Stress and uncertainty are at an all-time high in the current challenging times. In April, Dr. Dave Bullis presented his new book, "How to Get a Grip: Coping Strategies for Complicated Times," offering practical coping strategies for balance and resilience. In this conversation, Bouba Heart of a Giant interviews Dr. David Bullis, a mental health specialist, about his book 'How to Get a Grip: Coping Strategies for Complicated Times.' Dr. Bullis provides an overview of coping and emphasizes the importance of control, balance, and setting goals. He discusses the four aspects of human beings (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual) and how they are interconnected. Dr. Bullis also shares techniques for managing worries, decision-making, preventing regret, and releasing emotional energy through physical exercise and relaxation breathing. The discussion explores the practical side of coping with stress and reclaiming control in complicated times. The guest, David Bullis, shares his inspiration for writing the book and emphasizes the importance of recognizing that emotional distress is a normal reaction. He highlights the need to identify what hinders you and find practical solutions. The discussion also addresses the misconception that coping with stress means having no stress at all. Bullis encourages readers to embrace life's uncertainty and focus on doing the best they can with what they have. The main takeaway is to incorporate the guiding principle of doing the best with what you have into daily life. More about the book here - https://how-to-get-a-grip-book.com/about-the-author/
Takeaways:
Coping is an active process that requires setting goals and taking control over the choices we face.
Balance is crucial in coping, and it involves managing stress coming into our lives and releasing it through physical exercise and relaxation breathing.
Sorting worries into three boxes (things we have control over, things we will have control over later, and things we have no control over) helps us focus on what we can change and let go of what we can't.
Making choices is inevitable, and every choice has positive and negative consequences. It's important to make the best choice with the information we have at the moment.
Preventing future regret involves imagining ourselves at our hundredth birthday and reflecting on what we would be glad we did or wish we did more or less of.
Releasing emotional energy through physical exercise and relaxation breathing can help achieve balance and stability in coping.
Coping requires practice, patience, and the use of tools and support from others. Emotional distress is a normal reaction and should not be pathologized.
Take inventory of what is getting in the way and identify practical solutions.
Coping with stress does not mean having no stress at all.
Embrace the uncertainty of life and focus on doing the best with what you have.
Sound Bites:
"Control is the core concept."
"Recognizing that a lot of what we worry about belongs in the box of things we have no control over."
"Every element of every decision has some element of choice."
"You can control what you can touch."
"The emotional exercise is something that I use on a daily basis."
"If I don't want to regret at my 80th birthday, I gotta come back to my 25th or 30th and really think about then."
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction and Background
10:20 The Three-Part Coping Process
37:11 Conclusion and Q&A
49:01 The Importance of Emotional Exercise
56:16 Using the Book as a Workbook
01:04:53 Doing the Best with What You Have
Bouba Heart of a Giant (00:07.401)
Hello everyone, welcome to another Heart of a Giant webinar. So today we'll be with my old neighbor, Dr. David Bullis. So I'm super excited about this one because maybe, what is it? Yeah, so we moved into the neighborhood 2018 and then I will always remember seeing you on the road and we had small kids and that was a big, big, big entertainment for them.
So you and your wife will be on a bike sometime on the tandem bike. And that was a beautiful, I guess, a distraction for the kids. And then eventually to the point that we came to COVID and I remember talking with you during those times. And we were just amazed how much, you know, you were riding, how much, yeah, like the distance you were riding every time. And eventually getting to know each other and understanding that, you know, you are.
a mental health specialist, being a director at, I think, MGH for the longest. So, first of all, to this moment where soon after my heart transplant, and I think during the transplant, you briefly mentioned the book, but the book was ready, maybe around the same time as the transplant, but we met a month or so after my transplant. So it was a great, great surprise.
David Bullis (01:13.629)
Yeah.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (01:34.057)
And I just love the book from the beginning, from the title, of course, but from the concept of it itself. So how to get a grip, copying strategies for complicated times. So I thought this would be a great, great presentation for all of us. Hello, we can hear you. Yeah, no, you're good. Thank you. Yeah, so without further ado.
David Bullis (01:47.389)
Well, hello.
David Bullis (01:54.429)
Yeah, good. Okay. I keep getting sounds anyway. So great. Thank you for that introduction.
I don't know if I can get in.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (02:05.993)
Yeah, so yeah, we'll hand over to you and maybe start with a presentation and tell us a little bit about the book. And then, you know, in the second half, we'll come up with some questions. But I'm looking forward to learning about the book and sharing with others. I have my own copies getting worn out, but I'll share a few about that. So over to you and thanks for sharing this with us. Dave, welcome.
David Bullis (02:23.965)
Yeah.
David Bullis (02:30.973)
Well, thank you very much, that's a wonderful introduction. And yes, I have been working in healthcare for almost 30 years in a wide variety of medical specialties, currently cancer, but I've worked in heart disease and chronic pain and all sorts of other things over the years. And so basically, you know, what I want to do today is just give you a high level brief overview of sort of the concepts and kind of we're gonna go from there.
The slideshow, I'm not sure if I can make the slideshow work, but I'm gonna give it a shot. And if you can, I don't know if you can see the, Booba, you can tell me if you can see the slides moving. And if you can, I'll just go back and sort of go through them. But anyway, you know, basically the task around coping, I think is important to notice. And this is, you know, for anybody who's listening.
Sometimes this will be about illness, but I think it's also important just to interpret this around just any kind of challenge that people are facing in their life. And that's why coping is sort of a much more broad umbrella term than it is, you know, every specific to any particular illness. And so what is the coping goal? Like, what are we talking about? We're really talking about getting back some control over the choices that we're faced with and transitioning from being a person who was labeled as a patient or someone who was injured or
in some way, you know, sort of less than to being back to being a full person. Again, what is not the goal of coping is to not have anxiety about the stress or the challenge, or to ever feel like you totally know what you're gonna do every time and how to do it perfectly, because that's just not possible. And so important to lead to not get wrapped up in that kind of concept. And so wellness, I just think it's important. And Booboo, you can tell me if you can see the slides or not.
The wellness is a continuum. On the one end is when we're totally well, we have no illness or any injuries or problems at all, and all the way down to the other end when we're totally ill. And we all live in this little concept of being up on the one side, which is sort of benign innocence, which I think of as being, we think we're okay and we're gonna be okay and nothing bad is gonna happen to us.
