Gain Without Pain: Gratitude, Acceptance, Intention, And Non-Judgment With Dr. Greg Hammer

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markell and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change.

Proof. Okay, we've got Dr. Greg Hammer on the show today. You're going to love this conversation. He's a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, pediatric intensive care physician, a pediatric anesthesiologist, mindfulness expert, and the author of Gain Without Pain, the happiness Handbook for Health Care Professionals. He's a member of Stanford well MD initiative. Dr. Hammer is currently the chair of the Physician Wellness Task Force for California Society of Anesthesiologists. He has been a visiting professor and lecturer on wellness at institutions worldwide and teaches GAIN to medical students, residents and fellows at Stanford. I love this conversation. So sit back and enjoy. Wow. So when I hear my own introduction sometimes, and I do get to hear it, and it's painful, people ask me, you know, what's it like? Isn't it exciting when you get on stage and you've just had this great big introduction and whatnot? And I go, well, I guess on an ego level, it was fun a couple of years ago, you know, 10 years years ago or so when I started this. But today I just think to myself, gosh, I got to get somebody to cut lines out of that. That introduction is too much. It's like, I'm a daddy, I'm a father, you know, and I love business and I love people. You know, like that should be the intro or something. Your bio is incredibly impressive. And, and Greg, I want to start by asking you what's one thing that's not included in this introduction and bio that you would love for people to know about you?

I don't know if it's inferred by the bio, Adam, but great be with you, by the way. I would say that, you know, it's my study of Advaita or non duality. And I just believe that. I believe in what might be called the consciousness only model where everything is made of, you can call it consciousness, God, love, but we're all made of the same stuff. And I think if we embrace that, then lots of good things tend to fall in place. And so I guess if I were going to underscore one thing about the way I look at the world and other people and myself or for that matter, that would be it.

Well, you and I have already have Much in common and much that is important in common. I think a lot of people do. In fact, I think most, if not all of us do. But we're not always the season in our lives perhaps where that becomes the most relevant point of focus. It has been that way for me for about the last 10 or so years that I've just been more interested in that relationship, the one you were just describing, than almost anything else. Because it seems like it's the first domino. Everything, everything just tends to be in a momentum that feels on point or feels right from when that's the first domino. And that literally means the first domino of the day for me. So I start my day very much in stillness, practice. Do you do the same?

I start my day with, you know, if we don't count, opening the blinds and doing a bit of morning hygiene routine. I start my day with a gain meditation with my gain practice, which is, you know, I have a meditation room, but, you know, others can just have a chair, hopefully in a quiet place. We get, we do our thing in the morning and then we find a comfortable place to sit. We close our eyes, we draw our attention to our breath, we slow it down. That slows down our heart rate and lowers our blood pressure and the amount of adrenaline that's circulating in our bodies. And then we go through the gain elements. We start with G for gratitude, so we can do even 30 seconds of gratitude practice, silently appreciating that for which we are grateful. The loved ones in our lives, the ability, as you and I were discussing, to help others, our relative health, living in a relatively safe environment. There are so many things that are quite apparent for which we have to be grateful. Especially hopefully we embrace those at this time of year, the A in gain, which is the next 30 or 45 seconds. For those who do a three minute practice. Mine's a little bit longer, but I go to acceptance because we have to acknowledge that there's pain in life as well as joy. And if we resist it, our suffering increases. So there's a formula in my book, actually the first book. Suffering equals pain times resistance. So the pain is there and the pain that we cannot change. If we have any wisdom, we will embrace and accept. And if we resist it by pretending it's not there, and the myriad of other ways we resist things in our life, then our suffering increases. Suffering equals pain times resistance. So acceptance being the inverse or opposite of resistance. If we lower our resistance or we increase our acceptance, our suffering decreases. And so we embrace that. And then we go to the ion game, which is intention, because. And we, you know, I look forward to diving in a little bit deeper on this. But our default ways of thinking tend to veil our happiness. And there's only one thing that all 7 billion of us want and that's to be happy, Adam, as you know, and that happiness tends to be veiled by the way our brains have evolved over tens of thousands of years. And if we relax into a non intentional way of being, then we go to our default way of thinking, which includes things like negativity bias that tends to veil our happiness. So the I and gain is intention. It's a focus on being purposeful about our thoughts and the way we live. And then we go to the end and gain, which is as important as the other three factors, which is non judgment. And we can talk about that. But letting go of all judgment liberates us. And so I think these are really the four pillars of happiness. So when you talk about how to start the day, that's how I start the day and that's how I teach others how to how to start the day with a gain practice.

And, and I think you say that, that this is gain without pain, Is that right?

