199- Courage to Leap & Lead with Anna Yusim

You've got courage to leap, courage to lead.

Be brave and be bold. Wow!

Let it roar. Welcome to the Courage to Leap and Lead podcast, where each of our guests share the stories of courage that helped them become powerful leaders. Before we start today's show, please remember to visit courage-consulting. Where you can find all the episodes and other excellent resources, all at courage-consulting.com. Now here's your host, Leadership Courage Coach CB Bowman.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I just have to fix my eyeglasses today. How are you? It's Tuesday and it's Courage to Leap and Lead. How do you like my new earrings? How am I showing? Okay. I was just in New Mexico on my way to Phoenix to see the Rolling Stones. You know, I had to see this classic group, but I'll tell you a secret. Pink's got it all over Mick Jagger. It's a girl thing. Anyway, I have another special guest today. Her name is Anna.

Hi.

And excuse me, allergies from planting and things. Anna is a member of the same group that I am, full disclosure, MG100. And you know, that's Marshall Goldsmith's fabulous 100, which we are now 360 or so, but very, very special people, incredibly brilliant and talented, and Anna is one of them. And so, Anna, tell us, you're in our author series, the Courage to Leap and Lead author series, and you've written a book called—

Thank you so much, CB. It's such a pleasure to be here with you. And I have written a book called Fulfilled: How the Science of Spirituality Can Help You Live a Happier, More Meaningful Life.

Okay. So, you know, I am not a soft skills person. by any stretch of the imagination. But this sounds real soft skills, and it sounds interesting. So let's go back a little bit to your background. What— how did you— first of all, what do your parents do? What did they do? Sure.

So I was born in Russia, and in Russia, so many people are very academic, scientific, and certainly in my family. So I come from a family of Mathematicians. My mother was— she's retired now— a computer programmer, and my father a biomedical engineer, and he still teaches physics.

Wow. And Russia— your English is perfect. How is that possible? I don't hear an accent.

Yep, came when I was 5 years old, lost the accent, and I still speak Russian but at the level of a 5-year-old.

Wow, how incredibly exciting. Where in Russia Moscow, Moscow, Russia. In the big town itself.

In the big town itself, exactly.

Okay, now we really want to know your history coming from Russia and writing this type of book. So tell us, what did you do in high school, junior high, college? How did you get from there to here?

Totally. So I went— so I started being interested in math at a really early age. I thought I was going to be a mathematician. And I went to a math and science magnet school, public residential high school in Aurora, Illinois, called the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. You actually live there. You go there your sophomore year, and I just loved it. And I was part of the math team. I was the biggest nerd. I would do math contest problems for fun. And I thought, you know, when I grew up, I was gonna be a math professor. That's kind of what my whole family did. But then I got to Stanford. And started, you know, doing all of my math stuff. And all of the classes were taught by TAs from China who barely spoke English, and I couldn't understand what was being said. And suddenly my passion for math starts to dwindle because I'm just not understanding. And then it was the universe telling me, time to find something else. And the majority of my classmates were pre-meds. And so I jumped on the pre-med bandwagon. Most people, by the time they graduated, were off that bandwagon, but I stayed on. And somewhere in the midst of my 4 years at Stanford, I discovered the books of this amazing psychiatrist named Dr. Irvin Yalom, who was actually at Stanford at the time. And I read his books, and I was just so blown away by the depth with which he analyzed his patients and understood human nature. And I thought, I wanna be just like this person. I wanna go so deep into human nature and understand people on such a deep level, and then I wanna write books about them. And that's actually what—

but wait a second, if you didn't understand your professors in math, how did you understand your professors in the medical space?

Well, for whatever reason, at Stanford, a lot of the people who they brought to be like the high-level graduate students in math were from China, because China has brilliant mathematicians. And so that wasn't the case, you know, in the rest of, you know, the other TAs. perfect English. I had no problem.

Okay, that explains it. I had no idea. I've just learned several new things.

In China, there's brilliant mathematicians, and they— a lot of them go to Stanford.

