Simple Ways to Reverse Your Bad Habits

Imagine transforming your life through the power of habits; it's not just a dream but a journey we embark on with David Delrahim, a wellness visionary who illustrates the profound impact of including loved ones in our pursuit of health. 

With a rich background as the executive producer of the American Health Journal, Roland has seen the landscape of health evolve, but today's conversation digs deeper, exploring how personal wellness can become a shared voyage, leading to lasting change within our inner circles. David shares a compelling narrative of a family's transformation, igniting a spark that resonates with the idea that wellness is an infectious, collective experience.

This isn't just another conversation; it's an inspiring session that could very well catalyze a wellness revolution in your life. Join us and witness the contagious nature of positive change as David and Roland explain why your personal belief system might just be the cornerstone of collective wellbeing.

From the producers of PBS's American Health Journal and Innovations in Medicine. Thank you for listening to Better Wellness.

Transcript

Roland Perez: 0:02

We all have good habits and some bad habits. The good habit can transform your life for the better, but a bad habit can destroy your life. Divorcing a bad habit is difficult, but through self-reflection, some meditation and appreciation of yourself, there is a way. Welcome to Better Wellness. I'm your host, Roland Perez, and we're listening to a podcast that explores the newest innovations in true wellness. As the executive producer of the American Health Journal for more than 25 years, I've produced over 500 30-minute award-winning television shows that air nationally on PBS with an audience of over 100 million viewers. But better wellness is more than all that Not only keeping your body healthy, but developing a mindset and balance that prevents illness.

Roland Perez: 0:57

Our guests are experienced experts in the world of staying healthy, young and well. And let's start. Our first guest is David Delrahim, a friend and a visionary, and an expert in wellness. Hello, David, I wanted to talk to you today about involving others in your wellness journey and divorcing some of the bad habits that surround you. So many times people go into doing something in wellness, but it's usually by themselves. They've made an individual decision to do that. Unfortunately, they have a family, they have a wife, they have a husband. They have to involve them in it. And the wonder is how do you do that? How do you get people, your friends, your dear friends, your wife, your relatives to understand that you're going through this journey and what they can do to help you in this journey?

David Delrahim: 2:04

You know, I believe that we all have purposes on planet Earth, just like everything else. So nothing could exist without a purpose. We have different purposes in life. We know that as human, we are all interconnected and we need each other and we all carry certain consciousness and when we all come together, that consciousness is there. But we are relying on collective consciousness, which is a different consciousness than an individual consciousness. We just have to believe and know that the principle of creation we're born free the principle of creation we're born free Everything is subject to the choices that we make. We are inner connected. There's a consciousness, there's a collective consciousness and it's a journey of life.

Roland Perez: 3:22

So what you're saying is just like when Christianity started first you become a Christian, first you have the belief yourself, and that consciousness will grow to your family. It will grow to other people. First you have to take care of yourself as an individual, and then your family will come into it from your belief.

David Delrahim: 3:49

They do or they don't. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't Depends upon where they are along the journey of life. Number one it depends upon their desire and it depends upon their capacity. Then they choose again choice right Whether they want to be part of it or they're not. Or maybe they're part of it. They're not part of it today and as they go through the process of evolution and increasing their capacity, they will be part of it at certain capacity some other time into the future. But you cannot force anything. It has to happen naturally.

Roland Perez: 4:41

One of my friends' wife was ill. One of my friends' wife was ill and she took on a wellness journey to help herself in the problems that she was having. She would get up in the morning and she would do Pilates and she would juice and she would do things that she had never done before in her life. Her husband was standing there watching her go through this and one morning she sat down to do a drink and he walked up and said make two. And then three or four weeks later he joined her in Pilates and then yoga and little by little he joined her to live with her and to help her with her journey. But when the cancer was over and the problem was stopped, it didn't stop. They were together in this journey of wellness and guess what happened? One of their children moved back home. Their children move back home, saw this transition and then she joined similar. So it like I say very strong feeling about yourself doing this and then it will grow in other people if it's supposed to.

