Overcoming Anything

Overcoming Guilt and Shame with Dr. Gary Sprouse

• Anne Vryonides • Season 1 • Episode 33

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Episode 033 — Overcoming Guilt & Shame with Dr. Gary Sprouse

Guilt and shame can keep you stuck in the past—replaying old choices, questioning who you are, and carrying stress in your body long after the moment has passed. In this episode of Overcoming Anything, host Anne Vryonides sits down with Dr. Gary Sprouse (“The Less Stress Doc”) to break down what guilt and regret actually are, why they feel so heavy, and how to stop beating yourself up so you can move forward with clarity.

Dr. Gary Sprouse is a retired primary care physician and award-winning author who spent decades helping people reduce stress, worry, guilt, and overwhelm. He shares practical frameworks you can use immediately—like his “worry organizer,” the difference between guilt vs. regret, and a powerful self-forgiveness process—so you can stop living on the edge emotionally and start building a calmer, happier life. 

Key Takeaways
• Guilt and regret aren’t the same: guilt is “I broke a rule,” while regret is “I made a bad choice”—and each requires a different tool to resolve. 
• Worry is a fear reaction to something that hasn’t happened yet—your brain needs structure to plan without spiraling. 
• Self-forgiveness gets easier when you tell the truth, name the hurt, make atonement (change the behavior), and then renew or release the relationship. 

Timestamps
• 00:00 — Introduction: guilt, regret, and what truly causes stress 
• 03:10 — Dr. Gary’s mantra: “The harder I work, the luckier I get” 
• 07:00 — How guilt + regret show up in real life (and why mindset changes everything) 
• 13:30 — Why worry is your “future skill” with a side effect (fear on repeat) 
• 18:40 — The key distinction: guilt (rules) vs. regret (choices) 
• 24:00 — The “Worry Organizer” framework (5 columns that stop spirals) 
• 33:30 — “Depressed” vs. “overwhelmed”: why the label matters 
• 41:40 — Stress-reducer loops and addiction: when coping becomes the problem 
• 49:30 — Forgiving yourself: a practical 4-step process (story → hurt → atonement → renew/release) 
• 57:00 — The “Happy Place” equation + “50-point wake up” gratitude tool 
• 1:05:00 — Purpose (Ikigai), reserves, and how to stop living “on the edge” 

Resources
• Highway to Your Happy Place: A Roadmap to Less Stress by Dr. Gary Sprouse,  https://a.co/d/0bTfxeU0
• The Book of Forgiving by Desmond Tutu & Mpho Tutu (self-forgiveness framework mentioned in the episode), https://a.co/d/0egmfHnn

Connect with Dr. Gary Sprouse
• Dr. Gary’s website: https://dolessstress.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lessstressdoc
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lessstressdoc 

If this episode helped you, share it with a leader, creator, entrepreneur, or parent who needs relief from guilt, shame, or constant stress—and needs their next step to actually stick. I’ll see you next time on Overcoming Anything.
❤️ Anne

Disclaimer
The content of this episode is for informational and inspirational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional therapy, diagnosis, legal, or medical care.

#overcominganything #midlifetransformations #energyhealing #resilience #mentalhealth #personaldevelopment #selfimprovement #mindset #mindsetmatters #emotionalwellbeing #selfawareness #selfforgiveness #forgiveness #guilt #shame #regret #stressmanagement #anxietyrelief #overthinking #rumination #innerpeace #selfcompassion #healingjourney #traumainformed #nervoussystemregul

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Speaker 4

Welcome to Overcoming Anything, the podcast where we dive deep into stories of resilience, transformation, and growth. I'm your host, Anne, and today we have an incredible guest who is an expert in overcoming guilt and regret. So joining me today is Dr. Gary Sprouse, who is known as the Less Stress Doc. I love it. He's a retired primary care physician and an award-winning author who's here to reveal. What truly causes stress and how to finally feel calm, fulfilled, and happy again. Don't we all need that? Welcome to the show.

Speaker 5

Ah, and thanks for having me on the show and I'm hoping that we help at least one person today. That'd be awesome.

Speaker 4

We will. Thank you. So before we dive in, I love to ask, what's one quote or mantra that keeps you going in tough times?

Speaker 5

Oh, wow. One of the ones that I use is. The harder I work, the luckier I get.

Speaker 4

Good.

Speaker 5

So what I found is that, you know, things happen, but when you're working hard, good things happen. And we, I see this in different formats, right? So people that are, helping you get better, talk about synchronicity and law of attraction. And if you're religious and they talk about, God intervened or whatever, but it all comes down to when you're working hard, good things happen.