Had no clue whatsoever. Uh, probably because math is like one of my worst subjects in the world, being dyslexic. To me, 2 and 2 equals 22, and nobody can Totally get it. Okay, so what space in math did you go into after reading these books? I mean, in—

I decided I wasn't going to be a mathematician. I decided I was going to be a psychiatrist. And so I joined the pre-med bandwagon and went to— finished up, you know, at Stanford. Then I worked for a few years as a management consultant in the healthcare field. And then I went to Yale Medical And I was at Yale for 5 years. I took a year off to travel the world and write an honors thesis. And then I did my residency in psychiatry at NYU in New York City.

So you went to the best schools in the United States. Did you get in based on your math or your grades were just general?

For sure, for sure. Math definitely helped. But I think it was hard. It was really, really hard work. I always have worked really hard. And you also— it's also luck, you know. Because you can work really hard and still not get in. So, mm-hmm.

Okay, so then you went into this field, and then what led you to the relationship between the mind and the soul?

Yes, so I'm at— I'm in my residency at NYU, and I'm going through my own dark night of the soul. Things just are not going well, and I'm in a lot of like emotional pain trying to figure out, do I even really want to do this. I just like— life is feeling meaningless. And, and then I realized, you know, I have all these tools as a psychiatrist under my belt, but these tools aren't helping me to figure out how to pull myself out of this state that I'm in. And the reason for why I was in it was many, manyfold. There's many things happening at the same time. It was like the perfect storm. But I realized that the—

What was happening? What was happening?

I had broke up— I'd broken up with a 5-year relationship. And then I was not liking my residency at all. I had gotten in trouble with my training director, and there was just a lot of things. And then I had met this other guy, and then I found out he was dating all these other women, and I thought he and I— you know, there's like all these things one after the other. You know, just, just, you know, the nothing— thank goodness, nothing super horrible or nothing that had any enduring consequences. But nevertheless, all these things that just like one after the other can just, you know, bring you into your dark night of the soul. And so I was there and I was like, these tools that I have as a psychiatrist are insufficient. They're not pulling me out of my darkness. And then I was like, also psychiatry, like the translation of, you know, psyche is actually soul. So I'm supposed to be this doctor of the soul, but why is nobody mentioning anything about the soul in my residency? And actually, why didn't anybody mention anything about the soul at Yale Medical School? or in my training as a pre-med at Stanford. The soul is somehow missing from medicine. And so that led me on a big quest trying to understand how is the soul involved in healing. And that quest took me to ashrams in India to, you know, learn about that. So I went to learn Buddhist meditation in Thailand. I went to learn Kabbalah in Israel. And then I went to work with different shamans in South Africa and South America. All to better understand what is this thing that we call soul and how does it relate to healing. And that journey, which took the course of a few years, really healed me. It was a healing journey. And that's what got me involved, you know, in a more spiritual path in my life, which ended up being a huge part of my life's work.

I'm blown away. Okay, I don't even know where to start with that. You just said a lot, sort of laid an egg there. All right. What gave you the courage to visit these places in the world that probably women don't necessarily run to on vacation or education?

Absolutely. So what led me there? I'm fixing my mic a little bit, as you can tell. I just realized.

Yeah. And you know what? It's coming across better too.

Coming better?

Good.

Perfect. I'm so glad. I'm so glad. Good. And so The courage was from a place of pain, right? What is it that often forces us to go outside of ourselves and be a better version of ourselves and grow and transform? Pain, discomfort, feeling like stuck in some way. And that's exactly what was the case with me.

Why did you feel that these particular places were going to help heal you?

I didn't know if they would or not, but I knew that I needed to do something. And I knew I needed to do something different than what I was doing. I needed to get out of my comfort and complacency. I needed a different way of thinking about life. I needed people with different values, with a different system of how to heal, people who were more connected to their soul. And so I feel like it was more like the universe guiding me than my knowing. I didn't know how to heal. If I knew, I would've healed myself. I just knew that I needed to do something different than what I was doing.

What do you say to naysayers like me? That say, this is all hogwash. This is like Jonestown personified.

What?

You know, come on. But, you know, we're hard-skilled people. We go hard-driven. You're just so peaceful and in presence and sort of like a princess sitting in a palace.