David Delrahim: 6:01

Absolutely Well, we human, we are energy, we are all energy, and we know that one energy impacts the other energy that is right next to it. So we inspire others, all right, and through that inspiration, if someone is ready, has the capacity, if someone is ready, has the capacity, makes the choice to shift. And now, instead of one, now we have two, as a result of having two. Now we don't have the first consciousness, there is a second consciousness, now we have a collective consciousness, so we are creating an ecosystem. Now the third one comes in much easier because the ecosystem has been created, because it so the first to the second, to the third, the fourth would be easier.

Roland Perez: 7:03

One of the problems that people have getting on board is because they have a fear that they'll fail, because they have no support. Someone sees someone getting healthy at work. Let's make a scenario here. He sees someone at work all of a sudden doesn't bring in a bologna sandwich, but he brings in some kale. Or he's all of a sudden looking better, he's lost some weight, and he says I want to do this. You know, I want to do this. He gets back to his desk and says no, this is going to fail because my wife won't. I mean, I can't set up a separate refrigerator, a separate time to eat. I can't, you know, take time away from our relationship to go meditate or to go to yoga. And he says this is too much of a change in my life for me to do it, so I have decided I'm not going to do it. But I want to, but it's others that can hold me back. If that were your case, what would you do?

David Delrahim: 8:16

Well, we have a great example here at the office. Back in 2017, we started the health and wellness movement. We invited everybody at the office level to participate for about the period of about three and a half months and I truly got inspired by, you know, two people out of 22 people who participated and they saw the results and for those two people, it became a way of life. They continued on 13,. Six years later, we have another eight people that gradually got on board because they saw. So they saw all of those people that they got on board, they feeling better, they look better, so they got inspired, so they chose to get on the path of wellness and they did, and they saw the result and now they're really motivated. So we have about 10 people that invited this consciousness of wellness.

David Delrahim: 9:36

Granted, we have created this ecosystem at the office level that promotes. For example, we have snacks and I see some of them and I've done a couple of times that those the ingredients, are not exactly what I want it to be. I will discard them and I will let our office manager know not to order those specifically. If it is not here, they're not going to have it. I'm giving them alternatives. So you see, that is the support that we are creating. But if you create, if we just talk about it, which I say, let's say is guidance, but there's no support, it's just not sustainable. And that is where people find themselves and, yes, they have the fear of failing because the support is not there. Support is is like a net that, if you fall, I catch you, I got you. And when there is no net and people are trying to climb up, they have the fear what if I fall down? Nothing is holding me. And that is where we are with the wellness.

Roland Perez: 11:05

And it's infectious. So what I'm gathering here is if you have the inclination for changing your life to wellness and getting in the wellness space, do it. People will follow, don't be afraid.

David Delrahim: 11:38

Is that what I'm hearing? In any aspects of life, we as an individual could be a role model To inspire that next person, to create the ecosystem that becomes a little bit easier. You are rolling out a proven path. People will have, as a result, less fear in anything, not only in wellness, in attitude, in expressing love, in expressing kindness. Just making world a better place for everyone Always starts from one and pretty soon spreads.

Roland Perez: 12:20

We've talked about the creation of your own wellness journey and then having others going into it. But one of the things that we have to do and I've seen this in my own family you have to divorce some bad habits. My question is how do you divorce people, how do you get away from those bad habits so that you can insert your own kind of wellness?

David Delrahim: 12:47

We go through the modern life. Through the modern life, a lot of it we are getting programmed by the outside and the program is already in. I believe they are in such a way that is a commerce driven money driven its commerce.

