Empowering Your Health & Purpose with Colleen Rivers, MD

Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork Podcast. My name's Dane Groeneveld, CEO of HUDDL3 Group, and today joining me from just up the road, I think Newport Beach, I've got Colleen Rivers. Colleen's the founder of Seek, which is a wellness platform, and she recently spoke to my Vistage group, which is how we got connected. So some really cool work that Colleen's doing around just taking those small steps to drive wellness. So welcome to the show, Colleen.

Colleen Rivers: Thanks for having me on. Good to see you, Dane.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, so we finally got some sunny weather here in California after a bit of a gloomy start. And I know you were mentioning just before we hit record, it tends to lift the spirit and the energy a little bit.

Colleen Rivers: It's huge for the spirit. This winter was a tough throwback to my east coast roots with all the rain and clouds, and it's a good reminder though, to be grateful. We're usually pretty lucky around here weather- wise, so it's a good start to summer.

Dane Groeneveld: Super lucky. Super lucky. So talking about roots, maybe you could provide our listeners a little bit of your backstory, your work in medicine and how you've come to be building Seek.

Colleen Rivers: Sure. Yeah. So I'm a doctor by trade. As I told you, I'm an emergency physician. I've been practicing for years in a wide variety of environments. I've had the chance to work in academic centers, busy trauma centers, small community hospitals, and it's such a privilege and I absolutely love taking care of patients. And the part that I struggled with over time though was really my impact in the emergency room. And the way I explain this is I hope that no one listening has had to be in the emergency department anytime recently, but I'll tell you how it goes if you haven't been. And most of the time what happens is people come in because they are either in a lot of pain or they're convinced they're dying, maybe they have chest pain and they need medicine, but then they also think, okay, this is the heart attack that I was afraid was going to come. And sometimes we have to give bad news. Most of the time, when people come in the ER though, we can give them pain medicine to help them feel better. And then we get to run a bunch of tests. We have access to CAT scans and X- rays and EKG and all that stuff and blood work. And in my experience, most of the time, I get to tell people after a few hours, " Hey, good news, today is not the day." But what's unfortunate is that as soon as people hear that, they're so relieved, they often feel so much better because the medication and now they just want to get out of there. And I never get to have that follow- up conversation as an emergency doctor that I think is probably the most important conversation I could have with most people, which is that if they don't change some really simple things about what they're eating, how they're moving, how they're managing stress, all the things that we've talked about, the next time they come in, they might be getting that bad diagnosis that they feared. The stroke, the cancer, whatever the thing is. And so I struggled with this because I wanted to have that impact as well. And I found a way to do it outside of the emergency room, which is Seek, which is what I'm doing now. Speaking. Coaching, doing workshops.

Dane Groeneveld: Very cool. It is interesting how that framework that you just described in the emergency room is not that dissimilar to some of the HR frameworks we see in organizations, which is people get in front of the HR leader when there's a problem. A manager's having trouble managing an employee, an employee's got in trouble for something, there's a termination happening. But the follow on conversation, the continuous learning, the rigor that's required to stay healthy in an employment team setting, very much the same as staying healthy in an individual body setting, body and mind and spirit too. There's a lot of similarities there. So it's going to make for some interesting conversation.

Colleen Rivers: I bet. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: So what do you see here in the US? I'm not from the US. I'm from Australia and the UK originally. And here in the US there seems to be a, it's a lot more transactional when you come to primary care. So the ER tends to see a lot of issues. And then as you mentioned, people get it fixed and then they go home and they don't really go back to the primary care physician and talk it through and build a plan. Where in the UK and Australia with the social health systems, you tend to have what we call a general practitioner, a GP. They tend to have more of a long- term relationship with you, having more conversations about health over time. What do you see as the real gap there for individuals and how Seek can open them up to a dashboard or an approach to be fixing that for themselves?

Colleen Rivers: Yeah, that's a great question. So obviously my main lens is through the ER, because that's what I do, and there's a lot of issues. The purpose really of an emergency department when you think about our training is to stabilize patients and disposition. Disposition means can they go home? Do they need to be admitted to the hospital? Maybe they need to get shipped to a quaternary care center or something. They have something really complicated, but it's like, where do they need to go? And that's what our training is in. And that's probably, we hardly have enough time for that to begin with most of the time with so many patients in the waiting room and coming in and certainly the recent pandemic and whatnot. So time- wise, we don't really have a ton of time to do more than that. And then who are we seeing? We're seeing people who, they just want a doctor. They don't know how medical school is set up and how residency is set up. Maybe they don't have insurance, maybe they don't have time to leave work because they need to be at work all day and they don't have time to wait at a clinic for a primary care doctor. So they think you're a doctor. I'm here. It's the middle of the night on a Saturday night. I can get everything addressed right now from my eye itchiness to my blood pressure, to my cholesterol, you name it. So certainly the emergency room is not a great place. And unfortunately, a lot of people, that's the only resource that they find themselves having. And then I think secondly, from talking to colleagues in primary care, their practice is really supposed to be set up to be able to give people the lifestyle tools as well. Not just the medication, but they don't have the time either. They don't have the time. Their visits are cut so short. Billing is very tricky because you know my bias. My bias is, Hey, let's focus on the stuff with no side effects. Let's focus on the fact that you could go for a walk and boost your serotonin. The fact that you could change your nutrition. And that's probably going to help your risk of every chronic disease, all these things. But doctors, they have to get people on the right medications. They have to bill for that piece, and the education has to come second often when they run out of time. So yeah, I think it's a tough environment for this kind of inaudible.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it is tough. And then on the flip side, if you're at home alone and you go online, there's so much conflicting information. Do I eat nuts because healthy for me, or do I not eat them because they're high in fats? You just can't find the answers for yourself.

