the Bible says or the Koran says. In those cultures, women stop having sex with their partner when they stop being of childbirth age, in general. Fascinating study. They just go at that point, they go, "Well, I'm not going to do it anymore." A lot, not always, but a fair amount. Why is that? Because there isn't a developmental layer of intimacy that they and their husband are working for, because they're in a system where he's in charge. She has to do what he says. I say "yes" to sex, until I can't have kids anymore and then I can say "no" if I want. Keith Witt: And if we don't have a certain level of intimacy and a commitment to depth, why would we be interested? He would be going after youth and beauty and maybe I'll have an affair or maybe I won't. It just depends. If you're going in, but if you both have the sense of equal depth, if you both are post formal operational, if you both want to sustain your friendship and your love affair and expand it and expand each other, well, then that requires a different kind of inner subjectivity. So these are very complicated forces that are operating on all of us. Now, they're explicit in integral psychotherapy because we always look at lines and levels, and probably, you're going to tell me about Ellyn Bader, probably in their developmental model, because developmental models notice that people's worldviews change, and that relationships, demands of relationship, change as we go into different developmental levels. Keith Witt: The other ones, the effective ones, unconsciously adjust for different people's worldviews, but sometimes don't consciously do it, because it's not visible to them, consciously, but unconsciously, in the session, they get a feel for it and they attune to it. Just like if you're an effective therapist... Stan Tatkin has practically nothing about sexuality in his system, but I'll bet if people come in to his system suffering from not being sexual, he climbs in, understands their experience from the inside, finds out where they're turning each other and on and off, and helps them find the kind of safety that they need to move into eroticism. Keith Witt: And eroticism's very central, because it's like the canary in the coal mine. Everything else has to be going pretty well for you to be good lovers with your partner. It's very rare, as a couples counselor, for people to come in saying, "Yeah, we're both fulfilled, sexually. We enjoy sex, we have sex regularly, and we want a divorce." That actually happens once in a great while, but that's like one in 100. Usually, when people come in and say, "Sex is great," there's a solidity to their relationship, and they're coming in to talk about other kinds of issues; money issues, sometimes... Often child issues and parental issues, sometimes physical issues, that kind of stuff. Neil Sattin: Okay, so... Yeah, there are several different directions that I feel myself being pulled, and... Keith Witt: Great. Neil Sattin: I think where I'm going to go right now is on this practical level, because I want this to all be practical, and we're talking about all these systems as practical systems. I think I heard Schnarch say that... And I don't think this is an actual statistic, I think he was just making a point, which was, in a good relationship, sex makes up about 10% of what you think about and care about, but if the sex is bad... No, if the sex is good, then it's about 10% what you think about and care about. If the sex is bad, it's 90%, or non-existent. And so, I'm thinking about that in light of what you just said and wondering, okay, for people listening who are in this place where they're like, "Okay, well, I'm not connecting with my partner erotically. Should I be going to a sex therapist? Should I be going to an EFT therapist to work on my safety? Should I be... " I could feel... I can feel confusion there, around, what do you do, practically? 'Cause so many people might see like, "Oh, you're not having sex? Well, then, let's talk about sex." Others might say, "You're not having sex? Well, that's a symptom of so many other things going on in your relationship, so let's talk about the other things, and we'll talk about sex later." Keith Witt: Well, first of all, go to a good couples therapist who understands eroticism. It doesn't matter what system they're operating in, if they're a good therapist, a good couples therapist, experienced and know how to attune, and have the things that I mentioned, those qualities, and understand eroticism. One of the reasons that Schnarch says that is that, in general, human consciousness goes where the pain is. We have a half-dozen sex drives, we don't just have one, we have lots of them. And so, if one of those sex drives is activated in a negative way, say jealousy, that's a lot of pain. Say frustration... Frustrated... This happens a lot with guys after the first baby is born. A baby is born. Okay, their wife kinda gets over the birth, and he finds her utterly adorable and desirable. Yeah, this is adorable and she's in love with his kid, she's full of love, "We're sharing this thing," and he wants to have sex. She's in love with the kid, she's got follicle-stimulating hormone up the wazoo, her desire is down, biochemically. If she doesn't have a commitment to re-establishing their love affair, then he's in pain. Keith Witt: And so, what does he do? He makes jokes about it, and there's all these bazillion jokes about men wanting more sex, mothers with small children, and guys... Women don't want to have sex. And these are hostile jokes and these separate people. And, in general, three years after the birth of the first baby, according to the Gottmans' research, 70% of couples are doing worse. But what if you teach them about affection and eroticism and sensuality and say, "You need to sustain this after the birth of the first child. You need to both be onboard with it." Well, if you teach them that, then three years later, 70% of them are saying, "Yeah, we're actually better as lovers." Now, you need... In my experience, that's useful information for me to have, as a couples therapist. Keith Witt: And it's