Episode 91 The Signs You’re Living In Your Reactive Survival Brain: Interview with Dr. John Demartini

Chris McDonald: Welcome to the Holistic Counseling Podcast, where you discover diverse wellness modalities, advice on growing your integrative practice, and grow confidence in being your unique self. I'm your host, Chris McDonald. I'm so glad you're here for the journey.

Welcome to today's episode of the Holistic Counseling Podcast. I'm your host, Chris McDonald. I am excited to hear from today's guest, Dr. John d Martini. He's here to talk about the signs you're living in your reactive survival brain versus living in your self-governing thrival brain and how to overcome it.

He is a world leaning human behavior specialist, researcher, bestselling author, educator, and founder of the D Martini Method. A revolutionary tool in modern psychology harnessing almost five decades of research across multiple disciplines. Dr. D Martini shares his life, business, financial relationship, and leadership empowerment strategies with people all over the globe, enabling them to transform their lives.

According to their highest values. An interesting fact about him is he nearly died weeks before his 18th birthday, and that experience shifted him into a different life course. Welcome to the Holistic Counseling Podcast, Dr. D Martini.

Dr. John Demartini: Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, it's great

Chris McDonald: to have you here. So can you share with my listeners a little bit more about yourself and.

You have a lot going on. I know we talked before , we start hit record.

Dr. John Demartini: So, uh, you know, my best way to describe me is that I research, I write, yeah, I teach and I travel and that's about all I'm good at. Rest of it I delegate out because I'm not that competent in those areas. I learn a long time ago to find what you excel at and stick to that.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. That's a good life lesson.

Dr. John Demartini: Yeah. I, I research, right? Travel, teach. That's about it. I, I don't have much strength in those other areas, so I haven't driven a car in 32 years, and I haven't cooked since I was 24. And I, I delegate everything.

Chris McDonald: Oh, that's great. I like how you sum it all up into categories,

That's very

Dr. John Demartini: clever. I have a joke that, you know, I went to my girlfriend, my, my wife passed away a number of years ago, and I, oh, I'm sorry. My boyfriend and I. I said, if I was to delegate love making to George Clooney, would you still love me? And she said, I would love you even more . So I, I figure that delegation has a lot of places it could be useful.

Yes.

Chris McDonald: definitely. That's a bad job. That's funny. No. Uh, but yeah, the, the listers here. A lot of times I've talked to them about, you know, a lot of us are business owners and we own private practices and many try to do it all. But I think that you brought a good point is that there's some things we're just not that good at.

Right.

Dr. John Demartini: Well I learned, you know, when I was 27 years old, I went to a bookstore. It was Walden books. I remember Walden books and they, um, had a section on kind of self-help and. And I found this book called The Time Trap by Al McKinsey. And in there I devoured this book, cornered every corner of the book and underlined it, that kind of thing, and extracted some of the essence of what I felt was important out of it.

And I created a chart on a piece of paper. I divided the piece of paper into six columns, five vertical lines, six columns, equal spaced. And the first column I wrote down everything I did in. From the time I got up to the time I went trip, oh yeah. Everything that I did in a day and I divided into professional and personal.

And I looked at that and as I was writing that, I mean, I didn't write generalities business. I wrote down, made this call, ordered this supply, worked with this client. I went down and, and wrote exactly what I actually did with my muscle activities per day, throughout the day. And I thought about it over.

Three month period and thought about what might I be doing over those three months to make sure I concluded everything that I might be doing. I made an exhaustive list and as I was doing that, I was looking, you know, I do a lot of stuff that yeah, is lower priority and not really the thing I went to professional school for and I'm not getting paid for it and it's kind of devaluing my time and no wonder I'm not really the most productive I can beely.

So there's a lot of like just making the list.

Chris McDonald: Isn't it? Yeah, for sure. In the

Dr. John Demartini: second column I wrote down, how much does it produce per hour? Because I, I measured my contribution to somebody else by how much they're willing to value it by paying, and if I'm not, if I'm doing something that's not worth any value to anybody, I'm obviously devaluing my time and I'm not making a contribution to other people.

So I put a dollar value next to it to see if I'm actually making any sort of contribution to anybody enough where they would be willing to pay it. And, uh, that was eye-opening because then I realized that there were some things that really produced a lot and other things that didn't produce, but zero.

