Brain & Body Optimization for Powerful Negotiations with Ava Diamond

Hello, my friends, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. This show is produced by the American Negotiation Institute, and with over 5 million downloads and listeners in over 180 countries, listeners just like you have made this the number one negotiation podcast in the world. Hi, my name is Kwame Christian, and I am the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute. Here at AI we believe that the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And we are passionate about providing you with the best content that will help you to make your difficult conversations easier, both at work and at home. Lastly, I want to remind you that we offer consulting and conduct trainings both virtually and in person all around the world. Our focus is in three main areas. First, negotiation and conflict resolution. Second, leadership. And lastly, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Check the link in the description below to learn more about how we could work with you and your team. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview.

Foreign.

Thanks for joining us today.

Hi there. Thank you for having me.

It's our pleasure. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Okay, well, I consider myself a biopsychosocial entrepreneur. So what does that mean? It means that I've had some great education as a psychotherapist. It means that I took a deep dive into understanding how the brain and body work together. I've coupled it with being in the professional fitness competitive arena and focusing on addiction treatment. Long story short is that a biopsychosocial entrepreneur is somebody who looks at the science of social lives and social ways and helps people to really master their minds and bodies. So I focus on everything from mindset to movement to nutritional psychology to restoration strategies. My clients range from Fortune 500 to Fortune 50 companies to Yale, New Haven Hospital, Yale University, our military officers. I am placed at two of the top three global law firms in the world, working with lawyers, doing this kind of coaching.

This is great. Now, I want to really get to the meat of the matter early because whenever I have somebody like you who focuses on mind, body, connection, things like that, things that are not directly tied to negotiation, I always hear skeptical minds in my audience saying, kwame, why don't you just give me straight up negotiation tactics? And so I want us to really make this point really clear at the beginning. So why is it so important for us to understand this?

I am so glad that you have skeptic listeners, because that is a great question. Why? Because when we have high levels of cortisol in our Brain high at a regular chronic condition. Right. The impact of that is that parts of our brain starts to shut down. And what happens with that is that we tend to have a shift in perspective of everything that's going on around us. And believe it or not, sometimes, and I just wrote about this not that long ago for CNBC in the finance section, that when people are dealing with financial issues, the brain, when it's chronically stressed, will create a rosier picture in order. Because the brain's primary job is to protect us. That's it. Protect us from anything, physically or mentally. And so if it's trying to relieve some of the stress, it's going to try to create an upside. We don't always know that. Right. And you can imagine what that would do for negotiations. So learning how to stay in charge of your brain chemistry through simple strategies gives you the edge in negotiating because you have a more open mind, you have a clearer perception, and you have a greater ability to problem solve creatively. Is that enough of a connection for the skeptic?

I think so. I mean, essentially we could ask the skeptic this question. Hey, you want negotiation and conflict resolution strategies? Great. Do you need a functional brain to use those? Great. So let's get you a functional brain. That's really what it is. And I think the scariest thing about this is that the stress response, cortisol, all of these things, this will have an. An impact on our cognitive processing. But if we don't understand that it will have an impact, and if we don't understand how it will have an impact, then we're going to be impacted and we're going to think that we're thinking clearly when we're not.

Exactly. And that's what everybody has, bias. Our brain is like having a deck of cards. Right. Let's say it has a deck of memory cards. And bias comes from our brain, again, trying to protect us from stress of overthinking, not understanding what's going on around us. And so something happens. It triggers a memory card, and it. The brain. It's like Google search. You put in the first word and the Google search automatically pops up a whole sentence of what you must be looking for. Your brain does the same thing with memories. It limits your ability then to be exposed purely to new ideas and to understand wholly without interpretation from your history. Okay. So when I work with people, I help them to learn very simply how to lower that cortisol so they can be more effective in their perception and their thinking. We forget how much we need to do that. We don't even know. Most people don't even know, Right?

