“I’m Dying To Tell You” with Dr. Mark Goulston | EDB 308
Author & psychiatrist Dr. Mark Goulston shares the peace and wisdom he has found while facing cancer.
Originally a UCLA professor of psychiatry for over 25 years, and a former FBI and police hostage negotiation trainer, Dr. Mark Goulston’s expertise has been forged and proven in the crucible of real-life, high stakes situations. An influencer who helps influencers become more influential, his unique background has made him an indispensable and sought after resource and change facilitator to Fortune 500 leaders, entrepreneurs and educators across the nation. He is also host of the podcast My Wakeup Call. and is a producer on the documentary What I Wish My Parents Knew.
For more about Dr. Goulston: http://markgoulston.com/
For Mark’s “I’m Dying to Tell You” series: https://www.youtube.com/@Imdyingtotellyoudrmark
To learn more about the Deeper Coaching Institute: https://ongloballeadership.com/dci
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FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Note: the following transcription was automatically generated. Some imperfections may exist.
DR HACKIE REITMAN (HR):
Hi, I’m Dr. Hackie Reitman. Welcome to another episode of Exploring Different Brains. And today, I want to welcome back my longtime friend and my old classmate. He’s an author, a psychiatrist, a keynote speaker, coach, so much more. Welcome back. Dr. Mark Goulston.
DR MARK GOULSTON (MG):
Well, Hackie, it’s good to see you. And I have a feeling that after the show, we’ll be in contact more often.
HR:
I hope so. I hope so. Not for the reasons we’re going to, but — first of all, wanted to reintroduce yourself to our audience more properly, because I know you wear a lot of different hats and professorships and everything else.
MG:
It’s interesting, I think one of the, one of the difficulties I had in medical school, and we went to medical schools together, is I’ve been curious all my life. And I’ve been curious, and there was no agenda to it. And I’ve often been surrounded by people who say, why are you even thinking about that? What are you going to do with that? How are you going to monetize that has had lunch? And I couldn’t help it. You know, I was, I think as, even as a child, I was the person. And I wasn’t rebellious. But I’d say, Why? Why that? And, and, you know, a lot of people in the world will just say, Well, don’t ask that question. But it’s how we’ve always done it. And, and I really been fortunate because I took a leave of absence out of medical school twice, because I just couldn’t hack it. Oh, you’re good. And, you know, and the time I took off, you know, it wasn’t to do laboratory stuff I was, I was just curious. The first time I took off, I was probably depressed and confused. And I worked for a liquor distributing company. And I go to the south end of Boston, other parts. And I’d be the one who would put up the Heineken windmill on top of the bar on rickety ladders, and I’d see dead rat skeletons up there, and I absolutely loved it. And the people I would meet, it was wonderful. And, and I kind of got my depression went away, and I kind of got my mind back. And then I came back to medical school, and then it all came back. But it was probably more depression, purely than confusion. And so I then took off time and went to a place called the Menander foundation still around in Houston. But back then was in Topeka. And I grew up outside of Boston, and and I was able to connect with schizophrenic form young men and young women and I could get through to them because I was curious. I was more curious than I gotta find the diagnosis, I gotta find the treatment. And, and I think, people feeling that you are just curious about them. Versus curious about what are you going to do? What’s your treatment plan? Or how are you dealing with those hallucinations? I would just curious.
HR:
If we fast forward to now. Now you have on your plate, the ultimate curiosity.
MG:
Yeah, let’s shift to that because I’m about to launch. Well, the world’s launching me something called “I’m dying to tell you”. Because the prospect of dying is teaching me much more than living ever did. And I’m just taking it in. I’m, I’m creating I’m stockpiling these videos because I wake up in the middle of the night. And I learned three more things. So I’m stockpiling these I’m dying to tell you videos. They’re raw. They’re not edited. It’s first cut.
