Barry Shore: 

I can’t think of anyone that inspires noble deeds that I want to share with you more than Dr. Richard Schuster. Dr. Schuster, please say hello to 362,823 people around the world.

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

Well, Barry Shore, FU to you and FU to everybody listening.

Barry Shore: 

I told you. He is kind, he’s smart, capable, and everything you want in a doctor. Now, I’m going to ask you a quick question, Dr. Schuster. May I call you Richard for this show?

Dr. Richard Schuster: Just because it’s you, Barry Shore, yes.

Barry Shore:

Just because it’s you. Okay, wonderful, Richard. So, we have a lot of questions on the board. We announced beforehand that we were going to have you on, I asked them to Google you, and they were just in love and amazed. And there are a number of questions they want to discuss. But we want to begin with, by the way, I’m not going to give you a whole CV because I do that it will take up the rest of the hour. Here’s what to do, just go to my website wwwwhatawonderfulworld.barryshore.com and everything you want to know about Dr. Richard Schuster is there. And it’s a lot and it’s wonderful. It’s eye-opening, eye and it’s eye-opening with the letter I because you will be exposed to so many wonderful things that will help you in what we call the self-transformation of life and how to win at life. Because that’s really what Dr. Schuster is all about. Let’s begin with a very large topic, and then I’ll give you maybe one or two questions that sort of sub that we can break it down. The large topic is your specialty mental health. In other words, enabling people to be not just healthy physically and spiritually but mentally. And mental health, especially emerging from COVID. Now, by the way, this is being done in the year 2022, so maybe in 10, 20, 30, 50, hundreds of years from now, when people are watching these things they’ll think COVID, what are you talking about. Well, it was a thing that happened in the world for a bit of time. But we’ve emerged from that now. But people were really touched by that process, the lockdown especially. It really shattered people’s mental health. Richard, what do we do about that? How does one begin to live in life? How do you win in life from a mental perspective?

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

So, it’s a great question, a large question, as you said, a loaded question, Barry Shore. Because if your mental health isn’t properly managed, and I know that’s kind of a clinical term, nothing else in your life is going to have alignment. And one of the real blessings of COVID was that mental health stopped becoming a buzzword and became a movement. It became something that people actually recognize as important in addition to that, and probably more importantly because people got out of the office environment and started teleworking. All of a sudden the things that we were missing out on because we were all caught up in the rat race of commuting and spending 8 hours in an office and then dealing with traffic again and then managing whatever time you had back in the day, all of a sudden now you’re around your family all of the time. For most of us, that’s a really good thing. And so, as this pandemic lifted and we started going back to work in more of the traditional way or a hybridized way, people started asking the questions. Why the hell am I doing this? Why am I going into an office? Why am I forgoing my happiness, my relationships with the people that I care about, and my ability to spend time with them because I was doing it by working from home?

I got to wear boxer shorts and do interviews. And then when that was overrun and go play with my dog and read a story to my kid. So, we got a taste of that and we don’t want to give that up. So, when you asked about mental health and you asked about winning at life, I think they’re connected. They are connected but they’re different. And so, I want to address mental health first because I think going into ways to win at life just takes us down a different path entirely. There are so many things that feed mental health and impact you. And so, I’m going to give some strategies that some people, as you’re listening to this you’re like, yep, I could do that today, and some that are going to be more challenging and require more thought. From a neuroscience standpoint change occurs most successfully when you focus on one or two small things at a time. Put your energy into obtaining that goal and then move on to the next. So, don’t listen to all of these things that I or anybody else tells you and say, I’m going to do it all right now because the odds will not be in your favor for success. So, I want to talk first about your environment. What does that mean?

