Finding Health & Happiness: Life Lessons Everybody Learns Too Late In Life | Kris Carr

What I didn't understand, especially with something like grief and loss, was how it manifests in the body. We can't amputate any of our emotions and expect to be whole. One of the things that my dad said to me, and he was, as he was getting closer to dying, he was dropping all the fatherly wisdom bombs. He said, Make your golden years now. Yeah.

Wow.

Don't put them off. Because here I was, I was retiring. I'm in my early 70s. I sold my business, thinking on, Now I'm going to spend more time with my family. Now I'm going to play golf with my brother. Now I'm going to do XYZ PDQ. And here I am dying of terminal pancreatic cancer. So you have to make your golden years now, love, every single day, not tomorrow, today. What are you going to do today to make your life more golden? And that changed everything, you know, and, and I have to also say that even though his life was cut short, the, it wasn't about the quality of time. It was, sorry, it wasn't about the quantity of time. It was about the quality because I I saw him make more golden days in four and a half years than I had seen in the 40 years that I knew him.

Wow. Yeah.

So how do we begin? There's no one specific path. What we're not gonna do is like create a blueprint. We're not gonna hack anything. Like none of that's gonna happen. But what we're gonna do is hopefully.

Inspire- Steps to be free of grief, right?

Yeah, that's not gonna happen. If I ever write that, never buy another book of mine, I'm just saying. you know, because it doesn't work like that. And we're also unique. But if there's something that we're saying and becoming more emotionally illiterate and prioritizing joy and understanding that you don't have to hold it back, it's actually too painful. Like, picture waves stacking. At some point, they're going to overtake you. So you're not more powerful than the ocean. Sorry, honey. You know what I mean? Like, it's.

But.

But can we dive through it? Yes. And so here. In addition to the things that we've already talked about, get support. For me, that was going back to therapy and I've been in therapy on and off again for 30 years. Sometimes you think, Don't I know it all by now? Do I really need to pay for this? Oh my gosh, did I need to? And then some. I was just like, Take my money! So getting that support and then understanding some of the things, the lifestyle choices that you can make that will support you on this journey. One of the things that I began to prioritize for different reasons, like I used to prioritize exercise because I was like, I like my ass to move up a little higher. I mean, I'm like, I do that in a bathing suit. I'd like my thighs to be a little toner, like, you know what I mean? Or in the beginning with my diagnosis, it was like, I should exercise because it's good for my immune system. exercise became, I need to exercise because it helps me change the channel.

Yeah. You know, as we go through life, we hit bumps in the road. You know, when you're a little kid and a baby born, everything's fine, you know, but then stuff starts to kind of go sideways sometimes. And, and you, whether it's a diagnosis of cancer, which you had when you were a young woman, or loss of family members or business disruptions, and we've all experienced these moments in life that are just so challenging, and we don't really have an map. We don't really have a map. What do we do? How do we get through it? How do we manage our grief? How do we manage loss? How do we not turn it inward into depression, anxiety and self-destructive behaviors? I mean, it's really, you know, it's really in life, you can't get through life without getting beaten up. And how do you kind of come through that on either side and be whole and happy and not shrink and shrivel and contract and live in fear. And I see this in a lot of people. Like when they hit those bumps, it's like they retreat and they kind of withdraw. But you kind of have a different view of all this. And it's really beautiful. And your new book, I just want to sort of highlight it because it's such a beautiful book. It's beautifully written. It's deeply felt. It's a tearjerker for sure. And it's called the Not a Morning Person. And that's not M-O-R. M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G. It's M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G. Braving loss, grief, and the big messy emotions that happen when life falls apart. So, I'm just so excited to talk to you about this because it's not something we really talk about much. This recent moment you had a few years ago where your father was dying, your business was having challenges, you were about to hit your 20-year milestone of living with stage four cancer, and you were sort of at a breaking point and you're like, in the parking lot, bawling in CVS parking lot. Tell us about that and what that moment was for you and how it catalyzed something good.

Yeah, thank you. Well, you know, it's called I'm not a morning person because it was the one emotion that I was really afraid to go near, Mark. And when I was newly diagnosed with cancer 20 years ago, and as you said, I've been living with stage four cancer for 20 years now, the first thing I did was run to food because food was something I could control. And I desperately felt like I needed to control something because I felt so out of control. And what a wonderful place to begin your healing and wellness journey. And you have taught me so much. I've been so blessed to be your personal friend, but also to devour all of your books and follow your career and always learn from you on your IGs and all the things that you do in the world. It's true. I'm like, what do you have to say now? I'm in. But you said something to me a long time ago in a galaxy far away, which you also teach the whole planet, which is food is information. Where I started my life and my career, my wellness life and my career was being mindful of what you're eating. And 20 years in, I'm really focused on being mindful about what's eating you. Right? Yeah.

It is not what you are eating, it is what is eating you. I had a friend who lost 20 pounds as soon as he got out of a relationship that was toxic.

Well, and that is the holistic lifestyle practice that we talk about and sometimes it goes back to healer heal thyself. And so 20 years in, I have done many incredible things and written books and had the privilege of assistant< end_header_id >assistant happening, right? And I'm at CVS because my mother, you know, my father's dying of terminal cancer. And I'm at CVS and my mom had asked me to pick up more Ensure. And I didn't consciously have these thoughts, right? We can't choose our first thought, but we can certainly work on our second one. The first thought was, how many do I get? Do I get a six pack? Do I get a 12 pack? Do I get a case? Because I didn't know how long he had to live. Wow. Wow.

Right?