David Bullis (04:48.413)
And then the thing happens and the thing could be illness, it could be job disruption, it could be financial catastrophe, it could be a natural disaster, it could be anything. And then all of a sudden we're not so well and we're not doing so great. And that then becomes a part of the challenge. And so the next step really is beginning to think about if you're gonna slide out of benign innocence and then you're gonna work hard to get back.
to being well again. But one of the things that people get to is this idea right here by that line between A and B is that you can't ever get back to B 'nai 'n Innocence once you've fallen out of it. And there's some grief that comes with that realization. Even if you're doing really well on all sorts of ways, the idea that nothing bad is gonna happen kind of gets blown out of the water once the bad thing happens.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (05:39.529)
Yeah.
David Bullis (05:45.917)
So that's not too surprising, but I think it's important to just recognize that there is a continuum and you're never 100 % ill or 100 % well. And it's really thinking about what's the balance between the two. Next down, I think it's important sort of conceptual piece, the way I think of us humans. It's happening sort of four basic parts of us, our physical body at the bottom and it's like a column. This is my version of a column.
And at the bottom is the physical health. The next step up is mental, cognitive thinking, how we think about things, our expectations, our knowledge. The next step up is our emotional self, how we feel about things emotionally. And at the very top is our spiritual sense of connection with a larger whole. And the physical part is the most important. That's why it's at the bottom of the column.
Because if the physical body is wobbly, just looking at this column, if the bottom of the column is wobbly or unstable, then the whole column becomes unstable. So this is really important when we're thinking about physical illness, is that when we're going through treatment or we have a surgery or we have some kind of injury or long -term disease or illness, that is going to make our thinking skills, our emotional self, maybe even challenge our spiritual awareness.
And that's why the physical is the most important. And so this is, you know, this is what people focus on. This is what people talk to their friends about, what they go to the doctor for. It's a focus of, and many people will think about how they manage their stress in terms of how it plays out in their body. So the physical health is often a very major focus and also a very, a big starting point for
how people get access to managing stress. Mental health, this is our, and I think mental, this is more like how we think rather than our emotional self. And this is the focus of our knowledge, you know, and how we organize our time and how we set our expectations. We also may notice if we're going through a crisis that our thinking is unfocused, it's hard to pay attention. So that's another aspect of it.
David Bullis (08:07.773)
And then our emotional health. And I think it's really important to notice in terms of coping that emotions are a normal part of life's process. We have happy moments, we have sad moments. They can feel like they're on a roller coaster. The emotions are not always pretty. They're oftentimes negative like worry and sadness and anger. But sometimes they're great, like relief and love and connection with.
so many people around us. And I think it's important that the emotions we feel are in part about ourselves and what's going on around us, but it's also what's going on with our families, our partners, our kids, our parents, our friends, our colleagues, our neighborhood, our community writ large. So all of those things are a part of the emotional self. And then the very top is the emotional.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (08:47.401)
Thank you.
David Bullis (09:05.309)
I mean, a spiritual self, sorry. And that's sort of how I think about that is how we make sense of it all, right? That there are, you know, faith is a big part of many people's lives. An illness journey can oftentimes reaffirm or it can challenge our faith. In fact, many people have a kind of laissez -faire or hands -off attitude toward faith until they get sick. And then all of a sudden they really have to think about, well,
How does this connect me to my higher power? How does this connect me to the greater community? And I think just to recognize that the bottom three, the physical, mental, and the emotional, those are all things that we have some leverage on. Spirituality is something that I think people have a very independent and very individual version of, even if you're a part of a larger spiritual community. So it's important to just recognize that that's not as manipulable. You know, you can't sort of...
change and just go out and get the spirit if you haven't got it already. But on the other hand, if it is a big part of your life, it can be a real resource for how you manage. So coping is a three -part process. And I'm going to be just to be clear, I'm going to be going through a lot of stuff kind of quickly because I want to give the high level view. We could talk for hours about any one of these things, but just for the purpose of today's presentation, I just want to kind of give you a taste of all the different aspects of it.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (10:20.585)
Yeah. Yeah.
David Bullis (10:31.421)
So
Bouba Heart of a Giant (10:31.497)
Yeah, and for the audience, that's the goal. Today's an overview and we'll have a follow -up workshop. We'll be a bit more hands -on and I'll dig into some of those. So thank you.
David Bullis (10:38.941)
Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly. So here's, today's the taster menu, the previews of things to come. So the three -part process, part of that is just recognizing, like setting some goals for yourself. And I think goals are important because it gives us a direction to aim at and something to work toward. If you don't have goals, it's hard to figure out where we're going, right? If we don't know where our destination is, it's hard to even leave the house because we don't know what direction to go in.
Barriers are always they're always going to be barriers and these are not to kind of get stuck on But more like these are the targets of what we want to try to fix and the thing is if there weren't barriers You would have achieved the goal already, right? So that's the piece of this which is important to notice So those are not to be kind of like don't you need to get bummed out about the barriers other than to just recognize like no No, this is a part of what I'm what's getting in my way and that's what I want to focus on
And then the way you overcome those barriers is to really look at what your strengths are. And I think in a lot of ways, it's important just to take stock of what your strengths are because you already have some. You've gotten this far, right? Some strengths work better than others, to be honest, but they are there and it's an important thing to kind of really take ownership of that you have something to bring to the table. And so one of the core concepts in coping is this notion of control.
And it turns out that how people do, how people cope doesn't turn out to be quite so much related to whether they're on, if the disease is really severe or whether it's not severe, whether the financial challenge is small or big or whether the economic crisis or whatever is going on is small or big. It's really how much control we feel.
over how we're managing it that determines how well we cope. And so in a concept of that, right, there are sort of, there's aspects of our lives of which we have a lot of control. We have high control. There are other aspects of our life which we have low control. And then there are tasks that are really hard. And then there are some tasks that are easy. And there's obviously a continuum between these two extremes. And what you can see from the little graphic is just like.
David Bullis (13:01.245)
when we have a hard task, but we have high levels of control, that's when we're in the zone. That's when we're really doing our best work. We don't even notice time going by. We're just completely engrossed in it and we feel great. The other time that's good is when we have low control, but there's nothing to do, right? That's when we're on vacation. We're sitting on the parka lounge or by the beach. We're just having a nice drink, all good, right? So those are the two zones we wanna try to find ourselves in.
The other two, which we hear a lot about in business and healthcare these days, is when you have low control but the tasks are very hard, and that's when we feel overwhelmed or that's the root of burnout. The other thing which is sort of would seem kind of better, which is like having a lot of control but not much to do, it turns out that's really not great. That's what leads to boredom and just feeling like, well, why am I even bothering? Because there's nothing to do all day.
So we want to sort of make sure that there's a nice comparison or link between how hard the task is and how much control we have. And if you can begin to think and you can begin to see, right, like there are things we can do to adjust our sense of control, whether we can grab more or let go of some that we don't have. And there's also ways of focusing on how to make hard tasks more easy or easy tasks more effective.
