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Welcome to another informative episode of the Data Gurus podcast! Today, Sima shares the first part of a two-part series she created from the session she moderated at SampleCon, which took place in Los Angeles a few weeks ago. The session was titled Future-Proofing Our Industry and covered topics that included talent topics related to how people will return to work, supply topics, and market dynamics. The panel includes Patrick Comer, the CEO and Founder of Lucid, Bob Fawson, EVP of Business Strategy for Dynata, Mario Carrasco, the Co-Founder and Principal of ThinkNow, and Rebecca Brooks, the Founder, and CEO of Alter Agents. What work looks like for the next six to twelve months Rebecca: Alter Agents had an easy transition to working full-time remotely during the pandemic. Their staff also doubled during that time. They decided to allow their lease to lapse at the end of June 2021 and keep on working remotely. It has been challenging not to have the usual opportunities to interact and chat with colleagues. So Rebecca has scheduled time to meet with everybody one-on-one, once a month, to keep connected and talk about business or personal matters. Overall, her staff is happy and working better than ever. Working from home has released them from some of the stress they were experiencing from being at work. They now communicate with one another fluidly via Slack. Rebecca's primary concern is upholding the company values and maintaining its culture. Bob: Bob feels a little concerned about onboarding and helping new team members find mentors and learn how to work in a professional environment. They have been pursuing a hybrid model, which was a shift for their company. Bob is not sure that anyone knows what their preference will be six months from now, but he is looking forward to that evolution. Bob has enjoyed seeing how resilient people are. He hopes to end up with a little more balance between work and non-work life. Mario: When ThinkNow was founded back in 2010, working from home was a core tenet. They wanted to be a cloud-first company. Their leadership works from their headquarters in Los Angeles, and they have sales staff around the country, project management teams in India, and development teams in Latin America. The hardest part of the pandemic was finding themselves unable to see their overseas employees at their annual or bi-annual gatherings. Although technology has helped, they still miss getting together in person and interacting. They have taken the approach of opening their office and letting people come in when they want to. So far, that has been working well. About 70% of the employees go in two to three times a week, and the rest go every day. They are looking at people from a holistic perspective, rather than only looking at them only from a work lens, to address some of the mental wear and tear after the pandemic. Patrick: Lucid is a global company, so they are constantly aware that the pandemic affects different parts of the world differently, and it is not over yet. They have done their best to live up to their core value of compassion. The team went out of its way to offer help to Indian people and their families and assist them in staying connected and doing business. Patrick remembers having to remind their team in India that they could have extra days off if they or their families were sick. Sharing an experience, and knowing that we are all innately very human at this time, has made Patrick a more empathetic person, and hopefully a more compassionate person too. Connecting people Bob It was supportive of Bob's company culture to see the offices in Europe or the Philippines take on the work that others could not. That connected people across cultures and across the legacy companies that make up Dynata. It has been a catalyst for a lot of expression of good within the company. Moving forward  Moving forward needs to be an organic process.

There's a stigma associated with unresolved trauma. Many people don't talk about their traumatic experiences. Unfortunately, we're only taught short-term solutions like coping with stress and managing our emotions. With these short-term solutions, the root cause remains unresolved. The trauma is still present and can affect our everyday lives. In this episode, Dr Don Wood joins us to talk about how unresolved trauma can directly affect our health. He aims to remove the stigma around unresolved trauma, and the first step towards healing is understanding the pain we've gone through. He also talks about the power of our minds from the different stories of his past patients.  Tune in to this episode if you want to learn more about how unresolved trauma can affect your health and life.   Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to  https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.   Customised Online Coaching for Runners CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer  Without Burnout & Injuries Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles? Do you want to beat last year's time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler? ​​Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, your goals and your lifestyle?  Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.   Health Optimisation and Life Coaching If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you. If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or are wanting to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com. Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless. For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.   Lisa's Anti-Ageing and Longevity Supplements  NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, a NAD+ precursor Feel Healthier and Younger* Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time. What is NMN? NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that is capable of boosting the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life. Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements that are of highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today. Support Your Healthy Ageing We offer powerful, third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today. Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 capsules NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 Capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 Capsules Quality You Can Trust — NMN Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combat the effects of aging, while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility Boost Your NAD+ Levels — Healthy Ageing: Redefined Cellular Health Energy & Focus Bone Density Skin Elasticity DNA Repair Cardiovascular Health Brain Health  Metabolic Health   My  ‘Fierce' Sports Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.   Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Learn how unresolved trauma can affect your life and compromise your health. Discover Dr Don's alternative ways of how he sees addiction. Understand the power of our minds and how it can do anything to protect us from feeling pain.   Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron! You can choose between being an official or VIP patron for $7 and $15 NZD per month, respectively. Harness the power of NAD and NMN for anti-ageing and longevity with NMN Bio. More Pushing the Limits Episodes: 183: Sirtuins and NAD Supplements for Longevity with Elena Seranova 189: Increasing Your Longevity with Elena Seranova Connect with Dr Don Wood: Facebook Inspired Performance Institute – Learn more about Dr Don's books and the courses they're offering by going to their website. The Unbeatable Mind Podcast: How to Deal with Trauma with Dr Don Wood Brain Wash: Detox Your Mind for Clearer Thinking, Deeper Relationships, and Lasting Happiness by David and Austin Perlmutter  Emotional Concussions: Understanding How Our Nervous System is Affected by Events and Experiences Throughout Our Life  by Dr Donald Wood   Episode Highlights [05:32] What Inspired Dr Don to Start His Career Dr Don founded the Inspire Performance Institute because of his wife and daughter.  Dr Don shares that he had a quiet and idyllic childhood. He didn't experience any trauma. His wife had a rough childhood which contributed largely to the unresolved trauma and fear she lives with today. His daughter also inspired his research. She was diagnosed with Crohn's disease at 14.  [11:10] Dr Don Shares About His Childhood He remembers he used to get bad stomach pains when he was young. They would go to their family doctor for a checkup. His grandfather mentioned that he has stomach pains because of the stress at home. Later on, Dr Don realised that he felt the pressure in their home. The stress from this manifested as stomach pains. [15:00] Impact of Unresolved Trauma in Later Life Dr Don believes that unresolved trauma creates inflammation in the body. It compromises a person's immune system and neurotransmitters.  A person gets sick and starts feeling bad because of serotonin neurotransmitters. They are affected by our guts' inflammation. Unfortunately, the only things taught to us are managing and coping with the stress. We do not get to the root cause of the problem.  [18:10] Dr Don's Career Before Inspired Performance Institute Dr Don has been an entrepreneur all his life. Before he founded Inspired Performance Institute, he was in financial services.  He realised that committing to Inspired Performance Institute meant studying again.  To add credibility to his name, he went back to school and got his Ph.D. [20:31] What Causes Addiction Dr Don doesn't believe that addiction is caused by physical dependency. It's more about how the mind connected using drugs and survival.  Because people feel bad, they find a way to stop the pain and feel better temporarily. Most of them find it in using drugs.  The subconscious mind tries to find a way to feel better. The conscious mind builds a habit based on it. The interaction between these two memory systems is a factor in developing addictions. [25:39] Subconscious and Conscious Mind 95% of our mind works on the subconscious survival base. The remaining 5% is concerned with logic and reason. The 5% uses reason and logic to make brilliant things in life. However, when survival needs arise, the part dedicated to survival overrides the other. To learn more about Dr Don's analysis of the Time Slice Theory and how it's connected to how we respond to our day-to-day lives, listen to the full episode. [35:08] Effects of Brain Injuries on Brain Response People with repeated brain injuries might have problems with logical and survival thinking responses. Brain injury patients have lower blood flow in the frontal part when faced with survival situations based on brain scans.  [36:03] Available Help for People Who Have Brain Injuries Dr Don's son had three head injuries since he was young. The third one affected his communication skills and emotions.  He believes that his son has functional damage to his brain. Once they discovered that, they got him into hyperbaric oxygen therapy.  He started getting his blood flow into the areas of his brain that process his experiences.   [40:18] Probable Use of fMRI Dr Don shares that fMRI can be another procedure that can help people with brain injuries.  fMRI can detect abnormalities in your brain that other methods may not pick up. [42:26] The Story of Dr Don's Daughter His daughter was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. It affected her career as an actress.  His daughter's condition made him realise: inflammation responds to unresolved trauma. They managed to resolve her unresolved trauma that happened when she was six years old. Her mind understood that, and her negative response stopped.  [46:01] Talking About Depression In cases of depression, the person's mind puts pressure on them to do something in the past.  Depression then becomes the absence of emotion. It tries to numb you from the stress in your mind. When they get to the cause of what their mind needs and resolves it, their depression eases.  [48:02] Story of Rebecca Gregory Rebecca was a victim of the Boston Marathon bombing. She came to seek help from Dr Don five years ago. She has PTSD. Dr Don helped her realise the connection between her response to daily life and the memory she has. To know more about the process on how Dr Don helped Rebecca tune in to the full episode. [51:43] Similarities of Dr Don's Approach to EMDR Dr Don shared that he also studied EMDr In his practice, he used some of the techniques in EMDr He enhanced them to become quicker and more comprehensive.  Unlike EMDR, Dr Don's approach is faster and more straightforward. The patient can choose which way they would like to do it.  [54:36] Dr Don on Talk Therapies He believes that talk therapy is good. You must deal with a current problem. They aim to resolve the old issues that aggravate the new experiences.  [56:22] How Dr Don's Program Helped His Daughter Crohn's disease is incurable. However, since his daughter underwent their program, her Crohn's didn't flare-up. He believes his daughter's body has more energy to do maintenance and repair issues. It's possible because her unresolved trauma has been resolved.  [56:22] How Stress Connects to Our Other Unresolved Traumas The daily stress that we encounter every day might pile up and affect us in the long run. They might also connect and add up to our trauma, making it harder for us to cope. We misinterpreted experiences when we were young that still affect us as we grow older. Dr Don shares stories of how unresolved childhood experiences may affect a person as they grow up. [01:08:15] People Have Different Filters Dr Don says that people have different atmospheric conditions they grew up in. These factors affect how they filter and deal with their everyday experiences.  Our brain acts as the filter, and all of our experiences pass through that filter. The differences in how we operate upon those experiences are based on them.  Dr Don proceeds to share different stories of his patients regarding the differences in people's minds.  [01:15:06] Dr Don on Smoking  Dr Don says that smokers are not addicted to nicotine. They need the sensation of feeling better. The mind of a smoker associates feeling better to smoking. This link causes addiction.  You can break the habit by introducing a new, healthier factor. [01:19:17] A Better Approach Towards Addiction Many approaches to addiction make the person feel useless. They surrender to never getting better. Dr Don pushes a system that empowers people. He makes them realise they can overcome their addiction by understanding the cause.  [01:24:42] How the Mind Reacts to Pain Dr Don shares that the mind is powerful enough. It will do anything for you to stop feeling pain.  People who commit suicide act in desperation to stop the pain they're feeling.  He shares the story of the German sniper. It can represent the power of the mind in reaction to pain.   7 Powerful Quotes  ‘I really started the Inspired Performance Institute because of my wife and daughter more. Mostly my daughter than anything else.' ‘So if I had been a little frustrated with something that worked that day, or is, you know, some other thing that was nothing related to her, she could pick up on that tone change. And then, in her mind, what her mind would be doing is saying, “What do we know about men when they start to get angry?” And a whole bunch of data and information about her father would come flooding in and overstimulate her nervous system.' ‘And so when my daughter was 14, she was diagnosed with Crohn's. And they just told us that you just kind of have to, you know, learn to live with this.' ‘And that's really what led me to develop the program, is I realised that when my daughter was 16, she disclosed to us some sexual abuse that she had had when she was like six years of age that we had no idea. So my wife was, obviously both of us were devastated, but my wife was extremely, she had experienced, you know, sexual abuse as a child and thought she would never let that happen to her child.' ‘How could the body crave a substance that it doesn't know? It doesn't regulate heroin. How could it crave something that doesn't regulate? I believe it's the mind has made a connection between the heroin and survival.' ‘What's happened is your mind has been calling for an action for many, many years, that was impossible to accomplish. But your mind doesn't know that and it keeps putting pressure on you. “Do it, do it, do it.” And because you don't do it, it's using these emotions to call for the action, it stops calling for the action, it shuts off the emotions. And so now depression is the absence of emotion.' ‘I believe in a lot of cases, that's what they're doing, are trying to desensitise you to it. You know, talk about it enough, maybe it doesn't feel as dramatic. And talk therapy has its place so I'm not against it. I think where talk therapy is really good is when you're dealing with a current problem. Where I think the difference between what we do is we're able to get the talk therapy much more effective when you take out all the old stuff that keeps aggravating the new stuff.'    