The Savvy Communicator
There's Nothing Wrong With You!--Authenticity through Creativity with Dr. Fred Moss
Discover a radical new perspective on mental wellness as Dr. Fred Moss, the "Un-Doctor," joins us for a fascinating journey beyond the bounds of traditional psychiatry. Get ready to challenge everything you thought you knew about mental health as Dr. Moss shares his approach to undiagnosing, unmedicating, and unlocking the true potential within ourselves through authenticity, connection, and creativity. His insights will not only intrigue but also offer actionable steps toward aligning your thoughts, speech, and actions with your core self.
Embrace the flaws and quirks that make you unique in our heartfelt discussion on authenticity and self-acceptance. Dr. Moss invites us to dismantle the inner "integrity police" that often handcuff us to societal expectations and instead step into a life where every choice mirrors our truest selves. We explore how shedding the imposed beliefs about our worth can liberate and empower us, encouraging self-compassion as we navigate the winding road of life. This episode promises to spark a transformation, helping you to recognize that your imperfections are a part of your perfection.
Lastly, we delve into the profound impact of non-verbal communication and creative self-expression. Learn how silence can speak volumes and witness the incredible ways in which creative pursuits like art, music, and even three minutes a day can heal and connect us on levels words cannot reach. Dr. Moss opens our eyes to the therapeutic power of creativity, not just as a means to feel heard, but as a catalyst for profound personal and communal growth. Join us on this enlightening episode that's sure to reshape your views on mental health and the beauty of authentic living.
This is a show where ideas come together. The guest statements expressed on The Savvy Communicator Podcast are their own and not necessarily the views of The Savvy Communicator.
Thanks for joining us! Become part of the conversation at www.savvycommunicator.com, and follow me on social media: my handle is @savvycommunicator.
Discover a radical new perspective on mental wellness as Dr. Fred Moss, the "Un-Doctor," joins us for a fascinating journey beyond the bounds of traditional psychiatry. Get ready to challenge everything you thought you knew about mental health as Dr. Moss shares his approach to undiagnosing, unmedicating, and unlocking the true potential within ourselves through authenticity, connection, and creativity. His insights will not only intrigue but also offer actionable steps toward aligning your thoughts, speech, and actions with your core self.
Embrace the flaws and quirks that make you unique in our heartfelt discussion on authenticity and self-acceptance. Dr. Moss invites us to dismantle the inner "integrity police" that often handcuff us to societal expectations and instead step into a life where every choice mirrors our truest selves. We explore how shedding the imposed beliefs about our worth can liberate and empower us, encouraging self-compassion as we navigate the winding road of life. This episode promises to spark a transformation, helping you to recognize that your imperfections are a part of your perfection.
Lastly, we delve into the profound impact of non-verbal communication and creative self-expression. Learn how silence can speak volumes and witness the incredible ways in which creative pursuits like art, music, and even three minutes a day can heal and connect us on levels words cannot reach. Dr. Moss opens our eyes to the therapeutic power of creativity, not just as a means to feel heard, but as a catalyst for profound personal and communal growth. Join us on this enlightening episode that's sure to reshape your views on mental health and the beauty of authentic living.
This is a show where ideas come together. The guest statements expressed on The Savvy Communicator Podcast are their own and not necessarily the views of The Savvy Communicator.
Thanks for joining us! Become part of the conversation at www.savvycommunicator.com, and follow me on social media: my handle is @savvycommunicator.
Hello and welcome to the Savvy Communicator podcast. I'm your host, amy Flanagan, and today I'm very excited we have a very distinguished guest, dr Fred Moss. He is a psychiatrist, he is a healer and a teacher and he's sometimes called the undoctor. And welcome, dr Fred. I'm glad to have you here today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really great to be here. Thanks for having me, amy, it's wonderful.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. You're called the undoctor. Would you tell me a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the undoctor is a friendly, affectionate moniker I picked up from a friend.
Speaker 2:It basically is built on this notion that I have developed in being a doctor who is supportive of undiagnosing, unmedicating and then frankly and ultimately undocternating people from the psychiatric system, the conventional psychiatric system.