Colleen Rivers: Yes, there's a lot of, and there are a lot of rabbit holes people go down. The WebMD, I think with the tremendous amount of anxiety that is out there, people go from website to website and then every second year medical student thinks they have some chronic disease because they've read about all this. Yeah, so it's really difficult.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it is. And you touched on anxiety there. I know there's been a lot in the press about loneliness and the impact of loneliness on humans, particularly post- COVID. But I don't think we see enough on just what the impact of anxiety is. One of my favorite health coaches that I've worked with in the past, Dan Miller, would talk about humans not being designed. Our bodies, our systems aren't designed to deal with 14 hours of anxiety a day yet that's what most people are dealing with, whether it's their job, whether it's relationships at home, whether it's financial stress, whether it's social media. Anxiety's just a massive problem. And there are a number of ways to fix that in a team, in an individual, in a family, but it doesn't seem to get a lot of air time.

Colleen Rivers: It doesn't. And I'll tell you, that is one of the most, again, from my lens, seeing patients in the ER shift after shift after shift, whether or not people even know it, that is one of the most common complaints people are coming in with. Whether they can even describe it as that. And you're right. It would be hard to quantify. Okay, chronic anxiety, what is that leading to? Is that raising your blood pressure and leading to an increased risk of heart attack and stroke down the line? It's hard to make that connection. But as someone who certainly not immune to anxiety myself, certainly not, and is dialed into these simple solutions and these little things that we can do to alleviate it to get it down a little bit, there has to be a real physical toll of it. Because when you do take two minutes for box breathing in a busy day and you feel your own heart rate slow down, then you flip into doctor mode if you're me and you think like, wow, this is great. I just switched my physiology over here. I was in the fight or flight and now I'm over here in the parasympathetic, which is what we describe to medical students is the rest and digest. This is where our body can digest our food. It can go ahead and look for a cancer cell and wipe it out before it becomes a tumor, the immune system, all that stuff. And we can feel that when we implement some of these tools.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Actually anxiety, I'm not immune either. And I know when it catches me the most, they always talk about fight flight, but then they also talk about freeze. So when I feel it in the workplace, it's when I get hit with something complex, I'm anxious and all of a sudden I just can't process it. And to your point there, I'll do a box breathing exercise or I'll get out and go for a walk and just not get fixated on I'm anxious about doing this and not knowing where to start. That's one of the safer ways that anxiety shows up for me. One of the less safe ways that it shows up is if I come home from a busy day of work and one of the kids is misbehaving and they cop it. They get dad shouting at them to be quiet or not be silly and not the best approach or language. So that constant level of anxiety, whether you quantify it in terms of long- term impacts, it creates a lot of short- term impacts just for human connectivity and getting work done together.

Colleen Rivers: 100%. That's really relatable too, the parent piece. When you said that, certainly nobody should push anyone else. Let's take my kids for example, right? But if I'm really honest about it and I look at the gauge of my response to my nine- year- old pushing my almost seven- year- old on one day versus a day where I've had something on my plate that's a challenge professionally that I haven't figured out. And there's a difference. Isn't that interesting to look at?

Dane Groeneveld: Really interesting. And the kids know about it too, just like employees know about it and the team, they're like, hang on, so- and- so did that last wee and they got an arm around the shoulder and Hey, how are you feeling? Why did that happen? Can we try it differently? And yet the exact same practice this week got a phones slam down, door shut, something much more detrimental.

Colleen Rivers: Completely. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: So diving deeper into Seek, when you came and spoke to our group, Colleen, you've got a framework where people can start taking important steps. I'd love to go through that at a high level and look at what you see as the key aspects of that we all, where we as individuals and also as leaders, thinking about the health and wellness of our teams, can be looking for some good approaches.

