The Dr. Josh Axe Show - 3 Keys to Becoming a Happier, Healthier, More Positive Person | Mindshift 12

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

Does Your Mind Control You or Do You Control Your Mind? Negative thoughts bombard us daily - from the news, social media, and even our own self-talk. In fact, 80% of our thoughts are negative! Yet research shows optimism and positivity lead to better mental, physical, and emotional health. In this powerful episode, Dr. Josh Axe shares how a mindshift towards hope, grit, and gratitude transformed his life after a spinal injury left him unable to walk for a year. He reveals: His personal transformation story and the power of hope The harm of toxic positivity How to actively choose positivity everyday The #1 skill you need to develop to grow in your professional life, relationships, and physical & mental health Don't let endless negativity control your life for another day. Tune in for Dr. Axe's incredible story and expert strategies to cultivate a positive perseverance mindset. You'll walk away empowered to overcome any obstacle through hope, grit, and gratitude. Want more of The Dr. Josh Axe Show? Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Follow Dr. Josh Axe Instagram Twitter Facebook Tik-Tok Follow Leaders Instagram Twitter Facebook Email Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dr. Josh Axe show. I am your host, Dr. Axe, and each and every week on the show, we dive deep into the science and principles behind how to grow in body, mind, and spirit, and take your health and your life to the next level. Did you know that 80% of our thoughts are negative, and because of these negative thoughts, it causes an increased risk of heart disease, cancer, autoimmune disease, and just generally starts to corrode our lives. However, There is a cure. There are natural remedies to start to heal your mind, heal your body, heal your life. And I'm going to go through those things on today's episode.

And I'm going to be sharing how I went from not being able to walk for an entire year and getting a diagnosis that I might die or be permanently disabled. And now being back to almost 100% in my health and coming out of it with a stronger mind, a stronger spirit. And so when you go through difficulties in life, you can do this. same thing as well. Well, this is the last episode in a series I've been doing where I unpack each of the mind shifts that are going to help create breakthrough in your life. And if you haven't watched my last 11 episodes, go back and watch those. I guarantee you're going to, after you

watch those, you're going to say, my mind is at a whole new level. Also, make sure to subscribe to this channel and hit the notification bell so you don't miss a single episode. And thank, Thanks, everybody, if he's been on mission with me to help spread the word of health, healing, and living your best life. So I sat down with the doctor. This was, let me see, about a year and eight months ago. And here's what he told me. He said, Josh, listen, the best case scenario you have right now is you're going to have chronic pain the rest of your life.

And you'll be the first person to know when bad weather comes. through. He said, in all likelihood, though, aside from the best case scenario, there's a good chance you're going to be permanently disabled and you could even die. This was recently. And right before that, a few months before that, I was in the best shape of my life. I was throwing my two-year-old daughter up in the air in the pool. I was squatting and deadlifting heavy weight. I was swimming. I was sprinting. I was cycling. And then a few months later to hear that I could possibly die or be permanently disabled. It just, for a day or two, just wrecked me emotionally.

I mean, there are emotions that I experienced that I had never experienced before in my entire life. In fact, most people, and this might be the first time you're hearing this, or you might have heard me mention this on previous podcasts, but not really go into the depth and the details. But I, for two years, really couldn't work, couldn't do almost anything. And, in fact, the time of recording this, last year, I was just getting on a walker after not walking for 10 months.

And then I was gonna do about two months on a walker and I was in the middle of learning to walk again. And so I wanna share how this happened and then how you can overcome anything in your life. If you're listening to this, I wanna let you know, you can overcome anything in your life or nearly anything using mindset medicine, using the power of positive perseverance

to fight through. So I hurt my back, lifting weights, and I went and got something called stem cell done and it helped tremendously. I went and got a second time and it was all natural, using my own cells, went back again to do it. However, this time something went wrong. When it got injected, something just didn't feel right. And for the next few days, I felt worse and worse and worse. Well, then a couple months later, I kept feeling worse and worse and finally I had to wear a back brace. And then finally one day I woke up and I was like,

I can't walk. The pain was so excruciating. I had to have an ambulance come pick me up. And you can imagine this scene. I have a two-year-old daughter. my wife, and it's like I went from, you know, being incredibly healthy to ambulance coming. My daughter's crying. And I'm saying, hey, it's going to be okay, baby. They get me in the ambulance. And we were living in Puerto Rico at the time. We were living between Nashville and Puerto Rico and half the year and each.