Speaker 2:So in other words, working ourselves out of a job is the goal of the undoctor. The undoctor really is the conventional track when you have a mental discomfort or psychological pain or imbalance is to show up at the conventional psychiatric office psychological or psychiatric, the mental health office and ultimately get a sense of, get a treatment or a protocol that usually can often be associated with medication and almost always is associated with the diagnosis. Both of those things I have some difficulty with. It's actually landing that on anybody. So when we take away the diagnosis, then there's nothing to fix and therefore the medications leave. And if there's nothing to fix and there's no end of medications leave, we can start working through whatever is at the root cause of the imbalance or discomfort and we can start getting to what's really so as far as getting people in contact with nothing less by the way than human conversation and human communication and human connection, which I feel is at the source of all human healing, of all conditions, of all types.
Speaker 1:That's really fascinating because I agree with you that a lot of times it goes for the diagnosis and the medication and then it stops. People check in to make sure you're on some kind of baseline, but it doesn't really go beyond that. And it sounds like that you've recognized that and sort of attacked it at the source, and that's really interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it would be great if people stated a baseline, but generally people actually continue to deteriorate slowly as they do with their condition. So, yeah, people do not enter the psychiatric system picking that they're going to heal or cure. They think the very least that they might do, the very best that they would do, might be patch it up. But they have the condition and now have it for life, chronically and ultimately until the day they die. And that is simply not the case. The psychiatric or psychological or emotional imbalances that we go through in life are absolutely healable, and they're healable in the world of communication, connection and conversation, as well as creativity and resonating harmonically with another person. And in that connection comes healing, comes love and comes the possibility of truly recovering.
Speaker 1:That's wonderful. I'm glad you mentioned that, because I want to talk to you about your book about creativity as well as communication, and one of the things that really stood out to me when I started reading about you was the word authenticity and how one of the main things that you do is helping people find their own authenticity. So a lot of times I think people, a lot of people, know the word I know for a while until I really researched it Just kind of like, well, it means being true to yourself, but there's a lot more depth than that, I think. And so when you say the word authenticity, what is it that you're hoping to communicate to people that work with you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a really great question and not an easy question to take on in one sentence and not an easy question to think about using language as a matter of fact.
Speaker 2:So what authenticity is is a state of being, and it's a state of being whole and complete. But a state of being whole and complete with your thoughts, your speech and your actions, the idea is that all of those things are consistent with some sort of core value or sense of self that has been with you your whole life. In most cases, like that, you're speaking your truth, you're speaking your honest core experience, and when I say speaking, I'm using the broadest term of the word speaking. It doesn't have to be through words. It can be through non-speaking, it can be through non-verbalization, it can be through creativity, through the creative and performing arts. It can be through art, music, dancing, singing, drama.
Speaker 2:There are many ways of communicating. But what's clear is that when someone is authentic or approaches authenticity because a very significant theory out there holds that one is never authentic it's only a direction to point to that, ultimately, we're always inauthentic, because that's what the world requires us to do, because we speak in linear terms and the world is simply not linear. So we actually present ourselves in a light to be heard in a particular fashion, rather than presenting ourselves and being the whole person or the whole human or the whole living being that we are and because of that, we kind of cut into our authenticity, picking and choosing what we present and then therefore not taking on the whole nature of what it is to be ourselves. So when we are aligned with our speech, our thoughts and our actions and that alignment is consistent with something that is emanating from our core, central self, that's getting as close as we are gonna get in this lifetime to being authentic.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's really amazing. I'm really feeling that because I know, certainly for me personally, there are a lot of times where it's just like, well, I can't say what I'm thinking, I can't. You know, I have to present myself professionally or something like that, and you know it can feel really rough when you don't feel safe to do that. That's really interesting and you teach courses on. You have a book specifically about authenticity, your true voice, and you also teach courses on this right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have a couple books you've mentioned about the creative eight healing through creativity and self-expression and I have my other book, which is called Find your True Voice, and what that does is really assist people in getting the things out of the way that are in the way of discovering what is at this core, central self of ours. Like what is authenticity versus identity? I like to use identity like what we have taken on our personal persona of how we present ourselves. So when we start really just shaving away the things that are preventing ourselves from speaking our true self or presenting ourselves or expressing ourselves authentically, we can get down to what's already here. In other words, we don't have to go out there to find our true voice. Our true voice is already emanating and it's here to be discovered rather than explored and found out there. It's something that already exists in each and every one of us and we know it because, like you said, there's a sense of rottenness when we actually express ourselves differently than who we are.