Colleen Rivers: Yeah. So I'll take you to the framework. I describe it as six pillars. I'm still trying to figure out the right word to describe the topics of focus. And I'll run through them and I'll tell you where I start, even though it's a little bit abstract, you're going to have to bear with me. But the pillars are: movement, nutrition, sleep, spirituality, connections, which are relationships. And then I say intention. And intention for a while when I was teaching this stuff, I put last because it's the most out there. When I'm dealing with a group of CEOs, I worry about buy- in. You don't want to start... Everyone knows movement and nutrition is important. So I usually start with those heavy hitters. And now I've flipped the script that I do intention first. And the reason I do intention first is certainly my purpose is as a doctor to bring real evidence- based tips that people can implement in the setting of a busy schedule and not turn their life upside down. So I'm giving really actionable items in each of these areas. But oftentimes it's not the knowledge that people need, it's the drive to action that people need. Because I find people know a lot of the stuff I talk about, they might not know the latest literature, but they might have heard it. They maybe know they should be doing it, but they just can't keep it up for the long term. And so when I talk about intention, I talk about people getting dialed in to their purpose in life. Big question. This is something that we don't figure out in one day. This is something that takes time. But there's evidence to this, and I find this fascinating as a doctor because it's not something I learned in medical school. It's not something I was telling patients when I was seeing them in the ER. But we know that people who know their purpose, they tend to live longer and they tend to be healthier, and they tend to be happier. And I find this amazing because wow, what a tool. And it's not just in older people. When I look at the research, it shakes out in every decade of life, twenties, thirties, forties, and so on. And so I've tried to make heads and tails of this. And what I think it has to do with is that inspiration piece. As a doctor, if I tell someone, Hey, you got to get that cholesterol number down. You need a salad every day. You need these veggies on your plate, whatever. They're really only going to be inspired by that cholesterol number for a little while. A week, two weeks. No one feels like eating 70% vegetables or whatever, if they're not used to it. But when I talk to them and I have them journal and I have them meditate on who do you want to be as a husband? Dane, what do you want your legacy to be? Why do you think you were put here on this planet? Then we start getting dialed into that, it's like, Hey, whoa, whoa, Colleen, I got some work to do in this life. Let's figure out this cholesterol number. Let's go ahead and just have a snack of carrots instead of potato chips once a day, and maybe I'll start going in that direction. So that's the overall framework. I start with that and then I get into the nuts and bolts.

Dane Groeneveld: That's neat. And on purpose, I know a lot of corporations talk about the corporate purpose, but you are talking more the small P purpose, the individual's purpose, correct?

Colleen Rivers: Yeah. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: I'm a very visual person. So when I've played around with that in the past, it's really about what does me in 10 years or 20 years look like? How am I thought of by my kids, my wife, my friends? What do I do to have fun? Am I still physically active? I tend to tie into a lot of those things, but some other people will go more broad in terms of their impact, their legacy on communities that they leave behind. How do you help people frame that?

Colleen Rivers: A good question. This is something I've been honing because I always joke that although the literature tells us purpose really matters, there's not great research telling us how to develop that purpose if we're not already dialed in. And so this is something that I love and I've been working on, and I put people in one of two categories to start. First is the guy like you who's thought about this, this is in his wheelhouse. This is something you love and you've grappled with, right? You have an idea. And then even better if you're a founder or you're an executive as you are because you've thought about it in terms of your own company. And so I tell people, draft your mission statement, draft it, see if you can put it in one sentence. Any successful company can put in one sentence what they're all about so that they can say yes to more things that support that and no to the things that don't, right? We all know this. And there's data behind that in particular. If you can put it in one sentence, you tend to be healthier. So I have folks start with that. I have them do exactly what you're describing in terms of putting to words your legacy, really. Think about yourself in every aspect of your life as a child, as a friend, as an executive, whatnot. Put words to who you want to be and then keep that upfront every day because we always need to remind ourselves. That's the whole point is that's why it's called intention. It's living intentionally. So those are the questions in that category. And then I go to people who have no idea, because inevitably when I talk to a group of people, there's guys like you that are so jazzed and they're jotting down notes and they're thumbs up. And then there's a couple of people like, who is this lady? I thought this was a health talk. She's supposed to be a doctor. And so those people who haven't thought about it, we back up. And what I like to do there is to say, what do you love? What are you uniquely good at? What are your talents? What are your abilities? What are these things that you could do for hours at a time for better or worse? Dane, I could do this for hours at a time. I could rap with you about empowering people until six o'clock tonight, right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Colleen Rivers: Those things, and now a visual, you said, I almost make it like a Venn diagram. Where does that overlap with impact, with meaning? Something that's meaningful to me might not be to you. There are people out there in the world changing the world with art. This is not something I could do, nor do I totally get. I don't understand sophisticated art, but that's okay. That's them. Okay? And so they find that meaning and that great need in the world, and they find that overlap.

Dane Groeneveld: That's cool. I love those questions. And Dan Pink talks a lot about this in organizational context of helping individuals find their purpose with a small P to support the company's Purpose with a large P, you could play that out in a family too. Hey, our family goals, I know some families do this. They set goals and values and everything else. Here's our family vision or purpose. And how are you playing your part in that as an individual? It can have so many different flavors.