And I go to the hospital. They take an MRI. And then they get the report back. And they say, and the report says, I have an infection in my spine. It's something called osteomyelitis. Well, that's where you have an infection that goes from your, it gets in your, your disc between your vertebrus, and then it gets into the bone. And then I had an abscess to where the infection was spreading into my spinal canal and had an abscess close to my spinal cord.

I had to then have a flight, a private medical flight taken from Puerto Rico to Florida, where I sat down with an infectious disease specialist, one of the best in the world, who then sat me down and had that conversation I shared with you where he said, Josh, best case scenario, chronic pain the rest of your life, worst case scenario, permanently disabled, you're going to have to be on a caner walker, and we may have to go and do rods in your spine because the infection is spread so bad. And I had about 48 hours, and can you imagine, I mean, maybe you've been through something like this in your life, or maybe you were, have been in a place where you felt like, I don't know how I'm going to get around this. I don't know how this could ever turn out to be good. And so I had a couple days where I started

doing my own research online and here's the problem it didn't sound any better i mean people were talking about if they had this severe of an infection how they had to have surgery and everything else and i thought okay um and i the emotions i'd felt that i'd never felt before were despair and hopelessness i'm a very hopeful person i generally am a very positive person and so when i heard and i read basically all the confirmations of i'm going to have a permanent disability in terms of being able to walk and I may never run again. I may never be able to carry and hold my kids in the way that I used to in that type of way. And so I felt terrible. And then after a while of reading all the things online and basically listening to the doctor's words over in my head over and over and over again,

I realized this isn't serving me and this isn't what I should be focusing on. And I had this mental shift at the time to where I went from feeling so depressed and so hopeless and so to all of a sudden feeling positive in believing that something miraculous was going to help me in my life. And I was able to have that change by first deciding, I'm not going to focus on the negative. I'm not going to focus on the doctor's words. I am instead going to focus on God and what he can do and also the belief that the body has an amazing capacity to heal. I also realize this, that I'm not the average person. person, I am going to do more myself in caring for myself in order to reach my optimal level of

health again. And so I decided to not go through this as a victim, even though I could have easily felt like a victim because the person that had done the injections, I felt like maybe there was some of irresponsibility. And I felt I could have blamed him. I could have blamed a lot of people. But I decided instead to have hope in the future, to have hope in God. And I knew scientifically, And I knew even more importantly, biblically, that would give me my best chance to heal and to overcome this mountain in my life. Here's a reality. You can't have a miracle without an immovable mountain in your life. You can't experience a miracle without a Red Sea moment.

And I decided that this was going to be a moment for me where I was going to have faith and hope and drive forward in that way and not have a bad attitude and not live in a state of depression and knowing. And basically, the way that I overcame this more than anything was through focusing on the positive and believing this that God was for me, not against me, that he had a plan and future for my life and really meditating and believing that. And listen, all of us have heard at some point of somebody who had had a diagnosis could have been cancer. It could have been that they were partially paralyzed. And the doctors told them, you'll never walk again. Or this disease is incurable. You have three months left to live. And those people overcame the odds.

I was able to experience that with my own mother. I remember my mom getting a diagnosis and them telling her, you have a 40% chance to live. That's less than 50. So in all likelihood, she was going to die. Well, now my mom's in her 70s. Okay, this is a long, 2030. This is a long time ago. And my mom overcame the odds.

I've been able to experience that in the lives of others. And so I decided I was going to be one of those miracle cases and I was going to do everything in my power to help myself heal. And so what I did, and I basically fixed my eyes on God. I read the Bible. I surrounded myself with positive people. I really only talked to those people who were life-giving. My wife, my father-in-law constantly was speaking into my life, you know, my own parents. I had friends, my friends of mine, like, you know, Dan Sullivan and Simon.

I just had some amazing people who were just speaking into my life. And I also decided, you know, to put together a plan for myself in order to be. heal. And let me say this. I think this is so important. You know, when you look at the scientific literature, there's something called the placebo effect. And maybe some of you have heard me talk about this before. But it's amazing. Absolutely amazing. During World War I, there were soldiers who had lost their limbs in excruciating pain, and they would give these soldiers morphine. Now, morphine is one of the most powerful pain-killing drugs ever created. And this doctor ran out of morphine. And these were World War I soldiers who, again, were in excruciating pain.

