Show Notes
- Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith website
- Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith TED Talk
- Set Free to Live Free Book
- Come Empty book
- Sacred Rest book
- Rest Quiz website
Timestamps
- 00:00 – Introduction and acknowledgment of traditional land.
- 05:00 – Importance of sleep and introduction to the concept of rest.
- 10:08 – Discussion on the President’s Cancer Panel report and its recommendations.
- 11:26 – The critical role of exercise in cancer prevention.
- 15:00 – Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith’s insights on seven types of rest.
- 20:00 – Impact of rest on productivity and relationships.
- 25:00 – Exploration of sensory and creative rest.
- 30:00 – Social rest and its significance post-pandemic.
- 35:00 – Strategies for integrating rest into daily life.
- 40:00 – Discussion on the seven lies women tell themselves.
- 45:00 – Closing thoughts and the importance of workplace well-being.
- 50:00 – Final reflections and episode wrap-up.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith: Redefining Rest
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Unstress. My name is Doctor Ron Ehrlich. Now, before I start, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I am recording this podcast the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. And when I say past, I am talking about the longest surviving culture in human history, 65,000 years of nurturing and living in harmony with the land shaping it. Yes, but we have much to learn about connection and respect for country and people. Well, we’ve done many episodes on the importance of sleep, and made the point repeatedly that a consistently good night’s sleep is critically important is foundational, in fact, to happiness, health, and well-being. But we today are going to be focusing on rest. And rest has been, as you will hear, under-recognized its importance. In fact, my guest has redefined what we mean by rest. My guest is Doctor Saundra Dalton Smith. Now, Saundra is a board certified internal medicine physician, a frontline worker in intensive care units. She is a speaker and an award winning author. She’s an international well-being thought leader featured in numerous media outlets including prevention, MSNBC, Women’s Day, Fox, Fast Company, Psychology Today, CNN health, and the TED.com. She’s also the author of numerous books, including her bestsellers, which we discuss in some detail today. One book is called Set Free to Live Free Break Breaking through the Seven laws, women tell themselves. And, that is a very interesting discussion and very enlightening and, very well worth listening to. Her international bestseller, though, is Sacred Rest Recover your life, renew Your energy, Restore Your Sanity, including Life-Changing insights on the Seven Types of Stress of rest needed to optimise your productivity, increase your overall happiness, overcome burnout, and live your best life. Sounds very appealing and something we all need to aspire to. Look, it’s a wonderful discussion. I hope you enjoyed this conversation I had with Doctor Saundra Dalton Smith. Welcome to the show, Saundra.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:02:41] Thanks so much for having me. Ron.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:02:43] Sandra, we have focussed on this podcast many times on the on the importance of sleep, as a way of regenerating, recovering, rebuilding every single day of our lives. But I love your focus on rest. And you talk about seven types of rest, and you go on to talk about its, effect on productivity, relationships and overall happiness, which seems to tick a few boxes that everyone should be focussed on in their life. Can we just start by talking about the seven types of rest?
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:03:18] Yeah. So the seven include physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, social, sensory and creative of which sleep does fall into. One of those types falls under physical. But I find for a lot of people they when they think of sleep, they combine the word sleep and rest as if they’re one thing. And so when we do that, it positions us to to have this belief. If I get eight hours, isn’t that all the rest I need? And I think that is what has a lot of us in trouble and why the burnout ratios have consistently increased over the past five years.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:03:55] So just go through that list again, because you said it very quickly, and I think it’s really bears going through more slowly, physical and social.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:04:03] Yes. So it’s physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, social sensory and creative emotional.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:04:15] I’m writing this down sensory and creative. No, no, because, I’d love to dive into a few of them because as you mentioned, physical is is the one that we do focus on with sleep. And, you know, people can go back and listen to some of our wonderful, podcasts on sleep. But, I’m interested in let’s dive into let’s look at social. I mean, social rest. Let’s talk about that.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:04:43] I think that’s a fantastic one, particularly considering that one of the big health challenges right now that we have is people feel alone, like they’re they feel isolated. And, you know, the pandemic didn’t help with that. We kind of got used to being in our homes doing things and not necessarily out in groups. But that’s what social rest is about. It’s it’s not about withdrawing from people. It’s actually about spending time with people who are life giving. Most of the time we we spend our social energy with people who need things from us. In our case, it may be patients and someone else’s case that they may be working with co-workers or spending energy with their family or with other people that they’re having business or relationship with. So those are people who are needing things from them. They have demands on their social energy. We then need to think, who are the people in our life who do not have a demand on our social energy? We just enjoy being around them and being around them. Bills that edifies us makes us happy. But the smile on our face, their life giving. We have a deficit in many cases of those types of relationships.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:05:49] Hmhm I guess one could also put it in this category. Our preoccupation, dare I say almost obsession with social media. And it’s almost a contradiction in itself, isn’t it? You don’t get social rest or quality from social media.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:06:08] That’s so true because with social rest, it needs to be where you feel you have a relationship. There’s a connection. It’s that connectivity. It’s that vulnerability, that transparency. Most of what you’re not getting in social media, you’re actually getting a lot of the opposite. You’re getting a lot of the filters and a lot of kind of, well, this is my happy life. But now you don’t really get to see what’s happening behind the screen. So I feel like social media, if anything, it actually worsened some of these rest deficits, particularly emotional and social rest, because it’s very hard to be real and authentic, which is where the emotional rest comes from. And a social media type setting. And those relationships don’t have the quality and the depth of relationship that, that a face to face relationship would have.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:06:54] Yeah. No, no. Absolutely. And creativity is another one. Tell us about this type of rest.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:07:01] Yeah it’s creative rest was one that a lot of people have never heard of, but have experienced and didn’t really know what to call it. Writers sometimes call it writer’s block. Musicians say they lose their muse, people who are not creatives in the sense, but who use creative, innovative energy feel like they no longer can brainstorm. So creative energy is where we’re looking at, and it really is. Anybody who uses problem solving, brainstorming, innovation type ideas, since it’s energy that you’re using, you can become depleted in that area. And so what creative rest is looking at? How do we restore imagination, creativity, innovation? How do we open ourselves up to on wonder? And so creative rest can be from something like time spent in nature that a lot of people experience it around bodies of water, or when they’re in the mountains or at the lakes or whatever. Some people experience creative rest when they allow themselves to appreciate beauty in other ways, like going to an art museum or looking at a play, or looking at a dance recital or something, or listening to music. It really gets down to what inspires you, what awakens the creativity inside of you, so that you then have that energy to go spend in whatever way that you use creative energy.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:08:18] And do you think that lack of creative energy is because we are tired? Because we are being on the defensive a lot in life? You know, with judging? What, why? Why do you think what’s what’s blocking us from that innovation, that creativity?
