Have you ever felt like negative self-talk was holding you back in business? You’re not alone. In this eye-opening episode, I sit down with Dr. Gary Sprouse, a retired primary care physician and author, to uncover a surprising method for boosting your self-worth AND your income.
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Show Notes | Transcript“Whether we like ourselves or not, it affects our self-esteem. The problem that we’ve gotten into is we don’t count all our achievements.” – Dr. Gary Sprouse
Author of “Highway to Your Happy Place: A Roadmap to Less Stress,” Dr. Gary Sprouse shares his unique perspective on self-esteem, blending his medical knowledge with psychological insights. We explore his innovative “50-point wake-up” system and how it can transform the way you view yourself and your accomplishments.
Discover how to:
- Accurately assess your achievements and give yourself proper credit
- Reframe your self-perception using Dr. Sprouse’s three-part self-esteem model
- Overcome the hidden culprits behind chronic stress and self-doubt
Key insights include:
- The surprising connection between your ability to envision the future and your self-esteem
- How to use “realistic optimism” to navigate challenges without succumbing to fear
- A practical “worry organizer” tool to manage anxiety and boost confidence in negotiations
Dr. Sprouse also introduces his four D’s – Deny, Deflect, Diminish, and Dismiss – and explains how these unconscious behaviors can either reinforce or undermine your self-esteem.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur struggling with confidence or simply looking to enhance your negotiation skills, this conversation offers a fresh, science-backed approach to building unshakeable self-worth. Get ready to rewire your thinking and claim the success you truly deserve!
Resources:
Join the Soulful Women’s Network
Connect with Gary Sprouse:
Website: TheLessStressDoc.com
Email: LessStressDoc (at) gmail.com
Books: Highway to Your Happy Place & Mindset Matters
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TRANSCRIPT
Dr Gary Sprouse
So good self esteem perpetuates itself. Poor self esteem perpetuates itself. So to get out of that, you have to stop using the four ds and be willing to accept that someone’s saying something nice about you.
Gloria Grace Rand
I am Gloria Grace Rand, founder of the L.O.V.E. Method and author of the number one amazon best seller Live. Love. Engage. – how to stop doubting yourself and start being yourself. In this podcast, we share practical advice from a spiritual perspective on how to live fully, love deeply, and engage authentically so you can create a life and business with more impact, influence and income. Welcome to Live. Love. Engage.
Namaste. Imagine waking up tomorrow feeling unstoppable in your business, armed with a secret formula to price your worth and negotiate like a pro. Well, stick around, because you are going to discover a physician’s surprising method to boost your self-esteem, revolutionize your income, and finally claim the success you deserve. But before I bring him on, I’d like to welcome those of you who may be new to Live. Love. Engage. I am Grace Rand, and I help female entrepreneurs attract clients by going beyond search engine optimization to embrace my definition of SEO, spiritually engaging others. And joining us today is Doctor Gary Sprouse. He is a retired primary care physician and author of the book highway to your happy place, a roadmap to less stress. So without further ado, I am going to bring him up onto the stage right now and welcome you to Live Love. Engage.
Dr Gary Sprouse
Great, Grace, thanks for having me here. This has been awesome. I’m really looking forward to this.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yes, me too. Because I love. Well, number one, I love the name of your book, actually, because, I don’t know, I think it was last year or something. I was walking along the beach one day and I started making up my, making up a song that I’m like, I’m in my happy place, because it is. But I want to dive right in and actually talk about what I promoted today about self-esteem. So our audience is entrepreneurs, in particular, women entrepreneurs. So how can we go about boosting our self-esteem? Because I know sometimes, sometimes things happen, and it can kind of, we can kind of take a little hit on that from time to time.
