What If Burnout Is A Values Problem

Speaker 1 · 0:00Welcome everyone. Thank you for listening to the Mindfulness Exercises Podcast. Today I'm honored to welcome Dr. John DiMartini to the podcast. Dr. Di Martini is a world-renowned human behavior expert, educator, researcher, best selling author, speaker, whose work has helped people around the world better understand the relationship between perception, purpose, values, and personal transformation. I appreciate the work that he does inviting us to look more deeply at how our perceptions shape our lives, how our values guide our behavior, and how even our challenges can become gateways to greater wisdom and purpose and service. Dr. DeMartini, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for inviting me and have me on your podcast. You talk

Speaker 1 · 0:57about perception in your work. Do you use the phrase like mastering perception? And if so, like what does that mean in practical everyday terms?

Speaker 2 · 1:07Well, you have sensory receptors, actile, taste, smell, etc. There are many, many, many senses that most people don't know about. It's not just the five senses. But each of these have specialized receptors that transduce the stimuli, whether it be sound or color or whatever, into action potentials in the brain, or in the nervous system, peripheral nervous system first. They go into the brain stem or the spinal cord, send up some tracks up to specialized tracts, go into the thalamus and go up to the conscious awareness. A very tiny portion never makes it to conscious awareness. Most of it is unconscious. Most of it is there, but we don't know it unless we really have a purpose. When something's really meaningful and high in our values, the pulmonar nuclei filters it into the conscious awareness, and anything other than that gets filtered out. Otherwise, we'd be overwhelmed by infinity. So we couldn't possibly take it all in. We'd be overwhelmed by the multitude of stimuli. So we filter it out, and our hierarchy of values dictates what we perceive and what we allow in. And so we're creating our own model of the world. Our perception is based on our past experiences stored in our hippocampus, our new receptors, and all the associations of nerves are going up the tracks. They're all influencing what we perceive. I wrote a book called The Illusional Basis for Man's Health and Disease when I was 23, many years ago, 48 years ago. And it was on how perceptual illusions create illness and how they create entropy in the physics of the body. I really believe that perception is a malleable game. The quality of our lives based on the questions we ask. If we ask really quality questions and become aware of the unconscious, we can modify any perception. We can cognitively reappraise any perception and make a heaven out of a hell or a hell out of heaven, as Milton says. And so to me, as William James said, that's the greatest discovery of his generations. People can alter their lives by altering their perceptions and attitudes of mind. So if we can ask questions that equilibrate the mind to neutralize all the valency that occupies space in time to mind and causes intrusive thoughts, we can become poised and very powerful individuals, really clear on our mission and have a feeling of love for what we do every day. I've been studying these self-mastery, self-actualization, and those kind of terminologies all these years. There's no doubt in my mind that we have the capacity to do something extraordinary with our lives. There's no reason why we can't. It's just our own perceptions in the way. We bought in, we've subordinated to outer authorities and sort of let the voice and the vision on the inside take command. Trying to be second at being somebody else instead of first at being ourselves is futile. Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide, as Emerson said.

Speaker 1 · 3:37I usually come in like 30th when I try to be others. Grow in last on that race.

Speaker 2 · 3:44I really believe that we're not here to compare ourselves to other people. We're here to compare our daily actions to what we value most. How congruent are you on a daily basis? If you're living by priority and dedicated to what's highest in priority and delegating what's others, you're giving other people an opportunity to do what they love, it that helps you do what you love. And you can be grateful for your life and grateful for the people that help you fulfill it. That's mindfulness.

