Richard Jacobs:  Hello. This is Richard Jacobs with the future tech and future tech health podcast. And I have Elisha Goldstein, PhD. He’s the co-founder of the center for mindful living in West Los Angeles and Creator of a six month coaching and mentor-ship program, a course in mindful living. He is a psychologist and international speaker and mindfulness educator. And he has books such as Uncovering Happiness and The Now Effect. He’s also coauthor of a mindfulness based stress reduction workbook and the abbreviation MBSR every day. So Elisha, thanks for coming. How are you doing?

Elisha Goldstein:  Oh Great. It’s really great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Richard Jacobs:  Yeah. So tell me what, started you on the journey of considering mindfulness? Everyone seems to have a personal journey when it comes to health, so.

Elisha Goldstein:  Oh yeah. You know, I think like many, probably many people who, get really interested in whatever their approach to health is, it usually comes out of their own. Unlike me and my own kind of moments of suffering in my life, you know, throughout my life but really they came to kind of a peak in my mid-twenties where I was in San Francisco and I was working at the peak of the internet boom and working really hard and playing a whole lot harder. And so i was just abusing myself massively with drugs and alcohol and I just knew there was something else there. There was something else that was more meaningful and purposeful and man, I started reading a lot of books, like a lot of people begin with, around mindfulness or around different eastern philosophies. And I found something really enticing about it, like this idea that we could actually focus our attention and create a greater sense of energy and ease and well-being in our lives. And so I went away for a month to a retreat center down in Los Angeles and got more of a taste of it. And I came away from that retreat center just feeling, really relaxed, more at ease to a greater sense of purpose in my life. And probably within a week and a half. I just fell back into my old ways, so it wasn’t last thing. And that got me really curious and interested as well. I wanted to know what actually creates lasting change on people. But it did plant the seed that inevitably, took me on a path where I started seeking out a teacher and seeking out groups of people who are also practicing. And i really went back to a doctoral program in psychology and want to know like, what is this training around being more present and focused in our lives and found mindfulness based stress reduction, which at the time if you’re in a doctoral program, you have to do research. So that was the most researched program. It’s an eight week program started by John Kabat Zinn. And that was the most researched program out there, study in Harvard and UCLA and all the ivory towers you can think of. And they have some real science behind it. And so I got trained in that program and eventually went on to create my own programs. And now, you know, this entire world, this entire collective called the mindful living collective, which is really a place where anyone can meet other people and have more of a shared learning experience and practice around, you know, all of these topics that are associated with health and well-being.

Richard Jacobs:  What was your state before you got help? What was your state after? What things were you doing, like habits or behaviors or thoughts that you went, you know, this seesaw back and forth into an out of?

Elisha Goldstein:  The state I would describe myself in, it was kind of confused and I was just going wherever the current took me. I didn’t feel a whole lot of control in my life. It was a little bit, hard to tell at the time because I was doing well in business and because I was doing well in businesses sort of masked a little bit that I was being very unsuccessful in my personal life and you know, it took other people in my life to actually kind of shake me and wake me up a little bit. And literally people came to me, my family and friends and stuff like, what’s going on, you know, with you and your life, you know, kind of an intervention and afterwards, what happened with the specific experience I had that really kind of like ignited everything. When I was away at this retreat center, you know, away from all the cues and the triggers around me that were there in my environment, San Francisco, I met this guy who had a background in mindfulness and you know, asking me to do something, what I considered to be really silly at the time, which was to eat an orange in a particular way. And so I held this orange in front of me and I was looking, he’s like, just pretend you’ve seen this thing for the very first time, just to kind of humor me for a second. And I looked at this orange and I saw the dimples in it and I thought, okay, so it’s an orange, it has dimples, well what happens when you feel it? And I’m like, well it’s kind of soft and you know, kind of cool. And I opened it up and for the first time I saw the zest pop up. I never really seen it before. And so, you know, I even study this thing and I’m looking at the membranes of it and then opening up and seeing the juice begin to spill out and really kind of entertaining this. On noticing in that moment he’s like how you feeling? I’m like, Oh, I’m kind of feeling relaxed. And he said, well, kind of taste this thing and do it slowly again. And this is the very first time, just notice how it hits your mouth. So I put it in my mouth and just explosion of juice hit my mouth. And it was just this real experience of enjoyment. And he said, you know, what would the days, weeks, and months that had to be like if you had more of this in your life? I said, I guess I’d be more relaxed. I think I’d get more joy in my life. It can be something as simple as that. And that experience for me, it planted a seed of wanting to really study this stuff more. Now the hug in this is that we’re not separate Automaton, like islands walking around this planet. We’re really interconnected with our environment and the people we surround ourselves with. So when I went back to San Francisco and I went back to my same corporate job and then around the same people I was with, who were kind of cues and triggers to my old habits and behaviors, I just kind of slid right back into that because I’m interdependent with them. I wasn’t prepared for that, for the idea that, the people I surround myself with and the environment that I inhabit has a major impact in the way my brain makes decisions.

