Health & Happiness: Find Your Why

[Uncle Marv]
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of my Unhealthy Podcast. It's a look at life from a different perspective. We will talk about how to live healthy and be happy, but in a little different way.

It's not going to be just about diet and exercise. It's also going to be about mindset. It's going to be discussing some of the specific topics that come up and affect us.

And if you've paid attention to my last couple of episodes, we had an interesting talk about menopause and I got to learn what menopause means for men. So those are the types of things that you can get here on this show. Today, I'm joined by a previous guest who we're going to become friends at some point to the point where I introduce her a little bit better than that.

But Diana Feinstein with Match Packed Health is back on the show. And you may remember her as the person that introduced me to cauliflower pizza. Diane, welcome to the show.

How are you?

[Diana Feinstein]
Thanks so much for having me again.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So I asked you to come back on. We really didn't have a topic specifically.

But I think that I like where our discussions have gone in the sense of both of us are very mindful of what it is that we're doing. And this whole concept of why are you doing what you're doing? People have asked me that about the podcast.

Dude, why are you doing this show? You're not a health expert. I'm like, yeah, I'm not.

But I do want to live healthy and I want to be happy and I don't want to watch YouTube. I don't want to do any programs per se. I don't think I need to find a pill to make me happy.

Not that I don't believe that pills make you healthy when done properly, but just a pill to take a pill is not it for me. So, Diane, I know that sometimes you get to coach people and you get to ask them about their why. Let me start there.

When you do that, what exactly are you looking for when you're asking them that question?

[Diana Feinstein]
I'm looking for the thing that is going to have them put aside all their excuses. What is the one thing that when they are on their deathbed and they look back, they say, I led a good life? What is the big reason that they're on this earth?

Is it to leave a legacy? Is it to contribute? What is the thing that they're going to look back on and say, I led a good life?

And it varies from person to person. When you take away all the materialistic things, all the things that keep us busy on a day-to-day basis and you actually zoom out, what I work with my clients is to hold space for that vision so that you can actually lead those purpose, mission, and vision and values on a day-to-day basis because your life is really just a function of moments of how you show up and unfortunately, we are caught in this trap of, I want to say, staying busy and productive but to one end. So, I always like to ask people, at the end of your life, what is really going to root you saying, I led a good one?

[Uncle Marv]
Now, you specifically deal with busy professionals and a lot of times, they have a purpose. They have a goal. Usually, it has nothing to do with their health.

Initially, until they get to the point where they need to seek you out or someone like you to help them, how much of a change needs to happen from their original purpose, which is either to make money, be successful, get the big house, all of that stuff, to where it becomes about what does it mean for them when they're sitting on their deathbed and looking back?

[Diana Feinstein]
So, I love this question. What if, when they come to me, what if it were an invitation to actually reevaluate what it was that is important? Who would they be without the house and the cars and all of the material things, like what would be left and how is their health getting in the way of all of that?

When you're able to work with someone at their core identity, that's actually what creates sustainable change. And I love working with high-performing professionals because they figure out how to get stuff done. Now, for many of the clients that I work with, it was an either or proposition.

Either I have the successful job, I have the car, I have all of the fancy things, or I have my health. And there's often this trade of body for business. I want to have the cake, right?

I want you to have the cake and I want you to have your health at the same time. And being able to hold that tension, being able to reimagine what that relationship looks like so that you can hold that and is really the purpose of how I work with people. That's what makes it different.

Instead of putting you into a box of things that you can and cannot have or things that you can and cannot do, how do you actually take your health and leverage it so that you can actually have more of what you want in life? It's not either more or health. It's how to use health as the ultimate power play.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So part of what I hear you saying makes sense except for the fact that I think most people try to balance that where they still want to have all those things and they want to have their health, but the other stuff keeps getting in the way. Does that make sense?

[Diana Feinstein]
100% makes sense. So then my question becomes, well, why do you want that one thing? Do you want that one thing?