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:08:36] I feel like that there is some judgement that’s placed. They are oftentimes these ways that people experience creative rest are seemed, are judged, I should probably say, as being of lesser value. Like we we see someone go have a massage or go to the chiropractor or something of that nature and we think, or they do yoga and we think, oh, well, that’s great self-care. But if someone says, I’m going to go to the art museum and I’m going to stare at paintings that make me that, that awaken my creativity, you’re like, yeah, I don’t know about that. That’s different. I don’t know if I’ve seen that written somewhere where that works for people, but if that’s how that person restores their creative juice, if that’s where creativity sparks inside of them, why should we be judging it? That person knows what awakens that part of themselves. And I feel like because there is some judgement around our own creative rest avenues, that even within couples, one couple might want to go to the beach every time for a vacation, and that’s where they feel restored. Another couple wants to go into the mountains to the ski resort, and it’s like, my vacation is better than yours. But it’s it’s not about the vacation. It’s not about the activities. Sometimes it’s actually about the scenery and what the scenery does for the person who is in that’s in that situation.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:09:55] Yeah. Interesting. Spiritual I mean well that’s a big one of like I’m, I mean yeah I mean we could talk quite a bit about this one couldn’t we. Because there’s so many distractions from spirituality whatever we call spiritual. But tell us where you see that.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:10:13] Well a spiritual rest because I do work with so many different people from different faith backgrounds. We look at it in both regards. So spiritual rest, at the very core of it is that the need that we all have to have to feel as if our life has meaning, that we have belonging, acceptance, love, that we have empathy for other people, that we are part of the greater good. These are all things that most humans can agree upon simply the. Cause it’s part of humanity as part of being a good person and as part of understanding that your life has value and that it’s part of something bigger than just yourself. So whether you have a faith based system of appreciating that within some type of specific religious belief, or if you are someone who experiencing that type of connectivity and belonging through, let’s say, a cause that you a belief in or a mission that you believe in, we can get around the specifics of the fact that belonging, purpose, value. Empathy. All of these are things that don’t have to have a specific religious belief attached to it.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:11:18] Yes. It’s so interesting to to pull out spiritual because I remember in my own life, many, many years ago, 25 years ago, I always suffered from very bad allergies. And I once went to see a doctor who said to me, he thought everything was. And when he started as a doctor, he thought everything was physical. Then he thought everything was mental. And now he realises everything was spiritual. And we spent an hour and a half exploring that. And my hay fever improved by about 70% and my allergies haven’t come back. So spirituality is a very powerful force that we I like that to pull that out as an area of rest that we should all be focussed on. You talked about emotional, you talked about social sensory.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:12:05] Yes.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:12:06] About sensory?
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:12:07] Yeah. Sensory rest requires that we look at our sensory input. So each of us has some level of sensory input going on, whether it’s the lights and sounds and where you work. If you’re working from home, it could be your kids or the TV in the other room that’s giving the sensory input. You work in the city. Maybe it’s the commute, hearing the the honking horns back and forth on the cars. If you work in a building or the hospital, maybe at events, if you’re a nurse, maybe it’s an elevator. If you’re someone working in an office space, there’s all sorts of sounds that many of us are hearing throughout our day, and we believe that we are able to kind of zone out or tune out those noises. But in order for the brain to tune them out, it has to filter that information. So there’s energy being suspended in the sensory kind of separation of it so that you can continue to concentrate. And I don’t feel like many of us realise that our sensory environment has an effect on us. Most of us, when we experience any type of sensory overload syndrome symptoms, it presents us either irritation, agitation, rage, or anger. It’s the reason why road rage is not a thing, typically in the mornings, but it’s in the afternoon because you have kind of expended all of your sensory energy throughout your day. And now it’s evening and that one honking horn is too much. So now you’re in a rage. Well, I think what we have to realise is we can control quite a bit of our sensory environment. Regardless of where you work, whether it’s evaluating the noise pollution, whether it’s looking at if you’re at home, looking at whether or not you are dimming lights at certain periods to kind of help regulate your circadian rhythm a little bit better. From what your back, that room looks like, you know, how much blue light do you have going on? There’s so much sensory input that’s happening around us, even down to our notifications on our phones, just that that that little hum and the binging and the tingling of the phone. When we downgrade some of that, it helps with that irritation, agitation, rage and anger. So if you’re someone here like, I don’t know, the end of the day, I’m just a different person. I’m irritable. Chances are there’s some type of ongoing sensory onslaught that you think you’re ignoring, but your body’s still responding to it.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:14:24] Irritation, agitation, anger and rage. Rage. It’s so interesting that we’ve just because this sensory overload. I mean, my God, when I compare what I have, I’m exposed to now at this time in 2024, and I compare what I was exposed to when I was even 20, 40 years ago. You know, this this is the sensory overload goes a long way to explaining. And you included in that blue light and notifications. We are constantly bombarded by sensory overload, and it could go a long way to explain the mental health crisis we have in our society. So it’s really interesting to have you pull that out as, as one of the major areas for focus.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:15:18] Yeah, I think it’s one we tend to ignore. But I feel like right now, especially with the amount of gadgets that we use. And it was interesting during 2020 when Covid hit and everybody had to go remote, basically for a period of time, we started hearing terms that actually aligned with sensory overload syndrome, and we started saying things like, oh, I think I have zoom fatigue. Well, what you’re really describing is a sensory deficit related to spending excessive number of hours on your screen and that feeling that we get up, I’m tired, but I’ve been sitting in this chair for seven, eight hours. So I think we started to recognise that we didn’t have sometimes the vocabulary of how to have conversation about these things. And I find that really when I share with people the seven types of Rest framework, that’s what I hear. Mostly it’s like, okay, now I have vocabulary to be able to have a conversation with, say, my counsellor or my position or even my spouse about what it is I’m experiencing.