Speaker 4

Yes, I agree. I agree a hundred percent. So let's start at the Be beginning. Have you personally had to overcome guilt regret, or was this an underlying theme that kept coming up in your patients that you were seeing?

Speaker 5

Both actually. So one of the things that I, so a couple things happened to me. So professionally, when I first started, I had practiced for 40 years, but in the beginning. At the time, patients that were in chronic pain were not, were being undertreated and people were afraid to treat them. And so our boards were coming out saying, Hey, you're undertreating. These patients, you need to be more aggressive. So then I got more aggressive and I, I'm living in a rural area, so I was, there wasn't pain management specialists, so I was doing a lot of pain management. And then the pendulum swung. cause of all the overdoses and the, the heroin addictions. So then the boards decided, oh, now you same doctors that we told were undertreating. Now we're telling you that you're overtreating, and so now we're gonna get you in trouble. So I spent a lot of time being in trouble with my board because they were like, no, you're overtreating. I'm like, I'm just doing what you told me to do. And they're like, yeah, but that's too much. And you're like, all my patients are doing fine and nobody's having trouble anyway. But what that did though is it put me in a professional crisis where I was like, Hey, am I doing something wrong? Should I be feeling guilty? Should I be regretting? And what it did is I had to use what I, and so I'm involved in a book called Mindset Matters, and what I realized was that mindset changes everything. So when people talk about good stress and bad stress. It really comes down to your mindset about whether it's good or bad. So most people would've looked at me being in front of my board, getting my license threatened, fine, blah, blah, blah, as a bad stress. And I'm like, no. And in the end, it turned out to be a good thing because of my mindset, because what it made me do was go back and reevaluate what I was doing as a doctor. And when I did the reevaluation, I did reading. It made me read books and go to lectures and attend thiss and do that. When I did all that, I was like, no, I'm on the right track. And my vindication came 15 years later when the CDC came out and said, you guys misinterpreted what we said. You basically Sprouse had it right. Even though he got in a whole bunch of trouble. Right. But my mindset was, no, I'm doing this the right way.'cause my main objective here is to take care of my patients. And I'm doing that and I'm doing it safely. And the board has changed their posture. Because of their trying to react to some of the, in the information that's coming into them about addictions and like what they, their mistake was that they lumped patients with addictions and chronic pain as the same patient. And they're not, they're totally different patients. And so what they were doing when I was punishing me for taking care of patients with pain medicine, when really what they were worried about is patients that were having drug addiction problems. And anyway. That makes sense. But because of all that, it made me realize, hey, you know what? Somewhere along the line, I'm gonna retire. I need to figure out what I'm gonna do with myself. So my wife and I became real estate investors. I wrote a book, and it's like, so now we do karaoke. Yay. So we have all these different identities. So when I retired retirement from me, it was easy because I just moved from. One job to the next thing. And so I didn't have that two years of oh, what do I do with myself? Because I, my purpose never changed. My purpose as a doctor was to make people healthy and happier, and I did it with a stethoscope and a prescription pad. Now my purpose is the same thing. Make people healthy and happier. But now just use a book and end your podcast. So it's like, yeah,

Speaker 4

I love it. I love it. So what makes unresolved regret and guilt particularly challenging for people? Does it linger in the body and just create more stress and more disease?

Speaker 5

The first thing I had to do was, and this is part of what happened, was I started figuring out where are our stresses coming from? And it turns out as a doctor, I'm used to writing prescriptions that say, Hey, if I give you this medicine, it'll fix your diabetes and your high blood pressure, but it might have some side effects and we'll minimize the side effects and maximize the benefits of medicine.