Speaker 2:We have learned over time to accept pretending to be someone that we're not in order to protect the person that we are. We pretend to be somebody that we're not in order to protect the person that we are Now. When you look at that hovering over the top as an observing vantage point, you can see that that's truly an absurd way to manage life. Pretending to be somebody that we are not in order to protect the person that we are is really a way of assuring failure. Ultimately, of course, when we're pretending to be someone we're not, we're not going to be heard or seen as who we are, and it doesn't even naturally protect the person that we are, because either way, you're going to have haters. You're going to have people who dismiss you, people who disregard you, people who disrespect you for what you presented.
Speaker 2:So if you're attempting to protect yourself from being disregarded or disenfranchised or opposed or thrown off the island in some way, pretending to be someone that you're not is not a very useful or effective means of getting there, and we learned how to do it when we were children. We learned how to do it when we were in school, and we learned how to sort of present ourselves in a favorable way so that we could get a good grade or make friends or be in the right group, et cetera, and we never went back and fixed it. So now the general understanding in public is that people do that. We all expect that from each other, and because we haven't gone back and fixed that ever-growing crack in the cement, we are left with a life that is fated to have quite a fair amount of inauthenticity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. One of the things when I work with medical students to try to teach them is about that authenticity and saying you know, we tend to think a good doctor does this and you get that idea from somewhere and you think, okay, a good doctor is going to focus on the statistics or a good doctor is going to just focus on the person, or whatever. And I try to communicate to them. I said, no, a good doctor is you and you have to figure out what that is. Is it scary for some of your students when they start to work with you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, it's always scary, but life is scary. It's scary when you're not doing it and it's scary when you're doing it. So the truth is you can be afraid and not approach your authenticity, or you can be afraid and approach your authenticity, and you're not going to have less fear either way. So the opportunity here is to actually incorporate fear and move in the direction of what's being called from you in the first place, and I think you get a much richer life.
Speaker 2:You know, I think it was Henry David Thoreau who said that the massive men go through life in quiet desperation and then go to the grave with their song still in them, and that, to me, is one of life's greatest tragedies going through life and having nobody actually know who you are. The opportunity really does exist to approach presenting yourself as the person that you really are, and then a lot of things happen. You don't have to remember anything anymore, like there's no. You don't have to remember who you told what, you don't have to remember different lies or fibs, or you know fabrications that you have delivered, and instead you can actually be who you are in any given moment and be happy with that, and be happy with how you're expressing and, in fact, how you're resonating with other human beings.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it almost sounds like a fantasy but it's actually achievable, for sure it's achievable, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so for somebody, for our listeners, who may not have had the chance to read your book, I've started to read it. It's wonderful, and we'll make sure that all that's in the show notes so that everybody can get access to it and to your website. For somebody that's listening today, if you want to just start them off on a journey towards thinking about becoming their authentic selves, what would you say to them?
Speaker 2:Well, I think the key thing to really get is that your authentic self is already here. You don't have to go very far, you're already in touch with it. You know when you tell and tell a truth or when you are in authentic. There's a part of you that rings that bell. You know when you're not saying something that you should or, even worse, you know when you're saying something that even you don't believe. Yeah, how crazy is that, by the way, that us humans, at this point, that we even say things that we don't believe. Yeah, like that is just out of control, and that is what we humans have developed ourselves as.
Speaker 2:So we already know that. We know what the truth is. We know how do we become good liars. We become good liars by creating something that sounds close enough to a truth to be acceptable. So we know what truth is. We know what the experience of truth is. We know what the experience of our core self is, because when we tell a lie or we say something that is misaligned with what we know to be true, we feel that you know, there is an integrity police in each and every one of us that rings that bell for us and lets us know. So if we first get you know in a student form that we don't have to go very far to find this authentic self of ours, all we have to do is kind of move out the things that are in the way of us being that particular person, that's one good thing to know. The next really good thing to know is that there might be nothing wrong with you at all.
Speaker 1:That's wonderful to hear.
