Greg Voisen
Hey, welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. Gary, all my listeners know who I am. And I've done plenty of these podcast shows. But joining us today is Dr. Gary Sprouse, and the Highway to Your Happy Place: A Roadmap to Less Stress. And I was just telling him that, you know, it seems like to a certain degree that stress is at a I don't want to say epidemic. But it seems like it could add a Gary, how are you doing?

Dr. Gary Sprouse
I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on.

Greg Voisen
Well, it's a pleasure having you on and it's always a pleasure speaking with somebody that's talking about something that is just such a challenge today. And I'm gonna let my listeners know a little bit about you. He's born in 56. So I was born in 54. He grew up mid atlantic regions in a row house parents and four siblings, he started working at newspaper boy, so to die at the age of one beside it, yep, decided by the age of 13. He wanted to be a doctor. And I'm going to skip forward because he didn't go from 13 to being a doctor. But then he attended George Washington University, got his bachelor's degree continues his studies at GW for his medical school training where he graduated in the top 10%. He set up his medical practice in the underserved areas of the eastern shore of Maryland. And during his years in practice, he worked hard to be relatable physician to 1000s of patients. He has had a lot of stress throughout his years. And he's employed his own stress reducers, such as singing karaoke, and plays and other things in his life to reduce that stress. Now, and he wrote this book, most importantly, and you can see some great pictures here, because he wanted people to find their happy place. And he was dealing with so many patients that were dealing with so many so much stress. So Gary, you know, you're a successful physician, you saw many, many patients come in. And they would tell their stories, whether you gave them 10 minutes, or you gave them a half an hour. I know today with many of these programs, they don't want the Pacific wants to give their patients too much time. And that's unfortunate. Because people do have a trusted doctor, they trust you. And they open up to you. So why were you so compelled to write the highway to your happy place, so that you could help people with the stresses in their lives? Yeah, so

Dr. Gary Sprouse
I think that I'm like an old school physician, because I still spend a lot of time with my patients. And that, to me is the important part. One of the things that I said to my patients is like, look, I have the knowledge of a physician, but I have the empathy of being a friend to you, because I live in a small community. So the people that are my patients are my friends, and my patients and my business associates. So the more you get to know somebody, the more you can individualize the information that you have as a doctor. And I think over the years, my patients have really appreciated that. And then as I got some new insights into stress and where it comes from, and I was using it to help my patients in my own office really struck me that as I get older, and like I'm actually sort of semi-retired now that that other people in the world need this information. And the only way I can't do it one on one in my office, I don't have enough appointment times. So this became a way to get to help other people a bigger audience, basically. Well,

Greg Voisen
you know, it did and I think just like this podcast, now you reach 1000s of people through a podcast like this. And you're really wanting to make a bigger impact because you want people not only read a book, but practice some of the things that you teach in the book. So how do you teach people to better stay in control of their reactions to stress? How do you get them to understand what the stressors are in their life? Because awareness is where it all starts. Which is Willie, one of your main points in your book? Yes.

Dr. Gary Sprouse
Yeah. Well, that's so the first thing I try to get patients to realize is they don't have to resign themselves to being stressed out. I mean, too many of my patients come in and you're all stressed out. And if you say, well, okay, what can you do about it? You know, they have this learned helplessness, like, oh, there's nothing I can do about it. You know, there's a pandemic, there's a financial crisis, there's not enough money, there's my sickness or my they feel like they're victims, and they're helpless and there's not much they can do about it. So the first thing I have to do is convinced them No, no, no, no, you don't have to live like that. There are other things that you can do. So you don't have to be that stressed out. And then second thing is you have to understand where your stressors are coming from. And that's what this book is about. So people get that they're stressed out. And there's books that are out there that say, hey, the top 100 stresses losing your spouse, you know, losing your job, getting unhealthy. But they don't tell you why they're stressful. And that's what I got out of this book is, hey, you know what the majority of our stresses are, because of the skills that we have, there actually side effects to our skills. And when you see them as side effects your skills, then your job is to keep the skill because that's what's made us successful as an organism and get rid of or at least reduce the side effect, so that you can keep moving on. Well, look,