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:16:20] So okay, we’ve identified these seven areas that we need of rest that we need to focus on. I mean is identifying them enough.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:16:31] No. So identifying it is the first step. So it’s kind of like diagnosing a medical problem. when this first started and I started this journey I burned out is how this whole process began. I was trying to figure out how do I stay in a medical profession, and overcome some of the challenges there and still be able to have a smile on my face when I saw my patients? So that’s really where it began. And that understanding the types of breaths gave me the information to then see what changes need to occur. It’s really why the we call it risk but and. With.com, we have an assessment that lets people determine which of the seven they’re most deficient in. Once they determine that, that’s step one. Step two is what are the intentional restorative practices that I can do in the middle of my day to begin to restore some of these different areas? Because we can’t just focus on vacations. That’s that’s killing us, trying to wait until we get to the next vacation. That’s not realistic. Burnout prevention. That’s how we stay stressed out and miserable. So we have to understand that restorative practices have to be something we can do in the middle of our life. That doesn’t take extended periods of time. Small tweaks, small intentional restorative practices. That’s the goal. And that’s the next step after you identify what your rest deficits are.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:17:54] Well, we will of course have links to that risk quiz.com so people can explore that for themselves. And I love the fact that you’re talking about building it into a day. That that is interesting. You mentioned and that you had suffered from burnout. And interestingly, we have just done a we recently did a podcast with an oncologist here in Australia of 25 years of experience, who also experienced burnout and is now coaching health professionals on how to overcome it. And she shared a statistic with me, with us that really quite surprised, shocked me, although perhaps didn’t surprise me. And that was that. 44% of doctors and 60% of nurses suffer from burnout, which is characterised by disengaged, ineffective and exhausted. An acronym DEA, which is pretty sad in itself. Can you share with us a little bit about your own journey there? I mean, you mentioned you had experienced burnout. If you don’t mind, can you tell us a little bit about what that was about?
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:19:06] Yeah. So, for myself, I burned out within the first five years of my clinical practice and everything was going great till I had two children. Then it really the work life integration part of it wasn’t there. And I 100% agree with those statistics. Most, quite a bit of the work that we we do includes working with health care systems across the world. And what we’re seeing is nurses and doctors tend to have extremely high burnout rates, primarily because the way medical education is, particularly my experience is that within the states, particularly within the states, medical education is not conducted in a way that actually reinforces healthy work life integration. If anything, it reinforces the exact opposite. You sacrifice all for the profession. And so with that type of mindset and mentality of how we’re putting out residents and future physicians, we have a lot of people who then don’t come out with any type of resilience skills or even anything in their resilience toolbox to help them be able to deal with burnout when it happens. And that’s where I found myself. Everything was great when I was a, single women. And then when I got married, it was still okay because my husband was supportive in my in my residency and all of those things. But then when we had children, he’s working full time. I’m working full time. Plus, because I’m an I’m an internist. So I’m in the hospital and hospitals and icu’s and all, you know, call schedules, they don’t fit A6A 40 hour week. It’s just it just doesn’t it’s not natural. And health care for a typical 40 hour week and the type of work that I do, it’s more like a 60 hour week. And because it’s so many hours and that was the level of expectation, I thought if I was sleeping, that should be enough. And like because that was hard enough to try to get eight hours of sleep. And so to realise that there were so many other areas and, and the work we do with health care professionals. Now, one of the things we’re seeing primarily is the emotional rest, professionals, in all areas, not just health care, but whether you’re a C CFO, having to fire people or you are someone who’s a, entrepreneur and you’re having to hustle to keep your business afloat, every person has some level of professional, professional, emotional labour that they carry to do their job well. So an example would be a stewardess who’s dealing with someone who’s, you know, a jerk after they’ve had too many drinks. Now they’re yelling at everybody. Well, they keep a smile on their face or customer service. You keep a smile on your face. When you’re a physician, you don’t have that situation. But you do sometimes have situations where you, especially with an oncologist, where I’m in the ICU with a patient, most of the time that patient’s not a stranger to me. I live in a small town, so I know the people who are. Dying on the table before me, and I’m an empath, so I’m emotional. However, not a going to fall from my eye and that ego in that ICU because I know it’s not going to serve the patient, the family or my nursing staff. So I bottle all of those emotions up and I do my job. That is the professional emotional labour I choose to carry to perform the job well. However, most people in that situation, most health care workers never find a place to release it. So they carry that emotional labour and then they power more on the next patient and the next month for years until it becomes too much. And that’s where a lot of people are experiencing a lot of these burnout symptoms, because there’s areas of rest that they are needing where they may be getting massages, they may be sleeping well, they may be even getting creative rest and all these other areas. But if they’re not dealing with one of them, you can start feeling that downward pull, that cycling, that spiralling downward. That you mentioned Hmhm.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:23:06] It’s sobering, isn’t it, to think that the very profession that is delivering our healthcare system has not been given the information to deal with their own health in a proactive, positive way? And I guess the evidence speaks for itself. Our prevent the epidemic of preventable chronic diseases is staggering.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:23:35] Absolutely. I sometimes I say it jokingly, but it’s really no joke. You don’t really want to know how long your search has been a week. The reality is, we won’t let pilots get behind a plane because they could kill somebody. I mean, this is someone who’s literally has your life on the line, and most of them have not slept for hours when they’ve done their surgeries on called on call surgeons. You’re getting operated on by someone who’s about 12 hours behind in their sleep deficit.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:24:03] Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, it’s quite sobering. And I know we were talking before we came on about our both of our focuses. I mean, we’ve been in health care for many years. Both of us. My I have a little bit like you, to be fair. But but, but it’s still, we our focus is on the workplace because we feel that this is where change can really occur, where there is a confluence of interest, a great return on investment. Because I hate to be too cynical about this, but good health makes sense. But it doesn’t make dollars. And you don’t have a $1.5 trillion pharmaceutical industry where there are too many healthy people. But in the workplace, this is where we can see change. This is a focus for you. Now to Saundra, isn’t it the you your focuses within the workplace?