And so those thoughts brought up this tsunami of grief. And I remember dropping the insurer and like, you know, running out of CVS, hoping nobody's seeing me. Of course they're seeing me. I'm acting like a nut, you know what I mean?

And I'm running to- you- are crazy sexy kids, right?

Keyword.

Yeah.

So I'm running to the car and I get there. and I completely fall apart. It's all the stuff that I had been holding back. And it wasn't just the stuff of what was happening recently because my brilliant therapist said something to me that's in the, I use in the book a lot, which is when the grief train pulls into the station, it brings all the cars. Yeah.

It's like all the stuff that's been backing up that you haven't actually faced or looked at in your life. around grief or loss or pain.

Yes. That was it. And it's all energy. And if we can think of it that way, we maybe we can have some more curiosity around it, as opposed to perpetuating the stigma of it. And so she says this, and so it's all coming, and then I allow myself to just totally fall apart. I mean, it's a mascara festival, right? It's just like there. And and I felt better. It was a moment like when the medicine kicks in. And I was like, if this feels better, even just a little bit, why have I been so hell-bent on avoiding it? And if I stopped avoiding it, what could it teach me? And then that was the moment where I was like, I'm gonna learn about grief.

Wow. Yeah. It's. It's something that. I know is uncomfortable. And, you know, humans tend to avoid pain and seek pleasure. Right? And so I really relate to what you're saying. And I actually, it was probably around the same time the same thing happened to me. I, COVID happened. I had back surgery that was sort of unexpected for a disc thing that was just debilitating with dad complications. And my marriage ended sort of relatively abruptly in the middle of all that. And I just, I was in this place of total loss. And I, and I would literally have to kind of just sit in the experience of being broken, you know, my broken back, my broken heart, and, you know, I lost my mother. recently before that, I lost my father, my sister a number of years before, and I kind of had just buried it all, man. And because, in fact, you know, covet stopped everything. I actually had the time to sit with it all. And, yeah, I I I really had to feel, and I remember would be meditating, and I would literally just start crying as I was meditating, and I just start all these feelings coming up. And so I think for so many of us, we're just we're just not familiar with how to navigate that and navigate loss and how to heal from those ruptures. You call the things we call ruptures, right? The things like divorce, accidents, miscarriage, you know, back surgery, cancer, you know, death. So how do we begin to start to heal these wounds? How do we kind of actually kind of learn from them in a way that actually allows us to kind of get a roadmap for living fully. Because, because what you describe is what I felt when you actually go through it on the other side is light, right? If you bury it on the other side is often Darkness. It, it doesn't go away. It eats at you, right? It's what eating you, you said. And it, it causes illness, it causes grief. I mean, it causes anxiety, depression and anger and all these other things that kind of come out sideways. So how do we, how do we sort we can detend those wounds and how do we kind of get a roadmap for, like you say, fully living and thriving in the next chapter after that?

Yeah, that's a great question. And we'll talk about, I know we will get into some practical tools that we can use, but I think taking that big step back, it's first and foremost for me, and I'm not a grief expert, although, you know, when I'm on to something, I'm like, I'm gonna learn everything I can about it. You're a little voracious. assistant-1: But what I learned through the process of going through this first and foremost, and also writing my book, so a lot of research, was to take that big step back. First we have to normalize the experience. And, you know, we can't amputate any of our emotions and expect to be whole. And we live, we're domesticated in a grief phobic, messy emotions, averse society. So it's normal that we're walking around, I have a chapter called Awkward Times, Awkward People.

Yeah, we'll get to that.

Yeah, it is normal that we are walking around clueless, many of us. And so we want to give ourselves grace and forgiveness because we have not been given, as you said, roadmaps for how to navigate storms of this magnitude. So I would say the first step is just to get clear that this is normal. And if we go back to your brilliance of food is information and we apply that brilliance to emotions or information, Then we can start to get curious about them. And I was talking to a doctor the other day, and what came to me was, what if we could create like the anatomy of emotions? And I was thinking about when I was first diagnosed, and I have tumors in my liver and both of my lungs, if I were to say to you, a physician, I don't like my liver and I would like it's not attractive. It's clearly not functioning properly. It's not like the other livers on the playground, you know, who obviously got better educations than my liver. And I would like you to remove it because it's just unbecoming, as my grandmother would say, about an emotion she thought a lady shouldn't partake in.

Yeah.

You would say, Chris Carr, are you out of your rocker? Like, you need your liver. Your liver's incredible. Your liver does over 400 or more, I don't know, you know, things for you. And maybe if you learn a little bit more about your liver, you will like be in awe of that organ. And maybe if you learned a little bit more about your liver, you might actually get super inspired to take care of it as opposed to judging it.

Hmm.

So big metaphor that we can apply to our emotions. If they're information, what are they here to teach us? And if we can get curious about those emotions and put on like our little wellness detective hats that we put on when we're sick, if we put on our wellness detective hats and we get curious about our emotions, then we're not going to judge them as much. We'll forgive ourselves when we mess up because we will. And we'll be like, oh, you said it so beautifully. There's ways for me to tend to these emotions so that I can feel better.

Yeah.

And I think that's the first step is like first and foremost, like applying that mindset and then allowing it to take you to the places that it will take you.

Yeah, you know, so fascinating, Chris, because, you know, we don't really have any education in our navigating our internal, emotional, psychological, spiritual worlds, right? It's like, it's just like reading, writing, arithmetic, but like being a human, no, we have no idea about how to do that, right?

I don't know.

