163. Steve Chua: How Your Identity Is Either Healing Or Destroying Your Health

Summary

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Extend Podcast with Darshan Shah, MD

Episode 163: Steve Chua — How Your Identity Is Either Healing Or Destroying Your Health
Release Date: May 12, 2026
Guest: Steve Chua, Executive Coach, Founder of Steve Chua International & Insight Out
Host: Darshan Shah, MD

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the deep interplay between identity, mental narratives, and physical health. Host Dr. Darshan Shah and executive coach Steve Chua discuss how our core self-perception can either heal or undermine our well-being—no matter how optimized our labs, routines, and biohacks might be. Drawing from his decades of international leadership coaching and personal struggles, Steve shares transformative frameworks for understanding identity, battling burnout, and moving from “success” to “significance.” Listeners are given concrete tools for self-reflection, managing hidden emotional drivers, and cultivating holistic health across mind, body, and spirit.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Hidden Role of Identity in Health (00:03-07:50)

• The Missing Link in Wellness: Dr. Shah introduces the “burnout no biohack can fix”—when everything reads healthy but something feels fundamentally off. Steve Chua’s framework centers on the idea that alignment with your design—knowing and living your core identity—is essential for sustained health.

• Steve’s Backstory:

  • Grew up in London, overshadowed academically by two high-achieving brothers (04:00–05:10).
  • Struggled with negative self-talk (“You’re not good enough”), compounded by culture and comparison.
  • Made it to Oxford, but due to a little-known learning disability, failed out and spiraled into depression and a suicide attempt.
  • His brother’s intervention and subsequent self-discovery sparked a lifelong journey:

    “A lot of us work with narratives that drive us… When you start trying to prove something, you start living for value rather than living from value.” (06:13, Steve Chua)

  • Realized that the root problem in his clients—leaders, executives—wasn't external (performance, achievements), but internal: identity and self-perception.

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The Inner Journey: Self-Awareness, Self-Management & Self-Leadership

1. Self-Awareness: Creating Space for Reflection (07:50–13:29)

• Identity Crisis is a Slow Burn, Not a Switch:
  • Most clients are high-achievers who never “check in” with themselves—leading to blind spots and hidden self-sabotaging behaviors (08:00–09:18).
  • Practical tool:

    “Three or four times a year, just go on a day to yourself and reset. Ask: Am I aligned with who I am? Am I being the best version of myself?” (09:33, Steve Chua)

  • Even daily moments matter:

    “I try to walk 10,000 steps before I start work… it’s my time of solitude.” (09:57, Steve Chua)

• The Perils of Constant Busyness and Devices:
  • Most people never get solitude; their “default mode network” (the part of your brain that handles deeper thinking, creativity) is rarely activated.
  • Dr. Shah draws analogy between not checking your phone in the morning and not eating sugar first thing:

    “If you eat a sugary breakfast first thing, it throws off your metabolic health for the rest of the day… The same occurs with our devices.” (12:40, Dr. Shah)

2. Perception and False Narratives (13:30–17:42)

• Perception Becomes Your Reality:
  • “Your perception is truth to you.” (14:34, Steve Chua)
  • Steve’s story of a painful call with his father illustrates how misinterpretation leads to estrangement, even when love was always present.

    “My perception has sabotaged me from a relationship that was important for me.” (17:20, Steve Chua)

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3. Self-Management: Breaking Old Patterns (17:47–21:03)

• Tools for Change:
  • Moving from awareness to management means resolving inner triggers and traumas—sometimes through therapy, always with conscious effort.
  • Powerful exercise: Client imagines packaging their emotional baggage, literally “putting rage in a garbage bag,” and letting it go.

    “Are you willing to let it go and forgive? That’s part of self-management.” (19:24, Steve Chua)

  • Face your fears by “walking the opposite”—ex: relearning how to jump in a pool after childhood trauma.

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Executive Examples: Public, Private & Secret Selves (22:49–30:10)

• Common Executive Patterns:

  • Inability to delegate; bottleneck behavior rooted in fear of being “found out” (22:56–23:15).
  • The three “lives”:
    • Public: What others see (success, image)
    • Private: Close relationships (family seeing true nature)
    • Secret: “Where your hidden thoughts are… am I good enough?”
  • Misalignment between these layers breeds shame, addiction, and burnout.

    “Comparison is the greatest enemy to your identity.” (28:44, Steve Chua)

• Living in Alignment:

  • The goal is not to have a secret/private self different than the public self—alignment brings freedom and genuine energy (26:50–27:28).

    “If you know your value, you add value. If you don’t know your value, you’ll spend the rest of your life looking for it.” (07:42, Steve Chua)

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Cultural Dimensions & Parenting (33:30–38:22)

• The Asian Experience:

  • Dr. Shah and Steve share about being raised in highly critical, high-expectation Asian families—where love is rarely verbalized, and achievement equals worth.

    “We often like to compliment what they do, but it’s actually better to compliment who they are… the quality of leadership, creativity, kindness.” (36:35, Steve Chua)

  • As parents: Parallel tracks of affirmation and encouragement produce healthier, self-motivated kids.

• Career Identity → Personal Identity:

  • Example: Coaching a retired $4.5B CEO to move from defining himself by achievements to describing who he is (problem solver, strategic thinker, etc.) (37:14–38:22).

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Burnout: Origins, Symptoms, and Antidotes

Why Are We So Burned Out? (40:24–44:38)

• Three Roots of Burnout:

  1. Loss of Choice: Feeling trapped by circumstance or others’ expectations (40:49–41:18).
  2. Loss of Community: Leadership is lonely; lack of trusted relationships (41:51–42:07).
  3. Loss of Growth: Stagnation, maintenance over development—“maintenance always leads to mediocrity” (43:25–44:38).

  “The burnout starts happening when you feel, ‘I can’t stop’… you feel controlled or trapped, and can’t get out of your circumstance.” (41:10, Steve Chua)

• Real-World Example:

  • Dr. Shah’s period of surgical burnout: no growth, isolation in the OR, feeling on a hamster wheel with no exit (44:38–46:19).
  • Steve reframes midlife crisis as a shift “from success to significance, from accomplishment to purpose.” (46:50, Steve Chua)

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From Success to Significance: The Halftime Model (46:42–54:53)

• The Halftime Pause

  • Importance of a midlife “break” to reassess and realign (47:10–48:32)
  • “If you invest in yourself now, everything you care for—your family, business, community—will flourish even more.” (49:29–50:09, Steve Chua)
  • Four S’s of Life:
    • Schooling, Success, Significance, Succession (51:31)
  • Burnout as a “gift”—a painful but necessary wake-up call (51:43–51:59).

• Anecdotes:

  • Dr. Shah recounts meeting a former lawyer in Rwanda who, after reading the book Halftime, shifted from professional success to starting a school and farm for local children (52:12–53:50).