Yes. Well, for an anesthesiologist and you know, somebody who tries to prevent pain or if it exists, treat it, among other things. Yes. I think not only in my medical practice, but also in life, I think that things don't have to be painful. And I'm sure you can relate to the fact that there are ways of thinking and being into which we simply need to relax. So we're not hefting a heavy weight and necessarily straining. We are actually doing the opposite. We're letting go, we're relaxing into, we're allowing. And that's the A in game being acceptance is really all about just that. So our gains in terms of our happiness don't have to come at the expense of pain and the n. Well, the end is non judgment, you know, and I think it's just again, our default way of thinking, Adam, and I'm sure you can relate to this is we are hyper analytical of our environment. So we're always sizing up everything that we see and experience. And we tend to judge it, and I think perhaps from an evolutionary standpoint or the teleologic explanation for that way of thinking may be that it kept us a little bit safer. So if we're always wary of things around us, and this goes to our negativity bias as well, we're sitting in our cave as A early Homo sapiens 50,000 years ago. And there might be a saber toothed tiger lurking outside the mouth of our cave. And we're trying to keep the fire going, protecting our families. And if we're wary and we're, we're onto that way of thinking that there could be something life threatening lurking within a moment or 10ft away, maybe we got to live longer, maybe we got to procreate, we got to have an extra child and our kids live longer and our families live longer. And so whatever genetic predisposition to thinking and being this way of negative and wary and hyper analytical, maybe that's kind of encoded into our DNA and you know, it causes us to judge things. And with our negativity bias, we tend to judge things negatively and unfortunately most harshly ourselves. But again, there's a path forward. There's this wonderful quality our brains have called neuroplasticity. And we can actually guide our thoughts, if we're intentional or purposeful about it, toward a less judgmental, ultimately non judgmental way of thinking and being simply by allowing and dropping those judgment. So I'm thinking, oh, this person is better looking than I am, or I'm smarter than they are. This is bad, this is good. Those judgments represent a veil in our visual field. It means that we're looking at others and the world around us and its elements through a veil. And we're not seeing things for exactly what they are. So in the game practice, I encourage, for example, so we've gone through our gratitude, acceptance, intention. We move to non judgment in our contemplation with our eyes closed, focused on our breath. Picture the Earth. Picture one of these beautiful NASA images with the Earth apparently suspended in space. And we contemplate that the Earth is neither good nor bad. The Earth is simply what it is. And then it only really makes sense, as you know, Adam, for us to think I am neither good nor bad, I am simply the person that I am. And we transition to the I am ness and go back to our breath and then slowly open our eyes. We can actually train ourselves to be less judgmental and happier indeed.

Gosh, there's so much there that I want to dig into. I want to go back to something you said at the beginning, which that formula is really impactful. I'm pretty certain that somebody's pulled their car over at this point to write that one down. Suffering equals pain times resistance. I mean, it's just, it's clear. It's literally as clear as a bell. I feel as though, and let me know if you agree with this or not. But I believe that suffering is optional. Pain, on the other hand, is required. And I'm not a masochist. I'm not suggesting that we should seek pain or that pain is even a good thing. I'm making no judgment about, about it. I just, at this point in my life, I would say pain is not something we avoid easily or, and in many ways even I don't know that it's even advisable to try to avoid pain. But suffering is just that as well.

Absolutely, because the, the modifier, there is resistance. So you're right, the pain is absolutely intrinsically part of our experience. And you know, how many painful things can we talk about? I start the first book with a story about my son. And I lost my son when he was 29. And you know, what could be more painful than that? I can't, you know, like, I just.

Want to pause there to say as a parent and, and as a, and as a child of parents who are, knock on wood, still walking the earth, I can't imagine anything more painful than that, in all honesty.

But here, you know, here is a good example. It's something that is palpable and it's something that I could not. So if we go to the Serenity Prayer, I think, you know, these gain elements are evident in pretty much every useful philosophic and religious tradition. That's why these elements of gain resonate with us so well. And the acceptance, for example, is expressed in the Serenity Prayer. So there are things we can change and things that we cannot change. And some of those things we cannot change are painful. The world doesn't comport to our wants and needs. And so, so there is pain in life. And that pain that we cannot change, we, if we have any wisdom, should not only accept, but in the gain practice we embrace it. So as we do our morning gain contemplation, we actually envision our chest opening, bringing this pain closer, opening our heart, bringing the pain inside our heart, wrapping our heart around it, embracing it, fully accepting it. And when we recognize that there's no distance between the pain and our heart, we can ask ourselves the question, question, can I live with this pain forever? And when the answer is yes, we have accepted it. And you know, that's part of the happiness practice. You know, none of us gets out of here alive. None of us has a non painful existence. We have joy, we have pain. They almost seem to be equal in magnitude, if you will, like the area above and below the curve. If you Will above and below the zero intercept to a mathematician is sort of equal in area. So if we want to be happy or happier, we need to learn how to accept that is lower our resistance. And as you said, the pain is mandatory, but the suffering is optional.

Yeah. You know, I want to get to, I want to talk about the. What is probably a fine distinction between acceptance and non judgment. And you know, for me, I like to think of the non judgment piece as neutrality. That I can look at something even for a moment in a state where I'm not judging it as good or bad or right or wrong or fair or unfair. That to me is what neutral feels like. And, and it's, it's part of, in the last book that I wrote, came out a few months back about becoming change proof, this idea of how we develop long term resilience. There's a process that is kind of the through line of the book really. This pause, ask, choose simple. Just like in so many ways, the things that you're sharing with us I think are intuitive on some level, but not commonplace. You know, it's like learning. All learning is remembering. And maybe Plato said that, you know, we're, we're remembering so much of what we, what we already know and have either forgotten or somehow just again, it's, it's, it's just not. We just don't apply the commonsensical stuff that's that we could. So to pause, ask and choose is not profound. But yet think of all the places in our lives where if we had just paused to ask something before we chose is something. Whether it's to hit send on that email or to take a particular tone, a voice with someone, or to say something that's cutting or defensive or, or to get up from one seat in the front row at the Academy Awards and walk on stage and slap another human being, a friend, even in front of the entire world, you just go, wow. If I just had paused and got to a place of neutrality to ask a question. So in that moment to just go, you know, what are my options here?

Perf. I mean, imagine the judgment that preceded that slap.

Let's talk about that. Because I really do want to dissect the difference between acceptance and non judgment.

But yeah, I think that actually, Adam, the gain elements are all closely interwoven and interrelated. There is an overlap between acceptance and non judgment. But non judgment is a way of observing, if you will. Whereas I think acceptance is a way of being. So, you know, they're both a way of being in A way of observing in their own right. But acceptance is an opening of the heart. It's a bringing toward, a moving toward and an envelopment, an allowance. Whereas I think non judgment is a way of seeing. So there's a little bit of a distinction there.

I think there's a polarity too in just in the, in the, the vernacular itself that there's a positive and negative. And I don't, again, I don't mean to judgment one good or bad, just that there's acceptance, positive and non judgment. You know, it's a negation. So it's, it's interesting that the interplay between those two things. And that's so true of so many things in life anyway, right? I mean it's like Eastern philosophy on some level. There's a front and back to everything.

