Ikigai Leadership Podcast: Dhru and Dr. Dorothy A. Martin Neville Talk About Leadership Spirituality and Physical Health

Dhru 00:00

Hey, everybody, this is Dr. Drew Bee. And I’m here to welcome you to my podcast Ikigai Leadership. We’re gonna be talking to leaders in all different industries from all different backgrounds and demographics from all over the world. And we’ll be discussing topics like leadership development, culture, DEI, content creation and marketing, and all things business and entrepreneurship. Everybody welcome back to another edition of Ikigai Leadership. My name is Dhru Beeharilal, and I’m here today with Dr. Dorothy A Martin Neville. Thanks so much for joining me today, I really appreciate it. It’s an honor to have you here and talk to you about the work you do because you’re also a business and executive coach. But your approach is a little bit different from most. So do you want to say a little more about that and who you are.

Dorothy 00:47

Because I spent 20-something years as a psychotherapist, in private practice, as well as being a pioneer in integrative health care here in the United States. What I do is combine the depth of knowledge I have around health and psychology and how leadership is impacted by their belief systems by how they hold their stress by their understanding of leadership, their understanding of who they are theoretically supposed to be. And when you move into levels of self-betrayal or levels of confusion, you may be in transition, where am I going? What am I going to do? And as a leader, you can create all kinds of illusions about what you should be doing and where you should go and all of this. And that ends up not only impacting the effectiveness of your leadership, it impacts your health emotionally, spiritually and physically, so that you don’t get to bring the best of you to the table. Yeah.

Dhru 01:45

Yea, and I think that last part is the part people don’t necessarily connect the dots on, right, that affects your physical health, we tend to prioritize physical health over other types of health, which is interesting in our society. You know, I think now it’s kind of coming around a little more where mental health is becoming more of a focus. But frankly, it’s become an excuse and a lot of the time sometimes, because how do you measure mental health? Right? There’s no like, objective way to measure mental health and in terms of like being like, Oh, you’re even pain, right? Because it’s your pain? Is it a five? Well, hers is a five, two, but you guys might have different thresholds for pain. And how do you how do you talk to people with the with that kind of feeling about that?

Dorothy 02:21

For me, what I look at is, what’s your functionality? If you’re emotionally healthy in and we all have stuff, I don’t care who we are, we all have stuff, you know that stuff to the day we pass. However, for some of us, we are working so hard not to see our stuff, that we spend our days pushing through it, thinking we are functioning well. And yet, when you’re working with people, they can see how quickly you go into defense, how quickly you go into rage or push and will and in or collapse. And although you think it’s not impacting you, it’s having a huge impact. So to me, when I see somebody emotionally healthy, I see them and I have recordings I’ve done on emotional intelligence, you know, because I truly believe in this. When I see somebody emotionally healthy, what I see is their ability to own their own stuff. To say God, I blew it. Sorry about that. Let’s regroup and go over this again, come up with it. Or I might have made a mistake. Tell me what are your thoughts on this? And can we look at this and do this differently? Because there’s a sense of who the “I Am.” When you’re emotionally healthy you have or mental health, you have a sensitivity ”I am” it’s far from perfect, but you know what it is you can define it, you recognize the strengths as well as the limitations, you’re not humiliated by the limitations you own them, and so that they don’t become an energy drain on you.

Dhru 03:49

I love that because I always say that the worst kinds of leaders are the insecure leaders, right? The ones who are have that in the back of their heads, like I can’t, I can’t do anything wrong. Right? Sometimes it’s imposter syndrome. Sometimes it’s just blatant basic insecurity. But either way it comes in manifests poorly with your team, with your with people you manage with the people, you’re supposed to be inspiring. And right. Yeah, it’s disheartening in some ways, but it’s also it’s something that we can look at, and which is why I love the fact that you’re doing this and connecting that connection that thought and in a very, very, like, direct way, because I haven’t done that with my clients really, in terms of, I kind of, I won’t say I shy away from I do some somatic work, but I don’t go as deeply as you do, right. Like you actually connect the dots and say this is a physical manifestation of your stress of your insecurities. And when you work with folks, how does that manifest for you? Like how What’s the process like when you work with someone and talking to them? This kind of thing.

Dorothy 04:39

Well with a potential client who called last week we’re gonna have another conversation next week. He called me up. He’s been in an industry he couldn’t stand for 26 years he hasn’t liked to since the day he graduated from college, but it was a theoretically good industry, and it was going to provide well for him and his family.

