Health for a Lifetime

Stress Absorbers I

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Skip MacCarty, Don Mackintosh

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Series Code: HFAL

Program Code: HFAL000105


00:49 Welcome to "Health for a Lifetime"
00:50 I'm your host Don Mackintosh
00:52 Today, we're going to be talking
00:53 about stress and stress-absorbers.
00:55 And if you have stress in your life, you'll want to tune in
00:58 and tell other people about today's program.
01:01 We're joined with Dr. Skip MacCarty
01:03 You've been educating concerning stress for over 20 years.
01:06 You've written a seminar - "Stress Beyond Coping"
01:10 and I think it's been adopted as the actual seminar for the
01:14 Seventh-day Adventist Church,
01:15 and it's available through that "Health Ministries Department"
01:18 or if they call 3ABN.
01:20 So we're going to scratch, I guess, the surface
01:23 of stress-absorbers.
01:25 Give us an overview of stress.
01:28 How do we relate to stress?
01:29 What are some keys to relating with it?
01:31 Okay Don, the model that I operate on is the
01:35 basis of a stress tank.
01:37 It came out of Australia and then I have reconfigured it
01:39 based on my research...
01:40 And you think of your life as this tank into which stress is
01:44 being poured every day; all kinds of stressors
01:46 we are subjected to every day...
01:47 And if stress levels build to the overload point -
01:52 the overflow point, various kinds of harm...
01:55 Or if stress gets too low, because we need some
01:57 stress in our lives, then various kinds of harm -
02:00 illnesses or accident-proneness, etcetera...
02:04 And fortunately, the pressure relief valve on the tank
02:07 that can drain stress to safe levels,
02:11 and there are 7 keys to managing stress.
02:15 There are ways you can close that pressure relief valve
02:18 as well through alcohol and tobacco and so forth.
02:21 Now here are the 7 keys - here they are...
02:23 These 7 keys keep the pressure relief valve opened...
02:26 Prayer, relaxation, exercise, viewpoint, eating healthy - Yes
02:29 They prevent stress from building to the harmful point.
02:34 And what we're talking about today - stress absorbers
02:36 are in the area of viewpoint.
02:38 Okay, so again, we're looking at our point-of-view,
02:40 and how it can help us with getting rid of stress
02:43 or absorbing it - is what you're saying today. That's right
02:46 Okay, so how important then is viewpoint,
02:50 looking at that key again, in managing stress?
02:53 Okay, we have a stress management pyramid
02:56 we've developed, Don, and that stress management
02:59 pyramid has the 7 keys of managing stress in a hierarchal
03:04 configuration starting with the... Least important
03:08 Yeah least important - not that they're not important,
03:12 they are very important and working up to the pyramid
03:15 to the top that's the most important.
03:17 And viewpoint is right up there, right underneath the top.
03:19 Viewpoint is VERY important.
03:20 The bottom 4 are foundational and then you have the
03:24 power elements at the very top.
03:26 Viewpoint - our relationships and the spiritual integration.
03:29 And what is exactly "viewpoint?"
03:32 Viewpoint is one's attitude
03:34 Dr. Hans Selye said that adopting...
03:38 He was the father of stress management research by the way;
03:41 the one who originated stress management research
03:44 back in the 30s, 40s and 50s,
03:47 and he said, "Adopting the right attitude can convert a negative
03:51 stress into a positive stress. "
03:54 So that's how important attitude is... dropping right,
03:58 and that's our viewpoint, the way we view life;
04:01 the belief system for which we filter all the things
04:04 that happen to us in life.
04:05 Barbara Brown, another stress researcher said,
04:08 "Stress is 90% how the mind looks at difficulties in life,
04:12 and relieving stress is 100% how the mind uses its
04:17 resources to resist the effects of stress and learns how to
04:20 deal with stress without distress. "
04:22 So viewpoint is... Most of the stress in we
04:26 experience in life is process of stress - it's not real stress.
04:29 So it's not a real threat but when it gets filtered
04:32 through our belief system, we process things
04:34 as threatening to us or making us fearful or frustrating us.
