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141. Finding Inner Peace Through Mindset Shifts with Dr. Sean Sullivan
137 Plays1 year ago
How can we shift from one state of mind to the next by using technology to its full advantage?
This week, we’re chatting with Dr. Sean Sullivan, a a licensed clinical psychologist and founder and CEO of OnePerfect, a mental health and wellness platform that delivers personalized mindset shifting experiences called Shifts.
In our conversation, Dr. Sullivan shares how we can use technology for good when it comes to our mental health, ways to shift ourselves into a more positive state of mind, why mental health is the most important part of our overall health, and so much more.
Plus, he takes us through a shift experience of our own, to give you a better idea of what those shifts look like in practice!
If you enjoy this episode, please feel free to rate and review the podcast on whatever app you’re listening on, and share with a friend!
CONNECT WITH DR. SULLIVAN
Website: https://www.oneperfectshift.com and https://www.oneperfect.com/
CONNECT WITH THE SHOW
Website: WellnessAndWanderlust.net
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Twitter: www.twitter.com/moses_says
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Transcript
Introduction to Wellness & Adventure
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the wellness and wanderlust podcast. We're here to demystify wellness and help you add a little adventure to your life. Tune in for a new episode every week, where we'll hear from incredible guests and talk about ways to be happier and healthier in our new normal. I'm your host, Valerie Moses. Let's get started.
Technology in Mental Health
00:00:23
Speaker
Hey everyone, this is episode 141 of Wellness and Wanderlust and I'm so excited to have you join me here today. Our show is all about the small changes we can make in our lives to create major transformation in our health and happiness. And our guest for this week does an amazing job of embodying this.
00:00:40
Speaker
We are chatting with Dr. Shawn Sullivan, a licensed clinical psychologist and the founder and CEO of One Perfect, an enterprise mental health and wellness platform that delivers personalized mindset shifting experiences called shifts. In our conversation, Dr. Sullivan shares how we can use technology for good when it comes to our mental health, ways to shift ourselves into more positive states of mind, why mental health is the most important part of our overall health and so much more.
00:01:07
Speaker
Plus, he takes us through a shift experience of our own, so it will give you a better idea of what those shifts look like in practice. Now, if you're driving while listening to this, you may want to wait to do that exercise until you're safely parked or not in that moving vehicle, but this is really such a cool concept, and I'm so excited for you to see his program in action. So enough from me. Without further ado, let's hear from Dr. Shawn Sullivan. Dr. Sullivan, thank you so much for joining us at Wellness & Wanderlust. How are you doing today?
00:01:34
Speaker
I'm doing great. Thank you for having me, Valerie. It's good to be here. Well, it is great to have you on. I'm so excited to get to chat with you. Why don't you first start out by introducing yourself to our listeners? Okay. Okay. My name is Sean Sullivan. I'm a clinical psychologist professionally. And I suppose that's a lot of what we're going to talk about today is psychology and how to use it effectively in your own life.
00:01:57
Speaker
I've certainly been focused on that for a long time but twenty plus years since i was in graduate school really focusing right from back then through now on how we can effectively apply technology to psychology and so i did a lot of research on that through grad school and then out here i ended up coming out that was.
00:02:16
Speaker
I grew up in Boston. I ended up in Florida for grad school and then out here to where I am now, which is a little north of San Francisco and did my postdoc out here and always did research on how do we use technology effectively for psychology. And so that's been my professional life. And also, you know, since I became a psychologist, I've been seeing patients for a couple decades now also. And, uh, I suppose one of the main things I learned is that unless something that you're using as a technology in psychology is effective
00:02:46
Speaker
in the real world, meaning, you know, with patient or a client in practice, and that means they have to actually be using it. So they have to be engaged with the product enough so that it's having an effect.
00:02:56
Speaker
And no matter what you're finding in your research or the lab, it's not really valuable to the real world until you get to that point. And so we took that idea, I think, and brought that into the company One Perfect and the products that we've been working on since we started that company that I can talk more about, too.
Dr. Sullivan's Journey
00:03:13
Speaker
But that's a little bit about my professional background, at least.
00:03:16
Speaker
I think that that's so cool. Well, first of all, I am a Floridian, so we'll definitely have to offline about school in Florida too. Yeah. And I think that this type of work is so impactful. I mean, technology is always advancing and we literally carry, you know, our phones in our pockets or in our hands every second of the day, pretty much. And so technology definitely plays the important role. How did you develop that interest?
00:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, no doubt. I'm sure everyone out there listening has been talking about AI recently, if you're into this tech stuff at all. So yeah, the next phase is here also. How did I get into the technology side? I think my entry into psychology was largely I had a very difficult breakup at the end of college and I had been an athlete and I really knew quite a bit about how to prepare to perform, you know, as an athlete, but I didn't really know how to shift out of this difficult emotional experience of a breakup and the pain that that caused.
00:04:12
Speaker
And so that led me to looking into psychology and what we know and learning as much as I could. And I think it was just a matter of that at that time.
00:04:22
Speaker
It was clear that technology was becoming a real part of everything in our lives. And so while I went to grad school to learn psychology, I had an eye out for, well, how is technology going to play a role?
Impact of AI on Mental Health
00:04:34
Speaker
Because I imagined, you know, a career in psychology that would go over several decades and that the influence of technology would just continue to grow. And that's turned out to be true. I think in a lot of ways it took longer than most people thought. There's probably exceptions to this, but often in technology, it takes longer for
00:04:52
Speaker
really the mass adoption to happen. And when you're talking about applying it in psychology or in therapy, it has to be a pretty proven effective technological application that you would be willing to bring into your practice. So it's not the first beginning of technology. It takes a little while to get there. I think that probably explains somewhat why it's taken a while.
00:05:12
Speaker
But in the meantime, technology has advanced so much that what we could even dream of doing back then is now a reality. So it's an exciting field to be in for that reason.