And I has a whole lot of zeros on there, on that list. But I then reprioritized that list according to what produced the most, to least to most. Just cuz that way I could find out what I'm actually contributing and making some sort of contribution. And I was amazed when I got that list I was going, there's absolutely no reason I have anybody to look at except myself about why I'm not possibly producing and having the most fulfillment because I found that I have a lot of fulfillment making a different people's lives, particularly when there's a fair exchange and I wasn't doing it.

I was too busy doing other things that I thought were important, that really were. My area of expertise, but I was holding onto, after I finished that list and prioritize it and re-listed it, I rewrote it according to the one that produced the most to least. I also decided, you know what? I'm gonna start charging for some of those things.

It's my time. I, I wasd. Yeah, of course. Mm-hmm. . And so that helped. In the third column I wrote down, how much meaning does it. On a one to 10 scale, 10 being absolutely inspiring, where I transcendental thinking about it, I get tears in my thinking about it. Go, wow, I get to do this. It's amazing. Down to, oh, I gotta do that.

And I broke it down based on a one to 10 scale, 10 being highly inspiring and engaging, and intrinsically called and rest of being extrinsically motivating to me. To do it, I had to do it. Gotta do it. And I then made that list and that was eye opening. And then I prioritized that according to, from 10 down to one.

It just so happened that some of the tens were also the ones that produced the most. So I was very thankful for that cuz those are the things I couldn't wait to get up in the morning and do, and the people couldn't wait to come and get it because it was a win-win to everybody. And then I reprioritized those two and I looked at that and I go, Ooh, I can see where I need to be putting my focus.

I need to, you know, go into the direction where it's meaningful and. Productive. In the next column I wrote down, how much would it cost me to delegate that if I was to delegate that information that that particular job duty to somebody else with all the costs, not just the salary, but parking and paperclips and equipment and the space usage and training and time off and.

Bonuses. I mean, I got it down to the penny and then I put the spreads there between what it produced per hour versus what it costs per hour, and I reprioritized that. In the next column I wrote down how much time do I actually spend on that on average per day, and on the last column I wrote down the final prioritization.

So taking all the variables together, what is the final prioritization and what do I need to be focusing? First, what do I need to delegate? And then I layered that into 10 layers and I put job descriptions for each layer. And then I went out and hired somebody to do that lowest one and the next lowest one, and the next lowest one.

And I started out, when I did this, I had one assistant working for me. When I finished 18 months later, I had five doctors, 12 staff. A file square foot clinic and I was making net profit more than 10 times what I was doing. No kidding. Working more efficiently and doing only what I was loving to do that produced and brought fulfillment, and I never went back from that.

I realized every time I do anything less than what is inspiring. That's productive. I devalue myself, distract myself, disempower myself, and I create chaos and I end up bringing my blood and glucose down into the, from the executive center where I'm now the executive and leader down into the mi. Now I'm impulsive, instinctual instead of actually present.

Yeah. I go, I'm not doing that. I'm, I've delegated that and I've hired people for the last 40 years to not have to do those things again.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. That's so inspiring though, too, to think about really, what is it that you value and what's important to you and and I always tell therapists too, is sometimes we do these tasks that's like, You need to ask yourself, why am I doing this?

Why am I the one sending this email that somebody could help me with this? And you know, I really encourage people to really look at that and figure out what is, how are you best serving the clients you work with?

Dr. John Demartini: Exactly. I, I had a funny thing happen. I do a lot of traveling and, uh, In fact, I live traveling pretty well and I was coming in from Australia and I got in probably about eight o'clock at night.

And then I was early in my office. I I, I rarely go to my office in Houston. I have an office there, but I'm rarely there. Like, I haven't even been there. It's been about a year. And um, so I popped into the office and I forgot to unlatch the door and I went back to my office and got my computer and I was working quietly and my staff started coming in and they knew I was coming in town.

So they knew there's gonna be a lot of delegations. Get ready, get ready for the guy. But they didn't know I was in the back. And so this couple came in that were husband, wife that worked for me and uh, Keith, the gentleman, I heard him say to his wife, well, get ready for a whirlwind. You know what happens when he gets in?

