Episode 416 Gary Sprouse Finding Your Happy Place Transcript
This transcript is from episode 416 with guest Gary Sprouse.
Scott DeLuzio: [00:00:00] Thanks for tuning in to the Drive On Podcast where we are focused on giving hope and strength to the entire military community. Whether you’re a veteran, active duty, guard, reserve, or a family member, this podcast will share inspirational stories and resources that are useful to you. I’m your host, Scott DeLuzio, and now let’s get on with the show.
Hey everyone, welcome back to Drive On. I’m your host, Scott DeLuzio, and today my guest is Dr. Gary Sprouse, also known as the Less Stress Doc. Dr. Gary is a leading expert on stress management, health, and wellness. He is the author of Highway to Your Happy Place, A Roadmap to Less Stress, and he has been helping people find their happy place through his innovative techniques and insights.
Today, we’ll discuss ways to deal with stress, PTSD, and how to achieve a happier and healthier life. So before we get started, uh, first [00:01:00] off, welcome to the show. I’m really glad to have you here.
Gary Sprouse: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on here. I am super excited.
Scott DeLuzio: Excellent. Excellent. Um, Let’s start off. Um, if you, if you don’t mind sharing a bit about your background, a bit about yourself, how you became known as the Less Stress Doc,
Gary Sprouse: Yeah. Well, so I’m a primary, I’ve been a primary care doctor for 38 years. So I worked in a rural area in Maryland. And so when I was, as a doctor, I was faced with all these patients coming in with high blood pressure and diabetes and can’t sleep. And, and I realized that stress was causing a significant problem in my patients lives.
And coupled with that, with some of my books that I’d been reading and some of the ideas that came together. And I came up with this concept and it was critical. So as a doctor, I’m used to giving people medications and say, Hey, this medicine is going to cure your problem, but it has the potential for some side effects, right? So when I applied that to where we are as humans, I was like, wait, so I have the ability to envision the future. That’s an incredible skill, but it has a [00:02:00] side effect and the side effect is then I have to worry about it. And you’re like, wait, what? So what I realized was then most of the human stresses are just side effects to our skills.
And you’re like, wow, that’s an interesting concept. So then I go, well, okay, so let’s look at it. So our skills, uh, we can make choices. Well, then you have to regret, or I can look into the future. Then we have to worry, or I can know what good and bad is. And I have to feel guilty, or I have my self esteem and then I can have low self esteem.
So as I started putting all that together, I was like, this is going to help people. So I started using with my patients in the office and it really made a difference. So then I was like, we have to get to a bigger audience. And that’s when I started writing the book.
Scott DeLuzio: and let’s talk about the book, uh, so there’s for the video, uh, viewers here, we could see kind of the, the cover of it in the background of your, your video. Um, so highway to your happy place. Right. Um, tell us about the main message of the book and kind of what, what people can expect from it[00:03:00]
Gary Sprouse: Wow. So here’s the interesting thing. So I would say to my patients, like you really, they would come in and say, doc, I’m really stressed out. I’m like, really? I said, if you weren’t stressed out, where would you be? And they were like, uh, I don’t, I don’t know. I’ve never, I’ve never got that far. And it was like, oh, well, in fact, I was halfway through writing the book when I was like, wait, I need to figure out where we’re trying to get to.
So we’re, I think of us as we’re on the stressed outside of the river and we need to get to the other side where there’s no stress, but like, what’s on the other side? Like we had to figure this out. So then I came up with this idea of a happy place. It’s been a fascinating process. So it started as a castle or whatever, but now I’ve come up with this idea that Everybody’s happy place is a little different, right?
But they’re all made up of the same rooms. So like if you go to a house, it’s going to have a dining room and a bedroom and a kitchen. How you decorate it might be different. Like you might have different paints, you might have different furniture, but the rooms are going to be there, right? And so what I [00:04:00] realized was that our happy place is made up of these rooms and everybody’s room has the same room.
Everybody’s happy place has the same rooms. So real quick, the rooms are things like Hey, contentment. Like, how contented are you? And that’s, contentment is that sort of balance between good things and bad things in your life. It’s kind of like a baseline. And then, There’s pleasure, and pleasure is made up of things like, hey, excitement, and love, and fun, and it’s like we have these things that happen that are fun, or pleasurable, or loving, but then they kind of melt back down to the level of where your contentment is.
And then my next one is the anticipation, and that’s the anticipation of like pleasurable things. So we look to the future and go, oh, that’s going to be nice. So my wife and I are getting ready to go on a trip to the Dominican Republic for a missions trip, right? And we’re like, we can look forward to and go, Oh, that’s going to be awesome.
We’re going to be helping people. We’re going to be making some friends, blah, blah, blah. And it’s like, the nice thing about anticipation is you can do that for a [00:05:00] long time. We have another trip coming up in December where we go to Australia. And you’re like, so we have months to think about that. So I get pleasurable sensations for months.
And in my dreams, in my anticipation, there’s never any problems, right? There’s no lost luggage. There’s no flight delays.
Scott DeLuzio: That’s right.
Gary Sprouse: So then the next thing is gratitude. And I think that we can all be reminded to have gratitude, right? So, just a simple thing like, I wake up in the morning and I’m still alive.
Yay! 10 points, right? So, the more that we realize, like I go back to, there’s a movie, Castaways, where the guy gets marooned on an island by himself. And he figures out how to find food, he figures out how to find water, he figures out how to find fire. And he is jumping up and down excited, right? For him, that’s survival.
For us, like, oh yeah, here’s a match. And you’re like, no, that’s really a big deal, like, so, literally, I had patients do this, like, write down all the things that you should be grateful for during the day. And they will call me back and [00:06:00] they’re like, my hand’s tired, like, because I had to write so much stuff down.
Because when you start paying attention, man, there’s so much stuff we have to be grateful for.
Scott DeLuzio: Right.
Gary Sprouse: Then the next one is, is fulfillment. And this is a critical one, because people can be dirt poor, stressed out, but they’re fulfilled, and so they feel good. Or they can be rich and famous, and be not fulfilled, and be miserable, right?
So fulfillment’s important. And it’s based on things that we do as humans. So one is that we’re very curious, So learning is part of being fulfilled. So like one of the things I always liked about being a doctor is you’re literally learning every day. The second one is then giving and we’re set up as an organism to try to keep our tribe safe, right?