Speaker 4

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5

So when I took that concept and applied it to our human skills. Here's what I realized, that humans have these amazing skills. Like we can envision the future. What? It's incredible, right? But that has a side effect. And the side effect is then you have to worry about it. So when psychologists say to us. Hey, just live for today and you'll be happier. They're right. You will be happier. So my 1-year-old grandson he doesn't have the ability to envision the future and he's really happy. So he doesn't sit at the breakfast table going, dad, how are we gonna pay for college? Because he doesn't have that skill yet. But his 6-year-old sister now has the skill and so she now can start worrying about stuff. As adults and with social media. Now we have more and more things to worry about, which then does stuff to our body because we were meant to have a fear reaction last for 15, 20, 30 seconds, maybe a couple minutes. But what people are doing when they worry is they're having fear reaction over and over and over and over and over again. So when you start looking at regret and guilt. First of all, I thought they were kind of the same thing. I kind of sort of synonymous. And as I started writing about it, I was like, no, they're not even close to the same thing. They have similarities. So they both are reactions to something that's happened. But the big difference is that guilt is, I broke a rule, whether it's written or unwritten. Regret is I made a bad choice. They're way different things right now. Sometimes they can be joined.'cause the thing you did broke a rule and it was dumb decision to make. Right. But very different skills. So with guilt, we have to have the, we have to be able to define what right and wrong is. What you see is, and this is one of the reasons we're getting into trouble in our world, is because how people are defining right and wrong is real different depending on what country you live in or what religion you are, or what political affiliation you have. So the difference between right and wrong is way different, and that's one of the struggles we're having in the United States is, the current president is changing what's right and wrong. There's a whole lot of people that aren't comfortable with that, and you could see why, right? They're gone. You should feel guilty. He's like, you should feel guilty because right and wrong is this construct that we've made up as humans. But the guilt that goes along with it is this sort of shame reaction. And guilt is designed for a group of people so they can work together. Without guilt and shame, then you people just do stuff and nobody there. There's no way, there's no carrot and stick to keep them in line. So when we see somebody who says killed somebody, like some mother killed her kid and she's in the stand and she's crying and she's bawling and she's falling over and I can't believe I did that. I'm so sorry. I regret, I'm so sorry. I feel guilty. And we're like, okay, that wasn't good, but we're gonna punish you, but then we're gonna let you off. The person who gets on the stand goes, yeah, I killed the person. What do I care? That person we don't like at all that guy's gonna go to jail forever. cause we want somebody to have that internal sense of guilt that you did something wrong or he did something right. So in my book, what I talk about is I don't want to get rid of guilt because it's there for a reason. But what I do find is that people beat the crap out of themselves for something that was either minor or happened 20 years ago, and you're like, stop. And that's what I get in trouble. Just'cause that reaction. Yeah. It does stuff to your body because it makes you feel bad. And it changes how you interpret your environment. So if you're feeling guilty and somebody comes along and says, you're a really nice person, you're like, yeah, that's'cause you don't know the real me. If you knew the real me, you wouldn't say that. That kind of stuff. Excuse

Speaker 4

me. Good explanation there. Is

Speaker 5

that making sense?

Speaker 4

Absolutely. So do you think the biggest source of stress is worry? Or is it people beating themselves up?

Speaker 5

I don't know. I know that people worry a lot, but here's what I did find, and I'll say, here's, I'm gonna make a generalization about women. Women and women. So women tend to share their stresses and so they tend to be like, Hey, I'm worried about you. I'm worried about my, I would say to people, what are you worried about? Oh, I'm worried about my neighbor and my friend and my mother and my daughter. And I'm like, wait, I asked what you were worried about. Right? It's so they like group. Worry, right?

Speaker 4

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5

And what I realized was that most women think that worrying actually is a sign of their caring. Interesting. So if I'm worried about you, that's a sign that I'm caring about you.

Speaker 4

Wow, that's profound.

Speaker 5

What I found was that's actually not true. So worry is, and I'll, let me define worry. So worry is this incredible ability to envision the future, but then focusing on all the bad things that can happen. And then here's the key, having a fear reaction right now. So what I see is when people are worried, what they're really having is a fear reaction to something that hasn't happened yet. It's something that some concept or some thought or some concern of the future some future thing, and they're like, what if that happened? So if a big dog came to my yard, if. My dog would bark and yell and jump up and down, and then as soon as the dog left, she'd go back and lay on the rug and be, happy to go lucky. I'm sitting there going, what if the big dog comes back? What if my grandson was out there? What if I'd hurt my leg and I couldn't run away? So I can come up with all kinds of possibilities. Bad outcomes that can then I can have a fear reaction to. And that can go on and on. So men tend to minimize their stresses and so they tend to go, whatever, it's not gonna happen, so don't worry about it. And so this is a source of strife between men and women. So women are like, I'm worried that my daughter's gonna have an ulcer, and your husband's gone. No, come on. That's stupid. Don't even, that's not even that's so unlikely. It's not even worth thinking about. And you're like, why am I having to do all the worry and you just sit around not worrying about it at all, and you don't put any energy into this. So then it becomes a source of conflict. And what I find is, but I have to tell him, it's like, look, worry is not a bad thing until you do too much of it. But there's ways to envision your future without having to have that fear reaction. So when I say, when I have my wife and I have this discussion,'cause she's like, I'm worried about something. And I'm like, why are you worried about that? And she goes you're not putting any energy into this. I'm like, no, I am. But when you have a fear reaction, it literally turns off the thinking part of your brain.