About Dr Don Wood Dr Don Wood, Ph.D., developed the TIPP method after researching how atmospheric conditions affect our minds and impact our lives. In his search for answers for them, Dr Wood connected trauma and their health issues. He also recognised the daily stress they lived with. The only solutions provided came from medications. His experience with his family provided the determination required to develop a cutting-edge neuroscience approach. The program has benefited individuals all over the world. The results have been impressive. Dr Wood has helped trauma survivors from the Boston Marathon bombing attack and the Las Vegas shooting. He has also helped highly successful executives and world-class athletes. Marko Cheseto, a double amputee marathon runner, broke the world record after completing TIPP. Chris Nikic worked with Dr Wood and made world news by becoming the first person with Downs Syndrome to complete an Ironman competition.  The Inspire Performance Institute was built on this simple phrase, ‘There's nothing wrong with you, there's nothing wrong with your mind'. Some events and experiences have created some glitches and error messages for your mind during your lifetime, and all you need is a reboot.   Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can understand how unresolved trauma can affect our overall health and well-being. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa   Full Transcript Of The Podcast Lisa Tamati: Welcome back, everybody to Pushing the Limits. Today I have Dr Don Wood, who is sitting in Florida. And Dr Don is a wonderful man. He is a trauma expert. He is someone who had a problem in his own family and sought about finding a solution. He is the developer of the TIPP method, T-I-P-P method. He spent years researching, and to understand how our minds affect our bodies. Dr Wood made the connection between trauma and health issues. In addition, he recognised the daily stress that people live with when they've been through trauma, and that the only solutions provided in the normal conventional world and medications. But his experience with his family provided the determination required to develop a cutting-edge neuroscience approach, a real holistic solution that provides immediate and long lasting relief for people who have been through trauma of any sort, whether it's small or large. The TIPP program developed by Dr Wood has benefited individuals all over the world. And he really wanted to create a solution that removed the stigma of trauma. Too many people are afraid to ask for help because of that stigma. And that's why he named the program around increasing performance levels. The name of his institute is the Inspired Performance Institute.  I really love this episode with Dr Don Wood, he is a lovely, amazing person with a way of helping people get rid of PTSD, get rid of trauma out of their lives. So that they can get on with being the best versions of themselves. And that's what we're all about here. He's worked with everyone, from soldiers coming back from wars to victims of the Boston Marathon bombing campaign, to highly successful executives and world-class athletes. He's been there, done that. So I really hope that you enjoy this conversation with Dr Wood.  Before we head over to the show, just want to remind you, we have our new premium membership for the podcast Pushing the Limits. Now out there. It's a Patron page so you can be involved with the program, with the podcast. We've been doing this now for five and a half years; it is a labor of love. And we need your help to keep this great content coming to you, and so that we can get the best experts in the world and deliver this information direct to your ears. It's a passion that's been mine now for five and a half years and you can get involved with it, you get a whole lot of premium member benefits. And you get to support this cause which we're really, really grateful for. For all those who have joined us on the Patron program. Thank you very, very much. You know, pretty much for the price of a cup of coffee a month, you can get involved. So check that out at patron.lisatamati.com. That's patron P-A-T-R-O-N dot lisatamati.com.  And just reminding you too, we still have our Epigenetics Program going. And this, we have now taken hundreds and hundreds of people through this program. It's a game-changing program that really gives you insights into your genetics, and how to optimise your lifestyle to optimise your genes basically. So everything from your fitness, what types of exercise to do, what times of the day to do it. What, whether you're good at the long distance stuff or whether you be a bit more as a power base athlete, whether you need more agility, whether you need more work through the spine, all these are just information that's just so personalised to you. But it doesn't just look at your fitness, it looks at your food, the exact foods that are right for you. And it goes way beyond that as well as to what are the dominant neurotransmitters in your brain, how they affect your mood and behaviour, what your dominant hormones are, the implications of those, your predispositions for any disorders and the future so that we can hit all those off at the past. It's not deterministic, that is really giving you a heads up, ‘Hey, this could be a direction that you need to be concerned about in the future. And here's what you can do about it.' So come and check out our program. Go to lisatamati.com. And under the button ‘Work With Us', you will find our Peak Epigenetics program. Check that out today. And maybe you can come and join us on one of our live webinars or one of our pre-recorded webinars if you want to you can reach out to me, lisa@lisatamati.com, and I can send you more information about their Epigenetics Program. Right, now over to the show with Dr Don Wood.  Hello, everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. This week, I have another amazing guest for you. I've found some pretty big superstars over the years, and this one is going to be very important to listen to. I have Dr Don Wood, welcome to the show, Dr Don. Dr Don Wood: Thank you, Lisa. I'm excited to be here. Lisa: This is gonna be a very interesting, and it's a long-anticipated interview for me, and Dr Don is sitting in Florida, and you've got a very nice temperature of the day, isn't it? Dr Don: Oh, absolutely gorgeous- low 80s, no humidity. I mean, you just like I said, you couldn't pick a better day, it's very fast. I would have tried to sit outside and do this. But I was afraid somebody would start up a lawn mower. Lisa: Podcast life. I've just got the cat wandering, and so he's probably start meowing in a moment. Now, Dr Don, you are an author, a speaker, a trauma expert, the founder of the Inspired Performance Institute. Can you give us a little bit of background of how did you get to where you are today, and what you do? Dr Don: Well it's sort of an interesting story. I really started the Inspired Performance Institute because of my wife and daughter more. Mostly my daughter than anything else. I talked about this, is that I led this very, very quiet, idyllic kind of childhood with no trauma. Never had anything ever really happen to me. You know, bumps along the way, but nothing kind of that would be considered trauma. And I lived in a home that was so loving and nurturing, that even if I got bumped a little bit during the day, you know, was I, when I was a kid, I'm coming home to this beautiful environment that would just regulate my nervous system again.  Lisa: Wow.  Dr Don: So I believe that that was critical in terms of having my nervous system always feeling safe. And that really resulted in amazing health. I mean, I've been healthy all my life. And as an adult, when things would happen, I could automatically go back into that nervous system regulation, because I had trained it without even knowing it.  Lisa: Yeah. Dr Don: that I was able to get back into that. Well. And so when I met my wife, I realised she was not living in that world. And amazingly enough, Lisa, I thought everybody lived like, because I had no idea that a lot of my friends were being traumatised at home. That I had no idea, because everybody's on their best behaviour. If I come over, everybody's behaving themselves and you don't see it. My friends, a lot of times wouldn't share it because of either shame or guilt. I mean, my wife, nobody knew what was going on in their home.  Lisa: Yeah.  Dr Don: And she had one best friend that knew, that was about it. And if you met her father, who was really the bad guy in this whole thing, everybody thought he was the greatest guy. Because outwardly, he came across as this generous, hard-working, loving kind of guy. Loved his family, but he just ran his home with terror.  Lisa: Wow. Terrible. Dr Don: And so, oh, it was terrible. So when I met my wife, I realised, wow, this, because we got close very quickly, because I had the chance to play professional hockey in Sweden when I was 18. So we got married at 19. So very quickly, I was around her a lot, while we were sort of getting ready for that. So I got to see the family dynamic up close very quickly. And that's when I realised, boy, she's not living in that world, which is living in fear all the time. And that's why I sat down with her one day, and I just said, ‘Tell me what's going on here. Because I can sense this tension in here. I could sense that there was a lot of fear going on. What's going on?' And she started sharing it with me, but swore me to secrecy. Like I could never tell anybody because of all that shame and guilt, because nobody really outside the home would have been aware of it. Lisa: Or probably believed it.  Dr Don: Or believed it. Right.  Lisa: Yeah.  Dr Don: And then it was again, that ‘What will people think about me? What do they think about my family?' That's really common, when you have people who have experienced trauma like that. And so, I sort of follow along and said, ‘Okay, this will be our secret,' but I thought to myself, ‘Well, this will be great now, because I'm going to get her out of that home'.  Lisa: Yeah.  Dr Don: And she's going to be living in my world. So everything will just calm down, and she'll be feeling that peace that I've experienced all my life. Lisa: Not quite so simple.  Dr Don: I was like, Well, how is this not helping? Like, why now? She's living in the world that I grew up in because I was very much like my father. I wasn't gonna yell at her, scream at her, do anything that would have made her feel fearful. But she was still living in fear.  Lisa: Yeah.  Dr Don: And if, yeah, and if I said something like, ‘No, I don't like that.' She could tear up and start going, why are you mad at me? Yeah. And I would be like, ‘Oh my God, like where did you get I was mad at you for?' I just said. That made no sense to me at the time. Now I understand it perfectly. What I didn't realise at the time was that people who have been traumatised are highly sensitive to sound— Lisa: Hypervigilant and hyperaware of noise and people raising their voice. Dr Don: Any kind of noise. And what she also, as a child, she had learned to listen very carefully to the way her father spoke, so that she could then recognise any kind of the slightest little change in my vocal tone. So if I had been a little frustrated with something at work that day, or, you know, some other thing that was nothing related to her, she could pick up on that tone change. And then, in her mind, what her mind would be doing is saying, ‘What do we know about men when they start to get angry?' And a whole bunch of data and information about her father would come flooding in and overstimulate her nervous system. Lisa: So then it's like they Google search, doing a Google search and going, ‘Hey, have I had this experience before?'  Dr Don: Yeah.  Lisa: And picking out, ‘Yeah, we've been here before. This is not good. This is dangerous. This is scary.' Dr Don: Yep. And that's actually what led me to the research that I did, mainly because of my daughter, though. So my wife lived with that, she developed Hashimoto's. So she had this thyroid issue with, because she was constantly in a fight or flight state.  Lisa: Yeah, the cortisol. Dr Don: More flight than anything. Yeah, cortisol. And so when my daughter was 14, she was diagnosed with Crohn's. And they just told us that you just kind of have to learn to live with this. And she's going to be on medication for the rest of her life. And we'll just continue to cut out pieces of her intestines until she has nothing left and she'd have a colostomy bag. That's just the way it is.  Lisa: Oh. And she's 14 years old. Dr Don: She was 14. Yeah. She ended up having for resections done, she would go down to you know, 90, 85 pounds. She'd get so sick, the poor thing. No, because she just couldn't eat. Yeah. And she couldn't hold anything down. And they just told us to have no answers. My wife did unbelievable research, trying to come up with answers and really couldn't come up with anything except this management system that they've been given her. And so, I was adopted. So we didn't know my family history. Yeah. So our family doctor was my grandfather. And I didn't know this until I was 18.  Lisa: Oh wow.  Dr Don: I always knew I was adopted. But my mother shared the story with me when I was 18. That he came to my parents and said, I have a special child I want you to adopt, right. Now. I guess you just knew that my parents were just amazing people. And you know, at that time, you know, unwed mothers, that was considered a shame. Right? You didn't talk about that. So that was a quiet adoption.  Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: In fact, his wife didn't even know about it.  Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: Could be my grandmother. And that's, it's interesting, the story, because I should share this too. Because what happened was, is I never understood why my birth certificate was dated two years after my birthday. And what happened was, is that my parents adopted me, like immediately upon birth. But my grandmother found out about it, his wife found out about and sued my parents to get me back.  Lisa: Oh. Dr Don: And so they had to go into this legal battle for two years.  Lisa: Oh, wow.  Dr Don: Now I remember when I was really, really young, I used to get these really bad stomach pains. And I, and they took me, I remember going to doctors, I was really young. I remember going to doctors, but my grandfather was very holistic at the time for an MD. So you know, I was on cod liver oil, and you know, all these different things like, and so what he said to me, he says, No, he's just stressed out because of the stress in the home. You have to take the stress out of this home. He's feeling it.'  Lisa: Yep.  Dr Don: Right. So it's not that my parents were yelling, screaming.  Lisa: He's ahead of his time. Dr Don: Oh, way ahead. But what he realised was that, because it was so hard financially for them, that had a major effect on their life. So I guess I was feeling it. And so they went out of their way to take all the stress out.  Lisa: Wow. What lovely parents. Dr Don: Oh yeah. So it created this unbelievable, unusual home life. And so I never had any real tension in the home.  Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: Well, that was, I guess, as my wife said, we were the perfect petri dishes for this because I was living what we want to be, and she was living in the opposite world of what a lot of people do live in. And so at least I knew what the model was, what we were going for. Lisa: And when we're exposed to trauma very early in life, it has a much bigger impact on your health and everything then when it happens later in life. Is that right? Dr Don: Absolutely. Because we've never learned how to balance our systems, so then it stays, you know, in dysregulation a lot more than it did. And that's really what sort of led me to develop the program, is I realised that when my daughter was 16, she disclosed to us some sexual abuse that she had had when she was like six years of age that we had no idea. So my wife was, obviously both of us were devastated, but my wife was extremely, she had experienced, you know, sexual abuse as a child and thought she would never let that happen to her child.  Lisa: Yeah. Dr Don: So now my poor wife has also got a new, you know, trauma onto her. And so that's where it really came down to, is, you know, she said to me, ‘You could research this and find out what's going on, because I have no answers.' And that's when I started to research and I made the connection between trauma and these autoimmune issues, for example, that my wife had, and my daughter. And so what I discovered is that I believe that unresolved trauma creates inflammation in the body. The inflammation compromises the immune system and your neurotransmitters. So we start getting sick, and we start feeling bad because our neurotransmitter, serotonin is produced mostly in the gut. So the serotonin is affected by the inflammation, which was from my daughter, right? She's not going to feel good.  Lisa: Nope.  Dr Don: And then that just leads to a host of other problems. And it's, it's really, really sad that the only solution that we currently are using is to teach people to live and manage and cope with it.  