Shownotes
What is the Human Aligorithm?
That is, of course, what I had to ask Zachary Brooks, PhD, author of the How to Algorithm books. I’ll give you a hint, it’s about emotions, actions and spirituality – but you will need to listen to find out more!
Dr. Brooks will also talk about his personal experience with being an organ donor recipient and how he’s used the bredth of his life experience to found an organization for transplant survivors and start up a biotech company.
He also shares one of his motivational tips about the idea of anticipated regret, where one imagines a future emotional state to guide decision-making. For example, thinking about how one will feel if they don’t go to the gym. Makes sense, right?
Have a listen and check out his books!
About Zachary Brooks, PhD
Zachary S. Brooks, PhD is a #1 Best Selling Author on Amazon for his book Discovering Your Human Algorithm – how to live with meaning and purpose (2020), and he is releasing his highly anticipated 2nd book Discovering What Activates You on February 20th.
The books are part of his “How to Algorithm” series. In his 1st book, Discovering Your Human Algorithm, Dr. Brooks shared an action-based philosophy – algorithm – of Athletics, Adventure, Academics, Art, Advocacy, and The Human Algorithm.
But during the pandemic, he had to re-think. What if action was difficult or impossible?
In the 2nd book, Discovering What Activates You, Dr. Brooks shares an algorithm, emotional steps to take when dealing with difficult phases life in order to Move again.
Outside of writing books, Dr. Brooks is the co-founder of UGenome Biotech, a bioinformatics company dedicated to “Innovating bioinformatic solutions to help advance personalized medicine,” and he serves as the President of World Transplant Athletes, a non-profit who provide research and best practices from one organ recipient to another. Their tagline is “If you have a body with a new part, You Are a World Transplant Athlete!!!”
https://worldtransplantathletes.org/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachbrooks/
https://www.instagram.com/worldtransplantathletes/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088Y1CRJX
I really hope to connect with you personally so please send me a message here or join me in my Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/connectednesswithrevkaren. And in the meantime, enjoy the show!
Transcripts
you and your daily actions are really important for someone somewhere
rev karen:now, but also someone somewhere later.
rev karen:Your negative actions and pos positive actions.
rev karen:Hello and welcome to the Connectedness Podcast.
rev karen:Just as you might have guessed, I talk about connection and connectedness
rev karen:on this podcast, our connection with everything in the world around us.
rev karen:Whether you see it or not, we're all connected.
rev karen:And it doesn't matter if it's our dog, our cat, our God, our body.
rev karen:And I'll also talk about some more abstract connections like our career or
rev karen:our land, our community, our emotions.
rev karen:Your body life is all about connection.
rev karen:So the sooner we recognize that, the sooner we can have
rev karen:an easier, more meaningful.
rev karen:I will talk about these connections through different lenses.
rev karen:Things like synchronicities and coincidences are just everyday
rev karen:little bits of magic and miracles that we, we usually dismiss.
rev karen:It's really important that we pay attention to all of this so we can
rev karen:live an easier, more meaningful life.
rev karen:So welcome to the show.
rev karen:I'm your host, Karen Cleveland.
rev karen:Hello everyone.
rev karen:Welcome back to this show.
rev karen:I am really excited to introduce my guest this week.
rev karen:So Zachary S.
rev karen:Brooks PhD has two books out right now, probably working on a third,
rev karen:but one of 'em was just released last week and I was looking through it.
rev karen:and it's, it's so on target.
rev karen:It has to do with meaning and purpose and spirituality.
rev karen:And he calls these books, he calls his his method, uh, the human Algorithm.
rev karen:So we're gonna hear about that today and how you know me, it fits into
rev karen:the meaning and purpose of our lives.
rev karen:So Zachary draws upon his experience of being an actor, a world traveler.
rev karen:Co-founded U Genome Biotech, which is a bioinformatics company dedicated
rev karen:to innovating bioinformatic solutions to help advance personalized medicine
rev karen:and his serving as the President of World Transplant Athletes, which is
rev karen:a nonprofit that provides research and best practices from one organ
rev karen:recipient to another, in addition to him
rev karen:also being an organ transplant recipient.
rev karen:So bringing all this experience forward into this life, I look
rev karen:forward to hearing about it.
rev karen:Welcome to the show, Zach.
rev karen:Thank you, Karen.
rev karen:This is really, uh, a really nice pleasure to be here today.
rev karen:It's one of these sort of special pleasures in life that you don't
rev karen:strive for, but then you're like, oh, what a sweet piece of fruit
rev karen:I get to hang out with today.
rev karen:that's, yeah, that's spectacular.
rev karen:Because something we probably couldn't even have imagined 10, 20 years ago.
rev karen:Yeah.
rev karen:That this is where we would be.
rev karen:Right.
rev karen:Absolutely.
rev karen:. Absolutely.
