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From Wounds to Wisdom (Previously the Mental-Hell Podcast)
Welcome to From Wounds to Wisdom—the podcast where we turn life’s toughest lessons into our greatest strengths. Here, we dive deep into mental health, personal growth, and the messy, beautiful journey of healing. Whether you’re seeking a fresh perspective, a little humor, or just a safe space to feel seen, you’re in the right place. Let’s navigate the hard stuff together and uncover the wisdom waiting on the other side. Ready to get started? Let’s dive in.
From Wounds to Wisdom (Previously the Mental-Hell Podcast)
FWTW S3E07 | Why Stress Isn’t the Enemy—It’s the Side Effect of Your Brilliance: Dr Gary Sprouse
What if the anxiety you feel is actually a side effect of your most human superpowers? In this episode of From Wounds to Wisdom, Barbie sits down with retired physician and author Dr. Gary Sprouse—aka The Less-Stressed Doc—to unpack why modern stress isn’t random... it’s neurological.
Through powerful metaphors, science-backed insights, and practical tools, Dr. Sprouse reveals how our ability to plan, envision, and care deeply can also wire us for overwhelm—and how to reclaim joy without giving up your edge.
Whether you're soul-tired, anxious, or secretly stuck in "high-functioning stress," this episode will change the way you think about worry, purpose, and your nervous system.
📌 CHAPTERS:
Intro: What if stress is a side effect?
Meet Dr. Gary Sprouse and his Happy Place philosophy
The neuroscience of worry and future-focused anxiety
How high-functioning traits create hidden stress
Practical tools to “worry efficiently”
The Happy Place model for sustainable peace
Overwhelm vs. depression: redefining mental health
Social media, stress blindness, and nervous system fatigue
Parenting, video games, and modern-day anxiety
How to find purpose beyond performance
Final reflections + where to find Dr. Sprouse
🎧 Keywords:
stress relief, nervous system, anxiety tools, high achiever healing, burnout recovery, Dr. Gary Sprouse, the less-stressed doc, emotional resilience, trauma-informed healing, somatic wellness, stress and success, mental health tools, From Wounds to Wisdom podcast, Jack Canfield
GUEST INFO:
Website thelessstressdoc.com
Facebook The Less Stress Doc
Instagram @thelessstressdoc
Twitter/ X @lessstressdoc_
Linked In Gary Sprouse
YT @thelessstressdoc4057
Season 2
Unraveling the Mind: From Mental Struggles to Inner Strength.
Today I'm joined by Dr. Gary Strauss, the less stressed doc, to reveal how your deepest strengths might be causing your overwhelm and how to reclaim your peace without losing your edge. Let's dive in.
SPEAKER_01:The majority of human side stresses are really side effects to our skills. To live in all three tenses of their life, past, present, and future, and be happy in all three. And the key is just understanding that the reasons that we don't like being in the future in the past is because of the side effects. It's the worry, it's the guilt, it's the regret. Fifth problem, which is you're overwhelmed. I don't care which one of the five it is, we just get rid of one and you'll be back down to three because the overwhelmed will go away.
SPEAKER_00:I'm excited to be here. I like sharing my message because I wanted people to have live in their happy place and be less stressed.
SPEAKER_04:And you have a couple books that you've written. One thing I found interesting that you say is there is a side effect to things. So talk to me about this whole side effect thing. Explain this to me.
SPEAKER_01:Well, so I'm a primary care physician before I retired, and I was used to writing prescriptions for patients. Say, here's medicine for your blood pressure, and it'll work great, but it might have a couple side effects, might make you dizzy, whatever. But we're going to minimize the side effects and maximize the benefit of the medicine. Well, when I turned that on to our brain, I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait. The majority of human side stresses are really side effects to our skills. So, as humans, we have this ability to envision the future, which is phenomenal. Like we can look a week ahead, a year ahead, we can look to when we're 65 and get to retire, right? We have all these abilities, but then the side effect is you have to worry about it. So I was telling you that my one-year-old grandson, he doesn't worry because he doesn't have the skill of envisioning the future. So he doesn't sit at his breakfast table eating his banana, going, Hey, mom, dad, how are we going to pay for college? Because he doesn't have that skill. He doesn't it doesn't come up. So he does what psychologists are telling us to do, which is live for today. That's what he does. But what you find is that's a really cool skill that we have. And to give it up just because it has a side effect doesn't make sense. So what the book was about was how to keep the skill and lose the side effect.
SPEAKER_04:So here's the thing about when you say that. So love that your grandson obviously is in the present moment. Um, I know that there's a lot of teachers that say that we should be doing this, and also we don't really live in a world that would allow us, and I know that that's one skill that we're talking about. We'll go into other things, but we don't really live in a world that would allow us not to prepare for the future, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. That is correct. That's exactly you could it's literally impossible to be a human being and not have the future because we spend way too much time in the future. Okay.
SPEAKER_04:No, I was gonna say that's one thing that drives me insane about people like Eckhart Tolle and those people, because they talk simply about being in the presence moment, which I agree that we should be in at times when we have as much as we can, but they don't take into consideration the survival mechanisms of the brain and how that functions so that we have to be able to plan for the future as well.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. I one of the things that I talk about is I want people to be able to live in all three tenses of their life, past, present, and future, and be happy in all three. And the key is just understanding that the reasons that we don't like being in the future in the past is because of the side effects. It's the worry, it's the guilt, it's the regret. There's ways to have less of that, and that's what my book's about.
