Dr. Chris Lee on Breaking Emotional Cycles, Healing Trauma, and Becoming Unshakable

Welcome back to another episode of Know Your Physio—the podcast where we dive deep into the science of human potential and self-mastery. Today, I’m beyond excited to introduce a guest who truly embodies resilience and what it means to live with purpose: Dr. Chris Lee.

Dr. Chris Lee is not only a neuroscientist but also an entrepreneur and, most importantly, a compassionate human being whose journey has been shaped by immense personal challenges. He’s navigated the profound loss of his father, taken on the responsibility of being a single parent, and powered through the demanding grind of earning his doctorate. Through it all, Chris has developed an unparalleled understanding of the human nervous system and the true art of self-regulation.

In this episode, we dive into Chris’s personal “why”—a journey that started with heartache but has evolved into a beautiful, transformative philosophy. Chris shares his foundational mantra: “If the flower doesn’t bloom, you don’t blame the flower.” This mindset shift helped him reframe pain, purpose, and the environments that either limit or liberate us. It’s a powerful way to look at adversity—not as something to avoid, but as the very fuel for growth.

We talk about the stark difference between being driven by suffering versus being inspired by purpose. High performers, as Chris explains, often unknowingly uncover what truly regulates them and what doesn’t. We also explore the science of emotional intelligence, the importance of co-regulation in relationships, and how to thrive in an overstimulated world through "low-stimulation" habits.

This conversation is raw, real, and packed with insights that will challenge your understanding of success. It’s an invitation to embrace discomfort, redefine what “winning” really means, and discover the “unf*ckable” version of yourself that emerges when you do the inner work. Trust me—you don't want to miss this one.

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Topics Covered:

[00:02:29] Neuroscience and self-regulation journey.

[00:08:05] Pain as a catalyst for growth.

[00:12:56] Finding self-regulation through suffering.

[00:23:45] Skill development and dedication.

[00:34:22] Self-discovery through discomfort.

[00:40:06] Co-regulation in relationships.

[00:44:34] Doing right things for wrong reasons.

[00:48:29] Emotional suppression and its effects.

[00:58:14] Integration of fragmented identity.

[01:04:30] Vulnerability in masculinity.

[01:12:47] First date job interview vibe.

[01:16:20] Defining love through shared experiences.

[01:19:30] Synchronicity and spiritual connection.

[01:30:07] Conflict versus combat in relationships.

[01:42:14] Intimacy in relationships.

[01:48:49] Strategy for podcast growth.

Chapters

• 0:00 Teaser
• 1:29 Intro
• 8:05 Pain as a catalyst for growth
• 12:56 Finding self-regulation through suffering
• 23:45 Skill development and dedication
• 34:22 Self-discovery through discomfort
• 40:06 Co-regulation in relationships
• 44:34 Doing right things for wrong reasons
• 48:29 Emotional suppression and its effects
• 58:14 Integration of fragmented identity
• 1:04:30 Vulnerability in masculinity
• 1:12:47 First date job interview vibe
• 1:16:20 Defining love through shared experiences
• 1:19:30 Synchronicity and spiritual connection
• 1:30:07 Conflict versus combat in relationships
• 1:42:14 Intimacy in relationships
• 1:48:49 Strategy for podcast growth

Transcript

Dr Chris Lee:
I started to realize a very simple thing. And this is kind of like the quote that I stand on. If the flower doesn't bloom, you don't blame the flower. So I went from killing it in school and being super happy and never really being like a drinker or anything like that and playing college sports and running track and all the things and just finding myself in a way that was just real to me. Playful, biking, you know, all the stuff. And suddenly it felt like all that was Taken from me. I felt like it was stolen And I just kind of sat in this victim mentality of like what what did I do to deserve this? like I like my whole life is derailed like I don't know how to be a dad and like I want to go travel the world and I want to you know open this amazing clinic and help people in this way that and I can look I can look at it now and just laugh and smile because like it had to be this way and I wish more people understood that, that all these high performers, inadvertently oftentimes, have discovered what regulates and dysregulates them. And then through trial, error, strife, and struggling and suffering, they have evolved these strategies so that they're creating the stress that creates the nervous system tone where they execute clearly. Chris. Hey.

Andres Preschel: Hey.

Dr Chris Lee: How are you? How you doing? I'm good. I'm good. It's always, uh, I don't know with people that I'm super comfortable with. We like jump straight into like the recording. Like we just like got on the phone, but like realistically we've been talking for like the last like 25 minutes. Yeah. Um, which has been awesome, but yeah, it, the connection of it is awesome and it's Wednesday and it feels like a Monday. So life is great.

Andres Preschel: Yeah. Life is good, man. Life is good. It's great to have you here. I'm excited to jump in and I'm so excited for all the listeners who are going to uncover some good actionable substance for everything, you know, co-regulation, unplugging and, and much more. Let's dive in. Let's start with your, uh, let's start with your why, man. Why don't you tell us a little bit about, uh, why you do what you do?

Dr Chris Lee: The unhealthy version of me a handful of years ago would have not said this, but I originally got into the world of neuroscience and self-regulation because I needed closure. I needed answers. 2016 my dad killed himself out of the blue sporadic. He is the perfect middle-aged man who Commits suicide. He's the perfect statistic and He was my best friend. He was my brother's best friend. We were both in the middle of school finish up our doctorates I was like a year into it and I I was, you know, go through all the phases of grief and my brother flipped to addictionology and I flipped to neuroscience because I'm like, what, what the fuck happened? Are we allowed to swear? We're going to swear. Yeah. Did you say addictionology? Yeah. He went to go study addiction.

Andres Preschel: Okay.

Dr Chris Lee: And I went to study the brain cause I'm like, something must have been wrong. Something in his head really must've been wrong. And yeah, the answer, that I was hoping to get. I think as a lot of people that have gone through grief and maybe suicide and maybe relationship stuff, the closure is not something you find outside of yourself. It's something you go inside and find. And I'm at that point for the most part now. And a year after my dad passed away, I became a dad of my own. I was 24, and that was, you know, eight years ago now, almost eight years ago. My daughter's gonna be eight, and I was lost, broken, confused, full of grief, anger, frustration, confusion, just didn't know up from down, left from right, and in the midst of that, trying to complete my boards, trying to do additional studies, trying to finish school early so that I can get a job so I don't have to steal coffee from hotel lobbies, like, everything. And shortly after my daughter was born, I became a solo single dad, trying to figure that out with no family in town. And my family's amazing and supportive, but they were in Michigan. So I started to realize a very simple thing, and this is kind of like the quote that I stand on, if the flower doesn't bloom, you don't blame the flower. So I went from killing it in school and being super happy and never really being like a drinker or anything like that and playing college sports and running track and all the things and just finding myself in a way that was just real to me. Playful, biking, you know, all the stuff. And suddenly it felt like all that was taken from me. I felt like it was stolen. And I just kind of sat in this victim mentality of like, what did I do to deserve this? Like, my whole life is derailed. Like, I don't know how to be a dad. And like, I want to go travel the world. And I want to, you know, open this amazing clinic and help people in this way that… I can look at it now and just laugh and smile because it had to be this way. It had to be this way. It couldn't have been any other way. I had a neurophysiology lab teacher who originally told me that quote, if the flower doesn't bloom, you don't blame the flower and originally was talking about cancer. And he's like, yeah, cancer blooms in certain environments. And you know, blah, blah. And I was like, Oh, but that's like, that's me. Like, what environment is like, holding me down? What what is that thing? And I know now it's not just my nervous system. I know now that it's a ton of different factors. It's the people you surround yourself with. It's how you love yourself. There's all of those different things. So my why originally started out, I need answers. Like, dad, why did you do that? And it's to the point now where my why is to help people discover curiosity and playfulness instead of judgment, criticism, and being a victim of themselves. And I can anchor into the science of that, but eventually science can take you from point A to point B. And eventually you gotta surrender to the divine magic of nobody knows what the fuck is going on and only you can figure that out. Because that's where life gets really fun, is on the other side of, okay, I figured out the meat suit, I figured out the self-regulation, why am I here? What is my thing? I don't understand. And we'd be confused, and instead of confusion, you start to get clarity, and you start to understand your values, and I started to understand those things through my daughter. um being a solo single parent trying to figure it out and realizing oh the neuropsychology the psychology that all these things not only do i owe it to her but i can't fix her you can't fix anyone i can only fix me and then lead by example and that's been like a huge shift in parenting world but that's my why is you know i want to i want to show people show men show women Here's how you'd like feel your feelings and still run for businesses. Here's how you feel your feelings and still make sure that I cook home meals every single day. Here's how you feel your feelings and still like crush in life. Here's how you feel your feelings and like, you know, still squat 300 on the rack like this. And all of those things are that's for Chris. Everyone has to discover that. And you don't discover who you are through joy and happiness and like all the things. It's pain, it's suffering, it hurts. And that's the fertilizer that grows your authentic self up and out instead of down and out. And I think that's what most people experience. They get that down and out where they get squeezed by life and then just a part of them ends up popping out, like trying to hold like a volleyball underwater. The more you move, the harder it is to hold. And then eventually it pops out and you get smoked in the face and you're like, who am I? Why am I? And everybody's kind of had those experiences. My invitation to people would be, well, what if you just let it out? What if we just get on like, because the resistance is just you. So if you can get yourself out of the way and figure out why you're in the way, how's that keeping you safe? The world just cracks open for you in the most beautiful way. Why? Because life is meant to be lived, right? A boat is safe in the harbor, but that's not what it's built for.

Andres Preschel: What do you think your life would be like if you hadn't faced that kind of suffering?

Dr Chris Lee: I think I would have hit 45 and looked back and said, what an amazing life. But this isn't my life. This is someone else's expectations that I am living as a value. And I don't really know who I am. I don't really know why I am. I don't really love the way that I'm parenting. I don't really love the thing that I've created. I was really good at being a clinician, like set records, did all the things and would have crushed in practice. To this day, I have never practiced. I've never gone into practice. And that's because when you make way for the gift, the gift makes way for you. Like, you know, you have, you've read the alchemist.

Andres Preschel: No, I, I know, I know, I know. Yeah.

Dr Chris Lee: The universe is conspiring for you.

Andres Preschel: McTube, right? Yeah. My buddy has a, has a tattoo on his arm.

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah.

Andres Preschel: I'm gonna order it right now so I don't forget.

Dr Chris Lee: He's literally doing it too, for those of you who's like, I'm watching him hit it off.

Andres Preschel: I'm absolutely doing it, Alec, you missed.

Dr Chris Lee: And I love it, yeah. And I read that book once a year, and I need that reminder that even though I do a lot of this work, and we do, right? We're both strong, fit men, and yeah, who I would be on the other side? It would be fulfilling. I don't know if I would be proud of him. If that makes any sense.