So, within your space and I mean your personal world what makes 2022 different than in the past, and by in the past I’m talking about 20 or so years ago is that we as a society for the first time in history and this is not new but this has been going on for a while we have a 24-hour information cycle that’s customized to you. What does that mean? For one thing, whatever you agree with. And this is not political but the data is very clear and we have seen this increasing trend with each successive election cycle that we are becoming more and more entrenched in our thinking and less willing to hear other people’s points of view. So, why is that important to a discussion of mental health? Let’s take a quick step back and this will connect very reasonably. So, without putting on tinfoil hats I will tell you that the research suggests and anybody in the media space will tell you this, that the news media exists for one purpose, making money. Why do they put sports and weather at the very end of the local news? They want you to tune in to the whole episode because you’re going to sit through all the commercials. And what sells? What gets people engaged? Is it telling you about your neighbor down the street who rescued a kitten from a tree? How many times have you seen that story on the news? Never. What sells? What gets you engaged are the following emotions, fear, and anger. So, when you watch the news, when your social media feeds are bombarding you with fear-ridden things about the economy or a pandemic when the people in your world and that could be online or offline are reinforcing those things that are happening inside your body is really bad. Let me give you some examples. 

So, number one, a stress hormone named cortisol is being pumped into you pretty constantly. What does that mean? So, people who have excess levels of cortisol in their body are at increased risk of cardiovascular events like a heart attack or stroke. They tend to gain weight and have a hard time losing weight. And so, your own mental health is impacted by the messages that you hear in your environment. I have a very strict policy and I have adhered to this policy for many, many years. I don’t watch the news. Now, if you live in Southeast Florida and it’s hurricane season, pull up the news for 5 minutes on your phone and see if you need to get out of town or not. But don’t watch the news. Live coverage of this storm moving at 15 miles an hour that’s going to take a week to maybe hit you or maybe not and make yourself crazy. Because the way that we are wired from a neurobiological standpoint, an evolutionary standpoint is when there’s a stressor in our environment. What do we do? If we go back in time and the caveman version of Barry Shore with his spear were to have run into a saber tooth tiger, what would you have done? People think it’s fight or flight. It’s really not. It’s fight, flight, or the third F. I know Barry loves his F’s. So, what would happen is you would see a sabretooth tiger you would evaluate if you could kill this tiger, and if you couldn’t, you would get out of there as quick as you could. And your body would put itself in a state, both physiologically and mentally where you could escape danger. When you escaped the danger your brain functioning, your breathing, and your hormonal levels would return to normal levels of functioning. Our bodies are not made to be in a perpetual state of stress.

Barry Shore: 

So, let’s put a pause there on that wonderful, that word stress.

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

Do you have an acronym for stress?

Barry Shore: 

We do. We have two actually. We’re going to tell it.

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

Of course, you do.

Barry Shore: 

We may even unpack them in the show. I want to go back to just put into perspective some of the things that you said because they’re so powerful. Again, we’re working on how to win at life, self-transformation. I will just sprinkle in a couple of little pieces of pixie dust here and say that you can look at Dr. Schuster when you go to my website, barryshore.com, you’ll see Dr. Schuster’s TEDx talk, which is truly wonder-filled and wonderful much like what he’s doing today for us. And bringing us to understand that fear and anger, I’m using your words, are at this point the two most powerful emotions that move the being. And we all want to think about love and joy but we know as humans that fear and anger are actually more powerful than love and joy. It’s the ability, though, to transform oneself, as you said, in a simple growth step. The first one you said, don’t get engaged in these processes. In other words, if these are the processes that are causing fear and anger, which results in stress, which causes all of the deleterious effects on physical health, such as heart attacks, etc., cardiovascular problems then let’s find the root cause and at least reduce it, if not eliminate it. And then you said, unplug, stay away and do it in a joyful way. In other words, don’t just say I’m begrudging myself. On the contrary, I want to be more love-oriented, more joy-oriented as you said, the benefit of COVID, the doctor said it, the benefit of COVID to be able to touch the goodness again. So, thank you so much for just putting it in a beautiful way the three Fs. I love that.

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

Can I give another just really quick and easy a couple of other tips that people can use?