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:24:54] Yeah. So that’s where my current business is associated with is workplace wellbeing. And it’s it is I do believe that this is that area. This is kind of the wild frontier, so to speak, of health care because it’s it’s not in the business world. Health care has been summed up to benefits. You have insurance. We we give you a couple of psychiatric appointments per year that will cover. We’re good. We’ve done all we need to do for you. And so that’s what some companies do use to check off their wellness initiatives. We’ve done those two things. We’ve made this available. And what they’re not evaluating in some situations is the opportunity that they have to actually improve every aspect of their company, from the productivity to the innovation that they’re coming up with, to the employee engagement, to the overall morale of their team, to the culture of their company, that the value of workplace well-being initiatives, and not just the benefits, but the actual incorporation of a wellness mindset from the C-suite down can transform a company. And I feel like that is that is the area that we tend to do a lot of education on because they need to see the data. It’s all about, you know, the KPI, they have to share the data, but, showing them the data and helping them to see how effective it can be, it makes a huge difference.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:26:26] Well this is what I mean about confluence of interest because I mean Deloitte’s did a study in at the end of last year in the UK which showed for every pound or dollar a company spends on, well, workplace well-being, there’s a $5 or £5.60 return. And I think that’s an underestimation. And and it’s pretty impressive as a return on investment. But the emotional return on investment far exceeds the financial one.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:26:59] Yeah I think music toys. Yeah.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:27:02] Yeah. It’s music to my ears. And this is from people. Who were in health care. You know who who recognised that? I agree with you. I, I mean, but but but let’s let’s keep going here because, you know, identifying, which wrist you should be focusing on and, and, then going through some restorative practices. Can you give us some examples of restorative practices that one might do when one’s identified one of these seven areas to focus on?
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:27:32] Yeah. So let’s just use like a general office space I guess just to kind of summarise, I work day for someone and and this could be for someone who’s been working from home. So if we look at physical risk, we talked about the passive form of physical sleeping and napping. But there’s also an active form that includes things like yoga or stretching or massage therapy, but it also includes body ergonomics. So evaluating even your workstation can be where someone can begin if you’re having neck and back pain or, you know, stress in your, shoulders evaluating what’s the screen of your monitor, the height of your monitor screens, evaluating your wrist positioning, making those adjustments that are needing needed, looking at even the chair that you’re sitting in. What’s your posture in the chair? How long do you sit in the chair before you get pain? Those are some of those some of the initial types of fixes that you can do for a restorative practice. That’s a one time fix and it’s done. You evaluate it, you change the screen, you improve the posture. You do those things, with mental rest. And a lot of people have mental rest deficits. They lay down at night to go to sleep and their brain won’t shut up there. They are thinking all the thoughts. They’re ruminating over conversations. They’re they’re running through their to do list. A simple Night-Time practice someone could do is just having a notepad where they are jotting down whatever that To-Do list or thoughts that are popping up so that they’re not going through the rumination. And they break that cycle by putting it down on something concrete and it releases it for that, they can get into deeper levels of Ram and non-REM sleep. Another example would be emotional rest. Let’s say if you’re someone who’s single and you don’t have a lot of family and there’s you don’t have a counsellor or a therapist, which are great if you need one for emotional rest. But you don’t have that and you’re like, how am I going to get emotional rest? You could if you could write down those thoughts and feelings in a journal. If you don’t like journaling, some people experience and emote through art. And so we have creative rest, which is the appreciation of beauty that’s already been created. But when you create something and you’re doing it from an emotional place, like some people write poetry, other people paint, other people may play music based off of what the emotions are they’re feeling. That can be an emotional release. You get to evaluate how you release that emotion, but that’s part of the emotional rest. If you’re at the workplace and you’re in a noisy workplace and let’s say it’s just let’s say you’re at home and you’re working from home and the kids are running around and you need a little bit of a sensory break. You can put, noise cancellation headphones on for 20, 30 minutes. You can still see the kids if you need to. Same thing if you’re at your office space, you can what I oftentimes will do, because I like to do my charts at the end of the day, without all the noise in the humming and stuff going on in the background, I put the noise cancellation earphones on. I open up my office door so I can see somebody can peek their head and if they need me, but otherwise I don’t hear a sound as I’m doing those charts. At the end of the day, it winds me down so that when I leave and go home from the office, I’m not going home. Just wound up because I’ve had noise coming at me all day long through overhead monitors and intercoms talking to me. So multiple different ways. And for creative, let me say that one, because creative as we talked about being out in nature. But sometime that’s hard to do. I’m in I’m in the in the middle of the U.S kind of where there’s no there’s no oceans, beaches or really water or anything. So and that’s where I experienced creative wrath. There was this awesome study that was done where they looked at the MRI brains for people who said that water is how they experience creative rest. They looked at it after they looked at the ocean, after they looked at a picture of the ocean, after they like that colours that resemble the ocean. And after they looked at like grass. And all of the first three gave the same response. Grass of course, gave no response. And the benefit of that is you can put like images of your favourite beach spot or mountain spot or whatever it is on your computer or your phone. You can put a picture up in your office so that when you catch a glimpse of that, it gives you that moment of inspiration, that moment of creative rest without you having to always overthink it.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:31:51] I love this focus. And, you know, because we do, we have heard many people will have heard meditation is really good, really good, but not many people do it. And and then mindfulness is really good. Really good. Wouldn’t people know it’s a good idea, but it’s having the focus of the mindfulness on to to really focus on these different areas of rest. That gives you a structure by which to do it. I love the the focus here. Now, I know another area that you’ve written about, and I thought this really captured my attention here. The seven laws women tell themselves and how to overcome them. This is, from another book that you’ve written. But but, it’s called Set Free to Live Free. I’ve wondered if we might, you know, putting. Well, let’s see where the where where this takes us. What are some of the seven? What are the seven laws that women tell themselves?