00:05:22
Speaker
I really think that's so cool. I mean, I know with that AI, it feels like it's been so fast because that mass adoption has been pretty quick, but in general, and I think AI has actually been around for a lot longer than many of us know because chat GPT might be our entry point to it. But in general, I mean, even when we look at phones and social media in the last
00:05:44
Speaker
20 years. Everything has advanced so much where what may have been a concern when I was in school however many years ago is and we had the cell phones then is not even it's a drop in the bucket compared to the way that it impacts our lives today or even from youth through
Success of One Perfect Platform
00:06:02
Speaker
adulthood. So I find it so fascinating and I think that
00:06:05
Speaker
You know, I think a lot of times we hear about the negatives, but I think to see some of the positives and how we can really leverage it to our advantage. So I'd love to learn more about how you use technology for the better and to help people with their mental health.
00:06:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Well, everything you just talked about really does resonate. It made me reflect on when I was in graduate school, say 20, 25 years ago, there already had been a lot of use and research in the application of virtual reality within psychology. And that was because the military was spending money to try to understand how it could be useful for post-traumatic stress disorder. And so in the
00:06:44
Speaker
data was really strong back then. But that was 25 years ago. So that was an example of how, you know, as you're talking about, it's been around a long time and just keeps morphing. And in that case, it's there are some very cool applications of virtual reality for psychology treatment now. So what you said resonates for sure. But what we actually decided to do with One Perfect, and I have, in fact, spent time working in virtual reality for psychology. And that's part of what led me, I think, to
00:07:10
Speaker
the way that we approach it now and that is to say we we have a product called shifts and a shift is it's a digital experience it could be a live experience too we'll talk about both ways but a shift is the product and the product is just a tool that takes you from where you are right now and then shifts you into where you want to be and so an example of that might be you're feeling frustrated or angry or lonely or you can't sleep and you come into the one perfect shift app
00:07:37
Speaker
or you go to OnePerfectShift.com and you find a shift, you find the right one or you get a personalized one in the app, as the case may be, in that experience of the next five to 10 minutes, shifts you into a better place. And so that was the concept of how can we get great at just an under 10 minutes, helping people get from a place where they are to where they want to be. And with that sort of thesis, we built a product around it. And then we did a pilot with University of California out here.
00:08:04
Speaker
for a couple years to figure out how to do it best. And we got to the point where 90% of people roughly were reporting after they completed a shift that they had in fact shifted into or tore her into their chosen state of mind. And then University of California, one of the schools out here, they purchased the subscribe to the product for their 20,000 plus member community. And that was on the heels of a couple years of pilots. So we got to the point where it was really working well.
00:08:31
Speaker
And so that's how that's how we've been using that. We actually added to that the front part of that system, which is the one perfect shift dot com website that I talked about is attached to the app. And if you subscribe there, what you get is a weekly shift just delivered to your inbox. And the reason for that became that engagement is really important. I talked about that at the beginning. If you're not using something, then it's probably not benefiting you that much. And we found that when we sent these shifts to people's inboxes every week,
00:08:59
Speaker
About 50% of people were engaging weekly with them. And for this kind of a product, we think of it in the wellness category of products. That's just an extraordinary level of engagement. So people, we're finding that people really love engaging with
00:09:14
Speaker
shifts if they're short and they're effective. And yeah, so we've just been building from there and we're building the next iteration of the product now, which I'm excited about, but fundamentally it's about learning to shift your state of mind when you need to. And there are ways that we can give you to do that in five to 10 minutes, but ultimately you want to do it on your own. And so there's tools where we're teaching you how to do it and you're recording your own shifts.
Consistency in Mental Health Practices
00:09:38
Speaker
And then hopefully you're sharing your shifts with other people and really paying, paying this skill forward.
00:09:44
Speaker
that's amazing and I mean it's so true that a lot of times when we're experiencing an emotion the emotion doesn't really necessarily have to last that long for us to move through it and it's really just the way that we're kind of dealing with it and so often when I'm in a stressful environment or
00:10:01
Speaker
you know, kind of going through something, I might be on my phone or on my computer anyway. And so, you know, you mentioned really adopting the technology that people are already at. And I mean, every single person listening right now would very likely be, you know, listening on a phone or on a computer. I don't know if they're getting psychic, you know, downloads of this, but at least that's not coming up in my analytics. But
00:10:25
Speaker
You know, so these are places that we're already at. And I think to be using them in the right way and to find ways. And I think that that five to 10 minutes, I mean, that really eliminates those barriers for so many of us because we think, oh, I have to spend however much time doing this in order to get there. Yeah.
00:10:44
Speaker
I think you're right on with that, that that is a transition, actually a shift in the research that's been happening. I would say in parallel to our findings of just testing by asking people, did you shift, you know, in five to 10 minutes and hearing yes, alongside that we've been seeing, you know, top researchers from Stanford, NYU, who have been looking at using shorter experiences and seeing if they have the same impact on not only the report of the person who's using the tool,
00:11:13
Speaker
but also our brain changes happening in the same way that we've been seeing them happening when looking at people who are doing longer meditations. And so all of this is sort of coming together to demonstrate that if you're generally speaking, if you're consistent is really the key with doing a five, 10 minute shift every day. Over the course of a couple of months, you're starting to see a real habit being built and then you're getting a lot better at doing it. And there are sort of corresponding changes that are happening within you
00:11:43
Speaker
that we're getting we're seeing more clearly you know if you know the history of this this piece of the research you understand that this mindfulness based stress reduction has been you know decades in the research and with that they're a bit longer meditation type experiencing shifting
00:12:00
Speaker
type experiences that have proven to be incredibly effective for treating all sorts of mental health situations. So you can think of this, the way that we think of it at One Perfect is you can come in because you have a mental health thing going on, meaning like you're feeling sad or you're feeling lonely. You can find a shift for just general wellness, like reduced stress. We know there's all sorts of health benefits to doing that. And then you can also choose sort of on the performance side,
00:12:27
Speaker
okay, I need to get motivated, I need to get in the right mind state to do a presentation coming up, something like that. And so really, the idea is that all of those shifts rely on the same concept, which is taking yourself knowing how to take yourself from where you are right now into a more intentional place. So yeah, a little rambling there, but I think we're
Experiencing a Mini Shift
00:12:50
Speaker
on the same page.