Richard Jacobs:  Any examples of that jumped out of you that you thought, how could I think that or why did I think that?

Elisha Goldstein:  I think about, you know, Jim Rohn who was a famous motivational speakers like, where the kind of the average of the five people we surround ourselves with. And what I mean by what I hear when I hear that quote is, the science around emotional and behavioral contagion. And you know, how, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, many years ago now mind the research of the Framingham study, which was a longitudinal study on heart disease and they found that, obesity is contagious up to three degrees. So when your friend’s friend’s friend is eating a particular way, you’re going to may be influenced by that behavior and that friend’s behavior and so on. And they found the same thing with loneliness and positive, negative emotions and life satisfaction, which they define as happiness. And, so when you asked me like what thoughts and emotions I had, I think what happened was I went back to my corporate environment and they’re the same people there and my brain immediately kind of went to the place. Initially I had a certain vibe about like feeling kind of elevated. But then, I kind of went to the place of like, well, what’s one night? Or, you know, it’s not so bad to do this, this one time or, you know, screw it. Classic types of thoughts that are kind of about just taking the road most traveled and not having the people around me that inspired me to live differently. And, you know, at this point in my life where I’m at right now, I’m crystal clear that the people we surround ourselves with have, a strategic move in our lives and has a major impact on the way that we think, on the way that we feel and the way that we behave. So if we want to live our best lives when it comes to, you know, doing things that are in our own best interest around, own health and well-being, it’s really important to look at your social circle and who you surround yourself with and the people you have the most contact with and begin to just kind of a take a little bit of a cold audit. And it doesn’t mean these people are bad people or anything like that. They can be great people and great friends and stuff like that and take kind of a cold audit and ask yourself the simple question, does this person who I spend a lot of time with in my life inspire me to live my best self, inspire me to be mindful or present and aware of my life? Inspire, whatever change you’re wanting to make in your life, does this person inspire me to live this way? And until what percentage? And so begin to kind of take a look at who’s in my environment here and can I begin to curate my environment to begin to give me the energy, support me and giving me the energy I need to create the motivation i need, the momentum I need to be able to make this change I want to make in my life. And it became a really important point, the science, backs it up and very clear about it. But we look at the science that Jonah Berger has done, I means he wrote a whole book called contagion and so many other people the one I just mentioned Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, like there’s a real reality around our interdependence with each other. The environment we’re in and the people we surround ourselves with and we don’t realize it, but it has real implicit impact, on our thoughts, emotions and behavior.

Richard Jacobs:  Well, I know growing up, you know, if you’re around people that do drugs, you know, you’re more likely to do drugs and i have lived in apartment complexes for instance, where, you know, the people around me were just a mess. And like I said, doing drugs and all that, and it just, it becomes very tempting to do that kind of thing. And, you know, I’ve been around people that are very negative and that’s a huge drain. It’s horrible to be around them. So I’ve tried in my own life to reach for happiness and reach for the positive things. But did you have to do a lot of like difficult housekeeping? Did you have to tell some friends like, hey, I don’t want to see you anymore, or did you just kind of stopped talking to certain people or what happened?