Lisa: I think, yeah, so we, we know, which is, which is good. You know, we're learning things, how to cope with anxieties, and breath work and all that sort of good stuff. But it's not getting to the root cause of the problem and being able to to deal with it. So when we're in a heightened state of stress and cortisol, and when we're taking energy away from our immune system, and blood literally away from the gut, and and from a neurotransmitter production, and all that sort of thing, so is that what's going on, and why it actually affects the body? Because this mind body connection, which we're really only in the last maybe decade, or 15 years or something, really starting to dig into, isn't it? Like there's and there's still a massive disconnect in the conventional medical world where this is the mind, and this is the body. And you know, from here, up and here, and it's separate. Dr Don: And so on and so forth? Yeah. Lisa: Yeah. And it we're one thing, you know. And so this has a massive effect on our health, and it can lead to all sorts of autoimmune diseases, or even cancers, and so on. So you were at this time, so you didn't have the Inspired Performance Institute at this stage? What were you doing professionally? And then, did you go back and do a PhD? And in...? Wow. Dr Don: I've always been an entrepreneur all my life. So I was in financial services, we did a number of different things. We, my son and I, still have an energy business, we do solar energy and stuff like that. Lisa: Oh wow.  Dr Don: I decided if I was going to do this, I needed to go back and really study. So I went back and got by, went back to school, got my PhD.  Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: And, you know, to truly, to try to add credibility, number one, to what I was doing. Because, you know, people are gonna say, ‘Well, who are you? Yeah, you know, why should we listen to you? You never had any trauma and you're supposed to be an expert? Like, how does that work?' You know, it's the same thing with addiction. You know, I help people with addiction. I've never had a drink in my life, never touched a drug in my life. Now that I say, but I know what addiction is.  Lisa: Yeah.  Dr Don: I don't believe addiction is a disease. I believe it's a code that gets built from pain. Lisa: Yeah, let's dig into that a little bit. And then we'll go back to your daughter's story. Because addiction, you know, it's something I know from a genetic perspective. I have a tendency towards, towards having addictive nature, personality traits. I chase dopamine a lot. I have a deficit of dopamine receptors. And so I'm constantly going after that reward. Now that's worked itself out in my life, and in running ridiculous kilometres and working ridiculous hours, and not always in negative things. Luckily, I've never had problems with drinking or drugs, but I know that if I had started down that road, I would have ended up probably doing it, you know, very well.  Dr Don: You'd be a star as well.  Lisa: I'd be a star in that as well. And luckily, I was sort of a little bit aware of that and my parents never drank and they, you know, made sure that we had a good relationship with things like that, and not a bad one. Have struggled with food, though. That's definitely one of the emotional sort of things. And I think a lot of people have some sort of bad relationship with food in some sort of way, shape, or form on the spectrum, so to speak. What is it that causes addiction? And is it a physical dependency? Or is there something more to it? Dr Don: Yeah, that's why I don't believe it's a physical dependency. Because here's the way I look at it is, people will say to me, ‘Well, if I stopped this heroin, the body's going to crave the heroin, and I'm going to go into withdrawal.' And my response to that is, ‘How could the body crave a substance that it doesn't know? It doesn't regulate heroin. How could it crave something that doesn't regulate?' I believe it's the mind, has made a connection between the heroin and survival. Because you have felt bad, right? Because of trauma, or whatever it is, whenever you took the heroin, you felt better.  So I had a lady come in who had been on heroin. And she said to me, she's, ‘Well, I told my therapist, I'm coming to see you. And he told me, I had to let you know upfront and be honest and tell you I have self-destructive behaviour.' And I just smiled at her. And I said, ‘Really? What would make you think you're self destructive?' And she looked at me, because this is what she's been told for a year.  Lisa: Brilliant.  Dr Don: She says, ‘Well, I'm sticking a needle in my arm with heroin, don't you think that's self destructive?' And I said to her, I said, ‘No, I don't think it was self destructive. I think you're trying to feel better. And I bet you, when you stuck the needle in your arm, you felt better.' That nobody had ever said that to her before. And so I said, ‘Now, the substance you're using is destructive, but you're not destructive? What if I could show you another way to feel better, that didn't require you having to take a drug?'  Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: And I said, ‘You're designed to feel better. And I believe that the brain, what happened is, is it because you felt bad, you found a resource that temporarily stopped that pain.' And you see your subconscious mind is fully present in the moment. So when does it want pain to stop? Right now. And if that heroin stops the pain right now, then what happened was, is that system, you have two memory systems, you have explicit memory system that records all the information in real time. So it records all the data, and stores. No other animal does that. We're the only animal that stores explicit details about events and experiences. We also have an associative procedural memory that we learned through association and repetition over time. So, because the explicit memory kept creating the pain, because we kept thinking about it, and looping through this pain cycle, you started taking heroin, then you engage your second associative memory, which learns through repetition and builds, codes, habits, and behaviours.  Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: Because you kept repeating it your mind built a code and connected up the pain being relieved by the substance.  Lisa: Wow. Dr Don: Now, your subconscious mind is literal. So it doesn't understand negation. It only understands what's happening now. And so if your mind says that substance stops the pain, it doesn't look at the future and consequences of it. It only looks at what's happening. It's only our conscious mind that can think of consequences. Your subconscious mind, which is survival-based only understands. That's why people at 911 would jump out of the buildings. They weren't jumping to die, they would jumping to stop from dying. Yeah, if they didn't jump, they would have died right now. So even if they went another two seconds, they weren't dying now.  Lisa: Right? So it's really in the right now, there's really no right now. It's really in the seconds.  Dr Don: And the very, very milliseconds of what's happening now. And there's no such thing as consequences, it's basically survival. So now, if you keep repeating that cycle over and over using heroin, and then somebody comes along and says, ‘Lisa, you can't do that. That's bad for you. I'm going to take that away from you.' Your survival brain will fight to keep it because it thinks it'll die without it.  Lisa: Yeah. Makes a glitch.  Dr Don: It's an error message.  Lisa: Have you heard of Dr Austin Perlmutter on the show last week, David Perlmutter's son and they're both written a book called Brain Wash. And there they talk about disconnection syndrome. So the disconnection between the prefrontal cortex in the amygdala and the amygdala can be more powerful when we have inflammation in the brain. For example, like inflammation through bad foods, or toxins, or mercury, or whatever the case may be. And that this can also have an effect on our ability to make good long-term decisions. It makes us live in the here and now. So I want that here and fixed now; I want that chocolate bar now. And I know my logical thinking brain is going, ‘But that's not good for you. And you shouldn't be doing that.' And you, you're trying to overcome it. But you're there's this disconnect between your prefrontal cortex and your amygdala. And I've probably butchered that scenario a little bit. Dr Don: No, you got it. But 95% of your mind is working on that subconscious survival base. It's only about 5% that's logical. That logical part of your brain is brilliant, because it's been able to use reason and logic to figure stuff out. So it created the world we live in: automobiles, airplanes, right, computers, all of that was created by that 5%, part of the brain 5%. However, if there is a survival threat, survival will always override reason and logic. 100% of the time.  Lisa: Wow.  Dr Don: So you can't stop it. And it's what I talked about was that time slice theory. Did I mention that when we were going?  Lisa: No.  Dr Don: When I did my research, one of the things that I found was something called the time slice theory. And what that is, is that two scientists at the University of Zurich asked the question— is consciousness streaming? So this logical conscious part of our mind that prefrontal cortex, is that information that we're, as you and I are talking now, is that real, coming in real time? And what they discovered is, it's not.  Lisa: Oh. Dr Don: The 95% subconscious part of your mind, it's streaming. While let's say your survival brain churns in everything in real time, processes that information, and then only sends pieces or time slices, because your conscious mind cannot handle that detail.  Lisa: Oh, wow. So they're filtering it. Dr Don: Filtering it. And yeah, so as it takes it in, processes it, and then sends time slices or some of that information to your conscious mind. Right? But there's a 400 millionth of a second gap in between your subconscious seeing it, processing it, and sending it. And when I read that, that's when I came up with the idea that what's it doing in that 400 millionth of a second? It's doing a Google search, see? And so in that 400 millionth of a second, your survival brain has already calculated a response to this information before you're consciously aware of it.  Lisa: Wow.  Dr Don: And so the prefrontal cortex has got a filter on there to be able to stop an impulse, right? So it's the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex is sort of the gatekeeper to say, ‘Okay, let's not go into a rage and get into trouble. Let's try to stop that.' So we have that part of our brain. However, here's where the problem comes in— You're driving and traffic and somebody cuts you off. And so your first response is, you get angry, because this person is like, ‘Oh, I want to chase that guy down and give him a piece of my mind.' But that part of your brain can say, ‘Let's think about this. Hold on,' you know, even though it's 400 millionth of a second later, the first anger response, then it should be able to pull that back. Here's where the problem comes in. If getting cut off in traffic looked like you had been just disrespected. During that Google search, your now, your subconscious mind has filtered through every experience of being disrespected. And so much information comes in that it cannot stop the response. It overrides it, because now it feels threatened. And our prisons are full of people who had been so badly hurt, that that part of their brain can't do that. You and I can probably do that. Right?  Lisa: Sometimes. Dr Don: Because we can say, sometimes? You know, you can run them down. You can leave the car. But that's where the problem comes in. Yeah, can't stop that, then that rage and all those things come in. And that affects your relationships could affect all kinds of things. And people would say, ‘Oh, you got an anger management problem. We're going to teach you to live with, you know, and manage that anger.' What I'm saying is ‘No, it's a glitch. We don't need all that data coming in.' Right, good response, a Google search is creating the problem. Lisa: Like there's so many questions while hearing what you just said that, and I've experienced in my own life where with my family, where the initial response is so quick, that someone's punched someone else before they've even thought about what the heck they are doing. In the, when you said that, disrespected like this is, you know, I think when I've gotten really really angry and overreacted to something, when I think about it logically later, and a couple of times were of, like, in my early adult years, I was in a very abusive relationship. Thereafter, when I would get into another relationship, and that person tried to stop me doing something, I would just go like, into an absolute fit of rage. Because I was fighting what had happened to me previously, and this poor person, who may have not even been too bad, got the full barrels of verbal assault. Because I just reacted to what had happened to me 10 years previously. And that's the sort of thing where I felt like I was being controlled, disrespected when he went in. So that Google search is happening in a millisecond.  Dr Don: 400 millionths of a second. you couldn't have stopped, impossible for you to stop. And then people would say, ‘What's wrong with Lisa? She's just normally a great person, but where is that coming from?' Up until now, you may not have known that. But that's what it is. And it's impossible for you to have stopped. It was the same thing when my wife and I would say, ‘No, I don't like that.' And she would start to cry. I'd be saying, ‘Gosh, what am I doing to make this woman cry?' It wasn't what I said. It was what I said that activated her Google search, which then flooded into data about her father. She was responding to her father, not to me. We both didn't know that; we all thought that she was responding to what I just said. Lisa: Isn't this always just such complex— and if you start to dissect this, and start to think about the implications of all this, and our behaviour, and our communication and our relationships, so much pain and suffering is happening because we're not understanding, we're not, we're angry at people, we're disappointed with people, we're ashamed of things that we've done. And a lot of this is happening on a level that none of you know, none of us are actually aware of. I mean, I liken it to, like, I know that my reactions can sometimes be so quick. Like before, my, just in a positive sense, like effect glasses falling off the beach, I would have caught it with my bare hand before my brain has even registered it. I have always had a really fast reaction to things like that. That's a clear example of, like, that permanent brain that's in the here and now, has caught it before I've even realised that's happening. Dr Don: You know, and that's why I always say to people, ‘Did you choose to do that?' And they'll say, ‘Well, I guess I did.' I go, ‘No, you didn't.' Didn't just happen that happened before you could actually use the logical part of your brain. And because it was so much information, right? Even though the logical part of your brain would say, ‘Well, you know, don't lash out at this person. They didn't mean that.' It would already have happened. Yeah, I worked with a professional athlete. He was a baseball player playing in the major leagues. And I explained that concept to him. And then we were at a, one of his practice workouts, and his pitcher was throwing batting practice behind a screen. And so as he threw the ball, this guy, my client hit the ball right back at the screen, and the coach, like, hit the ground. Right? And I stopped right there. And I said, ‘Great example.' I said, Did your coach just choose to duck?  Lisa: Or did he automatically do it?  Dr Don: He had no, he had no time to use exactly. The logic. If you use the logical part of your brain, what would you have said? ‘This ball can hit me; there's a screen in front of me.' Lisa: Yeah, yeah. But you know— Dr Don: No way logic is going to prevail, when there's a threat like that coming at you. Yeah.  Lisa: This is why it's important because we need to be able to react in that split second, if there really is a danger and there's a bullet flying in ahead or something like that or something, somebody is coming at us from, to do us harm, then we need to be able to react with split second timing.  Dr Don: But you don't want that logic coming into it.  Lisa: No, but we do want the logic coming in when it's an emotional response. Do you think like, when people have had repeated brain injuries, they are more likely to have problems with this, you know, the prefrontal cortex not functioning properly and even being slower to respond or not getting enough blood flow to that prefrontal cortex in order to make these good decisions? Dr Don: Yeah, absolutely. And if you look at SPECT scans or brain scans of people who have had those kinds of injuries, you'll see that that part of the brain, that frontal part of the brain, the blood flow will drop when they get into those situations. Lisa: Wow. And then they can't make a good decision. And here we are blaming them for being— Dr Don: Blaming them for being— Lisa: —and they end up in prisons, and they end up with hurt broken lives and terrible trauma. And, you know, it's not good if they react and hit somebody or kill somebody or whatever. But how can we fix this? And that one of my go-tos is the hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And I've heard you talk about that on a podcast with Mark Divine in regards to your son. And that is one way we can actually help our brains if we've had had a traumatic brain injury or PTSD or anything like that, is that right? Dr Don: Yeah, my, like I said, my son had three head injuries, one in elementary school, one in middle school, one in high school. And the first one, we didn't see as big an effect. But he did have a problem. The second one, he ended up with retrograde amnesia. And then the third one, we just saw him go downhill and just really couldn't communicate very well, didn't have any energy, had a lot of anger issues and they just kept saying he's got major depression, you need to medicate them. And I was like, ‘No, I believe we've got traumatic brain injury.' But I could not get them to give me a script for a SPECT scan or an fMRI. It was impossible. And I wasn't looking for the structure, because they'd look at an MRI and they'd say, ‘We don't see any damage.' Well, it wasn't the physical damage we're looking for, it was a functional damage that we were looking for. Lisa: Yeah, the blood flow. Yeah.  