Speaker 4

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5

So really what's going on is we have a problem that we need to solve and worrying about, having fear about it isn't helping solve the problem at all. I'm trying to solve the problem. I don't need the fear reaction to then spur me on to help solve the problem. So I, so the worry part is, the fear part is the extremist part. So I have a tool that I use that maybe your listeners can use. It's called the worry organize. And so what it does is it allows you to plan, but without fear.

Speaker 4

Ooh, interesting. Tell me more.

Speaker 5

Okay, so I'll use my, the lady I just met the other day, she's 18 years old, and she had been sick for a couple weeks and hadn't been in school, and so she was afraid and worried about going back to school. So the organizer in five columns, and you write it down, right? So the first column is, what are you worried about? So she's worried that if I go back to school, I'm gonna get sick again. So then the second column is, why are you worried about that? So she's whoa, because I've just been sick and there's a whole lot of viruses going around and I'm, my immune system isn't right and I'm stressed out and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, okay. So then we go to the third column, which actually starts putting numbers on things. You go, how likely is it that you're gonna go to school and get sick, and the second half is, and if you got sick, how bad would it be? So she was actually puristic. She goes, there's probably about 50% chance that I would get sick. And I was like, that's probably pretty accurate, but that means there's a 50% chance that you won't get sick. And I go, and if you got sick, how bad would it be? She goes, probably 90% chance I'd just get a cold and get better. And I'm like, yeah, that's probably right. And so she, you could see her stop and think like, wait, what? So then the next column is, what can I do to make it not happen? So she could wear a mask, she could bring hand sanitizer, she could, sit in the corner of the room and that kind of stuff. And then the last thing is, if you got sick, what would you do? And you're just like, I would take a couple days off, I'd go see the doctor or take some antibiotic, whatever. So when you filled all that out. She was like, yeah, I guess I should go back to school. Huh.

Speaker 4

Wow.

Speaker 5

And you're like,

Speaker 4

bring it full circle. Yeah.

Speaker 5

Yeah. So it was like, because she was like, maybe I should wait another week so I can get stronger. I'm like, do you think that's gonna change those numbers in the middle? Is it less likely to get sick? Do you think it's the virus is gonna go away in the next week? She goes, yeah, probably not. I go, do you think it's more likely that more than 10% chance you're gonna get sicker? Yeah, probably not. I'm like, so what weight? What's waiting gonna do? And it really wasn't gonna do anything. So she ended up going back to school and everything went, worked out fine. But by doing that, then you're able to. Plan for the future, but not have to have that fear reaction. So a lady came to my office that had breast cancer who went through this and she was, she had herself diagnosed a hundred percent chance of getting breast cancer and a hundred percent chance she was gonna die from it. And so when I gave her the real statistics was 15% chance you'll get it. 85% chance you'll survive. She was like, wait, what? And then we made the list of what can you do to not get it? And then we made this list of, if you got breast cancer, the worst happened, what would you do? And we were like, we're gonna already have diet, figured out where the best breast cancer institutes are. I'll have my will filled out. I'll make sure my sister's gonna take care of my kids. So now every time you worry about that, you go, oh, it's already written down. I don't have to do that again.

Speaker 4

That's great. So you say that some people are labeled as depressed, that are actually just overwhelmed. So how can someone tell the difference and why does that distinction matter so much?

Speaker 5

Yeah. Wow. So here, as a primary care doctor, I'm, I was trained that when people came in with certain symptoms, you go, okay, you have these symptoms. Then you get that diagnosis. So if you come in and you tell me, I'm sad all the time and I'm not eating, or I'm eating too much, I sleep all the time, or I don't sleep enough, or I don't get any pleasure in life, and you're like, oh, those are all the symptoms that we go depression. And then once you get that label, then we treat the label. So now we're not treating you anymore, we're treating the label. And so the patient has the label of depression. Give them an antidepressant, and then they come back in a couple weeks and they're like, I feel a little better. And you're like, all right, maybe we just need to give you more or maybe give you a second, or whatever. Because what we've trained people is that when you have depression, that you have a chemical imbalance in your brain. So what I found was that all those symptoms I just told you about, they also fit with someone who's overwhelmed. Say you've ever watched a movie, like a military movie where a guy's sitting in a foxhole and he's just numb. He's just sitting there going, all right, and the bombs are gone off. And he's so overwhelmed that he just can't react. Guess what? He is not sleeping. He's not eating. He's not, he got all the same symptoms, but the problem is that he is not chemically imbalanced in his brain. He says he is got way too much stress. He's overwhelmed. And so what I found was, so I used, I have a patient that came to me. He is like 70, he was like 80 years old and he'd been married for 50 years. And he came in and he had all the symptoms of depression. So his kids had brought him in, gone. We think dad's depressed'cause he is yelling at mom and he is frustrated and he won't listen to us and he is not eating right and he's, he is angry all the time. So I started talking to him. He is yeah, cause my wife's getting dementia and she won't listen to me and I can't do all the things I used to do 10 years ago and this, and I'm getting less, I'm getting more dependent on my kid. This is crazy. I'm like, oh wait, stop. You're not depressed, you're overwhelmed. And when he was overwhelmed, he like, when he heard that, he is oh yeah, that fits. Because he goes, I'm not depressed, I'm not sad. I'm like, yeah. So what you have is too many things on your plate. So we started working through some of the problems, gave him a book on how to handle people with dementia. Started talking about, it's a grieving process that you go through when you've lost some of your skills, right? Mm-hmm. And so as we started talking about that much, much better, and he didn't need medication, and he didn't have a lifelong diagnosis and a lifelong need for medication, and he got better because the real problem with most patients is not that they're chemically imbalanced in the brain. They just got too much stuff on their plate.