Dr Gary Sprouse
Sure. So I’m a physician, right? So here’s the weird part. So I consider myself a holistic doctor because I can, I have all the physiological and all the medical, chemical stuff. I have that knowledge that I learned from medical school, but I’ve also learned all the psychological stuff, how the brain works, things like that. And so one of the insights that I brought to this equation is that the majority of human stresses are actually side effects to our skills. So what that means is we can envision the future, but then that means we have to worry about it. That’s the side effect. So my book is basically about how do you keep the skill, lose the side effect. But when it comes to self-esteem, that’s such an issue, right? Because first off, we have a definition, as humans have a definition of good and bad. So the side effect, that is, you could have good self-esteem. Side effect is you could have bad self. So my dog, now, she has this cut on her back she has, like, a scar, she has a lump on her neck. Doesn’t bother her self-esteem at all because she doesn’t have those skills of deciding what’s good and bad. So the problem with self-esteem is, what I found is I’m not sure we all define it as well as we should. When I talk about self-esteem, I talk about three parts to self-esteem. So there’s how you feel about yourself and then how you feel, like, what I call self-efficacy is. So self-efficacy is where you go, hey, how would I do it in the future? Okay. And then the third part is, you know, how do I think about, how do I envision? Well, so let me go back. So it’s like there’s self-esteem that’s broken up, and then you have. There’s a thing called, one of the things that we talk about is achievements. And so what I hear from people about achievements is you shouldn’t count your achievements. You should just love yourself for loving yourself. And I don’t know about other psychologists, but what I find is when something goes well, I feel really good about myself. And when something doesn’t go well, I don’t feel good about myself. And so what I realized was our achievements and lack of achievements definitively affects our self-esteem. Whether we like ourselves or not, it affects our self-esteem. The problem that we’ve gotten into is we don’t count all our achievements. So I have this thing that I call the 50 point wake up. So I wake up in the morning and I’m still alive. Yes, I get ten points. I have food in the refrigerator. Yes. Ten more points. I got running water. Yes. Ten more points. My wife is still alive. Another ten points. And I’m living in a safe house. Ten points. So I literally wake up, opening my eyes, and I just got 50 points. And then somebody comes along and says, hey, I got this project. If you take it on, you can get 20 points. And you’re like, sure, sure, let’s do it. And they go, well, but if you don’t do it and you fail, well, then you’re going to lose 20 points. But I woke up with 50. So if I lose 20, I’m still at plus 30. But if you wake up and you’re at minus ten, when you wake up, I’m like, ugh. So I might go to work. This. Things aren’t good. Somebody comes along and says, hey, I’m going to give you something. You can make 20 points. You’re like, yeah, that sounds great. And then you go, yeah, but you can lose 20 if you don’t do it. You’re like, I’m at minus ten. I could be a plus ten and feel good. Ooh. But I’d be at -30 you know what? No. Not going to try. So then they don’t even try. So what I found is part of self-esteem, then, is figuring out, hey, if I count my achievements accurately, there’s no way I can have positive self-esteem because we take all these other things for granted, like, I’m still alive. That’s not taken for granted. Like, I have running water, I have food. None of that’s taken for granted. And when you give yourself points for all of that, then there’s no way you can’t have good self-esteem based on your achievement. Now, there are going to be times when things don’t go well, but it won’t balance. Like, if you’re giving. Here’s what people do, they go, well, okay, I woke up. That’s one point. Well, but then this didn’t go well. That’s minus ten. Well, if you’re going to give yourself one point for every achievement and minus ten for everything, that doesn’t go well, yeah, that’s going to be. That’s going to make it hard.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, I love that. First off, I think that is so cool. And you’re right. I mean, it’s not something that we would typically think about doing. And especially, I think it was so important when you talked about just assigning enough points to those things that, you know, like, yeah, you just. You woke up today. Hey, that’s pretty good. I mean, it beats the alternative.
Dr Gary Sprouse
If you’re an entrepreneur, and you have a business, yeah, give yourself credit. Like. Like, I’ve watched my wife do this. Like, we had an apartment building and it needed a screen, and it was a weird size because it was an older building. And I’m like, well, I don’t know what we’re gonna do. She goes, well, I’ll just make it. I’m like, wait, what? Are you gonna make a screen? And she’s like, well, yeah, sure. What? I’m like, so she made the screen, and it was perfect. So I’m like, yes, give yourself, like, ten points at minimum, right? And she’s like, well, whatever. I just had to do it. And I’m like, no, do not give yourself one point. Give yourself ten. And then the next day, when I said, hey, remember when you made that screen? She said, yeah, yeah, whatever. Now. Now it’s zero. And I’m like, oh, it’s still ten. Come on. Like what? Yeah, so that’s a problem that I’ve seen people do it also. I I see when they look at the picture of themselves. So we have a picture of ourself in our head, and it changes every ten years. So those decade birthdays, that’s why they’re so bad. Because you go from, hey, I was 29 years old to now I’m 30. Hey, I was 59 years old. Now I’m 60. So when you’re 60, you can’t say, well, I’m in my fifties anymore. So now you have to have an all new picture. And in general, the picture doesn’t look as promising as it did the last decade, but it’s the same kind of problem. So what I found is that people, I had a patient do this, said, write down all your characteristics. You’re a mother, you’re a daughter, you’re a sister, whatever. You have