In this episode, We talk about how what others consider to be learning disabilities like ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia or similar are actually gifts. These so-called learning disorders or so-called learning disabilities allow those diagnosed with this so-called condition to think outside the box and see the world in a different way. Discover how to harness these gifts and superpower today!
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
Ep #3: Wash Your Brain Daily with This Daily Practice
Ep #6: Hug a Kid & Never Grow Up!
Ep #12: Yoga For Health Wealth and Happiness
This 11-year-old was bad, so they put an ice pick in his brain…
The 10 Most Insane Medical Practices in History
Transcript: (Read Time: 36 Minutes)
Siri Shakti: Hey fellow RockStars In Life, it's Siri Shakti. And today I'm joined by my co-host.
Dr. Dan: Dr. Dan.
Siri Shakti: Well, today we're going to be talking about some, actually this is pretty cool topic. We've been discussing lately the topic of learning disorders. It's such an awesome thing to discuss because, many of us like my husband and I we look at learning disorders in kind of a different-
Dr. Dan: Well, we don't even call them learning disorders. What we're talking about is what some people would call ADD or ADHD or dyslexia or those kind of things.
Siri Shakti: Yes, yes. And actually, that's specifically what we're going to be talking about today is ADD and ADHD. And that is absolutely correct, the way that we view it is we look at it as an actual blessing, which for many people they might be like, “What, a blessing?” Years ago when I first was introduced to the idea that a learning disorder could be a blessing, I thought that seems silly almost because I was so trained like most of us to look at it as something that is a great challenge almost like a curse in your life.
Dr. Dan: And not trained but conditioned.
Siri Shakti: Conditioned, yes.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. Because I don't know … Well, actually, I do know some of your history in school and I've mentioned mine a little bit in here as well that I was pointed out as being a problem child. And I don't remember in school them ever really talking about ADD or ADHD or any of that kind of stuff, they just said I was a problem child. And that they kept moving me into the special ed classes even in, was it in high school? Yeah. In high school, they didn't call them special ed classes back then, but they called them basic math or something like that. And I would ace those classes because it was super easy and then they moved me back into the other class and I'd just be lost.
Siri Shakti: I was in those classes too in high school.
Dr. Dan: I loved those classes.
Siri Shakti: I got really good grades then.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. I liked those classes and learning that stuff, that's actually fun. Once they got me into the other stuff, it was boring because I couldn't really focus.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. I have a similar background too. I know for you, you had issues with what and honestly I think nowadays, they would have definitely diagnosed you with ADHD because you had a hyperactivity, you-
Dr. Dan: Well, I thought something was wrong with me because I would read a book or they would force you, “Hey, open your history book and we're going to read this boring-ass crap,” that we know a lot of it was lies now. Because I remember there was a book I bought later on and it was something called something history that my teacher lied to me about or something like that. I think Matt Damon was the voice on that, the narrator on that. But I thought that was really interesting. Well, yeah, there was a lot of stuff on there that wasn't really true that they kind of washed up a little bit to be like, “Oh, yeah. We did this and we did that. Oh, no, no. We didn't do that stuff.”
But anyways, my point is that they would force us to read the books and they'd be like, “Open up and read or your homework is this.” And I would read the page and I would get, sometimes I wouldn't even get as far as two or three pages in and I was reading the words. And then I get to that third page or even the first page and I'd be like,” What did I just read?” It's kind of like when you're driving in the car and you're driving and all of a sudden you're like, “Wait, how did I get here? You just kind of dozed off.
There was something that we learned about that, that's the ether, right? Or a different part of the brain you activate that you're able to still go through the motions. If there was a car that stopped ahead of you, you'd still be able to stop. But that part of your brain has kind of checked out or something.
Siri Shakti: It's kind of in dream state.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. A dream state, but you're still able to function. Again, you're not falling asleep behind the wheel so to speak, it's kind of like an outer-body experience I guess in a way.
Siri Shakti: Actually, if you think about it, it's kind of like daydreaming. I've done that many times in my life where I was daydreaming, but I was still safely driving and then all of a sudden I'm like, “Oh, wait, where did I go?”
Dr. Dan: And it happens to me way more often now, now that I know this and I know how to pinpoint it like, “Oh, that was that.” It's pretty intense.
Siri Shakti: Yeah, yeah. For me, well, I always wanted to talk to everyone in class and I'd always get in trouble too. Everyone else would be talking, but my voice was so loud that I would always get in trouble. But I had a lot of issues with reading and comprehension and a little bit of dyslexia type of thing. I was put in some special-
Dr. Dan: How do you have a little of … Is that what they called it? You have a little bit of dyslexia?