HR:
First you want to let the audience in on a little bit about…
MG:
Yeah I can tell you so what I have is a I’ve had this thing called lymphoma for a couple of years and it was kind of in the background. We will watch it No, no treatment necessary. And in the past few months, I’ve developed something called high risk myelodysplastic syndrome – MDS. And that came from bone marrow biopsy. And untreated, which doesn’t apply, because we’re going to treat it sooner or later, it has a life expectancy of between five months to four or five years, you know, median about two years. That’s if it’s untreated. And what happens, your audience won’t know this, but you may remember it from med school, I didn’t. So this condition, I have something called 10% mono blasts. And when you get to 20%, mono blasts, you go into acute leukemia. And, and the Leukemia is tough to treat. So, my option is, I think what’s going to happen is I’ll get chemotherapy to we line up what will be necessary for a bone marrow transplant. And I was told that for my age, I’m 75. You know, the survival rate for that is 50%. Because I’m not young. But, you know, the survival rate for acute leukemia is much worse. Good news is all my children matches donors. So that’s, that’s taken care of, and I guess what’s going to happen as I think they’re gonna give me chemo to try to bring down those Monell blasts, while they, you know, while they line up everything that’s necessary for a bone marrow transplant. And if you’re listening, you may not know about it, but it’s an organ transplant, they take all your marrow out. So you’re very prone to infection, infections can kill you, right, right out of the gate. And then you you take a donor’s stuff from their marrow stem cells, they put them into you, and you’re isolated for about a month in a hospital. And then you wait for those hopefully, those cells to grow when they grow in you. And and if it works, you know, again, they’re optimistic and, and, and it’s really weird Hackie. I’m not optimistic or pessimistic. I’m just, I’m the calmest I’ve ever been in my life. I’m so calm. But here’s one of the lessons that is dying thing is teaching me is I’m letting people care about me. And I never did that before. And when I feel someone cares about me like you do, I start to cry. And I apologize. And what I’m feeling on my end, I hope it’s not a burden, Hackie. What I’m feeling on my end is kind of relief, letting people care about me. Appreciation, and embarrassment. And when I’ve told people, I’m sorry. Now, maybe you’ll be the exception, because I know Hackie has that kind of humor. But it’s what they’ve been saying is gone don’t apologize. It’s actually, it’s an honor to care about you, Mark.
HR:
It’s an honor to have someone like you, who’s helping others. By talking like you’re talking like writing like you’re writing, by having your shows by talking about this ultimate of journeys, when you start talking about death, and nobody wants to talk about it and you can’t blame them. And you’re looking at right in the eye and saying, I’m sorry, I’m getting emotional. Its big stuff, doesn’t get bigger than this. This is a new one doing good stuff with it. You turned the ultimate bad break into a good break because you are helping So many people.
MG:
Yeah, you know, it’s — I’m not happy about it. But uh, but I’m calmer than I’ve ever been. I’m not passive. But in terms of lending, you care about me right now here. And now. When, when I’ve apologized, some people have said, almost like what you said right now they said, Mark, this is so real. And a number of people have said, I haven’t had this real a conversation in a long time. And they appreciate how real it is.
HR:
Ironic how the surreal can be so real?
MG:
That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. And what happens is it changes the conversation. And it goes wherever it goes. And I hope you’ll be fine with that, because these people are fine with it. Something else I learned. So here’s a couple of lessons because I have, you know, I have 40 of these little videos. And I’m not sure if I’ll do anything with them, I’m just storing them on. On my computer. They’re raw, they’re unedited, it’s first take. But as I said, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, and I’ll write down three things, and then I’ll turn them into episodes. So some of my favorite ones that I hope people listening or watching will take to heart, I shared one of them letting people care. Now I have to say this, if you’ve been a pain in the rear and a complainer all your life almost demanding people care about you your entire life. What they would like is a break from caring about you. You know, yeah, but if you happen to be someone who can’t stand a burden others lives to care about others, has trouble letting other people care about them. You know, then people say, they love the feeling of caring about me, because you know, I’m, I’m not hitting on them. I’m not, you know, trying to get something from them. So that was a good lesson.
The first episode of I’m dying to tell you is called “Michelangelo Dying”. And what that when I talked about is I used to do house calls to die and patients. Kind of ironic and some of them at the end, I would try to help them make peace with their lives. And there was one particularly who was just this iconic, beloved huge person that the world loved his private life was kind of a mess. And he liked that I could be direct with them. And I said to him on one of my house calls, you know, you look awful. And I don’t think it’s because you’re dying. You’ve been dying, as long as I know you what’s up? You he said, I don’t think I’ve done anything important in my life. I said, I said, what? You got a hospital named after you, you got fans, you know, the world loves you. And he looked at me and he had a smile that the world loved. And he said, Don’t call it a con man, especially when he’s dying. I’ve got all the love that money can buy. And then he said everything I thought wasn’t important is and everything I thought was important isn’t and I don’t have time to fix that. So you know, you do host calls a dying patient, you need to collect a little bit of wisdom, you never know that you’re going to need it someday yourself. So Michelangelo dying is just like he said, I saw the angel in the marble and I carved till I set it free. I’ve identified what’s unimportant in life. And there’s so much that’s unimportant in life that we do. And I have just surgically cut it off. And if you can identify what’s unimportant and just get rid of it. What is truly important glows. So I just want to share that with you. And again, you know, five years ago, I wouldn’t have listened to me I’d say well I feel bad for the guy you know. Sorry that he’s done. I, but that’s not for me. And I’m just trying to share these things.
