Reimagining Holistic Health With Tim Macken

Right. And is that also something that you didn't study? I mean, just the way you described that, I'll say not in the same degree, but I've become a geek in the area of research in the last 5 years of my life. I've really leaned into that heavily. And it's not something that when I was 25 years old, if you said to me, hey, to what degree do you see your career involving research? I would've said like zero, you know, except it was legal research because I was, yeah, probably just about to go to law school at that point in my life. But so is what you just described something that, that was the case early on in life, or is this something that's become a newfound passion?

It's become a newfound passion. I think part of it driven from just some personal life things that happened in the last 5 years for me with my own health. But then, My career, I mean, 40 years has been devoted in behavioral health, particularly in the area of working with people with serious mental illness. And when you look at the science and research and just the history of treatment for that population and people that suffer from those illnesses, the evolution's quite extraordinary. And as science goes, we're looking for more science that shows this medical fix will make a difference. This pill's going to be better than that pill. And then to come to the point where all of a sudden I'm reading these things and I'm going down an area for myself that had more to do with my physiological health, versus behavioral mental health, realizing that there's an interconnection of these things that was extraordinary to me, that really piqued my interest. So I will share with you, I had, and I first heard this at a conference one time. There was a gentleman giving a keynote address and he said, let me start off by saying that all healthcare is behavioral healthcare. And it really gave me pause because in reality, when I look at the success of medical care, whether it's in cardiology or internal medicine and endocrinology, all these things require people and human behavior to be a key part in how that person's healthcare is going to be successful or not. Behavior is involved in sticking with diets and taking medications and all of those things. So it struck a chord and it was like, oh, this is really, really interesting. And then in some of the people I've encountered in my own journey looking at this stuff, it's like there's some pretty amazing things happening that kind of bring things full circle away from necessarily looking for a specific medical intervention. There's things that as simple as diet and exercise and other things can have a major impact on some pretty significant illnesses. So I thought, you know, that was not present early in my career. It's evolved over time, and we're now starting to see some of this stuff, which is fantastic.

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. Yeah, I mean, you know, you sort of anticipated what my next question was, and I still think it's, it's a good question. For those that don't know what behavioral health is, can we start by defining that as distinct from mental health or other areas that we focus on, like physical health?

Yeah, I think like all fields, I think over time the lexicon changes. So early in my career, there was no real connection You saw separation of various things. There was mental health, there was substance use disorders and treatment, developmental disabilities, intellectual disabilities, and they were all separate. Over time, as there became a greater and greater recognition that it's kind of like the Venn diagram, they're all overlapping and intertwined. There is no real separation. And the reality of it is there is a pretty strong connection. So the one thing they all had in common was the connection from a behavior standpoint. Most of the things I'm talking about have manifestations in our behavior. So I think that's where it's kind of evolved from into So that's in a nutshell what I'm thinking of as far as behavioral health.

Right. And what do you see are the challenges? I mean, obviously you're on the front lines, and I think people have a sense maybe that, that there's been an impact, let's say, as a result of the pandemic, maybe as a result of social media or other, just other sort of structural changes that we've seen in, in society contributing to a dis-ease, if I, if I can use that. Yeah.

You know, Adam, I'm going to really try hard not to go down any rabbit hole you don't want to necessarily go down, but I've had conversations about this. And one of the things that I look at that's really, really interesting, and I'm going to bring up, I'm kind of holistic in my mindset about things. So if I'm from an Adlerian standpoint, I've always kind of viewed human beings, we've got a physiological, psychological, and spiritual aspect to our nature. And if any one of those lags on that, stool are out of balance or are dysfunctional, it's going to destabilize the whole thing. And I think human nature and human behavior is, is, I think that does make a, make sense to a lot of people. So it's kind of a word picture. But I think as I've looked at our society and what's happened culturally over the last, gosh, it's been a slow thing, but it's happened over a fairly long period of time. We have become, and I'm not being critical of people who are purely secular or secular humanists, but I, I think the more we have evolved into a state or a place in time where each of us is our most important thing, and I'm not talking about the importance of our health and we should care about ourselves, that the best me is going to be a better husband and father. So I want to be at my best, but the point to where we become kind of the focus of our universe, I think separates us from culture and community. And I think what happens over time is that's become more true. We've been, it gets into the whole things we've been talking about too, you know, where we Well, I want to be grateful and we want to be happy and all these things. And what does it take to do those things? And a lot of times those are actions you have to do outside of yourself. Things that you want to do to help brighten somebody's day and make your own feel better is doing something for other people and something greater and a cause greater than yourself. I think when the pandemic came along, we already had some significant issues in these areas. You know, we had a massive spike in the overdose deaths from, from fentanyl and opioids. We had a significant continuous increase in suicides. And then during the pandemic, we saw a big spike. I think the statistic that scared me I've got a brother who's got daughters who, 1 in 3 females, teens were having thoughts of suicide. Yep. And so that continued further isolation more than what was just happening before the pandemic. But I think there were various things that were impacting that. We can get into the idea of how does social media impact that. All these things have tremendous beneficial things for us, but then you look at them in isolation and how some of them have come about. There's also negative impacts from some of them too. It's certainly made things worse during COVID There's some good signs as we've evolved and emerged from the COVID pandemic. There has been, and I find it interesting, and they say, well, we only had 90,000 overdose deaths related to fentanyl and opioids this last year. I'm thinking, okay, we were averaging over 100,000, 110,000 a year, which if you think about that, that's 2 Vietnams every year of the number of people lost.

