#102: Becoming Resilient And Courageous Self-Advocates with Sharon Sayler

Welcome to The Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, bestselling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markel. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your conscious pivot.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markel, and I really feel very energized today. I got a good night's sleep yesterday. I had a great massage actually before bed last night. So we've got this incredible massage therapist that comes to our house and he is just incredibly gifted, has a way of tracking down where the If I've got a stiff neck or a sore back or some other thing that's going on, he never goes to that spot. He always starts in some other seemingly random place, some bizarre other spot like under my armpits or my little toe or something. But he's just a miracle worker. He's just a great guy. So in any event, I got a great night's sleep. So now I have more energy than I know what to do with. So when you have so much energy, you don't know what to do with it. Podcast. That's the answer. I don't know what all of you are up to in the moment, but I hope it's something that you're enthusiastic about. I hope it's something that you can muster up some energy for. And maybe it's that you're in that trough between the waves and you don't feel a great deal of energy in the moment, and that this is the opportunity for you to get re-energized. And we all need that. I need it all the time, and I I think we all do and when we think somehow that we're supposed to be stronger than that or have more endurance than that, I think we're making an assumption, an erroneous— so back to my law school and lawyer days, it's an erroneous premise. We all get tired and the idea that somehow we're supposed to be able to endure and muscle through it is an unrealistic expectation of ourselves and it's an unrealistic expectation that we place and put on a lot of other people whether it's— Family. Mostly it's in the context of work, of either our business and our entrepreneurial pursuits, or it's as employees or as the managers of people in a company. Exhaustion is not the road to resilience. Endurance is not the only factor in what creates resilience for us. In fact, more and more, not just the science that I've researched, but in my own personal experiences and the people that we've worked with, It's our ability to recover that creates our opportunity for greater resilience and for greater growth. So it's like going to the gym. We can't go to the gym once every blue moon and expect that we're going to have the body or feel as fit as we want to feel. And in the same vein, we can't go to the gym every single day and work the same body parts or do the same exercises again and again and again. and end up resilient as a result of it, what ends up happening is we become exhausted, we become worn out, we become burned out, our muscles become burned out, and that is not how they actually grow and get larger or get firmer or whatever it is. It's this wonderful harmony between the stress and the work and the recovery that creates resilience. I think that's more and more what I've come to understand and have this blessing to share with other people is And we have the perfect guest to be diving into some of that today, and I'm going to introduce her in just a second. But to realize that it's not stress that kills us. I know there's a lot of kind of that out there that stress is an enemy, and I don't believe stress is the enemy. I think it's our belief that stress is the enemy that makes stress the enemy on some level. And on another level, it's stress without the counterpart to stress, which is recovery, which is self-care. that makes stress a dangerous thing. But when we get resistance and stress combined with the commensurate amount of recovery and self-care, then that's a wicked combination for growth. And I think that's really important, that resilience and that growth. So today I've got this amazing woman on the show. Her name is Sharon Saylor, and I actually got to be on her show a couple of weeks back, which was really a blessing. So we definitely wanted to have her on. And have her share her wisdom with our community today. So I'll read a little bit about her, uh, from her bio, and then we'll dive right in. Sharon Saylor is the founder of Competitive Edge Communications. She is a best-selling author, internationally known speaker, and executive consultant who teaches professionals how to create their own competitive edge using verbal and nonverbal communication skills. She is in the top 20 in the world for body language skills according to globalgurus.org. 4 years ago, Sharon's life and work took an unexpected turn to become what friends call an irrational passion. She now takes her communications training and combines it with her own experience dealing with a rare medical condition to teach others to become courageous self-advocates as they work to turn life transitions life transitions into transformations, pivots in other words. Along with speaking, group and personal coaching, she is the host of the popular podcast called The Autoimmune Hour where she inspires hope and shares experts to help those with autoimmune conditions find their— I want to put that out there as to find their blank. For you, Sharon, first of all, welcome. We're going to come back to that in a second, but welcome to the show. Thank you for being with us today.

Oh, thank you, Adam. It's always a pleasure to see you and chat with you. I always have so much fun.

Wonderful. Thank you for that. So I want to just go back to that last line in your bio which says she inspires hope and shares experts to help those with autoimmune conditions. And then I had this desire to know exactly what do you help people with those conditions do? Is there a way to formulate that into a word or a sentence? Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience, but that of our teams. So right now we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com. Find out just how resilient you are.