Colleen Rivers: It has so many different flavors. And I love in thinking about it like that. I've never visualized the small piece and the bigger piece. But what I love about that is every one of us contributes, no matter what our unique skillsets are. And I could tell that to my children from my five- year- old on up. And what I love is that's been told to me throughout my entire career, childhood and whatnot, and I'll share an example that just resonates with me so much. I always share it with people when they're struggling, not everyone has their dream job just yet. And there are people out there that are doing jobs to pay bills and on this podcast because they're trying to build that life of their dreams or of their intention. And so something that I remember, it stayed with me all these years when I was a medical student. So I was a third year medical student, which is when you do all your clerkships and you're a pretend internist, and then you're a pretend surgeon, and you do a couple months each and you learn. I was on my surgery rotation and the lowest, lowest man on the totem pole, as you could imagine. And I remember speaking to or we were being spoken to by this woman who was the chief surgical resident. So when you're a fifth year surgery resident, you run the show. She was essentially operating on her own. She was awesome. She was everything that I ever hoped to be as a doctor. She was smart, she was kind. She was curing patients of diseases. This is the whole gig. And I, on the other hand, with my colleagues, was just dropping papers everywhere trying to write our medical student accounts and whatever. And I remember her saying to us one day when she was going to be in the operating room for a gazillion hours and we were going to be on the floor looking after her patients, she said, " Do not forget that we all have things we can contribute." And she said, " You cannot operate on a patient like I can right now, but you have time that I don't have. Go talk to them. Spend time with our patients, get a really good history, find out every symptom they ever had in the last five years so we could put it together in their clinical picture. Comfort them, explain the surgery they're going to have tomorrow so they have less anxiety so that their family members can understand." On and on and on. And that resonated with me because she dialed into something I could do that day. And you know what? That was a shift for me in my medical training because every time I found myself at that next level, I said, well, what am I good at? And I share that with people because I think it helps.

Dane Groeneveld: It's a great construct too, because not only was your, you said chief surgical resident?

Colleen Rivers: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: So not only was she encouraging you all to use those talents and resources that you all had, but she wasn't delegating a very defined task. So she was giving you room to go out and explore. And I think that's really powerful in today's families, workplaces, you name it. We're living in a world where there's so much information, there's so much technology. It's really easy to say, just go and do this and not let that individual find the real value of what they like to do. And it's almost like a journey to find that purpose or that talent. I know a lot of people talk about, Hey, early in life, you've got to go out and find that talent. You even said, what are you good at? And it takes trying to work out what you're actually good at.

Colleen Rivers: I totally agree. And really working your best at whatever you're doing.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Colleen Rivers: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: It's funny, I've got another short story on that. My wife and I have been talking about her going back to work since our youngest is now five and starting kindergarten this August. And she's taken on a few different jobs over the last year or two, just starting to ease into it. I come in because I'm jazzed on all of this stuff, and I'm like, " Let's talk about your purpose." And she's like, " What even is that? I just want a job where I get to turn up, work with adults and actually see something get done every day. That will be enough right now."

Colleen Rivers: That is too funny. That's relatable as well though.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah, totally. Very cool. So that's really where you start with purpose and intention, and that's the footings for these other five pillars essentially.

Colleen Rivers: Uh- huh.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. So maybe where do you go next? Is it connections? Is it back to the basic movement, nutrition?

Colleen Rivers: I go right back to movement and nutrition and get those out of the way, because that's what everybody perceives as the cornerstone and rightly so, likely is. We go over movement. My take home points on movement are that it's not just about burning calories. That's where I always have to start. And you have to find something that you love. I find when I work with people, there's a disconnect. If you hop in a love movement and exercise, you're probably all set. You probably don't need me. Maybe you're training for your next Iron Man or whatever. But if you don't love it, sometimes people get limited. Well, if I don't have time for a half hour jog, it probably doesn't matter. How many calories am I really burning? I always stop. And I say, it's about feeling better and being better and thinking better. And I love to go over the physiology on that. I go over the host of neurotransmitters that get boosted from serotonin to dopamine to endogenous opioids, to endogenous cannabinoids, all these things that we know make people feel better. You start moving, you sneak in that 10 minute walk, you take one of your meetings on Bluetooth, whether it's here or you take a one- to- one walking, you're going to feel better.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, walking meetings, I think walking meetings are huge.

Colleen Rivers: Huge.

Dane Groeneveld: And not only does it lift you and who, whoever you're walking with, whether it's another individual or a group, it totally changes the dynamics hierarchy or whatever else, because you're not now in front of the spreadsheet or in a room where you are the boss. Actually, you're just out walking and having a conversation. You don't have to be sat across the table eyeballing and watching each other's body language.

Colleen Rivers: No. Literally.

Dane Groeneveld: So it just creates so much opportunity.

