RWL054 Unlocking Latent Potential: Transforming Stress into Resilience with Dr. K

Dr. K

Alex Wilson-Campbell

0:00

Hello everybody. It's Alex from Remote Work Life. I'm here today with a very important guest. I'm here with Dr Karthik Ramanen Now Dr Karthik Ramanen, also known as Dr K. He helps high-achieving professionals and entrepreneurs who suffer with constant stress. Now Dr K will help you end your burnout so that you can reclaim your energy and passion for life, and the Dr K show, which airs each week. He will discuss topics for high achieving professionals and entrepreneurs to end burnout and build emotional health and, as you can hear, this is why I said at the top show it's a very important topic and Dr K is a very important guest. So, dr K, I just wanted to say thank you for joining me today and you're very welcome.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

0:57

Oh, thank you for having me. It's you know you reach out to me on LinkedIn. We connected on Instagram. We talked a little bit and said I think we have a lot in common, both in terms of our past, which we'll get into, so I'm very honored to be here.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

1:23

It's probably affecting quite a lot of people and I think so we can start the year off on a good footing. I think it's important to have the right kind of person, the right kind of vibe, the right kind of energy, the right kind of mindset. So, dr K, I'm just so glad you were able to join me today and talking about how we've got, I suppose, that synergy in terms of our thought processes. Um, I want to know a little bit about you. How did you come to be the emotional health mentor that you are today?

Dr Karthik Ramanen

1:57

Yeah, it's a. It's an interesting journey. So, um, you know, we, I, I I started, uh, you know, doing my undergraduate career at Cornell University here in the US. I studied applied economics and management and biological sciences. I was a double major and found myself after that I was thinking about going into the biotech industry and that sort of thing and eventually just found myself actually leaving the biology at the time. Eventually, I just found myself actually leaving the biology at the time and I went to work at Wall Street, at Goldman Sachs, back in 2005. And spent the next eight years there, had a very good career, was able to contribute quite a bit and move up, but it all did come at a little bit of a cost and move up, but it all did come at a little bit of a cost.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

2:47

Um, as it was, you know, I went into, you know, past my, my undergraduate career. I was a little bit unhealthy, uh, on physically larger and everything else, and, um, and the stress of working the very long hours, uh, in any corporate environment, right, uh, and especially in, and especially among other high achievers where we're really trying to deliver a lot of value to our clients and everything else. And, of course, we had 2008 and the recession and all the challenges that came from that. So to take care of myself was not a priority and it was really just try to do the best we can keep our head above water in some cases and just know, try to do the best we can keep our head above water in some cases and just again, try to do the best we can for our clients at the time. And so, like I said, you know I was able to get the promotions and all that other stuff and think and I found myself at a point a little bit further along a few years down the road in my career there, at a place where I was able to pay off my undergraduate student debt. I was able to pay off my parents' credit card debt and I was able to do more for charity and sponsor families in a way that I never thought I could in my late 20s. I mean it was really fulfilling in that respect.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

4:00

But I remember one day, specifically, I was standing at the window of my wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling window of this apartment, looking over the New Jersey horizon. There's not a single building of that height on that 30th floor. That sky rise in my view. So I got this clear, beautiful view of the New Jersey horizon, literally feeling on top of the world in terms of the view and, like I said, it was, you know, had all those fulfilling things with, uh with.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

4:29

But I was able to do because of my career, except I had the sinking, painful feeling that I hated the man in the mirror. I absolutely had, even though I was it was high achieving on the outside. Everybody, you know, saw me a certain way and I was able to perform well, uh, on the inside. Nobody knew just how much confidence I lacked, how much I uh just dreaded being seen, uh, dreaded, just feeling shameful, in part because, again, I was 250 pounds at the time. I was just unhealthy, unhappy, very lonely, dating wasn't going well and nobody knew what was going on in my life and it was just at that point where I things were not. I realized that just because it looks good on the outside, it's more important for it to be in integrity on the inside.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

5:28

And, as fate would have it, I met up with my sister at one point and then three months later and in that three months she had lost 30 pounds and her cystic acne had cleared up and she looked incredible, and I was just at one of those rock bottom points, and I know rock bottom doesn't sound like a very good place, but the truth is and I've found this out multiple times in my life, this being one of them that rock bottom is a beautiful place, because this is a place where we are willing to do anything. We're willing to do the things that we would not be willing to do otherwise. Right, and I was just at one of those points. I asked her so what did you do? You look great. And she said I've just been eating a raw, plant-based diet. Like what do you mean? Raw plant-based? What does that mean? And she said I've just been eating fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds just as they're found in nature, uncooked, you know, apple off the tree, that sort of thing. And I was like what? That sounds absolutely crazy. Fine, I'll try it. I had nothing to lose. When we have not, when we feel we have nothing to lose, we are willing to do the most incredible things.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

6:33

And within three, I eased myself into it and within three weeks, I was at the lowest weight I'd ever been as an adult. And that's when something clicked in my head and I said wait a second. That's when something clicked in my head and I said, wait a second. What if I can have the body I thought I never could have? What if I can have the physical attractiveness that I never thought I would have? What if it is possible? What if I could be different?