rev karen:All right, so before we get into, um, your books and your current work,
rev karen:which, uh, like I said earlier are fascinating and, and write up my
rev karen:personal alignment line, um, why don't you tell us how you got there, where,
rev karen:where you started, and what was your personal journey in your development?
rev karen:Yeah, I think, um, I can certainly talk about a love movement in i e travel
rev karen:and places I've lived and through that I think I've developed, um,
rev karen:you know, reflecting on a little bit just a practice of living, which is
rev karen:trying to do a lot of things at once.
rev karen:And I think it's just my personality.
rev karen:So I was born in Denver, Colorado.
rev karen:I've lived in nine American states, six c.
rev karen:and some of that was just through family growing up until, in this case
rev karen:it was my mom's job who moved us.
rev karen:She was a director of, uh, various insurance companies.
rev karen:My dad always found work as a technician for, um, groups working on probes
rev karen:from Mars outta space, kind of things.
rev karen:Wow.
rev karen:And so forth.
rev karen:So I moved a lot growing up there.
rev karen:But then, and then we traveled a lot as a family friend of the United
rev karen:States growing up, and I think.
rev karen:, um, that probably just inculcated a, a desire to travel a lot.
rev karen:So when I was 17, I went to Europe, played soccer there, uh, for a while,
rev karen:and then I've just continued to travel and learn languages my entire life.
rev karen:And, um, I, I kind of have two working assumption, i, I working
rev karen:assumptions, and I take this directly from, uh, language learning.
rev karen:So people always ask me, so how do you learn languages?
rev karen:What's the best method?
rev karen:And so forth.
rev karen:And number one is obsess.
rev karen:. So whatever method you like, just obsess over it.
rev karen:So whatever thing you're doing, just obsess over it.
rev karen:And, and the other one is, um, people often say when they learn a new
rev karen:language, oh, I can't learn that.
rev karen:And, um, oh, I'm not very good at that.
rev karen:. And so you set yourself up for a certain kind of, um, results when you say that.
rev karen:But my working assumption in every single language, in every single
rev karen:topic that I ever come across is like, I know that perfectly.
rev karen:I'm just having a bad day.
rev karen:Oh.
rev karen:And so it kind of makes you feel like, oh, I can learn this really
rev karen:complicated bioinformatics topic or biotechnology topic, or a physics topic
rev karen:that I've never come across before.
rev karen:, if you just assume you know everything and it doesn't, you know,
rev karen:but you're just having a bad day.
rev karen:Yeah.
rev karen:You have humility, but you also give yourself, uh, permission to learn
rev karen:and believe that you can learn that.
rev karen:That's fantastic, because that really is the truth, isn't it?
rev karen:Mm-hmm.
rev karen:, we actually do know it.
rev karen:But I think that's how I would sort of summarize myself to start
rev karen:with in terms of, thinking about the many things I've done is like,
rev karen:I just assume that I can do it.
rev karen:I'm just having a bad day.
rev karen:So what do you think along this journey?
rev karen:, and live learning all these languages, which by the way, I've
rev karen:been trying to learn Swahili because my husband is Kenyan, but I keep
rev karen:telling myself I can't do it.
rev karen:So I'm gonna have to change that mindset there.
rev karen:But, , where did the meaning and purpose begin to come in?
rev karen:How did that evolve for you?
rev karen:Yeah.
rev karen:Um, I'm kind of coming some circles back to it with my third book, but, um, I
rev karen:think, you know, my, a lot of my life I've been around different religious
rev karen:groups and I've felt very much rejected by almost all of those religious groups.
rev karen:So I think, you know, my spiritual journey is sort of, A negative start.
rev karen:I mean, not negative in terms of Li life is horrible, but, you know, I wasn't
rev karen:accepted into a community to start with and like, oh, I found my faith, or I
rev karen:found my spirit, or I found my, uh, comfort in a group of people who call
rev karen:themselves whatever name by whatever religious group, multiple groups, um, and
rev karen:happened over and over and over again.
rev karen:And so, you know, maybe I have some desire for connecting to larger.
rev karen:larger things in life.
rev karen:You know, not just who we are as humans, but who we are as spirits.
rev karen:How that connects to us as historical figures.
rev karen:I mean, whatever someone did in the past certainly helps us going forward.
rev karen:But I think a lot of my, um, a lot of, a lot of it's, it's not because I have
rev karen:a direct spiritual connection to groups.
rev karen:It's actually the opposite.
rev karen:So I've been an outsider oftentimes in my life.
rev karen:And so what is it like to be an outsider?
rev karen:How do you interact with insiders?
rev karen:. And then the other kind of thing, this is more of like a very concrete example.
rev karen:So during my first kidney transplant, I got at Stanford
rev karen:University in Northern California.
rev karen:Um, I had a roommate and it was his third transplant and he was probably
rev karen:25 years older than I was at that time.
rev karen:And he was from Greece and he grew up in a time where he saw Nazi soldiers
rev karen:like, uh, mow down people with these machine guns in the streets.