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The Four Essential Life Questions (53:50–55:00)

• “Who am I?” (Identity)

• “Why am I here?” (Purpose)

• “Who do I trust?” (Security)

• “Where do I fit?” (Community)

  “If you can’t answer the first question, who am I, then your purpose is trying to figure out who you are. But if you know who you are, your purpose allows your identity to shine and impact what’s going on.” (54:53, Steve Chua)

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The Path Forward: Holistic, Aligned Health (56:00–58:07)

• Holistic Care:

  • True health blends physical, emotional/relational, and spiritual wellness—healthcare’s future lies in integration (56:09–56:49).

    “If we look at ourselves as whole—spirit, soul, and body… that creates a beautiful process. When people love themselves, they love others. When they love others, the community changes.” (56:09–57:04, Steve Chua)

• Closing Thoughts:

  • Prevention and longevity aren’t just labs and protocols—they’re founded in self-awareness, healthy narratives, and living from purpose.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Every action is rooted in the thought that produced it. Your starting point is your finishing point.” (06:13, Steve Chua)

• “If you know your value, you add value. If you don’t know your value, you’ll spend the rest of your life looking for it.” (07:42, Steve Chua)

• “Your perception is truth to you.” (14:34, Steve Chua)

• “Comparison is the greatest enemy to your identity.” (28:44, Steve Chua)

• “When you live with purpose, it brings you joy. When you live with purpose, you feel you can just keep doing it.” (53:50, Steve Chua)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:03] – Introduction: Why mindset matters in health
• [04:00] – Steve’s childhood, Oxford, and narrative-building
• [07:50] – Identity crises: Slow build and causes
• [09:33] – Yearly and daily self-awareness practices
• [13:30] – Perception as personal truth
• [17:20] – Story: Misreading a father’s love
• [19:24] – Practical self-management exercise (letting go of emotional baggage)
• [22:49] – Executive challenges: Public/private/secret lives
• [28:44] – Quote: Comparison kills identity
• [36:35] – Parenting: Affirming kids’ character, not just achievements
• [40:49] – Three roots of burnout
• [44:38] – Dr. Shah’s surgical burnout story
• [46:50] – Midlife shift: Success to significance
• [51:43] – Burnout as a necessary wake-up call
• [53:50] – The four basic life questions
• [56:09] – Holistic health: Spirit, soul, and body

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Resources & Connect with Steve Chua

• Website: www.stevechuaintl.com
• Company: insightoutcorp.com
• Podcast: Transformational Leadership (with Pete Cartu)
• Social Media: @stevechuainternational

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Episode Takeaway

To truly extend your healthspan, you must look inward: Reconnect with your core identity, update your inner narratives, and design a life that feeds your purpose and community. Without this internal alignment, no amount of physical optimization can prevent burnout—or unlock deep, enduring vitality.

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Transcript

[A]

Welcome to xtend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah. A podcast dedicated to cutting edge science research tools and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21 and trained and board certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results. When it comes to your health span, we are living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world renowned experts offering you a step by step guide to proactively avoid disease and most importantly, extend your health span. There's a version of burnout that no biohack can fix. It's when your labs look fine, your sleep score is decent and your routine is dialed in. But still something is fundamentally off. Today I'm joined with executive coach Steve chua. He's spent 30 years working with leaders across the world and he finds over and over again the same thing underneath what's going on with his leaders. Fatigue. It's the striving and the quiet sense of falling short. People who have built high performing lives around their role and their results and expectations often suffer from a long term fatigue and emotional exhaustion. Steve is a founder of Steve Chua International and the visionary beside Inside Out. It's a coaching and consulting firm dedicated to transforming leaders from the inside out. His work is built on one conviction. Healthy leaders create healthy organizations. And what Steve has found over and over again in over decades of his research around leaders is that when the leader is healthy physically, mentally and emotionally, it's inseparable from the organization's health as well. His framework centers around what he calls aligning with your design. This is the idea that every person has a core identity, a core set of values, wiring and purpose that either gets expressed or suppressed depending on how they live. When it's suppressed, the body and mind pay the price. When it's expressed, everything from energy to relationship and performance shifts. In today's conversation, we're going to explore what it actually means to know your design, how to recognize when you're living against it, and what the first steps back towards alignment looks like and how that internal foundation connects to your health, you know, your spirit, your soul and your body. Here's my conversation with Steve Chua. Steven, I'm so glad to have you on the podcast. Thank you for Joining me.

[B]

It's such a joy to be with you. It's good to get to know you, Darshan, over the last couple of months.

[A]

Yes, yes. And, you know, so I met you because you were doing a seminar for a big group of CEOs, and I really resonated with a lot of the topics that you talked about, because I feel like these are very common issues that are very seldom addressed specifically. You know, I also see a lot of executives as my clients.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And very much from a physical standpoint. Right. We're talking about their metabolic health, their inflammation, their body composition. And I think executives and CEOs and people that are just grinding away, working really hard, they rarely talk about their mindset and how that factors into their physical health. And this is something that I struggled with, and I didn't even realize it was a problem until about 10 years ago when I had to completely change my life. And during that time, I went through some level of identity crisis, massive amounts of burnout as well. And when you mentioned these words in this seminar that you did, I was like, I have to have him on the podcast. So before we get into all of that, I'd love to hear your background and kind of how you are in this world now.

[B]

It's a funny story, because I think sometimes our destiny or our purpose ends up actually coming from our past. And so growing up as a kid in London, where I had two brilliant brothers, and we're both Asian, so we know academics is a huge thing. And both my brothers were, like, straight A students. Oxford, Cambridge, you know, my middle brother's, like, the preeminent expert of Beethoven in the world right now.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And so they were getting straight A's, but I was getting straight Cs. So they were Asians. And I was a season. Right. And what I was doing was constantly comparing myself. And the more I did that, my mindset towards myself started to deteriorate. I had inner narratives. You're not good enough. No matter how hard you work, you'll never make it. You know, you don't have what it takes. And. And that was kind of reinforced by my culture a little bit. And so it actually culminated in a time where I just suddenly kind of said, I'm going to forget my past, deny it, and I'm just going to go for it. And I got myself into Oxford. Okay. But what I didn't. What I didn't realize till later in life, I have a reading disability, not dyslexia. It's what they call a visual tactile. Kinesthetic learner. Sounds really intelligent, but it really means I don't understand what I read.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And so I was at Oxford. I failed my exams, I got kicked out. And it was like everything of value, worth and significance got pulled from me. And about six months later, I was standing on a ledge of my new dorms in my new university. Cause I couldn't take it anymore. And I was about to commit suicide.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And through a series of circumstances, my brother happened to walk in because he was kind of chaperoning me. And he pulled me off the ledge. And I'm alive today thanks to him.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

But it was the beginning of a wake up. Because a lot of us work with narratives that drive us. One of my mentors, his name is Graham Cook, he said every action is rooted in the thought that produced it. Okay. Your starting point is your finishing point. It will either make you or break you, advance you or retard you. And what I was having with all these narratives and that narrative was saying, you're not good enough, whatever. First I tried to prove my value. And when we start talking about mindset and burnout, when you start trying to prove something, you start living for value rather than living from value. And when you are using external things to give you value, worth, and significance, then all of a sudden you're striving and you're looking for external validators. Does that make sense? External things to make you look successful. So you then start creating an image. You start trying to make yourself bigger than you are or whatever it is, when the greatness inside you was always inside of you, but you just denied it. And so I think part of this journey, darshan for me was the kind of irony of the universe is I got thrown into doing counseling. And then I started realizing there were so many people. And as I was counseling people, I was saying, this is me. And so it was on a journey then that I had to. I realized if I was gonna be authentic, I had to sort myself out. And then over the years, I began to come back to the issue of identity. I just saw so many people keep coming back for therapy. And actually the issue wasn't what they were presenting. The issue is how they saw themselves. And if you don't change that first thought about how you see yourself, then it actually affects everything else. And so when we talk about burnout, you can go for so long and you've got these inner narratives driving you to prove yourself. You know, work harder, be bigger, be more successful. Okay. And in the process, it's all functional. It's all about your performance. But actually, nobody's looking after your identity. Okay. And so the external things, the external circumstances are dictating you rather than internal peace and joy on who you are going out. So just one quote I often use is, if you know your value, you add value. If you don't know your value, you'll spend the rest of your life looking for it.