Well, to me, it's a pivot. I know you talk about pivot in business, but as you and I've chatted before, we pivot in all areas of our life. And once you get a diagnosis that it's not take 2 aspirin and you'll be fine in the morning, it takes a lot of courage. And as you were saying, resilience to actually go and sometimes buck the medical system and say, nope, I got to pivot here.

Yeah. That's a health pivot.

A health pivot, yes.

It's kind of an interesting thing, right? Let me go back to your bio for just a second. You've done a lot of amazing things and the introduction is always a great way to help people to know that somebody who they're about to listen to has the expertise and has earned the right, so to speak, to be sharing information. Clearly, your bio does that. I'm curious, what's not written in this bio that you would love for people to know about you?

Oh, wow. Great question. That I'm not always as courageous as I appear. Sometimes I have to sort of fake being courageous to get to the other side.

Right. I'm raising my hand to that one. That's so interesting, right? We're not always as courageous as we look to be. I have so many

people on the show comment, wow, Sharon, you're so courageous. You just Move through the autoimmune condition to that point of thriving regardless of the diagnosis. Yet sometimes it looks simpler on the outside than it really is when you're moving through it.

Yeah. I'm curious, what were some of the challenges, the more profound challenges that maybe, as you said, the way that you moved through it from looking at it outside in didn't really reveal just how much you were impacted?

I think my biggest frustration when I first started— okay, I hear the diagnosis. I refuse to accept ownership of the diagnosis. A lot of the medical community thought I wasn't being realistic. But as you and I have chatted before, words mean things. And if someone says you have X and it's a critical diagnosis, the last thing you want to do is have ownership of that word. So I tried to explain to them, look, I can have cockroaches, but that doesn't mean I own them, nor do I want them. But you telling me, giving me a great big label, almost printing it on my forehead in red letters, you have a very profound chronic medical condition. I don't want my unconscious brain to believe that. I want my unconscious brain to believe, oh darn, I have cockroaches. Now what do I do?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, and I think you and I did touch on this. Language is so important. And even the way we label certain things is important. I mean, there's a lot of reasons for labels, and yet at the same time, labels can have the impact of defining people in so many ways that— and where ownership becomes one of those cases of my something, my rheumatoid arthritis, my— and people start to take that on as a part of their identity even. And that could be a dangerous thing. Is that accurate, do you think?

Yeah, it can be a dangerous thing, but we can say my divorce It's my bad childhood, my failure at that first— my firing from that business. It could be any number of things where we take these labels on that keep us stuck. And I always am on the lookout for if I am playing professional victim at any time. Mm-hmm. Like, am I getting a secondary gain out of what I'm doing is a question I like to ask myself because I always want to be in forward momentum. And when we start looking for the secondary gain and am I in this moment being a professional victim, I keep myself stuck. I start— I can actually even start to move backwards. But especially in health, when it's our own health, it becomes pretty profound because with a longer condition, as I like to use the word chronic, with a longer condition instead of 10 days, you'll be fine. Not only do you have to be mindful, But you have to be very clear with your friends, family, coworkers. This is not going to limit me. And maybe you have some adjustments to make. But in my mind, I'm going to keep moving forward. I'm going to keep seeing myself as thriving because what we think also does affect how our body reacts. So if we see ourselves maybe not right in this moment, but we are able to project into the future that we're back at optimal health. It's really motivating to keep you moving forward. But if you believe when the medical community says, oh, Sharon, you have this diagnosis and these are the terrible things that are going to happen to you. And I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And their body language just blew me away before they gave me the diagnosis, just from their body language, I knew it wasn't good.

Hmm.

Which creates fear in you when you see someone else doing body language of sort of wringing their hands and maybe hemming and hawing and looking down and not making eye contact with you, you go into fear. You're like, okay, this isn't good. But you have to be able to move forward and move past that and go, I got to keep looking forward because if I accept what they say, I'm going to be stuck at this place where I don't want to be.

Yeah. Where chronic actually becomes something chronic.

Exactly. Other than just a word.

Other than just a word. Right, exactly. Hmm. Secondary gain. Would you say more about that? How would you define secondary gain?