Dr Don: And once we discovered that that's what it was, we got him into hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and he started getting the blood flow into the areas that he needed to process what he was experiencing. And so if you can, you can imagine how difficult that would be, somebody saying, well just go over there and do that. And you don't have the ability to process it.  Lisa: Yeah.  Dr Don: And so that frustration there is anger would be coming from just complete frustration.  Lisa: Yeah.  Dr Don: That he just couldn't do it's like, you know, you ran in somebody and you couldn't lift your right leg.  Lisa: Yeah.  Dr Don: Right. And somebody said, ‘Just start running.' ‘I'm trying.'  Lisa: Yeah, yeah.  Dr Don: It would be very, very frustrating.  Lisa: Yeah, I mean, having worked with, you know, my mum with the brain injury for five and a half years, and I will tell you, man, that is so frustrating. And still, even though she's had well, you know, must be close to 280 or something hyperbaric sessions, and gone from being not much over a vegetative state to being now incredibly high functioning. But there are still some pieces missing that I cannot get to. Because obviously damage in the brain where parts of the brain cells are, have been killed off. And we, you know, I'm really having trouble with things like vestibular systems, so, or initiation of motivation, and things like that. And hyperbaric can do a heck of a lot, it can't fix areas of the brain that is actually dead. So I, you know, and we don't have SPECT scans over here, this is not available. We don't do them. Dr Don: Yeah. And they're hard to get here. I just don't understand them. Lisa: They're very frustrating, because they just are so powerful to understand. Because when you see you've got a problem in your head, that it's actual physical problem, then, you know, it takes away the blame the guilt, and you know, like, I was having this conversation with my brother, and I'm, you know, talking about Mum, and why isn't she doing this, that and the other end. And I said, ‘Because she's got brain damage, and we can't get her to do that thing.' ‘But she's normal now. She should be doing that now.' And I'm like, ‘She's much, much better. But in that part of the brain, I haven't been able to recover.' It is still a thing. That is the year. That is, I am, not that I'm giving up on it, but you know, there are just certain things that we haven't quite got the full thing back. Dr Don: The SPECT scan would show that. And you'd probably see it, or do they do fMRIs there? Lisa: I haven't checked out fMRI because yeah. Dr Don: Check out the fMRI.  Lisa: I only heard you say that the other day, and I didn't, I knew about SPECT scans and I knew about. Dr Hearts and all the SPECT scans that he's done, and Dr Daniel Amen and the brilliant work on it all and I've searched the country for it. And New Zealand there's, they've got one that does research stuff down in New Zealand and I think but it's it's nobody can get access to it. And it's just, oh gosh, this is just such a tragedy because then we can actually see what's going on. Because people have been put on antidepressants. They've been put on, you know, antipsychotic drugs. Some things that are perhaps not necessary. We could have, we could have dealt with it with other other ways, like hyperbaric and like with, you know, good nutrients, and even like your program that you do that would perhaps be the first line of defense before we grab to those types of things. But— Dr Don: The fMRI would definitely probably help you. So it's, you know, a functional MRI. Yeah. So it's going to give you blood flow. I just had a young boy come in, nine years, nine years old, having real issues. And anyway, his mum's gone everywhere, tried everything. And I said, have you done an fMRI? She says, oh we've done the MRIs. But, and I said, ‘'No, you need an fMRI.' She'd never heard of it. No, I was telling her about it.  Lisa: I hadn't even heard about it either. Dr Don: She didn't want to do SPECT scans, because SPECT scans are going to put something into your system, right? So she didn't want any kind of dyes, or any kind of those, you know, radioisotopes and stuff like that. So the fMRI is the other answer to try to get that. Lisa: Oh, okay. I'll see whether they've got that, they probably haven't got that either. I'd say, probably having Dark Ages with a lot of things. Dr Don: There's so many things like that, that would give you answers that they just don't do, which is surprising to me. Because when you think research, I mean, you find out how effective they are, why wouldn't they do it? You know, they just won't. Lisa: Oh, yeah, like one of those doctors who was on my podcast, and we're talking about intravenous vitamin C. And he said, I said, ‘Why is it taking so long when there's thousands of studies proving that it's really powerful when there's critical care conditions like sepsis, what I lost my father to?' And they said, ‘Yeah, because it's like turning a supertanker. There's just 20 years between what they know in the clinical studies to what's actually happening in the hospitals.' He says at least a 20-year lag. And this is just, when you live in New Zealand, probably a 30-year lag. We're just just behind the eight ball all the time, and all of these areas of what's actually currently happening.  I wanted to go back to your story with your daughter. Because she's got Crohn's disease, 14 years old, diagnosed, having to hit all these restrictions, and that she's going to have to manage it for the rest of her life. And she will never be well. What actually happened? Because we didn't actually finish that story. Dr Don: Well, like I said, so she had, you know, suffered for many years with that, and she's an actress, so any kind of stress would just aggravate it. So she would constantly be getting sick, because, you know, the more stress she has, the more inflammation she's creating, and then she would just get sick and go back to the hospital. So it has really affected her career. So that's when my wife said, ‘You've got to come up with some answers.' And so I did the research. And I really believe that it was a trauma as a child that continued. Because this is when I made the connection between unresolved trauma and inflammation. Inflammation is the response to trauma, whether it's physical or emotional. And the purpose of the inflammation is to protect the integrity of the cell. So the cell gets into an enlarged space. So it sort of puffs out, gets enlarged and hardened to protect it from getting penetrated from any kind of foreign invader.  Lisa: Wow.  Dr Don: So the idea behind it is, it's a temporary pause, because there's been an injury. So the idea is, we need to protect this area. So let's protect it and not let anything get into the cells while, until the danger has passed. So this temporary pause in the system, temporarily suspends the immune system, temporarily suspends the processing of the cell until the danger passes, and then the immune system can come in and clean up, right and take care of everything. The problem was, is that my daughter's trauma was never resolved. So those cells in her intestinal area stayed in an active cell danger response, in an inflamed response, because as far as it was concerned, she was continually being assaulted.  Lisa: Wow.  Dr Don: Because it kept looping through the trauma. Yeah. So once we took her through this program, and we resolved it so that we were able to stop her mind from constantly trying to protect her from this threat as a six year old, because your subconscious doesn't have any relationship to time. So if you think about something that happened to you when you were six, that's happening now. So in her mind, she was being hurt now. And until we got that updated, so it's like a computer, I say your brain is a computer. Your body is the printer.  Lisa: Oh, wow. That's a good analogy. Dr Don: And so if the brain has an error message, it's going to affect the printer.  Lisa: Yes.  Dr Don: So in her mind, that trauma kept on looping. As soon as we got that corrected, and her mind understood that there was no memory— the memory was still there, but the activation of our nervous system stopped, the inflammation went down. Lisa: See, that's it, like your body's calling for action. I've heard you say—  Dr Don: That's when it processes the emotion.  Lisa: Yeah. So when you think back to a traumatic event in your life, and you start crying and you're reacting as if you were right there in the in, which, you know, I can do in a split second with some of the trauma that you know, been through. That means that there is a high-definition in your brain, that those moments in time are just locked in there, and causing this, the stress response, still now. And that's why you're crying years later, for something that happened. And it's actually calling for action. It's telling you to do something. But of course, it's a memory you can't do something. Dr Don: So action required, you know I think that's the glitch, the error message that I talked about. So if you think about something that happened to you five years ago, and you start to feel fear, or cry, your heart starts pounding in your chest, your mind is saying ‘Run,' five years ago, because it's seen it in real time. Now, it's impossible to run five years ago, but your mind doesn't know that. So it's going to continue to try to get you to run. And so a lot of times when I talk to people who have depression, one of the things I asked, I'll ask them is, ‘What are you angry about?' And they'll go, ‘Well, no, I'm not angry, I'm depressed.' And I'll say, ‘What's happened is your mind has been calling for an action for many, many years, that was impossible to accomplish. But your mind doesn't know that and it keeps putting pressure on you. Do it, do it, do it. And because you don't do it, it's using these emotions to call for the action, it stops calling for the action, it shuts off the emotions.'  Lisa: Wow.  Dr Don: And so now depression is the absence of emotion. Lisa: Right. Dr Don: And so what is done is to protect you, it's shut down the request. Lisa: Everything down. So you go sort of numb, numb and apathetic and just— Dr Don: Because you can't do what it's been asking you to do. And so it's been calling for that action for many, many years. You don't do it. And so it says, ‘Well, this isn't working. So let's just shut the system off for a while. We won't ask for the action anymore.' And so that's why the people are depressed. And as soon as you get to the cause of it, what has your mind been asking you to do and you resolve it, then your mind stops calling for the action. And then the depression will lift. Lisa: You had a great example of a lady that you worked with. Rebecca Gregory, was it from the Boston— can you tell us that story? Because that was a real clear example of this exact thing. Dr Don: Yeah. So Rebecca came to see me five years after the Boston Marathon. She was three feet from the first bomb that went off. And so her son was sitting at her feet. So when the bomb went off, luckily she shielded him, but she took the brunt of the blast. She lost her left leg. And five years later, she's having post-traumatic stress, right? And she says, ‘I have nightmares every night. I heard about your program. I heard that you can clear this in four hours.' She says, ‘Iy sounds too good to be true.' But she says, ‘I'm completely desperate. So I'll try anything.' And so she came in and sat down. And what I explained to her as she started to talk is, I said, ‘Rebecca, do you know why you're shaking and crying as you're talking to me right now?' And she says, ‘Well, because I'm talking about what happened to me.' And I said, ‘That's right. But your mind thinks a bomb is about to go off. And it's trying to get you to run.' And I said, ‘But there's no bomb going off. It's just information about a bomb that went off. But your mind doesn't know that.' And that, she'd never heard before. And so what we did is over the next four hours, we got her mind to reset that high-definition data that had been stored about the bombing into a regular alpha brainwave state, right, where it's very safe and peaceful.  So she could recall it and she could talk about it without the emotion. Why? Because, now we're not going for happy, right? You know, it's still sad that it happened. But what we're trying to stop is that dysregulation of the fear, the call for the run. That stopped. And you can watch your testimonial on her on our site, and she just talked about, she goes, ‘I just couldn't believe that you could stop that.' Lisa: But in four hours.  Dr Don: And then now she can go out and she spoke all over the country. You know, she was a very high-profile lady who did a lot of great work in trying to help people. But she was still suffering with post-traumatic stress. Yeah, trying to help people who were experiencing post-traumatic stress.  Lisa: She knew what it was like.  Dr Don: She was living it. Same thing. I tell the story, it's another dramatic one was a US Army sniper who had to shoot and kill a 12 year old boy. Lisa: Oh, gosh.  Dr Don: And when

Guest Co-host:  Rebecca Hoffman:  rebecca@goodeggconcepts.comRebecca's Website:  www.GoodEggConcepts.comPodcast Guest:  Lourdes Nicholls:  lourdes@oakpark.com Transcription: Kris Parsons 00:02Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too.  Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe 00:16The morning everybody and welcome to wildfire podcast studios in wonderful Woodbury, I got that wrong already Woodbury, New Jersey, and we are here with our engineer Taylor, who keeps us running smooth, and without him, we couldn't do these podcasts. So we have a couple of great guests today. And I think we need to make a comment before we get into our guests about the luckiest people in the world and remind everybody that they're the people who sit down and design their own lives, and who understand that things are going to change. And so they don't just design their own lives once, they constantly design their own lives, so that they can live their lives under their own terms, and live them being happy and content with where they're going. And we have two of the luckiest people in the world. Joining us in a minute. Let me bring on Rebecca Hoffman. Rebecca has been our guest host for the last month. And unfortunately Rebecca this is our last one, isn't it? Uh oh. So we're gonna have to do something about that. And Rebecca runs Good Egg Concepts. And every time I think about this, I get this image of Humpty Dumpty, but Humpty didn't fall off the wall. In this case, he's there. And he's intact. And, Rebecca designs, branding for people. And she is one of the best storytellers in the world. And best of all, one of the best people that help you craft stories. And we're going to craft another one today, aren't we, Rebecca?Rebecca Hoffman01:53Yes, we are. We have a great story to tell here today. And I'm excited for it.Ray Loewe 01:58Cool. Why don't you introduce our guest?Rebecca Hoffman 02:00Sure. Our guest today is Lourdes Nicholls, who I'm so proud to say is my friend, we met through some mutual work we were doing together. And as sometimes work will do when you're done with the work you get to talking about your life when you like somebody and we sat together one day and talked over coffee. And she told me a little bit of her life story, which really resonated with me because it was a story that's of personal interest to me privately. And I'm gonna let Lourdes tell the story. But I'm just gonna say that Lourdes is starting to devote and dedicate her life to greater understanding and education around the Japanese American incarceration during World War II. And I'm just delighted that Lourdes is going to take a little time with us to tell us about her family and kind of give us a sense of why this chapter in American history is profound and needs to be considered, especially in the moment we're in today. Lourdes, thanks for being here.Lourdes Nicholls  02:57Thank you so much for having me. I'm honored to be here. And I feel like the luckiest person to be part of a part of today and a part of you, and you've done so much to help me. So I appreciate you as much Rebecca.Ray Loewe 03:12Once you're on one of these podcasts, you're one of the luckiest people in the world whether you want to be or not, and you can't get out of it.Lourdes Nicholls  03:20Okay.  