#167: Building Resilience In The Face Adversity With Dr. Peter Nieman

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 as you may be able to detect through your hearing senses, or perhaps you're watching this on YouTube, I am in a different location for this show, having moved in the midst of the corona pandemic. Sort of at the beginning, certainly we stayed stationary and we were quarantining at home and doing all that we're asked to do. But when we were given permission and the signs were good, Randy and I packed up and we moved to the East Coast. We have a home in— on this little island off Cape Cod, and we are here and I'm in my studio and really feel incredibly blessed in this moment to be able to do something that I love to do. I have tremendous passion around conversation with great people. And, you know, podcasts are a wonderful tool. It's sort of a more interesting form of TV for me today. And it is the way in which I get to express my voice and our guests get to express their voice. By the look of it, with so many amazing shows that are available in this podcast arena, it really has become a new media that has leveled the playing field, that has actually given all of us sort of equal footing and a level playing field to have a voice in the world, which is something that we have as a species. We have fought for that from the beginning of time. The thing that makes sentient beings and human beings really so unique and special is this capacity to share ideas, to share stories, to connect with people through those communications. I pause there for just a second because of course when you think of sentient beings, it's not just human beings. And we know that whales communicate and dolphins and birds and And there's so much communication that goes on. And we've been dog lovers. We've had dogs and they certainly would communicate with us all the time, always telling us, you know, what they wanted, how they felt. You know, just, they never just, they never complained. Let's put it that way. The one really wonderful thing about being a dog owner and having those members, those additional members of our family, was the fact that they didn't complain. They never did. They also didn't judge. I just got nothing but unconditional love from all of our dogs across the years that we were lucky enough to have them. I have a wonderful guest today, somebody that I'm so excited that he is the first guest that I will be podcasting with from our new location. We'll be here for several months and I feel just really, really excited and honored that I have him as a guest on the show. We actually have a mutual friend. We'll probably talk about that a little bit today to honor that other individual. My guest today is Dr. Peter Nieman and Dr. Nieman has worked as a community-based pediatrician Since 1987, he believes in living by example and is a plantician. I'm going to talk about that. A doctor who promotes plant-based whole food nutrition. As we were saying just before we started the show, we have a lot of things in common and some things not in common, which we will talk about in just a bit as well. Peter also— this is funny— also runs marathons and has completed 112 so far. I just want to give that a moment. For people to take that in, let that land. I did say 112 marathons so far. The goal was to reach 100 by age 60, and by the grace of God, this took place when he crossed the finish line with his beautiful wife Corinne and 4 children who joined him for the last few meters. Peter is also a streaker. Let that one land. Thus far, he has maintained an uninterrupted streak of running every day since December 16th, 2009, which happens to be a day I remember every year because it's our son's birthday. Our son Max is a December 16th baby. In 2016, he became a holistic life coach under the training of our mutual friend Alan Cohen. He has authored a book, Moving Forward: The Power of Consistent Choices in Everyday Life. That book came out in 2015. On January 1st, 2020, he became a member of the world's worst club when he and his wife discovered the body of their son, Ben, who ended his life after a long battle with depression. He is married to Dr. Corinne Zamansky. I hope I've pronounced that right. Zamansky, who also shares the same passion of inspiring healthy living. They have 3 children, Katie, Matt, and John. Peter continues to learn what it means to be sustained by the love of God as he and his family move forward on the journey toward developing more and more resilience. It is just a pleasure, and I'm so happy to have you on the show today. Peter, welcome.

Adam, what a joy to be with you. And I think you don't know this, but you go with me on many of my runs. You've been running with me quite a bit. When I listen to your podcasts, that's when you come with me, and I'm inspired by your work and Cannot tell enough people to tune into this podcast if they want to pivot their life and move forward and be strong and resilient.

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 and find out just how resilient you are. Thank you, Peter. I just— the thought of having been with you on some of your runs, when I hear that you've done 112 marathons, I go, I'm getting in shape, and it's the most efficient way for me to get in shape.

Beautiful. Beautiful. Well, you're welcome. I'm looking forward to many more runs with you, many more podcasts.

Beautiful. So I love this question. I think you've probably heard it a time or two before, but Peter, what's not written in that box? that you would love for people to know about you?

Well, looking at me in totality, in holistic, what probably doesn't come out in the bio is just my love for the Creator and how much I depend on God for my strength. And having gone through this difficult time, losing a child, really as pivotal as you can imagine. But you know what I think Viktor Frankl said? He is a Holocaust survivor. He said, what doesn't break you Makes you stronger. And now we're getting to experience that, and we're not alone, which is a wonderful reassuring thing. People like you, people like Alan, many other people have come right alongside us. And you know, my favorite marathon is New York, and the crowds are amazing. When you do this distance, it's 26.2 miles. It's the same for the Kenyans as it is for, for mere mortals like me. And you know, we all like to have people cheer us along. But isn't that a metaphor for life? Even though we have people on the sidelines cheering us, being there for us, we still have to do the running. And the beautiful thing about running, another metaphor, is that everybody has their unique pace. There's no need to compete or compare. You find what is your pivot, what is your reason to get up in the morning, what is your purpose, and that's how we run the race together. And you know, the one thing we discovered after the loss of our son Benjamin, who died at age 16, ended his life quite unexpectedly, as these things often happen, was that, you know, there's an African proverb. I'm from South Africa originally. I've lived in Canada now since '83. But there's an African proverb, it takes a village to raise a child. Yes. And I see that as a pediatrician. But I've also learned that it takes a village to say goodbye to a child. And we've been very much supported by so many good and kind people. hopefully be able to help other people later, Adam, because this problem unfortunately is getting worse where teenagers end their life because they don't have resilience.

