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תוכן מסופק על ידי Steve Rush | The Leadership Hacker. כל תוכן הפודקאסטים כולל פרקים, גרפיקה ותיאורי פודקאסטים מועלים ומסופקים ישירות על ידי Steve Rush | The Leadership Hacker או שותף פלטפורמת הפודקאסט שלו. אם אתה מאמין שמישהו משתמש ביצירה שלך המוגנת בזכויות יוצרים ללא רשותך, אתה יכול לעקוב אחר התהליך המתואר כאן https://he.player.fm/legal.
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Character and Positivity with Dr Sandra Scheinbaum

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תוכן מסופק על ידי Steve Rush | The Leadership Hacker. כל תוכן הפודקאסטים כולל פרקים, גרפיקה ותיאורי פודקאסטים מועלים ומסופקים ישירות על ידי Steve Rush | The Leadership Hacker או שותף פלטפורמת הפודקאסט שלו. אם אתה מאמין שמישהו משתמש ביצירה שלך המוגנת בזכויות יוצרים ללא רשותך, אתה יכול לעקוב אחר התהליך המתואר כאן https://he.player.fm/legal.

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum is the founder and CEO of the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy. She's an author and clinical psychologist with over 35 years’ experience and an expert in positive psychology and mind-body medicine. In this show you will hear Sandra talk about:

  • The passion behind starting a new business at age 65 and still be driven at 71
  • The relationship between functional medicine coaching and positive psychology
  • The P-E-R-M-A. model in positive psychology
  • The 24 character strengths for a positive life

Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com

Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA

Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services

Find out more about Dr Sandra below:

Sandra on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandra-scheinbaum-ph-d-17ba678/

FMCA Website: https://functionalmedicinecoaching.org

Sandra on Twitter: https://twitter.com/drscheinbaum

Full Transcript Below

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Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.

Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you.

We have a self-professed lifelong learner on the show today, Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum work has been centered around education and innovation since the very beginning of her career. She's the author of Functional Medicine Coaching: How to Be Part the Movement That's Transforming Healthcare. As the founder and CEO of the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, but before we get a chance to speak with Sandra, it's The Leadership Hacker News.

The Leadership Hacker News

Steve Rush: Diversity and inclusion is an essential part of organization's growing and taking advantage of what diversity brings. However, many CEOs who are faced with real crisis individually often don't face into the fact that they might need to be more open about who they really are. A perfect example of this was CEO of insurance broker Bradley & Parker. Wayne Nowland, now Wynne Nowland has recently gone through gender transition and now claims to be much more at peace with themselves.

Nowland started working at the medium sized firm in Melville, New York in 1986 and held several senior positions before coming CEO and chain 2017, just a few months before her transition. During those years, Nowland buried herself in work to avoid dealing with her two personas. At work, she was Wayne, but inside and occasionally around a selected group of close friends, she was Wynne. Nowland told CNBC Make It. “One of my friends said that my work was my mistress, because it was the way for me to pour a lot of my frustration and resources into getting things done. So, from that standpoint, I guess it had some value.” From Nowland, earliest memory, she knew she was different, but it took her a long time to label it. And it wasn't until a few weeks after her 56th birthday in 2017 and four months after being promoted to CEO, she had an epiphany, an awakening and decided she couldn't hide her true self any longer.

Nowland sent an email to her 70-person, strong staff telling them that she had made a decision to transition her agenda. The note she wrote started, “I plan to begin working as Wynne starting this morning.” Nowland also wrote emails to corporate clients and board members making it clear that she plans to continue to lead the firm in a way she had done so for 30 years and the next time Nowland arrived at work, she was wearing a woman's pantsuit, pearl and a pair of Tiffany earrings and full makeup. Her colleagues greeted her with open arms that day. She goes on to say, I did not fully come out until I came out at work. Nowland 59, now feels more at peace and more ease with the work in her personal life and at home. She goes on to tell CNBC Make It.

“What I realized was that, unless you want to lead your life calculating every minute of the day, there’s a really no way to lead dual existences. Mentally you can, but outwardly, the communities are still too small.”

My advice to anybody is consistent. I think it's important to avail yourself to the professionals, to get some help and to help guide you through what could be a really confusing time. But once you've come to the conclusion, that's what you are, who you are, don't delay. So, whatever your diversity, whatever your challenge or whatever your two personas maybe, don't wait. And what a great lesson it is to us all, to be true to ourselves, whatever we are, and to make sure that we are really thoughtful about the journeys that not only we're taking, but people around us maybe taking unconsciously and unbeknown to ourselves. So, congratulations, Wynne and congratulations on celebrating it publicly. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. Please get in touch with us, if you have any stories or insights that you'd like our listeners to hear.

Start of Podcast

Steve Rush: On the show today is Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum. She is the founder and CEO of the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy. She's a clinical psychologist with over 35 years’ experience and an expert in positive psychology and mind-body medicine. She's also the author of The Functional Medicine Coaching, Stop Panic Attacks in 10 Easy Steps and How to Give Clients the Skills to Stop Panic Attacks. Sandra, welcome to the show.

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here.

Steve Rush: Now you have a really fascinating backstory that's caused you to pivot at almost retirement age, but before we get to that, perhaps you can give us a summary of how you've arrived at doing what you've done?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Sure. Well, where I am now is not where I began. I always thought I would be a school teacher and that's what I studied in college. I was teaching children with learning disabilities and other special needs. This was in the early seventies and I became quite interested in the, not only the stress that they were experiencing in their lives, but their parents as well. And I started leading groups for parents. They were like support groups and teaching them strategies for managing their children at home. And so, at the time I was teaching like breathing strategies and this was pretty radical and unheard of. This idea that by stopping and taking some breaths, you can calm yourself. It would increase your ability to learn more effectively. And I then went on and got my doctorate in clinical psychology and was always a renegade. At the time the world of psychology, psychotherapy, the psychoanalytic, and I was interested in people getting well now and moving forward, not spending years analyzing their childhood.

And so, I was blending these mind body medicine techniques, where you're using breathing or using muscle relaxation, use of imagery. And combining that with having people really stop and reflect on what they're saying to their selves, their self-talk. This catastrophizing, and so that comes from the world of cognitive behavioral therapy. I blended that with something else that didn't have a name at the time, and that was positive psychology, which is where you look at what's right with the person and not what's wrong with them. And you look at their key strengths. So, I've been putting all that together and found that not only were the people I were working with getting better, and these were people, I was a health psychologist. So, these were people who had a chronic health issues, or they had severe anxiety. And this was something that I knew quite well.

