#14 - What Death Teaches Us About Life - Dr. Kathy Zhang

🎙️ Lessons from the Dying: Dr. Kathy Zhang on Living Life to the Fullest | Youthful Aging Secrets Podcast

In the Youthful Aging Secrets Podcast episode, host Ricardo Vasquez welcomes Dr. Kathy Zhang, a palliative care doctor who shares profound lessons learned from working with dying patients.

💔 Kathy discusses the biggest regrets of dying, the significance of connecting with oneself and loved ones, and practical advice on emotional regulation techniques, including her tapping method.

🧘‍♀️ She also shares her journey through mental health challenges and elaborates on how facing mortality can shift our perspective on life.

🌟 Don't miss the discussion on how to live a meaningful and fulfilling life.
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Chapters

• 0:00 Episode Trailer
• 1:30 Introduction
• 2:18 FREE Gift To You
• 3:25 Dr. Zhang's Journey into Palliative Care
• 5:41 Facing Mortality and Mental Health
• 7:01 The Impact of the Pandemic
• 9:00 Coping Mechanisms and Personal Growth
• 21:08 The Therapeutic Power of Movement
• 28:37 Experiences with Death and Palliative Care
• 47:09 Lessons from Death and Preparing for TEDx
• 54:26 Overcoming Shyness and Building Confidence
• 58:32 The Power of Habits
• 1:02:10 Emotional Regulation Techniques
• 1:05:13 The Importance of Breath Control
• 1:10:38 Tapping for Anxiety Relief
• 1:19:55 Reflections on Life and Death
• 1:37:21 Final Thoughts and Farewell

Transcript

 What if the lessons you needed most came too late? When they were talking to me, for so many of them, it was too late for them to change their lives. Dr. Kathy Zhang has spent years at the bedside of the dying. She's heard all of their regrets. A lot of the regrets that people have is that they wish that they had connected more with themselves. 

I wish I had spent more time with my loved ones. We were having 6, 7, 8, 9 patients dying a day. Some people we couldn't even get to.  I was in a very dark mental space at the time. I was suicidal.  So what is it about us that we're still here? And some of them aren't. Each time that I'm taking care of someone, each time that I see someone die, it just reminds me that like, Hey, I am still here.

Even though life can be difficult, even though life can be really hard sometimes, let's focus on the positive.  And, the fact that I am here, I'm really grateful for that. This isn't just a conversation about death. It's about living. About seeing life differently. Before it's too late. I think any time that we're forced to face and confront our mortality, it changes us. 

Check out Youthful Aging Secrets Podcast episode 14 with Dr. Kathy Zang. The lessons from the dying might just save your life.  

 Hey, my name is Ricardo Vasquez and I'm the host of this podcast, Youthful Aging Secrets. Today's guest is Dr. Kathy Zhang. She's a palliative care doctor who works closely with dying patients.  Honestly, this one really hit home as that's how my father finished his last days. So for me, it brought back a lot of memories.

In this episode, we cover how to stop anxiety and panic attacks using Dr. Kathy Zhang's tapping technique, the biggest regrets of the dying and how you can avoid them and live with zero regrets, the secret to living your life to the fullest drawn from lessons learned with hundreds, if not thousands of dying patients  and how to break out of negative thought patterns, stay calm.

No matter how chaotic life gets, dr. Kathy Zhang is a awesome person and a force for good. Now before we dive into today's episode, I want to quickly share my free five health hacks newsletter. If you're somebody who has the goal of living as healthy as possible for as long as possible, but you don't always have the time to listen to every podcast episode or keep up with the latest health and longevity research.

Then this newsletter is really for you.  Each week, I send you a quick, actionable newsletter, featuring inspiring quote, a summary of the latest podcast episodes, a breakdown of a health topic backed by the latest research, a few of my favorite discoveries or recommendations for that week, and a question to get you thinking deeper. 

It's designed to be read in under five minutes. If you're interested, please head over to youthfulagingsecrets.com/subscribe to join for free. And if you find this episode helpful, remember to like comment, share, subscribe, leave a review. It really is the only way to grow this medium. And I'm grateful for each and every one of you.

Enjoy this conversation. 



 Kathy, thank you so much for being here. 

 Thank you, Ricardo. I'm glad to be here. 

who are you and how did you get to where you are, you know, what you do,  that kind of stuff.

Mm hmm. So, um, I am a only daughter of Chinese immigrants. I, uh, grew up in Brooklyn, came over from China when I was three and, You know, the American dream for my parents was basically to become a physician. And so I did that. And once I did that graduated from residency, I was working as what we call a hospitalist, which is.

Someone who takes care of patients who are sick enough to be admitted to the hospital. And I really liked it. And at the same time, I was feeling like something's missing. You know, I felt like I was treating almost like a revolving door of patients. Uh, and I would just kind of patch them up and send them out.

And I wasn't really getting to kind of the deeper conversations that I wanted to have. And I didn't have the skills because I was afraid. So then I decided to do a hospice and palliative care fellowship, which basically means I care for sick and or terminally ill patients. And I've been doing that, uh, for the past five, six, almost six years now.

And I love it. I, uh, realized that I was seeing so many people at the end of life and they were sharing so many lessons and insights and all these things. And I realized that when they were talking to me for so many of them, it was too late for them to kind of, you know, change their lives, the trajectory of their lives based on those insights that they had learned.

So I was like, okay, well maybe if I have a podcast, maybe if I share it on social media, other people will listen to it and we can shift those lessons 20, 30, 40 years earlier. So we can, you know, enjoy what time we do have left. So that's kind of where I am for right now. And I can, you know, talk more ad nauseum, but just that's a brief intro, I guess.  

No, that's, that's really beautiful. And I'm, I'm definitely going to dive into all the different lessons you've learned. Um, but  did you know right away when you started in palliative care that, okay, this is, this is what I want to do. This is for me. Was there a transition or was it really difficult at first to adjust because obviously if terminally ill, you must see a lot of really hard things with family and the patient themselves.

  Yeah, totally. Um, it was really interesting because I was working for about maybe like two or three years on my own  Before I was thinking that I should maybe pursue this fellowship and for me it meant going back into training taking a pay card all this stuff and I remember when I decided to do it to apply, I couldn't sleep for like a whole month straight.

Like I got maybe two, three hours of sleep and I thought it was just the weather. I thought it was the summer. I thought maybe it was the heat. And then as soon as I got my first interview, Then like, Oh, I started to sleep again. So for my body, for my nervous system, it was a transition. It was scary. And I think that probably speaks to maybe some of your listeners out there who are considering changing their lives or transitioning into something new.

You know, even though we think like, Oh, I want this, it still can be really difficult to take something on that we've never done before. So it was. difficult at the beginning, but I mean, I love it, you know, and  the first, I started summer of 2019. So even before a full year, uh, March, 2020 came around and I work in New York city.

So you can imagine like the pandemic, all of that stuff. And it was like, One of those things where I felt like the universe was like, Oh, you like taking care of sick and dying people like hold my beer, you know, and you get this onslaught of people. And that was really, really difficult for all of us. I mean, even outside of health care.

And for me, I was just like, I, I chose this and I totally was unprepared for it. And that was really rough for a while. I got a lot of therapy. I got a lot of coaching afterwards. And it was a very difficult time in my life mentally. And I'm on the other side now. And I do have to say that like, I would not be where I am without that.

So in a way it was a blessing as difficult as it was. 

  

That's beautiful. I want to touch on something you said. So  to the point of when you want to make a change, even though you might really want to change, you might know it's good for you. There's still resistance. I think that's the perfect word. I know for myself with this podcast, for example, this is an entire career shift.

Um, I mean, I was in the marketing world prior, but I had clients and, and, you know, good things happening, but I, I chose to pursue this. And there even still, there's, there's resistance because especially with podcasting, sometimes you don't really know, uh, the impact until there's some momentum  and so you don't know, am I wasting my time?

Am I making a difference or whatnot? So I, I, that, you know, that hit home as well, because I agree there's a lot of that resistance, um, with change, right? So just to touch on that a bit, how do you deal or how do you  recommend people deal with that resistance, whether it's a change that they want or they don't want, but it's one of those things that they kind of have to see through.

Can you just touch on that a little bit?

  Yeah, it's a great question. So I think first and foremost, just recognizing that we're all human and that we're going to have some sort of response to something in our lives. And so, You know,  throughout this whole thing, I also became a hypnotist and I've been really kind of immersed in thinking about the conscious and the unconscious mind.

So our conscious minds, you know, us talking, thinking that sort of thing are like the tip of an iceberg. It's maybe three to 5 percent of our awareness. And then the rest of everything beneath the surface is our unconscious mind, 95, 97%. So that's what's happening a lot of times when we. Consciously say I want this I want to live healthier.

