Transforming Stress: Finding Your Happy Place with Dr Gary Sprouse

Hello, welcome to the Transforming Stress with Dr Ash. And today we have got a very eminent physician, Dr. Gary Sprouse, from Maryland in the US. Dr. Gary Sprouse has around a four-decade experience as a as an internal medicine physician. And after spending nearly four decades as a physician, he transitioned to be a more holistic doctor. He saw during his he saw during his work that he was not always able to help his patients the way he wanted to, in terms of helping them solve the problem, solve the chronic problems. He learned about hypnotherapy, he learned about neurolinguistic programming, and his vision was to help people decrease the stress. To this effect, he also published a very great book, which actually I've been really reading and enjoying, Dr. Sprouse, The Highway to Your Happy Place, which is about he gives you a roadmap to less stress. So please help me welcome Dr. Gary Sprouse. Thank you again for showing up. I know last time we had a little bit of a technical hitch. and really, I'm so excited to speak with you, Dr. Sprouse.

So that was a practice session, and now we got a good, right? So we're good at now. And I hope that between the two of us that we find at least one person today that we can make them feel less stressed.

Definitely that is going to that is going to happen. And when you set out your own journey, your own road to write this book, what inspired you?

Well, so a couple things. So, first off, as a as a doctor, I'm used to writing prescriptions for patients. And they would say, Hey, this is a really good medicine for your blood pressure, your diabetes, or whatever it was. And then I'd say, Oh, but there could be some side effects. And so what I realized was that most of human stresses are just problems with our skills. So we have these amazing skills, so we can envision the future. What? That's an incredible skill, but it can have a side effect, and that's you have to worry about it. So psychologists will say to us, Well, I'll just live for today. And you're like, Well, that's a nice thought, but it's impossible as a human to live for today because we spend way too much time in the future. And second off, why would I want to give up my greatest skill just because it has a side effect? So my grandson, who's one year old, like he does what psychologists say, he lives for today because he doesn't have the skill yet of envisioning a future. So he literally can't worry because he just lives for today. And he's very happy, but he needs his parents and his grandparents around to keep him in track. Because he can't envision a future, it makes him not as successful on his own. And so in the book, what I decided was let's write a book and say, hey, here's our incredible skill, here's the side effect of the skill, and let's get rid of the side effect and keep the skill. And that led to me going, hey, I need to write this book and get this out to as many people as I can. Because as you know, when people react to their stresses, it affects their body. So I was seeing people, you know, came in with high blood pressure, and they were on medications and diets, and then they would retire and their stress levels would go way down. And guess what? They stopped needing blood pressure medicine. It was like, wait, what? And that's when I realized, no, no, we need to help people, not just for their psychological, but for their physical too.

So, what you realize that your patients, your clients, when they stopped working, they stopped they stopped requiring those pills. So, is it reasonable to assume that they were in an unhappy place and after finishing work their life changed, and so did their s so did their chronic stress, and they found themselves in a better place.

Well, I think your book is really important to explain what happened to these people. Like they were under stresses, but they didn't even realize it because it was their stress levels at baseline, so they didn't even realize how stressed out they were because that was just the way it was. So when they stopped working, then they go, Oh my gosh, I didn't realize how stressed out I was until I stopped doing it. And you're like, Yeah, and then and then you saw the changes in their physiology with their blood pressure and pulse and things like that. So I use the term stress blindness, which is you get so used to a certain level of stress that you can't even see it anymore, and it's not until you stop doing it that you go, oh wait, that was crazy stressful, right?

A fish in the water might not be aware of the water around it.

Yes, and I use the term the frog with the teeth, the temperature turning up. Yeah, exactly. They don't even notice.

The boiling frog, they don't have yeah, they are not aware of the they are not aware of the environment around it. So let's talk about the unhappy place that today, according to the Gallup studies, if you take the last five years of Gallup's report, it says 70 to 80 percent people all around the world in different continents are daily having negative emotions. That is a very startling statistics we are seeing that there is so much of unhappiness and slow burnout at work. Now, first of all, would you agree that in your own practice, first of all, what you learn from your own patients, and then secondly, secondarily, even the studies from for from physician burnout also show that 50 to 60 percent physicians are having signs of burnout. So, but you agree that a lot of places around the world are having high levels of unhappiness and dissatisfaction.