I had severe panic attacks when I was in my twenties. I also had a serious addiction to sugar where I would really binge on bags of cookies and all kinds of sugary snacks and not realizing how unhealthy I was becoming. I was not obese, but I was particularly unhealthy with thyroid issues, for example. And also, didn't realize that I had had years and years of antibiotics. And when I started studying functional medicine and that was around 2009/2010. I was fascinating with this idea that you could dig down to the root cause and you could develop a timeline for an individual and see, Whoa, it was that history of all the antibiotics, or maybe there was something traumatic that happened in childhood. And for me, that was losing my father when I was nine years old. So, you combine all those things and then you see what were the triggers and what was the perpetuator of not feeling well, was all the years that my diet was pretty out of whack.

So, as I started making changes in my diet. I started exercising, enjoying movement throughout the day. I was getting better as well. So, when I was 65, yes, I decided I was not going to retire because I had a huge vision and purpose in my life. I wanted to take all of these strategies that I knew worked so well and teach them to health coaches because health coaches are the ones who would be really the key to helping people to create a wellness, to live better lives. So, I approached The Institute for Functional Medicine, that's IFM, were I had trained in functional medicine and they were quite interested in partnering and creating this school to train health coaches. So, what we do now is, we train health coaches in all the things that I hah practice and the functional medicine principles that are taught through the Institute for Functional Medicine.

Steve Rush: Really fascinating. There's a couple of things there that really struck a chord to me. The whole philosophy that body and our mind are so powerful, and so intrinsically linked to our wellbeing. I think for most people, we still really take that for granted. I just wondered what your thoughts were?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Oh, absolutely. So, we don't realize that if we, let's say, we're not feeling well, maybe we have a headache. And if we tell ourselves that this is the worst thing, I can't stand this, this pain is awful. I'm always going to be suffering this way. Then that's going to create a stress response. We're actually tightening those muscles as we think those thoughts. But if we are telling ourselves, okay, if I just breathe? If I soften my forehead, if I imagine something cool on my forehead, back of my neck, that, you know, soon will feel better. And low and behold it does. And so, if we are scaring ourselves with something, if we are worried, if we are telling ourselves, it'll never get better, I'm always going to feel this way. Or the world will always be this way as we are all experiencing now. Then that's going to lead to some of our changes in our health, our guts and our brain are intimately connected. Think of those like sinus twins, they are always traveling together and inseparable.

Steve Rush: I guess that's, what's been referred to as psychosomatic?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: It was, but that term tended to be used by, for example, the psychiatric community in a pejorative way, they would tell people, Oh, it's all in your mind. It's nothing. Well, it is something. Your mind is creating. It's not like you're making it up. They often things psychosomatic as well, it's not real. This person is just making it up, it's all in their mind, but if it's in the mind and the body.

Steve Rush: Got it, that makes loads of sense. Now, I guess also the other thing that struck a chord when you were talking is this whole passion for teaching and education. Has really been a driving force for when people start to retire, you've taken it another step forward, and it's now become your life and work now at The Functional Medicine Coaching Academy. Tell us a bit about the epiphany that led to creating an organization at the age of 65?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Yes, well first and foremost, I'm very, very active and I like being around people much younger than I am. And I have this mission to want to see a health coach in every medical office and to furthest, to be the norm. And so, I know that when people are not sitting around in retirement and bored or losing interest, as the curiosity in the world, then that's when people tend to decline quite rapidly. For me, I saw my mother succumb to Alzheimer's disease, and I want to stay vibrant. I want to be young at heart. And so, when you have a strong mission and a purpose, that is what happens. At our school, which is FMCA, Functional Medicine Coaching Academy. We have a significant number of students. These learners love learning, and they are stepping out of retirement. A lot of former school teachers, for example, some retired physicians and they are studying with us and it's what's keeping them vibrant.

They're so excited. They're not doing it to build a career as our younger students are, they're doing it because they love the content, they're using it personally, or with their families. And they're going out, often volunteering, or they're not again building a career, but they are going out and serving. And that is how they are getting paid. And they're quite, quite happy doing that. And so that for me, is just having this strong, strong mission to teach. And so, in a sense, I came back to my roots. I started wanting to be a teacher and now I'm a teacher again.

Steve Rush: That's amazing. I love it. So, what's the difference between the functional medicine doctor and a functional medicine coach?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: So, a functional medicine doctor is the medical experts. They went to medical school; they can diagnose the condition. They can draw a big treatment plan for that condition. A coach is the expert in behavior change. So, they are not the medical person, or they are not the dietician. But they work on a team. They refer to those individuals and we need it all. And so, what the coach does is to listen, their expertise is in listening with people and asking the right types of questions so that somebody will become inspired to change how they're living their life. The coach is asking questions like, what do you want your health score? What brings you the most joy? And then they help them set goals that are achievable. And they're often very tiny once. And they celebrate with that person and they call, they also hold that individual accountable for call me and let me know how it's going, or we're going to talk about this again when we meet next week. So, this movement is growing and I'm really saying that I'm going to fulfill my mission of seeing a coach in every office. We have coaches who are increasingly getting hired by practices in the UK. The national health service is starting to hire coaches in the United States through the payer system here, we have a pathway for coaches to build directly, that's coming in the future. We're on that road right now. And there's, right now though, use of coaches where they can lead group visits, for example. They can be one who is in the office, monitoring all that data that's coming in from remote patient monitoring devices. Like your watch, for example, your blood glucose monitor. And so, the coach is the one who is working with that expert with that functional medicine doctor.

Steve Rush: Yeah, it's really fascinating, isn't it? And I suspect the current environment that we've been in and the pandemic has seen a real upsurge in people wanting to access health coaches. What's been your experience during the pandemic. And as it's evolved over the last six to twelve months?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: A thousand percent. People are interested in health, like never before. They are wanting to work with health coaches. Also, the health care workers are exhausted and burned out and they have their hands full with acute care. They are often not able to take the time with people who have these chronic medical conditions, like type two diabetes. And that's what the health coach can do, and they do it remotely. They do it over platforms like Zoom, and they can have people that are working with all over the world. They can work with people in groups, which is a very, very effective model that is also growing because it makes it affordable and more people are accepting health coaches. There's a lot of major companies that are hiring health coaches. And there's a group that unfortunately suffering right now. And those are those people who are what we call the lawn haulers from COVID, and they are still having symptoms often months later. And so, the coaches who are trained in this functional medicine approach to have a broad perspective to look at how to help somebody with the symptoms that are not dissipating months and months after they first got sick