SPEAKER_04:So give us some ideas of how can we have less. I can understand about having less guilt about the past, because that I mean, you go through the process of understanding you made the best choices that you could make and da-da-da-da, and all that stuff. How do we not have the worry about the future?
SPEAKER_01:Here's the first question that I ask people. So I've had patients come to me and say, Dr. Sprouse, I worry that I worry too much. I'm like, well, then you probably do, right? I know that, yeah. And so what I said to that person, I was like, Well, tell me what worry is. But when she started trying to define it, it got sticky. It was not so easy to define. Most people sort of struggle with trying to define it in concrete terms. Even if you have some kind of usable definition, it's not a fixable definition. So I had to come up with a definition that you could do something about. So the definition that I use is okay, we're using this human skill that's amazing that allows us to envision the future. Yay. Okay. Second is then we focus on all the bad things that can happen. One of the books that I had read calls it what ifing. So it's like, well, what if this happens? And then the key to worry is that then, based on that what if, you're now having a physiological reaction, you're having a fear response. And it can be from a mild anxiety all the way up to a full panic attack. But the key is that it's only to a thought. It's a concept, it's not a reality. So that makes it difficult for humans. So I look at my dog, and when a big dog runs into the neighborhood, into our yard, she smells it or hears it, and she's like and she's all jazzed up and ready to fight. But as soon as that dog leaves her senses, she goes back to being a rug. But I can go, oh, what if I was outside? What if I have my one-year-old grandson with me? Right. So I can what if? And there's nothing to make that stop. For my dog, the fear reaction goes away when this sensory system changes. For me, I can just think of big dog in my yard and ah, right. And so there's nothing to make that stop. So we have to find ways to worry. So, what I tell people is I don't want you to stop worrying completely, but I do want you to worry efficiently. So there's two tools that I talk about that are the easy ones. There's other tools, but those are the two main ones that I talk about. So humans also have the ability to have choice. So we have a tendency, there's actually a built-in tendency to look for the negative things. It's one of the ways we case stay safe. So if I had 10 people in this room that were trying to give me$100, but there was one guy in the corner with a machine gun, I'm going to pay attention to the guy with a machine gun because if I don't pick him up, the hunt, the thousand dollars that I get isn't going to do me any good. So there's a tendency to look for negative stuff. But we have a choice. So we don't have to focus on the negative things. We can focus on the positive things. So I was just doing a talk yesterday for some high schoolers, and I was like, don't focus on I'm going to fail the test. Focus on I'm going to pass the test. Right? Because that makes you feel better. Because when you focus on I'm going to fail the test, it sets off a fear reaction, which makes you actually not be able to think as much. When a lot of people have test taking anxiety, it's because they're focused on failing and there's literally their fear gets turned on. And I was reading this in one book, and it said, when our fear system gets turned on, it literally shuts off our thinking part of our brain. And you need that to take a test, right? So if you focus on passing the test, you're going to feel much more relaxed, a lot less fear, and you're going to be more confident and you'll do better on the test. But here's the key you have to be realistic. You can't just go into the test and go, oh, I'm just going to pass the test and like I just am, right? I'm really smart. No, you have to prepare and get ready. So that's the realism part. So as an author, I chose not to focus on, hey, I might not be a successful author. I chose I'm going to be a successful author. But I realized that most authors don't make a living out of their books. So I had to keep being a doctor until I retired. And then I could focus all my energy on that book. And that's what I've been doing. And so realistic optimism becomes a way to have fun in your life and then get look forward to things. But the realism part leads to the second tool that I talk about. And that's called a worry organizer. The first thing I find is that by writing something down, it already makes it better. It makes you focus on what you're writing, but it also frees up your mind because what most people are doing is half their brain is trying to remember what they're supposed to worry about. So if it's written down, then all of your brain can be used to solve the issues in front of you, right? And by writing it down, it becomes permanent. So I don't have to go over and over and over and over again. If I don't have anything new to add to that, we're just gonna leave it go.
SPEAKER_04:I do that. Funny thing is I don't even look at it most of the time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, that's okay, but as long as it's there, you're not worried about it, right? You don't go, oh, I forgot.
SPEAKER_04:So I know that you co-wrote uh did an anthropology with um Jack Canfield, which a lot of the stuff that he teaches in his books sound very similar to yours, except for he does teach that instead of writing down the stuff that's in your head, you write down the things that you want, almost like a manifestation tool. How do you differ in the approaches that you have to somebody like him who has been has all of these books out there and has been teaching this kind of stuff?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, he actually read my book, Highway to Your Happy Place, Roadmap to Less Stress. And he said in this and gave me a quote, which was like, This has game-changing ideas. This is a must read. So even he who had read or obviously written, you sold 500 million books, he got something out of this book that was different. And I think the difference is our tools got so much better. So, what I think my book, how it differs from every other book that's out there is it says, Hey, the cause of our stress is these side effects. So we need to know what the skills are, what the side effects are, and then the tools that we fashion will fix the problem way more efficiently. Because most books that are out there on how to handle stress say things like, here's the top hundred stresses, losing your spouse, losing your job, right? Getting a medical illness. But then their prescriptions are generic. They go, okay, we'll do yoga or go to church or you know, pray or whatever. And it's like, it's not that they don't work, it's that they're very generic. It's like talent diabetic, we'll eat less sugar. But if I, you know, with the things that I'm talking about, they're way more specific and I think are way more efficient. So Dr. Jack Canfield talks more about how to have success. I'm I'm coming from a different angle. I'm going, you can be successful, but you have to have less stress to get there because there's a lot of stress in life. And I think, unfortunately, in a lot of ways, it's getting worse.