Speaker 1 · 4:05Yeah. Well said. You talk about valence and moral hypocrisy and noticing our judgments of the external world and reflecting back. How do I have that within me? I'm wondering if some people may have some difficulty asking themselves, well, what do I really want or what are my highest values? I'm wondering if you see a correlation between what we don't like or what we judge, or where is our moral hypocrisy by identifying that? Can knowing that correlate to what we do want by knowing what we don't like or what we judge externally? Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 · 4:51Let me develop that. Back when I was 23 and I asked those questions, why do some people do what they say and others don't? I studied axiology. And there was only 12 textbooks available in English at the time on it. And I was not satisfied with any of the text because most of the discernments they were doing on identifying values for people were very subjective. There was no objective way of doing it at the time. And there was a problem, as David Hume said, the is versus the ought. Instead of going what the values ought to be, which most people live by, what are their values? And so I learned that there, your life demonstrates your values, but because you are living in a society that you subordinate to often, and there's normative ethics you're surrounded by, you're now going and having a conflict between what you feel you would love to do and what you think you ought to be doing. And the is versus the ought becomes a paradox. How do you live in a world and be yourself in a world that doesn't want you to be? They want, you know, everybody around you is imposing their values onto you about what you should do and ought to do and supposed to do and got to do and have to do and must do and need to do, all the imperatives. And you're trying to be yourself inside that. And so if you subordinate and put them on a pedestal, you're going to inject some of those values and cloud the clarity of what you're really called to do. And so if you're ever judging another person, putting them above you, you're going to inject them. If you put them below you, you're going to project them. And those both of those are non-sustainable futilities. If you try to get others to live in your values, you won't. Any marriage knows that when they get married, they both try to get the other person to live in their values, but eventually give up on it because it doesn't work. No one can sustain that. And eventually learn to appreciate that individual's values and how it serves your values, and then you appreciate people who they are and they turn into who you would love. So I asked, what are the how do we discern values in

Speaker 2 · 6:44people? And I found in um that one of the key indicators was how you fill your space. If I give you something and if it has very, very little value to you or no value to you, if I give it to you as a gift, you toss it in the trash. You'd want it out of your space. If it's very valuable to you, you keep it close to you. And the study of proxemics is you have intimate space, individual space, social space, public space. And you, if it's really important to you, bring it into your intimate space. So if I give you something really important to you and you really value it, you won't let it out of your sight kind of thing. So space is an indication of what you value. And if you look at what you engage in in your intimate space most frequently, it tells you what you value most in your life. So I'm not interested in what the subjective ideals of society are. I'm interested in what is your life demonstrating? Your actions speak louder than your words. And I've asked, God, millions of people over the years doing the value determinations. I mean, we do thousands in a day. Um, you know, what it is, and I assure you, 99% of the people don't know what their values are. They're telling you the ideals of what society is expecting and they're subordinating to outer authorities and the moral hypocrisies that trap them in the guilt trip that they're living in and the limiting beliefs that they're trust, they're they're they're they're stuck in because they're trying to be something they're not. They're envying somebody else and trying to be like somebody else instead of honoring who they are. So then I look at the the next one is is not besides space, is time. You find time, make time, spend time on things that are really valuable. You figure out a way of organizing and structuring your life to get to what is really important, and you run out of time and can't get the time for the others. If somebody calls you up and says, hey, I'd like you to come and do this thing, and it's really low on your values, you go, I won't be able to do it. I've got something else more important. You say no to it. But you'll make time if it's somebody gives you an opportunity. If somebody gave you an opportunity to do an interview on somebody you've always wanted to do an interview on it, you'll figure out a way of strategizing to get that interview done because it's really important to you. And to learn from them and to share what you know and to get it out to the people you care about, you're probably being figure out a way of getting that done. So when it's really important to you, you spend time on it and you fill your space with it. The third thing is energy. The mitochondria and the medial prefrontal cortex skyrocket with increased mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylization the second you're doing something that's really important to you. So when you're doing something you really love doing, your energy levels go up. And whenever you're doing something that's low, it shuts down. Just like your particular activating system turns on or off and wakes you up or puts you to sleep if it's high or low on your values. And then the next one is money. If I give you money, you're going to spend your money according to your hierarchy of values. And whatever you spend money, obviously where most of your value is. Well you don't have money for, that's where it's low in values. So that's a fourth indicator. And I have 13 indicators. The next one is where do you have the most order and organization? Where do you have the most discipline? What do you think about, visualize, affirm, internally dialogue with yourself about how you would love your life to be that shows evidence of coming true? What do you keep wanting to bring conversations to with other people? What inspires you and brings tears to your eyes of inspiration? And what's common to the people who inspire you? What are the most consistent, persistent goals that you've had that are coming true, that you really wanted to come true? And what is it you spontaneously want to learn? All these give indications objectively of what really is important to you and what your life demonstrates. And I start there because if you're not structuring it with something objective, you're going to be inundated by the subjective expectations of the authorities around you. Once you find out what that is and start prioritizing your life according to that, your energy goes up, your creativity goes up, your innovation, your drive, everything is intrinsic, not extrinsic. And that's where you have most effective and efficiency achievement levels. Companies use that, leaders of companies use that tool to hire people according to that. When you hire somebody, nobody's dedicated to a business. They're dedicated to the fulfillment of what they value most. If you don't know what their values are, you're going to be betrayed, expecting them to live in your values and not their own.