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:32:47] Yeah, well, the seven lies deal with things like perfection. It dwells within the image, control, spontaneity, limitations. And really at the core of that, the book Set Free to Live Free, is looking at how these different mindsets is what the lies are. They’re they’re mindsets that keep us from living our best life, that keeps us from living out a way that is open and authentic and expansive. And I feel like oftentimes when we are living from those places, for example, living with perfectionist type tendencies, those perfectionist type tendencies have have the ability to actually keep us from showing up in the world. If every time you’re trying to do something, it has to be absolutely perfect. You’re going to limit your opportunities. You got to limit the times when you speak up and show up. Whereas what we exchange perfection for, and that’s what we do with each of these lives. We exchange them for something that is more healthy. When you exchange perfection for excellence, excellence gives you opportunities for growth. Without that limiting belief that you have to get it to the pinnacle before you even begin.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:33:57] Now again Sandra you’ve gone through seven I love this focus on seven. You know seven, seven types of rest, seven lies. And you said perfection, spontaneity, envy can just slowly tell me those the other four.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:34:14] I have to start from the beginning.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:34:15] All that. Yeah. Yeah. No.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:34:16] That’s okay. So perfection.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:34:19] Yep. Image image.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:34:22] Envy.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:34:23] Yep.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:34:24] Control.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:34:26] Yeah.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:34:27] Spontaneity.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:34:29] Yeah.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:34:29] Emotions. And limitations.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:34:36] Limitations. Okay. No, no, I think limits is.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:34:39] And set.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:34:39] Limits. Well, you know, it’s it’s good to go through those because I love the substitution of perfection for excellence. It gives you a little bit of wiggle room there, doesn’t it? What about envy? What do we substitute envy for?
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:34:54] I well, with envy specifically, I oftentimes describe it as looking at the other person on the other side of the graph on the other side as being better. And what I usually say with envy is I’m too unique for comparisons.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:35:09] Okay, I like that. I’m t and take the comparisons one, which I think, and this kind of fits into a bit of self-love. You know, self-compassion, is a really important thing. If you can’t have compassion for yourself then, or empathy for yourself, then it’s very hard to have it for others. And I guess envy thinking that the other person’s always got something better than what I’ve got.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:35:34] Exactly. And there’s always it’s a losing battle. It’s a.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:35:39] Losing.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:35:40] Battle. It’s a comparison that ends up in a losing battle. So with with perfection, the the conversation is my excellence is good enough with envy. The conversation is I’m too unique and it really is a mindset shift. That’s why it’s worded that way. The conversation is I’m too unique for comparisons. And so I stop that. It’s to break that whole mindset that one of us has to lose. Can we both coexist and be in our uniqueness and both be excellent without each person feeling as if they’ve lost something? Can it be a win win on both sides? I believe again, I believe life’s a win win. I love collaborate like you and I. We have some very similar intense interest and things that we talk about, but I love that we can collaborate because no matter how similar we may be, there’s always going to be a uniqueness because my experience is not your experience. And we both bring something to the table. And unless we both come into the conversation, owning that and realising that it’s not a comparison, there is no transparency. There’s always that bit of envy and competition which keeps people from from growing together.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:36:54] Yes. No, I couldn’t agree more. I mean, within our own approach to workplace well-being, it’s very much focusing on the mindset, whether, you know, from really we talk about self sabotage to self-mastery and, you know, empathy is a really important way of, of exploring what others have to offer. And, and like you say, we both have similar interests, but I love the way you put it slightly differently to work quite differently to the way I do, but actually a lot of synergy there, which is great. What about I mean, image must be a huge one. We talk about social media. Got it. Image is all about social media. How do we how do we overcome that lie of image? Yeah.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:37:41] With image what we frame that with is my body, my choice as it relates to how your body works. Because one of the things that I talk about in the book, particularly with women and girls, there’s a lot of studies out there that talk about women have a lot of women have a lot of poor body image because they’re not razor thin or or they’re not fitting some specific mould that they have in their mind that beauty magazines and different things are showing them as what the ideal is. And I love showing these examples where you’ll have two women who literally are the exact same weight, and their bodies will look completely different simply because of their choice. So they can both be at a normal BMI, but one is more muscular and one is a little bit more soft, and it’s their choice, which one they want to be on. If both of them have great blood pressures and in our can walk a mile without passing out and you know they’re meeting general health guidelines. I’m good with that. As a physician, I’m not trying to get every woman to have a certain body image. I’m trying to get every person to have a certain level of health and well-being, the highest quality of health and well-being that they can attain with their that they’re willing to attain with their lifestyle choices and with the things that they choose to do habitually on a regular basis.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:39:02] And that is just so hard really in our society where we are bombarded and women particularly bombarded by body image, you know, sort of best of another one is well spontaneity. What, what do we mean by that. And what do we do about it? What what’s the lie about spontaneity?