SPEAKER_04:Right. It's getting significantly worse, in my opinion. And that stress, because it is in our minds all of the times and stuff, is holding us back from doing the things that we could be doing. Is that the thought?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, wow. So one of the things, one of the things that I think has made our stresses worse is that social media in that. Okay. And I so social media is this amazing tool that we have, right? It's incredible, it has incredible power. But again, it has side effects. Yeah, it has this incredible power to galvanize people, to, to organize people, to get ideas out there. But what it's what's one of the side effects is it also gives us these never-ending pictures of bad things that can happen. So it used to be that I had to think up something bad to worry about it, but now anybody in the world can think up something and then show it on my phone or on my TV. Right. I'm like, oh my God, I didn't even think about that. But then what happens is we have more and more and more information that we can then use in our negative outcomes and then focus on that. And that's what gets us into trouble. And so social media is still in its infancy. And I think somewhere along the line, we're gonna figure out how to balance the benefits of social media and reduce some of the side effects of it. Well, one of the ways we can do it now is just limit how much time you spend on social media.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So, like my stepdad, he watches news 24-7. I'm like, stop it. Yeah, it does stuff to you. Like, that's not good, right? You're watching people burn up and planes crash and governments fall and wars, and like it does stuff to you. I came up with this term the other day and I call it stress blindness. See this with the cat lady who has 50 cats who can't smell how bad the smell house smells, right? Because she's gotten so used to we call nose blindness, right? What I realized is people have stress blindness, they don't realize how stressed that they are because it just became part of their background, right? So, one of the things that I learned when I was in school, I was driving to Washington, DC. That's where I went to school. And on a night, it would take me 15 minutes to get there. In the daytime with traffic, it would take an hour. And if there was rain or an accident, it took two hours. And I didn't realize how physiologically stressed out that made people, including me, right? Until I moved and now I live on a more rural area. So when I drive back into the city and I end up in a little bit of traffic, I'm like, oh, right. I don't like it, right? But I didn't even realize I'm sure my body was doing that. I just didn't even realize because it was just part of the background. We're so used to it that we don't even see it. And I think TV does that when it's running 24-7. We don't even realize that seeing somebody get blown up on TV actually affects us inside.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and I feel like the children nowadays, because there's so much like violence in video games, TV, there's a lot more sexual um act, you know, stuff on TV, and they become uh this is normalized to them. And so, you know, like if you watch movies, they're just like, I don't I remember the days where there was like they didn't show the outcome of like a gunshot like they do now, right? Like an outcome of a gunshot now, like there's brains all over the place. Like half the time I can't watch it because I'm like, this is disgusting. But they're used to seeing this younger generation, and it's getting worse and worse. So they're becoming desensitized to these types of things, which normally they're like you said, they're in the background. The mind's going, like, what can I do? Now I'm in trouble about stressing out the mind in the background, but they don't realize that they're what's going on.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I agree that I think what you're saying is accurate, but there is a side to that, which is it gives people a avenue to take out their aggressions that don't have to take it out on a person, like they can take it out on their game or watch the movie and get their aggressions out that way. So there is a little bit of benefit to it, but I'm not sure the benefit is worth all the other stuff that you just talked about.
SPEAKER_04:I have a question on that then, because like I have an 11-year-old son, and for the longest time I was opposed to him playing any game that had violence in it, right? He was allowed to play, like, you know, Minecraft, but couldn't use guns and these kinds of things. And then you have these kids now, they're playing um, you know, uh games that have shooting and all these different things. And I would get such a hard time from his friend's parents saying that, you know, I'm isolating him too much, all of these kids play all of these games, and then they would tell him the same thing. And so he's coming home saying, My friends are all playing this, and I'm like the bad mom, and all these things. And so, what is your take on, with all of your knowledge about this? The uh they're like, Okay, they can play, but maybe they can play an hour a week. I mean, what was your take on that? Just curiosity.
SPEAKER_01:So, do you have daughters?
SPEAKER_04:I have a daughter too, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, does she do the same thing? No, she's not interested in that at all. So I had some friends that had two sons, right? And they made the kind of decision you made. This was before video games. So they were like, You can't have any toy guns, you can't have this, you can't that. And then they woke up one day and their kids were shooting each other with a chair leg, and you're like, Oh, find any way, yeah, exactly, right? So they're gonna find a way to get out that aggression. There's a book that I'd read is that humans play is for us to learn our skills as to be adults. I think that play is their way of learning the skills that it's gonna take to be an adult in a world that doesn't exist anymore, right? I mean, we don't we're not you know tribes anymore, but it's like, but it's the same idea and it's that skill set. So I would say to you, don't I mean, you what's happening is your kids are getting ostracized because they're not playing the game with everybody else. And so I don't think it's worth all that, but I would definitely put some kind of limits on it for two reasons. One, because you don't need all that violence, but two, so many kids have, and you know, we use the word addiction, but I I have a whole different term for that. I call stress reducer loop, but the idea is that they're playing too much, so that it's like causing troubles in their life, they're not studying, they're not sleeping, they're not eating right because they're so busy playing a game. So limiting how much time they have, using it as a reward, yeah, that might be a better way to go.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, like that game in and of itself, we limit to an hour a week, and then he's limited on the other stuff, but that in particular game, so at least he gets to play it right. And so, I mean, I know that that's kind of outside of the conversation stuff, but I think that these are real world things that people are you know going through, and and and your um amount of information and knowledge that you have is important for us to you know kind of to ask these things.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, I think by giving him a limit, because if you just say no, you can't do it, he's gonna find a way to do it. Right, he's like you can go to a friend's house, right? Then it's because then he ends up good, he's gonna lie to you or he's gonna do something else that you really don't want. So rather than saying you can't do it, I would just put limits on it. Yeah, that's what I would say.