I want to exercise more. I want to have a new career that doesn't make me miserable every time I go into work, yada, yada. And then  deep down, there's a part of us that's scared because we're just humans. We've evolved over time to want safety, to want comfort and doing something new means risking ourselves to some extent, putting ourselves up for rejection or judgment or anything like that.

And so just being aware that that that's happening and that's going to be normal for any type of change that we're expecting or hoping to do in our lives. And then just noticing like, okay, well,  one, I've probably done hard things before. So how did I manage last time? Right. For some people that's journaling for others, that's being in community with people who are like minded, who are really supportive, uh, for some people it's movement.

So maybe that's getting a walk out in nature. Maybe that's exercising, but I would say  back to what you've done yourself to help you cope during difficult times, during times where you have had to make a change, whether you wanted to, or life was like, here's what's on your plate, deal with it, you know, and then think about, okay, what What worked back then what didn't work and what can I try again to then kind of you know, see and test Okay, does this work?

Maybe maybe not. Do I like this? Maybe maybe not and then kind of pivot that way. 

  That's, that's a great answer.  Do you have a wake up call story that you can share?  I think we all have moments where we have these epiphanies. Anything like that that you could share you're comfortable with sharing 

  So there's probably a couple and I think because of the way my life has  turned out. I think a lot of it revolves around death and it doesn't, it's not surprising, I would say, given the work that I do. So when I was about 13,  I almost drowned in a wave pool. Um, I didn't know how to swim. I got swept under at, you know, those water parks.

And  at 13, that's pretty young to kind of just be like, Whoa, I could have died. And from then on, I've kind of been much more aware of, The fact that, hey, any kind of experience, even if it's positive, even if it's negative, I wouldn't be able to have the opportunity to have it if I died.  And so then, you know, with the pandemic,  I mean, it basically, it was like,  you know, there's a level in Tetris where you're playing and then the pieces start to come and then you're just like, Oh my God, it's coming too fast.

And then you can't. You can't place the pieces because it's just falling too quickly and then at some point you're just like, all right, well I can't win.  That's basically what it felt like during the pandemic at the beginning. It was just like patients were coming and coming and people were dying left and right and we just couldn't deal with it.

We had, I would say, I think our list of patients was normally in the 20s and we got up to like 89 patients in like a couple weeks. It was ridiculous. Um, and we had normally maybe two, three patients die a week and  during the pandemic we were having six, seven, eight, nine patients dying a day. Um, and we were Like, some people we couldn't even get to.

And so that was a lot of, you know, trauma for all of us. And I was very, uh, what's the word? Um, I was in a very dark mental space at the time, um, kind of when it got a little bit lower when, during the summer, when things slowed down a little bit, you know, like you're going so fast and you're go, go, go. And you don't realize.

what's going on until, uh, things slow down a little bit. And so I was, um, I was suicidal  because just how awful it was, you know? And I, it was,  even as a physician, I was kind of just like, Oh, I think these are suicidal thoughts. You know, and I knew, um, I just didn't want to be awake. I just didn't want to deal with all the pain and suffering of what I was seeing. 

And so that was a major wake up call for me because up until then I had always considered myself to be an extremely well adjusted person, right? Like I have a good family, I have good support, um, I'm, you know, educated, I'm resourceful like all of this stuff.  And that was a huge wake up call for me to be like, Oh, I have not been coping with my emotions in a way that's healthy for me.

Right? And so then I, you know, got a trauma therapist, and then I worked with her for a while, and then I got a lot of coaching, and I You know, always like to say that my therapist got me, you know, from that deep dark hole I was in up to kind of my normal baseline. And then coaching got me to see from my baseline what was possible for my future.

Right. And then from then on, it's just been like, I have, I had no intentions of becoming a coach or a hypnotist or doing any of the stuff on social media, like zero, I just wanted to feel better. And then as you probably have experienced, once you feel better, once you have the tools that someone else teaches you and the tools for yourself through reading and podcasts and all that stuff, then kind of all you want to do is to share it with others.

And so that's kind of where I am now.  

  

I'm glad you came out on the other side of it  and thanks for sharing. With respect to  feeling  suicidal and whatnot. How long did it take you to realize  that you maybe hit that state of mind because I've heard, you know, I've spoken to a lot of people and I read a lot.

I love to read stories on people and just in general. And a lot of times people don't even realize that they've hit that point  until they're really stuck.  If that's fair to say, you know,

  Mm hmm. Um, I would say that  I don't think I really realized for several months. I think,  you know, as Hi achievers, I think a lot of people are just like I'm just gonna go and go for the next goal Right kind of you just once you attain your goal you just move the goalposts a little bit further and you just keep trying and chasing and chasing and That becomes the norm after a while And it's, like I said, it wasn't really until things slowed down that my body, my nervous system was just like, you cannot keep doing this.

You know, I wasn't really sleeping very well. Um, I was very withdrawn. Um, I was crying all the time. And I'm, I'm normally a very sensitive crying person, like a life insurance commercial will take me out. Like, it's just, you know, um, but back then I was like, I couldn't even talk about it without bursting into tears.

I would cry like eight, nine times a day on the bus, just walking down the hallway, just anything. And so what I realized now is that I was. I had a lot of repressed emotions that I wasn't dealing with, that I wasn't addressing, and my body was carrying all of that, right? My unconscious mind, my, my nervous system, and so when our nervous systems are overwhelmed like that, we need to do do something to deal with it.

And a lot of us are so conditioned to just put it aside, shove it down and just be like, you know what, I'm, I'll deal with this later, or I won't deal with it. And then, you know, things happen. You start to have dark thoughts, you start to, uh, your health starts to suffer, et cetera. So it took me probably a few months at least, And, um, I, yeah, it took me a few months.  

yeah, I've, I've had a similar thing. I wouldn't say suicidal, but where you're go, go, go, go, go. And there's been different periods in my life where there was just so much things happening and traumatic stuff. And while you're going through it, I think it's kind of like this adrenaline rush. It's like, you're always in this,  you know, peak arousal state, you're fight or flight mode.

And then when you finally calm down, it's like you're vibrating, literally. You know, I went through that at one point in my life and I started to get like anxiety or panic attacks, literally. And I didn't even know what that was because it was happening out of nowhere, waking me up in my  sleep and umm Yeah, it's, it's something that you don't even realize until, like you said, once you calm down, it almost, it almost seems counterintuitive.

You would think that now I'm calming down, everything should be cool. But it's almost like now that you've calmed down, your body's like letting you know  that that's something that's going on. Right. Is that fair to say?

Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, my therapist taught me about the window of tolerance, uh, and, you know, hopefully your listeners can go and look it up as well, but basically it's like, Uh, our nervous system gets highs and lows, right? So the highs would be, uh, really high, overactive kind of stimulated nervous system would be like anxiety, panic attacks, like where your heart rate is up and that sort of thing.

And then the lows would just be like. You just don't want to do anything. You don't have the energy for it. You can barely get out of bed, that sort of thing. And so normally we live in this window of tolerance in between where we are stimulated, we're alert, we can talk, we can function, right? But we can still get out of bed, et cetera.

But then when life happens and you know, these external events happen, or even if we think about something, it can overstimulate us above the window. And under stimulate us, uh, as a result when we crash and we get too stimulated and then we can't function. And, you know, we're in bed for weeks at a time. So that was really helpful for me to learn about that.

And I highly recommend that people look into that as well, to know how your nervous system responds to things. Cause it was really eyeopening. 

  Yeah, I love that. I've never heard of that.  For me, what I found to be very useful during times of extreme stress or, you know, navigating trauma, especially after the fact, is maintaining routine, like certain routines for me, especially of healthy habits. So like I work out every morning. That's the first thing I do. 

Get up and go exercise. And I find that just moving your body is so important and, and from resistance training to aerobic to flexibility, I do martial arts as well. I find that those things have, have probably saved my life in many ways. It's kept me going even when I didn't want to, I would say, okay, I'll go a little bit lighter today. 

And just to keep that momentum and  maintain that and I found that that really helped me as for my mother, you know, we lost my father, her husband, they were married for many years, great relationship.  She started a new fitness regimen that I encouraged her to get on as soon as possible, like it was really on top of her with it.

And I was like, just start small. She got into Zumba, she got into weights. And she told me like when she would start, she didn't want to, but she would push herself and immediately she felt better. And it would last past the exercise for hours. And, and then it started to be like days, you'd feel a little bit better and better.

So I think. For the listeners, like exercise and you correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think you'll disagree, but I think exercise is a fantastic outlet that can help,  you know, fuel that change or to help you cope. 

  Yeah, absolutely. And honestly, um, there's For people who feel intimidated by exercise, if you just want to call it movement, right? Just getting outside, going for a walk, it's really Um, there's been tons of studies that talk about the power of movement of just even getting in nature for five minutes a day and being surrounded by trees or even looking at a photograph of nature is better than nothing.