Dhru 04:56

I was gonna say, is it law? Because it might be law.

Dorothy 05:03

I’ve had a couple of those. So, the thing is that he doesn’t like it at all. And at one point, his company was downsizing. And he was let go. And he grabbed the first thing he could, which is the same business again, which he still didn’t like, what ended up happening, he was out of work for about a month and a half. And in that month and a half, he went through so much self-hatred, about being a failure, because a man supposed to provide for his family. So he failed as a man, those belief systems, I failed as a man which we won’t even get into the cultural ridiculousness of that concept. But that’s there. All right, I failed as a man therefore, I have no value or worth, while the self-hatred comes up, all the insecurities come up. The stress literally gets held in the whole prostate area. And because it’s around his manliness, his manhood, and he ended up two months later, you know, going and finding issues around prostate cancer. And so, when I said to him, you know, how is your health record? And he said to me, well, I have had prostate cancer. And I said, were you ever laid off or fired? He said, Well, yes. And I says, so when did the prostate cancer show up? He said, a few months after I was laid off, why is there a connection? I said, yeah, there definitely is a connection. So, let’s talk about what’s going on in your life right now. And he said, I’m fully aware that I could do this for 10 more years and take early retirement, but I don’t know that I’ll live 10 more years. So, I need out. That’s okay. Now we can talk because in working with him, if he chooses to come on one, obviously as a specialist in transition, I will help him begin to see that this time, what does he want to move into what is going to make him feel alive? What is going to make him feel? Yes, highly productive. Many of us are driven by being productive by doing something of value, making this world a better place. So what can he do that would make him feel excited to get up in the morning and go do whatever that is he’s doing. And in addition to that, help him develop the life skills, as well as the business skills needed, because it’s going to be outside of his realm. He doesn’t like what he does. So, it’ll be outside of it. But it’s looking at how that stress is held. It’s based on belief systems; it’s based on expectations that are frequently very unrealistic. And so let’s look at it because how you hold your stress is what impacts your health. And how you hold your stress depends on your belief systems.

Dhru 07:35

I like the fact that it was a male example, because I think there’s always a lot of talk about around self-care around women, right. And there’s not as much self-care talk among men. I feel like there was, for better for worse, I watched this show called Love Is Blind with my fiancé. It’s as bad as it sounds, sometimes. But it was entertaining in some ways. There was one episode and those are there little nuggets in that show. And I’m deviating for a moment. But the reason I call that out is because there was one scene with between two guys, and they’re both African American, they both are talking through dealing with it with their respective significant others. And they were just, they’re having a very honest and frank conversation about the stress about what they’re dealing with and how they were trying to kind of deal with it. And one of them said to the other one, he’s like, hey, I want to thank you for having this conversation with me, because I don’t really talk to it like this with my boys. Like he’s like, it’s not normalized for people like us to talk like this, you know, and that’s probably one of the best moments in the whole season. It was like a throwaway moment, and like, you know, whatever. But, going back to what you said about the culture aspect of around that, and it’s very, it’s very interesting that the topic that comes up with this physical manifestation of stress and whatnot, it was an example was a man, I’m dealing with these kinds of things. Because I feel like there’s not as many outlets for us, right? And it’s not as okay for men to be not okay.

