Dec 20, 2023
We're excited to have Dr. Smith join us to share his thoughts surrounding change and how we respond to external and internal factors. We cover considerations of how we can prepare and where we may learn to make minor adjustments to how we perceive external environmental situations by better understanding context.
This is one of our more exciting episodes where we're provided the opportunity to discover more about, not only ourselves but also how we may consider ways to serve and support others through change.
A Dr. Smith quote from the conversation: "Bring it every day".
We have all we need to become the person we want to be. So, let's remember how to connect with others with sincerity and genuine intent as we continue the mission to serve.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinsmithphd/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrissspencer/
X: mrdbcross
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Episode Transcript:
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;28;18
You're listening to the Oracle MAVEN podcast, where we bring people
together from the veteran affiliated community to highlight
Employees, Partners, organization fans and those who are continuing
the mission to serve. Welcome to the MAVEN podcast. I'm your host,
Chris Spencer. And today's episode, I'm joined by our co-host David
Kross, senior vice president and SAS chief Information security
officer within Oracle.
00;00;28;24 - 00;00;51;16
And today we have a special guest, Dr. Justin Smith,
neuroscientist, CTO and passionate advocate for data analytics and
all things stress. We're excited to have Dr. Smith join us today to
share his thoughts surrounding change and how we respond to
external and internal factors. We cover considerations of how we
can prepare and where we may learn to make minor adjustments to how
we perceive external environmental situations by better
understanding context.
00;00;51;16 - 00;01;11;17
This is one of our more exciting episodes where we're provided the
opportunity to discover more about not only ourselves, but also how
we may consider ways to serve and support others through change. A
Dr. Smith quote from the conversation Bring it every day we have
all we need to become the person we want to be. So let's remember
how to connect with others with sincerity and genuine intent as we
continue the mission to serve.
00;01;11;18 - 00;01;25;23
Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy this episode and please
remember to check in on your buddies and family. Doctor Smith's and
David's contact details are in the podcast description and you can
always find me on LinkedIn.
00;01;25;26 - 00;01;46;09
MrdbCross How is it going, sir? Chris It's great. I'm excited that
we're now getting more guests on our podcast because we're going to
get up there. You know, we're going to have more listeners than the
All in podcast, so just stay tuned for 2020 for everyone. There you
go. Today we have a special guest with us, Dr. Justin Smith, and
he'll introduce himself and his brief background.
00;01;46;09 - 00;02;04;08
But you know, what we're talking about today is how to how to
maneuver and navigate through change. Dr. Smith Absolutely. Hello.
Thank you very much for having me. My name is Justin Smith, and my
background is in neuroscience. That's what my Ph.D. is in. And the
reason why people I jokingly say I won't make my brothers call me
Dr. Bias.
00;02;04;08 - 00;02;35;00
Just you can call me Justin, but my Ph.D. is in neuroscience
specifically and stress and decision making. And I get asked or
brought in to help work with groups that groups or individuals.
Interesting. An interest in enhancing their decision making under
extreme stress, but also understanding how the brain works under
dynamic circumstances. And I think that's very applicable to what
we're talking about today, this idea of change and transition and
kind of what's happening specifically to you as individuals, but
also to the groups that you're part of.
00;02;35;03 - 00;02;58;09
Well, it's pretty exciting, Dr. Smith, that really having you,
because not many people know is that actually about 12 plus years
ago, I actually had a brain aneurysm. Right? It ruptured. You know,
I had the hemorrhagic stroke and my brain needed to change under a
lot of stress and things like that. It's amazing to, you know, to
talk to someone and how people can go through these things and how
the brain can change and how people can change.
00;02;58;09 - 00;03;19;15
When you're under stress, our life and life changes. Yeah,
absolutely. I think that's a an incredible story. I'm happy to see
just my brief interaction already that you've done a fantastic
recovery. Those are very can be very life altering events. One of
the one of the things I'd like to talk about, it's kind of bring it
in for us today, kind of jump jump the agenda a little bit.
00;03;19;15 - 00;03;42;29
But the idea of neuroplasticity. Right. And so in your case
specifically, David, the idea of how does our brain repair itself
when it's going through or has experienced a specific injury.
Right. So an aneurysm is a very specific injury. And the mechanisms
that happen on both these structural meaning like parts of your
brain change and able to grow and adapt, we call that
neuroplasticity.
00;03;42;29 - 00;04;21;29
But also how do you learn new things or go through and your brain
changes? And essentially the idea of memory is being formed, but
also the plasticity of how do you become better at something
through experience? And the mechanism is essentially very similar.
There's a couple of nuances that are differentiated, but what's
fascinating is that our brains have this incredible ability that we
knew about for about 200 years ago or so, but then we've really
been able to show in the last 30 to 50 years that our brains can
actually change and adapt and grow to appreciate experiences and
also, you know, overcome injuries that happened to us.
00;04;21;29 - 00;04;43;06
And so I think that's something where when you're going through or
you perceive that you may be going into a time of transition and or
change, how do you prepare yourself for that? Right? How do you
build in those building blocks to know I'm going to have something
that's going to be pretty dynamic or stressful, potentially
occurring, even just going home to see friends and family for the
holidays all the way to a major life event.
00;04;43;09 - 00;05;01;15
How do you prepare and change and adapt yourself so that you can
respond as best as possible? That's always that's always a
fantastic conversation. So thanks for that and let's jump in right
to it. I mean, that's that's what we're here to do, you know, and
this is just to remind anybody, this is this is an idea based off
of some things that David.