And you have to think about it, too, that. It's all energy, right? So if the energy of some sort of repressed emotion gets stuck in our body and we're not moving our body, then it's stuck in there even more, has nowhere to go. And so that's why for so many people that want to change their lives and they start with Fitness, right?

They realize that it spills over into the rest of their life because they are moving and they are seeing positive changes associated with them making a decision. To, you know, walk or exercise or strength train. And then that spills over into the rest of their life. And they're like, Oh, you know, I worked out and now I'm seeing results.

Well then, how can I create results in my life, in my career? Right. Uh, how can I change my life because of the decisions that I'm making in other aspects that are not just fitness related? 

  Yeah. Excellent point. I totally agree. And I also do, like I said, I do martial arts. So mix martial arts and with something that's interesting, I actually want to get your take on it is out of all the different martial arts that I've trained in, some of them are striking like kickboxing, boxing, et cetera.

Then there's others that are more like grappling, which is like wrestling. If you're familiar with Brazilian jujitsu. And out of all of them, I find that Brazilian jujitsu is almost therapeutic on an emotional and psychological level, which is very strange because you're literally trying to like choke each other.

And like, it's, it sounds barbaric, but it's not, it's, it's really not. And I find like, it's made me a better person, more compassionate, uh, much more tolerant, more patient. It seems to have tamed my ego, the need to like prove myself or, and also during traumatic times. I've, I've had some very profound conversations with guys, like you're literally going at it for five rounds or five, sort of five minutes. 

And you're just sitting there sweating, you're gasping for air, and they'll share something really deep  about their thought or whether, you know, my girlfriend just broke up with me or whatever.  And you're like, yeah, man, my dad's in the hospital. Like, you know, you share these things. It's like a release and you, you build this like camaraderie with each other. 

Um, I don't want to compare it to guys who go to war. It's not even close to that, but I would imagine it's something similar in that you, you share this.  This bond and I find like it is a form of exercise and it's a form of I guess release I don't know if there's any studies that back what i'm saying up But I I know there's a lot of people that would agree with me on that.

  Um, so what I could maybe imagine is that, um, And maybe there's some parallels to some of the work that I do is that when we, when our,  in a sense, like when our mortality is threatened, when we have a sense that like, oh, you know, a lot of the physical stuff that you're doing in jujitsu, like you said, you're, you're really trying to, you know.

Like grapple and you're choking each other out and you're that sort of thing. It's an probably an unconscious response to be like, Oh man, I could be in real danger if we weren't sparring. Right. If we weren't in a controlled environment. And I think that does something to our nervous system, and I'm not recommending like everyone go and, you know, get grappled and, you know, do Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

And I imagine that there's a component of our nervous systems that kind of just breaks some habits, some patterns for us that when we're in autopilot and we're doing all these things, just going to work, coming home, watching Netflix, making dinner, scrolling social media. And And then when you're doing something like that, where you're like, Oh, whoa,  my life could be threatened or like, Oh, there's, there's something here. 

And then when that pattern interrupt, when our almost, when our idea of the fact that we're not going to live forever, that our lives could be threatened, I think it, it wakes something up in people. And then just, again, probably the physical release of doing intense,  sport like that can really help people process emotions to help them then feel comfortable being vulnerable with someone else. 

I agree, and I do encourage everybody to do  I always tell people, you know, if you're if you're physically capable and and you know, your doctor says it's okay You know try it, you know because I find that anybody that has Started a practice like Brazilian jiu jitsu. Um, initially it's, it's tough, but they get addicted.

Almost every single person that I've ever known that starts, men, women, children, they get hooked. And I think it's much more than just the rolling around. I, I do believe there's something to the element of like human touch as well. You're literally like hugging each other. It's a little gross to sweat and stuff,  but, um, yeah, I just, not that this isn't a commercial for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

I just think it's really, it's a, it's a great outlet. 

It's your podcast. Why not? Right. You're allowed to do whatever you want on here.

  No, I just, I just think an outlet is very important. It's my, it's my thing.  That's what I'm, what I'm saying. Um,

agreed.

  so  were you scared for your life during the pandemic as far as getting COVID and getting sick? Did you find yourself kind of paranoid as well? Because I would imagine  it was scary for you.

  Yeah. I think. At the very beginning when we didn't know exactly what it was and we didn't exactly know its method of transition, transmission, we, you know, everyone was wearing like N95s out in just  Out in nature, in fresh air. And so I think that was a little nerve wracking at the beginning, obviously. Uh, you know, there were some moments where I was a little nervous because I am Asian American, right?

So there was the whole. Rhetoric of the Kung flu and all that stuff. And so there were some times where I, I was targeted because of the way that I look. And again, that was a little scary as well. Luckily, a lot of people were on lockdown, not luckily, but like for my safety, there weren't a lot of people out in the streets for a while because only first responders and necessary, Uh, workers were going to work.

And so that felt a little bit better. But yeah, I think any time that we're forced to face and confront our mortality, it  changes us in a way that is kind of indescribable, right? If you've talked to anyone who's, uh,  But even like yourself, who's lost someone who's had a near death experience, like, it changes you in a way that shifts your way of thinking about life and how you are going to live afterwards.

And, I think it's only natural that that happens because death is such a like, it's fascinating and it's also frightening, you know? So, uh, you know, I don't know about you, but I'm sure that you've probably learned some things or had some insights after your experience with your father too. 

  Yeah, for sure. For sure. I, uh, I've always been somebody who, like, reflects in my thought. And I write, like I said, I read quite a bit. I love to write. So, yeah, I definitely had many moments of reflection, not a day goes by that I don't think about my dad and the different things and try to  extract wisdom from it,  adopt perhaps more empowering ways of looking at things as well.

So for sure, even just being in the hospital in and out and seeing people there, just, you know, those kinds of things really did change me quite a bit. I think they were very eye opening, even conversations with. Uh, doctors and nurses, um, whom I was very grateful for. You know, they did their best at going to the whole palliative care.

When my father got moved to the palliative care unit, um, it was a great experience as far as dealing with the nurses and the doctors, they were incredible. Like, honestly, I was, I was very impressed with their level of empathy and their professionalism and their compassion. Um, not all of them were like that in the other units. 

But I also understood how much they deal with, too. And so I tried to have that, like, empathy to see, like, You know what, man? I'm number 1, 000 this week. So, who knows? And some of the patients are abusive. Some of the patients don't. Uh, family are very, uh, abusive. I, I was, I, I had to intervene where I was like, Hey man, don't, you know, like, don't talk to her like that before security could come, whatever.

I'm like, I, I'll personally do it. I'll escort this person. Cause you know, they're dealing with a lot. They don't need you to.  You know,  start yelling at them or saying things because I think for the most part they're doing their best  and, uh, you know, with the resources they have and the training they have.

And we're all human. We only have a certain level of patience and like,  so,  

Yeah, I'm sorry. You and your family had to go through that. And, uh, I am happy to hear that you had a good experience with palliative care. So, and again, like, that's one of the reasons why I love it. And I never thought that I would be doing this kind of work when I first started going into medicine. And it is, like, it's the most meaningful, fulfilling career in medicine that I could ever imagine.

So, I, uh, yeah. I'm sorry you had to go through that. And  palliative care is a special field.  

yeah, even,  even the place it was, it almost seemed like a resort.  I was, you know, I was trying to make my mom laugh and stuff, but I feel like I'm on vacation in here, you know, just making jokes. It's just probably one way I try to release my emotions. I make the inappropriate jokes at the, like, the worst time.

But it's just for me to, like, kind of kill that edge. And my mom knows how I am, so she would laugh. And it's just a way to, like,  Hopefully make it a little easier you soften the blow

  Yeah, I mean, humor's like humor's a really power empowering, uh, and powerful coping mechanism. Um, like if you ask anyone who works with death, we all have really pretty morbid senses of humor and you know, it is what it is. You can't be surrounded by it all the time and not kind of laugh about it in some ways.

Right. 

  Yeah, there was definitely moments that uh, I had with my dad that were funny that were not funny, you know, like they're like, uh, I'll actually share this story because I I I think I think it's a good story, but it's it's maybe inappropriate But whatever so he had the gown on, you know, the back is, you know open so you can see there  their butt or whatever.

And, uh, he was, he was standing up and he, he was, he was speaking, we speak Spanish, right? We're from Argentina. And, uh, he's like, uh,  he basically said like the, the cold is going up his ass. Like it was, it's just, the moment was hilarious, you know? And he made me laugh so hard and I was trying to like lift him up to get him to walk.

And it was, it was just a really funny moment. It was just me and him too. And I was literally laughing so hard because he still kept, I don't think he was even trying to be funny, but that's how my dad was. He was very funny, like very crude humor. And like, he's like, the wind is blowing up my ass. Like,  

I love that!

Yeah, it's just funny, but um, yeah, I would make jokes like when I would leave the room I'd be like, don't, don't be, don't go anywhere, eh?