And I just came back from India and I went to the Sea of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India. And there was a Tibetan monk, Geshe, which is like a PhD monk. And he saw that there were these kids that were living on the street and they were begging and lived in slums and it was just the worst. and he decided he wanted to do something about it and give them a place to live and give them food and give them some nutrition. And they started that, and they just kind of snowballed into building this whole school. And now he has this whole massive complex called Tonglen, which essentially is a Buddhist meditation practice of breathing in the suffering of the world and breathing out healing. It's, it's a very powerful practice. But anyway, he, the school is teaching these kids social, emotional, ethical learning. and it's not, it's not religious, it's not Buddhist, and it's, it's secular. It's, it's really secular ethics. He calls it a secular emotional learning. And I went, how these, I mean, it was the worst of the worst I've ever seen in my life. And, and these kids came from this place, but in the school, they were, they were now educated and they were talking about compassion and their emotions, and they literally had, instead of, like, you know, math on the wall, they had Here's all your emotions. Here's how you navigate them. Here's how you relate to people. Here's how you be kind. Here's what compassion is. Here's how you have disagreements. Here's what dialectical conversations are that allow you to kind of get to the truth. And, you know, it was like, I was like, what? And I, and these kids were just so amazing and so aware of the need to kind of be a good human. And it's not about Christian or Buddhist or Jewish or Muslim. It's just about how do we human better?

Right?

And we don't have that map. And so what you're talking about is starting to kind of learn and what your book, I'm Not a Morning Person, is about is about how to sort of learn to confront and to navigate things that are unpleasant or difficult and understand our own internal landscape. And how do we dance with that? And how do we play with that? And how do we actually use the, you know, the rough bits of life to actually come out the other side better. Right. And can you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah. First and foremost, I want to go to that school.

It's amazing, Chris. You have no idea.

Holy cow. That's so beautiful.

Compassion. I'm like, what? Compassion? I can never say one of those.

I mean, like, can you imagine if we learned these things earlier in life? Like, usually, like, I learned about compassion because I was such a jerk to myself. And I couldn't, I was so uncomfortable in my skin that I started to learn, I went to a monastery. I was like, you, got to check yourself in. This is too much. Like, you're not, this is not a weekend pillow experience for you, girl. You know, and so, so, yeah, that's just breathtaking. I think, we humans limit ourselves by only allowing ourselves to believe that a certain spectrum of emotions are tolerable and emotions that will be supported in society. And I think it does us a great disservice. It's like saying, here's a pack of Crayola crayons, but you can only use brown and blue and red. That's it. And you have all these other crayons. You're like, but the masterpiece will happen if I can use all of them. It's like, I don't, I love that you said that we're all going to go through it. And I think in our society, especially as we get sucked deeper and deeper into social media and technology, we think, well, everybody else has a rainbow. I want a rainbow of a life, right? But we can't have the rainbow and say, but no rain.

Right.

Oh, right. Yeah. No rain. Thank you. Bad. Rain, bad, rainbow good. Like, well, how are we going to... So, you know, going back to this idea of the big emotions, one of the things that I didn't realize is that, I mean, I knew this to some on some level, but not until I really had to go decided to say yes to this adventure, let's say. So saying yes to the adventure of exploring the harder parts of my life and myself, my emotions, I realized that the big emotions come with something like grief. So when I was in the storm of my grief and really trying to avoid it as best as I could, what would also come forward was past trauma, what would also come forward was rage, what also came forward was shame. And so, it's like it's coming forward, so you can either continue to smush it down, but there's also emotional physics.

Yeah, emotional physics. Wow, what a concept.

I just came up with that recently. I was like, Mark's gonna love this. Well, you know, we think about emotional anatomy, that's one, but emotional physics is like, if it doesn't come out one way, it's energy, it's gonna come out another. And coming out another could be, you know, in my past life, It would come out through drugs, it would come out through heavy drinking, it would come out through toxic relationships, it would come out through either explosions or implosions. And none of that would make me feel happy, healthier, or more vibrant. And so, I said, well, what choice do you have? Like, you can continue down this path, or you can take another path. And the other path, actually, in some ways, it seems harder until you actually surrender to it. And through that surrender of saying, like, all parts of me are welcome back. And I love you and I'm going to sit with you and we're going to figure this out and we're not going to do it by ourselves. Right? So help, just like I would say, you're the CEO of your life and you have your well-being and you want to build a medical team and you're going to hire and you're going to interview and you're going to fire and you're going to find your second in command. And you don't have to know at all. They do, but you have to know enough to know when they suck.

So basically, the first part of your journey was creating, you know, save my ass technologies.

Yes, sir.

The second part is save my heart technologies.

Save my heart, save my mind technologies and say, okay, who's on my team here? Because these are places that are scary and I want to go, I want to navigate them with support.