He's gonna delegate lots of new stuff. We're gonna have a busy day. We do. And then he says, we do. Dang, there everything for him except wipe his butt. And he didn't know I was in the back. So for fun, I got a delegation sheet, which I have delegation forms, and I put some Kleenex tissues that I had in my office with a paper clip and said, 10 o'clock white butt

Cute. So it was a joke, but it was true. He, he knew that he was gonna be more, but the real truth. People feel more fulfilled when they're right at that border of a busy day. Not overwhelming, but full. They actually have a more fulfilling day. So I learn if I can keep my team busy, now I have, I delegate that to somebody else to do, but they keep the team busy and um, that way there's no idle time cuz idle time put you in the Amy and productive time puts you in the executive center where you're engaged.

Oh, that's,

Chris McDonald: that's good to know that, that really, that's what's gonna help you be more effective too through your day.

Dr. John Demartini: Yeah, I, I'm, I'm very grateful that I've learned to delegate it cuz I don't want to do things that I'm not inspired by it, my life goes by too quick. Yeah. To go by and, you know, if you, a quiet life of desperation as Henry David Throw would say, is not the life that I envisioned.

I envisioned living an inspired life, doing what I love. Beautifully paid. So my vocation and vacation are the same, so I don't have Monday morning blues, Wednesday hump days. Thank God it's Fridays and week frigging ends. I wanted a life that is designed by me. And if we don't get up in the morning and design it how we want it, other people are gonna get up and try to design it for us.

Exactly. And they're not dedicated to our fulfillment.

Chris McDonald: Oh, I hear that. So can you talk about Survival Brain? I know you were talking a little bit about that. Bring in the amygdala. , what is Survival Brain?

Dr. John Demartini: You know, there's different ways of describing it. William James called it the higher mind and lower mind.

Some people call it systems one and or system two and symptom one. Uh, some people call it, uh, executive center in the amygdala. There's many different angles of looking at it or, um, you know, thrival versus survival, that kind of thing. But I really believe that the brain is set up for emotional emergencies.

And it's also set up for an extraordinary inspired pursuit of something meaningful. In designing with foresight, we have foresight and hindsight. Hindsight is the least effective, except in emergencies. We gotta react quick and then, then think. But in most of our lives, it's not an emergency unless you're not delegating.

And then, um, you can actually live with foresight and plan and design it. And that's what Al McKenzie showed, that the people that are, that take the time with foresight to envision. How they want their life to strategically plan strategies to do it and to mitigate the risk and anticipate it, and transcend fantasies of immediate gratification for a long term pursuit of it.

You build momentum incrementally to achieve something and you have less survival mentality. If we, if we don't fill our day with high priority actions that really inspire us, our day fills up with low priority distractions that don't. One is an inspiring, you know, thrival, and the other one is a uninspiring survival mental.

So I'm a firm believer of prioritization of life to help bring the executive center in line to anticipate and anticipate and structure your life in such a way where you're doing what you love on a daily basis, and you have less time for all the distractions that most people are trapped in.

Chris McDonald: Oh, I think that's a perfect way.

Good reminders too about really for our inspiring life to really look at how we're planning our days and, and what is inspiring

Dr. John Demartini: to us. Exactly. You know, I just don't do it. I, people say you learn to say thank you, but no, thank you very tactfully that I ask myself, is that really the highest party thing I could be doing?

No. And I tell him, I says, I don't want to give. Halfway job. Um, and, and I have other priorities and I don't wanna, I don't wanna do something that's not gonna give my all to, and you deserve to have somebody do that, not me. And I just tell you, say it tactfully. Thank you. But no, thank you. I I don't wanna be distracted by that cuz I, I know clearly what it is when we're, when our day is filled with things that really do mean something and are inspiring to us, that how do you fulfilling it's easy to say.

Cause you're full. Yeah, exactly. So if you don't get up and fill your day with those things, then you're gonna end up having people. Easily distract you. The entropy that takes over when you don't ne and tropi your life and focus it and prioritize. It is a feedback to let you know you're not living authentically.

Cuz your authentic self is, revolves around what's really highest on your value. So if you are honest with yourself about what it is, I love teaching. So if I fill my day with it, I got a massively grateful day throughout the end of the. And I just say, thank you. What an amazing day ahead. But if I don't fill it and o other people's gonna fill it, you know, things are gonna, you know, that weird stuff just comes in.