So all of that is a part of what, you know, thinking about what's confronting you or what's getting in the way, you can sort of think about trying to, how do I get in the zone or how do I go on vacation? So the guiding principle that I think about is embodied in this question. And that is, you know, the question, am I doing the best I can with what I got right now to make the most out of testing?
And the reason why that's important is that when you ask, am I doing, you're really reminding yourself that you are still the one doing your life. You're making your decisions, you're managing your life tasks. You are in charge of yourself. No one else is making you do stuff or not making you do stuff. In the end, you get to decide for the most part, right? The best I can is just what you've done. Like everybody has, it is true in the world that people tend to bring their A game to challenges. Even if it doesn't work out well,
David Bullis (15:20.797)
Sometimes it's not like people show up and think yeah, I've got all I'll give half an effort today You know who cares most people don't do that most people Think I'm doing the best but I don't have the tools or I wish I knew more or whatever but like idea of you are bringing your best shot and so The the first two parts of the question are really there to highlight that fact that the two your core values
the things that make you who you are, the things that your work ethic, your sense of humor, your love of your family, their love for you, your spiritual, your faith, all those things, nothing is gonna change that. No illness, no job disruption, no environmental crisis is gonna change who you are as a person. You can feel very stressed and different, but at your core, you're still the same person. Nothing can take that away from you with a.
The research has been really strong that those core values are embodied in us really young as children and they stay with us all the way through the rest of our lives. So that's your bedrock. That's what you stand on when you're trying to face up to the hard stuff. Which brings up the next part, which is actually really different depending on the situation and that's the energy you bring to each day. And it can be very different than the kind of energy you had before the crisis hit. It can be very...
depending on what's going on at the moment, whether you're in treatment for an illness or disease, whether you're in the middle of trying to manage multiple tasks like legal problems and financial problems and all sorts of other things. And it can be affected by the process you're going through and also the reactions or the thoughts you have about that process. So, you know, like it's not just like, oh, I have this financial issue, but it's also the worry I have.
And I think about it as being kind of a range from zero. I have zero energy I'm you know, I'm gone to a hundred percent and I always joke that you know, it's as if I were 25 again I'm not 25 anywhere close. But like when we think about how much energy that I used to have and what did I bring to the table? We obviously use that as a reference point and then if you're going through a challenge You'll feel very degrees of less than that. And so we really want to
David Bullis (17:42.141)
It's more accurate for yourself to set your expectations for yourself based on your energy level. And that is gonna go up and down and that's normal. It's not cause you're broken. It's not cause you're not doing it, right? It's just the normal process. And what is important to notice is like, you're not at either extreme. You're not at zero and you're not at a hundred percent and that's okay. No one expects that.
Right now is the next part of the question and that's really underscoring it's the only time you have any control. Again, control is a core essence of this project and right now is the time when you can control it. I always joke if you can touch it, you can control it and if you can't touch it, you can't control it. So that's not to say that being in the now, being in the present is always feels great. Oftentimes it feels cruddy. It feels terrible because you're in pain or you're in a...
overwhelming situation, but that is the time when we have any leverage. We can't do anything about what happened before in the past, and we can't do anything that is about to happen in the future, near -term or far -term future. And so I think that's the piece of it is, those are the normal timeframes to go to when we get stressed out. We think about, oh, what did I do to get here? What did I eat or drink or do in the past that made me in this situation?
Oh, and then also what's in the future. Like that's where uncertainty lays. And so the past tends to bring up thoughts that are related to sadness and regret and being disappointed that I couldn't go back in time to when it was good. And the future is all about uncertainty and what's going to happen no one can tell me, right? Even if I'm working in a medical setting, even the most highly trained people, like the doctors and the nurses, they can't tell me what's going to happen.
So right now is the time we want to kind of bring ourselves back to. We can't stay in it because I, you know, people always say you got to be in the moment, but then the moment just ended. So you got to be in the next moment. Well, that's also going to end. So nothing lasts in terms of the being in the moment. It's more like a neighborhood. You want to bring yourself back from the future. If you get too far ahead of yourself, you want to bring yourself back from the past. If you get too locked into the old stuff, it's really a hard time for him to stay in, but you're really thinking of it as a neighborhood. I'm going to...
David Bullis (20:04.605)
be in the neighborhood, right? So this is the goal, right, to make the most out of my day. And it seems like a sort of a simple thing, but it turns out, right, like people think about what's gonna happen to me in the future, and since we don't know the answer to that, what we can say though, is that if I've made the most out of every single day that I've lived, whether I live for another 20 minutes or another 20 years, I will have lived as fully as I can.
And that is weirdly the secret to long -term happiness is that it just means that if I look back on my life and think, huh, yeah, I did the best I could every day, that really sets me up to have some success. And it's a goal that's achievable, just to be said. So that's the theme, right? The guiding control is the core concept. The guiding principle allows you to, if you answer yes to that question, yes, I am doing the best I can with what I got.
that helps you validate what you're doing and it's great. But it's also okay to say to yourself, yeah, you know what, I'm really not doing the best I can. I wish I could do better. That's just good information, right? Because it just means that something, you're focusing on something you don't have control over, the past or the future. You're not able to leverage your strengths in the best way possible because of something getting in the way of that.
So that question either reaffirms you are on the right track and you are making the most out of your every day based on what you have to work with or you're kind of getting lost in the process and it's good to just notice that so you can bring yourself back to something that's tangible and here and now. So that's the theory. I'm now going to just go through a bunch of different techniques which again we won't spend a lot of time on today but I just want to kind of give you the
wet your appetite for things to come in future seminars. One is just this concept of sorting your worries. And I don't mean sort your worries in terms of your favorite worry, but more in terms of how much control you have. So there are three boxes you can sort your life into. I realize that's an oversimplification, but we're just gonna go with it. So the first box is the things you already have control over and you're crushing those already and you're great at those. And...
David Bullis (22:28.989)
And in truth, you're already doing them, but it's good to give yourself credit for those things because that's not nothing. And it really gets back to this idea that you are doing something with your life, right? You are doing something with your day. So that's really important. Box number two is the things you absolutely will have control over at a later point. So these are the, kind of the to -do list.
I will be able to file my taxes, it's just not the 15th of April yet, so I don't have to do that just yet. I will go get my medical work up, but I can't get an appointment for another six months. Those are the kind of things which I will absolutely do, not this minute. And box number three is the things, this is sort of the hardest box, and that's the box over which we have no control.