Steve Rush: And to help your new health coaches along the way. There's a couple of key tenants that I noticed that really key to helping the end client get better physically and mentally well. And the first one is that what you call character strengths. And I wondered why you call them the building blocks for wellbeing?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: This comes from the field of positive psychology. So, this is a field of study that looks at what's right with somebody, what makes a life worth living? Why do people flourish? This comes from the work of Martin Seligman and other researchers where they came up with this concept that we call PERMA, P-E-R-M-A. This acronym stands for. P is positive emotion. We all need to have experiences of joy in our life. We need the E, which is engagement or flow. We need to be focused on something that is truly like putting us in the state of complete mindfulness of the moment or enjoying something or deeply moved by something, the R's relationships, we need meaningful relationships. The M is meaning, we need meaning and purpose in our lives, whether that's a big mission or our meaning and purposes, our family, and nurturing our family. And the A finally is achievement. Whether that's big or small, we got up and we made our bed. Wow, that's an achievement. So how do we get to these? We get to them through our character strengths. Why are they the building blocks? These are the traits that we all have, and the researchers have identified 24 of them. Why 24? Well, they took years and years. And they went through all of the research literature, all of the teachings of philosophy, psychology, religions, various cultures around the world and found that no matter how old or how young you were, no matter where you lived in the world. There were these 24 traits that kept coming up again and again, and those are what we call character strengths. So, when somebody is asked, what are your strengths? So, they tend to think of them as the ones that are skills like, Oh, I'm good at playing the piano.

I'm good at playing sports. Well, this is what you learned. These are skills, but how do you get good at playing the piano? Oh, you need to curiosity. You need to have a love of learning to get you to the piano. Well, how do you master that? Well, you need to keep practicing and that's the strength of self-regulation. And so, we put all these together. Appreciation of beauty and excellence. You have to be able to say, well that sound is lovely. This one is discordant and jarring. And so, all of these character strengths. All these 24 bring you to achieve great things to have a life well lived. And so, some of these strengths are what we call in a cluster. They're this wisdom strength, like having that curiosity and love of learning, having perspective and good judgment. There are strengths that have to do with courage, like bravery for example, and strengths that have to do with what we call the humanity strengths. Love and kindness, teamwork, leadership, and appreciation of beauty, hope, gratitude, humor, spirituality. So self-regulation, prudence. So, there are 24, if you're curious, because we have what we call signature strengths. So, of our 24, some come more naturally to us. Like for me, it is that appreciation of beauty, is love of learning, its curiosity, it's zest and creativity. And so, you can go to the VIA, viacharacter.org. It's a nonprofit at FMCA. We work very closely with them. Their director teaches for us, it's called VIA, V-I-A, and you can go on their website. They have a free test, which is very well validated. And then you can get an idea of what your character strengths are, and we all have them. And we just, sometimes we use one or a few more than others and strengths have been studied quite extensively.

Steve Rush: Mmm, I love that whole principle of character strengths. And as you were listing them off, they're almost what you would look for, ideally, in a leader that you wanted to work with as well. They're all the things that you would want to engender that feeling of positivity and wellbeing, right?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Absolutely, and they come in clusters. So, you know, for example. One of my top strengths is zest, which is like this excitement. I'm always like jumping out of my skin, jumping for joy. And that also connects with creativity, for example, and then it's balanced with self-regulation to have the self-regulation, to sit down and study what you love learning. And so, there's wonderful ways that we help people by having them identify not what's wrong with them, but they can use these strengths. And the strengths are what bring us to having joy every day, for example, and perseverance. So right now, to have that resilience to keep going on is very, very crucial. So, what we do, what we train our coaches to do is to help people when they see their timeline, their story, that they're not just thinking about all the trauma they experienced and all the, for example, illnesses they may have had and suffered through and are perhaps still suffering.

But the coach might point out their perseverance that they didn't give up. They kept going, and so they would then ask that question, well, how can you do that today? Or what strength are you going to use today? Or you can have strengths talk with your family, for example, instead of asking your child how was your day at school? What strengths did you use? Or you set an intention at the beginning of the day. Today I'm going to practice my strength. I'm going to build my strength of forgiveness. That's one of the key character strengths that is definitely is highly correlated with physical wellbeing. Forgiveness is so important.

Steve Rush: Yeah, so the skeptics might be listening to this. Who are suggesting well, it’s all very well having positive psychology, but what about dealing with the root causes some of these problems that exist in maybe other genres of psychology? How would you square that argument off?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: So, Positive Psychology is not happy allergy. It is not about just, Oh, I have to be happy all the time. It's accepting of the full gamut of emotions. They just are, and in the course of a day, lifetime, we experience all of them. And it is this acceptance that is really the root of positive psychology. So, you have the acceptance. Yes, this happened to me or I experienced this and it was bad, it was traumatic. And how do I want to live right now? What do I want to focus on today? What do I want to be hopeful for about tomorrow? And so, yes, functional medicine is root cause medicine. It's where you dig down and say, okay, these symptoms that I'm experiencing are connected. For example, if you look under the hood to inflammation, what could be causing inflammation? Perhaps it's all of that gluten and sugar, perhaps it is lack of sleep that I'm experiencing, perhaps I am upsetting myself and I'm getting really aggravated about my work conditions.

I'm very worried about my finances. All of those things would be root causes. And it's not just one. They usually come in a huge cluster. Now, where does the positive psychology come in? Well, you would say, okay, what can I do about this? How can perhaps taking some pauses and clearing this out as I exhale slowly and take a very deep breath, I'm going to let go of what I don't think is serving me, or I'm going to use the self-regulation, character strength to go to bed earlier tonight, or I'm going to experience the joy of eating something that is going to have gluten or perhaps it's sugar. Like I was having that problem with, well, I can experience the joy of blueberries as my sweet as opposed to that chocolate chip cookie. So, and experience the excellence of that taste of that blueberry. So, I hope you could see that how this positive psychology stuff, particularly the character strengths are woven in to your getting at the root cause, which let's say often it is inflammation where your body is just chronically inflamed. And so, you're using your mind or using your body. So, all of these strategies come together. And I think too often, we dogmatic about one technique versus the other, one way of eating versus another. And I've always been a big believer in an integrative approach because you put it all together and that is quite powerful.

Steve Rush: Yes, it definitely is. And I can also see the relationship between the character strengths as you were talking that through as well. And one of those character strengths of course, is practice and like any new skill or habit, that's going to take some time to rethink and reframe how you do things, right?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Absolutely. So, some people think, well, it's all just talent. For example, we want to learn something. We have to be good at it, but it is that practice over and over and over again. Why is that significant? What's really happening is you're creating new neural pathways in the brain. And so, the more you do it, the more it becomes automatic. Think about the first time you got to a car; you were young. If you learned to drive, Oh, you had to pay attention to every step in that process. You don't do that today. If you're a driver it's automatic. And so that's how you learn. It's hard at first, but it gets easier. It's that quality when you're getting good at something it's called grit. Angela Duckworth writes about this extensively in her book, grit, and it is the example again of playing the piano. So, it's not just going to the piano and sitting down one time, it's going to make you a master pianist. No, those people spent hours and hours and hours practicing. I know a lot of professional ballet dancers and their practice started when they were very young and its hours and hours and hours at the bar practicing.