Dr Karthik Ramanen

6:59

And I didn't know what it looked like. I didn't put any expectations on myself. I just started eating this way. I started getting healthier and slowly people started noticing at the office and and, uh, I would get people asking me hey, cartha, can you help me? Uh, lose a few pounds here before this wedding I got to go to and that sort of thing, and I just give them recipes and whatnot. And then the craziest things happen. I saw type two diabetes go away, hypertension cholesterol, type two diabetes go away, hypertension cholesterol, and I thought, okay, I don't know what I'm doing, but their lives are transforming.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

7:31

My life is transforming. I don't know what this is, but I got to do this for my career, right, and as I just went down this journey ended up losing a hundred pounds and discovering, hey, there's, there's purpose in this. So I I did some research and I found out about this, uh, form of medicine called naturopathic medicine that we're licensed in, you know, almost half the States here in the United States and, uh, you know, it's a. It's a form of medicine that that basically works with the body's ability to heal itself. So we're functionally looking at hormone levels. We're looking at different ways in which nutrition affects how we the balance again in hormones, balance in metabolism, everything else. How does nutrition affect the prevalence of chronic diseases, everything else that I started researching and I said, okay, you know what, I don't want to go back to school.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

8:32

I was going to be 30 pretty soon at that time and I'm like I don't want to go back to school. But I called up my sister and I said what do you think if I make sure you know the prerequisites, all that stuff, and and apply and see if I can, I can go back to medical school for this and she's, you know, the one of the best naturopathic schools in the country is right next to where I live now in Arizona. I was like what, no way. So I decided I'm going to move from New York to Arizona and I'm going to leave my career and it was lucrative career. But I said this is, this is where I need to be, this is where I'm being called. So I did that and I remember on the plane I'm on the plane for, you know, the, my, the, the, the movers have taken all my boxes. I just got my carry on and I'm flying and I'm on the plane, I'm looking out, literally leaving my old life behind me, right, and embarking in this new, healthy life, new career, coming up. And I remember on the plane thinking, oh my goodness, nobody knows me in Arizona. Nobody knows me. This is an opportunity for me to show up as this new version of myself and see what kind of impact I can make. So I took out a sheet of paper and a pen and I just started writing.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

9:46

What does Dr K of the future look like? How does he think? How does he eat? How does he treat others? How does he treat himself? What are his morning routines? What are his evening routines. You know what books does he read? Does he even read books?

Dr Karthik Ramanen

9:58

I didn't really read any books at the time. I started reading like crazy, right. So all these things, and I just started. I had that list and then I started implementing those things right away, as if I already was Dr K of the future, and in doing so, I went to medical school and I showed up as a completely different guy, showed up as somebody that I had never been before, a leader, somebody that took chances, stepped out of my comfort zone over and over, and in the process, I also happened to attract someone in my class who is now my wife, because, you know, I wasn't looking for romance, right, I was truly working on myself. But I became somebody that became magnetic to her and she became magnetic to me, right, and that was that was really. It started as friendship and obviously evolved to so much more. It taught me so much about anything is possible in our life if we really commit to.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

10:59

Yes, for me, the catalyst was nutrition, but ultimately it was the change up here. It was the commitment to emotional health that really drove a drastic change, and then, in the years that followed, got my doctorate in naturopathic medicine, got my licensure and everything else. And, as of last year, I really started to say, hey, you know, I can work with a patient one on one and we can come up with can come up with a perfect treatment panel. Let's say it's type 2 diabetes, we can work through that nutrition mindset, everything else. I come back a month later and I haven't done anything. So I realized, okay, the magic for a lot of people is probably not in the doctor's visit itself. Maybe the magic is in between the visits.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

11:47

What if I could help people here?

