This One Episode Will Change How You Think About the World & Your Life (From #1 Cancer Surgeon)

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:31:06):

Yeah. So just for your ... I love what I do. I chose to do this when I had opportunities to take care of less sick people. When you're in medical school, you choose sick or not sick, and then you choose procedure or not procedure. I do big operation. They come to me for operations and they're extremely sick. And I take care of patients who have stage four cancer. And what we're trying to do is land this crashing airplane.

 

(00:31:42):

And so I don't have patients that I still know because they're gone. And so from what, 2004, I don't know, 25 years, I was younger than them, then I was the same age as them. Some of them are younger than me. I was growing up. I was raising three sons. They're in their 20s. And I chose cancer surgery when I had an option of different types of surgery to do. And I know I'm a neurosurgeon or brain surgeon, but in my heart, I'm a cancer surgeon and most cancer cures begin with surgery. And it's just so visceral. Well, I love for my sons to be father and cancer surgeon. And what you see during that process, in the beginning, you want to be the best at what you do. And you have to realize that you can never get the risk to zero. There will be turbulence on the way to the moon.

 

(00:32:44):

This is not a flight to San Francisco on Southwest where you expect to land it every time. You know what I'm saying? So I know you're like, he just went there. No, but that capsules are like, there will be turbulence. And so what I realized is that I hurt people the least, that this operation will have a 3% to 4% complication and I'm trying to get it to two. I can't get it to zero, which means you will have complications and that you're still doing a service. I had a hard time wrapping my head around that because when you meet somebody and then they wake up and they can't talk, they can't move. It's been difficult, especially with children. And it's not a oops moment. It's you can't get it to zero if you're going to fly to the moon. You will crash and burn sometimes. It's not a mistake. And so-

 

Mel Robbins (00:33:38):

Well, the tumor you're trying to remove has done the damage.

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:33:41):

Right. And the art there is to get as much of the tumor out as you can, but not injure the person. See, that's the art of surgery is you're reverse sculpting. There are people who can take it all out, but the patient doesn't do well afterwards. And then there are some people who just go in there and don't take enough of it to give them the best lifespan. We call it peak and shriek. They look at it, they're afraid that they pull back and that's okay. So the patient's perfect, but the cancer surgery hasn't been done to the highest level. And some people get all the cancer out, but then the patient wakes up injured. So there's a lot going on there. But complications for me were difficult in children, particularly because it felt like a failure. I didn't have the scale to understand that I'm going to try to help thousands of patients. I've seen 15,000 operate on 5,000, and I'm trying to be the best I can for that whole group of patients.

 

(00:34:39):

I can't tell which one's going to have a complication or not. It's not an oops moment. That took me some time to wrap my head around that. And I only removed myself from that, whatever all of that caused me. First, I was overly competitive or I was emotional. It was just a lot there.

 

Mel Robbins (00:34:57):

I'm sure.

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:34:58):

Until I started to see that maybe all of this was an opportunity for me to understand humanity, to understand patients, to understand life, to understand suffering and to write about it. So this thing that we're doing now, the last five, six years is what has helped me not get PTSD from all these sick people I've been taking care of, is that they're sharing their life with me as part of a fabric. I'm stitching to share a story with other people.

 

Mel Robbins (00:35:28):

What has your patients who are near the end of their life who come to you as a cancer surgeon taught you about living life now?

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:35:40):

More time with family, pursuing things, reconciling, not reconciling. But what I'm seeing, what I've seen is that all of that is external. And in the end, if they start talking and they say, "I wish I had," then they're not coping well.

 

(00:36:09):

But some of my others, they say, "I'm glad I did their coping well." And I started to see this pattern that some of the ones doing the best, in my mind, I'm like, "Look, you're doing great compared to some of the other people I'm seeing." But their brain was stuck. Their life story was stuck with, "I wish I had. I wish I had gotten screening earlier. I wish I had gone to a different place. I wish I had not smoked. I wish I had." And then there were others who weren't doing as well. You would think the people doing well are going to be like, "I'm glad I did." But there's a mismatch there. It's a perspective on your life. It's the story you write for yourself.

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:37:22):

Well, what I'm learning and from my own life too, things haven't gone smoothly for me, but I'm glad I did drop out of college. I'm glad I did have a marriage. I'm glad I did go into cancer surgery, and it's not because all those decisions went well, man. Some of that stuff was painful. And it took effort because in those ... It's not like I'm born with this disposition. I don't like school. I didn't like reading, and I always took a negative angle on everything, and I was competitive, and I felt easily slighted. I didn't begin with this.