Greg Voisen
you're known as the less stress doctor. And I don't think that people right off the bat, will get this connection between the skill, the human skill and the downside of that skill. Right. So speak with us in specifics. So you literally got a lot of people out there that say in skill, what skill is, is my struggle coping with stress, I don't know how to cope with stress, because I don't have that skill. Or is it something that I am very emotional, and I react and I pop off. And so because of that, I get angry, and when I get angry, I get high blood pressure. And then that causes cortisol to be released into the system. And on and on. And on. As you know, as a medical doctor, the effects of these things are a slow but steady combination in somebody's life, toward dis ease. I call it dis ease. Right? It's because they're not at ease with these things that they're having issues. Explain if you would, please. Sure.

Dr. Gary Sprouse
Okay, so I think where I'm going for this is actually even more generic, right? So these are skills that all humans have. We're all humans that have a brain in our mind. Okay. So here's one of our skills, we have the ability to envision the future. So you and I had been talking for a couple of weeks about when this podcast was going to happen. And you sent me an email half an hour ago, going, Hey, be ready in half an hour. So that meant we were looking into the future. So that's a skill that humans have. So we can say, hey, there's a hurricane coming. There's global warming. What are you going to do if there's what happens in the pandemic? I mean, we all these things, how am I going to have enough money to retire? What's going to happen after I go to college? Right? So we are always we spend a lot of our time envisioning the future. Amazing skill. I mean, it's allowing us to either bring good things in or avoid bad things. But the side effect is that you have to worry about it. And so what you see is many people are worried. And I was just at church the other day, and the minister said, Yeah, worry works, because 90% of things that I worry about don't ever happen. You're like, yeah, yeah. But what when I say to patients telling me what worry is they don't know. They just know that it feels bad. And they know it has something to do, or they just, they come up with some definition. But if I say okay, even if you come up with a definition, how would you change that? And they go, oh, I don't know. So what you see is, here's your skill, envisioning the future that most people don't even recognize as a skill, but it's an amazing skill, okay. And then the side effect is that you have to worry about it. And that makes people feel bad, and there's nothing to make it stop. And that's where the problem comes in. So, the stress of distress is, is

Greg Voisen
that worrying about the future? Is it the dissonance that occurs between let me ask you this? You know, it's always been said that the yesterday's a canceled check, tomorrow's a promissory note. Right. And the, the many of the major Eastern teachers like I've had rom das on the show, he died a long time ago, but he was here. And you know, his book was be here now. Yes. Be here now. Right? So if my mind is always projecting to the future, or living in the past, I'm constantly like creating stress because I can't be here now. I'm not with Gary.

Dr. Gary Sprouse
I'm not here. I'm looking at something else I got to do. Right. Yeah. And I would ask what I would disagree with that. Okay, because why okay. So, be here now says give up your skill of being able to envision a future. Now I get what he's trying to say is keep your have, you know, keep your focus on now. But we spend a fair amount of our time figuring out what we're going to do tomorrow, next week, next year, when I retire when I get close to death, what's going to happen to my kids, we spend a lot of time. And there's a very good reason why we do that. One is because every organism is trying to keep its environment safe. Right? So if you're a snail, if you're a fish, if you're a dog, you're trying to keep your environment safe. It's what our sensory systems are set up to do. Check out to make sure there's nothing dangerous going on the problem that humans have. So my I use my dog in the book, right? So if like, somebody just came to the door, and she's barking, and at first and then off, because she's like, Oh, danger, danger, danger, right? But as soon as we go, okay, it's okay. And the person walks away, and she can no longer sense that person. Because their sensory system doesn't go beyond, you know, our driveway. Well, then she goes back, and she's laying on the carpet like she's a rug. Right? Right. So for me, as a human, I have future so I can go okay, well, the guy came. But what would have happened if he came with a gun? What would happen if, if you know, he came with it was something dangerous gone on? Now I'm going oh, no, what would this what if I wasn't here? What if I couldn't get away? So now I start adding what ifs to the equation, because my environment isn't just my house, right? The second my environment is this house, into the future. My environment now includes the whole earth. So you and I are learning about things going on in Ukraine and China. In real time, we're watching bombs go off, we're seeing people get blown up and bleeding, real time. So our environment isn't just where I can sense it's now a whole world. And in fact, it's the whole universe because as we watch it, but isn't