Dr Karthik Ramanen

11:49

What if I could help people develop strong emotional health so that they can be resilient right To the stressors of life that come up, so that we can stay committed to the things that we believe in, stay committed to improving our health, our relationships, our relationships, our careers, everything else, right.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

12:07

So I decided how could I go about doing that? And I thought about well, why don't I shift my focus toward that educational component of it? Right, whether it's creating content online, uh doing, uh doing online workshops, uh, workshops over the course, depending on the topic, up to even 90-day workshops, so that we can really build, with accountability, how to grow into the person that we wish to be, and that's how the Emotional Health Mentor came to be, and that's what I do today, absolutely, and this is all because I'm I'm living proof that the way that things used to be is not the way that things have to be, and it's really up to us to take charge of our life and get the resources and the help that we need in order to live the life that we know we want no, it sounds good and you've just really made a turnaround in terms of your life I guess your entire life by the sounds of it.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

13:14

And yeah, you found your calling. You're on your way in terms of using all the information that you gathered about your career and the things that didn't work, and now you've translated that into your business all the information that you you gathered about your career and the things that didn't work, and now you've translated that into to your business and helping other people, which I think is like it's the ultimate in terms of, uh, purpose. And so tell us about your business and I mean, I did give some hints in the um introduction, but who do you serve and why is your service so important?

Dr Karthik Ramanen

13:47

well, you know it's uh. Like I said, I come from whatever you want to call a high achieving background, whether it's ivy league, the university, wall street, medical school. I completely understand the mentality of over achieving perfectionism, dealing with imposter syndrome and acting through it anyway. All of those challenges, hoping that at a certain level achievement, we can feel good about ourselves, and knowing that that day never comes. That day never comes because you can't out achieve self-criticism, you can't outachieve burnout, you have to really, you know, go about it in a different way. The way I explain it is this right.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

14:32

So imagine you're from a personal development standpoint. You're a block of ice at zero degrees. All you want to do is to get to 32 degrees. 32 degrees, melt and become free-flowing water, energetic, able to adapt, powerful, loving. Right. That's the person you want to be.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

14:52

So, at zero degrees, you start to read the books, you'll listen to podcasts like ours. Right, you start to go to seminars. Maybe you go to therapy, maybe you go to a functional medicine or a naturopathic doctor, get your hormone levels checked everything. You get better and better and better and healthier and happier. Right, five degrees, 10 degrees, 15 degrees, somewhere around 20 degrees, 25 degrees. You look at yourself and you say I'm still a block of ice.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

15:20

Has anything really changed? I go to a seminar, I get really excited for two weeks and then all of a sudden it's back to before. I don't feel like I'm really changing. But really, is it that one degree from 31 degrees to 32, that makes the state change from ice to water? It's not. It's the latent potential energy that's been changing all along the way. It's just that we haven't gotten to that breakthrough point yet. All along the way is just that we haven't gotten to that breakthrough point yet. But what people don't realize is that the work that it takes to go from 25 degrees to 32 degrees Fahrenheit is not the same that it takes to go from zero degrees to 25 degrees, and as our emotional health mentor, I help people go from 25 to 32.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

16:01

Wow and I love the analogy. I love it. Wow and I love the analogy, I love it. Um. And actually one thing, one thing I wanted to ask before we we get into the, because we're going to talk a bit about, a bit about emotional resilience, but if, if somebody is um, I guess, recognizes any of the, the symptoms that that you've described, what I mean, other than obviously getting in touch with you, uh, I'm obviously going to leave your details in the show notes as well. What, what was? I mean, you had your sister um and you had a. You had somebody there in front of you as an example. What, what would, what would you advise somebody do? Because I think there's lots, of, lots of people who may not know what step to take next in terms of getting the help that they need.

Building Emotional Resilience

Dr Karthik Ramanen

16:50

Yeah, it's a lot of. It is circumstantial, right, like I fell into so much good fortune along the way. But the truth is that if we are open to accepting the good fortune that does come our way and acting upon it, it doesn't become good fortune until we act upon it. Right, but in terms of you know, if you wanted to change, one aspect that can have the greatest, it's the greatest lever toward change, is your environment. It's your environment.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

17:19

You know, we've heard all the time, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

17:23

You're the five average of the five ideas that you spend the most time with. If you find that the people around you are adding stress, are adding complications, adding challenges, if the people around you do not inspire you through their own actions right to grow and do great things for other people and live a life of purpose, if you don't have those type of people around you, the easiest way to bring that into your life is to find those people and spend a little less time with the ones who drain you. And so that's in some listen, there's going to be people that we're with that, um, you know we can't cut them out of our lives, but there is. You can always inspire them to grow. It could take time, could take a lot of time by your own example. So it's just super, super important to spend your time, fill your mind with ideas, spend your time with people that inspire you to grow. Um, because ultimately we are a social species. We do adapt and evolve with each other, and having the right people around you makes all the difference.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