SPEAKER_04:So what other real world like situations that, like, you know, obviously stress is a real world thing, but the day-to-day things that we encounter in our life that you feel like your um thought process method and all of that that you talk about would be applicable towards, um, that would be like a daily thing that we all go through.
SPEAKER_01:Well, so one of the things that I see is a lot of the patients that would come to me, they were coming for high blood pressure and diabetes, but really what was coming happening was they were feeling overwhelmed. They were feeling like they had too much stuff going on and they didn't know how to cope with it. And what I see is when people are overwhelmed, like you have one or two or three problems, but then that fourth one comes along and you go from okay, I can handle this to, oh my god, what am I gonna do? Right. Right. And so when they feel overwhelmed, all kinds of things happen. As a medical doctor, we got trained that when people come to you and they go, Hey, I can't sleep, or I sleep too much, or I can't eat, or I eat too much, and I just don't feel like living in life. And we would call that and label it depression. And then we were taught, okay, depression is a chemical imbalance in your brain. So the way to fix that is to give you another chemical to fix that balance, and then you'll be better. Right. And what I found in my practice was two things. One, I would give people the medicine and they wouldn't get that much. They'd get a little better, but not a lot better, right? So, what I found was when I found these patients and they depressed, what I said, no, no, no, no, you're not depressed, you're overwhelmed. You just have too much stuff going on. And what I show them is this curve where I said three problems, you're okay. The fourth problem, whoop, now you're in trouble. And then the fourth problem creates a fifth problem, which is you're overwhelmed. So, what I say to them is it's not as bad as you think because it seems when you're overwhelmed, you're like, there's no answer. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. How am I gonna fix this? What I show them is like, hey, you know what? We only need to get rid of one problem. I don't care which one of the five it is, we just get rid of one and you'll be back down to three because the overwhelmed will go away and you'll be back to feeling in control. So it's not that bad. It's not a lifelong chemical imbalance that you have to take a medicine forever. We just have to get it running on these problems. And I give them tools on how to do that. So, by what I find is when people get overwhelmed, they so overwhelmed they don't even know what to do. A lot of people just tend to withdraw. People have this tendency, and I'm not sure why we do this, but we lump and we go, Oh, I got this problem and this problem, oh yeah, and I forgot, yeah. Let me throw that one on top, and then I got this little thing through, and they get this big mass of crap, and they're like, that gets overwhelming. And they're like, What do I do? Ah, right, because they got this big mass. So, my answer to lumping is compartmentalization. So the more separate we keep these individual problems, then the less overwhelming they become. So, what I give them is this visual of shoeboxes. So, if I walked into my bedroom and there was a hundred shoe boxes, and the bottom was here, and the top was there, and the left shoe was there, and the right was there, and there's a hundred, right? You're just clocking, going, Oh my god, what am I supposed to do with this? Right. But if I walk into that room and the box is there and the shoes are inside and the lid's on and they're all stacked up in the closet, it's the same amount of shoe boxes. But when I walk in, I'm not overwhelmed now. And if I take one shoe box down, look at it, and fiddle with it, put it back up, take another, yeah, that's not so overwhelming. Still a lot of problems, but it's not overwhelming. So when I hear people lumping, I go, shoe box, right? And that triggers them to go, oh yeah, keep them separate.
SPEAKER_04:Like when you say that, what comes to my mind is like laundry, okay? We wash all this laundry, nobody likes to fold it. So you just like pile it, pile it, pile it, and then you look at it, you're like, oh my gosh. And then it's like an eye sore, right? And so you're just like avoiding it. I'm gonna go on social media, I'm gonna go do this, I'm just gonna ignore this laundry, like it's gonna go away. But what we figured out is like if we take the laundry out and then we put it in the piles, like on whose is what, then it's not as hard because it's like, okay, that's the son, that's the daughters, that's the husbands, that's the wives, and those are the towels. So now you take care of your stuff over here, you take care of your stuff over here, and then that big pile of laundry actually isn't as bad because you've separated it out, right?
SPEAKER_01:Am I allowed to use yours now? Maybe I have to change and have my laundry analogy instead of a shoebox. I don't know.
SPEAKER_04:I love that, right? Because even with like the shoebox thing, like you could go, like, okay, well, if I have a hundred shoes I gotta put away, that's gonna be a lot. So I'm gonna put the blues in one pile, the reds in one pile, the greens in this pile, right? And so I'll do it that way, but you got to break it down, like you said.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there you go. I love that.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, visualizations I think help people.
