Claudia von Boeselager [00:00:50]:
My guest today is Dr. Steven Sidorov, a UCLA professor, clinical psychologist and world renowned expert in resilience, stress mastery and peak performance. Something I think we all need. At 77, he's still mountain biking and rollerblading proof his methods work. His latest book, the Nine Pillars of Resilience, reveals how to master stress, slow aging and thrive in life. Today we'll explore the science of resilience, turning stress into a strength and staying sharp for life. Please enjoy. Welcome to the Longevity and lifestyle podcast.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:01:25]:
Dr. Sidoroff. Stephen, it's a pleasure to have you with us today.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:01:30]:
Thank you. My pleasure to be here. Looking forward to our conversation.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:01:34]:
I'm very much looking forward to it. I've had some definite personal challenges over the last weeks and so this has come very timely at dealing with stress. But I know in the wider world how many people are suffering with uncertainties, anxieties, stress and even yourself being based in la, so maybe you could share a bit how that's been for you. When these terrible LA fires were happening.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:01:57]:
In January, we all have opportunities all the time to use our resilience muscle. But I had a particular instance over the last month where I was out of the country. Came back on the 11th of January to the fires and to my neighborhood being right in the line of those fires, Topanga Canyon, everybody in my area was evacuated, so I couldn't go home and I could just sit watch on TV what was, what was transpiring. And it's the kind of thing that moment by moment it goes in the wind blows in one direction, you feel, oh, it's gonna miss my house. And then it blows in the other direction, you go, oh no. And so I was experiencing all of these different feelings from relief to despair and during that process, one of the things that I realized was that when I went into the place of despair, I stopped myself and I said, wait a second, your house is still standing and it may not burn down. Okay? So our range of possibilities, which we all have in life, we. There's always this range of possibilities of how something can happen turn out.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:03:27]:
And I stopped myself and I said, okay, I. If it, if it burns down, that's going to be terrible, but I don't have to go through that experience until. And if it happens. And that was an important moment in how I was dealing with my experience, because from then on, every time I noticed that I was going in that direction, I would stop myself and say, it hasn't happened. There's a good chance it won't happen. Let me focus in that direction. And that's really a key lesson for all of us in so much of our lives, because we can always go in those two different directions. What can go wrong, what can go right? We could start the day worrying about what will go wrong or what will go right.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:04:22]:
And where we place that focus directs the energy of our bodies. And so my fire, my house burning down doesn't have to trigger my stress response response. Just thinking of it as a possibility triggered my stress response. And so if we multiply this throughout the day of all the things that we think of that can go wrong or the problems, we realize how much we are continually in our day triggering the stress response. Now we don't have an unlimited amount of energy, and our bodies are always making choices. Should I send my energy to my muscles to prepare for fight or flight, which is our stress response, Even though, and this is so important, even though, while that remains our stress response, which was appropriate for hunter gatherers, our environment has gone so far beyond that, where rarely is the fight or flight response appropriate. So we build up this tension in our bodies to handle a danger, and then we have to hold in that energy. So again, when we think of something stressful or even if it might happen, our bodies go into that.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:05:54]:
Our bodies send its energy into fight or flight. But where does that energy come from? Well, we take it from perhaps the kidneys that require energy to purify our blood or other biological maintenance and healing mechanisms we have. The body has two choices. Fight, danger, protect or heal, grow. And we make too many decisions in the direction of defend and protect.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:06:27]:
And with that, essentially taking the opportunity from the body to be healing and repair at the same time. Right. So this is with the, you know, stress response, the Inflammating that we have because of this chronic stress fatigue. So I'm very excited to dig into many of these different topics today. And, Stephen, as someone who has studied stress and resilience for decades, if you could gift everyone in the world one new mindset, shift or habit to transform how they would approach stress, what would it be and why?