18:32

Yeah, I second that. I love that, and I mean, in the meantime, though, I think it's important. I think we're going to be talking about emotional resilience today, and especially as we're into a fresh start it's a new year ahead and we're looking towards not only what you've just suggested in terms of probably looking at looking at networks, understanding who we can turn to who is probably not so effective in terms of helping us out, you know, in a way, sweeping the cobwebs away for for a new beginning, almost for the for the year ahead, and one of the things that you you are great with is is helping people to build emotional resilience. Um, but there may be some people out there who may not know necessarily what it is. Obviously, emotional resilience, resilience is all about making yourself become more resilient. But how do you? What is emotional resilience and why is that important?

Dr Karthik Ramanen

19:32

so I'm gonna zoom out, before I answer that question, to the overall topic of emotional health. So the term of emotional health and part of emotional health is emotional resilience. So emotional health is a person's ability to identify, process, act upon feelings in specific circumstances and over the course of time, and it incorporates emotional intelligence and what we're talking about here, emotional resilience. So quickly, emotional intelligence is your awareness of your own emotional state, the capacity to understand someone else's uh, emotional state, especially in response to you know external things, external stimuli that happen in our life. So have you ever been around somebody who, especially in the face of immediate adversity, they simply just know how to carry themselves in that moment. They know how to interact with others. They just have that sense of self and that sense of someone else to be able to act appropriately for that situation. Emotional intelligence is unbelievably important for leaders. You know, for leadership because so much of it. It's not even treat others how you want to be treated, it's treat others how they expect you to treat them right. Obviously, there's ways of adjusting and according so that you move forward as an organization, but ultimately, emotional intelligence, you have to be in tune with yourself before you can ever understand someone else.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

21:01

The other part of emotional health is emotional resilience. So this is the ability to adjust to circumstances, to recover from emotional setback. You know how, how well do we respond to bad news when we get it. How long does it take? Are we the type of person that's going to sit and dwell on something terrible that happened and continue to live that misery, that tragedy, take on that victim mentality? Or do setbacks and acute stress send us down a dark road that we're not able to recover from? Or is it something where we can take bad news? You know we'll grieve it for a certain amount of time. If it's a significant news, it might take a longer time when when the pandemic hit in 2020. Even for me it took. There were days where I just I recognized what was happening. It's like those questions start coming up, like is life ever going to go back to the way it was? Can we ever enjoy a concert again or a sporting event? And those types of questions start coming up and it's okay to start to grieve those moments, right. But emotional resilience is being able to get back up and figure out how to handle it. So emotional resilience is being able to get back up and figure out how to handle it.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

22:14

So emotional resilience is being able to process those emotions, and this is where it's so important, because most people don't process. Most people, their coping mechanism is to avoid. You either avoid through putting your head in the sand that was me a lot of the time. Avoid through could be alcohol, could be drugs, could be overeating that was me a lot of the time. Avoid through could be alcohol, could be drugs, could be overeating that was also me, right, and so to not be able to process emotions leads to lack of emotional resilience, because once you've processed an emotion, then you can have the clarity to say, okay, what are the things that I can control.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

22:53

Then you can have the clarity to say, okay, what are the things that I can control, what are the things that I cannot control? Let me focus on the things that I can control. So what does that end up looking like? It also ends up looking like how do I avoid situations that will put me in a negative headspace, right? So emotional resilience is about as much prevention as it is processing and moving forward. So it's really about how quickly can you return to your fully functioning state of mind.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

23:21

No, it sounds good and you've kind of alluded to a few, I guess, influences on you know, emotional resilience. Are there any that perhaps that you didn't experience yourself, that might? You know, some of our audience might recognize any typical triggers. I guess you might say oh, absolutely.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