00:12:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think that that's such a practical application. And I think that so often, this is why I love that it has the weekly emails that are going out with the weekly shifts because so often we think that we really only need to put that time in. If it's in the moment, I am experiencing something difficult, but I mean, needing to get motivated for a presentation, that's something that could come up very often in our lives and we could be in what we think of as a, you know, in a good place.
00:13:16
Speaker
quote-unquote, and it still might not be, you know, we need to shift where we're at. I think it's, yeah, it's so true. You know, for me in my life, the shifts came in largely because I was overnight, I was waking up, you know, a lot of stress, not enough sleep, I'm not getting enough sleep, I have to do this tomorrow, all that kind of thinking. And I said, I'm a psychologist, I really am teaching this, I really need to figure it out. And I developed my first sleep shift.
00:13:42
Speaker
And, you know, that was just a five to 10 minute experience that I really refined for myself. So that then I came to know that when I actually what happened was when I would wake up, I would be pleased about it because I knew within five to 10 minutes I would be in a really nice state. I might not be completely back to sleep, but all of that anxiety would be gone. And I would be enjoying, you know, even if I was awake, laying in bed and
00:14:04
Speaker
at peace. And I just realized the power of that in the sense that all of the anxiety that I had, and I think in general that we have around those things that we have fear about, like I'm going to wake up in the middle of the night because I have stress around what's going on tomorrow. If you know that you're five minutes away from a better place, like if you know you have that skill, then it totally changes the original context.
00:14:26
Speaker
So you no longer get that wake up call in the middle of the night. It's a lot more mild. And I think that applies, you know, as you're saying to lots of different things in our life. So yeah, the one thing I try to stress is being consistent. So I shifted from, I will do the overnight shift if I need to, but now every morning with my coffee.
00:14:45
Speaker
I do a shift. You talked about the getting them in your email. It's on Thursdays, Thursdays and Sundays usually. So today's was, it was shipped out of being annoyed in the morning. And it's one of our most popular. And so it's like, even if you don't need it, the real thing is to get yourself to just do it. Because if you do it consistently, then the habit is really there for when you do need it and you're constantly
00:15:09
Speaker
kind of reinforcing and rearranging brain cells by consistently just shifting yourself and it's not super complicated but it's super valuable.
00:15:18
Speaker
Yeah, I mean how many of us have not woken up annoyed at least one time in our lives and you're building that resilience For when the time comes and it's it's like when You know, we don't always go to the doctor because we're sick We're going to get checked up into you know for maintenance and I think that this is a maintenance and even a growth aspect for us So I I'd love to know because that I mean that sounds like such a cool shift. Can you talk me?
00:15:44
Speaker
through a little bit what those shifts look like and you know from the virtual side and from the yeah yeah when the virtual side you mean like in the inside the app where it's a more personalized is that what you're thinking there yeah because you mentioned virtual and that they could do in digitally and live
00:16:03
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let me sort of go through where things are at and where the future is on that. But the specific answer to your question is that, you know, what we found over time doing a bunch of testing in the pilots was there's a structure that works pretty well. And you can kind of play with the order of the structure, but why don't we just, I'll kind of guide us through at least pieces of one so we can get an experience of it together. And maybe I'll talk through some of the pieces of that structure that tend to be repetitive.
00:16:32
Speaker
as we go. Does that sound like a decent plan? Absolutely. Okay, cool. I like starting that way because I always start with taking a long deep breath. And you take a long deep breath, breathe in, breathe out, allow your shoulders to relax a little bit, allow your arms to fall toward the ground.
00:16:53
Speaker
And so that's one structural piece that I think is really important to kind of just set that this is what I'm going to be doing for a little while. And then notice, noticing is really important. Notice after you take, try one more long deep breath and just notice if there's even any mini shift in your internal experience that you can notice just from taking a deep breath.
00:17:16
Speaker
And then undoubtedly, you know, I always will feel a little something and I love to highlight that because the real skill set here is being able to notice where you are and then notice those little shifts. And then if you do that, then you can grow them into bigger shifts. So that's why I highlight the noticing. And then what I like, another piece of this that I think is really important is to set that intention for what you're doing. So people who have meditated some and maybe gotten great at mindfulness, the intention there is a little bit different.
00:17:45
Speaker
Here is you're in a certain state and you want to move to another state. So let's say, you know, we want to come more deeply into presence today. So we're going to set the intention that over the next couple of minutes, I'm actually intending to come more deeply into the present moment. And by that, I mean, let's say you have 100% of your attention to allocate. We're going to bring all 100% of that in attention.
00:18:06
Speaker
into the present moment, that will be our intention.
Understanding Presence and Body Awareness
00:18:09
Speaker
And so let's do that together by just listening to life, listening to the sounds in our environment for the next 10 seconds together that you otherwise wouldn't, you wouldn't listen to. And as you do that with 100% of your attention, just again, notice if there's any little mini shift in your inner world and how you feel. So just listening to life with 100% of your attention.
00:18:41
Speaker
And so maybe that's probably a good place to catch up a little bit, Valerie. Where are you? Were you able to feel a little bit of difference when you did that or no?
00:18:52
Speaker
Yeah, I noticed like a little less, I've actually been having a lot of tension in my neck and shoulders in the last couple of months. And I do feel more relaxed, less, you know, tight in my, you know, neck and shoulders and yeah, just a little bit slowed down. Yeah. With, with those little exercises that
00:19:13
Speaker
We think of that as like, say the first minute is a mini shift to just set that intention and notice a little shift happening. And then, okay, so that's good. So you're sort of starting to drop into it with me, right? We're coming further into presence. And as long as we're doing, I talked about one this morning and that was all about, you know, shifting out of being annoyed. But in this case, we're just thinking about coming more deeply into presence and what we'll often do in, in that kind of a shift.