Barry Shore: 

Practical but wonderful.

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

Practical tips. So, sleep is an essential component of mental health, and most Americans do not get enough sleep. Actually, most people in the world do not get enough sleep. So, I don’t want to leave out our international audience.

Barry Shore: 

We have people all over the world.

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

I know that we do. And so, there are some things that impact sleep that a lot of us don’t even know. Our cell phones hugely impact our sleep because the light spectrum emitted by phones is basically telling our brain, when the light from the phone it’s the blue light spectrum going into us, and the signal that is telling our brain to send the little rooster, the cock-a-doodle-do because it’s morning time. It’s time to be awake. So, if you’re playing on your phone within maybe even 2 hours of your bedtime, this is really going to challenge people. You’re doing two things. One, you’re exposing your brain to this blue light, which is sending the wrong signal to the brain that it’s not time to release sleep hormones, it’s not time to wind down, it’s time to get busy. So, don’t do that. And I know everyone’s angry. Now, they do have blue light filters on Apple and Android devices but you’re still stimulating your brain. So, particularly if you’re reading some of that scary, anger-producing, fear-producing stuff that we talked about earlier. So, what I do is I have my phone charging elsewhere. I have a $10 clock that I got at Target so if I want to know what time it is, I know what time it is. I don’t need my phone to do that. Put the phone elsewhere.

The other thing that is very important to mental health, and that improves mental health is exercise. Exercise regularly. None of this doesn’t mean you need to become Arnold Schwarzenegger. Exercise can simply be doing some pushups or going for a quick run, whatever it is. You can do that in your home. Avoid caffeine as much as you can after hours because that also impacts your sleep. And Barry mentioned was one of his favorite four-letter words yoga. Meditation is also good, having a gratitude practice, focusing on positive well-being. These are things that will greatly improve your mental health. Because our mental health is like a bucket, Barry. And I’m going to stop after this but this is an analogy that I really love to use. So, our emotional well-being is our ability to keep the bucket from spilling over. So, your work stressor, if you’re a parent there are challenges involved with that. Everything in our lives, COVID, Ukraine, the economy, all of these things pour water into the bucket. So, when your bucket is filled pretty darn near the top it doesn’t take much for it to overflow. But every time you engage in these healthful activities like getting restful sleep, eating right, exercising, and maintaining a gratitude practice, that’s like taking a big cup and just scooping up that water and dumping it out so that your bucket levels are low.

Barry Shore: 

Everybody loves the idea of the bucket list but you just made it even better because the bucket list is talking about the end of life. What I want to do now, we’re talking about keeping the bucket filled with goodness and not overflowing with fear and anger. I just want to go back and unpack a couple of things because it’s so important to repeat. Repetition is the mother of learning, correct? So sleep as he said, even though it’s a five-letter word. Sleep is the miracle cure and cure is a four-letter word. Sleep is the miracle cure. And listen please to what Richard said. It is so difficult to put the phone away. At least three arm lengths away. Not one, not two, just three. You don’t have to put it in the other room, just three arm lengths away, face down. And as he said, at some point before you go to sleep, he advocates 2 hours, let’s even say 15 minutes just for the moment. In other words, small, practical steps and improve and just get yourself a clock. How wonderful. Because sleep is the miracle cure. The ability to be in REM and you can explain that later, is really fascinating and helpful. As he mentioned, avoid caffeine for at least a couple of hours before going to bed. In other words, know when you want to go to sleep because I’m adding this, Richard, with your permission, know when you want to go to sleep, just pick a number, a simple number, 10:00 pm. But also that relates to when you want to get up. In other words, you want to go to sleep and wake up at a certain time. So in my case, I’m a 5:23 person. I chose that. I used to be a 4:44 but that was years ago. Now I’m a 5:23. So, I want a round + – 7 hours of good sleep. So, you understand that sleep is related both to when you go to bed and when you rise from bed. And listen to what he said on the bucket analogy, I just want to emphasize again how wonderful it is because it gives us vision, a bucket spilling over and letting stuff happen. Exercise, exercise, walking. I don’t say stroll, I say walk. Walk, really move. Or as he said, doing anything that’s going to be beneficial to your body moving. I happen to be a swimmer. And I’m happy to tell you now I was a former quadriplegic I now swim two miles a day, six days a week. I’ve been doing it for 14 years. But I’m driven. But just exercise. Keep that body moving and that vision, I should have a bucket here, just keep spilling it, pouring water in here. You want to have water in it but not spill over because that will get you into fear and anger. This is so fabulous, Richard. As I mentioned, his TEDx talk is so important. Let’s talk about food because everybody eats. The food is good. Talk about food for the brain, and food for mental health, and give us some guidelines into this wonderful world of food.