You said that when we started talking. It's so funny that you say that. I'm like the most hardcore driven person. that you can ever meet, CB. Trust me.

You fooled me.

I know, exactly, right? And that's the whole thing. It's like, how do you bridge these worlds? I feel that my whole life is about bridging often incompatible worlds, like bridging spirit and spirituality, bridging, as you say, being peaceful yet being driven, bridging, you know, having relationships that are close and yet give you independence. So things that are seemingly incompatible and figuring out how to bridge.

Okay, tell us the secret.

The secret is meeting life where it's at and being very dynamic, changing in response to life and finding people that support you in what you need.

I'm writing it down because, um, meeting life where it's at is like accepting life on life's terms. It is phenomenally powerful. So powerful.

So powerful, right? Yeah.

And, you know, I was just— did a second interview with Dave Sanderson, who I don't know if you know the name. But he was the man who saved 155 lives on the Miracle on the Hudson.

Wow.

He, of course, with the pilot David Sicoe. But he— there was something that his mother had left words of wisdom in his head. His mom had just passed away. And she gave him the knowledge that help others before you help yourself. And he realized from his military background, he had the wherewithal to save these people. So he was sitting in the front of the plane where he could easily escape. He got up and he went to the back of the plane and pushed everyone to safety. When it got— and he held the life raft so people could get on board. When it came to him, the plane had shifted and he dropped the lifeboat, so he couldn't get on. And he had to swim to safety. And that was during the winter in January. And something just gave him the ability. When he got to the lifeboat, the people he had saved pulled him to safety.

Wow. It's an incredible, amazing journey. And so I love that.

Yeah. When you say life meets you where you're at, it just summarizes the whole thing. And so my question for you is, if we go with the statement, life meets you where you're at, how do you know where you're at so that life can meet you?

That's such a great question, CB. I love that. I love that. And sometimes you don't. You just have to meet life, and it's only in retrospect that you're like, oh, I guess that's where I was. You know, another version of that is this idea. It's like a spiritual principle that I call the mirror principle. And that principle is we don't draw into our lives what we want. We draw into our lives who we are, right? So the people that come into our lives aren't a reflection of, I want to meet this kind of person and have this kind of business partner and this kind of romantic partner. No, we draw into our lives who we are. So if you keep drawing in the same person over and over that you don't wanna be drawing in, don't look outside of yourself. Look within. Why is that happening? And if you're drawing in beautiful people that you're happy with, look within. That's happening because it's a mirror of where you're at. So life will meet you where you're at by bringing into your life what you are.

You know, uh, I think I remember my mom saying to me, About men that I was dating. And I never dated anybody, with the exception of once, that was bad for me. But it was all about who you draw, who you select. If you keep selecting the same types, that's what you'll get is the same types. And so figure it out, figure out what is the type that you don't like and make sure that you don't select that same type again.

Correct, correct. Exactly. Because everyone ultimately draws in the same people. It's what you're willing to tolerate. So at one point, you just say, I'm no longer willing to tolerate this. Thank you very much, universe. I've learned my lesson. Bye-bye.

So are you saying that what you want is really what you get? And then how do you change what you think you want To get what you really want.

What you get isn't always what you want. And a lot of people keep drawing in the wrong person over and over and over. You know, that happens a lot, or they keep drawing in the same situation over and over and over. Right? And they have to— if that's happening, you have to look within. What are you doing? What about you is drawing in that situation? What is drawing in that lesson over and over and over? And what can you do differently? What can you change about yourself? Like I gave you the example that I was feeling really down and depressed at one point in my residency, and I just knew I needed to do something different because whatever I was doing, it just wasn't working for me. I was drawing in like situations that were just making me sad and upset and not wanting to be a psychiatrist and all these things. And then I went on my spiritual path, did something totally different, and then life started drawing, bringing into me situations that were really positive. And because I changed my, my energy, I changed my frequency, I, you know, basically just stopped the whatever it was that was not working. It stopped. It took a while. It was like a year-long process, but eventually it stopped.