04:37 So this is sort of like - to use a medical analogy,
04:42 when something comes to us, it's sort of like an allergic
04:45 reaction; if we overreact though our body - it harms itself,
04:50 but if we do have the right reaction in the right dose,
04:53 or whatever, it's good that our eyes water.
04:55 It's just if they're watering all the time,
04:56 we can't keep a viewpoint of what's going on. Exactly
04:59 Our stress mechanism, our stress response,
05:01 was designed by God to help us in emergency situations.
05:04 The problem is - when we create emergencies,
05:06 in our mental processing of things
05:09 that aren't real emergencies at all.
05:10 Now you have a list of heavy duty stress absorbers
05:14 that you have in your seminar...
05:16 Talk to me more about those...
05:18 What are these stress-reducing beliefs?
05:20 What are the heavy-duty ones?
05:22 I call them heavy-duty stress absorbers, Don...
05:24 They are stress-reducing beliefs.
05:27 They are beliefs you have that when you get into difficult
05:30 situations, these buffer, these help you in those situations.
05:34 They can take a negative experience,
05:36 and convert it actually into a positive experience
05:38 when you line them all up...
05:40 And it's like shock absorbers on a car...
05:43 when you're going over a really rough road,
05:45 and you've got really good shock absorbers,
05:47 HEY... bring it on! Yeah, exactly...
05:50 Go down the road! It's kind of fun, in fact...
05:52 Yeah, it is... bump, bump, bump, bump, bump...
05:53 You may feel a little bit of a bump,
05:55 but if you didn't have any shock absorbers,
05:56 yeah - it would be rough!
05:58 Well, stress-reducing beliefs, GOOD stress-reducing beliefs
06:02 are like shock absorbers on your car to your emotional system,
06:06 to your physiological functioning,
06:13 or like a cliff that absorbs the pounding of a turbulent surf...
06:17 that's what they are.
06:19 Okay, good - so what would be one of the first ones
06:22 that would be on your list?
06:24 Well at the top of my list, Don, I've designed them in forms of
06:27 resolutions but they are really beliefs;
06:29 powerful beliefs lie behind them... #1
06:47 That's #1 for me...
06:49 All right #1 for you is this belief in God, the Father
06:53 who loves you and He is going to make it all work out somehow.
06:57 Exactly - it means that there's nothing you can say about
07:00 me, Don, that's going to make me devalue myself
07:04 because my value comes from God Himself.
07:08 Yeah okay, so you're telling me how does this actually work?
07:11 How does it help us with stress, this belief in God.
07:15 In other words, what it says is, in essence...
07:17 That nothing can alter my value in God's heart,
07:22 and nothing can alter your value in God's heart;
07:24 no failure - I can't fail enough to devalue me in the eyes of God
07:31 God placed a value on me...
07:34 When Jesus Christ was giving His life for me,
07:36 that put an infinite value on me,
07:38 where if you reject me, that doesn't devalue me.
07:40 If I go into GREAT financial need, that doesn't...
07:45 Or if I don't have much education,
07:46 I'm in the presence of other people,
07:47 I don't need to be shameful around people
07:50 with great education.
07:51 In the same way, I don't need to feel that way...
07:53 If you failed at something, I don't need to feel
07:55 like you have less value.
07:57 It gives me a sense of value for myself and for other people
08:00 that is absolutely crucial for stress management
08:02 because so much of stress management is this sense
08:04 of feeling INFERIOR or in feeling SUPERIOR to other people
08:08 creating stress in other people.
08:10 So failure, rejection by others, poverty, lack of education,
08:14 anything else in this relationship with God?
08:17 Yes, God is the release point for all of our worries.
08:21 And there is a beautiful text in 1 Peter 5:7 that says...
08:29 So that's where you go, that's where it all ends.
08:31 Absolutely beautiful and where I realized this for the first time
08:34 how powerful this was was when I was backpacking
08:37 with my 3 sons and woke up in the middle of the night
08:41 one night my second son, Andrew, was just screaming
08:45 at the top of his voice and he and his older brother
08:48 were in another tent from my youngest son, Marcus and I...