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

I got to put on my fun police head a little bit here because of course, there are foods that are nourishing foods like berries that are not BARRY but berries, foods that are rich in antioxidants and nutrients that are detoxifying and very good for the brain. I really want to focus more on what you should avoid. Because if we eliminate, and full disclosure here, I’ve eaten only fish, plants and that’s it. Fish and plants basically, for the past six months. I decided to make that change much to the horror of the people in my household. And everybody has survived but it’s made a significant impact on my health. And so, here are some things that you just shouldn’t put into your body. And alcohol is one of them. And for those of you who are avid followers of the Mediterranean diet and who want to attack me right now because you don’t want to give up your glass of wine, I get it. There is good data that red wine in moderation is a benefit for your health. Here’s the thing about alcohol, though, in general, and you just can’t escape this. Alcohol is a neurotoxin. Alcohol is also a central nervous system depressant. And Jordan Peterson has a really cool talk on alcohol. There’s just nothing good that comes out of prolonged alcohol usage. The other one and this is a really big one, is sugar.

Barry Shore: 

Do you mean refined sugar? Processed sugar?

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

Yes. I’m not saying don’t eat fruits. But refined sugar. It’s funny when they’ve researched how cults brainwash people, one of the things they do is they put them basically on an almost exclusively sugar-based diet.

Barry Shore: 

Wait a minute. On that amazing note, you want to get out of a cult [crosstalk 00:30:22].

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

For those of you listening, your cult is letting you listen to Barry Shore.

Barry Shore: 

Wonderful. We have a sponsor named Organifi who is the antithesis of what Richard is warning us against. And it’s the best stuff. This is good food. So, listen to our sponsor. We’ll be right back after this amazing message with more, Dr. Richard Schuster.

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Barry Shore: 

Good day, beautiful, bountiful, beloved immortal beings and good-looking people, and remember you’re good-looking because you’re always looking for and finding the good. We have found good in abundance. Our cup runneth over with good because Richard told us about the bucket. In our world, the bucket is running over with good. It’s all wonderful. You want that bucket to be filled and overflowing. And we’re talking now about food. We’re talking about cults. How to get out of a cult. And I’m just going to show everybody the seven words that I use about food then let Richard continue with things that you shouldn’t be doing for your brain. Maybe a couple of things, you mentioned already berries and Barry berries are the best. But seven words when it comes to food, are you ready? Eat food not too much mostly plants. Those are the seven words and if you follow those they will be the best food for your mental, physical and spiritual health. Eat food not too much, mostly plants. And as you said, you’re now fish and plants-oriented wonderful, Richard. So, let’s talk a little bit more about brain food, and things to avoid. We talked about the toxin, the neurotoxins in alcohol, maybe a tiny bit or a small bit to enjoy some red wine. But that’s it. Processed sugar, it’s just not there. In other words, not just processed sugar by itself but I presume you mean all the food of what they call food beings that are processed with sugar. In other words, it’s really the industry that keeps kids and therefore older teenagers and adults hooked with Frosted Flakes and things like that.