Greg Voisen
the key Gary, even though it is into the future, and we have this ability as human beings to project and do it, you talk about in your book, this worry organized, you speak about writing our worries down? And you speak about what you refer to as the worry organizer? Could you tell the listeners about the power of writing down our worries? And why you you know, because look at this, you just gave a great example, you projected into the future, various things that our mind can totally grasp and conceive, right? And I think somewhere in there, you saw define the concept, right? communicate about the concept. So what do you mean by that? And how do we reduce the stressors? And how would we use your worry, organizer? To get us there? All right. So

Dr. Gary Sprouse
let's take worry, right? So I say to my patients, tell me what worry is and they get this look on their face, like oh, yeah, I got this, I know this. And then when they try to do it, they get these very superficial definitions, which are not actionable, right? So in my book, when I say here's Worry, worry is using our amazing skill of envisioning a future. Second thing is in is envisioning, focusing on the bad things that can happen. And then the third thing, and this is where the trouble comes in, is having a fear reaction right now. So it so the worry organizer is a way to take some of the emotions out of it and make it more an intellectual exercise. Okay. So, with this, there's five categories to the organizer. The first one is what are you worried about? And I'll use one of my patients example. So this lady came in who was 45? And she said, I'm really worried that I'm going to get breast cancer. Okay, so that's category one. I'm worried about getting breast cancer, category two as well, why are you worried about it? And she said, Well, I'm 45. And my sister had just got diagnosed breast cancer. And 10 years ago, my mom had breast cancer. So I have this really strong family history. So my chance of getting breast cancer really high, and that's why I'm worried. So then the third category is, okay, well, how likely is it that you'll get breast cancer? And then the slash that is it? How dangerous is you get it? So when I said to her, tell me how likely it is you're going to get breast cancer? And she said, 85% I go, Well, if you got breast cancer, how likely would it that you'd be die from it? She said 85%. So here's this lady. Wow, this this lady's basically gave herself a death sentence. Yeah. Yeah. So what I said to her was, now that it's been written down, I go, okay, when you go to the literature, your chance of getting breast cancer is 15%. And if you got breast cancer, your chances of dying would be 15%. And you can watch the weight go off her shoulders, because she's like, me, and I'm not going to die of breast cancer. And I'm like, well, not necessarily.

Greg Voisen
You just reframed it. And you said your chances of getting it are only 15%. Right change. I change it to a statistic, I understand, but you also reframe it Sure,

Dr. Gary Sprouse
I gave her I gave her new statistics. Right, right. Right. Right. So then the fourth category is okay, what can you do to not get it? Right? So, you know, we made sure that she gets mammograms, or we got a bracket gene, and she does self examinations. And then the last category is, okay, well, what if hat? What if you actually got breast cancer? Or what if you actually died from the breast cancer? What would you do? If, right? And that's where most people spend their time anyway. And what they do, and this is where the problem comes in, is they have this fear reaction going on. And it goes on and on and on, because there's nothing to stop it because they're what if in themselves, and they're having a fear response right now, too?

Greg Voisen
Well, and the other thing, too, Gary, and I think this is i and I've seen this done by really skilled physicians like yourself. Even if she did believe that it was 85%, and you couldn't convince her, you can have her reposition it, that you have a 15% chance of not getting it. So why are you focusing on the 85%? That you're going to get it? Right? Yes. And I've seen really skilled physicians, no matter what position somebody is in, so you have a 15% chance of not getting it. So what can you do to change your life about where you eat exercise programs, all the kinds of things you can do to kind of prevent that, but your worry organizer is really good. It's in the book, folks, definitely get that. You speak about guilt, the definition of guilt? And how can your can you help your patients and people listening today to reduce the amount of guilt that they carry in their life? It doesn't matter who it is, everybody probably has some guilt about something they did they wish they could have, would have should have done it differently. It didn't work out that way. And the reality is, oftentimes they carry it around. Sure they carry it around the last time and that guilt turns into almost like a growing seed of anxiety, depression, right. And in your case, stress, which it which, as you said can be, it can be deadly. They can absolutely. So what are you doing to help patients with guilt? Alright,