It just un the unexpected distractions. The same thing with money. If you don't put your money into asset accumulation, you attract unexpected bills. It's a lesson. And, and people who don't value themselves, it's very important to, um, to value what you do. I always say, I, I wanted to work, not because I had to.

I wanted to work because I loved. So I wanted to make sure my passive income was at least 50 times the actual income I make working. So I just work cuz I love to do it.

Chris McDonald: So what are the signs that you're living in a more reactive survival

Dr. John Demartini: brain? Well, you're distracted. First of all, anything that you infatuate with and are impulsively drawn to because you're conscious of the upsides and unconscious of the downsides to, it's going to occupy space in time of your mind and distract you and take up space in time of your mind.

It's gonna be preoccupying you and you're not present or. You're not centered. You're eccentrically pushed off to the impulsive distraction that you're addicted to or seeking. And the same thing if you're resenting something. You know, you're conscious of the downsides, unconscious of the upsides, and now you have an instinct to avoid it and you now have that running your mind and now your mind is basically filled with this static and noise that's, you know, bombarding you from external perceptions that are false attribution biases generally.

And that basically keeps you in this noise system instead of being clear conscious. But if. Ask the right questions that balances out your mind and see the downsides to what's up and the upsides to what's down and bring it back into center. Stabilize yourself. You automatically get the blood glucose, oxygen going in the fore brain where you're more objective or you're more neutral and you're more inspired, and you're more, in a sense, proactive instead of reactive to these impulse and instincts that the Amy.

So accustomed to, you know, seeking prey and avoiding predator mentality and our two fears, the basic two fears that run all of our lives is the fear of loss of the fantasy that we're seeking and the fear of gain of the pre, the predator and nightmare that we're trying to avoid. And so every time we allow ourselves these polarized perceptions, we're adding fear into our life as a feedback to let us know we're not back on, on track and an objective path that inspires us.

Everything is a feedback to try to get us on track to what's authentic and what's me. I was

Chris McDonald: curious what your perception is of social media and people that get addicted to that if, if that's more of a survival

Dr. John Demartini: brain. Well, it depends. I mean, you can use so social media strategically with a plan and make a difference in it.

That's, I don't watch social media. I. Put information on social media that tries to inspire. I don't get distracted by it. I have somebody else that takes care of that. I do believe that social media is neutral in how you use it. What is meant matters. If you let the external world distract you by what you do that's sensational on that, then you know you just look at yourself.

Don't blame the social media. That'd be a false attribution bias. It's easy through the social media to distract people with it, but that's still your responsibility to select and prioritize what and how you use that tool. Cuz it's a tool that can be a distractor, it can tool to be something that makes a huge difference in the world.

So how do you use it? You wanna ask yourself that. You don't wanna blame something. You know people who can blame that. Whether that social media's taking up. Well turn it off. only put, only put on there. What you feel you wanna bring is your message out there, but don't sit there and get involved in social gangs.

I have a guy that somehow got my email and, um, I sent him a response back the first time. I said, thank you for your, for your response. But if you contact this number, they can help you. And that was it. And now when he sends it in, it just, he now knows, it's like a, a Skinner operant conditioning. He's now getting punished if he tries to reach me and he is getting rewarded if he goes and asks them.

Yeah. So people get the lesson. Eventually it realize that I'm a busy individual and I, if I don't take, you know, and prioritize my life, then other people are gonna occupy space and time in my mind.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. That's it. We gotta set those

Dr. John Demartini: boundaries. Yeah. Or just, well, I don't even call 'em a boundary. I just say prioritization.

Prioritization, yeah. Yeah. Just if I feel it with high priorities, I don't have to be worried about distracted by low priorities. Really simple. So how do you

Chris McDonald: know if you're living in more of the thrival brain?

Dr. John Demartini: Well, if you have to ask the question, you're not , am I? Because if you are, if you are. You're grateful for your life.

Mm-hmm. , you know, you're, you're loving what you're doing. You're inspired by the vision you're holding in your mind, which is spontaneous. You're enthusiastically working on it. You're present while you're doing it, and you're certain about your skill. I call those the six transcendentals. You know, Peter Lynch and his one up on Wall Street back in the nineties, um, you know, he was a pretty good guy on, on, um, the, the financial markets and, and the fidelity.