Secondary gain is really interesting to me. We all do it. Maybe we just don't want to do something. So all of a sudden that day we wake up feeling a little not so good. So we can get out of going to something that we didn't want to go to. Or a secondary gain can be on the positive. Like if we do X for that person, Maybe they'll reciprocate and do Y for us. So it's usually not our very first thought. But I have to be honest, we all have these little tiny twins on our shoulders that are whispering, well, maybe you could do this and you'll get that. Or if you do that, you'll get this. And a lot of times I was talking on the show to Dr. Namin. He's a cardiac pulmonologist and a surgeon. And this was a shocking statistic he said to me the other day that 80% of his patients do not have the intention of getting well. That was absolutely shocking to me because that means only 20% of his patients have the intention of getting well. And he says, I can repair whatever's wrong, but it's the mental mindset. Do you have the intention of getting well? And he found a lot of his patients Sort of like, well, you know, if I'm not well, then I don't have to do X, Y, or Z.

And that would be one of those— so secondary gain in that context would be that there's some payoff for people to be unwell, to be chronically not—

It's a hard question to ask yourself. Yeah, it's a hard question to ask yourself. You have to be very self-aware and honest with yourself because I think At all levels, we always have some sort of secondary gain going on. But when it's around a chronic health condition, am I getting some sort of emotional payoff by not being well?

Right. And that could be so many things, which we don't have to dive too deeply, I suppose, into this, but it can even be, who is it that I'm punishing by being unwell? Who am I making right by being the way I am? Or who do I get to prove wrong in some ways by being stuck or it becoming my identity? And so it's interesting because the words themselves can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And the question is, what do I get out of that? Which is not an easy question to answer. Right. And sometimes it's quite difficult to ask it as well, because who wants to believe? I mean, just thinking of if I'm sitting listening to this right now or I'm watching us, Are they saying that because I'm not, you know, my body is in a state of dis-ease maybe, or that there's something that's not right, that I've created that, or that I, or I want it worse than creating it, that I actually want to keep it? That this is something I'm making a story for it becoming a part of me for some long time or maybe permanently? And that's a tough proposition.

It is a tough proposition, and it may or May not be true for you, but to explore it. I'm just asking, play with the notion. Now, I'm not saying you caused it or whatever. We all get different medical conditions for different reasons. We're exposed to a virus, we're exposed to a bacteria, genetics. There's tons of reasons why our body goes into dis-ease. However, once you're there, is there something mentally, emotionally, besides the physical? That's keeping you in a place that maybe it's more comfortable than going over there or going past that. Maybe it's more comfortable here than going over there. And I'm not saying that that's a hard fact for everyone, for sure. But to play with it because it's an interesting aspect of healing anything that we do, not just our health, that we play with these notions that might be uncomfortable and just ask the question and then sit quiet. Breathe, meditate, spend some time and just let the question resonate. You may or may not have an answer pop up right away. Answers appear in the strangest places.

Isn't that true? Right. We can't figure something out. And then all of a sudden you're in the shower and the solution shows up or the name of the person you couldn't think of happens. I think that's a fairly common experience. And it's interesting, too, about questions. This is a personal belief more than anything else, I suppose. I feel like questions and answers, they're Very much cause and effect related. So you can't actually, in my belief system, you can't ask a question where you don't receive an answer. That you will always get an answer. I never know what the timing of the answer is, so it could require a great deal of patience. I mean, if you ask, what's the nature of life? Or what's my purpose in having been born? And all that kind of thing, you may not get an answer immediately. You might get something that drops in pretty quickly if you're As you said, you set the intention to want to have an answer, which presupposes why you've asked the question, that you want the answer, and then you give yourself some space to sit still and allow for the answer to present. It could be that it's 6 years from now that that question put you on some— it triggered a lot of other things and it became sort of a quest, but ultimately you get an answer. I think that's one of the really wonderful things we can count on. I also believe that a lot of people are hesitant to ask those questions because in many ways, the answers might change things. The answers might really, you know, am I willing? So when I was pivoting myself in the occupational space, I was saying, am I willing to trade the next 30 years of my life for a lot of money? I was earning a lot of money as an attorney, certainly doing well financially, but I was miserable. I wasn't fulfilled. So I didn't feel like a success. I actually felt like a failure even though everybody would Have said, "Oh no, it's totally got it going on." I mean, plenty of all that. But to ask that question meant that if I was really genuinely wanting an answer, the answer might not be something that would would make me comfortable. If you ask that question, the universe might deliver you the answer. Hello, thirty years from now, you're going to be thirty times more miserable than you are. And take a look around you and see all the guys and. and colleagues that you have who are 30 years your senior and he and she are miserable, like they're unhappy. That's your future. Then what do you do with that, right, Sharon? You ask that question. You get this answer. It puts you in a state of even, on some level, more uncertainty because the answer says a change is required. A pivot is necessary. Pivots—

It may not be the answer you want.