Dr. Gary Sprouse
so the first thing is, and this, I've done a couple seminars where I talked about guilt, it's actually an interesting. So it's been men and women, right? So I go tell me something that you felt guilty about. And the women were all scribbling down like they were going crazy, right? And the men were all sitting in room like, Let me think about this. And it was like, Wait, do you guys not feel guilt? Turns out, they do. They just don't see it as much right? To guilt turns out you is first off, so what I found was most of the women actually weren't. So guilt is I did something wrong, I broke a rule. Like I broke a law, I killed somebody, right? It's better I went in, I broke a rule that you shouldn't break, right. And so you have to differentiate that from regret. And regret is I made a bad choice. So a lot of women were feeling guilty because they didn't spend enough time with their kids. Well, that's really a regret not a guilt, because they didn't break any rules, not like they didn't spend any time with their kids, they just wanted to spend more. So what I found is, a lot of times people are using the word guilt. And what they really are saying is they, they regret it, they just had it, they made a different choice. But if you did something that you should feel guilty about. Guilt is a tool that society uses to shape our behavior. We want people to feel guilty when they did something that breaks a rule that if you go out and you robbed somebody, we want you to feel guilty that you shouldn't do that. And the guilt is that negative sense that shame that you should feel that you broke a rule, the problem you get into is the rules change for whatever group you're in. So in the book we're on, and if it's in the booklet, like if, if I go to a medical meeting in Chicago, and I kill a bunch of doctors, I'm not gonna get that's gonna be called breaking the rules. If I'm a SEAL team, and I go to Iraq, and I kill somebody, I'm getting all kinds of metals. So what group you're in really matters because that's how the rules get set up. And the rules change, depending on what group you're in. So the first thing I say to patients is figure out what group you're in before you start deciding whether you did something wrong or not. And then, and I'll put it out, go brief. But the second thing is, guilt is designed to change your behavior. You can't change what you did if you robbed somebody robbed somebody, I can't go back and erase that. I mean, it happened. So feeling guilty was designed to change my behavior going forward. So if I go forward, and I change my behavior, and I don't rob anybody anymore, then guilt did what I was supposed to do. So then I don't need to keep feeling guilty as long as I remember. We're not to do that again. Guilt started doing what it's supposed to do. And the third thing is, and I talked about this in front, it's in forgiveness. And I read Dr. tutus book about forgiveness, and I thought was excellent. I think everybody should read it. And I think you've talked about forgiveness in your podcast, too. And it's like, it comes down to forgiving other people, but also forgiving yourself. And I find that's usually the hardest one to forgive.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, well, and I remember not this not that long ago, Marshall Goldsmith, one of the biggest coaches to executives around talked about regret. And remember this in particular, because regret, actually holding on to something you regret prevents you from achieving your potential. Sure, okay. And so where people get caught, they get stuck, is, you know, the words we use to define things in our lives are so powerful, right. And as a physician, the words that you speak to your patients are so powerful, and how you speak them. Because that's how we create our perception of the situation is, we are a human species, we love talking to other people, we'd like to tell our story. And we're most of the time looking for some kind of validation, right? Some kind of like a, it's a, it's a good story. And that brings me to this low self esteem. Okay? Because that's a problem that can start very young in life. Okay, very young. And if it's already been programmed in, you say, perspective, the prison plays a role in how we see the world. So if somebody came into your office with a high degree of low self esteem, yeah, but let's say they had a lot of loads out their esteem was very low. And it was causing a tremendous amount of stress, distress, yeah. And distress as a result of carrying that? What simple words of wisdom would you tell them about self esteem, and why they should change their perspective about their low self esteem?

Dr. Gary Sprouse
So the first thing and you're absolutely correct that our self esteem meter, get started when we're born. So already, we're already taking information as we go on. And as, as Bruce talks about, we're not really cognizant of what we're doing when we're baby. And when we're one and two and three. So information that's coming in, we're just taking it That's true. And we go with it. So

Greg Voisen
yeah, that's our program. Yeah.