Well, you know, this is a this is one of the side effects of being humans. I'm not a hundred percent sure why we do this, but humans tend to focus on things that aren't going right, and they tend to ignore all the things that are going right, so they get used to a certain level of comfort, and then they only pay attention to things that aren't going right. So, one of the things that I talk about is gratitude. So we always talk about this at lunch today with some friends, and I'm like, I'm like, and I'm gonna use this example. Like, one of the guys was talking about his father had a house up in the mountains, but it didn't have indoor plumbing, so you had to go outside to go to the bathroom, and he goes, Yeah, you had to knock the spiders off and move the snakes around, and you're and it's the middle of the night and it's cold, and you're like, we forget that we have indoor plumbing. What? How freaking nice is that, right? And so we so I was in Germany, I was at one of the castles, like this beautiful castle, right? It's like, oh, this is amazing, but it didn't have indoor plumbing, they didn't even have windows, they didn't have heating, they didn't have air conditioning, they didn't have elevators, cell phones, computers, they didn't have taps on their sink where they could just pull, right? Like, I live better than the king of Germany did a couple hundred years ago. But what do I pay attention to? Oh, the things that aren't going right. And you're like, no, you have to start paying attention to the things that are going right, but you're correct. We tend to spend more time figuring out what's not going right. And one of the things that's made that worse over the last 20 years is our social media. So our social media is this incredible tool that we have, that we have access to the world's information. Like we get instantaneous things about what's going on in China or Ukraine or Gaza or South Africa or England or United States, right? We have instantaneous access, we have access to every book that's ever been written. You're like, what? That's amazing. But we also have access to every disaster that's ever happened and every bad thing that you can think of, or somebody else in the world can think of. Now we have access to that. And so I'm watching some video going, oh my god, I never even thought about that. Ah, one more thing to worry about. So what I see is our stress levels keep going up because we find all these other reasons to get upset about.

So, first of all, there is stress around, and the brain has what we can say as a negative bias. Yes, we are wired to sense for stress and danger. But as a side effect of that, as a side effect of that long skill which we've had as hunter-gatherers, we lose what we also have the skill of envisioning a future, of thinking of like what he what he just mentioned about gratitude, of just being tuning in and focusing on what are the things which are going great in our lives. Yes.

So you'll like this term. So I read this book and it's differentiating homeostasis. So homeostasis is like you have a thermostat and you want your house to be at 60, 70 degrees, right? So my house is set at 70 degrees. So if it's 71, the air conditioner comes on. If it's 69, the air the heater comes on, right? And it's trying to keep it at 70 degrees. But what this guy introduced was this term called allostasis. Okay, so now allostasis is predicting what's gonna come up. So if you're a worker using your hands, you're a carpenter, your hands go, oh, we're gonna keep using our hands. We better start building up callus on our hands to be ready for tomorrow when we're gonna use those tools again. And our bodies are the same way. So we go, oh, hey, you know what? We're gonna be under some stress tomorrow. So we better get ready for that stress, right? And then the next day you're like, oh, yeah, we had some stress yesterday, we're probably gonna have some today. So let's get jazzed up and get ready. So let's make sure the blood pressure's off, let's make sure the pulse is off because we want to be ready because that's what allostasis is. So what happens, and so with our hands using that as an example, like when you stop being a carpenter, then your hands stop predicting that you're gonna need to have calluses. So then they guess what? The calluses go away because now you're like, yeah, I don't need them anymore. And so eventually the calluses go away. And that's what happened with my patients that retired. The body was like, Oh, we need to be jazzed up for tomorrow. We need to be jazzed, and then they return, like, okay, yeah, we don't need to do that anymore. So we don't need to make our blood pressure go up and our pulse go up. So allostasis is actually really important to how we to how humans operate.

Very, very, very, very true, actually. And but on a different if you see in a different situation, people do not even have that awareness to start with.

Yes. Well, so because here's what I found. So these skills that I talk about are something that we take for granted. Like most people don't go, oh, by the way, I have the skill of envisioning the future. They like they don't think about it that way. Or I have this ability to understand what's right and wrong, or what's good and bad, because they're so inherent that we don't even see them as skills. I'm like, no, these are amazing skills. Like, my dog does not have self-esteem issues, right? She has a big cut on her back, but she doesn't wake up going, oh, I got this big cut on my back, they're not gonna like me. No, that doesn't come up for her. She doesn't have good and bad. Her right and wrong is so very limited to like, yeah, just don't pee on the house, right? She doesn't go, oh, maybe I should be wearing different clothes today because it's in the wintertime. Right? I mean, like their definition of right and wrong is so limited compared to what humans have. So these awarenesses, these side effects that we have, they seem to come like, where did this come from? Like, like what's guilt? What's regret? What's boredom? Like, they don't like for humans, these are like big deals, and these are the ingredients that lead to things being so stressful. So I use this example. Like a patient came to me and said, Hey, my spouse died last week, and you're like, Wow, that's really sad. But what I found was the reason that it was so stressful, because losing your spouse is like one of the top 10 stresses, right? Maybe top five. But the reason it's stressful is because you're overwhelmed, you worry about what's gonna happen, you feel guilty that you didn't do something, or you feel regret that you should have done something differently, or you get a little bored now because you don't have anybody to share with, and you get your self-esteem takes a hit, and it's like, I can't bring your spouse back, but I can do something about all those stresses that you're feeling that are making up why losing your spouse is so stressful. That I can do something about, and that's one of the reasons I wrote that book to say, hey, I can do something about worry and guilt and regret and feeling overwhelmed and low self-esteem and feeling a little bored. Those are things I can do. So if I can take the circle of loss that's out here where you can't function, and I can bring it to here, it doesn't make it go away, but it makes it small enough that now you can function. That's what I'm looking for.