I'll take it.Rebecca Hoffman 03:23Maybe we should begin at the logical beginning. And maybe Lourdes tell us a little bit about your family. And if you don't mind, for the listeners who may not be as familiar Can you describe what the Japanese American incarceration was, it was previously referred to as internment. But that's not a term that's used anymore. And maybe you can sort of have a little background so we understand.Lourdes Nicholls  03:43Sure. So when I was growing up, I always knew that my mom was born in a Japanese what I called an internment camp at Manzanar during World War II. I know now that the word internment camp is really an outdated term, it's just not, not what it was. It was an incarceration camp. And it's, you know, taken time and understanding and really learning more and working on this, you know, researching my family that I've come to understand the terminology that was used at the time during World War II and the terminology that we know now. And what exactly was going on many of the words that were used during World War II were to shape this narrative about what was going on, I mean, two-thirds of the people that were incarcerated, the Japanese Americans were US citizens, you know, they were forcibly removed from their homes, and they were sent to places all over the country. They sold all of their belongings and, you know, basically had to rebuild their lives, you know, after the war. So Um, yeah, I mean, it's kind of depressing, actually. But, I mean, it's a sad piece that I was asked to do. I was in high school, I was required to do a family history project. And that's kind of how this ball got rolling. I was required to interview my grandparents. And that's really when this all started. So, you know, 1982.Rebecca Hoffman 05:30So you were living your family was living in Berkeley, California, you're a teenager in high school, going through all the things that teenagers go through, and you're asked to do a family history, like oral history type project, what did you uncover?Lourdes Nicholls  05:44You know, I, again, I knew kind of this term that my mom was born in the camp, but I didn't really know. I heard family members talking about camp, but I thought it was summer camp. Honestly. I didn't really get it. You know, I was 15 years old at the time. And just, you know, growing up, I guess. So what happened was, this project was a requirement. My mom and I flew to Los Angeles, where her parents were. And for the first time, I think, ever, my mom said, they talked about what they endured while living at Manzanar. And it just brought a lot of shame to my family. A lot of, you know, hard times for sure. Prior to World War II, my grandfather had quite a life, you know, and I think that really that whole experience, and even after the war, after World War II, he actually worked for the US government and was a translator for the war crimes trials, which by the way, is probably one of the most disturbing things you can probably do. I mean, really, I mean, it's just unbelievable the things that he did, and I think it really depressed him quite a bit.Rebecca Hoffman07:07So your grandfather, pre World War II, he had an interesting job. But then he ended up in California, could you tell us, I guess the part that really affected me was the work that he did before there was ever a war. And then your family had a garden center. I'm gonna kind of talk for a minute about what he was like, how he was an expert in something, and then how did that end up becoming something he was able to use to survive Manzanar.07:35Um, so long story short, my grandfather was not a US citizen. My grandmother was, he came to the United States in 1916. He came to Los Angeles. Long story short, in the early 1920s. He made his way to Chicago, and he went to school at the Art Institute of Chicago. And while he was there, he met a man named George Harding Jr., and George Harding, Jr. was probably one of the wealthiest people in Chicago at the time. I know he was the first person to own an automobile. He added his own airplane. He had a mansion in the Hyde Park area. And he collected Arms and Armor and art from all over the world. And he met my grandfather and was very interested in him and his background and hired him to be his curator of all of the medieval items that he had and paintings and my grandfather worked for George Harding Jr. From the mid-1920s until 1940. And during that time, my grandfather lived at the mansion. He met Presidents, Vice Presidents, he met Al Capone, he met lots of dignitaries who came to the museum, which by the way, was the house, you know, before the Field Museum and other places people had like Driehaus, you know, they had private collections in their own home, right. Yeah. So, yeah. So my grandfather worked there. And, you know, again, I have newspaper articles. I have all sorts of history about that. Um, the ironic thing is, you know, George Harding, Jr. died unexpectedly in 1939. And that's kind of when things started to fall apart with, you know, with what was going to happen with my grandfather's job. And my grandfather and grandmother ended up moving to Los Angeles. I will say there is a happy ending to the George Harding collection is currently visible at the Art Institute of Chicago for many people who know the Chicagoland area. It's Sir, it's a real gem. And my family, we feel very fortunate because my grandfather's albums of the photos were used to put the displays together. Many of the things they weren't, as you know, had they'd never seen photos from inside the mansion the way, my grandfather took them. So kind of a nice part of being a part of, you know, living in the Chicagoland area. It's kind of a nice piece of history for our family.Rebecca Hoffman10:30Well, and I can add, it's probably one of the most popular displays. That's where people go because art comes to life when you see the medieval armor and all the accessories. So your grandfather enjoyed this tremendous this rarefied life here and then he goes to Los Angeles with your grandmother, and they buy or form a garden center.Correct. Lourdes Nicholls  10:53Right. So my grandfather could not find a job as a curator, you know, when he went to Los Angeles, I mean, it's kind of a unique job. Apparently, my grandfather was going to be a curator of a museum in Manchuria. But my grandmother's family who was from Los Angeles didn't think it was a good idea in 1940 to go. So the only thing that my grandfather could piece together was to become a gardener. And that's what a lot of Japanese Americans were doing at that time. So he opened a garden center in Culver City. And he, had that garden center until, you know, until he went to Manzanar on December 7, 1941, it was actually my grandparent's fifth wedding anniversary, because they were born out they were married on that date, in 1936. And I can only imagine that their five-year wedding anniversary was a complete nightmare. And it really wasn't what they were envisioning. And then within about two months, on February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which required all Japanese Americans whether or not they were American citizens or not living on the west coast, Washington, Oregon, California, and parts of Arizona to be sent to these incarceration centers.Rebecca Hoffman12:30Your family then had to make quick plans because there was no choice the government was going to force them to move. What did they do?Lourdes Nicholls  12:39Correct. So my grandfather, you know, my grandparents, from what I learned, had to sell everything or get rid of everything. And so they had to sell the nursery and the only person that they were able to find that was remotely interested in the nursery was the milkman who came to their house every day. My grandfather said, Are you interested? And he said, I only have $75. And so that's all that my grandfather got for the whole bird nursery. And Rebecca, you know, you've seen photos of it. I mean, it wasn't a small little shop. It was it was big. There was a pond. It was it gorgeous.Rebecca Hoffman 13:20Gorgeous plantings. Yeah, a little bit of a dream world. Yeah. So they got $75 for their family business. And they moved to Manzanar. Yeah. And yet, and I don't want to tell this part of the story, I  want you to tell it but yet when your grandparents get to Manzanar, your grandfather's still, in spite of this terribly adverse circumstance does something spectacular. What did he do there?Lourdes Nicholls  13:43So my grandfather, um, you know, I'm sure that it was a very scary time to, you know, board up go somewhere you don't know. Live in a 20 by 25-foot barrack. You know, build your own mattress out of straw. I mean, the pictures of what they had to do just to get into their accommodations. There's just nothing that you want to do. It wasn't until maybe about maybe less than six months after they arrived. They arrived in Manzanar on April 8, 1942. The head of Manzanar Ralph Merritt found out that my grandfather had worked at a museum and had this experience and he asked my grandfather to start a museum at the camp for the incarcerated. To show them what the rest of the world looks like and how they can, you know, things that they could do either participate or see things that they weren't used to seeing. So my grandfather created the visual education Museum, which was really to help young children who, by the way, maybe they had never been in a grocery store before, or maybe they had, they didn't know, you know, my grandfather wrote to all these places and asked for books and photos of like insects, animals, all sorts of things, and created a place for people to see exhibits and participate.  Some of the participants really, I think, got a lot out of it. I mean, as you know, like working with art or creating art, some amazing things came out of that. So absolutely amazing.Rebecca Hoffman15:40So, here's your grandfather and your grandmother, they're living in, they're incarcerated. This is not by choice, and he still creates basically a museum or a gallery for understanding the world. Correct. And this incarceration has an unknown end at this time, right. So he's building something. And famous artists came to see this gallery and showed some of their art there. Am I correct? Maybe a famous, photographer?Lourdes Nicholls  16:07I mean, you know, Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange, were both hired by the government to take photos. So maybe you've seen some of these photos. And they are quite striking. The main thing to know about those photos is that those photographers were not allowed to take pictures of the barbed wire of the guard towers with guards inside with guns, you know, pointing towards the camp. So, Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange, both captured the people that were there, and all of their daily life experiences. And my grandfather put together, you know, the Ansel Adams exhibit at Manzanar, which, luckily, I have a photo of. And Ansel Adams came back to Manzanar four times, I mean. He was regularly there and really had a lot of sympathy for the people who were there. I, unfortunately, I didn't get to talk to my grandfather about Ansel Adams, because I assumed that they had conversations. But I still, you know, I think that Ansel Adams photos, and the book that he wrote, called born free and equal, which actually ended up becoming a banned book and Ansel Adams was really not well received because he wanted people to understand that, you know, the Japanese Americans were not a threat, and that no Japanese American was ever convicted of any kind of crime or helping in any way during the war. So it's tragic, it's sad, it's a sad piece, actually.Ray Loewe17:54You know, let me interrupt and I don't know if you've noticed, but I haven't interrupted for 12 minutes. I never not interrupt for 12 minutes. I mean, what an incredible story. And I want to put this story in perspective a little bit because I hear you are Lourdes, You grew up in Berkeley, you moved to Chicago in 1991. You're a normal person. You have three kids, right? You have a job, which you like, right? And you're out running marathons, and you met everybody in the city of Oak Park so that every two blocks, you would have somebody to save you if you stumbled in a marathon? Right?Lourdes Nicholls  18:32I think I do. Yes, I hope I do.Ray Loewe18:34Yeah. So here you are. And then you get hit somewhere along the way with this incredible story as a 15-year-old, that probably no 15-year-old should have to face and yet you faced it. And it's become a project that you're running. Not In addition, not in addition to your life. You haven't dropped her life. You're running it like you normally did. And you're, spending time with this. So you've got this incredible story. Where's it going? What are you going to do with it?Lourdes Nicholls  19:07Good question. I mean, honestly, I love family history. I love anyone's family history. But my family history has become just a part-time job for me. I mean, it's always in the for, you know, it's always on my mind. I'm always trying to uncover new things. I would say that there was an exhibit in 2017. Then they came for me in Chicago, and then it went to New York City. I was asked to if I could come up with some documents or pieces for that exhibit. And that kind of got me reinvigorated in this whole piece of history. My mom was very reluctant. She really was not into talking about it. It brought a lot of shame to her family. But I will say that I'm bringing her to Manzanar, we went several times. And then going to the then they came for me exhibit in Chicago and New York. You know, she really started to understand more and accept it. I mean, she has said, she said for a long time it was intergenerational trauma, even though she didn't remember ever being at Manzanar as a baby. You know, it was part of her and her family. You know, so that has been kind of my, I don't know, I just something inside of me. I just keep moving forward, even though it's hard. My mom passed away about a year and a half ago. And, you know, she was my best friend and biggest cheerleader. I mean, that's, you know, so doing this by myself. I mean, I'm choked up just talking about it. It's really hard.Ray Loewe20:56But you have a movie coming out of this right. Or some film? Lourdes Nicholls  21:01Well, I have.  I'm so lucky to have Rebecca who introduced me to Arielle Nobiles, who is working on a documentary called, well, the series is belonging in the USA. And she has picked amazing people and I'm lucky to be one of them to focus on and so that should be coming out. I think I'm hoping December 7, 2021, which is the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor day, and it's also the 30th anniversary of the day, my grandmother died. Because everything happens on December 7, and my family, my grandparents were married, Pearl Harbor day happened and my grandmother died on that day. So it's kind of bittersweet. But yeah.Rebecca Hoffman21:52I hope, spectacular history. And, you know, as I hear you speaking, I think, okay, if I'm just listening to this, and I don't know much, what can I see? What can I look at? I know the movie is coming out? It's not a movie. It's a documentary film that's coming out later this year. When I first met you, you said you need to watch the orange story, which is a short film, maybe 12-15 minutes. Right. Lourdes Nicholls  22:16So orange story, yes. Which is I recommend to classrooms when I speak to them. It's at the orange story.org it's only 15 minutes. And so that you can get it in class. It was filmed here in Chicago by my friend Jason Matsumoto. And it really shows how Japanese Americans went from living everyday life like the three of us. And then suddenly, something happens and one particular person has to sell their business, pack things up. You know, it's heart-wrenching. Um, but I think that that's a really great intro. It's pretty much required viewing because then you can kind of be more up to speed, and especially, it's for all ages. I mean, kids, young kids can watch it and understand, you know, older adults, anybody. SoRay Loewe23:16Well, unfortunately, time is at its end. So Rebecca, do you have any final comments, Rebecca, and then we'll get some out of Lourdes?Rebecca Hoffman23:25Well, I you know, I just want to say thank you to Lourdes for sharing the story. And I hope that people who are listening to this will take their knowledge effort a little further, there's never been a better time to have a look at this chapter in American history. And consider, you know, what happened and how we can go one better we can do better?Ray Loewe23:44Yeah. And Lourdes, any final comments? Lourdes Nicholls  23:48Just, I mean, I'm, I don't feel I mean, I feel like everyone has a story to tell me about their family. They just have to unlock it. And I've been, I keep trying to unlock more. But, um, yeah, it's been a bittersweet experience. But I'm still learning new things all the time. So it's, great. It's great. I love it.Ray Loewe24:11And thanks, everybody, for being here. Rebecca, thank you so much for being our co-host.  Time has flown by in four weeks. And everybody Join us next week, we're going to have a brand new co-host, I'm not telling in advance. And we've got some great guests. And hopefully, we'll see Lourdes at one of our cocktail events soon where you can actually sit down and ask her some questions about this whole process. So thank you guys, for being with us. Thank our listeners for being with us. And we'll see you again next week.Kris Parsons24:46Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do that too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.