00;05;01;15 - 00;05;42;25
Mr.. Mr.. CROSS So you got me ready with the formalities. I was
thinking about. Dr. SMITH. It's columns that Tom just in the idea
of, of being able to understand when we're about to enter something
right in a situation, a conversation. David you and I have been
talking about these in the series of conversations on previous
podcasts. You know, when we're recognizing that something is about
to occur, how do we how are we going to create the awareness for us
to know what we're going to need to do to prepare for this
appropriately so we can be informed enough, but also understand our
limitation, you know, because we don't know what we don't know,
but
00;05;42;25 - 00;06;03;06
we have to be able to recognize that we need to be prepared for the
things that we don't know. So when we do fail, we can respond to
that accordingly or appropriately to where we don't stop. We've got
to keep moving. So just then, if you wouldn't mind maybe taking it
from that to say, how do we understand that something's about to
occur?
00;06;03;09 - 00;06;20;09
Yeah, absolutely. David, you have one thing you want to add before
he jumped in. Well, yeah, I think that I was going to ask maybe
another part of that question to you. Is that a big part of it I
used to think about is like you is all about having a vision,
right. And a plan. Right. And then that's what drives your brain to
get there, right?
00;06;20;15 - 00;06;36;16
Or am I being naive? You know, obviously like last podcast talk
about, you know, being useful and the tools and saying, hey, you
have a vision and a plan and that's what drives you. Is that being
too simplistic or is that part of the whole story? No, I think
that's very much a part of the whole story, right?
00;06;36;17 - 00;06;59;06
We are, as a species goal driven and plan oriented, and I like to
use evolutionary examples right? When you're going to go out and
gather food, whether it's berries or you're going to procure meat
from some something, some animal, right. Usually go with a plan.
You know, I tend to wander around aimlessly and waste expenditure
and calories on just randomly going to see if I can find a new
blueberry patch.
00;06;59;08 - 00;07;16;20
You were going to specifically say, I know there's blue blueberry
patches here, here and here. And because our species, we're
thinkers as well, right? Not just going to go to a blueberry patch
and gather blueberries. We're going to hunt our way there. We're
going to hunt anyway back right here and optimize when I have a
plan to go through and say, you know, what is it we want to do?
00;07;16;21 - 00;07;39;01
What are the goals we'd like to accomplish today, even if it feels
informal? Right. Those still are kind of structured. Portions of
our day are weeks or months and I would argue our years are kind of
the overall arc of our life as well. But I think it's not too
simplistic to say how do you create a plan and set goals for
yourself and a group to understand, okay, this is what the this is
what we're shooting for, right?
00;07;39;01 - 00;07;57;27
And kind of breaking it down in business. We do this a lot. We
here's the here's the house on the Hill we're trying to build. How
do we get there? How do we build these smaller building blocks that
are accomplishable and spur planning and all that kind of stuff,
Right. To to hunker down and tweak instruments or our instruments
or whatever it is that you're doing that cousins causes effort or
takes effort to do.
00;07;58;00 - 00;08;30;03
But having a plan is very much how our brains are organized
structurally as well. I would argue, to be able to optimize, be
able to accomplish those things for the basic level, for survival.
Right. We most of us have those needs. Metaphor Listeners podcast.
So how do you plan to do it for organizational advancement? So in
part of that planning, because you're talking about these things
too, where if you've never done it before, it's easy to say, you
know, here's what I think I need to do, and then you stop there and
then you learn, right?
00;08;30;03 - 00;08;54;05
So this is some of that developmental process that you mentioned
earlier about the growth and how that becomes a valuable. So how
much is this kind of a qualitative quantitative thing about how
much effort do you think you need to go into typical situations in
life stages and and, you know, maybe jobs or performance or
relationships or even the climate like seasons, right?
00;08;54;05 - 00;09;11;04
So we're going from summer to fall, fall or winter, and then what
occurs inside those seasons. Yeah. And so this is where I would say
you start to see a spectrum occur, right? Individuals who do very
little to no preparation just kind of go with the way to the flow,
all the way to individuals who are preparing for seasons and or
events at that.
00;09;11;04 - 00;09;27;07
Really, I'll just use the word elite and or extreme event, right?
Where they going to try and control as much, if not everything that
they can. And so depending on where you feel like it's the most
appropriate place for yourself to fall, and this is where you can
really start to see it in the workplace or even just in human
performance.
00;09;27;09 - 00;09;44;06
Individuals who prepare more perform better. It's a pretty clear
cut correlation. It's not, wow, they're really good at that.
They're good at that because they practiced it for years and years
and years of their speaking where there's a certain skill worth.
You're an athlete, you know, if you're leading a team meeting, you
know, that's not just thing you happen into.
00;09;44;06 - 00;10;19;15
Those are those are finance skills that you're able to practice and
build upon. And so for the transitions, right, is understanding
what are the potential transitions you're going to experience. How
do you figure out those before they occur? Right. And then if
you're if you're a planner who thinks diligently, right, the
military has a bunch of acronyms for this as well, but you have
your primary, secondary and tertiary plan knowing that they're all
three going to be a little bit different in the end because
dynamics and things change in the world evolves around us
constantly, but at least have some structure to hold on to as
you're going through this dynamic situation.
00;10;19;15 - 00;10;39;27
And that's the part where setting yourself up for success is really
key, right? And so, again, to use the evolutionary example, 10,000
years ago, you know, we were looking at when winter is coming,
seasons are changing. You got to start storing food, storing things
so you can make them this long winter because things are growing,
peaches gotten harvest, blueberries, got to save them.
00;10;40;00 - 00;10;57;18
You know, Dr. Smith, this really brings, you know, another question
to my mind, and since you are the expert here is, you know, there's
always left brain and right brain, and I can't remember which one's
which, but right brain is more structured, methodical, and the
other side is is more creative, artistic. Right. And we talk about
visions in planning structure.
00;10;57;18 - 00;11;24;11
Does it matter if a person's left brain focused or right brain
focused, or am I just making up a crazy thought? No, no, I think
so. This is the hard part. From the neuroscience perspective. We
view bilaterally like the split in your brain as being essentially
a redundant system, right? There is there is specialization, right?