Yeah, well, you know, it's just so empiric. It's based on, you know, based on our experience we can understand what judgment is and the importance of non judgment if we want to see things for what they are. So if I look at you and I say, oh, he looks like this guy, for example, just this very simple.

Stanley Tucci is what you're trying to say.

Yeah, that might be.

I used to get, I used to, when I had hair, I got Joey Tribbiani because I could do that whole hey, how you doing? How you. And then I get a different one.

You know, but even just judging you as similar to someone else, for example, brings to mind oh, he's this, he's that, and I don't know you that well. And anyway, that other guy is not you. And so just looking at things for what they are, if we want to see things clearly, it's simply a matter of dropping all judgment. And that doesn't mean discernment. So you talk about acceptance and non judgment. People confuse discernment with both of those actually. But with both acceptance and non judgment, we need to discern. So for example, if we, we have two acquaintances and maybe they're friends and one of them is just always badmouthing other people and gossiping and complaining about things, and the other one is pragmatic and forward looking and present and a good listener and positive, we don't have to judge one as good and the other as bad, but we want to discern. Because if we have an hour to spend with somebody that we know, with whom do we want to spend that hour? And so we have to be discerning, but we don't have to judge, we don't have to Say I don't want to spend that hour with her or him because they are bad or they are X, Y or Z. We simply discern that given the choice, this is our preference. But it doesn't mean we have to judge anyone poorly. And I think that's one way of looking at that distinction. And the same goes with judgment. We need to discern between, you know, one thing and another, one quality or another quality. But we don't have to judge either of them as good or bad. That's why I love the image of the Earth or the ocean, for example. Something that is clearly just what it is. You know, there's all kinds of activity on the surface of the Earth, Earth. But you can look at the whole planet with what a teacher of non duality, who's an amazing person called Francis Lucille calls benevolent indifference. It doesn't mean you don't care. It doesn't mean that your heart's not in it. You look at the world with a little kind of a mild degree of benevolence, but otherwise you don't care what happens. And that's another. I believe it was Krishnamurti who said, I don't mind what happens. It doesn't mean that you don't care. It means that you're not going to be affected in a way, especially in a negative way, by what is and what. What occurs. And I just find that so intuitively clear and maybe the best advice I've ever heard, to look at the world with benevolent indifference or don't mind what happens.

It's almost another way to look at how the world looks at. Looks at each of us. Now, whether that's just in terms of Mother Nature, like the ocean, for example, or the sky, the clouds, etceter, the weather that we're always very conscious of the weather, or even God or whatever word, you know, any of us use to describe that single source, unifying source, etc. Ego. Benevolent indifference is a great. I mean, I. I find that really appealing because the ocean, and I'm a big fan of the ocean, spent a lot of time in that environment, and it is the central metaphor in this book too, is just so indifferent, different, but not in a way that's like the ocean's trying to kill me. You know, like you're. If you've ever been in a storm, on the water, in a boat, or not in a boat, you know, or witnessed one close up, you might think that literally, Mother Nature is cruel. I mean, if you've ever been in the path of a tornado, or any of these kind of things. People have been, you know, obviously in Florida, have dealt with such extreme weather in the form of these hurricanes just in the last couple of months. It's like, like, you know, is that intentional on the part of nature or universe or God? You know, clearly we all get that. That's. Nobody thinks that's true. I don't think anybody thinks there's an intent on the part, on the part of the weather to cause harm to people. That's a really interesting way to do it, to kind of look and see. Well, how does it, how does nature look at us? We're just a part of nature. We're just another, another aspect of the whole. It's. Wouldn't it be interesting if we could adopt that philosophy and look out of the lens in that manner? What, what kind of equanimity would we feel? What harmony might we feel? Greater harmony, Greater, you know, happiness.

Well, the good news is that we can do just what you said. We can actually look at the world and look at ourselves and each other just that way. It's not outside of our realm. In fact, it's rather simple. We simply have to relax into the way of the being that is compatible with that way of thinking and behaving. And it's right there. It's within us. It's certainly within our grasp. There's nothing to grasp, but it's. It's within us. We need to be intentional about it. You know, one of my heroes is Dr. John Kabat Zinn, who's certainly a father of mindfulness. And I love his definition of mindfulness, which could also be the definition of happiness, which is awareness of the present moment on purpose, non judgmentally. So it's an acknowledgment of the important principles of happiness. Awareness of the present moment. If we're present, we're happy. If we think of all the happiest moments we've had, we're walking through a forest. It's an analogy I always, I often use. We feel the soft bed of pine needles beneath our feet. We smell the scent of the evergreen trees. We look up toward the sky. We see the sunlight filtering through the canopy above. We see these ageless trees around us. And we are present and we're happy. We're not thinking about something we were embarrassed by that happened yesterday or the list of things we have to do when we get home. We're present. And when we're present, we're happy. If you think of all your happiest moments, it's when you were right there, you know, it could be laughing uncontrollably with a friend where literally you can't catch your breath, you're not thinking about anything other than what's happening in that moment, and you know the other person is right there with you. And that's a magical moment. So when we're present, we're happy. So awareness of the present moment is an acknowledgement that we're often not aware of the present moment. In fact, I think the two ways of thinking that have evolved in terms of the way our neural networks work, the way our brains function, all the connection and synapses between neurons have formed these pathways that define our default way of thinking. Beside the negativity bias, we're very distracted by the past and the future in ways that are maladaptive, and we have a hard time being present. If you sit, if any of us sits with our eyes closed and just tries to relax into an awareness of our present sensations, the smell, what we're hearing, it could be a little bit of ringing in our ears, the airplane going by in the distance, the tingling on the soles of our feet, the pressure between our body and the chair. We quickly leave that awareness and go to what I have to do after this interview or what I have to do tomorrow, or what I did yesterday that I wish I hadn't done. We don't tend to stay in that present awareness. So if we want to be in that present awareness, which is where happiness resides, we have to have a plan. And that's the next ingredient in what Dr. Kabat Zinn defined as mindfulness awareness of the present moment on purpose. We have to be purposeful. But the good news is it's not that difficult. We just have to have a practice. And that's, you know, for me, that's the game practice. It can be attended to in as little as three minutes a day. It's an intentional way of thinking that tends to grow with us over time. So even three minutes of intentional thinking will lead to a greater state of happiness and awareness of the present moment. On purpose, non judgmentally. And we've just talked about benevolent indifference and the importance of non judgment. So there you go. It's not that complicated.