Andres Preschel: No, it absolutely does. I mean, and not to make this about me, but I can appreciate that because my whole life I thought I was going to be a doctor. My parents taught me that was at the time the most rewarding way to help others. And, um, I feel like I would have been a great doctor, but I, I wouldn't have been a had that's the same level of satisfaction, I wouldn't have become self-actualized. I mean, not that I am self-actualized, but I don't think I would have had, I would have been on the right path for that kind of internal happiness, joy, authenticity. I wouldn't have felt like, like, like me. I wouldn't have felt, you know, on paper, I would be happy and fulfilled, but not internally.

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah. And this, I, I, I hear this so much. i meet people and they're like yeah i like my life has been just really great and like really amazing i'm always excited for them because the resistance and the beliefs that stress and trauma and uncertainty and predictability bury in your nervous system is lesser for them and i'm also there's like a part of me that's also sad of like You don't know who you are until you've been in crisis. I didn't know who I was until… I had $10 in the bank account. I needed to buy diapers for my daughter. I needed food at some point and I had rent coming up and I had four finals that if I fail those finals, it's an insane amount of money to fail finals because you have a midterm, you got a final. So I didn't do really great on the midterms because I was getting two hours of sleep because I had a six year, six month old daughter, right? I'm like trying to take her to class and I'm trying to find people. I'm like, I found myself in that suffering. So when I hear people and like the suffering doesn't have to be like that. You can find and you can create environments for yourself and this is like I teach self-regulation all day and the people that I work with one-on-one more than anything I'm like we got to stress you. Right, like let's see who you are when we put you under pressure. So let's let's increase the tone for some of these things and let's take it down in some other ways. Right. And it's finding it's like a recipe. Right. And you have to put it in the right order. Then you got to proof the bread and you got to do this and you got to do that. Everybody, I think, has in every season of life a different recipe for what's going to allow their best self to come through, to get out of their own way. And I think that's a part of the playfulness of it. And I'm curious your take on that too. I'm always curious, how do I get the best out of myself? How do you get the best out of other people? What do you think?

Andres Preschel: What I think about what it takes to get the best out of me or people that I know or… Let's start with you.

Dr Chris Lee: Let's get cozy. Yeah. How do you get the best out of you?

Andres Preschel: The best out of me? I've realized, so, you know, growing up, I was always, when I came to school, which is obviously much of our young lives, I was always a procrastinator and I always got, you know, a lot of negative feedback from parents, teachers. But I realized that over time and learning neuroscience psychology, I just realized that I'm someone that needs a little more motivation to get things done. And I also work very well under stress. You know, I'm also, you know, I was diagnosed with ADD and I start to look into dopamine and trying to figure out how and why I am who I am. You know, I took Adderall for 10 years and it was a good thing in some ways, but terrible in other ways. And I realized, I'm just like, I'm generally someone that has low levels of dopamine. I need more stimulus, you know, and unless I'm doing things that I actually care about, I'm completely disconnected. Like, not completely, but like, I'm pretty black and white. It's different. Yeah, like I'm hyper focused and I've also noticed in my clients that are incredibly high performers that are the best in the world at what they do that they also have like some degree of ADD or they're on the spectrum or they're dyslexic or you know or a combination of all the above.

Dr Chris Lee: Say it again. Like I wish I wish more people understood that that all these high performers inadvertently oftentimes have discovered what regulates and dysregulates them. And then through trial, error, strife and struggling and suffering, they have evolved these strategies so that they're creating the stress that creates the nervous system tone where they execute clearly. Right.

Andres Preschel: Bro, round of applause. That was so well said. Do you see this? Do you see what I'm talking about? For sure, I see it. And like you, through this suffering that you've been through, you can put yourself in the shoes of other people. The way that you have to figure yourself out gives you that empathy and the ability to help other people. Similarly, figuring myself out was my number one mission for a while because I was suffering in so many different ways. I had to figure, I had no choice but to figure it out. And I decided, all right, well, I have to build my career and lifestyle around this. Like, I'm not going to go and do what everybody else does. Like, I'm going to, I have to be an entrepreneur. I have to do what I'm excited about. I have to solve the problems I care about. I can't, I can't have a boss. And I have to figure out a way to reinforce my health habits and leverage my health to do what I do even better. And so you put all that together and naturally, here I am.

Dr Chris Lee: And yeah, so you hit a couple points there that I want to go back to. Number one, if you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, I don't give a f***. frog. I'm working on it. For those of you that are like, this guy swears a lot. I got a tiny human. She's like floating around seven. She is seven. She's going to be gay soon. And she, I have no shame, she's allowed to swear in the house. A hundred percent, right? Free, go for it. If she swears improperly, And she swears like just inadvertently or just like randomly, like, oh, look at that. It's just a duck. Fuck. Like, and it's like, no, that's a duck, right? There's a proper way. There's a proper cadence to it. And she calls me out on it sometimes. She's like, there's a lot. There's a lot of seasoning in that sentence, dad. Like, mm, okay, thank you. She says that? There's a lot of seasoning? Well, yes, my kid grew up with me, right? As like dad, which like, it's probably going to cause a lot of therapy, but it's also like, All right, recognizing that she probably isn't feeling safe in her body. I'm recognizing that right now she's overstimulated. I'm recognizing right now that she is doing these bids for attention, which is creating her opportunity to be seen and heard in a way that she's not being seen and heard right now. And then, oh, do I have the availability for that, right? Because it's just, it's her and I. It's been her and I for eight years, right? So you just start to learn those different ways and a parent, maybe in a weird way, a parent in a very low stimulus way. She often asks me when we, when she sees other parents or people or relationships, like, I don't want to call it fighting or like discussing. They're like, they get loud. She's like, why, why don't we fight? I'm like, we will, is what I tell her. I tell her this every time. I'm like, we will. There's going to be a day where you and I are both just tapped out and it just goes. She's like, well, But still, I have never remembered you getting loud unless I'm being unsafe. Because we nurture this environment of communication instead of conflict, connection over distance. That's been built in since day zero. But anyways, while we talk about parenting and another thing, I wanted to come back to what you talked about building life building your business around a lifestyle. Because that's exactly what one of my mentors told me when my life was upside down, inside out, and I'm stealing coffee from hotel lobbies. It's a true story, by the way. Like, needed the coffee, couldn't afford the coffee, McDonald's coffee, dollar, too much, too pricey. So there was a hotel that I could walk to on the way to school because sometimes gas was expensive. I would walk in there. point at the person and they would just because I had my daughter strapped to my chest and a backpack on and you take a cup of coffee. But that was one of the most invaluable, most valuable pieces of advice I ever got. Like, what kind of lifestyle do you want? I was like, I don't even know. I'm just trying to like, I'm stealing coffee like that. Okay. Do you want to drink lattes and cappuccinos all day? Like you want to read? You want to do what? and building that as your lifestyle instead. Like I said, like me and my tiny human homeschooler and I run four businesses and like have great relationships and family and I hit the gym every day and we paddleboard and I haven't missed a sunrise or a sunset in a long time. Take care of my health and people would look at that. I imagine probably the way they look at you and they're like, how? How do you do that? Prioritization? What is that for you? What's the secret sauce?

Andres Preschel: Well, you know, I honestly, I don't know how I arrived at this golden nugget of wisdom. I honestly, there's no one that I can give credit to, at least up top my head. But I remember at some point in time when I was starting my first business with a doctor that I was shadowing. I don't know how this came to me, but I was like, wow, you know, the biggest luxury that I can imagine as far as, you know, my personal and professional life becoming intertwined and becoming like one thing, which is pretty much inevitable as an entrepreneur. I was like, I think the biggest luxury is just getting to live my life the way I want and building my career around that. And I was like, I don't know, it just made sense to me. And I was like, okay, instead of trying to crush it in business and impact and then have the means to kind of switch things around, even then that's like, that's pretty risky. I was like, what if I, prioritize my lifestyle, my health, the way I want to feel, the way I want to live and see what I can build around that. And I started doing it and it wasn't easy at first. I mean, like anything else, anything new, it was, there was a lot of friction.

Dr Chris Lee: Everything's a skill.

Andres Preschel: Yeah. It was, it was absolutely a skill and with a, with a huge ceiling and, um, you know, to make a very long story short, I, over time kind of learned how important that really was for me. And I started to see and really feel and even measure the difference that like getting my eight hours of deep, efficient, restorative sleep, really focusing on my nutrition, getting that regular exercise, I started to see the difference that that made in my ability to connect with others, to feel regulated. to feel present and clear. And I started to, I mean, in the beginning of my professional journey, my core focus, the core of my creativity, the way that I expressed that was through writing. And I would just write, write, write. I started making content online, taking what I knew and distilling it into actionable steps. And that was so therapeutic and I started to see in that at a small scale how the way that I felt and the way that I committed to this healthy lifestyle and healthy living impacted the quality of my work, the quality of my ideas, the quality of my connection. And I was like, wow, like there really is something so powerful here. And over time that was reinforced, you know, consciously and subconsciously and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And now, I mean, I have no choice but to do what I do and live the way that I live. There's just simply no other way. That's who you are. Yeah, it's who I am and there's no other, there's absolutely, it would have been impossible to be where I am today if it wasn't for that.

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah.

Dr Chris Lee: And I think people undervalue stress and frustration. So like for your brain to create neuroplastic change, we need like minimum two ingredients. We need friction and we need focus. And once you realize that everything you want is on the other side of skill development, You're set, right? And some skills are going to be easier for you to develop. Like I was telling somebody this the other day, they're like, I want to make content the way that like you make content. And I sent them like one of my first videos and I'm in the woods because I am. It was so bad. Right? Like I'm trying to teach like, oh, here's the diaphragm. The diaphragm is part of the audit. It was like a 45 minute video trying to teach someone how to breathe through their nose. I was like, all right. Like, you really want to start somewhere? Like, this is where I started. Like, nervous, jerky, ashamed, GoPro in the woods, 2018. Right? Like, that was what I had available. And then over time, and you don't even know how many reps people put into that, you become, I don't want to say world class, but like, you and I are doomed. better than we were yesterday and we'll do better tomorrow. People see the success though and they are like, oh, you did this in like a year. Wow. It's like, no, no, no. I planted this seed a decade ago and now it's producing fruit. That's what you're seeing. You're seeing the fruit. You didn't see the roots grow. You didn't see the trunk come up. You didn't see the struggle. You didn't see like the 4am wake up calls. You didn't see the heartbreak. You didn't see the therapy sessions. You didn't see any of this shit. You just saw fruit. You have no idea what it takes to get there.