When he ran out of morphine, he said, well, I need to give them something. And so he literally gave them sugar pills, pills that had nothing in them. And here's the crazy part. 30 to 40 percent of these soldiers experienced the same pain relief they had if they were given morphine. So think about this. Their own bodies, their mind, their spirit started creating. chemicals to help numb their body to help them heal with just the power of the mind. Think about that. And this isn't 1% of people. This was 30 to 40%.

There is something called neuroplasticity in the scientific literature that shows that your brain will start creating new neurons and nerves and neural pathways in order to help something heal. Even nerve damage. even something that the doctors say is incurable, your brain can start to help repair those areas, sending healing factors, growth factors, and creating new nerves in those areas. So even the science shows that's true. And of course, the Bible says this, and I want to mention this is important to grab a hold of.

The Bible never says, this food will heal you, this supplement will heal you, this medical procedure will heal you. It says your faith will heal you, your thoughts as a man thinks. thinketh in his heart, so is he. Your beliefs, what do you believe? And so I knew I had to believe the right thing. Now, I read something else years ago by a PhD, and he said, you can amplify the placebo effect. And here's how he said you can do it. He said, number one, you need to know exactly what you want. So think about this for your own life. What is that thing you truly want? Now, if it comes to how, think about it. Maybe you want to rejuvenate your thyroid and turn it back on into where your hypothyroidism is gone.

Maybe you have an autoimmune disease and you want to reverse it. Maybe you want to lose 30 pounds. Maybe you want to heal from cancer, whatever it is. The first thing you need to do is imagine yourself in the future being free of that disease completely free. So, for instance, I saw myself, what would it look for me to be free of and completely healed one year into the future? Well, for me, that meant throwing my daughter in the air in the pool, carrying her. carrying her around, lifting weights, going out there and running and sprinting. I pictured that. I visualized that in my head. I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

I wanted to have that sort of health back. And then he says in order to amplify placebo effect, here's what you need to do. You need to feel those emotions you'll feel in the future. So when I was playing with my daughter and I was visualizing that, running around with her, holding her, throwing her. I need to experience the same joy and happiness and laughter and knowing that's going to be the reality. And that actually helps your nervous system kick things in. And the number three is you need to have a plan in place for how will that be true? Have a strategy and a plan. Because sometimes your nervous system, your body doesn't believe you because there's something it's sort of like toxic positivity. You may say, things are great, things are wonderful,

but your body doesn't believe you, just like others may not believe you. You don't believe yourself. So I had to demonstrate to myself, here is how I'm going to do this. And so here's what I started doing. One, I started praying and visualizing every single day myself being healed. Number two, I followed the doctor's orders in this case. Now, he had told me there's a good chance I needed to be on antibiotics for an IV for six weeks and then an antibiotic oral dosage for another six weeks. Now, I'd read a medical study saying I could drop it down to four weeks if I got in a hyperbaric chance. every day because hyperbaric chambers, you increase your body's oxygen, but then the pressure drives it deeper into your cells and tissues, including the spine and spinal cord.

So I got into a hyperbaric chamber every day nearly for 30 days. And then I did vitamin IVs. I was eating incredibly healthy, really meats, meat, meat, vegetables, and berries mostly. And followed that plan. And then after two weeks, I started feeling 1% better. And it was only 1% better a week. And that went on for a pretty long period of time. And I started getting better and better eventually. And by the way, I had so many challenges along the way. And I haven't shared some of this information before, so you're the first to hear it. When I first started trying to walk, I got vertico so bad for a month that I could barely start. I could barely walk.

I'd be really careful because, again, I kept almost passing out because my body wasn't used to gravity for being down that long. major, major issues that kept coming and going. My facet went numb with Bell's palsy at one point. I mean, you can imagine, just thing after thing after thing. Now I'm probably 85% getting close to 90, and I'll get back to 100% by some time this year. Really, the only reason I'm not about 100%

is my tendons shortened so long. I still have some pain because some of those things. But I'm going to be, I'm at 100%. I'm running around with my daughter. I am swimming. I am lifting weights. I am back doing all the things I want to do. And I'm already way better than the absolute best the doctor told me I would be.