Speaker 4

Wow. I wish you were my doctor. You were amazing to be able to see that though. I think about how many patients are misdiagnosed and doctors don't have time, and they just slap that label on there and give'em a pill to go get better and it doesn't really solve the problem. Wow.

Speaker 5

The same thing is happening with addiction.

Speaker 4

Wow.

Speaker 5

Which is part of the offshoot of this work. Mm-hmm. Is that when people are under stress, they have to do something to get their stress under control. So we, there's like, somebody asked me, what do you do to reduce your stress? And I started making this list. It was like 50 long. Like I'll exercise, I'll watch tv, I'll read a book, I'll sing karaoke, I'll go play basketball with my friends. Right. There's 50 things that I do. I'll meditate or whatever. But when the thing you're doing to reduce your stress reducer starts producing stress, now you're in a loop.

Speaker 4

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5

So the example that I use is you're at work, you have a crappy day, you stop off at a bar and get a couple drinks of beer and you're relaxing. You're like, oh, that stress reducer really work. But then as you're driving home, you get pulled over and you get a DUI. So your stress reducer, the alcohol just became a stress producer. So then you get home, you tell your wife, oh man, I got a DUI. This is crazy. I'm gonna go get a beer. And your wife's are you nuts? You just got a DUI. You're like, no. This is my stress reducer. Now his wife's yelling at him, so his stress reducers caused stress reduce, and you're in this loop. And so we call that addiction and we label it as a disease that you're gonna have for the rest of your life. So I meet people who's been sober for 25 years and they go, hi, I'm Joan. I'm an alcoholic. I'm like, when's the last time you drank? She goes, 25 years ago. I'm like, what? Then? Why are you still labeling yourself an alcoholic? That's nuts. I'll give you a funny line that I give them. I'm Dr. Sprouse and I'm a bed wetter. And they go, what? And I go, when I was two years old, I went to bed all the time. I haven't done it in a long time now, but one more night on bedwetting and I'll be back. That sounds stupid to say, but that's what these people are doing. So what I found using my models, what I found was that the real problem is not alcohol disease or heroin disease, or drug disease, or whatever disease you wanna call it. It's not a disease that the problem, the alcohol is a treatment. It's not the disease. It's treating stress. So the disease is, if you wanna give it to the labels, is the stress. So the answer to get out of any addiction or get out of a stress reducer loop is what I call'em. Is to find out you're in one, two, is to then find ways to have less stress. And three, find all the ways to deal with your stress is that don't have the same side effects. When I did that, when I practiced and I was taking care of patients, I had a hundred patients on heroin addiction, I had a 95% success rate.

Speaker 4

Wow,

Speaker 5

when the go raid is like 20.

Speaker 4

That is profound. So what was the turning point when, after decades of high pressure medical system where, the board was analyzing you, did you realize that your old definition of stress was wrong?

Speaker 5

Yeah, it was. The concept of this book I've been working on for 25, 30 years. And I was gaining more and more information and it comes from where our brain the original concept came from how our brain works. So there's a model I used to tell us how our brain works, and it separates our brain from mind, but it shows how they're connected and what I've done. It's when I realized that most of the stresses that humans have are either due to our mindset. Are due to the side effects of our skills. And so when I started defining stress, which is not that easy, right?