Speaker 1 · 10:47Yeah, I actually didn't get a job because of that. And I'm really grateful. I interviewed with Jack Canfeld, the author of Kitchen Soup for the Soul. Kicken Soup for the Soul. Yeah. I met him, spent some time with him, and I wanted to work for him. But the role I knew internally it wasn't like the most fulfilling role for me. And after a lot of questions, he discovered that. And he's like, you know, I think you're best suited for something else. And at the time I was really disappointed, but retrospect, I'm really.

Speaker 2 · 11:26And can't wait to do it in a way that they're rewarded. And it's not highest on their value. They're holding the company back. They're holding their life back. They're creating symptomatology. They're going to take it out on their loved ones. You're going to get less productivity. You're going to have to micromanage them. That's not caring about the person. Caring about somebody is helping them find out what they're inspired to do and helping them find a pathway to get that done. That's what I love doing every day. That's my main thrust of every single day of my life.

Speaker 1 · 11:53Beautiful.

Speaker 1 · 11:54In my circles, there's two words that often come up, or two feelings or emotions, which are burnout and shame. And as I hear you talk about aligning with your values, and I love it when you use the word efficient, like efficiently adding energy and moving forward with your life purpose. You know, things become more efficient. I'm sensing into when we really know our deepest values and get into that 1% of people who really understand ourselves to this degree, that perhaps shame and burnout naturally dissolve. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 · 12:43When you're living in lower values, the blood glucose and oxygen goes into the amygdala. The amygdala wants to avoid pain, seek pleasure, avoid predators, seek prey, avoid challenge, seek ease. So the second you strive for that which is unobtainable, just ease without difficulty, the difficulty now becomes accentuated. And when you're striving for just ease and the difficulty comes, you can get burned out because you have a fantasy expectation of a one-sided world. But when you're living by your highest values, you embrace pain and pleasure in the pursuit of a purpose. You embrace challenge and support as feedback and guidance to mitigate the risk, to dampen the fantasies and to get on with what's really objective and get things accomplished. So when somebody is living by their highest values, they see challenge as feedback to help refine their path and to master the path. Where people living in their amygdala and their lower values, they see challenge as an obstacle. They see it in the way, not on the way. And as a result of they burn out and they get bored if they get only support. It's like in prey and predator constructs. If you have prey without predator, you get fat and gluttonous and you lose fitness. If you get predator without prey, you get starved and emaciated, you lose fitness. But if you put prey and predator together, support and challenge and pleasure and pain and the unity of opposites, the pair of opposites together, which is real mindfulness, you get maximum productivity, growth, and development. And that's been proven. It's at the border of order and chaos that we have the greatest growth. People that are striving for a one-sided world, a monopole, are going to get smacked by the other side of the magnet. And then they're going to be distressed by it and they're going to have burnout by it because they're striving for a one-sided world. But the individual that embraces the two sides of life, the two sides of a human being, the two sides of themselves, doesn't have burnout because they understand that both sides are necessary to maximize their potential. In fact, when I spoke at the UN and I talked about on innovation that when you pursue challenges that inspire you, you maximize your creativity, innovation, and original thinking. Pursue challenges. The greatest achievers out there are not people shrinking from challenge. They're going, what is the greatest challenge on the planet that I would love to solve? You know, what's the biggest problem out there? When you're running from problems, you're going to keep running back into them. But if you go and take them on and find the problems that you would love to work on and make a difference solving those problems and tagging on those challenges, that's where innovation, creativity, and fulfillment come about. I'm a firm believer in your highest value. You don't see challenge as an obstacle, you see challenges and opportunity.