useful for me to know the parameters of that. Just like it's useful for me to know about psychopathology. You know, if somebody has some kind of trauma thing or a personality disorder or some kind of debilitating or God knows, you know, bipolar. That kind of stuff. That has to be addressed. That really has existence. You go to a therapist that has a general understanding, and is good with sexuality in general. I don't know if I'd want to go to any couples therapist who didn't understand the principles of sexuality, and the sex drives, and the stages of sexual bonding, whether I was working on sex or not. It's such a central part of the life stages of a relationship, you know. You don't just have one marriage, you have many marriages. And there's different demands at each developmental level of marriage. And you want to be true to those demands and help each other with them, and good couples therapists all do that. Whether they do it consciously or unconsciously doesn't really matter, you know. They do it. Because, they're inside the universe of these couples helping them grow. And they discover these blocks, and they have their own orientation to help people through them, and help people into deep inter-subjective, into love with each other. Keith Witt: And so, that's... All good couples therapists can attune. They all interrupt people all the time. 'Cause you gotta interrupt toxic patterns, and they all have some sense of what a positive pattern is. You know, all couples therapists suspend their ego in service of their clients. If you have too much ego in the session, you lose your capacity to help people. All good couples therapists are willing to share their clients' pain. All good couples therapists tell vivid enough stories, have vivid enough metaphors that they register, they land with people. They're bringing their best selves into the work, so that's... If you took anybody from any system and saw them work, and they were effective, you'd see that in my opinion and so, that's their natural healing style. And, you know, you keep expanding that and after a while... And what breaks my heart about this is since people resist change, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of natural healing styles in existence being embodied by great practitioners, that we'll never find out about. Because, you know, there's a resistance in the field to new systems. And these people don't have as much... I don't advocate much for any of my systems. Keith Witt: As a founder, I haven't like pushed to make one of my systems famous. Okay, well, that means a lot of people haven't encountered a bunch of my systems. Okay. Well, that's kind of a weakness in my approach as the founder, really. Because if I want to make an impact, I should go out and beat drums about my systems and I don't. I go, "Well, yeah, I like my systems but the other ones are great too. Use the one that... Study the ones that turn you on. Turn that and have that enhanced and expand your natural healing style." What lights me up is people doing that. And if they want to use my system, if they like it, of course, I get a little ego rush from that, sure. That's great. [chuckle] Everybody likes to be told they're great, you know. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: You're great, Keith. [laughter] Keith Witt: Yeah, there you go. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and... Keith Witt: Well, I'm actually a little embarrassed, but you know, I often do if my clients compliment me extravagantly, I'll get embarrassed. Partly because of the transference stuff, you know. Okay, so people go through stages, and partly because, I'm uncomfortable with my ego. I don't want it to show up in my session. Anyway. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm thinking of something you said earlier about systems that maybe do or don't actually handle mental health all that well. That there's, you know, a lot of these systems work well in the context of someone isn't suffering with major depression, or borderline personality disorder and that made me think of certain modalities that are helpful with that. Like in particular, what came to mind was Internal Family Systems, Dick Schwartz's system, and... Keith Witt: I love that. Neil Sattin: And there's been an evolution of that intimacy from the inside out which is basically applying Internal Family Systems to couples therapy. Keith Witt: Yes. Neil Sattin: And that Toni Herbine-Blank, she's been here on the show to talk about that. This is something that I feel particularly connected to, is this question of how we, in a relationship, actually show up for each other to help heal. 'Cause I don't think that there are many people in our world that have escaped some form of trauma or another. I think we all have like places where we're wounded or where we don't want to go. We're talking about all of these systems in many ways from the perspective of going and seeking help, which I definitely encourage you to do. It's a good idea to go and, as Keith was talking about a little while ago, to have that outside perspective until you're really good at getting outside perspective on your own. Neil Sattin: But that being said, I like those modalities because the more conscious I think you get of how you heal from trauma, so I'm thinking of, yes, Internal Family Systems, somatic experiencing, the things that really enable you to identify what's happening within you, both your body awareness and how you attune to your body, but also what Dick talks about in Internal Family Systems, literally identifying the different personalities in you who are competing and at war, he calls them parts. Keith Witt: Yes. Neil Sattin: And then you can bring those dialogues into your conversations with your partner. Then I think there is a lot of potential through that, through co-regulation to actually heal with each other. But I don't know about any studies that show that that's going to be curative if your partner has depression, for instance, but I do have a pretty strong belief that that's going to help you show up in that relationship in a way where