Unlocking Breakthroughs with Dr. Karthik Ramanan this episode is Sponsored by ⁠⁠⁠Liquid I.V.⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠Acorns⁠⁠⁠

You are now tuning in to discover your potential. So listen, participate, be inspired, know that you can discover your potential. Thank you for having me, Anna. I'm excited to be here. No question about it. And it's always been an important topic. I think it's just something that's getting more focused now. And whether we realize it or not, it's simply because this body, this mind that we all inhabit, was designed and optimized for nature, for a world that we no longer find ourselves in. And so the computer, the machinery is made for a different environment. So naturally, the more things that we experience on a day-to-day basis, the stress, the overwhelm, the traffic, the notifications, the, I gotta do this for my job, for my business, whatever else, for my family, it just gets to be a bit much. And the fact is that there is still a lot that we can do. You know, just lean into what makes us naturally, emotionally healthy, so that we can best cope with what we deal with on a day-to-day basis. Yeah, there's so many things that can factor into drive. And you're right, that it's the unconscious mind that drives our decision-making more than we even realize. Sometimes it's the decision-making to take an action, but oftentimes it's the decision to not engage in something that we don't even realize is happening. And we just wonder later, wow, myself bad. As far as how I got here, rewinding almost the beginning, so my parents from India, and they had a vision to give me, and eventually my sister who was born here in the US, a different chance in life. They had to work really hard to get to the university level and everything else that they achieved up through their 20s. And they decided, okay, early 30s, let's move all the way across the country, across the world, rather, to a country where we don't know anybody here. It'll cost $5 a minute to call back home to India, mid-80s, right? And that's mid-80s dollars, so that's a lot for me to call back to. But it was something that they decided to do because it was for our collective best interest. And so they went to graduate school, University of Colorado at Boulder in the mid-80s, and started working on their master's degrees, and then their PhDs. So I grew up in Colorado, my sister was born a few years later, and one thing that was very clear from the get-go was, there's something different about the arrangement of our family versus my friends' families, even in daycare, before elementary school. Kind of figured out something was different here because they'd say things like, oh, my grandma's coming over, or my cousins, we're going over to see our cousins, things like that. And I'd ask my parents, where's my grandparents and cousins, and they're in India, right? And it started to form this picture in my head that they've really given up a lot for me to be here. Now, does that make sense to a four-year-old, not a ton? But as you start to piece together things as time goes on, you realize, oh, okay, education's very important for them. Not just for themselves, but for us. Like, we didn't effectively, you know, this idea of like, we didn't come here to play around, like we're here to, you know, get a good career and build a good life. And so I really took that on through elementary school, middle school, high school. Getting good grades was not an option. It was just, you know, what was expected of me, but eventually, and it didn't take too long, it was probably somewhere in middle school, that became my own inner desire. Cause I remember feeling that shift of, I need to get a good report guard to please them, turned into, oh, I wanna do it for me, you know? It was probably seventh grade or so. And so then it became this inner drive to do better all the time. And so same thing with the SATs, same thing with college admissions. I did get into Cornell University. I started as a biology major there. And my entire existence was predicated. My identity was so much predicated on being the smart kid. I skipped a grade. So I was technically, I turned 17 soon after, but I was technically 16 when I went to college. And so everything, like I wasn't, I didn't attract much female attention when I was in high school, et cetera. But it's just, okay, I'm the smart kid. Well, you go to Cornell, you're graded on a curve. Everybody here is now in the top 5% of their high school classes. I got the first, you know, Bs of my life. I didn't know what to do. You know, it was like, okay, the one thing that I thought I had for my self-esteem was now, you know, my high performance, now that's gone or your average. Like what a terrible feeling, right? For a kid that's like, that's the only thing. That said, I did have other traits and abilities and skills. I just never let myself believe it at that time. Right? But anyway, going through college, there was a whole lot of self-discovery, a whole lot of pain and anguish in terms of figuring out who I am at this point. I didn't want to quit on the biology degree, but I did pick up applied economics and management as a second major because of course, you know, when you're struggling to take on more work, that was just what I did. And so when I graduated though, I did land on my feet and I got a job at one of the premier investment banks on Wall Street in 2000, coming soon after, but I was so excited to, you know, land this prestigious corporate job and here was a chance for