Dorothy 09:02

Yeah, there’s this unrealistic expectation that you’re going to have it all together at all times. And you can take charge of everything, make everything work perfectly, and still be in a really great mood and loving and gentle to everybody all the time. And let’s do a reality check. Nobody can do that man or woman, nobody can do that. And what I have found is that frequently, when men get super stressed, their first thought is I’m just gonna go to the gym. Yeah, I’m just gonna go and work out for a little bit, and then they go and what’s actually happening is they learned how to avoid it. So theoretically, they’re letting the stress out, which works marvelously for a bit of time, half an hour, an hour, whatever the case may be. But as soon as they get back and they take the shower, and they go to the office, zoom, they’re right back to you know, so yeah, you had a great hour. But what did you change? You know, I’m all for working out, you know, I’m on my treadmill every morning and, and doing what I need to do. However, that’s to keep us that’s a maintenance piece. That’s not a growth piece, the growth piece is what is going on what is the belief system that is setting you up, to have this kind of stress? And when I speak to folks in corporate because I work with entrepreneurs, as well as those in corporate, when I speak to them is that you have no idea the levels of stress they put on us. I do. And I realized it’s absolutely ridiculous. However, how you take it in, is really what this is all about. How you take it in. And what do you do with it. Because when you can come to a place where you see what you’re doing as part of your life purpose. And I don’t care if you’re an insurance or you’re in manufacturing, is there a way in your belief system in your value system, you can see that what you were doing is about making this world a better place. If you know that you’re providing life insurance, I say that cuz I’m in Connecticut, and we have, theoretically the insurance capital of the world here. You know, so you’re in life insurance, not the most exciting industry. But if you can see that you’re helping those when they’re in their greatest period of need. And you’re supporting them, then you’re going into the office, no matter what you’re doing. There’s a wonderful objective at the end of it the end of the tunnel for this one? Well, you know, it could be manufacturing, I’m helping make the world a better place and making cars safer. It doesn’t matter what it is. How can you do that? And if you can’t, why are you in that industry? What are you doing in the industry, and maybe you need to go elsewhere. And it could be I’m in leadership, because I want to help develop great teams, I want to help develop the people behind me. Well, fantastic. Now you found something that feeds you, and you’ve got all this pressure coming in. But you know what feeds you and you keep doing what you can while you’re doing it. And it’s recognizing that when we go into I’m not good enough, and I have to push harder. I’m not good enough. And I have to do this. Or in Western culture, we’ve got such an expectation on catastrophe. If I don’t get this climb, I’m going to lose my house. If I don’t get this, I’m going to lose my family. If I don’t get it really take a deep breath. Is that honestly the truth? Is that honestly the truth? So the stories create the stress that makes me, I have to get it. And it’s like Whoa, now you don’t see clearly you’re not available to yourself, you’re not available to your family. And then what ends up happening, that affairs start coming into play. So now the affairs come into play, because you have a few minutes of an outlet where you can let stress go, that’s different than the gym. But now, where’s your value system? Now, where’s the fear of being caught? Now, where is all the other? So you’ve just found another way to create stress?

Dhru 12:59

Yeah, as coaches yesterday with some people about this, about exactly that, right? That making things bigger than the story we create. We weave these amazing stories that just don’t did just not true, right. They don’t serve us and they’re not true. You know, I remember I remember being in high school and applying for colleges, right this back when they had paper applications, write it up and then mail it in. And then everyone’s super like writing what do you what do you was writing speak of. But it was it was stressful at the time. Right? I think it is like getting all these essays written and whatnot. And like, you know, printed out and attached to these things. And I remember my parents, and you know, they did the best they could with what they knew they weren’t like intentionally trying to do harm to my mental health. But looking back, like they didn’t know any better. They were just like, you got to do what you got to get done to get what we’ve got to get done. Like just kept going with it. And whatever else I had to do for school and whatever. At the time, we felt at the end of the world. I was like, Oh my God, if I don’t get this application, and I’m never going to amount to anything in my life, my whole life is gonna go to hell. And then you look back and you’re like oh, like, I mean, so I would have gone to college a year later. Yeah, all my friends were going or whatever, like, you know, a semester later or something, you know, like, worst case, and that’s probably the really the worst case that would have happened. Right?

Dorothy 14:14

Right. And when you look at basic life skills, the reality is, you probably wanted to get that application done. And you wanted to meet your friends at seven and you needed to do something else at nine. What if, as an adult, we say, okay, if I can’t make my friends at seven, I’ll go to this place at nine. My priority is getting this done. I now can relax and get this done. I’ve got all night to do this, and I can do it. But that hopefully by the time you’re moving into positions of leadership, you can say okay, I’ve got eight things on my plate. But if I focus on this one thing, in peace, I can get this one thing done. And the reality is, if you keep all the stress of the eight other things that are going on and you’re taking twice as long to do it. So this isn’t about helping you become irresponsible. Do that one thing, get it out of the way, and then sit back and what can you do with the rest, you know, and find out what works for you. There’s no one right way to do this. For myself, if I’ve got eight things on my plate, I start with the easiest, because I know if I get four or five of those easy things done, and sometimes it’s 10 minutes on something, but I get four or five of those easiest ones, I feel like I’m on a roll. So that energy of I’m on a roll makes it theoretically more difficult ones easier. Because I’m on a roll my attitude going into it isn’t like, Oh, crap, this is going to be something else altogether. I’m exhausted before I start. And my mindset is like closing in, rather than expanding to make it easier.

