Healthy Mindset | Dr. Sal AbiEzzi, M.D.

Appreciation, the power of appreciation, that's something I really want you to adopt in your life, whether in work or family or friends, is to really give appreciation. It turns out that you have to do that 5 times for 1 time to give like a negative piece of advice to somebody. So that's something a lot of times we forget about in today's world, is to really show genuine appreciation and do it frequently and do it genuinely. Healthy mindset, that was the 4th pillar. The brain is a very complex organ system. Left, right brain. You have the analytical brain, the emotional brain. We went back to the forefathers of a healthy mindset, and there you have Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You have to meet their basic needs— food, nutrition, sleep is on there, safety— and then relationship comes into that play. Very important. This is an integrative model that's adopted by Duke University. You see also motion, nutrition, Again, we see relationships pop up as very important, and this idea of purpose and meaning. This is the Blue Zones. Do you know the Blue Zones? Who knows the Blue Zones? So this is a book that was written maybe a few years back, and since then it's become a movement in the United States. This researcher and journalist looked at the places on Earth where people live to be 100 on average and were very healthy. And he dubbed them the Blue Zones. And they are the Mediterranean Basin. You have Italy, Greece. You have Costa Rica. You have Okinawa, Japan. And Seventh-day Adventists in Loma Linda, California. So there are different gene groups. They all were the same kind of latitude as California. So it seems like sun, close to the water was the other. But these were kind of the highlights of the Blue Zones, is to be more connected, more in tune with nature, which is again something we're challenged with today, to have purpose and meaning. Downshift, all had a little bit of downtime to recharge and recover. Eating until you're only 80% full. So again, like restricting your caloric intake. Being connected to a tribe or a group. Spirituality. And so forth. So I started actually reading a lot of books to try to understand more about the healthy mindset. And again, relationships kept popping up. This is another great book. It talks about the Grant Study. So the Grant Study was done in 1928, believe it or not. It went that far back. It were Harvard freshmen. They were mostly white men. that were followed across time until today. So we're talking about 70, 80 years. And the more fundamental— and they looked at health determinants, what determines good health. Relationship was the number one determinant of good health. This is research from Susan Pinker. She's a psychologist. Social integration, close relationships, top of the list in terms of longevity, much more important than smoking or drinking. Or exercise for that matter. This is a great book. I recommend that for all of you to read called Never Eat Alone. And I love the quote from that book in his introduction. It goes by, what determines your success, your longevity, your health, your belt size, your wallet size is your relationships. So a great quote from that book, Never Eat Alone. Talks about building and fostering close relationships at home and at work. Let's fast forward to another aspect of a healthy mindset that I saw in the readings that I've done is nature, connecting with nature. And a specific study comes to mind talking about innovation is a researcher out of Utah took students like you into nature backpacking. It took about 3 days for them to really connect. And through that experience being in nature, A lot of ideas came to mind. allowed them to innovate at a higher level. And there were ways that he tested that. So sometimes you want to be with people, relationship, but sometimes having that little bit of that solitude to reflect inward. So nature is important. Laughter and play. So I'm glad to see that you again did a little bit of that last week. Sounds like you did a lot of play. Very important. Sometimes we forget that as we get older, that that's really critical for us to connect with each other, bond with each other. and a source of creativity. And music, singing, and dancing. So that also, in the readings I've done, suggests that it lifts you to a higher plane, allows you to reach a higher level of mindset. So we're going to do another exercise called the dabke. So who knows what the dabke is? So this is a communal dance. It comes from the Middle East. It's something that I want to share with you today. So we're going to form a circle. And we're going to dance the dabke all together. Let's go, Alex. Let's go. We're going to go around. We're going to go full circle. And I'm going to join you right here so that you'll hold hands. Let her rip, Alex. Okay. So again, this is a superactivity. Why? Because engaging our senses, music elevates you to a higher plane, but also we're connecting with each other. So this is very important. Play and enjoy along this journey. A lot of times as we get older, we get too serious, too bogged down in whatever we're doing. Forget about that. Very important for our health. A lot of readings I've done talked about the mind. You think of how the mind can take you to dark places. So this comes from a book called Change Your Brain, Change Your Mind. It's actually written also by a Lebanese-American psychiatrist called Daniel Amen. Probably— I don't know if you've heard of him. But he coined this term automatic negative thoughts. And I love that with my kids. I tell them sometimes I talk to them and say, hey, hey, stop with the ants. I call them the ants because why? These ants cloud your brain, cloud your judgment. They can invade and cloud people's brains and their judgment. You need to recognize them and squish the ants. So what are these automatic negative thoughts? Always-never thinking, negative thinking, focusing on the negative, thinking with your feelings, guilt feelings, labeling— he's bad, he's good, he's ugly, he's tall, he's short— mind reading. Sometimes you think whatever the other person is thinking, but maybe it's totally different. The blame game. So thinking with your heart. This is a story. This is one of my kids. I have 4 children. She's the youngest. Her name is Sarah. Just a quick story about thinking with your feelings. We have chicken in our backyard. And she was the mother of the chicken. She wanted to take care of the chicken. But she has a little bit of fear. These chickens, when they're little, they're very sweet. But then when they get big, they're very like— Scary. Scary looking. They have hooves and— not hooves, what do you call them? Nails and beaks. So anyway, she went into the coop one of these days and the door closed behind her and the latch is very high up. She couldn't reach to get out and the chickens were coming at her because she's the mommy of the chickens. They want to eat and she thought that they're going to attack her. So she got really, really scared. And from that day on, she didn't want to go back in the coop. But I had to kind of talk to her about this automatic negative thought that, no, these chickens, they came to— they wanted a hug from their mom. They didn't come to attack you. Then after a while, she went back in and she was able to get close to the chicken. So the idea of thinking with your heart. Appreciation, the power of appreciation. That's something I really want you to adopt in your life, whether in work or family or friends, is to really Give appreciation. It turns out that you have to do that 5 times for 1 time to give like a negative piece of advice to somebody. Or if you're the boss and the subordinate to you is not doing a good job, really you need to power your life with appreciation. Imagine having an immediate compelling way to power up your relationships in business, at work, at home, and in love. A way to maximize Your personal and professional success and happiness. That's what appreciation can do for you when you use it as a dynamic force that it really is. So that's something a lot of times we forget about in today's world, is to really show genuine appreciation and do it frequently and do it genuinely. Resilience comes up with these readings as something that's really important for us in our life. What is resilience? Ability to recover from, adjust easily to misfortune, adversity, or change. And this is something that Thomas Friedman kind of alluded to with the supernova. He's like, we live right now on the edge of that supernova. And sometimes, you know, you get eaten up by the supernova, which is the metaphor. If let's say you have a startup, then somebody beats you to it, to the punch. So you spend a lot of time and energy, your heart and soul into some product, but then it gets lost because something else, some innovation comes to take It replaces it. So having resilience is critical.