Yes. It's something I think a lot of people don't actually know that those statistics have not gotten better over the last 15 and 20 years. They've, they've gone precipitously in the other direction among young teenagers, younger and younger actually.

Absolutely.

And shockingly too, in some of the the studies that I've, I've read about this, women past the age of 50. I just couldn't, you know, just mouth open, couldn't believe it. Just would have assumed that, you know, you get to a certain age and, you know, you've gone through a lot. You have seen enough in your life to recognize the old adage that this too shall pass, which I want to talk to you about that cliché as well. But I want to go back to something else you said earlier about Viktor Frankl. And the reason is probably by no coincidence, we talk about Viktor Frankl in our work quite a bit in regard to a specific part of the makeup of resilient people. And even when we're sharing this with organizations and companies, you know, what makes for resilient teams. And that is this concept of finding meaning in things, especially things that seem to be meaningless, devastating, irreconcilable. Things that we think, that we believe are wholly unnecessary, like what Viktor Frankl endured and survived, which was to be a Holocaust camp prisoner and ultimately survivor and someone that witnessed the deaths of countless people. And while he was a prisoner, he was thinking about what meaning might come out of this. If you can imagine, I mean, it's something I don't know that most of us can even put ourselves in, even in the mind. space to imagine that. Similar to the way that I think many people cannot put themselves in the headspace of, of what it would be like to lose a child. You know, these similar irreconcilable things. To find meaning in something like that has fundamentally been a part of the process of creating resilience. Not just that you're demonstrating resilience, but you're actually creating it as you go along. Interesting. That you're building resilience. And I think a lot of people don't know that. That you're not just born resilient because it's in our DNA. As human beings, that's how we have evolved to this point and made it through so much, but that we can actually learn resilience and create it and develop it. And Viktor Frankl's work is one of those. He not only got out of the camp, but he also wrote Man's Search for Meaning, and he shared his meaning therapy work with millions of people around the globe. So if you could speak to where are you in that process of finding meaning in the loss of your dad? Dear son Benjamin.

It's been 6 months now, so half a year, and there's a pastor in Southern California, Rick Warren, who also lost his son. He's helped a lot. He's actually reached out to me and my wife and supported us. He said something. He says, it's something you never get over. You will never get over this, but you will find ways to get through it. He also said that we have a choice, really, as humans, to let something like this develop us, But some people unfortunately choose to let it destroy them or define them. So to answer your question, I'm very keen to let this develop me and my wife so that we can help other families who may go through this. And I'm a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Academy has asked me to, to join them in this effort too. So, uh, yeah, the whole thing about meaning is an important one. I'm not sure if you're familiar with David Kessler's work on grief. Yes. Do any of the listeners or viewers want to Google David Kessler, K-E-S-S-L-E-R, maybe we can put it in the notes, is a real guru when it comes to grief. He also lost a child and he worked with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the stages of denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance, which by the way are not linear, but he got permission to add a 6th stage which is meaning. And so many, many times if we lose a spouse or a child or a leg or whatever we may lose, can we grow from it? Can we let it develop us? Can we make that choice? Adam, I often think of how would I define my own definition of resilience, and I got it this morning again when I was running. It was such a beautiful day. Got out there, the birds are singing. Where I live, if I look to the west, I look at the Canadian Rockies. I'm running next to a body of water, and I looked up, there was the moon setting toward the east. And I thought about this, you know, here I am training for my next marathon, and this is a mental marathon we're going through. So the definition for me of resilience is to train Our mind, as you say, we have that choice to train our mind to have the capacity, almost like fitness, to have the capacity to stay strong. It's a continuous thing and to move forward, which is continuous when life gives us what we didn't want or didn't choose. In the Buddhist tradition, as you know, there's the 4 Noble Truths of suffering. The first one is that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. Now people say that's a cliché. Or a platitude. But I think it's sometimes important to pause and meditate when we hear the word cliché and platitude. Why is it that those things are named as such? And I think it's because we don't spend enough time to just think about it. And the wisdom of the Buddha, who lived 2,600 years ago, is amazing. And it's very true that nobody can escape pain or loss or setbacks or—

Or impermanence.

Impermanence, exactly. But the question is, how do we want to respond? And a lot of people react. And the good news is that we— there's a way out of suffering if we respond appropriately, if we have the right view, the right thoughts, the right action, the right words, the right livelihood. It's important to make sure that we spend time to be mindful and meditate, and that we also have the right concentration. Love the conscious part of your podcast. It's not just the pivot, it's the conscious pivot.

Yes.

And I think we should remind ourselves that's a very important word.

It is, I believe, as well, Peter, because there's so much of what we, what we experience, we experience by default because we're not actively choosing.

Right.

I mean, we take a lot for granted, like we take our breath for granted.

Absolutely. Or like, I think it was Jack Kornfield, he has a quote about a man who used to live 1 inch away from his body, not fully present. We're not there. we're not in the moment and we don't appreciate things. And I know I can say every morning I have a ritual in the morning. I know you like to talk about rituals. My ritual is one that I learned from a fellow, Davidji, who lives actually in Southern California too. And David taught me that in the morning he has for 40 years gone by the RPM— not revolutions per minute, but he says you rise, you pee, And you meditate.

Yeah.

And so in the mornings when, when I wake up, I do what you tell us all to do, which is take that first breath and be thankful, be in the moment, and realize somebody else elsewhere on this beautiful planet actually at that very instant is leaving with the last breath. These things are so basic and yet not always easy to do. But, you know, the beautiful thing is, as you say, we have a choice. We do it or we don't. And if we— and like Nike, the Nike, you know, says just do it. So get busy and just do it.