Elisha Goldstein: You know, what it was for me was I did start kind of creating, let’s say little groups that I met regularly to kind of engage the things that made me feel better like, I created a group specifically around a program called the artist’s way. And that was to kind of influence my own creativity. We have regular meetings so I can surround myself with those people. But the biggest thing that I did, which is not always available to most people, is I actually moved. And that’s when I went back to graduate school and again, it’s not available to everyone. This is why I know this is so true and why this works so well. And is really an important thing to do. And so I went back to graduate school and all the people in my school, a lot of the people were wanting me to grow and learn and progress. They were really like wanting and they were doing that for themselves. So just being around these people inspired me to live in a particular way that was more for my health and well-being then against my health and well-being. I go around the country and I speak around the world and I train, at this point i have trained thousands and thousands of people and in the specific notion and understanding that the people we surround ourselves with and the simple practice around learning how to be aware of, the impact of the people around us and the environment around us and be able to begin to curate that so for example, someone might be a loving person, that’s important friend. I’m not suggesting that this is the person that you’ve been ditch. If they’re not somebody who’s living their best life and to be able to inspire you to live that way, they might be really important in your life and feed you in important way, love, support. But we do need those people around us that are doing the things that we want to do. I guess you want to learn to eat better. We need to surround ourselves with those people. If you want to exercise more, you need to surround yourself with those people, mediators, we need surround ourselves with people who are doing that stuff. That’s going to give us a huge boost and the motivation, the inspiration to give us the energy to actually do that.

Richard Jacobs:  Yeah. I mean the whole reason I started this podcast was that, you know, in the 2016 I was caught up in the Trump and Hillary election, then it was all negative. And at the same time I was getting emails from Peter Diamandis. He talks about future tech and when I would read those emails, they were interesting and I felt good reading them and you know, I love them. So I made a decision, am I going to focus on negative stuff or am I going to focus on positive stuff? So that’s actually what led to the whole creation of this podcast. So it’s been one of my favorite things I’ve ever done, but that was like a big choice in my life. If that story helps.

Elisha Goldstein:  Absolutely that decision you made, as a perfect example, you made that decision, you were in a certain state of mind that led you to make that decision and no doubt that then has had ripple effects across many people’s eyes because now when I say surrender stuff for the people, it’s also surrender stuff would be the material. So you’re creating material for people to bring into their lives and they can kind of listen to on the go. That creates inspiration and insights and learning about stuff that’s maybe beneficial to whatever way they want to live their lives.

Richard Jacobs:  Yeah, I guess one thing that may be helpful is, I didn’t know where things would go or how they would turn out, but I just did it anyway and said, all right, let’s see. So I don’t know if you’ve experienced that, but when making choices big or small, I guess there’s some aspect of it where you have to say like, let’s just try it and see what happens, you know, without trying to analyze it to death if it’ll help you would know if it’s the best thing or not.

Elisha Goldstein:  There’s a great psychologist, Irvin Yalom very famous in the field of psychology and I was with him one time and he said, you know, if you don’t risk, you’ll never grow. And that’s a great example of what you did. You didn’t know how it would turn out, you rest and liquid It’s become, and yeah, I think all of the most successful people who are, out there and successful. What I mean by successful, I mean, whatever, success is defined as for that person, meaning like, they feel fulfilled in life. They feel grounded, they feel a sense of balance, not just financial success, but are people who have risked, have taken that leap and then if it didn’t work out for them, they adjusted. But then most of the people were kind of clear to some degree on like what they wanted to do this for. You know, like you sound like you were kind of clear on the what, and maybe even the why, like why you were doing it.

Richard Jacobs:  Yeah. It was just a simple reason why, I wanted to learn things. I wanted to learn positive things that were interesting to me instead of focused on negative things that, you know, don’t help at all. So, is there a simple framework for people to get started on this process? I mean, do they sit and make lists, you know, kind of people embark upon a change like this?