Guest Co-host Rebecca Hoffman:  rebecca@goodeggconcepts.comRebecca's Website:  www.GoodEggConcepts.comPodcast Guest:  Nicole Gordon:  nicole@nicolegordon.comNicole's Website:  https://nicolegordon.com/ Transcription:Kris Parsons  0:03  Welcome to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do it too. Join us with your lively host Ray Loewe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe  0:18  Good morning, everybody. And we're here in our podcast studios, Wildfire podcast, and Woodbury, New Jersey. And we're here with our engineer Taylor. And just a quick word about Wildfire. You know, they have made this whole thing possible for us. We started this thing over a year ago, we had no idea how to do a podcast, we still don't know how to do a podcast. But Taylor runs everything for us. And it all works. So we're here with two interesting topics that I want to bring up before we get to our main guest, the name of our show is "Changing the Rules." And that's largely because we're all fed a body of rules throughout our life. And those rules are kind of forced us to conform in a certain way. And over time, some of those rules become not so relevant to us. And our point is that we need to grasp those rules that we want to adapt as ours. And only when you choose your own rules, do you become free to be you and to become one of the luckiest people in the world. And remember, the luckiest people in the world are those people who design their own lives, and then live them. And we're here today with a couple of the luckiest people in the world. And we're here to bring a message to more of the luckiest people in the world. So Rebecca Hoffman is going to be our co-host this month. And I'm excited about this for several reasons. First of all, Rebecca is, adding a new dimension to the guests that we're interviewing, because she's bringing on a lot of people that she knows that are lucky in different ways than traditionally we've, we've talked to people about. And so Rebecca is the leader, I guess it's the leader, CEO, manager,Rebecca Hoffman  2:15  right, Chairman,Ray Loewe  2:16  The head egg of good egg concepts. And again, I have to read this again, because I love this definition. Rebecca leads good egg concepts an economical, thoughtful, clever, endlessly curious consulting firm focused on your goals and brand. And she's based in the Chicago area. And she helped me tremendously because she is such a great storyteller. And she's helped me weave stories into my whole marketing campaign and my whole life. So Rebecca, welcome to changing the rules.Rebecca Hoffman  2:52  Thank you, Ray, really appreciate it's nice to be here with you and with our guest, Nicole Gordon. Hi. Hi, Nicole. Thank you for joining us today, I want to just say a couple things about you to the listening audience so they know where we're coming from, and then we'll go. Nicole Gordon is an artist living in the Chicago area, but working all over. Your art has been featured in galleries from coast to coast from New York City to Los Angeles, and you've had solo exhibitions, and most recently at the Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, Washington. And I think what probably strikes people the most about your art are the themes, the colors, the textures, and we can talk a little bit about that. But you know, for our listening audience, if people want a peek, go to NicoleGordon.com, and you can kind of see what we're talking about as we go. Thank you for joining us.Nicole Gordon  3:44  Thanks for having me. So happy to be doing this.Rebecca Hoffman  3:48  Well, you know, you're an artist, and you're living and working in real life. And I think a lot of times people believe artists are like these, like this. It's like a fantasy world, which that's hard to achieve in everyday life. Right.Nicole Gordon  4:02  Yeah, I agree. I think that there's sort of this idea that artists sort of live on a whole different plane, and that we live in this other spectrum of our brain. And that, you know, it's all about sort of this creative inspiration and finding inspiration and living in this other place. But, you know, the reality is for myself, and I think a lot of people who would consider themselves pretty productive artists is that there is still this sense of, you know, needing to have a regular schedule, and needing to sort of keep at it every day, all the time. And this idea of sort of the creative spark, you know, it's a little bit more about just sticking with it and kind of working things every day to just like almost like a regular job and the more you work at it sort of the more productivity you have.  Rebecca Hoffman  5:01  Your regular job takes you into your studio and in your studio, you create worlds of fantasy. Do you want to talk a little bit about the discipline? Because I mean, we're always interrupted by email, and texts and telephone is ringing. How do you do that?  Nicole Gordon  5:16  Well, I have sort of the way that I have, the way that I work has changed dramatically over the years, you know, as I've gotten older as I have a family now that I have to attend to. And of course, with the pandemic, with this really odd scheduling, I've had to really adapt the way that I work to make it work so that I can still be productive. So maybe back in my 20s, when I could be in the studio all day and weekends. I could really spend more time being more sort of off the cuff with the way I work. And I could spend a lot of time working on one thing, where I say after a week, oh, that doesn't work. And I paint right over it because I had all the time in the world to sort of to work on it.  But nowadays, I've really honed my craft so that the studio time, which is very truncated, is more productive. So I do a lot of my sketching digitally now. And I've got a lot of my ideas worked out ahead of time I work very thematically, so I have these concepts that I work with. And I sort of input imagery that I love to these different designs. And by the time I get into the studio, I kind of have things mapped out a lot more thoroughly than I ever used to. And so what that does, yeah, it allows me to be really productive with my time I can go in, and sort of have a couple of hours here and there where I know I'm sort of moving the ball forward.Ray Loewe  6:51  You know, just to put this in perspective. Okay, so you're working in your home, but you're also raising two children. Is that correct?  Nicole Gordon  7:01  Three, yes, three children. There's a pair of them. They're twins.Ray Loewe  7:06  So how old are your kids?Nicole Gordon  7:09  I have a 11-year-old twin boys who are in fifth grade. And I have an eight-year-old son who is in second grade.Ray Loewe  7:17  So how does one you know I think we have a lot of people who listen to these podcasts who are saying, gee, I wish I could do what these people do? But I'm here at home, I manage a household I've got young kids running around, how do you do this? So what was your path? And how do you manage all of this?Nicole Gordon  7:40  I think that there's a couple of things at play here. One is feeling okay about saying I need time, that is just for myself. And it's really coming to terms with my kids are going to be okay, you know, I can make sure that they're fed and that they have their needs addressed. But they also understand that I'm an artist, and I have a job that is very important to me both emotionally and you know, financially, and that I require this time to get my work done. So there's sort of an expectation that's been sort of put on the table from an early age from them that they understand that this is something that I do and it's not really optional. The other thing is that I have really sort of trained myself, and this is a very important thing for me. So it's not something that I'm really willing to put aside. You know, maybe, obviously, in circumstances out of my control, but generally I make it part of my routine. And that might mean, in the last year, my routine isn't working nine to three like it used to be where I at least have these school hours. Now my time working might be you know, 10 to 1130, and then come down and make sure that they have lunch and then again back up at it from one to three. And just finding those moments that even if they're not the same all the time. And even if you have to sort of change the way that you work, just to keep going with it and making sure it is an integral part of your daily life. And it's amazing, you can actually get a lot done even in smaller amounts of time if you just keep doing it every day.Rebecca Hoffman  9:31  With focus, and I have to say I've I feel fortunate that I've been able to see your work across all the years that you've been working through a little bit of the work we've done together. And one of the things I observed is your work now does seem informed by this discipline, the subject matter of your art. Not always but often includes what I would just define as like an observer person who is often younger. You don't even necessarily see the face of that person, but the observer is looking at the subject matter of the painting with the person looking at the painting. Could you talk a little bit about the major motifs in your work? I just so the listeners know it's fantastical, but it's also realistic. And themes of the teacups and forest fires and earthquakes and pink flamingos.Nicole Gordon  10:21  Yep, I would say a generally a theme that runs through my work is looking at the world. In all of the good, the bad, and the ugly, and putting them together all of these disparate ideas and concepts into these narratives that are beautiful, and also haunting. And I, you know, these, these are things that tend to make up human existence that, you know, the yin and the yang, and we can't have beauty without decay. And a lot of it was inspired by sort of watching my children interact with the world. And this idea of finding beauty in the unknown and wanting for my kids to really take these moments to really sit quietly in the world, and not be constantly inundated with electronics and schedules and sports. And in realizing that these fleeting moments, of solitude and quiet, are really the most important thing that we have to fuel, our creativity and our ability to interact with the world creatively. And be thought-provoking humans. So the work is really about these dream-like worlds that we can create, within our own minds, if given that opportunity to be left alone. And these worlds are, again, filled with beauty. But there, it's also frightening, because as anybody might know, sitting alone with your thoughts, isn't always peaches, you know, you kind of have to dig deep. And sometimes that's a really terrifying place to be.Rebecca Hoffman  12:01  That's really interesting how you know, so you're a person, you do find beauty in that complexity and the difficulty of understanding what we could kind of broadly define as challenging moments or experiences.  Nicole GodonOh, I find I love beauty in sort of those more difficult moments, I think that that's what I really look for is, and I use a lot of graffiti in my work. And I love this sort of really rough imagery, where there's layers, and layers, and layers of art. I considered very beautiful artwork, even things were that most people wouldn't find really beautiful. But this idea that you know, history is sort of layering on top of each other, and really finding beauty in things that are decaying and things that aren't meant to be beautiful. And I use a lot of imagery of amusement parks that are in various states of decay. And I use the amusement park imagery as something that conceptually stands for something that can be both thrilling and terrifying. At the same time or two different people, one person might look at and say this is like the greatest thing of my life. And somebody might say, you know, I wouldn't go near that with a 10-foot pole. So I like these images that mean different things to different people.  Because pandemic years have been periods of time of great creativity for people who had that within their soul. They say that Shakespeare wrote, you know, right through a pandemic, and it was a great time for focus. Do you find your work shifting at all during this pandemic experience that we're collectively having? Or do you feel like it's just providing you with more time to work on what you were already working on? Or is it informing your work in some way?Nicole Gordon  13:58  Oh, it's definitely informing my work. The work that I've done in the past year has been fairly directly related to what's been happening in this shutdown. And interestingly, of course, my work leading up to this has been about solitude and finding beauty in being alone. So in some funny ways, there has already been a connection to it, because of course, this is something that we've all been forced to do. And so the work is sort of a continuation on that, of finding sort of the ability to be alone and creating worlds for ourselves that are meaningful, while the world outside repairs itself. And so that's really what this new work is about is sort of like. Alright, we're all here together, alone, in our own little pods. And outside the world is trying to figure out you know, how to repair so how are we going to create beauty for ourselves in a world that's kind of, um, you know, it's not falling apart.  It's working on itself. You know, that's what?  Ray Loewe  15:11  No, go ahead Nicole finish your train of thought.Nicole Gordon  15:13  I was just gonna say that's what a lot of this newer work and newer imagery has really been about for me.Ray Loewe  15:19  You know, it's interesting to me because I consider myself an art Luddite. Okay, you know, I have no artistic background whatsoever. And, being able to talk to an artist and find out why they're creating and what their thinking is, as they create. And I think I told you the story, when we had our prep interview that I've been to most of the major museums in the world.  And I've come out of them and felt, you know, I didn't get it. And I think a lot of it is these five things. I mean, you'll like it or you don't, you know why you like it, you understand what the artist has in mind. And you understand how difficult the media is that you're working with. And, I guess there's a fifth one, I guess you can go to a famous art school and become an expert, and then you get to tell everybody what's important and what's not, right.  Rebecca Hoffman  16:13  But ultimately, it's what you express, that's what your viewer is moved by, or not moved by it.  But I think, you know, good art is emotional and it moves you. You may not even understand it, but you're compelled to look right.Ray Loewe  16:30  And that's what I'm finding and I'm it's gonna be interesting to go back and relook at some of your paintings. Having had this interview with you where I've got some insight into what you were thinking and what drives your thinking here.  Nicole Gordon  16:48  Yeah, I always think that that's an interesting thing. I tend to, you know, there's I love talking about my work and telling people sort of what was going on in my head. But equally, I love hearing what people have to say about it without having any being fed any information for me. Because I'm always amazed at things that people get out of it that are clearly a representation of what their personal story is. And I think when you're looking at art, and when you're interacting with art, so much of it, because you know, the artist isn't sitting there 99% of the time. I'm telling you, this is what you should be looking for. So really what it becomes, is a conversation between the viewer and their personal experiences that have shaped them. And how those experiences that have shaped them, make them reflect on the work. And I think because my work is so narrative, and it has a lot going on, there are a lot of different things that people can resonate with, that may resonate with them in completely different ways than maybe my initial intention. And I love hearing about those things as well, because they're is equally as important, if not more so because at the end of the day, it's really about that interaction more than my intention.Ray Loewe  18:06  Okay, so real quickly, I saw one of your paintings when I was going through your website, and it's a painting of a giant panda sitting in a sea of I think sunflowers.Nicole Gordon  18:17  Yes.Ray Loewe  18:18  Now I have a panda project that I've been working on in China, where we're working with a group of people to release baby pandas in the wild. That thing hit me right away.  Nicole Gordon  18:28  Ah, I love that. And then I didn't know that exactly, this is exactly what we're talking about. So that hit you in a way, because of your personal experience, that you can relate to that piece in a way much differently than anybody else.  Ray Loewe  18:41  And the color that you put in there. You know, I just got a kick out of the color the content and there's a certain amount of wimzie in there it it put a big smile on my face and made me feel good. How's that? Oh,Nicole Gordon  18:56  I like that. That's great. And that's, you know, I hope people do feel good when they're looking at my work. I think I tried to have wimzie, I tried to have beauty. And I tried to have a little bit of darkness, just to kind of make you think oh well makes it'll sort of make you stick with the work a little bit longer. And help you make you digested it a little bit.Ray Loewe  19:17  As you go through this journey that you're on, you know. You are obviously an artist early in your life and you know, created or gave a lot of time to your artwork, and then children came into play, and you still have young children. So you're stuck with that for a while. And that's going to have an influence on you. And you're well known now, and you get people who commissioned art from you, and then you do some of your stuff freelance too. Where are you going? You know what's the when this is all done. What's the impression that you want to leave to let everybody know that Nicole Gordon was here?  Nicole Gordon  20:00  You know I have to tell you that I tend to not think that broadly about that. You know, I don't think like, Oh, I want these paintings hanging around, you know, 100 years after I'm gone for my legacy. I would say that first and foremost, I create out of an absolute obsession and need to create. And that is, first and foremost for myself. And I. But that being said, part of being an artist, I think, in general, is also sharing that art with the world. So you can go, you know, I could sit in the studio and create, but I don't think that that in and of itself is a fulfillment. I think part of what takes it full circle is being able to take this work out of my studio and put it into the world for people to interact with and enjoy. And that has always been hugely important to me. And being able to have these exhibitions and pushing the work.  I'm never satisfied to kind of keep with the same thing too long. So I think for me, to have a long distinguished career means constantly moving my work into a new place into someplace that I may not have envisioned years before. And I'm continuing to sort of move off the canvas. And I've started to create these 3d based installation works, which initially, were very outside of my comfort zone. And I think in order to kind of keep relevant, and to keep making interesting work, you have to continually push yourself outside of your comfort zone. And move into different material usage and in different concepts in order to find new meaning with the work and why I'm making it.Rebecca Hoffman  21:59  That's very interesting because the major theme of this podcast is changing the rules. And we may have some listeners who are sitting at home thinking. I am not a creative person, I could never do what Nicole is doing. But I think creativity is a little bit like a muscle that either you use it or you don't use it or to varying degrees. Everybody has it. What would you say to people sitting at home who are thinking, gosh, I wish I could be like Nicole, I wish I could paint, I wish I could make things I wish I could express my unconscious experience of this world. However, that may be what would you say to people who would love to take a chance, but don't know how?Nicole Gordon  22:36  Well and this is exactly what I tell a lot of students as well. And I think that there is a lot of fear that keeps people from doing anything because people are so afraid of, let's say in artists making work and not having it be the best thing they've ever made. Or putting things out there and having it rejected. And the fact of the matter is, what I tell people is I said just make something every day, just put a little, you know, pencil to the paper, whatever material you want. And not everything you do has to be the best thing you've ever made. In fact, you know, as you said, it's a muscle and you just have to keep flexing it, and the more you do it, the more confident that you become. And that's kind of then where the wheels start moving in your head. And you might be able to start saying, Well if it weren't for this first mark I made, I wouldn't have thought, Oh, this might take me someplace else. And I think that you constantly have to just kind of keep working in order to find where that next thing may take you. And if you don't ever start, you're never going to know where to go.Ray Loewe  23:47  I think that it's about taking a chance. Yeah, I think that's great advice. And I think you've demonstrated why you're one of the luckiest people in the world. You've carved out your career. You make time for it, it's important to you and you just keep moving. And Rebecca, we are near the end of our time, unfortunately, do you have any summing comments that you want to make?Rebecca Hoffman  24:09  Well, it just all goes too fast. We could talk all day about the art. Thank you, Nicole, for being with us today and talking with us about your work a little bit.Nicole Gordon  24:20  No. It was my pleasure. Thank you for the insightful commentary.Ray Loewe  24:23  Do you have any closing comments, you want to make anything that's important that you want to say?Nicole Gordon  24:30  Yeah, I think that we hit on a lot of the big important things and I got to say a lot about how I feel about it. But I think that to close it out what I do think for people, the most important thing is, is to just sort of step outside of your comfort zone and just try something new because you never know where that might lead. And that's kind of what I continually do. And I think that's the most important thing for myself and for others who want to sort of kickstart any kind of creative career?Ray Loewe  25:04  So thanks, Nicole, for showing us how to break the rules and change the rules. You did good. Okay. And we're gonna close out this podcast and Rebecca Hoffman will be with me as guest host again in another week, and we have a couple more incredible guests. And they're all well, nobody's as interesting as Nicole, but they're up there. How's that? Okay. So, thanks for being yeah, thanks for being with us on changing the rules. And we'll see you again in a week.Nicole Gordon  25:37  Good. Thanks so much.Kris Parsons  25:41  Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best life and how you can figure out how to do that too. Join us with your lively host of Ray Loewe, better known as the Luckiest Guy in the World.   