So David Kessler is somebody we will absolutely add his, his work, reference to his, his work in the show notes. We have a dear friend— by we, I mean my wife Randy and I and our daughter Chelsea, who's also involved with the company. And this dear friend lost a child unexpectedly. many years ago. His name is Ken Druck, and Ken is a grief expert specialist. He was a guest on our show, I think about a month and a half ago. So for those of you that have not yet listened to and watched the episode with Ken Druck, please feel free to check that out as well. There's something I want to get to as well that you said a moment ago, which is to let it develop us. I've not really— I've not heard that language used before. No. And I'm curious if this is language that you've created or where— whatever the origin is, is less important than what this means to you. Let this develop me. I mean, I'm wrapping my own head and heart around that term right now, that something that's happening. Like, so for example, as this show is airing, we're still in the midst of a pandemic. This event that we've called a crisis and a lot of other things, that this event has changed people's lives in profound ways. Mm-hmm. More than 100,000 people in the US alone have passed. I don't know what the global total is. I ought to know that. It's too many. One is too many. And yet the disruption and the change to people's lives has gone beyond health. It's gone into the area of their economics, their finances, their businesses. And so it's interesting in thinking about these unexpected events, the loss of a child, being held prisoner because of your religion, your family being exterminated or genocide or things happening because of, of the color of your skin, your religion, any number of things, the way that Black people, people of color in the United States have been systematically discriminated against and murdered, as we've seen recently as well. Things that are unthinkable that happen. And in trying to make sense of those things so that we can both evolve as a community, as a society, and individually involves finding meaning, as we said. It involves some other things that we may get to talk about. And then it— I think it involves, it feels like it involves This statement that you made, to let this develop me. Peter, what do you mean by that? Please unpack that concept for us.

Yeah, well, first and foremost, this is a mental marathon for me and Corinne to adjust to this new reality. And you know, I used to be a Dale Carnegie instructor, and in one of Dale Carnegie's books, he talks about a cathedral, I think in Belgium. Inscripted on the cathedral are the words, it is so, it cannot be otherwise. So the loss of a child is the reality that has happened. It cannot be otherwise. And by develop, I think I'm a holistic coach because of Alan Cohen. And then just if people go to my website, movingforwarddaily.com, there are 3 gears there. All 3 gears have to be engaged, and that's the issue of the spirit, the mind, and the body. And for me, I want all 3 of those muscles to be developed. I want all those 3 gears to be Engaged in order to move forward. And it means that first and foremost you have to not fight with God. Like somebody said, when you fight with God you're always gonna lose because your arms are not as long as his when you box with him. And then just to get closer to knowing that we are sustained, there's a line in the Course of Miracles, Adam. I think you've talked about the Course before and it says, I think it's Lesson 50, it says we are sustained by the love of God. And Corinne and I are really experiencing that. So It brings us closer to Him. I know for some people who don't believe in God or people who are mad at— they may disagree with me, but that's my experience. That's my story. Like Alan Cohen says, that's my story and I stick to it. It's bringing us closer to, to our Creator, even in difficult, difficult times. It teaches us about patience, endurance. It helps us to not think about ourselves all the time, but also to consider other people, to comfort them with the same comfort we've been comforted. But it also helps us to, to be resilient mentally. As you say, sometimes people are born with it and sometimes they're not. But for people who find they are not very resilient, there's hope. It's like, you know, you don't have to run a marathon. You have the ability to get fit physically. And I also think we all have that ability to get fit, more fit mentally. And we just call it resilience for lack of another word. I have a little friend of mine who's in Calgary where I live, who's a social worker and an author introduced me to the speech that Bobby Kennedy gave, the politician, famous Bobby Kennedy. And if it's okay with you, I'd like to, I'd like to read that. It was a poem that he ended up with, and I think it could have been even in the time of racial unrest in the '60s when Bobby Kennedy ran for the presidency, and he quoted a Greek philosopher Aeschylus, who lived 500 years before Christ, who lived in Athens, and it's about pain. He's— here are the words from Kennedy's speech: He who learns must suffer, and even in our sleep pain cannot forget, and pain falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the grace of God. And, you know, I underlined, he who learns must suffer. It's not morbid. It's not negative. It's real. And the Buddha taught that 2,600 years ago. We cannot escape pain. We cannot escape suffering.

Learning, learning comes at a cost. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that personally. My dad was apt to share this with my brother and I frequently. He would say that there's a front and back to everything, that there is a cost to things. You pay a price for things. And that's, again,

you

know, that's a good thing.

Yeah.

I don't want a free— I don't want a free lunch. I think people that think they want something for nothing or something to be easy, they're really selling themselves a bill of goods. They are deluding or being untruthful with themselves because I think we know in our core how good it feels to put in a good day's work, to come through something that's tough and difficult. As painful as the process is, as excruciating as it can feel, as exhausting even. The other side of that is a joy that helps you to sleep well at night. It's a joy that gives you peace of mind. It's a joy that helps you have clear eyes. And when you look in the mirror with those clear eyes, you see something looking back at you that you respect. Yeah. That you even love. That doesn't come cheaply, nor should it, in my opinion. But I love what you said earlier, so I want to repeat it and I want to share how I— how it landed for me. Let this develop. Let it develop us. So in light of everything that's happening in the world right now, Tremendous loss, loss of all kinds, of every conceivable kind, from the loss of a loved one. I have a dear friend from high school, and we were both kids on the high school swimming team together when we met, and he lost his dad to COVID-19 and, and couldn't even attend his funeral, couldn't have a proper send-off memorial or mourning in the way that traditionally it's done. There's every imaginable loss that's occurred. over, over the last few months. And I feel so deeply that, that it is going to serve us in some way, that it's already serving us in ways that we couldn't, couldn't have ever predicted or imagined. So the idea of letting, letting these things develop us, to me feels like a surrender.