brown hair, you have blue eyes, blah, blah, blah. There’s many things that you can use to describe yourself. And she ended up putting them in good and bad categories. And what she did was she had, like, four good and bad. And I looked at him like, wait, what? So the first one was that she had an alcohol problem. And I go, okay, that’s bad, right? And I said, but then she had. She was a bad mother. And I’m like, well, what do you mean you’re a bad mother? She goes, I go, do you not feed your kids? Do you not take them to school? Do you not provide food? You know, do you ignore them? And she’s like, no, no, I do all this, but I shouldn’t be drinking as much. I was like, okay, well, I agree that you shouldn’t be drinking as much, but the fact that you’re taking care of your kids makes you a good mother, not a bad mother. So we got down to the end. Like, what we had was ten things on the good side and four things on the bad side. And the good news was the four things on the bad side we could do something about. And so after that, she stopped drinking alcohol. And I was like, yes, right. So you got rid of one of those, but it’s the same point system. So I said, you’re a good mother, so get yourself ten points. You have a problem with alcohol, so give yourself minus ten. But it’s not, I’m a good mother. One point. I have an alcohol problem minus ten. No, because, like, I see people, I go, I’m overweight, minus ten. And it’s in blinking lights and neon, and I’m like, okay, but you’re a hard worker. Well, yeah, whatever. And, like, no, it’s not whatever. Like, that’s ten points. So what I found is when you go through it accurately in some, yeah, when you go through it accurately, there’s no way you can’t have positive points, which then leads to your good self-esteem.
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely.
Dr Gary Sprouse
If that’s the case, then why don’t people have good self…? Why doesn’t everybody have good self-esteem? So there’s a couple reasons. One, they don’t keep track accurately. They don’t, they don’t give the same score to the good things as they do to their bad things. But here’s the bigger problem. So self-esteem starts when you’re one years old. It’s when you first figure out that you’re different than everybody else around you and you start realizing there is a self that doesn’t happen till you’re about one. But here’s the problem. Your memory. You have memory. So I have a four year old granddaughter, and when I go up and see her, she goes, go, pops. Because that’s my nickname. That’s who I am. I’m go pops. She’s like, go pops. Can you do this with me? Can we go play on the playground? Because I like having fun with you. Blah, blah, blah. So she has memory, but by the time she’s ten, she won’t remember any of this. It’s in her brain, but she won’t remember it. She might remember it as a ten-year-old going, if I hey, remember when you were two, we did this. So she can develop a memory of it, but it won’t be there. But her self-esteem, so that’s there. It’s been developing from the time she’s one, but she doesn’t have any access to what happened at one. So you can have all these things happen to you at one, two, five that you don’t even know they are there. So you can, if you start out at four years old and decide, for whatever reason as a four year old, that you don’t have good self-esteem. As a ten-year-old, you don’t know why you figured that out, but you just do. So now you’re stuck as a ten-year-old with low self-esteem and not even know why. And usually it’s because as a four year old or a three year old or a two year old, you misinterpreted something. So this happens a lot where patients have been, where someone’s been involved in a divorce. So if you’re a six year old and your parents get divorced. Real common misperception that you caused the divorce, right? So then it gets stuck in your head that you’re so bad that you made your parents get divorced. Now. So this is the next step. So in our brain, this is where I look at it, because I think it makes sense, and it’s easy for people to see. So envision a prism, right? So when you see light coming into a prism, it comes out on the other side as a rainbow, right? All right, that idea. And now in your brain, there’s a prism, and I call it the perspective prism. So now information comes in from the outside or from your inside, and it goes through that prism, and it comes out the other side as your perception. So what’s in your prism are things like, hey, what do I believe in? Do I believe in God or not? Do I, do I have good self-esteem or nothing? What experiences have I had in the past? You know, how am I late? Am I awake or am I half asleep? Am I anxious or am I upset? All those things factor into that prism, which then changes your perception. But if one of the things in that prism is that I am bad, like, I have low self-esteem, well, that’s going to affect literally everything that comes into your, into your window, right? Every. You sense everything that people say to you, everything that you hear about yourself, right? All your own self talk will be in there, and it’ll filter through that thing that says, yeah, you’re not that good a person. So when that happens, and somebody says, like, if you have low self-esteem and somebody comes along and says, hey, doctor Sprouse, you’re the last stress doc. I think you’re a really good guy. And I’m like, I have good self-esteem. I go, yeah, that makes sense. If somebody comes on and says, hey, doctor Sprouse, I think you’re a bad doctor. And I’m like, wait, what? That doesn’t fit what’s in my prism. And then I do something I call the four ds. But basically, you start adjusting the information to reduce the dissonance there is between those two things. So when you have good self-esteem, somebody comes along and says, you did something bad. You do this thing to create dissonance. Go, oh, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know who I am. You got some alternative motive, and then you still live. You come out of the other end with good self-esteem, but the opposite happens, too. So if you have low self-esteem, somebody comes along and says, hey, you’re really good. At that. And you’re like, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You just want some other thing like that doesn’t, you know, now you just don’t know who I am or you’re an idiot or, and so what happens is when you start out with low self-esteem, it’s really hard to change because you’re going to literally ignore good stuff that comes in or minimize it and magnify anything that comes in that says you’re bad because that fits with what you think. So it really makes it difficult to start changing self-esteem because it started when you were young and it’s there, but you didn’t know. And two is you’re manipulating the information in a negative way. So it’s really hard.