Yeah. And that's the scariest part. You think about it with just stress relief that like what we were talking about, but also sleep deprivation. Just as a society, we're chronically sleep deprived to the point that we don't eat, even recognize that we're sleep deprived because sleep deprivation has become our new normal. Speaking as somebody with insomnia, I can definitely align with that. And when you talked about the skills or tools that you use with your clients to reduce stress, can you tell us a little bit more about what those look like?

Absolutely. As I mentioned earlier, they fall into four camps. Mindset strategies, movement strategies, which is not exercise. It's not the same as exercise. Even though we all know that exercise is great for managing stress, why doesn't everybody do it? Because as you said, who has time to go to the gym all the time, right? It's the first thing that comes for many people, it's the first thing that gets tossed out of the day is that kind of self care. But I give people strategies of movement that they can do using ready, ultradian rhythm. Right. And you may have seen me write about that on LinkedIn where the ultradian rhythm is the power hours that we have in our brain, the amount of energy that we have to operate without the cortisol going up and starting to clog our thinking, so to speak, starting to kill our brain cells, literally. And it's usually about 90 to 120 minutes that we have this power hour stuff going on. And I give people two minute strategies that they can do with movement that lower the cortisol just enough that they can then continue on. Right. With having more control over fluctuating brain chemistry. So there's movement, there's restoration. Restoration is kind of what you were alluding to. And believe it or not, I don't focus on quantity of sleep. We all know the old adage, you need eight hours of sleep. Not everybody can get eight hours of sleep. Whether you're a parent or you're a professional with a job that doesn't let you. I focus on quality sleep because when I give people the quality sleep strategies, they can fall into the sleep better, have the deeper, more restorative sleep, and then wake up when they need to to do the meet the deadline they have to meet. Right. So quality versus or trumps quantity for me in this, in the restoration. But restoration is also about how do you again restore that brain chemistry for optimal functioning. You need Optimal functioning brain to negotiate. Well, whether that negotiation, by the way, is with your teenage child or your negotiation is in a courtroom or a boardroom. And then lastly, nutritional psychology. Everybody knows you're supposed to eat a certain way to be healthy, you know, whatever that way is, Mediterranean diet or whatever, fad diet or simply calorically. Nutritional psychology is about how and when do you eat certain nutrients to optimize the way you're thinking, the way your brain is functioning. People don't focus on brain diet. They focus on what do I need to eat to lose weight or to put on muscle, which I know a lot about. But that's not at all what I talk about.

Ava, as you were going through these things, I realized that I was becoming more and more disturbed. I think everything but mindset is in a good place right now. This is, for me personally, this is great. And I'm really glad that you brought up the ultradian rhythms, because they are often dwarfed in popularity by their big brother or big sister. The circadian rhythms everybody understands, like the sleep clock, but people don't recognize that we have those ultradian rhythms that go through the day. And I think this, I want to focus on that one too, the ultradian rhythms for a little bit because that really goes into not just maximizing the timing for us to do hard things and understand where our brain is at optimal functionality, but it also impacts the timing that we should consider for our difficult conversations.

Does your company invest in professional development training? If you believe that your team would benefit from a negotiation workshop, all you need to do is go to our website, fill out the workshop request form, and then we'll set up a time to chat. These workshops are completely customizable, and we've done them all around the country. Negotiation and conflict resolution skills are beneficial across all professions, but they're especially useful in procurement, purchasing, sales, sourcing, and contract management. Our calendar is filling up quickly and we even have some workshops scheduled for next year if you think you might want one. I'd suggest reaching out soon so you don't miss out. Check out the link in the description.

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Right back after this.