SPEAKER_01:I did yes, I learned that from somebody who was like, you know, we can learn concepts, but we're much better when we have something that we can visualize.
SPEAKER_04:And the overwhelm is so true. I do think that that's why social media has gotten so out of control because we are using it to numb, because we're trying to avoid the stuff that is, you know, like the fourth thing that you were talking about, the fourth problem. We're trying to avoid it. The one thing that when you are saying you write a list, my mind immediately goes to a list of stuff to do. I don't need a list of stuff to do, right? Really that like the oh, as soon as you say list, I'm like, Do you know how much I have on my list? Like my list can feel like pages of just shit to do, right? So it's like when you say a list, it triggers something in my mind about it.
SPEAKER_01:But that's because you're not using the list, right? That's you check your list off, huh? You check your list off.
SPEAKER_04:Uh I cross them off as I do them, yes.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, but so when you're making a list, first off, then you don't have to remember stuff, right? Yeah, so that makes it easier because now you have more brain power because you don't go, you don't worry about, oh, I forgot to do something because it's written down.
SPEAKER_02:Number one.
SPEAKER_01:Number two, when you cross it off, what? That's five points of pleasure right there. Cross it off. My friend, I talked, I was talking to my friend about this, and she's a college professor. And I said something about Liz. She goes, Oh my god, I love Liz. And I'm like, What? So she makes a list of everything and she goes, I'll cross it off. And she goes, I'll go back five days. Because, like, you know, you say I'm gonna call this person and you call them and they don't answer, so it's still on the list, right? She goes, No, no, I'll go back five days and cross it off when I finally talk. She goes, Oh, I get so much pleasure out of that. It's great, right? So you just got to use the list in the right way. That's all right.
SPEAKER_04:And I think like it's kind of funny to go down this path, but like, so I like to cross it off. That's a big thing. And I will go back and cross off my list too. The problem is, is I have like a list here, I have lists in here. You know, I have like lists everywhere, right? So it doesn't think you do have to combine them into one type of thing. So they're just not like I have lists everywhere, what shape or form I go.
SPEAKER_01:Well, so I I don't know about you, but I I mean I see you using books. I use my phone because my phone's with me all the time. It's like attached to my underwear. In my in in the in that list, there's like, and I've actually found like like I'll write a list out one day because because like in a way my mind works, it's like I'll be sleeping and wake up and go, Oh yeah, and then I'll add it to the list. Because if I don't add it to the list, like by the morning, I'll have forgotten what it was that I was supposed to read, right? And so by having a list, then I can go back and go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did that, did that, did that right? Cross things off, add things on. So I was just at a rotary meeting yesterday and I added three things to the list, but it's all in one place, so I don't have it like five different places, and it's all on my phone, so it's right there, but it's under uh like an app, and I can just I don't have to look at it every single day. I mean, because it also makes me wonder if you're looking at that list and feeling like a little overwhelmed, yeah. Like like um yeah, guilty that you're not getting the stuff done. So yeah, do what you do with your laundry, just take one thing and get it done, right? I think the list will actually help you. You just need to put them all in one place, scratch them off, get the pleasure from that, not get overwhelmed by the list because even though you might have a lot of things to do, prioritize your list, put different colors on them. So these are things that need to be done now, these are things that can be done, whatever. So on my list is write the second book, right? It's called being kind of highway to your happy place, mile marker two, right? That's on my list, but obviously that's not gonna happen tomorrow, right?
SPEAKER_04:So maybe you put like write a chapter by XYZ. That would make sense, yes, right? Because then you're breaking it down. Um on that. It's funny. I do actually have I have a whiteboard that has various different colors that say like what I'm supposed to be now, what I'm supposed to do later, and now it's just sitting there and it's like a month old of stuff. I just still have on my glasses.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, and that happens, but I mean that's what Canfield's book's about is how to not let that happen. So that you're taking actionable things. He wants things that are actionable, he wants things that are measurable, right? That kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_04:So yeah, he does say that too. You're um fun. I don't know if you hear that a lot, but you're fun.
SPEAKER_01:We haven't even gotten to the happy place yet.
SPEAKER_04:Okay, well, tell us the happy place.