HR:
They are helpful to others. That’s the name of the game that you grasp. And I’m so honored that Different Brains — That you are bestowing this wisdom upon us, so that we can share this. You know, because it’s not every day. It’s ironic to even say it’s once in a lifetime kind of thing you are, and you’re making it look easy. You’re not even breaking a sweat pal.
MG:
Well, that’s what I’m trying to explain. Here’s something else that I think is practical. So one of the outputs other episodes is called visionary dying. I had a mentor named Warren Bennis, you know, most of your listeners or viewers won’t know the name, but anybody in leadership knows that he was he was to leadership what Steve Jobs was to computers, you know, and he was universally respected and loved. And I remember years ago, we were talking about how a visionary thinks. So this can apply to Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and to someone who’s dying, and the three Ds, and you might want to write this down, you don’t have to.
HR:
I’m writing it down baby. You know, earlier today, I was writing down some thoughts. That stuff I’ve learned, that’s really important. And I thought I would just start jotting a few things down. So I’m gonna write this down on that list. Go ahead.
MG:
So here are the three Ds of the way Steve Jobs or Elon Musk thinks the first D is you define reality beyond what other people can even imagine. So Steve, jobs define reality, are these days everyone’s gonna have a desktop computer. Elon Musk said, one of these days people are going to, you know, have batteries in their cars. You know, and so they can see beyond what people can imagine, the second D is you declare your intention to do it. On your own, we’re going to make those computers of those cars, but we’re going to do it. And the final D is you decide on a strategy about how are you going to do it. So I’ve used these three D’s for visionary dying. So the first one is, hopefully I won’t die tomorrow. And I still got some time. But I’ve defined what a really good and peaceful death is. And here are some elements, the main elements are, I really don’t want a lot of pain and suffering. Second, I don’t want to be a burden to people. One of my mentors, he had a mentor who had the saying, a good death is dying, so as to be as little a pain in the ass to your friends and family. I don’t want to be a burden to people. Third thing is apparently I’m the, I guess I’m a creative. But I’m the visionary lead on about eight projects. I can’t do anything other than be creative. And, you know, but I have teams, and they’re just saying, We’re gonna build this. One team who, you know, unfortunately, has fallen in love with me. And they, and they say, and they’ve created a mark Goulston bot. And you can ask it anything? And I’ll answer it. And they can do it for other people. They’re doing it as a legacy project for me because I’ve 10 books, 1200 articles, you know, 700 podcasts, I get a lot of content out there. And there’s ways to get that content and you turn into a bot. And so and so, you know, I’m kind of key to that project. And so, yeah, so as little pain and suffering as possible. Be eat as little a burden as possible to other people, tie up loose ends.
HR:
Oh, that estate planning is a pain in the neck.
