In this week’s series of the podcast, Dr. Daniel and Tana Amen take an in-depth examination of the process of resetting yourself and redefining your goals. In the last episode of this series, the Amens discuss why it’s so important to strike a balance with all of the different aspects of your life, such as family, work, finances, and health. The strategies they give in this episode will help you to find and maintain that balance necessary for a happy, purposeful life.
Daniel G Amen, MD:
Welcome to The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast. I’m Dr. Daniel Amen.
Tana Amen, BSN RN:
And I’m Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body.
Daniel G Amen, MD:
The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years, using tools like brain SPECT imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.
Tana Amen, BSN RN:
The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast is also brought to you by Brain MD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com.
Daniel G Amen, MD:
Welcome back. We’re so happy to be with you as we talk about resetting your life for 2021. Sort of the cool thing about being human, every day is a new day. And you had talked earlier that the past is the past, and the present is a gift, and we don’t know about tomorrow, but we can certainly set tomorrow up to be better by what we do.
Tana Amen, BSN RN:
The decisions you make today, make a difference for tomorrow.
Daniel G Amen, MD:
And that’s why I start every day with, “Today is going to be a great day.” I close every day with, “What went well today?” I love the ideas, the present is a gift, if you can learn how to anchor yourself to the present.
Tana Amen, BSN RN:
When you encounter challenges, one thing that helps me is like, what is the opportunity here? What can I learn? What can I teach others? What’s the opportunity? That’s something that really helps me.
Daniel G Amen, MD:
Write down anything you’ve learned this week. We’d be so grateful. Post it on any of your social media sites. Leave us a comment, question or a review at brainarriorswaypodcast.com, and we will enter you into a drawing to win a signed copy of Tana’s new book, The Relentless Courage of A Scared Child, or The End of Mental Illness. You tell us which one. We’d just be so grateful.
Tana Amen, BSN RN:
We mentioned earlier that for the rest of January, anyone who tags 10 people and reaches out, takes a screenshot of it, and tags us, will get a signed copy of the book.
Daniel G Amen, MD:
That’s awesome. So, reset. We hope you’ve enjoyed this week. What we’ve talked about is really defining for yourself what you want in a balanced way. The reason I created this with relationships first, work, money, physical, emotional, spiritual health is people get burned out when they are unbalanced. But by working on those four major areas of your life, which correlate really nicely to the four circles that we always talk about. Biology.
Tana Amen, BSN RN:
Your health.
Daniel G Amen, MD:
Physical. Health. Psychology, your emotional health, spiritual and social, which is relationships, work and money. It just really fits. What do you want for your emotional health? What do you want for your mind? Do you want to be happy? Do you want to be less reactive? What is it you want? Do you want to be less afraid? Do you want to make better decisions? Which I think is really that’s where success starts. I keep threatening to write a book called All Success Starts Here, which is between your ears. But success really is based on a series of decisions you make over time. And so, what do you want? For me, I want to be happy. Happy is so underrated. People think it’s selfish to be happy. But if you’re around unhappy people, you realize that happiness is a form of altruism. When I say that, what comes to mind for you?
Tana Amen, BSN RN:
It’s funny, I’ve done so much work around these areas. I love my life. I would love for 2021 to be, especially in our home, for the kids to… For this to sort of resolve itself, so that the kids have less stress. But I think we’ve done a good… Teaching them to have less stress is not, or taking away their stress is not my goal. Teaching them to manage stress is really what’s more important. I do feel bad for the youth right now that they’ve lost so much. But I do think it’s important to teach them, look, these things are going to happen in life. How are you going to handle it? That’s one of the big things for me with mental health is, how do we handle the things that come up? And I think that’s why-
Daniel G Amen, MD:
… How do you train resilience?
Tana Amen, BSN RN:
Right. And that’s why those questions I said at the beginning. What’s the opportunity? What can I learn? What can I teach others? What can I be grateful for? Because there’s almost always something that you can… If you can’t feel grateful for it, you can learn something. What’s the opportunity? How can you use it somehow?
Daniel G Amen, MD:
Well, and then spiritual health. What do you want? And some people go, “I don’t believe in God.” But that wasn’t the question. Spiritual health is, why do you think you’re on the planet? What is your deepest sense of meaning and purpose? You can find that in your relationship with God. You can find it in your relationship with others. You can find it in meaningful work. But one of the things I’ve noticed is that when people don’t have a sense of meaning, and don’t have a sense of purpose, they’re much more likely to get depressed.