And I did it through the power of prayer, believing God was for me, not against me, visualizing, and really following a plan in order for me to reach my optimal level of health. And the big thing was I had hope the entire time. I started believing and knowing. Now, listen, it wasn't 100% at first. And my biggest limiting belief was, well, I can heal, but I can't get back to 100% again. That was the biggest mental lie that I fought over and over and over again was, well, maybe I can get back to 70% where I can do some workouts. But, you know, and maybe I can walk without a walker.

But me being able to run again and do all these things or even swim as hard as I can, I wouldn't be able to do that. And I can. And so all that being said, no, here's how you do it. it. And here's another mindset you have to have. You can't control what happens to you, but you choose how you react to it. That was out of my control. You can't spend time. You cannot change the past. You cannot go back and change the past. I cannot go back and change the year of not walking. I can't go and change not getting that injection. I can't change any of that. But I could control my own thoughts. I could control what I did on a daily basis to optimize my healing.

there are always reasons to be pessimistic and cynical, but focusing on the negative will only create a negative life. I truly believe if I wouldn't have believed that I would be healed, that I would not have experienced, even where I'm at now, about 80, 85% healing. I wouldn't have experienced that. And so for yourself, you may be saying to yourself, okay, well, I want to heal, so I'm going to do some of the good things. And maybe you heal 50% and get 50% better from whatever condition you, you have or whatever life obstacle you have. But you don't get 100% or even that 90% very close to the 100. And part of it might be your mindset.

It's holding you back. Your brain isn't creating those new neural pathways via neuroplasticity in order to help your body heal. So you have to do that. And this is about more than healing. This is about overcoming any obstacle in your life. If you have a terrible relationship that you are dealing with in your life,

this will help you with it. If you have an addiction, this will help you with it. If you want to experience a breakthrough in your career, but you feel like you've been on a treadmill, you're just not going anywhere. This will help you live your best life possible in every single area. Now, here's the problem today. We are all surrounded by a continuous loop of negative information.

News as a percentage is overly negative. Politics tend to be incredibly negative. of both sides bashing each other. Music. Think about if you sat down and wrote out the top, look at, look up, I don't know what the top 10 songs are now, but if you go to the charts and wrote down the lyrics and thought about what they were on a regular basis, sex, drugs, wasting your life, doing something, just having fun without, without basically any real gain in life.

I mean, it's basically just absolute debauchery and, and, and, and, and, you know, negativity. The TV shows today. Video games. They all have this casual or some casual, some not, but this casual darkness, these dark themes, gratuitous sex, violence that are in all of them. And you have to understand that pollutes your brain. Listen, can I say something?

I feel a little bit like my parents right now. And I remember when I was a kid, my parents were. were so conscious of the music I listened to. I remember I had like a, again, it's shame to say this. I think I was in high school, but I had like a, you know, Tupac Shakur, you know, CD and my mom heard it and just, I think threw it away and some others. And so, you know, I, but I look back and I realize,

wow, my parents really knew something here. And I have noticed when I am listening to music that is worldly that in terms of just you're absolutely. average music you're going to find the most popular today, it changes my mind. I become a worst person. I am a worst person when I listen everyday music. When I'm listening to music such as Christian music, if I'm listening to music such as even classical music like Mozart, and I'm just appreciating the beauty of the rhythms there, or even sometimes it's country music, I don't know, but music that generally has a positive theme, my life is better.

I'm a more moral person. I have greater character. My thoughts are more clean and pure based on what I expose myself to. And remember, I've said plenty of times you are what you eat. That's true. But even more than that, you are what you consume. If you're consuming negative media and doom scrolling on social media and video games and negative TV and the dark dark music and all those things, it will darken you. It will stain who you are. And by the way,

research even shows that when we are constantly exposed to negative news, our stress levels go up. I mean, think about this with the COVID-19 pandemic. I can tell you, around the election and around COVID-19 in the year 2020, I had a period of a couple months there where it was the most stressed I ever was in my life. And I realized it was because I was spending more time watching television, reading articles about politics. And I was so unbelievably stressed for a couple of months. And I had to basically disengage and say, okay, I'm going to keep up with the news, but I'm going to really change the way I do it by really looking at some of the, by changing my sources of my news and only looking at it periodically. In fact, there is one thing.