[A]

Yeah. It's so true. You know, when you talk about identity, right. And this concept of an identity crisis, it almost seems like a moment in time when that happens. But from what you're saying, it sounds like a buildup of not living in your values.

[B]

Yeah. I wish it was as easy as making a switch and doing a switch. Right. It's not. It's actually. In my coaching, I actually talk about three levels. The first one is self awareness. So most people don't take time to actually check in with themselves. Okay. We were talking about a lot of your clients. They're just rushing and their lives are so busy, okay. And they're just after the next KPI, the next thing they have to do. But they're not taking time to look after their own personal health, whether it's physical, in this case, mental, emotional, spiritual. And I think when you are rushing, the first area of self awareness is, why do I keep sabotaging myself? You know, if you talk to a lot of the execs, they have hidden addictions, okay. When you are so stressed, you have to find a way to find stress relief. Okay. And so your mindsets and what you're feeling about yourself, because you're not aware of them, they start sabotaging you. But then once you get into self awareness, you can then begin to see, okay, that's what's happening. That's what triggers me. Oh, I see the picture. Okay. I see my blind spots. Then you go into self management. Okay. Self awareness is a big buzzword right now, but a lot of people just keep it there.

[A]

Yeah. It's.

[B]

Then what do I do with it?

[A]

So self awareness, just. Just a highlight on that to you. People can have better self awareness if they take some time to check in with themselves at the moment. Right.

[B]

I always tell my clients, three or

[A]

four times a year, three or four times a year,.

[B]

Just go on a day to yourself and reset.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. And I usually give them a series of questions to ponder, to think through so that they can say, am I aligned with who I am? Do. Am I aligned with the way I want to live? Am I being the best version of myself?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. And am I being the best for other people?

[A]

Right. And then what about even on a daily basis, should we be taking moments of self awareness on a day to day basis?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I think I often say it's always important to check in with yourself. So for example, I try to walk 10,000 steps before I start work. Okay. That's my time of solitude.

[A]

I see.

[B]

It's a time where I just get quiet, I get focused and let my thoughts kind of review certain things and preview where I want to go. And so yes, I would say self awareness is actually asking questions about why am I doing what I'm doing and what's actually going on and what are those narratives that are driving me right now?

[A]

Yeah. You know, and I just had another guest on the podcast we talked about. Rarely do we find time to be in solitude. And that's where, like the default mode network of our brain has some time to activate. And you know, a lot of people, from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to bed, they're at someone else's disposal. Right. And whether it be zoom calls or whether it be, you know, meetings or phone calls, like, we're always trying to fit in the most amount that we can in a unit time. And then the time that we do have free from those interactions, we get right on our phones and social media and try to catch up on social, catch up on our emails, catch up on our text messages. And you spend your, you know, unwittingly now, you spend 14, 16 hours a day doing this.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You rarely get time to activate that part of the brain. And for a lot of people, like, you know, it happens in the shower. Right. Like that's the only time that they have to themselves during the days in the shower. And that's when people have their greatest insights sometimes. Right. You hear that over and over.

[B]

I actually have worked with a number of my clients and I'll ask them a question. What's the first thing you do when you wake up? Okay. And I would say that probably 95% of the world's population picks up their phone.

[A]

Yeah. Because they sleep, they use it as an alarm clock.

[B]

Alarm clock. And then they say what texts have come in, what emails are coming, and immediately. Your device is now controlling your life.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And so what I've been working with them is you can use it as an alarm, but leave it as an alarm. Take the first 30 minutes, 45 minutes of the day to, you go 15 minutes. Whether you take a shower to work out, do whatever, go into a quiet place and just breathe for a little bit and just focus on what drives you. Okay. And then just begin to be. Think of, and just begin to envision the day. Okay. So that I often say it's how to learn to live above your circumstance rather than live under your circumstance. And it's a discipline, but once you get there, it's actually you suddenly become more productive. You then begin to realize what's important, what's not. Okay. And then you realize that probably about 30, 40% of the stuff that's there isn't really there.

[A]

Yeah, that's so true. I look at it very analogous to this whole concept of not picking up your phone the first thing in the morning. It's very analogous with metabolic health, where if you eat a sugary breakfast first thing in the morning, it throws off your metabolic health for the rest of the day.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And I think the same occurs with this, with our devices, is it puts you in a heightened state of stress and awareness and loss of any type of connection with yourself from the beginning of the day, which then for the rest of the day, it's harder to get into that. It's harder to get into that mode. Right. So giving yourself that 15 to 45 minutes at the beginning of the day when you're away from your phone later in the day is easier to stay with lower stress levels, lower levels of anxiety, all of this.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

Because the first thing in the morning really sets off what happens the rest of the day.

[B]

Oh, yeah. Your starting point is your finishing point.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Right. And I think when you. When you start. Right, okay. And you start in charge of your day. Okay. You know, when you think about it, when you pick up your phone, you know, work, emails, that immediately starts the stress part. But if you go on social media, media is designed to startle you. Right. It's. I mean, nobody wants to read boring feeds. Right? So when you get on the news, everything's a little bit more extreme, and then it immediately you are impacted emotionally. Okay. And you say, I can't believe that happened. I can't believe so and so said that. I can't believe this is happening in the world. And all of a sudden it. It throws you off your balance. Okay. And I think part of being able to do that. What, this 45 minutes is where you embrace yourself and love yourself.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. When I talk about identity, I talk about it being a perception of yourself. Okay. So Darshan is perception. Truth.

[A]

Is perception true? No.

[B]

No. Right. Well, it might be, but here's the truth about perception. Your perception is truth to you.

[A]

Right?

[B]

So that perception filters everything. So if you have other things governing how you filter and how it then judges you or talks about who you are, then all of a sudden you start living to that narrative.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Okay, so if you're living to the narrative, I'm not good enough or I'm failing in what I'm doing right now, immediately you can imagine you're stressed, the anxiety is there, and now the decisions that you make are based on that. I have to do this, I have to do that. You know? Whereas if you take a moment and regard and get back to your perception that actually I'm brilliant, I was created for greatness. I want to align with my design. I want to be able to. I have curiosity and I have inventiveness. You know, my personal thing is I was created to give people value, worth and significance. And so when I begin to have that deep in my meditation or my solitude moments, it reminds me who I am rather than what I do. And when I get back to who I am, then I begin to add value to things. If it's what I do, then what I do is dictating who I am.