Oh, no.

It may not be the answer you want.

It could shock you. It could be, hmm, the answer relative to my body is that I can't continue to live where I live. I can't do the work I'm doing, or it's not a good idea for me to do that. I have to stop drinking what I love to drink. I have to stop eating this thing that I love to eat but only causes inflammation. So the answer itself can bring about a lot of change and a lot of uncertainty. As you said, that brings up fear. So, I want to—

sometimes it takes courage to muscle through it too. And we were talking, you started to talk about force and resilience and courage and muscling through. I think sometimes it takes a certain amount of force to take that first step. But after that, I found that it becomes self-perpetuating. It becomes self-motivating that when you know you're on the right step, when you're on the right path, The problem is that when I was going through, I knew something was wrong before the diagnosis. However, I kept living the old life, forcing myself through, muscling myself through, forcing myself to get up and give that speech. Then the problem happened. The body broke down. So that was the continuation of the force. For me, sometimes it does take a little bit of extra willpower to— okay, I'm going to leap. I'm not sure that there's a net, but I'm going to leap. I think it's a continuation of the force where you have to stop and ask yourself, am I on the right path?

Yes. It's what people can sometimes call balance, but I think harmony is a word that, for me anyway, is more that yin and yang, male and female, or this idea that there's a place where things exist, coexist harmoniously. And there's a coexistence of everything that's possible. I haven't read the Tao Te Ching in full. I've read pieces and parts of it. What I understand of it is that it's that idea we find— how do we find center or where the center and balance or the midpoint exists in everything. Force, continued force only will lead to this imbalance, if you will, but force oscillating with acceptance or force oscillating with relaxation or with surrender Then there's a counterpart to all the force. And I agree with you. I think sometimes just to get something started, it requires a certain amount of force. And that force doesn't need to be a big deal itself. It can be the tiniest of dominoes that starts this domino effect that creates this momentum. But to tip the first domino requires some effort. And sometimes that effort— so in regard to health and wellness, what would you say is the tiniest domino that would also symbolically represent the force that's required to change something important in your health life?

Well, beyond setting the intention that this isn't going to define who you are, that you are more than this, that you are bigger than this, it may change the way you live in certain ways, but it doesn't define who you are. It's taking that next step to find the why. And I know this is going to sound a little bit nuts, but the reason I started the Autoimmune Hour is I was so frustrated. I have a background in communications. I teach people how to get up and be public speakers. However, I was so frustrated in getting medical community to really listen to me. They would listen to one little minute and then all of a sudden try to fix that little thing. I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait. No. See me as whole. And that's what I love about functional medicine now. The medical community is shifting to seeing you as a whole. However, it does take, as the person who's in the healing process on this healing journey, why? Why did this happen? I still can't tell you why the autoimmune condition happened to me, but I do know I definitely wouldn't have started the Autoimmune Hour without it. And part of that was from my frustration. If I am frustrated talking to doctors, what is the person without the level of training I have going through. Oh my goodness, what could they be going through? So I started offering the autoimmune hour partly as my own therapy because I enjoyed learning, but also as a way of sharing. You don't have to accept. I used to hear, Sharon, get real. You're not really listening to your diagnosis. And I'm like, oh, I hear you. I just don't accept it. And then they would— you would hear, get real. And that can be very defeating. So on the Autoimmune Hour, I started it to help people know that you're not defined by your diagnosis.

Mm-hmm.

And then, as you— that took force to do. It took courage to do. It took a lot of things to line up. But now we're in almost 200 episodes into our 4th year, and it's just exploded. So then all of a sudden, as you said, you may not know the answer right away, but here we are 4 years down the road. I'm like, Okay, I'm not sure I needed this diagnosis, but now I know the why. Now I know the why. And I think that's critically important.