23:43

I mean. So much of it is based on our own individual past, how we were raised, the ideas that we were raised with, the beliefs about ourselves. Trauma, right, and sometimes trauma is significant trauma like we talk about and that unfortunately a lot of people go through abuse or loss, significant loss, when they're children. Sometimes trauma is not even. Sometimes, you know, I talk to a lot of people so my clients were like I didn't have those challenges growing up, right, I didn't have those problems, those traumas when I was a kid. But I still can't shake the idea that I had a poor childhood. I still can't shake the idea, you know, that negativity toward themselves. So, again, high achieving people, by the way, very high achieving. You wouldn't know it necessarily talking to them, you know initially, but so, yeah, trauma has a big part of it. But it's just those experiences, because sometimes you know it could have been as simple. As you know you're seven years old, parent comes back after a long day and you know, maybe they're tired. They say something innocently, but for a child that can translate not into, you know, parent had a rough day, could translate into I am NOT enough, they don't want to spend time with me. And then as we grow up, those seeds start growing into full trees, these full, full belief patterns of I'm not enough, I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not good looking enough, I'm not fit enough, I'm not healthy enough, I'm not capable enough, fill in the blank. And some people cope with that over the course of time by outachieving. It's like I'm not good, you said I'm not good enough, I'm going to, I'm going to show you, and they just outachieving. It's like I'm not good, you said I'm not good enough, I'm going to, I'm going to show you, and they just outachieve. And ultimately they don't even remember how the idea came into their head. Somebody else's voice became their own and running from that negativity inside our head saying we're not good enough, so, but ultimately no level of achievement erases that, that negative voice. So that influences emotional, but really it's the environment all along. Like where did we? Who did we grow up around? Who are the good influences around us?

Developing Coping Skills and Emotional Support

Dr Karthik Ramanen

25:59

Did we learn coping skills at a young age or did we not? Most people don't, unfortunately. I wish. If there's one thing that I wish we could add to curriculums in school, it would be well two things. One personal finance super important Number two. Actually, I guess number two would be personal finance. Number one would be coping skills, because if we could develop strong coping skills when we're younger, it would give us so much of a better chance to move through life with much more resilience, so that when it's not a matter of if we get knocked down, we all get knocked down.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

26:35

Life happens, things happen, we experience loss, we experience accidents, the things that blindside us, terrible things, right? Or it could be something that was not even in our direct life. Right, the pandemic affected all of us, right. Initially it affected all of us and then, as time went on, it affected some of us individually as well, whether it was family members, whether it was ourselves, right. But initially, when you know, for a lot of people in the lockdowns first hit and everything else it was you know we hadn't come in contact with it ourselves or we didn't even know anybody who did. But now, all of a sudden, life as we know it has changed. Coping skills, grieving like these are really, really important to be able to go through and it's really the foundation for emotional resilience. But there are more things to it and we'll talk about here pretty soon when we talk about tips and whatnot, about the five pillars of emotional health not excellent.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

27:36

I love that. And talking about coping skills, there's actually a couple of questions to that, because it's it's phenomenal, isn't it? The the especially as a child. I'm a gen xer, so growing up, you know up, if I was going through a rough time, either at school or sometimes even my family members, they'd just say come on, stiff up a lip and you'll get through it. Try to build your own sort of um shield your own resilience in that way. You try and I guess, in a way, trying to develop your own coping strategies, your own coping skills, as you were saying.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

28:22

But some, I mean, I don't think that is is enough. It's unlike you said, it's something that probably should be well, certainly should be taught in schools. What you're finding now actually is, I don't know to what level this is happening, but there are businesses, and I don't know if it's specifically or especially remote businesses, but I know a lot of leaders within remote businesses are taking on coaches to help their teams to actually cope with certain scenarios, certain situations, and so that they get the support that they need. And it's not just a matter of you know, deal with it, you know, stiff off, pull it, that kind of thing. So the question I wanted to ask really is how do you develop those coping skills and what are they?

Dr Karthik Ramanen

29:17

Yeah, it's, you know. I think it all boils down. It starts with communication because, um, you know, I I certainly experienced the much, much of what you were just talking about to uh, tough it up, toughen up, be a man. That's a common one right, especially for us guys be a man, but that is a coping skill.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