We never did, we never will, nobody else will either. And I think that's important just to recognize is that that is this process of a lot of what we worry about turns out to be in box number three, right? And what's gonna happen in the future? Why don't we have a functioning political climate in this country? You know, the environment, whatever, like there's all sorts of things that go in that box. And the idea here is recognizing that as new information comes shooting at you.
and you feel overwhelmed kind of taking it all in, it's helpful, I think, to be able to say, all right, what part of this belongs in box number one that I can do something about today, that I do have some agency around? And what part of it will I be able to take control over just not yet? It'll happen in a while, in a couple of hours, in a month, in a year, and whenever. I know I'll be able to take care of it then, but I don't have to worry about it right this second. And the rest, the rest we have to work on letting go of.
But we already have a model of how to let go of things like the weather and the political climate and other things, because we don't feel any personal agency around the weather, for example. I don't think, oh man, it's a beautiful sunny day today. I really did a great job. And then yesterday when it was rainy, I was like, ah, you know, I really suck at this today. I should have been better at the weather. We don't really tend to think that way. So recognizing that there's a bunch of stuff that's in our
David Bullis (24:46.141)
in our life that we keep taking on that really belongs in box number three actually can be helpful because we can sort of let it go in the way we let go of our control over the weather. There's another threesome, the three rules of life. And that is the decision, every element of every decision has some element of choice. Every choice has positive and negative consequences. And there's no such thing as not making a choice. And I think that's important because this is sort of a way of preventing regret.
right, is that if we recognize that decisions we've made in the past, we made with the best of the information we had at that moment, we may think now in retrospect, oh, no, you know, it's, I wish I hadn't made that choice. But that's only because we now see some, you know, some after effects we didn't anticipate. But also thinking about how to regret future, how to prevent future regret is to recognize like, oh, you know what?
This is the information I have right now and it's the best I can do. It's the best I have. So I'm gonna make the best choice I can. I know that there's positive and negatives to this. So I know I'm not gonna wait till I find out what the perfect choice is. And even if I decide not to do something, that's also a choice. A lack of action is an action. So people will think, oh, I don't know. I don't know how to make choices. I don't wanna make a choice. It's helped me. It's like, okay, well, you just did.
He just made the choice. He just made the choice not to do anything. And that has positives to it and it has negatives to it. So this is an idea of just recognizing, oh, I can look back over past decisions and think, did I really make the best choice? And if I did, then what happened afterwards is something I can come to terms with. If I didn't make the best choice, now that I can see that, I actually get to use that information in terms of how I make new choices now going forward.
So speaking of timeframes and the future and whatnot, and people often will think, God, I wish I could go back in time and change what I did in high school or college or in my first marriage or whatever. And of course we can't go back and change those things. And so a mental exercise is to pretend you were, today as you're sitting here thinking about like, there you are at your hundredth birthday. You're sitting on the back porch in your rocking chair.
David Bullis (27:13.661)
looking around and seeing everybody around you. And someone asks you these questions like, what were you glad you did? Do you wish you had done more of something or do you wish you'd done less of something? And the answers that you will come up with as a hundred year old person about those questions are really informative about what you want to be doing now. Because you can't go back in time from now, but you can go into the future and then come back in time.
to now, which seems like a weird concept, but it's true. It's really helpful to be like, oh, I will not regret spending more time with my partner because when I'm 100, I love my partner and I'm really glad that I'm doing so I can do that now. I don't need to wait till I'm 100 and then think about it. I can actually do it now. So that's an example of, you know, sort of I can prevent regret when I'm 100 and think, oh, I wish I'd spent more time with my partner.
I can be like, yeah, no, I'm good. I did it. So another thing about, I'm a huge fan of balance and going through life is a lot like walking on a tightrope. That's not a great image of a tightrope, but you kind of get the idea. And the idea here is that as you're walking along, you use that bar to kind of balance us out. And sometimes we get hit by really hard stuff and we can't just shake it off. Like, you know, say illness.
diagnosed with cancer or I'm diagnosed with heart disease or I'm diagnosed with something and I can't just pretend that's not true. So I'm going to be out of balance as long as I think about that. But one of the things that can bring us back into balance is this idea of adding information, people, places, resources or whatever to the other end of that balancing pole. So if I'm feeling really negative about my treatment plan,
I can add some positives to the other side by making sure I have people to talk to who have also been through it. And so I don't feel so alone, for example. I'm feeling really tight on the money front. And so I need to, you know, kind of talk to people if I can do a, you know, go fund me to get a little extra money to help me get through this tough time, which I then will give back to other people later when they need it, right? So it's this idea that we can't just shake off the bad.
David Bullis (29:34.749)
And it doesn't make any sense to be like, well, I'm just going to have a positive attitude about everything all the time because sometimes it's really hard. Right. And so Rick is like, all right, let me take a step back and think about what can I do to get some balance in my life. And the idea here is that no matter how heavy the weight is, as long as it's in balance, we are able to go forward. Right. So you can balance two paper cups. You can balance two, you know, uh,
You can balance two airplanes. You can balance, as long as they're balanced, you can make your way through life. It can be heavy, but you can make your way.
Again, another balancing issue is that there's stress coming into our lives. And this is another one of my really high level graphics. And there's stress going out of our lives, right? And one of the things is to make sure there's a balance. Sometimes when this is a kitchen sink and you can imagine the water coming in out of the faucet and just going down the drain. And as long as everything's equal in terms of water coming in and the drain being open, the water could just run indefinitely, which would be a high water bill. But.
and no mess on the floor. Sometimes in life, the water just comes out so fast, the stress comes out so fast at us that even if the drain or the sink is clear, it still overflows and makes a big mess because there's just too much coming in at any one time. It's also equally true though that even if the stress coming into our lives is relatively little at any given point, that if we don't have any way of processing that stress or releasing that stress,
that the sink can still build up and can still make a mess. That's a little bit more insidious. You don't notice it as much, but it's just as toxic. So recognizing that we have two ways of thinking about stress. Can we turn the faucet down a little and let less stress come into our lives, which is about setting expectations and boundaries and whatnot. And also are we having a regular exercise to release that stress out of our bodies so that it doesn't build up and cause us damage.
David Bullis (31:42.973)
One of the ways to do that is to use physical exercise as an emotional release. We have, sometimes people will feel very tired and it's important to notice that they're, have still though, a lot of emotional energy that's churning in them, especially at night when they're trying to get to sleep. And so if you think about taking yourself out every day and when you go for that walk, you typically, I mean you,
think about the things that are worrying you or making you angry or stressing you out in some way. And when you walk or you exercise, this is if you can walk, right, if you can do any exercise, even upper body stuff, thinking about the thing that causes that internal strain will activate that emotional energy in you and then your body will use that energy in its physical release. And so if you are walking, you will find that you might walk further, you might walk faster.