Yeah, you know, a few years ago, as a consequence of all this loss and breakdown and physical, emotional challenges that I was in, I decided to really go deep. As opposed to turning away from it, which I normally would do in overworking and writing 19 books and changing the world and being Mark Hyman, I decided to stop. I just pulled the plug and it was COVID, so it was kind of easier to like scale down and to just really go into the grit of the emotions and the feeling and so much stuff came up and I realized that, you know, I really had never dealt with my childhood. I just had like, oh, just a flesh wound, you know, just kind of move on and, you know, it's okay. It was like not that bad, you know, I didn't, I know, I wasn't, you know, beaten with hooks and locked in closets and so what could be bad. But I realized that, you know, there was a lot of things that happened in my childhood whether the rageaholic father incest with my sister, my mother using me as her therapist because she was in a bad second marriage. And, you know, just, just, I never got to be a really a child and to actually have a happy childhood. And there was so much grief around that, so much loss, so much taken away. And I remember literally just, like, actually having to go into that. And it, it was almost like physiological, you have to talk about emotional physics. Like it was. physiological. You talk about experience in the CVS parking lot where you actually felt the relief after that. And for me, it was like something just got unlocked and in all this fatigue and stress and, you know, just kind of weight, kind of dislodged. And it was like all of a sudden it was like, you know, a thunderstorm comes and it's dark and the clouds banging and the thunder and the lightning, and then it just, like, goes away. It's, like, fresh and clear and bright and, like, you know, magical. And it. It's kind of felt like that. It was, like, weird to kind of have so much pain and. And kind of feel all of it and. And understand what happened to me and then get to the other side of it, feel that grief and loss and, like, kind of move through it and have this almost ecstatic experience on the other side. It was a little. surprising, but I was happy it ended up like that. But it's kind of what you're talking about. It's like the areas where we're unhappy or depressed. And I think I kind of want to dive into this next part where you talk about in your book, this is really this epidemic we're facing of anxiety and depression, you know, the diseases of Despair, the suicide, the drug addiction, alcoholism. We've all living in this sort of state of heightened alertness and stress, and. And it really causes huge damage to our bodies, you know, to our immune system, to. our hormones, our adrenals, our resilience. And, you know, and we don't really have a map for how to navigate out of that. How do we, how do we sort of understand these emotions of fear and anxiety and depression, things that are so rampant? How do we kind of learn what they have to teach us and use that as, as a way to kind of move through this, this sort of messy emotions that can get us to the other side?

Yeah, I love that you I'm going to go there in a second, but I love that you brought up fatigue because what I didn't understand, especially with something like grief and loss, was how it manifests in the body. So I didn't understand the connection between my brain fog and grief. I didn't connect understand the connection between my extreme fatigue and my lack of appetite and grief and just even Understanding some of that again, Likea, when we learn the landscape a little bit more, you can say, 'Oh, this is grief, this is actually normal', but I I'm the first one's going to be like, What what how do I have to change my diet, Letm get a blood test? What were are the next seventy seven supplements I need to take? Like, ba,ba, papa, It's it God be my thyroid callll Mark, Mark, I need to get a thyroid check You know, And maybe that's true. But I think those are the obvious places to go. The what we're talking about are the less obvious places to go that have very interconnected, impactful, impact, so to speak. And so, like, for example, fear and anxiety, you know, we take every chapter in the book handles a different emotion or experience that you may face when the rug gets pulled out from under you. They're not all of them. They're the ones that I included in the book that I can speak to firsthand. So with fear and anxiety, I used to think, Mark, that I was a very fearful person. And maybe that's not something I projected on the outside, but it's what I felt on the inside, certainly coming from my own childhood wounds and my own, the traumatic impact of being diagnosed at 31 and, and living with cancer for 20 years.

Right.

So it's very high. You're not 50.

Are you?

I'm 52.

Come on.

I just turned 52.

Yes. It's true.

It's true. Yeah. Well, I'm grateful for it though, that's for sure. Because what's the alternative?

Exactly.

Right.

Better on the side of the grass for the moment.

Yes, I'm going to hold off on the dirt nap, but you got to have a sense of humor when you talk about this stuff, right? Because it's tough stuff. So we have to bring levity and lightness to it. But anyway, so I thought I was a very fearful person because I tend to be more hyper vigilant. So I like to control and where does that come from? That comes from my own past traumatic experiences in childhood. And, you know, and I am adopted. So my biological father left when I was conceived. And so my chosen father, Ken, who raised me from nine on, to was a huge part of healing, of participating in healing in that wound. Is it completely healed? No, not all wounds completely heal, right? And that's what what we learned. But I think what can happen is, is that all these beautiful experiences and all this incredible development builds around that wound, like joy happens around that wound, my marriage happened around that wound, you know, like my friendship with you, like the wound still exists, but I have so many wonderful other things that are also true. And again, we live in this sort of like black and white society where it's either one or the other. And I think that's probably the biggest thing that holds us back. And so just going back to the idea of fear and anxiety, fear is actually kind of simple. It comes on in an instant, it has a beginning, middle, and end. Both of these emotions are designed from an evolutionary perspective to keep us safe. That's it. So we do not need to judge them. We can actually thank them. Thank you, fear, because it made me get up and go when the lion was chasing me. Thank you, fear, when a deer jumps in front of my car and I swerve really quickly and then the stress worms are flooding through my body and then I am going to have a hangover because it takes a while for me to return to some sort of homeostasis after that. Thank you, fear. Anxiety, on the other hand, is the fear of what could happen in the future, what may or may not happen. and so a lot of us who maybe think we're fearful people, we might be more anxious people and we can say, okay, let me learn more about the anatomy of anxiety. Am I finding myself ruminating in this moment? Am I talking to my friend Mark? But really, I'm someplace else. And in that someplace else, I'm telling myself a effed up story about What's going to happen after this call? Because I did not send that email on time. And all these other things that we are actually living some sort of chaotic horror story dream. And we are not actually in the present with our emotions, with our well-being, with our relationships. And so even just being able to diagnose some of that and say, Wait a minute, I am going to catch myself in this moment. I might even give that story that I'm telling myself a funny name just to like make me giggle. And then to, you know, all of the wonderful things that you could teach us is like, well, what are some of the tools to bring me back to this moment here and now that can also soothe my nervous system and bring my brain back online? Because when we're in those places, our brains are offline.