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:39:23] The lie about spontaneity is that you have to maintain control at all times. Usually, spontaneity is often looked at as a bad thing. It’s looked at as something. To avoid, is looked at as something that, we should that it’s not good. It’s not something that we should open ourselves up to you. And really, the focus on that is to switch to, to be able to realise that spontaneity actually is what brings joy in life, not always knowing what’s going to happen. That’s that’s the beauty of living. It’s it’s the opportunity. It’s the opportunity to be open to the possibilities of what could happen and be open to something that maybe is different than what you anticipated, but that you may love even more, or that you may learn from or grow from even more than. It’s something that you could easily have guessed or created on your own.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:40:17] And I like that. And control I mean, control, is that the opposite of spontaneity? Too much controlled? No. Can you tell me what it would tell me about control?
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:40:26] Yeah, the lie about control, it kind of goes somewhat with spontaneity and in a, in a way. And that the lie about control is really focusing on do we, do we really even have control because, if we think about it, how much stuff do you really have control over? And often time is this controlling the thought of our ability to control things that keeps us in stress, that keep us in a level of anxiety and fear because we’re afraid of the things we can’t control? But if we really think about it, how much do you really control and covet? Gave me a lot of great examples of that because nobody could control anything. You know, everything seemed out of control, if anything, at that time. And so we have so little control, but we do have control over is our response to the things that happen around us. That is the thing that we get to control more than anything else. You don’t necessarily get to control every aspect of your life. You get to control how you respond to all of this different things.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:41:33] Jim, I could not agree more. I know this is something that we talk a lot about. What sabotages us is this belief of control. And it’s, I love the analogy. I heard the analogy of a surfer. You know, we can’t control the waves of the wind, but we can become good surfers. And, and this is a bit like life itself. The other two that you’ve left me with is emotions and limits. Let’s talk about emotions.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:42:00] Yes emotions is that bar for women. Oftentimes we feel like I’m being emotional is a bad thing. If you’re told that you’re emotional that’s not necessarily considered a good thing. And so it’s that the kind of different way of approaching that is it’s to have that, to understand that I can have emotions without emotions having me. I having emotions doesn’t mean that you are like I hear oftentimes women will say things like what people call me emotional. And it’s like it’s almost as if it’s this label, like the Scarlet Letter label that that you carry. If you’re called emotional and it’s emotion, being emotional doesn’t mean that your emotions have to run your life, or that you are reactive only to the emotions and not to logic or other things that are going on. Being emotional actually is a healthy place to be, because it’s the people who don’t release those emotions, who tend to get in trouble. And so we detach that emotional label, so to speak, from kind of our own identity and who we are and how we see ourselves.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:43:16] I would almost guarantee that the person saying you’re being too emotional is a man. Because, well, well, you know, it’s true. I think men tend to be very rational, you know, and I think that that rationality is really important. And yet, when it comes to relationships, I’m not sure rationality has a has a big place there. And and it could explain why women have a longer life expectancy than men because they get to express their emotions more. I think that’s a lesson that I’ve learned, on my journey, and I’m surrounded by some wonderful women. The last one is limitations. Well, limits tell me.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:43:55] Yes, limits. And the lie on limits is that everything comes with conditions and that that that, and the flip side of that is exchanging the probability of something for the possibility of something whenever we think about what could possibly happen, for example, if I’m sitting down with someone and they tell me, hey, I wanted to start this business, but statistics show only what 1% or something crazy of business succeed after, or whatever the number is after so many years. And so you’re looking at the probability, you’re not looking at the you’re not focusing on the possibilities. And so I think too often we limit ourselves and. And what we are capable of accomplishing because we are focussed on the probability of something occurring, rather than then being open to the possibilities of what could occur.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:44:44] I love that exchanging. Did I get it right? The probability for the possibility.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:44:49] Or the possibility?
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:44:50] Yeah. I mean, listen, are you mentioned also that you are an internal internist to your internal medicine? You’re in ICU and my goodness, did an ICU get some attention in this pandemic? Can you just share with us your own experience from that pandemic and what lessons you learned from it?