08:51 And so I shined the light outside our tent
08:55 through the trees to their tent and it was moving a little bit,
08:57 and I raced over to their tent and zipped open the tent,
09:01 and shined my light on Andrew's face,
09:02 and I knew exactly what had had happened...
09:04 He woke up pitch black and just terrified - exactly.
09:09 Then he sat up and his head hit the top of the tent,
09:12 and he was just sitting there -
09:13 the look of abject terror on his face
09:15 as I was shining the light on him...
09:16 Then I realized I wasn't helping matters by shining
09:18 the light on him, so I turned it back on my own face
09:21 so he could see my face and he had stress hormones
09:26 just surging through his little body,
09:28 and when I turned that light back on my face,
09:31 he just instantly melted into peace.
09:34 His face just melted into complete peace.
09:36 He laid down and he simply said 2 words... "Oh daddy"
09:40 and he laid down and went sound to sleep.
09:42 It was all over in 30 seconds, the whole thing in 30 seconds.
09:44 And I realized at that moment, I went back in my bag
09:47 and it was just a chilling experience for me,
09:49 and I realized as I was laying there in my sleeping bag
09:52 ...That's EXACTLY what a relationship with God is.
09:54 He says, "Cast all your care on me"
09:56 And with 7 years of building a relationship with
09:59 my young son, that brought that instant relief to him,
10:03 and when we take our cares and worries, we panic in a
10:05 difficult situation - then remember our Father is here;
10:09 our Spiritual parent is here,
10:11 we can just release our worries to Him,
10:13 and it can bring such peace and calm.
10:14 So picturing His face and casting our cares upon Him.
10:18 Anything else about this MAJOR stress-absorber God
10:22 that you want to mention?
10:24 Well, I think that's the primary point. Okay
10:29 You've mentioned in that regard something about
10:32 a Serenity Prayer - about how you can have the Serenity Prayer
10:37 and how that factors in - talk to us about that.
10:39 That's stress-reducing belief #2,
10:41 and the way I think of these, Don, is...
10:42 If you only had one of these stress-reducing beliefs,
10:44 you have an awesome resource.
10:45 The Serenity Prayer is the next one...
10:47 The Serenity Prayer says...
10:58 So many people are fighting things in their lives
11:01 they cannot change...
11:03 And that is such a powerful resource -
11:05 If we can pray the prayer; it's not a resolve...
11:09 I don't make a resolve to do this...
11:12 You don't think you're working
11:13 your way to heaven by saying this prayer - or something.
11:15 Yeah, it's not like a commitment It's a prayer I'm praying.
11:17 God help me - accept the things I cannot change with serenity.
11:22 It's - I don't grit my teeth and bear them...
11:24 There's a peace about them because I'm releasing
11:26 these things to God - that He can do
11:28 something about that I can't.
11:29 And then trusting Him.
11:31 And then focusing on the things that I have left
11:34 that I can work on.
11:35 It may be very small - what I can work on.
11:38 I had a man, one time, who called me,
11:41 and when I picked up the phone,
11:43 he simply said, "I heard you talking on stress on the radio -
11:46 If I don't get help with my stress, I'm going to die. "
11:50 So we made an appointment, went to lunch.
11:52 The first time, I just basically listened to him,
11:54 and found out what resources he had available.
11:56 The second time we went to lunch,
11:58 we talked about the Serenity Prayer,
11:59 and he told me later, he said - "The Serenity Prayer
12:02 was the key to my mental health - I can see that now. "
12:04 We literally, what we do with that Serenity Prayer,
12:06 we sorted out things that he was SO frustrated about,
12:09 that really, he could do nothing about,
12:11 and we released those things to God;
12:12 just encouraging him to release those to God...
12:15 And we began to focus on the
12:16 things he could do something about where he could be
12:18 fulfilled in investing himself in those things...