Yeah.

It feels that we are surrendering to a wisdom, to a knowing, meaning it, you know, it's in the book Pivot. They say something along the lines of, if you knew you couldn't fail, you know, what would you do? What would be your approach to things if you just knew For a fact that you couldn't fail. There was no failing at it. Just like there is no, on some level, no failing but for not learning, but for not experiencing the grace and the gift of a learning that comes from that experience. Pain is pain. I don't know that you can ever compare pain. You can't say my pain is different than yours. Yours is tougher than mine because pain feels the same.

No, absolutely. And it's not a competition. You know, perhaps some can look at what happened in 2020. People on December 31st, 2019 said that may 2020 be the year of perfect vision. 2020, perfect vision.

Yes, 20/20 vision, right.

And I think we— it's not the vision that we were guessing.

No, it's going to be 20/20 hindsight now.

Yeah. And we're learning more about resilience, who we are, and we're learning about caring for each other. But you know, in the Jewish tradition, I just spoke to a rabbi friend of mine yesterday, and if I can just digress a little bit, that's the beauty of the podcast, you know, we can, we can just talk as friends. And the rabbi told me about a story of Jewish men who were in prison when Stalin was around, and it was a rabbi and a few other guys in the prison, and the rabbi was always smiling and happy and laughing and These other men in his prison cell looked at him and thought he was going off his mind, he was losing it. But they realized the rabbi was for real. And so they asked him, Rabbi, why are you so happy? And he said, well, let me ask you, what do you do? One guy said, I'm a doctor. And the other guy said, I'm a lawyer. Another guy said, I was a baker. And they're all sad because their profession was taken away from them. So the rabbi said, I see now, you are sad because your profession was taken away from you. You lost your profession. He says, but I can never lose my profession. That's why I'm so happy, because my profession is to serve God. And I think it's really quite symbolic of how when we find meaning, when we find purpose, when we find our calling and we're there to help other people, it makes a huge, huge difference, not just to us but to others, because we are interconnected. And so when we get enlightened, when we learn, when we grow, When we talk about these things, yes, it does help us. But if we keep it to ourselves, it's not a good thing. We need to share it to help other people.

Part of the development, right?

Absolutely. And my hope is, as, as so many people have said, my hope is that something good will come from this. Of course, there will be something bad too. And that's what the rabbi reminded me, that while we are alive, there will be good and there will be bad, sometimes more of the one, more of the other. And that's just called life. And now, you know, I mean, I'm sure there are people listening to us and they say, well, what about the wife beating? What about the child abuse? What about this suicide rate? What about alcoholism and addictions because of COVID And that's all true, but it's also true that there's a flip side to the coin where people allowed suffering and bad times and unprecedented times to help us to just simply move forward in the right direction. at a speed that's a match for them and hopefully in the right direction. I'm all with you. I think one day we'll look back at this whole thing and even, you know, being in the medical field, I have some thoughts about it too, which I don't think we'll have time to talk about, but I think the key thing is just may we learn the right lessons so that when the next pandemic comes, we'll be probably a bit more prepared.

Well, it's a process of it developing us and I think that's the point, is to allow for things at times that we don't understand, that don't have an obvious meaning to them. You know, this, this idea of, you know, when people say everything happens for a reason, you know, I think a lot of people feel like it's, it's a hollow statement. And I've pushed back on that, called BS on that from, from time to time in my life too, because it's incomplete. It's not just about the fact that, that something is happening for a reason, but that the reason is there for our development. It's there to develop us.

Absolutely.

The

reason

that something's happening is there for our greater good as

Adam, it's hard to see it when you're in the middle of the marathon, but when the race is finished and you put the medal around your neck and you look back and you extract from every marathon the lessons to help you do the next one better, you know, that's that moment that you can actually see what happens when preparation and opportunity meet. I've got a quick story about Las Vegas. If you— if it has a bit of humor, so we have to make sure people don't You give them a chance to laugh. You know, the good book says there's a time to cry and a time to laugh.

There is.

So I was training for Boston, wearing my Boston shirt here. Probably people who listen just have to trust me. It's a Boston Marathon shirt. And it was one of my— You

have to say Boston.

Yeah, exactly. Park the car in the garage.

Come on. You're training for the Boston Marathon. Yeah.

Yeah. So I'm training for Before getting back to Boston, and I chose Las Vegas because it's fast and it's flat. First year I get there, the race is on a Sunday. On the Saturday, you can light a candle. There's no wind.

Yeah.

On the Sunday, I'm running into a headwind, almost blows my bib off. It's terrible, you know. And on the Monday, no wind. I'm thinking, this is bad luck. I'm coming back. This is resilience, right? You fall down, you get up, you come back. The next year, exactly same thing, 100%, exactly same thing. The wind just— there was no way I could make it running into this wind. So the third year, I didn't think it could happen 3 years in a row, and it did. But at about mile 24, I'm hearing a fellow behind me swear like a sailor. It's a word that starts with the letter F and rhymes with the word duck. The guy was just giving it the gears, you know, to stop. I laughed so hard I had to hang on to myself.

So he's just out out loud running.

And so I'm saying to him as he passes me, what, why are you so upset? And he says, for 3 years in a row,

yeah,

he chose to run this race and it's— and he got, you know, the wind was the enemy. And so what I took from that is sometimes we can prepare and— but the opportunity isn't there. And sometimes the opportunity is there, but we're not prepared. And I think it was Gary Player, a golfer from my home country, South Africa, who said, you know, I think he was putting and he sank a very good putt and somebody said, Gary, that was very lucky. He said, you're right, but the more I practice, the luckier I get.