Well, you know, a lot of us try to go around the feelings, right? Instead of going through them. So the only way out is through, right? The only way out is through the, the facing directly and feeling the, the reality of whatever is happening to you and, and actually having a way to metabolize it so that it doesn't actually end up causing illness. And I think, you know, as a physician to me, you know, this is one of the sort big unexpressed things in medicine. And, you know, we kind of give sort of a nod to stress being a factor. But, you know, it's not just the stress of, you know, living in the modern world. It's not just the stress of work and kids and responsibilities. It's all this unmetabolized emotion and unprocessed experiences and feelings and loss and, and, you know, when I look at my own life, I'm like, you know, I've actually gone through, you know, horrible first marriage, an alcoholic, single father, you know, back surgery at 32, chronic fatigue at 36, you know, mercury poisoning, second marriage, I mean, just one thing after the other for so long. And, you know, I could kind of easily see myself being kind of shrunken and depressed and disabled and, and, you know, by literally just leaning into the experience of the pain of life, I'm not running away from it, but actually, and I think you said working with your team of, you know, save your ass Technologies team or save your mind and heart team, it's like save our soul, right? It's really about saving our souls and, and getting free. so we can actually have an authentic, direct experience of life that's unmediated by the kind of unresolved, unexpressed, unfelt, unprocessed emotions. And what's so beautiful about I'm Not a Morning Person, your book, is that it sort of normalizes this and it actually helps us to kind of think of practical ways that we can start to do this and through your own stories and and, and your own experiences, you've been able to actually get to the other side. Right. So a lot of us, you know, have this, and, and I'm sure many people listening around, well, that sounds good, but, like, what the heck do I do? Like, how do I, how do I get to the other side? How do I, you know, I, I had all this pain, all this suffering, all this loss, all this challenge in my life, and we all do. How do I, how do I find my way? And can you kind of talk about some practical ways that people can start to sort of move through this instead of having to sublimate it with drugs or sex or food or depression or anxiety or whatever the heck we do, Netflix bingeing.

That's my drug to your. It's better than some of the other things I used to do. That's what we're talking about. Well, I want to just start by saying that you, I know, We have been friends for so long, so I have been part of your life during some of these chapters. One of the things that I love about you, and I imagine that your followers will instantly realize when I say this, is you have a light-filled energy. You have an energy that exudes joy at the cellular level.

Thank you, Chris.

You do. You are so filled with light. And I think that is one of the reasons why so many millions of people gravitate toward to. And so I think you are an example of, yes, a lot of trials and tribulations can happen in your life, and you can navigate them, and they can grow you deeper, and you can be super successful, and you can really still love life. And so just you even being here shows me that that is possible for me too. And another thing about you, which is so fun, is you prioritize joy.

Yeah, I do.

You do. And I'd say that joy is one of the most underrated medicines that we could prescribe for ourselves because it helps us at the physiological level. You could tell about all those things. It helps our mental well-being, our physical well-being, our immune system. And the last thing sometimes we think that we even deserve, like we would feel guilty if we were to prioritize joy is when we're going through a tough time, especially with, let's say we're a caregiver and we're helping with end-of-life care for a family member or partner.

-Like you were with your dad.

-You could say, oh gosh, I feel so guilty to take this moment for myself and prioritize a little joy. That is the opposite behavior that we want to implore you not to do that because for me, it does not have to be this big, huge thing. If I do not go to Great Adventure, it is not going to be joyful enough. It is like, no, that is not what it is. For me, it could be I am feeding my hummingbirds. I have three feeders. I have this naughty little bully male hummingbird that will chase all the ladies around. And I have to go out there and keep the peace with the gals and the little bully. And they know me and they come chirping, chirping, chirping around my head. And it is just a moment of sheer joy for me. So I know I've gone on and on and on and we can come back to other things, but I realize it's probably time for me to pass the microphone back to you.

No, no, this is so great. I mean, I think, I think, you know, you're right. Everybody has to find their own path to navigate toward the, the experience, the feeling, the processing, the metabolizing of challenging and difficult emotions that, that come up in the course of going through the trials and tribulations of life. And, you know, I, you know, I think many people find, you know, life coaches or therapy or workshops or just a good friend, you know, who, you know, can really just deeply help you see what you can't see. Or there's programs like the Hoffman Process, which is something that, you know, is, is kind of like a, I think, emotional intensive care. It's like the ICU for, you know, like, where, you know, you can let all the, all the fluids out, you know, and all the emotions out and, and, and actually face things that you easily do on your own. So I think it's an important conversation, Chris, because bringing this forward for people, helping them to kind of normalize it, to understand that we are, you know, we are not going to get free until we understand, like you said, our emotional physics, until we understand the things that are, you know, turning in on us. So if you are experiencing depression, if you are experiencing anxiety, if you are experiencing things things like food addiction or alcoholism or drug abuse or any of these things, they're all ways that we turn against ourselves instead of actually meeting the feelings. And it's so hard to meet those feelings that we don't have, we don't have the constructs or the systems or the structures in place in our society to do this easily. And it's actually, it's only seems worse than ever. Like we see, you know, and I, like I said, I just got back from from being in Nepal and India and, you know, it was a Buddhist culture there in some of these places. And they have a very different frame of life. And in even the most challenging situations, there's joy and there's a meaning of life quite differently. And I think because they do get taught about these concepts as part of their culture and we don't. So, you know, in the book, Chris, you do have sort of a little bit of a roadmap where you talk about some of the five pillars of wellness, which really help us to kind of deal with the emotional piece too. I'm glad you talked about your mind and your thoughts being so important and how to actually influence everything else. But I'd love you to sort of talk about these five areas that you frame in the book around our wellbeing and what the practices are. What are the pillars of the practices?