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

Really processed foods in general and sugar has highly addictive properties in it. And so, yes, you get your kids started on Frosted Flakes early and they’re doing lines of powdered sugar by the time they’re 17 in the bathroom. It’s a bad deal. No, but in all seriousness…

Barry Shore: 

You’re correct. That’s what happens. It’s not a direct correlation but it’s an addictive process.

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

But it still hits on the same parts of the brain that doing cocaine would do. It’s an addictive process. But food is interesting. And when we talk about food for the brain, I know you’re all about secondary meanings. I don’t just mean food that you put into your body. I mean things that can nourish your brain. And so, I want to do a little quick five-second exercise with everybody right now, and I know this will resonate with you. Think of something amazingly wonderful that you’re grateful for in your life right now. Everybody got it. Now, try and be angry at the same time. It’s impossible.

Barry Shore: 

No, I can’t.

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

You can’t. Nobody can. You cannot exist both in a negative emotional state and a positive emotional state. So, why would we not choose to exist in a positive emotional state? And how do we do that? Well, of course, aside from listening to this show or my show or other shows like it, what we want to do is we want to feed our brains constant goodness. So, going back to what we talked about a bit ago, that means avoiding stimuli. Somebody used a fancy clinical word. Stimuli is information in any form that is going to elicit an emotional response. And so, that means don’t watch the news, get negative people out of your life. And I mean that so sincerely. If they don’t believe in you, and your goals, if they are constantly complaining they’ve got to go even if they’re family. This doesn’t mean that you announce on Facebook or send this mass text to all these people and say, guess what, I’m a positive person, you’re a jerk, and it’s over. There are ways to very gently do this. And I’m going to tell you why this is so important. So, from a neurological standpoint guys like Jim Rohn and Napoleon Hill and Zig Ziglar and Dale Carnegie, all these guys have been saying this since the 1920s. It’s only really recently that we have the science to support this. So, there are two things at play here.

We have a structure in our brain, a system in our brain it’s called the reticular activating system, ARS, and what that does is essentially it’s going to focus, it’s going to scan the environment for whatever you’re really fixated on. I’m going to date myself here for our younger listeners. There used to be this commercial in the late seventies it was a cartoon, it was a Tootsie Roll commercial. And whatever the kid saw, everything looked like a Tootsie Roll. Everything you looked at was cylindrical and it looked like a Tootsie Roll. So, let’s say that you get a new car, you get a new blue Honda Accord. Now, you’re driving around your Accord, and you’re fine, you’re going to notice more Accords. Now, are there suddenly more Accords on the road? Of course not. But your reticular activating system is saying Honda Accord, and it’s looking for that. We also have these structures in our brains called mirror neurons and the brain and the body is always looking to do is to basically achieve homeostasis. That is this kind of sameness. Here’s a good example of mirror neurons.

If you took two people and you put them on a New York subway if this is not you if you were in a New York subway you’d be singing and doing Barry Shore stuff. But most people might not make eye contact with each other. And if they do, they might make the subway frowny face that people on mass transportation like to do when they’re riding the subway. Take those same two people and put them in Giant Stadium and put Giants jerseys on them. And I’m not a New York fan at all but this is an example. And when their team wins a touchdown, strangers are high-fiving and hugging each other because the mirror neurons are scanning our environment for sameness and they identify those things that are like us. And so, if your world consists of negative people if your world consists of people who are fear-laden, if your world consists of people that don’t support you in your happiness by default, by just nature of them being there in your sphere, they are going to bring you down and inhibit your ability to experience joy and happiness. This is a real, real thing.

Barry Shore: 

This is so important. Let’s now do a shift. And yes, I’m very careful about the Fs. Because most people I’ve met, Richard over the past number of decades, somehow they drop the F in shift and the other stuff happens. So, you got to be absolutely, really careful about your F and F. So, let’s shift perspective a little bit and place us in a work environment. Because work is a four-letter word, also.