Speaker 4

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5

So here's what I finally came to, and it's a very broad definition. So our environment is constantly changing and we are constantly changing, right? Every day I wake up, I'm a little different than I was the day before. And our stress is that interaction between our changing environment and our changing me. We're never gonna get rid of stress because un unless we die. So as long as we're alive, there's always gonna be stress because our environment's always gonna change and we're always gonna change. And so that interaction is gonna, so the best that we get to do then is manage our stress, but the only way to manage it effectively is to know where it's coming from. So if I just say, Hey, divorcing your spouse is a big stress, that doesn't help. And then they give you some generic thing like, go exercise or go meditate, or, go to a church or something. I mean, not that they don't work, but they're

Speaker 4

generic.

Speaker 5

When you understand like worry and you go worry is having a fear reaction to something hasn't happened yet? Now you got tools that I can specifically go, okay, let's do something about that. So guilt is in that same place where guilt is, I did something wrong, so what are we gonna do about that? So one of the things that you can do is learn how to forgive yourself. Yes, and that's not all. What I found was forgiving other people is actually easier than forgiving yourself, because with other people you always have the option of going, you know what, I forgive you, so I'm not gonna be angry and mad at you and hate your guts anymore, but I'm not gonna relate with you anymore. Like you, you go your way. I go my way. With yourself. You don't have that option. Like you have to figure it out'cause you're not going anywhere. You're there forever. And so it, it's actually harder to forgive yourself, but

Speaker 4

so how do you suggest people forgive themselves?

Speaker 5

Yeah. Okay, so here's, so there's a book by Desmond Tutu and his daughter Fu and it's something about called the Art of Forgiveness or something. And. It's a four step process that he goes through. So the first thing you do is you go, okay, you're gonna tell the story because too many people are unwilling to tell their story. And so they hide it. And so then it just builds up all this negative energy inside of them. And so they're'cause there takes energy to hold into a secret. So one of the things that I found as a doctor, patients were willing to come to me and tell me these secrets because I was safe. And as soon as they told one person, that made them feel better. So telling your story is number one, but you have to find somebody who's nonjudgmental, who's safe, who's willing to listen to you, who's not going to give you 10 pieces of advice to fix it, blah, blah, blah. Right? This is why Catholics have confession. It's actually a pretty good thing, right? You get to tell your story to somebody. The second is. You have to name the hurt. So telling your story doesn't mean that you go, oh, you hurt me, but it doesn't matter. It's not that big a deal. No, it is a big deal. So you have to name what, you hurt me because you did this. The third thing then is then, and this is the part where he talks about, that's where you ask for forgiveness and you go, Hey, can you forgive me? But to a part of that is the atonement. And the atonement is, I'm not gonna do that again. So if you say you got a DUI, right? And you're like, oh, I'm not gonna drink anymore because I don't want to get a DUI again, that's what guilt was supposed to do. It was supposed to change your behavior, is to say that hey, behavior had was wrong. And don't do that again. And you're gonna have shame if you do it again. So if you don't do it anymore, then you did what guilt was supposed to do, which is make you not do it so that if you don't drink anymore, then why feel guilty? Because the guilt was there to keep you from doing that. If you're not doing it, then the guilt did its job. Get rid of it, right? So the atonement is, are gonna change your behavior to not do the wrong thing anymore. And then, so when you do all that, then the last piece is then you renew or you release the relationship. So with other people, you can go, so I'll give you the example. Somebody's cheated on their spouse. That can ruin a relationship, right? Because there's this trust issue. And so what happens is but it can also strengthen relationship.'cause here's what happens. The person goes, okay, you cheated on me and I didn't like that and that hurt me. And he's like, but I'm not gonna cheat ever again. And you're like, all right, I'm gonna learn how to trust you over time. And now their relationship is stronger. Because what they realized was the reason that he was cheating was because there was something missing in their relationship. So if they can figure out what the missing piece was and put it back in, now the relationship is actually stronger. cause now they put that missing piece back in. They were honest. They worked with each other. They made it through this crisis. So the relationship can be stronger. Or they can release a relationship like, you know what, I don't hate your guts'cause you cheated on me, but I'm not gonna, I can't ever trust you again, so I'm gonna move on to somebody else, but I'm not gonna waste my energy on you. Which then, because a lot of guilt can, being hating somebody and feeling guilty can cause a lot of relationship. So you just move on and you just go different ways. With yourself. You have to figure out a way to, to forgive yourself and atone in and not doing the wrong thing again is one of those ways.

Speaker 4

Wow. That's profound. Not to shift gears here, but you also talk about your happiness equation. Ah, yes. So how can someone feel fulfilled even when external circumstances haven't changed?