Okay, so first of all, I love that you talked about the timing of difficult conversations rather than work performance and productivity, because we can talk about that, but there's a different layer of consideration when we're talking about difficult conversations, whether it's in the workplace or at home, which is the emotional factor. Right. Productivity is one thing, but when you're trying to engage in something that has an emotional layer to takes more energy and a clearer mind to navigate through that. So ultradian rhythm, power hours or happy hours. Believe it or not, you can only be happy for about 90 to 120 minutes before your brain starts to say, okay, I've had enough, I need to shut down. I mean like gleefully, hysterically happy. Right? It doesn't work. And the same thing with sadness, like it really start. It's interesting. Your brain needs a break. What I tell people to do, what I teach people to do, I learned from very smart. For a little while I worked for a company that did some really great performance work with big other big companies. And so Tignum was the name of the company that I learned a lot from. I told you I learned a lot from people much smarter than me. And I just kind of assimilate it. And they talked about this strategy for meetings, for meeting with people. And I realized this has great implications for any hard conversation. And it helps you to reduce the anxiety, the stress level in your brain, the cortisol when you engage in this strategy. And it's very simple. It's about preparing for these conversations, for these. Yes. Picking a time of day when you're emotionally full, when you don't feel depleted from other things and also preparing with these three questions. The first question is how do I want to be perceived? The answer to this is not at all attached to the outcome, is not about actually what somebody else decides about you because you can't control that. It's only about how you show up to the conversation. Right. If you show up with your actions, aligning with your greatest intentions of how you want to be perceived, that is always the best that you can do. And so you reduce the anxiety because you gain the trust in yourself. So you choose the right time based on your ultradian rhythm. When you know you have the most energy and the space in your life to use. Have an emotionally charged conversation and you prepare with these questions. Question number one, how do I want to be perceived? Question number two, how do I want the other to feel? Again, you don't have control how they feel really. Right. But you can choose your words and your behaviors to align with your best intentions of how you want the other to feel. I want them to feel trust in me. I want them to feel cared for by me. I want them to feel led well by me. Right. I want them to feel empowered by me, whatever the case may be. And then lastly, what do I really need them to know? Because emotionally, when we go into a Conversation that's a challenging conversation, whether it's at work or at home, there we can often lose those golden nuggets into run on sentences, trying to convey what we think we're not really conveying quite right yet. Plus, we want to hold court. We want to keep the stage sometimes longer than we should, so we fill the space with long sentences. Yeah.

Oh, this is good. There's so much richness in this. So let me just recap it for the audience. So first, we have to think about the fact that emotions and the emotional conversations, difficult conversations, are going to require more energy. So we need to make sure that we're timing this for our peak level of energy and clarity and then preparing for these conversations, asking three questions. How do I want to be perceived? How do I want the other person to feel? And what do I really need them to know? And this is great because essentially what we're doing is we are preparing ourselves mentally and emotionally, but we're focusing on our presence in the conversation. And the presence itself is persuasive, even sometimes more so than the words that we say. But we often make the mistake of preparing strictly tactically or strictly strategically. And then we go out there trying to be like an automaton, which we're not. And then we fail under the pressure and because we haven't prepared internally for the conversation either.

That's right. That's right. And when you prepare this way, you are actually harnessing what I call healthy control.

Right.

Because you're controlling. You're focusing your control on where you actually have it. And let's face it, when we go into a negotiation, we may want to have control over the other person's decision. The intention and the goal, rather not the intention. The goal will be to have the other person collaborate with us or, you know, compromise with us or go along with us in whatever way in a negotiation. Right. And in fact, we have only control over the way we show up. Right. And if we show up with just a strategy, we're leaving the most important parts of the negotiation out of the picture.

Absolutely. It's like the classic military saying. No plan survives first contact with the other side. And so we go in with the strategy and we say, okay, I'm going to execute control. I'm going to exert control over this conversation. Then we go into the conversation and we struggle emotionally because we realize how little control we have in the conversation. And it's important psychologically. If we go back into the literature of psychology, how much perceived control you have over a Certain situation is positively correlated to emotional well being and things like that. When we think about the internal locus of control. But then when we blend in the stoic mindset with that, we recognize that we only have to control. We should only focus on controlling that which we can control. And so we have to blend those two ideologies, psychologically recognizing that we do have control, but then stoically thinking, we have to recognize that we have limited control. So we focus on the things that we can control. So we can essentially win every negotiation. That's the way that I think about it. Because if I go in and I control what I can control, I focus on what I can do and I perform the best that I can under the circumstances, that is the best that I can possibly do. And then we have to respect the other person autonomy. Autonomy to make their own decisions. But by preparing in this way. I love the term healthy control. We can exert healthy control over the situation and perform the best we can with. While minimizing the pressure that we feel in the situation.