rev karen:They would line them up, probably Jewish or gypsies or
rev karen:whatever their, their thing was.
rev karen:and then he eventually immigrated the United States and he got his
rev karen:first transplant in the 1970s, second one September in the eighties, and
rev karen:he was telling me stories about.
rev karen:, you know, the first and second transplant, the first one didn't last more than
rev karen:24 hours and they went right back to dialysis and he said people were dying,
rev karen:you know, after their transplants soon, within a week, because they
rev karen:didn't understand the anti-rejection medications and how to manage that.
rev karen:So he just put himself off the list completely for another 20, you
rev karen:know, maybe 15 years at that point.
rev karen:So fast forward to 1999, he got his third one.
rev karen:He happened to be in the same room as me.
rev karen:and he wheeled over his, whatever it's called, the thing that holds all the,
rev karen:the tubing, the IV book, um, to my room.
rev karen:Oh, what is it?
rev karen:Oh no, I thought it was the IV pole, but it's the kidney stuff, so yeah, you,
rev karen:no, it's no notice an IV pole that had a little like platform on it where you can
rev karen:put some things and he used that as some sort of lectern and he gave me a speech of
rev karen:like protecting your kidney and so forth.
rev karen:But what he was really sharing with me, how I interpreted is that, you know,
rev karen:we're part of the human parade that he himself had to suffer through, through
rev karen:some things to give me a better life.
rev karen:So he was a data.
rev karen:and how to get better in terms of getting to organ, the anti-rejection
rev karen:medications and the doctors and nurses and caregivers along across the spectrum.
rev karen:For those 20 some years, were really working so I could benefit.
rev karen:So I'm just doing now what I can for someone else to benefit.
rev karen:So I just call it the human parade.
rev karen:Wow.
rev karen:And that human parade is how I probably derive whatever spirituality.
rev karen:Now.
rev karen:I've written two books and written a th writing a third book now.
rev karen:So I'm thinking about it in a different way, but that's
rev karen:probably how I've got to this.
rev karen:. Wow.
rev karen:Okay.
rev karen:So let's, let's go the science, uh, route for a minute.
rev karen:Tell me a little bit more about your, you know, the world transplant athletes
rev karen:and the huge Genome Genome project, or, or not project, , business.
rev karen:Sure.
rev karen:Biotech.
rev karen:. Well, yeah.
rev karen:So, um, in terms of, I have a PhD from the University of Arizona and I
rev karen:was hooded, which means I graduated from both the College of Science
rev karen:and the College of Humanities.
rev karen:I happened to be in a program called Second Language Acquisition and teaching
rev karen:that allowed you to take courses from many colleges and most people
rev karen:would take classes from two colleges.
rev karen:I took classes from seven.
rev karen:Wow.
rev karen:You know, engineering, science, engineering.
rev karen:, social science, humanities.
rev karen:And there's one other I'm missing.
rev karen:I think I mentioned six.
rev karen:So I'm very much a person who likes humanities a lot, and I really
rev karen:love science at the same time.
rev karen:So my science background at the PhD level was mostly cognitive science
rev karen:and the language background was mostly, uh, the humanities, but of
rev karen:course there's a lot of crossover.
rev karen:So I'm very much both of those.
rev karen:So in terms of the world transplant athletes, I may have had the two
rev karen:kidney transplants from my parents.
rev karen:So I have a deep connection to transplantation.
rev karen:Of course.
rev karen:I'm very, uh, thankful for my donor and I, I've been around the world
rev karen:of, um, helping, you know, trying to advocate for, um, don donation
rev karen:of some sort for a long time.
rev karen:And after I'd been around it for a long time at a domestic and state and
rev karen:international level, I decided to.
rev karen:World transplant athletes in 2021.
rev karen:And right at that point we just posted things on, on Instagram and
rev karen:interacted with a lot of different transplant recipients around the world.
rev karen:And we're doing this in multiple languages.
rev karen:And fast forward now two years, we have 22 recipients from every continent of
rev karen:the world, speaking 11 languages who create content for other recipients.
rev karen:And mostly we just share with each other what we're doing
rev karen:in, uh, in a physical way.
rev karen:So are you walking?
rev karen:Are you exercising?
rev karen:Are you moving in some way?
rev karen:Take care of your organ.
rev karen:But really there's a lot of benefits that come from that.
rev karen:And now we're having a whole research program.
rev karen:We're setting up with people from Stanford and the Mayo Clinic to really
rev karen:investigate how people can, um, be active with their transplant, um,
rev karen:to increase their quality of life and their quantity of life as well.
rev karen:So we're doing a lot of research with the world transplant athletes,
rev karen:and it's called World Transplant athletes.org, if you wanna check it out.
rev karen:Also on Instagram and other places.
rev karen:So that's world transplant athletes.
rev karen:In terms of genome, um, I've been in five startup companies and three of them are
rev karen:life science companies at this point.
rev karen:And the last two were from University of Arizona, um, the commercialization office.