So, so let's go. Let's go. I'm going to take us back to that, that moment at the Academy Awards. And, and I want to, I want to say this, Professor. It's. If we're walking through the, the mere woods, I'm going to create a. Something close to where you you to where you live and work and teach. And I remember going there for the very first time and just being. I know, breathless, really breathless. In that forest, in that, like, Sherwood Forest, I mean, trees the size. That prehistoric size trees. Right. I think. And I'm not being a skeptic here, but I want. I want to play the. Take the role of somebody listening to this now that says, okay, I get it. When I walk through the Muir woods or the redwood forest or wherever, I get it. I can be in my Zen state. I can be peaceful. I can apply the gain principles or pause, ask, choose all that makes sense. But when I'm in the middle of a raging. A raging storm, whether that's a storm on the water or it's a firestorm, again, same same area. We know California said forest fires. And, you know, it's. So in that moment where there's a literal or figurative storm happening, like the storm that was going on when Chris Rock was sharing a joke about Will Smith's wife, there was a storm that brewed up immediately. It was a squall. Right. So I wanted.

I want to ask a lot of thoughts and emotions.

Thank you. Adrenaline, awareness of the present moment on purpose, without judgment. So in that moment, what's going on for Will, do you think? Think again. This all speculation, of course, but. And. And what's the advice for Will? I was asked that question by Psychology Today, interestingly enough, about a week after that incident, to talk about the resilience sort of angle on it. But now I'm asking you that question, and I want to.

Well, you know, Adam, that's something that. That's something we can all relate to because we've all had this experience that, you know, one term for it that psychologists might use is being flooded.

Being flooded.

So the water analogy is a good one, you know, but flooded with. With adrenaline or epinephrine. We are not in control, and we say things we don't mean. You know, we've all experienced this. We've gotten in arguments, we've said things we regret. And under those circumstances, you know, it's not too complicated. It's just, as you said, take that extra breath. Right. This is a little bit related to what we say in the operating room. Measure twice, cut once. Don't just be impulsive. Measure something and then cut because you can't take the cut back. So take another breath, take another measurement, make another assessment. And when we have that surge of adrenaline with which we're all familiar, that pushes us forward in ways that we can't control and actions, whether it's a slap or words that can be as egregious. Certainly a little light bulb goes off if we have an intention. Practice, let's say we have the gain practice. We do three minutes of gain contemplation every morning. One thing that is beautiful about the way this begins to rewire our brains is that when we are being ungrateful, resisting, unintentional and judgmental the opposites of the elements of gain, let's say a light bulb will go off. So I'll give you an example that's in the first book. I'm very fortunate, as we were talking before we started in, that I have a home on Stanford campus. So it's a wonderful community of faculty. And I'm very close to the medical center. So I generally ride my bike to work. So I get up, I open the blinds, I do my morning hygiene, I do my game practice, I have a cup of coffee, some berries, I get on my bike and I ride along a route that takes me through a narrow path which has a beautiful canopy of trees. And it's usually very quiet at that hour. Maybe the sun's coming up or maybe it's already light outside. As I pedal down the path, I see another human being. And he's walking in the way that I'm riding in the same direction. And as I get closer, I notice that he's got buds in his ears. And then I notice that he's looking at his screen and I start to form judgments because here we are in this beautiful environment and he's looking at his screen. It's like almost like I imagine him, oh, there's a bird on the screen. Picture of a bird. So then I get closer and I see, well, he's kind of in the middle of the path and he's blocking my way. And then I start to form more judgments about his degree of consideration to others. And then the light bulb goes off because I just did my non judgment practice. So as I start to form these judgments, many of which are negative, typically a light bulb goes off and says, you're judging. And I laugh at myself.

Yes.

And so as I ride past this nice young guy, I look at him and I smile and he looks up at me and he smiles and lo.

And behold, I got a little hit.

Of dopamine instead of an extra hit of adrenaline. And it was a happy, positive interaction. And that's the thing about the practice, is that when we start to rewire our brains when we're thinking and Being in a way that's not consistent with happiness. We get a little light bulb that goes off. So now back to Will Smith. He sees, he listens to the humor that he didn't appreciate, takes it very personally. The adrenaline in his body starts to get secreted, starts to lose control. He's making judgments, very negative judgments about Chris. If he's, he's got an intention practice, if he has an awareness of the present moment on purpose, non judgmentally practice, a light bulb will go off and he'll be aware suddenly that he's being flooded with adrenaline and emotion and he's thinking and about to behave in ways that are not consistent with his happiness. And it's recognition of that illumination phenomenon, that light bulb literally shining on this way of thinking and being that might have guided him into taking another breath, allowing the feeling of acceptance and non judgment on purpose.

Yeah.

So, you know, this is within, it's within our grasp, Adam.

