The Daily Helping

Today our expert guest is Conductor Roger Nierenberg, creator of The Music Paradigm. He has conducted for the London Philharmonic, The New Zealand Symphony, and the National Symphony, among countless others, and performed over 100 orchestras around the globe.

Roger developed the Music Paradigm after studying why American audiences weren’t receptive to classical music, and discovering that his experiments had applications for business. Over the years, Roger has presented to hundreds of organizations, from civic groups to Fortune 500 companies in over two dozen countries.

The Music Paradigm is a powerful learning experience that uses symphonic music to illustrate compelling insights about people at work. Participants are seated directly amongst the orchestra musicians where they gain fresh understandings about the opportunities and challenges faced by their own organizations.

At the age of 9, Roger heard something in the music and he knew that was what he wanted to devote his life to. He wanted to write music, so he studied composition in high school and college, but when it came time to pursue a career he realized it was conducting that he enjoyed the most.

At some point in the 90’s, Roger began to wonder why the American audience was so unsupportive of classical music. He studied the block that people have that keeps people from experiencing and being enriched by the music. So he started doing experiments, and they were incredibly successful. He realized this was something that could be very powerful for businesses as well.

Music unfolds very fast. In a minute of music, a lot happens, whereas in life not much happens. Because it is so compact, it is easier to connect the dots. The behaviors with the orchestra leads to results almost immediately.

Being put inside an orchestra makes them vulnerable from the very beginning, but in a good way. The environment is friendly and inviting, but by not being familiar with the setting, they are open to change and experience.

The goal of the Music Paradigm is to leave people feeling:

• Inspired about the possibilities they could accomplish
• More conscious about their own power to affect results
• That they have more tools for getting things done and working with other people

The way that orchestras interact to create moving music acts as a lens to view the behaviors of each person within an organization, and to instantly see the effects of those behaviors. And when people have this level of awareness, creating positive change is much simpler.

The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway

“Within what lies in front of us, on our desk, in the people we’re surrounded with in our lives, there lies a potential which we cannot see. It’s right in front of us, and yet we can’t see it because of the way we think of things. One of the greatest things that could happen is realizing you have the capability of making things better.”

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Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.

Resources:

• Learn more at http://www.musicparadigm.com/
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/themusicparadigm
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/rogernierenberg

The Daily Helping is produced by Crate Media

Today our expert guest is Ron Klein, a problem solver known as the grandfather of possibilities. He is the inventor of several ideas that have changed the world, such as the magnetic strip on credit cards, the credit card validity checking system, computerized systems for the real estate MLS listing service system, the voice response for the banking industry, and the bond quotation and trade information on the New York Stock Exchange. He’s a strategic advisor, consultant, mentor, and public speaker.

How does one become an inventor? Ron’s grandfather was a famous inventor and he was always involved in interesting things. He was his idol, and got him started on the path of inventing.

After being drafted in the Korean War, he was able to get an education as an electronic engineer and mathematician, which solidified his future as an inventor.

Ron’s philosophy is simplicity. When you turn a problem into a challenge, you have an opportunity to solve it. What is the given in a challenge, and what is the solution I’m looking for?

Humbly, Ron calls the invention of the mag strip on the credit card “the simplest challenge I ever had in my life.” When a major department store came to him in 1964 with a problem, he looked at that problem and said “this is very simple.” Anyone in his same position would have arrived at the same solution.

At 35 years old, he took his company public and sold the company. Essentially retired, after 3 weeks of sitting out on a boat fishing, he wanted to get back to his purpose in life. That’s when he started General Associates, without really knowing what he wanted to do. He just didn’t want a big company, a building, or a lot of employees.

In his pattern of turning problems into challenges into opportunities, Ron was able to turn a liability from a poorly thought out purchase into actual gold. Thousands of teletype machines that were scattered across the united states were able to be junked and have the gold-coated components separated out and sold.

Three months after starting General Associates, Ron got a call from the New York Stock Exchange to buy his remaining teletype. He sets up a contract to sell the machines with a maintenance contract.