Steve Rush: Yeah, no substitute for hard work and practice, right?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Right.

Steve Rush: So, if I was interested in getting involved in this field, what would be your advice?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: So, the coaches are needed now more than ever, and you do not need it background in health care. Some of the best coaches come from other walks of life. And so many people can study to become health coaches, even if they never go out and work as a health coach, they can find that information so valuable. And most of our students who come to us are really going out and working with others, but some are not, but they are all saying I had a personal transformation by learning a functional medicine paradigm of positive psychology. So, you can study with us. We have people who are medical doctors who are also studying to be coaches. We have people who are in the fields of nutrition, for example, and some of these folks are not changing careers. They are continuing what they're already doing, but they're using the coach approach. So, one of the best things that happen when you learn to be a coach is your relationships are transformed with your family, your friends, your colleagues. And if you are a practitioner with your patients, because you are really listening to them, they feel heard, and that improves the quality of the relationship.

Steve Rush: We'll also make sure before we finish off today, that we capture all of those things in our show notes. So, we can pass on any links and tips for any of our listeners who are really interested in this. So, at this part of the show, I also get to now flip the lens a little and get a chance to hack into the years of leadership experience that you've gathered along your career and on your journey too. So, the first thing I'm going to ask you, Sandra, is if you could share with our listeners. All of the years of experience and distill that down into your top three leadership hacks, what would they be?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Sure. So, I think that it is, the first is to be, yet it's not about me, it's about the people I serve, whether that's most particularly the people on my team. To really see what do they need, and it's the power of this teamwork. So, it's not about me, it's about them. And so, I'm very mindful of really listening when I'm at a team meeting, that is key. The second one would be to have, this goes along with the first one, is curiosity. I just am very curious and ask the right questions. And that also comes from the coach approach. And the third would be creativity. I love to find solutions. I'm a quick start, I'm a visionary. And I like to see that no matter how challenging the problem may be, that there's a solution. And I love to encourage people to think outside of the box, creative thinking. To see, well, how are we going to solve this? How are we going to pivot? And that's what I did so much during this pandemic to inspire people through creativity, to have a different mindset for example.

Steve Rush: And feeds, of course, positive psychology, doesn't it?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Yes exactly.

Steve Rush: The next part of the show we call it Hack to Attack. And I know from the work that you've done, you've said your biggest wins come from epic failures. And this part of the show is where we look at maybe a time in your life or work that could have been an epic failure, or certainly hasn't gone as well as planned. But as a result of the experience, you've used that as a learning in your life and work. So, what would be your Hack to Attack?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Sure. So, we can go back to my roots and when I was in education and college. We had to have a time, we were student teachers and I had trouble in that experience. I could not control a classroom of children. This was not in special education. This was just a normal classroom. And I did not get a good grade in my student teaching. And that mean that I probably wouldn't get a job as a teacher because I didn't do well. And so, I remember thinking, oh, what am I going to do? I remember just flopping out of my bed, crying that my career is over, what am I’m going to do? I'm a failure. And so, I chose that to pivot and, Oh, I'll just stay in college and I'll get a master's in learning disabilities. Because in learning disabilities I can work one-on-one with children, I could do that. And so, I'm thankful because if I had not failed at that experience, I was gone on and had a classroom of children. And I probably would have spent years as a classroom teacher and retired with a pension and just sitting at home knitting and playing cards with my friends right now. Which I love, I don't like playing cards. I love video and I love all crafts, but that's another story, but I'm thankful for that failure.

Steve Rush: Real sliding doors moment, right?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Yes.

Steve Rush: And it's interesting. Had that had happened, how different the world would have been and all of the work and the academia and teaching that you've given since in a very different spere. So, hallelujah to failing that class is what I say.

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Yes.

Steve Rush: The last thing that we would like to do today is give you a chance to do some time travel. So, you get to bump back into Sandra at 21 and give us some advice. What would it be?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: To give up concern about what others think about you. I was always pretty obsessed with being right, with doing the right thing and a lot of the shame and embarrassment of making a mistake, whether that was a cognitive mistake or even the mistake of wearing the wrong outfit to a party, always having to be perfect in every way and wanting to be like by these people. And now at my age, 71, I'm much bolder. And just speaking my mind and letting go of the consequences, still being kind but not worrying about pleasing people.

Steve Rush: Yeah, that's great advice, isn't it? And I guess that doesn't matter how old you are. You can still learn to unlearn that as a behavior, can't you?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Absolutely.

Steve Rush: Love it. So, for folks listening to this Sandra that would like to get a little bit more insight as to the work that you do, and if you're writing and if you're teaching and maybe some information around The Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, where it's the best place for us to send them?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: functionalmedicinecoaching.org is our website. And on Facebook it's Functional Medicine Coaching Academy on Instagram, functionalmedcoach, I should say, functionalmedcoach. Personally, I am drsani that's S-A-N-D-I on Instagram, and also at Dr. Sandy on the Clubhouse, new platform, which I'm excited about.

Steve Rush: You on Clubhouse too, awesome.

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Love it, yes.

Steve Rush: Brilliant. For those folks who haven't listened to Clubhouse, it's like having podcasts on demand and lots of random conversations, but some really insightful discussions taking place.

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Yes absolutely. I will follow you

Steve Rush: Super: Well, make sure that we connect and Clubhouse. We'll also make sure that all of those links you just spoke about are in our show notes so that we can continue the conversation beyond today.

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Fantastic. Thank you so much,

Steve Rush: Sandra. It's been amazing having you on the show. I'm super grateful. You've been able to join us and good luck with the next 35 years of The Functional Medicine Coaching Academy.

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Thank you so, so much.

Steve Rush: Take care.

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: You as well.

Closing

Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.

Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.

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תוכן מסופק על ידי Steve Rush | The Leadership Hacker. כל תוכן הפודקאסטים כולל פרקים, גרפיקה ותיאורי פודקאסטים מועלים ומסופקים ישירות על ידי Steve Rush | The Leadership Hacker או שותף פלטפורמת הפודקאסט שלו. אם אתה מאמין שמישהו משתמש ביצירה שלך המוגנת בזכויות יוצרים ללא רשותך, אתה יכול לעקוב אחר התהליך המתואר כאן https://he.player.fm/legal.