[A]

Yeah. It's like your self identity is what you set your perception of your self identity to be. And if you don't allow yourself the time to do that frequently, you lose your self identity because you just never even sit in it. So it's hard to know what it is. And then that perception of your self identity guides your choices and decisions for the rest of the day.

[B]

I mean, when I was comparing myself with my brilliant brothers, all I was feeling is, your dad doesn't love you. Yeah, you're not good enough. Dad's proud of them, he's not proud of me. And those weren't true, but they become your false narrative. That then becomes your perception.

[A]

Yeah, that's so true.

[B]

And then you live that. When I. I'll give you an example. When I got kicked out of Oxford, okay, big trauma in my life, I had to tell my dad, okay? So I get on the phone. Back then we didn't have cell phones and everything. And he said, steve, did you pass? And then I said, no, Dad, I didn't. And there was this silence on the phone. And then he started to sob on the other end. He was crying. And, you know, in the Asian family, you know, Asians don't cry, Asian men don't cry, all that sort of stuff. So my perception is, I've let you down. I've let the whole family down. I'm no longer worthy to be part of this family. Okay? And that phone calls to separate me from my dad until I got my identity sorted out. But I realized years later, I just said to my dad, I said, dad, do you remember that time, that phone call? And he goes, yeah. And he said, I. I cried because I felt your pain.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

And I went, and I said, what? Okay? And my perception has sabotaged me from a relationship that was important for me.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's the power of our mindsets. That's the power of our belief systems. And if our belief systems are based on perceptions, which could be false narratives, then all of a sudden, we can't discover the joy of who we are. We're just trying to find who we are.

[A]

Yeah, that's so true. You said, now, after self identity, what's the next step?

[B]

Self management. Okay? Because now you see what's going on, then what are the tools or what do I need to resolve to get there? Now, sometimes therapy is gonna help you, because for me, I had daddy issues, so I had to deal with some of those things. Right. But once you deal with that, then you begin to, you know, you'll understand this. Your body has memory, okay? And so you've been living a certain way for a very long time, so you're very used to the way you address certain situations. And I think freedom when you're walking into your identity is suddenly you have this ability to choose where you're going rather than being dictated to where you'. And that self management part is recognizing the triggers, bringing closure to the things that would destroy you. So, for example, yesterday I was on a call with someone, and they identified about eight or nine people in their lives who had traumatized them.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

Okay. And I took them through an exercise where I just said, see those people? And we said, what does this person mean to you? What do you feel? And she said, rage. She put rage. I said, put rage in a garbage package. By the time we finished, all the different emotions, rage, jealousy, rejection, whatever, it was like a hundred garbage bags. And I said, now you're willing to let it go because those garbage bags are what you've been carrying. As much as you want them to carry it, you've been carrying it. It's only damaging you. And I said, are you willing just to let it go and forgive them? She did it and she just felt, wow, I feel lighter. But that's part of self management. That's dealing with your. Your. Your inner Demons dealing with those things that sabotage you. Bringing closure to certain things and realizing, I don't want to carry that anymore.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then from self management, you start trying to live out what I call walking the opposite of what you had. Okay, okay. So if you are. I'll give you an example. If you're afraid of. Of if you have afraid of something, the best thing is not to run from it. You know, the fight or flight. It's actually to face it. Okay. So, you know, when I was seven, I got thrown off Olympic diving board. When I wasn't looking, I was just peering over and I was terrified. And some bully pushed me over.

[A]

Oh, my goodness.

[B]

And I went flying down. I thought I was gonna die. From that moment on, I never wanted to jump into a swimming pool. I would always take the steps or whatever because I was traumatized by that memory. And so in a coaching session, I said, you know, if you make a decision out of fear, you give fear authority in your life, and so it becomes rampant. And I went, oh, that's interesting. I said, the only way to do it is to face it. And I suddenly went. And I just moved into this house I have in California. I have this pool. My kids keep bomb jumping into it. And I'm like, come on, dad. Come on, dad. And I'm like, oh, no, I can't do that. And I would just walk into the side. So that night when nobody was looking, I just stood at this edge of the pool, sat by the edge, and I just jumped in, just pushed myself in. And then I said, okay, now I'm going to kneel down. I'm going to push myself in. I was facing my fear today. Okay. I don't. I never use the stairs going into the pool. I just jump in every time because it's overcoming the fear. You walk the opposite. So a lot of the things that have sabotaged you, you realize it's actually just a fake lie that you believe, and it's actually just a smokescreen. And now you need to walk in the opposite of that, and you begin to manage. Manage the stuff that you're dealing with.

[A]

Let's take a quick break from this conversation. I want to talk to you about something that rarely gets airtime in the performance space, but you should know about it. About 95% of Americans aren't getting enough fiber, and most of them have no idea. In fact, 70% think they're already hitting their daily target. Fiber is one of those things that get written off as basic, but the science tells a very different story. Gut health drives long term performance and fiber is what makes gut health possible. It determines how well you absorb the nutrients from your food, so how stable your energy is throughout the day and how effectively your body controls inflammation and recovers from training. If your gut isn't functioning at a high level, everything else that you're doing, the supplements, the workout, the sleep protocols, is working at a fraction of its potential. And that's why I'm using momentous fiber. It's a complete three in one formula with soluble fiber, insoluble fiber and prebiotic resistant starch. Most fiber products only contain one type of. Which means they're only solving one part of the problem. This formula is designed to strengthen the gut, support digestion and help stabilize blood sugar for steady, crash free energy, clean, minimal ingredients, no additives. And it's also independently NSF certified for sport. It comes unflavored or even in a cinnamon flavor that's really tasty and mixes easily into a shake or even just with water. Head over to livemomentous.com fiber and use my code DrShaw for up to 35% off your first order. The link is in the show notes. What are some of the examples that your executive clients. I know you do a lot of coaching that you can give us that's more practical like in your day to day or running a business or running, you know, running a department or something.