12:21 And it just brought such relief
12:22 to him and such a sense of freedom to his life to do that.
12:27 So it helps you to just kind of look at your life,
12:29 put things in perspective to know
12:31 what you CAN do something about,
12:32 what you CAN'T do something about,
12:34 and how to know the difference.
12:36 And it is such an important...
12:37 By the way, it's the same thing with risk factors in
12:39 heart disease or other guests I've had on this program.
12:42 They say, "Hey look, there are certain things you can't do
12:43 anything about, but there are some things you
12:45 CAN DO things about - let's focus on those. Exactly
12:48 What's #2 of your big stress absorber,
12:51 shock absorber, if you will.
12:52 That was #2... #3- Okay, #1 was God
12:55 as our Father, in charge of everything.
12:57 #2- was the Serenity Prayer. What's #3?
12:59 Very simple, "I will choose to live one day at a time. "
13:03 Again, there's a strong belief behind that.
13:05 That living one day at a time is a healthy way to live,
13:08 and that is very powerful, "living one day at a time"
13:11 That actually comes from the Sermon on the Mount,
13:13 from counsel given to us in the Sermon on the Mount -
13:15 which I believe is the greatest stress presentation ever given
13:20 to the human race because the Lord Himself said...
13:28 So Jesus, Himself, invited us not to worry about tomorrow.
13:31 I love the poem that Helen Mallicoat has...
13:35 It's entitled, "I Am" and it goes like this...
13:38 "I was regretting the past and fearing the future.
13:41 Suddenly, my Lord was speaking, "My name is I AM"
13:45 Now that term has great theological significance,
13:48 but I like the practical significance - she gives it here
13:51 "My name is I AM" He paused, I waited,
13:54 He continued...
13:55 When you live in the past with its mistakes and regrets,
13:58 it is hard...
13:59 I am not there. My name is not I was.
14:03 When you live in the future with its problems and fears,
14:06 it is hard...
14:08 I am not there. My name is not I will be.
14:11 When you live in this moment, it is not hard.
14:15 I am here... My name is I AM"
14:18 That's powerful!
14:20 And Don, I could tell you, there are people
14:22 and I class myself among them,
14:25 who, when they get up in the morning,
14:27 they start fretting about things that happened yesterday
14:30 or 2 days ago or a year ago even,
14:33 and they literally exhaust their energies.
14:36 The Lord is saying - when He says, "Don't worry about
14:38 tomorrow, each day has enough trouble of its own,"
14:39 what He's saying is: I give you sufficient
14:42 resources today to deal with today's needs.
14:44 Not with yesterday's needs, that's ALL done now,
14:47 put it away, trust me with it, not for tomorrow's needs,
14:50 but for today's needs.
14:51 So when I reach into the past
14:53 and try to scoop it into the present,
14:55 or the future and try to scoop it into the present,
14:57 I'm depleting resources that God has given me to
15:02 help me manage today.
15:03 We're talking with Dr. Skip MacCarty
15:05 We're talking about stress, how it can be absorbed.
15:08 We've talked about 3 keys to do that, really stress-absorbers.
15:13 Join us when we come back.
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16:23 Welcome back, we are talking about stress.
16:25 We're talking about how we can relate to it.
16:28 We're talking with Dr. Skip MacCarty
16:30 He has shared with us several different, very helpful,
16:33 what you call heavy-duty stress absorbers,
16:37 and all within the framework of our viewpoint looking at things;
16:40 recognizing #1- correct me if I'm wrong,
16:43 but #1- that God is our spiritual parent...
16:46 We can cast all of our cares upon Him.
16:47 #2- An attitude of prayer.
16:50 The Serenity Prayer is what you shared;
16:52 knowing what is happening to us that we can do something about;
16:57 what we can't do anything about and how to know the difference.
17:00 Or at least - what we can't do anything about,
17:01 to God and let Him work on that.
17:02 Let Him work on that, working on what we can.
17:05 And then #3- Very practical but we often forget it,
17:08 and that is - living one day at a time.