And so giving is just a normal reaction and it’s this it’s been made into this pleasurable thing because as humans we’re a group organism. So being in a group is amazing to us, right? So giving is To the group makes us feel good. And the third thing is called purpose. Like you need a purpose in life and [00:07:00] staying alive, unfortunately, or fortunately.
We’re so good at that, that it’s not a purpose anymore. It doesn’t, doesn’t jazz us up. We’re like, okay, I woke up today, whatever, right? So it’s like, we need other things to make us jazzed up. So like, I’m going on a missions trip, or now I’m writing a book, and my goal is to make people less stressed, right?
So that’s my purpose in life. There’s a, something I learned the other day. It’s called Ikigai. You ever heard of this? I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Japan. Yeah, so apparently it’s a Japanese thing. And so they, Ikigai is your purpose. But what they do is It’s four circles. And it’s like, what am I good at?
What do I like to do? What would help the world? And what can I make money at? And you fill out those four circles and then where they intersect, that’s your ikigai. And I’m like, oh, that’s nice. I like that, right? It’s simple and straightforward and kind of gives you what you need to know. So what I realized was, my working on this book is my ikigai.
Yay, I’m right there, right?
Scott DeLuzio: Sure. Sure. [00:08:00] I think a lot of people don’t think of it that way and they get pulled. Like I, I really enjoy doing this one thing, but no one’s going to pay me to do it. You know, I, I really like to, maybe, maybe I really like to go golfing, but I’m not good enough to go on the PGA tour. So no one’s going to pay.
Yeah, I’m not getting sponsored by Nike and you know, all these other things like the, the, you know, great golfers would, um, but you know, but I like to do it, so I, I, I’m drawn to want to go do that and then I might like, uh, you know, something else that some, or there might be something else that I can do professionally, but maybe it doesn’t, uh, you know, kind of fill that, that void, if you
Gary Sprouse: That’s exactly right.
Scott DeLuzio: something else.
I, if you keep, if you keep writing down all these things, filling out those, those, uh, those. Circles, those different sections. Um, and then figure out, okay, there’s going to be some commonality between those four, uh, with maybe at least [00:09:00] one of those things. And that’s your, that’s your thing, right?
Gary Sprouse: So they, so my wife and I are just going through this process because we just retired, right? So when I retired, she was doing my billing. So she had to retire too, right? Because there wasn’t any billing to do. So we’re both going through this idea. So fortunately for us, our finances are in a way where we didn’t even have to worry about that last circle.
We didn’t have to worry about it could make us money. It’s more like What is it that we’re good at? What do we like to do and what will help the world? So for me, it was actually really easy. Like I was already having written the book when I retired. So like that just became where I, where I want to be. So I’m like, yay.
My wife has struggled more because she’s like, so we went through this and we said. Well, what do you like to do? Well, she loves to cook, right? She’s an awesome cook. Yeah, I’m an awesome eater, so we’re good to go, right? Um, so she said, well, I like to cook, and she goes, well, that would help the world, like, right?
And I don’t worry about the money part, and I’m really good at it. So we’re like, well, then figure out what we can do with your cooking skills. She goes, well, I don’t want to open a restaurant. That’s too much of a pain. I’m like, well, okay, but you [00:10:00] like doing mission work. How about we do something where you go to a, uh, like a, um, a food kitchen or something like that.
And she’s like, Oh, so that’s what she’s doing now, right? So she went down to one of the local charities that has a food kitchen and she’s going to be working with them.
Scott DeLuzio: that’s wonderful because you get to, you get to do that. You’re helping other people. You’re fulfilling something within yourself and, and it’s. It’s like everyone benefits from this. Anyone who interacts in that scenario is going to benefit, right? That, that’s a good
Gary Sprouse: that’s it. So fulfillment is a big part of our happy place. And the last piece is something I came up with an acronym called C. A. S. H. and it has, it stands for something, right? So it stands for feeling connected because we’re a group organism. So we like feeling connected. And then feeling accepted, like, hey, I’m in this group and you like me because of me, right?
And then the next one is having safety. And I’ve been realizing over the last year that safety is really what drives a lot of what we do, like feeling safe. [00:11:00] And the last one is then having hope. And hope is looking in, so even if my life’s pretty crappy right now, I have the hope that it’s going to get better.
So what I realize is that we all need cash, like everybody, every human needs cash. We all want cash, right? But I’ve been working with this population of people who have had addiction problems. And they needed even more because they’ve been ostracized and shunned and called dirty and they’re just, you know, they’re just a drug addict or whatever.
And it’s like, no, they need cash more than everybody. So
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, and especially, you know, feeling accepted and, and, and those types of things. Like if you’re in a group of people and you don’t feel accepted, well then. Then now you’re talking safety. Like what are they, what are they going to do with me if I’m not even accepted in their group? Um, and that, that could lead to some other issues too, right?
Gary Sprouse: my thinking has revolved to saying like, I used to say that we all need to cooperate, right? That should be like [00:12:00] our number one goal should be to cooperate. And then my friend was like, yeah, but you can cooperate for bad. I was like, well, yeah, that’s true. Right. So then it was like, okay, so now we need to cooperate for the good of all.
But then I’m realizing like we, we say things like money’s the root of all evil. I’m like, no, that’s not true. That not feeling safe is the root of all evil because it’s like, what does money buy you? Right? Money buys you safety and buys you that, oh, I can make it. I’ll have food tomorrow or I’ll have a place to live tomorrow.
When you don’t feel safe and you don’t have those feelings, that leads to bad things happening. People get angry, people get fearful, and they pull away, they, they don’t cooperate, they pull back, and it’s like, so not feeling safe is a really big deal.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, absolutely. Um, and, and just stress in general, like it’s, it’s a big issue, I think for, uh, a lot of veterans who are the folks who primarily are watching this show, um, but you’re talking about the happy place and all these, these rooms in that. You know, kind of imaginative [00:13:00] house, uh, that you were describing.
Um, what are some common roadblocks to getting to that happy place and how can people overcome them?
Gary Sprouse: So I was just writing an article about this, right? So there’s really two questions, like one, where are we trying to get to? So that the answer to that was our happy place with the different rooms. But the second one was like, what’s keeping us from getting there? And I feel like we were like, we were meant to be in a happy place.