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

Indeed.

Barry Shore:

And some people bristle when they hear the word work. I love work, as do you. But let’s shift and let’s talk about something that you’re deeply involved with, which is helping transform the work environment, certainly in the United States, in North America, and possibly the world, and in something called JAWS, which I believe stands for Joy at Work Sessions. JAWS. You told me this, it’s based upon the idea of JAWS, the movie, where that ominous sound of boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom is how people go to work, whether they’re in the mailroom or the C-suite. And we really want to turn that ominous sound into the Satchmo song, Louis Armstrong, What a Wonderful World. So, how does one do that at work when you have people that are not the same, that could be negative, etc.? How does JAWS help people in a work environment and foster talent and foster growth et cetera, etc.? Could you speak to that, please?

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

Yeah, I’m happy to. And I want to set the stage with a little bit of data. And it’s pretty sobering data. We know that 83% and this is the United States workforce, I don’t have a global stat on this off the top of my head. But 83% of people at work experience stress from that job that directly impacts their health. And here’s an even worse statistic. The United States, in terms of work-life balance, is in the bottom quartile. So, out of 38 countries surveyed the United States is 30th. So, that sets the stage and that’s your background. Now, on top of that what is that costing a company? I get a number for you, $1,685 per employee. That’s the average of how much stress and unrest is costing a company. So, we have data that suggests that the overwhelming number of people in the workplace are experiencing some degree of stress that impacts their well-being. And so, what I love about JAWS is that JAWS gives a company the ability to identify, and it uses a really fantastic assessment called the Powers Corporate. And Powers Corporate stands for, Barry Shore and his acronyms, predictor of world-class excellence rating scales. And so, what Powers does is it identifies areas of personality, behavior, talent, leadership, and balance so that you already have the data points. And what’s really cool is that an organization is able to use Powers to go to corporate and they’re able to use the aggregator, it’s called the Peak Performance Lab, where they get to look at a very high level, to look from the organizational level, from a departmental level, and even at an employee level to identify employees that are struggling, as well as their gifts. Powers [Unintelligible 00:44:37] because it focuses on what employees are really doing well and employees where they’re having challenges. But then you can identify those employees because we also know and this is a product of COVID, that it is harder to find workers, it is harder to find employees that will meet your qualifications. We had the great resignation.

And so, if you have a rock star employee and you have a company you need to hang on to them. So, that’s a huge deal. Now, if you’re an employee listening to this, what you need to do is go to your HR director and say, hey, this is a big deal, check out JAWS. Because when you know from an organizational level what are the challenges you’re then able to use the JAWS system. And it’s modularized so the modules can go in a certain order as it relates to the Powers Corporate test results so it’s a chocolate and peanut butter kind of thing. They’re great by themselves but together it’s a complete system that helps employees better engage by doing a lot of the things that we talked about throughout this call. By focusing on the positive, by engaging in gratitude and teamwork and collaboration in a way where it doesn’t feel like it’s canned and it’s shoved down people’s throats. It’s a very digestible and friendly way. And I say friendly because you and I have both sat through in the past, in my old corporate days, these overwhelmingly, disgustingly boring training sessions. And JAWS is not like that.

Barry Shore: 