It literally is a nano. I don't even know what's smaller than a nanosecond. I was reading today about that. On the day that you and I are having this conversation, they have had a major breakthrough in terms of nuclear fusion. Like, is it a major breakthrough? Because I'm not a scientist and I don't recall exactly the length of time where this reaction produced the result it was looking for, which was that it, it produced more energy than it took to create the reaction itself. That's the breakthrough, as I understand it. But the length of time that they measured, that they saw what they needed to see, was so infinitesimally small. It's like a billionth of a second or something like that. Right. It's so tiny. And I think that what you're saying for folks as I'm taking this in at the same time now, that awareness doesn't have to be, you know, I'm sitting there contemplating because I think Will Smith, Smith frankly, was smiling and laughing and, and enjoying what was going on. And then he looked over at his beautiful wife and the grimace on her face sent a very different message to him about how she was receiving that joke. And I have a daughter, my wife and I have a daughter who has some challenges with alopecia as well. So, you know, it's like she was feeling how she was feeling and then he saw that and then in that nanosecond it all, it just all flipped for him, you know, so it's like in that, that splitness of a second, even that awareness can go, can go wildly in, in one direction. Or the other. And I think that's the way we're baked for the reasons you said, because we've got kind of a 24 hour ADT system playing in our head for survival purposes that we take in this, you know, whatever the, the feedback, and then immediately assess. We assess so quickly and, and that might be less about discernment in that moment and much more about, like you say, this predisposition, this default judgment that we go to. So it really is almost an artificial thing to me. And I don't know if you feel this way. I feel like you practice these things so that you're prepared in the moment. When I responded to that Psychology Today inquiry, I said he was. Was from a resilience, at least from our research on it. The resilience principle was that he wasn't resilient in that moment. Mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually. Even in that moment, he was depleted. And so in that depleted state, he didn't take advantage of that moment to take that breath to create some awareness, to just go, yeah, I want to punch this guy for offending my wife, but I'll do that privately or, you know, whatever. He had so many choices. They could have gotten up and walked out on the guy, which would have been a major insult. You know, somebody's telling a joke and it's about your wife, and you say, you know what, darling, we're out of here. Turn your back and walk up the aisle. Would have sent quite a message because the joke might have really been a poor taste joke, right? Or whatever. But it's like all that got lost in the fact that he snapped and snapped in front of the world and destroyed his career in many ways. And he didn't wake up that morning, right? I mean, Greg, he didn't put his feet on the floor that morning when we were going, what are you grateful for? And you know, my, my morning practice, I started my feet go on the floor. I love my life. That was my TED talk. It's the first words out of my. I love my. You know, he didn't wake up that morning go, I'm gonna F up my career today.

Everything a neuroscientist, Adam, would to talk about the activation of a neuron, which is a, you know, an individual nerve, has a receptor. Something stimulates that receptor. It causes the neuron to fire. So there's actually an electric current that runs along this long arm of the neuron, terminates at the end of the neuron and causes neurotransmitter to be secreted that communicates with another neuron. So this is, our brains are like an electric circuit it and they fire very quickly.

So in a billionth of a second.

Like almost in a very short period of time, in a finite measurable more than a billionth of a second, but pretty fast. I mean to our ability to be aware. It's all in a billionth of a second for all practical purposes. But these nerves will fire according to their architecture. So they have their circuits, if you will. So we've been talking about our default neural circuits. And the good news is that since our brains have this wonderful quality called neuroplasticity, means we can rewire them just by exercising new ways of thinking, even just relaxing into a new way of being, accepting non judging. And so we can begin to actually rewire these circuits. So instead of, you know, the sound.

Create a new default replacement.

Exactly. So the sound comes in and activates our eardrum. This insult, as he perceived it to his wife, gets transmitted through neural connections to part of his brain that goes to another part of his brain that goes to a gland in his abdomen that secretes epinephrine, or what's commonly called adrenaline. All this adrenaline gets liberated because of this neural activity and then it stimulates more neural activity that cortisol is pumping. And yeah, now he's really out of control.

Right.

And as he's walking up to the stage, I think this process is winding up even further. And so the good news is we can preclude that whole effluent neural electrical output by rewiring, rerouting those pathways to a more positive, grateful, accepting, intentional, non judgmental pathway.

It's like just by exercising, flipping a switch. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And we do it, you know, like we didn't, our brains didn't have these neural connections form overnight. So we're not going to rewire them overnight. But the good news is we don't have to. All we have to do is be moving in the right direction. You know, life is a, is a journey. There's a path. All we have to do is step onto that path. We are very gently taking very small steps to rewire our brains and think and be in a way that's consistent with happiness. And it's, it's doable.

Yeah. And you practicing it before you need it, I think is one thing that I, I want people to know that this is a thing that you, you practice like anything else you might want to get great at, you practice it. And the more clearly the more you practice anything, the better you get. It, this is, again, not profound, but I think it's, it's defying some common, some other practices that we have that, you know, if you want to not be judgmental, for example, if that's not the first place you want to go, you want to be discerning, but you don't want to be judgmental. Just check yourself every time during the day, you're being judgmental.

That's exactly right. That's very clear about those judgments.

Like what you were saying earlier.

Yeah. The light bulb goes off, you start to practice, and then when you are thinking and being in a way that's not consistent with your happiness, a light bulb will go off. And you want this to be automatic. Right. You want to have new thoughts generated by stimuli in your environment that come automatically. You don't want to have to stop and think about everything. You want to just move with baby steps toward a place where you don't automatically judge things. You don't automatically cast a negative hue over things, especially yourself. You want it to be automatic. It's like if you were, let's say, a baseball player, you want to be able to hit a curveball. It's got to be automatic. So you start to pick up the cues, I assume, of the pitcher. The way the pitcher's motion is. You see the way his arm is moving, you see his hand, you see the way the ball's coming out of his hand. Or you've got to have that be automatic because now you know that it's a curveball.