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:45:13] Yeah, it was really interesting because I had I had just stepped out of medicine 2019 before the pandemic ever occurred. And then when the pandemic occurred, I chose to step back into clinical practice because because the health care system just took a hit on all sides. And. It was needed. There’s only way I can can say, so stepping back into that scene was a little, it was like being in a horror movie that you couldn’t escape. Then what it felt like, because, everything was completely different than how any of us had ever been trained. Everything. And I think one of the things that that really helped hit the healthcare system so hard is that the I mean, we’re used to medicine being a fluctuating science. I mean, diabetes alone, there’s a new drug every like every other day. It feels like I mean, literally, there’s constantly new research, all kind of all new things coming out. All physicians across the world are keeping up with CMS and all the new data and all the new checkpoints. With this, it was like you couldn’t keep up. Every time you turned around, there was a there’s someone missing, something contradicting something out. You didn’t know what to give patients because one minute you were supposed to give this in the next minute that’s that’s not what you’re supposed to do. One minute you’re supposed to wear a mask, the next minute they’re like, we don’t know if they’re helping there. There was so much conflicting information that it really made it where I thought just within our own hospital, we just had to come to a consensus amongst ourselves and I. And if we did that, I’m assuming probably hospitals around the world had ended up doing the same thing because we there wasn’t enough consistent data coming in from the scientific world to support us in the middle of the battlefield, because that’s what it felt like. It’s like we’re in the middle of a war zone right here, and we’re all we got. So we got a group together, our our minds that are inside of this hospital with our resources and what we have available, because one day we have vents and one day we wouldn’t have vents, one day we’d have personal protection equipment, the next day we wouldn’t have anything. So it was like day by day figuring it out. And I think for a lot of people, I know for us in the side of the hospital, it was like, what’s happening? What’s happening here? I can only imagine what the world was thinking. Who didn’t have some of the, you know, extra information being fed to them and just getting little clips on the news. So there’s, there’s it’s without doubt it was going to become chaotic and just a mess because there wasn’t enough consistent information being fed to the public or to the health care staff.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:48:10] Hmhm. I’m trying to visualise the team in the hospital. Amongst all of this confusion, coming to the conclusion that we have to form a consensus and, and, and given the amount of training and knowledge that existed within that cohort of people, quite different from the general public. I mean, I know you at your undergraduate level, I think I’m right. You studied biochemistry.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:48:36] And then that’s what I majored in. Actually.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:48:39] That’s what you major, I know that. And and biochemistry is a big part of natural immunity. And, and there are some basics that we know about a viral infection and the infections in general and viral infections in particular. Was that what we would draw, what you as a cohort were drawing on, or what were you looking for, which medication we should use and which where, how far back, how deep did you dig in your knowledge to come up with a consensus?
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:49:09] Yeah, the consensus was more looking at the data that was coming in, the patients that we were treating in-house in real time. The strategy, the specific protocols we were using for different patients and the outcomes that we were seeing from those patients. So it was it was more in alignment with a field clinical study is what I would probably call it. You know, it wasn’t like we sat down and thought up our clinical protocol for this study. It was like, okay, this, this, these set of patients have these things in common and looks like the research is leaning towards this is the right strategy for this group of patients. We did this for this, these five people. And this was the outcome with these five with similar we did maybe something a little bit different. We got a better outcome. And so that was more what we were seeing. It was like daily real time. And we, we these meetings were, were often honestly done kind of by the phone because we couldn’t necessarily get all of us like we normally would if we were having a, peer session over something. We’d get all together in the, you know, the hospital room. You know, where we have everybody get together. But with this, it was like, hey, wherever you happen to be out, pull this up on your phone. We’re going to discuss. And we discussed it and code basically, you know, patients one, three and five, you know, all them had this done. Patient six seven and eight had this done. This is the outcome I felt like. And then pulmonology would share their point and, and whatever concerns they had. And then infectious disease would share their point, whatever concerns they had. And then ICU which shared their point and the surgical team. And between us, we could come up with, okay, this is how we’re going to proceed with this type of patient from the e.R to how they process through the hospital. This is going to be our plan for this. And then if there was a new bit of data that popped up, we’d reconvene. And or if we’ve completely run out of something, you know, we have no vents. Now, what are we going to do? We reconvene and make a new decision on how we’re going to move forward, because it was it was a, day by day challenge. You didn’t know what was happening. One day, you may have the hospital at 50%. The next day, the hospital’s had 125%. We got people literally all over the place, you know, so it was one of those just, taking it as it came.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:51:43] And, what’s that? I mean, state by state, in America, because I know you probably heard about Australia and, how Australian states dealt with it, and particularly down in Victoria, which held the world record for lockdowns. I think they kept the whole population literally locked down for about six months. Well what state? I’m sorry, I should know that, but what state are you in and how did the state approach lockdowns and all of that? And how did you as a, as a health professional, reflect on it?
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:52:15] Yeah. Well the the entire US was pretty much on lockdown for. End of March. April, most of May. It was around June when we started seeing kind of a loosening up of some of that. So yeah, it was a few months that we it definitely wasn’t six months, that we were on lockdown. So we came out of lockdown in the summer. So not too long after, you know, everything was kind of, started, but we still had all of the mask mandates and all of the personal protection equipment that everybody was using, not just hospital staff, but everybody was being recommended to use at that point in time. And that was kind of how how the general public was dealing with it. And then combining that with the number of days that you had to stay home or isolate, depending on if you’d had exposure or a positive test in those types of things. So they didn’t keep us locked down nowhere near as long as you guys did. It was more so that period of time and then all of these other pieces added after that.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:53:26] And as an internist, as a, as an in ICU, what what role do you think natural immunity played in, in any of this? I mean, did it I almost asked myself a question during the pandemic, is natural immunity still relevant?