SPEAKER_01:I was talking to my patients, they they're like, I go, Hey, I'm writing this book on how to have less stress. And they're like, Oh, I need that book. Every single person I've ever said it's and I go, you know, there's like 300 books out there, maybe a thousand, right? Have you read any of them? Like, I'll give it too much stress at the end of it. So I'll give them the book and I'll talk to them a couple months later. He said, What you think? And they're like, Oh, I haven't had a chance to read it yet. I'm like, Well, it's not gonna get in your head by just sitting on your coffee table, right? But then I said to them, Well, look, where would you be if you had less stress? And they looked at me like, I don't know, I only got as far as wanting to have less stress. I never really thought about where that would put me, right? So it got me thinking that wait, we need a destination. And this came up because my wife and I did this diet called Optavia. I don't know if you've ever heard of it or not, but yeah, what he talks about is not saying, Don't go to a weight, you want to be healthy. Because if you go for me, I wanted to be 180 pounds. If you put that as your goal, when you get to the 180, then you're gonna stop doing the things that got you to 180 because you met your goal, right? So he says, instead of doing that, think I want to be healthy. And by being healthy, you get to that weight, but then you're committed to staying there because you want to be healthy, not 180 pounds, right? So I said the same thing. If I had people have less stress, but they don't know where they want to be, they're gonna be in the same place. You're gonna do less stress, but then they're gonna stop the things they did to be in less stress. So I said, we need to come up with a place that you're gonna go to, and that became the happy place, right? I realized that everybody's happy place is different. So my wife and I have very different happy places. Like I like the beach, I like hanging out on the beach and the sun and the sun tent, waves, right? My wife thinks the beach is a big kitty litter box. And I'm like, yeah, that's not gonna work, is it? Right. So here's what I realized is that even though our happy places have different variations, they have the same rooms, they have the same places, so they have the same kitchen, they all have a dining room, they all have a living room, they're decorated differently, but they all have the same rooms. So then I was like, Well, what are the rooms of people's happy places, right? So here's the list. So the first one was gratitude. So we need to be grateful, and I'm not just mean a little grateful, grateful for everything because we tend to take for granted a lot of stuff. So my wife and I got to go to Germany on a vacation, and we're in this beautiful castle, right? It's huge, it's beautifully decorated. Yeah, but it didn't have air conditioning, it didn't have windows, it didn't have indoor plumbing. It was like, wait, what? Like, I'm living better than the king of Germany was 300 years ago. By far, not even close, right? They didn't have cars, TVs, refrigerated. Like, no, we have all the stuff right that we just take for granted. So we have to be grateful for that. And when you're grateful, it's hard to be upset. Some bad thing happens, you're like, oh, but look, all these other things, right? Second is then pleasure. And what I see is that humans were designed to have pleasure, but they were little pleasures, like a little, like, oh, I found some extra berries, or I caught a fish today, right? We've tended to make it into these big things, like, oh, I got married, or I graduated, or I passed the test. I'm like, no, we need to go back to where it was. So I think of that pleasure as a jigsaw, a hundred a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, right? So every piece is like, ooh, a little zing. Oh, that was I got a piece. Oh, I got another piece. Oh, I got so you get 999 little zings of pleasure. But then at the end, you get a big pleasure because now the puzzles together, you're like, whoa, right. But 999 times you go, ooh, that was nice. If you fill your day with those little pleasures, wow, what a nice thing. Then you don't wait for that big pleasure to come along because that sometimes it could be disappointing, it might not be as good as you thought, right?
SPEAKER_04:Real quick on that. Do you think people have forgotten what pleasure feels like?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think they've changed it from these little pleasures to this big pleasure. So what happens is I'm gonna retire. Well, that's years away, right? It's gonna, and it might not be as great as you think, right? I think we have ignored those little pleasures because we've taken them for granted. One, I'll give you an example. When I was a kid, I had a car and it had roll windows, like you know, right. I'm like, what is it? No, my kids would like not even know what that is, right?
SPEAKER_04:I know somebody roll down a window, you still do it.
SPEAKER_01:Right, exactly, right? So I'm rolling down the window and the handle breaks. And I'm like, what? So then I had this little nub. So every time I wanted to raise the window or lower it, I had to like turn the nub like this. So when I finally got to the autopart store and bought a crank, it was like, Oh my god, this is so nice, right? Yeah, so those are the kinds of things that we tend to ignore because we just push a button and the window goes down. What nice is that, right? So then the next thing is anticipation pleasure. And that's using our skill of envisioning the future. But now we're anticipating things that are going to happen. So my wife and I are going to go to Greece with some friends. In my anticipation, it's like, oh, this is going to be great. Greece is going to be beautiful. The airplane's going to be fine. My luggage is going to get there. At the end of the vacation, my friends are still going to be my friends. Yay! Right. So I have pleasure in my pocket. All I got to do is think about Greece. I'm like, oh, a little total pleasure, right? And then we have fulfillment. So fulfillment is a combination of things. And it's about learning. So humans are very curious. Like we're way more curious than other than every other animal. And we had to be because we had to go around in our environment to find food and to make sure we were safe. So it's built into our DNA to find curiosity pleasurable. So we like learning. So we need to do that. That is part of fulfillment. Second is is um is sharing. So we're a group organism. Like we don't have the best claws, we don't have the best vision, we're not the fastest animal, but we work in a group really well. So in a group, we can take down a woolly mammoth. What? Right? So in a group, sharing then becomes important. So it's again, it's built into our DNA to find sharing pleasurable. So when I have something extra, I have a couple extra berries and I give them to you. That makes me feel good. Plus, it makes you not hungry because now you got some extra berries. But when you have some extra fish and I don't have any berries, you're giving me some fish. Oh, okay. So sharing is built into our DNA. And the third thing is purpose. And every other organism out there finds purpose by staying alive. That's their goal. For humans, I wake up in the morning, like, okay, I'm still here, right? Like it's not that big a deal, right? Isn't that funny? It's so true, right? Right. Some people wake up and go, Ugh, I'm still here, right? So staying alive isn't enough of a purpose anymore to jazz us up. It doesn't get us excited to get up in the morning, go, I'm still alive, right? So we've had to find other things to give us purpose to give us that feeling of excitement when you get up in the morning. So for me, being a doctor was that like I was excited every day I got up to help somebody, blah, blah, blah. And I realized that when I stopped being a doctor, a lot of doctors get into trouble because they don't know what to do themselves. But I had this book. So it turns out I'm doing the same thing. I'm helping people, but instead of with a stethoscope and a shipping pad, I'm using a book, but I'm doing the same thing. So I still get jazzed up. I get to be on Barbara's web, you know, her podcast. Yes, right.