Yeah, it's just shocking.

But only 90,000. Okay, well, that's still a really bad outcome. That's still a really bad situation. So things are getting better and emerging as we get away from that period of time. But all those other variables are still well at play in our communities, in our society today. So, yeah.

I mean, to what degree do you think loneliness is an issue? And do you, does that show up in your work as—

It does. You know, Adam, I think it's all related to the same thing to a certain extent, but even the idea of this existential loneliness, why are we so alone lonely. You know, if you look at the evolution of human beings, we've, it's been well known and believed for a long time, we are social creatures that we really are at our best when we are part of a community and part of a collective, a group. And then the more we have isolated ourselves, moved towards this, I call it the me, myself, and I era where we have become the center of our own universe. I think that that's a key issue that you bring up that I think loneliness plays a key role in that. And how do we get people to feel connected again?

Any— I, so I love the question and I'm going to press you on the answer. So, because you raised the question and I think there's no one answer to it, obviously I'm being a little cheeky about that, but do you have some thoughts around how do, how do we get out of that? What are the things that, that we can do both in our personal lives as well as in even in the professional pursuits that we have, you know, at work, for example?

It's a really good question. You know, Again, it's been kind of a focus for me as I've been witnessing and observing and watching how the system surrounding the helping professions with behavioral health, people who are having those challenges with mental health and substance use and various things, is what can we do? It's so easy. And I don't mean it's easy because we want to find ourselves in this place. But negativity and all these things are much easier to perpetuate And focusing on the negative, it's much easier than trying to be positive in the face of things that are challenging. I know this is an area you're definitely into, but I think people forget. And so for me, the idea is helping people remember that. And I certainly know this from a clinical perspective when I used to see clients and we can help work you, get you towards a place where you're happier in your life and you're feeling better about things, but it's going to take a lot of work. And I think that scares people sometimes. I think that's why we've kind of evolved over time to wanting a pill to fix something. But I think when you look at What the really practical, pragmatic things people can do to feel better about themselves. It does take effort. I think happiness is an action word. It requires some effort on the part of the person. Much along the lines, if you want to feel good about yourself, if you feel bad, what have you done today to help yourself feel better about yourself? There's various things you can do. So we've talked about this. I know I've mentioned one of the people I love his writings and following his work is Dr. Achor, Shawn Achor, who's kind of book— I think they call him the happiness psychologist, but he talks about various activities you can do from gratitude practices, which I know you're familiar with. The idea, if you just start with identifying 3 things you're grateful for each day for 3 consecutive weeks, can help pull somebody to a point where they're starting to develop a habit that will help them maintain that gratitude. Doing things as simple as doing something for somebody else, simple act of writing a letter to someone you haven't spoken to in a long time. I know people writing a letter sounds like a foreign thing, We're used to typing it, but just writing a letter to someone that was important to you, you haven't spoken to in a long time, reaching out to them and connecting. One that I particularly like to do, I don't do it all the time, but every month or so I'll be going through the line at a coffee place and I'll give them money. I said, let this pay for the next people back as far as, for as long as it lasts and just try to make someone's day. Thought that was important. And then I recalled something too, and it was interesting because I was young in my career. And I was at an agency that was co-sponsoring a conference up in northern Michigan. Beautiful place. And like, I was young, wide-eyed and whatever, but I was walking down the hallway at this conference center and this gentleman came by me and stopped me and he said, hi, my name's Dr. Warfield. Who are you? I mean, I'm not used to people just stopping me out of nowhere just to introduce themselves,

right?