Like, don't be fucking 

running off

Yeah, right.  

off. He'd just look at me like, you're an asshole.  Just my way of like, easing the blow, you know?

  Yeah, yeah, and you know, it's a way of connecting to like if that's how you connected your whole life Like why would you not continue that?

  Exactly. Yeah, Argentines have a very crude humor. If you know our culture, we're very, very sarcastic. We, we make jokes at most, some cultures be like, whoa, like you guys go there? Like, it's just, it's just the way we,  It's just our culture. It's yeah, it's in good fun. So I'm going to pivot. I'm going to ask you some maybe harder questions if you don't mind answering them. 

So, the first thing was this idea of  sudden death versus prolonged. So, obviously in palliative care, it's probably prolonged in a way. Like, you kind of know what's coming versus sudden death, a car crash or something.  My,  I've thought a lot about this and I feel like the sudden death seems to be obviously easier.

For the victim, the, the, the person who passes, if it's sudden and much harder  for the family, because it's like a blow,  but the, the prolonged seems to be much more difficult for the patient and easier on the, the family. And what I mean by that is obviously it's not easy. I feel like you have time to process and plan and to know like, okay, this is.

 happening You're, you're, you're kind of given small dosages of what's to come.  I wanted to get your take on if you agree with that  line of reasoning that I have about it.

  Yeah, so  I think a lot of people  Have more experience with hospice and palliative care through kind of similar  constant You know, circumstances, maybe as you and your family, where someone has kind of a chronic illness that maybe, you know, they get hospitalized here and there, or they've had it for years, obviously, the most common thing that people think of is cancer.

Um, but it could be heart disease. It could be lung disease. It could be kidney disease, where they just kind of get slowly get sicker over time. And then, you know, they pass away.  There are, we do see a lot of sudden death in palliative care, and so we do see a lot of traumas, we see a lot of strokes, we see a lot of kind of brain death, things like that.

And the teams call us to provide support for the families during those moments. And so, from our standpoint, we see it all, right? And I think there is a lot of validity to what you're saying is that people really benefit if they have a little bit more time to process the gravity of the situation.

Because if it's, you know, if it's, if someone's had cancer for 20 years, right, and they're getting older and you see the decline in them,  it's, you know, fairly, you know, Recognizable to a lot of people to be like, okay, you know, so and so is getting weaker. Okay. They used to be able to walk and now they can't get out of bed.

They're more frail. And so that kind of process is prolonged for the family members. And it's a little bit Less, I guess, surprising when that happens, when they do pass away, when they do die and for, uh, I will say it is very, very difficult for the patient to, and a lot of patients will, you know, um,  do certain treatments because of their families, right?

Even if they're like, I'm tired or I don't want to have treatment anymore. A lot of patients, especially people from cultures in which the, the family unit is really important over the individual. A lot of them will just be like, okay, I will, you know, I I'm tired and I, my family really wants me to do chemo, so I'm going to do it.

Right? And that's fine. Every family dynamic is different. Every patient makes different choices. Um, and I would say it is really, really difficult to in a different way. It's still really difficult for families for prolonged illness. And it's really difficult in a different way for people who have a sudden loss.

And that involves its own set of emotions, its own set of grief. That's very different, even though it is very similar. 

What would you say was the hardest death or patient that you've had to deal with? 

  Um,  That's really difficult. Um,  so  there've been a lot of patients over the years that kind of have stuck with me.  I would say one that really stuck with me was kind of very early on in my training. And again, I think it was because I was very young in terms of experience. Also in age, I was in my twenties, but she was, A young girl, she was also in her 20s.

She was also the only child and daughter of Chinese immigrants. Uh, I think her birthday was like maybe just a couple months ahead of mine.  And so she had stage four cancer. And, uh, her parents had flown in from China. She was living here on her own. Her parents had flown in and, uh, because she was dying.

And I was acting as both her doctor and her interpreter because her parents didn't speak English. So, the daughter, the patient, and her parents were like trying to protect each other. So, I was interpreting for both of them. And they were both kind of trying to  not talk about the big elephant in the room.

And so, one day she started to,  She looked like she was dying imminently. And so her mom was at bedside. And so I was like, Hey, can you call your husband, her father, to come and, you know, kind of, cause I think she's dying imminently. I don't know if she's going to make it through the day. It could be, you know, minutes, hours, that sort of thing.

And they lived kind of, you know, a mile away. And so I figured he could just jump in the car and get here and he'd be there in 10 minutes. And she goes, Yeah, I called him. He's going to be here in an hour. And I was like,  this girl does not have an hour, you know, um, and I started panicking. I was like, why, he's 10 minutes away.

Like, why is it going to take him an hour? And she said, you know, we're, we don't speak English. He doesn't know how to navigate public transit. And, you know, he's going to have to walk like across the river. So across this big bridge. And I don't know, it just broke my heart at the time because I. I imagine that, like, my father would have done the same thing, like, he would have just been like, all right, I'm just gonna walk, you know, I'm, I'm gonna get there by foot.

I'm gonna, you know, say bye to my daughter. And as a parent, like, who wants to, no one expects to bury their child, you know? Um, so he eventually got there, but it was just, I think a moment of recognizing that like, there was nothing particularly special or different about me and her that  our places could not have been switched.

Like what made me so special that I wasn't the one lying on a bed dying, you know? And so that really made me think like, wow, what am I going to do with this life that I still have? All right. I mean, I get to wake up every day. still am, you know, knock on wood. And so many people don't,  people who look like you and me, people who have same family members, they probably do some of the same work.

They have the same interests. They, you know, have some of the same favorite movies that we have, favorite foods. So what is it  about us that we're still here? And some of them aren't. And I don't know the answer to that, and each time that I'm taking care of someone, each time that I see someone die, it just reminds me that like, hey, I am still here, even though life can be difficult, even though life can be really hard sometimes,  and I'm not kind of dismissing the negative parts of it, to just say like, let's focus on the positive. 

And the fact that I am here, you know, I'm, I'm really grateful for that. 

 That's beautiful. I, I agree. And that must've been tough. It sounds to me like it was also a, a window, right? You could almost, or a mirror, you can see yourself and it really maybe shook you up a bit, right? That's, that's really tough.  

Yeah, definitely. It was, um, you know, it's hard to watch someone die. And it's, I think, hard to watch someone die who looks kind of like you.  

 I think  with me, what was really difficult is, My father was, you know, older, not that much, not that old in his seventies. But for me, I still saw him as a, the kid looking at my father. And so it was almost surreal. Like it just didn't, it almost like didn't make sense to me. Like this wasn't the way the story is supposed to go. 

And then you start to see yourself in that, right? Especially as you get older, you look like, okay, when,, when the days behind you are potentially.  More than the days ahead of you or you getting close to that, you're like, you start to really reevaluate everything from your relationships, how you spend your time.

Um, so yeah, I can, I can definitely imagine what that would be like, especially at a young, if you were just starting out in your twenties. That's, that's a lot. That's a lot that I don't think you can prepare for. Right. It's kind of just you have to go through it.

  Yeah. Yeah. And, um, you know, we, no one expects  to die, even though we all consciously know that we all are going to at some point. Yeah. Um, and no one expects that their family members and their loved ones are going to die, even though, again, consciously, we know that we, once we're born, we're all a little bit closer to death and a little bit further from birth.

But just, it's, you know, I think it's a safety mechanism for us to not think about it. And I know for me and a lot of people, just occasionally, even thinking about that intentionally can really kind of just  help us prioritize our life in a way that can be actually really helpful without having to actually lose someone without having to actually get sick, you know, and so that's kind of what I'm trying to remind people of more often. 

 So  what can we learn from death? Without actually experiencing it ourselves.

  Yeah, so, um.  You know, I'm preparing for a TEDx talk, which is going to happen in a few weeks. And so that's really going to be the topic of the talk. And so, you know, a lot of the regrets that people have, if I really boil it down for people is that they want, they wish that they had connected more with themselves and with other people.

That's really all of the regrets, what they boil down to. So connecting with yourself, right? A lot of times people will say like, I wish I had been more true to myself. I wish I hadn't been afraid of other people's judgments of me. And I had gone for the thing that I wanted to do. Or they were like, I wish I had been, you know, a lot of people will say that they regret,  um, not pursuing their aspirations.

So things that they really wanted. And instead they just were like, okay, well this is what I'm supposed to do. This is what I should do. And then they kind of do that. And so there's a lot of regret there. And then when it comes to connecting with other people, You know, people will say, I wish I had spent more time with my loved ones.

I wish I hadn't worked so hard. I wish I hadn't spent all that time at the office instead of, you know, going to meet up with my friends or attending, you know, showing up for weekly weeknight dinner with my family. And so just if you think about your life right now, how can you connect more with yourself?