Tana Amen, BSN RN:
Well, and science actually show, some of the studies show that people live longer when they have a sense of purpose beyond themselves. Something bigger than themselves that they believe in. It is an important thing for your mental and physical health, to have something larger than yourself that you believe in. And one thing, every kid goes through this phase, I think of, “It’s not fair. It’s not fair.” Life is not fair. I used to tell our daughter this when she was little, she would always, “It’s not fair.” I’m like, whoever told you life was going to be fair? Fair is a place with bad food and farm animals. It’s not fair. No one promised you life was going to be fair. The better question is, why is the world a better place? Because you are allowed. That’s the better question. What are you doing to make it better? Because that changes the question in your head. It sets you up to be more in control, to be more responsible, to be more empowered.
Daniel G Amen, MD:
There’s actually the father of stress psychology, his name’s Hans Selye, coined a term many, many years ago called egoistic altruism. Which is where altruistic, giving to others, without expecting anything back, because it’s good for us.
Tana Amen, BSN RN:
Right. Because it feels good.
Daniel G Amen, MD:
It actually lowers our stress. As you said, it helps us live longer. When it’s all about you, then it quickly will lose its level of happiness.
Tana Amen, BSN RN:
Right.
Daniel G Amen, MD:
And level of meaning.
Tana Amen, BSN RN:
Even small things. Like we’re stuck inside the house, everybody’s like, “Well, I can’t go do volunteering.” The kids even asked me, “Why do you spend so much time answering people’s questions? What are you getting out of that?” Honestly, it makes me feel good. It makes me feel good to go on social media, and see questions, and help answer people’s questions and just connect.
Daniel G Amen, MD:
To connect.
Tana Amen, BSN RN:
Right.
Daniel G Amen, MD:
Yeah. Ultimately, the spiritual circle is about connection. For me, when I describe it in lectures, I’ll often draw on a board a cross. And it’s just a coincidence it’s a cross. But it’s, what’s your relationship with God? What’s your relationship with the planet? Because if the planet’s not healthy, you’re not going to be healthy. You need healthy water, and healthy air, healthy food in order to thrive. What’s also your relationship with the past. For me, that’s my grandfather, who I was so connected to. And what’s your relationship with the future? For me, that’s my five grand babies and my grandchildren.
Tana Amen, BSN RN:
I thought you didn’t believe in coincidence?
Daniel G Amen, MD:
In what?
Tana Amen, BSN RN:
Coincidence.
Daniel G Amen, MD:
Why? Oh. Anyways. Those are sort of the major areas that help you be spiritually fit. Which people won’t talk about spiritual fitness. They talk about physical fitness. They rarely talk about mental fitness.
Tana Amen, BSN RN:
But they’re connected.
Daniel G Amen, MD:
Or relationship fitness. And they’re all connected to how your brain works. So, reset. Create a one page miracle for yourself. Look at it every day. And then ask yourself every day, is my behavior getting me what I want? I have a new book coming March 2nd called, Your Brain Is Always Listening. And there’s a whole chapter on the addicted dragons. And how to manage addictions. I have a brand new 12 step program, and the 12 steps don’t start with the typical 12 step, my life is out of control. It starts with, what do you want? And then step two. Well, is the addiction causing you to not what you want? That’s how you know when your life is out of [crosstalk [00:10:56].
Tana Amen, BSN RN:
Yeah. I think the ‘why.’ We underestimate why mindset. We have all the… There’s so many self-help books on losing weight, getting healthy. It’s like the shelves are loaded with them. But if you don’t address mindset, if you don’t address the ‘why.’ Why are you doing this? What is your purpose? It’s very difficult to do the ‘what,’ if you can’t connect to why? The ‘why’ needs to be addressed first.
Daniel G Amen, MD:
Well, we are grateful. Part of our purpose is serving you, and helping you have a better brain and a better life. That requires being a brain warrior, being armed, prepared and aware to win the fight of your life. So we’re grateful for you. What did you learn? Write it down. Take a picture of it. Post it on any of your social media sites, #BrainWarriorsWayPodcast. We’ll be grateful. You can also go to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. Leave us a comment, question or a review. We announced three winners this week. And you may win a signed copy of either Tana’s book, The Relentless Courage of A Scared Child or my new book, The End of Mental Illness. Stay with us.
Tana Amen, BSN RN:
If you’re enjoying The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, please don’t forget to subscribe, so you’ll always know when there’s a new episode. And while you’re at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast.
Daniel G Amen, MD:
If you’re interested in coming to Amen Clinics, use the code Podcast 10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com. For more information, give us a call at (855) 978-1363.
