This One Habit Kills Peace | Dr. Emeran Mayer’s Lessons on Purpose, Resistance & Healing | 5 Questions

0:00Welcome to a new release on the show. This is the five questions to nourish the mind, body and soul. To get to know the person sat in front of me a little bit more and ask them questions they wouldn't normally have. This has become very quickly one of my favorite parts of the interview. Now we are re-releasing these because we released these months ago for our paid subscribers over on my newsletter, The Compassionate Cure on Substack. If you're not a paid subscriber, you will get these months in advance of being part of our community. However, we are now starting to release them. So enjoy. This is more of a personal connection and a shorter episode.

0:39But it really gets into the heart and not into the mind of the person who is sat in front of me. Everyone, welcome to Live Well Be Well. We're going to start with our Substack questions. Okay, so you have no idea what I'm about to ask you. Okay. unless you read our substack which I don't think has been many out so you probably haven't but these are five questions that nourish the mind body and soul so I felt you're very aligned to this because you're very much a believer of the interconnectedness so I want you to answer these in a short form answer that comes more from the heart as opposed to the mind okay are you ready I hope I'm ready you're gonna be ready as you're ever gonna be okay so the first question is what What makes you uniquely you?

1:24I think it's that I'm basically following my own path and I'm kind of very resistant against following other people's models or ideas. or I think overall when I think about my role in gastroenterology, I've not joined the main professional organizations. I've always been this outlier, this maverick. I would say that's a good term for it. I love that. And it's caused me – it hasn't had a negative impact on my success early on in life, but I somehow could not make the compromise. You know, I just had to stick with my own ideas. Do you think you've been like that as a child? No, I was the middle.

2:19Interesting. Okay. Maybe that's because you trusted your instincts more or your gut instincts, ironically. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. You know, it has something to do with, I think when I was young, I was much more on the introvert side. I was a real introvert child, and I had this almost complete transformation in life, something that may have had to do with it. I was a foreign exchange student when I was 18 years old in the U.S. for a year, thrown into a high school in Pomona, close to a year. and that year forced me to completely change give public speeches and interact with a lot of people and promote this agency the American field service that was you know the sponsor of this so I think when I came back and then I was in a family opposite from my own family in in every way and I had to adapt, I had to learn.

3:23And I think that sort of brought me out of my inner shell, you know, and then for the rest of my life, I've been integrating. I like both of these sides, you know, but I think this sticking to my own rules and my own compass and my own map comes from the early part of my life when I was sort of building this, you know, inside of me and nurturing it. And yeah, so I think that's a good, I've actually never gone through this kind of reasoning, but I think it makes sense when I answer your question. I love that. It makes me think a lot about the importance of that as a child, you know, throwing yourself sometimes into the unknown to develop your own character as opposed to what you believe is expected of you.

4:07So that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it definitely makes life harder. You know, I think I've seen it with many colleagues, you know, how they sail through particularly young colleagues that made, you know, connected with the sort of thought leaders and that moved them up rapidly. And I was always sort of on the opposing side. I didn't recognize these people, you know. And kind of surprising how it worked after all anyway. So I think I did pretty well with that approach. Took longer, was harder, but I'm sort of proud of it. Yeah, well, it means that you kind of connected to a purpose within you, which is, I think, probably one of the most important things in life is to have purpose.

4:59Exactly, yeah. So my next question is overcoming resistance, which may have connected to the answer you just told me. But what's been the most persistent area of resistance in your life and how did you overcome it? That's a tough one. Because I actually always felt attracted to challenges, to kind of resistances and overcome them. you know that started with um sort of a physical thing mountain climbing in the area that i grew up in there was almost like a like a an addiction you know like you want to climb the highest peaks in europe the highest peaks in south america and um not exactly sure why i did that you know but it's a resistance like most people would not overcome that resistance for me it was always a challenge.