So I told him and he said, are you here for the conference? I said, yeah. And he asked me— he started just talking about where I worked. He was really obviously focused on talking to me. He had interest in me. And he says, well, I'm sure I'll see you later. I think I'm going to be speaking at this conference tonight. And I said, oh, okay. And sure enough, he was the keynote speaker. But one of his key tenets in his own life, and one of his personal parts of his philosophy and daily routine is that he never wants anyone to come across his path. He wants them to feel grateful for having met him.

Hmm.

And it really touched me. And I started thinking, you know, how many people in your life do you know are like that? I've known a few and I can easily point them out in my own personal life. If I haven't seen them in 20 years, I come across that person, I walk away feeling good because that person has that kind of effect on me. They're, I think they're wonderful humans. For me, that was like, okay, I need to, as much as I can, make sure that whenever I come across somebody that they don't walk away from me regretting having met me. I want to make sure what their interaction is with me is a positive one. But that requires effort. You know, we get wrapped up in the daily grind, you know, the things that are happening, the stresses and all those things. So to keep that in mind is a challenge. But physical activity, another thing people need to do, the importance of that. So that 3-legged stool, the physiological, psychological, and spiritual, it was always advice I was giving clients. I want them to also start, I don't know if it's just walking when you don't feel, you gotta, you've gotta start moving. Movement is huge. And then spiritual and without being prescriptive of specific faith or whatever it is. It can be whatever a person chooses to address that spiritual aspect of their nature. But combining those things to me is kind of an essential thing.

It's holistic, as you said. I mean, I couldn't agree more. Our research and books that have been involved in writing and a lot of the speaking I do talks about how resiliency— that's the term that we give for this— is this capacity to To move through, I don't want to even say in a positive way, to actually leverage, to get some exponential value out of the challenges that you face. And even the challenge of uncertainties or adversity, that there's ultimately this really important ROI that comes from it mentally, emotionally, physically speaking. In order to produce that resiliency, we have to be, I think, more aware of what it is that that takes away our energy, what will send us down those dark thought holes and chasing things that ultimately don't fill us up but deplete us. I'm curious, first of all, 2 things. What's your definition of resilience?

Wow.

And second, what do you do on a ritual basis, habitual but very intentional? So I'd say on a ritual basis to look after your own resiliency.

That's a good point. Good question. So for me, resilience, I'll try to be concise. I think it's hard to say one specific thing. I think you've heard the phrase and we've all heard it, you know, that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Well, that's not always true for everybody. And I think there are certain things that I'd like to believe that resilience is something we're all born with and have the same capacity for. I think we all have the ability to be resilient. I think some people have more natural abilities Early on, you look at studies of families and you have 6 kids that grew up in the same environment. They all have a different capacity for this, but it doesn't mean it's not something you, you're not able to learn or develop. We've always focused on the kids with that, and I think it's grown to the point we're actually looking at it, which I'm grateful for. We're looking at the fact that we need to help adults become more resilient because even if we focus on kids, if they're not being raised by resilient parents, what's— we're, we're kind of missing the boat a little bit. We need everyone to be as resilient as possible. But I also see it as it relates to the workforce and the need for it at this day and time. So resilience, the ability to absorb and experience difficult challenges without it debilitating you, and you're able to then keep moving forward. That's about as simplistic as an answer I can give you. But in our capacity to handle those things, those challenges, those— and it can be as serious as a pretty significant trauma to being fairly minor things. But our ability to absorb those, have those experiences, and then be able to continue moving forward without being knocked off our feet and becoming dysfunctional or nonfunctional.

Yeah. And I'd say just to plus what you're saying too, that, that surviving them is one goal, I suppose, but to actually see it, them as a catalyst for growth, it's a heightened level of importance that we can even place on what we learn in the process of, as you say, absorbing and moving through them. What are some of the things that you do if you're conscious of it? on a daily basis or on, in some other regular timeframe that really ensures resiliency holistically, as you said?