Wow. The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid. And if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilient leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes. And it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. What you described is what that momentum looks like, that one thing tipping into the next and the next and the next. And it's really a cool example to see this visually that— so Newton's law of Physics is body at rest tends to stay at rest and body in motion tends to stay in motion. So that's the classic explanation of momentum. But what's really cool is that a body in motion can impact another body. So with dominoes, for example, little domino or any size domino can knock over another domino that's bigger than itself, usually 1.5 times depending on the weight of it, but 1.5 times its size. That's the capacity. So you start out with a domino that's like 3/8 of an inch tall. By the 29th domino, that process of knocking over another domino that's 1.5 times its size, it's a compounding effect because you get the 29th domino, it's the size of the Empire State Building, which is pretty remarkable and also explains on some level, you start out and it's 4 years, before you know it, you've tipped over a domino and 4 years later, you've got 200 episodes and the thing is exploding and now you understand the why behind your diagnosis originally, which Must have caught you off guard like it catches a lot of us off guard when we hear something like that. So I would love to know, you said earlier, see me whole. I'd love to understand a little bit more about what you— when people go to the doctor, what is their typical experience and what does it mean to be seen whole?

Well, I think in the medical community it means a lot of things to me in the wider consciousness of my mind. However, in the medical part of it, my frustration was They would see perhaps my diagnosis. It contains a skin condition as well as muscle weakness. And the problem with the medical community is you go and you see a rheumatologist, an endocrinologist, a gastroenterologist. And so let's take gastroenterology. They see you as the digestive tract. That's it. They don't look at, OK, what if I change in my digestive tract will strengthen my muscles? Or help me with the skin condition. And that's what I think in the medical community is important for us to be our integrated patient. So we see ourselves as whole. I'm not just coming to you for the stomach or the rheumatology, the endocrinology, whatever it is. This whole body has to heal as a whole. We can't just tweak on the outsides here on the different parts and hope to have it fixed. It works as an engine. It has to all function in a healthy way. So it's incumbent upon me as the patient to make sure that the doctor understands we're not here just to fix, let's say, a digestive issue. I need you to see me as— this is the whole patient. How do we optimize the whole unit, not just tweak a part of it?

It's a holistic approach. So you tweak or change or toy with one piece of the system It impacts other areas of the system, right? I mean, there's a—

Absolutely. A frustration of mine was when you take an autoimmune medication, they're typically pretty significant medications that have a lot of side effects. And some things that happened to me, I started calling symptoms. I had a period where I had short-term memory loss and I'm saying to the doctor, now look, you're saying it cured my skin condition, but it caused short-term memory loss. Let me choose. Do I want skin condition or do I want memory loss? Let's say. And the doctor's arguing with me like, well, no, but we fixed it. Yeah, but the other part of the system is out of balance now. And that's where I think it's incumbent on the patient to keep really good journals of what their conditions are, the experience, the journey that they're on. Keep really good notes. And that way, you know that when this is tweaked, That may or may not happen over on this side because as we know from physics again, you know, you push one place, something else gives.

Right. Trying to remember from the last talk we had, were you diagnosed with dermatomyositis? Is that what they said it was?

That's correct. Great, great memory. Yeah, dermatomyositis. Yes.

Well, I just remember it because I've had family that have also heard that diagnosis as well. And yeah, it's an interesting thing what you're saying about The side effects, because just to sit— I mean, I don't watch very much TV, but if you're ever on regular TV with commercials, you're not watching Netflix or something else, which is much better in my opinion. But occasionally what I see are these pharmaceutical ads, and there's more pharmaceutical advertising now and marketing than has ever been before. And more than half the ad is just sort of talking to the side effects of the drug that's supposed to help one thing, but it's potentially creating every other thing you can imagine and many things you can't imagine, including death.

Yeah, some of those are pretty scary.

Yeah. So you go, how does anybody make heads or tails of this stuff? And yet clearly they're advertising because it's working. There's no question that the pharmaceutical companies are very astute business people and they wouldn't be spending the millions and potentially hundreds of millions— I'm sure it's hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising. If people were not actually taking those drugs as a result of that marketing.

I want to make it clear that I'm not anti-drug. Those drugs saved my life because when you're at the heights of certain medical conditions, thank goodness there's antibiotics in the world. You know, thank goodness there's all sorts of things in the world. They saved my life. But at another point, you get to that place where you said some of these side effects, is it worth the price? And you can't answer that As a group. It's not a collective decision. That particular part has to be a very personal decision. And spending time with yourself, knowing your intent, knowing your why, and understanding the cost is really the decision that only you can make. I have friends that have gone through all sorts of chronic medical conditions, and sometimes the doctors disagreed. I had a friend quit cancer therapy. They're older and they said, you know, this is really not the quality of life I want. I'd rather have a shorter life and the quality I want than extending my life. And as much as I am worried and don't want the prognosis because I know we'll lose him sooner, I have to honor that that's his choice.