Sprouse, in your practice, what are the in your patients, what are the biggest sources of stresses you saw?

So the two that I work on the most right now are worry and feeling overwhelmed. And so one of the things I'd had patients come in and they would go, Dr. Sprouse, I worry that I worry too much. And I go, well, then you probably do, right? But when I'd say to them, tell me what worry is, they would fumble and stumble because they weren't quite sure what it was. So how are you gonna fix something if you're not even sure what it is? So the first thing I had to do for that patient was describe to them what worry is. So worry is having this ability to envision a future, amazing skill that we have, but then focusing on all the bad things that can happen. And here's the most critical part is then having a fear reaction right now. So now you're having a fear reaction, not to hey, there's a lion in my yard and it's gonna eat me. Now you're having a fear of like, oh, what if there was a lion or some concept or some idea or some possibility? And it's so one of the books that I'd read called it the what if, right? So what if this happens? What if that happens? And now you're having this fear reaction to just some thought or some concept. Well, your body wasn't really set up for that. We were set up that if there's a line in your yard, yeah, run and freak out, like, okay. But then once you got away, then your body would relax and you'd be back to doing normal stuff. But when you're reacting to thoughts and ideas, there's nothing to make that stop. It can just go on and on and on and on. And what I found was like you can run your car 150 kilometers an hour for a while, like it can do that, but when you do it long enough, the car starts breaking down. And so I found with humans it's the same deal. You can run your life stressed out and worried and freaking out, but after a while your body starts breaking down. So somehow you have to get that under control so you're not breaking your body down.

Slow down, slow down, yeah.

And that's so here's what I found. So, like when we go to people like psychologists and physicians, most of them will say, Well, do these generic things like meditate or exercise or go to church or whatever, right? But I'm like, but that's these are generic, and it's not that they don't work, I mean they do work, but when I say here's what worry is, now I can fashion very specific tools for worry. And so the tools that I talk about, there's two. One is what I call realistic optimism. So, what that means is we have the ability to choose. Incredible, right? So I can choose to focus on all the bad things, or I can choose to focus on the good things. And so what happens is if I focus on the bad things, that makes me feel bad. If I focus on good things happening, guess what? That makes me feel good. So that's cool, right? But there's a realism part to it, and the realism is well, I gotta I can't ignore that bad things could happen because that gets you into more trouble. So, what I talk about is realistic optimism. What that says is let's focus on the good things that could happen, but we gotta do things to make sure the bad things don't. And the way I do that is there's a second tool that I use called a worry organizer. So I'll give you an example. I had a patient that came in and she's in her 40s, and she was worried that she was gonna have breast cancer. So I this is what I write down. So there's five categories. So the first category is what is it you're worried about? So in her case, she was worried that she was gonna get breast cancer. The second category then is, well, you know, why are you worried about that, right? I mean, you're a female, but yeah. She goes, Well, my mom and my sister both had breast cancer. And like, well, okay, I now I get it. So you're worried you're gonna get breast cancer because you have a pretty strong family history. But that brings us to the third category, which is well, how likely is it to occur and how bad is it if it would happen? So when she was giving me the answer, what she said is I have a hundred percent chance of getting breast cancer and a hundred percent chance that I'm gonna die. But now that I knew that, I'm like, no, those aren't the right numbers. The numbers are you're with you have a family history, your chances are 15% of getting breast cancer. And because we're gonna find it early, you have an 85% chance of survival. And you could see that once she got those numbers in front of her, that she's like, oh my god. And you can see her body language change because now she got her life back. So then we went to the fourth column, which is well, what can I do to make sure I don't get breast cancer? So we do mammograms and self-exams and brackagines and diet and all that kind of stuff. And then the last category is the one that's probably the most important, which is, well, what could I do if I got breast cancer? And now what you're doing is with that column, is planning for the future, but without fear. And that's the critical piece. So now she's like, okay, well, I'm gonna research all the best breast cancer institutes, I'm gonna make sure my will's set up, I'm gonna make sure my life insurance policy is paid, I'm gonna make sure my family's agreed to take care of my kids if something happens to me. And now, when you wake up at two o'clock in the morning, where'd you gonna get breast cancer? You go to your piece of paper that you filled out, you're like, yeah, unless I got something to add to this, I'm just gonna go back to sleep because it's all right there in front of me. And you can do that for every single problem that you have. If you need a notebook, fine, get a notebook. But once you figured out the once you fill out the form, now you have a to-do list and you have everything set up so that you're planned and now you don't have to have fear anymore. And the nice thing about writing it out is now you can show it to your doctor, show it to your sister, show it to your friend, or show it to some colleague, and they can see what you're thinking, and they can go, oh yeah, you forgot you could do this, or yeah, that's not gonna work, right? And so now you have a way to talk to other people to get less worried.