29:44

That is one coping skill is to have that tough shield, that exterior, so that when things happen, you do have the ability to just not be swayed so quickly by the wind that is blowing at you, right? So that is a skill. However, if that's the only skill in your toolbox, it doesn't work all the time. Another skill and this is where the part that I think is really lost is just the ability to talk through challenges right, to express how we are feeling and to have somebody on the other end who is a good listener, who will not judge you as you were speaking, because if two people can communicate with each other without judgment, to say, you know and this is this also boils down to what makes for one of the things that makes for a good relationship, romantic relationship, right Is the ability to communicate, to say this is what happened, like something happened. There's a disconnect. So, instead of saying you did this right and now look what happened. There's a disconnect. So instead of saying you did this right and now look what happened, instead of that, it's simply this is how I'm feeling. This is what's coming up for me, because sometimes we know that the thoughts that come up, the feelings, or sorry, the feelings that come up are not the same as what we know to be true. I mean, if you're listening to this and you've had that thought I know I'm not seeing you right now, but raise your hand, right you ever had those feelings where what you're feeling, you know, is completely out of line with rational thought, but you can't stop the feeling anyway, right, I mean, it happens so that that the coping skill of being able to talk it through with somebody, the coping skill of just simply being able to, just being willing to get help, because there's a stigma around that for some people, there was a stigma around that for me. I had to learn the hard way that, even even after I had gone through a lot of, you know, that transformation we talked about. There was a period a couple of years ago that you know, my, my fiance at the time we were having some challenges logistically with uh. She was working in another town from what, we didn't get to see each other as much um as we were planning for the wedding and everything else. It was a challenging time and we're still trying to figure out our, our careers, post, you know, uh, our medical training and all that and um, and really I had the lesson that I I went through another, you know, relative rock bottom at that time and the lesson that I had to learn from that was we all need to reach out for help, and I did. And that was an incredible lesson that, hey, we don't have to go at this alone.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

32:40

Another coping skill getting help, right, right. So these are, these are just mechanisms, but there's also, there's also the element of self-awareness, emotional intelligence, to notice, hey, I'm having an intense urge to go have a drink to deal with this problem. Or, instead of dealing with this problem, going to have a drink is a coping skill, not a good one. Right, it's not effective because it ends up for a lot of people as alcoholism. So, but then somebody else can have a relationship with alcohol. That's perfectly.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

33:15

You know, like they just every once in a while, just a little bit, with certain circumstances, they don't have the same addictive personality to it. I had an addictive personality with food. Took a long time to undo that. Even after I got healthy, I still had the addictive personality with food. Took a long time to undo that. Even after I got healthy, I still had the addictive personality of food, because it started up here. So, coping skills, understanding what are healthy ones, what are not healthy ones and, ultimately, the people around you, and getting the getting the right help yeah, that sense of um as well, isn't it?

Alex Wilson-Campbell

33:50

There are those that probably realize what they're going through and then get help, and those that realize that something is not right but probably try and sort of, like you said, use things to try to block it out and um to really just yeah, just to to make it, make it better, but it's only obviously a temporary thing.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

34:16

You mentioned alcohol, all those sorts of addictive things. Actually, another question which is actually just come off top of mind, in terms of if you, if you see one of your, your team, your colleagues, your friends, your, you know, your college friend or whatever, and you suspect that they're going through something like this um, this is quite close to home for me. Um, if you suspect some, that you know that they're going through something themselves, how do you broach that subject with them? How do you actually kind of because nobody wants to think that their, their sort of their mind is probably not in the place that it should be you don't want to make them feel as though they're inadequate or that they're, you know, they're going crazy or whatever it may be, because I think that's that's still a stigma that people attach to mental, mental health and mental illness. Um how, how do you actually broach that with somebody?

Dr Karthik Ramanen

35:21

well, um, you know it takes not an easy question. Yeah Well, here's, here's the important thing to be able to help somebody, you first have to help yourself, because I think the main reason why people don't ask others truly how they're doing, we say how are you? I'm fine, are you really fine? Are you really asking, how are you? Do you really want to hear the answer?

Dr Karthik Ramanen

35:45

I remember back in you know, when I used to you know it was a working career, even in college you pass by somebody. You know you're walking, especially New York, right, you're walking to a lot of people, so I think, a lot of people, when, when you ask the words how are you, or whatever it is in common parlance where you are right, they don't hear it as you really care. But what I like to say oh sorry, the first part of that is being able to work on your own emotional intelligence so that you are willing and able to hear what's going on. And, by the way, when you do ask somebody and you start to listen, don't try to provide solutions right away unless they want you to provide solutions, because the reason people don't get help a lot of times is because they don't want to be told what to do, what not to do. Oftentimes and this is for women and men we just want to be heard, just want to be heard. Just being heard is therapeutic in many cases, right? So if you get yourself to a state and really it's not that hard once you practice it a little bit to just be able to listen and just be there like you don't, hey, when you take the burden of having to solve the problem off of yourself and just say I'm just, I'm just here for you, I'm just here for you, right? So the question I like to ask when I, when I know I have a friend that's going through some tough time, is how are you feeling? Right? Because this is not about how are you is a little vague, but how are you feeling? Like, what are you is a little vague, but how are you feeling? What emotions? It's a big difference, it's a big difference. So that's one way that I approach it, and the other aspect is just saying, if they don't want to go into it, you just say I understand it's tough to talk about everything right now, but I just want to let you know that I am here with you, I'm here for you and please allow me to help you in any way that you need. Right now. I'm here with you.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