And I mentioned this because it's sort of counterintuitive most people think oh with stress I should go out for a walk and breathe in the fresh air and let the Sun on my face and feel the wind in my hair and Those are great. Those are mindful walks. Those are very different But if you have a lot of pent -up emotional energy it's actually really hard to go for a mindful walk because these thoughts keep intruding into your vision into your thought process and you're like God I'm trying to relax but I have all this freaking stress on my mind and it's like I
lean into it, use it. If you're on an exercise machine or you're at the gym or you can, even if you are physically limited in some ways, just even just pushing against something that won't move allows you to release some of that emotional energy. So it's a, it's a, an exercise of understanding how energy works in our body and we can use emotional energy for a physical release.
And the last little technique is just to understand that whenever you feel that tension in your body, just to blow out your birthday candles, or blow out any candles, right? And the idea here is that when you expel that stale air in your lungs, which is what gets stuck there when we get tense, your body automatically, with no effort on your part at all, will breathe in the fresh air your body needs.
David Bullis (34:02.077)
And when it breathes in the fresh air your body needs, it sends a signal to the brain to open up your blood vessels so your heart doesn't have to work as hard to get the blood around your body. It actually helps with healing in terms of getting nutrients to the various parts of the body that need it, cleaning up refuse and dead cells and all sorts of other gross stuff that our body produces when we're living.
That all gets cleaned out of our bodies much more readily when our body is pumping and healthy and our blood vessels are open. So the breathing, this is just relaxation breathing, but I frame it starting with the blowing out because then everything else happens automatically. It's really hard to meditate if you're already stressed. It's really hard to just clear your mind when your mind is full. Whereas if you're just blowing out your birthday candles, which most people have done at least,
two or three times, that you will automatically get the benefit of this. Now for bonus points, if you want to focus your thinking on the air going out and then pay attention to what it feels like when your chest fills up and your stomach pushes down and the air comes back out again, that will help take advantage of this weird quirk of our brains that it's easier to choose to focus on one thing.
than it is to try to ignore multiple other things. So when you focus your mind on just the air going out and coming back in and going out again, you are actively choosing to focus on something that you have control over. And what you'll find is that as we open up the blood vessels and the body starts to relax, that makes that pillar that I talked about earlier, the physical body at the bottom of the pillar is more stable. If we're focusing our thinking just on the air going out and going in, then our mind,
Quiet and if our physical body is stable and our mind quiets then emotionally we feel more stable as well We feel less overwhelmed. We feel less out of control. So that's an example of that full pillar That we talked about before So this is just a very brief gimmick, you know, you can sort of think like oh I'm gonna write down what my goals are and each of those four domains. I'm gonna
David Bullis (36:19.965)
look at whatever barriers you're getting in my way, and then I'm going to think about what my strengths are that I have or that I need to get to achieve my goals. And you're going to use your strengths to overcome those barriers. And that is what's going to help you achieve your goals. So here's the summary, right? Coping is an active process over which you have a lot of control. You have to base it on your energy level that day because that can ebb and flow and look at and work with the tools you already have.
and learn new ones if you need them, and think of the people and the support you have around you as one of your best gifts. But it's important to notice that anybody can do this. Anybody can cope if they really use the tools that we've talked about. You have to have patience, and yes, it does take practice, practice, practice. So I'm gonna leave it at that.
Thank you for that and I'm happy to answer questions and we'll kind of take it from there. Booba, back to you.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (37:19.913)
Thank you. Thank you, Dave. We'll give you a chance to breathe a little bit. And then really, thanks for this amazing presentation. I did probably half on the book, but the presentation makes it so. Put it all together greatly. And I love the concepts you shared and how you shared them. Because some of them we kind of know, like we knew about expectations, boundaries, but the way you put it together and when to use it is very, very.
David Bullis (37:24.285)
Hahaha!
Bouba Heart of a Giant (37:49.641)
unlikely for me personally. So I just wanted to start with that. But really thank you for sharing, you know, the story, sharing the book, sharing the giving us an overview. And I think you emphasize coping skills a lot, especially in complicated times like difficult times, which in many cases are not expected or, you know, we don't kind of predict but we know at some point there will be some.
moments like that. So I appreciate that. And then you also talk about reclaiming control. Like the discussion around, I think you mentioned, and we have some, I'm saying this with a few questions coming up, but the way you touch on control was also interesting in the sense how we can, we can basically control what we can touch. And it made me think of, you can, you can, yeah, you can, you can, you have to measure certain things. Like you have to sense it. You have to be able to,
David Bullis (38:31.485)
Yeah.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (38:48.361)
to senses before you can control any situation or any item. So that was, so a lot of gems around that, but I really like the practical side, practical tools you share and how to share them. So we have a few questions coming up, but super excited for this. And some of them, into the book, but I think the first one to start it, and I think you do a good job of that in the book, but.
David Bullis (39:06.493)
Great.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (39:16.137)
The first question I received is, and by the way, we are live on Instagram, YouTube, and also we have audience members here. So a lot of places I can see the audience and a few others. So, but just thank you everybody for joining us. And yeah, thanks everybody. A message from Hazel, thank you for sharing and it's very appreciated. But coming back to the first question, I think we have a good amount of time to...
David Bullis (39:45.949)
Yeah.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (39:46.089)
go through those, so no pressure, no rush on those. But essentially, I think the first one I wanted to know is really what inspired you to write this book, especially about the subject of coping for complicated times. So what inspired you and perhaps when did this journey start?
David Bullis (40:05.149)
Well, so thank you. That's a great question. So I have been doing this work as a psychologist in mostly health care settings since 1994. And many of the stories in the book, the examples or the sort of the stories that I tell are all based on real people. They're not.
Any particular person, any particular story in the book is an amalgamation of many people. But the idea for me, I think, was just that, you know, in our society, we tend to think that people who are emotionally distressed are somehow broken or, you know, doing it wrong or something like that. And in truth, it's not. It's a normal reaction. And I think as, you know, as the world has gotten faster and faster,
24 -hour news cycles, that kind of thing. I just was really aware that no one's really talking about the fact that there are some practical things that we all do. And many of the things that we talk about in this book, like the emotional exercise, is something that I use on a daily basis. And if I go to bed and I'm still amped up from my day, I need to do something to release that energy. And so...
It's sort of, these are tried and true things that I've used in my own personal life. They're things that I've used with my clients over the last 30 years. And they are sort of, the reason why I thought about putting it in a book was I think that they're, these turn out to be transcendent of what the stressor is. So I used to work in nursing homes where a lot of the stressors were kind of people being kind of chronically ill and not being home. And I then worked in cardiac rehab where people were worried about, you know,
living with the very next thing that was gonna happen to them, or I now work in cancer where, you know, the sort of the landscape of what coping, what illness is constantly changing. But I've also worked with people in my private practice who are overwhelmed by financial distress and family challenges or adult children who are struggling with mental illness or something. And...