Siri Shakti: Well, maybe just a little bit, I don't know. Because it wasn't always present, it would happen sometimes and then sometimes it wouldn't. That's the little bit part. And so, they put me in some special classes. The thing is, later on in high school, I was the same. I actually enjoyed those classes, but when I was in school, I remember feeling really inadequate like I was different than everyone else. And so, that kind of stuck with me.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. And plus, I don't know if it was the same for you, but teachers would always constantly say I was different-
Siri Shakti: I didn't go through that, I didn't go through that, but I remember feeling embarrassed that I was the only one being pulled out of class to get some special one-on-one attention with a teacher's aide on something that everyone else could do as a group, but I needed to have some one-on-one help with. And I remember feeling like, “Well, I want to be able to do it like everyone else,” but I knew it wasn't working.
Yeah. Anyways, when I was reading today online because I was curious how many people or how many kids nowadays are being diagnosed with this. And they said right now roughly 6.4 million children in the US alone are diagnosed with either ADD or ADHD. That's a lot, and we're talking just children.
Dr. Dan: Is that as of this year or is that maybe an older study of last year?
Siri Shakti: No, no, no. As of this year. Yeah. As of this year. And they said roughly, so give or take a little bit. But that's just talking children. You think about, that is huge numbers. And I remember thinking to myself as we started learning about having a different perspective on what these so-called disorders are. Now, we talk about it, we say it's not a disorder, it's a higher order.
Dr. Dan: Or disability, or disorder any of that stuff. Yeah, exactly. It's a gift.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. Or instead of a disability, it's a different ability. And that's something that I think is lacking nowadays is that we've come up with this system and we're just running children through it. And when we see a child that isn't learning the way that our system is set up to teach them to learn, we automatically, and I say we roughly, that's loosely we.
Dr. Dan: We as the people.
Siri Shakti: The people.
Dr. Dan: The majority.
Siri Shakti: The majority. Look at these children and think, “Oh, something's wrong, something's going on. Oh, it must be this,” because they can't learn that way. But come on, how many different ways is there to learn? There's so many different ways to learn. And our current education system … Okay. To be fair, there are many schools that are starting to change things. But yes, it's happening at a very slow pace, it's snail pace. But our current education system is really set up to honor one form of learning, one form of proving that a person is knowledgeable and intelligent. But there are so many ways to show knowledge and intelligence. I know for you and I, we're both very hands-on. Sitting at a desk all day staring at a board was like.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. Without going into a whole hours of discussion about the whole thing because we could really go into, why do they diagnose these many children? Because they've got drugs that they can give them. There's drugs, there's money and there's all this other stuff. Without getting into all that and then also the school system. We've heard of a few schools, especially private schools that are changing things. But the public schools, for the most part, I've heard of maybe one or two. And I'm sure there's more out there that are trying to shake things up and change it up. But again, it's not going to even be 1% probably of the schools out there because school is … Yeah, I don't even want to get into it. But their job, not their job, but what they're trying to do is just try and get as many students as they can to graduate so they can get paid and stay in business. And their business is to give kids diplomas basically.
And yeah, there are some great teachers and some great principals out there that really want to make a difference. In my life, I remember at least one or two teachers in my entire lifetime that I was like, “Oh, I remember that person.” And they really did try and help me or there was this moment where they tried to connect with me. And I was like, “Oh, I recognize that, that's really cool.” But again, out of all the teachers and all the experiences I've had and maybe some of you listening might have a different experience. And that's totally fine, we're not trying to put down the system. What we're trying to do is give you the tools and the knowledge to know that you don't have to be a slave, you don't have to be … I forgot the word I was going to look for in there.
But you don't have to be, I guess I'll just use word slave. You don't have to be a slave to the system, that you can actually pull yourself out of there, you can pull yourself out of what other people believe that ADD or ADHD or dyslexia is a curse or a disability or something that's wrong with you and needs to be fixed. Because like you mentioned, there are so many ways of learning. And unfortunately, we can't really put it on the school. If our kids were in public school, we couldn't go to, I mean we could, but we couldn't go to the school and go talk to the teacher and be like, “Hey, Mrs. Teacher, our child learns better this way. Can you do it with them?” It's like no.
It's a little difficult. The point that we're making is that you need to recognize this in yourself if you're someone that has or has been diagnosed or you know somebody like myself that hasn't been diagnosed, but everybody says, they're like, “Hey, you've got it. That's you?” And just knowing that it is not a curse and that it is a gift. And we'll get a little bit more into that because we don't want to go down the other rabbit hole right now.
Siri Shakti: Well, yeah. And actually, just one more point I want to make about what you just said because you're so right. I'm not trying to bash the schools or anything by any means, but also not only in yourself, but if you have a child that you see that … If it's your child that has been diagnosed or you possibly think that they do have ADD or ADHD that even if they're in traditional school, that's fine. But that you as a parent can now help them when they come home. Let's say they come home with their homework, you can work with them or empower them or even just help them to understand that who they are is beautiful and that they can be their authentic selves. And even if they're having a hard time learning in the way that the school is delivering the information that they can still get some extra help either from their parent or maybe a tutor or something that can help them in a way that they can better understand what they're learning.