But about you, I mean, that's, that's what's really interesting about this. Right. Is that we're not talking about analyzing other people. Like, the goal, if you're sitting in that seat, isn't to analyze, you know, necessarily what that other person is doing or the cue. The cue is it within you? And it's interesting because men and women are very different. And I hate to. To be seen as sort of stereotyping or playing, playing this, this stereotypical card, but I do think it's true enough of the time for it to be accurate, that men are less aware of their bodies than women are. And there is a mind, body connection that medicine, that doctors, that all of us are not really hip to or, or are aware of in the same way that we're aware of other things. And I, you know, having a wife and three daughters, son, I get the mix in our family. For years, what I've seen up close and personal is that women, they check in with themselves. They check in with Their body, their body sends them a message before they get all out of control. Whereas men and males more in general seem to just go like from that moment, like you said, it's like the fuse is lit and the next thing you know it's an explosion. With the women, I've seen that if there's a fuse at all, the fuse is longer, Longer. And I'm not saying let's go back.

You know, we're talking about the evolution of the brain as a neural network with pathways that become entrenched and well defined and circuits go back again 50,000 years ago to that early Homo sapiens in the cave. And what role did men and women, as far as we know from archaeologic study, what role did men and women have? Men had the, to like react quickly, grab your club, go after that animal, what have you, you know, like in a split second without thinking about it, you know, become, have a more automatic way of thinking and being. And women, I think perhaps more circumspect, if you will. And so, you know, it's not hard to, you know, I think we can go easy on ourselves for casting stereotypes to some degree, especially if we are male and we're taking our hats off to the women for being a little more, have their act together in terms of the way their thoughts operate.

Well, I think that's, I think there.

Is truth to that.

That's the evolution, I mean, that's the potential evolution for the, you know, the polarity is important. I'll get into that whole thing, but, but just feel, you know, there's nothing wrong, like you said, because it's, it is how we're wired, let's say from, from, from the beginning or whatever the beginning is.

But if there weren't some truth to it, then all that stand up comedy that's based on men and women wouldn't be so funny.

It wouldn't be so funny. Yeah, I, I just think that it's more about the vigilance. Like the point that I meandering to at this point, at this moment is that when you said earlier, there's this relationship between pain and suffering, I want to come back to again. What suffering to me means, or an example of it is that you go, you know, my default is to, to do this thing I'm wired to do. And then your life is just a product of reactions and mistakes that are made when you say the wrong thing or you just, just, you just, you just jump to that judgment so quickly and you can't take it back like you said, you cut, you measure and cut and then it's too late to uncut. And, and I think that the, the pain is the vigilance that it takes to be so aware. Like this is not easy, it's painful when you recognize that you're doing it again. Like I'll just say me, not you or anybody else. When I realized, oh, there I am judging something again, or someone again, or there I am with that tone of voice or whatever it might be, I can't take back the fact that my brain just went where it went. But what I can do on an ongoing vigilant, every day basis is go, oh, there it is again. Like you said, laughing.

Drop the judgment, Drop the self judgment, which is the most difficult thing. I mean, we are definitely most harshly judgmental of ourselves.

Yeah. And so there I go.

I'm just a human being.

I look just a human being.

I look at the earth, it's just a planet. I look at the ocean, it's neither good nor bad. I look at myself. Yeah, it only makes sense for me to see myself the same way and drop that judgment.

Exactly. You know, so even when it comes to not, not so much closing a loop on that whole Will Smith thing, you know, there's a lot of places you can go with that. And, and to me, my assumption and, and hope really is that, that it is one of the great growth opportun person who's done a lot of good work in his life. And I would imagine it as, you know, on any given day we might have done as awfully or, or worse as him in those shoes, you know, so it's, it's more of just a question of, you know, what's the lesson when you're, when you have so much going for you, you think I'll be happy when I'm successful, rich, famous, married to, you know, know, whoever, you know, he has everything. So he's a great example because it doesn't get much higher up the food chain than somebody who's has his level of fortune and fame and everything else, and yet he's just a human being, puts his underwear on one leg at a time, I would imagine, like all of us do. And so if that person cannot so much fall from grace or whatever it is, you know, we see that as well. But if, if we can see it in, in literally in real time what it looks like to, from your higher self to your lower self or from that, that, you know, here I am, a conscious being having an experience of life that you Know where I believe in important, you know, like that I'm compassionate and kind. And then in an instant go back to, we're in a cave, I'm picking up my club and I'm about to go in and you know, and the other caveman who's outside the cave, who's meant, I think, to do us harm, arm and you go and club that guy. Like we watch that happen literally in seconds. And that's remarkable as a learning tool for all of us because we're, we are in our own little way, you know, beating people up with our thoughts, beating ourselves up, like you said, but beating it, beating up others as well with our thoughts all day long. How's that going to contribute to happiness? Is my question.

And it's, it's exhausting, Adam. And it means we're not seeing others and the world around us us as they are. Right?

Yeah.

We judge Will Smith harshly. We're not really seeing him for the human being that he is. So let's just drop the judgments. And I think, you know, as, as we both acknowledge it's hardest to do that with ourselves especially. I think some people that go into medicine are really hyper self critical. I know that I certainly have been. And those handful of moments where if I'd only known what was going on five minutes earlier or one minute earlier, I could have saved somebody's life who died in my presence, who didn't necessarily have to, you know, in order to accept those memories and drop the self judgment. It's a steep hill. But personally I've made a lot of progress. You know, we're never there. It's a journey. You know, I still wake up sometimes and think of something that happened to me in my medical practice. But I take care of the sickest kids having heart surgery and in the intensive care unit. And if you practice it long enough, enough, you're going to have bad outcomes that would have potentially be prevented. Prevented, were preventable. And you're going to be very tough on yourself. But we're all like that. We all judge ourselves most harshly. And I love the cognitive behavioral exercise of imagining we're talking to a good friend who's in the same circumstance. So if a colleague and good friend of mine said, oh, Greg, you know, I had this patient, this is what happened. If I just put a needle in the sac around the heart and drained the blood away from there a minute earlier, she would have lived. Would I have been critical and judgmental of my colleague? Of course not. I would have said, you know, you Ran the range of possibilities, the risk benefit analysis in the moments that you had and you made the best decision that you could, right? And anybody who has kids knows that there's no book about it, you know, and there's no guide. And you're going to make mistakes. And some of it is you come to a fork in the road and you can't do what Yogi Berra suggested and simply take it. You got to make a call and you're going to make the wrong call sometimes and you're only going to know that in retrospect and you're going to judge yourself. So let's train our minds to drop the judgments. Start with the low hanging fruit and stop judging other people and develop that neural pattern of letting go of the judgment. Because when we start to form judgments, a light bulb goes off, we recognize it, we have a smile and we let it go. And when we get to the point where we begin to do that with regard to judging ourselves, then we'll look back and say, boy, this six months of practice has really gotten me started. So that would be my message to all of your listeners is it's never too late to get started. Have low expectations and baby steps with repetition is how we learn.