How can you connect more with others? And then there's also other ways that you can think about death too. It's like, all right, well,  if I'm 90, looking back on my, my life right now,  how would I want to live it? Right? What would I regret not doing? And then just shifting that perspective a little bit and thinking about like, okay, well, what if this is the last time I get to?  

You know,  talk with my mom, right? What if this is the last time that I get to eat my favorite food? How is that experience going to be different? If we really are like, Oh my God, this could be the last time, even though we could have many, many more times going forward. And because of the nature of life, there will always be a last moment that we have with everyone and everything.

And so just being a little bit more present, being a little bit more aware and not letting the chaos of life and the go, go, go. And like, Oh, I got to do the next thing and I got to check off the next task on my list. If we can just pause a little bit more and just be like, okay, what do I really want?

What's going to make me really satisfied, fulfilled at the end of life? You know, what decisions, what actions do I need to take to get my life a little bit closer to that version of me on my deathbed,  then go and do that. You know,  

Yeah. I love that.  It's beautiful. Like I can't wait to hear your TEDx talk as well. 

working on it, working on it.

if it's, if it's out by the time this is released, I can definitely promote it as well. And I have a newsletter I put out. So even if it, this comes out before it's released, I will definitely share it for sure. 

  Yeah. Thanks. Just, just getting the word, just, you know, finishing, putting the final touches on it. 

  Off topic,  just to lighten it up a bit with respect to preparing for a TEDx talk.  Do you do it in form of like almost writing an essay and then kind of repurposing it into more of a talk?  Is that kind of how you approach it?

  Um, so the, basically they want kind of a 10 ish minute talk that's memorized and delivered. And so what I've been doing is basically I have been writing the, the talk, just by From scratch, and editing it and then once I have the words to a point where I'm like, okay, this is what I want to deliver.

This is what I want to speak out into the world. Then I'll work on memorizing and delivering it. So I'm about 90, 95 percent on my words. I just, I'm picky and you're, you said you're a writer too, so you probably know that there's a feeling within you that when you are writing where you're just like, it's not quite there yet.

And so that's where I am right now. It's not quite there yet. I'm really close in terms of the message and the structure and the certain specific word choices I want to use. Uh, and then I'll memorize it and deliver it. That, I think for every speaker, it's, it's different. Some people are much better at the writing portion.

Some people are much better at the memorization portion. I'm not as worried about the memorization. So I, I'm giving myself a little bit more time to just get the wording. Where I want it to be.  

Yeah, I love that. And I would never say I'm a writer. I like to write. 

Well, you're, you're a writer, right?  

Yeah,

you like to write, you're a writer. It doesn't matter.

I love to write. I'm not so sure that I'm that good, but I do love it. I find it to be very therapeutic. Yeah.  Um, yeah, that's cool. Just, just a little off topic, but I'm just curious how you do it. I think there's like three skills, right? You have to write it, then memorize it. And then presentation skills is a whole other beast. How to use your body. Cause you could have the best.  Script or whatever and if you deliver it poorly, it's like, uh, and vice versa.

You could be an incredible presenter, but what you're saying sucks

Seems like you're very eloquent in your communication skills. So so I don't

  thank you. There's actually a TED talk that I think it's like five minutes long and this guy literally talks about nothing. He, and he says like at the beginning, I'm going to talk about nothing and then he has a five minute speech That's actually really good. Uh, so I recommend people watch it because when you, if you ever have to give a presentation or speak to people, cause his delivery is so good, even though he's literally talking about nothing. 

I actually came across this dude. I hate that I can't remember his name. He's also an Asian dude. He's incredible. Probably one of the best speakers I've ever heard or watched. He's a phenomenal communicator and he has courses on speaking and he has courses of Before, he shows clips of him when he used to talk.

Terrible, right? He was shy. He was like, he'd get panic attacks. So he talked about like, Hey, I wasn't like this kid that was super outgoing and charismatic. He's like, I had to learn and you can learn to kind of like a Tony Robbins style. Like Tony Robbins is he'll captivate. Even if you don't like the guy or he'll, he'll sell you.

Like he's a phenomenal communicator and the way he uses his body, his voice. It's, it's incredible. Like it's very inspiring to watch people like that.

  Yeah. I'm a big Tony fan. Um, and again, I was a very shy, introverted kid. I would hide behind my parents and I would just be like, when we would go to the mall together, I'd be like, mom, where's the bathroom? And she's like, sweetheart, I've never been here before. I don't know where the bathroom is. Like, You know, go and ask someone.

And she did that knowing that I was shy trying to get me to do that. And so for anyone listening, like you, you think that this is just, I'm genetically blessed and born with this. Absolutely not. This is learned and practiced over time. And so I think a lot of people will see people standing up on stage and be like, Oh my God, they're amazing.

I could never do that. Not realizing that it's just putting in the work and doing it and you get better over time and you start where you start and you go from there.  

Totally agree. For me, same thing. I don't think I've ever been extremely shy, but I definitely wasn't somebody that was super excited to talk to a group of people. I still get nervous and I still do, but for me, I think it was in sales. I had to do a lot of cold, cold approaches on the street. For charity or selling different things, literally going into people's cubicles and interrupting them and you can imagine some people don't like to be interrupted.

And so I had to learn ways to like, like Tony Robbins would say, like, interrupt their pattern or like, just anything, or even as a young guy, you know, trying to get with a girl, like trying to approach her and you just totally get. Punked off, she's like, get lost. Like, please go away.  You had to develop the thick skin.

And I was like, I, I liked women. So I was like, I got to learn how to approach a lady and be confident. So those, those early rejections taught me that hey at  the end of the day, you're okay. You're gonna, you'll be fine. And then I learned not to be afraid of looking stupid or making mistakes. Even these interviews, I get a little nervous for sure.

Cause. You don't want to say something stupid or look dumb, but the mission is more important than my feelings in the moment. That's how I look at it.

  I love that. The mission is more important than my feelings in the moment. It's a great perspective to take, right? Because we're so bogged down. I'm like, Oh my God. And once you think about the end game, the longterm thing, it's just kind of, uh, shifting your perspective, zooming out from what we're focused on now to the bigger picture.  

And that's kind of what death does for a lot of people. It kind of really just shifts you from like the, the tunnel vision that we have on a day to day basis. And then you look out and you examine your life and you're like, what the hell am I doing? And then that's when shit, that's when change can start to happen. 

  Yeah, absolutely. That's something my dad taught me too. When I was little, I would get worried about something or what people thought or like, Oh, what would they say? And my dad used to be like in 10 years from now. They won't, they won't, not only will they not care, they won't remember. He's like in 20 years from now, it'll be even further from the memory.

And like in a hundred years from now, it almost like it didn't happen. He's like, so don't worry about that stuff. Like who gives a shit? Like it's, he's very crude, but it was very wise. It was like, yeah, that's true. Like who, who cares? And also I always remind myself like, Hey man, you're not as important as you think you are.

And I don't mean that in a, you know, like put myself down way. It's just that people. Aren't paying attention to you as much as you think they are like even if they laugh at you in the moment In an hour from now, they're already forgot in a day or two like  trust me people don't care that much  

They really don't. We, we spend so much time with ourselves that we think that everyone cares as much about us as we do about ourselves. And they're just doing the same, but for their own lives. So yeah, it really is not, um,  we're not as important as we think we are to everyone in the world. And that can be a good thing.  

Absolutely.  Okay, so i'm big on Habits and as of recently i've come across two books that really changed my perspective So the first one was you've probably heard of both of them. I i'm pretty sure I would imagine So the first one is called atomic habits That one's a huge book. And the other one is Tiny Habits.

So Tiny Habits is by B. J. Fogg, I find is, is a little bit more, he's a behavioral scientist, so he kind of goes really deep into the science behind it, so I appreciate that one a little bit more in that sense, but they're great books.  And it really emphasized for me the importance of our habits moment to moment, because like you said, like your analogy of a, of a mountain is like the tip of the iceberg is whatever.

But I think, I think habits are  the core of what ultimately gets us to a particular outcome or result. And you can correct me if you think I'm wrong, but I think habits are probably one of the most important things to really get a handle on.  So first of all, do you agree or disagree? And then secondly,  What habits would you say  would be wise to be adopted to live a fulfilling life based off what you've learned and the habits to get rid of? 

Sorry if that's, uh, big.

  No, it's, it's a great topic. Um, I've, I've read atomic habits, uh, and I loved it. I haven't read tiny habits, but I will put it on the list. I'm a personal development nerd as well. So I love all of that stuff. So yes, habits are super, super duper important. And I'm going to take kind of a more, um, neuroscience neuroplasticity approach to it, because if you really think about it, anything that we.

think over time, repeatedly, also becomes a habit. Whether that's good, like, uh, I'm, I've, I'm smart or something like that, or bad, like, I'm not good enough. And I don't mean good or bad, but I mean like desired or disempowering, right? So anything that we do, so most people think about habits as like things that we do, uh, waking up in the morning to go to the gym, or you have a nighttime cup of tea before bed.