So your right hands control the left hand, push your brain, you
know, your eyeballs, cross your optic nerve, goes back and crosses
it, gets back to your occipital lobe in the back of your brain.
00;11;24;13 - 00;11;44;21
So there there is a duality or there is a bifurcation right between
the two lobes. Your brain. But how it's organized in terms of
people being right brain and left brain, I this is my personal
opinion. I think it's far oversimplistic, right? Because all of
your brain is working more or less constantly all the time. And we
do see individuals that are more creative, right?
00;11;44;24 - 00;12;06;09
But it's not creative because one side the brain's functioning at a
higher percentage or higher perspective and some people are more
analytical or more, you know, logic based, you know, less we can
say less creative, right? Less creative. In the same way they're
not able to paint and draw pictures readily. But that just might be
because they're using different forces of brain that are more
optimized to how things are running for them intuitively, or we
call it in neuroscience.
00;12;06;09 - 00;12;24;13
It's called the default mode network, right? So essentially it's
that what's the Hummer? What's the idol of your brain when you're
at rest and then you're able to bring it up to say, I have a
cognitive task. Can you take care of I have this big thing I need
to prepare for. How do I prepare resources? How do I plan how to
prepare myself physically, mentally, you know, all those kind of
things.
00;12;24;13 - 00;12;43;08
And that process takes your whole brain, like all the parts of your
brain from your cortex, all the way down to your limbic system. The
emotional, you know, emotional portion of your brain. And so when
it gets to the idea of left brain versus right brain, I it's just
it's too simplistic for me. This what I like to say.
00;12;43;10 - 00;13;01;29
Well, that's great to hear. Certainly I can say from my experience
when I had my ears and my my speech center, which was on my left,
left behind my left eye. Yes. Will be damaged. Right. I'm still
paranoid today that I don't speak properly, but it is amazing of
how my brain evolved, you know, adjusted so quickly to say, well, I
need to still speak.
00;13;01;29 - 00;13;24;16
And I actually I all the language just started coming back and
things like over time. And that means I can adapt and I think
that's maybe our our our conversation today. How do you adapt
right? How can you get through stress, stress or a change or a
challenge? Yeah, absolutely. And so using your example is really,
really illustrative for us today, because that is exactly
neuroplasticity, right?
00;13;24;16 - 00;13;53;29
You have a large damage to the course of your brain is responsible
for a very specific process. And this is what do I do this often?
I'm still I get excited and I'm like, this is incredible. You're
brain to have a damaged that's just that big area yet parts that
were closer near it are able to pick up some of that functionality
right and you're able to train and bring in and your body kind of
helps to move those resources that your neurons can connect again,
to say this is a core functionality of existence for us, it's
speech, right?
00;13;53;29 - 00;14;11;15
Understanding and processing and be able to speak language. We have
to figure this out. And so you practice it, right? You go to these
therapies, you do all these things that are that are hard and take
effort, but your brain is able to kind of overcome that deficiency
or that that injury that I experienced. Right. And that's that's
phenomenal.
00;14;11;15 - 00;14;25;24
And so where that leads us for the transitions and the change
portion is knowing that there might be a change coming up and, you
know, it's going to be stressful. What do you do to prepare? Right?
So number one is you figure out what that area might be, right? So
let's just say it's a big transition for your family.
00;14;25;24 - 00;14;42;06
You're moving across the country, right? We have this cool thing
called the Internet. You're able to do a bunch of background
research and say, where's I'm going? Where do I want to live? Kind
of paint that picture for yourself. Right. The other part, too, is
you're able to ideally if you're moving, is let's use that as the
example, right?
00;14;42;08 - 00;14;59;04
Hopefully able to save some money to say, I'm going to make an
advanced trip out there and this goes in that person that's super
logical and can do a bunch of planning, right. And then make an
advance about there and not tell your whole family, send one
person, your family, maybe, hopefully the person that's really
interested in deciding what parts of town you want to live in or
what you want to have as your living situation.
00;14;59;06 - 00;15;28;16
You will do a little reconnaissance of that area to say this is a
this looks like a great place on the Internet and on a map. Then
you get there and it's an area that's under heavy construction. And
they're not there's no end in sight. That's not a place you want to
bring yourself or your family. But what you're able to do during
that process, and this is where even if you don't have to
physically go somewhere to practice, this is the key part, the
practice of thinking about what is it you can do to prepare for
these big transitions are going to go through, helps to restructure
and organize your brain, if that makes
00;15;28;16 - 00;15;44;14
sense. Right? So it's doing those kind of thought experiments is
thought exercise and even going through and asking yourself and
thinking about where would I like to live? Sounds super easy.
Intuitive, right? I don't care. Apartment, condo, house, it's fine,
doesn't matter. But then it's way more nuanced that do I want to
buy water? You want to buy a golf course?
00;15;44;14 - 00;16;05;09
Do I live by the road, the airport, and going through and say,
okay, what are those options? And laying them out for yourselves
that your prefrontal cortex, your executive decision making process
in your brain can really start to step in to say, I know that we as
a unit, a family unit or use individual really appreciate I'm
happiest, healthiest when I have access to a green belt to ride my
bike and go for runs.