me to move up. And so that's what I did. I felt so much worth just in their ability to see what I could do for the company, for the firm. And so I put it, I mean, it's already an industry where you work really hard, tons of hours. And I put in more than that. It was coming in on, you know, the Saturdays to work on side projects that would help us gain some efficiencies, help me move forward, make a name for myself. It was volunteering to work every public holiday so that, you know, the rest of the team could take the holidays off with their families. It was all of those things to give myself a chance to move forward and grow. Well, as we know, the Great Recession came around and it was definitely a rude awakening in terms of what is a, quote unquote, safe corporate job. Not very safe. And so we, our building was right next to Lehman Brothers and when that bank went bankrupt over the weekend in just the Monday morning in September, we come into work and we see the news on CNBC and we're all shocked. And we run over to that side of the building where we see, we look down and you see thousands of people walking out with filing boxes. They all came to work that morning, not expecting that this 165 year old company that they worked for was just gonna vanish over the weekend. And it really just made me reevaluate things like what is, what do I do here? What if I lose this job? What if we, what if we're next? And all of those cross my mind. So I responded the only way I knew how, which is work harder. Meanwhile, I was also seeking wisdom from anyone that was further along in their career, whether it was formal mentorship or just casual questions. I wanted to pick the brains of people who were successful. And I got a lot of great advice, like one gentleman told me, it's very easy to want to work on the things that you're weak at, but I believe that just double down on your strengths will hire people that are good at the things that you're not that great in. And cause realistically, you'll never be as great at those things as they are, but you can be best in the world at the things that you're great at. So that was great advice. And I take on a lot of those, but there was one gentleman, his name is Jim. And he was, I knew something was different about him the moment you met him. He's probably in his early fifties or so when I first met him, maybe late forties, somewhere in that realm. And he was, he had been in some senior roles before and presently didn't have a team that he was running, but wealth of wisdom, everything else. And when I asked him for career advice, it was, Parthik, take care of your health because nobody else will. I find it really interesting that our money is closely related to our outlook on life. And maybe you've noticed that things are a little bumpy right now. That's why I appreciate any advice that helps me stay calm and stick with my investing. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. Acorns is a financial wellness app that makes it easy to start saving and investing for your future. You don't need to be rich. Acorns lets you get started with the spare money you've got right now, even if all you've got is spare change. You don't need to be an expert. Acorns recommends a diversified portfolio that can help you weather all of the markets ups and downs. I find that making small, easy changes in my money mindset helps me stay calm and stick with my goals. And Acorns makes that easy too. Acorns automatically invests my money, giving it a chance to grow with time. Sign up now and join the over 14 million all-time customers who've already saved and invested over $25 billion with Acorns. Head to acorns.com slash dyp or download the Acorns app to get started. Paid non-client endorsement, compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns. Tier one compensation provided. Investing involves risk. Acorns advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. View important disclosures at acorns.com slash dyp. This show is sponsored by Liquid IV. I don't know about you, but in the summertime, I always hit the wall about mid afternoon and it sneaks up on me. So that's how I realized I'm probably dehydrated. The cool thing is that Liquid IV is clinically studied to maintain hydration better than water alone for up to four hours. So now I love my hydration routine. I just keep a few packets of my favorite Liquid IV right by my purse. So I remember to mix it up before I leave the house. And if you're the kind of person that can't make yourself drink plain water, then Liquid IV is a game changer. It's the easiest thing to remember. And I just love the true to fruit flavors like tangerine and watermelon are my favorite. And if you keep one with you, you won't reach for a sugary caffeinated drink when you feel that afternoon's slump. It's amazing what a true pick me up Liquid IV feels like. And that's how I know it's full of the good stuff, which is three times the electrolytes of the leading sports drinks plus eight vitamins and nutrients all in a single stick. Break the mold and own your ritual. Maximize your hydration with Liquid IV, get 20% off your first order of Liquid IV when you go to liquidiv.com and use code DYP at checkout. That's 20% off your first order with code DYP at liquidiv.com. One night I'm standing at the window, wall to wall floor to ceiling window of my brand new apartment that I got to, first apartment of my own in my entire life. 30th floor, brand new sky rise building overlooking the New Jersey horizon, not a building of that height around