Yeah. No easy answers for this.

I don't think there's easy answers in life, are there? I think we have to make choices. We all play it our own way. That's my big thing.

That is so true. Yeah. I think we want easy answers and that's not necessarily setting ourselves up for success for sure. Because in this arena, you really have to take responsibility for being educated yourself and having a certain amount of advocacy in your corner. That you may not be getting from— well, I'll just say, I don't want to speak ill of any profession. If you have cause to be in the hospital, you need advocates and you need to have people around you when you're not at your best and when you're not going to be able to think objectively about what's best long-term for you, to have other people around to bounce, at a minimum, to just bounce things off of and get their hopefully independent viewpoint. Is there more that you advocate for people to do when they've been given that scary diagnosis or they just don't know what to do next, really?

Well, educate yourself. But I always say be really wary of Dr. Google because you can just freak yourself out on Dr. Google. So educate yourself. Find researchers. It's okay to ask people, if you had this, who would you go to? I mean, ask your primary care physician, who's the best person in this community? It's okay to do that kind of stuff. Sometimes people say, I'm just going to go where I'm told to go. I have gone through so many doctors and I have found a really quality team that get me. And that's the important thing. You've got to find a team. It's rarely just one doctor because nobody can know it all and nobody knows you like you. So they can't look at you and say, oh, well, maybe her toe's hurting today. They don't know that. So Find a team that get you, that listen to you, and that you know have your back in the medical profession, as well as your friends. I have this theory about friends, and I, I have 2 types of friends, and I love them both.

Will you hold that thought for just one second? Because you opened and closed the loop there, but I want people to really hear what you said again, which is that part of what's really vital is that you're working with a team. I mean, it's like having a team for anything, with a team for your marketing, a team for your sales. When we need a medical team for whatever purpose in our lives, you want a team that gets you. I mean, having run companies and running a company even now, you have to work with a team that gets you. Can you imagine? I mean, we all— I don't know if we all know this, but I certainly know what it's like to work with a team that doesn't get you. It's a frustrating experience and it's not setting anybody up for success, not them, not you. You've got to have a team that gets you. Part of that is that they're listening to you. That's what I heard you say. They're listening to you. They get you. They understand you. Anything else in that equation of what it means to get you? Because I really think that's fundamentally important.

Well, it's fundamentally important that not only do they get you, but you get them. You see their place on the team. Now, I know just a little bit ago I was railing about sort of how we specialize. You've got these different specialties, but you also have to realize not one medical professional is going to be the absolute answer, because even though I have the label dermatomyositis, my dermatomyositis doesn't look like the next person's dermatomyositis. It's completely different. And so even if you find a dermatomyositis expert, you have to understand that they're doing the best they can, just like you're doing the best you can. And so having that grace of relationship—

Mm-hmm.

Where you're open to sharing ideas, You're not discounting. You're not over-exaggerating. It's just this wonderful grace between people.

That's a beautiful way to put that. And for me, part of the grace between people is how we communicate. So if maybe in just with people, I'm just thinking who are listening to this right now, if the communication between you and your doctor isn't great or the team that you've got isn't— doesn't feel right to you, that's a pretty good sign that Maybe there's some reexamination, pun intended there, that's required. I know I just switched doctors, and part of why I switched doctors was I never felt really connected to this particular GP that I had. But you know what? It was sort of my feeling was, ah, it's good enough. You know, it's a hassle to find somebody new, blah blah blah. They take my insurance and some of the other rationalizations. But when a bigger medical organization. purchased that other practice and I became a part of this big organization now and couldn't even get my doctor on the phone and had a lot of other things that were just impeding what I would expect in any relationship. The grace was— I didn't feel any grace in that communication or in that relationship. I said, no, I'm going to make a change, and did and went out and found a medical doctor who also is a homeopathic practitioner as well. So I've got a combination of both traditional medicine and homeopathy. Is that a word? Homeopathy?