Speaker 5

Yeah. So here's what I found. So I would say to patients, so if you had less stress, where would you be? And they're like. Yeah, I don't know. I've never got that far. I only wanted to have less stress. And you're like, but wait. If you don't know where you wanna be, that's not a good thing. If I go into my GPS and said, take me somewhere, it is not gonna work. It needs a definite place of where I need to go. So I started writing about Happy Place and I quickly learned that everybody's happy place is different. So I use my wife as an example. I like going to the beach and the sand and the waves and the sun. My wife thinks the beach is a big kitty litter box.

Speaker 6

I, I like that. That's funny.

Speaker 5

Yeah. Yeah. So our happy places are different, right. But as I started writing more and more about it, what I realized was that each person's happy place has the same rooms. They just decorate it differently. So some rooms are big or some are painted yellow, some are painted green. Some have rugs, some have art, some might, right? They're all just decorated differently, but the rooms are the same. So the rooms, and I'll go through'em real quick, are things like gratitude, pleasure, anticipation of pleasure, feeling contented, feeling fulfilled, and then there's an acronym I use called cash and cash stands for feeling Connected and Feeling in Control. Feeling accepted and feeling appreciated, feeling having a spiritual sense and feeling safe and having humor and having hope. And when you put out that room, you're like, whoa. That's a great, because I, I went, I did a lecture last week and I said, tell me your happy place. And somebody put it said the beach. And I go, oh, great. I go, how often do you get to go to the beach? And they're like, I know, like two, three times a year. I was like, really? So the only time you're in your happy place is though two or three times a year when you're at the beach. Wouldn't it be nice if the happy place was in your pocket and you can pull it out anytime you want it. And with how I define the rooms of the happy place, it's in your pocket. You can pull it out whenever you want. So it's like in the last month, I've had a number of different things happen to me. I diverticulitis and I got a really bad cold, and I got tripped up playing basketball and cut my head and blah, blah, blah, right?

Speaker 4

Oh no.

Speaker 5

And I'm like, you could be like, oh, life is horrible. It sucks. I can't believe this. I'm like, no, you're kidding me. I woke up. This is what I use. I have a 50 point wake up.

Speaker 4

I love it. Tell me more.

Speaker 5

Yeah, so my 50 point wake up is I wake up in the morning, open my eyes, 10 points. I'm still alive. Go to the refrigerator. 10 points.'cause I got food in my refrigerator. 10 points.'cause I go to the sink and there's running water and it's hot too on demand. Right? 10 points.'cause my wife is safe and we live in a nice safe house. Oh. And the last 10 points,'cause I have indoor plumbing. Yay. Now's like 10 degrees outside. So indoor plumbing is maybe 15 points. I don't know. Right?

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Speaker 5

Right. But that's all you have to do is wake up and you get 50 points. So if I scratch my head playing basketball, I'm like, all right, minus 10, but that still leaves me plus 40, plus I get 10 because I can still play basketball. What? Yeah. So when you're grateful for stuff, like it's really hard to be super upset and overwhelmed, right? But feeling fulfilled is that same thing. And what I. So fulfillment. It turns out that there's three parts to that, being curious. So humans are in cur a curious organism. Like my dog snapped at a crab snapped at his nose and he is okay, that's enough. I don't wanna get near that anymore. I'm like, no. What's inside? How's it work? How's it reproduce? Where does it right? Humans are incredibly curious. So we have to feed that curiosity or we get bored, which is not a good stress. Two is that we like to give cause we're an organism that grew up in a social environment. We like giving, and we talked about this earlier, like social media allows us connect, but it also keeps us at a distance. We like that physical connection where we can see the whole person and feel their, see their body language and get all their vibes. And we like giving and sharing. So like I've done some things in my life, like I've joined the Rotary Club, which is awesome. And its motto is, service above self. And if everybody live without motto, how freaking cool would that world be? Right?

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Speaker 5

And then the last piece is fulfillment. And fulfillment to me. Is that or not? Fulfillment? It's purpose. We need a purpose in life and here's why. For every other animal in the world, staying alive is their purpose. For humans, that's so easy. What? I just woke up and got 10 points. It's too easy for us. So we had to find something else to jazz us up to make. So feel excited when we get up in the morning and that's where purpose comes in place, right? And so for me, my purpose was as a doctor, dude, I was excited every day to come up and figure out, Hey, what's wrong with this person? Hey, I just read this article. Let's try that and see if that that got me excited every day to come in. Now guess what? I'm still excited.'cause now I get to figure out how to help them with their psychological stuff. And so it's my purpose. Never changed. My wife, she struggled'cause she was doing stuff. She was doing the billing from my office and she hated it. Hated it. Did it for 10 years. She was good at it. And. One time I said to Honey, you don't have to do that. I know you hate this. Let's just pay somebody to do it so you can free to do other things. She goes, what? Not doing a good job. I'm like, oh,