rev karen:So more, most large universities have some sort of commercialization office.
rev karen:Which of the idea is you take a, let's say a professor's research
rev karen:and maybe she has a fantastic idea.
rev karen:, but she's an academic, you know, maybe that idea though could be
rev karen:commercialized and maybe should be commercialized in order to benefit a
rev karen:human with a new drug, a new te, a new therapy, a new technique or so forth.
rev karen:And then you take that idea and then you commercialize it.
rev karen:You, you make it into a company that people will get benefit from.
rev karen:And so Eugene known biotech is one of those companies, and
rev karen:it's a bioinformatics company.
rev karen:In our case, we use, uh, software and data tools to analyze data to provide.
rev karen:, hopefully down the line better, um, gene therapeutics or
rev karen:immunotherapies or something.
rev karen:So, um, that's what Genome is right now.
rev karen:And that's, uh, genome biotech.com.
rev karen:Awesome.
rev karen:Thank you.
rev karen:So when you received your transplants, Uh, I can only, you know, look at the
rev karen:outside and make guesses about it.
rev karen:Is there some kind of spiritual component to the contemplation that
rev karen:happens about receiving someone else's organ into your body?
rev karen:Well, there's, yeah.
rev karen:I mean, you can go , you can fall into that world easily because it is
rev karen:really mind numbing if you think about how incredible it is, and especially
rev karen:if you receive, um, I don't know, especially if you receive a stranger's.
rev karen:You know, you connect with humanity in a very different way.
rev karen:I mean, it's so easy to be cynical in life, but if you connect, yeah, if
rev karen:you receive a, an organ, especially from, uh, a family who decided to
rev karen:let their loved ones or organs go at the moment, that person died.
rev karen:you feel such an incredible power and obligation and commitment and
rev karen:gratitude towards all the humanity that you didn't know existed.
rev karen:So wonderful, wonderful thing about transplantation is that,
rev karen:you know, it really connects you to the best of humanity.
rev karen:And if once you're thinking about the best of humanity, you start
rev karen:to then build on top of that and thinking this is pretty spiritual.
rev karen:Mm-hmm.
rev karen:. Um, and had a few moments.
rev karen:I mean, during my first transplant there was complications and if they didn't
rev karen:operate me on me right away, probably would've died within a few hours.
rev karen:and my parents were with me, and they were of course, just beside themselves.
rev karen:And I remember looking up as I was on the gurney watching the towels
rev karen:pass by, and I just thought, oh yeah, I'm supposed to be here right now.
rev karen:And there was a lot of comfort in that.
rev karen:Like my pain level was so high that I couldn't even feel any pain.
rev karen:And they're probably giving me some drugs at that moment as well.
rev karen:But the pain was so high, I got past a pain threshold that
rev karen:I just didn't even notice it.
rev karen:And I just went into this.
rev karen:kind of surreal state.
rev karen:And I thought, well, this is where I'm supposed to be right now, . And
rev karen:so there's a plenty of spiritual moments that come from that.
rev karen:Um, and then, you know, it depends on the, the person themselves.
rev karen:Maybe they become more spiritual.
rev karen:I think a lot of people just have some sort of applied
rev karen:philosophy after a transplant.
rev karen:Like, I'm gonna live, well, every second of my life is
rev karen:gonna be lived to its maximum.
rev karen:Mm-hmm.
rev karen:. So I think that's where I probably would fit in as like some sort
rev karen:of, Um, if I don't live today, well then I am wasting all this
rev karen:good gift that I got in this case.
rev karen:Okay.
rev karen:Um, a chance of life, right?
rev karen:Right.
rev karen:So what, what has been the inspiration then that led to your first book
rev karen:and now your second, third, and, you know, any forthcoming books?
rev karen:What's behind that?
rev karen:Well, the first book, um, it was through my PhD that had
rev karen:nothing to do with my PhD at all.
rev karen:Uh, I wanted to write for a long time in my life and I didn't know what mm-hmm.
rev karen:, um, but I'm probably a person who thinks in terms of like, how can
rev karen:I communicate this effectively?
rev karen:One of the, one of the ways to communicate effectively is through
rev karen:writing, you know, making videos, doing podcasts, uh, painting.
rev karen:There's all sorts of things you can do.
rev karen:And I started coalescing around when are I happiest Now?
rev karen:I kind of was building off a book called Flow.
rev karen:, um, but I can't say his name.
rev karen:I think it's Michael.
rev karen:It's, it's a really long Polish name.
rev karen:He wrote a book called Flow.
rev karen:Yeah.
rev karen:And he was talking about Michael Jordan and some other people that
rev karen:they were completely engaged in what I, whatever activity, but
rev karen:also forgot about that activity.
rev karen:And I thought, well, what are the things that I'm happiest about?
rev karen:So again, kind of from that book, I started to put them in as, so,
rev karen:uh, the first book was called Discovering a Human Algorithm, how
rev karen:to Li Live With Meaning and Purpose.