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum is the founder and CEO of the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy. She's an author and clinical psychologist with over 35 years’ experience and an expert in positive psychology and mind-body medicine. In this show you will hear Sandra talk about:

  • The passion behind starting a new business at age 65 and still be driven at 71
  • The relationship between functional medicine coaching and positive psychology
  • The P-E-R-M-A. model in positive psychology
  • The 24 character strengths for a positive life

Join our Tribe at https://leadership-hacker.com

Music: " Upbeat Party " by Scott Holmes courtesy of the Free Music Archive FMA

Transcript: Thanks to Jermaine Pinto at JRP Transcribing for being our Partner. Contact Jermaine via LinkedIn or via his site JRP Transcribing Services

Find out more about Dr Sandra below:

Sandra on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandra-scheinbaum-ph-d-17ba678/

FMCA Website: https://functionalmedicinecoaching.org

Sandra on Twitter: https://twitter.com/drscheinbaum

Full Transcript Below

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Steve Rush: Some call me Steve, dad, husband or friend. Others might call me boss, coach or mentor. Today you can call me The Leadership Hacker.

Thanks for listening in. I really appreciate it. My job as the leadership hacker is to hack into the minds, experiences, habits and learning of great leaders, C-Suite executives, authors and development experts so that I can assist you developing your understanding and awareness of leadership. I am Steve Rush and I am your host today. I am the author of Leadership Cake. I am a transformation consultant and leadership coach. I cannot wait to start sharing all things leadership with you.

We have a self-professed lifelong learner on the show today, Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum work has been centered around education and innovation since the very beginning of her career. She's the author of Functional Medicine Coaching: How to Be Part the Movement That's Transforming Healthcare. As the founder and CEO of the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, but before we get a chance to speak with Sandra, it's The Leadership Hacker News.

The Leadership Hacker News

Steve Rush: Diversity and inclusion is an essential part of organization's growing and taking advantage of what diversity brings. However, many CEOs who are faced with real crisis individually often don't face into the fact that they might need to be more open about who they really are. A perfect example of this was CEO of insurance broker Bradley & Parker. Wayne Nowland, now Wynne Nowland has recently gone through gender transition and now claims to be much more at peace with themselves.

Nowland started working at the medium sized firm in Melville, New York in 1986 and held several senior positions before coming CEO and chain 2017, just a few months before her transition. During those years, Nowland buried herself in work to avoid dealing with her two personas. At work, she was Wayne, but inside and occasionally around a selected group of close friends, she was Wynne. Nowland told CNBC Make It. “One of my friends said that my work was my mistress, because it was the way for me to pour a lot of my frustration and resources into getting things done. So, from that standpoint, I guess it had some value.” From Nowland, earliest memory, she knew she was different, but it took her a long time to label it. And it wasn't until a few weeks after her 56th birthday in 2017 and four months after being promoted to CEO, she had an epiphany, an awakening and decided she couldn't hide her true self any longer.

Nowland sent an email to her 70-person, strong staff telling them that she had made a decision to transition her agenda. The note she wrote started, “I plan to begin working as Wynne starting this morning.” Nowland also wrote emails to corporate clients and board members making it clear that she plans to continue to lead the firm in a way she had done so for 30 years and the next time Nowland arrived at work, she was wearing a woman's pantsuit, pearl and a pair of Tiffany earrings and full makeup. Her colleagues greeted her with open arms that day. She goes on to say, I did not fully come out until I came out at work. Nowland 59, now feels more at peace and more ease with the work in her personal life and at home. She goes on to tell CNBC Make It.

“What I realized was that, unless you want to lead your life calculating every minute of the day, there’s a really no way to lead dual existences. Mentally you can, but outwardly, the communities are still too small.”

My advice to anybody is consistent. I think it's important to avail yourself to the professionals, to get some help and to help guide you through what could be a really confusing time. But once you've come to the conclusion, that's what you are, who you are, don't delay. So, whatever your diversity, whatever your challenge or whatever your two personas maybe, don't wait. And what a great lesson it is to us all, to be true to ourselves, whatever we are, and to make sure that we are really thoughtful about the journeys that not only we're taking, but people around us maybe taking unconsciously and unbeknown to ourselves. So, congratulations, Wynne and congratulations on celebrating it publicly. That's been The Leadership Hacker News. Please get in touch with us, if you have any stories or insights that you'd like our listeners to hear.

Start of Podcast

Steve Rush: On the show today is Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum. She is the founder and CEO of the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy. She's a clinical psychologist with over 35 years’ experience and an expert in positive psychology and mind-body medicine. She's also the author of The Functional Medicine Coaching, Stop Panic Attacks in 10 Easy Steps and How to Give Clients the Skills to Stop Panic Attacks. Sandra, welcome to the show.

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Thank you. It is a pleasure to be here.

Steve Rush: Now you have a really fascinating backstory that's caused you to pivot at almost retirement age, but before we get to that, perhaps you can give us a summary of how you've arrived at doing what you've done?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Sure. Well, where I am now is not where I began. I always thought I would be a school teacher and that's what I studied in college. I was teaching children with learning disabilities and other special needs. This was in the early seventies and I became quite interested in the, not only the stress that they were experiencing in their lives, but their parents as well. And I started leading groups for parents. They were like support groups and teaching them strategies for managing their children at home. And so, at the time I was teaching like breathing strategies and this was pretty radical and unheard of. This idea that by stopping and taking some breaths, you can calm yourself. It would increase your ability to learn more effectively. And I then went on and got my doctorate in clinical psychology and was always a renegade. At the time the world of psychology, psychotherapy, the psychoanalytic, and I was interested in people getting well now and moving forward, not spending years analyzing their childhood.

And so, I was blending these mind body medicine techniques, where you're using breathing or using muscle relaxation, use of imagery. And combining that with having people really stop and reflect on what they're saying to their selves, their self-talk. This catastrophizing, and so that comes from the world of cognitive behavioral therapy. I blended that with something else that didn't have a name at the time, and that was positive psychology, which is where you look at what's right with the person and not what's wrong with them. And you look at their key strengths. So, I've been putting all that together and found that not only were the people I were working with getting better, and these were people, I was a health psychologist. So, these were people who had a chronic health issues, or they had severe anxiety. And this was something that I knew quite well.