Colleen Rivers: It's huge. And I've heard that from executives over and over again that they come back to me. That's one thing they took from the meeting. It never even occurred for them to do it. And now their relationship with this person and that person has completely transformed. So that's a great one. So yeah, so I talk about that and I talk about finding something you love. It doesn't have to be what I love. My husband and I still joke because long story short, I've sold a lot of Pelotons. I've never worked for Peloton, but when Peloton became a thing, so we both have a five- year- old. It was becoming a thing right after I had my fourth child. I had four kids in five years. I mean, talk about not feeling great physically and couldn't run. So anyway, so we got this thing and it changed my life. I started to feel better, my mood was better, all this stuff. And so then I proceeded to systematically convince every single person I came in contact with that they too require a Peloton to change their life. And it hasn't been the case. My best friend from growing up hated it. I still see people that are great to see you, Colleen. My Peloton is in my garage. I'm still paying it off. I've never used it. But I say that to say for some of these folks, it's walking with friends, it's going and playing tennis. It's swimming. It is... Again, like you said, it's exploring what we like, and that's okay as a grownup. We took our kids to do that. We put our kids in 20 sports until they figure out what they like. Why don't we do that, right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Tying back into anxiety a little bit on that, a good friend of mine back in Australia, Dean Dewhirst, he's actually built this new golf business called Golf Space. And it's cool because golf, for some people, particularly certain demographics, it's not accessible because hey, there's a whole bunch of wealthy white guys at that golf club. So if I'm a young woman or a person of color or someone who doesn't feel like when I show up, I'm going to meet other people like me, it might be intimidating. So I think right now with things like Peloton, with some of these digital ways of connecting with other people to go and join a run club or whatever it is, we're starting to remove some of those barriers and remove some of those anxieties for people to just go and try something.

Colleen Rivers: How cool is that? That's a really cool concept on golf.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, because golf, particularly if you don't do the golf cart thing, which I know a lot of Americans like to do, because all of the courses here have golf carts, but if you go out and swing the club and walk 18 holes, it could be a great way to get out and get some exercise and be social. But I'm sure there's a hundred other sports like surfing. I'm a surfer. I know a lot of my friends that don't surf because they don't want to look goofy going out on a surfboard. I was just like, that's sad. Go out and try it.

Colleen Rivers: Just go try. I know. That's like the gift right there.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, totally. That's it. So movement. Nutrition, that's a big one.

Colleen Rivers: That's a big one.

Dane Groeneveld: Lots of fads, lots of emotional elements of eating. I know I've always been a bit of a stress eater. I get home at the end of the day and I'm just hammering whatever's there.

Colleen Rivers: Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: What are your approaches, key tips to starting to build that nutrition muscle?

Colleen Rivers: And the third piece that I would add in addition to the fads and the emotion is there's a lot of controversy. Even flip side of a fad, I always joke when I talk about nutrition in a room, it's the most nerve wracking because people come at it with really strong opinions and philosophies, and there's one carnivore person over there, and then there's a vegan person, and there's a lot of opinions. And for the sake of a group event, certainly my belief is you got to do what works for you. We're all different. I firmly believe, I think meat is okay if it works for your body and it works for your belief system and whatnot, and a lot of diets work out people. But the point that I always take home is no matter who we are, most of us could benefit from adding in more whole unprocessed foods, period, full stop. More fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts. And I loop it back to this concept of inflammation. The idea that all of these foods from the earth contain things called phytochemicals, which are nature's anti- inflammatories, and these are the things that are going to go ahead and slowly, slowly, slowly decrease our risk of chronic disease, which is really what I'm so dialed in to chronic disease, because that's what I've been seeing in the emergency room all these years. The obesity, the diabetes, the heart attack, the stroke, the cancer. Certainly nothing is perfect. And I think actually, you may have been at the meeting, it's a tricky thing to talk about because I believe one of these meetings recently, and I believe it was yours, I gave this talk and at the end I got some almost concerning feedback saying, " Hey, you're telling us to do X, Y, and Z. You could do X, Y, and Z and still get cancer, for example." And that took me back especially because as I've shared with you, I had breast cancer a year ago. I lost both of my parents to cancer at the age of 50, at the age of 62. And everything that I'm talking about is not coming from a place of judgment or a finger pointing. It is coming from data and like, Hey, we're all in this together. We're all at risk, but the science tells us if we can move the needle and eat a little bit better, our risk is going to go down. It's not going to be perfect. We're all going to get some diagnosis, we're all going to die of something, but let's move the needle and let's make ourselves stronger and more resilient if we do get that bad diagnosis and then we need to get treatment or we need whatever. And so that's my message.

Dane Groeneveld: And I like that. And I also like similar to what you mentioned in movement, if incrementally all it does is make you feel a little bit better or think a little bit better, it's already winning, right?

Colleen Rivers: Already winning.

Dane Groeneveld: It's the short game versus the long game too.

Colleen Rivers: Yeah, exactly. And it's changing the experience of your life in a subtle but meaningful way.