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:07:00]:
Yes. So what's very important to realize, because people have a lot of resistance to dealing with stress, and there's a good reason. Stress is not just bad. In fact, I've redefined stress as stress response as a useful tool because it helps us focus, it helps us mobilize and motivate us. But the key is you have to find your stress sweet spot. Okay, so people are probably familiar with this curve that goes like this, as we call it an inverted U curve, where at low levels of activation, we don't perform at our best. We don't have the motivation, the focus, the. We need stress to function and perform at our best.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:07:51]:
But there's this window in that curve in which we function at our best. And when you extend your stress beyond that, performance and health go down. And that's what happens with most of us, for the reasons I just outlined a few minutes ago. We go into the stress response too often, too intensely, and for too long a duration, and we wind up beyond that stress sweet spot. So the first important recognition is it's a useful tool, but you don't want to go beyond your stress sweet spot. In fact, that's one of your goals. What is my stress sweet spot? Am I in it or have I pushed beyond it?

Claudia von Boeselager [00:08:40]:
How can you tell?

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:08:41]:
Well, the other lesson and the other redefining that I've done is we talk about resilience as the ability to bounce back, and I've redefined it as the ability to bounce forward. In other words, when you encounter any kind of stressful situation, you want to learn the lessons from that experience. So the other day, I had a client who always worried about taking a test. And, you know, for days before her exam, she'll worry. The night before, she. She'd get very poor sleep, she'd take the exam, and she feels like she didn't do well on it. And then I said to her, well, tell me, how do you do on your tests? And this was the kicker. She said, well, I always get A's.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:09:38]:
And that's when I realized something that we all do and we all have in common. She worried. And worried was anxious leading up to the test, and she got a's her brain put those two things together. When I worry, I get A's. She didn't get Ace because she worried. She got Ace because she worked hard, prepared well. And that was the work we did, was to disconnect those two and show her that it's her ability and her hard work that got her A's. And after a while of this retraining, she stopped being anxious leading up to it because she made the real connection.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:10:23]:
She bounced forward. And this is a lesson for a lot of people to learn. We've made that connection, whether it's worry, starting the day and thinking about what can go wrong, and then at the end of the day, whoo, nothing went wrong. Okay, well, learn the lesson that things are most likely to go well, not the automatic connection that you made, which is when I worry about the day, when I think things are going to go wrong, things turn out okay. That's the unconscious conditioning that we're all subjected to. So the learning, the new lessons, the correct lessons, Bouncing forward is so important to resilience.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:11:10]:
That's such an amazing concept of really. Just would you recommend every evening that time of reflection? Like, what is the lesson in the day? Like, where was I anxious? Where was I stressed? Is. Was there, you know, the saber tooth tiger there where I really needed to be stressed, or was it a, you know, imagination that something could potentially go wrong? What's the lesson? And that's the bouncing forward. Okay, next time that happens, I'm going to use it to my advantage. I will decouple those old neural pathways. Is that what you recommend to do?

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:11:40]:
To figure out, in fact, I really encourage anybody and everybody to use a journal and at the end of the day, sit with that journal and do just what you were were saying. How did my day turn out? What did I do? Right. But also to look at the situations in which you responded with a stress response. And in the peacefulness of the evening where you're not stressed, you can look at it more clearly, because when we're stressed, it actually causes us to not think as well. Yeah, you can say to yourself, look, I reacted inappropriately over here. The next time that happens, I don't have to get so worked up as I did today. So, yes, reflection journaling is very important to consciously live your life.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:12:45]:
I find it really helpful and I think a great tool for people listening is the five minute journal, which is a gratitude practice, but it also gives you time to reflect what went well, which a lot of us forget to actually focus on. And then how Could I have made today even better? And I love the wording because it's framed in a positive way. So it's like, well, this didn't go well. And if I see correctly, you're wearing an aura ring which the new updated version shows you the markers where you were stressed during the day. So it's kind of fun to be like, ah, yes, okay, I see the correlation. Okay, my HRV dropped there, my heart rate went up. So you can better understand your markers to reflect on that. So yeah, love that concept.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:13:24]:
And the 2024 study revealed that 43% of adults feel more anxious than they did the previous year, up from 37%. So I think in, you know, today's fast paced world, if you had to point to one systemic issue, be it cultural, biological or psychological, that is wrecking people's health and performance, what would it be? And maybe what are some steps to, you know, start counteracting it?