38:00

When people know that they have support. They might not be ready to speak it in the moment, but I find oftentimes that they will reach out, if not for that specific problem that they're dealing with at that time, at some point down the road where they're just like, can we talk? I just need somebody to talk to somebody, to sound off, that's all it is. But the key part how you reinforce that, that they can talk to you, you, that you can be there for them is to just listen. You don't have to solve the problem. Don't try to solve the problem. Unless they want your advice to, hey, what do you think I should do then? Of course, give your opinion, sure, but to really just to, to just be there for them is is the most important thing of course I love that.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

38:45

Dr k um, I just want to ask if you could share some of your tips on. You mentioned the five pillars. Share some tips with us in terms of how we can build our emotional resilience.

Five Pillars of Emotional Health

Dr Karthik Ramanen

39:00

Yeah, absolutely. So. I teach what I call the five pillars of emotional health, and if you build emotional health, that's emotional intelligence and emotional resilience. And, realistically, emotional resilience, I think, is emotional intelligence yeah, it's that ever-growing underlying skill. But emotional resilience is functionally what we're after, right, like the ability to just be able to handle life and still move forward towards our dreams, right? So the five pillars of emotional health are number one your, what I call your psychology, the way you think, your default thought patterns and behaviors, the way that you um the, the way that you see yourself, the way that you talk to yourself uh, the, your ability and willingness to step outside of your comfort zone to discover what patterns have been running your life uh, your psychology, uh. Number two is your relationship. So, again, we're the average of the five people we spend the most time with working on your relationships means addressing the pain points with your significant other, others that are close to you. It means having conversations with your boss, your coworkers, to create an environment around you that's conducive to emotional intelligence and emotional resilience. It's releasing who you think you're supposed to be around them and embracing who you truly are to attract the best people into your life. That's number two. Number three your nutrition. And what does nutrition have to do with emotional health? Actually, a lot. If we can agree that if our brain and nerve function isn't operating at proper capacity, then we're not going to feel well. If we don't feel well, our emotional resilience will suffer.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

40:49

So the neurotransmitters are chemical messengers, compounds that aid in sending signals throughout our nervous system. So neurotransmitter examples are adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin GABA, many, many others, serotonin GABA, many, many others. What you might not know is that 90% of the neurotransmitters in our body come from our gut. 90% of the neurotransmitters in our body come from our gut. There's an estimated 100 trillion bacteria that live in our gut that are responsible. A lot of them are responsible for neurotransmitter production, regulation and a lot of other things that we're learning about daily, but also immune function and so many other functions here. So the bacteria provide us the essential compounds that we need for the function. We provide them a place to live. So it's this nice symbiotic relationship. But the types of bacteria that grow that give us that optimal function depends on the food that we eat. So if we eat too many food that harm our gut microbes, we're going to lose a little bit of that body function that those microbes provide. So diets that are high in refined sugars, fried fats, processed foods, animal products yeah, they might help us like, oh, fried fats, processed foods, animal products yeah, they might help us like, oh, I like those foods especially. They could be a coping mechanism, right, when we're not feeling good, to have a cupcake or a donut, or ice cream or a hot dog or whatever, right, nachos. But they push us toward a suboptimal gut microbiome. On the other hand, diets that are full of more whole plant foods and more insoluble fiber are essential to giving us a thriving gut microbiome and therefore thriving emotional resilience.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

42:43

Number four is sleep. So let's be honest, right, high achievers are like sleep is for the week. I got this project. I'll sleep later, I'll sleep when I'm dead. You know like we, we stay up late, get up early, it doesn't matter, right? That's that's what we do, and I totally get it because when I was, when I was an undergrad at Cornell, at 30 weeks in my first year, two semesters, 15 weeks each, and in those 30 weeks I pulled 37 all-nighters, so more than one.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

43:12

I averaged more than one all-nighter a week. I went one phase of time where I went 100 hours without sleeping and then I went to Wall Street in my 20s and I got a little more sleep, like five hours, six hours, yay. And you know, eventually it caught up to me, absolutely caught up to me. It eventually catches up to everybody you can't like. Sleep is when we develop long term memories. Sleep is when we process the day's events. Sleep is when we actually our brain, actually goes through physical detoxification processes during those hours of sleep.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