Let’s take, for example, you know, I want to have more energy. I also want to binge watch Netflix for five episodes straight until 2 o'clock in the morning because I have a tough job. And so what is the underlying need behind binge watching Netflix?

What is the underlying need of clearing out your pantry at the end of the night? What is the underlying need of only doing takeout and junk food? What is the need?

Now, what if you actually had those needs met in a way that produced vitality? What if you could reimagine the formula to meet that need instead of using all of those maladaptive coping mechanisms to numb out? Because when you get to the root cause of the problem, right, first principle thinking, that's actually like where that's where your health unlocks.

And you can use that as the as like the most underutilized asset in your life.

[Uncle Marv]
OK. I want to transition that to something you and I have talked about off air, not on air, so I need to kind of give people a little background. We talked about the concept of me doing this show and the mantra that I always put in there is to live healthy and be happy.

And the whole idea of having that described as a Venn diagram, you know, everybody always talks about, well, you know, it needs to be I need work life balance. I need personal relationships. I need, you know, still need my work.

I want to have leisure time and all of that. And you presented me with the thought of instead of having all those different circles, what if it was just two circles, healthy and happy? To me, that means that all those other circles have to be within those two somehow.

Right.

[Diana Feinstein]
That's right.

[Uncle Marv]
And I try to think about if I had to redesign my Venn diagram of life, that's going to be a little difficult right now in terms of my thought, because I have to rethink everything.

[Diana Feinstein]
Right.

[Uncle Marv]
Even though I've talked about living healthy and being happy. It's always a sense of, OK, how do we do that? Sorry, I'm thinking in my head right now because I'm trying to decide if I have a question to ask you or if I'm waiting for you to ask me one.

[Diana Feinstein]
What are the qualities of things that make you happy? The qualities.

[Uncle Marv]
The qualities of like individual things of so like what quality of work?

[Diana Feinstein]
Anything that so I'll give you an example. When I am with my nine year old son. And a specific experience, it makes me happy.

When I have ease. That makes me happy. When I have a feeling of.

When I am when I am cooking and I smell the aroma. Of the Philippines. That makes me happy.

So what are the qualities of the domains in your life? Talk to me about the qualities of what would help that would make something that would make you happy.

[Uncle Marv]
OK, that is not the question I had in mind. Not one I was ready to answer, but I will. I will answer as honestly as I can.

Because if I had to answer right now, I don't know if I could say specifically this or that makes me happy. But I will describe this. I knew that there was a point in life where things were going to change.

And I've when I started this podcast, I talked about it. I've explained it to you. And basketball was one of those things that made me happy.

And my basketball growing up and, you know, throughout school, played after school was never good enough to be professional or anything like that. But good enough that I could play in leagues and I could play with guys that were in college, semi pro and hold my own. And I played up until age 48.

I was still good enough to be out there with the young kids, guarding kids half my age. And I still enjoyed hitting the game winning shot. I.

And then there was just one day where I'm in the middle of a game and I'm like, yeah, I'm done. I cannot describe why. I don't know if it was a combination of just getting older, realizing that, you know, I'm not as young as these kids out here.

I can't do the same things. I don't know if there was a trigger to do other things in my life because I did shift my focus into doing the podcast, which I was doing my business podcast at the time. And I took the time I was playing basketball and put that into that.

I cannot say that the podcast gave me that same happiness feeling.

[Diana Feinstein]
So I'm going to reflect back what I'm hearing.

[Uncle Marv]
OK.

[Diana Feinstein]
Teamwork and relationships are part of your formula for what brings you joy. How does that land?

[Uncle Marv]
We might have to dive into that deeper because. I don't see that only because in every other area of life, I don't have that dynamic that was in basketball. So even though.

I work in I.T. and I do work with other people and stuff, there's no real team around me. Does that make sense? The podcast, there's no real team except for my guests and my listeners.

[Diana Feinstein]
It's the relationship, though, that you have with people. And the connection.