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:13:51]:
Well, I actually identify three systemic, structural, one I've just talked about, which is conditioning. But, but I want you to everybody to think about all the successes in your life. And I guarantee that all or most have been associated with stress. An important meeting, an important test, an important presentation. All the hallmarks of success have been associated, have been associated in our life with stress. So again, our brains have put those two things together. Okay. One of my early mentors, a pioneer in neuroscience, Donald Hebb, said neurons that fire together, wire together, wired together.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:14:46]:
I love that expression.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:14:47]:
We have to realize that we are biased to look for stress because it's been associated with success. So that's the first thing. The second I also touched on, which is biological. We have a stress response that's not fit, it's not a fit for our environment. And so we over activate our bodies, fight or flight, when all we need. And this, I work with a lot of professional athletes on this. What we need is a calm focus. You want to be focused, but you could be calm in the same moment that you're focused.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:15:31]:
Your body doesn't have to go along with your cognitive focus. But the third thing that's so important is that the way we learn to use our stress response is in our childhood environment. And so the lessons of childhood are survival lessons. And so they go in very deep. And these lessons, these messages that we get as a child typically result in more stress as an adult than we need. And this is the result of feeling like I'm not good enough. It's the result of feeling like something's going to go wrong or we Grow up in a dangerous environment. We again conditioned to expect danger.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:16:21]:
And so we're always looking for the danger. And whether it's there or not, we think it's there. And so our body's activating. So again, intentionality, where we place our focus is so important and we have to catch ourselves with in catastrophic expectations patients and say, no, it hasn't happened. Like I did with the fires. I'll plan for if something goes wrong, but once I do planning, any additional focus in that direction is worry and it doesn't serve us. I'm going to consciously go over here to positive and positive potential outcomes and which I did during the fire. I said, I'm going to focus on.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:17:09]:
It's not going to reach my house, they're going to stop it beforehand. Which is what happened fortunately for me. But I didn't waste any of my energy with some expectation that never happened.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:17:26]:
And I think this is so critical because the amount of people who have stress for fictitious events, myself included, I've had phases and it's almost like a downward spiral, right? That as soon as you really start going into that vortex, unless you're able to check yourself and obviously you are an expert on. Hang on a second. I know my teachings, I know my tools. I will not do that. But I guess number one is the awareness, right? And then number two is then reframing or refocusing, you know, can I control it? Can I not control it? What do I focus on? Let's focus on the positive until it happens and then take steps accordingly. So I think that's such a powerful teaching. I really, really enjoy that. In your opinion, where does the world, the modern world's relationship with stress go so wrong? Is it a matter of biology failing to adapt cultural.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:18:16]:
Something deeper? Why are we so in this stress pandemic with just the mindset going in the wrong direction? Or is it because we're overwhelmed with all these stimulation what's happening?

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:18:31]:
I think it's all of these things. It's not just one, you know, the complexity of life, the way that life seems to keep speeding up, even if you think about that as a metaphor, life speeding up. We're trying to keep up with life and that, you know, time pressure is a key source of stress for everybody. And so that's happening. You have all of the background dangers that are not part of our immediate life, but are part of the environment in which we live. Climate change, we. We are witness. We are witness to what goes on throughout the world.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:19:24]:
So a bus goes off the rails in India, we get it on our news because news people like to portray disasters. So we're faced with this all the time. And even if we don't consciously have a reaction, our bodies absorb all of this. And that's very important. You know, the uncertainty from a political perspective, the uncertainty from an economic perspective, all of these are in the background, but we absorb it unconsciously. And so we have to be very conscious about being resilient. It's not, you know, automatic, takes us in the wrong direction because we're faced with so much, including in our own lives. You know, we all have concerns about finances, we all have concerns about our health and the health of the people we're close to.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:20:22]:
And anytime someone close to us gets sick, it's another source of worry, which is a form of stress. And so, yes, people need to have a plan, an approach to be more resilient. And it won't happen automatically. The. The ways that we're conditioned, we have to learn new and healthier responses. And that's why I wrote my book, because I wanted to give people a handbook. One of the people that reviewed my book, Michael Ovitz, said that it's a brilliant book. It's a handbook for living your best life.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:21:04]:
And that's how I wrote it. It's not something that you sit down and read the whole book. It's something that you pick up, you read five pages, and it gives you something to focus on today that will help you be more resilient. And you do that each day.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:21:19]:
I'd love to dive into the book. Right, so the nine pillars of resilience, where you lay out the blueprint for thriving amidst life's challenges, which, as you said, we all have yet to meet. A person who has no challenges. If someone wanted to evaluate their balance across these pillars, where would you suggest they start? And which pillar do you find most surprising or overlooked?