[B]

I mean one of the most common things is that they, it's because they've driven themselves to success. It's hard to trust other people.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Okay. So they become the bottleneck to a lot of the issues. Okay. And if they try to delegate then, then they try to. No, it's not doing the. Right, let me just do it for you. Right. And, and what happens is they burn out.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You, the culture becomes very, very, I won't say toxic, but dysfunctional.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay, so what are some of the things that I often will help them say? Why are you doing that? And again, it's, it's because they've, their identity is so caught up in what they do, not who they am. So if somebody does something that's not the way they do it, they feel like it's going to fail and it's going to reflect on me. And so that's an identity crisis. That's actually the self image issue. And so when I'm helping them, I'm beginning to help them understand who they are. I talk about again, another three levels. You have your public life, your private life and your Secret life. Okay, so your public life is what you want people to see. So right now on this podcast, everybody's watching. This is our public life. We want people to see the good side, us, the successful side of us, all that sort of stuff. And that's where a lot of people live. Yeah, but then your private life is like, if you're married, your wife, your family, they see the side of you and they say, dad, you're not the same person. Okay. Or whatever. They see your weaknesses. That's right.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Okay. And. And so that's private life is. Is People begin to see a little bit more intimately into. Into you.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Your. Your secret life is where your hidden thoughts are. It's. Am I succeeding? And I'm. Am I really being a good. Am I really a good husband? I feel so guilty that I'm not spending time with my kids and all these sorts of things that are going on. And what happens is when we have guilt or we have shame on the inside, it then begins to dictate how we present ourselves and try to overcompensate for a lot of things. And when it comes to something like what you're talking with executives, I can't let go. Because if I let go, they'll see, really, my inner narrative, that I'm driven by the fear of failure. Okay. A lot of execs burn out. They're brilliant. They do really, really well, but they're driven by the wrong thing. So remember, every action is rooted in the thought that produced it. So if your action is really, I have to prove myself. I have to. I can't be seen to fail. Okay? It's like. It's like a slave driver inside of you. And mentally and emotionally, after a while, this. You just run out. Because I can't do. I can't do another round of this. I can't get that. I've got no more to give.

[A]

Okay?

[B]

And. And I can't. But if I trust somebody with this, what if they mess it up? Okay, so we become our own worst enemy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. So that would. I don't know if that kind of answered your question. A little does.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, and that would be one thing. And. And then a lot of my clients would just come in with secret addictions. Okay. Why do I keep drinking too much? Why do I. You know, I'm doing this and I'm doing that. And sometimes it's. What. It's also, people gravitate to work because if things aren't good at home, you always gravitate. To the thing that gives you value. Okay. And so you don't, you don't have to see the thing that's not. That's challenging.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. And so those are some of the things that we work out. But when you discover the joy of who you are, then you see things from a very, very different perspective. And your family life changes. You find balance. You begin to. You, like I said, live above your circumstance. So that self management section then moves to self leadership.

[A]

Right, okay.

[B]

Because. Yeah, because when you then start living the way you want to live out of your values, out of the talents and the gifts that, that, that you were innately given, when you begin to be the best version of yourself in the secret life, then in the private life and it shows out in the public life, that's when you are fully aligned.

[A]

Yeah. So that was my next question for you. Like, shouldn't these level aligned with each other?

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

So you don't have a secret life that's very different than your public life.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Or even your private life.

[B]

Absolutely. And the thing is, most people don't. I would say that 99% of the people that I know, they need a chiropractic adjustment, an inner chiropractic adjustment, and they're not that far off because they think that if I stop working or I stop doing this, then I'm going to fail. That's not true, because your brilliance has actually made you not fail.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. But you're using your shame to drive you. So imagine you have a Lamborghini and you put crude oil in the engine. After a while, this beautiful Lamborghini is going to stall.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But if you didn't realize, you didn't, you know, you put in the right fuel, it's going to go like crazy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. And it's just about adjustments, putting the right fuel in, but the right mindsets, the right beliefs, the. The way you see yourself. Okay. And I often say the way you see yourself is the way you treat yourself. And so. And you'll understand that also with some of the work that you're doing, why is it that people don't look after their bodies right? And a lot of the time it's because they don't see themselves in the right way because they don't want to take that step to look after themselves.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. I do feel that people don't look out for themselves because they do have a lot of guilt around their business, their families. And so it's almost like it's the last priority. But it's the last priority because they feel like they shouldn't be taking care of themselves because they're failing maybe at their family life or their business. And it's a perceived failure. It's not a failure. They're obviously doing better than most people. But there's always something that's going to make you feel like you're not doing as well as you thought you were going to be doing.

[B]

And that's, that's the inner narratives.

[A]

Right, Right.

[B]

Those are the, the demons of that start saying, should work harder.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, look at so and so. They're doing so much better, you know, and then the jealousy starts coming in. Or the comparison thing. I mean, I often say that comparison is the greatest enemy to your identity.

[A]

That's so true.

[B]

Because you're trying to be something that's trying to make you something that you're not, rather than embracing who you are and seeing the innate brilliance inside of you. Okay. And so I think when we begin to look in this area of self leadership, for example, you start living the way you want to live. You know, I was on a call yesterday with a group of people who are a kind of salesforce of some group, and I just said, okay, how many of you ever had a good leader? And they would say, there were a few of them and said, how many of you had a toxic leader? Well, these hats would go up. And I said for a moment, I want you to get a whiteboard, write the word leader in front of you, and then imagine what would be the ideal leader that you would like. What would you like to see? What are the qualities of the ideal leader? Okay. And so they started, would be writing their, their little notes, you know, confident, secure, empowering, you know, envisioning, you know, all these brilliant words. And then I said, okay, so that's who you are. And they go, oh, because you already know what makes a great leader.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And if you live that way, how would you feel? And they went, well, I feel so good about myself. Absolutely right. So it's just sometimes just a little bit of a chiropractic shift in your mindset can begin to set you on the right path.

[A]

Right. Yeah. The mindset around, around your self identity is so critical. And giving yourself that shift, like you're saying from the very beginning, like if you're thinking of yourself as a failure the entire time is going to drive you to make decisions in one path that was almost deadly for you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And if you had a different kind of self identity, you would obviously be Making different perceptions and different choices.

[B]

And even after that real traumatic moment, it didn't mean that my mindset had changed. I got rescued in that moment.

[A]

Okay? Right.

[B]

And I had to. And I was able to get a lot of stuff of that. I'd been kept inside out, but I still had this fundamental underlying feeling that, am I good enough? Will I succeed? And so that proving thing was still in my early professional career. Okay. And when you're trying to prove, you're always striving, okay. Because you're trying to survive. All right? And what happens is you begin to look for things that will feed you. That's where your ego comes in. Okay. That's where pride comes in. Because I built it, I made it, whatever. But for whatever reason, they always seem to get pulled apart. It's like that castle cards. Boom. And it wasn't until I realized that, first of all, I was loved and I needed to be loved. Okay. I'm very spiritual, so faith is important. So that encounter of love changed my perception of me. That if I'm that loved, then why am I so desperately looking for love? And then I began to realize it's not because people aren't loving me. It's because I don't love myself.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that moment of that light bulb moment just started changing things. And actually I say I had daddy issues. My dad had a kitten run car accident.

[A]

Oh.

[B]

And he went into ER and just intensive care and all sorts of stuff that was going on. And, and that was the wake up call. It's like if, if he died and I wasn't in that place. And, and the funny thing was, he came out of the hospital and while he was in intensive care, he wrote a poem.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

About his sons. Cause when you have near death experiences, the things that are most important come to you. And he started writing about his three sons. I'm the youngest of three.

[A]

That's awesome.