While spending time on the floor at the Stock Exchange, Ron noticed how manual the process of trading was. Instead of running around with pieces of paper, he could automate the whole process. There was a lot of resistance, but he befriended the leading bond trading manager and gave him his prototype automation box.

Suddenly, people were calling to find out how he was buying up all the bonds before anyone else even had a chance! Soon, he had 1500 automation boxes on the floor, for $300/month, for the next 26 years.

Considering his incredible role in shaping the technologies of our past and present, Ron brings some insight into the technology of the future. Artificial intelligence will be all positive. “Fall in love with that electronic leash you carry around,” referring to the cell phones that have become such a huge part of our lives.

After a life of innovating, Ron isn’t done yet. He is currently working on a project called Project Eli which covers several of his future projects centered around the technology we all carry around in our pockets.

The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway

“Simplicity.”

“If it’s not a benefit, it’s a hobby.”

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Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.

Resources:

• Learn more at https://thegrandfatherofpossibilities.com/
• Learn more at https://envisioneli.com/
• Read The Grandfather of Possibilities: An Inspirational Biography About Ron Klein

The Daily Helping is produced by Crate Media

Today our expert guests are Andie Kramer and Al Harris. They have been mentoring women in speaking and writing about gender communication for more than 30 years, are frequent keynote speakers, conduct workshops for multinational organizations to better understand the world of gender bias, and are authors of the book Breaking Through Bias: Communication Techniques for Women to Succeed at Work. They also have an upcoming book titled It’s Not You, It’s the Workplace: Women’s Conflict at Work and the Bias That Built It.

When Andie got out of law school, she didn’t imagine that women could be perceived or treated differently in the workplace. It wasn’t until she left Al’s smaller law firm and went to work for a larger firm that she found that stereotypes and biases influence the ways in which people interact with you, treat you, and judge your skillset.

Al was convinced that he was a good person who didn’t suffer from bias himself, and that his own firm would be fair to everyone. When Andie left, he looked around and realized that we weren’t doing any better getting senior women into their leaderships than anyone else. That’s when he realized that people can believe they are bias free, and yet still find unconscious ways to hold women back.

During the time that Andie had left Al’s law firm, the two continued to have conversations surrounding these issues, and they committed themselves to work together and do everything they can to end gender bias.

We like to work with people that are like us, so when men are running organizations, they often reach out to and bring up other men because those are who they are comfortable with. So we see a pattern of men mentoring, supporting, and advocating for other men, and the women being ignored.

So how do we tackle biases upfront? Here are some possible solutions:

• We need to provide education – because information is power! If people understand how biases work and how it’s not intention or pointing fingers, that’s step one.
• Policies and procedures need to be implemented that take discretion out of the process of evaluating other people. Standards, objectives, and job descriptions are a good starting point.
• Find ways to slow down when making decisions: When evaluating things, don’t use open-ended questions and, instead, set out core competencies that you’d expect a person at this level to accomplish. Don’t let people make these decisions in a vacuum by themselves, and have people explain their decision process to others before making up their mind.

The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway

Andie: “Perfection is overrated. If we strive for perfection instead of as good as we can get, then we will never give ourselves the opportunity to succeed.”

Al: “We need to be better readers of other people. We need to understand how to understand what other people are thinking about us, and to adjust our behavior, our communication, so that we can better shape that impression so that it matches the one we want them to have of us.”

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Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.

Resources:

• Learn more at https://andieandal.com
• Read: Breaking Through Bias: Communication Techniques for Women to Succeed at Work
• Preorder: It’s Not You, It’s the Workplace: Women’s Conflict at Work and the Bias That Built It
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/breakingthroughbias/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/AndieandAl
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreaskramer/

The Daily Helping is produced by Crate Media

Today our expert guest is Wade Lightheart, a 3-time All Natural National Bodybuilding Champion, Advisor to the American Anti-Cancer Institute, and Director of Education at BiOptimizers Nutrition, one of the world’s most innovative nutritional supplement companies

He is also the author of several books and host of The Awesome Health podcast, which helps him accomplish his mission to help others fix their digestion and transform their health with the daily practice of positive principles, rituals, and optimizers.