Dhru 15:53

100%. And I think that one of the bigger issues that come up with comfort a lot of leaders, especially in toxic environments, where they don’t identify as a toxic environment, is that they don’t have that space to prioritize, right? Everything is a fire, everything is a priority one. And I tell people, I tell people all the time, if everything’s a priority one, nothing’s a priority one, right? If your boss is constantly telling you that everything is a priority one, they have no idea how to prioritize first of all. And second of all, nothing’s a priority one, then because if you get five priority one things at the same time, they’re not actually probably two one things which, frankly, almost nothing is a priority one thing, in reality, then which one do you do first? How do you do? You can’t work on all of them at same time. To your point, you can’t do that you can’t even work on that. Let me work on this first get this built up momentum wise, and then roll into the next thing. Because everything is always it’s like, oh, you’re working on one thing? Then you get pinged about the second thing. And it’s like, okay, well, how many things can I do at the same time, right? And when we as humans really, really can’t multitask.

Dorothy 16:51

We can’t and we get overwhelmed, which makes us incapable of doing anything well, which is why and I do know that when the boss has five things any Annie wants to hear she wants it all by five. I can’t do all of them by five. But what I’m going to do is do a really phenomenal job at maybe two or three of the five. And now you can have them in. And it’s going to be done. Now. Yeah, it’s after five o’clock. Listen, you got these three? And let’s do and yeah, you can’t become your boss’s boss. But you really can say, Listen, you gave me the five, I’ve got this much time, realistically. And his or her inability to deal with stress impacts everybody beneath them. Which is why for me being able to work with the leaders to allow them to begin to see the insanity that gets developed. It’s how unproductive it is and also how much illness develops as a result of it. Not just for the leader who keeps pushing this down the chain, but all the people down the chain. Now you’ve got all of these folks out, either with surgeries or if it’s minor, they may have a flu. And they’re not pretending they are so darn sick, they can’t get out of bed because the stress is impacting their immune system.

Dhru 18:07

That or it gives them like direct issues, right? Like shoulder pain. I used to go to a massage therapist. She, the way she categorized it was illustrated to me it was very interesting. She’s like stress and emotions in general, are like food for your body. But, so it depends on how you process it. Right? And where do you store it, they get stored just like fat. And I’m like, that’s interesting, because she’s like, rubbing my shoulder and there’s like this huge knot and it was hurting. And she was like, Yeah, this is where you store all of your stress. Like this spot right here is just so hard and almost calcified How hard is right now,

Dhru 18:42

but think about if you integrate that knowledge in because she’s completely correct. I had one client too. She had two girls, two daughters. And one on the shoulder was always this particular daughter in the shoulder was this particular daughter. And when she finally recognized it, that it was starting to tighten up I see okay, so what’s going on with her? Oh, nothing of any great deal. Well, yea this isn’t acute yet what’s going on? That has you stressed in the fact is we all do. Some of us when we get highly stressed we get migraines, there’s some get strep throat, some get diverticulitis, others, it’s the lower back that goes out for you with the shoulder. We all have developed patterns based on our belief systems. You know, right shoulder is really beliefs around you all the responsibilities you carry your inability to carry, believe the burdens you’ve got on your shoulders. And my first thought and working with you if I was, why is that a burden? Why are you perceiving that as a burden to start with? And then if it is more for you to handle, let’s talk about how you could deal with it. Who can you bring in to support you what else can you do with this? But basically what’s the belief system and you have all these burdens on your shoulder? Because that’s generally not the truth. It’s the filter through which you see things. Everything becomes a burden. You know, for something, being in a relationship is a burden because God puts so much stress on you, how do you do this? What am I going to do? I can’t do anything, right? And so just thinking about the relationship you feel stressed? Like, what if we change how you saw that relationship? What if we changed how you saw homeownership? Homeownership is exhausting. There’s so much work. Let’s take a deep breath. Let’s back up a moment. What if you hired somebody to do the lawn and you didn’t have to do it? You know, what if, let’s look at how you can do these things without that belief system. Without that, because changing that belief system changes the how you hold the stress in your body, which changes your physical health. You know, my doctoral dissertation was on the psychological and spiritual causes of physical disease and disorders. And I received NIH grant funding to do my work that we picked fibromyalgia, which was the disease of the moment, because diseases, literally are cyclical depends on the stress and the culture. All of a sudden people throughout the country develop that particular disease. And, you know, we have all these tendencies that are coming up now, people under 30, of becoming far more diseased with cancer, disease patients with cancer than previously, what’s the stress is on folks under 30? So again, there’s a cyclical element of what’s happening in our culture. And how do you deal with stress. Because some, some develop bladder disorders, when they’re highly stressed. Bladder is fear and an inability to protect somebody else. I’m making this very simple, because it’s a much more extensive thing. But to make it simple, it’s fitting in Eastern thought, the water element, which is kidney bladder, is about fear. And some people when they get highly stressed to panic attacks, some people highly stressed develop bladder infections. And that’s about the inability to protect people they love. Kidney disorders, those are the inability to protect myself. They usually happen when you’re frightened of being laid off, or when you’re getting a divorce, or when you’re being asked to move to another state. Fear when an inability to protect myself, somehow you get a kidney infection. Think, Oh, it must been something I ate. No.