So, let me unpack a few things here. First of all, this is very elevating, energizing, and enthusiastic to the point of being able to show people how to win at life, and self-transformation in the most positive, purposeful, powerful, and pleasant way to use what you said about Power’s Corporate assessment and the fact that something is friendly, digestible, useful, and from a pure business point of view. The bottom line from your business point of view is healthy for the organization. And when a healthy organization is more profitable on every level, both financially in terms of dealing with employees and creating a culture of goodness, a culture of transformation, and a culture of winning in every aspect. Everybody likes to win at business, and every business, by the way, can win. When one business wins it doesn’t mean the other business lost. On the contrary, the best businesses create an environment where everybody wins, much like you said, Richard, about eliminating negativity in one’s life because you are a winner. A winner is one who associates with other winners because they know that by winning you help others win. In other words, the essence of life is the three words I use, how who, and why. How is – help others win? Who is – winners help others, and why is – winners help wisely. That’s what you’re talking about with this JAWS program. This sounds remarkable. So, you’re saying whether you’re listening and you’re a decision-maker in a company, you’re listening to your employee in a company, urge your company to find out about JAWS. I think it’s jaws.com or something, we’ll get you the exact URL and it’s truly wonderful. Joy at work sessions and eliminate stress, eliminate the cost of stress, which you said is an exact number. And it’s quite remarkable, whether you’re employing 10 people, 20, 200, 2000, or in some cases, hundreds of thousands of people. So, thank you. A huge bravo to you. This sounds like a winning formula for everybody in the country and maybe this can spread worldwide. So, Dr. Richard Schuster, we applaud you. It’s quite wonderful. I’m going to bring in a couple of other questions that people have asked because they go right to this point about JAWS here in improving brain function, soul function, and spirit function. Just briefly touch upon the stages of life psychology. In other words, you mentioned already the ability to make sure that your bucket is not going to overflow and cause fear or anger. Can you just quickly touch upon just in a couple of minutes, some stages of life psychology that are oriented towards growth and maybe even this whole idea of using JAWS?

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

Well, it’s a number of things and it’s not so much like a gene Piaget in a stage of life kind of thing, more as it is really being able to identify and connect your purpose and passion to something in the workplace. And we know this, we know that people that love what they do are more productive in the workplace because it doesn’t feel like work to them. It’s like this, we’re working right now. Ridiculous, right?

Barry Shore:

FU, Richard.

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

FU, Barry Shore. And so, if your purpose isn’t aligned with your work and this is increasingly true with younger generations because the Generation Z groups and the millennials, in particular, it’s really important to them that they work in an organization where the culture, they feel a sense of belonging to the culture and that the organization is mission and value-driven towards making the world a better place rather than solely focused on driving revenue for shareholders. And so, to even take a step back, if all of a company’s employees have connected their passion, the things they love to do with directly related to tasks they’re having at work the company is going to retain talent more effectively, which saves the company money because you don’t have to go through this hiring cycle, especially now. You don’t have to have this period where you don’t have an employee in that slot. You go through the hiring cycle, you hope that you get the hire right. Then you have to retrain this new employee. If you just keep your people in place and keep them happy, and healthy the company makes more money because the data is very clear. If your employees are happier and healthier your profit levels go up, your people stay longer, and that’s how you build culture. You build culture because you have a core group of people who have been there forever. They love it. They wouldn’t dream of working anywhere else. So, that’s the thing that gets missed. A job shouldn’t just be like Fred Flintstone clocking in and clocking out. It should be because we have to spend so much time at our place of work, whether we’re doing it virtually or we’re doing it in the office, we spend so much time there that it needs to be something that people feel excited about. And that’s why so many people have quit their jobs because they now realize how important their well-being is.

Barry Shore: 

This is wonderful because job has a connotation to people of constriction. And if you use the Barry Shore formula for job, which is an acronym for joy of being. In other words, I love going to my job, I joy of becoming. And it’s so wonderful you’re talking about retention of talent and everybody knows intellectually that retaining talent is far more cost-effective not just on the bottom line level but in terms of interpersonal things than trying to re-hire or hire someone new. And I’d just like to speak literally a couple of minutes. There’s a phenomenon that I believe costs companies in the many hundreds of billions, and that is something called absenteeism and even non-presentism, which you’ve talked about a little bit. Absenteeism is when people call in sick and they’re really not. I mean, they are mentally or physically, emotionally ill. And non-presentism when they’re physically at the place but they’re not participating.

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

Right. The lights are on but nobody’s home, so to speak.

Barry Shore: 

Thank you. So, how does JAWS address those issues in just a couple of minutes?