And, uh, in his book he said something really cool. He said, he says, when I go and do my technical and quantitative analysis on the companies that he's about to buy in stock and. He says, once I do all that, I get a narrowed down to a handful of companies. I then get on a jet and I fly over to the headquarters and I walk around and meet people and introduce myself and, and get to know 'em cuz I'm about to buy, you know, a billion dollars worth of their stock.

And in the process of doing it, I wanna know them. And he says, I'm looking for six things. I'm looking for people who are grateful for their job. And because the way they do that, they go, they say, I love doing this. Instead of, I got to do that cuz they're, when you're not grateful for your job, you have imperatives.

When you're grateful for your job, you are inspired. He says, I'm looking for people who love what they're doing. Inspired by the vision of the company enthusiastically, energetically working. They're skilled and they're certain about their skills, and they're very present when you're interacting with them and present with their work, which means they're fully engaged.

He says, if I do that and I invest money in that, I will make money. My clients will make money. The company will make money, and it will serve vast numbers of people with a highly qualified exemplifying staff. And that helps Society, helps technology. It helps.

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Chris McDonald: So how, if you realize you're in more of the survival brain, so what el, what can you do to get out of that?

If you realize you're very distracted, you're not feeling centered, you're not

Dr. John Demartini: present well, you're designed not to be. If you're not prioritizing. Prioritizing is important. Yeah. Your, your life is giving you feedback constantly. Your physiology will create symptoms. If you don't, your psychology create noise and scatter and self depreciations.

If you don't, your friends will create vi volatility and emotional drama. If you don't, everything is around you is pushing you back into authenticity. Cuz the second you go back to priority, it starts to flow. And what's interesting is most people, if you ask 'em what is priority, they're, they're. I've been doing a value determination process for 45 years as I'm teaching for 50.

And, uh, most people, if you ask 'em what their values are, they're gonna tell you a bunch of social idealisms instead of actually what their life demonstrates. And I'm only interested in what their life really demonstrates. I was in South Africa speaking at a big conference there about, uh, about 5,000 people.

And, uh, Richard Brans and I were doing this program there and, and, um, I asked, I stood up at the very beginning and I said, listen, how many of you wanna be financially in. And all the hands went up and half. Both of 'em had both, both hands up and some had a leg in the air. And I said, okay, great. Now how many of you are.

And all the hands went down. I said, isn't it interesting you have a fantasy about being financial independent, but you actually don't live it? So I'm gonna challenge you and show you that your, your highest value isn't financial independent. Your highest value is living the lifestyles of something beyond yourself and buying consumables that depreciate in value.

And you wonder why you're struggling financially. So we're gonna, we're gonna crack the whip today, and we're gonna get grounded here, and we're gonna make you realize that. The hierarchy of your values is dictating your destiny, and you need to be clear about what's really truly important to you instead of lying to yourself, cuz that is self-defeating and people don't realize that they live vicariously through other people and other people's brands instead of actually honestly looking integrity at what is truly invaluable to them.

And their life is demonstrating that I have, I have women that say, my kids are everything to me, but they're out working all day long. Or, you know, I really want to grow a business, but I can't seem to get it off the ground. Because they're focused on their kids and they're basically incongruent with what they say they want because they're envying other people and trying to imitate other people instead of being true to themselves.

And so the first thing, if you want to get outta survival, Is to get really truthful about what your life is demonstrating as you're committed to, and what's important to you. And that's why I, I call determining your values first, then start structuring your life according to priority, according to what's truly found, not your fantasies and idealisms and the nvs you have of the people.

So

Chris McDonald: I know you have the D martini method. Is this part of that? No,

Dr. John Demartini: the Dmar method is different. That's the, that's the value I have. The dmar value determination process. Determination, okay. Yeah, that's on my website. Dr dmar.com. They can do that for free. It's private, that's separate. The DEMARTINI method is a series of very precise questions that assist people in discovering a hidden order in what they think is apparent chaos.

And to help them see what they're unconscious of, because it's making 'em ask questions to make them fully conscious, to override the things they're unconscious of so they can see both sides to life. So they're less likely to be in survival mode, reacting with impulses and instincts and see both sides and be present.

So it's a, it's a science, it's a methodical science that they're working on it for 50 years to help people transcend survival mode so they get on with doing something that's meaningful and then live by the priorities that they're truly valu. Not the fantasies that they're subordinating to by the collective herd, instinct and impulse.