[B]

And he just basically said, you know, here's Andrew, my oldest brother, the one who always gives, who's so generous. My middle brother, who's always, never left my side. And then he said, steve, the son of my gifting, it was almost like, you're my legacy.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

And I'm thinking, what? I'm not your legacy. I, I, I failed and all these things. And I suddenly realized he always loved me, but I couldn't see it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that was the, that was the beginning of the shift. And all of a sudden I didn't. All my failures, all my mistakes, nothing proved him that would, that I thought it could be love been. Make me lovable. Actually, that didn't matter.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so that was the. That, that, that moment shifted a lot of stuff for me and was reinforced in that journey. And I started to deal with my demons, my self awareness, started. Have made myself accountable for a number of things. Walked with the. Walked with my own mentors and so forth, who really helped me see myself, you know, and. And now I get to lead it. And I. And I'm just living out my story and helping other people do that.

[A]

I love that. You know, coming from an Asian family myself, there's a little bit of this kind of cultural dystopia now that I live in versus how I was raised. Right. Because just like you, I was raised with a lot of pushing in the academics. Right. We were very, very much pushed. And I think all of that came from love, not from whether or not they would love you if you did well or not. They wanted us to do well, so they pushed us to do well so we could have a better life. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But then that was not accompanied with words or actions of affirmation at all.

[B]

No.

[A]

Right. So you grow up thinking that the only thing that matters is whether or not you do well in academics, and if you don't do well in academics, then you're not worthy of even being in the family.

[B]

Well, you know what it's like in Asian. It's like, therefore, often the form of encouragement is criticism.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

That's so true.

[B]

You know, my mom, she. She killed straight A's at high school and she got one B and her dad beat her.

[A]

Oh, my gosh.

[B]

Okay. And. And it was like, why aren't you doing that? And it's not that she. He didn't love her, but he thought he can make her better. Okay. And we often live vicariously through our kids, you know? You know what I mean? We don't want to make mistakes. We have. We want to have a better opportunity than we had on all these sorts of things. And. And I think part of it is when we are driven that way, we then create these mindsets that the only way I have value is if I perform.

[A]

Yes. That's exactly the perception that is there,

[B]

rather than I have value. And because I have value, I will perform.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. And so you're. You're no longer trying to prove you're just being, you know, and it. And can I tell you, when you get to that stage, it's so freeing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You feel kind of like, I can. I can climb Mount Everest. I can do whatever because I have the. The joy of knowing that I can add value wherever I go, you know, and that's a beautiful feeling.

[A]

Yeah. So true. I think as parents, too, you know, for younger children, even older children, showing them that they have value despite whatever they achieve academically. Right. I mean, I think they need to be two parallel paths. Showing value, showing love, and academic pushing. As a parent, I think those two things can live together. They don't have. They shouldn't be exclusive from each other, because then that's the perception that is created in the children's mind.

[B]

Yeah. And I think as I was on my journey, okay, I have five kids.

[A]

All right, you have five kids.

[B]

I have five kids.

[A]

Amazing.

[B]

And I have this beautiful wife, Barbara, who's been the most amazing mom who's in the studio right now. But I think on this identity journey, I think for maybe the first two of my kids, I was a little bit more like the Asian dad, pushing them and. And not realizing I was living vicariously through them. I. I don't want them to feel the shame I'm feeling. Not that I would tell them that. So, you know, I was good at sports, and so I wanted to drill them in sports. And after a while, I was putting. I was maybe putting some unnecessary pressure on. They ended up getting scholarships and stuff, which was great.

[A]

But.

[B]

But it was because they started enjoying it rather than enduring it or being pushed to it. They pushed themselves in a good way. And then with the other kids, we began to realize, let's speak into their identity when I do that. It's not like we often like to compliment what they do. Okay. But it's actually compliment who they are. So in other words, it's not well done for doing this. Well done, because the way you did this and the quality of leadership that you brought in or the creativity that was there, the kindness that you expressed. We start now. We're talking about the quality of the person, not about the quality of their work.

[A]

Yes. Not the outcome is how they achieve the outcome that you compliment.

[B]

I was just. This last weekend, I was dealing one of my clients, random billion, 3, 5, 4. $5 billion company, and he has now stepped down as the CEO. And I said, so just tell me who you are. And he said, well, I've done this, I've done this, I've done this. And he kind of gave me his resume. I said, no, no, no. That's your reputation. Tell me the person who built that. Who are you? And he goes, I don't Know, I've never thought about that. I said, well, you're a strategic thinker, you're a problem solver, okay? You have a sharp mind, you like to make complicated things simple, all these sorts of things. And his eyes were lighting up. He said, how did you know all of that about me? He said, well, that's what I do, okay? But I said, I want you to write an elevator pitch. Not on what you've done, put on who you are, okay? And all of a sudden he started getting excited because he started seeing all these different qualities in all these different things. And he said, see, that's your value. You add value and you have to align with, you have to embrace it and actually give you self permission to get there.

[A]

Love that. Hi, Dr. Shah here. I want to take a minute to talk to you about cellular health. So in my clinics I've actually seen 30 year old people with cells that look like they're pushing retirement. And I've also seen 60 year olds with cells that look like they're 40 years old. So what's the difference? It's really about how fast their telomeres are breaking down. Your cells, you see, are like phones and they have limited cell phone battery, poor sleep, stress, processed foods, all of these things can drain that battery way faster than it should. So this is the reason why I partnered with iM8. IM8 powers that cellular battery. It's not just another multivitamin. It's a comprehensive 92 ingredient formula designed specifically for cellular health and longevity. I'm talking 900 milligrams of vitamin C. That's like 20 oranges worth of DNA protection, the clinical dose of CoQ10 that you need to power your cellular engine. You also get zinc, selenium, vitamin E, alpha lipoic acid. All of these work synergistically for cellular repair and protecting your telomeres. So instead of taking a handful of pills every day and all these supplements, IMAID actually gives you everything that you need in one scientifically formulated system. And this isn't just a theory anymore. IMAID had partnered with Oxford University, the International Space Station San Francisco Research Institute, and they've done studies and they've gotten this NSF certified to truly power your health. Most people are aging twice as fast as they should. Unfortunately, you don't have to be one of them. Try ima. I actually have a discount secured for you if you go to DrShaw.comIM8 or go to IM8Health.com discount DrShaw and you can get 20% off with my discount code. DrShaw, you can also find the link below. I want to talk about burnout. You know, like I told you, I experienced what I termed burnout about 10 years ago.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I think that, you know, many people are living in a state of burnout right now. Whether you're an executive, whether you're just living in your job. It just seems like there's more and more burnout everywhere I look. And this is a massive consequence to your health. Like, these are definitely tied together your physiological health and the state of this mental state called burnout.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So why do you think so many people are burnt out now?

[B]

I think because they have lost that, this, I would say three areas. One, they've lost their sense that they can choose.

[A]

True.

[B]

Okay. Secondly, they've lost a sense of feeling, that there's often a feeling of being alone, so they don't have people to support them. And thirdly, they've lost a sense of growth. And so when we burn out, it's like we're on that hamster wheel that we go round and round and round and we just feel we can't get off it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Does that make sense? And when I go about choice, it's like when we start feeling controlled or trapped and we can't get out of our circumstance. Okay. Or as a leader, people expect me to be this, to live this way, and I can't let them down. Okay. We then put what I call expectations or pressure on ourselves and that's what we have to live up to. Now you, now you're putting even more emotional mental energy into trying to meet those expectations.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But you don't realize that those expectations actually causing you to silo yourself. And in that being siloed. That's what I'm saying. It's almost so much more fun to do with people. Okay. But often leadership is a lonely place.