You know, as you were saying, in when we're going through difficult times, this is a perfect time to double down on our self care. And you probably know Dr. Judd, Dr. Judd Brewer. He he wrote, he has a great book about anxiety, and he talks about how it can actually be something that's habitual, you know, like every habit has a trigger, a behavior and a reward, or a result, you know, because not all rewards are actually rewarding. So let's say we're really struggling. And so when we're struggling, we want to like drink a glass of wine every night because it's going to help us like, I don't know, just self-soothe for a minute in some way. But we know that the result of that night after night or from night or, you know, multiple glasses of wine or whatever it is, I'm just giving that example actually starts to maybe impact our, our, our mental health, we start to feel more depressed, we're dealing with brain fog and all these types of things. And so it's like, I think that the, the tools that we sometimes reach for that are less productive, they're good intentions gone wrong, right? You're not doing it because you're weak, you're doing it because you're looking for help, right? But sometimes we're looking for help in places that don't actually provide the help that we need. And so Going through difficult times, I think that's when we can double down on our self care, but in a different way. So when we talk about the pillars, it's just my way of distilling the, I would say the principles of a healthy lifestyle practice, which is about being mindful about optimizing what you're eating, what you're drinking, what you're thinking, and how you're resting and renewing. And, you know, that kind of rests on a strong foundation of stress reduction. Those things actually help to reduce inflammation. And, but the key word is optimize. The key word is mindful. And I think what can happen is we get really hard on ourselves. We want to get it right, and we want to do it perfect. And if we don't do it perfect, we think we're failing in our healthy lifestyle practices. And I would say, you know, what. What you did when the chisel was hitting the fan for yourself is, like, so, so, so essential. It's like, we gotta slow it all down. you know, what can we handle at this moment? We are not going to be at full capacity, nor should we expect ourselves to. And so what, what can we prune? What needs to be let go of? How can we make more time and space for our own processing and healing and self-care especially if we're caregivers, because then we're already stretched thin, right? And so I like to say, first and foremost, is like lower the bar.

Yeah, lower the bar.

Lower the bar. Good enough is good enough. Yeah.

Like expect less from yourself is what you're saying. Which is sort of the opposite of our culture, right?

A little bit because look, when we expect so much of ourselves, like let's just break it down. Let's make it really obvious. So the pillars, like if I'm at optimum, like I'm working the pillars, the lifestyle might look a little different. But let's say I'm going through a divorce or let's say I'm going through my own diagnosis or the loss of a loved one, I've just lost my job. It shocked me. My boss kicked me in the teeth and fired me for no reason. Let's say that just happened. I don't feel like eating or I feel like eating the whole planet, you know, it's like one of the, and so for me, it's going to be like, I don't feel like eating. And so what am I going to do? Well, I got to eat and I.

Might be going for the three pints of Hagen Dazs. Like chunky monkey.

You want some chunky monkey, right? So like, I'm going to say, well, you know what? I don't have the energy. I'm completely, I'm so sad. I can't believe how sad I am. I'm going to make myself a smoothie because that takes very very little time. It's got the good fats and healthy proteins and, you know, all the good stuff. Your people know. I don't even have to say. But that is a commitment I'm going to make to myself. I am going to drink water. That is a commitment I'm going to make to myself. That's what I'm saying about lowering the bar. You know, you might open your, your pantry and see your 77 bottles of supplements and say, F you. I'm not, I can't. For whatever reason, at that moment, you're like, I can't, you know, but. What are the three things in there you probably should be taking right now? Talk to Mark, he'll tell you. But lower the bar because if it's so high, you'll probably do nothing. And if you do nothing, you're going to feel worse. So it might not be that you're going to go to the gym and do all of the big things that you usually do with your trainer. But for me, if that's you, for me, it's like every single day, as my grandmother say, by hook or crook, I'm going to take my walk after work. It's a 30-minute walk. I'm not doing it to lift my ass to the sky. I'm doing it to release my day and get some movement.

-Effy: yeah.

-Justin: and so what I'm talking about is practical wellness that strengthens this lifestyle medicine that you so beautifully teach us about.

-Effy: yeah. I think it's true. And I think, you know, what I've learned as a physician and as a human being. And I heard Tony Robbins talk about this once and it was such a powerful concept, which is learn how to change your state.

Yes. Right?

Learn how to change your state, whether it's yelling and screaming, jumping up and down 100 times, going for a run, jumping in the cold river, you know, standing on your head, whatever it is, there are ways to change your state. And it's, it's, it is emotional physics. And so I've learned that, that I actually have a channel that I can get to. It's a different Channel by, by actually doing some simple practices that access my kind of emotional realm and help to resolve some of the sort of emotional distress by kind of physical means, right? So, I've learned all these practices and I talk and write about them, but maybe it's like a cold shower, you know, like in the morning, just like step in an ice cold shower. That'll change your state, right?

Yes, it will very much so.

Or go in a sauna or go for a run or do 10 push-ups or, you know, do some kind of process where you're actually changing your physiological state. And it's an incredible medicine because it discharges a lot of the stress. Because what we're talking about is whether it's grief or whether it's anger, whether it's anxiety, depression, these are all states of stress. And so it's a physiological process. And as a doctor, I deeply understand what the physiology of stress is. But as a human being, like I can understand it and it's still gonna, you know, mess me up unless I actually learn the tools and the techniques, whether it's having my morning smoothie, right?