And that it's, it's not a one and done. It's not like you just wake up one day and go, I'm cured of my judgments. And so if I were, if I were listening to you in that moment, I would have also at the end perhaps just said, you know, can you be, can you be gentle with yourself because you're going to make more mistakes? It's, it's likely that if you're going to continue to want to serve, and you, and, you and I were having that conversation right before we hit the record button on this. You know, what does service look like even, even beyond, let's say, the, the major career that we have and, and I think we, we are in a constant state of reinventing ourselves, but all around this idea, idea of how do we serve? And to do that, to put yourself out there, to be in the arena, as I think Teddy Roosevelt might have referenced once, that you're gonna get banged up, you're gonna experience pain, you're gonna make mistakes and people are gonna get hurt in all likelihood. And so how you, how you manage your, your, your judgments around that internally, externally, really makes a difference as to whether you can stay in that arena.

Yeah, very nicely put. I agree, Adam.

I have so enjoyed this conversation, Greg, and maybe what we'll do is do a part two because I had a whole host stress and maybe we can just touch stress a moment before we do do say goodbye. And then I'm thinking we would get us, you know, we'll schedule a part two here because I'm sure people are really itching to just know more from, from your perspective about this stuff. So stress is not something, I mean, I'll ask you the question, can we manage stress? Yes or no? Maybe. So what do you think?

You know, Adam, I think that's what we've been discussing for the last hour. It's resilience, how to be present, how to be accepting, how to be intentional, how to be non judgmental. That is how we manage. And you know, you and I were talking offline before we started recording about what a three or four year period this has been and having your kids go to university during COVID and we didn't talk specifically about it but you know, the financial hardships people are having, the war in Ukraine I think is painful to all of us, you know, the political divide, the climate, you know, and again, I told you that my current book is about teenagers and, and imagine having all these things to worry about going forward, wondering whether the climate of the planet on which we live is going to be compatible with life for my kids and my grandkids, you know, if you're a teenager now, for example. So life is stressful as a baseline because we don't really understand being born, living and dying. We, we are stressed out about our mortality, about, you know, the ways we respond to our environment and ourselves. Life is a stress stress at its best. With regard to all the elements we've been discussing for the last hour and I think the last few years have really cranked that up several notches. I've not observed a more stressful time in my life. And the way we cope with that is we have intentional practice and gain works for me and others in my environment. Your practice and I look forward to reading your book, your last book. I love the idea of putting your feet on the floor and saying I love my life. It's just what you're doing is you're putting a positive spin so you're rewiring your brain, be forward looking, optimistic, present rather than depressed, negative, self judgmental. And so if that starts with putting your feet on the floor and loving your life and embracing everything in your life that is worth being grateful for, that's a beautiful practice and that's how we deal with our lives.

It's an Architecture that you choose to either consciously design, build or you leave it to the default. And I wrote a book a couple of years ago called Pivot. And it was in many ways a book about the choice that we have in our lives to have sort of a pivot by design, a reinvention. And that's everything we can think of, everything from our, the way we reinvent our process of thinking to all we do in our careers, whatever, or a pivot by default, which is leaving it to the. Whatever you want to call it for those things to be determined. And I just know myself that if I leave it to the default, I'm sort of wired, as you said earlier, to just sort of complain and belly ache and be angry. And anger has been a central theme in a lot of my, my earlier life and now it perkle, you know, it percolates, it bubbles up. That's why I can really relate to Will in that moment because I know what it's like to just suddenly be caught in an adrenaline flood that produces anger that can lead to angry, not just words or thoughts, but to behavior. And we've seen it in our world, you know, I know we're going to end here. So we don't want to open up a big can. I just think, you know, when we see the division and it's pretty awful to watch, we have an audience that's outside of the U.S. but so I'm speaking mostly in, in North America now, but we're in the United States, frankly, not in Canada as much. And we see the division, the vitriol. I really don't think that we are suddenly different as a species. It's just that we are, we're in that depleted, exhausted, stressed out where we're like a sponge that's so saturated there's just nothing, the very little room for anything else to get in there. And when we're in that state of sheer depletion, the default is survival. Survival. And we're not the best species when we're faced with survival. That's how we got here. So that's a good thing, I suppose, right? We're still around. But in this day and age where we don't have to worry about a saber toothed tiger, that way of being is really pretty sharp, you know, sharp edged. But I will say this, Greg. I want to know if there's one thing in particular that you do in the day that is your go to. So after your morning practice, let's say it's real life experience. It's one o' clock in the afternoon and you're on the Stanford campus and, you know, maybe you get an email from somebody in the administration that's questioning something you're doing, or you get some group of students that are taking up a stand against the fact that you said you shouldn't judge, blah, blah, blah, you know, like whatever, you know, thing seems as unjustified or ridiculous and a waste of time as you can imagine. I'm sure you might have a memory of something like that, right? And you go in that moment when that occurred, you describe gain. Do you sit down in the middle of that campus? Do you find a bench and do something to resolve that in the moment? Or is there something else that just like a go to? Like, I'll go to the pool, I'll go swim, I'll go to the beach and take a walk. That's my go to. What's your go to? That's my. My last question for you.