[A]

It does.

[B]

I mean, you know, if a lot of CEOs, they say, well, if I share really what's going on, they're going to. It's going to cause all sorts of issues. Now, I said, that's why you should really have coaches or have somebody that you can talk to.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But in that process, the burnout starts happening. When you feel that, it's almost like I can't stop. And that's one of the things that some of my clients, it's one of the hardest things. There's one client, I keep telling them, you need a vacation. Okay, I can't. I can't take a vacation. And so I forced them to Take a vacation. And then. And then she canceled.

[A]

Oh, no, I can't.

[B]

There's too many things that work. But then 2, 3, and I. It's like my coaching then becomes like a pep talk just to keep it going rather. But if she would take that moment to stop, reset the burnout, we could start dealing with the burnout. But then your mental mindsets also. This is identity. That if I. If I don't achieve, I'm going to let everything down. I'm going to fail everybody.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And so that greater sense of weight or burden.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And that's the thing that drives you.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So there's three things. You said that there was.

[B]

Yeah. So the first was choice.

[A]

Choice.

[B]

So you want to have the freedom to know that you can choose and not be dictated by your circumstances to the community.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You want.

[A]

Not feeling. Feeling alone.

[B]

Feeling alone. Having connection. The third one is grow. Is. Is what I saw. Competency.

[A]

Growth. Growth. Okay, that was the last one.

[B]

Right. If you're doing a job and you're not growing, after a while, you're just maintaining what you're doing. It's the hamster wheel. You're just maintaining it. Maintenance always leads to mediocrity. And after a while, you feel mediocre. Motivation happens when we have a sense of excitement that we're growing, growing that we've got, learning new skills, we're developing new character, we're becoming more resilient, all these sorts of things. Our mindset is based upon growth. And if we stop seeing things as targets and goals, but we see life as a growth curve. Okay. Then you're gonna hit all your targets anyway. That's why I encourage all my clients. Don't think about becoming a better CEO. Think about growing as a person. And if you are in a situation where you feel you're growing, you will be energized. If you feel that you're in a community of people who are there supporting you and you can trust them, you're energized. If you feel that you can actually take a vacation and everything's gonna be o. Because I've learned how to build the right team, everything gets energized. Okay.

[A]

I think, you know, I'm looking back at my situation 10 years ago, and I could see why I was burnt out by your definition of it, because I was spending 12 hours in the operating room five or six days a week. Okay. So. And I was. I've been doing this for 20 years now. So there was very little growth because I'd Done the same procedures over and over and over again for 10 years now.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Secondly is lonely being the operating room because you're there operating on someone by yourself. No one's really talking. It's a little bit of conversation, but you're focused and you're the anesthesiologist doing his thing, and I'm doing my thing, and I do that 12, 14 hours a day. Right. And I didn't feel like I had a choice either, because I had surgery scheduled for six months out. I had no way of getting off this hamster wheel, of going to the operating room every day. Then you see these patients that you do surgery on after surgery, and it's like you've built up volume over decades now that you're kind of stuck in this routine of your job, which is very intense and isolating, and there's no end in sight. And same thing over and over again. I mentioned all of this because I feel like there's probably a lot of people out there that are in a very similar situation when they hit 40s or 50s in their career. Right. And I found my way out of that. Thank God I did. But, like, what would you. What kind of advice would you give to me at that point 10 years ago if I had come to you as a coach and said, look, I'm not growing at all. I'm just here doing the same thing every day. I'm stuck in this hamster wheel. There's no way out. How would you advise me to find a new path?

[B]

Yeah, no, great question. I mean, part of this is you need to take charge of your life again, but you need to understand all the things that pulling you from doing that. Okay. It takes courage. All right. But also, you talk about 50s. A lot of my people, clients come when they're in their 40s or 50s.

[A]

That's the time.

[B]

We call it the midlife crisis. Some people. But it's really a shift between moving from success to significance.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Okay. I've been successful, but I'm burnt out. But my life must mean more than this. It's moving from a sense of accomplishment to purpose. All right. And I mean, when I've been kind of researching you, and also I could see you're driven by a purpose to find longevity for people, to give people better lives. What an incredible purpose in that.

[A]

Right. Thank you.

[B]

But when you're in that burnout, sometimes you need to be willing to listen to people to tell you to stop. But also, this is going back to. Do you love yourself enough to stop? To realize if you don't stop, everything that you've built is going to explode. Okay? And there was a great book called Halftime. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but I often will say, you know, great book. Yeah. The greatest moment in a sports game. I will say, you know, if you're. If you're. If you like football, soccer or whatever, what's the most important time? Everybody says, oh, maybe the end or the beginning. No, no, it's actually the halftime break. Because that's when you assess what happened in the first half, and then you can begin to say, okay, that was good. Because, remember, not everything is bad. Because you burnt out doesn't mean everything was bad. In fact, there's a lot of success. In fact, it's your success that burnt you out. Okay? And so there's a lot of things that you can identify which you can bring into the second half. But there are certain situations, choices, or the way you've positioned yourself in certain places. Let's relook at that and refocus. There are certain people in your life that are maybe toxic. Okay. That you're feeling. They're causing you guilt and whatever. Well, maybe we need to remove certain people from your area. I think it was a Jim Rohn or. I think he said that you become the sum of the five people you spend the most time with.

[A]

The average of the.

[B]

Yeah. And you've got to choose those people carefully. So your second half allows you to reposition yourself. See the first half, learn the lessons of the first half, okay? Because you won't fail if you've learned from your failure. So fail is only fail if you don't learn from it. Okay. And so I would often say, are you willing to invest in yourself? Okay. Because really, if you think about your first half, you're investing your success to help your family. All these sorts of things you've kind of driven, and it's very. You don't really spend a lot of time on yourself. Maybe physically, I go to the gym or whatever. I mean, I'm sure you find the same thing of what you do. A lot of people. I don't have time to do this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. But it's the most critical thing they need to do.

[A]

Yeah. And you're right. They don't take the time to do it because they're not investing in themselves at all. They just get stuck on this Hampshire wheel of investing in their company and their employees and their families. And it's almost like there's some guilt Associating with, diverting time and energy away from.

[B]

Well, they think it's a luxury. Okay. It's a distraction or whatever. But business people, you'll understand this, they like the roi. We turn on investment. I said, well, if you invest in yourself for the second half, and I could say you could double or triple or quadruple what you did on your first half, would you do it? And they said, absolutely. So why aren't you doing it? If you could see, invest in yourself now and your family starts flourishing, you invest in yourself now and your business starts even more flourishing, or you create new multiple levels of flourishing, your community flourishes, how would you feel? They said, that's amazing, but it requires you to invest in you.

[A]

Yeah, it's funny because you forget that when you get to that point in your life, but that's exactly what you did when you went to college, maybe when you researched how to start a new business and you started a business. Like you invested the time and energy into learning a new skill or learning something that would create flourishing later on. And then you flourished and. And then you get to your 40s or 50s, you have this kind of midlife crisis where you stop flourishing. Right?