 

(00:38:13):

I'm no saint. This is not about that. It's that it's been just a dial. I'm turning quarter century and choosing experiences. I've built my identity. But what I want people to know is those cancer patients are not falling into like, "Oh, positive. Rosie disposition says, I'm glad I did." They're fighting for that. Their fight is not just with the cancer, but the fight is with the way we think about our world, our life, because you don't know what's around the corner. There is no moment of arrival. There's only being prepared, having some strategies, some coping skills. So we're maturing through life, and then having the ultimate, ultimate gift is to write your own story in your own mind and not by other people. And that's what they're doing. Everybody's like, "Oh, how are you doing? You have cancer." They hate it. They're like, "Oh, if another person asked me about my cancer, they wear wigs to hide all of that stuff." But in their mind when I see them, I can see the wheels turning that they're taking this imperfect life and they're like 40s and 50s with cancer. Of course, that feels like the worst luck, but they don't come in depressed. If you went into this, you would think, "Oh my God, it's got to be the saddest thing in the world." They're heroes. They come in, they come in dressed up. They're telling jokes. They've found a way with a cancer diagnosis through effort, through faith, through spirituality, through friendship. They're directing their life story this way because if you don't, you're just going to spiral. And that's the responsibility, I think, that we have in our position is to equip people with that, that there's no shortcut that it's possible. There's no secret steps. Cancer patients have taught me that it's a direction of your psychological energy to write the story of your life as you want it told, and more importantly, as you really embrace inside your own mind.

 

Mel Robbins (00:40:28):

Well, it's also, and I love that phrase, the direction of your psychological energy, both of the story that you want to be told, but also of the story you want to experience as it is unfolding. Because what you're also teaching us is that when it comes to things that are out of your control, and I think we can all agree, all of the decisions that we have made in the past are over, the cancer is here, the divorce has happened, the school has been dropped out of, the drinking for however many years, whatever it is, you cannot control what has happened, but you can control how you talk about it and how you look at it. And so even the framework that you use through your own life, you could have said, "I wish I had never dropped out of college. I wish I had not gotten a divorce.

 

(00:41:26):

I wish I had this. I wish I had that. " Or you can say, "I'm glad I did. I'm glad I did because in that reframing, I'm glad I did," you have to force yourself to see either the lesson that you learned from it or the experiences that you could have only gained in it.

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:41:47):

And it's an active process. It is your prayer. It is your cognitive behavioral therapy. It is the argument you must make to yourself. And it's, I'm glad I did and then populate that with, because of this good thing happened, then I met Mr. Jett, then I met this, then I did this.

 

Mel Robbins (00:42:05):

Or because I learned this

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:42:07):

Is my son. I learned that. So it's not just four or five words or whatever. It's an approach to thinking. And so when you talk about cognitive behavioral therapy and that cognitive restructuring to perceiving and looking at things ... So these are consistent things between Marcus Aurelius and meditations and stoicism where people are talking about you feel what you allow yourself to feel, or you have Buddha and Eastern philosophy or you have cognitive behavioral therapy where it's cognitive restructuring and monitoring. It's all the same thing. You are controlling the direction of your psychological energy. Either you are focusing on something and focus, like holding your breath is a skill that you can learn, or you are learning to be non-judgmental and let all these experiences pass you like little boats on a river and not biting on everything. For me, it was both. I was biting on too much when I was young, wilding out, reactive, impulsive. So I had to learn that there's a temporal nature. I know something's coming up that I can't deal with and I need to brace myself for it. So there are strategies directing your focus, I wish I did, and filling that bucket, and then also using that focus to actively monitor but not judge.

 

(00:43:32):

These are Buddhist and behavioral therapy techniques. So what I'm seeing is all of these different things that people are hearing in the wellness community on a practical level, my cancer patients are doing it and it all comes down to the direction of your psychological energy.

 

Mel Robbins (00:43:50):

And amputating something from your life is another tool because if you are filling your life with too many things-

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:44:00):

Absolutely.

 

Mel Robbins (00:44:00):

I always say if everything's important, nothing is. Well, that's what we talked about. Yes. Amputating something pulls the direction of your psychological energy toward the things that matter.