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, we’re going to take a short break real quick, and when we come back, I would love you to maybe elaborate a little bit more on those four d’s that you mentioned and also maybe talk a little bit about negotiating with confidence as well. So we’ll be right back. And I just want to let you know, if you have been enjoying the podcast, there is just a small amount of time left now to show your support by voting for live love engage. We have been nominated for a women in podcasting award in the mindset category, and you can actually vote for us by until 06:00 p.m. eastern time on October 1, 2024. So like I said, time is getting very short to do this. So you can go to womeninpodcasting.net forward slash awards, look for live love, engage in the mindset category, and you will be able to vote for us. And I really, if you do, I’m just, I’m very, very grateful for it. I really appreciate it. And I also wanted to let you know, too, that I am a firm believer in the power of community and also having people to, you know, to reinforce, you know, when you are feeling like you’ve got poor self-esteem to be able to lift you up again. And that’s why I launched the Soulful Women’s Network. And so this is a wonderful group where fun, creative, powerful women get together to support each other in business and life. So we’ve got a free community that you can check out. You can just go to bit.ly forward slash soulnetwork. And SoulNetwork is all one word and lowercase. I will have it in the show notes as well for you to do that. But I hope you will come and come and join us and, and maybe even come and join us monthly because we have monthly masterminds as well. All right, enough of that. I want to go back in and bring Doctor Gary back in here now and let’s see if I can figure out where to do. There we go. All right, so you were mentioning before, before I took that break, something about the. It seemed like you mentioned one of them, but I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit more.
Dr Gary Sprouse
Alright, so here’s the four ds. Deny, deflect, diminish, and dismiss. Okay, so the first one is deny. So somebody says, you’re a good person. You don’t think that, you just don’t hear it. And I see that a lot. People just literally can’t. Sometimes it’s actually hard to hear somebody telling you a good thing and you just kind of didn’t. They didn’t say that. You just totally ignore it. The other one is you deflect. It’s the someone says, hey, you’re doing a good thing. You’re like, yeah, isn’t the weather nice outside? Like just kind of like go to another place. And one. Next one is diminished. Someone says, hey, you did a good thing. You’re like, okay, well, you said I did a ten, but I know it’s only a one. So you just diminish your date and the last one is dismissed and you go, okay, that person doesn’t know what they’re talking about. They don’t have the right information. They don’t know who I am. They don’t, you know, they have some ulterior motive. So what I find those four ds, or what people do to try to correct the distance that’s coming in between them. So if they have good self-esteem, they’re using the four ds to figure out why somebody would say something negative. But if they have poor self-esteem, then using the four ds to try and figure out why would somebody say positive? That’s why. So it becomes a self-perpetuating issue. So good self-esteem perpetuates itself. Poor self-esteem perpetuates itself. So to get out of that, you have to stop using the four ds and be willing to accept that someone’s saying something nice about you. So one of the things I’ve been working on with my patients, this is where the doctor part comes in. So in our brain there’s a track, and the track says, hey, two plus two equals four, or I’m bald or whatever. So one of the tracks, here’s what I find. That people have a track that says I have good self-esteem, but they also have a track that says, I have poor self-esteem. And the difference is, if they’re. If they have poor self-esteem, that that track is really thick and the good self-esteem track is tiny. So when I work with patients, hey, and I say this to them, you need to build up the track that says, I have good self-esteem. So that becomes your prism, then changes. So now the prism starts shifting, and you go, oh, I have good self-esteem. So now you start using the four ds to enforce that as opposed to denying it. Right? So that’s one of the ways to build up your self-esteem. The other way is to look at the three categories. And I think I was trying to say this earlier. And the three things are to say self-worth, which is, am I a good person? Self-respect, which is, am I doing things the right way? And self-efficacy, or what I call self-confidence, which is how will I do with their future thing, with future tasks. Right? So I have seen patients that have a lot of self-efficacy. If you say, hey, can you play basketball? Yeah, dude. I’ve never played before, but I know I’m good at it. But then we say, well, how’s your worth? They go, oh, yeah, well, not so good there. Right. So you have to differentiate which part of that self-esteem equation is having the difficulty.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, you know, and it’s. I love when you were talking to about these four ds, because this is something that. How I handle that when in teaching my clients is to the love method. The v in love is to value your uniqueness and what you were talking about before, it’s like, I could see, I think we might want to work together here because I think a great way to combine it, because then I could say, okay, well, let’s assign not only look at what’s unique about you, but let’s assign some points to that as well. I think. I think would be really, really cool.