But clearly, you had the ability to be in tune with yourself, to say, I'm unhappy. Okay, so a lot of people can get to that. I'm unhappy. And then they can't move past it like you did to say, and so what do I need to do differently? What makes you special that you were able to say, I'm unhappy and there is a next, and here's what I'm going to do about it, and I'm doing it?

Absolutely. Well, I'm a super action-oriented person. That's just the way I am. And everyone's different. There's a lot very action-oriented people, and they will do things all the time. Being super action-oriented, by the way, isn't always the best thing. Sometimes you need to just be, and as opposed to do, you need to just be. You need to be with your emotions, be with your feelings, be with where you're at in life. And then from that space, create. I actually talk often about the 2 ways that we can manifest and create in this world through being and through doing. Being is actually the more feminine way of manifesting. Doing is the more masculine way of manifesting. And so the best thing is if we can manifest through both. But for what I was describing to you, that relied— for me, that was a lot more doing and a lot less being.

How do you be?

You be by just being.

Sounds like slang.

Exactly. How do you be? You let yourself do less and therefore just be. So being in flow with life, you see what life presents when you slow down, when you feel, when you just sit there, when you give yourself the time for self-care, for just being with yourself, with your thoughts, with your emotion, with your body, and you see what comes up. That's how you be.

Okay. I'm not getting it because let me give you an example. I get ticked off with my husband and I go out and garden. All I think about is how angry I am with him and how— why did I marry this man? So I don't know if that's a being. I don't know if I'm— the being part, right?

Yeah. Okay, so the being part of that is you let yourself feel your feelings and you let the thoughts come up, and your feelings are frustration, impatience, anger. Sadness, curiosity. Why did I marry this man? Right? And you let yourself feel. Right?

You just— You summed it up actually pretty well. Yeah.

Yeah.

Except you left off the strangle part. Yeah.

Okay. Murderous rage. There's a little murderous rage in there. Throw that in there. Perfect. Okay, great. We got it all. So you have all that together, and that's your being. You sit with the emotions, and you don't try to do anything. So when you be, You do not try to fix it. You do not try to confront him. You do not try to fix the problem. You do not try to make it better. You just let yourself be with what is. And a really remarkable thing happens when you let yourself be with what is. And when I say that, what I mean is you let yourself be with what is without judging, without trying to push it away, without trying to process it or put too much language to it even. You let yourself really just feel it. And Something magical happens when you are able to be, and that is that you're able to let go through the process of being and letting yourself be with something. You now— it kind of runs its course, and eventually you're able to let go.

Oh, hell no. Maybe it's because I'm a Scorpion.

So, and if that's hard to do, then you can take your being, and alongside your being, you can figure out, okay, Now I'm here with my feelings. Now what do I do? And then you come up with your doing plan, and that's okay too. And that could be, let me talk to him and let me set some better boundaries so that I don't get so annoyed with him. And next time I get annoyed, maybe I will go and see a friend, or maybe I need to go on a vacation with my girlfriends, or maybe we need to do some couples therapy, or maybe I just need to think about all the things I really love about him and how amazing he is.

I like that advice.

You're laughing here.

So, okay, so now do you have a copy of your book?

In my car, not with me. Oh, come on. Right outside in my car. It's because, you know, I'm in my office. I'm in like my— actually my office in, uh, New York City. And unfortunately, how I don't have a copy of my book here. I'm sorry.

Okay, I'm gonna coach you.

Thank you. I need, I need, I need that. Thank you.

Okay, or at least tell me the title. Oh my God. Okay, give us the name of your book slowly.

Yes, it's called Fulfilled: How the Science of Spirituality Can Help You Live a Happier, More Meaningful Life.

Oh, I wish you had the COVID here.

I wish I had it too. I don't think I had it, unfortunately.

How far is your car from where you are?

It's like, like a 5-minute walk.

Okay, that, that's not gonna work. Well, I'll tell you what you do when you get a copy of your book in front of you. Let me know, and we'll kind of like cut it into this.

I love it. I love it. I, I would love to do that with you. Perfect.

Okay.

You know, I have a million photos of me with my book. I can send you those.

Well, can you share a screen? And so we could see it.

I have to pull up my Instagram. I think I have them on my Instagram. Should I do that?

Not on Amazon.