Speaker 2:No, it really might be that there is nothing wrong with you. Like, even if you've been told that there is by a big time professional, there still might be nothing wrong with you. Even if you are carrying a diagnosis that three professionals have agreed with, you still might have nothing wrong with you. It could be that you're just being a human and that your only diagnosis is that person you're seeing in the mirror. That's it, the exact person that is you. If you can get that, there's nothing wrong with you in the first place, that you're just bumbling through life like each of us are, without a road map, without a cookbook, without a manual. When you really get that, that's all you're doing and the difficulties you're having are fairly equal to the difficulties that the person next to you is having and also trying to hide. When you get that going on that there might be nothing wrong with you. That might leave you a little bit of room to actually explore what is what, who you are really like, what in who you are really. Because if you can start doing that, you can start seeing that you have come to be you authentically, that your ride to become you has been entirely authentic, everything that you've said and done has been you. Everything that you're about to say and do is still going to be you.
Speaker 2:Who you are being right this very minute is you and that's all you are, and we don't have to actually put ourselves into a box and be declared different than, or less than, or defective or deficient or afflicted or diseased or with a deficit of any nature. We, in fact, don't have to call ourselves sick or ill or syndromeed at all. We can get that. Who we are, just like we are, is exactly who we're meant to be as perfection, like straight perfection, including, of course, all of our imperfections. Once we start giving ourselves that level of latitude, that level of grace, of compassion, of acceptance and forgiveness, we honestly have an opportunity to explore what is this real self of mine anyways, and maybe I don't have to be making up and fabricating a story about who I am in order to please other people. Maybe the person that I really am is the person that I'm most comfortable being ultimately, if I would allow myself to fall into who I really was born to, I have to say you are good at this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not my first ruck.
Speaker 1:Because you've, yeah, no, because I definitely, you know, without you getting into a session or anything. You know, there's certainly a lot of times, you know, in my life, and I think in everyone's life, like you're saying where you're just like, well, I can't say that, well, I better smile here or I better do this instead of what I'm actually thinking, because we're in a public place or whatever Right. And you know, you just get used to that.
Speaker 2:And that is not necessarily inauthentic, by the way. You have to take everything into consideration, and being authentic is not telling your truth, even when the face of safety becomes an issue. I'm not telling people to be you know to be so authentic that you go to the mountaintop screaming how much you hate your mother-in-law or a particular group of people. That is not the level of authenticity I'm talking about. I'm talking about weighing and listening closely to what's being called from you. How can you move that needle forward in your relationship with the person that you're with or with the people that you're attempting to you know, attempting to impact, or the group or the event or the circumstances that you are embedded in? How can you make a difference in that? And that might mean communicating. It might be not communicating. What it probably doesn't mean, however, is saying something that even you don't agree with. That's probably not your best choice of all the choices out there. I do suggest that you don't do that one very often, because that one naturally leads to a sense of diminishment of self, you know, to a depletion. When we actually speak and say something that even we know we don't agree with and all of us have had that experience, then it is just a really difficult situation that diminishes from our core self. It leaves us feeling less.
Speaker 2:Here's the other thing that I really want to make clear Most people think there's something wrong with them. In fact, almost everybody thinks there's something wrong with them. In fact, everybody thinks there's something wrong with them. Now, when the truth is and you start looking, there's nobody who thinks there is nothing wrong with me. You have to develop that nature. It is not a default. You have to actually grow into the notion that there's nothing, because we have been told over and over again by our authorities, by teachers, by police, by our parents, you know, by our siblings, by our friends there's something wrong with you, you're wrong, you know, and then we take that on to ourselves. So it almost can be like. One of the ways to look at this is it's very, very normal to know that there's something wrong with you and therefore, when you know there's something wrong with you, that just only shows that there's nothing wrong with you.
Speaker 1:I like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I like that a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do, and one of the things that you touched on that I want to go back to a little bit is talking about not doing verbal communication that you can show a lot of these things through nonverbal communication or through creativity.
Speaker 1:And you have your book Creative 8, that I love to hear more about because it sounds just fascinating To bring in the arts. Of course, I'm a former actor, a former director, all of those things. So when you say bring in creativity to it, I just go nuts, because that's really on my wavelength as well. Tell us a little bit about how you see that nonverbal communication or creative communication or anything like that comes into this.