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:21:42]:
My book contains, and I will make it available to all of your audience, my resilience assessment booklet, which describes all the nine pillars. But it has a questionnaire that a person can take, can self score and derive their personal resilience profile along my nine dimensions. That's always the starting point, is always where I. Where am I now at the start?

Claudia von Boeselager [00:22:12]:
Where is the baseline? Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:22:14]:
I know what my areas of strength and what are the areas that I need more work on so that I present in the beginning of the book. Also to help people get a sense of where their strengths are. Because you want to lean on your strengths. You want to Appreciate those strengths you want to realize, hey, there are areas that I am good at as we then look at the areas that we need to grow in. And that is my fifth pillar, mental balance and mastery, which includes a growth mindset, which means that any shortcoming you notice within yourself, you don't just go, oh, I guess I can't do it, or I'm not good at that. A growth mindset is okay, I'm weak in this area. What do I need to do to get stronger in this area? Let me engage in a learning, training, growing process to get better at that. And it's also a positive mindset that I've been talking about where you acknowledge what can go wrong, but you spend your time focused on what can go right.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:23:30]:
If it's pot, if going right is a possibility, you want to focus on that possibility.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:23:36]:
Beautiful analogy with your house, right? And the fires to focus. It's still standing. Let me be grateful that it's still standing. I can't predict the winds. I don't know what's happening. But I will focus on the best case of that as well. And for some people listening, they might say, this sounds good, but I'm in such a stressful situation. There's so much going on, I can't see the wood from the trees.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:24:00]:
How do I basically start on the path to moving forward and breaking free from this day to day? Constant anxiety in battle. What would you recommend in more extreme circumstances like that?

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:24:13]:
Well, one of the things that I say to everybody, and everybody falls into this category is wherever you're at, there's always a best way forward. Wherever you're at, there's always a best way forward. And you, when I, when I say that and a person says, oh, that immediately has us pointed in the right direction, because now I'm looking for that best way. Okay, so that's what I would say to people in the most difficult of circumstances. You know, one of the things we learned, you know, listening to the losers of the super bowl, what they would all say is two things, actually three things. Yes, it hurts, but I need to learn the lesson from this experience and then I need to move on. And those are important lessons for all of us. No matter what's going on, you know, even when you lose a person, someone close to you dies, those three things still apply and the finding the best way still applies.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:25:30]:
Now, for people in those situation, it probably begins with allowing yourself to go through a grieving process. So if you're in difficult circumstances, grieving, feeling whatever pain you're going through is part of the process. You want to digest those feelings. You want to allow them to move through your body, not push the them down, not ignore them. Because when you push them down and ignore them, they stay there. And then they unconsciously direct some of your behavior. But unconsciously, you want to feel whatever you're feeling. There's no right or wrong with your feelings.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:26:16]:
They're all just like if you're hungry, there's no right or wrong with hunger. If you haven't eaten for four, four hours or five hours, you experience them, you let them move through your body, but then you have to let go of them. Then you have to say, I felt these feelings. Now I need to move on. A lot of people just keep recycling the same feelings over and over again because the loss or the mistake they made is too painful to fully acknowledge. And so we unconsciously feel like if we keep going over and over it, we're not fully having to deal with the results, even though the results are there. So there's no good way of doing that.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:27:05]:
Can I ask a question on that? Is there a certain time, like when do you, or how much time do you give yourself to sit with the pain, to process the pain versus then moving on and not recycling it? Is there any sort of formula or advice or guidance around that? Because I think many people would be interested in understanding what is okay to feel the pain. How long and when do you move on?