me. I'm looking at the thousands of lights across the sky that night, just reflecting on all the sacrifice that it took to get me to that point. I had, I was able to pay off my undergraduate student loans. I was able to pay off my parents' credit card debt. I was giving more to charity than I ever thought I could at that age and here I was, the youngest VP at that department had seen, at least to that point in time, I had so much going for me, right? Career was going well, everything else, and I hated the man in the mirror. I couldn't understand how is it that I can have all the things that society tells us we need to have, especially in the late 20s, to be happy and yet I was miserable. I felt that darkness coming back and I just knew I cannot, I cannot let myself go back here. So what do I need to do? Let's do P90X and Insanity and change everything about it, how I eat, everything else. Work harder. Work harder and it did work to some degree, but then after a certain point, it just, I hit a plateau and probably triggered, my cortisol curve to go out of balance, everything else. And I don't know that for a fact at this point, so looking back, the signs were there. But ultimately, all I really wanted was a great relationship in marriage and meaningful work. I felt so far from either of those things and I didn't know what the answer was gonna be. Well, still wasn't enough to really change things wholesale until probably the person I was dating at the time that I thought had the best chance of, I got dumped. Well, Rock Bottom's a beautiful place to be because you're willing to do anything. You're willing to try the things that you would otherwise say no to, you have nothing to lose. True. It's a very powerful place to be if you know how to harness it. Now, I didn't necessarily know how to harness it, but sometimes life gives you the answer right at the right time. And so having been struggling with my health, I saw my sister after a three month window of time and she had lost 30 pounds. Her cystic acne had cleared up. She looked incredible. And I was just at that moment to say, okay, whatever you did, I'm gonna do. So I asked her very hesitantly and proud of her, but also hesitantly, what did you do? Right, is this hard? She goes, I've just been eating a whole food plant-based diet, mostly raw foods, fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds just as they're found from the earth. Oh God, that sounds horrible. Show me how to do this. Show me how to do this. But I realized something at that point, Anna, was that my best ideas in life had gotten me to that moment. And being a perfectionist, I can't do it perfectly. It's not worth doing it at all. People pleaser that if you need me to do something, I will say yes, because under the surface, I need your approval. All of those things, it's, it got me this far. Great career success, personally, not so much. So what if instead of cold turkey and lifestyle change, what if I just gradually change the way I eat and move and think and let's just see what happens? Because again, rock bottom, I got nothing to lose. I'll try anything, yeah. Try anything. Well, three weeks in, I wasn't measuring my weight each day, but three weeks in, I was feeling really good one morning. I said, I got to check this out. I step on the scale, I look down, and I see the lowest weight that I'd ever seen as an adult. Wow. And that was the point that my mind blew open. And I said, whoa, wait a second, what if the confidence I wanted, the relationship I wanted, the life I wanted, what if all these things are possible? And the only one holding me back was me. And it was a sobering realization that what if the only reason I didn't get there was because I didn't believe I deserved it. And if that's the case, then, well, let's just release all expectation and see what happens. Because again, I'm playing with house money at this point, I got nothing to lose, let's see what happens. So I sure didn't tell anybody at work what I was doing. I'd show up with my jars of green juice and I'd get the occasional questions. You know, what are you doing there? There's one guy who was like, oh, so what's in your pond scum this morning? You know. And the same guy later on pulled me aside in the pantry. He's like, Karthik, I've got this wedding in a couple of weeks. My suit's a little tight. You got any advice for me? People lost weight, but I saw type two diabetes, vanish, chronic joint pain, hypertension, and migraines. I just saw so many things that people had been struggling with for a long time vanish and I thought, I have no idea what I'm doing, but this is satisfying. This is gratifying. I gotta figure out how to do this for my career. And that's when I found out about naturopathic medicine and there's a school here in Tempe, Arizona. And so I applied, came back, interviewed, got in, left my corporate career, which was by far and away, the dumbest financial decision I've ever made in my life. Spend all the savings. Let's take on a bunch of student debt again. Let's take on 250,000. Why not? And nothing is promised on the other end of it. Oh, by the way, you are also going to meet the love of your life in medical school, which, you know, makes it better. That happened. Yeah. Now we also have two, two student loans, but whatever. But, but when I moved out here to Arizona, that was a chance to reinvent who I was. And I realized that nobody out here knew me. And this is a beautiful opportunity. And I had this moment of realization, inspiration on the plane, flying out of Newark