Dane Groeneveld: I always like to draw parallels and analogies when I think about teams and work and the eating more whole foods, it just stands out to me. And avoiding inflammation. We had Andrew Friedman on the show the other day from Mind Shift, and he talked about, and it's the first time I've heard this, he said, " Burnout is not an individual thing, it's an organizational thing." So organizationally, we're doing 250% more meetings. People don't have time to do real work. So essentially, that's a big problem for teams' productivity, alignment, health. From an individual health standpoint, inflammation and whole foods, there's a similar parallel there because you think about it, if you're constantly eating a lot of processed foods, you're not thinking about enjoying the food. You're just eating to get through the day. You do have a lot of that inflammation. And so you're going to have burnout- like effects, whether it's not thinking clearly, whether it's bad behaviors that follow, you drink a lot, you eat a lot of nachos and you drink a lot of beers at night. What are you going to have the next morning? Well, tons of coffee and tons of sugar to get yourself going again.

Colleen Rivers: Exactly.

Dane Groeneveld: And it has that impact. So maybe in the parallel of individual health, eating more whole foods. In teams, it's probably spending more time together doing work rather than being in meetings and dealing with all of this digital stuff. I think there's some really interesting ways that the body works and that humans connecting in work work.

Colleen Rivers: Yeah, I think that's fascinating and it's really interesting because the reason not to tell why we started with intention, but from the corporate teams' aspect, in my experience, that's all about being intentional also. Just like this is you bringing your intention or your nutrition, no matter what industry we're in right now, I'm pretty sure most of us could spend the entire day replying to emails and never jumping in and doing the creative and the impactful work that we're here to do.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, yeah. I agree.

Colleen Rivers: And like you're saying, not accepting meetings that are not going to move forward what the thing is that you're working on, that's okay sometimes.

Dane Groeneveld: Absolutely. Yeah. And you think about the benefit, and you talked a lot about personalized health, which I think we're getting closer and closer to and looking at the biome and the gut bacterias and that there's so much in nutrition that we don't yet really know, probably hence all the controversial contradictory stuff out there. But I think it's interesting just again, journeying, trying different things, seeing what works.

Colleen Rivers: Exactly.

Dane Groeneveld: And not being too hardcore about it, because I think some people almost make it a bit of a statement about who they are. Hey, I don't need carbs.

Colleen Rivers: Yeah, yeah. My husband and I had a joke. We still joke about it. We have a friend who's very extreme and we love him. And it's funny, we're coming up on the 4th of July. We were at a 4th of July barbecue with this guy maybe a decade ago, and someone offered him, I think it was a cheeseburger, and they said, " Do you want a bun?" And he said, " Oh God, no." The disgust with which he answered that is to your point, we understand. You don't eat the bun, it's fine.

Dane Groeneveld: But now I'm going to feel bad about myself eating the bun.

Colleen Rivers: He ruined everyone else's barbecue.

Dane Groeneveld: That's right.

Colleen Rivers: But to your point, that fanaticism, I think at least with a lot of the people that I'm working with, I think it's what limits progress. It's not going to look perfect. My children, we were at a soccer tournament all weekend. We weren't home cooking, which is what I recommend all the time. We were doing our best to choose between food places on the run, and maybe we choose things with maybe more Mexican food with beans and burritos than getting whatever, cheeseburgers and so forth. But you do your best. And then when you're home, you hone in and you start making those improvements as you can.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, definitely. Actually, that fanaticism word really jumps off the page of me because we've created, I was talking to my brother about this last night. We were down at the beach talking about life, and we've created this sense of pressure, particularly in the younger generations, that you have to turn up and bring a lot of hustle, be an entrepreneur, get a big salary, do all of this stuff, and it's not sustainable or real for a lot of people. And even those people who have great success, what really is the measure of success if you're in a broken relationship and your health's going down, you might have big bank balance, but fanaticism is dangerous not only in diet, but also in teams and careers.

Colleen Rivers: Absolutely.

Dane Groeneveld: And we're seeing a lot of that, and it probably brings us onto your third killer desk, sleep. And I connect sleep and recovery. It's something that I've struggled with a lot in the last five years, and I know it's true for a lot of other teams that are out there trying to do big things at work. So how do you get started on sleep?

Colleen Rivers: Yeah, this is huge. This one I always say is it's the simplest one. If there's anything we all agree on, it's that we're exhausted for the most part. And yet most people aren't getting the required thing. And the science is really simple. I go through a bunch of really interesting data on the links between obesity and sleep deprivation and dementia, and I go through all of this, but at the end of the day, your chances of dying from anything go up when you don't consistently get seven to nine hours of sleep. And then I think we're all individual, even in that window. I'm more of a nine- hour person. For better or worse, my productivity is not great. But I think the solution is number one, making it a priority. This isn't that you're not, somewhere along the line, that culture that you're talking about gives you a pat on the back when you constantly skimp on sleep to show up for work or show up for whatever. And we sort of dub someone who gets that sleep as lazy. And I think that's the first problem. You're going to be more productive. You're going to be better at your job. You're going to be a better leader if you're sleeping. So number one, it's that. And then again, you're not going to change it overnight. When I talk to CEOs like you, a lot of times there are people that are hovering on that five hour mark consistently, okay, make it five hours and 20 minutes. Can you do that?

Dane Groeneveld: Just a little left.