Andres Preschel: And you know, if you still have the 45 minute video that you have, I mean, I'm sure it was still valuable, but I'll tell you what, maybe it's not something that someone would tune into for 45 minutes. However, I think people see something like that and like, wow, this guy was putting in the work. It's evidence that you were trying to figure that out and that you were committed to that process. And similarly, if you scroll back to my first post, I'd make these carousel posts that were scientific. It'd take me 20 hours to create all of the graphic design, get all the research, distill it, add the references, and my followers wouldn't spend more than 20 seconds. However, now, I don't regret it. It taught me to improve just as it did for you. But now, if people scroll back, they see that I'm the kind of guy that would spend 20 hours just to get a point across. And that I'm willing to do the work. And that I've done the work. You know what I mean? So it's more like what it says about you than what you created. Yeah, it's a dedication.

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah. And I think that now, because So the amount of stimulation that you experience determines how you perceive time, right? So the amount of stimulation that you experience determines your experience of time. And a lot of people are just like, I can't get present. And I'm like, how much time are you on your phone? Are you doing like slow stimulation activities? And especially with like how our channels are now, like, We're probably talking to like, what, 100 million people per month collectively between the two of us? It's a lot.

Andres Preschel: You probably have 99 million.

Dr Chris Lee: No, no, stop, stop. But between what we're doing, you and I have designed lives that it's thinking fast and thinking slow, right? If you haven't done that one, Amazon that one too. Thinking fast, thinking slow.

Andres Preschel: By the way, I got the alchemist.

Dr Chris Lee: I believe it. Yeah, you're gonna have a stack of books. I have a huge stack of books I need to start reading. As we all should because that's that low stimulation, right? So like the way that you read a book versus that very same book, listening to the author talk about a podcast. When you read a book, you have this really cool effect that your brain has the ability to ingest that information slowly. and argue against if you like it or not, versus having a conversation like this, extremely valuable, but it's a stream of consciousness that you and I are having. So people are like, well, I can listen to a book faster. And I'm like, you can. That's not the point. You don't want to, it's not, it's not a race to the finish, right? Like that's why in this season of my life, I'm just crushing it. I don't know if crushing is the right way to say it. Poetry. If I get through like one Sufi poem per day, it's a great day. And I'm like taking these lines and sometimes these words just bit by bit by bit and like, oh man, something like that hit. And it's the slowness of that, but we're so fast-paced and everything is just trying to get the biggest dopamine hit on the face of the earth. And the scroll is like… Social media can be extremely beneficial. I believe that. it's either using you or you are using it. And 99.9% of people, even like big creators out there, they're being used by it, right? Like they're getting jacked into the matrix, so to say, and the overstimulation is just running their lives. And you can see these people, right? Like they're just, they're so overwhelmed and unhappy. Like I can see this in marriages a lot right now, that people are just like, you want to find a person who wants to do the work, Show me where you're putting your time. I don't even give a frog about where you're putting your money right now. Like, show me your schedule and show me your bank account and I'll show you your future. Show me your screen time, right? Like, how much are you on the screen? Like, how much are you overstreaming? Like, I live this summer, me and my daughter for the past two years, do either 230 hot chocolate. We make, obviously, the healthy paleo cacao, all this, all that, and it's great. Hey, what do you mean 230 hot chocolate? 2.30 in the afternoon, we make hot chocolate. Yeah, so I like a nice, healthy, high polyphenol cacao.

Andres Preschel: Middle of the day, cortisol low, get a little boost.

Dr Chris Lee: We're just chilling, yeah. That's the end of my day, right? And she's done with school at that time, so that's our transitional behavior. Nice.

Andres Preschel: Bumoxytocin, theobromine, the antioxidants.

Dr Chris Lee: We're doing all the dirty goodies, yeah. And we're just having that, or we're having a cup of tea together. And it's just us, that's it. There's no TV, there's no video games, there's no books. It's just her and I making a slow 30 minute cup of tea. That's it. And what that does to you over time, especially in the midst of business and life, because I'm trying to talk like the way my life is, and life still gets busy for me. So there's still chaos in there. I'm not levitating around. I haven't got it all figured out. I'm figuring more of it out, but I will 100% die incompletely unfulfilled with a to-do list and dishes in the sink and laundry to be done. Everyone does. right? But it's those snapshots that you can get where you're fulfilled in a different way. You're slow like you were talking about it's but like being present before we hit the record button you're like I'm just focused on learning how to be more present and it's like oh Yeah, like, who's not? And how to be present shows up in different environments, in different states, in different ways. Sometimes being present means acknowledging that you are shared, just scared shitless right now. And like, I don't know what to do. I don't know who I am. And just like, I don't know why I'm scared. I'm just letting that thing through without judgment, without criticism, without, you know, oh, well, this person would do it differently. There's magic in that.

Andres Preschel: You know, one habit that I've incorporated now for almost a year that does exactly what you're describing, like reading a book, it's not how fast you can get to the finish line, but giving yourself the chance between the words, between the the decisions you're making, just to really reflect and see how certain things make you feel and to truly enable that presence with yourself where you can be honest about what you're engaging with and how it may influence you or what you can take away from it. I started making tea in the evenings, chamomile tea with glycine powder, which just, I mean, mechanistic. Oh yeah. So mechanistically, right? That's going to create a GABAergic effect. Inhibitory neurotransmitter helps you relax, unwind. So just the tea itself, you can drink it and it'll have that influence on you. But for me, what's been more important isn't that. It's the ritual of going and heating up the water Waiting for it to get to the right temperature adding the tea bag getting my mixture tool mixing the glycine powder with the chamomile tea and Then waiting for it to seep and then sipping it slowly, you know it ends up taking like 10-15 minutes but that to me that that has been a a it represents a commitment to a genuine wind down and it's like Turning the page between like, cause I'm the kind of person, man, I mean, I like being creative into the evening, right? Dopamine levels are lower, serotonin levels are higher. You don't have hard commitments in the calendar. I just like to think and create, but that even that can be very stimulating and keep me up at night. So to me, that's like a true turning of the page where I have to take the time to do it and I can reflect. And that alone, I mean, even if you remove the GABAergic influence of what I'm consuming, it would still have a meaningful effect and influence on the quality of my sleep. And I've had a lot of my clients do this because a lot of my clients relate. I mean, I identified a lot of them, right. And, and, and they can relate to that. You know, their, their, their minds are very, very active pretty much all day long. And that ritual has been so therapeutic. So that's been one of my go-tos as of late.

Dr Chris Lee: That's huge, dude. So in the world of neuroscience, if you really want to start to imprint new patterns, it's time. Because your brain is constantly calculating time, intention, and effort. So, this ritual, which is very much a ritual, right? Like, which is a beautiful and amazing thing. It's an intentional, effortful thing through time. You are telling your brain, this thing is meaningful to me. So, we're gonna slow down and we're gonna go do that. And your brain creates significance and meaning and impact from those moments. So when I see people struggling to find meaning in their life, I oftentimes will tell them, but go make a cup of tea, right? Like go watch a sunset. Go do something slow. And don't do it for a day. Do it for a week. In seven days, if you really want to see something change, take away the stimulation. Two or three days, maybe a week of just breaking. It's an addiction, right? Break that addiction. And then afterwards, do something that's going to make you uncomfortable. Because the truth of who you are, why you are, it is trying to surface. It's trying to come up and I wholeheartedly believe this because I see I see this all day people are like I don't know who I am and I'm like well Are you removing the parts that feel like who you are not or that are the distractions or the unhealthy parts? because once you get those things out of the way like The leading happiness researcher out there, one of the leading ones, Sean Aker, came out with this, you know, happiness index and, you know, Stanford did that longevity study. And what they consistently find is like, we're innately happy little monkeys on this planet. We just have to take the stress out of the way. When we remove stress, and so much of stress is perceptive, which is for me, I don't love the term mindset. I like mental frames way more. Maybe it's the same thing. Maybe it's nuanced. Once you get that down and you understand stress, you're happy. You start to find that happiness or it starts to find you, I think. And that starts to play in the esoteric a little bit of like, oh, you are who you've been looking for. Adam Roa, another great, amazing poet out there. You should definitely have him on the show. I got his phone number now. But he's got this this poem that you are who you've been looking for and it went just nuts viral look it up on YouTube and It hit me like a ton of bricks it like four or five years ago and And when you stop seeking who you are from outside of yourself, you get uncomfortable in the silence. You get uncomfortable in the effort of who you are in a journal, in slow activities, of doing something meaningful that you might not ever get retribution or reflection on. You find meaning in that suffering. You start to find who you are in that suffering. And that's, you know, Man's Search for Meaning. For sure. Viktor Frankl. Extraordinary book. Highly recommend it. Right. Yeah. And that's, you know, one of those ones that I try to read every year too. I haven't read it this year. Maybe this is time. But yeah, you know, the Buddha described seven different forms of suffering and how that was like the meaning of this whole thing. And there's like 16 different translations for what suffering means from like, you know, Sanskrit to English. And it's like, It's a shedding. It's an evolution. It's a rising from the ashes. My daughter's name, her name is Phoenix. And it is a constant reminder of like, okay, it's okay to burn down and rebuild. It's okay. There's a cycle to this thing. And every time you burn down and come back, you find a little bit more of who you are along the way. And I think self-regulation and the nervous system and understanding rituals and glycine and chamomile tea is another extraordinary pathway to doing that. Like I have found more about who I am and made more money from a cup of tea or a quiet latte or a cappuccino in the morning than a $100,000 course that I bought or coaching or Maybe not therapy. Therapy's always been amazing. I just have the dopest therapist ever. But I don't know. And this is for me. And I can't speak for you and I can't speak for anybody out there listening, but you have to find your thing and you just let it kill you. Let it just murder you in a dark alley.