Airport, looking out the window and seeing my old life fly away from me. And I had this realization that I could design my ideal self now. What does this Doctor K of the future look like? This guy that I'm going to school to become. What are his habits, routines? Who does he spend time with? What books does he read? All this stuff. And so I outlined this ideal version of myself. And I started filling out what does that person look like? And that became the blueprint for how I would act going forward. The choices that I would make. So it didn't matter if it felt good, if I was comfortable with it or anything else. No, is this something that that guy would have done? If that's the case, then I'm going to do it now. And that was it. So I pushed myself out of my comfort zone. It was really this era of discovery that started at that point in time that has never ended since. And. And yes, I did meet the love of my life in medical school. Now, when we graduated a few years later. I realized there was something that I want to do that was a little bit different. Ordering labs, calling in scripts, you know, writing up treatment plans, diagnosing and treating. Certainly something I was good at. But it didn't light me up the way that something else did. And that something else was simply this. Mental health. Right. We've got two avenues, generally, of solutions. We've got our counseling and psychotherapy. And for the right person with the right counselor at the right therapy, magic happens. I need EMDR at one point in my life, especially super powerful. I think having the right counselor in our corner is a benefit to every human being on earth. The other side is psychiatry. When you need a medication for a specific circumstance, especially acutely, can be very helpful in certain conditions. Absolutely. At the same time, my journey to emotional health came through food. It was neither of those things at that point in time. Yeah. EMDR was later. But it was neither of those things at that point in time. And so there's more to this picture. And there's a philosophy too of medicine that I would love to bring to this awareness in mental health. And what is that? It's simply if you fall down and take a step back and say, fall down and scrape your knee as a kid. Right. Do we look for? Yes, there's the antibiotic cream and the bandage, right? You're healing the wound. But do we look for, you know, some pill to solve that ill? Or do we actually treat the root cause there? Do I have a headache because of the lack of Advil in my system? Or is there another cause? And so that's what I'm was looking to solve. And it's simply this. So if I said, Anna, there's a plant back here in this corner that's off screen. You can't see it just yet, but there's a plant back here. And it's not doing so well. What would you suggest that I do to revive it? Yeah. So water, sunlight, maybe the soil and. Why? Why do we all have that intuition? Even the people that say, oh, Dr. K, I kill every plant that I ever touch. Please don't ask me. And even if I say, please just throw something out there, we'll get some combination of sun, water, soil. Everybody intuitively knows what that plant needs to thrive because it was made for nature and we just assume it's just not getting what it needs here. Same thing with us. It's the same thing with us. We are beings made for nature, optimized for nature, optimized for survival in nature. And certain things in nature are present that are not present today, at least for those of us that are fortunate enough. Food, energy source is abundant now. It is not abundant in nature. We have to do so much work to go acquire food. We need to conserve the precious water that we have. All of these things factor in. And yet. Our modern life doesn't support that at all, right? And so it's easier to put on weight because our bodies are like are wanting to conserve excess calories. It's easy to, you know, our out of nature, there's not a lot of salt to then preserve hydration in the body in the cells. And so we have a system when, when our water is low to conserve salt, we will not for sodium as opposed to, you know, our food supply, which is just chock full of sodium, right? And it's just little examples of how what we have is just not aligned with how we live. So when we're talking about emotional health, there's the five pillars. Your psychology, relationships, nutrition, sleep and body movement. So your psychology, understanding this lens through which we see the world. What are the things that occurred? Yes, earlier in life, but the things that have been kind of compounded as time has gone on. What are the things that, that, that dictate this unconscious lens through which we see the world? And so in my book, we talk about a concept called the truth cycle, which that exercise and the one that follows it will help illuminate what are some of the things that might be dictating our life on an unconscious level. Number two, relationships, where the average of the five people and ideas that we spend the most time with, right? How do we surround ourselves with other growth seeking individuals who are looking to become their ideal selves? And when we spend time with those people, growth is inevitable. Number three is nutrition. 