Yeah.

And luck is that which happens when preparation and opportunity meet.

Collide.

And this is a great opportunity, 2020, and if we are prepared to meet this opportunity, I believe we can come out stronger.

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 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. We will be better than before. It's not just an attitude, even though attitude is everything. And so I shouldn't even diminish the fact that it's an attitude to just look at things in that way. But I do believe truly that we are going to be better than before in so many ways. So I do want to talk about the marathon. So I'm really glad that you brought that up. And by the way, I've been to Vegas many, many times and done many workshops and things there. And it is a tale of two cities. It is a schizophrenic town for sure in so many ways. But the Mother Nature there, I mean, it can be, as you say, peaceful, calm, still, hot, dry, and then blow like nobody's business. I mean, winds howling in that place. I can't even imagine running a marathon in those conditions. You, sir, I've got to understand this, the mind of a man that runs the way you run. What started this? What started this? How many marathons do you run in a single year typically?

On average, about 4. Houston is always my favorite one. You know, we get away from the cold of Canada in January and Houston is very reasonably— the temperatures are good in Houston in January.

So when did you start? What year did you start?

Well, it is interesting. It was a Saturday morning in South Africa. No, actually, sorry. It was a Friday evening and there was a knock on my door.

In Toledo, Ohio.

I was in medical school and another medical student says to me, we're running a marathon tomorrow. I signed you up. I said, you're kidding me. I haven't even trained for a marathon. But we were in good shape because of squash. And so we ran the thing together the next day, Saturday morning. I did my first marathon. And I figured if I can do this without training— I was young, you know, I'm 64 now. At that point, I think I would have been in my early 20s.

Yeah.

And I just got bitten by the bug. And then in medical school, I was so focused on training and residency in pediatrics. And when I landed here in Canada in '83, it took me about 10 years to start running again. And so my second or third marathon was in the early 1990s, and ever since I've averaged about 4 or so a year. And it's, it's really, it's one of my meditative states, is just to be out there and to run and to pray and to be thankful. I, I don't know if I mentioned, I don't think I did mention my 3M, you know, the company 3M? Yes. I have a 3M method for coping with stress and adversity, and it's to move, to meditate, and music. And so I get a lot out of it. I mean, obviously it's a ritual of mine now. And by the way, the word ritual comes from Latin, which means to come together, to fit together. That's the root meaning of the word ritual. It's so— so things come together for me when I'm out there. Yeah, it's just a real privilege to celebrate health You know, to fuel my body with plant-based nutrition too is—

So you came through your 100th marathon at what age?

Just before 60. Just before 60. As you said in the intro, I did it here locally. And they gave me a bib number with the number 100 on it.

Yeah.

And they allowed my wife and at that time, you know, the 4 kids to run next to me for the last 100 meters. And

yeah,

so we crossed the finish line together, lots of tears. Tears of joy and tears of gratitude that you can do something like that. And that I had my family with me at the time was beautiful.

And speaking of the bio, we mentioned that you're a plantitian. So I want to get a little bit into that because, you know, I think doctors for the most part don't, at least not sort of in my own experience, they haven't so much talked about nutrition. I think it's a tremendous failing in I would say in the medical training, in medical school training, that this is not more focused on.

No doubt. I call it a Swiss cheese doctor. And as you know, Swiss cheese has these holes, right?

Yeah.

And the hole in the doctor's ability to be compassionate and wise is that he or she does not give enough credit to nutrition. And so a plantician is a physician who believes in plant-based whole food eating. Maybe we can put in the resource pages or the notes, PCRM.org. It's called the Physicians Council for Responsible Medicine, based out of Washington, D.C. They also have a podcast called The Exam Room, and this podcast has helped a lot of people to lose weight, to get their blood pressure down, to reverse heart disease and diabetes. So based on my research and my wife's research in this area, we know this is not for everybody. Some people are vegetarians, some people are Pescatarian. To my knowledge, it's the only dietary plan that can reverse heart disease. If you go on keto or if you go on the carnivore diet and you actually do studies of coronary vessels, there's evidence to show that the story is not that happy in there. The vessels are clogged up and it's a problem. And yet with eating plant-based foods, you can reverse it. You know, there's the gut health axis too. If you have a healthy gut microbiome, it's good for the brain, good for depression, One thing that I really like about this is that I'm never having cravings and that I can eat guilt-free because of the fiber. And, and you're eating real food. There's a book by Michael Pollan, I think, called In Defense of Food.

Yes.

And the book can be summarized, I think NPR summarized it, there's only 3 things: eat real food, that means food that rots, not processed foods, real food, not too much, mostly plants, not exclusively, but mostly plants. And so it works well for us to talk about Like this. I mean, we, as a coach, when people call me and talk to me and they want to talk to me about that, I'm happy to give them resources. I'm happy to help them and encourage them, but it's definitely not for everybody. And I can't be evangelical about this because not everybody— who was the guy that said, I like my salad, but also with some meat on top of the salad?

Right. So let's talk about ritual.

So I'm sure there's good fish right there where you are.

You defined rituals earlier and as this sort of coming together. And I, for me, rituals is really the key to so much of how I organize my own life is based on my rituals. So I feel like the quality of my life really equals the quality of the rituals that I maintain consciously, as you pointed out. So what are some of the rituals that you consciously creating and maintaining? And maybe there's a new one. I don't know if you've swapped any out or tried something new that you're feeling really good about at the moment.