And there’s things that keep getting in the way. And I call them roadblocks, right? And that’s what these stresses, these side effects to our skills come in. So I look at things like worry and I go, okay, so worry is a side effect of our skill. But when I say to people, tell me what worry is, people come to me and go, I worry that I worry too much.
And you’re like, yeah, well then you probably do. Right?
Scott DeLuzio: That’s a cyclical
Gary Sprouse: Yeah.
Scott DeLuzio: not going to end.
Gary Sprouse: So I go, well, tell me what worry is. And they go, oh, and then what they do is they, like, they realize, wait, that’s harder to define than [00:14:00] I thought. And you’re like, well, yeah, right. And so they come up with something because they know what it feels like.
If they use it in a sentence, people know what they’re saying. But when you start saying, define it, then it gets weird, right? It gets hard to do. So I came up with this very concrete definition, which is, So worry is being able to envision the future, focusing on all the bad things that can happen, and then having a fear reaction right now.
And when you make that your definition, then you’re like, oh, well, so now what I can do is go, well, let’s still, let’s keep our ability to envision the future, but let’s lose the side effects. And that’s the key. Because if someone says to you, well, just live for today, You’re like, well, that’s nice. First off, you can’t do that.
It’s impossible as a human. We spend way too much time in the future, right? And second off, that’s my greatest skill. Why would I want to give that up? Like, I can look into the future and go, oh, the rain is coming, the hurricane is coming, I’m going to batten down my hatches. If I can’t look into the future, then I’m no better [00:15:00] than my dog who just goes like, she’s just laying on the rug, she doesn’t even know what’s happening, right?
Scott DeLuzio: Sure. Sure.
Gary Sprouse: So my goal then is to say, hey, here’s some things you can do that you can keep having a future, and you can plan for the future. But not do it with fear, and that’s, that’s the critical piece, right? So I have these two tools that I use. One’s called Realistic Optimism, and the other comes from that. It’s called a Worry Organizer.
And when you put those together, you can envision the future, focus on the good things, but plan for the bad things. But without fear, and that’s the key.
Scott DeLuzio: And I think planning for the bad things are, are, In my mind anyways, correct me if you have a different viewpoint on this, but you, you plan for the, the bad things that are within your control, right? Um, like there, there are some bad things that are completely out of your control. And, uh, I mean, I guess maybe, I, I suppose you could plan for them as well, but, um,
Gary Sprouse: There you go. Yeah,
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, you know, I [00:16:00] actually, I’m, I’m, I’m talking about as I’m talking about the light bulbs
Gary Sprouse: Yeah, uh huh, you got
Scott DeLuzio: yeah, you can, because I was going to use the example of you, uh, taking that trip to Australia that you mentioned earlier.
And, and you said, well, that’s, that’s a great thing to have for the future and, and a great thing to be thinking about. And right now I’m thinking about it. Like I want to book a trip to Australia too. And like, so I could have that, that kind of thing too. Um, Then you mentioned something like, well, there could be bad things like, uh, like losing your luggage.
Okay. Well, what do you do in that case? Which funny you mentioned that this actually happened on a business trip to my, my father going to Australia. Luggage got lost for, uh, I think it was like a week or two week trip. What all his clothes were, were, were lost. He just had the clothes on his back. So. His contingency was he went to the closest department store and he grabbed a suitcase off the shelf and he went to the people [00:17:00] who are working there.
It was like near closing time. They’re just kind of standing around. He goes, these are my sizes. I need two weeks worth of clothes. Have at it, go find it for me and bring it here and fill up the suitcase. And that was pretty much what he had to do. That was a contingency plan, but it’s like, it was kind of out of his control.
Once in you let go of the suitcase. It’s out of your control. You can’t worry about where is it the whole flight, you know, you’re going to drive yourself.
Gary Sprouse: can’t worry about it. That’s the problem. That is, that’s exactly the problem, right?
Scott DeLuzio: You shouldn’t worry about it. I guess maybe it’s a different way because
Gary Sprouse: Whatever. But this is what people do. It’s actually a natural instinct. Every organism in the earth is designed to keep their environment safe. The problem that humans get into is our environment includes the future. So we’re trying to keep our future safe. And how do you do that? Well, you look for all the bad things that can happen.
So we’re trying But when you see a bad thing, like, Oh no, what if I lose my luggage? Then you have a fear reaction like right now, and you can have that fear reaction for weeks and months and we’re out and they, and we’re just [00:18:00] talking one thing. Right. It’s like, you know, people can go, Oh, what if that happens?
What it’s like, they can go on and on and on forever. Because there’s nothing to make it stop because it’s just an idea in your head.
Scott DeLuzio: And yeah, it is. It’s just, it’s an idea in your head. And I guess you have to learn how to put that in a bucket of things that are kind of out of my control and.
Gary Sprouse: so one, so here’s what one, there’s a book that I’d read called The Worry Trick and it does, the title should have been called The What If Book, but so what happens is people do what ifs. They go, what if this? What if that? What if this? And then they have these giant fear reactions. And his point is your, your brain’s always gone, is always thinking.
It’s always, there’s always concepts and ideas floating around in your brain. And so what he wants you to do is learn how to surf. So he wants you to be on a surfboard and you’re just kind of floating above the ideas. And so if a bad idea comes up, you’re like, yeah, it’s just a bad idea and I’ll just go [00:19:00] away.
Because what people do is they’re floating around a good idea pops up. I’m like, whatever. And then a bad, Oh, there’s a bad idea. Oh, right. And then they’re freaking out. He’s like, no, no, they’re all ideas. They’re just going to float in and out and you just have to float with them. But my worry organizer helps you do that because when we’re working in our brain, It just keeps going on and on and on, and there’s nothing to make it stop.
But when you write it down, then it’s done, and you only have to do it once. Because that’s what people, they’ll wake up at two in the morning and go, Oh, I forgot, I have to worry about this, this could happen, this could happen, what if my son did this, what if the dog did that, right? So by writing it down, and I organize it in five columns.
So the first column is like, what is it I’m worried about? So, like, I use a plane. That’s an easy one, right? You got, hey, I’m worried about flying on a plane. And then the second column is, well, why are you worried about it? What’s, what’s the big deal about flying on a plane? And you’re like, oh, well, it could crash.
Oh, yeah, or they could lose my luggage or whatever, right? So then the third column is, how likely is it to happen and how bad is if it does happen? So if they lose your luggage, you’re like, well, that [00:20:00] doesn’t happen that often. And how bad would it be? It’s not that bad. I’ll just go to the store and buy some more clothes, right?