00;16;05;09 - 00;16;34;21
Right. Or I like to play golf every day. So if I can move in or out
a golf course, they have accessibility to, you know, these are
things to start to practice in the exercises. Again, it doesn't
sound like exercise. We talk about physical exercise and these
those mental exercises to be able to prepare for these types of
change is setting yourself up for success so that if you have to
make that big transition and most people say, wow, you had you
found out in 30 days, you moving across the country, your response
if you thought about it ahead of time because you had an inkling
that might be happening is yeah, but I already
00;16;34;21 - 00;17;05;25
have a really good idea of what I'm looking for and I've got a list
of places I can contact. And I have a realtor that I have kind of
on standby, right? Those are things that, again, seem like they're
completely tangential to the idea of like, how do you prepare for
big transitions? But it's the idea of preparing yourself and your
brain to practice and exercise this cognitive thinking that you're
able to do so that when you have to do it and this goes down to
really specific situations as to as well, you're able to kind of
rely on those experiences and those resources because they're
readily available and you've trained them up, if that
00;17;05;25 - 00;17;29;11
makes sense. If I'm if well, if I'm transitioning right to our
military family, you're transitioning right? You have a network of
people to where anybody that you're asking if even if you overhear
it, but if you're intentional on trying to find out and pursue
investigate, like you just said about, you know, connaissance.
Right. You're trying to figure out ahead of time whether or not
this is something for you, it's safe to say.
00;17;29;11 - 00;17;50;28
Then you have to identify and be as accurate as possible by
thinking critically about what's important to you and understand
the levels of importance. So to prioritize these things. Yeah. Yes.
Yes, absolutely. And that's something where, again, going back to
our spectrum of laissez faire people, they don't they go with the
wind all the way to individuals who are, you know, really large,
you know, meticulous planners.
00;17;51;00 - 00;18;06;09
Understanding where you fall on that spectrum is key. But also it
takes resources to think what makes me happy and healthy. Right?
And it's easy to say I'm a go with the flow kind of person, but all
of a sudden you find yourself not in the place that you're you
recognize. After six months, you're not very happy or healthy.
00;18;06;09 - 00;18;36;12
And why is that? Is that things that you can change in your
environment is that the career path? Is it the new job you took
within the organization that you thought would you be really good
at? Turns out it's really hard. It's not a good fit for you, right?
How do you how do you make sure that you're able to stay
self-aware, which again, it sounds easy to say it's a skill to
practice that then when you go through to these major large changes
and transitions really helps you to say, I know that I'm very good
and comfortable when I get to these situations, but I need to
practice these other types of situations, right?
00;18;36;12 - 00;18;53;27
And that's where the business side comes in to us. If you know, you
have to give a talk to 30 people and you're comfortable doing that,
what happens is 30 people that are three levels above you. How do
you practice for that? How do you think about what's that audience
going to want to hear that's different than talking to 33
individuals that are your peers, right?
00;18;53;27 - 00;19;13;12
And so, again, transitions change that planning ahead of time is
really key and critical. And again, it's a skill to practice
because it's like golf. You never win golf. You play it and get
better, hopefully, but at some point you're like, okay, I'm still
practicing, still getting better, I'm still hopefully enjoying it.
But you never you never win.
00;19;13;13 - 00;19;28;17
You know, you kind of continually practice it. I think that's kind
of just like the we always talk about lots of books and I say,
Well, what's the best book? When you think about presenting? I say,
Well, go get the book on the presentation. Secrets of Steve Jobs.
Right. And how does Steve Jobs get really good at presenting?
00;19;28;24 - 00;19;55;02
Because he practice, practice, practice, practice, practice
straight. And I and I think that's what it's all about. Whenever
you need to do something and be successful at it. Practice,
practice, practice. Chris What's your favorite book? Isn't that the
Malcolm Gladwell saying 10000 Hours? Yeah, it's repeatedly it's the
outliers because it does talk about very specific things. That's
relative to not only time in a place to where it just so happens to
be that it was convenient, right?
00;19;55;02 - 00;20;18;28
If you're in the right place at the right time, then you just your
opportunity. And then there's the ones that actually put in the
effort, put in the reps, develop that skill set based off of
repetition and things like that, which Dr. Smith, you've talked
about in the past, how important repetitions are and then the
outcomes of those acts and how you're going to now develop the
awareness to know what you can do better and what you shouldn't
repeat?
00;20;19;00 - 00;20;34;27
Yeah, absolutely. And that's that feedback loop in training, right?
So if you're really diligent about your training, you want to have
a near immediate or real time feedback loop of did that work or did
it not work? You know, we do it oftentimes we're we'll send a
survey after we have, you know, a big all hands meeting. What did
you hear?
00;20;34;27 - 00;21;01;06
What did you like? What could we change for next time? You know,
leaders want to know what what worked, what didn't, how we adjusted
for the future. And that's, again, a skill you can practice or
think about often. It's easy to say it's hard to do, right. I think
that's that's pretty gets down to in practicing takes effort and
cognitive resources which are finite and so making sure you're able
to prepare yourself as best as possible to leverage those resources
appropriately is key.
00;21;01;06 - 00;21;22;22
And that's one of the other points I really enjoy making. I think
it's super important. It sounds again, tangential, but it's
extremely valid and is really important. And that's the idea of
exercise, physical exercise, specifically voluntary exercise.
Right? And so whatever your athletic ability is, challenge
yourself. If you want to go for a walk for 30 minutes every hour of
the day, Right, Do that.
00;21;22;23 - 00;21;40;10
That's your exercise. The big thing I have to say is making sure
you're getting your heart rate elevated, your break a little bit of
a sweat like that's that you're physiologically moving your body in
in a meaningful way. You know, you don't run an ultramarathon or do
100 K like that. Sometimes it's not good. And those have certain
effects on your body that aren't always great.
00;21;40;10 - 00;22;10;18
But the reason why exercise is so potent and powerful, this is a
probably good transmission to the idea of stress is our bodies are
really good at mitigating stress when we have access to free
exercise or we're able to move our bodies. Right. So there's two
components that. One is the physiology. Your body gets better at
moving things around through it, through your blood system, through
endocrine system, through, you know, the lymphatic system, the
parts that move things through your body when you're when you
appropriately exercise or use that system with intention,
especially, it's voluntary.