Speaker 1 · 15:12The research on what they call flow is that you need both that challenge. That's the true flow. Right.

Speaker 1 · 15:20On your website at drdmartini.com, we'll post links in the show notes for everybody. You have a breakthrough movie. You have breakthrough experiences. I'm wondering what you mean by breakthrough and how you offer that to people.

Speaker 2 · 15:39Well, I jokingly tell people when we start the program, I've done it 1,264 times, so I've done it quite a few times. I tell people the reason it's called the breakthrough experience because there's no breaks through the experience. That's a joke. Because we go, we're just full on. It's an inspiring two days. I just finished it. But the breakthrough experience, when I was 17 years old, I met a teacher named Paul C. Brack one night at a little recreation hall on the North Shore of Oahu. At the time, I was a long-haired hippie surfer living and surfing big waves on the North Shore. I was a high school dropout. I left home when I was 13 and I nearly died. And this man, in one hour, in one message, in one meditation, that's my first time I ever meditated with him. He inspired me, and that was the night I believed that maybe I could overcome my learning problems, my speech impediment, and I could someday become intelligent. I saw a really beautiful vision that night. Ever since that night, I've had a dream to do what that man did for me for as many people as I could. The breakthrough experience, it's two days. I introduce people to values and my Di Martini method on how to sort through and take whatever happens to you and how to turn it into opportunity and help them get clear about what they want to do. So they're intrinsically driven to go after things. I'm there to teach them how to appreciate and love all of them. People are beating themselves up and comparing themselves to people and thinking they got this and that, and they got labels on them. And none of those mean anything to me. All those labels are just incomplete awarenesses because inside a human being, there's a tremendously powerful potential to do things, and it's accessible. And the quality of our life is basically quality questions. So if we ask the right questions, we can unveil that and liberate that and get it moving again. I've had celebrities in there that have gone and done amazing things even further. I've seen people that are six-year-olds that start businesses. I mean, I've had all kinds of people, every imaginable people, 94-year-olds. Everybody's been to the breaks expensive, a couple hundred thousand people. But I don't know of anybody that can't benefit from that information. I mean, I've been studying 54 years almost on human behavior, and I try to download as much as I can to help them, and each individual has a different thing. The whole purpose is to break to whatever's going on in you. And I don't know what that is until they're there. Some people have financial barriers, some people have relationships, things are stuck, some people have health issues, some people they've just been in a legal issue. I mean, I don't know what it's going to be. I just know that there's a way through it, and we can come out and turn it into an opportunity. So that's what the breakthrough experience is about. I love doing it. It's one of my favorite things to do. That's why I've done it 1,264 times. Here's canting there. I'm a metric freak. I keep a record of everything. I've already got you mentioned on my document. I had the opportunity to be interviewed by you on your podcast. It's already documented before I even got to you. I document everything. You know, I'm a firm believer if you have a goal, it's worth metricking. With a metric, you can see if you're making progress or not, and if it's real or not, or if it's a fantasy. And if you're making progress and you can modify your strategies and you can know what works and what doesn't work. I've got a 10,000 page document that I work on on a daily basis that keeps going on all my goals and objectives. And some people look at that and they go, that's insane. And I go, well, then I'm insane. I'll take that on. I'll own that one too. But I'm a firm believer in achieving what you set out to achieve in life and you capable of doing it. I don't care what you've been through, I don't care what you're going through. I just know that you have the capacity to transform whatever that is into something great.