[B]

Well, because we think flourishing is success.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. And I would say it's like, if you can imagine you are a tree and you have lots of fruit and you're very fruitful, okay? And that's your success. But if you had an orchard, then you start flourishing. And I think that's the moment that you move from that moment of success is significance from that moment of what I'm building or to what can I impact. And, you know, in. In seasons of life, I call it the four S's. Okay. You start with schooling, right? Okay. So you need to educate, learn how you do it. And then the next S is success. And so hopefully you put all those things in, you start being successful, and you start hopefully getting. Getting the money, building the family, whatever that's going on, you can be successful. But then, like I said, you hit that midlife crisis, then significance. And then after significance comes succession. What am I leaving behind?

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

All right. And all of this is part of, I would say, that identity journey. Okay. Going back to burnout. I sometimes think burnout is a gift. It sounds really crazy to say that because it's.

[A]

I feel like mine was a gift.

[B]

Yeah. Because it's the wake up call.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's the thing that shakes you. It's questions what you're going to do about it in that process. And Sometimes our greatest challenges are actually gonna be the things that make us the greatest champions. Okay. In that process.

[A]

That's so true. You know this book, Halftime you mentioned, who's it written by?

[B]

You know what? I wish I could remember, but it was a significant game changer. There was a guy who shared it with me, and it just made so much sense.

[A]

So this book, you know, there's entire communities now developed around this book where people are going through this time period in their life where they're going from, like, success to significance. And I also know that. I'll tell you a story. So I went to Africa a couple years ago with my family, and we're in Rwanda. And there was a guy that was living in a house that he had built at the base of this, like, resort that we were staying at. And he was living there, and he was. He started a school and he started a farm where he was teaching hundreds of African kids in Rwanda school every day. And he would also grow in the farm eggs. And every day, he would give the kids eggs because they didn't have adequate nutrition. And he knew eggs were very important for children because they gave them the protein and the choline and the things they needed. And I asked this guy. Cause he was obviously not from Africa. He was a Caucasian male in his 60s, like, what are you doing here? And where did you come from? And he said, well, I was a very successful lawyer in California, and I decided to move here after I read this book, Halftime. And I read this book, Halftime, because I was super successful. And there was a community around this book that had formed to talk about, what are we going to do next? And this is what I decided I was going to do. And so it just goes to show you that it's so important to take that pause when you feel like you're at your halftime and to make a significant decision or make some decisions that lead to the shift of significance. Because I think probably burnout is not shifting to that significance mindset in the right time.

[B]

Well, if you think about it, when you live with purpose, it brings you joy. When you live with purpose, you feel you can just keep doing it. Like I said, it energizes you when you're living for profit or you're living to the bottom line or whatever. After a while, you've hit those targets, but it always. There's another target and there's another target, and then you lose that sense of joy in that. And I think what you're hitting on is such an important point, because if we can live from purpose. And it comes from your identity as well. I say this, keep all these little things I do. But I have four questions. Who am I? Identity. Why am I here? Destiny or purpose? Who do I trust? Security. And the last one's, where do I fit? Community. These are four life questions that we are constantly asking ourselves. But that second one, why am I here? Is the second of is to do with purpose. But if you can't answer the first question, who am I? Then your purpose is trying to find out who you are.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Whereas if you know who you are, your purpose then allows your identity to shine and impact what's going on.

[A]

Got it. Got it. Wow. There's so much important discussion that we've had. This, this is such an important discussion because I feel like this is something that's really impacting the health of the community of patients that I see because we work so much on their glucose levels and their cholesterol levels. But it really stems from a lack of purpose and a lack of direction, a lack of significance, a lack of community that really drives all of these negative physiological content quizzes. And there's a lot of talk around blue zones. Yes, Right. But really what they've done is they figured out the answers to those four questions. Yeah, I think that's, that's, this, that's the real kind of secret of the blue zones, if you will, is they've answered those four questions and they've answered them way before they were impacting their biology and becoming sick with chronic disease.

[B]

Right, right.

[A]

And so maybe that's where the real magic l figuring out the answer to these questions.

[B]

And I think that if we're, if we look at ourselves as a whole spirit, soul and body.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. I mean, a lot of what you do is working with the body, but if we're also working with our mind and our emotional health. Okay. We, you know, our emotional quotient, our relational health, and even our spiritual health, then if you put that all together, it actually creates a beautiful process. We've become a bit one dimensional in many ways. Okay. And I think the few, just some ideas of the future of healthcare is. And, and I think that all the talk of mental health and all these sorts of things, I think, what if we can find a holistic health service that actually respects each other and realizes we need each other.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. And we can refer to each other rather than, oh, you know, there are competition or enemy, actually. We then start creating holistic people.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And then that changes society. Actually, when you think about people who love themselves, will love others, and if they love others, the community changes.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. That's true health, right?

[B]

That's very true health.

[A]

That's very true. Well, wow, Stephen, this is such an incredible conversation. I'm really, really excited that you joined me today, and I was able to pick up the conversation with you and really give this gift to our audience with you. Thank you for doing this.

[B]

Well, it's been an absolute pleasure, and I'm just thrilled to be just part of a holistic process. And, you know, Darshan, kudos for what you're trying to do to create preventative health rather than just dealing with issues that happen at the moment. It's brilliant. And I think that's what we're both trying to do, trying to help people from not damaging or sabotaging themselves.

[A]

Yeah. And true prevention comes from not just fixing your physiology, but also really looking at your mindset and your purpose and all the things that you talked about. So you're right. It does take a holistic strategy, and holistic goes beyond the physical. It also dives into the things that you're talking about. Also a mental health strategy. All of this has to come together to become truly healthy. So.

[B]

Well, thank you for inviting me.

[A]

Yeah, thank you. Where can people learn more from you?

[B]

Okay. There's different ways. You can go to my website at WW. What is it? Www.stevechuaintl.com.

[A]

okay.

[B]

I also have a company called Insight Out. It's not Inside out, but Inside Out.

[A]

Inside out was a good movie.

[B]

It was a good movie.

[A]

Inside out is a great company.

[B]

It's a great company. Yeah. So it's insightoutcorp.com.

[A]

okay.

[B]

And I have a whole bunch of coaches that work with me to. To help with organizations and to find

[A]

coaching all over the country.

[B]

Yes, all over the country. But we do a lot of it because of Zoom and everything else. So if you need a coach to work with, we can find you a coach.

[A]

Oh, so even all over the world?

[B]

Or even all over the world. I mean, actually, most of my clients are in Asia.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

You know, and so I have a very late night, and so I've had to find balance and not burn out.

[A]

And where can people find you on social media?

[B]

Just find it. Steve Troy NTL or Steve tra. You'll often find me there. I also have a podcast called Transformational Leadership, which I do with another executive coach called Pete Cartu out in New York.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

And we're looking at how can we help you lead your life and then if you can lead your life, you're going to lead other things a lot better.

[A]

I love it. Thank you so much for this.

[B]

Thank you. Darshan

[A]

thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you like this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps to support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educators educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best, and it's always important to seek their guidance. Sam.