julie maddox who i call the pain the pain detective you are the wellness coach so these guys started out being guests in the now we've just retired you know thirty five shows later we're all doing it together so  case this is your first time tuning into well you show i spent twenty five years working in hospitals teaching people how to manage stress how to live well and i just felt like people should get so sick and so it's a it's really to me a miracle to be here with  television you know studio and sharing these tools with people if you are checking in to us live on facebook you can always go to the well you show dot com and find out some of our passion so we just did a really good what on stress and a full plate so today we are going to be talking about this and one of these guys actually came up with the idea change and i'm talking about healthy changes that we've tried to make you know and that is easier said than done but i asked these ladies to think about some changes that have made successfully and then there were some that you had no no no so i think what i would like to do first is identify what are some healthy changes that you guys in your lives have made for yourselves so can you think of what you can definitely definitely exercise added since the age of twenty at various levels  he's never was exercise or somehow he made his way to the fitness place and he's already by go wing and do it he is trying to sing these use treadmill or bike but he's always showing pictures of the thing he's already lost like ten pounds and i said to him you know he said he had worked out this hard since boot camp so shows he really wasn't but he's just and i guess i bring that up because i'm not to give his each away but let me tell you what he's retired all right let's just say that and for him it's the changes happening just a little bit later in life because you said twenty's early twenty's so we can change any time yeah yeah yeah change for you so i'd say it's a matter of change of attitude yeah i like this things that i used to take personally i'm like that's you know that's something's going on them and it's not about me you know what it's added to but your attitude is the result of the change in your mindset yes does that make sense is more more of the yeah yeah and what i love about our show is that i usually don't tell these ladies what we're talking about so that this is just all very real sincere even when we drop our bikes you know we don't rehearse anything you know it's i yeah it's just for me it's like a wonderful wonderful thing we get to do i want to give you one of mine it's one of my newer changes within the past couple years and that has been to meditate him so do you meditate you mean oh mike you sue meditation every day every day like out like you know with well so here's the thing that's not what it is though no i know yeah but yes so what i try to do well i'm given seekers who are not given a secret i'll come back to that remind me later ok so i want to get just one more change from each of us up here on our board here got one julie i got better at scheduling  letting go of letting go of things that i felt had to be a certain way you know and you question yeah then we talked about this once no no no no that you're actually making me think of a big change i made in my life and for me it was that it didn't have to be the right way i was never a perfectionist but it always had to be the right way and if somebody could do it the right way guess what i did i did it  because i would let them do it i don't know is that kind of similar in a sense or jest or or just changing what the expectation is i think it's almost too big to even say just things had to be a certain way because they were going to judge everything from the outside to the inside now and or are you know maybe they have more money so even though my services are a plus but mom my house isn't that they would judge me by that right letting go of that by letting go of other people so you know what i call that is the changes in how other people don't influence your life anymore you're like other people's opinions but that makes sense yeah it's good i don't have to kind of like you know i'm vehicle or write opinions because what you described to me was an opinion that i would have all of you know this or my perceptions but yes thank you that i grew up with a father who was a doctor and so he was a perfectionist but it had to be done the right way so there is the right way to sweep the floor or there is the right way to make a bed there is the right way to put the dishes in the dishwasher there's right way to paint you know and and so for me it was about being done the right way i went away on vacation i had all the stuff we put out into the car and one of my housemates packed the car have packed the whole thing because they didn't do it the right way oh why five they were so pissed yo so so pissed it changed my life because i realized carol it doesn't have to be done your way and your way isn't necessarily the right way and so i changed to good enough yeah and right good enough that's all it has to be now is good enough now these are things that you guys have you gone had any lately so we call relapse and where it kind of i mean i think that is a positive term some people hear the word relapse and they think of it isn't that good if but the truth is i think of it as something positive because i can learn from it you know and what i like to do is think about we're cruising down the highway and we decide we well maybe we don't but we just got to pull off into the rest stop you know do a little fixing up and come back on the road again so when i used to work in a hospital for people with their mental health kids what there's a lot of health conditions you don't get to control when it shows up as my diabetes you can manage it but it still can i decided well forget