Wade was mortified into action when he learned that 12 percent of emergency hospital visits are due to gastrointestinal conditions and over 95 million Americans suffer from some form of digestive distress – and if things keep going the way they are, the problem is only getting worse!

So, for starters, where do things start going wrong in our digestion?

• We’re the only species on the planet that cooks our food. There are some advantages to that, but it also means we’re destroying all of the enzymes in our food. As a result, our bodies have to manufacture more enzymes, which comes with an energetic or metabolic cost.
• Especially when we get older, our bodies will stop breaking down certain enzymes, which can lead to low energy, feeling bloated after meals, or skin problems. Beyond that, Wade says that 25 percent of our population is actually suffering from depression because they’re not breaking down their proteins correctly.
• By the time most of us are 30-40, we don’t produce enough hydrochloric acid. This is what disinfects our food; our first line of defense in our immune system. So as it diminishes, we start experiencing digestive problems and/or sick.

The Golden Age of Digestive Health

Luckily, Wade says we’re entering The Golden Age of Digestive Health!

So, while health issues rooted in the gut are rampant, our ability to diagnose and treat these problems through holistic solutions, as well as our general understanding that there is a problem, is also increasingly greatly.

But instead of sharing the supplements and tests that someone might take to improve or identify gut problems, we have a different call to action: hire an expert that can help!

It will cost a little bit more money up front, but it will save you much more money in the long run because you will select the right products for you, at that particular time, and it will reduce your healthcare costs in the future.

Wade is also generous enough to share the FREE Awesome Health Course with Daily Helping listeners!

It will help you learn more about your health and find the right experts to support you. You can get started for free at https://bioptimizers.com/TDH.

The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway

“Take action on your health now, before you run into serious problems.

“In today’s world, it’s very easy to be busy, it’s very easy to be dialed into the digital work, it’s very easy to put off those little things that we know we need to address... But when your body is giving you a message that something is not working, you need to pay attention.

“When your body is giving you a message that something is not working, you need to pay attention.”

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Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.

Resources:

• Learn more at https://bioptimizers.com/
• Awesome Health Podcast: https://bioptimizers.com/category/podcast/
• Take the FREE Awesome Health Course: https://bioptimizers.com/TDH

The Daily Helping is produced by Crate Media

Today our expert guest is Darren Virassammy, the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of 34 Strong, an organization that believes everyone deserves a great place to work and that any workplace can be great. A leading expert in the global employee engagement community, the 34 Strong team leverages a strength-based approach to human development to create massive shifts within organization, both culturally and on the bottom line.

Darren and his team have created sustainable organizational change in small micro businesses all the way to large organizations like the FBA, Bank of America, and California Department of Public Health.

If you’ve listened to this show before, then you know that I’m fascinated by people’s Why – and Darren discovered his Why in an incredibly powerful moment of compassion, sadness, and realization.

Darren and his wife were taking their first vacation with their baby. They were on the big island of Hawaii, sitting on their hotel balcony and overlooking a thunderstorm on the Pacific together. Darren was eating a papaya when his daughter looked up at him and laughed out loud for the first time. It was one of the most amazing – and terrifying – moments of his life.

Because, when Darren looked into his daughter’s eyes, he saw all of her potential and felt excited about getting to be her partner in growing up... but then he also saw who he was being as a father. At the time, he was gone for work more often than he was at home, and he knew he wasn’t make his family a priority.

So, Darren asked himself, who is the dad I want to be? What is the impact I want to have on the world? And what’s the message I’m going to leave behind?

Shortly after Darren started looking at his life with this new perspective, he met 34 Strong co-founder Brandon Miller. They shared a vision of changing organizational culture, and they both knew it was so important because people spend so much time at work.

But, getting back to the moment Darren discovered his Why, it’s not just about making work more enjoyable. What do you think happens when someone gets to show up to work as their best self, and they’re valued for being valuable? What happens when they go home? How are they showing up as a spouse, as a parent, as a member of their community?