David Bullis (42:16.157)
And it sort of seems like I would end up sort of having the same feedback for people and thinking, huh, this is sort of a normal thing that someone's going through. And so having that sense of like, I think it would be helpful to have people think kind of broadly about what are some things that I can do that'll kind of help me feel like I'm back, I have more agency, I have more control in my life. And so that is what inspired me to do the book was to think, oh, there really isn't anything on the market that sort of,
practical and that sort of general many many books are written about stress management many many books are written about cancer or heart disease or whatever and those are all great they're really good there's a lot of good stuff on the market but this notion of let's just get practical I think it's had sort of a unique thing because most people are like no there's the theory and there's the way to think about it but they leave the practical things to the individual who's reading the book.
And a lot of my clients have said, you know, you're the first person who's ever given me this tip. And I'm like, I'm always happy to be practically speaking. And some of it's my own culture. I'm a New Englander from long since, and we're very practical people. So that's a part of it also.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (43:36.201)
So yeah, I appreciate that a lot. And I think I like the mission practicality a few times. I like that. Because when you first shared a book with me, I was thinking, what if we had this book before the COVID pandemic? Right? Because during that time, and I was dealing with my heart condition, and I have many people in my network that have heart conditions or chronic conditions. And they've been, most of us, I think, dealing with the conditions where we kind of
I think somehow prepared for this moment, so to speak, because it was just another crisis for us and we had been dealt with it. But what I thought about was when a crisis happens, it's not about what you have or what you wish you had, but it's how prepared you are for that crisis. So in that particular moment, it doesn't matter where your reach is, how far you can go, it's how well you are. So this book, I think it's also...
One way I see that, like just reframing for myself is how practical, how prepared we would be when let's say I'm faced with my next depression for SS or my next, we mentioned tax, tax is coming up soon, so we mentioned the tax thing. So I like that a lot, but I wanted to know, hear your take on that, from that perspective, what is it, how do you see people using this book on a day to day and like when would be the best way to,
to use this. You mentioned that you do this every day, but if you were to kind of have a call to action, what would that be?
David Bullis (45:06.909)
Yeah.
David Bullis (45:12.061)
Well, I think part of it is, one is just to recognize like, okay, what I'm feeling is normal. So I'm not, I don't, we don't need to pathologize, oh, I'm worried about my taxes or whatever. Like that's a normal thing, right? So we can sort of stepping away from thinking that everybody who has stress is somehow broken or ill. Two, I think that it's helpful to just sort of take a step back and think like, well, what actually is getting in my way, right? Because we, when we get stressed,
Bouba Heart of a Giant (45:23.721)
Yeah.
David Bullis (45:40.349)
everything seems difficult. And it turns out, and that's why I was doing the sort of the three boxes idea, right, is that there's a bunch of stuff that you are already doing well. You don't need to fix a lot of things that are going on in your life. You do need to fix a few things that are getting in the way of you being successful or feeling successful, but sort of taking a little bit of an inventory about thinking, oh, this is really a problem. And...
And when we begin to take an inventory of those things, then we are much better able to set about figuring out what the practical solutions are. And I think that's, it's the old adage, right? Like it's really hard to change something that we don't know what it is. Like, I don't know what's getting in my way. And so I don't know how to change that. But if I begin to take a step back and think about like, let me use this book, there's a bunch of exercises in it.
And if you read the book, if you go through and sort of fill in all the little, every chapter, there's a little like homework assignment, you know, whatever. And those are just really to kind of get you thinking about, get anybody thinking about, oh, I could say how this would work in my life. Because any one solution is never gonna work for everybody because there's no one stressor that everybody's facing. Even during COVID, right? We all were facing COVID, but,
there were so many other layers to other things that people were managing that, you know, a COVID coping book wouldn't have made any sense because it's different, right? And so for everybody. So I think that's part of it is just sort of like thinking about like, if I use this book as a kind of a recipe thing, and then I pick the recipes, I pick the, it's like a cookbook, and I pick the recipes that work for me, then I'm gonna have some tools in my toolbox that are gonna make me feel more successful.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (47:25.929)
Yep.
David Bullis (47:33.053)
rather than, oh, I've got to go for a walk for a half an hour every day, no matter what. It's like, well, if you're in a wheelchair, that's a stupid idea, so that's not going to work. And if you're, you know, or if you happen to, you know, not be ambulatory in that way, that just doesn't, that doesn't make sense. But there are ways to use whatever skills that person does have. And so that's, that's a big part of like the, that's why it's written in the way it is. It's not just a...
a theoretical book, it's actually like a kind of a workbook almost, but with examples.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (48:03.241)
Yeah.
I'm super excited. I can't wait for the workshop. So that'll be great. Yeah, please tune in. And then like I said, we have an international crowd. So for those that are in Boston area will have some in -person session. So tune out for that. But online will be definitely as well for us. So I have a few questions. Some of them might be redundant. So I have a few more coming in. But feel free to blend them together too. But this part.
David Bullis (48:08.573)
It's gonna be great. Tune in.
David Bullis (48:26.589)
Yeah.
Yeah, good.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (48:35.049)
We wanted to kind of understand, can you share like a personal anecdote or an experience, right, of that influence your approach to developing these coping skills? Because I feel like you used some of them already besides just suggesting to your client or your patients. But yeah, what are some of those? Can you share an anecdote or maybe an experience from your own self?
David Bullis (49:01.853)
Well, yeah, I mean, so I mean, I think that the one that I use, like I'm saying every day is the emotional exercise one that my life as a psychologist at a cancer center, I bring home a lot of emotion every day. And that's a part of the job and I don't mind it, but it is a natural side effect of the work. And so every night before I go to bed, I do some yoga, I do pushups, I do...
core work, not that I'm trying to get in such great shape, but I have a bad back and it helps, but also because it is one of the ways in which I sort of let go, I use a lot of that emotional energy to just release it just before bed. And I've given this advice to countless clients over the years around using something for like, people who have a hard time sleeping, this is something that I do.
I mean, the general attitude, right, is if you can't, if you can't fall asleep, if you wake up and you can't fall asleep in 20 minutes, it's good to kind of get out of bed and do something different. And one of the things that I recommend is to just do a very low level of physical exercise. Like if you can do a plank where you hold yourself up on your arms, your forearms and your toes, and you make your body flat, or you just lift your legs off the ground, you know, even just a couple inches.
And what you're doing when you're doing that is you're using that energy. And, you know, what's funny about this, I tell this people all the time, is like, I do this for a living and I still have to remember it. I still have to remind myself, dude, get out of bed, go do your stretching, do it, don't be an idiot. And so I say that because it's like, it's a little bit counterintuitive to do this, but it is recognizing.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (50:56.969)
Yeah.