00;22;10;18 - 00;22;28;23
That's the key part, is it gets better doing it right. It's kind of
like if you haven't done a certain exercise a long time, you're
like, I'm going to go out and lift weights. That first two or three
weeks back is really hard because your body is like your brain
says, I know how to do is a dumbbell curl like it is all day long
and your muscles are freaking out because they haven't done it in
such a long time.
00;22;28;23 - 00;22;48;03
Your bone structure may have changed. You know, you may have had an
injury or coming back from ulcers. This different makes an impact.
And so starting where you are is key. Building up your
physiologist, you have that physiological response. But also this
is the part to where I think it was probably five or six years ago.
Now they're finally able to get a real time image of the brain
while you're breathing, right?
00;22;48;03 - 00;23;03;20
So you can see inside the skull and watch the brain. So all of our
textbooks, until about ten years ago had the brain is this just
static thing that stuck inside your skull? Well, it turns out when
they did a race, they were all kind of played as a movie. Our brain
moves as we breathe with our heart rate as well.
00;23;03;20 - 00;23;24;13
Right. It's this incredible like, my gosh, this thing is actually
not just this static, you know, mushy gray matter. White men are
stuck in a box. It's moving and it's moving with your breath, with
your respirations, your situation system, all these things change
it. And so what happens is the more you're able to build up the
appropriate level of physiology for you, for yourself, right.
00;23;24;16 - 00;23;43;27
You're able to not only think better and more clearly because
you're kind of resources will be able to be moving around much
faster. You're able to physiologically have a response. It's
appropriate to a certain stressor. And that's the key thing, right?
So if you're feeling completely unprepared and overwhelmed, you
have to stop and say, what is it that's overwhelming me?
00;23;43;29 - 00;24;06;04
And after time, that's a very difficult question to ask yourself as
well, because it could be personal, it could be professional, it
could be systems that are under your control, somewhat out of your
control. Right. But be able to stop and say, okay, what's what's
bugging me, What's stress me right now, How can I deal with that?
And the more you're able to leverage voluntary exercise in your
life, the better you will be at doing that.
00;24;06;06 - 00;24;34;22
You know, Dr. Smith, that I can't agree 100% more certainly to
those things is that certainly whenever I'm stressed for the work
life, whatever, I go for a run. Right? And it's amazing of how much
just a5k run. I'm not as hard core and you know, Chris and his his
50 K, you know, kind of sprints and things like that but my little
five K running boy, it's amazing of like how that can just reset
everything, reset your brain, reset your body like okay, I'm now
able to, you know, take on things and also the element is he made
his luck I don't know.
00;24;34;24 - 00;24;53;25
But literally one week before I had my brain aneurysm, I ran my
first half marathon race. And in some ways, I believe to this day
is that my body, my mind was conditioned for stress, you know, in a
race of that type. And that's maybe one of the reasons I survived,
is because of that. But I could be wrong.
00;24;53;27 - 00;25;20;14
I was not a medical doctor to send it very clearly. But I will say
you were in a far better position for recovery because you prepared
for that ten K then had you been sitting on the couch and been
completely sessile or just not moving around for two or three years
before that injury happened? Right. And that's where in health care
we see this massive split of individuals that have what seem like
near miraculous recoveries, but turns out like, no, that person
casualty's a triathlete as well.
00;25;20;16 - 00;25;39;27
It's like you. Their body is ready to respond to stressors that may
come into it, whether it's injury, internal or external, whatever
it may be, versus, you know, people that are let's just say, not as
conditioned to have those types of responses because what we see or
what we think about, especially especially with exercise, is, a
person's weight's going up or down, right?
00;25;39;27 - 00;25;58;14
You look at the overall physical structure, what we don't think
about is what they do internally is your blood pressure. How is
your heart looking out? What's the rate of oxygen return from your
lungs all in that just before you even get into the brain
chemistry, Right. It's all affected. And exercise is an extremely
powerful tool. And again, using the evolutionary examples,
right.
00;25;58;14 - 00;26;25;13
We weren't meant to sit behind computers for 8 to 10 hours a day,
like we're supposed to be out walking around doing stuff, thinking
and talking, interacting with our peers and being social as well.
But moving is a big part of our existence and it should be. So I
think that's part of it too. Where I get to work with certain
groups is the idea of letting it and letting everyone know it's
okay to take 30 minutes to go outside and do a walk like that will
your productivity will increase like we've seen it over and over
again.
00;26;25;15 - 00;26;45;28
Your response to stress will become better for sure if you have
even just a small amount of movement in your day. And I think
that's where we start to see that on the other side, the negative
side of chronic health conditions of people that aren't moving
around very much. So it's it's again easy to say, hard to do, but
building it into your day and planning for it can be very key.
00;26;46;00 - 00;27;14;04
And that can it goes the idea of stretching or having those large
changes, that preparation, that anticipation for those big changes,
they come up. Yeah. So part of the part of the plan and I think
this is something that's commonly omitted from the plan is self
care. Right? And so this this is along the lines of, you know,
interestingly, when I'm trying to do something to be better at it,
you know, I'm thinking about the external factors and how I'm
looking ahead externally, meaning out of out of self, right?
00;27;14;04 - 00;27;33;12
I'm saying, well, if I need to go to the store, if I need to, you
know, I want to work towards a degree or a certificate or something
to that element, there isn't a lot of these things that I'm adding
the value or incorporating the value of the physical element that
that's necessary for me to function, hydration, nutrition, rest, I
mean, all of those factors.
00;27;33;12 - 00;27;52;02
So can we kind of just touch on some of those things because your
perspective on how how the brain is what it is and you just started
to explain it, but how it needs the nutritional components to be
able to optimize its function and things like that. How does how do
all of these things connect? Yeah, so that's one that's a really
big question.