But if you had, like, the plane crashes, well, that happens even less likely, but when it does happen, then you’re dead, right? So it’s not a good thing, right? So then the fourth column is, well, what can I do to make it not happen? So I can make sure I’m flying a reputable airline, I can make sure there’s no ice on the wings, I can make sure the pilot’s not drunk, right?
There’s a list of things that I can do. And then that last column is that contingency plan, right? Okay, what happens if the plane crashes? And you’re right, I don’t have any control over whether it crashes or not, like, I’m just a passenger, I’m just hanging out, but I can make some plans in case, so If the plane crashes and I die, well, what’s going to happen?
Well, now I can make some contingency. I’m going to make sure I have a will done. I can make sure that my sisters agreed to take care of the kids. I can, right, there’s all these, I can make sure that my bills are paid off, right, whatever. So now I can make contingencies for those bad things that could happen that I [00:21:00] can’t fix.
But by doing that, what I find is the more prepared you are, the less fear there is.
Scott DeLuzio: Right.
Gary Sprouse: And when, and when it’s written down, you can show it to other people. So I had a lady who was worried about getting breast cancer and it turned out her sister and mother both had breast cancer. So in her mind, she had a hundred percent chance of getting breast cancer and a hundred percent chance she was going to die.
So when she showed it to me, the, you know, the expert in the field, I was like, no, your chance of getting breast cancer are 15 percent with a family history and your chances of survival are 85%. And it changed her life.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. Yeah. So just, even just looking at those numbers, it, it, it can kind of change your whole perspective on it. Um, as opposed to just thinking you’re, you’re a ticking time bomb and, you know, who knows when this thing’s going to go off and, and it’s all over. But, uh, when you put into perspective and you put those numbers next to it, it’s like, you know what, it’s actually, I got a pretty good chance of this not ever even happening, you know?
And even if [00:22:00] it does. I’m pretty, I’m pretty safe too, right? Um Now, uh, as you were talking kind of, uh, funny story came into my head where, uh, there was a, like a bomb squad guy who works on, you know, defusing bombs and that, that type of thing. And, and so when I asked him, you know, how. How can you be so calm and cool collected as you’re working on diffusing a bomb, which could literally blow up in your face?
And you know, how can you do that? He goes, well, either I do my job and I’m right and everything’s good or I’m not. And it’s not my problem anymore. And that was his
Gary Sprouse: know that. Yeah, kind of
Scott DeLuzio: there was no worry there, you know?
Gary Sprouse: But he was very prepared, that was the other key, right? Like, he knows what he’s not going to go doing it with no preparation. So the more prepared you are, like if I go out and do a speech, the more prepared I am. The less worried I am about it because I know I’ve done my work, and [00:23:00] so I don’t have as much fear because the chances of it failing have gone down significantly, and that’s that middle column, right?
So the chances of me failing go down a lot, so at some point you get to where, and I guess that guy’s in that place where like, hey, if it blows up, it blows up, I’m done there, I’m good. But that’s where you go, well, okay, what, and then that’s where we use our ability to envision the future. So if I’m dead, what happens?
Oh, well, my wife’s by herself, so I better have a life insurance policy. Oh, my kids aren’t going to have college, well, I better have enough life insurance, right? Those kinds of things. Now you can start planning for them, and the key then is that, but you don’t have to do it with fear, because the fear is where people get into trouble.
Scott DeLuzio: that’s right. Yeah. And when you, when you have all of those things laid out, the life insurance, uh, you know, maybe savings for college and you have other, your bills are taken care of, your will is in order. All, all those things are in order. It’s like, okay, no, I, I don’t want the bomb to go off in my face,
Gary Sprouse: Yeah.
Scott DeLuzio: But if it does, [00:24:00] everything’s taken care of and, and, and things will, you know, the, the people that I love and the people that are, you know, in my life are going to be taken care of. And, and, you know, they’re, they’re not going to be struggling to get by, obviously there’ll be some sadness and grief and all that kind of stuff, but, um, you know, which we don’t want, but you know, there’s, it’s going to happen eventually.
You know, we all have a expiration date attached to us at some point. Right. Um, and so, uh, you know, when you’re, when your time comes, it comes. And, and when you have all of that stuff in order, you don’t have to worry about. When it comes or how it happens or any of that kind of stuff. It’s just, it’s going to happen, whether it’s a plane crash or a bomb going off in your face or an illness or, you know, any number of other things.
Um, it’s like, why, why worry about it?
Gary Sprouse: Yeah, so, because this is the side effect, right, we’re trying to keep our environment safe and our environment is the future, but the future can go on forever. So, I was telling them, reading this book, and there’s an alien nation coming to take us over in [00:25:00] four and a half, four hundred and fifty years.
Well, the people that are living there, and their grandkids, and their great grandkids, are not going to care. They’re going to just live their life. But knowing that was freaking people out in the book, right? You’re like, oh, yeah, right, because I’ve had patients come to me and say, Oh, yeah, right. Doc, the sun’s gonna blow up in four billion years, so what’s the difference?
You’re like, that’s four billion years from now, come on, man, seriously? But that’s because our ability to envision a future doesn’t stop, it just keeps on going. Yeah.
Scott DeLuzio: It’s a, it’s a linear thing that just keeps going and.
Gary Sprouse: But the fury action happens right now. So there’s a book I read called Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, which is a great title, right? So, so here’s the difference between zebras and humans. So a zebra’s eating grass and one of the herd smells or hears a lion and they go, Lion! And they all start galloping away, right?
They don’t sit around and go, was that a lion or a tiger? I don’t know. They’re just running, right? But once you can’t smell or hear the lion anymore, [00:26:00] Then they just go back to eating grass because they can’t go, right? For humans, we go, Oh my God, was that a lion? Was that a, I don’t know, I don’t know. And we start running away, but then we stop and we can’t see the line.
And we’re like, wait, could that lion be around the corner? What happens if he comes back next week? What if my back was hurting and I couldn’t run away? Ah, right. And so there’s nothing to make that stop. Zebras stop because they can’t smell the line anymore. We can think a line and just keep going on and on and on and on about it.
And that fear reaction, you can drive your car at 100 miles an hour, but after a while, it starts breaking down. And your body is the same way. You can have a fear reaction all day for a while, but then it starts breaking down.