True. I mean, I think it's a great strategy. So, first of all, you one has created an emotional distance from the problem, yes, and then also one has brought some strategies, so one feels that there is much more locus of control in dealing with that kind of situation and brings more objectivity because we know that our brains are kind of wired to 10x, 100x, even the seed of a worry or a self-doubt. So there's very little possibility the brain inherently could do 10x, 100x. But here you are kind of diverting it, you are looking at it with a lens, you're looking at it with objectively, and once you do that, you've got it on paper, you find it much more, much more control, and it changes the whole emotional cascade from that. And also, if you share with somebody else, then they also brainstorm, then you're developing a strategy to deal with this kind of a situation. Really, really a very great strategy, Dr. Sprouse.

That you're hitting it right on the head, they're hitting the nail right on the head. That's exactly what I talk about. About so yeah, so I joke about like I did this with a kid who wanted to go to a concert, right? And he's like, Yeah, I wanted to go to the concert, and my parents were like, Yeah, I don't think so. And I'm like, No, no, look, I'm the chances of me getting in trouble are pretty low, and they're like, Well, all right, and then he goes, Oh, but the concert's in another state, and they're like, Wait, no, right? Because that changed everything. And you're like, and he's like, No, it didn't make any difference, right? And then they're like, now they're calling each other names, and you're a snotty kid, and you're an overbearing parent. And I'm like, no, let's figure out the numbers, right? So when you change it to numbers, now instead of insulting each other and getting all upset and angry with each other, now you go, well, okay, are the chances really that much worse that I'm gonna get in trouble? No. Are the chances of this being bad if you get in trouble? They are worse because now you're in a different state. I don't know people, I don't know what the rules are, but that's something you can research and go, hey, let's call a policeman from the other state and say, let's find out what the rules are and let's fit, right? So now you're discussing things objectively, as you just said, instead of calling each other names. And so then, like I did this with a lady who was the 18-year-old who was like worried about going to school. And as we filled it out, she's like, Well, I don't want to go to school this week, I don't wait till next week. And you're like, Well, why? Well, when we filled it out, I'll be like, Well, how likely is it when you go back to school you're gonna get sick? And she's like, I don't know, like 50%, because there's a there was a like a flu running around. And I go, well, if you got a flu, you're 18 years old and you're healthy otherwise, how likely is that you're gonna get really sick? And she goes, Yeah, I don't know, probably like 10%. And I go, and do you think those numbers are gonna change if you wait a week? And she thought for a second. She's like, Yeah, you're right, no, they're not really gonna change. It's gonna be the same next week, too. I'm like, yes. And so then she decided, let's just go to school and be on and be done with it, right? And then everything worked out, so it was good. But if we didn't have those objective numbers, she would have been worried, oh, what if, what if, what if, what if. But when you put numbers on it, then you're like, oh, yeah, you're right. That doesn't make sense.

Very true, very true. So tell me about in the in the happy in the happy place, what are the you mentioned about gratitude. What are the what are the other ingredients of the happy place?