David Bullis (50:57.021)
that we humans are full of energy and we can use it in different ways. And so I do that every night, even if I go to bed late or binge watching a show and I stay up until midnight, like I might've last night not saying I did, but if I did, that's what I think. But even still, midnight, 1230, I'm like, all right, I gotta go do this because my brain is now sort of trained to expect myself to do it. And it just allows me to have this release.
And then when I get back into bed, I blow up my birthday candles and that whole adage of the candles and the exercise, that's something that comes from my own very real lived experience on a day -to -day basis. And a lot of the other stories that are in the book are from my clinical life. And so the 100th birthday, for example, arises out of the story where I was seeing a gentleman at a nursing home and he was complaining about his life.
and how bad it was and how everybody had sort of left him alone and abandoned him. And I felt really bad for him. But I also felt like I didn't want to be him. You know, I never wanted to be in that position where I was so regretful about my life. And just the way my mind works is like, well, if I didn't want to be at the age of 80 regretting my seventies, I wouldn't want to be in my seventies regretting my sixties. And if I didn't want to be regretting my sixties, I got to pretty much not regret my fifties. And I kept going back until I bumped into my twenties or my thirties, which is what I was at the time.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (52:22.505)
Yeah.
David Bullis (52:27.421)
And I realized like, holy crap, if I don't wanna regret then, I really gotta work on not regretting now. And so he was the example in my head of like, oh right, I gotta not do that. I gotta come back, I gotta remember that if I wanna be without regret at my 80th birthday or my 100th, I gotta come back to my 25th or 30th or whatever it was at the time and really think about then. So yeah, this book is both a...
example of techniques that have worked with my clients and also myself as a fellow human.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (53:01.769)
Yeah, I think we have time for a few more, but I think I have to ask this one. This one, any piggybacks on what you just said in terms of, I mean, taking stock of what you have, the level of intentionality going forward. And you mentioned this a few times, reclaiming control. So maybe this is a good point to emphasize how crucial that is, especially in dealing with uncertainty in general.
David Bullis (53:05.213)
Yeah.
David Bullis (53:31.965)
Well, right. And I think the thing is that having control is obviously, it's important to notice, right? Like, no one has absolute control over everything happening in their life. In fact, if you try to have absolute control, you will be completely out of control because it's just not possible. But what is important to notice is that the sort of idea that this task is too hard in my life, and that's why I'm miserable, is recognizing like, if that...
It really has to, it's not so much about the task, right? It's this matchup between how much control I have and the task I have. And that two by two grid, which showed out, you know, when you're in the zone or you're burning out, burnout is an example of we are focusing on things, we're putting people in positions that they don't have enough agency or control in, and that's the reason why they're having a hard time. So recognizing that I have some control over how I,
how I bring stuff into my life. And I also have control over how I respond to that. And that's the kitchen sink issue. So I think that even, because when we're not in control, when we feel overwhelmed, when there's just too much coming at us, even simple things, right, just seem hard. Like, you know, my babe was really busy and I just did not have time to have lunch. And so I'm hungry. And so that's too bad for me. But that's like...
That's something that I have some control over. And although having lunch is not technically very difficult, I didn't make time for it, right? And so that's something I have to think about. I'm like, oh, right, I gotta be more mindful of that. So shifting how I set up my time gives me some more control. So the idea of focusing on, it's not, do I have absolute control, but rather, what do I have control over and how can I make decisions based on?
Bouba Heart of a Giant (55:02.761)
Yes.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (55:25.769)
I appreciate that a lot. I think it made me, it just made me think of my kids. So, right. So they go hungry. So I don't know, maybe you should, you know, I should get you to talk to them. Cause I'm like, I told you to hit, but yeah. So that's, that's a good life. Good life. So, uh, uh, I mean, I think, I think we, I'm okay. I think with, if he's okay with you, we're gonna go a little bit over time because I think this is, um, very important. And I think most, hopefully most people online will be available, uh, still, but.
David Bullis (55:30.557)
Yeah.
David Bullis (55:36.093)
Yeah, your kids are great. I'm happy to talk to them anytime. I love your kids.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (55:55.721)
you know, we'll make sure we share the recording. But I have, I think, four more questions and then, you know, we'll wrap it up. But the next one I have is like, basically, we talked a little bit about the practicality, you talked about the workbook. So I wanted to see how do you, what's your suggestion for the readers in how to approach the workbook aspect of things of the book?
David Bullis (56:01.021)
Okay.
David Bullis (56:16.061)
Well, I mean, Mike, yeah, like any workbook, I think you get the most out of it, the most you put into it, right? So if you read it, and actually a lot of the things seem silly and stupid, which I get, I totally get, but they're meant to prompt your thinking. They're meant to prime the pump and be like, oh, huh, I never thought of it that way. So I think it's helpful, like read through the book. It's not that long, it's a small book. And then...
Go back and actually do the exercise. You can print them out. I have my website, gatewayccs .com. I'm working on kind of fine tuning the website so you can go on and look at, there's some videos for each of these kind of concepts and there's more, we can print out worksheets that are a little more accessible than the teeny ones in the book. But I think it's really this idea of just thinking about the book is like, it's an active document, right? And that you may...
you know, have one or two issues that you're working on right now and you work hard on them and you get them done and you feel great about it. And then, you know, in a year from now, another thing comes up and you're like, you know what, that book actually helped me think this through. Let me go back and get those worksheets and kind of sketch out what I'm thinking. And it's oftentimes the sketching out and the kind of putting it on paper that allows you to see it in a different way. Once we get the stuff out of our heads and into something that's in front of us, then we're like, oh, right.
God, I know what to do now. And so, that's sort of the idea is that it's not like you go through this book once and then you have no stress for the rest of your life. It's more like, oh, right. These are some tools and I now gonna, and if I have the tool and I use the tool, second part, really important, gonna have the tool and you gotta be able to use it. That's sort of the recipe for how I think of it being useful.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (57:44.937)
Yeah.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (57:52.937)
with.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (57:58.825)
I like it. I think in many times we have tools that we don't use, so this is not one of those. But hopefully it will also help us even solve some of those problems. So I think you touched on the next one already. You already talked about the handouts and how to do the to -do list. So switching a little bit to, I guess, the theoretical side of things, it's what are some of these?
David Bullis (58:05.981)
Right.
David Bullis (58:10.013)
Right, very right.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (58:27.369)
common misconceptions about coping with stress and that you kind of address in the book. I'm sure there's a few, but what are some of those misconceptions about coping with stress? You open with that part of that, but I wanted to know if there was one or two that you wanted to highlight.