Oh yeah, I can. Yeah, on Amazon for sure. Oh my God, give me 2 seconds. Give me 2 seconds. Oh my God, you're exactly right. Duh. Okay. Oh yeah, even on my website, you know. Oh, thank you.

Well, I want to share the Amazon so people know where to go to purchase it. Hello.

Exactly. Hello. Yeah, and so you can purchase it on my website, on Amazon. Okay, here, this is from my website, and this is what the COVID is. So I need— um, do you want to give me, uh, rights so that I can share my screen? Okay, perfect, perfect. Share screen. Um, let's see.

So this is what we call shooting from the hip. As you know, this show is about shooting from the hip.

There it is, and here is my book.

I love it. Okay, read what it says here. Discover your life's true purpose. Eliminate self-defeating patterns and roadblocks that are keeping you from living your most authentic life. Understand the scientific underpinnings behind answered prayers and random coincidences. Filled with exercises, guided meditation, fascinating scientific research, and inspiring success stories. Fulfilled integrates the best of Western medicine with universal spiritual principles to help you find more meaning, more joy, more fulfillment in your life.

I—

oh, and Deepak wrote a wonderful, uh, statement about it. When did— when was your book released?

It was released in 2017, and I'm working right now on the next one.

Oh, do tell.

So this book, should I keep it up, or do you want me to— do you want me to do—

Take it off now so we can see you.

What did you— okay, cool. Okay, good. So this book was on the science of spirituality, and my current book that I'm working on is on the science of miracles, with a miracle being defined as something highly beneficial yet statistically improbable. And with— and that's kind of a scientific definition as opposed to a spiritual definition of a miracle. And by that definition of a miracle, something highly beneficial yet statistically improbable, miracles happen all the time. Not all the time, but they do happen because many statistically improbable events happen. And so the question is, what can we do to bring more miracles into our life?

Well, then I have to introduce you to Dave Sunderson from the Miracle on the Hudson.

I love it. It would be my pleasure to meet Dave.

Oh, yeah. I mean, and I actually— As I mentioned, I just interviewed him, and this is his new book. Oops.

Amazing. Beautiful.

And certainly it wasn't meant to happen. And his impact on 155 people is amazing. So talk about miracles.

Amazing.

And we spoke about, you know, his magazine is called Moments Matter. And I said to him, why that? And he said, because you just don't know, and you just have such a small amount of time to make a decision that can save you or save someone else. Ergo, moments matter. I think you both would be terrific together.

I love that. I love that.

Okay, now going back to your book. People who are in a lot of trouble, a lot of trauma, who can't even see their way through the light of the day. Can your book help?

Absolutely. And I work with a lot of those people. So as a psychiatrist, I see suicidal patients all the time. I see patients who are severely traumatized. See people who are in the depths of addiction thinking about ending their own lives, or who are like this close to overdosing, right? This is part of my practice. I'm also an executive coach where I work with the most influential people at working at very high levels. But even those people can fall to suicidality, to addiction, to depression, to very traumatic, difficult things. This is part of the human experience, unfortunately. And absolutely Um, because my book is about connecting people to their own souls and helping them align with the deepest part of themselves. And when people do that, it gives them newfound hope. It gives them a renewed sense of purpose. It helps them remember who they really are, and it makes them realize that they're not alone in this world. And I think those are the features that you need to move past anything, any kind of darkness.

You know, Anna, first of all, I have to interview you for my second book. This is good stuff. I see a functional doctor, and the first thing that she explained to me is that the gut rules the body and the mind. This is new findings. Do you find that there is any relationship between the gut and what you're doing?

Absolutely. There is more and more research. Dr. Sabine Hazan, someone who I recently heard speak, she's devoted her life to publishing about this, looking at the different bacteria in your gut that, for instance, are missing if somebody is depressed, or are missing if someone has anxiety, or are missing if somebody has fertility challenges, or are missing if somebody has this kind of issue or that kind of issue, right? So there is more and more being learned about this. I believe that this is a burgeoning area of medicine where there's going to be humongous developments, not just in our understanding of what causes disease, but then in our ability to heal from these diseases. And so there's already been a lot of data and, and more case reports on fecal transplants. So people are missing certain things from their GI. You can actually transfer— it sounds really disgusting, but it's really— you just transfer the, you know, the best parts or like the positive parts of feces into that person and it heals them. And that people have healed from, you know, many like gastrointestinal issues and other issues through fecal transplants. And so this is just one, one aspect of that.