00:19:37
Speaker
is suggest let's close our eyes together, continue to slow down, breathe deeply, and take that 100% attention that we were focused outside into the outer world by listening, and let's start to bring it more internal now. So we're still listening to life, but think of listening with your body now. And the way that I think that's so powerful to do is recognize that your body is 30 trillion cells interacting in countless ways every moment,
00:20:04
Speaker
completely outside your control. And the effect is that they're buzzing you into life in this moment. So each of us is this complete miracle, buzzing into life with 30 trillion cells. And you can feel that if you just, I'll be quiet for you in a second here so you can focus on just that sensation, the buzzing of life that you are, whether it's feeling the buzz of your hand or the air on your skin.
00:20:29
Speaker
Just try to notice the buzzing of your body with your eyes closed. A great way to start is how do you know your right foot is there if you're not looking at it? Just feel for that buzzing sensation. And if you pick it up anywhere in your body, try to just expand that footprint to your whole body for the next 10, 15 seconds. 100% attention just listening to your body.
00:20:58
Speaker
Feel that body buzz deepening your presence.
Science Behind Shifts
00:21:09
Speaker
And so what we're doing here is we're, again, taking that a hundred percent of our attention and putting it into something very core to us. Our body are what the effect of that is that we're taking it away from those thousand thoughts that are running through our minds before perhaps about, you know, what we have to do next or what we haven't done yet. The fears of the future or the, you know, if you might be ruminating on the past, whatever that might be, but if you can get yourself
00:21:35
Speaker
Trained to put your attention a hundred percent where you choose all of a sudden you're able to bring yourself into presence and one of the Real values of that is that if you were struggling before for example We started this shift now you're coming more into a place where whatever you were struggling with you're approaching from the
00:21:53
Speaker
a present state of mind, you know, not a fear-based state of mind. You had talked earlier about, you know, we have so many different mind states that pop up throughout the day that you might do a shift and it might work great for you. You might have just come into presence. I certainly did more deeply. And then that's great. And you bring that out with you to the rest of your day.
00:22:15
Speaker
but ten minutes later you're feeling stressed again and so you know you but now you're developing the skill where you can go address that so it might be that you need to do it repetitively it's not gonna solve your depression or your anxiety overnight but if you do it consistently that change that i talked about before of that you come into awareness that you have a solution to these difficult states really compounds and value for you.
00:22:40
Speaker
It makes a lot of sense because I even think about if I go to the gym one time, that's great. It doesn't take away the value of that. But if I only go one time, that's not going to have a lasting impact. And it's what I do on a daily basis or on a regular basis, whatever it is for the particular habit that we're bringing in. And I mean, I think so many of the problems that we face and so many of the challenges we face have to do with that lack of presence there too. So I feel like this is a really good one to start with.
00:23:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I love your analogy there, by the way. And I think it carries even further, you know, you think of you're training your muscles by repeatedly repeatedly stressing them, right, breaking them down, and then they rebuild. And in the same way, your brain builds neuroplasticity is this idea that your brain changes based on the content that it's processing in any moment. And the key things that make that change is both that content that you're bringing in, in this case, it would be
00:23:36
Speaker
the ability to have 100% of your attention where you want to. That's what you're training your brain to do. And so the other variables there are how intensely are you engaged with that? So intensely, you can think of, you know, what percentage of your attention are you putting into it? How much energy are you putting into it? And then the other is the repetition. So as you repeat it, those brain changes
00:23:56
Speaker
they anchor more fully. And so those brain networks that are being trained to have your attention where you want, if it's presence,
Time Management for Mental Health
00:24:03
Speaker
then it's presence. If it's motivation, it's motivation. So repeating that with intensity consistently, that's what anchors this as, you know, really it's a natural skill over time if you do it.
00:24:14
Speaker
Absolutely and I just think it's something where there really is again there's very little barrier because it's you know what we're doing repeatedly sometimes for just a few minutes or even 30 seconds sometimes it's really not that long. You know our biggest excuse a lot of the time or our biggest reason for why we can't take our health take our mental health take whatever it is into our own hands is
00:24:37
Speaker
Well, I just don't have the time. I have too much on my plate. And I mean, again, that's probably also going way out of the present too. But it takes away that barrier for us and allows us to make the changes in actionable but accessible ways.
00:24:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm so excited by this idea that in five minutes, you can really have an impact for yourself. Because I think what you just said is getting at the heart of it, which is that we know that there are things, you know, you can go to yoga, you can do classes, you can do a lot of things that bring you into a better state. But we traditionally have thought about those as taking a long time. And so
00:25:14
Speaker
If what I was actually thinking about this and recording a shift on it a little bit earlier today, if you find that you're not able to take five minutes to get yourself to a better place, there's probably a bigger story there about what's going on with you. You know, no one's that busy that they can't find five minutes. And if you are, it probably means that there's something a little bit off.
00:25:35
Speaker
and how you're perceiving the need for you to keep going fast. So this brings it to a place I feel like we're kind of getting towards this concept of there's not really a great excuse to not do it now. Now it's about, oh, there's something a little bit off if you feel like you can't take five minutes. And when you get to the place where you're seeing that as a trigger, right? You saying to yourself, no, I can't do it. I don't have time. That's a really powerful moment
Future of One Perfect Platform
00:26:02
Speaker
for you.
00:26:02
Speaker
because if you're at that place, and I certainly am, I'm there regularly, right? No, I can't, I can't, I don't have time. If you can see that as the way to do it, what you've learned is that there is a massive difference between the state of mind that's stressed and the state of mind that's not stressed. If you know that five minutes from now you can be in that place, you really come to trust it, then you're not gonna have the excuse not to do it, and your life's gonna change a lot. And then, to me, the impact of that is, well,
00:26:30
Speaker
Your life changing changes everyone who you intersects with life. So it really pays forward effectively.