Dhru 22:19

Yeah, my actual one my best friends, when he’s going through his divorce, he got kidney stones. And it’s something where it’s just, that’s fascinating. And it’s also going into the spiritual for second. You know, I love that intersection that you have there. Between those, those three things, right, that the physical, the emotional and the spiritual, because what you’re talking about the stuff that just stuff you’re describing, and the symptoms, especially with the different manifestations in the body, align very closely with the chakras. Right?

Dorothy 22:48

Right. Absolutely.

Dhru 22:50

It’s so fascinating that that these kinds of things were studied and documented 1000s of years ago, right. And they’re now kind of coming back up nowadays, you know, and even things like the like the Egyptians, you know, studying the fact that the heart was a little bit to the left, as opposed to being the center of the body, right. But it’s just fascinating how much of that is coming to fruition. And obviously, you know, Eastern medicine also gets a bad rap some ways, because people tend to be like, Oh, I’m not going to use Western medicine at all, I’m gonna go do Eastern medicine, and then they end up, you know, still being sick or whatever might happen. But I wonder if the answer is somewhere in between.

Dorothy 23:25

I believe, when we make enemies, whether it’s of medical systems, whether it’s of anything else, we’ve created problems that don’t need to exist. Western medicine, to use it in that term, is fantastic for acute disorders. That’s acute, if you break your leg, it’s great to go to the hospital, get it reset, get it checked out.

Dhru 23:48

You mean, you shouldn’t get a tea for that.

Dorothy 23:55

And pray. But and I believe from power of prayer, but let’s do reality here. But then when it comes to Eastern medicine, it’s a phenomenal approach to maintenance. It’s a normal approach to creating health, to create health and maintenance is with the Eastern component. Western medicine is wonderful for acute care, in a crises in an emergency, go in, you don’t have time to do any emotional, spiritual reassessment, go in and deal with the problem immediately. Then once you’ve dealt with it, now let’s step back and do the emotional and spiritual assessment so that we can prevent a reoccurrence so that we can support you going forward and getting back into full health again, you know, but all of this comes down to this stress, that crises we were talking about is really about the adrenals. The adrenals are here to support us in an emergency. If everything in life is an emergency because if I don’t get this and I lose my job, if I don’t get I’m gonna lose my house. If I don’t get this I’m going to lose. All right. So when I’m in a crisis, and when the adrenals start to become depleted, energetically they take from the immune system and the immune system, then stress feeding the adrenals so you can stay in survival mode, which then makes you vulnerable to any bacteria, any virus, anything that’s out here, it also then begins to cause distortion, biochemically, and distortions in cellular formation, because cells are always being recreated in your body dying and being recreated, you know, so all of that stress impacts this recreation. And we end up with all of these diseases. So let’s go back to not draining the adrenals, which means not living in crises, in high stress, which strengthens the immune system. And things are different. If you look at all kinds of different cultures, what are the diseases or lack of diseases in different cultures, and some of the islands in Greece and other places, people live to well over 100 without any major diseases? Why? Why does that happen? Why do people in the Caribbean have these diseases and not have other diseases? People in Tibet have these diseases and not other diseases? So let’s look at what’s happening in the culture. What are the belief systems for the people in those cultures? And then you’re going to discover why there are certain disease patterns in different cultures.