Well, I think the reason that, that I have rituals is because of results. I think all of us, whether we choose a certain way to eat or a book to read or a podcast to listen to or whatever, comes down to what results are we getting. I'm extremely certain that how we start the day is so important. You know, you've had people on your show who talk about journaling and gratitude and stretching and so on. Yeah. But for me, It's important to start the day off just being quiet, just to be still. And I'm a fountain pen lover, and so just to sit in my study with a white sheet of paper and use my fountain pen and just get ideas that come for book writing, that's blissful. That's to be in the zone, to be energized, to be in the present moment. I'm not sure if you know about the 10% Happier app for mindfulness by Dan Harris.

Oh, you know, It's one of my favorite books. It was the first book I read in 2020. And Dan Harris's work has really taken off. I haven't got the app, but you're talking now of the 10% Happier app?

So what Dan did was if you're a physician and you're working in the COVID era, he allowed physicians to get some access to this. And my wife and I both— she's a doctor too— we just enjoyed it. I can't say enough about it. And again, people have different apps, but it really teaches how to be mindful, how to have insight meditation. Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, a number of other famous people, Judson Brewer, are the teachers on the app. I tend to do that as a bookend because my other ritual is in the evenings before I go to bed. Norman Vincent Peale is a— is one of my heroes, and by the way, he was a good friend of Emmet Fox, the guy that you talk about so often as being inspirational from a spiritual point of view. And Peel introduced me to this whole idea to have the rituals of bookends. It's how you start the day, how you end the day with gratitude, with meditation, with mindfulness. Peel also has a little booklet called Thought Conditioners. You can just Google it online and just download it. And I saturate my mind with these thought conditioners before I go to bed. Peel also actually— this is kind of fun, these things, because he taught about how we drain the sink. And then fill it up again. And so that's, that's another thing that I do is at the end of the day, like you empty your pockets, you know, you empty your mind and you let go of some of the things that didn't work out. I'll never forget where I was running when I heard you talk about a Blue Monday. It was a bad day for you. One of your clients didn't want to continue with you and you perhaps took it personally and fussed over it as you would. Most people would do that. It's just very normal. And then at the end of the day, the story goes, correct me if I'm wrong, that you sat with your daughter overlooking the Pacific, watching the sun go down. And I think she said to you, your attitude isn't very good right now. And she knows that. And that's okay. That's okay just to be with what is, to surrender, not to struggle, not to fight it, just to be with it. Because this too shall pass, right?

Hmm.

Comes and it goes. It arises and it goes away. But what a wonderful time for all of us in the evening before we have a proper sleep to empty our mind and to fill it with something positive, whether it be gratitude or scripture or meditation or so. I think there's evidence that we sleep better actually.

Without a doubt. At least I would say my sleep took a turn for the better when I started to think before going to bed. Well, for me personally, and this is part of my just before, or I guess before losing consciousness ritual. To thank God for forgiveness, for forgiving me my own trespasses and to forgive everyone really, not leaving anyone out, not holding back forgiveness from anyone, especially those that have maybe hurt me or hurt my feelings or done, you know, whatever thing that I might be still holding on to some resentment or some grudge over. And then asking— and really gratitude is such a powerful form of prayer that I always form my prayers in In the structure of being grateful. So giving thanks for them, giving thanks for a sleep that is forgiving, a forgiving sleep that I'm thankful for, forgiving dreams and dreams of forgiveness. So I want to, as we're wrapping up here, I want to not so much close any open loops, but to just go back to a couple of things. And one is the fact that you are from South Africa. I thought for a moment that your accent might be from Kentucky or Louisiana or something. I couldn't place it right away, especially you living in Calgary. But then it became quite clear. I'm familiar with that accent because I've listened to an Audible book for a couple of years now. I'm due to listen to it again, so I'll bring it up for myself as well. It's written— this is a book written by a South African. His name is Michael Brown. I refer that book to you, Peter, in what you and your lovely wife are working through, as well as anybody that is working through a grief process now themselves. Absolutely. Again, that's grief over anything, the loss of a job, the loss of a business, the loss of a loved one. Anything, loss of our youth. There's so many things that we're, that we are grieving from time to time. And it's called, the book is called The Presence Process. So Michael Brown wrote this amazing book. He's South African. It is in many ways a book about so much more than the process, but there's a magnificent breathwork process that's introduced in the book as well. And the Audible is not read by the author. I wish it had been, but it's read by his editor at Namaste Publishing. I think his name, this gentleman's name is Michael Ord. And it's beautiful. I mean, his South African accent is just something me personally I could listen to. And interestingly enough, as you take podcasts on your marathons, on your training, whenever I'm on the elliptical machine or sometimes walking out in nature, I'll listen to this Audible version of The Presence Process. So it's really, really cool. So I'm going to, I'll ask you, you know, as we end, if there's anything that you sort of finally, at least for this episode, want to share with folks. And then I'm going to transition into some I want to get to something else you said as I wind down my own thoughts. But I will say before we do that, just for a second, you said earlier that, you know, there's a saying that you can't fight with God because you'll lose because his arms are too long. It had me thinking that we can't fight with ourselves for the same reason. You know, to fight with yourself is— it's illogical.

That's another thing.

To quote your buddy from 10% Happier, Dan Harris, who was quoting someone else. But, but it's a really powerful question to ask yourself. Is this useful? And when you're fighting with yourself, if you could just pause even for a moment to take a breath and ask yourself the question, is this useful?