Scott DeLuzio: Right. Right. And the humans in that zebra example, you know, humans start building a wall so that the lion can’t get in and we start
Gary Sprouse: to prevent, right?
Scott DeLuzio: creating that safety. Right. And, and we, we, we strive for that. Whereas the, the zebras are content with just being out of smelling range, I guess, of, of the lion or [00:27:00] whatever
Gary Sprouse: that’s it. So here, this is, we’ve been using this word safety, right? So my wife said to me the other day, So what is safe? What does that mean? And I’m like, well, that’s, and I, now I’m in my own position, like where someone says, what’s right? And I’m like, I don’t know, let me think about this, right?
So if I said to you, what, what is safe? What would you say?
Scott DeLuzio: I, I guess it depends on the situation, but you know, I think every, you know, In my, my opinion, every situation is going to be different, but minimizing risks and, uh, you know, because you’re going to be in sometimes an unsafe situation, driving your car is going to be unsafe because you don’t know what’s going on on the road with other drivers and everything.
But as long as you, your car is in working order, you got your seat belt on, the airbags are there, all that kind of stuff. Well, that’s, that’s safe,
Gary Sprouse: So here’s what I decided. So I decided that, that safety isn’t a something, it’s the absence of something. So feeling safe is when you don’t feel fear. And you don’t feel anger and you don’t feel [00:28:00] pain and you’re not suffering when you don’t have those things. What’s left over is safe. And it’s like, and just as you said, it’s in different circumstances.
So you might feel physically safe, but not financially safe or vice versa. Right. Or you might feel spiritually safe, but not, you know, emotionally safe. So like there’s different categories of where you would feel safe. And the third thing is you can never be a hundred percent safe because you’re It includes the future and who knows what’s going to happen in the future.
So what I realized is to feel safe, you have to identify where, where, what arena you’re talking about. You have to go, it’s the absence of feeling that. And the third thing is you have to go, okay, can you feel safe at 99 percent certainty? Can you feel safe if it’s 90%? How about 50%? So what you see is lots of people at 50 percent they’re like, yeah, I’m fine.
I’m good. Let’s do it. Right. Other people, it’s 98%. They’re like, no, you know, like a plane crash and they’re freaking out. Like. Come on. That’s only a 1%, not even a 1 percent [00:29:00] chance. They’re
Scott DeLuzio: It’s less than that. Yeah.
Gary Sprouse: so, so then my work then becomes, I want to get you to feel safe. I have to define it so that we know where we’re trying to get to.
And two is I go, okay, let’s figure out a way that you can be comfortable with a 98 or a 95 or a 50. And then that way you can feel safe, even though somebody else might not.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. And yeah, it’s unique to each individual and, um, uh, you know, and each situation too. Some, some people may be more, uh, feel more secure, more safe in, uh, the financial area of their life where they might not feel so safe in, in other. Social scenarios and all that kind of stuff. Um, and it might be vice versa for somebody else.
Uh, and, and so I, yeah, I guess all of this is very, uh, individualized where each person has to, uh, Figure out what their own [00:30:00] tolerance is for safety and, uh, maybe even work on building that up. Um, kind of almost like if you had low self esteem, um, you want to build that up and gain confidence, right. But, uh, you know, build up your tolerance for the, the safety, not to the point where you’re reckless, obviously you don’t want to, you know, just be driving a, You know, 150 miles an hour down the highway with no seatbelt on and your head sticking out the window like that, that’s stupid and you don’t want to, you don’t want to do that unnecessarily, but, um, you know, figuring out how you, like, if you have that anxiety over, um, over worrying about just getting in the car, for example, uh, just cause we’re using that, um, You know, figure out how do you get into the car and go on the road and drive and, you know, or, or maybe there’s certain other things in your life that, that are holding you back.
How do you feel safe? With those things, you know, what contingencies can
Gary Sprouse: question, right?[00:31:00]
Scott DeLuzio: right? Yeah, it is. And again, everyone’s going to be different. Um, but I know a lot of people, uh, dealing with like PTSD are dealing with stuff and I, I think, and I’m, I’m not a doctor, so I don’t, I don’t know for sure, but I think safety does play a big role in that,
Gary Sprouse: I was just going to bring that point up. Like, so I just finished reading this book, The Body Keeps Score, which is a great book, and it’s about trauma. And what I was going to say is, if you’ve been in an, in a, an event where there was this trauma that, um, that was involved in it. That gets input into your brain in a certain way.
And so then when you get back to a place that’s theoretically safer, that event still in your head, and it makes you feel like you’re not safe, even when you theoretically are, and that makes people go crazy. And that’s, we then label it PTSD or whatever we call it. But when I got out of that book, the key thing when I got out of it, and this will help all your patients have PTSD, if they haven’t heard this already, is that our brain keeps memories in [00:32:00] two ways.
So the first way is. Like we tell a story like, yeah, I saw Scott and we got, we did his podcast and then we done, we were done. Right. And there’s words to it. And there’s a storyline and there’s coherence. There’s a beginning, a middle and end. But when there’s a traumatic event, it’s a whole different memory because that front part of our brain, the frontal lobe, the thinking part of our brain.
Literally gets shut down. Now we’re just operating on the lower parts of our brain, limbic system, blah, blah, blah, right? But that part of our brain just has emotions, and it doesn’t have words. And so the memories now are stored as just these giant explosions of emotion. And these, like, isolated images, these, like, there’s a smell, or there’s a taste, or there’s some visual thing, or you hear something, but then there’s no coherence to it, and there’s no words to it, so something triggers that memory, and you have this explosion of emotion, you get these horrible images in your head, and then But there’s no story.
[00:33:00] You’re like, what is that? You don’t even know what it is. And so that’s what makes PTSD such a difficult thing, because there’s no words to it. And what people do then is they figure out a way that they can cordon off that memory so that it doesn’t keep showing up. But to do that takes so much effort.
And it has its own side effects. Like, so now if you tamping down all your feelings, so you don’t feel that, that means you also can’t feel this, the love of your wife or the love of your kids. So that’s what makes it so difficult.
Scott DeLuzio: right. It does. And it’s, it’s this overwhelming feeling that you get, like whenever these triggers come up, uh, Yeah, you’re absolutely right. You want to isolate those things and stay far away from whatever the, the smells, the sights, the, the tastes, the, the sounds, the, any of those things that are, uh, reminding you of whatever that event [00:34:00] was and, and we’re not just talking combat here because I know a lot of the folks who are listening, it could be anything, it could be a car accident.