Colleen Rivers: That's it. That little, the 20 minutes every night adds up over time and it has real impact. And then I think the progress grows from there.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I think you're right. And there's been a lot of posts lately coming out of sports teams moreso, but targeting individuals and teams in the workplace, and it's saying 80, 85% should be the performance target. You shouldn't be trying to get a hundred percent out of every day because that's why you are getting up early or going to bed late, and it sets a pattern in. So just adding an extra 20 minutes is important if you're already low, taking 20 minutes out of your workday is really important. Realizing that you don't have to hit that stretch every day because that might give you some more time for sleep hygiene or actually being in bed or whatever that might be.

Colleen Rivers: Absolutely. And that's exactly on that. That's the other hysterical part that we all do. We would never put our five- year- olds to bed. We would never pull them off a soccer field with a mom and pop ice cream or something in their mouth and toss them into bed. But yet, we sit on our computer, we do work, we reply emails, and then we hop into bed and expect that we're going to start the clock and we're not. So you're a hundred percent right. Taking that 20 minutes, powering down, that will lead to a more restorative sleep. If we can do our quick meditation that we meant to do or do our gratitude list and calm our brains down, then all of a sudden we're not going to roll over. I don't know if this is relatable to any executives on the call, but rolling over, we all have those nights where you wake up five times because you have that underlying anxiety.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, no, that's definitely, in fact, from when you came and spoke to our group, Colleen, I know with a reasonable level of success, I've putting my phone away at 7: 00 PM to spend time with the family, don't let the work stuff catch me. My other goal was to reduce to four drinks a week, and I'm not anywhere close to that goal, but you've got to have something to work towards.

Colleen Rivers: Hey, build on your success, you're doing it.

Dane Groeneveld: That's it. But I do know that I sleep better if I don't have those couple of drinks at night. So it's all part of that whole sleep hygiene approach.

Colleen Rivers: Absolutely.

Dane Groeneveld: Cool. So that was sleep and then spirituality, right?

Colleen Rivers: Yeah. So spirituality, I always have to define because this means different things to a lot of people, and my answer is it's whatever it means to you. For some people, this may be an organized religion. It certainly doesn't have to be. For some people it's toes in the ocean or looking up at the sun, or it's a few deep breaths to anchor them in the moment. It's whatever really gets you dialed into the universe, really. So for starters, I say, whatever it is that does that for you, then please go do it. Because that alone is the disconnect. People say, oh, I feel great when I get up early in the morning and I walk my dog and I see the sunrise. Okay, do it then. So let's prioritize that. And then I focus on mindfulness and gratitude because those are both data- driven areas that no matter where we're coming from, they're so easy to implement. And there are tons of both mental health and physical benefits as well.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it's huge. And actually, I've had a few different speakers on gratitude here on the show that I've worked with in the past. And the act of gratitude, inaudible is really important, but actually the act of gratitude, like thanking someone for something that they've done or doing something for them because they did something for you, it's so powerful.

Colleen Rivers: So powerful.

Dane Groeneveld: And it's a great way to break that self- defeating anxiety riddled cycle that you can get into in a workday or just in any day if you stay at home with kids or whatever it might be.

Colleen Rivers: Absolutely. And that's one of my favorite points. We started talking about anxiety. I think we're both dialed into the fact that this is what people are struggling with, and there's so much research out there that a gratitude practice exactly what you're describing, either writing down three things every morning that are going okay in your life, that alone is going to reduce your rate of anxiety and/ or depression. That alone, as simple as that.

Dane Groeneveld: That's huge.

Colleen Rivers: It's huge.

Dane Groeneveld: I also heard one, which I would tie into this spirituality, maybe it's more the human connections, but it was saying the other day that high performing people tend to be happy to respond to someone else's ask for help, but they're terrible at asking for help of others. And what was interesting in the way that the show explained it was actually asking for help is not only good for you, it's really good for that other person. He was referring to a story living in a neighborhood where his mother would go and ask the neighbors for sugar every once in a while, not because they needed sugar, but because they wanted to show that their neighbors were important and part of their lives, and they were grateful for that little bit of help that they could get.

Colleen Rivers: Well, how cool is that?

Dane Groeneveld: I think that's huge in the world of wellness, whether it's with your neighbors, members of a social club, sporting club, or teammates. I think we could all do a little bit better at asking for help. It's something that I think we've lost the art of.

Colleen Rivers: Oh my gosh, I think you're so right. And then it speaks to across the board with strengthening connections, but it speaks to that vulnerability. I think that's one of the hardest things. Listen, we get on this call, and of course I think each of us is caught up in certainly how we're going to be perceived. I'm supposed to be a doctor, I'm supposed to be an expert, and then I share. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, anxiety can be tricky for me too. I take that step to make myself more vulnerable thinking, Hey, listen, if there's someone on this call, now all of a sudden they're not as ostracized on that piece. If that's something that they are struggling with, and now they're may be more likely to take my suggestion, which is I think why we're both on this, is to spread messages and tools to really help people and empower them. I think that's fascinating.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it is. And I think if I think about the world I want my kids to grow up in as they become young adults, I think a world that is more connected. Technology has been a problem, particularly social media, I would say in the last 10, 15 years. But maybe technology's becoming part of the answer to create more time for humans to be out of the more laborious data, heavy manual tasks, and actually spending more time together, helping each other, being grateful for each other, appreciating each other. So I think that creates a much better sense of civil society and a place where you can spend time focusing on your own individual health too.