SPEAKER_04:I know you woke up this morning, you're like, This is a big never happened to me.
SPEAKER_01:Like, yes, all right. Um, my wife, she struggled, right? So she did the billing in my office, she hated it. So I would say, honey, you don't need to do this. We can hire somebody to do what you're doing. And her answer, yeah, I'm well, I'm not doing a good job. You stepped in it, huh? There was no one in that one, right? Anyway, so when I retired, she finally got to stop doing the billing. But here's her problem. So now she gets up and we're like, What do I do with myself? And she's really struggling because she doesn't know what to do with herself now, even though she hated the billing, gave her something to do. Now, oh, it's been a year, and so she's had time now. So she's a beekeeper and she's working at a charity, and we found a church where they have they play cards on Monday night, and she's got in a book club, so you know, you can start seeing the pieces coming. So she's like, Oh, today's book club, all right. And so she's reading a book, so she's getting there. There is a thing called icky guy. So ikki guy is a Japanese term, and what it says is fill out these four circles. And it's like, what am I good at? What do I like to do? What can I make money at? And what will help my community? And when you fill out the blocks where they intersect, that's your icky guy. That's your purpose. And you're like, So for me, it was easy, right? My purpose was real easy helping people, writing this book, going out there, being on podcasts, right, doing talks. Yeah, that became real easy for me. She's now starting to figure it out, right?
SPEAKER_04:Don't you feel like people are so overwhelmed they don't even have like they're just surviving, right? So their work is not their purpose because their work has to pay the bills, their children are not their purpose because at this point they're a liability and a burden because they cost them much money and they're just trying to pay their bills, like that. People just and I know that this is a tool like to teach people to have a purpose, but I find like in general, most people are just so overwhelmed that they can't even find these things.
SPEAKER_01:You are correct. When people are overwhelmed, they tend to shut down and they can't do the things that I'm talking about. But one of the reasons they get overwhelmed is because they haven't done so. And I'm talking to my stepson in Atlanta with his 120 animals, he's clearly overwhelmed. And I say to him, So what's your goal? He doesn't know. Like, where do you want to be? What's your purpose? He doesn't know. So he's gone from job to job, and he he's been doing, and this is where I find people get into trouble. You mentioned kids, we tend to focus on the negative part of our kids. Oh, they cost money, they're pains in the butt, police them, and like, no, but there's a big part of our kids too, right? I mean, they're really nice, right? Like, there's a reason we have kids, they're cool, right? Yeah, so one of the things that I find is when people are focused on, like I said to my stepson, he was working as a bartender and he was he was upset, he was miserable. And I'm like, dude, go to work, change. That's where the book Mindset Matter comes in, right? Change your mindset. I said, Go to work. Think of all the good things that are gonna happen when you go to work and how much fun it's gonna be, and you're gonna meet somebody new, and blah blah blah, right. He came back that night and he was miserable. I'm like, what happened? He goes, I didn't do a single thing you said, and I was miserable and I got no tips because people figured out I was miserable. And I'm like, Yeah, see, so mindset really matters. Like instead of focusing on the negative things that are going on with his work or with your kids or with whatever your work or whatever, focus on the part that's good, and that makes you feel good right now, which then makes it easier to get up in the morning and do stuff.
SPEAKER_04:And that goes back to your other steps: gratitude, having that whole um pocket thing you talked about, like they're they all work together.
SPEAKER_01:That is exactly right. So the last room is what I call cash. And I was talking to these high schools like, no, I'm not giving you cash. It's acronym. I was kind of hoping for a Zell. Yeah, I know, right? Get your Zells out right anyway. So cash is an acronym and it stands for being connected and feeling in control because we like that, right? We like being connected, and then the second the A is for accepted and being appreciated, and that's where parents get into trouble, is a lot of times they don't feel appreciated, like they're putting out all this effort for their kids and they don't appreciate. Like my kids would say, Dad, what have you ever done for me? And I'm like, Are you kidding me? Are you breathing right now? It's exactly like before you were born, I was doing stuff for you, right? Yeah, yeah. So what we do in our head is like, Well, I know they appreciate it, but and what I tell people is appreciation was the original currency. Think about this. Before we had money and Wampum and whatever else we used, right? Appreciation was the currency. So if you did something nice for me, I said, Thank you so much. That was nice, and that makes people feel good. Yeah, it makes you feel good for saying it, it makes them really feel good. If you say it genuinely, man, that it's worth more than most than money can be, right? And it's like it's free, it doesn't cost anything, you can just do it whenever, right? How nice is that, right? Then the S is for feeling safe because we all want to feel safe, and the other S is for spiritual, right? And I had to add that in there because I realized there's a book I'd read that said our brain really has four parts there's a thinking part and an emotional part, a daredevil part, and this the spiritual part. It's like we feel connected with the universe, right? And I think that religions tap into that part of our brain because that part of our brain gets overrun by the thinking part and by the emotional part and by the daredevil part. So when it gets tapped into, you're like, it's a really nice feeling. And some of the drugs that we take, some of the psilocybids and things like that, stimulate that part of our brain, which is why they become so powerful, but also so wanted, right? Because that is such a great feeling. And then the last one is humor and hope. And humor I had to add, because I hadn't really thought about humor, but humor, like we've