It could be,
Gary Sprouse: no, exactly. Here’s the, here’s the, here’s where it’s the worst. This is what the guy said. Like if someone’s mugging you and they punch you in the face, it hurts and they steal your wallet and they steal your, your watch, but you punch them in the face and you run away. That’s bad, but that’s not where trauma gets involved.
When you are being held down by three guys, and somebody’s punching your face, and they steal their wallet, and your body’s going, get away, run away, and you can’t because you’re being held down, that, because then the body’s just going more and more, like, come on, run away, and you’re like, I can’t, I can’t, and it’s like, that’s when people get into trouble.
You’re in a situation that you can’t get out of, And your body just keeps ramping up the fear reaction to try and get you away, and it has nowhere to go, and you have no control, no control over the situation. That’s when the trauma gets the worst.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. [00:35:00] Um, I’m just thinking as you’re talking, I’m thinking about, you know, like if, if you’re in a fistfight like that, the first example that you described, um, yeah, even if you lose that, that fistfight, even if you, you know, you, you lose your wallet or, you know, a watch or something like that, um, yeah. You know, unless you’re beaten to within an inch of your life.
Like, I don’t know, I’ve been in a fist fight before. Like, I barely remember it. Like, it’s not like a thing that, that triggers bad memories or anything like that for me. I mean, I’m not saying it doesn’t for anybody. Um, but I can, I can see where you’re coming from versus. If you’re, I don’t know, if you’re being restrained somehow, like that’s, that’s exceptionally traumatic.
Uh, even though the end result might be exactly the same, you got punched in the face, you got your wallet stolen from you, but you’re being restrained on top of it. That sounds like way worse, uh, for, for whatever reason. Um, and, [00:36:00] um, you know, yeah, I could see how that would come back. If, you know, even, even something like putting on, uh, you know, a, a tight fitting shirt or something like that might.
Trigger something in somebody where they’re like, I can’t wear that. Like I got to wear something loose. Cause otherwise forget about it. You know?
Gary Sprouse: Well, and it doesn’t even have to be physically restrained. So like, if you can’t get out of the situation, so what he talks about in his book is like, if you’re a kid, and you’re coming home, and your dad is the one that’s beating you or molesting you, but you have to go there because you don’t have any other choice, you Now, you know, I’m going to come home.
Like I had a patient once and I was like, what was your family life? And she’s like, my parents are great. Then it turned out her sister literally is beating her up every day of her life. So every day she had to go to bed knowing that in the morning her sister was gonna beat her up. And there wasn’t, and she would say something to her parents and they were like, yeah, whatever.
And so like, how do you live your life like that? Like you can’t just, I, I assume people try to run away from home and then somebody brings them back and like, now you’re stuck. [00:37:00] And that’s when all this stuff happens. So it can be physically or mentally, or like if you’re in the military and you’re in the scene where you can’t get out of, like you’re, you’re in a foxhole and you can’t get out.
Like you’re stuck even though you’re not physically being restrained. You’re like, no, I’m not. This isn’t good, right?
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you’re, you have a job to do and there’s a mission that needs to be accomplished and it’s your job to go do it. And you can’t just, uh, no, I’m opting out of this one. Like, that’s not an option.
Gary Sprouse: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Scott DeLuzio: Like you’re in it, like, go do it. Like you have
Gary Sprouse: the things that I learned how to do was hypnosis with neural linguistic programming. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with that or not, but I was when I was taking my classes, right? The instructor had brought people up from the audience that, you know, that we were all therapists and stuff.
And so this one guy came up and he was a military vet. And he had been in Vietnam and his position was being overrun by the enemy. So he called an airstrike [00:38:00] on himself, right? And the airstrike came, the bomb went off, all his buddies were killed, and he was not. Yeah, and you get it, right? So he comes back to the United States and he wants to go to the Vietnam Memorial.
Because he wants to pay homage to the guys that were with him. He didn’t feel guilty. He didn’t feel like he did something wrong, but he was like, just overwhelmed with the trauma of it. But he couldn’t because he kept having panic attacks. Every time he’d even think about going there, it would just freak him out and would take him back to that scene, right?
So we did neurolinguistic programming, the instructor did it, and he would say, So tell me what happened to Vietnam, and you would see this guy’s body would just tense up and you would freak out, like, Let’s go down to Vietnam. You know, it was just like, no, that’s not happening, right? A half an hour of neurolinguistic programming, And the instructor’s like, so, we’re in D.
C., how about we go down to the Vietnam Memorial? He’s like, yeah, let’s go. And you’re like, wait, what? And, but what it did was, what Northern [00:39:00] Linguistic Department does is they, It gives some coherence and some reframing and some words to that immensely emotional fragmented memory. It now puts it together in a way that you cannot handle it.
Scott DeLuzio: Interesting. Um, that has got to be super powerful. Uh, thinking about someone like that. Yeah. Um, and it’s, it’s almost like, why is this not done more often? Like,
Gary Sprouse: Well. So a couple things, there’s a couple different techniques that are very similar to NLP. So there’s a thing called EMDR, which I think people have heard of more. And then there’s another one, I just read this article about a guy who was working with military people and he had made up this technique as, but I’m, as I’m reading, I’m like, well, that’s NLP. So people have come up with similar ideas, just call it different things. But yeah, no, that’s, that’s been, [00:40:00] my question is like, Why isn’t this being done more? Just in the same thing with that guy, um, the guy who wrote that book on the Body Keeps Score. There’s a hundred pages of that book on how to help people with this.
And NLP and EMDR are one of the things that are in there. So there’s, there’s a whole bunch of techniques now that are very effective. It’s just a matter of using them.
Scott DeLuzio: When we talk about stress and we’ve talked a lot about like the, the mental and the emotional side of things as well, but there’s gotta be a physical component too. If you’re always stressed out, worried about, about things, how does that affect your physical health?
Gary Sprouse: Well, so when you’re, when people get stressed out, there’s two hormones that get released. One’s cortisol, one’s adrenaline. And so they have very specific things. So when people think about being stressed out, most of the time it’s fear and then that’s what’s going on. And so those those two chemicals cause all kinds of problems in your body when they’re too high and for too long.