Dhru 26:32

I like the distinction. And I like that distinction, as well as the distinction about between the acute conditions versus the longer term kind of proactive slash maintenance conditions. Right. I mean, that’s something that I don’t think a lot of people I haven’t heard that distinction like that before. And I think it’s an interesting one, because it’s something that we don’t think about in this in this country a lot, right, which is that maintenance for us is you’re on Xanax good to go, you’re solid, you know, or you’re on you’re on this diabetic medication, you know, you’re taking insulin regular basis, or whatever. Like, it’s not, it’s not in the idea of let’s figure out how we can make it so you don’t need medication, right or so you don’t need to get to that point where you where you’re dealing with medication, it’s like, oh, I’ll just take a pill for that.

Dorothy 27:15

Also, and as you see, you can be on high blood pressure meds, you can be on diabetic medications, however, you can also get off of them. And I’m not saying you make that choice, I just don’t feel I take that I’m done. But you can, you can lose that weight, you can get in shape, you can change your belief systems that create diabetes, alright, high blood pressure, you can learn to deal with stress. Again, losing weight, working out, learning how to deal with stress can eliminate high blood pressure. And people will say to me, but it’s genetic. My whole family has said, yes, let’s look at the belief systems your whole family has. Because the reality is if both your parents are diabetic, and they have five children, statistically, we know two or three of those kids are going to develop diabetes. So what’s the variable of the other two? That don’t get it? And the reality is, if you look at the home of the three kids that got it, they eat the same way their parents do, they have the same political beliefs as their parents, they had the same worldview as their parents. Look at the two that don’t have it. They have dramatically different belief systems and lifestyles than the parents and their three siblings that have developed the diabetes. That’s not coincidental. You know, so pre-conditions don’t even need to be actualized.

Dhru 28:39

Yeah, their genetic preference. They’re not like a guarantee right? Lifestyle does make a difference. I mean, for me, I don’t have diabetes. My parents are not diabetic, thankfully. But on both sides of my family, like grandparents died, but Right. I have uncles and aunts on both sides who are diabetic and so I’m, I actually had diabetes a few years ago. But I had an amazing doctor. And luckily, she worked with me and was like, Look, I’m gonna get you on vacation short term so you can get off but Well, here’s what’s let’s make a plan to get you back to being healthy, and work our butts off. And I had to go to the gym, I had to eat different I had to do a lot of things for like a year. And I corrected that. I’m not saying I’m not the pinnacle of health or anything like that. But I’m just saying like, it’s possible to reverse those conditions. Right. I don’t think people understand that. And I think a lot of doctors don’t even understand that or say that to people, which is frustrating, because it’s just, there’s more money in a treatment than in a cure right?

Dorothy 29:31

Well, there’s more money in pharmaceuticals than not. All right. And I’m not making enemies out there. This isn’t about enemies, or ill intent. It’s just the reality is that when we take ownership for how we live our lifestyle, but also our belief systems. When you live in hate, or when you live in resentment or the illusions of victimization. What ends up happening is that you suppress everything in your body. When you begin to recognize stress, and we, you know, this was about talking about leaders, that when they begin to recognize that every single one of us on this planet has a spiritual purpose, everybody on this planet is here for a reason. And, and it’s to make the world a better place. And in doing so when we’re do that we’re fed, just as when you stop being completely stressed, running down the street and say, New York City, just because I’m close to New York, and you stop and help somebody who fell. Not only do you feel good about you, you allow them to feel good that there’s somebody out here to support them. And all of a sudden, think of what that does to your body. Think of what that does to the dopamine, think of what that does to everything, because you stopped long enough to open your heart, you stopped long enough to be present to the humanity around you. What ends up happening is you feel good about you, which says to me that we’re all intrinsically wholly good souls. But some of us choose to live under the stress of false expectations. Some of us choose to, not consciously, but choose to live in fear. And when we live in fear, we either go to collapse, which is depression, and other disorders, or we go to rage. And that’s other disorders, or this extreme competitiveness. Now we end up with strokes, we end up with heart attacks, we end up with those disorders. So really how we live, whether it’s in fear and defense, or to me the value of meditation, or prayer, or whatever your faith system is, when we stop in the morning to start our day, with some meditation or reflection, and we end our day that way, that starts to become a natural way of being for us. And that doesn’t mean we’re not passionate during the day, we’re not excited about things during the day, that we don’t have a ball playing sports or playing card games, whatever it is that that excites us, you can do all of that and still be at peace. You can be passionate and at peace. You don’t have to be passionate in stress or passionate in rage. You know, so we get to have all that vibrancy, but without the stress, the unhealthy stress.