90% of the neurotransmitters, the serotonin, dopamine, GABA, etc., that regulate how we think, act and feel are made by the bacteria that live in our gut. We don't even make them in our own body to that extent. And so the foods that we eat determine which species thrive and which ones are there to produce the compounds that we need. But all the, all at the same time, your gut health determines not just your emotional health, but your immune function, hormone balance, metabolic function list goes on. Number four is sleep. It's the first thing to go and we're busy, but optimizing our nighttime and morning routines along with our cortisol curve, melatonin curves are vital for our long-term brain health. And number five, body movement motion dictates emotion, not just about exercise, but just being in more constant low grade motion is a function for being more emotionally healthy. It's a very simple framework, right? It's an ecology, relationships, nutrition, sleep, body movement. It's just not easy to put all that into play. And so my whole premise is how to actually make it a little bit easier, work with your biology, work with how we're made to be optimized for nature, to make a lot of these things a little bit easier to do in our busy lives. And I can take that another step forward, addressing the physical problems or problems in general. I don't believe their problems. They're just our symptoms, the things that we deal with are just a reminder. Take a look over here. Don't forget about this. Right. Maybe there's something here to look at. Even the things that we call problems that happen to us in our life. It's not about being toxically positive about it. If something is painful, processing it is vitally important. Yeah. And at the same time, there is a point where we can sit in it a little bit too long and I've been there. I get it. Yeah. There is a point where we can say, okay, well, what can I learn from this? What is this allowing me to do that I would not be able to do otherwise? And so when we start to live from that framework, they're not problems. They're just learning opportunities always. Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a, and it's in the uniqueness of the journey that we have something absolutely special to share. It's that, that, that road that is unclear, maybe scary, painful, traumatic. Later on can be the vehicle that produces that wonder, that greatness. The concept of what is good in our life and what is bad is subjective. What's good for one person is bad for someone else. It's all subjective and it's subjective within ourselves too, meaning that we can reframe our relationship with something that we cannot change. And what is real or not real then? What's real is what happened. The meaning we take from it is entirely up to us. And that doesn't mean that we have to take the empowering meaning right away. That can take time. But once we do own that, that empowering meaning, put it this way, all the struggle that I've been through in my life, there's not a day that I would ever want to go to sleep and in a dream, relive a single moment of some of those situations. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy and I wouldn't change a thing. Cause I wouldn't be who I am today. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to do what I get to do today. I had not been for all of those. So pain is going to happen in life. Pain's our greatest teacher. So never let your pain go to waste. The emotionally healthy you how to own your past and love your future. It's it's available on on Amazon. Hardcover, paperback, Kindle and the audible coming out soon as of the time of this recording. So yeah, however you like to consume books, there is a workbook that goes along with it. You can either get that on Amazon as well. Or you can download the pages of the workbook for free on the reader resources page. So it's meant to be something that you read along with and figure out how to incorporate it into your life. And there is exercise that help you do that because this is not, we've all been to those seminars or read those books, listen to these podcasts. We get all excited about something like, oh, this is so good. This is going to change everything. And two weeks later, life is back to what you see. Right. And I don't want this book to be that right. It's it's not a very long read, but it's something that you can still break down into small pieces and make it actionable because my whole goal with it is to help you past and love your future to stop chasing joy. Begin living. I would certainly love that. And if I could just add one last thing just for listeners. Just remember one thing. There's nobody in the history of this planet that has ever lived your situation, your life, your challenges, your tragedies, your triumphs, your victories, defeats. Nobody's had your parents, your friends, your families, your teachers, your jobs, nothing. Nobody's ever lived the life that you have right now. And yet we spend so much time trying to compare ourselves to what other people have done when the game is totally different. Yes, we all walk similar paths in that we all have the human existence. There's certain parts that are common within all of us. And there's parts that are different because of who we've been in contact with in life and the things that we have been through along the way. So I'll just say this. Instead of trying to compare ourselves to other people and where we think we should be, just remember that you are unique and nobody has ever walked your life before. And that makes you undefeated in being where you are today. You are literally the best in the world at being you. This is Cindy Gilman and you're listening to Discover Your Potentials. So until next time, do something nice for yourself, but do something nice for someone else.