Dr. Dan: Well, it is difficult to put ourselves in those shoes because that's one of the many reasons why we decided to home-school our kids. For us, it's like if somebody says, “Well, what should I do if my child has this learning disability?” I would not want them in a public school because it's just going to make it so much harder. But if you feel that's your only choice because of whatever you've got going on in your life, you're a single parent, you have three jobs, I don't know. Then obviously you have to do what you can handle right now. And for both of us growing up in the public school system and knowing and recognizing just how crappy it was and what we had to go through, it has made us stronger, we came out the other side. But we have plenty of friends that had similar challenges and they didn't come out the other side.
I have friends that either are in jail or murdered or killed, you know what I mean? Or hit rock bottom.
Siri Shakti: Yes. I do too.
Dr. Dan: And that's where they're at, your job as a parent or yourself is to get yourself out of that. First is to recognize that this is not a disability and it's nothing that's holding you back. And to get more into that, it's a gift because I remember the first time I heard this because I felt there was something wrong with me for years. And it wasn't until, and I think I've mentioned this before. It wasn't until me and you went to a bookstore and you loved to read and you're like, “Oh, grab a book.” And I'm like, “I hate books.” Never even read an entire book in my entire life. And you said, “Just walk around and pick one that you like, we're in Barnes & Noble.” And I was like, “Okay,” and started walking around. And I found a book, it was a bunch of short stories, inspirational stuff. It was, don't sweat the small stuff. And it was a real short book and I read it. And I was like, “Wow, I feel amazing, this is awesome.”
I read so many books that year and I just continued. I was just like a sponge, just reading book after book, after book. And that was amazing, that was one of the turning points. And then I joined, I've mentioned this before, I've joined Tony Robbins Platinum partners and masterminds, and I was doing a lot of traveling and doing events and other masterminds besides that. And I remember one of the private events that I was at, somebody had raised their hand and they said that, it was something like they wanted to be normal or something like that and how can I fix my learning disabilities. And he had said that he had been ADD and also dyslexic and had problems learning. He was holding on to this emotional baggage from growing up.
And keep in mind that the people at these private events, they've all had some form of financial success. They were all able to afford to be part of a over $100,000 mastermind. They were all people that were, probably the average income would be a million dollars a year or something like that for these people. Some made more than a few million, some maybe a half a million a year, some were CEOs and VPS and founders of million and billion dollar companies even. And Tony had asked him, he'd said, “Hey, what's your business right now?” And he had said, “Well, I have a consulting business where we go into,” I remember he said grocery stores, I don't remember if there was anything else besides that.
But he said, “We go into grocery stores and we help turn them around. If they're in trouble and they're starting to go out of business or something or they're not making enough money or they've had down times for more than one year in a row and they can see that we're failing, I come in and I look for the mistakes and I rearrange everything and I get the profitable again.” And he asked him, “Are you successful at this?” He says, “Yeah.” He goes, “Are you good at it?” “Yes,” he said, “I am the best.” And he said, “Well, how many other people can do what you do?” And he's like, “Honestly, nobody.”
And I'm sure maybe there was somebody out there that could do that wasn't in that business, but I think he said he was the only person doing it and that no one else could do it, that only he can come in and see those things. And he realized, he's like, whoa. He's like, “Yeah. Did you see what happened there? You were talking about all these curses and how you have all these learning disabilities and dyslexic.” And he's like, “No, no. You're able to see things that others aren't. You're able to see the holes in the sinking ship that no one else can see. It's like you have these special sunglasses on.” He didn't say this, I'm just saying it. Imagine that there's holes in your ship and all the holes are glowing in the dark. Well, the problem is it's light down there and you can't see them. Well, you put on these shady glasses and all of a sudden you can see the glowing holes.
You're able to see those things, and that's how I look at it. I look at it as puzzle pieces. Some people are good at putting together puzzles and some aren't. Some people might get overwhelmed by looking at all these puzzle pieces laying on the ground while some people just go, “Oh, I'm going to grab the corners and I just start working on it.” They don't stop, they just go, go, go and they're really good at that. That's how they process things, and that's how I process things. I'm able to, I'll give you an example in my business, in my consulting and also a software business and a marketing, and a lot of these different things. There's a lot of technical stuff that we have to figure out in our business.
And I will tell you there are times where some piece of software or code or something breaks, something's not working right or we're trying figure out a workaround like, “Hey, we can't get this piece of software to work with this one and we need these two things in order to sell our product or service or whatever it is, and they're just not playing together.” They're not meant to work together and we can't figure it out. We've hired people that that's their job, that's their profession. We've hired developers that know how to code software from beginning to end, they know how to put in all the zeros and all the different special characters they do to develop something. And that's what they do. And they get paid sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars to do that.