Yes,

that's a word. Okay, good. So yeah, but thank you for bringing that

up. That's the thing about medical professionals though is you'll find the one that fits you. Maybe not everybody's into homeopathy and that's okay. Maybe you just like traditional Western medicine. That's fine. Or maybe you want to find someone who's traditionally Western medicine trained but is open, just open to understand the idea of simple things. I had a doctor, one of the best rheumatologists on the West Coast, that was my first rheumatologist, that we decided to part ways because he kept telling me drinking, being careful drinking filtered water or eating organic food were not going to help me.

Yeah.

And that was so against my grain because my brain was, it's not going to hurt.

Yeah. You're telling me whole foods won't— you can't make an argument for whole foods? You can't make an argument for certain things? You go, what? I mean, yeah. So—

I needed someone a little more open-minded that eating more— even eating more organic fruits and veggies and drinking pure water were going to be helpful to my health. And so that's why we agreed to part ways, that we didn't see medicine the same way.

Yeah. I think it's real. I'm so glad that we landed on this spot in our conversation this time because People who are relying on any other professional in life have to be, to me, have to be empowered, and it usually isn't the case. It's usually the case that somebody's an expert, you're not an expert, so there isn't a balance or a harmony in that relationship. One is very much more empowered than the other. And so whether it's your mechanic who tells you there's a problem with your car and you don't know any better, and so they say, oh, it's going to cost $1,000 and this is what has to be done. It's like, hold on a second. Hold on. I want to understand exactly what it is and I want to know what other options I've got. And if the conversation goes like, well, listen, I'm the person who knows. You don't know. So, you're just going to need to trust me here, or this is what I'm going to do for you, it's like, well, maybe I need to see somebody else. Maybe I need to get a second opinion or a third opinion, whatever it is, and feel at least that there is a conversation that's a two-way conversation. between people. And so for me, I just wanted a doctor that was actually looking at me, the whole of me.

Seeing you as a whole.

Yeah, exactly. And it's interesting, I mean, what you said earlier about 80% of people do not intend to get better, that percentage about a doctor had relayed that sort of 8 in 10 people he was seeing do not have an intention for getting better. I mean, it's a very interesting thing when you try to reconcile that statistic with this other conversation around how it is that we are more empowered. I mean, part of us being more empowered is that we decide we want to be more empowered or ask the questions. I want to close, go back to that loop earlier where it's, what's the purpose of questions and how is a question potentially that smallest of dominoes? Because you, yes, you started a show and 4 years later, it's 200 episodes and the thing is— going gangbusters, but it probably started with you asking a question. Could I do something to make a difference? Could I do something to share my experience and what I went through that might actually help other people? Was it something like that for you, Sharon? Is that where the littlest—

It was a little question. It grew out of my frustration that, gosh, Sharon, with all your years of training and all the beautiful mentors you've had in your life, Have brought you to this moment to realize, even with all your training, you're having difficulty being heard. What can the person who doesn't have— hasn't had the blessing of my training and all the gifts I've been given, what are they going through and trying to be healed, trying to have a better experience in the healing journey? And I just decided to start sharing that way. And then— I thought, well, no, I want to find this expert in nutrition because I haven't found any experts in nutrition. What can I learn that way? So it was part selfish in a way because I wanted to know more about nutrition or sleep or stress management, meditation. And the other part was, wow, come on this healing journey with me. Come with me. And because it wasn't that easy for me to find. And so here it is. Find it here. Because that was— That was my— it grew out of a frustration.

Well, we started our conversation talking about resilience, so I'd love to move toward wrapping things up with us for today anyhow by asking you about your rituals. So I believe in the power of rituals, and these rituals can be very impactful as to resilience. You've been a resilient person. Do you have rituals that have helped you to create resilience?

Oh, many. I think on the physical level, the ones that I've learned, especially since the diagnosis, are really honoring myself. And it's not selfish to put yourself first and give yourself moments where you can find peace and away from stress. Good sleep hygiene, as they call it. Honoring what your body needs as far as nutrition. Those sorts of physical types of rituals are critically important.

Hmm.