That is the fastest way to probably end what some people call the monkey mind. You know, it's where your mind goes in circles and circles and circles. And there comes a point where you clearly have to say, is this useful? Just a quick story about Ringo Starr, the Beatle, which I got from Alan Cohen, because as you know, Alan likes to tell stories. He tells the story, and this is in the context of how we view ourselves and how we fight with ourselves and how we lack compassion. And in terms of self-compassion, if you can ever get Professor Kristin Neff from Austin, Texas on your, on your show, I highly recommend you ask her to join you. She's the guru on self-compassion, Kristin Neff. But Ellen tells a story about Ringo Starr, the Beatle, who felt like a fraud, an imposter. You know, it's called the imposter syndrome. So he didn't feel worthy, Adam, and he figured, look, tomorrow I'm gonna talk to my 3 friends and just tell them, out of the 4 guys here, I just don't belong. I'm not as good as you guys, and it's time for me to quit, get away. I'm embarrassed to be with the 3 of you, John, Paul, and George. So he went to George Harrison the next morning and he says, George, I want to sit down with you guys and discuss our future. I just don't belong here. You guys are too good. I'm not good enough. And George listened to Ringo and he paused and he said, you know, Ringo, funny, I've been thinking those same thoughts. I've been thinking those same thoughts. And I think so many times we box with ourselves or wrestle with ourselves. And, you know, the great commandment in the good book, in the Bible, is love God And love your neighbor like yourself. And I think a lot of pastors, ministers, preachers, teachers teach a lot about the love God part, as they should, and love your neighbor, as you should. But I think they forget the other part, which is love yourself. Give yourself credit as a child of God. You're special. Everybody is unique. And like Gandhi said, meet everybody as if he's a best friend. And so by taking good care of yourself, self-care, there's a saying. that you cannot pour from an empty cup.

Hmm.

You cannot pour from an empty cup. And I deliberately avoided the analogy that we have all heard when you fly, put the oxygen mask on your face first and then other ones. But I like the cup part. If your cup is empty, it's hard to pour. To invest our time growing, getting more resilient, having a pivot, having rituals, and doing it consciously is to me a great way to design Work on that tendency of wrestling with ourselves and fighting with ourselves.

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. 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. Indeed. Indeed it is. Yeah. That concept of the golden rule is so interesting because I'm going to take maybe a little bit of a different slant on that for a moment to say that I think people do in many ways treat people the way they treat themselves. You know, love thy neighbor as you love thyself or something. You know, that's the essence of it. I think people do that. And by that, I mean most people do not treat themselves well. They don't love themselves. They certainly don't love themselves unconditionally, and self-care is seen as selfish. So it's not that striking if you look at it through that lens that people are as awful at times to each other, to other people, because it in many ways models how they are to themselves. So the Ringo story, I think, would be— even if I pay it forward and tell that story again, I'm gonna add something to it. I just want to— What are you gonna add? I want to say that I'll have to— I'll probably have to tell Alan as well that I've embellished on the story, but I feel like there's a joke that that's there for the taking. And the joke would probably be something along the lines of, so, you know, he goes to George, who was his buddy, and he says, you know, I feel like an imposter. And George says, you know, I was just gonna say the same thing. I feel like an imposter. You know, so then they go to, you know, they go to Paul or they go to John. You gotta figure out which one it is. Probably just gonna stick with, probably stick with John on this one and say, hey John, you know, this is how, you know, Ringo and I have felt, you know, a bit of an imposter. And John says something along the lines, you know, I was gonna tell you guys the exact same thing. I think you're both imposters as well.

That is so good.

You know, because it really was a big gap, I think, in— on some level, you have 4 ridiculously talented fellows and sort of 1 or 2 that were exceptional. As exceptional goes, they were exceptional on top of that. But they never— John, in my opinion, I'm a huge music fan. John, as great, as talented, as as gifted as he was, as gifted as Paul is and was, they were never and could never be what they were individually as they were as the Beatles, as a group. And for some, maybe they find that— maybe some folks will take exception to that. That's perfectly okay. So I think there's something in that for me that says, you know, each of us individually, we have our unique gifts and talents.

Okay.

And to aspire to share them and grow them is, I believe, honoring our Creator for sure. And at the same time, when we collaborate with others, when we come together with others to solve problems like the kind of problems that we are seeing in our world now and have been around for a very long time but are seeking redress now, we are so much stronger together and so much better together than we are, any of us, on our own.

We are interconnected, you know, it's like the waves of the ocean. One wave cannot say, I'm not part of the ocean, or one branch of the tree cannot say I'm not part of this tree. And together we achieve more. I mean, it's a— this is a cliché, but it's true. There is no I in team, and team stands for together everyone achieves more.

Indeed. So my final thoughts on— from this show really are relative to that term, this too shall pass. Clearly, with what's happening in your life and what's happened in all of our lives more recently, there is this concept of this too shall pass. And I do believe that that is a truism. That it is a fact. If you've lived long enough, you know that time is a great, a great healer. And I don't— I use that word healing, heals, really sparingly. But I also look at this too shall pass for some time now as not just about things that we want to be resolved and that we want to get past. But if you think about what this too shall pass really means, it's about the fact that every moment shall pass. So even when you're in joy, when things couldn't be better, it's the sunny day and you're doing exactly what you want and you feel great about yourself and confident and loved and money is not a worry and all the things that contribute to somebody feeling joy, that too shall pass. It's so— it cuts both ways or operates— it's operationally working all the time. And I think that takes a bit of the sting out of what we might be dealing with, the difficulties we might be dealing with in a single moment. It is what you said earlier about the Buddha. It's this law of impermanence that when we appreciate that everything is impermanent, that everything is passing, and that that's the nature of being. It's that, you know, as much as I want to hang on to it, we're here in this beautiful place and we've never seen some of the things that— some of the plants on our property we've never seen bloom. So what we've seen bloom in May and in June have been breathtaking. And some of them right now are in the latter stages of that bloom. And as much as I want to hang on to I want my mom, who's going to be visiting us in a couple of days, to see it in peak, in its peak. And I couldn't hang on. I can't contain the peak. I can't make it stop what it's evolving into. And there's this, that cycle of going from something that is born to something that dies and then something that's born again is just what life is about. And for me to try to hang on to the rose or to the azalea or to the rhododendron bloom is Again, it's, it's a useless task and one that only I think will— can create pain. So

it's— I think the Buddha would have said it's delusional. It makes no sense.