And we've had them come to us and say, “Oh, yeah. I can't figure out a way to do this, we're going to have to specially build something that's going to take about two months to build to get these to work together.” They're like, “Oh, man, this sucks,” because they don't want to do that extra work, another two months, they want to get it done as quick as possible because a lot of times we're paying the same money regardless if they get it done in two months are the same. There have been more times than I can count and even remember that either myself or my partner, Ben or both of us together we looked at each other and we don't know anything about coding. We're not coders, we're not developer, we don't understand all that. We can hack stuff around by googling it and looking stuff up and being like, “Here's a special code to do this,” and that's it, a short little snippet.
Anyway, there have been times where we looked at it and we're like, “Well, what if we did this workaround? What if we use this other free software or what if we use just a link that linked over here instead and we processed it this way?” And they're just like, “Oh, yeah, that'll work, yeah.” And it'll only take five minutes to set, and they can do it effortlessly. But this happens all the time where we're able to just look at something and be like, “Boom.”
Siri Shakti: Yeah, yeah. Actually, that makes me think about what I was reading, when I was looking at the symptoms, the typical symptoms of ADD and ADHD. Obviously, the common thread is the inability to focus on a task. The difference though is people with ADD tend to be a little bit more shy, withdrawn, distracted but kind of keeps themselves a little bit more whereas ADHD they have that hyperactive part of it, have so much energy, squirming, moving in their seats like you do tapping your foot.
Dr. Dan: Shaking my leg.
Siri Shakti: Shaking your damn leg all the time.
Dr. Dan: You're always yelling at me when we're watching a movie on the couch, you're like, “Stop.”
Siri Shakti: But the whole bed is shaking.
Dr. Dan: And I'm doing it right now as we're talking.
Siri Shakti: I can see it.
Dr. Dan: I was doing it right before we started too.
Siri Shakti: Yes. But ironically those with ADD and ADHD tend to be the most out of the box thinkers because their minds are constantly wandering. And the funny thing is that they usually have absolutely no problem focusing when they're doing something they love, which, duh, doesn't that makes sense? We all focus better when we're doing something we love. That just goes to show you that children that we try to-
Dr. Dan: Put in a box.
Siri Shakti: Put in a box.
Dr. Dan: Forced to think like everybody else.
Siri Shakti: Yes, yes. These children are just not being stimulated in doing that are interesting to them. They're freaking bored. Kids with ADHD, they want to move their bodies. I know for me and you, you do this as well, there's been times where the only way I can learn something if I'm standing up or moving and doing something or go on a walk to get ideas. Actually, I know there are exceptions. One of our best friends, her daughters go to one of the best public schools in the US. They're high rated here in Orange County and they get so much funding from families as well. She was showing me their classrooms, the kids get to stand up and walk around and things like that, but that's not every school.
There are so many parents that I talk to that have expressed this to me that their kids come home and they've been bored and they just have to sit there in their desk, could be quiet, pay attention to the teacher. And again, we're not trying to fix the system in this one episode. But my point is that their needs are not being met because these kids are well, key word, I already said it, they're bored, they're not being stimulated with ideas and things that are going to interest them to bring their focus.
It makes me think of our oldest daughter because when I read about the description of typical ADD symptoms, I'm like, “Oh, that's sounds like Kayleen.” And oftentimes, when I would sit down to do homeschooling with her, her eyes would be looking at the ceiling and she'd be daydreaming. And I always know when she's daydreaming, she gets this little look on her face. And I would always know if she was not interested in what we're doing because that was the look that she'd get on her face, I'd have to kind of switch things up a little bit. But if you see her during the day working on her anime stuff, writing stories, researching-
Dr. Dan: Or drawing.
Siri Shakti: Drawing. Laser focus. She knows so much about all of that and she could sit there and tell you all the details and talk on and on, and on about it. I'm like, “There we go,” perfect example.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. Totally. Here's the thing though, if we had her medicated, which would be what the doctors would want to do like, “Let's put her on Ritalin … What's the other ones called?
Siri Shakti: Oh, for sure. Adderall, dexedrine dreams. I think that's how you say it.
Dr. Dan: They're a bunch of them, and they have some crazy side effects and stuff like that on top of them, it's insane. But yeah, if we did that, then she wouldn't have that same passion for the projects and the things that she loves to do. She would be numb to that, and I wouldn't be where I am today if I was taking those things and doing those drugs. And if you're somebody that doesn't have these symptoms of ADD or ADHD or dyslexia or things like that and you're thinking, “Man, I wish I had that because it sounds cool.” That's not what we're trying to do here because everybody needs each other. Think of it as a baseball team or any team sport, you don't have … Let's say baseball, for example, you don't want everybody to be the best pitcher.