So our stress reaction was designed to be like a [00:41:00] zebra like run away or hide or get eaten whenever right and it’s like and then it goes away So it might go on for 10 minutes or 20 minutes or 30 minutes But humans, because we have future, we can have it go on for months and years. And so when you do that same reaction for that long, it takes its toll.
So people are more likely to have heart attacks. People are more likely to get infections. People are more, way more likely to get asthma, way more likely to have bad headaches. I mean, there’s all kinds of physiological. And that book that, you know, um, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, it’s 300 page book that has 250 pages on what happens to you if you have too much stress, right?
So it’s. It’s a lot. It’s too much. I mean, the bottom line is try to have less because it’s better for your body. The less stress you have, the, the long, it turns, it’s just fascinating. I just read the study. It was like, you actually live 10 years longer the less stress you have. And you’re like, wait, what?
Yeah. So it’s definitely a good idea not to run your car at a [00:42:00] hundred miles an hour or not to be stressed out.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. And I know it’s easier said than done sometimes with, with certain people and the, the things that they’re stressed about and how they, they handle it. Um, but that’s kind of like what you’re outlining in, in your book, right? The highway to your, your happy place is kind of the, the, the roadmap, if you will, to figure out how to.
Reduce the stress in your life and reduce
Gary Sprouse: of the things that I
Scott DeLuzio: all those physical things,
Gary Sprouse: yeah, well, people say to me, well, you know, I don’t have any control over this, and you’re like, okay, well, okay, control is a percentage thing, like, nobody has 100 percent control, and nobody has 0%, we all have somewhere in the middle, so you can’t always keep things from happening to you, but you can control how you react to it, but if you’re going to react to it, you have to know what it is that you’re reacting to, so if I just say worry, and you don’t know what that is, well, how are you going to fix that?
So what my book, Highway to a Happy Place, says is here’s what [00:43:00] worry is, so here’s how to react to it. Here’s what guilt is, so here’s how to react to it. Here’s what feeling overwhelmed is, and here’s how to react to it. And now you can come up with efficient and effective tools that you can then do something about it so that it gives you the sense of control back in your life.
Because now, even though I can’t stop this from happening, I can change how I react to it. And now I don’t, I don’t get that huge stress reaction that I was getting before.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. And it could be as simple as like what we were talking about before, having some sort of contingencies in place so that if something happens, you’re, you’re covered, you, you have a, you know, you have a spare tire in your car, right? So if you have a tire that blows out, well, you can change a tire and you’re not stranded on the side of the road with three tires left on your car, right?
There’s, there’s contingencies. No, you can’t. Control whether or not you drive over a nail and your tire blows out or, or whatever, you know, you, you can’t control that. Um, but you can control how, like you said, how you react to it and [00:44:00] having that spare tire that’s in good working condition, that’s something you can control.
So focus on that and do that. And then if something bad happens, like a tire gets blown out, well, okay, fix it and move on from there, you know?
Gary Sprouse: Well, we do have to be careful. I will say this to you, right? So, this is, this is my one line where it’s sort of gender specific, right? In general, not specific, in general, women tend to worry more than men. And here’s, here’s what I think why. This is my theory, right? So men were designed to go hunt. So if you’re out hunting a woolly mammoth, you don’t want to think about all the things that could go wrong, because then you would never go out and hunt a woolly mammoth, right?
So, we were designed to minimize. So we go, oh, it’s not going to happen. I, I can take the woolly mammoth by myself, ah, right? Okay. Women were designed to raise kids. And when you’re raising kids, your job is to figure out what they could get into and make it not be there so they don’t get into trouble. So when you handle problems in this, I see [00:45:00] this in, and it’s not always, I mean, it can be the opposite, right?
There’s plenty of men that, there’s plenty of women that minimize and plenty of men that worry. But those two people tend to get matched up. So the minimizers, you know, the one spouse is going, I’m worried this is going to happen. And the other spouse is like, no, no, it’s going to be okay. And they go, oh, that’s so nice.
That makes me feel good. That makes me feel safe. Right. But over time, the minimizer is wrong once in a while. And so then the worrier goes, well, that’s what you said last time. And it happened. And now we’re stuck. So I’m not listening to you this time. So now, as the minimizer says. No, no, it’s gonna be okay.
Like, no, what, like, why am I spending all the energy worrying here trying to fix this problem and you’re sitting there in La La Land, you know, it’s like. So then it ends up being a fight. And so that’s when, when I start talking about worry organizers, that’s why that column becomes important. So instead of fighting, you go, well, what’s the chance of this happening?
So the minimizer say, well, it’s a 5 percent chance. And the worrier might say, well, it’s an 80 percent [00:46:00] chance. Well, but now you’re arguing numbers, not you’re a lazy jerk and you’re, you’re a worry worry, right? So now you’re talking numbers, which is way less emotional.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, that’s right. And it does seem like those opposites do end up attracting each
Gary Sprouse: yeah, they do. Yeah.
Scott DeLuzio: I’m, I’m just thinking of some of the people I know and nevermind. I won’t, I won’t go in. I’m not going to go down that rabbit
Gary Sprouse: Yeah.
Scott DeLuzio: um, um, so for the listeners who are. They’re worried about how they’re going to reduce the stress of their life.
Um, where, where can they go to find out more information about, uh, kind of what you do, your book and the kind
Gary Sprouse: So the book is The Highway to Your Happy Place, A Roadmap to Less Stress, and it’s in Barnes and Noble. It’s in Amazon. It’s just getting ready to come out in an audio book. So yay. Um, I have an online course that’s just getting ready to come out in the next two weeks and, but they can find that on the website.
It’s called the less stress.dot com. And then if they want, they can just email me at less stress [00:47:00] [email protected] and I’d be glad to talk to people. ’cause what I find is. The book, the problem with books, books are awesome. Right? I got, I don’t know if you know who Tony Robbins is, but he, one of the things he says is somebody just spent 20 years gathering the information to write that book and I just spent a week reading it.
And like, so I just got 20 years of education in one week. Right. And you’re like, yeah. So, but the problem with the book is. That is generic. Like, I can’t write it for you, Scott. Like, it has to be like, here’s worry, here’s guilt. Like, it can’t be for you. And so, talking to me or going on my website, now it can be you, right?
So, that’s where it gets personal.