[Uncle Marv]
All right.

[Diana Feinstein]
Right. So do you value relationship and connection?

[Uncle Marv]
Sometimes.

[Diana Feinstein]
What if you had more of that in your day to day life? Would that bring you joy?

[Uncle Marv]
To a certain degree. Only because there are times where I'm like, all right, I need to have some me time. At the end of the day, yeah, at the end of the day, I don't want to come home and have, you know, group people coming over, hanging out, having dinner.

I'm like, my day's done. I need some time to unwind.

[Diana Feinstein]
Right. So it's the type of connection that brings you joy. OK.

Right. So it's connection, whether it's to yourself or to others. Very specific type of connection to yourself and others that helps you re-anchor and ground.

[Uncle Marv]
Interesting. I'll have to think about that more.

[Diana Feinstein]
Right. So it's the quality as well. It's not just the what, but it's the quality that motivates you.

Right. So when you think about your health, what if you were to slow down and look at how you take care of yourself, whether it's through your diet or your exercise? What if it were a communion of that connection that brings you joy?

So I'll give you an example. I'm a first generation Filipino-American, and my grandmother was the one that raised me for the first 10 years of my life. One of the qualities that really left me empty when she died was that sense of loving love and belonging whenever I was with her.

And that was always coupled with her cooking. And she always made me this specific Filipino dish called kare-kare, which had like a peanut butter undertone. And so whenever I make meals, I always use some kind of like peanut butter dressing because that elicits in me a sense of reconnection back to my grandmother, where I felt safe, seen, loved, and belonged.

And so the peanut butter gives me that sense of connection to her. So how do you craft your life practices that give you the same feeling of like, you know, really great moments in your life? How do you more proactively craft that in?

Because if you weren't deliberate about that, you're going to spend a lot of your life in this busyness. It really comes down to the experience. How do you proactively craft that experience?

It doesn't have to be about basketball, but how do you want to move your body in a way that feels good? And I've had to reimagine that, quite frankly, for myself. So training for an Ironman no longer excites me, but hiking in the woods for miles is so invigorating.

That's still movement, right? You know, they say that, you know, you have to lift weights and do all the things, but it really comes down to like resistance training. And what if that resistance training were actually like volunteering and like, I don't know, let's say building houses.

Like how do you actually move your body in a way that is life affirming? That creates health. And so it's about crafting experiences throughout your day to bring you that happiness, to bring you that health at the same time.

And that comes down to being aware of what brings you joy. And each moment of joy is what brings you closer to being happy and healthy at the same time.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So because we're going to run out of time, I don't want to jump into the question that popped into my head or the thought. But just to say to everybody out there, this was one of those shows where we just thought bringing up this concept of, you know, what is your why would be something that I felt you would want to hear, especially from me as the person that started this podcast and asked you to come on this journey with me.

And then, of course, my guest. And I thought that Diana would be the perfect person to have that conversation with. And thank you for doing that, Diana.

[Diana Feinstein]
Thanks so much for having me again. I appreciate it.

[Uncle Marv]
So I am going to say that this whole Venn diagram of life thing, I'm going to look at this a little bit more. And, you know, the overlapping of everything. You mentioned health and relationships.

And sounds to me like I need to look at the energy and emotional capacity to nurture connections.

[Diana Feinstein]
Dead on.

[Uncle Marv]
But I'll look at the other stuff in there. Because, of course, the Venn diagram to me, again, you know, health, work, relationships. Mindset, all of that.

But it's all going to be in an effort to do what I hope I'm trying to do in a good way. Live healthy and be happy. So, folks.

Great. Diana Feinstein, Max Pact Health. I'll have her link and her bio guest profile page in the show notes.

We're going to have to carve out more time so we can dig into this and some other stuff a little bit more. All right?

[Diana Feinstein]
I would love that.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, folks. That's going to do it for this episode. Sorry it's a short one.

But we'll be back with more. So we'll see you back here soon. And until then, live healthy and be happy.