If you had a team full of just the best pitchers, you'd be a sucky team because you wouldn't be able to play the other positions or football. If everybody was to be the best quarterback, your team would suck. It would get destroyed because you got all these big guys just knocking you over and just slapping you and taking the ball, thank you. It's the same thing, if I didn't have people on my team that weren't as unfocused as me and weren't able to do the things that I'm not the best at, then I wouldn't be able to use my gifts fully. We all need each other.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. Good point, very good point. There's another perspective I want to share with all of you because when I started learning about this, oh, my gosh, I thought it was so beautiful and it made so much sense. My husband and I, we've talked much about this that we're really into yoga and that whole community. But this isn't just a yoga thing, this is a human thing that we as humans are evolving. I heard a few years ago, it's funny how most of us think of evolution and we think, “Well, humans evolved and we became this and now we're done, and now we're just living our life.” But that's not how it works. We may not be evolving on the outside visually like our bodies. They may look-
Dr. Dan: Heavier, that's about it. We're getting heavier as a whole.
Siri Shakti: Okay. Yeah. Well, that will be another episode., we'll address that one. But emotionally and our brains, it's all evolving because we as a human species we need to survive. And so, what we're finding now and you can find so much information, so many books on this topic with research that has been done and people talking about this all over the world, it's amazing. That children nowadays are being born highly sensitive. And not just children, we're highly sensitive people, but it's really increasing. And so, what we're seeing is we're seeing children that are being born with a very broad level of emotion and displaying very unique traits and gifts that as adults we look at and we don't quite understand so most of us try to organize it into a category, ATD, ADHD, autism, Asperger's, all these things, give it some sort of title that we can then sort of understand as adults.
But the part that I want you to understand is that these are beautiful gifts that these children are displaying. The way I like to think of it is they're things that we as a global world, we need in order to keep evolving. And the children are being born sensitive, they're so much more, I love the word free thinkers. They're ready to explore new ideas and to express themselves in a new way so that we can come up with solutions that are really going to solve this really the human dilemma that we've put ourselves in. That's something that I love, when I'm with my children's friends and I get a chance to talk to them. I just love hearing what they have to say and hearing their natural authentic expression because kids nowadays are full of so much creativity and so many ideas, it's just brimming to the surface. And I'm like, “Yes, this is the next generation.
We see it, these kids nowadays stepping up. Unfortunately, some of them for very tragic reasons, like the shootings that we've been seeing happening. But these kids are stepping up and making a difference. And we're going to see more and more of that over this next hundred years and continuing. I think as adults our job is to really ignite that sense of desire to want to understand and to want to look deeper into not only ourselves and our own innate gifts, but also being able to see our children in a new light and change that training that we've had to look at it as disorders instead as gifts that can be utilized in our world.
Dr. Dan: Yeah, no. Exactly. Yeah, we all need each other. And it is going to be very, this could be a whole nother discussion.
Siri Shakti: Another episode coming up.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. I'd like to get somebody as a guest on that one though because just talking about the children, it's going to be very interesting and scary at the same time seeing just how things are going to evolve because you hear it all the time especially on places like Facebook and stuff where you've got kids and some people saying, “Look, these kids are standing up for their rights and they want to live. They don't want guns in their school,” things like that. And then you've got some people that are just like, “You won't take my guns and just get all … And they call them snowflakes or libtards. And I almost said something in one of them because they were saying libtards, and I'm like, “If you think about, that is so offensive.”
You got to be careful … Well, not that you have to be careful, but you don't want to engage with somebody like that that's just going to control you. They're just not going to see it because that's the kind of person that's going to run around calling people retards, which is just horrible.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. And you know what, I really want to do an episode on this. And I agree with getting a guess because this is such an important topic right now because it's what's happening and it's so present and we see it all over. I want to get to that definitely.
Dr. Dan: Well, the point is that, what I was trying to get to was that it is going to be very, very interesting in a scary way as far as just seeing how so many people are, so many in our age and older, it's actually the older generation that are like, “This is the way it's done, and this is the way it needs to be done, it's always been done this way.” And they're going to be like, “You're not going to take this power away from me, from my dead cold hands.”
Siri Shakti: My dead cold corpse, you're not going to pull it out of my hands.
Dr. Dan: We might have to wait until that happens, another 10 years or so, who knows. But it is also exciting in a great way, I'm juiced to see this next generation to come through because even with our kids, just some of the amazing things that they say. I remember years ago, our son, Bodhi would even say that he was just maybe five or something when he would say, “Oh, what happened to your grandma or your grandpa? How old was he when he died?” And I was like, “Well, I never met my dad's dad because he passed away before I was born.” And he's like, “Well, that's sad. I'll tell you what, I'm going to invent a time machine, I'm going to go back in time and I'm going to save him.” And we were like, “What?”
Siri Shakti: Oh, sweetheart.
Dr. Dan: It was so amazing. And just hearing those kind of things and they're constantly saying stuff like that in different ways. And it's just this next generation is just, there's a lot of very, I'll say, awoken, awakened.
Siri Shakti: Awakened.
Dr. Dan: And very generous and compassionate, which is what we're going to need more of. What's pretty funny is there's a lot of people out there, not funny, funny, but there's a lot of people that are the baby boomers, that are like [inaudible 00:37:15], they're like, “Oh, you guys are a bunch of wimps and sissies and pansies.” They're basically saying, you've got all this compassion, that's a bad thing until they're in a nursing home and they need some compassion.