I'll tell you the magic of the practice, which is not lost on you, Adam, But I'll frame it in my own way, which is that associating, starting with the breath in the morning with my gain practice, practice really appreciating the magic of the air coming in through my nose and filling my chest and filling my body, expanding myself beyond my bodily limits, slowing it down, exhaling without any effort at all, and then going through the gain elements. What happens is those elements of truth and happiness are now linked to the breath. So I don't have to be seated, I don't have to be in a pool, I don't have to be in my home gym, which I love. I can simply go to my breath as I'm walking down the path or biking down the path or sitting in my office reading that email, just go to the breath. And all of the magic of the gain elements again. It initiates new neural pathways that are still being formed, but that are not my default mode, that are my happy mode. And it's miraculous. It's just by automatic. It becomes more automatic the more you practice. And it's just go to the breath. Go to the breath. And that gratitude for my interaction with those students, even if they have a bone to pick with me at times, gratitude for the ability to teach them. They're such brilliant young people, accepting that not every word out of everybody's mouth is going to be kind, being intentional about my interactions and my own personal way of thinking and being, and dropping any judgments of the hospital administrator who slapped my hand for taking a photo of a patient or what have you. It comes with the breath. So I just go to the breath. I can continue on my merry way, walking down the hallway way in the hospital or along a path on campus or on my bike or wherever I am. You know, wherever you go, there you are. And you've always got that breath right up until the end.

Go to the breath. I just can't imagine more tangible advice than that. So I know there'll be a lot more for us to discuss and for our wonderful community, there'll be full show notes. So to find out more about the work that Greg is doing in the world and where it is that you can interact with the gain methodology, all of that's going to be part of the show notes and we'd love as always to just get your feedback and your questions. So you can go to AdamMarkel.com podcast and leave a comment there and it will be, I will. If it's a question for me, I'm going to answer it. It's, there's no bots involved. There's a question for Greg, then he's going to answer it. We're going to reach out to him to provide an answer for that. That's our commitment, that's our promise. It always, it pains me and again, I'm not, I'm not afraid of the pain. It pains me on some level to have to say this, but I want to say that the algorithm is something that we have to work. You know, we want what Dr. Hammer said today or not what he said, but how many things were shared that would be valuable in the world that we're all living in together today? I think it goes beyond stating, it's just obvious. And yet, you know, the algorithm is the algorithm. So if we want this show to land in front of more people, what we really need is for you all to do one or two things. If there's someone you know that would really benefit from getting this advice, what you heard today day, please share it, share it with a friend, share it with a colleague, share with somebody that you care about or somebody you think is that you're seeing is reactive or struggling. And we said struggle is optional. Share with that person. That's first. And secondly, if you could please leave a review. I know it's totally self serving and I apologize for that. But when you leave a five star review, it helps the algorithm say this is important content and it should get in front of more people. So we're just working, working the same system in a good way. Hopefully. So we appreciate that greatly. Take something that you heard today and put it into action. That is the only thing to me that is beyond everything is so important that comes out of this is take one thing, take that gain philosophy and put it in action and start working with it today, not even tomorrow. Take the breath. Go to the breath. That's the last thing that Greg shared. Go to the breath in that moment where you catch yourself, whether it's the body that signaled because you had tension in your neck or you just got tight or you just sensed I'm angry in the moment, just go to the breath to start and let's see where things go from there. Again, it's been just a tremendous blessing to have you on the show today, Greg. I love the conversation. Thank you so very much.

Anytime, Adam. And look forward to sitting with you in person someday.

Me too. All right, ciao for now, everybody. I so, so love that conversation that I got to have today with Dr. Greg Hammer. He and I are definitely brothers from another mother. We talked about non duality and neutrality and the difference between pain and suffering and whether pain is optional, suffering is required. And we talked about resistance and letting go and the mind body connection. And really, really a wonderful conversation that flowed out of his own philosophy and his work in the world that he calls gain. Gain without pain, which stands for gratitude, acceptance, intention and non judgment. And we really got granted granular around what it means to be non judgmental. How do we apply that? How is that a practical tool in our lives, in business or in our personal lives? How is it that we can use that to create less suffering and less pain in our bodies? What's the relationship there? We really got to track a number of things that I found so fascinating. And he gave us his number one, his go to. When it comes to how he lets go of difficult emotions, emotion without repressing it, without suppressing it, without ignoring it, but acknowledging it and then utilizing, utilizing that emotion for something valuable. And I think that that is without a doubt one of the most important things that we can be doing right now in a world where there's just so much anger and so much uncertainty that's creating fear. That's really, I think, the catalyst for so much of that. Those feelings, those angry feelings, those judgments, mental feelings. So we, we were able to get into that and talk about benevolent indifference. There's a concept for you and discernment and how it is that we can be more discerning but yet somehow not be more judgmental. Again, absolutely love this conversation and I know it's one that was going to pay dividends for a long while. If you know somebody that would love to hear some of what Dr. Hammer shared with us today, please feel free as always to share the episode Leave a Review those are are super helpful when it comes to the algorith, making sure that that this kind of content finds its way into the the stream that's in front of of more and more people. Because I think the content stream is one of the greatest influences on society, on our civilization today, what what people are consuming and what's being curated for them. So it helps when you give, when you give your opinion, when you leave a review and we appreciate it. And of course you can always leave a comment@adammarkel.com forward slash podcast and that's where you can leave your comment for us as well. If you've not established your own baseline line level, found out how resilient you are mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, tracking a lot of the same things that Greg and I spoke about today, feel free to just go to rankmyresilience.com and get your own free assessment takes three minutes and you'll have not only a great deal of clarity that'll flow out of that, but some resources and tools, again, that are entirely for you to use with our compliments. Again, thank you so much for your support of this show and we'll see you on the next one.

Thanks for listening. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change proof. Remember to leave a review on Apple Podcasts and you may be featured in an upcoming episode. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change proof teams, visit AdamMarkel.com to get your own free resilience assessment, go to rankmyresilience.com.