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:44:12):

Because your psychological energy is limited. It's not infinite and it has to be matched to your real world scenario. If everything's good, distribute all of that juice to all the good stuff, but sometimes you got to brace for the storm. When I operate, sometimes I'll come around a corner on a tumor and there'll be a blood vessel. And I know there's four more hours of work that just kicked up and there's a risk for the patient and I got to go into escape the free fall mode. So this is a very practical thing.

(00:45:08):

So that's what I do in surgery. That's what Navy SEALs do. That's what deep divers do. And that's the built-in resource. The simplest way that I had somebody explain to me is where it's like, oh, so you don't hyperventilate and panic because hyperventilation leads to panic. So at that time when you want to panic, what you're doing is first, you're directing your psychological energy to controlling a reflex that's called breathing. And so you're practicing your focus, your ability to focus. It's a skill. Attentional power is what I call it. And then number two, what you're doing is you're relying on a physiological mechanism that prevents hyperventilating and those slow, deep breaths. The whole science that I can explain is going to keep you from having hyper excitability of your limbic system. The point is, do not let yourself breathe too fast. When you blow off the carbon dioxide, you will panic, then you will not be able to deliver your maneuvers.

 

(00:46:18):

So for me in surgery or whenever you're about to go into a difficult situation, maybe you got in a fight, you got to talk to a lover about breaking up or whatever, just come in with pace breathing. And it's a few seconds in, it's a few seconds old and it's a few seconds out. Now what I will tell you is if you think you're going to do that when you get rocked, it's not there for you because you haven't been rehearsing it. You haven't made that ritual. So when I park my car in my spot, and so that's the mindset, that's the playbook for when the crisis hits.

 

Mel Robbins (00:46:52):

Well, Dr. Jandial, what I like a lot about what you said, there's a lot to unpack, is this concept of controlling the direction of your psychological energy and attentional power.

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:47:05):

Attentional power.

 

Mel Robbins (00:47:06):

And the power that you have even in the storm around you, whether that's a patient that comes to you and gets a terrifying diagnosis, or it's the email that you get that layoffs are coming and there's a meeting tomorrow, or the sound of somebody saying, "I don't love you anymore. This is over." So many moments. What I really appreciated about what you said was just simplifying it down to slow down your breathing, don't worry about technique or seconds or just in slowly, out slowly. And I also loved that you are suggesting that there are moments throughout your day that you can leverage attentional power and settle yourself and calm yourself or even create an intentional transition, whether it's before you get out of the car, you're just going to breathe in and breathe. And there's nothing going on.

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:48:06):

Five minutes.

 

Mel Robbins (00:48:07):

Yeah, that's it. There's nothing going on before you walk into the house. Before you walk into the room, you're just going to breathe in and breathe out. And what you're saying is if you start to leverage this little tool in your life before it's going sideways-

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:48:21):

It'll be there for you when shit goes sideways for real.

 

Mel Robbins (00:48:24):

Yes, because we all know the more emotional and reactive we get, the more screwed we are.

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:48:29):

Yeah. You got to practice. Game time is not going to be the only time that you want to run those drills. So it's practical. And again, cancer patients are doing it, Navy SEALs, and it's there. It's free. It's universal. It's for all of us. And just briefly, there's an anatomical connection that sort of mediates all of that. It's not woo-woo. I mean, we-

 

Mel Robbins (00:48:52):

What's happening? At the highest level, what's happening when you breathe in and you intentionally control the direction of your psychological energy by suddenly?

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:49:02):

You're releasing the pharmacy in your mind. You're releasing your own volume and it's an anxiolytic. So we always hear about, just to get a little science to you, we hear about a lot of neurotransmitters, but it's a big cocktail up there. And a lot of neurotransmitters will actually depress the electrical energy of your mind a bit. They're excitatory, but there are also some that depress it, and that's called GABA. It's used in Valium to actually break seizures out of control brain electricity. And so what is clearly demonstrated out there, whether you tickle the vagus nerve here or you control it naturally with pace breathing, you're increasing the release of GABA that's sitting there already in your brain and mind. That's the science behind it. It's not even exotic. It just hasn't been explained.

 

Mel Robbins (00:49:51):

That's super cool.