Colleen Rivers: Absolutely.

Dane Groeneveld: Is there anything else on connections, Colleen, that you like to look at when you're working with an executive or a team?

Colleen Rivers: Yeah. Well, we talk a lot about appreciation, which we touched on already. And then we talk about attention. And you just mentioned the digital world we live in. This is tricky. This is something that I certainly struggle with as a parent, as a wife, et cetera. It's just the way the world's set up. We're tied to our phones. We have our email, we have our calendars, we have everything. We turn on my house alarm or to look up the soccer schedule for my kids. I'm constantly going back to this device, which then pulls me away from the people that I'm standing in front of. And what I always say is, listen, it's going to look differently for all of us. I could take you through the tricks that I do. Maybe I leave my phone home on a Friday night when we're all going to dinner together, or maybe I've turned off notifications on email because I don't need to see it every time, and I could just check it a couple times a day. But we're all going to have different commitments and different things we're going to need to do for work on our phones. We need to be intentional, though. We need to think about that picture that we came up with, who we want to be in life. And then we have to make sure that the phone is supporting that. And that's my general advice on that.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, absolutely. And that tip that you gave me, putting the phone away at seven's helping me there. But I also find, even without the phone, I can have a problem that I'm solving in my mind, and my daughter comes to tell me something, going back to the word intentional, I really need to stop and say, Hey, I need to listen. I can't just be churning in the background and not being active with her right now. So it's interesting just the amount of data points and problems that we're all solving in our heads all the time these days.

Colleen Rivers: It's amazing.

Dane Groeneveld: Because of the complexity of life. I think if we were still living in the village and the harvest was the only thing that mattered or the hunt or whatever it was, I think maybe there was a little bit more time for being present.

Colleen Rivers: Absolutely. And to your point, even, again, with the little five- year- olds, they know.

Dane Groeneveld: Oh, yeah. They're onto you.

Colleen Rivers: Even if you're there. They're onto you.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Actually, one of my favorite podcasts, I listen to Prof G Scott Galloway, he talks about one of the things that we can give as a gift to young people coming up into the world is storytelling. And storytelling is such a great activity for human connection because you can't really get good at storytelling unless you're doing it with other people. And I feel like that might be part of the future too. How are we spending more times in our families, our social groups, our workplaces, really playing out storytelling because a safe place to adventure and journey and share ideas and feedback. And I think that's going to be more and more, hopefully with technology going the right way, an activity that a lot of us spend time on.

Colleen Rivers: Absolutely. I agree.

Dane Groeneveld: Cool. Well, this has been a really fun conversation. We're right up on the 50 minutes already. Flew by.

Colleen Rivers: Oh, could talk all day. Like I said, it's been fun.

Dane Groeneveld: So there were a lot... The six pillars are very cool. They were very impactful for me when you came and spoke to the group. But that key point of how you got into it, wanting to have more impact coming out of the ER and following up and then moving into intention, intentionality, being the real footing for getting all of this right. I think that's very relevant, not only for those of us who are trying to improve our health or health of family members, loved ones, but health of teams at work. I think all of that, whether it's straight up physical health, spiritual health, mental health, that's important, but also organizational health. Just looking at what activities are there and how are we making time and space for each other.

Colleen Rivers: Absolutely.

Dane Groeneveld: So much cool stuff. I'm sure Alicia and I will probably put together some cool posts and maybe even a light paper to look at some of these parallels and draw on some of your reference material there too.

Colleen Rivers: All right, thank you. Yeah, and I love hearing, I mean, this is something I think about all the time and one of the things I love talking to you is hearing how this translates to teams, how this translates to the corporate environment because I think it's so needed across the board. So I really appreciate it.

Dane Groeneveld: It is. So if anyone, actually on that point, if anyone wants to reach out to you and have you come in and work with them as a coach or come and do a keynote for their team, because I think that's big right now. I think any employers that are really showing that they're invested in the health of their employees are going to be putting a step in the right direction. How do they find you? How do they find Seek?

Colleen Rivers: You can send me an email, Colleen @ Seektransformation, just as it sounds. com or there's a link on my website, so it's seektransformation. com. You can just send me a note. I'd be happy to oblige.

Dane Groeneveld: Cool. All right, well, we'll make sure we get that up there on the post as well. And yeah, I recommend to anyone who's listening, Colleen definitely delivers this in a quick and fast way that's meaningful, so it's easy for the teams to engage with.

Colleen Rivers: Awesome. Thanks, Dane.

Dane Groeneveld: All right. All have a good summer.

Colleen Rivers: Yeah, have a great summer.

Dane Groeneveld: Thanks.