rev karen:And there was, Six A's in that.
rev karen:So the first A is athletics.
rev karen:To be human is to move.
rev karen:The second A is, um, adventure, to be human is to explore.
rev karen:The third A is, uh, academics, to be human is to learn and so forth.
rev karen:And so I put this into an algorithm form because algorithms are such,
rev karen:um, ubiquitous concepts in our life, even if we have no idea about them.
rev karen:And since humans wrote algorithms, we should try to recapture the idea of an
rev karen:algorithm and put it into our own lives.
rev karen:And I just thought.
rev karen:You know, I can get people six steps that they could go through and maybe after
rev karen:three steps they say, okay, I got it.
rev karen:I don't need this silly book anymore.
rev karen:But they figured out some for themselves.
rev karen:I thought that would be really worthwhile.
rev karen:And the other part of that, that first book, is that I had a friend of mine.
rev karen:that I confided in, that I was thinking about this, and she's like,
rev karen:yeah, that's kind of who I am too.
rev karen:So she felt that she was getting benefit from this six, a philosophy of, you know,
rev karen:arts and academic and, and athletics and adventure and helping other people.
rev karen:So that was really nice.
rev karen:And then I published the first book in 2020, uh, May, 2020.
rev karen:The pandemic was very much, yeah, a full swing.
rev karen:and since that book was about movement, you know, a movement philosophy to human
rev karen:is to, is to move the human, is to, to create, to be human, is to help others.
rev karen:It was all very much like an active type of philosophy.
rev karen:Suddenly, I like, you know, millions if not billion people around the world
rev karen:were kind of confined to a space.
rev karen:What is movement then?
rev karen:What if you're suddenly kind of depressed?
rev karen:And I'm not a, a therapist by any means, but I thought.
rev karen:I need to really rethink the second book.
rev karen:So my, my partner was very, um, friendly and critical all at the same time about
rev karen:the first book that it was too positive, you know, too American, too much, and some
rev karen:people would call this toxic positivity.
rev karen:Mm-hmm.
rev karen:and so forth.
rev karen:And her questions really prompted me to think.
rev karen:About this.
rev karen:And I did wanna do a second book, and it took me three years to actually finish
rev karen:that book because I was going through a pandemic like everyone else, right?
rev karen:And trying to figure out what was, what was next.
rev karen:So I, the second book is really based on emotions starting with
rev karen:awareness all the way to activation.
rev karen:So again, try to provide people steps to walk through to get to
rev karen:the point where they could move.
rev karen:So if you're so depressed, Wow.
rev karen:And you can't even get outta bed.
rev karen:What kind of steps do you go through to get yourself, your foot on the
rev karen:floor to start walking for the day?
rev karen:Hmm.
rev karen:So the books were connected to each other, um, and the three
rev karen:books series are all connected.
rev karen:So you have a bridge metaphor of the foundation, the structure,
rev karen:and the super structure.
rev karen:So I've written now the foundation, which is the emotions, and I've written
rev karen:the structure, which are the actions.
rev karen:The third book is now the super structure, which is more the
rev karen:spiritual component that we.
rev karen:that I think that we, we have and we can walk through our own steps to
rev karen:find something better about ourselves and connect with our, our own spirit.
rev karen:Right.
rev karen:So was there a defining moment for you in this whole creation
rev karen:process, starting with book one?
rev karen:Um, or before or after that you said, this is it.
rev karen:This is, you know what I'm here to do?
rev karen:This is.
rev karen:my my thing or do you feel like you're still looking for, you know,
rev karen:one thing or do we have many things?
rev karen:Yeah, that's a good question.
rev karen:I mean, the one thing that stuck with me, so my dad said this once, I, I
rev karen:thought he said it many times and he, um, has forgotten saying this,
rev karen:but it stuck with me so much and it was sometime during my transplant.
rev karen:I forget when it was exactly, but my dad at one point said, Being, uh, positive
rev karen:is the only practical way to live.
rev karen:Hmm.
rev karen:Which I wrote in my first book, and I think that stuck with me.
rev karen:So, um, now I would call that kind of resilience, you know, resiliency,
rev karen:you know, like we all have bad days and we woke up today and I
rev karen:wasn't feeling fantastic at all.
rev karen:Like anyone else.
rev karen:And you know, I guess I have put some more pressure on myself being
rev karen:a self-help author at this point, to find the resiliency and to
rev karen:follow my formulas and so forth.
rev karen:But I think in terms of your question, that particular thing stood out.
rev karen:Being positive is the only practical way to live.
rev karen:And then second part is like I'm constantly discovering, discovering, you
rev karen:know, my spiritual self and so forth.
rev karen:I'm not religious.
rev karen:Um, and third book is actually now a real dive into.
rev karen:What spirituality means to me.
rev karen:And I'm, I'm interviewing people from different faiths, so I've
rev karen:done three out of the nine to 12.