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, that is. And so I’ll definitely have a link to the website, the book, obviously, uh, in the show notes for everyone. Um, but. I highly encourage you first off, get the, get a copy of the book, um, to at least get a baseline understanding of, of kind of where we’re coming from here. Um, but if you need that kind of more personalized approach and, um, you know, there’s the course that you’re [00:48:00] talking about, but also, um, also reach out and, and hopefully there’ll be some, uh, perspective that, that maybe, uh, you’re, you’re missing and that might help lead you in that right direction to kind of help reduce so much
Gary Sprouse: Oh, it’s fascinating. Like, I learned stuff too. So, like, I was talking to somebody the other day and I said, well, you know, women say they, like, I would say they would go, I felt guilty that I didn’t spend enough time with my kids. And I was like, well, that’s not really guilt. That’s regret. You made a choice.
And, and then the lady was like, well, no, actually there’s an unwritten rule in our society that women are supposed to be raising their kids. So when I’m not raising my kids, I do feel guilty. I am breaking that unwritten rule. And you’re like, Ooh, yeah. So I learned stuff too. Right. So that’s where the personal stuff comes in.
Uh,
Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. And like you said, uh, earlier is that you’re learning stuff every day in, in the job that you do, but you know, talking to someone like that and getting their perspective, that’s learning something about how somebody else is thinking, um, that maybe you might not have had that perspective had you [00:49:00] not talked to that person.
So, so interesting. It’s really, uh, cool stuff that you’re doing. And I encourage everybody to, Check it out. Again, check out the links in the show notes, uh, for all of that stuff and you can get in touch, um, with, uh, through those links there. Um, before we wrap up the episode, uh, sometimes the topics that we talk about, a little bit heavy, uh, topics, uh, as far as the, the content goes and, uh, might, might need, uh, to lighten it up a little bit, uh, lighten up the mood.
And so I like to add a little bit of humor at the end of each episode, sometimes just telling a quick joke, uh, hopefully to Get people to laugh at the joke and not so much at me for telling such a bad joke, but I’ll take it either way as long as someone’s laughing. Um, I thought this one might be appropriate for, uh, this episode, kind of thinking about the future and worry and kind of thing, thing like that.
But how is apathy different from indifference?
Gary Sprouse: I don’t know. Tell me.[00:50:00]
Scott DeLuzio: Eh, who cares?
Gary Sprouse: There you go. Now, now I get to tell a story and this is, this, this is all myself, right? So when I was in high school and college, I wrestled, but now, and I went, I, when I first got into practice, I went down and I certified the wrestling team. But I haven’t wrestled in 20 or 30 years, but now I’m retired and I’m like, Ooh, I can go back and wrestle.
Right? So I call the coach. I was like, can I come down? He’s like, yeah, yeah, come on down. And I was like, do you know how old you are? I was like, I don’t care. I’m all right. Right? So I get out and I’m wrestling and it’s like, it’s hurting my ears. Right? So I come home and I’m like, okay, I got to fix this. So I get online.
And I buy headgear and then while I’m there, they go, well, since you buy headgear, you want some knee pads? You’re like, yeah. And they’re like, well, how about some sweats? How about a sweatshirt? I’m like, yeah. And they go, how about a singlet? I’m like, Oh yeah, singlet. Right. And it can’t be just like a monochromatic yellow or green.
No, this has a big giant American Eagle across the chest and USA down the leg. And I’m like, yeah, this is me. Right. So I get this package in the mail and my wife and I had [00:51:00] just been on a diet. So we lost like 30 pounds. Right. So I go to put this thing on stretchy. So I’m putting it on, I’m like, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, and I’m like getting up to my knees, and I’m like, this is hard, right, and I’m like, uh, I’m getting really frustrated, I’m like, I just lost weight, ah, and I go, I’m like, mm mm, this isn’t getting on, right.
So I take it off, and I look, it’s a junior size.
Scott DeLuzio: Oh my
Gary Sprouse: little kids. And I’m like, now I’m going, oh, check me out. I got loads in my waist. Yeah, right? So then I looked around like, yeah, nobody had a camera, so we couldn’t take a picture of this.
Scott DeLuzio: Well, if it was only up to your knees, uh, we wouldn’t want it. We wouldn’t want the photographic evidence of that anyway. Oh man, that’s good. Um, anyways, uh, thank you again for coming on and sharing, uh, your insights on, uh, you know, kind of reducing stress, finding that happy place, um, and, and getting, um, You know, kind of, kind of getting out of our own heads sometimes and kind of, [00:52:00] uh, realizing just what perspective, the way you outline things here, um, you know, just how significant some of the things are that we sometimes worry about and, and allowing ourselves to kind of move on from that and, uh, just figure out how to not be stressed all the time.
Gary Sprouse: Yeah,
Scott DeLuzio: So it’s really great. Thank
Gary Sprouse: I say to people, like, please, please, please do not resign yourself. To just being stressed out. Like don’t sit there and then we call it learned helplessness. Don’t think like no way out. No, there’s a way out. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Find it. Like my book’s one of the answers.
There’s lots of other answers out there, but do something. You don’t have to live a stressed out life.
Scott DeLuzio: exactly. And, and I say this about everything that I, all the, the resources that I bring on the show, um, and, and all the resources that I haven’t yet brought on the show. If you’ve tried something for whatever it is that’s, that’s going on in your life, or you tried something and it’s not working for you.
For whatever reason, okay, cool. You [00:53:00] tried one thing, you learned a little bit. You know that that thing doesn’t work. Go try something else. And, and so go check out the book. Uh, again, uh, the, the book is, uh, the highway to your happy place, a roadmap to less stress. Um, check out that book and, uh, and, and. And see if that, that help is helpful for you.
That might be the answer to, uh, you know, the issues that you might be going through and you might need some little more personalized type stuff. So reach out again, links will be in the show notes. So, uh, uh, Gary, thank you again for being on the show. I really appreciate it.
Gary Sprouse: Thank you for having me. This has been great. I had a good time. I hope your audience got something out of this.
Scott DeLuzio: Oh, I’m sure they have. This is, this has been great.
Thanks for listening to the Drive On Podcast. If you want to support the show, please check out Scott’s book, Surviving Son on Amazon. All of the sales from that book go directly back into this podcast and work to help veterans in need. You can also follow the Drive On [00:54:00] Podcast on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and wherever you listen to podcasts.