Well, for me, a lot of it is kind of putting my money where my mouth is. It's hard for me to be kind of a cheerleader out here and my push in looking at helping the community become more positive in its efforts towards mental wellness. It's those things. I am kind of pretty diligent in the idea of identifying things I'm grateful for. I know even when I am talking to my staff and we're, what are, what are the things you're grateful for? You know, one of the things I'm incredibly grateful for, and I tell them all the time, I'm, I've surrounded myself luckily in my career and, and my current role, especially with really wonderful people. They all bring each other up, which is great. And when we're dealing with challenging situations and, and, and what we're doing in our, in our work, there's nothing we don't feel we can't deal with and figure out. And then on top of that, kind of like you said, leveraging that, it's like, okay, What can we do and make changes based on what we've experienced now and do them even better? How can we make the situations that we're less likely to experience them? And, or just that even if we're doing something well, we can always do it better. I think that's part of my focus. I think for me, from a health standpoint, my obsession, I guess, with the whole idea of metabolic health as it relates to mental health and various other physiological health issues and immune system issues, you know, I'm kind of focused on the nutrition aspect of things. I was without any affiliation to anything political. I thought it was interesting. The things that I've heard Bobby Kennedy talking about are things that are kind of right up this alley, things he's talking about. So those are areas that I am focusing on. I took a pause. I was, I would say, excessively exercising to the point where I think I was causing myself some harm. And it was, it's like, okay, I'm 62 years old now. And I don't, while I was proud to be able to say I could, I can bench press more than I could in high school and college, but what is that doing for me? It's, it's like I don't have anything to prove and perhaps I need to change my focus on how I'm doing resistance training and, and be more helpful. So I had to take a step back from that. But I'm at a point now it's like it's time to go back, but do it differently. And then a bit obsessed. There's a, I'm blanking on his name.

Yeah. Tell me what your obsessions are. I definitely want to—

Oh, you, you, you know the one, this whole idea of metabolic health and, and healthcare as it relates to diet, especially very low carbohydrate diet. Ketogenics is a fascinating thing. And the research that's going on out there now, finally, that's actually going out, that's kind of supporting a lot of these things, is fascinating to me. I have my ex-wife who's 4 years younger than me, who's in late stages Alzheimer's. It was early onset. And the devastating thing for our son is that he's now— she came down with that, was diagnosed in 2018. I was doing a deep dive for her husband, just trying to find things that might be helpful. And that was a rabbit hole that was con— it was connected to everything else I was looking at. So it was kind of interesting how they coalesced into this area. So that's, that's kind of an obsessive area. But when it comes to health, you know, I was, I remember the last time I did one, I ran a, I was with my younger brother. He's 12 years younger than me. And he called me up, this was in 2015. He said, well, what do you think about running this goofy challenge with me down at Disney in January? It was 2014. He called me. I said, okay, what's the goofy challenge? He says, well, you know, you run a half marathon on Saturday and then the next day you get up and you run a full marathon. I said, I think you've lost your mind. But what, why the goofy challenge? Why this one? He goes, well, I'm turning 40 and I wanted to see if we could, I could find a race that was about 40 miles, was a 40-miler. He goes, I couldn't find any, but I got a close approximation. Got one that's total of 39 miles point whatever in 2 days. All right, I'll do it for you. And talk about obsessive training. And as we successfully completed that, I was also realizing the devotion of time it took to train to be able to run basically 40 miles in 2 days was a huge sacrifice to the time of my family. And after I did my second 20-mile run just for training purposes, and I was running on trails and on the roads for 6 hours straight, it's like, I don't think I want to do this anymore. There's probably a better way and a healthier way to, to be cardiovascularly healthy and have good, better lung capacity. So Sean, I believe it's Sean O'Mara, Dr. O'Mara is well known for his use of HIIT training, especially sprinting, to help people reduce visceral fat and increase overall health. And it's, it's a fascinating area. And he's, he's done studies, gotten money, I believe, from the National Institutes of Health. I think I'm right about that, where they're actually taking MRI shots of, of visceral fat in people's abdomens. And then, they're doing the before and the after. And simple as, you know, just 15 minutes a day sprinting. And now, even 80-year-olds, they said, you don't get right out and start sprinting.

Right.

But you get up into this thing where you can do that kind of thing and it's quick. You lose body fat quicker, but you're also, your cardiovascular and your pulmonary function improves drastically. So, that's become much more of an interesting thing. So, for me, make a long story short, I got away from running road miles. to doing sprints on inclines on a treadmill. That was the easiest way for me to do it. And in 15, 20 minutes, I'm totally spent and shot. And if I can do that 3, 4, or 5 days a week, it's pretty remarkable. So those are the things I'm currently doing for me. But there's another area, and I think it's, I've mentioned it before, but it's the lifelong learning stuff. I'm very curious, so I'm always looking for more information into those areas that I'm kind of interested in. So As long as I remain curious and interested, I think I'll be doing okay.