00;27;52;04 - 00;28;09;17
But to kind of take it in smaller bites and chunks, right? So how
does it all connect? One of the ways that I like to kind of
describe this to think about it is the idea of context. And so when
I say context, I mean in two different ways. I mean the external
context to you, the physical environment that you're in, your
surroundings around you, right?
00;28;09;17 - 00;28;27;00
So like literally the room that you're in or the space that you're
occupying external context, and then also your internal context,
what's happening inside your body, inside your brain. This is my
favorite joke with the whole scientists is like, we can't point to
a thought like we're told about your mind, Like we don't know where
the mind or you can't put your mind.
00;28;27;00 - 00;28;52;28
We think it's in your head, right? But our our neurochemistry, our
physiology inside our body is new. What's happening can be your
considering talk about is your internal context. Those two things
are related. They're interconnected completely right, because your
external environment influences your internal environment. But what
I like to say, and this is why I think is fun, is as humans we have
this really unique ability and that is to think.
00;28;53;01 - 00;29;11;27
And when you can have an experience that's external. So an external
context is a stressful situation. You have the ability to say, I'm
going to put this as best as I can, right? And so I'll use my self
as an example. If I get stuck at a dinner party or some sort of
gathering and it is just a really dry conversation or something's
happening, right?
00;29;12;04 - 00;29;25;06
And I don't want to be the person who's going to dominate the room,
because sometimes I think that's fun to do as well. But sometimes
it's not. It's the idea of sitting back and saying, How can I make
this more enjoyable for others? How can we and we call it steering
the conversation. How do you steer this conversation?
00;29;25;06 - 00;29;58;22
So it picks back up again? How do I help control these external
contexts? Because in my brain, my internal context is like, this is
boring. Like I don't want to be here anymore. What's going on
right? And so specifically to do that and usually I talk about this
more in more applied circumstances in terms of individuals that go
into extreme stress environments, meaning life or death situations,
but for us that aren't usually facing those situations on a day to
day basis, hopefully the idea of how do you take care of or set
yourself up for success in the best way possible, right?
00;29;58;22 - 00;30;19;18
So exercise is very type of exercise. Next to it is nutrition,
hydration, Right. And so making sure you're meeting your body's
needs for what you're asking you to do and this is another fun fact
I really enjoy talking about is when you and Chris, you should know
the answer because you heard this one before, I think. But for
individuals that are playing in a elite grandmaster level chess
tournament.
00;30;19;20 - 00;30;38;10
Right. How many calories do you think their body or their brain or
their body overall is burning in a day? Like what would you say if
you had to guess? David Wow, I'm stuck with that. I don't I don't
have a good guess on this one, actually. Okay. Would you guess it'd
be low because they're just sitting there and they're just playing
chess all day?
00;30;38;12 - 00;31;01;01
No, I don't think so. I think that that is hard to say. It doesn't
make sense. But now that sounds like I'm being comedic. Doesn't
right now. It's all good. So what's amazing, right, is when you
watch somebody play at the grandmaster level, these really intense
chess tournaments, what we see externally from the external
environment is they're sitting there and they're staring at a board
with pieces on it.
00;31;01;01 - 00;31;22;07
Right. But what's happening to them internally, their internal
context, their brain is firing and they're thinking ten, 20, 50
moves ahead, They're playing what's happening, what they think the
strategy of their opponents going to be. They are literally
thinking at the most cognitively resource intense level possible
for hours on end. This isn't like a 30 minute speech chess
game.
00;31;22;07 - 00;31;38;28
Like these people play games over and over again the other day. So
it's fascinating is the number of changes a little bit, but you can
think about in terms of it's a lot, right? So the idea is it's
either eight, it's up to 8 to 12000 calories a day, which when you
sit there and think you're like, holy cow, that's day.
00;31;39;02 - 00;31;58;02
So, Michael Phelps is swimming in the Olympics. He was eating
10,000 calories a day, right, because he was in the water training
and racing and to feed his fuel's body for the physical exertion.
But what's amazing is those grandmasters in chess, they're
literally thinking their way through their caloric resources to
their body because they're thinking so hard, they're playing these
games.
00;31;58;04 - 00;32;13;28
And so that's the idea of what nutrition do you need? And this is
where I get to have fun. Another group specifically. But knowing
that you're getting ready to go do something, it's going to be
extremely stressful. How do you set yourself up for success? And
our brains run on glucose and oxygen. It's kind of the way you can
think of it, right?
00;32;13;28 - 00;32;31;01
So simple the simple sugar glucose and need to be able to breathe,
right? So before you go and you think it's stressful, especially if
you know it's an event that's coming up, I usually don't have any
with my desk here. I usually keep the organic gummy bears like the
kids Gummy bears, right. That are just really just you know, it's
like honey, Honey is a great example.
00;32;31;01 - 00;32;49;02
Those honey shots for athletes and they take without running, do
laundry and stuff, having glucose on demand that you can boost
yourself up, help special blood sugar. It's all the physiology kind
of comes together, but setting your brain up for success to say,
Hey, we're going to boost your brain, I'm going to boost you up
with glucose so that you can have the resources you need for
this.
00;32;49;04 - 00;33;07;07
Hopefully a medium to short duration, high level of cognitive load
to deal with the transition or change you're going through,
especially into an acute event. These are acute event examples. We
talk about chronic events in a moment, but then also understanding
this is another fun study was done probably 15, 20 years ago now.
But it's not just any but individuals.
00;33;07;07 - 00;33;29;28
They measured respirations during an intense test. I think it was
in the category also after medical school or law school to get
into. And what they found was individuals that had the same resting
actions, meaning they weren't holding their breath when they're
taking a test, individuals that were able to have the same
respirations throughout the whole test experience scored
significantly better than individuals who are holding their breath
during the testing process.
00;33;30;00 - 00;33;49;00
And again, it makes sense because when you do something, it's hard.