Dr. Gary Sprouse
So by the time you're sick, you already have a pretty good idea of what your self scheme is going to be like. Because you've already taken in a fair amount of information. And here's the problem. So this is where that perspective currently comes in. So I think of it as a triangle, right? So this is where you store your, your beliefs, your facts, your experiences, your emotions, your, your, your conscious level at the time. So it sits in this prism, right, and information comes into the prism. And it goes to filters through the prism, and it comes out as a perception. And the perception is what drives our emotions and our actions. So it doesn't really matter what the reality is. Because what's driving what we do is based on that, what comes through that prism and our perceptions, per se, so perceptions are the our reality. And so what I find is, I can't fix your perception, I can't fix your emotional reaction, I can't fix your actions, what I can change so much in your prison. So like what I was doing with that lady with the breast cancer in her prison was 85% chance I'm gonna get breast cancer. So if I changed the fact and then said it's only 15% Well, her perception just changed. Right? And this is something I can do something about. So to me, this is where all psychology should work on and we should work on ourselves, find out what's in our prison, because that's what's and I think Bruce was leading to that is find out what's inside what's in your programs, because that leads to all these other things. You know, self esteem becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. So if you think of yourself as a bad person or not a good person, then information that comes in and says You are good person gets filtered out because there's dissonance and anything that comes in and says you're bad, you go I don't like that. But it fits. So you're literally ignoring anything that says you're good, because it doesn't fit. So you got to change what's in here that

Greg Voisen
doesn't fit your story. Because that was a story. Yeah, hang around. So you know if the story is around low self esteem and I'm not good enough, and I can't be enough. And never enough. I mean, it's always the enough tape from the ego that constantly plays. And unless you can co create with that, as Bruce Lipton says, You're not going to unplug the program. You're you can't pull that seven, the first seven years of your life. Yeah. And plug it right. But what you can do is you can change your perception about it. Yes,

Dr. Gary Sprouse
well, you can become aware of it. I think that's what he's trying to say. So two things that I say, there's two pieces to our self esteem that aren't really self. Right. So number one is our achievements. So a lot of psychologists try to get rid of achievements as part of your self esteem. And I'm like, well, that's a nice thought. But that doesn't always not the way it works. Like when I do something good. I feel good about myself. When I do something bad. I feel bad. You can't ignore that happening. Right. What I found is that people don't count their achievements. They just take them for granted. So that's what I say to patients. I woke up this morning. 10 points. I have food in my refrigerator. 10 points. I got running water. 10 points. My wife is safe. 10 points. Right. I wake up and I got 50 points for waking up. Yeah. And most people wake up and they get minus 10. Another day, right? So somebody comes along and says, Hey, if you do this, you'll get 20 points. You're like, well, I might 50. What the heck, I'll go for 20. And if I lose, if I don't make it, I'll be 30. All right, right. But if you're at minus 10, and someone says, Hey, here's 20 points. And you're like, ooh, that'd be up to 10. I've been positive. Yeah, I think then I Yeah. But if you don't do it, you'll be minus 20. And you're like, Oh, I think I'll just stick with my minus 10. And not even take the risk, right? So what I found is we, we don't count our achievements. So we just kind of, literally, I asked somebody to write down all their achievements during the day, and I said everything and I met, like, I got in my car, my car started, my wife was alive, I was alive, I had food at work. They came back after one day and couldn't do it anymore, because they had to write down so many things like forget, I can't do it. Right? So we don't count enough of our achievements. And two, we give our we give our successes, one point or zero, and we give our failures minus 10. Well, it's hard to keep up. If you have three minus 10 damage, you have to have 30 pluses? Well, that's hard to keep up with. But if they're all 10, now they need three and I'm backed up to know, right. So what I found was people don't back