Like that's a habit. And a lot of people don't think about our thoughts as habits. We don't think about our emotional reactions to things as habits. So, you know, every time someone cuts you off in traffic and you're like exploding in anger and you're on the horn, that's a habit too. You just don't realize that that's an emotional reaction and that's a habit.

And so what I would say is to just recognize that you are Every day,  every time that you do something, you think something and you can replicate it, as in like, if your entire day today is exactly the same as it was yesterday and the day before, and there are moments in that day that you feel like you would not want to continue, if it's a bad habit, whether it's something that you do, something you think, or an emotional response, then it's up to us to be like, okay, Well, then how do I interrupt that habit?

How do I change it? How do I create some distance from it so that I'm not repeating the disempowering or  undesired habits that I am currently engaging in? And so to the last part of your question,  my biggest thing, and it's not very sexy and no one wants to really talk about it, is emotional regulation.

Thank you. Right. If we can become aware of how we respond to certain things, you know, what makes us anxious? What does our body do? Or what do we feel when we are anxious? A lot of times people say like, I'm anxious. And then I'll talk to clients. I'm like, okay, well, how do you know that you're anxious? And there's often a disconnect between our brains and the rest of our bodies.

that they're just like, I don't know, I'm just anxious. And so kind of breaking it down and helping them reconnect. It's like, okay, well I feel something heavy here in my chest, or I know that my palms are a little sweaty, or my heart rate is a little fast, or I'm not breathing normally. Then if we can become aware of those signals that our bodies are giving us, then we can take steps like breathing, like going for a walk, like movement, or whatever it is.

To calm ourselves down in the moment, and that's when we can, again, kind of short circuit those habits in our brains, those neural impulses, to then make room for change, to make room for what we do want instead.  

That's that's beautiful. Well said. And I totally agree with that. And I was one of those people that didn't make that connection where I thought that habits were just  physical behaviors, like actually something happening in the world. But I think our thoughts and our emotions are probably much more intense in terms of the frequency of the habits.

We have a habit of thought, even when you wake up or how you operate in traffic. In the past, I've been somebody who had like road rage, you know, get super angry in traffic and I  like, you'll see the worst come out of me. You know, uh, I've changed quite a bit in that. I've learned to take that opportunity as training to like relax.

I'm not,  I'm not a monk. I still get annoyed and irritated. I think, you know, it's tough not to, but I've definitely come a long way. And with practice, I noticed I'm getting more and more patient and learning like, Hey, you can't change this right now. There's what's the point? Why am I going to waste that energy?

Let me, let me think about something else. Let me call my mom. Let me call my friends. Have a nice talk with somebody I haven't talked to in a while on the phone. Like these are good opportunities to connect with somebody, right? So  a perspective change. Another thing you mentioned is emotional regulation. 

That's huge. And going back to Tony Robbins, he talked a lot about that, about state, managing our state. And,  and it's, it's, it's huge. Like in NLP, they talk about that. Obviously, if you do hypnosis, you know, it's all about state management. And I think even when we can't get ourselves to do something we need to do or stop doing something, it's all about regulating our state.

So I will give a tip that  you kind of triggered was the importance of breath. This is something I learned in martial arts. I just never made the connection that it transitions to any area of life.  So in martial arts, I had a coach who taught us that in order to  preserve your energy and to keep calm in a situation where you're sparring or you're in a bad position,  you have to control your breath.

And the science behind it was like, you need to slow your heart rate. If you can slow your heart rate down, you're, you're going to be much more relaxed and calm and you're going to not have this like adrenaline dump. If you can just slow things down. And so what I learned from me with breathing wasn't just breathing, but to emphasize on the exhale.

Cause when we exhale, it slows the heart rate. And I actually started to do that as a habit in traffic. So I'd take like a deep breath  and then like exhale much longer. And I keep doing that and I literally feel my heart slow down and then start to think.  You know, maybe say an affirmation of some sort, like if you can't control this, just enjoy it, whatever. 

And  I found, I found that if you can control your breath specifically, deep inhales and even longer exhales, that that helps you calm down and regulate your emotion. Like those peak emotions of like anger, anxiety. This is just my, my own little, uh, application of it. What, what do you think of that?

  Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense. I do that with clients too, where we will inhale together and just double the exhale. Right. And the it scientifically makes sense because the exhalation portion is what helps to bring in the parasympathetic nervous system. So the sympathetic nervous system is the fight or flight.

It's like getting you active and ready. Uh, and the parasympathetic system is really helping to. kind of bring those systems a little bit down to downregulate that. And so that's why people feel better after just breathing. And that can, that's easy. Anyone can breathe. A lot of times we just don't realize that we've been holding our breath, that we're not breathing normally.

because we're so anxious or everything's going on around us. And so when we talk about breaking or interrupting patterns, it can just be as simple as just be like, okay, you know what?  I can, I can just take some deep breaths. I think I once said to a client and I was just like,  I know like when we're faced with something in the world, it's like, That it feels like we're gonna die if we don't address it immediately. 

And I can tell you, as someone who literally works with dying people, that like 98%, 99 percent of the time, of the things that we're worried about in day to day stuff,  no one's gonna die if we take a couple seconds to just take some deep breaths.  Right? For the most part. And so, if I can leave your audience with something, it's just be like, Hey!

Start with the breath. It's so important.  And if you can just bring that, do that more often in your life, not every time, not a hundred percent. We're not robots. We're still humans, but to do it more often, you'll notice changes immediately.  

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, Dr. Andrew Huberman talks about, um, physiological sighs. It's the same idea. You do this like two deep breaths in like,  and then a slow exhale, a much longer one. And that has been, there's been studies on it that it actually is proven to slow down your heart rate and engage that parasympathetic nervous system and, you know, kind of bring you down and it doesn't take a lot.

So I do that often.  So back to emotional regulation. So what are some habits aside from breath work in your breath? Do you have some specific habits people could perhaps start to think about and maybe adopt to help regulate their emotions and regulate their, their thoughts?  Do you have other ones that you could share?

  Yeah. So I'm really big on giving people the tools to regulate their emotions in real time. And so what I tell all of my clients and people out there is that like, if you really, if you really get down to it, emotions for the most part, when they come up and they've done research on this, like it really kind of, if you allow the full spectrum of it to happen and flow through you, It takes about 90 seconds to really kind of, but people are like, well, no, that can't be right. 

Like, if I get angry, it doesn't take me 90 seconds to just feel better about it. And that is because our brains have just repeated that process. And like looped the thing that makes us angry, right? Someone cut me off in traffic. And then six hours later, you're still angry because you think about the moment that someone cut you off in traffic, even though that was six hours ago. 

And so then in the moment to be able to calm ourselves down, that is the key because that's how our brains work. And if we allow it to continue, then it becomes a problem. of recurring habit. But if we stop it in the moment, so some things that I teach people are, um, tapping, which is EFT, emotional freedom techniques.

You can go on YouTube, you can look it up, but basically it is tapping with your fingers on certain points on your upper body, mostly your face and kind of your neck area. Uh, and head that are kind of energy meridians that feed back to the amygdala, which is the center kind of for fight or flight, that sort of thing.

And so it's been proven, it's been researched to help with anxiety, pain, insomnia, all this stuff. Right. And so that's something that people can do in the moment to really calm themselves down. And I've done it with patients too. I'll teach them. Like, hey. I had one patient who, she passed like a couple weeks ago and I was really sad about it, but  she was having a full blown panic attack.

Like she was hyperventilating, she was crying, that sort of thing, because she was thinking about a situation with her kids and her home. You know, she had a few kids, she was young, she had cancer. And so I was like, hey, we're going to do this together. And so just a couple rounds, and it took a couple minutes, It's really like two minutes and she went from hyperventilating, crying, anxiety attack to just not crying, breathing normally and able to kind of converse and have a full on conversation.

And in that moment she was like, Oh my God, I didn't realize that I had the power to do anything about my emotions. And for her, it was like a life changing moment. She told me that all the time, every time I saw her afterwards. And she was like, I didn't realize I was that powerful. And I was like, how cool is that to give someone the tools to be able to manage their own emotions,  So that they can cope better with the world, with the situations around them.

So that's one thing, um, A lot of people, uh, if you pass something back and forth in front of you like this, um, it's, And it's hard to describe, but basically, like, if you  do anything that requires both of your hands, right, or both sides of your body, It helps to,  It helps the body to process anxiety because that usually lives on one side of our brain.

So that's why things like knitting is really comforting for people, right? Sometimes, um, people playing the piano or a musical instrument can calm them down because they're using both sides of their brain. And again, similar to movement, if you're walking, you're using of your brain and that helps with the energy release and processing. 