Chris McDonald: And is it sometimes that people take values that they see other people doing around them and live their life? They think that's how they should be living their lives?

Dr. John Demartini: Well, Emerson said, envy is ignorance and imitation is suicide. And uh, Einstein said, my contempt for authorities what made me one, he didn't subordinate to authority.

He didn't subordinate to Philip Leonard, his teacher at the time. He confronted the Nobel Prize winner and found a flaw in his theory. And then that became a feud. But the truth is, he was accurate. So having the courage to stand out in a world that wants you to fit in is the path. Uh, otherwise you're part of the collective hero as Ernest Becker says, instead of the individual hero, and you're basically, um, yeah, it's, it's as long as you put somebody in a pedestal and think they're smarter than you, more successful than you, or more wealthy than you, or.

You know, stable in their relationship. You are more socially savvy than you are. More physically fit than you are more spiritually aware than you. As long as you minimize yourself and exaggerate somebody else, you're going to inject their values and cloud the clarity of your own mission in life, your own purpose in life.

So we're not here to subordinate, to sell to others and live as second at something that's being somebody else. We're here to stand on the shoulders of giants and being first to being our. Yeah,

Chris McDonald: that's, that's really, uh, good for our therapist to remember too, cuz I think it's easy for even us to get in that comparison model.

And, you know, people will now as like social media, for example, post all their success in this, in business. And it's easy for therapists to compare themselves that are in business too. And,

Dr. John Demartini: well, if you compare your, if you have time to compare yourself to somebody else, you're not comparing your own daily actions to your own highest priorities, which is gonna give you the greatest.

Hmm. You know, it was Thorpe the swimmer when they did an interview with him and his coach. Uh, he was about to get up and, you know, about to dive into the water, and he said something that's very pertinent. He says, if I look to my right or left and look at my competitors, I've already lost the race. Yeah. I have to look straight on at my objective.

And become present with the objective and see it in my mind's eye. Perfectly clear. Done. And I'm a firm believer that if you're comparing yourself to others and putting 'em on pedestals or pits, you're gonna minimize or exaggerate yourself, lose your authentically and the power that you have to go do something extraordinary.

But if you put 'em in your heart, And have reflective awareness, which is what the DeMar method's about. See the method is basically asking what specific trait, action or inaction do you perceive this individual displaying or demonstrating that you admire, look up to or despise, look down on most, and then you go in.

Once you define that, so it's not nebulous, you then go to a moment where and when you perceive in yourself. Displaying or demonstrating the same or similar trait inside yourself, and you own that trait 100% quantitatively, qualitatively. So you no longer are too humble or too admiring to proud to admit you got it.

You now own it. The sea or the seeing the scene or the same. Once you do that, you're now coming from a perspective of not putting people above or down. You're not minimizing or exaggerating you. You're present with equanimity and equity and in that place you go back to your executive center, you start moving unrivaled cause you're not distracted by co.

Comparison as, as Wilhelm won the counter of ex, you know, education and, and psychology, and experimental psychology said that it's the sequential contrast that distracts us from being present with the simultaneous reflections. So we, we are here to be reflective, not deflected, and be inspired and, and, and use people as a feedback to discover what we have inside our.

Because as, as it says in the Romans, I think in the New Testament with we're resenting somebody's because they're reminding us of something we're ashamed of, but we're hiding and we're too proud to admit it. And for admiring something, we're too humble to admit it. But the truth is, what if we see in others we have within ourselves and they're there to teach us how to love all parts of ourselves.

And when we, we do, we're not distracted by the impulses and instincts that we're trying to seek or.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. And that comes up a lot with, um, psychology too, with what we do as therapists is learning to love all parts of ourselves. I'm glad you said that. Yeah.

Dr. John Demartini: Well, you know, there's nothing I would say there's absolutely nothing.

I tell people, you know, no matter what you've done or not done, you're worthy of love. So let's start from the basics. The, the moral hypocrisies that we subordinate to, as Paul Direct said, the Nobel Prize winner, he said, it's not that we don't know so much. We know so much that isn't so, so we're basically bombarded and injected.

The values of people that may be projecting their own wounds onto you and calling it moral hypocrisies, and then you're trapped in them instead of actually transcending 'em, as Colberg would say, transcending 'em and living in a view, an overview effect where you see neither of those positive negatives.