I have never heard of this.

Amazing stuff.

So I'm writing this. We're just—

and it's just in its infancy.

Like, wait till So I am familiar with stem cell.

Yep. Stem cells are amazing. I'm a fan.

Mm-hmm. And in fact, I've just had stem cell done in my eye.

Amazing. For what?

Cornea. It's called blood tears for the eye.

Tell me more about that. I've never heard about that.

Leave it to Colorado, right? Well, Colorado is the state that does the most damage on your eyes, which I found that really interesting. recently because we're so dry here, right?

Mm.

I don't know about Arizona, but people, more people flock here to ski and they don't realize since they're skiing, wetness, that their eyes are drying out. And so this non-doctor came up with this idea and it's been used here in Colorado for years now. And what they do is they take your cells and they put it through a centrifuge, just like in stem cell, and they make it the— they make an eye drop, and you put this eye drop in your eye 4 times a day, and it heals the cornea.

Oh, that's amazing. So you're basically— so, so it's not necessarily your stem cells, or is it your stem cells? Is it your V cells? Um, V cells are a kind of stem cell. It's like, it's very small, uh, stem cells. Or is it actually your growth factors that they spin?

Like, you know, I'm not a doctor. The only thing I said to my doctor when he told me, I said, is that the same as stem cell? And he said, yeah.

So cool.

I don't know what part, but all I know was it was a cloudy clear liquid and it looked just like what I had done to my knees. And I'm like, this is amazing stuff.

Amazing. That's so cool. And, and most importantly, did you feel better afterwards?

It did. I did.

That's amazing.

Not having pains. And it's just, it's this whole thing.

So cool.

I'm finding it curious because, you know, that the gut has now been related to Parkinson's disease.

Yes.

And somebody told me that they're doing more research and finding out that it's also related to dementia. And I'm just— I am just blown away by what's going on.

That's amazing. Very interesting.

Have you, in your research, come into any findings regarding the gut and like, um, alcoholism or drug abuse or anything like that?

Um, I think that all those things are connected. I mean, especially because there's certain You know, microbiome, uh, things that are missing if someone has depression and anxiety. And there's such a strong correlation with depression, anxiety, alcoholism, uh, drug addiction, etc. Absolutely. And cravings, any kind of addiction, probably sex addiction. We're gonna probably be finding all of these things correlating. And if I were to go look in PubMed, which is the medical database, I'd probably already be able to find a lot of things.

Fantastic. Fantastic.

Yeah, it's very interesting.

Well, look, it's been fabulous talking to you. I'm super excited about your book. And, um, give us the name again.

Fulfilled: How the Science of Spirituality Can Help You Live a Happier, More Meaningful Life. And CB, it is such a pleasure. I'm so happy to be here with you. You are such a beautiful spirit. And I have to say, I just look at your face and you exude joy. I just love just looking at you. You just exude joy, and which is why I've so enjoyed being on this with you, and I look forward to doing it again.

Do you know that you are the 3rd person this week that has told—

I told you that? Exactly. Exactly. So whatever you're doing, whatever you're doing, keep doing it because it's coming through loud and clear to all of us.

Well, that's wonderful to know. I love seeing people happy, and you truly represent it. I think I'm gonna move from my staunch belief that this is silly putty, and I'm going to go in depth on this spiritual part and see what happens.

I love it. I love it. Please do. And let's see what happens. Try it out. And I look forward to hearing about the results.

Great. Thank you so much. Listeners, please grab ahold of her book and be sure to read it and reach out to her and let her know. How did it work? You're on LinkedIn, right?

Absolutely. Please.

Okay. Send her some feedback. I'm sure she'd appreciate it. And she might use some of her research in her new book. Thank you so much. Thank you, Anna, for coming on. Audience, thank you so much for tuning in. And please tune in next week. Goodbye now.