I had severe panic attacks when I was in my twenties. I also had a serious addiction to sugar where I would really binge on bags of cookies and all kinds of sugary snacks and not realizing how unhealthy I was becoming. I was not obese, but I was particularly unhealthy with thyroid issues, for example. And also, didn't realize that I had had years and years of antibiotics. And when I started studying functional medicine and that was around 2009/2010. I was fascinating with this idea that you could dig down to the root cause and you could develop a timeline for an individual and see, Whoa, it was that history of all the antibiotics, or maybe there was something traumatic that happened in childhood. And for me, that was losing my father when I was nine years old. So, you combine all those things and then you see what were the triggers and what was the perpetuator of not feeling well, was all the years that my diet was pretty out of whack.

So, as I started making changes in my diet. I started exercising, enjoying movement throughout the day. I was getting better as well. So, when I was 65, yes, I decided I was not going to retire because I had a huge vision and purpose in my life. I wanted to take all of these strategies that I knew worked so well and teach them to health coaches because health coaches are the ones who would be really the key to helping people to create a wellness, to live better lives. So, I approached The Institute for Functional Medicine, that's IFM, were I had trained in functional medicine and they were quite interested in partnering and creating this school to train health coaches. So, what we do now is, we train health coaches in all the things that I hah practice and the functional medicine principles that are taught through the Institute for Functional Medicine.

Steve Rush: Really fascinating. There's a couple of things there that really struck a chord to me. The whole philosophy that body and our mind are so powerful, and so intrinsically linked to our wellbeing. I think for most people, we still really take that for granted. I just wondered what your thoughts were?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Oh, absolutely. So, we don't realize that if we, let's say, we're not feeling well, maybe we have a headache. And if we tell ourselves that this is the worst thing, I can't stand this, this pain is awful. I'm always going to be suffering this way. Then that's going to create a stress response. We're actually tightening those muscles as we think those thoughts. But if we are telling ourselves, okay, if I just breathe? If I soften my forehead, if I imagine something cool on my forehead, back of my neck, that, you know, soon will feel better. And low and behold it does. And so, if we are scaring ourselves with something, if we are worried, if we are telling ourselves, it'll never get better, I'm always going to feel this way. Or the world will always be this way as we are all experiencing now. Then that's going to lead to some of our changes in our health, our guts and our brain are intimately connected. Think of those like sinus twins, they are always traveling together and inseparable.

Steve Rush: I guess that's, what's been referred to as psychosomatic?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: It was, but that term tended to be used by, for example, the psychiatric community in a pejorative way, they would tell people, Oh, it's all in your mind. It's nothing. Well, it is something. Your mind is creating. It's not like you're making it up. They often things psychosomatic as well, it's not real. This person is just making it up, it's all in their mind, but if it's in the mind and the body.

Steve Rush: Got it, that makes loads of sense. Now, I guess also the other thing that struck a chord when you were talking is this whole passion for teaching and education. Has really been a driving force for when people start to retire, you've taken it another step forward, and it's now become your life and work now at The Functional Medicine Coaching Academy. Tell us a bit about the epiphany that led to creating an organization at the age of 65?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Yes, well first and foremost, I'm very, very active and I like being around people much younger than I am. And I have this mission to want to see a health coach in every medical office and to furthest, to be the norm. And so, I know that when people are not sitting around in retirement and bored or losing interest, as the curiosity in the world, then that's when people tend to decline quite rapidly. For me, I saw my mother succumb to Alzheimer's disease, and I want to stay vibrant. I want to be young at heart. And so, when you have a strong mission and a purpose, that is what happens. At our school, which is FMCA, Functional Medicine Coaching Academy. We have a significant number of students. These learners love learning, and they are stepping out of retirement. A lot of former school teachers, for example, some retired physicians and they are studying with us and it's what's keeping them vibrant.

They're so excited. They're not doing it to build a career as our younger students are, they're doing it because they love the content, they're using it personally, or with their families. And they're going out, often volunteering, or they're not again building a career, but they are going out and serving. And that is how they are getting paid. And they're quite, quite happy doing that. And so that for me, is just having this strong, strong mission to teach. And so, in a sense, I came back to my roots. I started wanting to be a teacher and now I'm a teacher again.

Steve Rush: That's amazing. I love it. So, what's the difference between the functional medicine doctor and a functional medicine coach?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: So, a functional medicine doctor is the medical experts. They went to medical school; they can diagnose the condition. They can draw a big treatment plan for that condition. A coach is the expert in behavior change. So, they are not the medical person, or they are not the dietician. But they work on a team. They refer to those individuals and we need it all. And so, what the coach does is to listen, their expertise is in listening with people and asking the right types of questions so that somebody will become inspired to change how they're living their life. The coach is asking questions like, what do you want your health score? What brings you the most joy? And then they help them set goals that are achievable. And they're often very tiny once. And they celebrate with that person and they call, they also hold that individual accountable for call me and let me know how it's going, or we're going to talk about this again when we meet next week. So, this movement is growing and I'm really saying that I'm going to fulfill my mission of seeing a coach in every office. We have coaches who are increasingly getting hired by practices in the UK. The national health service is starting to hire coaches in the United States through the payer system here, we have a pathway for coaches to build directly, that's coming in the future. We're on that road right now. And there's, right now though, use of coaches where they can lead group visits, for example. They can be one who is in the office, monitoring all that data that's coming in from remote patient monitoring devices. Like your watch, for example, your blood glucose monitor. And so, the coach is the one who is working with that expert with that functional medicine doctor.

Steve Rush: Yeah, it's really fascinating, isn't it? And I suspect the current environment that we've been in and the pandemic has seen a real upsurge in people wanting to access health coaches. What's been your experience during the pandemic. And as it's evolved over the last six to twelve months?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: A thousand percent. People are interested in health, like never before. They are wanting to work with health coaches. Also, the health care workers are exhausted and burned out and they have their hands full with acute care. They are often not able to take the time with people who have these chronic medical conditions, like type two diabetes. And that's what the health coach can do, and they do it remotely. They do it over platforms like Zoom, and they can have people that are working with all over the world. They can work with people in groups, which is a very, very effective model that is also growing because it makes it affordable and more people are accepting health coaches. There's a lot of major companies that are hiring health coaches. And there's a group that unfortunately suffering right now. And those are those people who are what we call the lawn haulers from COVID, and they are still having symptoms often months later. And so, the coaches who are trained in this functional medicine approach to have a broad perspective to look at how to help somebody with the symptoms that are not dissipating months and months after they first got sick