Greg Voisen
very accurately, the fact that you're scoring it measuring it alone creates awareness. Yeah, that's it. Most people don't have the awareness because they're not going to sit there and give themselves points where yes, that's exactly in the positive things that are going on in life, what they are going to do is focus on the negative, that's what the media sells. Right. And that brings me to this. It's a bit of a conundrum. Not and I would think for me, some of my listeners as well. So here's I want to explain it. You speak about boredom, and how we can control over art or control it over directed awareness. Okay. When you are bored, versus totally enthusiastic about something, if it's a stretch goal, let's talk about that for a second. And you have an incentive. Right? Because there's there's these two sides, Gary, that are almost playing. And you're saying directed awareness is what changes that, right. And what I want to find out from you, is what you really believe by that. Because I think a, a show on personal growth is about having somebody stretch. People who are bored or not stretching, for the most part. They're like, ah, it is the way it is, I'm not going to do anything about it. I'm bored, whatever it might be people who are enthusiastic about life, living life, but you were just talking about the points. I'm counting my good points today. There's a great, great tool. What can you do with this directed awareness to help people get rid of the boredom and have some stretch goals? Okay,

Dr. Gary Sprouse
so first thing you have to understand that, well, here's the one, boredom is bad. It's really bad. Like, I sent it to one of my friends who's a psychologist, and she read that championship. Oh my god, you're right. I didn't realize how bad boredom is. It's like it's horrible. So but there's three different kinds of boredom. So like if I put someone in solitary confinement to punish them, that's a lack of stimulation and for humans, and that's our skills we have we're incredibly curious. As an organism. We're like, the most curious organism in this out there. All right. So if you take away people's stimulation, it literally makes them go crazy. When they don't have enough stimulation, that is not the problem for most people in this world, most people have plenty of things to do. So the second thing, and this is probably the most common one is, they're in withdrawal. So they have a height, they have a certain level of stimulation, and then somebody changes that. So they go from New York City, to Roanoke, Virginia, or whatever, right? Okay, so their level of stimulation was here, and now it's here. And when you take that level down, they literally have a withdrawal reaction, which we have labeled boredom. And so they really have stimulation, they just, it's different than where they were. And so they're going through withdrawal. And if they just give it some time, it'll get better. They just have to wait. And eventually, like, I watched my sister, we moved from Pennsylvania to Suburban, we moved to this rural town in Maryland, and she was bought for a while. And now she's, you know, now you would never know that she didn't live in Southern Maryland. And if I took her back to a place that was busy and crazy like that, she would be overwhelmed, because now she's reset her, her meter of like, this is okay. Now, the third thing, and I think this is what you were talking about, is if you have a long term goal, so you want to be a nurse, or you want to be a doctor, and it's a long term goal, but you can then you're making decisions going, Okay, well, I'm gonna take this class is going to help me or I'm not going to take this class, or it's not going to hurt me. So I can take this class, right. But then there's classes you have to take that you don't like at all. So like, if you're a nurse, you have to take a chemistry class, you have to take an algebra class, and you're like, What the heck is algebra going to do to make me a better nurse? And you're sitting there and you're not stimulated? You're bored? Is that the word we use? Right? Because you just don't care. It's not helping you get somewhere, it's so why am I doing this, right? And that's where directed awareness can come in. Because you can say, hey, you know what, like, I'm going to use my curiosity because it's an aggressive, amazing skill. And I'm just gonna learn to learn. Because then it's like, now it's not just an impediment to my goal is now something I'm learning. And what I did is I had, I taken some classes, I take his math class, right. And I took care of a patient who had a stroke, who turned out was a math teacher. And he was really worried that he was going to lose his skills. And so when I came in and talked to him, and I, we talked about chaos and complexity, and some other math topics, and he could talk about it, you could see the light shine in him. And so even though I didn't know nearly as much as he knew, I knew enough that I could then communicate and empathize with him. And it made his life so much better. Now, what I found is knowledge can always be used somewhere along the line, in a conversation at a dinner theater, you know, the patient with, there's always room to have more information that you can then use. And that's where your directed awareness comes into, you can go okay, I'm going to direct my awareness to learn something here. And then instead of saying, being bored, and like, Oh, why just go, Hey, I'm just gonna learn to learn because somewhere in my life, that information is going to help me.