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:50:12):

They're on a mission. Many of them have children. They're not even thinking about a cure. They have said to me, and it's been my experience. I understand a lot of cancer surgeons out there, doctors, a lot of patients. I'm just telling you what I'm seeing, their prayer is just that they make it to where the kids finish high school and get out of the home because they don't want their children to see their mom pass away while they're in high school. It's a specific finish line that they're going for. You would think they want to cure. They're just like, "This is what I really need." The older ones, when the kids have moved on and they've got their own lives and they forget to call on Mother's Day or Father's Day and you have that fuss, whatever, their perspective is more that, again, when it didn't hurt anybody, that they wish they would've been more bold with their hunches and their instinct that, "Maybe I should change my direction.

 

(00:51:13):

Maybe this isn't working for me. " All those maybes that were almost like a fifty fifty or a 60 / 40, not that it's a choice because it's unclear. "Do you want to win the lottery? No choice. Thanks, I'll take it. "It's not choices are because it's a crossroads and it was unclear. So it's not so much the amputation that I talked about because that's more of crisis choices.

 

(00:51:39):

It's more of the subtle meandering through life. "Maybe I should have lived here rather than there. Maybe I should have done this rather than that. " They felt like they could have been more bold in pursuing their hunches and their instincts. They never say, "Ooh, I'm glad I was practical and conservative." I mean, maybe not never, but you know what I'm saying though.

 

Mel Robbins (00:52:02):

I know what you're saying.

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:52:03):

Because then they look back and they say it's a short run. I should have taken a few more chances as long as they're not hurting other people or gambling it all away. But it's the subtle navigation in their life. At all the pivots, they wish they would've been a little bit more emphatic and bold.That's what I'm seeing.

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:52:47):

That if you find yourself in the most trying and difficult situation, you're not alone. The person next to you may not have been there, but they will in the future. And the person next to you might look like they're coping, but they could have endured that in the past and that our struggles and our triumph at the level of the brain are quite similar. So you're not alone and there are resources for you to get through this with support, with love, with direction, but ultimately is those private moments in your life that you only share with yourself that you need to prioritize.

 

Mel Robbins (00:53:32):

I would imagine that given how much surgery you do, how many patients you've treated with cancer, that you've just seen extraordinary resilience. What have you learned about resilience and that human beings are so many times just so much stronger than they think they are?

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:53:55):

So it's a word that's been bugging me for a long time because it's now thrown off. It's just thrown around like, "I don't even know what it means anymore."

 

Mel Robbins (00:54:05):

What does resilience mean to you?

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:54:06):

Well, there's an engineering definition, which is the ability to return from deformation or like a bridge shifts and it comes back. Then there's a psychological definition that's more appropriate and that's the resilience doesn't mean just coming back to what you were. It means coming back stronger, more fortified. And so in the psychological sense, there are two types of resilience and they're systemic and processive. Systemic means what you're bringing to the fight because of all those, the cyclical nature of crisis and springtime, crisis and growth, struggle and growth that you banked, that you've rehearsed your skills on. So now you're bringing something to the next fight, the next struggle. But then there is also a processive resilience, which is what the fight brings out in you.

 

(00:55:10):

They're not tough until they get hit. They're not tough and resilient until they face the cancer diagnosis. And I've seen that you think people are like, "Oh, they're going to fall apart inside your mind." And the crisis brings out something in them. I like to feel like that's what happened in my life at age 19. And that's a tricky thing to say because I don't want cancer. I don't want these things. None of my patients do, but it's what you bring the fight, but if you're not doing well, this fight is training you. So you're not lost no matter how you're dealing with your life. Either you're practicing and feeling good about coping or, "Hey, this is rocking your world and teaching you a lot that's going to prepare you for what's coming up."

 

Mel Robbins (00:55:57):

Dr. Jandial, what are the best recoveries that you've seen in terms of the things that they have in common, or even if it's not a recovery, the best meeting of the moment?

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:56:10):

So sometimes cancers and injury will paralyze. Like Christopher Reid, they'll paralyze patients or sometimes their legs are paralyzed, but they have their arms because the injuries around their belly button and the brain can't talk to the legs and the legs can't send sensation up to the brain. And some of those injuries are either total and there's no chance or some are partial. They've got flicker of movement. And the lesson there for patients and people is it's in the first three months that they get the bulk of their function back. The ones that get it back the most are the ones that are sitting there trying to move their leg and the leg isn't moving. They are sending electrical signals through the damaged spinal cord, landing on the muscles ready to go. It's just not getting the spark. So they are directing their psychological energy towards moving a leg that won't listen and they do it and they do it and they do it and there's nobody there.