study that was done on over 2,000 adults. It was 2,251 adults in 2020, and they found that the more frequently people saw information about things like COVID-19 or any type of negative news. And this could have been television, the newspapers, and social media, those people were more likely to report emotional distress. The reality is you become what you consume. And if your inputs aren't adding value to yourself and others, just eliminate them. On social media, you should go through and delete every person and every post that is not causing you to be better as a person, that is not causing you to grow. Now, I'm not saying you only follow people you agree with. That's definitely not what I'm saying. I'm saying people that are virtuous, people that have

character and integrity. If you don't know that this person is high in integrity, high in character, adding value to your life, delete it. And again, that's people, but it's all. just the accounts in general. Here's another problem that's out there that I think is causing us to, it's destroying our mind. And by the way, I am very soon going to get into really the cure here. And it's what I call positive perseverance. And it's a combination of multiple virtues. But there's a problem with this thing of negativity bias. We are wired to attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information. Negativity bias doesn't actually, it doesn't prepare you for anything. It keeps you

locked in a state of stress, unhappiness, most of the time selfishness, because you're just thinking about how to protect yourself. And it causes you, here's the other thing. Studies show that this sort of stress causes you to age more quickly and will take years off your life. Now, here's the other thing that some people have. Toxic positivity, okay? This happens when you allow good feelings and thinking to fog or distort reality. Or when you deny what is really true, just because you want to hold true to your ideologies. And basically, it's being absolutely unrealistic and naive. And have you ever met anyone like that? I know, I've got a few people in my life that have this toxic positivity. And they're living in, I'll call it la-la land. Now, listen, I do think there is an element of people believing

in the greatness of God and the supernatural and the spiritual world and the unseen and walking in a state that some people could seem unreal and to them it is real because it is real. But there's also this thing of everything, you ask them, well, how is life it's perfect when obviously you can see

that everything is falling apart around them. And so you also don't want to have this sort of positivity that's toxic where you're living in, you're living a lie. That's the thing where you're living a lie. And so you really want to focus on having what I would call an optimism bias where you have a positive expectation of the future. Right?

And this is what it comes down to. This is a big part. Like when I had my spine infection, rather than thinking, worst case scenario, let me give you an example, worst case scenario thinking, there's a really good chance I'm never going to walk again or that I'm going to have to be on a cane and I can't. Like, I could live in that pessimistic state. instead I chose to believe and think I'm going to do what the top 1% of people with this condition would do

and I'm going to do everything in my power and believing I will get back to 100% or let's call it 97% let's call it the upper 90s I will get very very close to where I was and being very realistic about it and by the way this is also why there are some people in the natural community that maybe wouldn't have taken an antibiotic now that would have risked their life in a great way but I decided to because I wanted to be realistic and also do everything I could to get my health back. But optimism bias going back to this. Basically, here's the thing. You have a positive expectation for the future and it's this sort of idea from the Bible.

God is for you, not against you. He has a plan and purpose for your life. Like believing in a bright and beautiful future and that you're going to contribute and move towards that future. You know, here's the other thing about hope that's so great about the virtue of hope. It keeps our mind at ease. It lowers stress. It improves our physical health. According to medical studies, optimists are healthier and live longer than pessimists. So who's right being an optimist or pessimists? Well, obviously an optimist, it leads to a better outcome in your life. People who have more hope have better outcomes in their mental health,

their physical health, academics, and athletics. They also have higher esteem. In studies, hope is shown to be one of the greatest deterrence of anxiety. And so if you have anxiety, part of your problem typically is you're not believing for the best outcome in the future. You should focus on, if let's say you've got three futures in front of you, a middle of the road, a really terrible and the best case scenario, you should focus on the best case scenario. Now, not to say you shouldn't prepare in things like business for middle of the road or worst case,

but you should fix your eyes on the most positive outcome and plan for that. Now, I want to go through three keys of what I call positive perseverance. And so positive means you're moving towards good, okay? You're moving towards a best case scenario. And perseverance means in order to make that positive reality, you're going to have trials, you're going to have tribulations, you're going to have valleys, you're going to have mountains in your way, you're going to have seas and your, you know, whole oceans and like, how can I,

across this, but you continue to endure and go because you have a hope in the future. It keeps you going. It's motivational in that sense. As I mentioned earlier, all of us at some point will have mountains and valleys in front of us, but you cannot have a miracle without a mountain in your way. And when you experience that Red Sea moment and you continue to start to walk into the water before it parts, it helps you grow. I mean, you cannot grow a muscle without stressing it. And then you need to stress it more and more. If you just keep doing the same weight over and over again,

let's say you're doing a shoulder press, okay, and you're doing five pounds. Okay, if you only do five pounds and it's the only thing you ever do, it will never get stronger. Do you think maybe God knows this? I'm not saying he causes all of our stress, but I'm saying, do you think maybe God knows that, hey, I need to give this person 10 pounds now.