MG:
Oh, yeah, all that stuff, the estate planning, still have a lot of app to do all the other way. Our lawyer and financial planner said, your family’s going to be fine financially. So that was a lot of tears. And then the final thing is what I’m being taught, you know, I’m accumulating these, I’m dying to tell you videos. And I can’t stop it. I think part of it is, you know, I wrote a book on listening. And I’m a psychiatrist. So I’ve listened for 50 years. And I’ve learned a lot. And, and I’ve been more of a listener than, you know, because the important thing is listening to people helping them to feel heard and feel felt you can save lives with that. But I’ve learned a lot. And I’m retired now. And so something’s happened. A sense of urgency. I think I’m, you know, recording a lot of them every day, because there’s a good chance if I go into a transplant or whatever, you know, one of the side effects as you get confused. So, you know, otherwise, I’ll just be doing that, you know, with no hear from my hospital. But, but to me, so that’s, that’s a good death. Ain’t intend to do it because I see it so clearly. And my strategy is find the most capable best people. And it wasn’t easy to get through to some of them, like one of the top people are at a place called City of Hope, outside of Los Angeles and one of the top people at Cedar Sinai. So it wasn’t that easy to get through to them. And but now I have. And so they’ll figure out what I do next. And I’m good with it. I mean, I have people telling me I know a lot of people around the world all you got to do stem cells in Thailand, oh, don’t trust the western medicine. I’ve got the, you know, these things you can do and and I’ve gotten kind of feisty. And they say you won’t let me introduce you to so and so they could save your life. And I say stop. You know, and part of it is I’m not trying to die. But do you follow me I’d get this clarity on the peace with it. I wouldn’t be at peace with it if I was 20 years younger. But my kids are launched. My wife will be okay. She’s really close to our kids and our grandchildren. And so I can’t put into the words that the peace of mind I feel is unbelievable. I think it’s because I just saw what was unimportant. And I just let go of it. So Is any of this making any sense of what we need some more Hackie commentary here?
HR:
No we need very little Hackie commentary because you make an all the sense in the world. This is this is what you’re figuring out. You’re able to separate out all of the BS that doesn’t count that you used to think really counted. And this new you thanks to this journey you’re on is surprising you because people like you.
MG:
I feel like Sally Field he liked me you really liked me. None of our listeners knows whose that is
HR:
They do and many of them do and they’re also going to feel how inappropriate I am laughing with you who I know. And I get what you’re saying. And what a journey it is for you to come full circle and say this the comments that have been in my whole life pretty good.
MG:
I want to share something else, another lesson, then you can give commentary. So one of the other episodes is bave people in utter delight. Bathe people in utter delight. And I’m a pretty good storyteller, I guess. And so I am fortunate, I get to see my grandchildren, my four grandchildren almost every day, my wife was right, keep the house with the pool, because when they visit, they’ll stay an extra 10 minutes. You know, where as opposed that rank is going away? Why are you gonna really end up? So my two daughters will bring over our four grandchildren. And sometimes in the kitchen, there’ll be my wife, my daughters and my grandchildren. And I’m not excluded. But nobody’s paying attention to me. Nobody looks at me. Nobody asked me a question. Nobody does anything. But it’s very important. You know, I want to see them. I adore them all, especially my grandchildren. And here’s an interesting thing that leads to utter delight. I didn’t think I served any purpose being there. And my daughters could be on their phones, multitasking and whatever. And I think I’m being ignored. But if I pick up my cell phone and looked at it, they all give me the stink eye. What are you lookin’ at your phone for! Oh, sorry. Sorry. And, and I said this one thing just once. Will nobody’s paying attention to me. And afterwards, I thought that is the most pathetic thing of seven months. And so I tried this experiment. Because see, if I was my grumpy dad, you know, who could be a little self absorbed? He would have said, Well, nobody’s paying attention to me, I’ll just go in the other room. And I thought, Oh, they may not be paying attention to me. But they notice if I pick up my phone, there’s something going on here.
So I put the phone down. And I didn’t look at it. But I was thinking about what was on the phone is someone emailing me if someone texting me is if I gotta be unhappy show again. Yeah. Am I missing out? Am I FOMO, missing out on something. And then I thought to myself, That’s pretty crappy. And then I had this crazy idea that even though my wife and daughters who are caught up in the details of the day that I know nothing about. Occasionally, when my grandchildren are there, and they’re playing with each other. They’ll look up at me, maybe they’ll look up at me like, you know what’s going on with Grandpa, everybody’s ignoring him. I don’t know what they’re thinking. But when they would, here’s what I learned is I was there to wait for them to look up at me. And when they did, I would bathe them and utter delight. And with my eyes, I be communicating. I love you so much. It hurts. The most amazing thing that’s come in my life. I don’t cry with a butt. But my eyes are alive with adoration. And what happens is they take a second hit is that because most people don’t get bathed in under delight. I don’t think I did that with my children when they were growing up. I thought my kids had a nickname for me Hi kids, by kids love your kids. Cuz I had to go run, you know, make a living. But this utter delight thing is really interesting. And so I’m trying it with everyone. We didn’t focus on that. But, you know, when we do some of our follow up friend zooms. I hope you’ll see in my eyes. It’s so good to see again. As opposed to what are we going to talk on? How can we make money from it? How can we scale it to we turn it into courses? Oh, yeah, we could talk about that. Well, I don’t think I’m gonna be that much interested. But I’ll tell you. You can do this with waiters and waitresses. You can do this with anyone. And here’s the experiment. You go out you go to a restaurant. You know the waiter or waitress serves you they do a good job. And if at some time at the end, they look at you is there anything else you’d like? You look at their name tag. And you say, yeah, there’s one other thing, Nancy. Hey, thank you. And it’s not like Thank you. It’s like, Thank you. I’ll tell you start doing this. And they’ll go, Oh, okay. And they walk away from the table and they shake their shoulders like, What the heck was that? And they do that, because it’s so rare. That’s a pretty good lesson. Don’t yout hink it’s not bad?