 

(00:57:15):

It's not when physical therapy comes in because I see them in gaps and all of a sudden they're coming back with movement and it's all of that work they did when they saw no result. Just imagine just trying to flicker your foot and it doesn't move. And you're still trying. You're still trying. You're still trying. So the recoveries that impress me are not biological. And I always tell them, "You're training for the Olympics. This is bootcamp. This is the window to go for it. Things won't look like they're moving, but the continued effort is the only way you will spring back to life in your legs." And so those are the kind of things I wish people would know is there's a lot out there. And the inspiring thing is if the injured brain can heal, and I don't mean heal like some magical thing, and it doesn't regrow.

 

(00:58:10):

It's not liver, you don't pop up a new part of your brain, but if the injured brain can recover, what about our healthy brain?

Dr. Rahul Jandial (00:58:41):

Well, I think we can go backwards. We can talk about it in the brain and therefore life. Sometimes children will have seizures so ferocious from both sides that they have to be on a ventilator, otherwise they can't live. And the only option exhausted through everything else is to remove nearly half of their brain. It's called, people can look it up. It's a hemispherectomy. And usually it's on the right side because language is on the left. So you take the right side, the surgery is done, they're able to wake up, but because you took the right side, the left arm and left leg is out. It's paralyzed. And then it's a large part of the brain that you've removed, removing a hemisphere.

 

(00:59:27):

And this has been going on for a long time. So I'm bringing insights from all different facets of my life and things that I'm reading. Then a couple of years later, an extreme example to set the precedent, they'll come back walking. And it happens in children, more difficult in adults. And what's interesting there is when you take a brain scan, it's hollow. The part that you cut out, it just filled with brain fluid. It didn't grow back. The leftover neurons Repurposed. The dancer became the soldier. You didn't grow. So I always get thrown off when people are like, rewire plastic. I don't understand what that means because these kids, they don't regrow that part we took out. It stays hollow. What's left over does a new job, takes on new functions and such. And the way that happens is with this thing called myelination. So when we're going to get into that, how change happens is if you do something once, the way it works is why change for that?

 

(01:00:45):

Because it's unlikely to happen again. But the constant direction of psychological and energy will make the original effort will not have to be as strong once you deposit myelin. Just stay with me for a little bit. So the neurons are like molecular microscopic jellyfish. They're spraying electricity at each other. And the way, once you think a certain way, once you behave a certain way to reduce the energy usage, they'll start wrapping omega-3s as fatty sheets like insulation around the tentacles. Okay. So think of it as like if you keep going down the same groove from the top of a mountain and you tend to fall down that groove, well, there's a cellular basis for that. And the brain will do that as a response because it wants to now have this action occur without using up so much fuel, efficiency, neural efficiency. Otherwise, well, we're using up so much fuel just to tie our shoelaces.

 

(01:01:57):

At some point you want to tie your shoelaces.

 

Mel Robbins (01:01:59):

Not really think about it. Yes.

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (01:02:00):

And when people get Alzheimer's, they can still tie their shoe laces. They can still ride a bike because it was efficiently deposited. So change takes constant, but moderate effort. It's not like one big effort. It's not 10 hours to throw on the baseball to learn it. It's better to do 15 minutes a day. And those are the molecular cues for the omega-3 fatty acids that we all want to eat from salmon and brain diet to take the positive habits that you've built and make them more likely to occur, to shift from the bad grooves down the mountain to the new grooves that you've made. That shift takes effort, but it's not lifelong effort. You put in a hard couple of months to make that change. Now that change gets easier to do. Then you take on another change, you do another minus one plus one, like we talked about incrementally.

 

Mel Robbins (01:02:55):

What's one big epiphany from all the brain surgeries that you've done that has changed the way you see human possibility?

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (01:03:04):

I will tell you the recently, it's not from brain surgery. When your heart stops beating, there's still another couple of minutes where your brain is sparking electricity, spraying neurotransmitters. It's still going. That last surge gives it enough glucose and oxygen. And when your heart stops, after cardiac death, there is not electrical silence in the brain. And those one or two minutes, the brain isn't whimpering like ... The last thing the brain will do is launch all of its electricity and chemicals in a giant salvo fireworks and then stop. So it's not like other organs where they go down ... It's not like decremental. Slowly the heart stops beating. Slowly the liver changes color. The brain, when it gets its last pulse of blood, will just fire off. And a lot of that electricity looks like dreaming and expansive memories and that sort of things. And that might explain why if those people come back, they all share the same film strip of their life.