Is there a particular thing that you're reading right now that are learning something from that you'd share? You don't have to share about that unless you want to, but what are you reading? And if that's the area. Yeah.

The one book I'm reading that I think is fascinating because it's a woman psychiatrist, name is Georgia Ede. She was at Harvard. She's in, she has a private practice now, but she's been treating students and her patients now for a number of years. via nutritional intervention. She's written a book, and the book is fascinating. It's called Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind. So I'm currently reading that. I've ordered it, but I haven't started reading it yet. It's a book by Dr. Chris Palmer from Harvard, who's now doing a lot of research as well, as he's really focused on the metabolic causes and impacts, metabolic dysfunction, mitochondrial dysfunction, as it relates to mental illness, especially serious mental illness, from major depression to bipolar and schizophrenia. So

And by metabolic, again, just for the audience, what can you say about what that means?

Metabolism in general, I think about metabolism, it's, it's how our body, it's a great, never thought of having to define metabolism. You know, it's the function from a cellular level and how our body is, is regulating its use of energy. And,

and I was just going to say how it creates energy, right? Through, through food, through our nutrition. But right.

So that's exactly right. So at a base level, Energy, when we consume food, it gets to our cells where our mitochondria produce ATP, adenosine triphosphate. And the mitochondria are the power plants of our body, of our cells, and then therefore our body. So the importance and the impact that they're finding these diet, the diet has on our metabolic functioning. And of course I'm obsessed with this because I know there's going to be a lot of focus on that, especially over the next 4 years with the politics that are involved. But the reality, when I start looking at the rate of obesity and how the pace at which points in time when we started seeing this huge uptick and spike in the growth of obesity and diabetes and other metabolic health issues corresponds ironically with our creation and implementation of our food, food pyramid.

Yes.

So if that was implemented in '79, '80, that's when you start seeing it happening. And so I don't run around trying to proselytize, you have to do this specific diet. But the reality of it for me is if we did one simple thing and if we avoid eating anything, but just eat real food, we're going to always be far better off as a, as a people in the nation. But there's a lot of things happening with food and that should make people pause. And I'm hoping that more and more people will start seeing the research that's coming out on this stuff because I think we're all going to benefit from that.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively. to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. You think about how you produce energy and the food that we What's the fuel that we give that we, it's like putting fuel in your cars. It

matters how good that fuel is. That's right.

Yeah, exactly. Imagining what's the octane, you know, what's the quality of, of the fuel. We'd probably have to go back. You may know the answer, but we may not need to dive into this at the moment, but there's probably some effort at the time when the food pyramid was constructed and then disseminated through schools and—

Oh boy.

In a lot of places, there's some, probably some organizations that benefited from the fact that that new way of looking at at our food intake was being proselytized across.

Yeah, there are probably people I could advise people if you want to go do the search on and look and even watch interviews on YouTube and other things that are huge experts on this. But you look at even the whole lipid theory of heart disease and the scientist that really started that was a guy named Ancel Keys out of the University of Minnesota. And he did this at the time was called, I think he called it the 7, the 13 or 7 country study, which really started out as like 27 countries. But as he and got his data, kind of cherry-picked which country's data he wanted to use that fit his, his hypothesis. Kind of the opposite of what you should be doing in research, right? Let the evidence support or not support your hypothesis. And he really believed his theory. But unfortunately, there were also a lot of people that there was a lot of evidence contrary to what he was saying. But what pushed him at the time was the health of President Eisenhower. You know, as a country, we became kind of hyper-aware of heart disease all of a sudden because we had a president who started having heart attacks. And he was going down this theory that he had, but they underscored the reality also that President Eisenhower smoked 4 packs of cigarettes a day. And, and while I'm not saying diet didn't play a role in this, right? There was a lot of other things that were probably much more likely to have been contributory. So there's a lot of things that happened over time in history. If you look at even, there's a book by Nina Teicholz. Nina Teicholz is a former, she's a journalist who was researched and did journalism on science and various other things, but she's been subsequently given a PhD. largely based on the book she wrote. I think it was called, you know, Big Fat Surprise. And she went into this long history of how we developed certain oils and stuff for cooking. And Crisco oil was her— Crisco was the first one she found, which she found that Crisco was nothing more than a lubricant that was used on machines in industry that through a chemical process and various things added, it was made to look like lard. And all of a sudden we're using it in cooking. Well, It's the formulation that was in place back then has been banned by the government because of the type of fat it is. But we've been doing all kinds of things with seed oil, so it all fits to this whole metabolic issue and what's making us healthy or not making us healthy and the stuff that's behind it. But