Elisha Goldstein:  Yes and make it really practical. I mean, there’s two areas that I come from. I come from the background of mindfulness. That’s something that’s been so helpful to me in my life, which is a practice I’ve trained myself to just be more present and aware. It’s just a variety of different meditation practices and different practices that have nothing to do with meditation, but this idea of just knowing what I’m doing while I’m doing it and just coming back to that again and again and fine tuning that just like you would when you learned how to play an instrument or learned how to drive a car or anything like that. And then there’s this idea of curating your social circles in your environment and so specific example around both of those is as around mindfulness you know, it’s just, it’s a trainable thing. Your brain is memorizing a procedure basically as simple as that. If you want to be more intentional, focused and present in your life, you can train that just like your train, anything. And so that, just starts with sitting and pausing or standing or walking, whatever you want to do. And just for a moment, just seeing if you can notice how your body’s feeling, notice the quality of your attention, notice how you’re feeling emotionally if you want to go and that could be like a 30 second practice. If you want to go a little deeper, there’s ton of apps out there that have a variety of meditations. But when it comes to getting the motivation, the energy to do it, it’s really helpful to surround yourselves with people who are doing that type of thing. And so one thing you want to do, and this is specific to curating your social circle and this will take you like 5 to 10 minutes to do, is get a piece of paper out and list from top to bottom, the people you spend most of your time with, to least time with. This list is the people that you care about the most or anything like that, number one, number two, next, next, next and texting people and messaging people counts because you’re having interaction with them. And then after that you’re asking yourself the question on a scale of 1 to 10, how inspiring is this person to me to live at my best self, to remind me of my best self? And you already know the way you want to live, you know what’s best for you and just does the very presence or thought of this person elevate you, give you the energy to live in this particular way, that’s all, to be your best self and again, if it’s a low rating doesn’t mean that’s a bad person, it’s just like you’re just kind of taking an audit basically, and then you’re saying like, do I have a lot of people that I have frequent connection with that are high or are people on the outskirts high that I need to have more connection with? Or do a lot of people here not have a lot of high inspiration and do I need to go then find some of those people? How do I make more contact with more people in those circles because that’s going to more naturally elevate me and give me the energy to do that? And you know, this, right? Based on my experience in doing this, and you just described that experience of being in an apartment building and having people who are doing drugs around you. We all know this that we walk into a particular building, we can feel anxious if it’s really cluttered, but if it feels open, we tend to feel more relaxed. We’ve walked into a certain group of people, we tend to feel more elevated. Another group of people, we feel that frenetic, anxious energy. So we’re just taking this audit and then if you find people in the outskirts, and the question is, how can I make more frequent contact with them? If you don’t have those people, it’s like, where are these people then?

Richard Jacobs:  What if someone feels like, oh, I’m surrounded by assholes, and their typical advice would be, like get a hobby, you know, that’s like old school gruff, like New York advice that I heard many years ago. But you know what’s like a nicer, gentler way, to find the people that you’re looking for.

Elisha Goldstein:  That’s not a bad thing, like meetup.com. There’s a reason that company started, can find people who have similar interests with you and can connect with them, like live in person. So that’s actually a great resource it’s kind of hit or miss. You know, sometimes if the exact reason why I created something called the mindful living collected, was because here’s a space where a lot of people come to because they, this is about people who want to live their best self and want to learn mindfulness in particular. And they’re all motivated to do that. So you enter into this space and it’s all people who are motivated to learn, mindfulness and learn how to live, you know, they’re more elevated itself and so there’s groups that form around specific interests around like anxiety, around aging or around these types of things, there’s courses in there to kind of go deeper into that material. But the whole sentiment behind it is that you are in regular interactions with people who are wanting to support you and inspire you and living in this particular way. So I wanted to create a space that can centralize this and people know where to find these people. So that’s that particular space. But meetup.com is a great example of that. My guess is there’s somebody you know, in that circle that’s already there that might be someone that’s worth making more frequent contact with and if there’s not, there are these things that are available again to look at. But I would look at and research at meetup.com I would check out the mindful living collective and no doubt, there might be other type of interest groups that might, where you might meet some of those people.