Speaker 4

oh no. Oh

Speaker 5

no. You're doing fine right now here. So 10 years when we retired, I was like, oh, she's gonna be happy. She's gonna wake up. No, she wake up. I said, am I supposed to do with myself now? And I'm like, oh, this is a problem.'cause she didn't have any reason to get up in the morning. She stayed in her pajamas all day. I was like, no, this isn't good. So now it's been a year, so she's figured it out. So we do some traveling and she does, she has honeybees and she does gardening and she's, we've joined a church and she's part of a book club and all this. So now her life has, she gets up in the morning, now she has stuff to do and it's like, yeah. There's a thing if you have time, there's a thing called icky guy, which I don't know if you've ever heard of it.

Speaker 4

No, I haven't.

Speaker 5

All right. So icky guy is a way to find your purpose. So it's four circles. So the circle is, what am I good at? Second circle is what? What do I like doing? Third circle is what can I make some money at? And the four circles, what will help my community? Where you fill out those circles and where they intersect. That's your icky guy. So for me, writing a book and helping people, man, that was right, right there. That's where I'm at. So other people can fill those things out and say, oh yeah, I like this, I like that. And start figuring out where they want to have their purpose in life.

Speaker 4

Wow. So exciting. Oh my gosh. You've shared so much wisdom with us. So what life lessons did this whole experience, this whole journey teach you?

Speaker 5

Okay, a couple things. First off, don't resign yourself to being stressed out because there's ways to get out of this. Two is that your mindset really matters because how you approach a problem will change the problem, right? Because if you see problems as. Insurmountable obstacles. It's never gonna go away. If you just see it as some detour, then you figure out a way around it. So your mindset really changes how you address the world around you. I see that so much in self-esteem. With self-esteem. People decide they're not a good person and then they filter all the information in to, to make that true. So if you, so I've had patients with low self-esteem. I go, Hey, you're a really nice person. They're like, yeah, I don't think so. They filter the information. Nah, you don't know what you're talking about. The real me, blah, blah, blah. But if somebody says, you're a really crappy person, ugh, I hate hearing that. But they're right. So it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. So your mindset, what you do about that makes a huge difference in how you approach life and then working hard. And the last one I talk about as a reserve, because one of the things that I see are people live on the edge. And that's a really stressful place to be. One of my friends called me other, they said, doc. Can you lend me 30 bucks? I'm like, for what? And they're like, my, my husband needs his medications and it's Friday and his paycheck doesn't come till Monday, but he needs his medicines today. And I'm like, literally, you don't have$30 somewhere that you can go buy his medicine and wait till Monday. That's living on the edge. No, that is not. That is not a good place to be like. So what I tell people is particularly financially, but with your time and effort too, same thing. I see a lot of women and people that, we call it codependent. I use a different word called self-sacrificing loop, but they give themselves so much that they don't have any time for themselves and they're falling apart. And it's like you need some reserve for yourself. You need some financial reserve, you need some time reserve. You need time so that you're not on the edge. Living on the edge is a scary place.'cause then any little thing that happens becomes a really big deal.

Speaker 4

So true. Wow. You have shared so much wisdom, so many frameworks and great tools with the listener. So thank you so much. I appreciate it. So where can people connect with you? Follow your work, learn more about what you do and what is the name of your book?

Speaker 5

Yeah. Cool. So the book is called Highway, to Your Happy Place, A Roadmap to Less Stress. And I'm working on volume two. It's, it'll be called Mile Marker two.

Speaker 4

I love it. I love it.

Speaker 5

And so they can get on my website. It's called Do Less Stress. Do. Dot com and on there is like an online course you can sign up for. There's also a free chapter. The worry chapter's on there for free. You can just download it and then here's what I found as an author, as a doctor, I'm one-on-one, right? I'm talking with a person. I can see if they're getting it. I can ask specific questions. When you're an author, you just have to write the book. You don't know who's on the other side of the book. So it has to be a little more generic. So what I tell people is, look, if you have a question and you want that book personalized for you, then just email me@lessstress.gmail.com and then I can talk to you individually, because that makes it much more personal. Because you can only write what you can write. cause I don't know what the other person's thinking or what they're dealing with.

Speaker 4

I love it. Wow. Listeners, if you found this episode helpful, please share it with someone who might be facing a similar challenge of regret, overwhelm, and they can hear this message of hope. So I'll see you next time on Overcoming Anything.