Yeah.

So for me, it's like if I'm in a bad way and I, and when I was, when I was going through the divorce and the back surgery and a broken heart and my life kind of falling apart and, you know, having just lost my, most, all my family, close family members, my nuclear family, I, I actually set myself up where I would, you know, do these practices no matter how crappy I felt or how depressed I was or how much grief I was experiencing. I was like, okay, I'm gonna wake up and I'm gonna journal for a half an hour and just like get out everything. Then I'm gonna kind of work out or go for a bike ride or jump in the ocean or, you know, I had a set of practices that I would do and I'm gonna have my smoothie and I'm gonna eat these vegetables. And, you know, it kind of worked. And I didn't mean I wouldn't sit and meditate and cry, but I was actually able to move through it. And it helped me not to kind of get ossified in the state. And I think our emotions tend to get ossified. And unless we kind of learn how to, you know, break them up and change the state we're in. And this is really why I think your book is so important, because it helps us to see the, the greater context of it's, hey, it's okay that things fall apart. Stuff happens to all of us. But, but how do we actually navigate that? And how do we use some simple practices and tools to actually fix it? And it's not that, it's not that hard. It's like what you're eating, it's what you're drinking, it's what you're thinking, it's how you're resting, how you're renewing all the things you talk about, the pillars in your book. And I, I think, you those simple practical things are not overwhelming. They're really accessible to all of us. And, you know, it's, it's like a, it's kind of like the medicine that we're missing. Right. I I I I as a doctor, you know, I, it's hard to treat diseases of Despair. Right. You, we've got to find a different way. And, I mean, maybe if you all went to that Tongland School in India and learned social, emotional, ethical learning. you know, like we'd be okay, you know, but we're not, we have to kind of, you know, go back to school, really. And, and your book is, in a way, a curriculum for us to kind of relearn how to be in relationship with our feelings, our emotions, our, our hardest, you know, most difficult things that we have to face in life.

Thank you for that. You just said so many wonderful things. And, you know, these are the prac, this is like the work boots of how to get how to get moving when you don't want to be moving. And I'll just take a step back real quick and say, you know, sometimes it just begins with courageous acknowledgement of saying, this is where I am right now. And that's why the first step of that emotional literacy is so helpful so that you can understand where you are and then actually say it. Because, you know, when we think about diseases of despair, we think about loneliness, we can be in community and still feel lonely.

Why?

Because we're actually not sharing the truth of what we're actually experiencing. And we do share the truth of what we're experiencing. It gives permission for somebody else in our community to say, well, you know what? I'm very sad, too. And that creates that deeper bond because we do need each other. It's very hard to lone wolf difficult times. And yet when we're in difficult times, what do we do? We tend to withdraw. And so I'd say just even being able to, here's an example. I was in a meeting the other day and somebody asked me how I was doing and I said, I'm sad.

Not something you say in a meeting.

No, no. And I'm not saying that you should, like, I'm not giving you, like, go tell your boss you're sad. You know what I mean? But I'm in a meeting and I said, I am sad. That was such a huge win because what I was doing is saying, you,'re asking me how I am and instead of saying, I'm fine, everything's great, Hey, great. It's like, I'm sad. Yeah. And, and what would life look like if we were actually more honest with each other? What would life look like if the next time you cried in front of somebody that you cared for, or maybe some, some, you know, colleagues or friends or people that you don't even really deeply know, but for whatever reason, you were moved in that moment and you cried and you didn't say, I'm sorry. you just said, thank you for, you know, holding space for this moment. First of all, everybody would be like, whoa, what kind of stuff does she take? That's amazing. Like, that was brave. It was brave. What was so brave about it? It was just being with the truth of the feeling. And for you, it could be just starting with naming it. What am I feeling right now? Like, what would it be like to start your day and write this question for yourself. How am I? And then, and then, like, literally free form and let yourself actually know how you are. That's where we're going to start before we even put the work boots on. If you just developing that relationship of how am I? Well, I'm. I'm this and I'm that and. Oh, you know, it's just even getting in touch with those emotions because we can give you lots of tools. box breathing, there's mirror work, there's so many that I write about a lot of the practical things in the book.

And that's not box breathing isn't like being in a box and breathing in a box. No. I just let people know. It's a technique of actually holding it, breathing out.

Very good. You don't need that mess in the comments.

Yeah. But anyway, you told me to go in a box.

Yeah, no, that's not it. But let's make it, let's simplify it all and start with the truth of where we are.

Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful. You also in the book you shared, after your father died, you took a beautiful walk with your mom on the beach and that that was really profound for you. And then it was.

You know, A.

Moment that it was, you know, on Valentine's Day, it was your 18th year cancer-versary, you call it. It was a few days after your dad died. And, you know, tell us about the walk and what happened. And you kind of had some kind of message from your dad. And I think that would be very meaningful to share.