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:27:30]:
Very good question. Very good question. And there isn't one answer to it for two different reasons. One is we're all different, and different people need different amounts of time to really go through that process. But the other thing is there are different levels of. Of, of, you know, disaster. There are different levels of mistakes that have different levels of consequences. So there are all these variables that make it different from one thing to another.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:28:04]:
But I, I will say that if we focus. Focus on taking the time to fully feel the pain, the, the anger of the loss, then we will know when we're starting to just go through it over and over again. And I would also say that when we make a mistake, there's a process we go through that helps us move on. So it's okay to be angry with yourself and express that anger toward your. Yourself. If you make a mistake. You want to be careful though, that you in, in. In expressing that anger that you're not putting yourself down.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:28:52]:
You're not calling yourself names. Oh, you're stupid. Calling yourself. Oh, I was stupid. Never call yourself names. Never put yourself down. Those are. That is undermining.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:29:05]:
You want to express the feeling without being undermining, which makes it more difficult to get it correct the next time. So you express the feeling, then you learn the lesson. If the mistake has a cost, you want to balance that out with a lesson to be learned. This is bouncing forward. So you do it better the next time, and that's key. And then once you do that, you let go.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:29:36]:
Letting go. That's a good point as well, I think. Is it the neural pathway that's just used to looking for the pain? I know so many people, you know, have the resentment or, you know, they like, well, if I don't, I can't just pretend everything's okay. You know, you hear comments like that from some people, it's still there or it still bothers me. Is that a sign that they haven't processed the painfully, that they haven't sat with it fully? Maybe they should journal more. What would you advise if people feel like, you know, it can't look?

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:30:05]:
Well, it's either that or. Now here's something very interesting. When we have the tendency to focus on what can go wrong, or if we dwell on the negatives, we literally sensitize our brains to look for the negative, to react to the negative. If, on the other hand, we train ourselves to focus on the positive, we literally rewire our brains to focus on the positive. This is the basis of neuroplasticity, how our brains are amazing at change, but we have to want the change and we have to direct the change. Because our childhood patterns also have a gravitational pull and they're very powerful.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:30:59]:
Yeah.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:31:00]:
So we have these two opposite forces, the gravitational pull of our childhood lessons and the brain's capacity throughout our lives of neuroplasticity. So what I tell people is when you come across a challenge, it's like you're coming up to this forest, right? And the forest has this one path that's well beaten path. And we automatically start going down that path because, well, of course it's a forest and there's the path. The problem is that path is not going in the direction you want to be going. That path is not leading to success. It's not leading to your health. And so with this awareness, we gotta pull out our machetes and go over here and start hacking away down a new path and literally hacking away a new path. In our brains, we're wired to go down what's familiar, what we've conditioned ourselves to go down, and we have to make this extra Effort first.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:32:13]:
We have to be aware as we approach a challenge. I'm not going to go. I'm not going to think what can go wrong. I'm not going to think this is going to be difficult. I'm going to think it's possible and I'm going to. I'm going to figure out the right way as an example that's going over here and hacking a new path. Now, the more you are consistent in doing this, hacking this new path, and the more you're consistent at saying, no, I'm not going to go down the old path, you begin creating new pathways in your brain. Claudia.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:32:49]:
In fact, this conversation you and I are having, this conversation we're having is long enough. If people are impacted, that people. During this time of our conversation, new dendrites are starting to grow in our brains. It is amazing. That's neuroplasticity in action. But the key incredible is you have to do it consistently. You have to do the new consistently. You have to hold the intention.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:33:21]:
And what's most important and difficult is you have to say no to the old way. One. So for one of the ways that I help people to do this is my first pillar of resilience. My first pillar is first three have to do with relationship, but the first one is your relationship with yourself. Again, childhood lessons, right? So, yeah, we're all, we all need to start paying attention to what our internal voice, what I refer to as our internal parent, is saying to us. You're not going to get it right or you may make a mistake, or people are not going to like you or, you know, they're going to judge you, all of these things. And I guarantee anytime we're upset about anything, we can trace it back to some of one of those messages from that voice. And so I say to people, we have to develop literally, again, neuroplasticity, develop a healthy internal voice, internal path, internal parent that comes from a place of love, compassion, acceptance, support, self care and joy.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:34:47]:
Those are the characteristics. So that's the model you, everybody can compare how they talk to themselves with this model of a healthy voice, with the goal to be saying no to anything that deviates from these qualities and then speak from this place. And every time you say no to the old voice and yes to this healthy voice, you are hacking down a new pathway in your brain.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:35:18]:
It's becoming more and more trodden. Right. It's becoming the default pathway after a while. Yeah. Is there a time, I mean, some people say if you repeat a habit over 21 days. I've heard different numbers. If someone is really focused on this, and I know it's hard, everybody's different and everyone has different belief systems and pathways. But in general, would you say, you know, if you master this skill over a 21 or 30 day period or 60 day periods, you know you've got it done, or is this something just, you have to remind yourself every single day and one day you'll wake up and it's habit.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:35:55]:
What would you say?