The positive effects of organizational change then compound on each other throughout families and society, hopefully resulting in a legacy of cultural change for all of us and a better life for future generations.

The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway

Darren shares two quotes with us at the end of the episode.

First, after Michelangelo sculpted David, he was asked how he created it from a box of marble. Michelangelo responded, “David was always in there. I just revealed him.” And there is a David, there’s a level of brilliance, inside of all of us – but we have to do the work to reveal it.

Darren’s second quote is from jazz bassist Marcus Miller: “In life and in music, at some point, you just have to find your own voice. Because, at the end of the day, there’s nobody who can do you better than you can do you.” So take the time to invest in discovering you.

How can you afford not to live the life that you were put here to live?

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Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.

Resources:

• Learn more at https://34strong.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/strengthsfinder
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/dvirassammy
• Grind. Greatness. Genius.: https://www.34strong.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/GeniusZone.pdf
• Strengthsfinder: https://www.34strong.com/shop/product/basic-package/

The Daily Helping is produced by Podcast Masters

Today our expert guest is John Ruhlin, the world’s leading authority in maximizing customer loyalty through radical generosity, the founder of Giftology, and the author of Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Retention.

John stumbled onto the idea that grew into Giftology while he was a salesman at Cutco. John asked his girlfriend’s dad to buy pocket knives that he could give away to clients who love hunting and fishing, but he didn’t want pocket knives – he wanted paring knives.

Why? John wondered, why would you give a kitchen tool to the CEO of a multi-million dollar company?

That’s when John received a piece of advice that would change his life: If you take care of the family, in business, everything else takes care of itself; that’s the key to referrals, access, deal flow, and retention.

As John started presenting this idea to others, he realized that no one was using gratitude, gifts, and generosity as their competitive advantage. So, after developing a system of using generosity to gain access to elite clients and generate thousands of referrals, John became the best seller in the history of Cutco, while he was still in college.

John and his firm now help automate this process for individuals and organizations like UBS, Raymond James, DR Horton, Keller Williams, the Chicago Cubs, and Caesar’s Palace, teaching how anyone can turn their clients into a personal sales force that drives exponential growth.

In an increasingly digital world, we crave human-to-human experiences, we crave being treated like an individual, “we crave realness!” As human beings, we all want to be known, acknowledged, and appreciated.

And, although there is a lot of lip service given to the idea that relationships are the most important thing, in business and in our personal lives, not a lot of people are actually walking that talk. “Everyone says relationships are their most valuable assets. Well, show me what you invest your money in and show me your calendar. That determines what you prioritize.”

So, take a look into your own calendar and look at where most of your money is going – are you acting like you put a premium on relationships?

Whether you’re already doing great or just realized you have some work to do, John has some great advice for scaling and improving your relationships through acknowledgements, appreciation, and personalization:

• Invest as much as you can in relationships. At Giftology, they recommend reinvesting anywhere from 5% - 15% of your net profits.
• If you have, for example, $5,000 to invest, don’t then try to invest it in 5,000 people by sending out calendars or other cheap, branded trinkets. Instead, take your top 20 relationships and invest $250, so that each of those people feels acknowledged and appreciated.
• Most people don’t need more stuff, so focus on one best-in-class or world-class gift that is personalized and that the recipient will treasure. Personalization is a BIG deal.
• Don’t forget the family! 80% of the gifting that John does includes the spouse, kids, pets, and/or inner circle because those people are usually neglected in business relationships.
• It’s not about spending the most money – it’s about making the people who you invest in raving fans. “If you want somebody who is actively loyal to you, you have to show them that you’re different than anybody else, you have to inspire them to act on your behalf, and that doesn’t happen on accident – that happens because of you loving on them so much that they can’t help but want to reciprocate!”
• The three times that people usually send gifts are after a deal is done, after a referral is closed, and at Christmas – and those are the three worst times to send a gift! At Giftology, they call this, “No ABC gifting.”

The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway

“You’ll never regret giving more than is reasonable... That’s where you separate yourself. When you do that, with whatever level you’re at, people notice.”

Of course, John also has a gift for all of you: a list of the 10 gifts you should avoid giving to clients!