00:26:38
Speaker
And if you, if you have time to talk about it, I'd love to talk more about how that next phase of what we're doing amplifies that. But even I think what I just shared is kind of a big chunk of information. Yeah. I mean, I think it's so like, and I actually think too, because I also fall into that category. I tend to overbook. I have a lot of good stress sometimes too, but it's still stress and there's still a lot going on and thinking about it recently and realizing that I wasn't.
00:27:04
Speaker
really prioritizing my mental and physical health and the way that aligns with me and my values and all of that and you know the not having enough time that was where I realized now I got to make the time it is more important than ever if I don't have the time to then make the time it's kind of paradoxical but you know for me that kind of made sense but yeah I'd love to know what what's next and what that next phase is because this is really cool work and
00:27:29
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, thanks so much. Yes. So the next phase to me is I talked about the app, right? You come into the app, you identify how you're feeling, you know, I'm feeling stressed, I need to shift out of loneliness, whatever it might be, and you're getting a digital
00:27:43
Speaker
meaning an audio experience or a video or audio video experience right now. And that's working. It's working really well for people. So we, you know, I mentioned you can get this as an individual. You can download the app and you can get it, or you can subscribe at One Perfect Shift. And we also sell into organizations. So those organizations will pay for their employees or their students to have a subscription so they can come into the app that way. And the next phase of this is that we're adding to that live shift therapists. So you come into the app.
00:28:13
Speaker
and you get to see the profiles. One way to think about it is Uber, the Uber of mental health. You're looking at profiles, seeing this person's great at shifting people into meditation, motivation. They have five stars for that in their last 50 shifts, and you choose that person.
00:28:29
Speaker
And then within a couple of minutes or a minute or whatever it is, the person comes on and they give you a live shift. And the cool part of this to me is that there's so much data that suggests that if you add live human to technology, the effects are much stronger. And so, and that's obviously especially true if you're having a shift therapist who's proven that they're very good at what they do and you can.
00:28:54
Speaker
provide them with the right content in order to support what they're doing. So that is what we're doing now. We're, we're recruiting shift therapists largely from our subscriber network. So people who are shifting a lot and really love it and are good at it are becoming shift therapists. And we're training, giving them training so that they can be the ones that then, you know, either get paid or volunteer within the app. My fantasy would be that everyone in the world, let's say, let's start with the country though.
00:29:22
Speaker
volunteers 10 minutes of their time to shift someone else into a better place, 10 minutes a week even. I think we would solve 95% of our mental health issue and loneliness issue. I probably haven't talked about it yet, but the value you get from providing a shift to someone else is arguably more than you get from being shifted because, you know, just as I was guiding us through one a moment ago,
00:29:45
Speaker
I have to bring myself into that state. So de facto, you're shifting yourself to a better place by doing this. So you're practicing, you're sharing what you know, and the big thing is that you're really connecting with someone, and that has such a profound effect on each other's lives.
00:30:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's so true that any time I've given back in whatever way, or even just I know somebody is dealing with something, whether it's emotional, whether it's career, and I can provide some kind of resource for them. When I know that it's helping somebody else in that way, and sometimes it's something so small, it's connecting someone by email, or it's a little thing that
00:30:27
Speaker
to me it seems little, but it makes their day and it makes my day probably even more. And so I think that's a really cool concept. And I mean, I think for so many of those people that worry about technology overtaking the humans and that we're not gonna be able, you know, there are gonna be no jobs for the humans out there. I think it really does come down to how do we as humans integrate technology? How do we work with the technology together? Because you're so right. Like this is really cool technology and this is such a great concept.
00:30:57
Speaker
but working with that live therapist, that live shift therapist, that person is going to be able to get into my specifics a little bit more. If there's not a specific situation, and there probably are so many where it's hard to not fit into one of them, but they can really dive a little bit deeper and maybe even provide something that has worked for them personally in the past.
Human Connection Through Tech
00:31:18
Speaker
Sometimes getting that from a real human, it makes such a difference. Yeah, it does. The way that I like to think about it is,
00:31:26
Speaker
You know, think about your best friend or someone that you really, whenever you think about them, just the act of knowing you're going to be talking to them for a few minutes jazzes you up, makes you feel good. And I think that's the added power of being able to connect with someone that you're excited to connect to.
00:31:42
Speaker
that resonates with you, that you trust, you know, all of the things. So adding that to something that we already know works is super exciting. And then, you know, I think it's clear that we've lost a lot of connection in our world and we're trying to find ways to regain it that as you were talking about really do sink to the new reality, which is technology is interspersed in most of our lives now. So how do we use that to our benefit instead of having smartphones that are bumming us out,
00:32:11
Speaker
How do we make it, we call like, how do we make it a portal presence when you open your phone? Yeah. Cause I think at this point, like, I mean, I have the days where I'm like, man, I wish I could just throw my phone into the ocean. Having said that, I won't have an alarm clock or a way to communicate at work or anything. I'll never wake up again Valerie. I actually will lose all my library books that way too. I listen to all of them on my phone.
00:32:35
Speaker
So much good with our technology if we if we can and like, you know, if we can use it in the right ways and we're not getting rid of them, they're not going away or even if one person gets rid of their phone, I mean, that's not going to have that ripple effect everywhere we're all
00:32:50
Speaker
you know, the world isn't going to change to that extent at this time. So rather than fighting it in that way, I mean, I think this is something where there is so much power in these tools that we have at our fingertips. Again, if we're doing it in those productive and meaningful ways, and the fact that there is this research now behind it too, I think it's all the more powerful.