you're still feeling connected and you're in integrity. Keith Witt: There are studies that show that it is curative to expand into your intimate relationship, your family relationships, and your social relationships to be curative with depression, just like there are many studies, overwhelmingly, that show that exercise is a better anti-depressant than any drug. So, that's all true. And your central point, I think, is huge, and that central point is when a couple has mobilized to, one, have compassionate self-observation of both their healthy and unhealthy sides. In my Shadow Light book, I talk about growing your shadow, and that our unconsciousness is constantly giving us constructive and destructive messages, and that we have resistances, defenses against being aware of them, and to the extent that we do that, we have problems with ourselves and in relationships with other people. Because, let's face it, the more intimate you are with yourself, which is having compassionate awareness and acceptance of yourself and self-regulation, the more able you are to be intimate with other people. So, that's just how it works, ask any therapist, any couples therapist. Keith Witt: And Dick Schwartz's approach is wonderful in that, one, he develops... You'll notice there's always a compassionate witness observing these inner parts, okay? Just like meditation increases the capacity of the compassionate self-observation, the witness, as we say in the wisdom traditions, so do these systems that look at these inner parts. Because if I'm looking at inner parts, who's looking? The compassionate witness is looking, and awareness regulates. So, as I'm looking at these parts and I'm identifying the constructive and destructive ones, already I am unconsciously up-regulating the constructive ones, down-regulating the destructive ones. Okay, that's a great language, and it's nonjudgmental, but it's very, very powerful. Now, say you do that with your partner. Instead of taking offense when your partner says something nasty, you go, "Wow, that was that nasty sub-personality." And you go, "Whoa, that was kind of nasty." And they go, "Ooh, that was my nasty self, I'm sorry." Now, at that point, the nasty self isn't in charge. The compassionate witness is in charge regulating the nasty self and now bonding with that partner, and they are collaborating to help shape each other to be their best selves. Keith Witt: When you get to that point with a couple that are doing that with their friendship, their love affair, and their capacity to repair injuries, that's a self-sustaining system that creates the great relationships. And you see the great relationships, you see that, it's called the Michelangelo Effect, it's been studied, and people, they end up talking more like each other, and looking more like each other. But even more, they get up... Long-term couples will tend to get happier with each other because they're receiving influence to be better. And it takes a lot of courage and a lot of openness to receive influence, and a lot of self-regulatory capacity, and that always runs from some kind of compassionate witness, and all the systems encourage that. They all have their different names for it, but if you don't have that, then you're kind of left with raw behaviorism. And if you do have that, which most of us do, or formal operational or post-formal operational. Keith Witt: Having that compassionate witness be more robust gives us more options, response flexibility and interpersonal neurobiology, they would say. And response flexibility isn't random. I want to choose the healthy responses, which support love and support health and I want to say no to the unhealthy ones. But I have to be aware of them, I have to be able to regulate them. That's where Allan Schore comes with regulation theory, that's where Harville Hendrix. His systems basically force people to self-regulate because they can't go into their fight patterns 'cause he's given them different patterns to do. Keith Witt: And so, probably the power of this system is as much by not allowing people to do their hostile patterns as it is giving them new patterns, and I think that's true for Dick Schwartz too in Internal Family Systems, and it's especially useful in trauma because we get overwhelmed with trauma. So, anything that causes us to observe trauma without being overwhelmed, whether it's somatic re-experiencing, EMDR, Internal Family Systems, all those things are drawing from the same well in terms of helping us be aware and regulate and then attach and then connect, love other people and be loved by other people. These are the things that the affective systems have in common. Like, practical mythological, somebody might do better if they see themselves at a particular stage of the Hero's Journey. Great, I love the Hero's Journey, I'm all over that, I've been studying it all my life and practising it. Keith Witt: Somebody might do great in seeing, "Well, I have this destructive... An Internal Family Systems thing. One of my firemen is just driving me crazy by giving me all these impulses to regulate myself in unhealthy ways." You go, "Oh, yeah." But he wants that fireman and he wants to feel better and what's a healthy way to feel better? Oh, now, I'm going to these other selves. Okay, these deeper ones. Oh, and here's this injured self that just really never felt good and still doesn't. Oh, well, we need to love that self until it begins to feel like a legitimate person who's in pain. When that begins to happen, say a childhood injury, most people hate that little kid who was abused, if you had early abuse. Once you start loving that kid who was abused, feeling the pain but loving him, saying, "Hey, look, it wasn't your fault they molested you or beat you up," things change, there's more freedom of motion and you can love better. Neil Sattin: Right. And this goes straight to the strengths of a system like EFT, and that's based around attachment and why it's so important to recognize the bonding, the safety, the ways that you are trying to regulate your safety in relationship. And if you're not conscious of