Steve Rush: And to help your new health coaches along the way. There's a couple of key tenants that I noticed that really key to helping the end client get better physically and mentally well. And the first one is that what you call character strengths. And I wondered why you call them the building blocks for wellbeing?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: This comes from the field of positive psychology. So, this is a field of study that looks at what's right with somebody, what makes a life worth living? Why do people flourish? This comes from the work of Martin Seligman and other researchers where they came up with this concept that we call PERMA, P-E-R-M-A. This acronym stands for. P is positive emotion. We all need to have experiences of joy in our life. We need the E, which is engagement or flow. We need to be focused on something that is truly like putting us in the state of complete mindfulness of the moment or enjoying something or deeply moved by something, the R's relationships, we need meaningful relationships. The M is meaning, we need meaning and purpose in our lives, whether that's a big mission or our meaning and purposes, our family, and nurturing our family. And the A finally is achievement. Whether that's big or small, we got up and we made our bed. Wow, that's an achievement. So how do we get to these? We get to them through our character strengths. Why are they the building blocks? These are the traits that we all have, and the researchers have identified 24 of them. Why 24? Well, they took years and years. And they went through all of the research literature, all of the teachings of philosophy, psychology, religions, various cultures around the world and found that no matter how old or how young you were, no matter where you lived in the world. There were these 24 traits that kept coming up again and again, and those are what we call character strengths. So, when somebody is asked, what are your strengths? So, they tend to think of them as the ones that are skills like, Oh, I'm good at playing the piano.

I'm good at playing sports. Well, this is what you learned. These are skills, but how do you get good at playing the piano? Oh, you need to curiosity. You need to have a love of learning to get you to the piano. Well, how do you master that? Well, you need to keep practicing and that's the strength of self-regulation. And so, we put all these together. Appreciation of beauty and excellence. You have to be able to say, well that sound is lovely. This one is discordant and jarring. And so, all of these character strengths. All these 24 bring you to achieve great things to have a life well lived. And so, some of these strengths are what we call in a cluster. They're this wisdom strength, like having that curiosity and love of learning, having perspective and good judgment. There are strengths that have to do with courage, like bravery for example, and strengths that have to do with what we call the humanity strengths. Love and kindness, teamwork, leadership, and appreciation of beauty, hope, gratitude, humor, spirituality. So self-regulation, prudence. So, there are 24, if you're curious, because we have what we call signature strengths. So, of our 24, some come more naturally to us. Like for me, it is that appreciation of beauty, is love of learning, its curiosity, it's zest and creativity. And so, you can go to the VIA, viacharacter.org. It's a nonprofit at FMCA. We work very closely with them. Their director teaches for us, it's called VIA, V-I-A, and you can go on their website. They have a free test, which is very well validated. And then you can get an idea of what your character strengths are, and we all have them. And we just, sometimes we use one or a few more than others and strengths have been studied quite extensively.

Steve Rush: Mmm, I love that whole principle of character strengths. And as you were listing them off, they're almost what you would look for, ideally, in a leader that you wanted to work with as well. They're all the things that you would want to engender that feeling of positivity and wellbeing, right?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Absolutely, and they come in clusters. So, you know, for example. One of my top strengths is zest, which is like this excitement. I'm always like jumping out of my skin, jumping for joy. And that also connects with creativity, for example, and then it's balanced with self-regulation to have the self-regulation, to sit down and study what you love learning. And so, there's wonderful ways that we help people by having them identify not what's wrong with them, but they can use these strengths. And the strengths are what bring us to having joy every day, for example, and perseverance. So right now, to have that resilience to keep going on is very, very crucial. So, what we do, what we train our coaches to do is to help people when they see their timeline, their story, that they're not just thinking about all the trauma they experienced and all the, for example, illnesses they may have had and suffered through and are perhaps still suffering.

But the coach might point out their perseverance that they didn't give up. They kept going, and so they would then ask that question, well, how can you do that today? Or what strength are you going to use today? Or you can have strengths talk with your family, for example, instead of asking your child how was your day at school? What strengths did you use? Or you set an intention at the beginning of the day. Today I'm going to practice my strength. I'm going to build my strength of forgiveness. That's one of the key character strengths that is definitely is highly correlated with physical wellbeing. Forgiveness is so important.

Steve Rush: Yeah, so the skeptics might be listening to this. Who are suggesting well, it’s all very well having positive psychology, but what about dealing with the root causes some of these problems that exist in maybe other genres of psychology? How would you square that argument off?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: So, Positive Psychology is not happy allergy. It is not about just, Oh, I have to be happy all the time. It's accepting of the full gamut of emotions. They just are, and in the course of a day, lifetime, we experience all of them. And it is this acceptance that is really the root of positive psychology. So, you have the acceptance. Yes, this happened to me or I experienced this and it was bad, it was traumatic. And how do I want to live right now? What do I want to focus on today? What do I want to be hopeful for about tomorrow? And so, yes, functional medicine is root cause medicine. It's where you dig down and say, okay, these symptoms that I'm experiencing are connected. For example, if you look under the hood to inflammation, what could be causing inflammation? Perhaps it's all of that gluten and sugar, perhaps it is lack of sleep that I'm experiencing, perhaps I am upsetting myself and I'm getting really aggravated about my work conditions.

I'm very worried about my finances. All of those things would be root causes. And it's not just one. They usually come in a huge cluster. Now, where does the positive psychology come in? Well, you would say, okay, what can I do about this? How can perhaps taking some pauses and clearing this out as I exhale slowly and take a very deep breath, I'm going to let go of what I don't think is serving me, or I'm going to use the self-regulation, character strength to go to bed earlier tonight, or I'm going to experience the joy of eating something that is going to have gluten or perhaps it's sugar. Like I was having that problem with, well, I can experience the joy of blueberries as my sweet as opposed to that chocolate chip cookie. So, and experience the excellence of that taste of that blueberry. So, I hope you could see that how this positive psychology stuff, particularly the character strengths are woven in to your getting at the root cause, which let's say often it is inflammation where your body is just chronically inflamed. And so, you're using your mind or using your body. So, all of these strategies come together. And I think too often, we dogmatic about one technique versus the other, one way of eating versus another. And I've always been a big believer in an integrative approach because you put it all together and that is quite powerful.

Steve Rush: Yes, it definitely is. And I can also see the relationship between the character strengths as you were talking that through as well. And one of those character strengths of course, is practice and like any new skill or habit, that's going to take some time to rethink and reframe how you do things, right?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Absolutely. So, some people think, well, it's all just talent. For example, we want to learn something. We have to be good at it, but it is that practice over and over and over again. Why is that significant? What's really happening is you're creating new neural pathways in the brain. And so, the more you do it, the more it becomes automatic. Think about the first time you got to a car; you were young. If you learned to drive, Oh, you had to pay attention to every step in that process. You don't do that today. If you're a driver it's automatic. And so that's how you learn. It's hard at first, but it gets easier. It's that quality when you're getting good at something it's called grit. Angela Duckworth writes about this extensively in her book, grit, and it is the example again of playing the piano. So, it's not just going to the piano and sitting down one time, it's going to make you a master pianist. No, those people spent hours and hours and hours practicing. I know a lot of professional ballet dancers and their practice started when they were very young and its hours and hours and hours at the bar practicing.