  Yeah, that's great. I do that with a ball. I can bounce a ball, catch it with my other one. I find, I just. Do that if I'm waiting for somebody or something and I have a happen to have a ball I I typically have one of those they're called lacrosse balls  They're somewhat rubbery pretty hard. I use it on my hips and my neck and stuff.

It's really great It's like a self massage and they bounce. I'll just balance it and I find that that's very relaxing It's so it's very soothing. I I don't know why but it works for me Um, so can we can we actually?  Go through  that particular, uh, the tapping and, and like, let's say I'm freaking out right now.

Can we actually go through that? Cause I want people to be able to use it to actually do it. Is that something we can, we can try.

  Yeah, sure. Um,  

can do it on themselves.  

yes. So, uh, the traditional tapping is like, kind of nine points. I, with my clients, kind of teach what my teacher taught me, which is kind of a abbreviated one. It's five points on the body. So, um, and that you do that. In combination with just saying something, and I keep it pretty simple in terms of the words that we use, because I want my clients to be able to actually use it and repeat it and do it instead of thinking, like, Oh, what am I supposed to say?

So, um, Let's just pretend. Do you have something that if you think about it would make you a little bit anxious or nervous or worried? Not something like crazy dramatic, but something that just would put you at a Seven or eight level of anxiety on a scale of one to ten.

  Yes.  

Yes. Okay. So do you feel do you feel it

have a bag of them. I have a bag of them.  

Okay. All right. Do you feel it in your body right now? Would you say that you're like if you actually thought about it? You'd kind of be a little bit like yeah  Uneasy. 

  Yes.

Okay, so what number on a scale of 1 to 10 is that right now for you?

  Right now is probably like a four or five. But if I really sit, like, think about it, it can get up there for

Okay. So just, just turn it to like a six or a seven for me.  

Okay.

  Okay, cool. So what you're going to do is just follow me. You're going to tap with a couple fingers in between your eyebrows right there and just tap, right? And then just take a deep breath  say, I release this and I let it go.  

I release this and I let it go. 

And then you're going to tap on the sides on your temples on both sides. And you're just going to say, I release this and I let it go. 

I release this and I let it go. It's

  Good. And then you're gonna tap underneath your eyes, the top of your cheekbones, both sides.  Deep breath.  It's okay for me to feel this way. 

    It's okay for me to feel this way.

Good. You're gonna tap under your lip, kind of in that divot above your chin.  Again, it's okay for me to feel this way.  

It's okay for me to feel this way.

  Good. And then on kind of like your collarbone area, some people like to tap with their fingers. Some people like to just put their palm here and kind of  do that.  I release this and I let it go.

  I release this and I let it go. 

  of the head.  I release this and I let it go. 

I release this and I let it go.

  Good. And then you can just grab one of your wrists and just hold it for a few seconds. Take a deep breath in  and exhale twice as long. And then that's one round. Right, so we can check in.  How do you feel now? 

  Definitely back to baseline.

Mm hmm. So what maybe was a six or seven is now  What number would you give it? One,

two, zero.  

Zero,

I don't feel that at all. Like, it completely  gets rid of that, that loop in my head. It starts in my head and it goes in, like, more of my chest. For me, when I feel that, I get it in my, in the middle of my chest and in my stomach.  

Mm hmm.

  I, like, get butterflies, almost like I want to feel sick. That's where it lives for me.

So I know once I don't feel that in my stomach, I'm starting to feel better.  

Mm hmm. Right.

me. That's, that's just for me.

Right. And that's just one round. Right? It took maybe 30 seconds. Um, and for some people, maybe it goes from an eight to a six, so do it again and do it again until it gets down to a level where it's manageable for you. All right. We always say in palliative care, not always, but a lot of times it's like, Hey, we may not be able to totally get rid of the symptom that you have, but let's get it down to a level where you can live, where you can work, where you can go out and enjoy time with your family.

And so it's the same thing with emotions. Maybe it's not a zero, but if it's at a two and it's manageable. That's a win, right? 

Yeah, that's great. I appreciate you sharing that.  

Yeah, of course,

that will be helpful for the the listeners.  

everyone

I want things that people can take away and use right? I think that's a great one. It's a great tool 

Totally.

  I've heard about tapping before. I think I've even maybe done like a video or two.

I've never  adopted it as a habit. I don't know why I never have. Um, perhaps because I'm skeptical in nature. So I always like to see like, okay, what's, what's the science behind this? Or is this validated by any studies? It doesn't say, I'm not to say that things have to be, I have to have a study on or anything like that, but I need to know like I can use it and it works for me type thing.  

And there is a lot of research and, again, what I want to put across is like, it's more helpful in the actual moment, like when you're feeling the emotion. If you're at baseline and you're cool and you start to tap, not really gonna do too much, but if you're really amped up or if you're feeling some type of way, that's great.

And then you tap, you'll notice like, Oh, okay. It works. You know, I'm at it. I'm back to baseline after one round. So it's pretty impressive. And it's always really impressive for me too.

  That's excellent. That's really cool. So we're getting close on time and I have a lot of questions I want to ask you.  I don't want you to rush, but I'm going to ask just rapid fire kind of thing and we can go through it because I do have quite a few that I wanted to ask you.

Is that cool?  

Yeah, 

If you could live forever,  Would you want to? 

  absolutely not.  

That's interesting. I most people I ask say the same thing so science is catching up to I don't want to say live forever, but there is quite a advancement in Extending our lifespan right and even the quality of our life during that that period  where would you say? It's like okay too much. Would you say it's 150 years?

Would you say it's 200 years? Like if you could live healthy  And your loved ones to 200 years, would you want to do it? And where's, where's the line where it's like, Hey, 450, that's it. 

  Um, I think if, I think for most people, myself included is if we, if our bodies are going to deteriorate, Then I wouldn't want to live forever. I, I'm assuming living forever, meaning my body is going to deteriorate. But if I'm going to preserve this, then yeah, why not? I'd love to see 22, 35, you know? So I think it really depends on what kind of advances we can make in our time.

And knowing that my body will still kind of, you know,  Age, I fully plan on living past a hundred. I think it's possible for me and hopefully with the habits and the lifestyle that I'm  creating right now. So that's my plan for the next  several decades. Um,  

Well said. I agree. Me too. I do the best I can right now with the habits and then the rest I leave up to, you know, I believe in a God, I leave it up to fate or whatever you want to call it.  So  on the topic of longevity science and research, do you think we will reach a point in maybe in your life or ever that we will be able to extend our life indefinitely or for, and I'm talking about preserving our optimal health.

So we're, you know, we hit our peak health and we can stay there for hundreds or much longer. Do you think we'll ever reach a point where we could maybe, I hate the word forever, but indefinitely  without an accident or anything like that, do you think we'll reach that where we eradicate all diseases and we can stay in the optimal state of health?

I

  I, I'm not a longevity researcher or anything like that, so I couldn't really say. I hope so. Right now, from what I'm seeing, you know, I think there's a lot of advances, so maybe. I really don't know, though. 

  appreciate your honesty.  Yeah. You know, every year there's these new things and it seems to be very slow, but you know, we'll, we'll see.  So  we, we talked about, uh, living forever. Now with the patients you've, you've had,  um, I know we kind of touched on it with respect to the, the regrets they've had. And a lot of them center, um, around a central theme.

Are there any specific regrets that you found that people? Have had I know you mentioned true to yourself and true to others are there more specific regrets that you found were reoccurring 

  Yeah, so, um, you know, A hospice nurse named Bronnie Ware published a book about like the five regrets of the dying. So those are, that's kind of out there. And I see that a lot. So a lot of them are like, I wish I hadn't worked so hard. Uh, I wish I'd been more true to myself. Uh, I wish I had, um, I think spent more time with my loved ones, that sort of thing.

Some others that I've seen are,  I think a lot of people kind of wish that they had let other people love them or support them. A lot of people I've seen push people away because they feel like they're not worthy of love.  And a lot of times unconsciously because of how they grew up and stuff like that.

Um, And so that is one that's really heartbreaking too, because you see people trying to help and trying to show up and support people and they are pushing them away, whether that's consciously or unconsciously. Um, and I think a lot of us, myself included, will do that. Because of childhood wounds and a lot of these  unconscious habits and thoughts that we have where I'm not good enough No one loves me or I'm not good enough to be loved that sort of thing So a lot of that I see a lot of regrets about people wishing that they Again hadn't spent so much time at the office that they had you know gone to show up for their families instead of burning the midnight oil in the pursuit of achievement and more and more and more.  

Um, there's a lot of regret about not taking the risks that they had thought that they wanted, you know, not going for the dream, not writing the book, not starting the business. You know, like I've never once heard someone be like, you know, what I really want on my deathbed is like, I want to, I want to sit in my Porsche again, you know, or like, uh, I just want to  see my diploma, that sort of thing, which doesn't, I'm not saying anything against, you know, cars or education or anything like that.  