Well, so it is interesting, right? When you asked how why I write this book, so I was already writing the second half of the book. I was writing about our stresses and how to have lots of them. And I started talking to the patients, saying, Hey, I'm writing this book, like, oh great, I need that book. And I go, Well, if you didn't have so much stress, where would you be? And they sat for a second, like, I don't know, I never really thought about that. I only thought about having less stress. And you're like, Whoa, and then they would say to me, Well, I know where I don't want to be, but I'm not really sure where I do want to be. And I'm like, Well, that's not a good situation. If I'm trying to go on vacation and I don't know where I'm gonna go, that doesn't get me there, right? So I'm like, we need to have a destination, and that's when I started looking into this happy place, going, okay, we need a destination. Like, okay, I want you to have less stress, but where I want you to be is in your happy place. And so I was talking to somebody at a conference I was doing, and I said, So, you know, give me some examples of where your happy place is. So this lady goes, So I like the beach. And I'm like, well, that's awesome. I go, but how many times do you get to go to the beach in a year? And she's looked like, I don't know, like two or three times. And I'm like, wait, so you're telling me that two to three times a year you're in your happy place, but all the rest of the year you're not? Well, that's not no, I that's not acceptable, right? So when I started in investigating what a happy place is, I learned very quickly that everybody's happy place is different and unique. So, like, I use my wife as an example. So I like going to the beach and the sand and the sun and the waves, and my wife thinks the beach is a big kitty litter box. And I'm like, oh, so we have very different happy place ideas, but here's the key the rooms are all the same. They're just decorated differently. Some might be big, some might be small, some might have pictures on the wall, some might have gray paint, some might write different front. So they're decorated very differently, but the rooms are the same. And so when you start going through the rooms, you're like, whoa, what are the rooms? So the first room, as we talked about, was gratitude. The second room is having pleasure. And one of the things that I talk about is we tend to do this thing where we only acknowledge pleasure when it's a big thing. Like, oh, I graduated, or I had a kid, or I had a grandkid, or you know, I got to go on vacation, or whatever. These big things that we wait for. And while we're waiting for them, these little pleasures are gone by that we're not even paying attention to. So I tell people, think of your life as a thousand-piece puzzle. So every time you get a piece together, you go, ooh, that was nice. And now you get 999 little pleasures, and then when you get the puzzle together, you get one big giant pleasure, but you've had 999 little ones while you're getting there. And if we thought of our lives in that way, you're like, what? How nice is that, right? The third thing is then contentment, which is very dependent on your mindset. So I've seen very poor people feel very contented with their life, and I've seen very rich people who are miserable. And you're like, it all has to do with your mindset and how you view things, right? Then the fourth room is fulfillment, which has to do with curiosity and learning, it has to do with giving and sharing, and it has to do with having a purpose in life. And what I've seen with humans is like every other organism in the world, their purpose in life is to stay alive. But for humans, that's so easy that we didn't even pay attention to that. So we got to come up with some other reason that gets us excited. And this is what I count as feeling a purpose in life is when I get up in the morning, I'm excited to do that. And so as a doctor, I felt very excited every morning to get up and help somebody and diagnose some problem or figure how to get around this, or right? That was exciting to me. But then when I retired, a lot of doctors get into trouble because they're like, What am I supposed to do myself now? But for me, my purpose was easy. I was trying to make people healthier and happier as a doctor, but now as an officer, I'm doing the same thing, trying to make people healthy and happier. I just use different tools now. So my purpose was easy. My wife, on the other hand, struggled because she was doing my books, which she hated. She was doing the billing. But when she retired, the first day she woke up, I'm expected to be all excited. I don't have to do this anymore. No, she was like, What am I supposed to do with myself now? I'm like, Oh, so it took her a year to finally kind of cobble together a purpose in her life. So now she does honeybees and she does gardening and she's at church and she does volunteer work at a place. And so now I can see now she there's things that she gets excited for. I get to go do this, I get to go do that. So that's important. And then the next room is what I call CASH, which is an acronym. So it stands for feeling connected because we all want to feel connected, but also in control. And I think you mentioned that earlier. When you feel like you have some control over your life, that's really nice. And interestingly, control actually, our sense of control comes from having the ability to choose. And what I see is many people take away their own choice. So they go, I had to do that, or I have to do this, or I ought to, or I should. And really, when they say those words, it takes away their sense of choice, which then takes away their sense of control. Because if you go, I had to go to work and there was no other choice, then you're miserable. But if you go, hey, I get the opportunity to go to work and somebody's gonna pay me, and that lets me give me money so I can pay for my house and I can go buy ice cream. Well, that's a whole different attitude to take. So the next one is feeling accepted, which interestingly, and this is what I see in our world, is that we've got more acceptance. So people can, our definition of what's normal has broadened over the last hundred well, over our history, right? So now we were just talking about at lunch. It's like what we consider normal or okay is way wider than it used to be. But it takes some getting used to because when you've grown up