What do you think about what happens? You go we ask you a question
like how you think about that and you hold or pause your breath,
right? And so recognizing what your breathwork is doing at the
time, especially again, these are acute stressors, can help to
actually improve your performance.
00;33;49;03 - 00;34;03;10
And so when you watch like Olympic athletes are great because
they're on camera all the time before they're getting ready to go
and do their event. When you watch them, a lot of times they're
doing these deep inhalation breaths. They're helping to saturate
their body with oxygen. They're thinking about it. I guarantee you
they've had a snack for the last hour.
00;34;03;12 - 00;34;25;28
Right. All these sort of subtle things that we do intuitively at
elite athlete athletic levels. But to understand now the
physiology, especially the neuroscience of why that works so well,
that's what's really key. And so there's these really foundational
building blocks of chronic stress. You know, make sure you have
access to voluntary exercise, right? You'll make sure you're eating
a healthy diet that's appropriate for the caloric intake and
exertion that you're going to have.
00;34;26;01 - 00;34;41;28
So if you if you know, you're going to be biking 2 to 3 hours a
day, get that smoothie in the afternoon. If you're not, you're not
sitting through 6 hours of intense strategic meetings. Maybe you
don't need the smoothie to have. You know, it's nice to have a
dessert by Nita. And so I'm putting all those together I think is
really kind of part of the key.
00;34;42;00 - 00;35;03;12
What makes so much sense now. Right. And it's elements of, hey, we
got a hard presentation, you got hard work to do. It's your brain
needs the calories. And let's come back to that. You know, the
continuous runner theme that we have on our podcast is, you know,
there's a running I've done a measurement myself and it makes sense
now is that, hey, I'm running a5k, it's flat, it's straight,
right?
00;35;03;12 - 00;35;18;14
I'd like to think I just get into a zone. I know some runners are
going get mad at me, like you get into a zone. You're not thinking
right. And I know exactly how much weight I'm going to burn off,
but then I do a5k in a a mountain trail. Right now it doesn't. It's
not because of hills.
00;35;18;14 - 00;35;49;29
It's like I have to think about every single step, every single
move. Because if I make the wrong one, I'm going to fall over. And
how much more energy you consume. And it's not from the physical
energy. It's like the brainpower. I'm exhausted from your brain
perspective, from that same five k distance. Yeah, Yeah. And what's
really fun and what are the examples I love to hear, especially
from runners, is once they start doing more of those mentally
engaging runs, they say it's really hard to go and run a flat five
k on pavement because you get you, you want to do it.
00;35;49;29 - 00;36;08;22
Your body says, let's go and try this right because it's fun and
you're doing it voluntarily. I think that's the other part that's
key, but it's it's engaging. Yeah. So then I think, Chris, we got
to see you doing some hills, dude, and not just doing those
trademark KS around the Redwood Lake. You know this guy, He's
trying to get me into a what, a 25 minute ten.
00;36;08;23 - 00;36;32;14
Okay, so it's baby steps. So just to kind of get to where we are
and summarize what we've taken, you've taken us through at this
point. It's it's the planning, right? So becoming intimately
familiar with what you're trying to do, it requires that you
understand yourself better. And that comes through a true inventory
of what you've achieved in the past.
00;36;32;14 - 00;37;01;13
And then, you know, somehow coming up to a methodology of
categorizing things, of capable, not capable, want, don't want, you
know, need, don't need things. However it works for you, you have
to come up with some theory that is applicable to to what steps
you're going to take to get in motion to move forward. And that's
the preparing the, anticipating, you know, going through the
experience, reassessing because the growth is going to now uncover
some other patterns that you didn't know that you were going to
benefit from.
00;37;01;13 - 00;37;31;24
And so you realize it. You know, even we're talking about
nutrition, this little this little tweak and how your body's
identifying stress and then acclimating to stress the recovery
component, which is not often spoken about, you know, how you
recover from these activities, from the physical component, the
biological component, the mental component. You don't have to
restore all of these things where I don't know that everybody's
realizing that just sitting idle, the perception on the outside
with the chess analogy is, you know, you're not really
demonstrating physically anything outside.
00;37;31;24 - 00;37;51;14
Do people think that you're actually doing something, but
internally you're expanding an enormous amount of energy to where
it can be draining. You put it into word the context of what we're
talking about. Again, military family, you know, the deployments,
the idle time. There's still this thing that you're now putting
your body through to assess, should I be doing something?
00;37;51;14 - 00;38;16;23
I should be doing more, maybe I shouldn't be doing this. And then
the families being brought through those experiences on the same
same context, the deployments, time away, time back, getting
associated through the relationships and all that stuff. That's
putting a weight on us to be able to understand what we need to do
to prepare for that. But then it's the decision to get out of an
environment that you've been in for an enormous amount of time, say
five, ten, 15, 20 years.
00;38;16;26 - 00;38;40;19
You know, what are some of the things that you can do where, you
know I'm thinking positive psychology, you know, things that you
can reinforce through the self-talk of understanding a how to get
through a moment to get unstuck or just make sure that you're not
going to remain stagnant if that's how you feel. Yeah, no,
absolutely. I think this is a really, again, key component,
especially when you go through major life transitions, right?
00;38;40;27 - 00;38;59;27
Is one is again, I think I saw this 16 times today, but easy to
say, hard to do. Number one is recognize that it's hard it's hard
to do like this is going to be stressful. I think just accepting
and recognizing that sounds easy, but it's so like we're really
good at denying things. I mean, like, I can get through this.
00;38;59;27 - 00;39;13;15
I'm just going to brush in the rug, recognize it's hard because
when you recognize that something is going to be hard or be
difficult, you then recognize you have to put effort into it.
Right. And so then once you know, you put effort into it, this is
the part of having a really be and this is why our brains are
cool.