Speaker 2:Right. So the ways to communicate are really vast, nearly infinite numbers of ways of communicating. We have leaned on the default of being words, using words in our hearing, so what we say and what we hear, and then what we actually process about what we say and what we hear. And we have also really cut ourselves into no slack. So once we say something, the other person holds us to it, even if we think we didn't say what they thought we said. So we say something, someone hears whatever they say. Then they say oh, you just said this. And you say no, I didn't say that. They say yes, you did, yes, you did. And now you're held to actually saying what someone else heard you say rather than what you really said. And if you look back at the tape, if you actually looked at the review, the replay, you would see that you actually said what you thought you said. They heard what they heard. But because they heard what they heard, they're holding you to what they think you said and because of that, you end up defending something that you didn't mean to say, but you said anyway, spontaneously, or maybe you didn't say it all and it got heard in a different fashion, as you could see this whole thing, which actually took place in less than two seconds. So this event that I just described for you is an instant event, right? Yes, I say something. You heard me say it. You heard my expression, you heard the circumstances, you heard the context, you developed what you heard me say. You said, oh, dr Fred said this. And then I think, well, not really, that isn't what I meant. And you're like, look, you said it. I guess I'm held to it now. So that is not really a very efficient way of communicating.
Speaker 2:Ultimately and frankly, like I already mentioned, in the world of verbal communication it's extraordinarily linear. I am streaming together, like a string of beads, a bunch of words that I'm designing on the spot. I am picking these things out of my repertoire, out of my vocabulary, on the spot. I'm not sure what my next word is that I'm going to use, but, boy, better be good, because it's going to represent my soul in your eyes and other listeners. So it has to be perfect. And I get one shot at it, like I got to be picking it spontaneously and I got to pick it now. And it's linear. How do I know it's linear? Because it's one after the other, it's one word after the other, it's one thought after the other, it's one after the other Latin, that's what linearity is headed towards.
Speaker 2:A point, if you haven't noticed the world is not linear, but experience is not linear. We don't have a thread called experience. Experience is a vast, overwhelming experience, ontological event, and to use our singular, linear way of binary language to create a string of words that then gets interpreted as a truth is the last thing from Shirley Effective. This is why creativity can be used so effectively, because when we start splashing paint on canvas, or we start making music, or we start dancing, or we start singing, or we start drama, like you said, or, in many cases, cooking or writing or gardening, when we start creating, we create that vast experience without words tainting it, and a new level of expression can be made. I don't know about you, but when I see a Van Gogh, when I see a Dalai, when I see a Picasso, it's an experience that far exceeds any words.
Speaker 1:When I hear Bing.
Speaker 2:Tobin, when I hear Mozart, when I hear even Led Zeppelin in my case I hear something that's entirely expansive, way more than what Jimmy Page might have been able to say to me on a singular sentence. There's something inside.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's such a good point yeah.
Speaker 2:Like Jimmy, I would love to have lunch with Jimmy Page, and if you can make that happen, that'd be really cool, and I'll work on it.
Speaker 2:And it's not Jimmy Page per se, but I really appreciate watching Jimmy Page play guitar and I especially appreciate Led Zeppelin putting it all together as they did. This is also true with some of the classical musicians, as we jump out of Led Zeppelin a little bit and go to some of the artists that have stood the test of time, where listening to a symphony can certainly draw you to cheers or to arousal, or to happiness, or to fear, or to sadness or multiple different life experiences, just in the listening of the vibration that people call music. And this is true with all forms of creativity. And non-spoken words is also a decision. In other words, if you choose not to speak when that's one of the options out there, you are making a statement and there is a. I think I can get this up for you. Let's see. I cannot not communicate, yeah Right.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's so true yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, I most definitely am communicate.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, that is so true. You're probably familiar with the work of Dr Paul Ekman, who does all of the. Yeah, I certified with him several years ago in order to be able to teach about facial expressions and body language, and he says kind of the similar thing, and there's been. There are studies about the biochemical reactions that we have in our brain when we feel a particular emotion, and there's a lot of question over whether we feel the emotion first or have the facial expression first, because it's so deeply intuitive. So you're talking about how to express and, yeah, I would imagine I loved what you said about how watching Jimmy Page play guitar and then if you asked Jimmy Page, well, what does this mean here? He probably wouldn't be able to describe it.
Speaker 1:He shouldn't be able to describe it, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I heard quotes from Jimmy Page. I recently posted something this week from Jimmy Page talking about his notion that Led Zeppelin is the best rock and roll band of all time and it's a really beautiful piece of about of a paragraph of him putting words together about who they really were together, the mojo that they put together as the foursome, and that him and Plant were really great together. But putting all four of them together created something that had never been done and never will be done again, and he really did speak to the beauty of that. It was really remarkable, a remarkable quote that was inspiring in its own right, but the furthest thing from hearing black dog or steroid to heaven for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So what we have to do is remember that each of us is like that as well.