a certain way and now you're faced with this, like, hey, is that okay? And you're like, well, didn't it used to be okay, but now it is okay. And you're like, well, I'll have to get used to that, right? So we've gotten much more accepting of people. And then the other one is appreciation, which we tend to underappreciate, right? We tend not to realize how important that is. And I will say to my friends, I was like, look, if I have a patient that comes in and says, I'm gonna pay you extra money, but then they're a pain on the butt and they're like, oh, you didn't do this and you should have done that, and you're yelling at my staff, and I'm like, you know what? But then I'd have another person that come in and say, Dr. Brass, you are so wonderful, you saved my life. Thank you so much, but I don't have any money to pay today. Guess what? I'd rather take care of that patient who appreciates what I'm doing for them, as opposed to the other one that doesn't appreciate a thing and just wants to pay me some money. No, I don't want that, right? So then the next one is S, and that stands for feeling safe, which I think is one of the major determinants of what we do in our life. Way more than money. People talk about money being the root of all evil. - We want to feel safe. The reason we want money is because money helps us feel safe. Because if I get into trouble and I have money, it's a lot easier to get out if I have money. And so I don't think it's money that gets us in trouble, it's feeling safe that gets into trouble. And so when someone has a billion dollars and they're trying to get more, you're like, what's up? And you're like, Well, I don't know. Maybe the stock market will crash and my billion dollars will go away. And you're like, yeah. So when's enough? Who knows? I mean, how many stories have you heard of a millionaire that goes bankrupt? And you're like, yeah, I don't want to be that person. So the feeling safe is critical. Then the next one is spirituality. And this is as a scientist, I mean, you know, you're but we're both scientists, right? So it's always a little like, yeah, how do we fit spirituality into our science, right? Because you can't really do a double blind placebo controlled trial to say what God does, right? But here's what I learned. So I was reading this book by a neuroscientist, and she had a brain bleed. So she lost half her brain. And she was in her 30s or 40s, but then it started coming back. But while she was damaged, she realized that her brain really has four parts to it. This is how she looked at it. So we have a thinking part, and we have an emotional part, and then we have this sort of daredevil part, and the fourth one is this part that our brain that makes us feel like we're all connected. And what happens is when you're thinking and emotional part, they overread they override all those other parts. And so that's the part she lost was the thinking emotional part. So all she had was the daredevil, I'm connected with the world. And she's like, How wonderful is this? Life is wonderful, I'm connected with everybody. Yeah, let's try it. Why not? Right, but then as her brain started to heal and she started getting the thinking part and emotional part back, she's like, No, I don't want that. And you're like, Yeah. So what I think is that the spirituality taps into that part of our brain that says, Well, we're all connected and we're all one. And so religion taps into that. We have certain drugs like psilocybin that tap LSD, all these drugs that tap into that part of our brain. And so, what I've seen with these studies is that people have these incredible experiences and they go, Oh my gosh, if that's the way it is, why would I ever want to do heroin again when I could have that person in my brain? And like, and what I said to this the researcher, I was like, Well, can't you just do that on your own? Because I think like when people like Buddhism and they talk about being in nirvana, that's what they're talking about, is that part of their brain being the biggest part. And he's like, Well, yeah, but it takes a long time, it takes a lot of experience, and it's not very predictable. With the drug, I know it's gonna happen. And you're like, okay, I'll give you that. But it's in there for everybody's brain to tap into, right? And then the last one is the H, which is it stands for humor. Here's what I realized about humor. Humor is our technique for trying to reduce things from being so stressful. So I'm sure you've heard the line, like, Well, I had to laugh or I'd be crying. And you're like, Yes, because humor is really important for humans to reduce what stressful environment is going on. It's our way, it's our technique for reducing it down, right? And then the last one is hope. And hope is about looking into the future, going, My life's gonna get better. And I don't know if you've seen patients like this, but I have. And they come in and they go, My life sucks, Dr. Sprouse. And I go, Yeah, I hear that. And here's when I get worried, and they go, it and it's never gonna get better. They've lost hope. That's when I start worrying about them. So they go, My life sucks, lots of people's lives suck. But then they go, Oh, but I can do this and do that and get better. But when someone comes in and says, My life sucks and it's never gonna get better, then I start going, oh, this person's suicidal. And when they add the third line, which is yeah, and I'm just a burden to everybody, yeah, okay, now you're in the hospital because you're getting ready to kill yourself, and I don't want that, right? So when people lose hope, bad things can happen. And what you see in the world, even when people are slaves or they're in you know German concentration camps, as long as they keep their hope up that things are gonna get better, they do okay. So when you put all those rooms together, you're like, what? That's what a nice place that is. And this is what I say to them: guess what? It's in your pocket. You can pull it out anytime you want. So if you're in the middle of yelling at your kids for being idiots, you're like, oh, I didn't even put my happy place. Oh, I'm really grateful that I have kids. Oh, I'm really appreciative that they're there. Oh, I'm really right. And it's like, I just have to learn how to handle the situation. So you have that happy place no matter what's going on, and it's right in your pocket, and you can pull it out 365 days a year. How freaking nice is that.