I mean, think about the story of Job. If you haven't read the story of Job from the Bible, I want to encourage you to read it. It is one of the most compelling stories and events that occurred in history. He lost everything. And basically Satan went to God and said, and God was bragging how amazing Job was. And the devil said, well, that's because his life is so great.

You know, you take those things away from you. he'll curse you God. And Job says, and God says, okay, I'm going to allow you to test my servant Job. And Job goes through these unbearable hardships of losing his entire family and having boils all over. I mean, one of the worst, most painful type of disease you could ever have, especially burns and wells all over his entire body. And he did not curse God. He continued to focus on having, really focusing on a positive future. and knowing God was for him, not against him. And that is the most powerful form of medicine ever. So the first thing you have to do is persevering through that,

and you can't persevere unless you hope and believe in a good God and a good future. So here's what hope is. Hope is more than optimistic thinking, thinking, okay, things are good. It is optimism in action. It's where you believe that something, by the way, you're, there's a, there's a, when you think, about the word belief, most people think it's just a way of thinking. It's not. If you actually believe something, you're doing it or else you don't believe it. Just because you say you believe

it isn't true. So hope is you have positive thinking that you're actually taking actions with to move towards that positive future. You're action-oriented. Hope is a cognitive process that encompasses really three main components. One is goals. You're thinking with purpose, priorities, and a vision. So you really have something in the future you are going towards. It's really hope is connected to purpose, okay? Purpose and goals in a future vision. The second thing that really hope encompasses is pathways, developing strategies and systems in order to reach the goal.

Because here's the thing. If you truly believe and have faith, whenever you hear the word faith in the Bible, hope accompanies it constantly. And if you have faith in the future or hope, then you are, you're doing things, you're taking action, creating pathways to make that a reality. And number three, it takes agency. You taking personal responsibility, accountability, and

ownership, and believing in the expected change. And so hope is, let me give an example for myself. I hoped, I had hope in knowing God was for me, not against me, that he was going to use this for my good. And that's one of the prayers I had as I went through this. I said, God, I'm not only praying that I would come out physically back where I was, if not better. I'm also praying that you would refine me and help me grow through this process. I'm praying that I would come out spiritually stronger, closer to you, mentally stronger. Please use this for my good and let me honor you in my suffering. By the way, I was even conscious as I went through this of not only how my condition impacted me, but more so how it impacted my family and those around me. I could have gone

through that and every day been ungrateful and mean and just negative because I felt sometimes like like that. But instead I decided I wanted to show my daughter, who at the time then was three for most of this, what it was like to deal with pain the right way. And so every day I said, I love you, you know, I told her I loved her. You know, she'd crawl in bed with me sometimes. We'd watch her favorite TV show, Paul Patrol or Veggie Tales. And we would. would just enjoy, you know, just enjoy time together. Every time I had my father-in-law bring me meals through every day. I mean, I couldn't, again, I couldn't walk.

I couldn't move. I couldn't get out of bed. At one point, after a few months, I was able to start crawling and getting into a pool. But I didn't have people bring me every meal. And I made sure I told them over and over and again how incredibly grateful I was for them. And I lived in that state. And so do that, if you're,

If you're ever suffering or going through a mountain, also don't just do it for yourself. Do it for the people around you and having positive perseverance. But again, you, so for myself, one, I had goals for the future. So hope was I was goal-oriented that I'm going to actually, one of the things I want to do is officiate my sister-in-law's wedding. That was going to be about 11 months later. And that was the first time I was able to walk without a walker was walking up there to officiate that wedding.

So I had goals, very specific. The next thing is I had a plan in place in order for that to happen. And then I decided I'm going to take personal responsibility, do everything in my power in order to heal. It's this idea of get on your knees and pray and then get on your feet and work. There's a couple verses I meditated on that are really tied to hope I want to share with you. One is this, but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary.

They will walk and not faint. That's Isaiah 40, 31. Another one was Jeremiah 29-11. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans for welfare and not for evil to give you a future and a hope. And so, again, it's really fixing your eyes on and anchoring yourself to God and that future and moving forward ahead with that type of mindset in order to create your best outcome. Now, the second key of having positive perseverance in order to overcome anything in life is grit.