Greg Voisen
Well, it also has to do I think, whether I'm going to use your course example. You have curiosity, we all have biases and our curiosity about what and what stimulates us, you know, hey, some people out there may be interested like me, I'm very interested in cycling, there's a lot of people that could care less about I own like five bikes. Right? And, and you got to find something that kind of as when to say floats your boat? Did you have a passion about? Sure, right? If you have a passion about being an artist, or passionate about being a doctor, or passionate about anything, deep down inside, there's a motivation, and an inspiration, which is driving that. When you have curiosity, and you have purpose. And then you have a vision, and then you create goals. And then you create proximal goals, right? The formula for that, starting with curiosity, going to purpose, having a vision, creating goals, and then having proximal goals is really quite an elixir. Right? Yeah.

Dr. Gary Sprouse
Then you should write a book. That's good. Well, the point

Greg Voisen
is, is that that's how you're going to reduce boredom, stress, all this stress really can come down to someone living a purpose, live outside of yourself, find someplace to give your time to and they say, there's been 10 studies done like this like crazy on stress. If you went out and you donated your time to a charity, they say and gratitude. Those two things are two of the biggest stress reducers around Right. And I think people get so into themselves that they don't see beyond that. And so that causes that so that you cover a lot of important ideas about reducing stress. What are three important changes people could make in their lives to reduce stress? And I'm going to say, because the book is, and I'm going to hold it back up, find the happy place. I think most people want to be in the happy place. Today, we've talked about regret and boredom and low self esteem. And we've talked about worry. How do people find this happy place? Gary? Well, first

Dr. Gary Sprouse
off, you have to know what it is. Because when I say to people, I'm writing this book on how to have less stress or like, oh, okay, that'd be great. I need that book. And I go, but if you didn't have as much stress, where would you be? And you're like, I don't know, I never got that far all I want to do where I have less stress, right. So I had to realize where people need to be, which is in their happy place. And all these things that we talked about today are just things that keep them from being there. So your happy place and includes the things you just talked about feeling fulfilled by learning, and by giving, you know, having gratitude for the things that you have, having pleasurable events occur, being contented with what's gone on in your life as it is, and then anticipating pleasurable events. Because it turns out, like my wife, and I had the luxury of gone to Germany for a couple of weeks, but we had months of thinking about Oh, isn't it would be cool. When we go to Germany, Mons, the German tripled over the last two weeks, right? So the anticipation of the pleasure event was way more impactful than the pleasurable event itself, right. So if you have those five things in mind, then you understand what your Happy Places, okay, now I can get there. And I just got to get rid of this clutter that's keeping me from being there. So that's number one. Number two, is I talk about lumping. And I see this all the time. So a patient will come in and go Yeah, Doc, I got this going on. And then this happened. And my aunt, this and my son, dad and my brother, and I'm like, Whoa. And what they do is they take one stress and added and added out and end up with this long. That's overwhelming. And they have no ideas like so overwhelmed, they don't even know where to get started. And I say look, no one of those stresses is that bad. If you just keep them separate, and the more separate you keep them, the less overwhelming and the less stress will become because now you can focus. Okay, right now I'm going to focus on this. And then like, ignore these for right now. And now I'm going to put that one back and focus on this. And the more separate you keep the stresses and the less you let them lump in. So my friends now will call me. I'm lumping. I'm like stop talking about right.

Greg Voisen
So I think I think partly that's aggravated or it's exacerbated, Garin might say, by, by our media, by our social media, by how quickly we get news, how quickly we're supposed to be processing. All of this, you know, I mean, look, you talk, the wars, you look at the economy, you look at all these factors, you got so many of them. And you say lumping, and I think many people feel overwhelmed. lumping Yeah, lumping, because there is so much going on. That doesn't mean in times past, there was a lot going on. It just meant that we weren't getting instantaneous news about what was going on. Today. It's in our face, it's on our phone, it's on our iPad, it's on our TV, it's everywhere. It's everywhere. And that in itself, I think exacerbates stress, you