17:12 During the break, you were saying there was something
17:13 else you wished you mentioned.
17:16 The psalmist said, in Psalm 118,
17:18 "This is the day the Lord has made,
17:21 let us rejoice and be glad in it. "
17:23 In other words, if we focus on today,
17:26 there's a glory in every day and if I wake up today,
17:30 and I'm focused on yesterday, I miss the glory of today.
17:32 So the Lord sets us free to concentrate
17:37 on the adventure and the glory of today.
17:38 Some people say, "Look, what you need to do
17:41 is just take more responsibility for your own life"
17:43 Is that a good way to deal with stress? Absolutely
17:45 In fact, that's my stress absorber #4. Okay #4
17:49 #4- I choose to accept personal responsibility
17:54 for my behavior and emotions and will seek to influence
17:56 them through wholesome thinking, beliefs and attitudes.
17:59 There was a therapist by the name of Harold Greenwald
18:02 who was a counselor for 30 years,
18:05 and a lady came to him one time and he was trying to
18:07 find out what her presenting problem was,
18:09 and she said, "Well I'm not really unhappy;
18:11 I don't have a real problem, per se,
18:12 I just would like to be happier. "
18:14 "I'm a happy person, but I'd like to know how to be happier"
18:16 And it said, it hit him like a ton of bricks at that moment,
18:18 that he had become an expert in misery.
18:21 He knew how to help people through misery,
18:23 he did NOT know... he didn't even KNOW
18:25 what made people happy... is what he wrote in his book.
18:29 And then, he went out and suspended his practice,
18:31 went out and researched happy people...
18:33 And then he wrote a book called, "The Happy Person"
18:35 And in that book, he said my most surprising
18:39 discovery was how many... Let me read it exactly here
18:42 It was how many of the people I interviewed for this book
18:46 of a joyous, satisfied people I interviewed for this book
18:48 had undergone traumas, frustrations and defeats
18:51 remarkably similar to my misery-laden patients.
18:54 It wasn't what they had experienced,
18:55 it wasn't the circumstances in their life,
18:57 it was the way they related to it.
18:58 It was their belief system.
18:59 And these people chose to be happy
19:02 in SPITE of what was going on in their lives,
19:05 and that made ALL the difference in the world in their lives.
19:07 I call this the "good weather factor"
19:10 The good weather factor - it comes from Stephen Covey
19:13 He talked about people who create their own good weather
19:16 who take responsibility for their own emotions,
19:18 and behavior, happiness and success,
19:20 and create their own internal good weather,
19:22 and carry it with them wherever they go.
19:24 So you could take the apostles and you could FLOG them,
19:27 put them in prison, put them in stocks,
19:29 and they'll sing hymns in the night.
19:31 Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say Rejoice.
19:33 It doesn't matter - That's right They created good weather
19:35 in that stinking, foul, dungeon;
19:37 pitch black - there was good weather,
19:40 the sun was shining in there, but that was internally created,
19:43 and that's the ability we have.
19:44 We literally have the ability to create internally
19:46 good weather and carry it with us wherever we go.
19:49 So Paul says, "When I have much, when I have little,
19:51 I've learned how to be joyful in all those. "
19:53 He had a good-weather mentality. Exactly
19:55 And it probably built on the other 3 that you talked about;
19:59 praying, having God as your spiritual parent,
20:01 living one day at a time. Yes
20:03 Okay, well anything else about that...
20:07 Are there anymore heavy-duty stress absorbers?
20:10 I kind of like that -
20:12 Yes, the 5th heavy-duty stress absorber on my list is...
20:24 So that's a choice! That's right
20:26 It was Dr. Hans Selye, Don, that made the statement,
20:29 I think in the final analysis, he's the father of
20:32 stress management research...
20:48 So he says, on one end of the spectrum you have
20:49 gratitude and on the other, revenge
20:51 and these are the poles in terms
20:54 of creating success and happiness in life.
20:56 Now, I've created a way to create your own gratitude zone,
21:06 and it also is ways that stress is created...