Dr Gary Sprouse
But here’s one of the cautionary tales that I had to learn the hard way, unfortunately. So the lady I was telling you about. So I. So what I do is I have a stick figure, and I guess you have them label it, right? And so we went through and we figured out that, hey, her point system, you know, she had 100 good points and 40 bad points, and she can fix some of the 40 bad points. And I’m patting myself in the background, oh, I fixed this lady’s self-esteem, and then I looked at her, and you thought I punched her in the stomach. And I’m like, what happened then? Like. So then she said, well, if I’m wrong about this. If I’m wrong about myself, what else would I be wrong about? You’re like, oh, wait, what? Yeah. So remember how I said that self-esteem is in that prism, and literally everything that you think and feel and anything inside of you and outside of it has gone through that prism, and that’s something that’s been there since you were one years old and you didn’t even know it was there. And then somebody says, you’re wrong. Yikes. Yeah. Then it’s just disturbing as what I found out. So you can’t just jump in and go, hey, I’m fixing your self-esteem in five minutes because you have to warn people. You have to, like, let them get and grow that lowest, the good self-esteem tracking a little bit at a time, and then they can accept, okay, yeah, you’re right. I am a good person.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, well, that makes sense. Absolutely. Because. Because as someone who has dealt with that myself, I know that it definitely takes some time and. But I. But I do love this whole basic premise, though, about being able to at least give you a way to be able to more accurately judge it. And I think that’s. That’s the real good thing. I think one of many that you have come up with, but I think for me, that that really stood out for me. So one of the things that you talk about as well in helping clients is about being able to negotiate with confidence, because I know this is something I haven’t always been the greatest at. I will say I’m getting better, but what advice do you have for someone who is, and this applies to really any. Not even in business, because a lot of times we have to negotiate things, maybe with our spouse or with our children sometimes. So how do you approach this and what advice do you have for people?
Dr Gary Sprouse
Okay, so there’s a couple issues. So the first one is what we just talked about, self-esteem. So if you have low self-esteem, that’s going to make it harder for you to negotiate. So the more you bump up your self-esteem, the more that’s. Remember that part I said, self-efficacy, self-confidence. The more you have of that, the more, the better you’re going to be in a negotiation because you’re going to be saying, hey, that’s not right. You’re treating me poorly. If you have low self-esteem and someone treats you poorly, you kind of expect that. And so then you would go, okay, well, they’re treating me poorly, but I guess that’s what I’ll just have to live with. So if you come in with self-confidence, meaning, hey, I know I’m a good person. I know I’m doing things the right way, and I know I can do a, be a, do a successful task in the future. Well, you’re going to be way better at negotiating right there. The second is there’s plenty of books on how to learn how to mediate. And so one of the books that I read was called “Getting to Yes.” And one of the things that it talks about is, is don’t talk about people, talk about the issues. So leave it at issues. Don’t say you’re a jerk. You know, go, hey, you know, like, I know you don’t like where the economy’s gone and I have a way I’m going to fix it. And you have a way you’re going to fix it. Instead of saying, well, you’re a jerk and your answers are wrong, you go, okay, what’s the problem and what’s your solution and what is it that where are we trying to get to? And when you start focusing on the objective and where you’re trying to get to, well, then you can go, well, your way might get there, my way might get there. But let’s look at, and now you can start looking at statistics and looking at models and predictions and things like that. And instead of yelling at each other and being mad at each other, which has no help at all, you’re now negotiating out and then finding a way to measure the objection. So if you go, okay, we’re going to talk about the economy, well, how are we going to measure, we’re going to measure by GDP. We’re going to measure by unemployment rate. But when you have an objective measure, then you can at least say, okay, well, using that objective measure, this is how we think we should go.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, that makes sense. And I, I appreciate that. It really does start with you being able to have much, you’ve got to be able to start building that confidence muscle so that then you can have those conversations because I know definitely just in having discussions with my significant other in the past where he was really strong on this is what he believed. And I just really didn’t agree with it, but I didn’t have the facts to back it up, so I couldn’t really engage in a decent discussion with it.