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

So, one of the things that’s cool about JAWS from this standpoint is, and I’m going to bring a little bit of neuroscience into it that JAWS helps an organization further foster community. And within the community there’s trust. And why is trust important at work? I will tell you, Barry Shore, I’m glad you asked. When people trust each other a hormone known as oxytocin is released. Oxytocin is the trust hormone. Oxytocin is this wonderful hormone, when people hug each other oxytocin is released. There’s very clear research on this. And when you have a greater percentage of oxytocin in your employees you have fewer people calling out sick because they’re healthier. You actually are healthier when you have oxytocin, your immune system is higher. How crazy is that? So, go hug somebody today. Go to the cube to the person next to you or a fellow cult member and go give them a hug because you’ll release oxytocin. But again, JAWS fosters the ability to really have cohesive teams not teams for the sake of having teams but cohesiveness, trust understanding, and an environment where people feel safe to be who they are. Because psychological safety is something that has become increasingly important in the workplace. But a lot of people don’t get psychological safety. And JAWS is something that will assist in promoting that within a corporation as well.

Barry Shore:

Dr. Richard Schuster, you’re not just a breath of fresh air you are a breath of joy, happiness, peace, and love. I have three quick questions for you. Are you ready?

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

Fire away, my friend.

Barry Shore: 

Will you come back again?

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

Yes, I will.

Barry Shore: 

Thank you. Number two, you have 80 seconds only to answer this question. What is your most fervent desire in 80 seconds?

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

My desire is to help people understand that they can have it all. That they can have the career that they want, be it working for somebody else or being an entrepreneur that they can have the relationships that they want. They can have the financial freedom that they want. And all of that can be yours if you understand balance and harmony, which is something that I am so passionate about telling people about. And maybe we’ll do an episode, I’ll come back and I’ll talk about that. Because it was when I had a stroke and I almost died that really kind of made me wake up and realize that I was out of balance. And now because of that, I’m able to share that experience with people everywhere and give them practical tips on how they can have balance and harmony in their life.

Barry Shore: 

Balance and harmony. Now, number three. May I give you a HUG, speaking of hug…?

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

Give me some oxytocin, yes.

Barry Shore: 

368,224 people around the world. Let me tell you what HUG stands for. Harmonizing, unlimited giving. On the count of three. 1-2-3 roar. 

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

You beat me with that one big time.

Barry Shore: 

[Inaudible 00:57:56] Dr. Richard Schuster, you tuned in and you really are happy with this one, and you’ve been listening to The Joy of Living with your humble host, Barry Shore. Remember, this show is not about Richard Schuster, as great as he is, or even Barry Shore, as wonderful as he is, it’s about you. YOU, you becoming the best you possible. When you are you’ll be happier, healthier, and wealthier. Who doesn’t want that? Use the three fundamentals of life. Number one, life. Your life has purpose. If you lead a purpose-driven life you can go mad. Mad stands for make a difference in the world. And number three is to unlock the power and the secrets of everyday words and terms like w w what a wonderful world. Smile, seeing miracles in life every day. Or as my eight-year-old niece says seeing miracles in everyday life. Create the kind of world you want to live in, causing, rethinking, as Richard just taught us, enabling all to excel. Internalize the six most important words you’ll ever utilize in your life. Choice, not chance creates your destiny. Choice not chance determines your destiny. Use four-letter words like love, life, hope, grow, free, gift, swim, play, pray and tell the world to FU capital N, capital N. We want to have a lot of fun. And use the two most powerful words in the English language three times a day, every single day for the rest of your life. It’ll be good for you, your family, your friends, and all living beings. And they are, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. To harmonize a network, kindness and our prayer, our blessing from Richard and Barry is to go forth, live exuberantly, and spread the seeds of joy, happiness, peace, and love. Go mad. Go make a difference. Richard, please stay with us, okay?

Dr. Richard Schuster: 

You got it.