Andres Preschel: Couple things I want to add here just to help contextualize what you're saying and to show people the reality as much for you as it is for me. This is just a small example but definitely a meaningful one that's recent and relevant. You know, the other day I have, as I imagine you do, and pretty much all people, we all deal with difficult people in our lives, you know, and sometimes these difficult people that are worth hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, hire me to help them. And as it said, you know, more money, more problems for both them and for me. And, you know, I've had the opportunity to have to deal with two of these people in situations that now require legal teams to get involved, which I'm not going to get into as to why I'm not going to mention any names, obviously. But the point is that I'm in a difficult situation with about three people right now where legal has to get involved. And it's OK. But the other day, we just had one of these things come up. And, you know, it just felt like life was just throwing this at me, like, you know, one situation after the other, like, nonstop, now we have these three cases that we're dealing with, right? And it's like, wow, like, what a punch in the gut, you know? Like, I thought I already had enough, and I thought I had already transformed spiritually after the first two, and I have to deal with this? Like, wow. Like, really, really, really, like, just humbled me. Humbled the frog out of me, okay? And yeah, and then, and you know, I've got an incredible COO, shout out to Max Ross, who is very, we just, we've learned to, how to stand up for each other and how to have each other's backs. And I know that one of the topics that you're so excited about is, you know, this co-regulation. I would love to shift gears and talk a little more about that and personal, professional, you know, and intimate relationships. But anyway, he had my back and he's like, listen, man, you have to focus on what you can control. What can you control right now? And these three situations, obviously, they're costing a lot of time, effort, money to resolve, right? And he's like, listen, what can you focus on? You can focus on the quality of your work on your service delivery, the clients that you have and that we need to service, focus on that. and focus on the leads that we have that we need to onboard in this program. We need to close them, we need to onboard them, we need to help those people. He's like, everything else is like, you have… You have the privilege of dealing with these situations because our business has grown so much. If we didn't have this growth and we didn't have this scale, we wouldn't be dealing with these problems. So be grateful and then start focusing what you can control because it needs that kind of focus. And I'll tell you, man, that obviously it's not easy, but I took a moment and I was like, let me treat myself like my own client right now. What would I do? What would I tell a client right now if he's dealing with this situation? Take a fucking moment. Sorry, I brought you I was like take a moment Do some four seven eight breathing diaphragmatically through your nose go for a walk engage with a nice panoramic view engage the peripheral visual cortex go look at the water and Just take a moment to let this sink in and see how it makes you feel and ask yourself Why is it making me feel this way?

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah. Let's get curious instead of judgmental. Judgment is, and criticism is automatic, right? Straight to the default mode network. Information doesn't get filtered. It just gets witnessed. Exactly. Questions? Frontal cortex activate. A little temporal though. Get a little ACC activation. A little dopamine anticipation. Start teasing yourself with opportunity instead of shame.

Andres Preschel: For those who aren't watching the video, Chris sure has a way to make me blush with his applied neuroscience. Girl, stop. But yeah, it's exactly what happened, man. And you mentioned how you prefer to describe this as a mental framework rather than a mindset. And I see it similarly. I see this as an opportunity to positively reframe the situation. You know, instead of just being reactive, like really thinking to yourself, you know, OK, what do I. What is this inviting me to learn and how is inviting me to grow? What what? What can I derive from this in a positive way? Because I think the only real failure, there's no such thing as failure. I think the only real failure is going through something difficult and not taking away anything from it. You know, driving no meaning, driving no lesson. That's real failure. That's failure.

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah, you're a victim. You can't say, victims can't be taught, victims cannot learn.

Andres Preschel: Exactly. So I was like, that's exactly the opposite of what I need to do. And, and get this, so this all went down, that third instance went down and everything's getting resolved and people are doing their jobs and things are going to work out. Um, but dude, the next day I was so motivated going back to, you know, this is the way that I work, right? I need more stress to feel motivated, dude. I. focused on what I, what was in control and you know, we onboarded five VIP clients in one day. The next day, five, five stellar, five people, you know, like had one of our best days ever. because I was so freaking motivated. And my COO today, we had a team meeting and he's like, listen man, you need to pretend that at all times you're dealing with these situations now because now we get to see how you're performing under stress. You need to figure out a way to get yourself more stress. One of the reasons I bought this place and I got a mortgage, I mean, obviously I can afford it, but. That kind of responsibility motivates you to keep crushing it.

Dr Chris Lee: Before we started recording, you were like, do you have anything you want to shout out? And I'm like, do the podcast. Because we're in the middle of this rebrand and the stuff that's left is on my plate. I'm like, if you're going to hit this thing on Monday, the deadline will do the thing for me. So I'll go do it. And then the big thing for me is doing right things for wrong reasons is wrong things.

Andres Preschel: So doing right things for wrong reasons is the wrong thing.

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah.

Andres Preschel: So give us an example.

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah. Go to the gym because you think that you're a fat piece of shit and don't deserve to eat or be a good like people just shame the fuck out of themselves. And then you create this associative learning pattern that I go to the gym because I'm a worthless piece of trash. I go to the gym because I need to be punished. I go to the gym because I just deserve to suffer. And it's like, hold on. that pattern that you repeat over and over and over and over again is eventually going to become a personality trait. And this is why, you know, the gym bro culture has that thing and they joke about it, but it's not really a joke when you start to talk to these guys. So when I start to talk with, I mean, same thing, I have these companies that I'm supporting and these guys are fit. billion dollar company, you know, all the things. And then underneath the surface, there's these emotional patterns that got associated to wealth. Never going to be enough. Don't feel worthy to receive. You need to be validated through external circumstances and dollar bills. And it's like, OK, so you've been every hundred million dollars you've made, every ten thousand dollars, whatever the heck it is, is just another intention that I'm a worthless piece of shit validated through action. And you've repeated that every breath, every day. So now we have to unwind that. But you've suppressed it under a hundred million dollars, under a billion dollars, under nine years consistent of going to the gym. So when we allow this thing to come up, we just bear witness to it without judging because I think one of the hard things of doing, like, not just, like, talking about the work or, like, mindset or framing is just, okay, I, in some way, shape, or form, think that I'm a worthless piece of shit. And instead of going, well, no, I'm not a worthless piece of shit, it's taking an observatory perspective and going, oh, I'm going to let myself feel without judgment or criticism that I'm a worthless piece of shit. I'm going to bear witness to the thing. It's like watching an imperfect sunset. it's still a sunset, your judgment of it to the past or the future or expectation is what takes you away from enjoying it. And that is just for so many people, myself included, like six times today, right? I'm like, oh man, this thing, if it was only this way, it would be so much different. If it was only, and it's like, wait a second, I'm suppressing it now with healthy things because I can't sit in the mud with myself. So okay, this narrative that I'm doing a good healthy thing like going to the gym as a punishment because I don't love myself or I'm not good enough. Can I just not try to change, not try to judge? Can I just hold space? This is emotional intelligence, like class 643, right? Like this is an advanced class and the thing, but just being able to go, oh, I'm starting to realize the reason that this is there. And it's that I think somewhere that I learned that I need to be punished, that I'm not a good person, that I'm this, that I'm that, I'm this, I'm that. And eventually you get to that point in time where you're like, oh my God, this is having such a detrimental effect to the results that i want because i built on quicksand and when we build on quicksand of fear shame guilt criticism it's this constant yo-yo effect because the truth wants to come up so you shove it back down with all the intention and action time effort energy right like we talked about So your brain is overriding the emotional reality, which is really going on. And this is what produces autoimmune conditions. Brain, body, they're fighting each other for regulation. So you're super high cortisol, super low state, hyper metabolic, hyper like, and it's just constantly this tug and pull. And this is where people really start to get these struggles. It's like, well, something's just messed up with me. Something's broken. It's like, it's not broken. It's suppression, right? It's like, There's a thing in there and it doesn't come up. Like we talked about physical skills, getting good on camera. Emotional stability is a skill. It takes time. So as you start to develop those things, you gotta slow down. You have to experience time differently. You have to create new space for new and old patterns to come up and re-experience them in new ways. Because that's at the core of what emotional regulation and emotional healing is, which is like, I want to say it's like 90% of the work that makes businesses successful that I work with. Because like my consulting firm, we buy and sell companies. We buy them, scale them, sell them. We're really good at that. 99% of it, I think, is leadership and self-regulation. So it's getting people out of their own way and getting people to re-experience old emotions in safe environments, whether that's through vulnerability or emotional acceptance or just holding space for those things. Because once you get people to that point, the catalytic change that they start to develop trust and then safety in their body makes them realize that they're unfuckable. Nothing can hurt them. Nothing can disrupt them because they have so much trust in the process. Like, I've already suffered a hundred ways to Tuesday. This is just another thing. And it's not a punishment. It's not a this. Every time I've suffered in the past, I've learned something from this. Instead of letting this thing control my life, I'm gonna take a page out of your book and be like, well, what can I control? Like the emotional part of this thing is stressful. How is this stressful? Why is this thing pulling at me so hard? Is there a hole in the shield that I'm not recognizing? Is there all of these different parts? And once you get to that point, point where you take responsibility for what's yours, put boundaries for people that are projecting what is not, and lean into the intentional action of what feels true and right to you consistently over time, you just become a fucking animal. Nothing gets in your way at that point. You want a $10 million business? Maybe. I definitely could. I'm definitely close. But do I want the responsibility of that? It's going to impact my lifestyle. It's going to impact the way I hang out with my daughter. Do I want to have a 5,000 square foot house down in Naples? I could, but do I actually want that? Or do I want something small and cozy that's in a neighborhood with people that love, cherish, and nurture and don't holler when I turn the smoke alarms on because I tried to make Tello French fries inside, which was a mistake last night. learn my lesson. So it's all those different parts. It's those small little things that you allow yourself permission to be dysregulated and fail because you came here to learn and have life instead of suffer under the scrutiny of past failures or what could happen in the future.

Andres Preschel: And I think, you know, that being said, I think you alluded to this or you, in part, you answered this question, but just to make sure I cross my T's and dot my I's, there's a lot of successful people that I know that We're really focused on solving a problem that stem from some kind of pain that they've experienced or they felt or that they've seen. And being in touch with that part of their identity is what continues to motivate them to solve that problem. Let's say at scale and grow a company and be successful on paper, maybe not so much internally, but you know, still successful. So what is there to say about. effectively recover, like doing the inner work, let's say going to therapy, uh, self-regulating, but now being out of touch with the pain that once drove you, you know, how do you know when that's appropriate? And how do you know when there's that trade-off? Because if you're no longer in touch with it, or you've healed from the pain, maybe you're not as motivated per se, but you are technically fulfilled at a deeper level. How do you, How would you go about finding that trade-off and that balance?