Dr Gary Sprouse
So that’s when you can say, hey, you know what, give me five minutes, I’ll be back. And, yeah, that’s true because like there’s no, I have to have it right this second. You can come back and come later. And when you have the facts, then. Then. So emotions are nice, but when you’re trying to negotiate something out, they tend to get in the way. Right. So particularly if they’re the wrong emotion, anger. When people are angry, they don’t listen to each other at all. So if you find yourself arguing with somebody and there’s anger involved. So, like, I just had a discussion with my mom the other day about politics, and it was contentious, but at the end, we both said, yeah, I love you. That’s because we’re on very different sides of this. And our perspective prisms are very different, so our perceptions then are very different. Right. So we were having these discussions, and. But we kept anger out of it. And what I got out of the conversation was we. There was a lot more in common with what we were saying, and there was not in common. It was, some of it was just a matter of who was going to do it and how they were going to do it. Right. It wasn’t like we both said, you know, immigration needs to be fixed, but we need to have it done legally. It’s not, we don’t want. It’s not that we don’t want immigrants, that we just don’t want illegal immigrants. And so, like, then it was just a matter of, how do you figure out how to fix the problem? Well, so that, that changed the whole tenor of the conversation.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah.
Dr Gary Sprouse
So another thing I was going to say is that one of the other big problems that humans get into is worry. And I was listening to some of your other podcasts, and people talked about fear and anxiety and worrying about what’s going to happen. So worry is, like, a major problem that humans have, and it affects your negotiations, because if you’re worried about something, that you’re not going to be as strong in your negotiation. But here’s what I found. So, when I ask, people say, tell me what worry is. Well, pretty much everybody has some sense of what the word means, and they know what it feels like. And when they use it in a sentence, people understand what they’re saying. But when you go to try to define it, it’s not so easy, because I see people struggle. I’ve seen professional struggle going, well, it’s, uh, you know, it’s worry, right? And I go, well, it’s. It’s fear. It’s this. Is that like. Well, but if you don’t know worry is, then how can you fix it? And I liken it to when we were in doctors a long time ago, what we knew about diabetes was that your sugar was too high. Well, okay, if that’s all I know about diabetes, then I’m going to say to you, don’t eat as much sugar and you’ll be better. And some people were better, but most people weren’t, because not eating sugar doesn’t really fix most people’s diabetes. But now that I know as a doctor that, oh, it has something to do with your stomach hormones and your insulin levels and your insulin transport and your liver and your blood. Right. Well, now I have all these tools. So now that I have more knowledge, I’m way better tools. And so our treatment of diabetes has changed dramatically just in the last. Just since I’ve been a doctor. And to the better. Right? So much better. So what I found with things like worry that people don’t, when you ask them what it is, they really don’t have a very good definition. So when I say, hey, look. So first off, worry. You can’t work. Like, I. I was there, my dog and I are watching the TV, and we’re looking at the war in Israel and Ukraine, and we’re hearing about immigration, political fighting, and blah, blah, blah. And I’m sitting there going, oh, I’m getting all upset, and my dog’s just laying there.
I’m like, we’re watching the same thing! What’s the matter with you? Why aren’t you tensing up? Right. So the problem is my dog doesn’t have the skill of envisioning the future. Literally can’t worry. Like, it’s not possible. So my four year old granddaughter, she can start to worry a little bit. My one-year-old grandson cannot.
Gloria Grace Rand
Right.
Dr Gary Sprouse
And then I had a lot of patients with really end stage dementia, they don’t have the skill anymore, so they can’t look into the future. So then they can’t worry. So here’s my definition. So worry is I use my incredible skill of being able to envision the future. Then I focus on all the bad things that can happen. And then the last piece, and this is the worst, is then I have a fear reaction. Right now, might be a little anxiousness, it might be a full blown panic attack, but it’s a fear reaction to some bad possibility. Right. And the reason I can even look at in the future, look at bad possibilities because I have this amazing mind.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yes, exactly.
Dr Gary Sprouse
Does not have this problem. Right.
Gloria Grace Rand
Mm hmm.
Dr Gary Sprouse
So if you’re sick, gone into a negotiation, and you’re worried, you’re. So you’re focusing on all the bad things that can happen out of this investigation, and then you have the fear reaction right now, do you think that’s going to help you negotiate?
Gloria Grace Rand
No.