Siri Shakti: Oh, snap.
Dr. Dan: They're going to want some of that, right?
Siri Shakti: Yes, yes. Come on, the world has been hard enough, we need a lot more compassion going on.
Dr. Dan: Exactly. I know we went in a whole different direction with that, but it all kind of-
Siri Shakti: It all comes together.
Dr. Dan: It all comes together.
Siri Shakti: And there's something else that I wanted to mention because we mentioned a little bit about the medication. And believe me, I know what it's like to be presented with a challenge that you're having, especially if you have a child. And if you don't know any other options, most of us think, “Hey, let's just follow what our doctors tell us.” I'm not going to get too much into that. But what I do want to do is encourage you to also explore other ideas that … and I'm not saying, let's say you're on medication right now, I'm not saying go get off your meds right at this very moment, no, no, no.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. Don't go cold turkey. Obviously, and again, talk to a physician first before doing anything like that. We don't recommend that. If your physician is saying, “Oh, yeah, you need to be on medication.” Then I do recommend just like if you had the money, if you're a millionaire and you have the greatest best insurance in the world or even just that case, you're not even a millionaire, you have the best insurance in the world that will cover any kind of experimental or any kind of surgery or anything and you've just been given a year to live by your doctor, are you saying that you would just take that doctor's word and that would be it? No. You'd probably be like, “You know what, I'm going to go get a second, a third, a fourth. I'm going to find a way that I can live.”
Look at it like that. You need to go out there, and if one doctor is saying you need to be medicated, you need to reach out to a few more doctors. Find some good ones, find the best one out there and that recommendation might be no, you don't need this.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. The more that I've been researching, there's a lot of herbal things out there and supplements and foods. Food in itself is medicine, and I've been learning a lot about that recently. I had started using ginger everyday, I'll juice, I have like ginger shots and stuff like that. And I also would give it to our daughter Kayleen because ginger actually focuses the brain, it focuses the attention. And I can always feel a difference, I'll sometimes do that twice a day. I actually love the taste, I know some people don't, but I do. And so, I encourage you to get online and just start opening yourself up to new ideas, what are other people using. Let's say their doctor said they needed to be on a medication or their child did, what are some other options, natural options that could support them and not inhibit their natural abilities and and gifts that they have, but could still support them in their needs?
Dr. Dan: Yeah. Two things I want to mention. One is I heard this stat a while back and I think I mentioned one in the other episodes as well is that we wonder why our kids are hyperactive and they're not acting the way we did as kids or our parents. I think at least in my day, it would have been … I don't the average age of a teacher today, but when I was growing up they would have all been in their 50s most of them, 40s, 50, 60s which would mean that they probably have baby boomers for teachers. Of course, they want them to act the way they did growing up, but it's a different world than it was for them because look at the movies, look at the cartoons, could you imagine taking even … I don't even know what some of the, I would say SpongeBob but that's even behind what some of the stuff is right now.
There's that Rick and Morty or something, there are some other crazy cartoons that are just flashes of light and talking and then back and forth and jokes are left and right. And even the games, I tried playing a game a couple years ago and there's 12 or 15 buttons on the damn controller. When I was growing up, there was two or three, and that was it, three or four. And I was playing and I kept dying because I had to press the bottom button, the the left, the bottom left, upper left or one of the other ones. And it was insane. But even if you look back, even further back, I heard this stat that was something like today we process in just 30 days the amount of information that's thrown at us, the information whether it'd be the internet, our TV, our phone, all that stuff that we're processing, emails, phone calls, text messages, videos.
Everything that we're processing in 30 days is more in our ancestors entire lifetime, just a hundred short years ago. Their entire lifetime, we process the same amount of information that they did in their entire lifetime in just 30 days. That's insane. Of course, things are going to be different, nothing's going to stay the same. So why would we keep teaching and doing all the things that they did back then? And the other thing I was going to point out, we were kind of talking about this a little bit ago was lobotomies. And if you're not familiar what that is, you should google it.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. Go google it.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. I'm sure you've all seen a movie where they did it in the movie or something like, it was an old movie. But I was just looking it up because there was, let's say the first lobotomy I think was in 1936 in the US. And that's where they take an 8 centimeter steel spike attached with a wooden handle and the surgeon would drill a pair of holes into the skull either at the side or the top and push a sharp instrument, that needle into the brain. And they would sweep this from side to side to cut the connections between the frontal lobes and the rest of the brain. They were creating brain damage on purpose.
Siri Shakti: That is disgusting.
Dr. Dan: That's what they were doing. There was about 50,000 people that received lobotomies in the United States alone. And most of those were done between 1949 and 1952, in just a couple years.
Siri Shakti: It's not that long ago.
Dr. Dan: No. That's what? Three years. In three years, they did that much. And that isn't that far off. Imagine if somebody said, “Oh, yeah. I've got these migraines.” “Oh, what are they going to do?” “Oh, I'm going to go in this weekend for a lobotomy, they can take a spike and smash it in my head.”