Absolutely. It's just bringing your awareness to what you have already got.

Yes, yes, exactly. Yeah, I'm not making this stuff up, it's already out there. You just have to know it's there and be able to tap into it.

The other thing we are seeing, Dr. Sprouse, let's I mean, talking about your cash to cash to framework. So you mentioned about connection. Yes. Now we know that we have got a smartphone in the hand. Now everybody has a smartphone. Now we see that in youngsters and also in the elderly, there is a epidemic of loneliness. This is paradoxical because today with all the social media, as you mentioned, there is you can have thousand to thousands of Facebook friends and connections, but there is no deep in depth of relationships. What is your experience in this evolving what we should say epidemic of loneliness in the world today?

Okay, so here's here's my take on this situation. So if you looked in your environment, right? How many times have you been attacked by a bear? How many times have you been bitten by a snake? Never, right? Like, we have all these things we talk about being dangerous, but they're not really there. So the most dangerous thing in our environment is other humans. Like, other humans will hurt me, they'll steal my money, they'll like you know, break into my house, they'll they'll break my heart, right? Humans are dangerous because they can do really be mean things to me, right? But I'm wired to be connected to them. So I'm in this dilemma, like, what the hell do I do now? Like, I really want to be with people, but they're really dangerous. And so what we've had to figure out is how do we make that work. And so, what I think is social media is one of our answers, is because now I can be connected to you at a distance. And so, what you get is a little bit of that connection, but as you say, it's not the same because there's something about being in the room with somebody else that makes it much more enriching. So we can have a conversation. So, yeah, we're on social media and I can talk to you, and you're in a whole different country, and it's like, what? How nice is that? But if we're in the same room together, it's a way different connection. And what I see is people are choosing to be lonely because they're afraid they're gonna get hurt. And what you have to realize is when you understand yourself and you have empathy for others, then your chances of getting hurt get a lot less. And one of the things I talk about is we have a serial relationship. So I know when I went to high school, you know, your friends, you're with them like, you know, eight hours a day, and you're all doing the same thing, and you're all in the same place, and so you're this incredible connection, and you go, Oh, I'm gonna be your friend forever, right? And then four years later, you don't even remember their name because but that's because now you have new friends that you met at college or you met at work or you met a church or you met at you know, some wherever you went, right? So, what I see is there's gonna be a couple people in your life that maybe have been there. Like I have friends now that I've known for 35 years, right? And that's awesome. But then I also have friends, hey, I just met last week or last month, or like I put myself out there and go, hey, maybe I should be your friend, maybe we should do something together because I'm willing to take that risk because they're not so dangerous to me, because I know who I am and I'm learning who they are, so now the risks are less, and I'm not worried about, hey, we need to be friends for the next 50 years. I just go, let's be friends now while we're still in the same place. And then if we all change places, like you move or you get kids or whatever, then we'll then I'll move to another friend. And because so it's like a serial kind of relationship, and that's what I've seen for us. So if you don't think of humans as that dangerous, then you're much more likely to be willing to go out there and cultivate a friend. And what I see with lonely people is they're afraid, and the reason they're staying at home is they're afraid they're gonna get hurt, and so then they'd rather be lonely and unconnected than take the chance of going out there and trying to make a friend.

True. The other thing you mentioned was about mindset. How do you help people to cultivate that mindset, especially if they have got a fixed mindset? How do you change their perceptions around that?

Yes, so one of the things that I talk about is that when people tie say your perceptions are a reality, I believe that's true. But in our brain, I think we have this filter, and I used a mental picture of a prism. So in our brain is a prism, and inside that prism is our beliefs and our facts and the things that we know and our experiences, and they're shaped by our emotional state and how aware we are, you know, are we a lake, are we awake, or we half asleep, whatever. So all those things are in this prism. And so when information comes in through your senses, it goes through that prism and it comes out on the other side as your perception. And it's your perception that then drives your emotions, and your emotions then drive your actions. So if I say to someone, no, your perception is wrong, they're not gonna listen to me because they go, No, no, my you're you who you like my perception is my perception. What I can do is go, let's see what's in your prism that led to that perception. So like in our country, we had a black person that got shot by a policeman. Okay, so depending on what was in your prism, your perceptions were a hundred per 180 degrees different. So if you were a black person who'd been had issues with the police before, like your experience was that, what you saw was the police abusing this guy. If you were a white person who had, you know, the police had been nice to you, what you saw was a policeman arresting some you know black guy that was trying to steal money from somebody, right? So then your emotions were totally opposite and your actions were totally opposite. But if I try to explain to a black person or a white person, no, no, your perceptions are no, they're not gonna buy it. I'd have to go back to what's in your prism and go, hey, what's in there? Maybe we need to adjust that. So I use the example in the book. Like, if you thought the earth was flat in, you know, whenever that was 1400s, and you start sailing somewhere, you're like, oh no, because we're gonna be falling off the edge somewhere along the line. But that's because that's what's in your prism. But if I change what's in your prism, like, no, no, the earth is round. Well, now sailing around the world, okay, yeah, let's do it, right? So that's so what I work on then is let's when we talk about mindset, what he's saying is like, let's figure out what's in that prism. And the more because here's what I found people don't even know what's in their own prism. Because a lot of what's in there got established when you were a kid, and it got put in there by TV or by your parents or by your siblings or by your friends, and you don't even know how it got there. So you have these ideas that you have in your head that like if someone said, Why do you think that? You're like, I don't know, I just do, right? And so self-awareness becomes critical. That's number one. Number two is we have to realize that it's okay. So here's what I see so people think, Oh, I this didn't go right, so I failed, and people don't like. Failing, so they're afraid again, right? They don't want to fail. But when you're not risking failure, when you say, Hey, I'm gonna learn how to ski, and the first couple times down the hill, you fall over and you get snow in your face, and your hands are cold and your leg hurt, and you're like, Oh, I failed. No, you only fail if you stop trying. So if you then go, hey, I'm gonna use my growth mindset, which is the opposite of fix, and go, okay, those first couple times down the hill were my practicing. Why would I expect myself to be good at this in the beginning? But if I keep applying myself and keep practicing and get the right teacher and get the right equipment and give it some time, and I get better and better and better, and you're like, oh, okay. So those weren't failures, they were just you're learning how to do it right. And so when you stop, yeah, so if you stop seeing things as failures and see them as just experiences that you're learning from, well, then you're much more willing to take the chance to try new stuff.