Dr Gary Sprouse
So one other way. So I have two. Two, stop. I mean, you want to hear, I have two tools that I use. I mean, there’s more, but two that I talk about. So the first one is what I call realistic optimism. So that means that I’m going to envision the future and I have the choice, I can focus on the bad things or I can focus on the good things because neither of them are real. They’re both just concepts. They’re both just ideas. So what I say is, look, I’m going to focus on the good. So when I was writing my book, if I focused on the bad things and I would say, well, I’m never going to get this book done. Even if I get it done and will never get published. Even if got published is going to read it, well, that makes you feel bad now, but then you won’t finish the book. But if you go, hey, this book is going to be awesome when I get it done and it’s going to get published and it’s going to change people’s lives. What? Yeah, that makes me feel good. Let’s get back and start writing. Right. So that’s the optimism part, that I focus on the good things that could happen. And here’s the caveat. Here’s the realistic part of that definition. So realistic optimism, I can’t ignore the fact that bad things could happen. So I can’t say, oh, it’s going to be wonderful and it’s going to be great, and I’m just going to quit my day job because I’m going to make so much money at the book. And then you have to pay attention that bad things could happen. But then you can address those without fear. And that’s where the second tool comes in. So the second tool is what I call a worry organizer. So I’m going to give you a patient’s example so you can understand it. So the first category is, what is it you’re worried about? So this lady came to my office and she was like, in her forties and she said, well, I’m worried I’m going to get breast cancer. So the second category is in. Why are you worried about that? So in her case, her mother and her sister both had had breast cancer. Excuse me. So that brought us to the third category. So the third category is two. It says, how likely is it to happen and how bad would it be if it happened? So I said, so I asked her those questions like, how likely are you going to get breast cancer? She said, well, 100%. My sister and my mother both had breast cancer. I go, well, if you got breast cancer, how likely is that you would die? She said, 100%. And I’m looking at her like, well, no wonder you’re upset. Like, you’ve given yourself a death sentence. So I said, okay. So she was. Now, now that we put it in these categories, I said, I’m a doctor. Here’s the real statistics. Here’s the statistics we have in medicine. So with a family history, you have a 15% chance of getting breast cancer. And she looked at me like, wait, what? 15%? That’s it? And I go, yeah. And I said, and because we’re going to find it early, you, 85% chance of survival. And you could see that her body literally changed.
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely.
Dr Gary Sprouse
It just got her life back. So then the fourth category is that, okay, what can I do to make sure it doesn’t happen? So in her case, we started making, like, doing mammograms and self-exams, and we did a blood test for gene and blah, blah, blah, right? And then the last category, which is an interesting category, it’s like, what do I do if it happens? And here’s what I’ve seen. When people prepare for the ban, then they don’t worry about it as much because they’re prepared. So we started talking about like, okay, well, let’s make sure your will set up. Let’s make sure your sister and your husband have signed a letter saying they’re going to take care of your kids this way. And you’re going to put this dress on me when I get the funeral. And you’re going to. Right? And so now, and here’s the key that it’s written down, because one of the problems with worry is that it’s very inefficient. People go over and over and over. 02:00 in the morning, right? Okay. So when it’s written down, it takes a little bit more effort, but then you only have to do it once. So then if you wake up and there’s something else you think about, you go, oh, yeah, I already wrote all that down, so it’s no big deal. And the other benefit to writing it down is then you can take it to your family, to your friend, to your husband, to your doctor and go, hey, here’s what I wrote down. Can you add, is there any, is this, are my statistics accurate? Is there anything else I could do to prevent this? Is there anything else I can do if I get it right? So now you have something that you can share with everybody else that’s not just in your head. It’s out on a piece of paper, and it’s always there so that you can have it by your bedside if you want, and you can make one for each worry that you have.
Gloria Grace Rand
I think that’s excellent advice. And I absolutely see the value in this because, yeah, it’s so easy. Cause our imaginations are so wonderful, but they can also really spin out of control when we’re in that fear-based state. But, yeah, treating it the way you’re recommending it, and getting information, number one, I think, get some research behind you is certainly important. And then, yeah, being able to look at it realistically. So I like that so much. Um, we’re rapidly running out of time here, and there was so much more I wanted to get to. But.
Dr Gary Sprouse
Talk too much. Dang.
Gloria Grace Rand
Uh, no, but it’s all good. It’s. It’s been all good. And, uh. Oh, I’ve got a. Got a comment here. Oh, okay. Very nice, Joy. I’ll even put this up here. Joy says very wise words, doctor Sprouse. I appreciate that.