Now, grit is passion and perseverance for long-term goals. Studies show that grit is a greater indicator of success than IQ and physical ability. In fact, there was a study on cadets at the, I believe it was the arm at West Point. and they found that the greater cadets with greater grit than their peers had a 54% greater odds of making it through this initiation period without dropping out. When it came to graduating, grit, and then the second was physical ability were each better predictors of success than cognitive ability. So here's the moral of the story. your strength of your of the strength of your mind and spirit,

your will, your ability to just grit through things, get through the hard things in life is more important to your success in anything than your IQ. Grit doesn't mean also the absence of failure. It just means that you're going to commit to staying in the game. You're going to finish the game.

You're going to still give 100% along the way even if you fail some during the process. So you have to start with hope. The second thing you have is grit is you. It's a determination and dedication to get through things. And the third is gratitude. You know, in studies, gratitude supports physical and psychological health.

It increases life satisfaction, helps people adopt healthier habits. The thing I want to say about all these things, hope, grit, and gratitude is they are choices you make every day. You choose to be grateful. So this isn't something you're born with or something you're born with. someone just born positive. It's no, you develop it like any skill. Just like you can get stronger lifting weights or faster running by running more, you have more gratitude when you practice being grateful. There is a study done and basically what they looked at was 800 different traits that described people. And one of the top four percent in terms of likeability, if you want to be a person

that's an influencer and that people like and connect with, one of the top four percent was grit. Okay. So if you want to be a more likable, influential person, you need to be grateful. I mean, I can tell you this from running a practice and employing hundreds of people in my companies. Gratitude is for sure to me, one of the top probably three to five qualities somebody can have in terms of that I want to hire them, that I want to work with them. I want to make with them, I want to be around them. I mean, gratitude is one of the most important qualities to be a good, a person that is likable. You know, in one study, they found this as well, 70% of employees would feel better about themselves if their boss were more grateful for them.

In fact, they said this, they said, if my boss just told me I was appreciated or my boss was a more grateful person towards me, 81% said they would work harder for the company and put in more hours and more time and energy. Employees who experience more gratitude at work report fewer depressive symptoms and stress. 95% of employees agree that a grateful boss is more likely to be successful. And also regular gratitude journaling has been shown to increase your quality sleep by 25%. So if you want to sleep better, 25% better, journal for what you're grateful for and the good things in your life for things that are positive before you go to sleep at night.

Also, a lack of gratitude is a major factor driving job dissatisfaction, turn over quiet, quitting, burnout. One of the top three things that will get somebody fired for my organizations is entitlement, which is the opposite of gratitude. It is so crazy today how, if you look generationally, younger people coming in the workforce, how ungrateful they are and how entitled they are.

I mean, I hired, I've hired people who after they were there a month felt like they should have my job. I'm not kidding, by the way. I mean, they felt like I should just give them the whole company. And so, again, it's not fun to work with or be around anybody who's entitled. It is so incredible to work out with great, great people, people that are, that people are, are, are grateful. It is, it creates an amazing work environment. If you want to have a great company culture, an attitude of gratitude is one of the most important things to have a great organizational culture.

So the key here is you want to be grateful. You know, one of the people, I am a huge fan of today. In fact, he's probably one of the people I admire most is Dion Sanders. You know, Dion Sanders almost lost his entire leg. Now, he ended up losing some of his toes, but not his whole leg. And if you read about him, and I cover this in my book, Think This Not That His Story, and it's amazing. But he really talks about how he just lived in a state of gratitude of just thanking God, living with purpose, believing he was going to be healed and he was.

And so, you know, he went from almost committing suicide to thinking about taking his own life and basically having a very, very negative childhood. He had a dad who was a drug addict who left him, his dad who, another dad who raised him was an alcoholic, so just had major, major childhood trauma and has ended up. And he said gratitude and hopefulness, those emotions are what have made him prime time, I've allowed him now today to become a father figure for so many young student athletes in college. It really, really is amazing. And here's one of the things I realized is I've studied people that have the biggest impact on this world.