David Bullis (58:43.709)
Yeah, I mean, I think that the opening line is really the key thing, right? And that is that being good at coping with stress does not mean you have no stress. There's no book in the world. There's no therapist. There's no process or medication that's going to make you feel completely calm all the time about anything, no matter what. Because if there was that pill, I would so be selling it and taking it right now. So that's not happening. But...
So having the coping and stress management is really about saying not, I hope I don't get stressed about something. It's more like, okay, when the stressful situation happens, I have all these things that help me get through it. And here in New England, not that we've had much of this this winter, but none of us like big snowstorms because they're a pain to shovel, but we have our shovels anyway.
and we have our salt and we have our technique and we have our snowblowers or whatever. And so that idea of, I don't want to live my life thinking, I hope stress doesn't happen and I gotta hide from it, but rather I'm going to have all these skills that I will then bring to the table. And many people think, oh, that person's so good at coping, they must not have anything wrong in their life. And the truth is, is that no, everybody has something. And so it's just recognizing like,
If you have the tools, then you, you know, in that sort of burnout scenario, if this is how hard it is, but I have the tools to match the, meet the need, then I'm gonna be okay. So there is no sort of like, oh, if I just do this right, I'll read the book, I'll do all the worksheets, and then I'll be so good to go no matter what happens. It's like, yeah, no, it's still gonna be, it's still gonna suck sometimes.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (01:00:25.289)
Yeah, yeah, I placed...
Bouba Heart of a Giant (01:00:37.545)
That's what I was expecting, but we'll keep trying. So I think many, I get every now and then, especially my friends dealing with heart disease, and most of us have been super lucky to really be still be thriving and to the point that sometimes you forget about the difficult part. So I can relate to that part. And then some people will see us and really think that it's all great, it's all good, but it's...
David Bullis (01:00:41.245)
Yeah.
David Bullis (01:01:05.885)
Yeah, right, exactly.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (01:01:07.305)
Yeah, yeah, it goes on. So, but I think we learning to embrace this. And I think he said it in your own words, but like, embrace that the uncertainty of life and then prepare for it accordingly. It's a message that I wanna like, you know, share and keep for everyone and spread as I can, but also at the same time, leaning into your strengths to overcome and to overcome some of the situations. I wanna touch on a little bit on.
on that part where, you know, let's say you take stock of life and you understand yourselves, you understand your strength, but then you might identify some gaps. So what is your tip in terms of how to learn a new strength and like within this context? So you might need to learn a new skill or a new attitude to cope with the situation. And then it's a case sometimes when you're diagnosed with a condition, you have to adopt some new habits. So how do you...
What will be your suggestions? I don't know if, I don't think the book touches on that directly, but like having the book in mind, what would it be? Or what would it be one or two suggestions for me?
David Bullis (01:02:15.581)
Well, yeah, I mean, that's a great question because it could be different for everybody. And so part of the part of the answer to that, I guess, is just recognizing that one. This is where that sort of general model of like, what is getting in my way? Right. What is is it, you know, like I'm out of work and I don't have any of the office skills that I need. So if I had those office skills, then I might be able to find a job. So it's that so part of the process of thinking about the skills is.
Not that there's one set of skills. And this book in no way is meant to be the complete set of tools, even for emotional coping, but more as a scaffolding to think about like, oh, right. So here's the thing I want. I want to get a job in this industry. Do I have the skills to do that? And if not, are there ways for me to go get those skills? And so people with sort of heart disease, right? Like, I need to learn more about,
They keep harping on me about my diet. It's like, I need to know more about what the good diet is. So who knows about this diet? Who are the people who could help me figure out what would be a good diet for me? They're also harping me about all this exercise stuff, for God sakes, they keep harping on me about exercise. It's like, great, who do I need to talk to to get a good exercise regimen that will help me particularly? Not just average Joe with heart problems or the average.
person with cancer disease, but like me in particular, because my needs are unique to me. And that's why the coping skills can never be so super specific because none of us are the same in sort of in the end. So first is just to recognize like, I want to name, I got to figure out what my goal is. And then I got to think about what's getting in my way. And then all the things that we've talked about today are all assets to help me get there.
And so that's the basic, and that's just a very generic, it can probably sound very unsatisfying as a piece of advice, but it is in terms of like in reality, like that's the answer for any of us.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (01:04:22.505)
Yes. Thanks so much. I think here's my last question and I think hopefully we'll cover it for everybody. But how do you, and you can close out after that. So you can quickly say, but how do you envision readers incorporating this concept into their daily lives? You already touched on it, but I wanna close it with like a main takeaway. So what do you hope to see or what do you hope that the readers will take away from reading your book and from using your book?
David Bullis (01:04:53.053)
Yeah, I mean, I think the guiding principle is the thing that, you know, am I doing the best I can with what I got right now to make the most out of the day? That's a great guiding principle no matter what the situation. And so I think about that for myself. There's a lot that goes into the answer to that question, obviously, which, you know, we've talked on a little bit today and we could, I've talked to people for decades about it. So, you know, like it's a big conversation, but basically that's the idea is that I think,
We want to doing the thing on a day -to -day basis that brings you your focus mentally back on what you do have control over is what allows you to ride out the hard times, take advantage and really be grateful for the good times. And that's that notion of this really that whole question embodied in it is all the elements that we need. And so self -compassion, focus on things we have control over, recognizing our strengths, being aware of the time.
and how valuable time is. All of those things are embodied in that question. So if I have any one, if there's a bumper sticker takeaway from this talk and from any of the talks I give, it's that guiding principle is something that can really be an organizing focus no matter what the situation is and no matter what your age or whether it's illness or financial crisis or things happening outside of your control. So.
Yeah, so that's my thing. So thank you very much, Mubba, for inviting me on today. I think it's been great. I've really enjoyed this. And I look forward to our future seminars together and other things that we can do in the community to really bring this out to the folks who just will not maybe have access to it in any other way. So that's my hope.
Bouba Heart of a Giant (01:06:37.353)
Thank you so much. We are super grateful for your presentation and sharing so much with us, so many insights. I appreciate you as a person, I appreciate you as a health professional, and I really appreciate you now as an author. So thank you for all of all you're doing. This is a great asset, I think. I've been recommending to everybody and I can't wait to send it to a few of our audience members that have won the books.
And obviously you promise that you deliver so we're gonna have some international shipping done, but thank you so much I'm super grateful and then see you again soon and like you said we have many more lined up so stay tuned everybody. Thank you Bye bye. Take care
David Bullis (01:07:07.645)
Oh, awesome.
David Bullis (01:07:13.469)
Great, yep. I'm looking forward to it. All right, thanks everybody. Bye.