Yes. And in. My personal goal when I go into a difficult conversation or a negotiation of some kind is to show up with my best intentions right there, right there, ready for me. Right. Visualize how it's going to happen. But the goal, while I would love for someone to just say I love what your idea is, I'm going to go with your idea. Right. My goal is to leave with that intact. In other words, getting dragged into the negotiation and misaligning my actions and my words from my best intentions will leave the most detrimental impact on me personally than not. Not winning the. The argument or the negotiation. Do you understand? So.

Oh, yes.

Yeah. Right. Because there's shame involved then, or there's some level of guilt and shame, or then there's resentment potentially. But it's all because I let myself move away from my best intentions. Right. So I'd rather leave without the end game prize of the negotiation with my integrity intact.

This is worth exploring a little bit further because it's really nuanced and I want to make sure that people are understanding this because really what you're saying is that when we think about the healthy control, all we need to do during the conversation is make sure that we are carrying ourselves in alignment. So my words and actions are in alignment with my ultimate goal. And that seems really simple. But as the conversation goes on, we become more stressed, we start thinking about different things and then essentially we lose our form. And in a lot of these difficult conversations and I'd Expand this to life in general. It's not so much about doing incredibly cool maneuvers at the negotiation table or anything like that. It's more about making sure that you have the discipline to maintain your form throughout the interaction. It's like doing the right thing long enough, and success, whatever form that might be, will become an eventuality.

Yeah. And so one of the greatest tools for staying in proper form as you're using that phrase, is the power of the pause. Too often we think we have to have the answer right away, then be reactive rather than responsive. Right. And when we do that, that's when we start to slip and slide away from. And earlier you said our actions need to be aligned with our intentions of the goal, and it's actually the actions need to be aligned with our intentions as a whole human being coming to the table. Right. Because when we move away from our best intentions, our. Our core values and our core beliefs for why we're sitting at that table, then we're left with the residue of ick, you know, when we leave. Like, who was I when I was at that table? That was. That's not what I wanted. That's not who I wanted to be. Right. So that's the integrity piece. But the power of the pause, when we learn to slow it down and attend, really listen to what somebody else is saying. Most of the time, when we're hearing what somebody else is saying and our buttons get pushed and we start to move away from. It's because we haven't given ourselves the chance to digest what they're saying and come from a place of compassion. Okay, so here's. I'm going to go back to. It's okay to say. I'm going to go back to my original idea. Right. Here's where I was coming from again. Right. And this is. And putting the conflict, the ideas that don't align, right out there in that pause moment. So right now, we're coming from these two different places. You're wanting this, I'm wanting this. Your reasons are this. My reasons are that. Okay, so let's just take a minute here, and you rethink how you want to show up again, going back to the three questions that you've practiced before the meeting. Right. What happens in this is that you earn the trust of the other person that you're actually listening and not just so attached to your desired outcome. Right. So, you know. Yeah, I think that. I think that the power of the pause to recap and to regroup is essential.

This is gold. This is gold. And you know, Eva, you are uniquely positioned to explore this element of this because people might have heard the power of the pause before, and it doesn't stop them from failing to utilize the power of the pause because it's really hard for them to put it into practice in the moment. And so. So can you speak to essentially what's happening internally that makes it so difficult for us to slow down and then what we can do to overcome that?