00;39;13;21 - 00;39;33;11
We can take that into the context of a giant transition that they
separate from. Military is a good example, right. And switch it. So
it's not this it's not a negative event. You can look at it and
frame it for yourself, Change the internal context you're
experiencing into a positive or just this is a transition I'm going
to be going through and making it as positive as possible.
00;39;33;13 - 00;39;50;29
Right? And so that kind of gets the idea of the positive psychology
of how do you think about challenges. You're going to have to go
through. And once you recognize that doesn't have to be a negative
challenge, it starts to become fun because then you kind of start
to gamified, where do I want to live? What do I want to do with a
second career?
00;39;51;00 - 00;40;11;06
What do I want to do in my retirement? What what does getting back
to being self aware? What does bring me joy and happiness? What
makes me a better at being a partner to my in my significant other,
to my kids, to my people in my life. And so I think that's again,
one of those things that you kind of talk about or hear about this
bajillion books written about it, right?
00;40;11;09 - 00;40;30;28
But it's the idea of changing an internal context that you perceive
that you're telling a story that you're telling yourself, which is
why our brains are different. Fantastic. Because I'll say the
military is a good example because you see, you have to think it's
really hard and difficult to do. But the more kind of selecting the
groups you get to work with or you go into, you recognize you're
surrounded by people that have chosen to be there.
00;40;31;06 - 00;40;58;03
They want to do those hard, dangerous, let's be honest, exciting
tasks because it's not mundane. It's the trail run with the rocks
with the side of the cliff exposed. You can have to run it through
or around or find a bridge to go across that river. Right? These
are challenging things that when you kind of set it into a positive
framework, become challenges that you want to do and you want to
accelerate out and accelerate and you want to accelerate your
experience going into those so that you can come out of them as
best as possible.
00;40;58;06 - 00;41;14;20
And so I think that's something where recognizing that you have the
ability to say this is again the idea I'm not, I'm going to be
okay. There today or I'm going have a good day today, right? If
your days go and carry one piece, you got in a fender bender in the
morning and your lunch spilled out on the floor.
00;41;14;22 - 00;41;32;23
I'm going to get there today. You know what that means? I could
figure it out. I'm going to solve this problem, this car wreck. It
sucks, but I can figure this out. I'm okay. That's one thing,
right? It's about okay, I'm okay. This happens part of driving a
vehicle on the roadway. Also, my lunch is malicious. Tash, I want
you to tell us if you did, but you're like, okay, how am I going to
solve this problem of finding my new lunch?
00;41;32;23 - 00;41;59;15
How I'm going to steer every source of calories to my brain by
taking those things that could easily spiral to be very acute
negative for an individual and saying, okay, this is a challenge I
get to solve now, right? Just that that small, subtle flip from on
what's happening to me to how can I influence the outcome. And
that's where you start to see individuals that we call resilience
to resign, individuals they are extremely good at telling
themselves, I can solve this situation.
00;41;59;20 - 00;42;16;21
I don't know how yet, but I know I can solve it. Right? And so
that's where those kind of core features that we see people that
are really, really good at adapting to change, which we're all not
very good at it, but people that are better than others,
potentially, they're really good and. A lot of times they don't
even realize they're doing it.
00;42;16;23 - 00;42;28;18
It's that I'm going to have a good day today. I'm going to an
awesome day out. I can build in three things that I love to do
today, right? As in this is we kind of get to the setting, the
plan, we talk about the beginning, but setting up something that's
fun to do in the middle part of the day.
00;42;28;22 - 00;42;43;16
You have it takes a minute your life and it's like filling up the
joint through the end of the day, right? That's enjoyable. No
takes. My friend can tell you that I'm having a great deal, a great
day, as well as small, subtle things do not just influence
yourself, but also influence others. I think that's the idea of
kind of getting back to that.
00;42;43;16 - 00;43;08;20
How does it all come together? You know, that's not that's a four
Ph.D. dissertation right there, but kind of recognizing that you
can change your internal context and then you also have influence
often your external context as well, even when it seems like it's
outside of your control. I think that's kind of those things where
the more we understand and think about it in those terms, the more
able people are to find tools that work for them so they can
mitigate the situations as best as possible.
00;43;08;23 - 00;43;30;19
Yeah, I agree. So the the idea that there's context, how you shape
the context to understand how you can motivate yourself because
you've probably at some point, if you've done this repeatedly,
you've created a discipline where that means that you have the
routine already set there. Isn't it an external factor to motivate
you? It's just because, you know it needs to be done.
00;43;30;19 - 00;43;57;18
You've already acknowledged and accepted, which I think is some of
the things that you know have been consistent. David And what you
and I have been talking about, the one thing that I can't help not
bring up is the value. So the value component, because if we're
talking in our situations to where maybe there isn't something
that's obvious about what you're needing to do to make sure that
you're not being complacent, that you're prepared is to understand,
are you in what you're doing right now?
00;43;57;18 - 00;44;17;25
Are you creating the value for others to leverage, to not you in a
position to where you have to change or transition to? That could
be a career, a job or a task, something to that effect. So I don't
know. Do we dive into a little bit with the time we have left? I
can give I can give a quick a quick sort response.
00;44;17;27 - 00;44;38;18
It won't take hopefully too long. But on the idea of creating a
value, I had an amazing coach and I was playing at this football
and it was a team sport and this coach came with so much passion
and he played the collegiate level. So his techniques were off the
charts like he was really good at all. These things needed to kind
of build into a beginning athlete.
00;44;38;18 - 00;44;53;13
And we were playing high school football. But one of the major
takeaways and he'd say this and every practice was bring something
to the party, because if you're the fastest runner, bring your
speed. If you have fast runner, but you have a lot of a lot of
personality to share with the team, you're a great man. Bring that
right.
00;44;53;13 - 00;45;12;13