Dr Gary Sprouse
I hope they help you. The key is, I’m not here to help me. I’m here to help you. Right. That’s my whole goal here. And when I. When somebody calls me, says, hey, you said something, and that helped me, like, that makes me feel good.
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely.
Dr Gary Sprouse
That puts me in my happy place.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, there you go. Absolutely. That’s where we all need to be, in our happy place. Is there anything else that I should have asked you about that I didn’t? Any other last point you want to make regarding anything we’ve talked about today, or maybe even just about, you know, being less stressed or being in your happy place? Maybe even.
Dr Gary Sprouse
Wow. So we have to do this again, because there is way more information in my head than any your listeners so that they can help and help us out? We didn’t even get to talk about your happy place. Right. Another conversation.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah.
Dr Gary Sprouse
Here’s what I say to people at the end of these in my interviews. When I say to. I look him in the eye and go, look, you might be stressed out right now, but you don’t have to be. There’s ways that you can get rid of some of the stress, that you don’t have to live your life overwhelmed, stressed out, low self. It doesn’t have to be that way. There are ways to fix this. My books. One of the ways. There’s a whole bunch of other books you can listen to. Grace, she’s got some good stuff. I was listening to some of your podcasts. Good stuff. Don’t resign yourself. Don’t use this thing that I call learned helplessness. Where you go, well, there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m just stuck there. No, you have all kinds of options and all kinds of tools. There’s. One of my instructors told me, he goes, when somebody’s getting a bad outcome, they always have the tools inside themselves to get a better outcome. So what I tell people is, don’t resign yourself to living a stressed out life. You can get to your happy place and stay there.
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely. Yes. I agree with that 100%. We always have the choice of how we want to be in any moment of our life. It’s just. We just need to decide. In fact, I was experiencing this overdose over the weekend. In fact, I was not feeling very chipper, and I had a lovely luncheon to go to, and I’m. And I just was, like, telling myself, you know what? No, I don’t want to go there today. I want to be in a happy place. I’m not. I’m not giving into this today. And then when I went to the luncheon, I met someone who. Who was going through the exact same thing.
Dr Gary Sprouse
Oh, my God.
Gloria Grace Rand
And we laughed about it. It’s like, oh, yeah. I don’t know what was going on in the. In the air today, but it was just. It was just so funny that we were.
Dr Gary Sprouse
I do seminar. Yeah. So I do seminars on how to help people get to their happy place and get rid of some of their stresses. And the day of my seminar, like, half the. Literally half the people call and said, we can’t come. And some of them call and said, I’m too stressed out to come. I’m like, no, this is what I say. Calm. Like, yeah, right. Read this stuff. Do these things. Right, because you get there’s ways to help this and you can get a better outcome.
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely. And one last thing I want to ask is if someone listening to this today would like to get maybe a copy of your book or to learn more about you. Where can people go to find out?
Dr Gary Sprouse
Yeah, so the book is called highway to your happy place, a roadmap to less stress. And it’s on Amazon, and it’s on Barnes and Noble. And then if you want to, I have a website that’s thelessstressdoc dot com. And then I have an email if you want to get in. Touch me. It’s lessstressdoc@gmail.com. But I forgot to tell you, I just had a book come out. I was a co author with Jack Canfield, who wrote chicken soup for the soul. And so the collaborative effort with 29 other people and a book called Mindset Matters and became a number one bestseller. Yay. So. So that book’s out there, too. And in my work, mindset, like, the reason I got involved with that was because I agree mindset matters. And so I wrote a chapter for the book with some other people. It’s an excellent book. So I might want to get that because that will help you envision your own mindset and see how it would affect your life.
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely. All right, well, I will be sharing all of that information in the show notes, so if you’re listening or watching on YouTube, I’ll make sure that it’s in the description there as well. So thank you so much for being with us today. I really appreciate it and I really enjoyed and was educated as well, so that’s always a good thing.
Dr Gary Sprouse
Well, thank you for having me. And we have to do this again.
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely.
Dr Gary Sprouse
And hopefully your audience got something from this. That’d be great, for sure.
Gloria Grace Rand
And I know, at least I think Joy did. And so thank you, Joy, for watching today, and I’m glad that she got some value out of it, too. So excellent. All right, well, I want to also now thank all of you for watching and for listening today. And I really appreciate you and I hope that you did get some value. And if you’re not subscribed to the podcast, I encourage you to do that. We’re on all the major platforms and as well, you can subscribe to us on YouTube. So until next time, as always, I encourage you to go out and live fully, love deeply and. Okay, well, let me try that again. Live fully, love deeply. I know what I was going to say, but I’m going to say it right this time. Engage authentically.