This 11-year-old was bad, so they put an ice pick in his brain…
Howard Dully’s Book “My Lobotomy: A Memoir”
Siri Shakti: They did it for people that had anxiety. Nowadays everyone would get them.
Dr. Dan: I thought I read they would do it for a female hysteria.
Siri Shakti: Hysteria, which is basically like PMS. If I lived during that time, I would have had one of those done a long time ago.
Dr. Dan: Many, many times over. Just kidding.
Siri Shakti: Like yesterday.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. Well, even even before that, many years prior to that, they would do that kind of stuff for … Or they wouldn't do that, but they would drill holes into the skulls to release evil spirits.
Siri Shakti: Oh, yeah. That makes sense.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. Right. That's what you want to do.
Siri Shakti: We should try it.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. Let's read, I read some more stats about it because I was kind of interested in learning more about that, but what they'd realize, one of the most top neurosurgeons in the world, I don't know how long ago this was, but they basically said that that operation was bad science and that it was bad medicine, bad science and that they didn't help anybody. Because they said if you saw the patient after the operation, they'd seem all right, they'd talk, they'd say thank you doctor, but they'd be totally ruined as social human beings. They would just salivate out of their mouths and they couldn't hold conversations or anything like that. It's insane.
Here's my point, not that many years ago, we're not about thousands of years ago, we're not even talking about a hundred years ago, we're talking, what? 80 years, 70, 80 years ago. They were doing this and they were saying that this is required because this is how we need to do it. History repeats itself. Imagine 20, 30, 40 years from now, probably even less, but let's just say 20, 30 years from now, people are going to look back and be like, “Remember we used to medicate all these kids and they all have problems now.” I've seen plenty of stories about prescription drugs that they prescribe to pregnant women. Well, heck, they used to say it was okay to smoke a cigarette, it was good.
Siri Shakti: And to drink. Go ahead, have your cocktails.
Dr. Dan: That's my point, my point is to wake up, do the research yourself, find some good doctors and learn to harness the power of these gifts because they are powers and they are gifts. And I has mentioned that how do we harness these gifts, how do we cultivate these gifts? Well, one of our favorite ways is by doing morning yoga, meditation, cold showers, the hydrotherapy. And we talked about all this in episode three, wash your brain daily and also in episode 12, yoga for health, wealth and happiness. And we also talked about doing mind dumps, which was in episode seven, take a mind dump.
Those are some of the things right there, and also taking breaks and filling yourself up, which was episode 14, fill yourself up. By doing these things regularly and doing them, you are going to be able to really cultivate those gifts.
Siri Shakti: That's right. Yeah. Actually, one thing that I know that over the past two years I've enjoyed doing more often that helped me to utilize my own gifts is I was starting to have this real need to kind of get back to nature. And we've talked a lot about earthing and stuff. Some days, I'll just drive to the park and I'll just walk around, just have some quiet time to myself. And just doing that for 20 minutes helps me to balance that sensitive part of myself that could be labeled as a disorder, but I know absolutely that they are my gifts. You'll find what it is that works for you, but for sure like you were saying, yoga is a must for us, we have to do that each morning. It keeps us aligned.
Dr. Dan: And if you have kids, help them grow and harness their gifts as well or if you're a grandparent or you're an uncle or an aunt and you're close to your nieces or nephews or your grandkids obviously, then yeah, help them as well. And you can go through episode number six, hug a kid and never grow up and also episode 11, why homeschooling. There's some great advice in there as well too. That's why we chose to do it.
Siri Shakti: And also if there's, because often times like I said, these children they have a hard time focusing things that they're just bored with, they have no interest in whatsoever. But you'll notice there's things that they really align with, that they can laser focus on like I told you about our daughter. When you notice that your child can focus really well on something even if it's something that you are not interested in whatsoever or you want them to do something else. But no, appreciate and encourage them in what it is that they're interested in. And join in with them on what they love because that's what they want, everyone wants to have people that can appreciate the things that they love and want to explore. And as a parent that's not only our job, but it can be our greatest delight to do that.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. No. Totally. A great example would be for my son or our son Bodhi, he loves to play video games. And a lot of parents would be like, “Don't play those games that much, you need to go out and play.” Well, he does need exercise, he does need to take breaks. We're not going to let him be on there for 22 hours a day or anything like that. But we're not going to limit him to an hour a day. I hear so many parents doing that. But think about it, what's he going to learn by going outside and running around and dribbling a basketball? What is he really going to learn?
And I'm not saying he needs to do those kind of things, yes, you need to get out and get some exercise and do some outside stuff and balance out. But him being on the computer for four hours a day or something or six hours a day sometimes, four to six hours, we let him play games off and on and stuff. Either he can develop games, eSports is a real thing right now. People have realized that there's talk right now that many of the experts believe and some of the wealthiest people are investing very heavily in eSports, online sporting where people are sitting in a chair playing video games with an audience. I think they said there was more people watching the e-games than there was watching the Super Bowl or something like that this year, I think it was something like that, maybe it was last year, I don't know.