You're seeing things just as they are. And not the subjective biases that you misinterpret things with and that liberates you from the, the judgments you have on others of yourself. Cuz it's the judgements that keep us in the trust your world, and it's the love that takes us to the celestial view.

Chris McDonald: That's what I wondered with. What are some of the emotions with like reactive survival brain? Is it more

Dr. John Demartini: all the polarized, all the polarized stakes, the false joys and sorrows and happy and sads and admirations and despise and infatuation resentments and manics and depressions? You know, it's, It's the polarized emotions that are subjectively interpreting things with incomplete awareness.

And, um, it's the transcendent synthesized feelings, which we described. The gratitude, love, inspiration, enthusiasm, certain in presence that where we see both sides simultaneously. The integration of opposites and, and scientific American. Just recently they showed that the media prefrontal cortex, the executive center, is now they've defined it as the seat of the true, authentic self.

And they showed that, uh, it's the integrative center. So that's a pretty, pretty cool thing. Yeah, that is really cool. It's really cool. It just happened and. You know, they've been saying, where's the seat of the soul, if you will. They thought, well, the pine by the car, whatever. But really it's the, the integrative self-governing center where all information is more objective, and we're not subjectively distorting things by our comparisons and judgments of survival.

And that's where we have the most power and we, we have the capacity to live there. We don't have to be sitting there living in survival all day long. Most of our survival are feedback systems to let us know we're not living by priority. And there's

Chris McDonald: a physiological response to living in survival mode too that can really negatively impact you.

Dr. John Demartini: You automatically have autonomic dysregulation syndrome. You automatically have a. Alter to heart rate variability. Your physiology shows it, it, the epigenetic coating from all the imbalances of sympathetic or parasympathetic responses. And, and you can have symptomatology. I just finished teaching a five day program on a thousand conditions in the psychology bind.

There's no doubt that the autonomic nervous system is creating symptoms to let you know with its epigenetic impact on genes and expression and illness and regression every time. We're not living by priority and. It's letting us know it. It's a, we, we've been caught in a palliative monopod, uh, healing modality world that, you know, if you feel good, well then you're healthy and if you feel bad you're not.

But that's false. If a person pigs out and overeats and they wake up feeling snuffed up and cramps and gas, those symptoms aren't disease, those symptoms are a healthy response to somebody who is picked out to let 'em know that. They've not, they've had a, an imbalance perspective. They overeat and they're basically creating symptoms to let 'em know how to eat.

So if we reinterpret our symptoms and use them as a guide to live wisely, we don't sit there, get caught in the trap of an opium of the mass mentality in. The healthcare systems and that's keeping us because it sells it's commercial, but it's not true. And a lot of times we get caught in that we're addicted to immediate gratification instead of focusing on long term vision, embracing the two sides of life evenly.

No, that

Chris McDonald: makes a lot of sense. It's embracing life immediately. Yeah, and I just think of those red flags, right? When our body tells us these signs, we gotta listen instead of pushing

Dr. John Demartini: them. The body is amazingly, the autonomic nervous system is, is controlling every cell of the body other than just if the callies of the kidney is about the only place, it's not controlling.

And so every single cell has receptor sites for acetylcholine, you know, colonic or auric responses. And so if we perceive a challenge without a support and we're not willing to look for where the support is at that time, our auric systems are gonna go off and we're gonna create the symptoms that the sympathetic does.

It's gonna dry up the bowels, the mucus glands, the Bruner are gonna start losing their secretions. We're gonna get blood supply that's going out into the muscles. We're gonna tighten up her muscles. We're gonna have. Indigestion, you know, all of the, the heart rate's gonna go up, the lungs are gonna start dilating.

All the things that we would expect from autonomic responses are measurable, and it's letting us know that we're seeing a challenge without a support, and that we're overlooking the obvious that's there and we're unconscious of it, and it's giving us an opportunity to ask the right question to become present with that unconscious information.

If we do that and we balance it and discover it by asking the proper questions, and we bring ourselves back to homeo. We automatically calm the symptoms down. The symptoms don't need to be there cuz we're now back and seeing things as it is not have we subjectively interpreted them. It's a feedback system.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. Well, I wanted to get to, before we end today, about your book, um, the Seven Secret Treasures. Can you share a little bit of what listeners can expect

Dr. John Demartini: from that book? Well, because I talk about values. In there, it's applications of values. Whenever you're, if you ask a question, whatever I'm studying, reading, learning about how is it helping me fulfill what's most meaningful?