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:35:56]:
You know, someone asked me, someone came up to me in one of my seminars and said, you know, I've been working on this and does it ever get easier? And I said, yes, yes. It gets easier when you, when you come, when you speak from the healthy parent, where that, when that becomes easier for you to do, the easier that becomes, the easier your life becomes. And so it's a gradual process. What gets a lot of us stuck is, is that under difficult circumstances, we go back to the old pattern. And when we go back to the old pattern, it reinforces that old pattern. And so it's a combination of variables that the more you go to this healthy internal voice and follow some of the other lessons of my nine pillars, the more your creating the new pathway, and the more you do that, the easier it gets.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:37:02]:
You've coined the term autonomic dysregulation syndrome. Could you break it down for us not just in terms of what it is, but also the hidden ways it may be affecting our daily lives, relationships and long term health?

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:37:15]:
Yes, absolutely. So we talked about the stress response. The stress response is the activation of one of the two branches of our nervous system. Our nervous system is so beautifully designed. It has the stress response that activates us to danger, and then it has the parasympathetic recovery response to restore all the resources used up during the stress response. These two branches of our nervous system are designed through the evolutionary process to be in balance and to stay in balance. Okay, but think of your day. Think of your typical day and think of all of the situations that trigger your stress response.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:38:05]:
And now think of your typical day and think of all the situations that trigger, I'm safe, I can let down my guard, I can recover.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:38:14]:
Probably not enough of the parasympathetic ones.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:38:17]:
Gives you the picture of what we face. We're continually activating and we're not giving ourselves and our bodies time to recover. So we activate and activate and activate and, and very quickly in our days, we've stretched the resources of our bodies that has various biochemical and physiological consequences that lead to speeding up the. The aging process that lead to the disease process to the point that we estimate upwards of 80% of doctors office visits are due to this dysregulation. What I refer to as the disregard autonomic dysregulation syndrome because it's a pattern that gets developed over time in all of our lives. This imbalance that I'm talking about that leads to all kinds of other physiological and biochemical consequences.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:39:22]:
A study published by BMJ Mental Health found that adults with the highest levels of mental resilience had a 53% lower risk of death. So it's resilience is they're not just thriving, but they're actually living significantly longer. If we reverse engineer this finding, what are the most high leverage ways people can start building their longevity through mental resilience today?

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:39:47]:
Well, that is a great study and highlights how stress affects the rate of our aging last year. There's now a way that you can get your biological age so you can actually, you can actually find out how fast or slow your body's aging as opposed to your chronological age.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:40:12]:
Yeah, I've done one.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:40:13]:
So I did this last year. And so my book is based on what I believe is the best way to live your life. And I live my life based on, based on that my biological age came at 20 years younger than my chronological age.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:40:32]:
Amazing. Which test did you take?

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:40:34]:
If you don't mind me, it was true diagnostic. Yeah. In fact, I'm about to do a study where we're going to give my resilience questionnaire to people who have already gotten their biological age. And we're going to see if the people who score the highest show the slowest aging. So I'll let you know when we get the results of that study. But I believe I'm curious you will find that that is is the case.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:41:08]:
Yeah. Well, because stress equals inflammation. Right. We know the inflammating and inflammation is the fundamental for chronic disease and many different dysregulation in the body. So you know, we know that there is that system. So if you can solve upstream for what's going on, it will allow downstream things to function better. So brilliant study I'm excited to hear.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:41:28]:
About and it points out for all your audience, the more you learn to be resilient, the more you learn some of the lessons that we've been talking about. You all can actually slow your aging process. What a, what a great goal. Right? What an incentive.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:41:48]:
And you're such an inspiration at that as well. I'd love to understand some of your strategies because at 77, still mountain biking, still teaching, still doing so many wonderful things. What are some of your secrets and practices that you could share with my audience that you do to be in such a peak state?