TRANSCRIPT:This is Changing the Rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.KC Dempster  0:13  Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. This is KC Dempster. And I'm here with my co host Ray Loewe. And we have a wonderful show ahead for you. We are broadcasting from Wildfire Podcast Studios. And it's a beautiful day in Woodbury, New Jersey.Ray Loewe  0:32  You know, one comment that I make frequently, but we've been doing podcasts now for a little over a year, and we have no idea what we're doing. And and the advantages we don't have to know because we have Taylor, and we have Wildfire, and they lead us through this thing. And all we have to do is get great guests. And then our guests lead us to wonderful podcasts. It make it sound so easy.KC Dempster  0:55  Why do I get so stressed?Ray Loewe  0:57  It is? Well, Rebecca Hoffman, who's our guest today was on once before last year, yes, she very definitely is one of the luckiest people in the world. And we so acknowledge that with a mug. Okay, yes. She's been mugged. And, Rebecca, thank you so much for being with us. And let's start because I want to get some semblance of your creativity on the line before we get into substance here. So the name of your company isRebecca Hoffman  1:29  Good Egg Concepts.Ray Loewe  1:30  Where the heck did that come from?Rebecca Hoffman  1:33  Well, it's funny, you should ask that. Because I was for some reason thinking about that. This morning. The notion of a good egg came up years before I even had a business. And I was living in Miami and we would receive our email was through the county. And it was like a computer code email address, which was impossible to remember. And you could check your email at the library or at the University where I worked. So I have this sort of difficult email address. And then at some point, somebody said to me, You can make your own email address on something called Yahoo. And so I became the good egg@yahoo.com because I turned to my friend and I said, Well, how do you make an email name? Like, how do you do that? And this was probably in the mid 90s. And they said, well, you're a good egg, just be the good egg@yahoo.com. wonders, things happened, don't that, you know, well and 30 years later, I still have this name hanging around, which is kind of funny, but I guess that's the power of a name.Ray Loewe  2:33  Yeah. And and Rebecca, by the way, has her own marketing consulting practice. And she's kind of a branding expert. And you can see she's got the good egg. But she did some wonderful things for me. Yes, a long ago, while maybe it's not that long ago, and I am better through a friend of mine. And I was in Chicago on a business trip. And we met and I think we met in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel, in downtown there. Pardon? Yep. Yep. And, and we started talking, and we were talking about a trip I had just completed, I just gotten back from Africa. And I was telling all these wonderful stories, and all of a sudden, Rebecca says, "You know, you have to, you have to structure these a little bit. You have to can them because they're wonderful parables. And they have morals to them. And if you tell them and create them the right way people will remember them." And yes, Rebecca, that was true. That was a that was a defining moment. Thank you very much.C Dempster  3:37  Right. And we've been, we've been calling re Aesop for his fables ever since then.Ray Loewe  3:42  Well, you know, and, and one of the stories and I'm not going to tell the story, but but it's about penguins in Antarctica, because we expanded this from Africa. And, and people come up, and they just say, remember the penguins, you know, and, and, and it's all there. So one of the things that we want to talk today about is the power of storytelling, and why we should all use this more, whether it's in business or personal life, and whether you're trying to build relationships with your grandchildren, or your grandparents, or whatever it is. So Rebecca, tell us a little bit about storytelling and where you position this in your life and your business.Rebecca Hoffman  4:26  So storytelling, plays a big role in my life, both personally and professionally, and it always has. And I think one of the things I've always marked in my life is that I like a story well told, in a book and a movie, in a poem in something that someone is telling me. When I get together with my friends, I always say "what's new Tell me a good story I want to hear." And so I think the essence of good storytelling for any person and it's I think it's what anthropologists would call a human universal is that there's every human on Earth likes to hear story well told. And so, stories bind us to each other. They they aren't just plot and summary. They are narratives that either can teach us or inspire us or give us some sense of perspective, or some way to reflect upon any issue that we're thinking about. And it really works either in the personal realm or the professional realm, in my opinion. So I think storytelling, it's probably been going on since time immemorial, right, because it predates writing and publishing. And I think oral histories and oral storytelling are passed on century to century generation, to generation in every culture we can find.Ray Loewe  5:42  And it's an art form. And yet, it makes things more interesting, and it makes them more memorable. You know, one of the things that we were talking about the other day, is that the time that we're in right now, and I think one of the comments that you made is it's time to take the about us on our website And tell stories.Rebecca Hoffman  6:05  Yes. from a business standpoint, anybody who owns a business or works in business, who has the opportunity to influence what we call like the About Us page, or the team page, or whatever it is on your business website page, or in your marketing collateral, if you tell a good story, people will remember it and it brings them closer, I can give an example that probably everybody we talked to if we asked them, What could you tell me about Steve Jobs at Apple, even though he's passed away a few years now, pretty much everybody who uses technology can say something about him as if they've met him. And so they've done a beautiful job in the corporate realm of creating what they call the origin story, you know, about, he didn't finish school, he was in a garage, he was making stuff. So he was a disrupter. He was difficult. But he was interesting. And he was persuasive. You could say all this stuff as if you've eaten lunch with him. And so the story gets through to people because it's interesting. It's memorable, it's well told, and it's told over and over again. And so we see that in all of the successful enterprises, whether they're small businesses or giant corporations, and those stories help bring customers closer and make them feel part of the ecosystem of the brand. And I think that also helps people feel like what we would loosely call evangelists, like people who are who celebrate a brand because they're familiar with it, and therefore it starts to feel like their team, or they have an affinity for it.KC Dempster  7:37  That's really, remarkably deep. And I know we all laughed, but I didn't mean that to be funny. I think that it's really a very thoughtful concept.Ray Loewe  7:51  Well, what do you want for a good day, right? I mean, after all, but but you know, it is, it is true, we're going to take our podcast going forward. And we're going to spend quite a bit of time on storytelling going forward. And we're gonna look at it in all different kinds of perspectives. So Rebecca, you were just kind of the lead, that's going to get us started on this. And I know what you did for me with my stories, and I had, I'm since learning how to craft stories, but but you look at all of the different things. We're where you can use them. So how do we leave? How do we leave memories for people? Well, right. Go ahead.Rebecca Hoffman  8:33  Well, I think I yeah, so I think that a story allows people a way to transmit memory or history or impressions or emotions. Sometimes it's really very fact based, such as in such year and such year your grandfather came to this country, or, you know, more in a family and people will describe the challenges they face and how they overcame them and little children. And actually it gets older than little children. But it begins with little children will ask Tell me a story before bed or before a nap or when there's some quiet time or you're in the car. You know, my kids aren't that young, and they still ask for stories from our family. And I think that storytelling, at least according to psycho therapists, and I think they're right, builds resilience when people know what it took to get, the moment that you're in now. The hard stories, the sad stories, the big stories, the complicated ones. They are really invested in the storytelling. And if it's part of a family system, it makes them feel even more connected and close to the generations. And so I think that's the piece for people at home to think about. And I think psycho therapists would call it like, a sense of generativity. How do you pass your sense of yourself and your history to the next generation in hopes that they'll then tell that again, or be inspired by it and live a life kind of in accord with that?Ray Loewe  9:54  So what Let's talk for a minute about stories last. Oh, okay. And let me set the stage here because I've seen people have books of photographs. And and yet during this dusty album, you open them up, nobody has any clue as to who's in the photo, what's going on. It's a story of lost. Opportunity lost. I remember my grandmother, okay. And and I remember my grandmother because I can smell the cooking in the kitchen. Uh huh. So, so the story comes from there. So so how do we, you know, if we're looking at ways of telling stories, and let me set a couple scenarios. So number one, maybe we have older parents, grandparents, and they're still here, and before we lose their presence, how do we craft the stories and what do we do?Rebecca Hoffman  10:57  Yes, I think there's probably a couple top level points I would think about in a situation where we want to capture information before it could possibly be forgotten or missing, or misinterpreted or placed in a box and not seen for decades, you have to probably set out a bite sized goal. So you may need to because I think people are home more than normal right now. I think we can all agree we're all more homebound than usual. So we actually have an opportunity with more time to kind of think about this. Literally sketch on a piece of paper or on your iPad, an area of your family history or story that you want told. And then go after those photos and provide them with a context whether you photograph them and you make a digital file, or scan them in, or you already have them digitally organized. And I think probably the most important thing is the narrative, the captioning the ordering of things. So like you said about your grandmother, if you let's say you had some photos in a box of her, could you not organize them in such a way that you could then show someone else who'd never met her? This was my grandmother, she was a remarkable cook. And she made the following things and I can still smell those foods today. And I wish I could eat them right now. Then you're telling an interesting story, versus here's a box of pictures of my grandmother, if you want to see them, you're welcome to have a look. And that person on the outside has no idea what to do with that.Ray Loewe  12:21  Yeah, she was a card shark too incredible Pinochle player. Okay.Rebecca Hoffman  12:27  So these are things that you don't want lost in the dustbin of history, because she was an interesting person. And she probably had specific things that she cooked that were just delicious.Ray Loewe  12:38  Yeah, nobody can recreate. Nobody can recreate them anymore, because the recipes were in her head. So you know, the whole idea is these ideas, I want to explore the opposite approach to a little bit. So. So let's, let's take the situation where you're a grandparent right now, and you have grandchildren, and you want to create stories that the grandchildren will remember. So instead of being initiated by the children, let's initiate it by grandparents and, and how do we do the same kind of thing I know I'm putting you on the spot here. But ButRebecca Hoffman  13:16  I think so the grandparents who was thinking about this at home, probably needs to get some of those photos, or the videos or whatever media they have that can support the storytelling to the extent that they're able, it could be family books could be artifacts, it's just you have to think of yourself like a cultural anthropologist in your own house. Find those elements that are interesting. And then bring them to life because a child is interested in like, show and tell. So if the grandmother has specific cooking pot and made a specific stew, invite that child assuming they're not too young to come and help you make the stew and talk about it and show the pictures and describe what happened. And as you're doing it, maybe even have them write the steps with a crayon as a first step to investing in the memory of the story. And you bring it to life because stories have beginnings, middles and ends. But stories also have exciting details, which is why some movies are more interesting to people than others, or some books are more interesting to people than others. And it varies per person, but the skillful grandparent will think about what their grandchild might find interesting if their grandchild likes to eat, then cook something that the that the grandparent makes and transmit the experience to the child. So it's extremely rewarding and memorable so that they say could we do it again? Or if it's not that then it's looking at the photos and like I remember showing my kids some photographs of my grandfather recently, I said he had a dog here was his dog. His name was Scamper. And he was a very friendly dog. And they like looking at the pictures of my grandfather with his dog. But if I didn't do that, they wouldn't have known This. Right? Yeah, you know, and there's so much you can doRay Loewe  14:57  I mean, even going to the zoo, taking your grandchildren The zoo and, and taking no more than a dozen pictures. And and and putting them in a little book and turn it into stories that you can tell at bedtime, you know to craft and create the memories. You know, one of the reasons we have Rebecca on here, by the way is I know that Rebecca's secret desire is she wants to write for Saturday Night Live. This is why we get all this creativity from her and why she is a master star storyteller. And and you know, one of the things I I know that you study people who tell stories, too, so, so So give us a couple of people that maybe we can look at if we don't know how to tell stories. One way is to mimic other people. And I think you mentioned Spalding Gray. One time, right. I know about Garrison Keillor, right? Absolutely.Rebecca Hoffman  15:49  There's so many. And there's so many kinds of great stories. So Ira Glass, This American Life is a superb storyteller, an interviewer on National Public Radio Spalding Gray, who's since passed away. You can dig up his videos, he sits at a desk and you think, oh god, how am I gonna get through this? Watch this man and a flannel shirt for two hours talk. And you don't even notice the time passing. He's so good. There's a new one. I think I might have mentioned this to you. When we were talking the other day, john Wilson, there's a show on HBO called "How To with john Wilson." There's six episodes. And this man is a videographer, a filmmaker, and probably a little OCD lives in New York. And he's phenomenal. He kind of swirls together how to he likes a how to video like you find on social channels. And then he melds it with like his own personal problems and observations in New York. And he had to build a scaffold because he said there's scaffolding everywhere in New York City, how to make small talk, how to make risotto and he goes and finds a stranger on the street and gets into his kitchen. And makes rissoto with this man. It's all six in a row. They're half an hour each. So you need like three, four hours to do this. Make some popcorn. And you're in the hands of a master?KC Dempster  17:07  Did Ray tell you that today is or last week was national popcorn? Yeah.Rebecca Hoffman  17:12  Well, I do know, that's because I received a card from Ray, my Kansas morning, and we will have some popcorn.Ray Loewe  17:19  It's an important event, you know, and one of the things that people do is they tend not to let events become important. And I think this is one of the things that we want to highlight this year as we go through these podcasts. And we'll have you back later, when we won't put you on the spot. So much we'll kind of set you up in advance with some stuff that you can really think out. But but the whole concept here is number one stories have a message, they're much more interesting than a lot of other ways to relate things. You know that what what's the key to a good story? You know, I don't know that we had the time to really go into that today.Rebecca Hoffman  18:01  But well, I would just say one thing with respect to a good story is you need a good use of vocabulary because people don't like dull words like it was a really nice day. I like the color pink. People want specificity. They want details. So anyone can come up with great details. And don't be afraid to share them because that's what people hang on and remember.Ray Loewe  18:20  So what is it a pink day today?Rebecca Hoffman  18:23  There's an ounce of sunshine, where I am in the Chicago area.Ray Loewe  18:31  So you know whether it's business, whether it's a business story, or whether it's a grandparent, trying to create a memory for grandchildren or whether it is a grandchild or a child trying to capture things from a grandparent while they're still here. And while we have a chance to capture the memories. I think it's a mission worth taking, huh?Rebecca