If you make links, neuroplastic in the brain to your executive center by asking that question and answering it, you will not only spot information, absorb the information, retain the information, apply that information more efficiently. If you take a job that you're going to at, at at work. And you ask yourself, how specifically is doing this job helping me do and fulfill what's most meaningful to me?

Your engagement level, productivity level, uh, feeling of ownership level and the job goes up, which increases productivity and profitability. If you go in there and look in finances and ask How is saving and then investing in quality assets, uh, serving me and helping me fulfill the highest values, you increase the probability of overlooking the immediate gratification impulse.

And allow you to start to invest that your money's working for you instead of you working for Ed as a slave. If you do it in a relationship and ask, how specifically is this individual that I love? How is their highest values and what's important to them fulfilling me and mine, then you're not less likely to be in alternating dialogues and trying to force them to be living in your values, which undermines relationship.

You'll appreciate them and love 'em, who they are. When you do, they turn into who you love. If you go out and socially go find out what the world is looking for in your. And find out how fulfilling their niche is helping you fulfill yours. You're more likely to congruently with, in a sense, equanimity and equity serve them, which helps you profit and lead.

If you do the same thing by living by high priorities, you end up helping your physiology and maximize its potential, and you're more inspired by life, which is your spiritual quest. And whatever's highest on your value is your spiritual quest. Whatever it. You're not here to compare yourself to other ideas of what spirituality is.

It's what's inspiring to you. And so the book is about how to master the seven areas of life and how to live congruently so you can go out and have a life that you can say thank you, what you're gonna wanna document every night, what you're grateful for spontaneously, because you had, what an amazing year I had today.

That attitude, that's what the book's about. And when is that coming out? Actually, tomorrow. Oh, .

Chris McDonald: Ironically

Dr. John Demartini: it comes out tomorrow. I haven't, I just finished another book yesterday that's gonna come out in about a month. But this one, the Seven Secret Treasures is coming out tomorrow. So I'm, I'm very inspired

Chris McDonald: by it.

And it's October 24th today.

Dr. John Demartini: It's, it's simple and it's, and it's a fast reading book and it's, and it's practical, very practical stuff you can do immediately to start more empowering the areas of your.

Chris McDonald: So you have a free gift for my listeners on your website. Can

Dr. John Demartini: you share on my website, if you go to just dr d martin.com and look where it says, determine your values.

There's a free, complimentary, private 13 steps. It's 13 questions, and I've been working on this for many, many years to help you discern what's really priority to you. Now you think, why would you do that? I can just tell you what it is. I've been doing this for 45 years, this determination process. I can.

That only one person in 45 years showed me first time congruency. I was amazed. It's most people think they know what's really important to them, and they don't even realize how much they're subordinating to the collective society around them. This helps you go and look at what your life demonstrates, not what you fantasize about, and that's an important step in making clear decision.

That are priority that you will achieve. Because if you set a goal that's not really high in your values, you'll procrastinate, hesitate, frustrate, beat yourself up going, why is it not happening? Why am I sabotaging? Why am I have limiting beliefs? And all this other verbiage that comes around with it. But the second you set real goals with real time frames, with real strategies on something that's really important to you, you will grab outta yourself your great genius that.

Sometimes untapped.

Chris McDonald: What's the best way for listeners to find you and learn more about you?

Dr. John Demartini: The website, dr d martin.com will keep him busy for probably a couple lifetimes, ,

Chris McDonald: couple lifetimes. Okay. And we'll have that in the show notes as well in case you forget what he said as far as the website. But I wanna thank you for coming on the podcast, Dr.

D Martini, this has been great.

Dr. John Demartini: Thank you. I appreciate it. You're great question. You're, this is your, this is your heart, this is your love. These topics and this question. So we're at resonance. Well, I can go on all day on this topic.

Chris McDonald: Absolutely. And don't forget to join us for another episode next Wednesday.

Remember to support the show by rating and reviewing and the app you're listening to so we can continue to get more impactful guests. And again, this is Chris McDonald's sending each one of you much light in love. Till next time, take care. Thank you for listening and supporting the Holistic Counseling podcast.

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