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:42:07]:
Well, there's a lot, a lot of it has to do with how you think. And I. One of the things that's very important to me in my life is that I keep challenging myself to do the things that I did when I was younger. So I still play ball, I still rollerblade, mountain bike, I still jump into the ocean. And, you know, sometimes I'm not as. I'll go down to the ocean, for example, and I'll take a lounge chair and I'll sit in the lounge chair. And when I was younger, no sitting in the lounge chair, I just run into the ocean, right? But now I sit in the lounge chair and I think, do I want to go into the ocean? But it's so comfortable here, the water's cold, so. But then I do what I encourage everybody else to do.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:43:06]:
A lot of times when we think of a goal, we focus too much on the obstacles rather than really focusing on what it will fit, feel like if I achieve the goal or be in the goal. And so I, I say to myself, you know, 30 seconds after you're in the water, it's going to be comfortable. And I use that to get up and run into the running, or maybe not run into the ocean, but I get in, you run in.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:43:35]:
I'm sure, Stephen, you're running in there.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:43:37]:
It's, it's mindset. It's mindset. And even if you, you can't run, you walk briskly. If you can't walk briskly, you get out, you walk. And I think it's so important to get out into nature. I think it's important to be connected to nature, that what's natural rather than what we're mostly engaged in, which is a computer monitor, our cell phones, walls and buildings, be out in nature, hear birds chirping, hear water rushing. All of those things have a positive impact on us. But perhaps most important, and I haven't touched on this, and it's very important too, relationships.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:44:27]:
Relationships are so important because they give you the opportunity for human contact, for letting down your guard, taking in love, taking in appreciation, all of these positive emotions literally have a positive effect on our physiology. You talked about heart rate variability. We know that when we go into a positive emotional state, such as gratitude, that we enhance the Heart rate variability pattern, meaning when we breathe in, our heart rate goes up. When we breathe out, it goes down. And the healthier the person, the more we have this what we call coherent pattern. When we go into a negative emotion, anger, frustration, and we look at the heart rate variability pattern, we find it's chaotic. Okay. So our emotions have this direct impact on our physiology.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:45:34]:
Now, the interesting thing about that, if you and I were in the same room together one day.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:45:43]:
Yeah.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:45:43]:
If you and I are in the same room together and I measured and I monitored your brainwaves, I would pick up my heart rate pattern in your brain waves.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:45:57]:
Wow. Could you expand on that?

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:45:58]:
Well, our hearts are powerful engines that put out signals that are powerful and powerful enough that if you're close enough to me, you will pick them up in your brainwaves.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:46:13]:
Wow.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:46:13]:
Now go back to my last comment, where if I'm in a positive emotion, I have this beautiful coherent heart rate pattern. If I'm frustrated, angry, or worried about something, or not fully present, I'm going to have this chaotic pattern. And notice you're going to pick that up in your brain. Not consciously, but it's going to be there. What effect does that have on you, these two different heart rate patterns?

Claudia von Boeselager [00:46:42]:
Yes. I mean, one is you feel calm and relaxed and in pleasant company, and the other one, you feel a bit agitated and trying to figure out why and don't like the energy of the person and want to run away.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:46:52]:
How many of us have had those different experiences of feeling so comfortable with some people and uncomfortable with others, so.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:47:02]:
Oh, that's fascinating. And I'd love to also touch on neurofeedback, which I find very interesting. And it's also transformed addiction treatment. How do you see it shaping the future of resilience training? And is it something your average person could incorporate into their life today?