you we're not going to work any more medication and i were a lot of people felt like a feel your because they'd be making changes even even we talked about harvey in our last but but even if you look at what's happening today with the opioid a crisis and just addiction and how people can try and get sober and it takes so many times in order to be able to  be further and further and further periods that we were talking earlier that guess what we're going to have failure along the way but that failure can also teach us what my word is for failure o i brought you guys selfies dean book the war tools for self esteem so here's what failure is so if you think about it i'll make sure i get it all appear all right people think failure is a negative but it is here's why it's a positive because it's about finding and important lessons using paper what are you going to do for yourself to be a better influence for students but he had me yeah and we had a discussion and i started running with the rest is an interesting story so yeah i lost thirty pounds know more people told me i needed to chop stop the more i did it you know which is really the thing about change we can't tell somebody to change you know in the more you push people to change the more they're going to fight you and push back at you but i've had a few relapses  see i'm i'm glad to say that i haven't gotten all the way down to i once did you know but my nails are pretty short right now cause i was in a little bit of a readout i am owed you know and it's catching myself and i guess that's that's what i also want this to even talk a little bit about is that you know when you had brought up this subject to his you know kind of having a lapse or really so for me this you know this was well sometimes i go back to doing it and not even trigger because because again any time we're talking about changes in our behavior you know what we also have to be aware of and you said it hit you when this professor feeling you also have to have a feeling you know that's more powerful to kind of pull you were not direction than to stay where you are too and you said it when you cut it you said it hit you like yeah yeah yeah exactly know and for me i could tell you the defining moment was here too i was embarrassed that was the feeling yeah i was embarrassed because there was a time when i just did one on one fitness coaching and i remember this this client  didn't matter what i taught him were told him but one day his chauffeur said something and it embarrassed him and and and then also he started changing his eating habits and exercise he found time but it was being embarrassed by his chauffeur yeah i think a birth mate is a powerful feeling you know that we can kind of for me it was the other thing was not being a hypocrite now do as i say lights in the studio ok this i have shown you guys before but it might you know let me see if the shows are all right so let's say your mindset that's the behavior kind equals awareness got me all right for hopefully people that are watching this can see this if not well write it all down to get on the show but where hughes will let you use her as an example all right so you have this awareness well first off you would let other things bother you right and then all of a sudden so let's let's say this happens first thing in the morning for you like for some reason your mind set you said  you start to get worried about something somebody was going to think or feel about you so i want to put the the thought this well i won't put what we're working on which is the mind set ok but it doesn't occur to you until later that night like oh my god i did it again this morning when carol said there is and i took it this way so it kind of the awareness that you didn't do the change happens way later but then so here's we have the other change but here's what i want you to recognize each day it's the process because then you go here and then the change is i so let me just make my seeds down here because these are going to change all right so that's the mindset or work around mindset then what happens in jail is and i've watched this with you i mean i've talked to enough to know that this is you've done this is that each time each day what is up happening is it gets a little closer and closer until you do it and you say oh  and then there are days i'm pretty sure you have these where it's going this sneak in and he's last seen and it's going at the same time and then yes ther really that's how whatever the change is we kind of do my brother in his exercise right well he says he's going to go and there's a day he doesn't but then he realizes ok i didn't go you know and so stead of it being a whole week of not exercising maybe it's only goes a couple days or a day but our awareness that we're doing it begins to get better and better and better until we actually then are aware before we do it so i'm biting my leg again here you know and maybe i don't realize it until it's later in the night now like oh my god i've been sitting here for three hours you know doing this but then if the next time i can catch it after two hours and in one hour you know and and  the idea think to not look at it as a failure right right right i mean i think of it has to look at it as a lesson like even if you look at it as a failure see it as more of the failure equals lesson not you screwed up again kind of thing because to think that you would go from this to that is it going to happen that's like saying you're going to go run a marathon and you just run around the block yeah it's not going to happen and i think what's important about this too is the people get down on themselves and they say oh well i said i was going to do this and i didn't do this or i'm not going to do that screw it kind of they call it the pit of the growing just kind of gradually now i want to talk about there's one other