rev karen:I'm going for so far and I'm learning very, you know, learning some things
rev karen:from each, uh, person who's a ahead of his or her, um, religious group.
rev karen:So it's been a fascinating journey.
rev karen:Yeah.
rev karen:Oh, I bet.
rev karen:And how are you going to, is that going to be part of a book or what are
rev karen:you gonna do with that information?
rev karen:Yeah, so, well, this is part of the, the series.
rev karen:So the series is called How to Algorithm.
rev karen:Okay, so the first book is Discovering Your Human Algorithm.
rev karen:The second one, discovering what activates you.
rev karen:The third one, discovering what Awakens You.
rev karen:And that's the spiritual, okay, uh, steps.
rev karen:And I'm, I'm putting the book together now.
rev karen:I'm certain that, uh, a chapter will be called Acceptance and one
rev karen:chapter will be called Awakens.
rev karen:Um, so I know those are the two chapter, two of the six chapters, and I'm figuring
rev karen:out the, the other chapters right.
rev karen:I think looking at all the world's religions and pulling out, you know,
rev karen:the truths of those and even the lies or the dogma, or I shouldn't call them
rev karen:lies, but half truths perhaps are what we believe we know about a particular
rev karen:religion, even when we're in it.
rev karen:And, um, just compiling all that would be fascinating.
rev karen:. . Is there anything that you wish you had known when you were younger?
rev karen:Now obviously you couldn't know what was going to happen in your life, but,
rev karen:um, something you might have been able to tell yourself to make things easier
rev karen:or to, to expand on your situation, um, when you were younger that you would
rev karen:take it more advantage of Now that,
rev karen:Well, I think when I was younger I had did one.
rev karen:Idea that actually served me well.
rev karen:And then I'll answer the other part in a second.
rev karen:So the, the part that served me well is I came up with this, I was reading a lot of
rev karen:philosophy during one semester in college.
rev karen:I don't remember a lot of it in terms of who authored what, but.
rev karen:One of it was that my only intelligence was that I wasn't that intelligent.
rev karen:So that the idea of, to keep you humble, to learn from a lot of other
rev karen:people, to constantly incorporate something smart that someone was saying
rev karen:at that moment, even if you disagreed with them, you didn't like them.
rev karen:And I think that's pretty, been helpful.
rev karen:Mm-hmm.
rev karen:, um, . But I have a lot of challenges, I would say, in, um, forgiveness, even
rev karen:though I've tried to work on that, um, you know, get sort of frustrated and
rev karen:angry or jealous or something like that.
rev karen:So I have a lot to learn still in my life.
rev karen:And I, when I teach, when I give seminars to students about bilingual
rev karen:decision making, which was my, my research, I usually pepper in around
rev karen:10 slides of a bunch of failure.
rev karen:of my life, cuz I want people to have a sense of failure is totally okay.
rev karen:Yeah.
rev karen:You know, it's what you kind of do with it later, but also, you know, if someone
rev karen:sees me and seems, uh, thinks to themself, oh, he seems to put together well, I
rev karen:think that's just a, not a complete facade, but it's an ongoing process
rev karen:and I think that's really important to share that, you know, we're, we're
rev karen:all in this together trying to learn.
rev karen:I mean, I think the main thing is trying to, um, be a better
rev karen:person, but it's not that you.
rev karen:on any given day, you know?
rev karen:Mm-hmm.
rev karen:the perfect person.
rev karen:Mm-hmm.
rev karen:. So, yeah, I think, you know, early on I, that was just something
rev karen:that came to mind recently.
rev karen:I certainly had an idea of like, I'm not that smart, so just
rev karen:constantly try to learn from others.
rev karen:But, you know, , I, I'm constantly trying to figure out how to be
rev karen:more forgiving and, um, try to be more compassionate, I would say.
rev karen:Mm-hmm.
rev karen:towards other people, and I think people, especially people who are close
rev karen:to you, because you have so many deep and complicated interactions with people
rev karen:who are really, really close to you.
rev karen:Yes.
rev karen:I think that's the hardest group of people sometimes to be
rev karen:forgiving and loving towards.
rev karen:I mean, a stranger sometimes the easiest person you can open up to
rev karen:this stranger and tell 'em you're deepest, darkest, darkest secrets
rev karen:and you feel fantastic and great.
rev karen:You're unburdened yourself and or they did to you.
rev karen:It's really cool, you know, and the strangers are really important
rev karen:like that, but I think the forgive.
rev karen:and the pains we feel about human relationships, they only come
rev karen:from people you really care about.
rev karen:You know?
rev karen:I mean, who's gonna hurt you?
rev karen:Who's gonna break your heart?
rev karen:Who's gonna hurt you deeply?
rev karen:Right?
rev karen:Only someone you really care about, you know?
rev karen:Right.
rev karen:So they come from, you know, it, it's like the story that just someone told me.
rev karen:I was yelled at by doing a bad project for a vice president somewhere, and my friend
rev karen:said, well, you've seen it all wrong.