Dhru 32:16

So let me ask you this question, what caused you to do this work? I was doing

Dorothy 32:19

therapy for about three years, with patients seeing 42 patients a week. And I started noticing that certain patients with certain personalities and belief systems were walking in with prostate cancer, or breast cancer or kidney disorders. And when I asked friends who are MDs have they noticed the personality construct of their patients seem to be similar? They said no, no, that’s coincidental. Well, when I could predict it, I knew it wasn’t. So, I then went and became certified in nine modalities of integrative health care, nine different approaches to it. I mean, reflexology, acupressure and so forth many others, and began to see that when I brought that awareness and could deal with my patients that way, they started changing, their health started changing, their joy started changing, their depression started changing. And then even emotionally, I worked with one of the men, the First Men in Connecticut here who had HIV. And it had just come out as in the 80s, it had just come out in across the country. And he’d only been in the country about six months. And a patient I’d been working with on depression, for about a year, came in and said to me, I’ve only got less than a year to live. I said, really? Why? What’s happened? He said, I have HIV. And I have listed here. So we’ve only known about this for about four or five months in this country. How can somebody predict how long you’re gonna live? We haven’t even known about the disease that long. He said, I know, the doctor just told me that. Then I said, so what if you had 20 years to live? What would you do differently? Oh, this is what I would do is I’m in insurance. I hate insurance. I want to be a DJ, I would quit my job. He said, and my marriage isn’t working. I realized I’m gay, and I want out. But I don’t want to lose my babies. My two boys. So, we worked with that. How can you do this? How can you approach this marriage? How can you tell his wife and about the two boys and it worked out that he got divorced. There was no interruption in this relationship with the kids. And he became a DJ. And over the next 20 years, what ended up happening this man was so happy. So in love with his life that he had two in 20 years, two issues that really showed up. He was blind for about three months, some bacterial infection he got, got through that and came through the other side, lived his life so perfectly happy. They ended up with the cocktails. The medicine cocktail said they developed HIV and lived his life with little to no impact from this disorder and just truly was alive. And he said to me that day when I said to him, what if you live for the next twenty? Do you know he says to me, Hey, Doc, I have no time for depression. I’ve got too much life to live. I’m done. And literally, not once did that man come in depressed for the rest of the time, we didn’t work together for 20 years. But the rest of the years we work together. Not once did that man come in depressed, overwhelmed on occasion, but never depressed. He always said, I’m overwhelmed, we got to put this in perspective, tell me how to do this. And then he went back out again, even depression, it was like, that’s a luxury can’t afford. I’ve got to live my life because I don’t know how much life I’ve got. And the joy that showed up when he became a DJ, the joy that showed up when he left a marriage that wasn’t working, all of a sudden, everything in his life changed because of a decision he made. And truly, it’s hard for people to believe it can be that simple. I believe life is simple. It’s not always easy. But we make it far more complicated than it needs to be.

Dhru 35:56

Yeah, I completely agree with you. I definitely think we complicate life a lot of times. I think that the stories we tell ourselves, right? And it’s cultural, it’s so many different influences, and on that side of things, but we can choose to see a certain path and to see that through. And as you were talking, you know, I couldn’t help but think about the the idea of, of, we’re all gonna die. And that’s something that, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk has this video, like, you’re gonna die, right? Like, I’m gonna die, you’re gonna die, everyone’s gonna die. And we don’t know when, right? We have no idea when it’s gonna happen. We’re assuming it’s gonna be at a certain point when we’re 90 or whatever. But we don’t really know, right? Could happen tomorrow. But we live, we live our lives, like we’re like, it’s like, oh, well, like, I’m gonna die when I’m 300 years old, I can just do whatever I want. I’m not going to, you know, bother caring about what I’m happy doing. I’m just going to slog through this nonsense, you know, just to do it. And I wonder, that guy, that perspective that that guy got when he was faced with mortality, right, is something that I think, you know, traumatizing as it might have been, I’m sure. But I feel like it’s a wake up call, we can all use sometimes. That realization or recognition of our mortality, the short time that we actually are here on the on the planet, right?