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah, this is a hell of a question. I think it's the question for people that are like, well, I want to heal, but if I'm afraid… And this is my… So, we'll just choose super vulnerable here. So, I do parts work. I've been doing IFS work. I've been doing therapy for nine years, right? I've been doing IFS work for the past six. You say parts work? Yeah, parts work. Internal family systems. So this essentially says that our identity gets fractaled every time we get overstimulated, scared, or dissociated. We don't know what to do in a situation. We fractal off a part of our identity and it becomes a coping or a defensive strategy that our system, our psychology, our identity will pull back up when the brain takes in information and says, your brain doesn't care what it is, it says, what does it look like? So parts work would essentially say that we've referenced back to what the situation looked like, and then we use that as an internal narrative and we run it automatically and unconsciously. And it's been an amazing modality because you can essentially go back to those parts like it's stuck in these loops and spaces and you start to unpack them and you start to bear witness to them and you can ask them questions. For me, it's a really awesome modality. And one of the parts that I had fractaled off when my dad had died was my playfulness and curiosity. And it's just an innate part of who I am. I'm a playful person and I'm just innately curious, which is why neuroscience for me was just the shit. Because we will never, we know 1% of 1% in the neuroscience world. We're just really okay, I'm guessing, and we're just taking stabs in the dark. So we have all this and we still don't know shit about fuck. So neuroscience for me was like just awesome. So I've been doing this parts work for a while, like I've been literally doing this like once or twice a week for six years. And one of these parts that I fractaled off from the whole of who I am was this part that was driven by suffering. And the drive from suffering, as anyone who's gone through heartbreak, suffering, grief, it sucks and it's stimulating. The ideas, the heartbreak, whatever it may be, gives you new insight or gives you access to a realm left not yet explored. So I had this part that I was working through that was so afraid that when you do parts work, the defensive strategy, when you integrate it, you understand it, you bear witness to it, all those different things, and you don't judge it, you criticize it, it can feel safe, it will take the defensive and the coping mechanism and it'll turn it back into a gift. Um, and there's a book out there called no bad parts add in your library. Um, and that Defensive part of me that was like, well if we let go of the part of our identity that suffers We're not going to be creative anymore. You're not going to be like the doctor chris So I just held on to it because i'm like, well, I can't I can't lose that version of me Like I deserve to suffer so that I can provide things back to it's a good thing the suffering is good and over the past couple weeks like this is very recent this part has continued to come up and what I have continued to recognize is that the more that it integrates the more that I'm like Tell me about what's going on. What are you experiencing? And you get this facilitated with a therapist, and you just give yourself permission to let the thing talk. Like, where are you right now? Because a lot of times they get fractaled off, and then that memory lives in certain areas. So, alright, this part of mine is locked in my dad's basement, and he just lives down there. So, he's just down there, like, suffering and alone. So, I go down there, you introduce yourself in this memory scape, and you're like, hey, I'm just here to check on you. I'm just here to see if there's anything you want to say. I'm just here to tell you what's going on. And eventually, you know, you connect with these parts and they're like, who the fuck are you? Why are you here? Like, we're in the middle of something. It's like, yeah. Very Jungian, huh? It's very younging, yeah. So Carl originally started to pull some of these ideas. Have you ever read his Red Book? Oh my God.

Andres Preschel: I'm in the midst of reading. I'm halfway into the Red Book. Best piece of literature. Dude, best piece of literature I've ever come across in my life.

Dr Chris Lee: Oh, you got to get into C.S. Lewis. Get some C.S. Lewis in your life. Yeah, I'm going through all the Oxford classics right now. And some. Yeah. Anyways, we'll talk about books. Yeah. We talk about books all day. So I'm pulling this part. I'm giving permission for this part to show up and talk and do this. And then eventually you can ask them, OK, so what's your purpose? And he's like, well, my purpose is to suffer so that we can create. We can create solutions to our dad.

Andres Preschel: This came from that fragmented part of your identity that had locked in that basement.

Dr Chris Lee: This just came up.

Andres Preschel: You had never told yourself this before.

Dr Chris Lee: No, like this work is like, wow, man, wicked, good stuff. Right. So I am going through and I'm like having these different experiences and I'm like connecting with this part. And he's like, well, if we stop suffering, then our dad's just going to spiral out because this part is 12 in my dad's basement. And we started to recognize that our dad's not doing well. I see my dad on Wednesdays and on the weekends, my parents got divorced, and I'm like, oh, my dad's never drank before, he's drinking an awful lot right now, and on the days that we go on Wednesdays, like, he only has groceries for us that day. So, okay, if I'm not hypervigilant and I don't create this elevated state of compassion and empathy that I need to experience in my body, then I'm gonna miss something. And if I miss something, Dad might slip. Dad might not take care of himself. Because if I could just take care of him, then eventually he'll give me the love that I deserve, that I so desperately crave from him. So you work through these parts, and that part that you're talking about of like, well, if I do stop the stress, if I do stop the stress, what happens to us? And what happens is you stop going from being motivated to being inspired. You stop going from procrastinating to looking at long-term goals. You stop going from, I have to, to I choose to. You stop going from in relationships, keeping tally, to unconditional, I got you, period, blank, no matter what, for friends, intimate relationships. And the thing that's holding you back but pushing you forward allows you to integrate into a hold and a push, instead of a push, into a pull forward. And it's just a different, it's a power versus force, right? David Hawkins, it's a power versus force thing. And that's for me kind of where I'm at right now, where it's like, I don't need the caffeine. I don't need the stimulation for those things anymore. All the time, right? Like I used to drink two cups of coffee was like my max. And now I'm like, well, maybe I have a cup or two of coffee per week. Like I told you, like right before we got on, I was like, I got up at three this morning because I wanted to write, right? And spend time with my person. So I did those things. and had an amazing morning. And then I'm like, Oh, it's the afternoon. Oh, I think I'll have a cup of coffee with some heavy cream in it. So you start to break through these internal limitations this way. And the motivation is always there, right? Like the business does infinitely better because the story of if I give this up, then I won't be enough. Turns into I am already enough. Because you are. And like I'm like, I know this starts to like kind of get into the weeds. But when When I can get owners and CEOs, teams, to this point, and we start to go across the understanding of this, and people not talk about do the work, but they're like, okay, so I sat with this thing last night. I started to journal it out, and I started to frame, and I started to do these emotional tools. I started to self-regulate, and I'm sleeping well, and I'm communicating hard shit with my partner. I made an extra million dollars this month. You don't know how different you are because you can't read the label inside the jar. But people experience you differently. People perceive you differently because you're holding yourself differently. You stop giving a shit what other people think because I don't need external validation. I don't echolocate who I am based on who you feel me to be. I just am. And these are the people that walk into the room and you're like, Who the fuck is that guy? Who's that woman? Oh my god. Is it confidence? I want to hear from them. I want to talk to them. And everybody's kind of experienced that, I think at some point in their life, or I hope you have, where you're like, what is it about that person? And it's because they've turned the internal reference of, I am this person based on who you tell me to be, based on the standards of other people. And it's like, oh no, I am this person because it's who I am. It's who I've chosen to be. And that choice is just so powerful.

Andres Preschel: You know, that's, uh, I've experienced that firsthand. And I think one of the latest, call it, um, spiritual milestones that I hit happened when I walked away from my last relationship, knowing that it wasn't the right fit. And, you know, God bless her and all love and respect to her. You know, it wasn't about her. It was just, we weren't the right fit for each other. And since I did that, life has rewarded me in ways that I didn't know were possible. I've been happier, more authentic, have made more money, significantly more of this. This feedback that I've gotten from the universe has been immense and had nothing to do with her. It's just the standards that I demanded for myself.

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah.

Andres Preschel: You know, they weren't showing up in, in that relationship, which, you know, inevitably becomes a huge part of your life. Um, so I can totally appreciate that. And it's just fascinating. You know, I think so many people at that level, I'd love to get your take on this. So many people at that level, I feel obviously your services aren't for everybody, but I'm curious what some people who might be like, um, in that gray zone where they think they want to cement this, but they don't, they're not ready to take the leap of faith. I wonder what there is to say about the risks they feel that they're taking by engaging in something as vulnerable as what we're discussing. You know, when do you, when you, do you ever get people that are afraid to kind of open up and how do you navigate that kind of vulnerability? It's funny because I think in other, in other realms, we would call this like objection handling.

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah.

Andres Preschel: Right. Right. Yeah. But this is just, you know, psychology and neuroscience, right? Yeah.

Dr Chris Lee: I mean, I, I live my life because of who I am. Mostly a bleeding heart, right? Like, heart on my sleeve, like… I think vulnerability from men like us, who… I'm a masculine five o'clock shadow, work out every day, and very emotionally connected. And for sure, like, have a daughter, if anybody looks at her the wrong way, I got that, I got that dad mode. And it's like, it's palpable if you're looking at my kid the wrong way, you are gonna very quickly recognize that I'm looking at you the wrong way. And I cry at Disney movies. I dress up as a Disney princess. You can have both of those aspects. And I think showing that gives other men, especially, permission to be like, there's something there. He's not me. I'm not him. But man, I hear this a lot. I want the freedom that you have to express yourself in my own way. Because that's what it is. At this point, my company logo is a unicorn my daughter drew when she was like two or three. And it's been like that for years. And at a certain point you just stop getting obsessed with what other people think. Because the people that are meant to be in your life are going to be there. They're the ones that are going to show up. They're going to be the ones that do the work. And people that are not are not. And like you said, like, you know, walking away from that relationship, it's just hard, right? Like there's there's the chemical addiction.

Andres Preschel: I could have stayed. Could have, you know, I could have just stayed and, you know, it would have been OK. It would have been okay, but it isn't good enough.

Dr Chris Lee: It's not. And you need somebody that's at your level. And this is not, I hate the term, like, oh, never settle. So stupid. So stupid. And 80%, if a relationship is 80% good, you guys are crushing, crushing it. So I think in co-regulation and relationships, two things are really, really important. Number one, you have to have the baseline values. Health, wellness, spirituality. Family. Family, right? Number two, it is the virtues that you guys share. They need to be your best friend. If you guys broke up, you would be heartbroken because number one, you lost your person, but you lost a best friend. Like if you don't have that in order, you're in trouble. And then it's just trajectory and velocity, right? So like, are you guys headed the same direction? Do you guys have similar hobbies? And it doesn't, you don't, that person shouldn't be the entire village. And give yourself permission to have your own life and like the core of who you are and why you are. It's like your whole thing is like helping people, right? It'd be really cool to have a person in your life that also has those values, right?

Andres Preschel: I found my person. I have my person.

Dr Chris Lee: You got your person?

Andres Preschel: I found my person.

null: 100%.

Andres Preschel: I've never been more sure of anything in my life.

null: 100%.

Andres Preschel: And she feels the same way. And everything that you just said, we got that.

Dr Chris Lee: Dude, OK. Can we talk? Can we talk like boys? Can we talk like boys in the garage?

Andres Preschel: Of course.

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah, let's talk about it. Yeah. How'd she show up?

Andres Preschel: How did we like cross paths?

Dr Chris Lee: How'd you cross paths? Yeah.

Andres Preschel: Okay. It's a funny story. You ready?

Dr Chris Lee: Perfect. Born.

Andres Preschel: I've actually never shared this publicly.

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah. And this is permission to also establish a boundary. If this is, if this is your story and that thing is intimate, dude, tell the internet to fuck off. Tell me like, no, no, no.

Andres Preschel: I want to tell it's a great story.

Dr Chris Lee: I'm here. I'm so here. I'm so in this. Okay.

Andres Preschel: I appreciate the opportunity to share because I consider our relationship one of my biggest life accomplishments and I know she's the one.

Dr Chris Lee: Just the way you're talking about her right now, I get goosebumps. I'm such a sucker for a love story. I'm in this shit. Go ahead, I'll stop.