rev karen:Like, not everyone gets yelled at by a person like that.
rev karen:And so, you know, we only get pain from being in a deep relationship.
rev karen:Mm-hmm.
rev karen:. So have to try to reframe things in a, you know, in a moment of like angst and anger.
rev karen:You know, try to reframe it like, you know, I'm lucky to have this pain
rev karen:because it means I'm connected to these other humans in a very deep and loving.
rev karen:Yeah.
rev karen:Even though we don't like the pain sometimes it is, it's meaningful.
rev karen:Of course.
rev karen:We hate it.
rev karen:Yeah.
rev karen:Yeah.
rev karen:We hate the pain.
rev karen:, who doesn't, but, you know, try to reframe it in a way that like, gives you a little,
rev karen:a little pause for that second to move on.
rev karen:So you sound like, um, you like to learn a lot.
rev karen:You, you're always, um, I guess self-educating, we say, do you
rev karen:have a system that where you like to get new information from?
rev karen:Do you have a reading program or do you take classes or what's your personal.
rev karen:Way of, yeah.
rev karen:Yeah, there's a lot of things.
rev karen:I mean, I probably have, you know, a hundred tabs open in five different
rev karen:sort of browsers at the moment.
rev karen:Mm-hmm.
rev karen:and then I try to close them once a week.
rev karen:Um, I take a lot of online classes.
rev karen:I sign up for a lot, take 'em for a few weeks at a time, and
rev karen:sometimes I just give them up.
rev karen:And I, I used to feel really bad about that.
rev karen:I don't feel, feel bad about that anymore because if I do something for three to
rev karen:four weeks, I get something out of it.
rev karen:Yeah.
rev karen:I think a lot of platforms are fantastic.
rev karen:I mean, Coursera.
rev karen:QuantX LinkedIn.
rev karen:Yeah, I mean, you name it.
rev karen:Um, there are a lot of great platforms like that.
rev karen:So, um, I kind of just go back to what I said earlier, like, I think,
rev karen:um, obsession, like whatever you like to learn and whatever way
rev karen:you like to learn it, do that and, you know, lean into it completely.
rev karen:And at some point during that obsession, you were gonna start
rev karen:to recognize patterns in your.
rev karen:And those patterns are probably, they're gonna be more, um, ob objectable,
rev karen:sort of nice connecting patterns.
rev karen:You can start to put things together for yourself.
rev karen:So I just think obsession is number one.
rev karen:And obsession doesn't mean you, you have to give yourself to that
rev karen:task every minute of every day.
rev karen:But if it's five minutes every day, like that's your five minutes, like
rev karen:completely obsessed on those five minutes and then come back to it the next.
rev karen:And if you can't, then don't beats yourself up, uh, about it.
rev karen:Go back the next time.
rev karen:So I think there's a lot of like, um, coaching you have to give yourself to,
rev karen:to know that your type of learning and the way you're doing it is totally valid.
rev karen:Yeah.
rev karen:And normal.
rev karen:And then you're gonna observe someone else and say, I'm gonna learn from her.
rev karen:Yeah.
rev karen:What is she doing that I, I need to figure out.
rev karen:So those would be my, my heuristics in terms of.
rev karen:Nice.
rev karen:And to follow up on that, then, how about for the listeners, any tips on their,
rev karen:um, I, you know, finding their meaning or purpose, anything that they can use today
rev karen:before they have access to your book, perhaps before they read all about it?
rev karen:Any ti specific tips you can give someone today?
rev karen:Yeah, well one that I've, I've been sharing a lot lately, so
rev karen:this came from my, my PhD in the world of decision sciences, and
rev karen:so I mentioned I did something called bilingual decision making.
rev karen:So I really.
rev karen:Dove into decision making and decision making is really a study of like a lot
rev karen:of human errors and mistakes and biases.
rev karen:I'm, my gosh, we're full of them.
rev karen:It's a wonder sometimes we make good decisions after all because we're just
rev karen:so full of things that guide us down a path and we realize much later, like,
rev karen:that was a really wrong decision.
rev karen:Mm-hmm.
rev karen:. But one of the things from decision making that really stood out that I think is
rev karen:super practical and very helpful today for anyone is this idea of anticipated.
rev karen:An anticipated regret, as it sounds, is that imagine a, a future, maybe a near
rev karen:future in which you don't do things.
rev karen:So let's take a really simple example.
rev karen:You wake up in the morning and on your mind is to go to the gym,
rev karen:and then things come up during the day and you're exhausted.
rev karen:You've eaten really poorly, you know, whatever it is.
rev karen:You've had a glass of wine, I whatever it is in your life, but then you wanted
rev karen:to go to the gym earlier in the day.
rev karen:So I think it's really important to think deeply.
rev karen:, you know?
rev karen:Okay.
rev karen:How will I feel if I don't go put yourself in an emotional state in the future?
rev karen:Mm-hmm.