Most of them had an attitude of gratitude and were positive in their mindset. Anybody that did things that were towards the good. The battle starts and is one, both in the same thing. place, your mind. Don't ever say anything to yourself that you wouldn't say to someone else, by the way. Because this isn't just about being negative outwardly. It's about being negative inwardly. When you look at part of the root of autoimmune disease, it's when you're saying negative things to yourself over and over and over again. So you're attacking yourself. What happens in autoimmune disease? Your body starts attacking its own tissue.

In Chinese medicine, autoimmune disease is partly tied to emotions where you're attacking yourself with negative self-talk on a regular basis. Never say anything to yourself. You wouldn't say to someone you love unconditionally, like your child or someone you're close to. So stop that immediately. And again, really one of the greatest focuses you can have is loving others, love yourself in that way.

And again, don't say anything to others, again, that you wouldn't say to a child or a loved one. It's the golden rule, do unto others what you would have someone do unto you. Now, there was a quote I had that I read. I was on when I was about a few months into this, not walking. And I was, one day, I was feeling a little bad for myself. And I came across this quote.

And honestly, it just, it really, it pierced my heart. And it's this. This is an ancient Persian proverb. It says, I cried because I had no shoes until I had a man who had no feet. And I thought to myself, I'm in a blessed enough position to where I am going to get back and start walking again at one point. But there are some people who have lost their legs. And there are some people who lost their lives. And the fact that I'm even alive right now, the fact that I have a God that loves me, I have an amazing wife, I have an amazing daughter, amazing family and friends.

I have a job that I love. So much of you living your best life is, what you focus on. I could have focused on myself being a victim. Instead, I focused on myself being a hero of the story, helping guide others and help them live a better life. But think about this proverb again, I cried because I had no shoes until I met had a man that have no feet. It's all about comparing ourselves in a positive way. Every time I've been on a mission trip to another country, whether it be China, Jamaica, Uganda, Ethiopia, or anywhere where there's a greater level of poverty, especially those areas of Africa I mentioned, I come back so incredibly grateful

because I'm comparing somebody who has nothing to the abundance that I have versus if I feel start feeling bad or awful for myself, it's I'm comparing myself to somebody who maybe has more than I have, whether that be in something physical or something in terms of their assets, or wealth and life, don't compare yourself to somebody who has more than you. Compare yourself to maybe the people that have less than you, not in a superiority way, but instead in a way of understanding how blessed you are. I mean, if you live in America today and you have a house and a car and a TV, you're in the top 1% in the world, the top 1%.

And so walking around with that mindset of humility and gratitude and just, you know, a gratefulness is just, it's so incredibly powerful. And if you're going through something hard in life right now, something very difficult, I want to encourage you to do this.

Walk through it, you're suffering with hope, grit, and gratefulness. And here's the other thing is not only will you come out of it, you'll come out of it refined. You'll be refined by fire.

And you'll become out more pure in your intentions. You'll have grown mentally, grown spiritually. You'll come out a better person. So when you're going through a challenging season in your life, ask yourself the question, how can I grow from this and how can I use it for good? And if you choose to do that, you'll be blown away of what God does in your life. I look back in my life with the hardships I've had. And during the time I'm going through them, I'm always asking the question, why God? Like, why do I have to go through this? And when I get to the other side, I realize I have grown through that process and I see how it's refined me and helped me in life. And so I want to encourage you to stay away from consuming all the negative, start consuming all the positive, focus your life on the right things, walk with gratitude, walk with grit,

walk with hope. And if you do that, no matter what you're going through, it's going to be okay. It's going to work out for the good. And I want to say thanks so much for tuning in here to the show, the Dr. Josh Jack Show. If you want to learn more about what I've talked about, I cover this in so much more detail in my book, think this, not that. And you can get at bookstores nationwide. It's on Amazon.com.

But this is a book where I share it. I wrote this entire book from being on my back in bed, every single word. And so I was able to focus. I probably spent three times, some more time on this book than any book had ever written. The first week, the book was out. It hit the New York Times bestseller list, I think, because it resonated with so many people on how to overcome limiting beliefs, how to live with purpose, how to live with purpose, how to live your best life possible. Someone encourage you to pick up the book, check it out. And let me know in the

comments, if you are going through something hard in life, how you got through it, I'd love to hear from you, pray from you, support you as you go through a difficult season in your life. Remember each and every week on this podcast as well, we're diving deep into the science and principles and how to grow body, mind, and spirit and take your health and life to the next level. Make sure to subscribe, like and share, and I'll see you on the next episode.