Andres Preschel: Whatever, I'll get to that point later. Anyway, let's focus on this. So, technically, she had been following my work for years, my podcast, specifically. I did a podcast with Jessie and Charles Spader, the Glucose Goddess, back when she was a lot smaller. Now she's got millions of followers. God bless her, she's amazing. But I did a podcast with her, and apparently, you know, Camila, my girlfriend, started following me then. She appreciated my work. We were both in relations at the time, you know, and it wasn't, it was just, you know, She's a nutritionist and dietitian and loves applied science and biohacking and has done her own inner work and has been through her challenges and has really truly faced them, like grabbed life by the balls and like gone through the therapy, done the deep work. we're all in we're all doing the deep work you know but she's committed she sees it she knows she understands it and she takes responsibility um and so anyway she was following my podcast for a while at one point um really funny this is the part that i don't have to tell but i'm just gonna say i'm gonna tell i don't care So at one point, I posted something about coaching, about my health coaching services, and she was interested. I had no idea who she was or what she looked like or anything. I just had a username, private profile, sent me a DM. I noticed she was a woman. So I said, hey, you know, thank you for your request and for expressing your interest. You know, I don't work with women because I don't feel like I can identify with them the same way that I did with men. You know, here, reach out to my partner, my ex-girlfriend, reach out to her and, you know, I think you guys would be a better fit. Never heard from her again. Never. Didn't even know that she eventually signed up for coaching with my ex. Had no clue. Zero. Anyway, years later, or like, yeah, over a year later, two years later, you know, I was single, just doing my thing. And I had just started my neuroscience master's degree. And I'm doing it through UF online, biomedical neuroscience. And so, you know, I have my work and my responsibility throughout the day, and then at night, around 8 p.m. after dinner, from 8 to like 11, every night, I'm doing neuroscience. And as you can imagine, like I've got, you know, my desk set up with like, there's red light, like the whole room is covered in red, you know? It's starting to accumulate melatonin, more relaxing, no blue light. My laptop screen, I have this app called Flux, f.lux, which, you know, the anti-blue light. So it's like an amber colored screen. I'm on a standing desk. I have a pile of books in the back. It's like a classic. It's like a fully biohacked study setup, right? And so I would take pictures of it and put it on my story and just show people what I'm learning as it pertains to neuroscience. randomly one day someone sends me a picture a screenshot of this random Instagram's account story with like an identical setup and they asked me like hey is this girl at your house? And I was like, no, there's, I wish, like, I wish Kenny was in my house.

Dr Chris Lee: There's no one here. Yeah, there's nobody here.

Andres Preschel: It's just me and my dog. And so I realized that it was, I look up the username and I go to see this, and I couldn't see anything because she's private. So I go to message her and I realized that it's this person that had reached out to me years ago to work with my ex. And I'm like, hey, someone sent me this and it looks like we have identical setups, like, You know, boom, we start talking about like applied science and biohacking. And then I asked her at some point, I asked her, I was like, hey, why don't we get coffee to talk, you know, biohacking and applied science and all that. And she'll be the first to tell you that that first date to get coffee felt like a job interview. Because I was like, I was very just like, I was like, listen, like I've been in two long term relationships, five years each. I'm 28, like, here's what I'm looking for. I'm not even looking for anything, right? I'm not even emotionally available. I told her that straight up. I was like, this is not even a good time for me. But, you know, this is this, this is that, this is how I like this. She was like, it felt like a job interview. Funny enough, at that same cafe at 11 a.m., I set up a meeting in person with a business partner. And so towards the end, I have like five, I'm like looking at my watch, I have five minutes left to spend with her. And I tell her, I was like, hey, listen, I have a meeting in five minutes, but I want to let you know that I find you attractive. I want you to know my intentions, or I find you attractive. I had like a dead serious face. I was like, I think you're attractive, and I'd like to see you again. And she, like for the first time, finally, she felt like she kind of got something from me that was actually, that had some degree of emotions. She's like all nervous. She's like, oh, well, you know, I find you attractive too, and I also want to see you again. So I was like, all right, well, let's plan something. And then immediately I got up, I hugged her, and I walked right over to another table, then sat down for a meeting.

Dr Chris Lee: What was that hug like?

Andres Preschel: What was that? What was the hug like? The hug was good. It was a good hug. Yeah. It was like, we were both like, wow, you know, that was a great conversation. Like, because we both pride ourselves in our professional identities and in the work that we do and why we do it.

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah.

Andres Preschel: And that's like super, you know, I knew, I'll tell you what, months later we were in New York and it was still, we had only known each other for about a month and a half, but I knew that I had to, you know, ask her to take this more seriously and be my girlfriend and whatever and take it. to the next level. I didn't expect it to come so soon but we were in New York and we sat down in Dumbo. We were having a glass of wine and she was telling me why she loves the work that she does and the way that she does her work with other people. The way that she interacts with her patients, she managed a functional medicine clinic for a while. The way that she described how she engages with her patients felt so familiar to me because something that my parents, not that they taught me, but they showed me through their values as medical professionals coming from Venezuela, where the medical system and the way that people interact with their doctors is completely different compared to what it is over here. You know, there's that confianza, like it's like family, right? So the way that she was describing this and her passion for it, it felt like home. And that's when I knew I was like, I have to make this girl mine.

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah.

Andres Preschel: That's what I knew. That's when I started falling in love with her, funny enough. And so immediately I got, I, we were on like a random trip to New York that some, somehow, some way she said yes to, and then we're walking out to a restaurant for, to meet some friends for reservation. And I was like, how am I going to do this? So I was like, all right, let me just, I'll figure it out. We started walking and now we're between two bridges, like the Brooklyn bridge. And there's another bridge, I forget the name, but we're between the two bridges at night, beautiful view. And I stop and I'm like, Hey man, like, I didn't say, Hey man, I said, Hey, I know.

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah, I gotcha. I gotcha.

Andres Preschel: I said, I said, hey, you know, like this trip has been amazing, right? She's like, yeah, oh my God, it's been incredible. She's so innocently saying that. I was like, you know what I think would really take this over the top? She's like, oh my God, like what? She was so cute. She's like, what else? Like we had amazing food. We went all over, we walked around. I was like, well, I'd love to, you know, Like, I'd love to, like, consider you my girlfriend, you know, by the time that we get back, like, I want, I'd like to be able to say that you're my girlfriend." And she, like, couldn't believe it. And it was the most special moment ever. Anyway, since then, it's been eight months. We've been together for nine months now, and I'm telling you, and I, she knows this, and I know this, and I have no fear saying it. I have no doubt, never been more sure of anything in my life. She's the one. And, um, And I think that one of the most special things that we have in common is that we've been through hardship in our lives and we've taken full responsibility and even been proactive in terms of how it may affect us and how it can also influence people around us. It's something that's difficult to put into words, but you know, you've alluded to it and you've described it in depth throughout this show. And I think people can appreciate what I mean by that now. And we've done a lot of that inner work. And it's what motivates us to help people in a very unique way. She's also has, you know, she has a Latin background. I have a Latin background. She was a ballet dancer her whole life, lead dancer, is in incredible shape physically and mentally. She's brilliant. You know, so there's so much that I appreciate about her and so much I admire. And we had a lot of those difficult conversations ahead of time, proactively, because we can understand and appreciate the difference that it makes. You know, we like reverse engineer some of the most difficult things you can experience with another person. Yeah. So anyway, I can speak about her all day long.

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah, I can tell. Oh, my God. It's beautiful. It's beautiful, man.

Andres Preschel: And thanks for the opportunity, man. I really appreciate it. A hundred percent.

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah. I think one of One of the beautiful moments that I particularly enjoy is watching people try to talk about how they love a person and why they love a person because it's impossible, right? You can see the most confident man or the most elegant woman start to describe their person and it's like, It's the way their breath smells in the morning. This guy's not just waiting. And you're like, I know, I know, right? Because it's like, it's everything put together into like who they are. And it's nonlinear, multinodal, multidimensional. And it's like, only you will ever get it. No one else will ever get it. And that is your like secret that you two will have. And that's like a different kind of sacredness.

Andres Preschel: Yeah, I'll tell you two things that you can appreciate from a neuroscience perspective that are just so much fun that we have in common. Have you watched the movie Anger Management? Okay. You know Goosefraba? Okay. Goose raba, right? It's like they, I don't know, the Eskimos share this with their kids to help them relax when they're angry. And I mean, I guess you and I can say that, you know, it stimulates the vagus nerve, the humming, you know, whatever. So more parasympathetic, whatever. So since I watched that movie from a very young age, right? Whenever I'm stressed out, I say that to myself and I'm the only person that I know that actually does that and actually uses that word, right? She, I found out some way shape or form that she does that too and we found that out about each other.

Dr Chris Lee: This is where I'm like this matrix glitchy thing and like conspiracy theory where I'm like oh the synchronicities like you can't.

Andres Preschel: The synchronicities are, I'll tell you what, they're actually so insane that since we met we've both committed to getting closer to God to get closer to how that is even possible, that we found each other and that we have these in common. We have inspired each other to get closer to God because we're so humbled by our coming together and the way that it happened and the timing of it all. But anyway, at one point we were in a stressful situation and she said, Goosefraba, and I stopped and I was like, there's no way you just said Goosefraba. Yeah, yeah, you know and another thing about us really cool that just pertains to I guess the neuroscience and such is That she's a lefty like me and we're both semi-ambidextrous So we have the same overlap in how we're semi-ambidextrous. Like there's some things that I do on my right side Some things on my left and we have the exact same things in common.

Dr Chris Lee: Oh, that's nuts.

Andres Preschel: Yeah, it's super weird. Our brains are and we we have the exact I want you to tell this so bad, but this determines people in your life that are this close, that are your best friend, your partner, your lover, your wife, your husband,

Dr Chris Lee: They determine the quality, quantity, and experience of life, success, failure, more than anyone else, anything else in life. It's that person.

Andres Preschel: Since I met her, I've never been happier or more successful in my life. And it's not like I owe it all to her. It's just what she brings out of me. Right. And how we co-regulate with each other and how we support each other, how we inspire each other, getting closer to God because we came across each other and how magical that is. Anyway, the last thing I was going to say here was our taste in music. I have a very particular taste in music. I like very grungy stuff and some lighter stuff. Very grungy, dark techno, dark dungeon style. It's the kind of stuff that makes you wonder when you first tune into you like why would somebody listen to something like this? But it's it kind of represents that hardship and like the lightness in it, you know Anyway, I found out as we got to know each other that I'm not Exaggerating her top 10 favorite songs are exactly my top 10 favorite songs as wild like like she was showering right? She played the music And like five songs straight, I'm like, wow, that's my favorite song. Wow, that's another favorite song. It's like the exact, I could not believe that. And we talked about it and she's like, well, I think the reason we can appreciate this is because we've gone through similar hardships in our lives and there's lightness in that. And the songs kind of feel that way, you know? So anyway, I can go on for days about her.