HR:
No. And it leads me to say, Mark, thank you. I appreciate it. Mark, this has been so much fun, and so instructive. And so helpful, in many ways, you have no idea. And yet, you do have an idea because you’re doing it tells us how our audience can get more of you and learn more about you and more of all this stuff?
MG:
Well, I don’t know what I’m gonna do with it. I mean, I might do a book I, you know, I’m not. First of all, I have to see how tough the treatment is. Because what I’ve heard is a bone marrow transplant is not a walk in the park. You know, you’re fighting infection every day. And you know, you don’t have any cells. My, I don’t know why I do this, but probably my most current profile is on LinkedIn. And what I’m talking about zero people on LinkedIn would have interest in. But you know, LinkedIn seems to be a place where a lot of people troll and lurk is something I will add, where this may start showing up.
I am the co founder of the Deeper Coaching Institute at a site called On Global Leadership – ongloballeadership.com. DCI, Deeper Coaching Institute. So I’m the lead person on that, although, and then we have deeper coaching certification. The idea being that when a lot of people get coached, you know, we’re not talking about sports, but other coaching. You know, a big part of coaching is not just your strategy, but you learn about yourself. And you sometimes learn things about yourself that, wow, that was helpful. I want to go deeper. And because of my background, you know, a lot, a lot of business coaches will say, Well, you may have some limiting beliefs, you may want to see if you can correct those or, you know, a little emotional intelligence could help. And that’s all fine, but that they don’t have my background. And so for people who want to go deeper, that’s what the deeper Coaching Institute is, and I’m not sure I’ll have enough time, but we’re creating deeper coaching certification. Because there’s a number of people who go into coaching. Here’s the irony, here’s the elephant in the room, and they’ll all chuckle because it’s not that funny. What they do is, they’re in the corporate world, they get burned out. I mean, it nearly kills them. They go out of the corporate world to become coaches. But in order to make a living, they get hired by the corporate world, to help people perform better so that in 20 years, their clients can get burned out to. And a lot of great coaches want to go deeper. You know, because they realized how their corporate life they got burned out on it. And they’re going into coaching, hoping for it to be more fulfilling. And so what’s happening is there’s a fair amount of interest in coaches in getting certified in how do you do that? And I’ll tell you, here’s the secret. Let go of any agenda you have, like I did with my kids utter delight. And here you don’t even need the certification. To be a deeper coach. Your client needs to feel that you take on her delight in meeting with them not just working on what they’re working on. You work on that to be your calling card is they take they, they say, Why are you smiling? Because I’m so glad to see you. I think you’re terrific. I think you have an amazing potential. I think we have to work out the things that are getting in the way, but why should not be glad to see you. And then you listen with zero agenda of your own. And you only listen for what matters most to them. And to help them figure out what matters most to their audience, to the customers and clients. And you bring it out of them without you having to be the big, you know, the big No at all. So yeah, so we’re liking that. And a lot of the stuff that I’m sharing might show up there because a lot of what I’m writing about people say well, that’s not superficial.
HR:
Mark, I hope you come back again to Different Brains. This has been great. And we’ll, we’ll catch up of course, separate from different brains. This has been nothing short of inspirational. Fun. Educational, totally enlightning and again on. Very, very, very important subject and perhaps the ultimate subject when you think about it, and I want to thank you very much. All kidding aside, and I’m not gonna laugh. At least I’ll try not to laugh.
MG:
you know why you’re not gonna laugh. I’ll tell you why. Because I’m gonna end it by saying “Hackie stop. You’re killing me and I don’t need it!”
HR:
Great to hang out with you. As always, draw your family and grandchildren and everything.
MG:
A nd myfriends like Hackie.