What people say is I want to hold my grandson again. You know, I want to see my daughter walk down the aisle. It's always about. people. It's always about the relationships we have with people. And so, you know, focusing on that while we are still alive, I think is so important.  

Yeah, I I like that Even this podcast for example is it's something that was motivated by that same thought of  If I die tomorrow, would I regret doing this and no the answer would be that i'm happy i'm doing this Like this doesn't feel like work It, of course it is, you know, quote unquote my job or career now, and I'm pursuing this.

As a professional career as well, but it doesn't feel like work. It feels like I'm making a positive impact. It's, I feel like it's healthy for myself. I feel like it's a good thing. And so part of the motivation was also to do something where I could feel proud of what I'm leaving behind. And that would make my father proud and honoring him.

So I like that you said that because I was doing a lot of things with just for the money or just To get ahead and it's like it felt empty at times, right?  So I think that's that's great. I'm sure with what you're doing too It's it's very rewarding because you're doing something important and that's you know, we'll live beyond you.

It's it's people will always  Will be grateful to you for all the stuff you've done. Would you agree with that?

  It is incredibly rewarding for me. Yes, I could not imagine myself doing anything else. People are like, how do you spend so much time around death? Like, isn't it like weird? And like, what's wrong with you? And I'm like, Hey, like, if I'm going to be here, if I'm going to be alive, like, I want to see it all. I want the full spectrum of what life can be.

All the highs and even the lows. Because that's the human experience we can't know how what joy is unless we really know what pain and Suffering is even though none of us want that and I don't wish that upon anyone and it's life.  It's  We can't escape it, right? And so like I want to see the raw emotions I want to see that  Like love, like you've never seen love until you see it in the context of death and dying, right?

And you've never, you've probably never seen anger until you've seen it in the context of death and dying. And I want that. And it's a privilege to be surrounded by that. And you're right. It's incredibly rewarding for me, at least.  

That's beautiful. Are you are you afraid of death? 

  Um,  in some ways. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, um, we were just talking in our, uh, we have process groups in, in our office about death anxiety. You know, I, I noticed that the more I work in this field, the more, when my husband leaves to go to work, I, I say, I love you, but I also say, be safe.  Right? It's very, it's a very specific kind of last words and a reminder because I see so much sudden death.

I see a lot of people in accidents and all this stuff. And so I am I think healthily afraid of it, but I, you know, it's like we're all gonna die somehow. In some way and at some point. And so I think it would be foolish of me to say that I'm a hundred percent not afraid of it. And I have accepted the fact that I cannot control it. 

I can only influence the people around me. I can only control myself. So.  

Yeah, I think I'm in the same boat as you. I respect it. 

Mm hmm.

that.

Yeah.

Where I was young, I was more an adrenaline junkie, so to speak. And I almost  fearless, but from a delusional perspective, not realizing the consequences of my actions and probably got lucky many times, just doing really stupid things.

Driving probably shouldn't have drove as a teenager. I was kind of a lunatic and  luckily I didn't injure myself or others.  But that's a whole other topic. 

  Yeah. I like that. I respect death very much. So

For sure. Absolutely.  Okay. Um, and how do you define a meaningful life? 

  I used to ask this question on my podcast too, and it was funny to get a lot of different answers. So for me, a meaningful life is one that, you know, you're living in accordance with your values. whatever they may be. So for some people, their value is family. For some people, their value is success, wealth, whatever it is, right?

Uh, and I think it's important for us to reevaluate our values  as we get older. and to think about what is important to us and what decisions, what behaviors, what thoughts, what actions we are engaging in that are either getting us closer to the life that we want or getting us further away from it. And so for me, a meaningful life is to spend quality time with people that I love,  is to engage in work that feels fulfilling and rewarding and You know, which I feel like I'm doing or I'm in the direction of and then to for me personally to kind of share that with others in whatever capacity that is.

And so, for me, I would say that is what I would be on my deathbed quite happy about if I were able to consistently do that throughout the rest of my life.  

That's beautiful. I love that.  How can we make peace with things we can't change? 

  Um,  I had to work a lot on this as a type, a high achiever, um, realizing that the only thing that we can truly control is ourselves,  right? Can't control others. Can't control the weather. We can't control the outcome. We can't control traffic, even though we want to. And it's, it's letting go of that and it's shifting control.

Right. It's shifting the locus of control from trying to control everything in the external world to controlling ourselves  because. We can't do that in the outside world. And that energy is just, uh,  expended energy that could otherwise be diverted towards something that could be more productive. And so it's a difficult process. 

It took me a long time and I still, and again, I'm human. I'm still working on it. So that's what I would say is to try and learn to shift that control. From outside from external to internal.  

I like that.  And do you have any quotes you love? Any particular quotes you live by or that you find yourself reflecting on often that you could share with us?

  Yeah. Um, the, the ones that come to the top of my head are if you don't ask, the answer is no.  Right. So I've gotten a lot of just things, uh, and opportunities just because I asked. Uh, and if you don't ask the answer is automatically no, but if you do ask, maybe it's not, no, maybe it's a yes. Maybe it's a later, not now. 

And then the other one is. And I forget who said this, but, um, it's, we all have two lives. The second begins when we realize we only have one.  So that stuck with me a lot.  

I've never heard that one. The first one I've heard. And I pretty much learned that in sales.  , if you don't ask, it's gonna be a no, for sure. 

Absolutely. Absolutely.

  So I'll ask one final one. Um, and I, I'm sure you alluded to this several times, uh, but if you could give one piece of advice  to people, to whoever's listening, but one people, uh, one piece of advice. 

About living fully or just how to live their life or how to embrace the life they have based off of all your experience around death.  What would that advice be?  

It would be connection at the end of the day. It would be really to  connect with others. in a way that feels meaningful to you and to connect with yourself in a way that feels meaningful to you. And part of connecting with ourselves is emotional regulation. So both of those together, I think really helps us to navigate our lives in a way that resembles the path that we want to be on instead of the path that we find ourselves on.

And sometimes we can get lost. And I always like to say, no one gets through life alone. No one, right? Even though we feel like we have to sometimes go at it alone. So, that's why connection is so important to me, uh, for everyone.  

 I know this might sound odd, but even with, I have my daughter, she's a teenager and I, I teach her about pursuing experiences versus things. And so even with gifts, she'll ask me, what should I get this person? Daddy, whatever. I think let's use some creativity. Things are great.

And some things have excellent utility, right? Of course. But I find that experiential gifts are much more meaningful. They last longer and they have so much more value in my opinion. I think it's about what you just said, too. I think that's why it's this like connection with yourself, connection with others.

So like, if I get you give you a hundred bucks, it might not be nothing, but if I take you to the movies.  And we have a great time. It's less than that, but the value is there. You're going to have that memory. You're always going to remember that we have a great time.  

Absolutely, yep.  We can't take it with us, right? So, might as well enjoy ourselves while we're here.  

Right.  Okay. So, Dr. Kathy Zhang, is that your full, your full name is, you had another name,

Oh, my, um, Chinese name is Lu Yi.  

L Zhang, or is it just Kathy? Okay. Where can, where can people find you? Where would you like people to find you?  

Mm hmm. So, my, I'm pretty active on Instagram, so my handle is, u  my website is there as well. So yeah, find me on social media and on the World Wide Web, as we called it when it first came out. Because I'm old enough to remember the internet. 

  I know, me too.  Well, um, I'll make sure to include everything and, and feature it in my newsletter and everything I do. I'll, I'll have it there for sure. Um, and I really want to just take a second to tell you thank you so much for the work you're doing. It's very important. Um, I'm very grateful for what you do just from my personal experience with it.

It really does make an impact. Um, and we, we need more people like yourself. So thank you for that. And thank you for entertaining my request and being here and sharing your time. Because as we know, time is scarce and valuable. So I really do appreciate you for that. That means a lot to me.

  Thank you. I appreciate you and you know, uh, I'm again, I wish that things had turned out different for you and your family. And at the same time, I'm, I'm glad that you had a positive experience with palliative care and for what you're doing, sharing your message with the world and hoping that people live healthier lives is really important too.

So keep doing what you're doing too.

  Yeah, for sure. That's my mission.  Uh, my, my saying is to inspire others, including myself, to live as healthy as possible for as long as possible. That's kind of the mission.  

Yeah, I love it. 

so, do you have anything else you want to say? Any questions? Nothing.  

Yeah. Good to go. 

Okay, cool. So we can wrap up. Thank you so much. Uh, Dr.

Kathy Zhang, I really appreciate it.

Thank you, Ricardo. It's been a pleasure.

Hey, thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please like. Subscribe, comment, share it with someone, write a review. Honestly, it really helps me out.  And don't forget to check out my free five health hacks newsletter. You can find it at youthful aging secrets. com or slash subscribe. 

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