David Delrahim: 13:14

The commerce platform wants to create customers and when they create customers they want to create a membership to purchasing certain items, Create this perpetual behavior. It works for them. But often anybody really stops and thinks that what I'm selling is it really good for the human or not? It's just business, we call it just business, but as an individual we have to take responsibility for ourselves. It's taking that responsibility Analyze it. Is this thing good for me or not? We know the french fries might not be good for us, but any time Tastes great. Any time we see it we salivate. It is the programming in our head that creates the salivation and we want to satisfy that desire that comes from within. You know, we don't even know. I just want to put one in my mouth and I promise you I'm not gonna do the second one because I know it's not gonna be good for me. But guess what happens? We will finish the whole plate right.

Roland Perez: 15:02

Just one, you can't eat just one right.

David Delrahim: 15:05

So one of the things in order to have control over our attachments to the things that are not necessarily good for us is to make sure that we don't have any exposure to them.

Roland Perez: 15:24

So you eliminate the exposure to these items by not either buying them or having them on hand, absolutely.

David Delrahim: 15:31

Just don't bring them in. If you bring them in, then now I'm creating a risk that I might not have total control over my behavior because I'm just not there, yeah, All right. And instead of I know that price is not good for me I'm going to say that I'm going to limit myself to one. But once I have it, then I have no control. It's not me, it's all of those programs. It says no, let's finish it. You know, life is too short. Who cares? You know what? And once I finish it, then I will not feel good about myself because I lost control. So instead of going, subjecting ourselves to that whole emotional, physical turbulences if I don't have the French fries around me, I don't have it, I don't think about it.

David Delrahim: 16:35

it's over, Out of sight, out of mind yes, and overall, as we go forward, by practicing this, you will build more resistance towards this kind of behavior and you will build the control and you get stronger in your will. So at home I went through when I got on this journey no soda. So I'm telling my family please, no soda. And for different reasons I always found soda and when they weren't around I would throw them into the trash. And then they come and they're looking for and I didn't have it. Guess what? They didn't have it. If it is not there, they will go ahead and have a glass of water right or carbonated water or something else, but if it was there they would have had it. So I was eliminating the exposure. I truly believe that in a matter of two weeks you can overcome any urges. Is it two weeks? Is it two weeks that you're going to find I want that french fries? I'm going to find I want that French fries. I'm going to go ahead and make myself some rosemary potatoes.

Roland Perez: 18:16

I'll create an alternative and I don't have that guilty conscience because I baked it. I used to smoke many years ago and I was a heavy smoker. I was in the business of a lot of stress and stuff. I gave that as an excuse, but I used to smoke three packs of cigarettes a day. There's nothing that's worse than smoking three packs of cigarettes a day.

Roland Perez: 18:43

But I saw my grandfather die of emphysema. I went to the hospital to see him and it was horrible. People dying of emphysema, it's not a pretty sight. They're gasping for breath. I came home and I looked in the mirror and I thought of myself breathing like that and it scared me. But I said, how am I ever going to quit smoking? And I got a cold and I had a hard time breathing. And I got in a mirror and I was just before I brushed my teeth. I took this very long, deep breath and it reminded me of my grandfather. You know, david, I have never, ever, ever had another cigarette since that day and it was from the fear of something happening. So it could come from a prevention and also could come from a trauma or a fear of having something happen to you, or a heart attack. If you're eating French fries, you stop eating French fries. But either way, it's very possible to do this. It's not impossible, it can be done.

David Delrahim: 20:09

Our body can correct itself, can fix itself as long as it's balanced.

David Delrahim: 20:18

When our mind is balanced, we find ourselves on an amazing, solid path in life. Amazing, solid path in life and no matter where we are on this path, we created that path. It is the path that we created with our choices. So, as we are shifting and going towards a wellness path, we are shifting from certain behavior to another set of behavior. So wellness is a lifestyle. We are divorcing our old lifestyle, which wasn't wellness, and this set of new things that we are going to do constitute our wellness path, which is a lifestyle, which is. They're all new choices, still choices. So we are in charge. It's nobody else's fault, but us.

Roland Perez: 21:39

Thank you, david. This was incredible. You always have such an interesting perspective on just about everything that you think about and remember. No-transcript.