thing i want to talk about we're going to use or come back to our list here but i don't get it without not going to everything off our changes t me all right because here's the other really important thing that i think is so important is when i started working in a hospital twenty five years ago here's what one of the things it was a dual diagnosis unit and it was around addiction and i remember hearing them say relapse is impossible it's probable and i remember thinking very very positive thing to tell somebody but when i came to realizes i was part of the disease you know that it just kind of goes like this so if you have this did feel kind of be back here again and and i always learn this lesson it's not what happens i what you do about it and so really i want to talk about this is a debt crisis that's a good point you know because it isn't so much about failure or let's say i'm biting my nails or i don't meditating or you fall back in your mindset or you just don't exercise or don't manage your time you know it's not about what you didn't do it's a becoming aware of it seeing it and then be devastated would just go there to the point where i don't get that low yeah right yeah no i think that's i mean that's really important point for you if you see what she just did i do it again what you just did though what we're really need to do and that is it's really important to measure to have something that kind of keeps you on track you know whether that's a measurement tool i know julie worker i work with i would do my ten thousand steps and she looks at her watch and it only says four thousand she has this feedback saying oh you better get moving because you're not doing what you said you were going to do and one of the tools i made up when i started meditating was i made a little chart it was thirty one days and it was thirty two columns thirty one and another box and every day that i did my meditation i checked off the box the day i didn't do it i didn't do it and what i found happening was is that the number of days that i didn't do it there was a lot to start but then i got better and better and better as i kept doing it and so the a recent exercise i really am very oppositional and writing down but i in early spring i was heading that way and i did it and it really made a difference and you know once again i'm kind of flowing through the slaps thing again but it really made a difference and i've been fighting it for years because what it does is it teaches us to be a little more mindful you know doesn't make a list actually you can tell us what you do because the yeah i want to touch on that yeah so so so i went to the princeton buddhist meditation  group with my girlfriend almost two years ago maybe three years ago and i didn't think i could meditate because i couldn't make my mind be quite right but when i sat down and she knew the teacher was a buddhist nun it kind of ran the group she said someone you knew to meditation she said so i'm going to give you my really simple instructions because it's not about making your mind be quite sit down shut up and see what happens and i said i can do that so i started with one minute and that's what i wanted to share is that when you're making a change you don't even have to make it the big change start with a very very small step a baby steps you know so that we set ourselves up for success rather th still i can't i can't meditate it's so i never saw it any other way then that way you have to be quiet you have to shut off the thoughts but you know what like we talked on other shows what works for me to you know go to that place you go to the you know the nature to nature yeah yeah and i'm like why can't this be my meditation as it is as long as i'm not just because you don't mind for when you're there yeah and i think that's the most important part of it is really about it's training our attention you know because it's really what meditation is about doing pushups with your mind so that you can decide where do you want to focus your attention or like because your attention run over you so that's actually one of my next books it's half getting your mind to mind you so be honest yeah i brought you guys approve copy today to seize you  and get all these out just so so so i mean i'm glad we got to talk about this because i mean these are just our examples of life changes but anybody who is really working on a change what i always is pick a very strong feeling feeling to encourage you you know could feelings get us moving more than anything else embarrassed to could be embarrassed you know that sometimes if you can use the anchor feeling to kind of move you in that direction but the other thing to julie said is it is not just once they it's the journey you know towards step destination and the other thing is that we might take the tours and the most important part about traveling and getting stuck on a detour is recognizing when you're lost and in kind of coming back to where you were and the other thing that we can use now with our phones when we get lost in real detours well we have technology to help us stay on track  to i know somebody uses the weight watchers up and just keeps track of the points you know that way so as i go up guess what you only got five points less of what are you going to do where you going to eat you know fifty five points around there so that we can actually use technology had a healthy way you know not to kind of run over us we were saying earlier about sometimes so you need to set turn your phone off like i think there are some changes that people need to make it like leave their phones yeah yeah know like i can't imagine being at dinner and having my phone and my father allowing that to happen i know they are deaf or like you know and so those are some changes i think that i think about how other people got to change those are the ones i come up with for