Dr Chris Lee: She's amazing. The co-regulation portion that we were, you know, alluding to here is your ability to take hardships and find meaning in it. And co-regulation is being dysregulated and kind of like piggybacking off of somebody else's safety and their regulated state to allow you to find faster, deeper meaning inside of what you're experiencing. you're going through legal troubles and tribulations and it's a shit show, right? Like, it's just like, it's horrible. I hate that stuff. Like, it's just brutal. But she's there. So in the days that you can't, she's reminding you that you can. Like, that's one of the most important things about having those people in your life is like, yeah, celebrate, self-validate, all those things. And you're not meant to do it solo. So like, the days that I just tapped out and you're like, they are there.

Andres Preschel: What do you think about dogs or pets and co-regulating with them?

Dr Chris Lee: Love it. So Santa brought my daughter a cat three years ago, a little black cat. And he's the one that's kind of run around. I never had a cat before. My cats are like cats. I promised my daughter when she turned five that I… The clean-shaven Santa? Is that what we're talking about? So she knows. She asked me one day on the way back from a cohort. She's like, Dad, I just want to… It was this year? It was this year. She's like, Dad, is Santa real or are you Santa? I was like, oh, I'm Santa. She goes, okay. Oh my God. Like I didn't, I'm not going to like sugarcoat it. I'm not going to lie to her. And she's just like, okay. And I'm like, do you want to talk about it later? And she goes, I think I do. But right now I just like, I just want to do it in my head. I'm like, sweet. She said that she's seven, eight years old. My daughter is the most extraordinary child. Like I love her so much. She's so awesome. Wow. So after we got home, make our cup of tea. Right. And we're sitting there and I'm like, how do you feel about me being Santa? And she goes, What about, like, we talk about magic a lot, right? Like, she's like, where's the magic come from? Like, what's that, the feeling in my chest during Christmas time? Like, what is that? He asked you that? Yeah, he's like, we, because we talk so much. I don't think I have the maturity to ask somebody that. So we're talking through this and I'm like, at a certain point, kids just don't have the language for those things. So I'm asking her, I'm like, okay, so Santa represents an archetype and I'm like, here's what an archetype is and we're trying to build language. It's like a conduit of the magic. She's like, I don't get it. I'm like, okay. So we found another way to go talk about it. She's like, oh, so the magic is something that I am creating and it's bouncing back from the environment to me. And I'm like, that's the season of Christmas, right? We do that as a collective people. And she's like, oh, OK, yeah, thanks. I'm like, oh, that's right. Because like kids are just they don't have the resistance patterns. It took me like 45 minutes to try to explain that one concept to you. She got it instantaneously because she's just out of the way. So for the clean-shaven Santa, yeah, like this year we're still gonna put the Christmas trees up. We're still like the presents will just appear Christmas Day and the magic will still be there. Like I don't know if you experience like the magic's gone like when you hit your like 18s, 20s. I hope that never happens for her. I hope like it's just there because she knows that she's the one rendering and generating that. So all those things to say. Co-regulating with Pats, yeah the research there. It's clear, right? You can definitely go do it. It is not, and this is also like really want to touch on it. Pets and AI are not a replacement for people. And I know there's a lot of AI software out there that's like, let's get more emotionally connected. It's not the same. Like personally, I get asked to help companies in that capacity a lot. Like, hey, we run this like mental health and I'm like, I get that that's probably beneficial, but my internal values tell me no. I want people to be uncomfortable and I want them to reach out to community. I want people to do the vulnerable thing and connect in that way. over using a software because there's no skin in the game with software. Vulnerability is skin in the game. To me, yeah. And that could be different for a lot of different folks. But that's why, you know, part of the businesses that I run, they're communities. Like, I'm not going to build an app to try to replace humanity. I think that's irresponsible. I think it's in some ways dangerous. So I would rather tune and tap into your discomfort. Like that's what loneliness originally was, was like, oh, I'm lonely. And then we have so many distractions now that you can cover up the loneliness. Loneliness was assigned to go out and like, go connect with people and like, all right, I'm just gonna go to the coffee shop and get a cup of coffee. Like I just need to be out, right? And now it's like, well, I don't need to, I can just, I can scroll or I can just like, I'll go play video games or I'll go- Paradoxical hyper-connectedness. There it is, right? Porn, right? Is like the biggest one. It's destroying men. It's destroying relationships, right? And just being able to be cognizant of how those things impact you. Like, there's a ton of different facets that go along with that, but yeah, vulnerability. I think it's absolutely critical.

Andres Preschel: Chris, I want to be conscious of your time. I know you had to go at two. It's 2.02.

Dr Chris Lee: We're doing all right, we're doing all right.

Andres Preschel: You sure?

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah, we're good. Yeah, I got time. It's admin work in the afternoon, so I'm all right. How much more time do you think you have?

null: 20?

Andres Preschel: Okay. If we need it. Yeah, if we need it. If we need it. Okay. So, you know, we've touched on some of this low-stem unplugging, such as the reading, making the T, definitely not, you know, doom scrolling or gaming, you're watching porn or anything like that. We've spoken about, you know, what it means to do the work. And we've definitely touched on and we've spoken about co-regulating, but I want to dive even deeper. What's some advice that you can give, you know, couples on how to navigate Difficult, and I'm starting at biggest, but don't worry, I'm going to get more specific. Difficult situations where maybe they don't see eye to eye, where one person doesn't feel seen or they feel like the other person can't see why they're frustrated. What do you have? What is there to say about, yeah, just seeing eye to eye with your partner on certain things. Maybe we can give you a little more context.

Dr Chris Lee: No, I think I'm taking a deep breath because you and I are going to have contrast to this based on the people in our lives. So you and your partner seem very similar, right? Me and my partner are not complete in total opposites, but very opposite. So we don't see on things eye to eye often or frequently, but like the core values are so there. And I value non-violent communication significantly. Like I'm like, I'm such a proponent of that. So when there's things that I don't understand that feel like they're directional and they're at me, my base, my core for communication is to ask more questions, right? Most people get defensive and defensiveness always turns into combat. And you would never fight the person you love the most. doesn't mean that in and of itself conflict doesn't have a home in relationships. Combat does, right? So conflict in and of itself is, hey, I am recognizing that you said this thing and it produced this feeling inside of me. I'm sharing that just to bear witness to a vulnerability that's inside of me. Hey, this pattern of this thing in our particular relationship continues to pop up and it's causing me distress. I would love to know how we can work through this together. Or if you're even aware of it, combat is going, why the fuck did you do that? What is wrong with you? Like, do you know what that did to me? And it's like, OK, we have to take responsibility for the feelings that are coming up inside of us because it's just a struggle. And one of the rules that I like to impart in all my relationships, friendships, kids, parents, all the things is for most, most people, not all, most 80 percent, 90, one person gets to have feelings at a time. So what that looks like is, oh, I'm recognizing my partner's overstimulated and having a conversation. I need to have the wherewithal in my head to know that she might say some things that she probably doesn't necessarily mean, but the emotion is framing it in a way that I can be the safe outlet for her to understand herself differently in this context. And then what I'll do is not take Tali on it. What I'll do later is ask if there's anything else that has come up or more clarity around that situation. Because if I have feelings about the feelings, then we get in a feeling loop. And the feeling loop is going to do the amygdala hijack thing. And then it's just, well, you remind me of this because the brain doesn't care what it reminds, what does it look like? And it's like, well, This, you sound like my ex that used to beat the shit out of me, or you sound like this person who abused me, or like… And then it's like, well, you're not yelling at me. There's a seven-year-old version of you that's yelling at your dad. You're not yelling at me. There's an 18-year-old version of you that got emotionally abused from your girlfriend in high school, and I'm mad at her, right? And what you can do and what you can recognize during those periods of time is just ask the relationship, the collective between the two of you, is this ours? Is what's going on right now ours? It's our responsibility, but is this ours as in?

Andres Preschel: So just a click man. I mean it by the way It's the way that you're Describing. It's just so practical. It's unbelievable. Like I seriously like Incredible incredible how practical this is. I mean the situations that I'm in now not necessarily with my partner just in general where I'm just going through these mental frameworks and I'm really playing them out and it's just unbelievably valuable. So thank you.

Dr Chris Lee: So helpful.

Andres Preschel: So when you say like, is this ours, as in, is this, I don't know if this is the right word, so forgive me, but almost like, is this our fault that this is here?

Dr Chris Lee: Yeah, is this a projection from the past or is this a fear from the future? Are you yelling at me as if I'm your abusive father? Am I, are you good?

Andres Preschel: But is that, so is that, what you just said, right? About the father, is that something that you are literally saying in the conversation or just, is it a personal reflection before you say something that is a little more?

Dr Chris Lee: Calls him out. Yeah, so you have to, I got five people, that's it, five people in my inner circle and they get it all. Unfiltered, unwavered, all the shit. If you're not in the circle, you don't get it. right, respectfully. So those people that are in there, though, I talk to one of them per day, every single day, right? And with those types of people, we have an agreement that's been showing up consistently through time, evidence, evidence, effort, like all the things, right? So it's like, hey, so the way that we communicated in this thing, it doesn't, this is new to us. Is this ours, or is this an old pattern that is coming up before us? Because I want to work through this, but how it's showing up is not in exact accord to how we want to move forward into the future. This is a debate on rightness instead of space, instead of connection. So I feel like we're trying to play king of the hill here, and that's not how we do things. So respectfully, do you need space? Do you need food? Do you need like, you know, some of those different strategies? So support, solutions, space, or if it's your intimate partner, sex, right? The four S's. So there's a space and a pocket in there for whatever your partner needs. And oftentimes, I think the one that we don't use enough is space. So nobody should be an emotional punching bag for someone else, right? Like, just, I am capped in emotional regulation. I got an ocean of patience. Doesn't mean that I deserve to be abused emotionally. Doesn't mean that I should have to hold space for people who are just blatantly using me. So I don't. So when somebody got, I don't mean to interrupt.

Andres Preschel: They want to amplify. Um, when, and I can identify with the patients, I'm a self-taught fly fisherman. I can spend 12 hours in a river. I don't need to catch the fish. I'm, I'm an extremely patient guy. Yeah. Um, so when someone starts to project those emotions and use you as a punching bag, not intentionally, but just because they almost like they can, how do you call the nine on something like that? In a way that doesn't feel, I mean, I'm sure you've already considered what I'm about to say before I even said it.