5:53So I think, I'm not sure if it's the same if you talk about overcoming obstacles or, yeah, I mean, the biggest obstacles early on, you know, coming back to what we talked about before was clearly, you know, being an introvert and then having to give public talks to audiences of like 500 people, you know, in a foreign language. So as an 18 year old, so that was a tremendous fear-inspiring idea and exposure. And actually, before I went on that one-year journey, I decided I had to see a psychologist because I was scared. I didn't think I could do it. And then afterwards, it actually turned out to be fairly easy to learn the skill to embark in something that is incredibly threatening, and then you can do it.

6:59Another thing was fear of heights. With this mountain climbing, you would think somebody whose fear of heights would never get into that. I developed a technique if I had to traverse a ridge where it went down on both sides, like 1 ,000 meters. that I could never do this with fear of heights. And I learned this technique to, I mastered myself really being on the other side. And that worked, you know, so I never had an issue doing this. Visualization, that's quite a powerful technique, actually, that I talk about a lot. Yeah, so I think with resistance in my life, I got pretty good in overcoming them.

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9:03It is really critical to make sure your iron levels are in check. Well, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I think when we can face resistance, we can sometimes already feel defeated. But knowing if you've had to do it from quite early on, you kind of end up building a lot more resilience to knowing that you can get through it even if it's tough. And that's where I think biggest growth comes from, which is why it's an important question for me to ask. So the next one is small changes, big impact. So what's been the smallest change that you've made that's had the biggest impact on your life? When I think about so deciding that I want to kind of reorient my career path, I mean, it wasn't really a small change.

9:47And that happened with writing my first book. And I was in the midst of being totally immersed in my research and competition with all the, you know, getting grants. And then that book kind of opened up a whole new world, you know, like having to promote it and having meeting people in the public and with the media. I mean, that has a huge impact and actually had the impact that I decided I don't want to continue my old career path. You know, it's too narrow. I cannot do this anymore. I have to. So writing this first book, you could say it was a small change because I did it on the side. I didn't just take off.

10:33But it had a huge impact, which is still lasting because I did never go back. I couldn't go back to the old way of doing it. I love that. Well, that gives me a lot of excitement because I'm writing my first book. Yeah. So I hope it has as big an impact as yours. Yeah, it's kind of interesting what this can do, you know. And a lot of people who have written a book give the same story, you know, it has a major. and particularly if it's if it's successful i think there's a lot of people who write books and you know they don't get the success that they hoped and and that's painful you know but if if you get the unexpected success i mean i never thought this was actually that in the beginning it was not popular that first book and but then as as time went on i saw that, you know, the whole new field evolved in the mind-body or the mind-gut connection, which was the title of my first book.

11:36That term didn't even exist when I wrote my first book, you know, how a whole field developed over this. So it had a big impact. So this takes me into something quite interesting, which I'd be, well, for you, I feel like this would be very interesting, which is health. So what's been the one health-related change that has significantly impacted your world being that you've made yeah i would almost say that uh that the diet to focus on a healthy diet was the main one um and you know being a gastroenterologist you would think that diet was sort of an essential part of your training and but but it was not it was non-existent you know and i think a lot of gastroenterologists a lot of my colleagues at meetings at lunch meetings still drink their Coke or their diet Coke now and eat unhealthy food.

12:30So, yeah, I think that had the biggest impact. And, I mean, both health-wise but also lifestyle-wise, you know, it's really – I mean, looking at it from the other side, you know, I don't believe that diet is the only thing you need to do for living a healthy life. But it's a key component. And for me personally, it was the biggest change from being a carnivore when I was young, not even paying attention to it, without any awareness. That change to become aware of how you eat, what you eat, where this food comes from. obviously the writing the book has helped you know and and and all the thoughts around it but that had the biggest impact so the way that we like in in in my family we we live now and we eat is sort of fundamentally different it's uh and and it feels good you know it feels good of course i really connect with a lot of what you say you know so much about the show and about all the work that I do is about the multifaceted approach to health in general.