Hoffman  18:56  Absolutely. And it's true. You could almost have a continuum from grandparent to business, it really doesn't matter we should presume and understand that all humans, whatever they're reading, whether it's a marketing brochure, or a family history, it should be interesting. And interesting as if it has been true in real details, the good parts and the bad parts, you know, to help people understand why something matters.Ray Loewe  19:21  Well, we're going to explore over the next several weeks different ways to do this, we're going to bring Bonnie Shea our photo organizer in and she's going to talk a little bit about how to make photos live as opposed to just being digital records.Rebecca Hoffman  19:37  She does brilliant work because one of the challenges in the digital time that we're in is it's easy as you say to go to the zoo, it's a lot harder to take 12 photos than it is to take 120 so if you can hold yourself to that kind of almost minimalist standard, you're gonna have an easier time especially for the grandparent at home. Doesn't want to Sift through 1000 photos from a day at the park. Right? You want to capture some moments, they don't have to be Ansel Adams the perfect image, you know, you know, it can just be the most, the informal casual moments are really very satisfying to so people probably get hung up on perfection. And that's the enemy of good, right. So if you can get a small selection of photos, you have an easier time creating a story about the time you had together then a giant compendium of photos.Ray Loewe  20:29  Now, we're also going to try and bring in some tools that are out there, there, there are places where organizations will send you a question every week or every month. And and it gives you a chance to organize the stories that you want to tell about your life. And, and, and maybe about your life with your family or your life with another person or your life with a business. The whole idea here is that storytelling.KC Dempster  20:57  It's it's a teachable tool, a teaching tool. It's an entertainment tool. And, and, you know, I had, I'll be very quick about this. But in my family, we have a cousin who's going through some real health struggles. And my sister was calling me with an update of what she had heard. And she just was feeling such despair over a lot of the circumstances surrounding this. And I and I said to her, you know, Mary, we come from a family of strong women. And I reminded her of my grandmother on my mother's side, my father's mother, and also our own mother, and the mother of this cousin. And I said, You know, I just reminded her of the stories behind these four women. And I and she took she took comfort in that and said, You know, I never thought of it. But But all of these women were challenged and all of them were able to step up and it was through the stories that we've heard over the years.Ray Loewe  21:55  Okay, so our mission, should we decide to accept it. Okay. It's going to be to tell stories. I think so. And I think there's some wonderful stories out there. Rebecca, thank you so much for your insights today, because I think you're gonna get us started here.Rebecca Hoffman  22:11  Oh, yeah. Thank you, KC and Ray. I think This is the year for storytelling.Ray Loewe  22:17  Yes. Any any final words of wisdom before we have to sign off here?Rebecca Hoffman  22:22  I think that the the only piece I would say is take a chance don't don't wait and hesitate because the moment can get missed.Ray Loewe  22:31  Okay, well, thank you so much for being with us. Again, Rebecca, one of the luckiest people in the world and and you kind of get a sense of why. Okay, and and Rebecca, we will have you back and you can bring your eggs along with you if you wish. And, you know, have a great day. And thanks again for being here. Thank you, Paul. Good to talk to you.KC Dempster  22:55  Thank you everybody for listening. Tune in again next week when we have another fantastic guest one of the luckiest people in the world who will have a lot of wonderful information to share with youRay Loewe  23:06  And maybesome stories evenKC Dempster  23:08  maybe. Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us next week for our next exciting topic on Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. 

Amanda's husband let us know she can't stand it when she's trying to talk & gets interrupted! So Rebecca poses as a customer service rep calling about some late fees & tries to see how many times she can cut her off before she loses it...

People who experience weight discrimination are more likely to gain more weight over time than people with obesity who don't describe these kinds of experiences. Weight bias, stigma and discrimination have received more and more attention among researchers, but also in the public. Think, for example, of the term "fat shaming." Among the researchers doing pathbreaking work in this area is Dr. Rebecca Pearl at the Perlman School of Medicine. Her research focuses on weight bias and its associated outcomes in patients with obesity. About Rebecca Pearl Rebecca Pearl, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her BA from Duke University and her PhD in clinical psychology from Yale University. She completed her predoctoral psychology internship at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School and her postdoctoral fellowship at the Penn Center for Weight and Eating Disorders. Her research focuses on weight bias and its associated health outcomes in patients with obesity. She also investigates strategies for reducing weight bias and its internalization. Her work has been recognized with awards from The Obesity Society and the American Psychological Association and is currently supported by a K23 mentored patient-oriented research career development award from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the NIH. Interview Summary Rebecca, I'm very grateful that you could join us, and let me start with a fundamental question. What is weight bias? How do you define it? Well, Kelly, first, thank you so much for having me, and it's a real treat to speak with you about this topic considering that you are one of the first people to really draw attention to this issue, especially in the scientific context. So when we're talking about weight bias, we're thinking about negative attitudes toward people because of their weight, so people with overweight and obesity, and these negative attitudes are rooted in some common stereotypes, such as that people with obesity are lazy, they don't have any self control, they're unhealthy or don't care about their health. They're greedy, or might even be less intelligent than other people. And then there's also a strong sense of blame that's put on people because of their weight, due to this belief that weight should be entirely within an individual's control. So when people are perceived as not being able to control their weight, they're perceived as being a weak person, or having weak character, or having a failure of personal responsibility. So actually being perceived as an irresponsible person because they have a higher body weight, and these negative attitudes and stereotypes and this blame lead people with obesity to face societal stigma, experiences of weight-based teasing or bullying, discrimination or social rejection, or just generally being devalued by society. And these consequences can be pretty severe, can't they? Absolutely. From a socioeconomic level, when people are denied employment opportunities or denied promotions because of their weight, that can affect wages and socioeconomic advancement. There are also educational disparities that can be attributed to weight bias and weight-based discrimination, and then there are also a number of health disparities that might be in part explained by experiences of weight discrimination or stigmatization. So we'll come back to the health issues in just a minute, but I want to ask you about a particularly important area that you've worked on, weight bias internalization. You and others have documented the impact on people, but you've looked at this particular issue in great depth about internalization. Can you tell us what you mean by that? People can experience weight bias from other people, but they can also apply it to themselves. So weight bias internalization is sometimes called self-directed stigma, and this occurs when people with obesity are aware of the negative attitudes and stereotypes about people with a higher body weight. People with obesity might come to also believing that they are a weak person, or lazy, or a failure, or less worthy than other people, so it's really how stigma can get under the skin, if you will, when people are devaluing themselves because of their weight. And is there variability in how much people with obesity do internalize these negative messages? And what effects does that have when somebody does? Not everybody with obesity internalizes weight bias, but given how pervasive the societal messages are about weight, it's understandable when people do internalize these messages. There's certainly a significant minority of people who have high levels of internalized weight bias, and then many more people who internalize these messages, at least to some degree. A lot of the same health effects that we see from experiencing discrimination from other people, we're also seeing independently associated with this internalized weight bias, and some studies actually suggest that weight bias internalization, above and beyond the experiences of weight bias, might be a stronger predictor of some of the negative health outcomes. So let's loop back to that issue of weight bias and health. And one could imagine that if you internalize the bias and-or you're just subjected to all these things happening out there in society, and it affects your wages, your success in education and all these other kinds of things, that it could affect your health through things like depression and stress. Are there other ways that weight bias might affect health? So those are the big ones. We do know people have higher rates of depression when they're reporting experiences of weight discrimination. Also more anxiety disorders, which makes sense too if you think about when people are anticipating rejection or anticipating discrimination, that that is stressful and might also increase anxiety, especially in social interactions. We also know that substance use disorders are higher in people who have perceived weight discrimination. And then the stress issue is a big one that more and more researchers have been looking at. There's a physiological stress as well as a psychological distress that might affect health outcomes. So if we see changes in cortisol, blood pressure, other markers of inflammation, and those independently are risk factors for cardiovascular disease, but those can also affect people's appetite. So cortisol, for example, is a hormone in relation to stress that can increase appetite, so people might also have behavioral responses to these experiences or even just the internalization of weight bias that's in part driven by physiological responses of eating more food because their body is in a state of stress. So many of us eat as a way of coping with negative emotions, as a way of soothing ourselves or finding comfort. And so for a lot of people who experience weight bias, this is a common way of coping. People also might avoid engaging in physical activity when they are concerned about how others might be perceiving them because of their weight. Especially in public settings like in a gym, they might feel intimidated or just very self-conscious. The patients I've worked with have described negative comments that they've received in fitness type settings, so that would understandably lead them to want to avoid being in those settings. And so that combination of eating more food in response to these experiences as well as avoiding physical activity can actually lead to more weight gain over time. And the last aspect of health that is really important to highlight is how weight bias can play out in health care. So many patients describe having humiliating or disparaging experiences in health care settings, and this might not be intentional on the part of the physician. They might not even be aware of the bias. So for example, a patient coming in for a health concern that's completely unrelated to weight, and the physician solely focusing on the need to lose weight. That can be a very frustrating experience for a patient that might make them want to avoid even bothering to go to the doctor's office the next time they have any health concern. And so if patients are avoiding health care settings, then that's also setting up a higher risk for missing health problems early or for missing out on preventative healthcare services. And the quality of care, too, can also be influenced by weight bias. So Rebecca, what strategies do you think might be effective for reducing weight bias? There are some structural level interventions that have been showing promise. So these interventions include changing media portrayals to reduce the stereotypical or stigmatizing images, and news content in stories about obesity. Other interventions might include policies, for example, legislation to prohibit weight discrimination. In most cities and states in the United States, with the exception of a few cities and one state, the state of Michigan, it is entirely legal to discriminate against hiring or promoting someone because of their weight, so policies to address that could be very effective at reducing instances of discrimination, as well as anti-bullying laws that specifically incorporate weight as a reason that bullying is prohibited. And then other policies at institutional levels within workplaces or educational settings or healthcare settings to promote awareness of body size diversity and increase weight sensitivity by incorporating more education about obesity, especially in healthcare settings, might be helpful as well. Obesity is tied to biological factors, to environmental factors, and it's not a matter of personal weakness or a failure of personal responsibility. There are so many complex factors that influence a person's weight. Some of that kind of education might be helpful for increasing understanding and reducing bias. Another principle that's been looked at is the idea of social consensus as well. Weight is a very socially acceptable thing to tease people about or to stigmatize people for, and so if we could figure out ways, whether it would be through campaigns or just individual actions of making it clear that it is not acceptable to tease someone or make someone feel badly about themselves because of their weight, then that could also go a long way in shifting societal attitudes and behaviors. Well, thanks for those ideas. They're really very promising roads to go down. So let me ask one final question. Is there a way to reduce the internalization of these messages in people with obesity? That's a question I've been very interested in in the past few years, and I do want to emphasize that we need to be, first and foremost, trying to improve societal attitudes and behaviors to try to prevent experiences of weight bias or prevent people from internalizing these messages. And for the people who have already internalized these messages, I think it's really important to develop strategies to help them cope with this and to try to retrain their brains or undo some of this internalized weight bias. So some of the strategies that myself and my colleagues have been testing draw upon psychological principles and psychological treatments that have been used for things like depression and anxiety, and trying to adapt those strategies specifically for targeting internalized weight bias. So this might include cognitive and behavioral skills like examining myths and stereotypes about weight and really digging into, what is the evidence that would support a stereotype like people with obesity are lazy? And what are some of the points of evidence that might poke holes in that idea, or to really challenge the evidence against this idea? Other strategies might include learning how to speak up for oneself, so promoting assertiveness skills. If someone does make a comment to you about your weight, how do you respond? What do you say? How do you have a conversation with a loved one to ask them to stop making comments about what you're eating or what your weight is at the dinner table? And other skills like increasing self-compassion, improving body image, these are all strategies that we're looking at to see if they could have an effect on reducing weight bias internalization. And the last potential strategy might be engaging in advocacy as a way of feeling empowered to do something about this social injustice in the world, that that might help people feel better about themselves and also help to combat this bigger problematic issue in society  

Rebecca Massoud is an award-winning marketing & presentation coach, speaker, and creator of Speak, Shine, Sell(tm) and Soulful Speaking(tm). Women entrepreneurs hire Rebecca to multiply their income and impact through speaking, because many women hold back their voice, stay invisible and aren’t making the money they want in their business. So Rebecca teaches them how to create a client-attracting signature talk that sells AND serves. Website: rebeccamassoud.com

So Rebecca's husband Mike thought it would be funny to submit his own personal favorite to the Best Worst Christmas Song and let's just say, Rebecca doesn't approve.*Audio Provided by The Orchard Enterprises*

Rebecca and Chris went on a date to find the perfect bowl of Mac and Cheese. But after two stops, Chris went home with a tummy ache and 8 days have passed with no sign of Chris wanting a second date. So Rebecca called us to see what we could do to help her out.

Rebecca and Chris went on a date to find the perfect bowl of Mac and Cheese. But after two stops, Chris went home with a tummy ache and 8 days have passed with no sign of Chris wanting a second date. So Rebecca called us to see what we could do to help her out.