indeed, there's a great podcast and a book with the same name that you may have heard of called Lifespan. David Sinclair is the co-author and, and also the co-podcaster. Really, the podcast is It's pretty neat. It's just 7 episodes, kind of a limited series based on, based on the book, but some really great stuff there. I want to go back to something you said earlier about the sprints. And this, I'm personally curious. I imagine some other people are as well, because I, I get my exercise in a variety of different ways, but I don't love long-distance running. So it's just one of those things. I was a sprinter in swimming. I was a swimmer in college and played water polo and some other things. So I love the water, but I was never, never a long-distance. Running or even swimming for that matter. So when you say sprinting and it's 15 minutes and you're spent, this is, I'm assuming, interval training. And so what— so just share a little bit more about the practice because there are some people I'm sure listening, they go, hey, you know what, I can make 15 minutes a day to do this, or 3 times a week or whatever it might be. So what does that look like?

That's great. I'm glad you asked. So I'll use my routine as an example of what I'm talking about. So It really is about short bursts at optimal effort. And so, it is high-intensity interval training is what it is. It's HIIT training. So, once I've warmed up, and I may walk for 5 minutes, I may do whatever, but then I'll start my intervals. And I'll do my first interval where I will start running, and I'll run for a minute. But at 30 seconds in, I will hit, I will start running at my optimal maximum effort. for a maximum of 30 seconds. And the moment I'm done with that full minute, that 30 seconds of max, I walk, I slow down, and I walk for 2 minutes. I totally try to come back. You can't fully come back to base, but you get back to a place where you're just comfortable and ready to do another full maximum effort. So I will then do another, I'll start going for a minute, and at 30, within 30 seconds, I'll have it up to my max. I've had it at times where I've, I've been a 14, 15, 16% incline and I'll have, I'll be going, you know, if, and for me, if I'm going 8, 9 miles an hour, that you're, I'm moving, especially if you're good for 62, I'm doing good. But at the end of that each interval, I'm exhausted. But then I'm going to walk for the next 2 minutes and I'm going to walk slowly and, you know, recover for that next interval. And I actually will do that sometimes. I'll, I've gotten up to 10 intervals. So that's, that takes 20 minutes or so 2 minutes for each walk. So it takes longer. You can, you don't really need to do 10. You can really, if, if everyone, if you just did even 5 or 6 of those 4 or 5 times a week, you're gonna see amazing benefits from it. So that's my example how I, I am implementing it. But,

and you could do that on a treadmill, but you could also find yourself a nice long street or a long, absolutely a long field, probably be the best of all worlds to run on something

barefoot in the grass. Well, be safe. I, and

Yeah, exactly. No, Tim, that's the— I love it when we can get really granular like that. And that's one of those ways. I love that. I suppose my last question for you is really just when it comes to mental health. And again, I'm thinking about the workplace, but it can be much broader than that. I mean, we hear about levels of anxiety increasing to a degree we've never seen. It's never been measured to that level before. Burnout, incidents of burnout in the workplace, et cetera. I mean, if there's one thing that you would attribute to the, that trend, if there is a thing that you attribute to that trend, what is it? And if there's even one thing that you're thinking, you know, if I could just get people or get leaders of people to think about things this way differently in some respect, what would that change in philosophy or mindset look like? And you brought up the word culture, and I think it, that's, we have a culture of the world, world culture. We have our own societal culture. We have culture here in North America and obviously in many subcultures too, based on where you live in the world, where you live in this United States even. And then there's the culture at work. And I'm— our research, our writing, and much of our work in the world today is focused on that subculture at work. And frankly, what we get there is the very much a mix, hybrid, of all of that other stuff, especially when those organizations that we work with have across geographies are a mix of people that are in office and work remotely. And we, so the pervasive culture, the greater societal culture is brought to work as well. So again, just back to those 2 questions. Hopefully I didn't lose you in my additional diatribe there.