rev karen:, how will I feel if I do go and then try to let that future state, and
rev karen:likely in this case, a person's gonna choose to go to the gym mm-hmm.
rev karen:Um, they're gonna feel better if they go to the gym than not going to the gym.
rev karen:So put yourself in an emotional state and really sit with it for about 30 seconds.
rev karen:And there's a really good chance that future emotional state is gonna
rev karen:motivate a better action right now.
rev karen:And an action in which.
rev karen:you will not regret something so anticipated.
rev karen:Use anticipated anticipated regret to your advantage to make decisions so that you're
rev karen:not looking back and regretting things.
rev karen:Small things and big things.
rev karen:Cuz most people, it's been documented very well who are on their deathbeds, they're
rev karen:gonna regret to things they didn't try.
rev karen:Right?
rev karen:So why not use that great information these forefathers and mothers gave to us?
rev karen:And for, for right now, get to the gym today, you'll feel.
rev karen:. Wow, that's, yeah, I've never heard of that.
rev karen:And I think that's a fantastic technique.
rev karen:Anticipated regret because how will I feel if I don't do this or if
rev karen:I do do this, you know, whatever.
rev karen:Whatever is most likely, whatever the easiest path is
rev karen:that we don't really wanna take.
rev karen:Well, uh, I appreciate your sharing with us today.
rev karen:Do you have anything before we leave?
rev karen:Um, any questions I forgot to ask that maybe the listeners would wanna
rev karen:know or that you want to share?
rev karen:I think you've covered so many good bases right now.
rev karen:I just need making stuff up.
rev karen:. No, actually there is one more question I wanna ask.
rev karen:Well, two more.
rev karen:One is, um, what do you wish everyone knew?
rev karen:Like if you could get one idea across to the world right now, what would that.
rev karen:, yeah.
rev karen:That you and your daily actions are really important for someone somewhere
rev karen:now, but also someone somewhere later.
rev karen:Your negative actions and pos positive actions.
rev karen:And I say that because I a partial embodiment.
rev karen:Embodiment to that.
rev karen:I mean, my parents both chose to donate an organ to me, but I can think of organ
rev karen:recipients or people who have benefited from cancer, uh, students in a classroom
rev karen:who've benefited because someone.
rev karen:gave them themselves that day.
rev karen:So, you know, your actions influence someone somewhere.
rev karen:So you want your actions to actions to be more positive than negative.
rev karen:Again, you wanna avoid your, your regret.
rev karen:So I think that would be the one thing I would, I would share at this very moment.
rev karen:I talk about connectedness a lot, and that's true connection.
rev karen:I mean, that's a true physical connection on how it particularly.
rev karen:donating an organ and receiving an organ.
rev karen:I mean, you can't, you can't get any clearer than that and see the effect on
rev karen:the world around us, on people around us.
rev karen:So thank you for that.
rev karen:And my last question is just simply, uh, if you wanna let the listeners know,
rev karen:if they don't have a chance to go to my website, where can they find you?
rev karen:Um, on, you know, what are your book title names?
rev karen:Go ahead and tell me what you're working on and drop some links.
rev karen:Yeah, so I'll have to share the links later.
rev karen:I can't find 'em right now.
rev karen:But the, the three things, if you wanna just find about me personally,
rev karen:uh, you can find me on LinkedIn slash I n Zack Brooks, so z a c h.
rev karen:B R o k s.
rev karen:So LinkedIn, Zach Brooks, um, about world transplant athletes.
rev karen:It's world transplant athletes.org.
rev karen:Um, eugene is genome biotech.com.
rev karen:And then the book titles.
rev karen:The two I have out so far are discovering your Human Algorithm,
rev karen:how to Live with Meaning, purpose.
rev karen:It's a yellow book cover, so I have copyright here.
rev karen:It's not the best framing, but it's yellow with kind of a Mi Michele.
rev karen:Figure.
rev karen:And the second book is discovering what Activates you.
rev karen:It's blue there, so you can find those on Amazon.
rev karen:Um, and enjoy the book and if you get something out of it, then let me know.
rev karen:But if you don't get something out of it, then write your own book . Exactly.
rev karen:We all have have books to release, I think.
rev karen:Well, thank you so much.
rev karen:I really, really appreciate your time and I'm going to, um, say goodbye to the
rev karen:listeners and thank you for joining us and I look forward to connecting with.
rev karen:With everyone later, so bye-bye everyone.
rev karen:If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to head over to rev karen podcast.com.
rev karen:That's R E V K A R E N podcast.com.
rev karen:There you're gonna find the tools for finding more meaning
rev karen:and happiness in your own life.
rev karen:Plus, if you have a story that you want to share with me, either on or
rev karen:off the air, be sure to look for that.
rev karen:Make sure you follow me so you get notified when new episodes drop.
rev karen:And also I'd love to connect with you and my Facebook group
rev karen:Connectedness with Rev, Karen.
rev karen:So head over to rev karen podcast.com.