Richard Jacobs:  Yeah one thing people can do that I tried, you know, I started a couple of meet-ups on a topic I wanted to talk about like AI or things like that. You know, a couple of times only like one or two people came, but I met one or two new people. So you can either go to meet-ups or start on your own or you know, like you said, you provide a great resource for people to find that stuff. So I guess, there’s a lot of things people could do.

Elisha Goldstein:  Yeah if someone is interested in exercise of like living in that particular way is important. You know, there are particular, and I loved the example that you gave around taking risks because sometimes we’re kind of nervous or hesitant to actually do something like this. Like for example, there are certain types of exercise groups that are more tribal-based which means like it’s more relationship based, almost like you end up meeting the people more and it becomes more of like people that you end up having a connection with versus some cold gym that you just kind of come in and out of it and you don’t actually know anybody in. But you know, there’s certain kinds of circuit training, type of exercise spaces where the same people come all the time. So when you see the same people repeatedly over time, you can help them make a connection with them. And once you have that connection, that person then drops on your list, so all of a sudden you have someone in your list, and that would have kind of been inspiring to you, to kind of do that particular thing.

Richard Jacobs:  Yeah makes sense. Any other strategies for people? Maybe some people are super shy and just need an existing structure to fall into. Maybe some people live in rural communities or their interests are, I don’t know, maybe they feel unusual or embarrassing. I mean, would, what kind of flavors of help do you see people need in doing something like this?

Elisha Goldstein:  I don’t think there’s any shame in finding relationships online and especially like nowadays with the ability to see people, to choose whether you want to actually see the person or not via video feed or whatnot. If you’re living in a rural area or you’re feeling shy, that’s a great first step at to say like, well, it’s not, what can’t I do? It’s what can I do? That’s the question everyone always asks. What can I do is to see if I can, you know, step out and kind of move into, you know, an online group where I can meet people and have frequent interactions with people, that are kind of living in this particular way. Also, we have to understand that our energy has an impact on our motivation. Like hardly ever do you see someone slumped over who feels really motivated? Typically we want to kind of be aware of our kind of body posture and that’s going to impact the way our mind thinks that like what we actually can do. Sometimes actually getting our energy up helps us feel more confident, it helps us play a little trick on our brain that makes us feel a little more confident and so this may sound silly, but like kind of do even some brief kind of exercise if we’re feeling kind of anxious about a particular thing and get our energy up a little bit and then enter into that next moment. But getting our body and our energy up helps us feel more courageous to take on whatever that is that we’re feeling hesitant about. But we know deep down that we really would like to try it. Whether it’s a meet-up or going to a particular again circuit training group or whether it’s going to whatever that live thing is. And again, that online space is a good mediating point. And I know we have a lot of really warm, wonderful people, you know, in the mindful living collective that have also live in rural areas too and have been able to make great relationships with people over time that, you know, for them they see are the lifesaver.

Richard Jacobs:  Any misconceptions people have about mindfulness, you know, like they say, Oh, I’m supposed to sit there and eat a blueberry for an hour and think about the universe. I mean, is there anything people say that, you know, it was dismissive but a misconception?