21:09 And it's this model here that when it comes to goals,
21:13 the higher the goal you set, the greater the eustress.
21:16 Eustress is a positive stress, it's a good stress.
21:19 It's eustress... Yes, the little phrase "eu" is a Greek...
21:23 The prefix used is the Greek prefix - it means "good"
21:26 Good stress! Eulogy, euphoria...
21:30 It means feeling good - speaking well of somebody.
21:33 And then the lower your goals, the greater the distress.
21:37 But conversely, when it comes to expectations,
21:40 expectations are what you expect to GET.
21:42 How you would expect to be rewarded
21:44 for the efforts you put in.
21:46 The higher your expectations, the greater the distress.
21:49 The lower your expectations, the greater the eustress.
21:52 So here's what happens...
21:54 You set low goals - high expectations,
21:58 and what you actually realize, the benefit you realize from
22:01 working toward that goal, whatever your goals are,
22:05 is the baseline and then the difference between that
22:09 and your expectations in the stress zone,
22:10 and we create those stress zones
22:12 by setting high expectations.
22:13 And then, if you have low expectations, conversely,
22:18 you can create your own gratitude zone by
22:21 lowering your expectations to like zero-point,
22:23 and then you have same realization level,
22:25 but the difference between your expectation
22:28 and your realization is your gratitude zone.
22:30 For instance, if I take a class,
22:32 and I think at the end of that class, I'm going to get a
22:35 promotion for having graduated from that class,
22:38 and let's say that I enjoyed the class,
22:40 but I didn't get the promotion.
22:41 Well, then I've created for myself a stress zone...
22:45 the difference between my expectation and realization.
22:48 But let's say that I said, "Okay, I may not get promoted,
22:51 I may not even enjoy the class,
22:52 but it's going to have good information that I want to learn
22:55 So I'm going to take the class, I set a high goal,
22:56 I'm going to take this class.
22:57 Put the discipline in to do my work for it and so forth.
23:00 I end up enjoying it more than I thought I would,
23:02 The difference between that lower expectation that I set of
23:06 "I don't know if I'm going to enjoy it or not even"
23:08 and you don't have the expectation
23:10 you're going to get a job promotion for taking that class.
23:12 The difference between that lower expectation,
23:14 and the realization of enjoying the class is a gratitude zone.
23:18 You're GRATEFUL that you enjoyed the class as much as you did.
23:22 Same enjoyment level but the difference between creating
23:24 pertinent stress zone when you had higher expectations
23:26 for the class, than lower expectations
23:30 that have been created in a gratitude zone.
23:32 So this could be helpful not only for yourself,
23:33 but the way you relate to other people in your life.
23:35 If you had set a real high expectation for someone else,
23:38 you could be setting them up for MAJOR stress along with them
23:43 That's right - setting yourself up for disappointment
23:45 with them as well... Exactly right.
23:47 I remember that a lot as a pastor...
23:49 with a goal in the church or
23:51 this or that or whatever, you know, it's very important.
23:54 I had, when my stress program was first published,
24:01 in January 1999, down in San Diego,
24:05 it was introduced to a conference of health educators
24:08 there at a church ministries convention
24:14 down in San Diego, January 1999,
24:16 and we had a roomful of 25-30 health educators,
24:20 physicians and Dr. Handysides was there from the G.C.,
24:24 Stoy Proctor from the G.C., DeWitt Williams from the N.A.D.,
24:28 and some people from Loma Linda, etcetera,
24:30 were there and health educators from around the country.
24:34 And so when I went through the program,
24:37 the first day - it's a 12-hour stress seminar,
24:41 and I was giving 4 hours each afternoon.
24:43 In the morning, they had experts in the field of stress
24:46 coming in - I mean, real experts;
24:47 people I'm quoting from and so forth...
24:49 They're coming in the morning making presentations,
24:51 and then I get 4 hours in the afternoon.
24:55 So your expectations kind of went down there...
24:57 Well, you know the first afternoon is a long day,
25:02 starting at 8:00 in the morning, going until 5:00 at night...