Yeah. You know, I have to say, I have a very feral, fluid, fickle relationship to faith. and I like, you know, alliteration, obviously. I I've had. I think, like, everything. I question life very rigorously, and. And I was going through a time where I was really questioning if there was anything Beyond this, even though I know that energy doesn't die. It transforms, and I believe that's the same with. you know, but I can get very cerebral very quickly. And I, we were going for a walk on the beach, we're both so soaked in grief, we're in shock, really. And we had an incredible experience through his passing and being present with him. And I learned so much from the hospice nurses and doctors and like, I'm no longer at the place of like really being afraid of my own death as as a result of going through this, which was what a gift. But we're walking and I'm like, Dad, if you're there, I could really use a sign. A little further out, there's nobody on the beach. I see these two long stem roses standing at attention. And he would have sent me red roses for Valentine's Day, because he often did. There was one for me and it was one for my mom. And the crazy part was is that beforehand, my husband had gotten me roses, but he was like, I don't know what to do. Should I get your mom roses? Is that gonna be weird? Is that gonna remind her of her loss? I said, Look, if you're so stuck on the roses, they're not yours to give. And so here we are. And I was like, Mom, it's Dad. And we go running to these roses and it was just such a beautiful moment whether, I don't know, again, I don't know how it works and I'm very open to the mystery and I'm so excited. You know, I think we'll really know when we know. But it was, it just filled my heart with hope and possibility. And we got back to the car and I, we were in the parking lot and I could see this little apartment complex and there was a man getting ready to watch a movie, you know, he's like in his lazy boy, big screen TV that I can see and I see Netflix come on. And the title card of the movie that he's about to start watching is called Surviving Death. And I'm like, the signs are coming fast and furious. All right, Dad, here's the situation. And so I think the point is what I've done since then is really it's given me an opportunity to not only strengthen the faith of my knowing, but to build to build a new relationship with the people that I love who are no longer here. And so that relationship continues and making you can even say like, I'm going to make my life a treasure hunt. I'm going to look for signs, signs that I'm in a loving universe, signs that, you know, I'm still in relationship with people who have passed that are still a big part of my heart. And when you start to make your life a treasure hunt, you'd be surprised how many treasures you see.

Yeah.

And so that was a big aha for me, as was the making your golden years now and then saying, okay, well, how am I going to do that? It's not just about the wonderful people I want to have in my life or the experiences I want to have, but it's also about what kind of nose am I going to say now? What is the perspective this has given me? And how do I embrace fully alive living and really live more in alignment with who I am so that I can continue to share the truth of that and also blossom deeper into that person. And that means that there's some things that probably will fall apart. Like sometimes when things fall apart, there's a domino effect because there needs to be. Yeah.

You know, it's like Leonard Cohen, right? It's like, you know, the crack is where the light gets in, right?

Yeah.

When things are cracked open in our life, It's often the most juicy moments. It's the moments of healing, of repair, of learning, of discovery, of kind of getting to the next quantum level of our own emotional, spiritual evolution. It's hard, it's not fun sometimes, it's painful, but it also is kind of juicy. It's like we kind of push away the things that are uncomfortable, right? We avoid pain and we see pleasure as just human nature, right? But it actually undermines our ability to actually feel the pleasure. It's kind of paradoxical as we bury the pain and the grief and the loss and the whatever we're feeling and we don't go into it, it actually causes more pain. It's kind of this weird paradox and actually going through it and meeting it and facing it and experiencing it. and breathing through it and getting the help. Like I said, you said it very well. You can't do this on your own. You need a team, right? And that's, it's a hard thing for people to kind of get in this life because we all want to sort of not feel those feelings. But actually, your book is an invitation to think about it differently. It's an invitation to meet those feelings, to go through the grief, to go through the loss, to face it all, and actually to kind of emerge through it free. It's like, I I I I I it's like, like you sort of said it, like when you were in the parking lot and you had this moment, and afterwards there was something that felt light or free in you. You know, I was talking to a friend last night in my men's group. We've men's group of, you know, friends we've been have for 40 years. You know, it's like, so we know each other really well. And, you know, he's talking about about, you know, the sense of, you know, when his mother died and how, you know, the, the undertakers came to take her away and the grief he felt and the, you know, the sobbing and afterwards how, how much lighter he felt and how much Freer he felt. And I think that's true for all of us. Like, if we go into it on the other side, it's like, it's like climbing a mountain. You know, it's, like, so hard to get to the top, and then you're like, oh, and then it's like, and then it kind of gets easy on the way down. So I think you've climbed a lot of mountains in your life, Chris. You've climbed the mountain of your own cancer thriving, which is amazing. It's like 20 years. And I've been with you a lot through most of that journey. You have. And the loss you've shared about your dad and other things that we've all gone through, it is such a gift. Your being on the planet is a real gift. Your book is a gift. and I wonder if you have any final thoughts or words you want to share with our audience? Yeah.

Well, first, thanks for having me. This is such a highlight for me to be with my dear friend and mentor, Mark. I would say just give yourself grace. And as much as possible, when you allow yourself to become more curious to explore the conversation that we're having today is to also to make sure that you are very compassionate with yourself. But as we've been talking about, this is the path, right? It's so easy to say, you know, we are in the personal development world in many ways. And, you know, I see the trends where people are talking about the creating their best life and manifesting and all these wonderful things, like who doesn't want that we want to attract the abundance into our life and so on. I do. But I think that this is the groundwork because sometimes when we're doing that work or we're searching desperately for ways to do that, it's kind of like putting lip gloss on a problem, right? The problem is still there. And so by being courageous enough to say, I'm going to go to some of these deeper places, it's almost like we unlock the potential for the lives that we want to live. And you keep mentioning the beautiful word freedom. I mean, that's just such a core desire of mine and of each and every one of us. And we may never be completely free of the pain, and that's normal, too. It's not a failure. But I believe that we can be free of the fear of the pain and the barrier it creates to fully alive living.

If you love that last video, you're gonna love the next one. Check it out here.

And I think It goes to the fact that we dismiss symptoms that are seemingly vague, right? Fatigue, I mean. I'm tired.

I'm a little depressed. I've got some function in sex. My skin's a little dry.

My hair's thinning.