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Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.

Resources:

• Read: Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Retention
• John’s gift-giving guide: http://thegiversedge.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnruhlinjr
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ruhlin
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-ruhlin-0b04b01/

The Daily Helping is produced by Crate Media

Today our expert guest is Morten Andersen, a living personification of the American Dream. Morten came to America as a foreign exchange student when he was 17, and during his first week in the USA, he discovered a talent that changed his life forever.

Morten went on to have a remarkable career in the NFL, during which he achieved a number of impressive feats: he’s the only player to hold statistical franchise records for two teams, the Falcons and the Saints; he played an all-time NFL record of 382 games throughout his career; and in 2006, he became the all-time leading scorer in the NFL (a title he held onto for 12 years).

These days, Morten is a speaker and philanthropist who draws on stories from his 25-year NFL career to deliver speeches on teamwork, leadership, and achieving goals that will motivate and inspire the audience.

Morten actually came to the U.S. as a soccer player, but his high school didn’t have a soccer team. They did, however, have a very good football team, which happens to have exactly one position that perfectly fits someone who is good at kicking: the placekicker, or kicker.

He did extremely well in his first year. So well, in fact, that Michigan State University offered him a scholarship. He went from playing in front of 1,000 to 100,000 people, but the intensity didnt’ say his resolve. Morten set records, was named an All-American, and earned himself a spot with the New Orleans Saints.

But even then, Morten didn’t exactly think of the NFL as a career. He was still, really, just putting one foot in front of the other. “I wasn’t trying to project how many years. I was just trying to, literally, make the next game.” And, unfortunately, Morten also had a “dismal” pre-season, followed by an injury on his very first kick in a season game.

Luckily, the NFL player strike that year gave Morten an opportunity to fully heal, while his replacement kicker coached him on how to finesse the field goal. Then, Morten has a breakout ‘83 season, and he realized that he had an opportunity to do something special in the NFL.

Morten learned a number of important lessons during these years, and they’re lessons that we can all benefit from learning and applying to our own lives:

• If you want to be a high-performer, that doesn’t mean coasting on talent. You have to do your homework own your work bench.
• You also have to identify your work bench. For Morten, that was very simple: it’s the little area where the ball is put down. Then, you have to train through repetition; when you start developing good habits and training good habits, they become dominant, and that’s the secret sauce to success in high-performance situations.
• Unconscious competency is the highest level of learning (also called muscle memory), and as a high performer, that’s where you want to get to.
• High-pressure situations only exist if you aren’t prepared. “Pressure happens when your skillset doesn’t match the task.”

The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway

“It’s one simple word – Will – and the will to do the distasteful. It’s not when your hands are in the air that you improve the most. It’s not when everybody is applauding you and clapping on your shoulders and saying attaboy. It’s when your back’s against the wall. It’s when the world is suck. It’s in that moment when you realize that you have to go and recruit some traits that, perhaps, are not pretty, but are necessary in order to get through something.

“And within those traits is a very small word that’s so important – it’s will. The will to do the distasteful. The will to go places others may not want to go. But because you have the will to go there, you will be able to absolutely fly into that rarified air of personal excellence.”

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Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.

Resources:

• Learn more at http://www.mortenandersen.com/
• Support the Morten Andersen Family Foundation: http://www.mortenandersen.com/index.php/family-foundation/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kickermortenandersen/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GreatDane2544
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/greatdane2544/

The Daily Helping is produced by Podcast Masters

Today our expert guest is Laura Gassner Otting, an instigator, motivator, and provocateur who has never met a revolution she didn’t like. She is lit up by The Big Idea and encourages people to think audaciously, motivating them to dream boldly and then act decisively; she has a knack for seeing the greatness in others and reflecting it back on them in ways that help them get unstuck.

Laura collaborates with entrepreneurs and investors to push past the doubt and indecision that consigns great ideas to limbo, delivering strategic thinking, well-honed wisdom, and catalytic perspective informed by decades of navigating change across the start-up, nonprofit, political, and philanthropic landscapes. Laura has empowered thousands of people through her speaking and writing, and she’s sure to empower thousands more with her new book, Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve Your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life.