But there's so much money in that now, and it is so big. There are kids that are on YouTube playing video games that just play games and talk while they're playing the games. And they record themselves, and people watch them live, they watch them recorded. Well, here's the kicker, they get paid to do that. They get paid by either sponsors, by YouTube's ads that play, they get a percentage of that. There's also Twitch, which is live streaming and stuff, which is kind of like YouTube but live streaming all that stuff. And it's like it's insane, they get paid to do this kind of stuff. I'm just saying don't try and limit them into this mold of you need to do this out there. Help them cultivate what they love to do.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. Actually, one thing I love, I think this is so cool is when he's playing those games because they're all very interactive, he chats with people. And he's met kids from all over the world playing these games. And many of them, he's teamed up with and they always play together now, play the games together. And on top of it, I've mentioned this in another episode when talking about homeschooling, the kid is an insanely fast typer, he types way faster than both of us. It just blows me away.
Dr. Dan: He's clicking all kinds of stuff faster than I can, there's no way I can click on the things. He's picking up weapons or items-
Siri Shakti: Building things.
Dr. Dan: Building stuff and changing and switching-
Siri Shakti: And then typing to people at the same time.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. It's insane.
Siri Shakti: And then, oh, what was the other thing I was going to say? What was it, oh, shoot. It slipped my mind, that's okay, it will come back. But yeah, the point is that it's just remarkable. These kids are picking up so many skills. Like you said, of course, we keep a balance, but I love to encourage him. And just today he was saying to me, “Mom, I really want you to play this game with me tomorrow. Can you play?” And this past week, I had been busy so I didn't get a chance to. I told him, “For sure tomorrow, mom's going to play.” And he's so excited.
Dr. Dan: That's awesome. Yeah. We talked about it too, he's like, “Dad, when you finish these other projects, can we develop a game together?” And there's so many different things that we want to-
Siri Shakti: Oh, that was the key word I was looking for. He always says he wants to be a developer, create games. And I have no doubt that, I believe he will do those things.
Dr. Dan: Yeah, no. Totally. That's insane. It's awesome.
Siri Shakti: Yeah. Very much. Is there anything else you want to add before we get to our RockStar mission?
Dr. Dan: Well, there is a lot more I'd love to add-
Siri Shakti: I know, me too.
Dr. Dan: We went really long on this one.
Siri Shakti: Well, because we have so much to say, I'm sure we could have another episode further about some of the things that we've mentioned on this because this is such an awesome topic. We'll do that.
Dr. Dan: Yeah. Totally. Bottom line is that these are gifts and they're not meant to be fixed. Instead, they're meant to be cultivated. They need to be cultivated, they need to be developed and harnessed just like any other superpower. Before we get into our RockStar mission for today, we want to remind you to go to rockstarinlife.com to get links. The resources mentioned, this episode's transcript, download free books, training, yoga, meditation, homeschooling advice and so much more being added every single week. Go to rockstarinlife.com and join the RockStar In Life revolution today.
Your RockStar mission for today is if you've been labeled ADD or ADHD or dyslexia or anything else, any other kind of so-called disability or people have said, “Hey, you've got that,” or you think you have that or anything like that and you've been treating it like a curse or if you haven't. If you've known that these are your gifts and that's great, I want you to grab your journal or a page, a piece of paper and just write down three examples of how having this so-called disability has actually helped you in your life, helped you problem-solve something or come up with a solution that nobody else saw. I want you to write that down.
And then the next part, that was the first part to grab that and write down three examples of how it's actually helped you in your life and whether it be problem-solve or come up with solutions or come up with ideas or anything like that. And then if you don't, if you're someone that's listening to this and you don't consider yourself to have ADD or ADHD or any of those things that people have labeled, but maybe you know somebody, family member, significant other, kids or nieces, nephews, grandkids or whoever it might be, then share this episode with them. Share this episode with them and let them listen to it as well and learn, free themselves from this label of, “Oh, it's going to be hard for me all my life. No, get excited about it.
And also, if you're on medication for this, then talk to your doctor on ways that you can possibly get off of it and/or find a doctor that doesn't believe that you have a disability that's like, “Look, do some yoga, do some meditation. And here's how you can do that.”
Siri Shakti: That's a good point.
Dr. Dan: Exactly. Well, that they support you. That is your RockStar mission for today.
Siri Shakti: Beautiful. All right. And also, when you sit down to do this, please share your stories with us. We would love to hear from you guys. If you have any questions that you want us to answer or talk about in any of these episodes, please do that.
Dr. Dan: Yep. Go into rockstarinlife.com and you can contact us.
Siri Shakti: All right. And guys, don't forget to be a RockStar in your life.
Dr. Dan: And make the world your stage.
Be a RockStar In Your Life.
& Make The World Your Stage!
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