Dorothy 37:11

It really does. I’ve worked with so many folks over the years who have come up with cancer and given a short period to live and somehow they come through it. And they’ll say, I’m not the person, I would never wish cancer on anybody. But it has changed my life completely. It was a gift I didn’t know I needed, because boy, do I look at life differently. Boy, do I look at my career differently, my family differently. And it’s given me an outlook on life I never would have had otherwise. And everything in their world changed because they were faced with their mortality, and came out on the other side. And there’s so little they take for granted now. There’s so little they don’t value immensely now. Because it’s all a gift. It is all a gift to us. And when we can step back and realize that from day one, we don’t have to go for why, why wait till you have cancer? Why wait, you have HIV? Why wait till those issues show up? What if we really began to see that I have achieved what I have achieved at this moment. Because of every decision I have made in my life. From the time I was six or seven years old. Without knowing it consciously, I was making a decision to define the person I was going to become, and the path I was going to take. And we’ve done that through every step of it, if we can own that, that where we are isn’t by luck. Where we are is because of all the decisions we made, we can walk with a certainty that I’ve created this life. And the way I explain it to many of my clients is you’re sitting in this chair, and over there. And the other side of the room are all the friends you’ve had, all the lovers you’ve had, all the careers you’ve had all the jobs you’ve done, the homes you’ve lived in, that’s all the life you’ve lived. That’s the life you created, you’re over here, you are so powerful, you could create that life. And you have the ability, the power to create whatever you want in the rest of that life journey. It’s on the other side of the room that doesn’t define who you are, you are so much more than the life you created. And when we can look at that. And we can see that we recognize that these theoretical crises I’m creating in my life, these theoretical difficulties and leadership that I’m creating in my life. Why? Why am I creating these? Why am I looking at it as such? And why am I putting myself in this context? That is destroying me? What can I do differently? And that’s either reframing where you are, or getting out of where you are. But all of it is just a part of the journey. It’s not who you are. All right. And it certainly doesn’t define who you are.

Dhru 40:03

I know that I think that’s a good place to pause for the sessions. I think that’s a good period on that one. With this one caveat, the question I want to ask you, which I prepped you for a little bit, because I think we’ve talked about this for a long time. And I’d love to have you back for session two at some point to talk there more.

Dorothy 40:18

Any time, any time.

Dhru 40:20

But the question wants to ask what you already know is, in your, in your career, in your life and in your in the development that you’ve gone through in the course of your life? Who or what have been the most influential things in your life or people in your life?

Dorothy 40:32

There have been many, I was thinking, you knew that this spiritual element for me, Dan and Phil Berrigan were folks from years ago back in the 60s and 70s. They were Jesuit theologians who were real social, social activists, who really made it so obvious to me that we’re all in this together, that every one of us is in this together, and none of us is this isolated, separate being that we’re all here to care for one another. We’re all here on this planet together, that impacted me massively. When it came to becoming who I am. It’s really, many of the powerful people that I’ve met Martin Luther King that I’ve that I’ve read about or know about, that have been really aware that life is so much more than what we see that life is so much more than what we own. That that value, that way of life that says, these are wonderful things. So I love my home, I love my car, I love all of these things. But if I lose them tomorrow, life goes on. The gift of the journey is really what this is all about. And I think they have all inspired me. Many of the men and women I’ve seen, who have had all kinds of opportunity and still remember to be kind to other folk. They inspire me continuously.

Dhru 42:02

Well, thanks so much for joining us today and talking through some of the stuff that’s really fascinating, because I love that intersection of the emotional, the spiritual, and the physical, right, because I don’t think people necessarily think about those things being related, right, they try to compartmentalize, and as you know, we can’t do that.

42:19

Right, and you can’t, because it’s so integrated. This, this not boxes that are separate, there’s all one being. And for me, the excitement of working with leaders is allowing them to really lead from that place of that inner knowing leading from that place of I am all of this, I am this emotional, spiritual, physical being. And my leadership is just an expression of who I am, rather than a job I’m supposed to be doing. It’s an expression of how I walked through the planet, you know, very different way of looking at leadership.

Dhru 42:51

love it. Well, thanks so much, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. Hope you enjoyed this session today. If you want to reach out to Dr. Dorothy, her contact information will be in the description box below on YouTube. And there’ll be in the show notes in podcasts. Thanks. Thanks all so much. Thanks to Dorothy again. And we’ll see you guys soon. Thank you all so much for listening to the Ikigai Leadership podcast today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a five-star review with comments to let me know what you thought. It really helps me keep on delivering valuable and relevant content to you all, and if you want to connect with me directly, please feel free to do so on my socials. That’s at @DhruBee on Twitter, at @DhruvaBee on Instagram and LinkedIn, it’s linkedin.com/in/dhrubee. Thank you all so much. Take care. Stay safe. Talk to you soon.