been doing this today, right? Like we're taking these situations, like I'm sure you're having struggles with your son and his gaming, and it's like, but we talked about it humorously, so then it wasn't as bad, right? Right, right. And so we take these mundane things in our life and turn them into humor, and then it's like, oh, it's not that bad, right? And then hope is critical. And what I find with my patients is patients always will come in and go, My life sucks. And you're like, okay, what's gonna happen? You're like, Oh, well, it might get better if I do this or I do that, or when I retire, or when my kids grow up and go away, or whatever, right? So they have hope because they're using the future to go, well, it sucks now, but it's gonna get better. When people lose their hope, that's dangerous, literally dangerous. That's when people start thinking about committing suicide, right? They go, like, my life sucks and it's never gonna get better. And you're like, Whoa, oh, that's bad. Because if it's never gonna get better, then what's the point, right? I have a patient that I saw, she was like 17, 18 years old, right? I'm walking into the room to see her because I've got to sign her case, and the psychiatrist walking out because he's already seen her, and he's like, Yeah, give don't waste your time on her, there's nothing you're gonna do to fix her. And I'm like, Whoa, for myself, that's like aggressive, right? Yeah, exactly. Right. I was like, Man, how bad is this lady, right? So I go, What's up? She goes, My life sucks and it's never gonna get better. And I go, Well, what makes your life suck? She goes, Well, I got a shitty boyfriend, and my dad is a pain in the butt, and I work, but I have to give all my money to my mom, and she uses to buy drugs. And I'm like, Okay, that sounds pretty bad, right? Well, let's back up a second. I go, let me get this straight. So you've worked for two years and you've given all your money to your mom. So you've basically worked for free for two years. She's like, Well, yeah. And I go, You know how amazing that is? Like, what happened? What are you gonna do when you actually make money for yourself? How freaking nice is that gonna be, right? And I go, so you have this boyfriend, and he goes yeah, he's a pain in the butt. And I go, Well, do you have sex with him? She goes, Well, yeah. I go, Well, do you like it? She goes, Well, yeah. I'm like, Well, there you are. So you're having sex and it's great, right? And I go, So you're living with your dad and he's a pain in the butt. I'm like, Yeah, and I go, but you're living in a house, right? She goes, Well, yeah, because I had to live on the street for a while and that was way worse. And I'm like, So your life doesn't suck that bad. Like, and what keeps you, can't you get a better job? She goes, Well, I don't have a GED. I'm like, Well, what keeps you from getting a GED? She goes, Well, I go to school, I think I'm smart enough, but then I get frustrated and I don't do the test, and so then I fail. And I'm like, Oh, okay. So it's in your control. You have enough brain power, you just need to focus and get the test done and get your GED, and then your world of opportunities will open up. So I walked out of the room a half an hour lady, and she had a big smile on her face. She was like, Let me out, I'm ready to go. I'm like, the psychiatrist is ready to write her off. I'm like, all it took was changing her mindset, her viewpoint, and going, My life doesn't suck as bad as I thought.
SPEAKER_04:And I got things I can do to make it better. Sadly, the psychiatrist might have given her depression medications. Absolutely. I'm sure he did.
SPEAKER_01:I have no doubt that he would have given her depression medicine.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, whereas you're giving life tools that actually last.
SPEAKER_01:Well, because I'm coming from a different point of view. Like that's what he and I don't fault doctors, that's what they're trained. They're trained to do that. What I want to do is change their training and go stop calling people depressed, call them overwhelmed. And your treatment is very different. So if you say someone's depressed and they're chemically imbalanced, it would make sense. You give them a medicine, right? If you think they're overwhelmed, then that doesn't make any sense at all for the long term, maybe short term, to get them through some of that sadness, so they go have an energy to solve the problems that they have. But helping them solve their problems is going to be way more effective in fixing the problem.
SPEAKER_04:I love that. Uh, if people want to take all of your wisdom, which I really thoroughly enjoyed everything that you shared, how can they find you?
SPEAKER_01:Right. So I have a website, thelessstressdock.com. And on that website, you know, there's stuff about me, but there's also a chapter. They can download the chapter and worry. So if they don't have enough money to buy the book, just download the chapter and read that. What I tell people is you have an opportunity to buy the book, it's on Amazon, it's on Barnes and Noble. It came out an audiobook a couple months ago. I just got to check on my audiobook. I'm like, what? Like, people are buying the audiobook, which is what I've learned is that that's why I did the audiobook. People like hearing about hearing the book, they're using it in their car when they're driving. I was like, Yes, that was exciting, right?
SPEAKER_04:Did you do your own audio? Did you yes, I did, right? Good, because your voice, like it would be enthusiastic, right? Like, so it was like that, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:They apparently when the guy sent it back to me, he modulated a little bit, so it took a little bit of the enthusiasm out, but whatever.
SPEAKER_04:You're like, don't take away yeah, I know exactly.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, I don't want to sound like an AI robot, right? Thank you. Well, thank you for having me on here. The last message I give to patients is your people. Sorry. Um, my wife says I have to call them clients now.
SPEAKER_02:I was like, whatever.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, do not resign yourself to being stressed out. Like, there's answers, there's ways out of that. You don't have to live your life that way, but you do have to do something to get there.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, definitely. You can't just sit there and ignore the world. Yes, love it. Appreciate you. I'm grateful for our time. And thank you.