Dr Chris Lee: I get this because this is like, so number one, hurt people hurt people, right? So the fact that you feel, and I'm not saying you, that that person is throwing those emotions at you, right? They in some way, shape or form are feeling attacked. Probably not by you, but by the situation. And one of the key factors that I want everyone, including me, to remember is most people, like I would say nearly everyone, no one grew up that conflict was safe. It wasn't safe to be confused. It wasn't safe to be emotionally dysregulated and find your space inside of that. So when my daughter's like, we've never really fought, but she's like, I've been upset a lot. She's like, why? And I'm like, whoa, that's conflict. You and I do not have the same philosophy. She was like five, maybe four years old, and she wanted a duck umbrella from Target. And I said, no. And she's like, I'm going to scream. And I was like, sweet. Go for it. Scream. You're safe to scream. So we had a little pterodactyl in Target time. for like 45 minutes. And I let her do it. I didn't judge. I didn't shame. Was it brutal to my nervous system?

null: 100%.

Dr Chris Lee: But I'm not going to show her that men are stronger than women and that this is irresponsible. I'm going to hold the container. I don't give a frog what other people are going to think or say. And I'm going to sit on this dirty floor in Target until you get this thing out of your system.

Andres Preschel: Rather than repress it and

Dr Chris Lee: 100% because if I would have been like, stop, this is wrong. This is bad. I'm building the association that number one, men outpower women. Number two, your emotions are not valid. They don't matter. And number three, your needs are unnecessary. So instead of that, we went back and we talked through it. I'm like, okay, this happened. How did that feel on your body? I did not like that. I felt out of control. I felt all these things. Like, okay, did it feel dangerous? And she said, I never felt dangerous and it never felt unsafe. Like, okay, awesome. The next time, would you do something differently? And she was like, I would try to listen, but I don't, why couldn't I listen to you? I'm like, well, we have those emotions. The emotions came up and they started to create reaction instead of response, right? And like most people experience reaction versus response, like throw a ball at you, like you kind of react and defend yourself. Your system just had an experience of that with me. I'm not mad. I'm not any of those things. But the next time that that comes up, I'm just going to say, hey, remember that moment that we had in Target? Let's go find a quiet space where we can talk through this. So now she's got a new model where her system goes, oh, yeah, no, I am safe and I can process and he does want to talk about it. He wants to have that experience. And oh, my God, conflict is safe. And I'm not going to settle for anything less than safe conflict in my life. So when she gets older, all these fuckboys that are going to try to connect and talk with her, she's going to be like, well, you can't even hold glass on a sunny day. Like, no, you can't hold my emotions.

Andres Preschel: Her first reference would otherwise have a negative connotation, a negative association, and now she would be afraid to express herself and feel her emotions. It would only evolve.

Dr Chris Lee: 100%. So when we start to recognize conflict in everyday life, what I tell a lot of folks is one person gets to have the emotion, or if you're emotionally intelligent, you can both be emotional, but the emotional action is what creates that. So when you're dysregulated, state determines story, determines strategy, right? Not only for business, but just relationship communication. So, hey, I recognize that right now we're at an elevated state. All the things right so like me and the people in my life and in my persons Like we can laugh about it and like it's just the dynamic of our relationship. It's like fuck you this and like and we like both like Yeah, fuck you. We just need like, let's go. Do you want to walk together in silence or do you just, I need space. I got to go take a shower. I got to go hit in the hot tub. I got to go hit the sauna. I got to, whatever the thing is, right? Come back and it's like, hey, there are three things that I would like to take responsibility for. And there's two other factors that things you mentioned, things you said that just felt awful to hear. Are you in a space where you can hear me take responsibility and support me in that and hear the things that I would love to change in the future? That would be a really good conversation. If you get 20% of that, killing it. If you can't and you guys just scream and erupt, most relationships start to crumble, I think, because they don't know how to resolve conflict. Because the conflict happens and then it's not safe and then it just never, they never tie it up. So, this is where I'm going to be like, all right, we need space. I got to go for a walk. I got to hit a sauna. I got to hit the gym, right? We got the kids. We got this. We got that. I'm going to write this thing on a sticky note. Literally, we'll do this. I'm going to say, okay, what's the thing? Do we need a code word? Do we need a mantra? Is there a question? Do we just need to write fuck you on a sticky note and put it on the bathroom mirror, right? sometimes we do and it's like whatever and it's like would you like me to do it is you smile like so i do it throw it on there brushing teeth and it's like hey that was a day we had a thing right you remember the thing the the fuck you where we at i'm here i love you Connect with me. Do you need to be held? Do you need to brush your hair? Do you want me to braid your hair? Do you need a massage? Do you want me to hold your hand? Do you need space? Talk me where you're at right now. I want to be in the same room as you, and I feel like we're on the other continent. And you slow it down for them. When you slow it down, anger turns to sadness. Sadness turns to grief, and that person lets themselves process something. Not your fault, but you share the responsibility. And that's the most intimate thing that could ever occur in a relationship. Intimacy, Esther Perel's intimacy, right? I'm giving you a window into my soul. I feel defective. I feel broken. I felt like you were attacking me. And I can see now that you weren't doing it maliciously, but it felt like it. What we feel like builds our reality. So I felt like you were coming at me. So even though that wasn't true, even though that wasn't there, and this is how I handled business negotiations, right? Hey guys, we're attacking each other with a problem that doesn't even fucking matter. Everyone's going to take a 15-minute walk. Phones on the table. Come back at 15. It's going to be great. Negotiations that can go that way where I can act as mediator and we can do that. We crush. We just crush. I wish divorced attorneys going through those types of things would do. All right, guys. We're yelling at each other. All right. Wrap it. Take a walk. Because that walk and, you know, the optic flow and all the other stuff, like, oh my God, it does wonders. So for communication, intimacy, it's space, right? Support, solutions, and most guys, respectful guys, just go immediate solutions, right? Instead of helping validate the emotional problem. A logic, right?

null: 100%.

Dr Chris Lee: And there's women that do that too. It's like support, solutions, space, sex. Which one do you need? Right? And they all are different tools at different times.

Andres Preschel: And I got another question for you before we conclude here. And man, this has been amazing. Chris, this has really been such a special episode, man. And it's been so special getting to connect with you for real. And I look forward to more moments together and hopefully in person next time.

Dr Chris Lee: Oh dude, we'll crush.

Andres Preschel: Yeah, that'll be amazing. All right. I've got a question about like, let's say you have someone in your life, let's say it's, it could be, you know, a business partner or it can be a friend or it can be your partner or a parent or a sibling, just someone in your life, someone special that you're willing and enable and motivated to go through this, this deeper, difficult work with, right. To get to the other side. Stronger, better, et cetera. Anyway, let's say that there's a moment where said individual, said person is acutely dysregulated. Let's say there was some kind of trigger, they're dysregulated and they're using you as that punching bag and they want to talk things through, but let's say maybe it isn't the time or the place for you to be there for them because you know that you can't be the person they need in that moment. How do you communicate that and what is there to say about not knowing intuitively that it's just not the time for you. You don't have the capacity to be that person for them, even though you want to be.

Dr Chris Lee: You said it. I recognize that something's coming up for you. I don't have the space, bandwidth, availability inside of me right now to be able to hold that container. I have the availability to give you physical touch and hold your hand. I have the availability to create space into the future. And I have the availability to take one or two of your daily tasks off of your plate. I can cook dinner and do the dishes. I can, you know, do this and do that. Right. So which which of those feels best for you right now?

Andres Preschel: Right. What if they what if they say that's not good enough? I need I need this now. And you don't have the capacity.

Dr Chris Lee: then you just got to be honest with them and you say, you're asking for something that I can't give you right now. I can give it to you into the future, but I'm tapped out. I just don't. So I hear your need to connect and I have that need as well. It's so important to me. My worry is that if we connect right now, we're both going to feed off of the disconnection and we're going to spiral and we don't deserve that. So I completely understand where you're coming from. And let's find a gentle, slow way right now just to connect and ground. Do you need a walk? Do you need ice cream? Like, what is it? Is there a thing? And then let me, right now, get my phone, look at my schedule, and see if tomorrow morning I have time or if not, because this is so important to me. I need you to know that this is so important. I am also important too. So your needs are important and I want to make sure that my cup is so filled for you because right now it feels empty and I don't want to serve you from something I don't have. Once you start to build the foundation of that, like if the person is right for you, they belong in your life, they're going to be upset and understanding. I'd be like, all right, all right, I get it. Fuck you, and tomorrow morning, 5 a.m., outside. And like, 5 a.m. tomorrow, I'll be there. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Chris Lee. Bro, thank you. This is such a good time. I had such a good time. And dude, you're our neighbor. So yeah, we're going to go. We'll hang out, we'll work out, spear fish one day. It'll be amazing.

Andres Preschel: For sure. Two rapid fire questions, not even about this topic, just pretty cool if I do. Technically one last question, but it should be simple. If you could put a word, message or phrase on a billboard somewhere in the world, what would it say and where would you put it?

Dr Chris Lee: If the flower doesn't bloom, don't blame the flower. And I would put it outside of a pain clinic.

Andres Preschel: Wow. Yeah. Have you gotten that question before or is it just intuition? No, we're just ripping right now, yeah. Ripping. I love it. I love it. Awesome, man. And where can people find you? And your new podcast that you are rebranding. What's the rebrand looking like?

Dr Chris Lee: Every brand's amazing. We got some professional headshots that I just haven't made time for, but we finally got them and the podcast is called Wired for Wonder and it's going over the stuff. It's doing it in a way that is different. We're upgrading how consulting and executive coaching and executives are operating out in this world. And doing it like wear your Rolex where your three-piece suit do the goddamn thing. I do the thing And I'm not an asshole you're being an asshole. So let's talk about our emotions. Let's talk about systems Let's talk about strategy. We've been a top 1% podcast from the car pickup line whenever I have availability So now that we're really leaning into it. I'm super stoked to just take it over. So that's where we're at

Andres Preschel: What's your shortest specific deadline to get those tasks out of the way and get the show rolling?

Dr Chris Lee: The functional deadline for me, I would unhelpfully say that I'll do it today. But my priorities will tell me that if I do it today, I will sacrifice things that are most meaningful to me. So I will move it to tomorrow and I will remove a Tier 2 task to make space for that Tier 1 tomorrow. So probably tomorrow, I would guess somewhere between 7 and 8 a.m.

Andres Preschel: Love it.

Dr Chris Lee: Awesome. Make it happen.

Andres Preschel: Chris, thank you so much, man. For real. I mean, thank you for the work that you do, for your incredible presence, introspection, and just the flow that you're able to tap into is humbling and inspiring and beautiful and wonderful and all the things. And I can't wait to share this with the world. What a show.

Dr Chris Lee: Dude, what a show. And I'll see you soon. Okay. Thanks for having me.

Andres Preschel: For sure, man. My pleasure.