00:33:11
Speaker
Yes, I totally agree. I mean, I think it's such an exciting thing to think about the idea that, you know, at any moment you can pick up your phone, just say, I'm feeling this way or I need to, I want to feel this way. And you can scroll through and find someone that excites you to learn how they sort of have learned this skill and mastered this skill. And then they can share that with you. And the flip is true too, right? You could
00:33:32
Speaker
You can be a shift therapist and then also go get your shifts when you want to. We see that some people like to get a shift by reading through it. They can really control the pace that way. They scroll. Some people like to just listen, close their eyes and listen. And undoubtedly other people like it in different ways. So the live way I think is going to be a super powerful one.
00:33:54
Speaker
You know, think about even a student at college who's lonely, the lonely freshman who's sort of separating from home for the first time and they can connect to a junior and even on their own campus who has been through that experience. Just all of this stuff is so powerful.
Mindset Shifts in Daily Life
00:34:08
Speaker
I remember when I was a therapist, it became evident to me that
00:34:14
Speaker
If someone was really struggling and then, you know, they went off and the next week they came back and they talked about, oh, you know, an old friend left a voicemail for me and like, it changed my whole week. Just reflecting what you were saying, it doesn't take up a lot, a lot of times to, and that's just an example of how quickly we can shift given the right, you know, circumstance. So this is mindset stuff.
00:34:36
Speaker
you know it maps onto the real world for sure but yeah it's to me it's very exciting that i think that there is a lever there that can really change the way that the baseline of how people are feeling out there absolutely yeah i just think about you know i think about that voicemail i have a friend
00:34:54
Speaker
She listens to the show, shout out to Rachel, who without knowing it, she'll send me a text out of the blue. You're going to have an amazing day today or something along those lines. I'm so proud of you. It's one of those things where so often, I really do believe in the synchronicities with that. I get those messages when I really need them.
00:35:18
Speaker
And I think that for all of us, it's that way that, you know, it can make such a big impact with just a few words or just with a few moments. And I'd love to know just some simple mindset shifts that we can incorporate into our daily lives, especially as things are getting busier again, the pandemic while still there, you know, we're kind of getting more and more back into normal life and things get hectic, busy.
00:35:45
Speaker
Yeah, difficult political climate, all the things. All the things for sure. I mean, yeah, we got real off track here and I, you know, with silly stuff.
00:35:56
Speaker
Like we can get real back on track with just recognizing it doesn't take long to get yourself in a good place. The shift that we did, what I was trying to do there was give an example of some of the different pieces of every shift, right? So if you, you know, when you ask what's a good shift, the way that I think about it is every morning I get up to get my coffee, sit down in the seat and do a five minute shift. But what I'm going to do is I'm either going to go into the app, if I'm not recording one myself, I'm going to go into the app and choose what I need right then.
00:36:26
Speaker
Or I'm going to go onto the website, oneperfectshift.com and I'm going to search and choose or, you know, like take a suggested recommended for you.
Importance of Mental Health
00:36:33
Speaker
So really it's not so much that I can share, here are some techniques with you. It's more that the idea is that we're providing, we're providing what you need when you need it. And so that's why it's able with technology to become so much more personalized than me just guiding through, you know, everyone through the same shift.
00:36:52
Speaker
Now. And so that's part of the reason I usually will pick something like presence, which is universally, everyone, you know, feels better when shipped into presence. But it tends to be that that shift into presence is the first step. And then if you want to get motivated, for example, then we might stay with our eyes closed or close our eyes if we hadn't done that yet and start to bring into our inner world, what is that next step of our day that we want to be focused on and do some visualization around succeeding effectively in that task in a few minutes.
00:37:22
Speaker
and really coloring it in and getting ourselves there for shifted into a sense of competence and confidence but also just reorienting our attention.
00:37:31
Speaker
to where it needs to go. And basically it tends to be the case that when you're not in a place that you want to be, it's because you have attention that's leaking, right? It's leaking out into some other fear or anxiety or your attention is split in some way that can pretty easily be rectified if you just take that time. So I hope that kind of addresses the question a little bit, but basically I would say
00:37:56
Speaker
Go, you know, start doing it yourself. See, see what works for you. Do a little experimenting. If you get in the app, you can actually in anywhere you are in the app, there's a record button.
00:38:06
Speaker
so that you can practice recording your own shift. Or another way to think about that is we get distracted while we're doing these, you know, shifts, these meditations. And it's always there to kind of get off your mind what you're distracted by and record that so you can come back to it later. And if there's something that you're working on, particularly in your, in your whatever, your professional life or your personal development, you can record your thoughts around that and then blend that into your shift.
00:38:31
Speaker
So that next time you can be reminded of it just in the words that work for you because a lot of what works here is getting the language that fits you in your life and your sensibilities. So we're really being intentional about trying to guide people to recording their their own voice. You know, speaking in your own voice is so powerful.
00:38:51
Speaker
Um, you don't have to start there. You can start by reading or listening or whatever, but, um, yeah, just engage with it where it seems like it feels right to you in that moment. And if you're like, uh, I was last week when I recorded a shift out of being annoyed in the morning, you know, this stuff, two steps for one step backward, right? But it's all about knowing that you have a tool when you need it to get to a better place.
00:39:16
Speaker
Yeah and I would imagine too that some of these things where even if it's a specific thing that I may not be dealing with there may be a very similar situation that I could get into later on where maybe I'm not annoyed when I first wake up but there may be some kind of annoyance where some of what I take from that shift I can yeah I can apply that and so that is really cool. You know I'd love to know because we talked a little bit about how there's this ripple effect
00:39:41
Speaker
with this kind of work, that as you're improving this within yourself, it's then improving with the people in the world around you. Talk to me about mental health, why it's the most important part of our health.
00:39:53
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So that question kind of makes me think of two things. The first piece you were talking about, you know, a major influence on how we're doing both emotionally in terms of like, are we having mental health problems or
Evolving Openness About Mental Health
00:40:06
Speaker
not? And then that seeps in as I think most people are becoming aware of now to your physical health. If you have stress that's compromising your physical health over time.