And the other one that I want to share, the ritual that I always ask myself whenever— is know the value of no. Because oftentimes that's the one where I have a little ritual that I use when someone asks me to do something. Now, you're always being asked regardless of where you are, either a public figure, private figure, you're always being asked to do things. And if you haven't figured out the value of no, then you're giving up something else. You're giving up a really valuable yes if you say yes to something that's not valuable to you. So, I always have this little ritual that when someone asks me something, I know it sounds weird, little ritual, but what or who am I giving up to say yes? And oftentimes, that makes saying no easier. And When you say no, and it's a true no, that like, this isn't what I'm supposed to be doing right now. I think that's where true healing comes in. And it's better for the other person too. Because like, as we talked earlier, coming around to a loop of frustration, if you're not— if you said yes, and you really meant no, you're not doing them a service either, because you're not there 100%. It wasn't your intention.

So, overreaction.

Yeah. So ask yourself the question. That's one of my rituals, is I always stop, take a couple of nice deep breaths. Nobody says you have to answer the question right away.

That's true.

And ask myself, what am I giving up to say yes to this?

I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. I love that, Sharon. I'm just thinking, and I myself will start to ask that question. That's a great question. And since I'm So utterly fascinated with things that create resilience, that to me just feels so right because saying no to things that aren't— don't feel good or aren't our work to do or whatever it is or would just lead us into more exhaustion or burnout or any of those things, saying no is an antidote to being kind of worn out and it produces a resilience of itself. So Sharon, thank you for adding that.

Oh, thank you. And there's polite ways to say no. People are always like, oh, I hate saying no. There's polite ways to say no.

Yeah. Well, what you said earlier about creating grace in a relationship, I think there's— if that's your focus, if that's what your intention is, that there's grace in a relationship regardless of whether we say yes to this deal or we say no to this deal, I don't think you could do it unkindly in that context.

No. All about intention.

Beautiful, beautiful. Thank you so much for being on the show today. What a pleasure.

Oh, thank you, Adam. It's always a pleasure to see you and chat with you. You do such an awesome job and I love your book. It's a life-changing book. Thank you for sharing it with us.

Oh my goodness. Well, I will shout out to everybody right now. If you've loved this episode, I cannot imagine that you would not have loved this conversation, but you have a right to your opinion either way. We want to know what that is and you can go to adamarkel.com. .com/podcast to leave a comment, or you can go on iTunes and leave a review. All of it is so welcome, and we respond, and it's helpful to us. So, you know, taking those 2 or 3 minutes as though you were doing a Yelp review or something else, we really respect the time it takes to do it, and we appreciate it. So thank you so much for your willingness. And our Facebook community is a way for us to give back. Start My Pivot Community on Facebook. You can get there Either by going to Start My Pivot Community on Facebook directly or you can go to pivotfb.com, which takes you right to the front door. We also have 6 powerful questions that will help you to determine where you are potentially in your pivot process. Are you designing a pivot? Is a pivot kind of out there in the mist and you can sense it but you can't see it? Change is ever-present and it was so— Yeah. Perfect that we had a conversation today about the power of questions because these are 6 questions that will help you to get greater clarity. You can get that as a gift. There's no strings attached. Startmypivot.com. If you go to startmypivot.com, you can get those 6 questions and join our community there as well. It's been a blessing, a real pleasure, Sharon. Again, thank you so much for being on the show. I want to end sort of— I never think things are ending. It's always sort of a Ongoing beginnings. But as we will stop the recording on this particular show in just a few moments, I want to remind everybody how blessed we all were today to wake up. That was not a guarantee. And tomorrow, it is my intention, to use Sharon's word, that we all wake up tomorrow. And I hope that you will join me in that intention, that you wake up and that you wake up with the understanding. Hopefully right out of the gate that there's something special about that. It's not guaranteed. As you are taking your first conscious breath of the day, there will be people taking their last breath in that same moment. So it's very sacred, it's very special, and it deserves to be acknowledged. And to me, the word for acknowledgement in that context is gratitude. So hopefully you're bought into and intend to wake up tomorrow. to be grateful in that moment for whatever it is that you are called to be grateful for. And then, if you're so inclined, to say something out loud, to declare out loud some very powerful words about how you feel about yourself. I've got the words written on my shirt. Those of you that are seeing this on YouTube, you can see it perhaps. And those of you who can't, I'm going to say them out loud. I love my life. I love my life. I Love my life. Tomorrow morning, wake up, feel grateful, and declare, if you're willing, out loud that you love your life. What a blessing. Sharon, again, thanks so much for being on the show today.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcast. For more tips, strategies, and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love, join our Pivot Community on Facebook at pivotfb.com.