that, how the ways you do it are probably going to be jeopardizing, ultimately, the safety of your relationship, even though, ironically, you're trying to keep yourself safe in those moments. Keith Witt: Yes, and now here's the paradox of the whole attachment stuff. The attachment theory just kind of blew the lid off of the developmental orientation. People have been resisting psychoanalytics... The cognitive behaviorists, the cognitive therapists have been resisting for decades the psychoanalysts' assertion that infancy and early childhood really matter. Well, attachment theory showed that it really does, that we do get set up for secure and insecure attachment, and that there's elements of that that go all the way to the adult attachment industry that the researchers in Berkeley, I forget their name... Mary Main came up with. Yes. Keith Witt: Now, there's a little switch here because that attachment has to do with mother/infant attachment. Okay, now, we go on to couples and then we gotta add that sexual component. Adding that sexual component to secure attachment is tricky. I really don't want to be having to be secure with my wife exactly the way I was secure with my mom. I want to have elements of that, but there's not a lot of eroticism there, or hopefully there isn't, and if there is, there's more problems, that would be more complicated. And so now we have to add that erotic component. Now that erotic component has a lot of other elements in it. It has adventure, it has transgression, it has change, it has whoever we discovered we are from a gender standpoint or whoever we discover we are in terms of our own kinks, whatever our culture told us about our sexuality, whether it's good or it's bad. Keith Witt: People discover their sexuality, and if they're lucky, the culture says, "Oh, that's fine sexuality." Say you discover you're a heterosexual g

This is it! Wait… this is it? THIS?! Okay… Well, we get the old Nadine back!  Andy and Lucy are in love! Special Agent Dale Cooper is bested by drapery!  With “Beyond Life and Death,” Twin Peaks is over, baby! Until next week that is… Our main theme, “Downstream” was composed by CNTRL_ALT_DSTRY. The songRead More

The only superpower I know I have is to make more mistakes than the average dentist. All successes and recoveries after those mistakes happened as a direct result of the analysis of those mistakes and the redoubling of efforts to make those mistakes right moving forward. The purpose of this episode is to save all of you years of frustrations and give you the shortcuts I have learned without you having to suffer through the sequelae of my mistakes. You get a head start on your success by stealing takeaways from my misguided labor so you can reach the top of the mountain much faster than I. In this Episode You Will Learn: All the mistakes I made after trying to convert my general practice to a Cosmetic Advanced Services practice and how you can avoid the pitfalls to create your own niche practice The details of the letter I sent to a group of patient that lost 98% of that pool of patients and what I learned that can help any practice retain their patients and close the back door. The worst way to try to boost your hygiene department.  (Hint:  Your hygienists and you will think it is a good idea at first.  Don’t be fooled)  Plus, the right way to build a rock-solid hygiene foundation. The number 1 way to look like a wimp to your staff and how to look like the leader they need instead. And Much, Much More…   (#) The Dr. Chris Griffin Show – Season 1 Episode 8 “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Now who said that? Welcome to the Dr. Chris Griffin Show. Your resource for leveraging systems and technology to easier workload, increase productivity and provide you with the time off you deserve to live the life of your dreams. It’s time to practice productivity in the passionate pursuit of a better life with your host, Dr. Chris Griffin. The doctor is in. Hey everybody! That is one of those quotes that you hear your whole entire life but you don’t always necessarily, you don’t know who said it right? it just, well over time it’s just part of the common culture. But in this case, I’m going to tell you who said that, it was a guy named William Edward Hickson, now also known as W. Hickson. Now he was a British education writer, he was the author of a book called “Time and Faith”. Now I have not read that book but I’ll tell you what, it’s got a great subject matter because as we talked about way back in I think Episode 4, of this season. Time is very important and I think faith is also very, very important. So there you go, he’s also created and writing a part of the British National Anthem. So there you go, the line out of the proverb that he actually wrote is called “Tis a lesson you should heed, try, try again. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.” Okay? I like it, I like it. So anyway, British guy, very, very famous saying, very famous proverb but maybe you didn’t know who said it. Okay? Well anyway, the reason that this is an important quote in one that I wanted to share with you guys today, is for a reason as I’m getting ready…I’m actually getting ready this week to do a full day CE course in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Right? I like Oklahoma City, it’s one of those places I had not been too much into recently and I’ve in and through Oklahoma City 5 times, maybe 4 or 5 times in the last 2 years and you know it’s really not that far of a drive. I drive a lot of places I go and it happened to be on Highway 40 or US Interstate 40 and which I can hop on really close to my home. And go through Memphis and Little Rock and next thing you know, you’re in Oklahoma City. And you’re like, wow this is actually not that far. But I’m getting ready to do a CE course there for their dental society. And one of the thing that I’m going to talk about, is I’m going to talk about all the mistakes that I have made over the years. Right? A lot of mistakes and because it…truthfully, who wants to go to a course and hear the guy that’s going to get up there and