00:40:16
Speaker
if it's chronic stress and you don't know how to manage it well. And so what that means is that if you can increase your mindset, your feeling of your social network by knowing that I have like a shift therapist out there or whatever it might be, then that's how this sort of collective approach to it has increasing benefits over time. So that's where we see that as a super powerful piece of
00:40:41
Speaker
shifting. Can you just remind me again, Valerie, what was the other piece of that question? Just about how mental health, how it can become the most important part of our health.
00:40:51
Speaker
Yeah. So I think for me, this wasn't intuitive until I was really asked the question the first time, you know, if you have your mental health, no matter what's going on with your physical health, you can be inspirational. You can be living purposefully. You can be living presently. You can be an inspiration to the people around you and a key part of your social network and all of all of the things.
00:41:14
Speaker
that make for a purpose-driven life. And so that's why I think the mental health sits in front of the physical health really. If you don't have your mental health, but you do have your physical health, there are all of those things that I just talked about. You may be very compromised in terms of how you're participating socially in the world. And I think, you know, that's where a lot of stigma around mental health issues also comes in, is that we don't really see it as the primary thing. We see it as a subset of
00:41:43
Speaker
health of physical health. But if you flip that on its head and understand that your mental health, your capacity to shift into a better state of mind is maybe one measure of where your mental health is at. If you see that as the primary piece of your health, then it really flips around how you think about just your life in general and whatever you're struggling with, right? If you're struggling with physical issues,
00:42:08
Speaker
and you know that you can get yourself into a better emotional state, well, all of a sudden, you've really changed the impact of that physical health on you. Yeah, and I hadn't even thought about that, what you said about how, because there is such a stigma, I think, a lot of the time when it comes to mental health. And I do think some of it is, we're starting to talk more about it in the mainstream. I was somewhere recently where five people were talking about their therapist.
00:42:35
Speaker
And I thought there was no way even 10 years ago that anybody would have been talking this openly about that kind of thing. And so I was happy to see that, but that we don't, because it's not usually the primary focus, that that's why that stigma is there. I had never thought about it in that way.
Tech's Influence on Awareness
00:42:51
Speaker
It has changed for sure over time. And I was even talking earlier today about depending where you are in the world, right, depending where you are in the country, that has a different trajectory.
00:43:01
Speaker
But yeah, I think it's getting fairly immersed in our culture, certainly in the kinds of people that are probably listening to this and in the world that I circulate in, wellness, psychology. But I think there's so many people that are now getting support, whether it's through coaching, life coaching, actual psychotherapy, because it's just expanded online so much as a consequence of COVID. So it is becoming normalized. And I think that's helpful for the stigma, which is still there, especially for more severe mental health.
00:43:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, in a lot of ways, that's another one of those great impacts of technology being so immersed in our lives because now we are seeing the, like there's the telemedicine, the teletherapy that people are getting. And I think more people online and even not to say that you should get your medical information from TikTok or anything like that, but just people kind of normalizing that, Hey, I
00:43:57
Speaker
have this neurodiversity, you know, whatever it is that they're, and maybe not always mental health, but that people are talking a lot more openly, and that it's just there that it is becoming a lot more normalized. So I've been loving that I've been loving seeing that. Yeah, people, it's sort of interesting, isn't it that there's this historical stigma thing, and then you look on TikTok, or someplace like that, and you're seeing someone
00:44:23
Speaker
that's maybe presenting what they're going through in an authentic and maybe new way to you. And it's actually fairly engaging and exciting. It's not scary in the way that it is. I think if you're another degree removed from it, then seeing or knowing someone that's actually going through it, you're projecting a lot of these old assumptions on it. And now, yeah, you get to see it. And oftentimes there's a flip side benefit to some of this stuff that's not evident necessarily off the bat.
Invitation to Join Shift Revolution
00:44:53
Speaker
Yeah, because I do think there was so much that we would see that or if you even like just in an intro psychology class that you would hear and it's like, Oh my gosh, that sounds really tight. Like I never want to be around a person that has whatever. And then, you know, now knowing that so many of us are either undiagnosed or just that it's not what we kind of grew up thinking. And it's like that people are so much more nuanced and that kind
00:45:20
Speaker
fun people that we would enjoy are maybe struggling with whatever it is. I think that's very helpful. So I really love the work that you're doing. I think that it's really helping a lot of people and going to continue to do that, especially with these live experiences. Talk to me about anything else coming up with One Perfect and with the shifts that you'd like to share with our listeners.
00:45:40
Speaker
Oh, so well, thank you for saying that Valerie, you're kind of reaching to the choir here. I'm obviously, but yeah, I mean, part of the reason that I'm talking a lot right now out on podcasts and such is that we're recruiting shift therapists. So whoever might be interested, I think, you know, that you might be good.
00:46:00
Speaker
at this, just go over to OnePerfectShift.com, subscribe, and then you'll start getting information about taking that next step if you're interested. And yeah, I can't really highlight enough how much I think the value that you'll get out of it yourself, and then the value that you'll be given to others as we build this network out, I think of it as the shift revolution, where if we can get everyone understanding what a shift is and how to do it, I think we will have made a
00:46:28
Speaker
huge dent in the loneliness crisis, the mental health crisis. In a lot of ways, this is about knowing the language that works for you to get yourself where you need to get and then developing some expertise by practicing. But what we're finding that I think is exciting is it's not that difficult. And then when you layer on the idea of, oh, we're going to build a community, it's everyone knows that being embedded in a community that you respect and that feels like your people and your tribe is
00:46:57
Speaker
So it just has compounding effects in your life and your mental health and just your feeling of being connected in the world. So all of it I'm excited about. And if I bring an intention to these kinds of conversations, it's, okay, let's recruit shift therapists who think that they might want to get involved with this. So please join us if that resonates at all with you.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:47:19
Speaker
That's amazing. And I'm sure we have plenty of listeners that would definitely fall into that category. I think that that community piece is so huge and that just about any challenge that you're going through or when I've even gone through the more traumatic times when it comes down to it, some of the research I've done, some of
00:47:36
Speaker
what I've even just heard from experts like yourself is that connecting with other people you can't isolate in those times and you have to figure out you know what that community looks like but for some it may be harder to to do that on their own and so having that built into this program is so huge and
00:47:54
Speaker
Um, again, I think limiting those barriers and making it easy and quick to do with practice. That's honestly amazing. So I really do hope that we have some listeners that, that apply. Um, I, again, I think that's so, so cool. Now I definitely want to ask you more about, you know, how they can connect with you and, and where to find you. But I do have some rapid fire questions as well that I love to ask our guests. May I ask you those rapid fires? Let's, let's see. Yeah. Let's give it a try.