13:48But food was the first entry for me as well. So I really, you know, believe there's always one entry, there's one thing that sticks in people's minds. And that's why everyone's so individual and different. And it's nice to know that nutrition was a big part as well for you, which makes complete sense because you're a gastroenterologist, right? So this is a big paradox, you know, gastroenterologist, it's changing slowly now but what's changing now is that gastroenterologists hire a dietician they don't learn it themselves you know it's not i mean i know well that's the field i went into where i would kind of work alongside yeah yeah i mean gastroenterology is basically now a technical semi-surgical specialty you know we're doing endoscopies that makes the most money that's why people go into it and not in the uk yeah in the us but not in the uk oh yeah in in the us it's it's it is ridiculous in some ways you know i get these emails all the time it looking for you know people look for a gas controller just one million dollars starting salary and it's all generated don't listen to this if in the uk and leave us and go to america we need But it's all generated by procedures, not by advice, not by dietary advice.

15:07It's all just technical, you know? Yeah. I know I've had many of them. Um, okay. So the last question before we get into the main part of the show. Okay. What's been the hardest thing for you to make peace with about yourself or your life in general? It's quite a big question. Then I have an easy answer to, and I haven't quite made, I haven't quite reached the goal, you know? And it's this pathological competitiveness that I've had from childhood on. And even today, I think for myself, I've accomplished all the things professionally that I wanted to accomplish. In some ways, I could say now the book writing and the whole social media presence is kind of entertainment for me in some ways.

15:55I don't need to make money with it. but I still am fiercely competitive you know I cannot forget with yourself yeah and looking at other looking at competitors in the same space and the good thing now is I catch myself I've realized this is the one thing that keeps me from being really happy and and peace of mind and unless I can overcome that I think I will I'll never reach this full peace of mind that I would like to have you know that i can look at others and say oh wonderful that they're doing this you know it's always like god what do i need to do to to catch up um it's crazy yeah i relate you can relate yeah i mean this is a lot about what i talk about with my self-compassion right because when we have the acceptance of ourselves when these moments come up it's actually i think a really good antidote to how we see ourselves is is having that compassion that you would have for a friend but it's so much harder to have it for yourself especially if you're a high achiever yeah um and it's mostly high achievers that can can suffer with this kind of critical um point of always wanting to be better i mean i can tell the reason why i had that you know because um like many people never got the recognition from my dad.

17:26The only time I was supposed to take over family business, I was a huge disappointment to my father. Even when I went into medicine, we had a very strained relationship until he, I mean, I was already in the U.S. and I hadn't seen him for years. he was diagnosed with end-stage liver disease, cirrhosis, from a hepatitis C infection. And so he was too old to get a liver transplant in Germany. And I managed to get him a spot here at the UCLA transplant service. And so basically he saved his life, you know, gave him 10 or 12 extra years in his life. and that was the first time in my life that he actually you know thanked me for doing something good wow but the amazing that you have the awareness of that yeah of the root and I actually want to talk to you about that in the show where we talk about adverse childhood experiences actually um and I wonder if that's been kind of a big significance of your interconnectedness all the work that you've done seeing because I think I'm a big believer that people go into the field that they believe in because one they may have been affected by it because you have more a passion and a purpose to to understand where it all fits together yeah and so it's amazing that although that happened the awareness that you have from that to one communicate it to to maybe like translate that into your own life yeah actually has a really profound experience yeah and i find myself i mean doing being pulled in the same direction with with with our son you know that I did not give him enough didn't accept him enough in the way he is so he's not that competitive you know and for a long time I tried to get him into medical school and you know he just didn't want to do it you know he was not me yeah but that thing i've actually able to manage and our relationship is is much better since then since i'm not trying to expect anything from him that he's not you know which is amazing that you've managed to to see that yeah so many people don't so wow i'm very excited about our full conversation so thank you that was amazing five answers you did incredibly well i'm going to give you a big gold star um and yeah i'm very very excited for our main interview thanks so much for listening to hear the full episode there's a link in the description