Yeah, because I was thinking while you were asking the question, one of the things that I think, and the timing might be good on that question given what we've just experienced You know, we go through this process every 2 and 4 years as far as elections go. But if you look at our culture and our society, we've become more and more polarized over time. Part of that, and I think it is, and it gets part to my advice for people, is we are so focused on differences versus commonality and what we have in common. I think it's, for me, it's like, listen, we have far more in common than we have differences over. And if we can try and get away from some of the identity stuff and really focus on, okay, How do we as a culture and community come more together? I think part of it is, and one of the things that strongly affects us is our, I'm going to use the word, but I think we're bombarded with stuff 24 hours a day now. You know, it used to be, I remember the first Gulf War and CNN, and it was like this 24-hour coverage and people were obsessed. Well, that became a new normal. We became obsessed with 24-hour news cycles and we're getting constant information bombarding us. And while we have tools that allow us to seek information and gain knowledge in areas we're interested in, much like social media and YouTube, and those things are fascinating to I think it's really important at a point in time, we all have to find a way to make sure we're taking a step back from that and give ourselves time to not be bombarded by stuff. If I'm going to encourage people to be a little more self-focused in a certain way, it's to be getting away from that stuff, to become more introspective, perhaps spend more time, whether you're into meditation. So various things can be meditative for people. It can be prayer. It can be exercise for some people, and people do yoga and other things. My message to people is we've got to step away from being bombarded by the messaging. And we have some power over that, although I think there's a reality that there's a legitimate possible addiction to the social media stuff that people are in. But I, for me, it's a messaging thing. If I were to say I would want people to try and step away from that bombardment of information, because that's the stuff that's increasing the anxiety. You've got kids interested in how many likes they got and the clicks and the anxiety related just to get, I got to go to school, but I didn't get enough I'm grateful social media didn't exist when I was a kid, to be honest. But it is what it is. I encourage people to really truly take a step back, spend more time pursuing some introspective focus on whether it's gratitude practices and exercise and things, but certainly with any type of meditation and whether it's, again, prayer or meditation can all be very, very helpful. I'm reminded I had a professor undergraduate in 1980, and I'm remembering this guy like yesterday, so he must have had an impact on me. But even he had in a book, one of the textbooks that he had written, we were using in class, talked about the importance of play, the importance of getting into a state of flow that if you even do it for 10 or 15 minutes a day where you are devoid of any intrusive thoughts of anything stressful or bothersome, that it actually will increase your lifespan. So I think that's kind of a critically important part to things. So we could talk about practices about gratitude and all these things as it relates to trying to be happy, But I think boiling it down simply to, we all need to take a step back and play, I think is really important. And I don't mean you have to play like children, but I think childhood, childlike is an important thing to think about when you are truly in that moment where you're separated from all the stresses and anxieties, where you're letting it go and you're focused. It can be listening to classical music. It can be out just taking a walk in nature. It's really truly setting aside that time and truly letting go. And, uh, play.

Yeah, that so resonates with me, Tim, having 3 little grandkids now— 3-year-old, a 1-year-old, and a 4-month-old. And there's no question that being around them, being around our 3-year-old in particular, even the 1-year-old now, it's just like this constant play. And yeah, yeah, and it's, it's exhilarating. And the last thing as we wrap things up, I want to share with our audience is another resource because you've given us some great ones today. I read a Recently called Stolen Focus. Many, many people probably have heard of it. Johann Hari is the author. And in that book, Stolen Focus, I think he gets at a number of the things that you just talked about and how, how our focus has been diverted, let's say. And, but ultimately, whether it's been diverted, co-opted, stolen, whatever you want to say, I think it's really important that we do move away from the blame game that we, I think, get so wrapped up in and, and even in those around us or in the tribes that we find ourselves routinely congregating in that we find that there's trying to assigning blame and trying to find what I think are the simplest solutions to complex problems. And we know that complex problems involve complex solutions, not simple ones, not ones that are just based on sort of superficial things. And so to put it into, I guess my own theory about this is that yeah, there are probably people that have interests that are divergent from The ones that we are talking about in terms of our mental wellbeing and our physical wellbeing and overall health and wellbeing. But yet it's our responsibility. This is personal again, personal philosophy here. I believe it is still personal responsibility that we have to become the one in charge. You know, I'm, I never tell people to get rid of their phone. I deliver talks all over the world talking about mental health as well as Holistic resilience. And, you know, we talk about this thing. This is an important tool. Technology is vitally important. It's not a question of whether I'm going to use it. I'm totally going to use this. I'm going to use it every day. And we all, most of us are. It's a question for me of who's in charge here. I think that's the vital, that's the vital question for me personally, is to know when this thing is, is running the show and instead of me. And you can't know that all the time, or you can become sort of, I suppose, intoxicated to the point where you, where you We can't really tell. Right. And, and that's where that quiet time comes in, whether it's stillness practice or gratitude practice or prayer or meditation or any of those things. So anyway, Tim, you gave us some really tangible takeaways today. I love the show. I'm sure everybody listening to this has just been vibing and going, oh, I didn't think about this. And then maybe there's some people that maybe need to listen to this, would benefit from listening to this, and it's gonna get shared. And, and that's part of the reason why we do the podcast as well. So you've been a fabulous guest, Tim, and I, I so thank you for your time today. Thank you. Oh,