Speaker 2:Exactly, that's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we all are.
Speaker 2:We're all artists and we may not be Jimmy Page proficiency in a particular area, but each and every one of us is entirely creative. How do I know that? Because if you got through the last second of time, it took a lot of creativity to get that done.
Speaker 1:That is fantastic. That is fantastic. Make me feel better about myself, that's for sure.
Speaker 2:That's good.
Speaker 1:So if you don't mind giving us a little more detail, so your book, the Creative Eight. What are the eight things about creativity that your book talks?
Speaker 2:about. We've spoken to the eight already. I did drop them in, incidentally, so here they are in order. They're art, music, dancing, singing, drama, cooking, writing and gardening are the top eight. Wow, that came on later and those were cleaning and photography, and ultimately the book is about the tenth one, or the ninth one, or the eleventh one, the last one, the trump card, if you will, and that is helping anyone do anything.
Speaker 2:The idea here these things were put in place because what I learned when I was treating my multiple thousands of patients as a psychiatrist was that symptoms or the sense of symptoms despair, misery, pain, discomfort, imbalance all disappeared when we were in the act of creating. So the therapy or the modality that I asked people to take on was to take one minute a day to do three of these things. So pick three art, music and cooking. And if, for a minute, do some art, and that might mean tracing or doodling, that's fine. For a minute, do some music, and that might mean tapping that same pencil on a table or playing on a harmonica, or picking up the guitar or tapping on the piano, whatever you have, or pick up a third one, and I think I said cooking. So I'd like to go beyond toast and ramen noodles, but something to actually put together some cooking effort for the full sake of its creativity.
Speaker 2:If you do this for one minute or a total of three minutes a day, my intention is to activate the creative aspect of that particular pathway, and what I've noticed is that people who do that we remind themselves that they're creative at their heart and if I re reminding themselves, they can get turned on and buy what it really is to be creative and how creativity, in fact, can be utilized as a massive tool to alleviate the depression and the discomfort that comes from not being heard for who you are. Almost all mental illness is a function of not being self expressed to the point of being heard for who you are. If you go through the assumption or the conclusion that what people want more than anything is to be seen and heard for who they are and who they're not, that's really what people want.
Speaker 2:And so ultimately, there's a backfiring of sorts that you're not being heard for who you are or you're not listening. Like the communication breakdown and communication breakdown course is a nice lead up one song in and of its own right, and when you have a communication breakdown, the opportunity exists to really step into finding a way to communicate effectively, and these are many of the ways that we can get that done.
Speaker 1:Wow, I'm trying to think of the next question, because you explain things so succinctly and you've just got me going along saying, yeah, yeah, I know how that feels, I know how that feels. So you're saying three minutes a day to pick three different things. One minute a day and do them one minute a day for three different things.
Speaker 2:Right, one minute per thing yeah.
Speaker 1:Per thing. Okay, and then it can be as small as you want, like just doodling, or it can be as big as you want, like splashing paint on a canvas.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:And that that's going to get you the start of being tuned in more to your authentic self, and you used a term that I can't remember.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just getting more to do Creative self expression, exactly.
Speaker 1:Creative self expression. Okay, yeah, well, that's certainly something I can do. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:And when you find yourself doing that, you'll see that, at least during those times that you're participating in that activity, during those times, your symptoms or your misery, your pain or discomfort will be disappeared. Now, the truth is, you can keep it disappeared or you can snap back to where you were before you started that event. The truth is there's some choice there. You're not afflicted against your, in other words, you're not enslaved. You're not enslaved to have your next way of being dictated by the past that got you to here.
Speaker 2:It's entirely possible to choose a different direction from any given second that we are.
Speaker 2:So, if we're able to alleviate the pain and discomfort for any period of time, we have a choice of where we're going to get off that horse. Are we going to get off the horse and go back to where we were directly before we started playing the piano? Certainly, you can do that. If you want to go be really pain and depressed, it's a possibility that you can absolutely go and return. But what's really interesting and I'm not suggesting, by the way, that this is simple that our habits are built very deeply in ourselves and we tend towards disempowered context. But I am suggesting that there is some choice and there is some agency and some sovereignty from that space on the back end of your creative action, where you get to choose where to get off the horse and maybe you don't have to snap back to the misery that preceded that. Maybe you have an opportunity since you're making up the whole thing anyways to go into a different direction and create something that's a little bit more satisfying or self-fulfilling Yep.