Laura didn’t make it her life goal to be a motivational speaker or author, and she didn’t plan a career path to bring her to this exact moment – but looking back, she can see that what excited her, whether she was doing executive search or working in the White House, was finding out other people’s Why.

Her superpower, Laura says, is being able to look at somebody and see their greatness, even if they have never seen it or believed in it before. But the real superpower, I think, is her willingness and ability to breathe life into another person’s greatness, helping them capitalize on it and live a life of purpose.

The biggest obstacle to living a life of purpose, however, is what everyone else is saying. There’s this idea that living a life of purpose means sacrificing yourself; you have to be Mother Teresa feeding the lepers. But that’s not what purpose is – purpose is just the reason for which something is done!

“Purpose is not just service and service is not just sacrifice – so we can all have purpose in our work!” And the only purpose that matters is your purpose, so we have to stop worrying about everyone else saying our purpose is worthy, or what society says, which is why the first part of Laura’s book is “how to ignore everybody else.”

And it all starts when you stop trying to keep up with the Joneses; when you stop assigning value to what other people say is valuable.

Ready to learn the rest of the equation so that you can truly #BeLimitless? Then order your copy of Limitless and start listening to the episode on loop until it arrives! (Or maybe just listen to it once and then check out the awesome resources at http://limitlessassessment.com while you wait).

The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway

We hear a lot of stories about the biggest regrets people have when they’re dying, and top of the list is almost always ‘I wish I could have lived the life I wanted instead of the life people expected of me.’

“And this book is meant to help people understand that the best way that you can serve the people around you and the causes that you love is to find your very best, most fundamental state of leadership: who you are when you’re at your very, very best... And if that sounds like ambition, to go and to strive and be the biggest version of yourself, I would say that doing that and showing up more in the lives of the people you love and the causes you hold dear helps them do better. It’s not just your ambition, it’s your responsibility.”

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Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.

Resources:

• Learn more at https://lauragassnerotting.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heylgo
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/heylgo
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heylgo/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauragassnerotting/
• Read: Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve Your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life
• Read: Mission-Driven: Moving from Profit to Purpose

The Daily Helping is produced by Podcast Masters

Today our expert guest is Erin Wathen, a holistic health coach, food abuse counselor, and the inspiring author of Why Can’t I Stick to My Diet?: How To End The Food Drama. Her philosophy is, simply put, that health isn’t a number on the scale or how often we exercise, but how we live our lives as a whole.

As a graduate of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and a Food Addiction Counselor, Erin was well versed in the science behind health. As a Certified Spinning® Instructor, Vinyasa Yoga instructor, and Classical Pilates instructor, she understood the mechanics of health and fitness as well. But, still, she was not at peace with her body for many years. She had all of this knowledge and was always on a diet, yet she never reached her goal weight.

However, through a lot of trial and error, Erin found true nutrition to be the missing piece of the puzzle. It was then that Erin started her last diet, which ultimately became her food plan and the basis of her health coaching program and her book.

Erin realized that what she was taught was okay to eat was, well... not okay! Growing up in the 90s, people would demonize fat with the drop of a hat, but no one questioned Diet Coke as a staple in your diet. Obviously, the pendulum has shifted a little in the nutritional world today, but there’s still a mass normalization of sugar in our society – and it’s hurting us.

“Sugar affects our mood, affects our health, and affects our body in all of these amazingly negative ways – it’s just completely normalized in our society,” Erin says.

The truth is that most of us are addicted to sugar. So many of us wake up and immediately go to sugary coffee drinks, then we snack on sugary treats throughout the day, and in the evening, we drink beer or wine. It’s so easy and so accepted that most of us don’t even realize we’ve become addicted.

So how do you know if you have a sugar addiction? Well, if you don’t consume any of those things, anything with added sugar, how do you feel? Chances are you feel pretty crappy.

So, what can we do about this addiction?