00:48:22
Speaker
All right. What is your favorite self-care practice right now? Oh, that one's kind of easy. I love to shift for, you know, as I said, I can have my cup of coffee. I do a shift in the morning. That's definitely the best. I mean, the obvious ones that I, as a psychologist, I have to say are you got to get great sleep and exercise. You got to do some exercise. Those are core and then shift. Maybe that's the three legs of the stool.
00:48:47
Speaker
I love that. And I love that you've created a ritual around it too, because I think that's another piece to it that, you know, I love my, I love my tea in the morning or my hot, sometimes just hot water. And, you know, having kind of a place and a mindset that you're in kind of a setting, I think that adds to it. I think it makes it more special and it kind of solidifies the habit a little bit. So I think that's great. And the other two habits for sure.
00:49:10
Speaker
Thanks for, for pointing that out. I think you're so right. Yeah. Getting that context right. So you kind of look forward to it. And, um, I find that for me, it leads into that, you know, okay, you got to kind of dial in and get some work done and it can really sit in front of it nicely and provide this bridge to that next step of your day. Cause you look forward to it and you know, you're going to feel better after it. So yeah, pairing it with coffee doesn't hurt either.
00:49:33
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Now, if you had one word theme for this year, what would that be? I would say one word is listening. Listening, you know, we were doing that at the beginning of a shift, listening to life, just listening, but think of listening as more broad than just your ears.
00:49:52
Speaker
listening with your body, listening with your eyes. To me, that's really the core of what a shift is. If you're listening with 100% of your attention, then you are in presence. So listening, I took much more than one word to say listening 10 times.
00:50:08
Speaker
No, but I think that gives a broader sense of what that is. Because yeah, I think the first thing we think of with listening, I mean, more often than not, that is going to be that physical act of hearing with our ears. And yeah, there's so much more to it that we're not necessarily intuitively thinking of. So
00:50:25
Speaker
Yeah, when you're talking to someone else, when you're seeing them, there's so much about just the visual part of listening that you process. So yeah, it's all your whole body and you're feeling it, right? Your mirror neurons are hooking up and you're impacted by the other person's emotions. So noticing all of that by listening closely.
00:50:44
Speaker
Absolutely. And my final rapid fire for you. This could be personal, professional, really whatever way you'd like to go. What are you most looking forward to now? Oh, another easy one. Shift there. I'm looking forward, really like having this product be awesome. I want it to the point where I want to go use it and you like see how this person shifts or how they might shift me and just that
00:51:09
Speaker
that there's all this diversity of people in there. How much do we learn when we come across a new kind of way of doing or seeing, connecting to a new person in a new way, all of that I think is going to be so exciting. And so yeah, bringing this shift therapy product to the world in its best form, that's what I'm looking forward to right now.
00:51:27
Speaker
That's amazing. I am so excited to not only experience the shifts in the current form, but I think also just again to see with these shift therapists, the power in the, like everything that that brings, because as you said, that ripple effect, the compounding effects, it's so huge and it's really exciting and impactful work. So I want to thank you for the work you're doing. How can the listeners get connected and learn more and find you?
00:51:55
Speaker
OK, well, thanks again, Valerie. You're giving some compliments. I appreciate it. I think we're on the same page with a lot of this stuff. So maybe that's why we've connected today. But yeah, just what I mentioned before, if you go to OnePerfectShift.com as an individual, that's the place to go and then subscribe for free and you start to get some information and you'll find the app from there, too, the apps.
00:52:17
Speaker
If you're an organization and you want to learn more for your organization, One Perfect, and that's spelled out O-N-E perfect dot com or O-N-E perfect shift dot com. Those are the two places I'd suggest as starting places.
00:52:31
Speaker
Wonderful. I'm going to make sure to link them in the show notes. And I cannot wait to share this with the listeners. I think that they're really going to find so much value in it. But again, want to thank you for the work you're doing and for sharing this incredible vision with us and for sharing a shift with us today as well. Oh, thanks so much Valerie. It's really nice to spend some time and connect around this stuff and I hope to talk to you again. And thanks everyone for listening.
00:52:57
Speaker
Thank you so much for joining us for this insightful conversation with Dr. Sullivan. I think so often we talk about the negative impacts of technology, but it's important for us to remember that we can also use that technology to empower ourselves and to create positive changes in our lives. I'm really excited to see the work that Dr. Sullivan is doing and can't wait for you to try the app out for yourself.
00:53:17
Speaker
I've linked everything in the show notes so make sure you connect to learn more. If this episode resonated with you please share it with a friend or someone you think might benefit and take a moment to leave a rating and review for the show. It means the world to me but it also helps us bring on other incredible guests like Dr. Sullivan and it helps us reach
00:53:35
Speaker
even more people like yourself. Now, if you have a question or a topic you'd like to explore in the future on this show, my inbox is open. You can drop me a line at Valerie, V-A-L-E-R-I-E at wellnessandwonderlust.net or shoot me a DM at wellnessandwonderlustblog. I hope you all have a wonderful day and can't wait till next time.