Elisha Goldstein:  Oh, yeah. I think mindfulness has been put out in the magazines and catalogs like this panacea, you know, it’s a cure all for everything. I was just on the airplane back from New York to LA and they have a mindfulness hour long, you know, episode on there and it’s like, the guy says, see this medical chair, she sit in this medical chair, it’ll cure and he lists like, I don’t know, like 50 things. It almost seems like it’ll cure your life would be like amazing. He goes, there is no medical chair that medical chair is mindfulness. And I’m like, Oh God, Jeez, you’ve ruined it. So you know, reality is that’s the problem. Like if you’ve kind of pose it as a panacea, which is not mindfulness, you know, there’s a lot of doubt that gets raised in it than it should. But mindfulness is really a simple practice of mental fitness, of training our minds to be more available, to be able to see the choices in front of us and to be able to focus on the things that are going to be for us instead of against us. Like, if your mind typically is one of those minds that focuses on a lot of worries or focuses on ruminations in the past and it just kind of does that and you know, and you feel, when you walk around, kind of anxious or stressed all the time. Then what mindfulness can help do, at least at the very least, it starts to train the ability to focus on the things that are going to be more supportive to you and maybe focusing on the things that you need to actually do and accomplish or focus on the thing that matter to you more in life versus the worries and ruminations that are there. Or maybe focus on the worry, but focus on them more intentionally so you can actually plan and prepare versus letting your mind go to the worst case scenario. So it’s a way of mental fitness that can actually help you tune your nervous system. But it’s certainly not something that’s going to, you know, for sure you cross your mind from it’s going to cure cancer and it’s going to bring you million dollars and it’s going to like do all this stuff which is video seemed to be kind of counting but it does give you a greater sense of perceived personal control and it’s totally trainable like anything. Really, your brain has a something called procedural memories that memorizes procedures and when you practice and repeat something with certain level of repetition, you get a little bit more mastery over it. And a perceived sense of control is correlated with study after study with feeling more well in life. When we have a perceived sense of lack of control, that tends to be more associated with anxiety and depression and certainly what we’re doing is, we’re really training this locus of personal control and mindfulness. We’re getting, we’re harnessing the ability to focus on the things that are going to be supportive to us and getting a bit more control of our minds. And again, practice and repetition, your brain memorizes certain procedures and it really is as simple as that. But it’s getting the motivation to get the practice and repetition going. That’s the harder thing and working with our doubting mind. And that’s why I bring up the idea of, you know, look in your environment, look at the people you’re surrounding yourself with because they also have an impact on giving you the energy, you know, that help supporting you, inspiring the energy in you to actually do this stuff. But it doesn’t mean you have to be dependent on them. We can kind of also drum that up in ourselves.

Richard Jacobs:  Okay, very well. So what’s first step or two for people that are listening that, you know, they feel like they need some kind of relief or improvement in their circumstance or their friends or you know, whatever it is going on in their life. What are some initial first steps they can take?

Elisha Goldstein:  I would say that a simple thing you can do in your life aside from kind of having a kind of a scientist mindset and just experimenting with different, readings and writings and maybe listening to things like this or playing with different apps and have meditations on that. The simplest thing you can do is be on the lookout in the day and where you notice your body tensing and see if you can notice that tension and then soften your body or open the space where you notice the tension. If you did that throughout the day that would actually train some mindfulness and also make your body feel a whole lot better and make you feel better. Very simple thing to do. Just have to remember to do it. If my body is tensing right now, where it is bracing, the first thing we do. And this six month coaching program I have called a course in mindful living, which you mentioned earlier. But, that’s a very simple thing to do that really takes no time out. But then in addition to that, you can explore certain writings and articles or books or listen to podcasts or experiment with different meditations. But I do think it’s good to, if you are interested in like mindfulness as far as like really learning It’s good to enter into some structured program of some kind. So you have like a teacher and you have people you’re learning with and you know, that kind of thing. There are in person programs like mindfulness based stress reduction, great introductory eight week program that’s, you know, various places all around the world but not certainly not available everywhere. The course in mindful living is a six month coaching program that I created. The next one starts, June 11th, 2019 and but things like that can give you more structure for you. And the collective is a general space where, you know, there’s people there, that are stealing shared learning stuff together and that’s another place to start. And also just researching maybe a meet-up group, maybe there is one near you that might be value-aligned with an interest you have around some kind of change you want to make in your life.

Richard Jacobs:  Okay. Well, very good. Well, I appreciate you coming and hopefully people that are listening to this, you know, whatever are their circumstances, they can at least take small steps to improve it and feel better and be happier, I guess, as I thought, you know, why be miserable? Why not reach for happiness? You know, there’s plenty of misery in the world. I’d rather be happy to be a miserable, rich, so.

Elisha Goldstein:  Right. It all starts with your focus. What are you focusing on?

Richard Jacobs:  Well, very good. Well, I appreciate you coming on the podcast.

Elisha Goldstein:  Okay. Yeah, thanks for having me. It’s been really great. I really appreciate it.