25:04 and in the afternoon, they break for lunch at noon,
25:06 but, of course, speakers go a little longer,
25:08 so they broke at 12:30; they were supposed to
25:10 come back at 1:00, by 1:30, they were starting
25:11 to trickle in - a few of them.
25:13 So by 2 o'clock, we'd get going and I have 3 hours to do
25:16 2 presentations in 4 hours...
25:20 So at the end of the day, Dr. Williams calls me,
25:23 and says, "Skip, we've got a problem"
25:24 "Some people are saying, "You know it's not like we haven't
25:27 heard this stuff before and we're down here in San Diego,
25:30 ...Give us a break, let us go out and have some fun!
25:33 And we got the beach, we've got the San Diego Zoo
25:35 down here and we've got Sea World down here"
25:38 Just what you wanted to hear! Yeah, exactly
25:41 He said, "I'm trying to wonder what we should do with this,
25:43 so we've got this problem. "
25:45 So my wife is sitting, she's listening to this,
25:47 and I said... because she's with me for the week,
25:50 and I said, "You know, Dr. Williams, that will be
25:51 the easiest decision you have to make this week"
25:53 "Oh really? What are you thinking?"
25:54 "I'm thinking - you make the afternoon optional. "
25:57 "You make my seminar optional. "
25:59 Even though they're there to get introduced to the seminar,
26:02 and to get the certificate for stress management,
26:04 but these guys do know a lot of stuff,
26:06 there's no question about it.
26:09 So he said, "Are you sure...
26:10 there may only be half the people there"
26:12 I said, "No problem, I'll do it for half the people. "
26:14 "Well, there may be like 10 people there. "
26:17 "No problem, I'll do it for 10 people. "
26:18 "And there could be less. "
26:20 "I'll do it for less - not a problem. "
26:22 Now, I hang up the phone...
26:23 So he says, "Okay, well let's try it. "
26:24 He said, "You're sure you're okay with that?"
26:26 "Yeah, I'm okay with that. "
26:27 So we hang up the phone and my wife is not feeling
26:29 real good about this - she works on commission.
26:32 She gave up a whole week and she said,
26:33 "You mean to tell me, I gave up a whole week
26:35 of commissions and now there may be
26:37 less than 10 people there. "
26:38 And so I'm feeling a little bit the same way,
26:40 but I said, "You know what we're doing to ourselves?"
26:42 "We're literally creating this expectation...
26:44 Here's these health professional doctors and professionals
26:48 in the field and they're sitting on the edge of their chair
26:50 right after lunch - they don't want to miss anything"
26:52 So maybe they say, "It's only 12:30,
26:54 we don't have time to go eat lunch - we're going to wait
26:56 because we don't want to miss a word of this. "
26:58 So I said, "We're creating our own problem. "
27:00 False expectations! HIGH expectations.
27:02 I said, "What would be lowering our expectations to zero point?"
27:05 We came to the conclusion, talking this through
27:07 that would be 3 people; she's one, I'm the other,
27:10 and we only need one more.
27:11 So we'd be happy with one more person...
27:14 So the next day, the same thing happened,
27:15 and at 1:30 they started to trickle in.
27:18 We thought if there were 5 people there,
27:20 we would be elated because that would be
27:21 almost double what we expected.
27:24 As it was, that ENTIRE week, there were only like 3 people,
27:29 out of that entire group, that missed
27:30 one of those afternoon sessions,
27:32 even though it was optional from that point on.
27:34 So, of course, our gratitude was SKY-HIGH,
27:37 but that's exactly how it works, Don...
27:38 It is SO powerful and it works that way to create gratitude.
27:42 Gratitude is SO important for stress management.
27:45 We've been talking with Dr. Skip MacCarty
27:47 We've learned that there are stress absorbers
27:50 that we should know about and we can put into practice.
27:53 If you would like more information about these,
27:55 you can get a hold of Dr. MacCarty's seminar.
27:57 Thanks for joining us for "Health for a Lifetime"


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Revised 2014-12-17