Speaker 1 · 18:54When you said that when you were 13, you had a like a speech impediment. I was in a speech pathologist when I was a year and a half old. Yeah. So in terms of learning and speaking, I would never have guessed that you had the speech.

Speaker 2 · 19:10When I was 18, I came back and took a GED, high school equivalency, because I had dropped out. And I guessed and I passed. I said, I don't know how I had passed that thing. Then I tried to go to college and I failed. And then I was very distraught, crying on a living room floor. And my mom came home from shopping and she said, son, what happened? I said I got a 27 on a test. A first grade teacher told me I would never be able to read, write, or communicate, never mount a thing, never go very far in life. And so that's what came back to me. And I told my mom that. And she said, son, whether you become a great teacher like you dream about, whether you go back and ride big waves or you return to the street and panhandle, which you've also done, because I did that as a kid. I just want to let you know your father and I are going to love you no matter what. No matter what you do, we just love you. My hand went into a fist. I looked up, I saw the vision the night I was with Paul Pragg, and I said, I'm going to mass this thing called reading and study and learning. I'm going to master this thing teaching helium philosophy. I'm going to do whatever it takes, trouble whatever distance, pay whatever price to give my service of love across the planet. I'm not going to let any human being on this planet stop me, not even myself. I got up, I hugged my mom, I went into my room, I got a Funk and Wagnell's dictionary, and I started memorizing 30 words a day. And I memorized the 30 words a day by reciting them 20 times, writing the definition 20 times, saying the word 20 times, pronouncing them properly 20 times, putting them in a sentence 20 times. And I grew my vocabulary 20,000 words in two years by doing 30 words a day. And my mom tested me every single night. And I went from the bottom of the class to the top of the class and I practiced speech. And I mean hours and hours and hours of speech until it's clear today.

Speaker 1 · 20:41So I was gonna ask about that first meditation you did with your teacher and ask what you remember from it or what made it so powerful in terms of the guidance, not just like what you went through, but how it was shared, if there was a memory of a feeling or an energy. I wonder if there's a parallel there in the sense that your first meditation guide may have exuded some sort of love or acceptance that helped you to then dream or vision or see, say, like a North Star for your life.

Speaker 2 · 21:31While you were speaking, I was trying to find something on my phone that was the vision I saw that night. Because it's been painted by a famous painter in Mel Melbourne, Australia, and it sits in my office. It's a four by five foot painting today. He took us through this guided imagery meditation. He had us sit and breathe. We kind of all were sitting in a Tater fashion or Lotus position in our yoga position. And then he took us through this guided imagery kind of experience. And then he had us open our eyes and he had this mandala. And he had us then look at this mandala and then close our eyes, a couple more breathings, and then we kind of went off and really got present. Within about, I'm gonna guess, 10 minutes or so, you could hear people starting to cry all through the room, including me. I had tears of inspiration. It was like a visionary thing. I'll show you what I got because it was painted, because I did a presentation in Melbourne Australia. There was a famous painter there, and he asked if he could paint my vision. He modified it just slightly to put my new version of me inside it, but that's what I saw.

Speaker 1 · 22:27Okay.

Speaker 2 · 22:27It was me standing on a balcony speaking before a million people with an iconic building from every major city around the world. And the name of the painting was A Man on a Mission with a Vision and a Message. That was what I saw, and that's been in my mind since I was 17. I've gotten now to speak in 174 countries. So my dream is to go to every country in the world and to share a message. So I do that. That's what I do. I live on a ship so I can go country to country to country as I travel or fly on the jet. So I'm constantly in motion, traveling and speaking today.