Absolutely, absolutely. So, again, you know, I'm certified in brain health, but because of my advanced degrees in psychotherapy, I understand the psychological and science where they intersect. Okay? So when you're in a negotiation and it's not going exactly the way you want it to. And again, going back to these memory cards and the biases that form in our mind. And bias is not a bad word. It's a way we organize life, right? So something happens, somebody says something, or something is triggered, and your brain will be going through that deck of cards. What does this remind me of? It reminds me of this time when I was disrespected. Reminds me of this time when I didn't win. It reminds me of this time when I failed. Whatever it is, right? And it will then lead your next words, and it will direct traffic right in your own brain. So what happens in. In a moment where you're feeling the tension, you start to feel the tension start to rise right in. In the conversation. And everybody has that experience in a little bit of a different way, but you start to expand your chest. People automatically do that, right? They. They take a deep breath when things start to get tense because you're preparing for the fight. You might notice that your palms get a little sweaty or you start to feel tingling in your fingers. Your brain is saying, oop, here it comes. You better prepare for fight or flight. Right? And that's the cortisol response. What happens is that people forget to triage, and they treat it with a sense of urgency. If I don't say this right now, then I'm going to lose ground, when, in fact, if you really want to gain ground, you're quiet for a minute, and you give yourself that. The grace of space, right? So you may. People may have heard about the power of the pause, but they don't know how to find comfort in it. Well, there's grace in that space, and that's the other thing to remember. So it's not just power. There's a grace. You get to put your body into this state of, I'm okay. This is fine. They have their opinions. I can take a minute to reformulate what I'm about to say. We're not going to lose ground in this minute's time. From a psychological standpoint, it's a fight or flight response. From a chemical standpoint or a brain health standpoint, it's the way your brain's trying to sort through and protect you. So some people that I work with, they actually have on their phones, they have, like, a screensaver, or they have a note on their laptop that they write. If it's a meeting like this, right, that just says pause. It just says safety, whatever the word is for them. And it has. If it says safety, it has a couple of words underneath it that remind them of their best intentions and what they need to trust about themselves to get through this difficult conversation. And it helps to lower that biological response.

This is incredible because essentially what we're seeing here is that we have the conversation itself, but there is an internal battle that's happening. And if we can't manage that, then we're going to really struggle in the actual conversation. And even just taking the time to understand the psychology, it helps us to not be as afraid and not be as beholden to those feelings that we have in the moment. Because, like you said, we have that sense of urgency that comes about because of this psychological cocktail that is brewing within us. Now we can say, okay, I understand what this is. It does not mean I need to jump in and interrupt and say my piece right now, actually, and this is my experience. I found the more that I want to say something, the more pressed I feel to say something, the less I should probably say that thing and I should slow it down in the moment.

Here's another one I learned from my incredible clients all the time, and I've had thousands of them over the years. But I will never forget this person who was going through a precarious time in his marriage, and he was also in recovery from alcoholism. And he said, you know, I heard in the rooms. And so he shared it with me. He said to ask yourself, does this need to be said right now? And does this need to. Or does this need to be said by me? And if the answer is no to either of those questions, you don't say it. Does this need to be said right now? Or does this need to be said by me?

That's good.

It's so simple. It's so simple, and it saves so many headaches, right? But I love when you said I loved it and you said that, you know, there are Basically, two dialogues always going on. The one you're having with the person and the one that's going on in your own head. Right. And so one of the things that I encourage people to think about is called meta communication. Communicating about what you're about to communicate. In other words, if it's a challenging conversation, if it's a negotiation that has emotionality attached to it. Right. It's often helpful to take the edge off the emotion simply by starting with what it's like to be talking about what you're going to talk about. In other words, we're starting this conversation, and I'm concerned. I don't want you to. I'm concerned that you will experience it as a criticism when I'm coming from this place of caring. Right. So it's a prelude to the conversation or a. You know, it's a setting the stage for where you're coming from with your emotional piece before you get into the. You know, I'm nervous talking to you about this because my hope is that when we end this conversation, we'll be in a better place, and I can't control that. You start that way, and you're automatically bringing the person closer and taking the edge off of the emotion. Right. You're saying, I'm nervous about this because my hope is that our understanding and our negotiation brings us both to a better place. And we think sometimes we can't say that we're uncomfortable with it or that we're concerned about it or that we're nervous about it, that it'll somehow tip the negotiation in the favor of the other person, when in fact, it embraces them. It brings them closer to the issue at hand and the collaborative approach to it.