Exactly.

Delusional will make us suffer more.

Yes. Well, I want to ask you right now if there's one single thing that you could share with our audience, one thing that they could do, a small change, perhaps a micro pivot, if you Is there something that comes to mind that you would encourage people to try on for size today?

I would say mindful meditation, mindfulness meditation. The beautiful thing about that is it's independent of your religion or where you land with God or your belief system or your political party or your country of origin or race. I really think it's an investment that anybody can do, even if they start small. Find something that can be customized for you, but to be really, really experiencing the beauty of being more mindful, being more present, being more aware, and bringing a mindset. I think one of your previous guests talked all about a mindset, and as I was running, listening to the two of you guys talking, you know, it's your outlook, it's your attitude, it's a mindset. And I think the It's a muscle inside here that can be developed over time so that whatever life brings you, you can bounce back, you can be resilient, and you can, you can just have, as Dan Harris said, your life can be 10% better. Maybe not 100%, but 10% at least.

Yeah, I love his attitude and how cheeky he is. I think it's an approachable thing. You know, you think about, can I, can I just be 1% better? I like to use the British Cycling performance director Dave Brailsford as the example for what 1% improvement, what 1% progress looks like because he was able in the course of a few years to take a team that had never won the Tour de France, had not won a medal in the Olympics since 1910 and through this principled and disciplined practice of making, identifying and implementing 1% changes, 1% progress to their— the way that they approached every aspect of cycling. They, in a few years, not only were Olympic medalists, but they were the top Olympic medalists. I think he started with the team in 2003. They won an Olympic medal for the first time in whatever that was, in almost 100 years, in 2004. And by 2008, they won more Olympic medals than any other Cycling team and then went on to win 5, 6, 7 Tour de France simply because they were able to adopt this 1% philosophy. And so as we end right now, I've got my own 1% progress ritual, which everybody listened to the show before is familiar with, but it involves waking up. Yeah. So it is, it is the waking ritual. And that's where I'll leave everybody today, which is that if you're listening to this, the good news is you did wake up. And that, as a lawyer, I can say there was no contract for that last night when you put your head on the pillow. There was nothing that said you're guaranteed to get to wake up tomorrow. So that was an unexpected event and a gift as well. So there's 3 small pieces to this 1% change in how you greet the day. One is that you wake up, that you've already done. 2, that you have some recognition that that wasn't guaranteed. There was no contract for that, that it was truly a gift. Something that you, you can be thankful for, that you can even feel blessed by. So gratitude being that second piece, that you're awake, one, that I leave to God. This idea that we, we are waking, getting another day is out of our hands. And, and, and 2, it's, it's up to me to feel grateful. So I get to choose to do that. And 3, that when I put my feet on the floor, I get to say something if I want to. I get to think something if I choose to. And the 4 words, the simple words that I I've repeated now for more than 10 years are these 4 words that I shared on a TED stage and I've shared in these podcasts time and time again, which is, I love my life. And some people, they love to say that. They write to us and email us to let us know how that practice has worked for them. And others have pushed back. Others have said, you know, those are not words that I'm ready to say, or I don't feel that those words feel true. It feels like a lie. I feel like an imposter when I say that. And my answer to those folks is, well, great. You don't have to say it because I say it, certainly. But what do you want to say? What is— what is, if you had the choice to plant a seed, we all do at the very beginning of the day, what do you want to grow out of that soil? And choose some words that make sense to you to reflect what it is that you, you actually want to prophesize into existence for the day. So as the last question right now, it's simply going to be this one. Peter, I say I love my life when I put my feet on the floor in the morning. What are the words that you choose to say?

It's very similar. And again, I got this from Dr. Peel. Love life and life will love you back. Love life and life loves you back. I forgot to mention, in the Japanese tradition, there's a word called— I have to look it up— naikan, N-A-I-K-A-N. And it's the Japanese term that they say by having gratitude, We can do something about feeling sad. It's an antidote to sadness. Or as somebody else said, the cure for depression is expression. And so, you know, it's so true that people who listen to us who cannot do these things themselves, let the two of us encourage them to dig deep and to seek what would work for them. How are they going to run their marathon? At what pace? In which shoes? And, and just Just finish the darn thing. Yeah. Just get there. Move forward. Don't quit.

My brother is, my brother is a runner. And so I know he'll love this show. He'll love to listen to someone that has such an appreciation as he does for running.

If he wants to stay in touch, my email, and probably be in the notes, is info@movingforward.com. Anybody who wants to stay in touch and learn more or be encouraged or look at the book, whatever, you know, I'm happy to I'm here to help because I think it was Zig Ziglar who said you can get anything in life if you just help enough other people get what they want.

Yes, indeed. Thank you for being a guest on the show today, Doctor. It's been an honor. And give an extra, extra squeeze, an extra hug to your lovely wife as well.

From my heart to your heart, lots of love, lots of peace, lots of joy.

Beautiful. Everybody, please feel free to leave your comments. Let us know what you think of the episode, any questions that you have. Obviously full show notes will give information about every reference that we've made mention of, including how it is that you would get Peter's book and find out more about the work that he's doing in the world. All right. We love you and look forward to more and more of our interactions going forward. Ciao for now, everybody.

Thank you.

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