43:49

So, yeah, I mean one day, here and there, we have to do what we got to do. That's fine. But on a regular basis we have to prioritize sleep. But prioritizing sleep is not just enough. We have to understand what are the factors that give us poor sleep right, so that we can start to change it. So if we're on our phones at night first thing in the morning, that's going to affect our sleep. If we don't get enough sunlight exposure during the day to set our circadian rhythm so that we have proper hormone balances of cortisol and melatonin from you know, throughout the day, that's going to affect our sleep. That's also going to affect our appetite, which could make us make bad decisions on the nutrition front. See how they all interchange with, interact with each other.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

44:28

So sleep is incredibly important, and if you want to end burnout, if you want to build strong emotional resilience, sleep is absolutely required. Um, eight hours a night, some people nine hours a night, uh, but it's also about the quality of that sleep. Um, then comes your exercise. That's number five body motion, motion dictates emotion. You know.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

44:50

Think about how great we feel after a workout. Right, that endorphin rush. Your blood's flowing, you're getting blood to your brain. It feels in those moments that your mind and your body are in sync, and that's what we want to create in all aspects of our day. Working out isn't as much about weight loss as it is about training your body to operate at the highest level. So if you want to feel good, you want to feel your best, there's really no substitute for moving your body. Emotional resilience requires that body movement, especially movement. That includes being outside, getting that sunlight, obviously, d production so much, so many other benefits of that as well. So those are the five pillars of emotional health which will help you build strong emotional resilience prioritizing your psychology, your relationships, nutrition, sleep and exercise.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

45:42

Wonderful and tell you what, the more you we've been talking here on this podcast is, the more questions that have popped up into my head. So I'm sure there's another podcast or hopefully you know, at least in that term for us, because I think I know that it's been therapeutic for me and it's been informative for me listening to you, dr K, to you, dr k, and I'm sure there was one or two or ten or a hundred people out there, hopefully as well, that have found um, found this, this useful. I'm sure that there are, and what I guess I want to know is if, if there are questions that need to be answered, where can they, where can they find you and what are your plans for the year ahead?

Dr Karthik Ramanen

46:26

Yeah, absolutely so. You can find me at my website, drkarthikramanamcom. A shortcut for that is drknmd naturopathic medical doctor, drknmdcom. That'll take you to the same place. But also, if you're interested, you can follow me on social media. I'm on YouTube, instagram, linkedin as well. Feel free to follow me there.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

46:52

And if you're really interested in, like I said, you're at that. Remember that ice cube analogy. Oh yeah, like, ok, I've been doing this for a long time. I'm really ready to take it up a few notches, it up a few notches, uh, if I do have several workshops, online workshops that are open to anybody in the world.

Sharing Emotional Health Resources

Dr Karthik Ramanen

47:12

Um, starting, uh, in, well, starting, you know, january, through the end of the year, and um, the first one coming up is, if you're listening to this podcast around when it goes live is ending self-criticism and self-criticism. It's a really designed for, again, the high achiever who's Desperately ready to stop being their own worst enemy, to move past impostor syndrome, to move past procrastination, to move past self-sabotage and to really Live into that realm of being kinder to ourselves so that we can be better for the people that we're serving. But, uh, so you, you can go to endselfcriticismcom for that, or, uh, just to see what's coming up on the calendar, uh, for the months ahead. Uh, go to emotionalhealthworkshopscom. You can bookmark that one, emotionalhealthworkshopscom. I'll be updating it, uh, constantly with the new stuff that are coming out, so you can get the help that you need and move forward really to stop chasing joy and begin living in wonder.

Alex Wilson-Campbell

48:15

No, it sounds good, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to link all the links that we need so that everybody can access the help that they need. I'm going to put the links in the show notes. So check out, you know, if you're on Apple or Spotify, wherever it may be, just scroll down a little bit to the show notes and check out the links below and speak to Dr K via the links. But, dr K, it has been an absolute pleasure. It's been an eye opener, it's been informative. It's, as I said, pleasure. It's been an eye-opener, it's been informative. It's, as I said, it's been very close to home for me. So there's a few tips that I'm going to be taking away from this and sharing as well, and um, just wanted to say thank you to you for for joining me today and, yeah, let's, uh, let's, let's keep up to date with what you're doing and let's keep in touch absolutely, alex.

Dr Karthik Ramanen

49:04

It was uh, such a joy to chat with you today and, uh, definitely, you know, we'll do a part two.