This is great, Eva. And I think for the listeners, too, I hope you all are recognizing that. Of course, this will work in the business context, but the majority of your difficult conversations are going to be with family and friends, the people who are closest to you. And in the business world is going to be your colleagues that you work with day to day. The external negotiations that are more transactional in nature, those are less frequent and honestly, a little bit easier because we're more emotionally detached in most of these situations. And so these types of gems that Ava was dropping today, we have to really make sure that we're holding this close to our heart during our most sensitive conversations with the people who matter the most, because that's when emotionality will be high and performance will probably be low.

Thank you. Yes. And I'm going to go back to the whole idea for everybody, whether it's in the workplace or at home. If you don't take care of your brain, I'm on a mission to help people take care of their brain every day, just as regularly as they brush their teeth. You wouldn't go out of the house without brushing your teeth, most likely, would you? Did you brush your teeth today? Of course. Today.

Listen and listeners, listeners, you never want to lie. But if the answer to that ever is no, you cannot own that.

So always safe, right? So you wouldn't do it. You brush your teeth every day because it's so ingrained in us that you do that to protect your teeth from decay. You do that because socially you don't want to offend anybody. Right? There's all these reasons that you're attached to, yet people don't recognize that you need to brush your brain of the plaque on it, the cortisol on it, because if you don't, you're not preventing decay. And then you're also going to be impacting your social abilities because your brain will shut down in parts. And taking care of your brain is essential to negotiations so that you can think clearly, problem solve better, be creative. Right. Manage your emotions better. And the strategies are as simple as I mentioned, the two minutes. But also hydration people don't. They think, oh, if you went to school that day in high school, you know, you've heard, oh, you need eight, eight ounce glasses of water. Guess what? That is old school information. People who are over 150 pounds actually need 15 and a half glasses of water. Eight ounce glasses of water a day just to be at baseline under £150. 11 and a half glasses of water. I share that statistic because that's the kind of thing that people don't really know that simple statistic. And without, when we are 8 ounces shy, might be 4 ounces, but certainly 8 ounces shy of that number for our size. Literally, the brain starts to go dormant in parts. It's conserving energy.

Wow.

Yeah.

It's funny, Oscar Tromboli said that on an episode too. The importance of hydration. And I think this is one of those things where we need this constant reminder because it's so easy to forget being busy and whatnot. Okay, well, I'll skip this. No. And now your, your brain looks like a raisin and it's not in a good spot. So, yeah, Ava, this was great. I can't wait to have you back on to talk more. Yes. That was an invitation. Just Enough.

Thank you.

This was really good. And again, listeners, make sure you check out ava on on LinkedIn. She is always dropping gems. Awesome newsletter. Make sure you follow her there too. And before you go, can you remind the listeners know about what you're working on and how they can get in touch?

Absolutely. First of all, I'm kicking off a great speaking series, both online and workshops available for companies. I've been doing this for a long time, but I've also been working with individuals. I'm kind of focusing more turning 60 in next year and my goal is in my 60s to just be doing a lot of speaking gigs and not really working just one on one. I have a course that I'm creating and I will. If you go to my website, ava diamond mental fitness.com I'm sure the link will be attached to this. You'll see when the brain and body optimization course is going to be available for everybody and on what platform. Additionally, there's going to be a certification in brain health for mental health providers that will be available. Right now it's continuing education credits and I'm going to look for that more of that too, through different organizations. But yeah, I'm excited about that.