• Take stock of what you’re drinking – high fructose corn syrup is the easiest way to get more sugar into your diet.
• Stay away from the middle aisles in the grocery store.
• Don’t add extra sugar to your drinks, meals, or snacks.
• Avoid fake sugars; they trick your body into thinking it’s had sugar, which has its own negative impacts.
• Don’t go on a diet – embrace a lifestyle change!

One of the biggest reasons that people can’t stick to their diets, Erin says, is the mindset they adopt when they start. They’re doing the diet with the intent to stop eventually, instead of adopting healthy lifestyle changes that will make them healthier in the long-run. It’s a juice cleanse today so that you can go back to eating things that are bad for you tomorrow.

On top of that, we don’t address the emotional component of why we have unhealthy eating habits in the first place; the why behind our sugar addiction or other bad habits.

The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway

“Just be very aware of how important food is in our life versus the people in your life – because this isn’t that big of a deal. It’s just food! And when we put food in front of everyone else, we’re missing out on an opportunity to connect with others, to make good memories, and to really find out what’s going on with ourselves.”

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Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.

Resources:

• Learn more at https://erinwathenwellness.com/

The Daily Helping is produced by Podcast Masters

Today our expert guest is Kyle “Mind Brain Dude” Ferroly, and he’s going to talk about the brain in ways that you’ve probably never thought about. Kyle completed his Doctoral training in Psychophysiology, which we discuss at great length in this episode, in addition to doing advanced EEG training with some of the top professionals in the field, who are making incredible advances in brain research.

So, what in the world is Psychophysiology?

Psychophysiology is the blending of three disciplines: psychology, physiology, and neurology – or, in other words, it’s the holistic study of the mind, body, and brain.

“So, in a nutshell, when someone is in our office, we don’t just talk to them and try to have them work through things; we have them hooked up to assessment objective equipment, and we can see when their brain, mind, and body are making changes based on what they’re thinking.”

You might be wondering, then, what’s the difference between the mind and the brain?

The brain is a physical organ that we have. The mind is our conceptual ability to think, act, and feel. We can’t prove we have a mind – philosophy has been trying to do it for who knows how many years – but we know that we can think, act, and feel. So there has to be something that gives us the ability to do that, and that is our brain.

So, although our mind can seem like more of a philosophical concept than a core part of ourselves, practitioners in the field of Psychophysiology can help us see what our mind, brain, and body are doing through scientifically verified assessments. Because this ephemeral part of us is critically important to living happy and fulfilled lives, and too many of us are being crippled by stress.

People may be motivated to change, but until you’re able to show them evidence that something is wrong, it’s hard to show them that there is a problem. And for many of us, that problem is the effects of overstressed lives.

Whether you’re being chased by a bear or you imagine you’re being chased by a bear, your body is going to respond in a similar way – and in that equally powerful response, we can begin to understand how the mind, brain, and body are all interconnected.

“How do we communicate in our daily life, with our friends and our family and our coworkers, if our impulse control is out the window, we’re not empathetic, we’re not communicating well, and we’re just worrying about ourselves? That sounds like a lot of people that I know... because they live in stress!”

We need to get to the root of the problem and stop chasing symptoms – and that’s why Kyle wrote his upcoming book, Check Your Blindspot: 7 Ways That We Are Unintentionally Destroying Our Health, Happiness, and Productivity.

The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway

“Albert Einstein once said that problems cannot be solved with the mindset that created them. We all have a certain mindset or a current frame of mind for how we are going to get through our problem. We need new information, we need new tools, and we need to get in front of the problem – and that’s what I feel the field of Psychophysiology will do. It will give you a new frame of reference for what’s happening inside of you.

“And there’s always hope when you look in the right places.”

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Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.

Resources:

• Learn more: mindbrainbalance.com | kyleferroly.com

• Pre-order: Check Your Blindspot: 7 Ways That We Are Unintentionally Destroying Our Health, Happiness, and Productivity

• Biofeedback Certification International Alliance: https://www.bcia.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=1
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mindbraindude/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/mindbraindude
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-s-ferroly-b6037726/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXCFAxpiUbXe2X6OIDLvaYA

The Daily Helping is produced by Podcast Masters