Absolutely, absolutely amazing. so in your road to less stress, I know your framework to the happy place is really very rich. It's given me a lot of insights because as you just mentioned about self-awareness. Now, in my book, The Boiling Frog, as you can see, this frog is this frog is practicing self-awareness. And what it does and also it is it has got a st it has got a stethoscope. It has got a stethoscope, it's diagnosing the environment. But equally in my the workbook, you can see the frogs are in the jacuzzi. They are in the jacuzzi, and the jacuzzi is the happy place where these two frogs they are having inspiring coaching conversations, they are in they are indulging in self-care, grateful. So the principle you have shared, the formula is really a very rich formula to get that happy place, the for me the jacuzzi, where you can the happy place is like an antidote to the stress. So stress is going to be normal because it's a normal part of life. It's how we manage it. And the how the way we manage it is we connect to our happy place. And happy place is as Dr. Sprouse just mentioned, is always there in your pocket. It's always you have got 24 by 7 access to that happy place. Yes, but also one needs to develop that awareness that you have it. Also, one needs to have that mindset of how do you apply these principles. Now, Dr. Spouse, I can continue talking to you for a long, long time. It's such an enriching conversation, but we are coming to the top of the hour. What I would like you to share with the listeners is if you were to crystallize the learnings of your life, and if people find themselves in an unhappy place, what are the steps they should take to be able to get out of what are the s what is the single most important thing you would tell them and so that they know that there is hope.

There's a way forward. So what I say to them is one, like I want you to understand where your happy place is, so you know where it's at, like you're aware of it, it's in your pocket, you can pull it out whenever you want. And then what I see is then there's these obstacles that are getting in your way of being in your happy place, and that's those stresses like worry and guilt and regret. And then there are ways to reduce those so that now you can spend more time in your happy place. But the most important thing is to not resign yourself to being stressed out because what I see are too many people sit around going, my life sucks and I'm stressed out, but I there's nothing I can do about it. No, there's a lot of things you can do about it. Read your book, De Bonnie Frog, read my book, Highway to Your Happy Place. There's a whole bunch of people out there that have really good ideas on how to have you manage your stresses better. But if you resign yourself and say, that's it, there's nothing I can do, well then you're never gonna get better. So you're getting an outcome and you might not like it, but the only way to get a new outcome, a one that you like better, is to change the input. And the way to do that is to listen to Dr. Kumar or listen to Dr. Sprout. Like we have ideas that will help you, but don't resign yourself to being stressed out the rest of your life.

Absolutely. I think that is going to be a great help to the listeners. Dr. Sprouts, it's been a real joy of getting you on the podcast. I mean, my purpose of life is helping people transform, transform their stress. How to change trans means to change, form means the form, transform, and your toolkit which you have shared, the happy place, will definitely help them transform the stress. And if the listeners want to learn more about your work, is it okay if I put a link to your website and your book, The Highway to the Happy Place, which is the road map to the less stress.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm hoping that between us today that we helped at least one person feel less stressed. That'd be good, right?

I am I'm I'm sure that we will we'll be able to give at least people the hope that you can really we have done that, we have done that in our lives. We have had patients and colleagues who have applied these principles, whether people read my book or Dr. Sprouse's book, or there are so many books, good books out there, but you always have a strategy, always have the hope that you don't need to be in this unhappy place. The future is there to get these absolutely helpful and amazing resources we have got, and as Dr. Sprouse mentioned earlier, like you have got access to so much of material, so much of information, helpful information, but that is just the starting point because information alone is not enough to cause a transformation. So I'm wishing all the listeners that they use, make use and read the book. read the book, The Highway to the Happy Place. I am reading it. I'm really enjoying it. And thank you, Dr. Sprouse. It was really, I really enjoyed the conversation. Well, thank you for having me on this show, and this will be great.

We'll have to do this again sometime. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Sprouse. Okay.

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