Yeah, this is great, Ava. Really appreciate it. Thanks again for coming on the show.

Thank you for having me.

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I'll catch you later.

My weekend was great. I got to see some magic, which is a big part of our life here. And I saw a great show in the city, so I was happy.

Nice. Where are you located?

Right about 35 minutes outside in New York City in New Jersey.

Oh, nice. Very cool, Very cool.

Where are you exactly?

Are you Chicago? Columbus, Ohio.

Columbus, Ohio. Okay, great.

Yeah, it's funny, I love when people kind of guess where I'm from. They always pick a cooler city.

You know what, though? Columbus. I had fun in Columbus because back in the day when I was I used to compete professionally in bodybuilding I would be in Columbus, right. With Arnold and his big statue and all that. And I'm actually, I did some speaking engagements with Arnold too, and there in Columbus and. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, I know Columbus a little bit. You guys have some good stuff going on.

That's cool. Yeah, I saw those, those pictures. You look that, that's so impressive that I tell you, bodybuilding is always something that I've admired, but I, I like to eat too much. I'm just in a constant bulking phase.

You know, it's an interesting. It was a glorified hobby for me that I happened to do well in. And I like to say that it shaped my mind more than it shaped my body. And that's why I ventured into. Was really from an emotional place that I got into it and it was. I left with a lot of really great information to. That's what I am. I'm a biopsychosocial entrepreneur. Right. And what I do is I am a connector and a curator of people and information. Right. So I get to meet with people so much smarter than myself and bring together all these really brilliant things. I get to learn and connect it with the people who need to hear it. So that's amazing. Thank you.

That's so cool. Okay, so on your, in your bodybuilding journey, you talked about how it was psychological and emotional for you. What do you think was the biggest payoff for you in that journey?

Yeah, well, again, it's really what I was able to glean from. From the mind body connection and then share. So I'll give you two quick answers if you don't mind, from an emotional place. The story behind the story is that my son was going. And I know you have a boy, too. I forget how old your boy is. How old is he?

I have two. Seven. Seven and almost two.

Oh, so they're little. All right. So you'll have a lot of years of potentially the parental pain of seeing your child not get what they want or not. Or not potentially. Right. The, the things that they need to go through, but it's so hard to, you know, to watch them go through sometimes. So my son had been going out for the golf team in high school and this would be the third year that he was going to try again. All the years prior, he did not make it. And I'm like, he says, mom, I'm going out for the golf team. I was like, no, no, no, no, please don't do that again. Right? I didn't say that. And, and people had been Saying to me, approaching me and saying, you should compete. You should compete, because I was that gym rat person and I was shredded. And so I said to him, instead of saying, please don't. I can't take it, I said to him, if you can keep putting yourself out there like this, then it's time for me to put myself out there and try something, you know, push myself to the next limit, overcome the last bit of shyness that I have. Right? And what better way than to get up on a stage in a freaking bikini in front of hundreds of people and to overcome shock. Wow. And this long story short ends with the fact that he did make the golf team and I did win the show. So there you go.

That's so impressive. That's so cool. Including the mom of the year there. That's. That's impressive because you're. You're showing through your actions that. That strength, that resilience and the value of daring greatly being in the arena, regardless of the. Of the outcome, you do it for yourself because you grow through the process.

Oh, I love that you said that because that's. I always talk about the prize being in the process. Right. Like, a lot of people who have gone through ordeals or people have gone through and taken on life challenges to help, you know, that they weren't sure how it was going to turn out. It's like, I don't care what happens at the end. It's what happens, you know, in the middle that shapes you. Right. The rest is frosting. And I like cake with or without frosting.

That's awesome. I love it. I love it. It's funny because people have asked me, speaking of cake, they've asked, hey, have you ever thought of competing? I was like, yeah, not for long. I just. Unhappiness associated with that cut. I tell. I told my wife, I was like, my goal is to always be within striking distance where I can. Okay, give me 12 weeks. I know I could get it together. I'm always pre complaining space phase, never in competition shape, but always just like, right, right out there. That's where I want to stay.