I, I'm greatly appreciative for you having me on, and it's kind of an honor. I, I would never have thought, hey, maybe someone is interested in hearing what I have to say about things, but it's an honor. And, and I hope that people get the sense that there is hope and there's a lot they can do. And as you said, it is about personal responsibility. You can't control what happens to you, but you have a choice in how you respond and how you react to that. So the more we realize that, the better off we're going to be, I think.

Tim, again, thank you so much. Thank you for 4 decades of service in an area that I know this Through friends and family members that work in that field as well. It's not, you don't go into it for the money, let's say. And I just so appreciate the fact that you've done the work you have and that you've had the impact that you've had as well. So thank you, sir.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. It's gone by very quickly and at the end of the day, it's nice to know you've been able to hopefully help some people along the way.

Indeed. Well, Tim is a solid man, solid guy, done some really amazing work in the world and has come out With, I just feel, great conventional, practical, usable wisdom when it comes to how we take care of ourselves holistically, psychologically, physically, of course, mentally, even spiritually. We cover those things today. We talk about that in this podcast, as you heard, and the importance of play, getting into a flow state as a means to add to our dopamine reservoir. We didn't talk specifically about dopamine, but ultimately it's, I think of it as like a dopamine Menu and, and in the menu of things that we have access to in a day, we have to think about how we produce dopamine. We have to think about scheduling those times of the day, whether it's to make time for stillness in the morning or it's to sprint, to run, as, as Tim was telling us about that 15-minute practice of intermittent interval training that can create that physical health, of course, but also create a great deal of mental health in the process. There are lots of ways to do that, to create those moments where you increase the level of dopamine. in your brain by doing certain things, whether it's to read a book that you love or read the newspaper or take a walk or write a letter to somebody that you haven't written to in, in a while, or, or think about somebody, send them the text message or place a phone call to somebody that you haven't spoken to in a while. And just a whole host of other things that we can be really intentional about because ultimately our mental health is our responsibility. Our physical, mental, emotional, spiritual health is really Our responsibility at the beginning, in the middle, and the end of the day. And it doesn't mean that because that's the case that we should go it alone, that we don't need support, or that it wouldn't be appropriate for us to ask for support. So I'm not saying that at all, but I am saying that we have to be responsible. You know, there are things that happen in our lives and some of them are pretty tough. And the only real freedom we truly have, what we, what we have that's ours to keep always, that nobody can ever take from us, is the meaning we make. out of those things and what we ultimately get from those experiences. Do they actually contribute to us, help us grow, help us evolve, help us be better, happier even, if you will? Or do they do something else? The former is about resilience creation. It's— that's something that we can actively do. And the latter is something that happens as a result of us not taking care of ourselves. And ultimately, That's unnecessary. It's, yeah, it's not a requirement. It's optional. We can take better care of ourselves and then defeat those things that would otherwise defeat us. So I love the conversation with Tim. He is an inspiring man. He gave us a lot of resources. I contributed a few today as well, but of course we were really here to hear from Tim and we did. And so enjoyed that. I hope you love this episode. If you did, please share it with a friend, colleague, family member that you think might be might benefit from it, maybe even somebody that's going through a bit of a hard time and is looking for some additional creative information, inspiration, if you will. We'd also love to hear from you. And if you've got a review that you could leave for us on the platform that you consume this podcast, that would be so appreciated, whether it's iTunes or any of the others that there's so many these days. A 5-star review is, is welcome, but whatever makes sense makes sense. And ultimately, if you'd like to find out exactly where you're at, just create a baseline understanding of your own resiliency in those 4 key areas that that holistic view of resiliency for free, entirely our gift to you. Just takes 3 minutes. You can go to rankmyresilience.com, rankmyresilience.com, and 3 minutes into it, you're gonna get yourself a confidential report, just yours. Nobody else sees it. Give you some not only important information to assess where you are, but also resources like some of the ones that you heard today and many, many more. So it's, it's chock-full of that. And we hope you take advantage of it. But for right now, I would just say once again, thank you so much for being a part of this community. We could not do it and would not do it without you. So thank you again, and be resilient. Have a great, beautiful, blessed day, and thank you again.

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