Steve Rush: Yeah, no substitute for hard work and practice, right?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Right.

Steve Rush: So, if I was interested in getting involved in this field, what would be your advice?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: So, the coaches are needed now more than ever, and you do not need it background in health care. Some of the best coaches come from other walks of life. And so many people can study to become health coaches, even if they never go out and work as a health coach, they can find that information so valuable. And most of our students who come to us are really going out and working with others, but some are not, but they are all saying I had a personal transformation by learning a functional medicine paradigm of positive psychology. So, you can study with us. We have people who are medical doctors who are also studying to be coaches. We have people who are in the fields of nutrition, for example, and some of these folks are not changing careers. They are continuing what they're already doing, but they're using the coach approach. So, one of the best things that happen when you learn to be a coach is your relationships are transformed with your family, your friends, your colleagues. And if you are a practitioner with your patients, because you are really listening to them, they feel heard, and that improves the quality of the relationship.

Steve Rush: We'll also make sure before we finish off today, that we capture all of those things in our show notes. So, we can pass on any links and tips for any of our listeners who are really interested in this. So, at this part of the show, I also get to now flip the lens a little and get a chance to hack into the years of leadership experience that you've gathered along your career and on your journey too. So, the first thing I'm going to ask you, Sandra, is if you could share with our listeners. All of the years of experience and distill that down into your top three leadership hacks, what would they be?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Sure. So, I think that it is, the first is to be, yet it's not about me, it's about the people I serve, whether that's most particularly the people on my team. To really see what do they need, and it's the power of this teamwork. So, it's not about me, it's about them. And so, I'm very mindful of really listening when I'm at a team meeting, that is key. The second one would be to have, this goes along with the first one, is curiosity. I just am very curious and ask the right questions. And that also comes from the coach approach. And the third would be creativity. I love to find solutions. I'm a quick start, I'm a visionary. And I like to see that no matter how challenging the problem may be, that there's a solution. And I love to encourage people to think outside of the box, creative thinking. To see, well, how are we going to solve this? How are we going to pivot? And that's what I did so much during this pandemic to inspire people through creativity, to have a different mindset for example.

Steve Rush: And feeds, of course, positive psychology, doesn't it?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Yes exactly.

Steve Rush: The next part of the show we call it Hack to Attack. And I know from the work that you've done, you've said your biggest wins come from epic failures. And this part of the show is where we look at maybe a time in your life or work that could have been an epic failure, or certainly hasn't gone as well as planned. But as a result of the experience, you've used that as a learning in your life and work. So, what would be your Hack to Attack?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Sure. So, we can go back to my roots and when I was in education and college. We had to have a time, we were student teachers and I had trouble in that experience. I could not control a classroom of children. This was not in special education. This was just a normal classroom. And I did not get a good grade in my student teaching. And that mean that I probably wouldn't get a job as a teacher because I didn't do well. And so, I remember thinking, oh, what am I going to do? I remember just flopping out of my bed, crying that my career is over, what am I’m going to do? I'm a failure. And so, I chose that to pivot and, Oh, I'll just stay in college and I'll get a master's in learning disabilities. Because in learning disabilities I can work one-on-one with children, I could do that. And so, I'm thankful because if I had not failed at that experience, I was gone on and had a classroom of children. And I probably would have spent years as a classroom teacher and retired with a pension and just sitting at home knitting and playing cards with my friends right now. Which I love, I don't like playing cards. I love video and I love all crafts, but that's another story, but I'm thankful for that failure.

Steve Rush: Real sliding doors moment, right?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Yes.

Steve Rush: And it's interesting. Had that had happened, how different the world would have been and all of the work and the academia and teaching that you've given since in a very different spere. So, hallelujah to failing that class is what I say.

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Yes.

Steve Rush: The last thing that we would like to do today is give you a chance to do some time travel. So, you get to bump back into Sandra at 21 and give us some advice. What would it be?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: To give up concern about what others think about you. I was always pretty obsessed with being right, with doing the right thing and a lot of the shame and embarrassment of making a mistake, whether that was a cognitive mistake or even the mistake of wearing the wrong outfit to a party, always having to be perfect in every way and wanting to be like by these people. And now at my age, 71, I'm much bolder. And just speaking my mind and letting go of the consequences, still being kind but not worrying about pleasing people.

Steve Rush: Yeah, that's great advice, isn't it? And I guess that doesn't matter how old you are. You can still learn to unlearn that as a behavior, can't you?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Absolutely.

Steve Rush: Love it. So, for folks listening to this Sandra that would like to get a little bit more insight as to the work that you do, and if you're writing and if you're teaching and maybe some information around The Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, where it's the best place for us to send them?

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: functionalmedicinecoaching.org is our website. And on Facebook it's Functional Medicine Coaching Academy on Instagram, functionalmedcoach, I should say, functionalmedcoach. Personally, I am drsani that's S-A-N-D-I on Instagram, and also at Dr. Sandy on the Clubhouse, new platform, which I'm excited about.

Steve Rush: You on Clubhouse too, awesome.

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Love it, yes.

Steve Rush: Brilliant. For those folks who haven't listened to Clubhouse, it's like having podcasts on demand and lots of random conversations, but some really insightful discussions taking place.

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Yes absolutely. I will follow you

Steve Rush: Super: Well, make sure that we connect and Clubhouse. We'll also make sure that all of those links you just spoke about are in our show notes so that we can continue the conversation beyond today.

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Fantastic. Thank you so much,

Steve Rush: Sandra. It's been amazing having you on the show. I'm super grateful. You've been able to join us and good luck with the next 35 years of The Functional Medicine Coaching Academy.

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: Thank you so, so much.

Steve Rush: Take care.

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum: You as well.

Closing

Steve Rush: I genuinely want to say heartfelt thanks for taking time out of your day to listen in too. We do this in the service of helping others, and spreading the word of leadership. Without you listening in, there would be no show. So please subscribe now if you have not done so already. Share this podcast with your communities, network, and help us develop a community and a tribe of leadership hackers.

Finally, if you would like me to work with your senior team, your leadership community, keynote an event, or you would like to sponsor an episode. Please connect with us, by our social media. And you can do that by following and liking our pages on Twitter and Facebook our handler there @leadershiphacker. Instagram you can find us there @the_leadership_hacker and at YouTube, we are just Leadership Hacker, so that is me signing off. I am Steve Rush and I have been the leadership hacker.

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