Speaker 1:All I can say is that I'm really identifying with that, and I hope listeners are too. So tell me a little bit. I don't have any idea about this next question but, what do you find? And I don't know if there have been studies or anything like that, but what do you find as somebody goes through this reconnecting with their authentic selves, this connecting with the creativity what do you find happens in their life, in their mental health? In their physical health. Are there results that you've experienced I?
Speaker 2:think so. I think what people really find out is indeed, if it's on they take into consideration, there might be nothing inherently wrong with you in the first place. People start getting in touch with the real self and creating a space for the people in their world to also get in touch with their very real self. So there's like a contagion, a virality to the whole thing. The idea is, when I'm being authentic, I bring out your authenticity just by being in your presence. When you're being authentic, you create a space for which authenticity is then invented and invited into the center stage and because of that you get a much richer life. You get a life that actually works and not a life that's based on all the deficiency and defects that you thought you had.
Speaker 2:So an opportunity has to really launch a life in the direction of sheer and possible creativity, like actually creating creativity, creating open communication lines and ultimately creating the harmonic resonance that is required to connect with humans to you, what you have a harmonic resonance that is what's required to connect human to human.
Speaker 2:That is the source that we're talking about. That is the listening and the connection that we're all after, and from there comes healing and ultimately from there, I am submitting, is the essence of love, so that love and healing are also a function of connection, and connection is a function of this harmonic resonance. And harmonic resonance is a function of coming to grips with your authenticity, and authenticity is a function of being honest with your thought, speech and action. And all of that is a function of discovering your true and authentic self. And that's literally what's here, and we go in both directions there. It's clear that it becomes entirely possible to have a fully transformed life, for which caring for yourself becomes a function of making it possible for other people to care for you and to care for themselves in your present.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I just for a quick anecdote. I have to say that I was fortunate enough when I met my husband to feel this sort of sense of relief All of a sudden, because I didn't have to try to be somebody that was particularly funny or sexy or anything. It just sort of happened that because it happened all of a sudden, I was funny and I was smart and all of those things I said.
Speaker 1:I'm really lucky Some people don't get to experience that right away. So, dr Fred, this has just been a really illuminating day for me particular, and I know for the listeners too. So you teach courses. Like I said, you have the two books, finding your True Voice and Creative Eight, and how can someone get in touch with you if they'd like to learn more?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the brand that I've developed is a brand that makes a lot of sense at least now I'm, the more I speak about what I'm about and that's something called Welcome to Humanity, and you can find me at Dr Fred at WelcomeToHumanitynet. The person who haswelcometohumanitycom is offering it to me for like $10,000, and I've chosen some that are not highest, so I have.
Speaker 2:WelcomeToHumanitynet, and if you really want to see all the things that I'm up to with respect to podcasting or keynote speaking or teaching or one-to-one coaching, which I love doing as well as group coaching, then you can find me at Dr Fred drfred360.com DrFred360.com, where you get a little taste of everything that I'm about, including my contact information and, for your listeners, a special offer for a discovery call where you can maybe see it whether you and I can work together.
Speaker 2:But if you and I aren't a good fit, I know a lot of people in the community that are coaches and therapists and doctors and you know multiple different professionals that can help you or help whatever it is that you're looking for assistance with, and I'd be glad to make that referral. That's really important to me that you get what you came for when you reach out for me at for a discovery call. My books are there, you can get a bunch of freebies and that are also on DrFred360.com, and you get access to a lot of different things, including ways to contact me and ways to utilize my services.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's welcometohumanitynet. We'll have all that in the show notes and then it's DrFred360.com DrFred360.com. So, drfred, can't thank you enough for being here today. Like I said, it's been incredibly illuminating and you've got me feeling, you know, more cool and excited and in tune with myself. Good and when we started. Thank you very much for that, and I'm sure our listeners have had the same experience. So thank you very, very much for being here today.
Speaker 2:My pleasure. Thanks so much, I really appreciate it. Thanks, rafe.
Speaker 1:Thank you everyone for listening today. Special shout out to listeners in Globe, arizona, hamburg, new Jersey and Buford, south Carolina. I appreciate you. Remember you can find DrFred at welcometohumanitynet. That'll all be in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening to the Savvy Communicator. We'll see you next time.