Dr. Gary Sprouse
hit on what I was going to say Right? Which is it's not just the information, it's how it's presented. So we're a very visual organism, right? So we're 80% of what we have our information is visual, right? So when, when people heard about a football player that punched his girlfriend, he got a two game suspension. When they saw the video of him punching her in the face, then he never played football again ever. Right? So video visual is so much more impactful to this. And that's exactly what we're seeing in our phones in our TVs, is 24/7 visuals. And I think you said this earlier, is that the media has shown us all the negative things that are going on. So they will, you know, take a mass murderer and played for two weeks, and some guy who helped 100 people, you know, it gets a one minute snippet on the end of the news cycle, right? And it's like, so, like I say this, one of the answers would be okay, if you're gonna run an article that says an airplane crash 300 People die, then in the same type size, right next to it should say a million people landed safely today. And if you have that comparison, then it's not going to be as stressful because you're in your Brian, you're gonna go, Oh, that was really bad to 300 people die, but a million people led to safely. Okay, so then you guys, I love your

Greg Voisen
analogy. And I think it's wonderful other than the fact and I'll say other than the media sells news by putting all the negative and there is a gravitation as a human species toward looking at what's wrong, not what's right. Absolutely. And that bias needs to shift in everybody to reduce their amount of stress. Because if they weren't so curious about what was going wrong, and they were more curious about what was happening, right, just like you said, the million people that landed safely, they would have a lot less stress in their life. Well, but

Dr. Gary Sprouse
here's the problem, right? Because what I said earlier, was we're trying to keep our environment safe. So if I have 10, people in the room trying to give me $100. And I know we're looking for we're looking for those things. Well, that's things that's but that's how you keep your environment safe, is you got to make sure because if I'm, if there's a guy with a gun, and I miss that, well, then I'm dead. So it doesn't matter if he will give me $100, because I'm dead, so I can miss positive things. But if I miss a negative thing, then I'm in trouble. So we tend to focus on the negative, which is why we worry so much. We have but you're right. It's a habit. And we can shift that habit, we can change our habit and people stopped drinking, it's like that'll

Greg Voisen
come kind of bring me to the kind of the conclusion of this is that it's something outside of ourselves, you talked about being in church and speaking and the minister was speaking, I think that the whole Mind, Body Spirit element of this and spirit was, unfortunately, we left a little bit out about spirit. But if people have a belief, bigger than themselves, and whatever it might be, and I'm not saying that it's, it's God, or it's all, or it's whoever it might be. The point is, is that if you have something that's holding you together a truth about life that's bigger than you, you have a lot less stress, they've already found people who have a spiritual practice, have less stress in their life. Sure, absolutely. Right. Well,

Dr. Gary Sprouse
I mean, it comes down to a belief, right? So if you believe there's someone that's holding you together, it's gonna hold you together. And like, I see studies where they talk about prayer, helping people get through an illness, right. And I see this right, I see people in their bed, that are by themselves, and they're lonely, and they're sad, and they're sick. And they don't have people coming to visit them. And it changes how their how they view themselves and their illness. And then I see other people have family members come in and they go, oh, yeah, the whole church prayed for you today. Well, when you feel that you go, man, a whole church prayed for me today, well, that makes you feel good, which then gives you a more positive hormonal experience, which then makes you more likely to recover.

Greg Voisen
That's right, and you're gonna heal, you're gonna heal a lot quicker. And your whole book really is about healing, healing from this stress. And, Gary, I want to thank you for being on inside personal growth and sharing some of your wisdom. And for my listeners, this is the book. And if you want to go to his website, you're going to go to the less stress doc, that's thelessstressdoc.com there, you're gonna find more about Gary, you're gonna find more about the book, addiction treatments, you can contact him, there's a store, you can join his mailing list, stress management, there's a section on that he writes a blog in there and how to about stress management. But Gary, it's been a pleasure having you on. This is a great opportunity for people to change their perspective about stress this boss. Thanks so much.

Dr. Gary Sprouse
All right. Thank you for having me on. It's been a pleasure and I hope we help people today.

Greg Voisen
I'm sure we did. If we didn't, all they gotta do is listen to like two minutes of it and there'll be help.

Dr. Gary Sprouse
Thanks!