 

(01:04:19):

That's cool. And that's a measurement. That's not my opinion.

 

Mel Robbins (01:04:23):

That's super cool.

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (01:04:24):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (01:04:24):

That's super cool. I would love to talk more about some of the things that you personally do every single day. You are a cancer surgeon. You are a father of three adult boys. You've had so many just unbelievable twists and turns to your life. You're one of the most decorated cancer surgeons around. What are the most important daily rituals to you that really help you? Or what's the single most important daily ritual that you have?

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (01:05:01):

The single most important daily ritual I have is that at several times in the day, I rehearse my attentional focus by pacing my breathing. It trains my mind to focus and it trains me to get ready for that what's around the corner. Because when it arrives, when crisis arrives, it's not when you really want to pull something out of your rusty toolkit. You want to have that sharpened. And why I think that's important is when I can cultivate my attentional power, then that attentional power is useful for other things. And I'm able to shift it. When I'm driving, I'm like, okay, I'm thinking about my next book. I'm going to listen to some music and a rock out a little bit. I'm going to deliver attention to this. So that five minutes of directing my attention, pacing my breathing keeps the reins on where my mind is headed, and that way I can deploy it in a strategic fashion.

 

Mel Robbins (01:06:00):

I want to have you walk me and the person that's listening or watching right now through how we could start this five-minute practice ourselves, because it makes a lot of sense to me that I think most of us go through life probably on autopilot, feeling super distracted, our attention pulled all over the place, putting fires out. How do we implement this today? What do we do?

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (01:06:22):

Step one, try. Step two, it doesn't have to be some private place because a lot of your crises and a lot of your attention is stolen when things are wild. It's not going to be in a yoga studio or in a quiet room. So randomly, at times during the day where you think you're stressed out or about to be stressed out or walking into a stressful situation, just sort of set a timer in your mind. It could be a song. I like to go for ... There's a certain song I use, or it could be a timer on your phone. And just through your nose, it doesn't have to be one nostril. I mean, all of that, it's all going in the same place. And through your nose, just try to breathe in for three, four seconds, hold for a few seconds, and then slowly exhale, and then pause for a second, and then do that again.

 

(01:07:13):

And see if you can get 10 of those, see if you get 20 of those. And if you're in public and stuff and you don't want people to know you're doing that in surgery, because my mask will fog up if I use my mouth. I wrote about that. In the beginning when I was learning, I was like ... And we wear these glasses that were magnifying glass. It's like fogging up and the nurses would tease me. They're like, "Hey, you freaking out over there?" I was like, "No, I'm not. " So I only use my nose. And what I'm trying to tell you is this overlaps with Buddhist meditation, pace breathing, directing ... You have to try. You're directing your attention to do this. You're pulling your attention from something that's been spiraling and driving you crazy. So already you're redirecting your psychological energy to something positive.

 

(01:08:01):

And so the attentional power is really a skill you can cultivate. People can learn to hold their breath. You can learn to hold your attention.

 

Mel Robbins (01:08:10):

I want to make sure that you got that. And so I'm going to translate it. And if I miss something, you tell me. Okay? So basically it's as simple as it sounds. Practicing and building the skill of attentional power is simply at any moment, and you could do it right now. You could do it sitting in your car, you could do it lying in bed in the morning, you could do it sitting at your desk, you could do it before you walk into a room. Attentional power is bringing your attention to your breathing. And you just recommend in through the nose.

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (01:08:44):

Out through hold, out through the nose.

 

Mel Robbins (01:08:46):

Out through the nose.

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (01:08:47):

It's not as easy as you think. When I first started, four breaths later, I'm like, do something. So that is what-

 

Mel Robbins (01:08:54):

Try 10. Try 10, you're saying. Try to do it 10 times.You could do it standing in line at the grocery store.

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (01:09:00):

Yeah. Especially standing in line in the grocery store or whatever it is.

 

Mel Robbins (01:09:03):

But here's what you're going to notice is that as you're standing in line at the grocery store and like, okay, I'm going to practice attentional power since I just heard this and I'm not going to look at my phone. I'm just going to practice attentional power. You can only pay attention to one thing at a time. And so by focusing on your breathing in, pause, out, pause, in pause, this is how you build the skill.