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:47:22]:
We've done a lot of talking today about conditioning. Right now, patterns get set up because we go do the same thing all the time. Like the stress response. We condition to the stress response as a result of our lifestyles. Our brains go into a rut. They go into rigid patterns. There's flexibility, but when you're consistent in your thinking and behavior, your brain gets goes into a rut. Neurofeedback is a way of literally monitoring your brain waves with electrodes on your scalp, feeding that information back to you and feeding it in back in a way where we can put in bar graphs different components of your brainwaves.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:48:09]:
Patterns, such as the frequencies, alpha frequencies that are calming, low beta Frequencies that are focusing theta frequencies which have different purposes, but can cause us to be less focused, less present. Okay. And we could literally, through the movement of these bar graphs, which is done in real time, feeding back to us what's going on in our brains, we can literally shift our brainwave patterns into a healthier, better pattern. So we published a study back in 2005 in which we did a particular neurofeedback protocol with a group of drug addicts, recovering drug addicts. And we got phenomenal results. We found that they had double the rate of abstinence. Two years later. We help them work through and heal some of their traumas.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:49:12]:
More recently, I published a study where women who have had cancer, breast cancer, gone through chemotherapy have what's referred to as chemo brain. So chemo brain is a condition in which people are in a cognitive fog, have very difficult, great difficulty with cognitive functioning, as well as sleep problems and other problems. And we worked with a group of recovered breast cancer cancer survivors who said they've lost their lives because they can't focus, they can't concentrate, they had high paying jobs and they had to quit. Quit for these reasons. One said, I can't read a novel because I lose the thread of the story. And we did a neurofeedback intervention with them and all of those women said they got their lives back. And now we looked at their brainwave patterns and the neurofeedback almost the. The before had tremendously damaged brains from an electroencephalographic perspective.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:50:20]:
Perspective. And after the treatment almost completely normalized their brainwave patterns. So again, the power of our brains for healing, tremendous power. If these women with such deficits can recover, that potential is there for everybody.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:50:41]:
That is really fascinating. I like to do. I find this area very, very fascinating. And I have a few different neurofeedback devices that I use and that I try. The latest one is the neurovisor with the pulsating light. And there was very promising research out of MIT last year that it was even clearing amyloid plaque from the brain. And so they're looking into it further. What can be done also with FDA approvals for.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:51:08]:
My mother, sadly suffers from dementia. So this is part of a topic close to my heart for people interested in neurofeedback. And there's different EEG devices on the market and Brain Tap and different ones. Is there anyone that you would say is good to start with for your average person to help train neuroplasticity, essentially?

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:51:31]:
Well, I've worked with a Few. I would, I would recommend, you know, one, there's a company called Thought Technology. It's a Canadian company. They're one of the largest and oldest companies. I would suggest people reach out to them for what they have available or for even a conversation about options and choices.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:51:56]:
Okay, wonderful. So I'm just looking at the time today. It's flown by. I have many, many more questions, but I'm wary of your time, of course, and I want to respect it. It's been such an inspiring conversation for listeners interested in diving deeper into resilience stress. Where can they find your book and more information on this topic? Where would you send it?

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:52:19]:
This is available in bookstores. If you go to a bookstore, it's not there. Ask them to order it. But it's also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Nobles and any place where you get books, it's available. The nine pillars of resilience. The proven path to master stress, slow aging and increased vitality. You can go to my website, drstephensideroff.com there you'll find a lot of useful tools. You can get free my Resilience assessment booklet and you can read about the nine pillars and you can take your own test and determine your strengths and weaknesses.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:53:00]:
Also, I have a number of other of my talks on that website and other information including a new online course that they can get on From Stress to Success.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:53:14]:
I love it. So we'll link all of those for people listening in the show notes just for convenience as well. Stephen, do you have a final ask or recommendation or any parting thoughts or message from my audience today?

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:53:27]:
I would say that if you're struggling, it's not your fault. It's very important to not blame yourself for having difficulties at the same because of all the structural issues I have talked about. Right. But at the same time, you have to have that growth mindset. You have to say, okay, here's where I'm at. How do I move forward? What's the best way to move forward? My book is a good, a good fit first step. There are a lot of other ways to, to move forward, but you can't say I can't. You have to focus on what do I need to do to get better, to improve.

Dr. Stephen Sideroff [00:54:11]:
And then once you do, remember the healthy internal voice which comes from that place of acceptance. Don't judge yourself in that process.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:54:20]:
Self, compassion, love. Love. It. So, so important. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today. It's been very, very helpful personally, also to me. Thank you. Also, dear audience, for tuning in.

Claudia von Boeselager [00:54:31]:
Make sure to subscribe and share and look forward to speaking again soon.