I love that too. Yeah, I did that for most of my life. And then it really wasn't until the pandemic. And a lot of people experienced this, but for me, it was the pan. It was a trifecta of the perfect storm of, you know, kind of making it harder for me to stay in a condition that I like to stay in physically, number one, my age. So during the pandemic, I went from, you Know, certain stage in a woman's life. I'm 59 years old, so I went from, you know, 50, whatever, 56, 57. 56 years old. I loved the way I was. I was within striking distance. It wasn't until I was 57 that I started to slide away from that. But then I had this injury that broke this finger and it can't move and I'm left handed. And so that, long story short, is that shit happens. Right?

Yeah.

And then we have circumstances that also can make things difficult. So we have to redefine the terms sometimes not give up on goals, but redefine the terms so that we're really self promoting rather than self defeating. Because it could be easy for someone like me to say, I don't have, you know, I have a four pack rather than an eight pack and that's not the way I like to be. Or I have extra meat on my body parts where I don't want them to be and what am I going to. And I can get self defeating if I went down that road. Or I can say, okay, what matters now at 59 years old, I want to have strength, mobility. Right. And so I started doing different kinds of things for fitness. And most importantly, because this is what I, I always practice what I preach. This is what I preach. I focus on taking care of my brain because. And, and the movement that I need to do to take care of my brain because if I don't do that, nothing else is going to work the way it's supposed to. And that includes weight loss. That includes simple things like weight loss. Right. If I don't really learn to exercise my brain, manage my brain chemistry, then that body fat's going to stick because that's what cortisol does. It keeps the body better.

That's true.

I don't want to get too far off into a different sub.

Oh, this is good. I love it. I love it. And let me know, tell me what you think, because this info is really. I don't talk about fitness very much on the podcast. I think it just comes up conversationally. One thing that I've been doing is taking some of the fun banter at the beginning of episodes and putting it at the back for bonus content. Would you be.

Absolutely, absolutely. I love it. Yeah.

Awesome. No, I appreciate it. Dropping gems here.

Yeah. Well, let me just tell you, I don't know where you want to focus it, but in the backdropping of a gem, let me just tell you that the other thing about fitness and when we talk about Brain health and body fitness is the power of nature. And I am working with an incredible company, particularly bringing adventures in nature to cities. To cities like using Central park and the Hudson river is where we're starting because of the incredible science that's been proven over the last five years about the impact of city dwelling on brain health and how being in nature, but then coupling it with adventure in nature gives people such a relief to prevent this kind so many of the issues that can happen when we have city dwelling burnout. Oh, yeah, yeah. So that's another, another conversation, but on the back burner, people can know about it and tap me for it because it's going to be really exciting.

I love that. Yeah. The science is indisputable. It's one of those few things where it's, it's not a situation of, you know, some minds may differ on this. No, it's, it's very, very clear. The, like living in those concrete jungles, the impact it has on you and then just adding green space, those, that, that opportunity to experience nature, it does something to you that nothing else can. And then also giving you the opportunity to experience awe, like that feeling of awe of nature. You can't really get that anywhere else. Not yet at least. And so, yeah, I'm down. I think that's really cool. Yeah.

And let me correct myself. This is, this is not new information. It's new research, you know, for mainstream. But it's been around, especially in Asian cultures for centuries. We've known this.

Yes. Well, you know how it is in the west when it comes to medicine, it has to be invasive for it to have legitimacy. And so if it doesn't, cause if it's nothing exogenous to the body, there's a little bit of skepticism. And if it's not verified by Western medicine in terms of like clinical trials, then they are incredibly skeptical. And then what ends up happening is Western science discovers things that have been known for thousands of years in other cultures.

Isn't it amazing?

I'm with you. I'm glad you're doing that. That's really important.

Thank you.