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (01:09:27):

This is how you ... And controlling your attention is a part of meditative practices from Eastern philosophy. It's a part of when people say, "Get therapy." When you see your therapist and they talk about cognitive behavioral therapy, you have to divert your attention to argue against the life narrative you're writing. You have to divert your attention to do non-judgmental monitoring, they call it. Don't react, don't react. All of it takes attention. And so this skill, pushups will help you open a heavy door, focusing on your breathing like this and your private moments during the day will help you with all of the other things you're trying to do because it harnesses your attention.

 

Mel Robbins (01:10:06):

Could you speak directly to the person who's with us right now who's going through an extraordinarily difficult moment? So they're in the crisis mode. Dr. Jandial, what do you want them to know?

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (01:10:22):

You're not alone. Crisis hits our brains and minds in a similar way, and there are approaches to dealing with crisis that we've talked about today in the moment, as well as when you go home, set your guardrails. Don't make a decision tonight in crisis that you can't take back. And then the next day is when you have to sort of turn to others to come up with a plan to get through this difficult moment.

 

Mel Robbins (01:10:56):

How has what you do for a living and the patients that you've treated changed you?

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (01:11:06):

I'm a lot less judgmental. When you're younger, when you place your emotions on other people, you think you know what other people are thinking or you feel underestimated and all of that stuff. And it just feels foolish and immature to me now because after this many patients and all of their stories, what I've seen is that don't judge the rich, don't judge the poor. You don't know what they're going through. You don't know what's happening in their lives. They're in line with you next to you, you don't know. Cancer patients have taught me that. It's not what you think when you care for them because a lot of times they don't share. A lot of times they keep it inside. And I just think somebody on the freeway is probably short with them or something and they have no idea they're just driving home right now after hearing they got cancer.

 

Mel Robbins (01:12:05):

If you had to just distill everything that you've shared with us today from this playbook, the mindset frameworks, the attentional power, directing your psychological energy, some of the real truths about life into the most important takeaway for the person who's listening, what would it be?

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (01:12:34):

That there is no final moment of arrival. This life is not linear. It's cyclical. And in the springtime of your day or your life, relish it, enjoy it. And during the difficult times, there are strategies and approaches that can help you cope and help you survive. It's not you alone in the dark trying to grab for a life vest. People have been here and they've left their mark by guiding us on how to deal with that as best as we can.

 

Mel Robbins (01:13:14):

Well, I really appreciate you leaving your mark. Thank you, Mel. And guiding us in an extraordinary way. Dr. Jandial, what are your parting words?

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (01:13:28):

Life is beautiful because it's difficult. It's nothing guaranteed, nothing promised. Make the run you can. Relish the good times too. That's also a life skill.

 

Mel Robbins (01:13:42):

Yes. Well, the good times are the average Tuesday. If you can't enjoy an average Tuesday, then you miss the good times.

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (01:13:49):

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (01:13:50):

Well, this was extraordinary. And I'm going to borrow from one of your really powerful frameworks and say, "I am glad you did get on a plane and you did come here and you shared all this because I know that my life will be forever change and I know that I speak on behalf of the person that's with us and everybody they share it with. Their lives will be changed too."

 

Dr. Rahul Jandial (01:14:18):

Yeah, I'm glad I did too. Thank you, Mel.

 

Mel Robbins (01:14:20):

Thank you. And thank you for taking the time. You put your attentional power to something that is going to help you create a better life. There is no doubt if you take anything from this and apply it, and I hope you share it with people that you care about, you will be able to manage the very difficult seasons of your life and you will be glad that you did. Alrighty. In case nobody else tells you, I want to be sure to tell you as your friend that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And when you do, I know you'll be glad that you did. I'll welcome you into the very next episode, the moment you hit play. I'll see you there. And thank you for watching all the way to the end.

 

(01:15:03):

Wasn't Dr. Jandial extraordinary? Of course he was. And so are you for spending time watching something on YouTube that's helping you improve your life instead of escaping your life. Thank you also for sharing this with people in your life because I know they're going to see this as an incredible gift and resource that you're giving to them. And finally, if that subscribe button is lit up, would you please hit subscribe? It's one way that you can say to me and the team here at the Mel Robbins Podcast and to Dr. Jandial, thank you. Thank you for showing up here on YouTube with these extraordinary episodes and world-renowned experts for free. Thank you for doing such hard work to help me improve my life. I really appreciate it. Thank you for doing that. All right. I know you want to watch another video and you're going to love this one and I will welcome you in the moment you hit play.