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:53:44] I think. I think we always have to have some level of natural immunity. You know, I think it’s, you know, and I think it’s important to, because I think I look at it like this, know Covid was was a bit of an interesting situation, but in general, I feel like natural immunity certainly has a place, because if you look at just healthcare, healthcare professionals in general, as a health care professional, you’re around sick people all the time, especially in the winter months. And, you know, the four months you’re around flu, influenza, you’re around strep, you’re around all the stuff, but you don’t get sick all the time. Now, when I was in residency, I got sick a whole lot more than I did during those 20 years in clinical practice. And I believe a part of that was building some of that natural immunity to some of these different things, because you’re around it so much that you build up a very healthy immune system. So I think there is a level of natural immunity that’s, that’s needed, just in general, just for general health. How we develop that, though, is where things get kind of tricky because. Because then it’s that whole conversation about vaccines and how healthy are vaccines and what they cause and what they don’t cause. So it has a lot of pieces to it. But I do feel like there is a place for natural immunity. I think we all need to circulate blood in our body whenever that looks like to you. You don’t have to go run a marathon, but, you know, get walk, get up, move around, you know, circulate the blood. Making sure that you’re drinking adequate hydration, that you actually are giving your body some liquid so that it can circulate things around, that you’re eating enough vitamins and minerals. You’re thinking about antioxidants. You’re varying up the vegetables in the fruits that you eat so that there’s some variety there. You’re getting adequate amount of sleep so that your body can actually have some rejuvenation and restoration process as you’re controlling inflammation and not, you know, going crazy with carbohydrates, especially all the bad carbohydrates, the refined sugar, carbohydrates. And so making sure that you are kind of controlling some of those things and keeping your inflammation levels down. So I think there’s a general knowledge about how your body builds immunity, that each person needs to be aware of and be conscious of. There’s some responsibility there. And just making sure that you do have a healthy immune system.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:56:10] I know that seemed like a very good jump. Where are you really being serious asking me about natural immunity. But I think particularly through the pandemic and post pandemic, it was important to, put that flag back up the flagpole and remind people that, yeah, natural immunity still pretty important. And so good to hear you saying that from your position in ICU and hospital, you know, in your clinical practice. Listen, coming back to the rest and, and the lies that people are telling, women are telling themselves, but rest in particular, if someone was listening to this and I hope many people are and are saying, well, give me, you know, I want to I want to get started on this. I want to really embrace this idea. What would be three to couple of tips you would leave our listener with?
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:57:00] Well, the very first thing I recommend is when you wake up in the morning, do a quick assessment. How do you feel if you’ve got six, seven, eight hours of sleep and you’re waking up and you’re still exhausted, there’s something going on there. So you need there need to evaluate the quality of your sleep. Do you have sleep apnoea? Do you have something else going on that’s keeping you from actually getting high quality sleep? Or is there a deficit in another area and the fatigue you’re feeling isn’t physical fatigue, but it’s actually fatigue and one of these other seven areas. So that would be the first thing. The second thing would be is to then start looking at what type of restorative activities do you do. It’s everything you do work. Because if if all you’re doing is working and there’s never a time for restoration, then you’re not really building up any resilience as well. You know, resilience is built during that rest phase is just like with the muscle. When you’re stressing the muscle, you’re not building resistance during the rest, resilience rather. So it’s during the rest. And so I think we need to make sure that we are incorporating some restorative practices within our day to day lives and not necessarily waiting on vacations or sabbaticals or holiday that we actually are being proactive and incorporating some of the types of rest that we need.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:58:15] Well, that’s a great note for us to finish on. And Sandra, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for all of the work you’re doing. And, we will, of course, have links to your sites, restorations and and also risk quiz.com. And thank you so much for today.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith [00:58:32] Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.
Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:58:33] Well, that was a lot to think about in that episode. The seven areas of rest physical, social, sensory, creative, mental, spiritual. And. Emotional. The Seven laws reflection, spontaneity, envy, image, control, emotion and limits. A lot to think about there for us all. Now there are now restorations. Restorations. We will have of course links to that website, but rest quiz.com is something that I invite you to do. 250,000 people have discovered their personal risk deficits using Sandra’s free Assessment at Rest quiz.com. I’d also encourage you to join our unstressed Health community, which is focussed not just on individual but also on workplace wellbeing. And workplace wellbeing includes lots of individuals and their families and we have a very inclusive and holistic approach to health, with only one thing driving us and that is and it seems rather unique in health care, particularly if we’re talking about the traditional health care where we are more focussed on chronic disease management know and unstressed health, we are focussed on empowering you to better health. And as I have said repeatedly, as the world we live in becomes more complicated, the solutions are remarkably simple, accessible, sustainable, cheap and what’s most important, effective. Look, it’s so interesting to connect with Sandra, who is focussed on workplace wellbeing and that’s something I’m focussed on as well. I truly believe the workplace is where we are going to see global health change because unlike in the health care industry, there is a confluence of interest. Good health not only makes sense, but it’s a great return on investment both financially and emotionally. Our approach to workplace well-being is to explore the daily challenges we all face, both private, personal and professional. I think we call that life the mindset with which we approach those. Are we into self-mastery or self-sabotage? Is your mind your best friend or your worst enemy? That is the world of mental fitness training and the third part of that cycle. So we have challenge, mindset, and recovery each and every day. We need to recover. In fact, if we’re recovering just from the day, whether we’re recovering from one of the many chronic degenerative diseases, the model is the same. And that is looking at the five stressor and five pillar model. But that is essentially how we approach workplace wellbeing. But it’s so interesting to have that reframed and looked at it from the perspective that Sandra has presented us today. I hope this finds you well. Until next time. This is Doctor Ron Erlich. Hey. Well, this podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health, and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice, or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences and conclusions.
