Mental Wealth Podcast

Rob
Hello and welcome to the Mental Wealth podcast. My name is Rob and with me is Mukund. How are you merchant?

Mukund
I’m doing well. Rob, how are you?

Rob
I’m doing very well and today we are delighted to welcome one of the leading psychologists. In the area of behavioral psychology and behavioral health. We would like to. Welcome to the podcast, Doctor Ethan Levine. Dr. Ethan, could you please introduce yourself a little bit and tell us a little bit about your background and? Yes, we’d like to learn more about you.

Dr. Levine
Thank you, Rob, Mukund. Appreciate the opportunity to be here. My story is pretty simple really. I’m a person who always believed I can do what I’m currently doing before I ever got a degree that licensed me to do it and my career is. In two pieces, an organizational psychologist doing executive coaching, leadership development, change management, and a clinical psychologist. And these two have come together in my current role, where I helped start a company called Eventus Whole health that’s grown in the last 10 years from five people to 1000. And that. That’s me.

Rob
That that was part of what drew us to you in the 1st place and then, you know, we we have spoken previously about some of your practice and background and we’d just like to start talking about events as whole health. Can you tell us a bit about the company’s mission and some of the things that you guys are introducing?

Dr. Levine
Sure you. We we started really in a basement having a conversation. There were five of us and we worked for another company and they didn’t do very well. They went bankrupt, but we felt like, Gee, this is they’re on to something working, providing really healthy services for. Residents of long term care facilities, meaning assisted living and skilled nursing, and doing it in a way that’s integrated at a manageable cost. And we started it out. We started with 44 facilities. We do primary care, psychiatry, psychology and a few ancillary services that tell people we do the we serve the forest, anything that has a tree on the end Podiatry, for example, we serve the. Cars but. We have a history of believing that people can be healthier if we give them chronic care management and in the psychiatry arena, we believe that, you know, the first choice shouldn’t be medication. Our history and our track record has been 60%. Reduction in psychotropics within 60 days of being in a building. That’s the overall. You know track record and where this has led us to is today we are over 1000 people in over 1200 on skilled nursing and assisted living and the model we have created turns out to be the model independently.

Rob
Yeah.

Dr. Levine
That Medicare said this is the way it goes, better services. At a lower cost and last year, as an example, we came in 23% under the cost that Medicare estimated that we would spend to provide the services and we met or exceeded every single quality metric. Things like keeping people out of the hospital. Keeping that in the emergency room, providing follow up. You know, we all of us, miss those kinds of things and we just that’s the way we started. That’s the way we practice and it’s. Work fairly well.

Rob
Yeah, it sounds like the results you guys are achieving are incredible is. There. Does that begin with the individual patient or is that something that begins from a top down approach where you guys decide this is how we’re going to do things? Is that something that began with your practice or is that something that Aventis has as a mission overall?

Dr. Levine
Now it all started with individuals because I think that every single one of us is different. And you can’t. I can’t have the same kind of medical care that each of you has. Yeah, you need medical care that’s customized to what I need, you know, and the practice of psychology. It’s the same thing for me as saying everybody gets the same treatment. That’s not true. I mean, even if two people have depression or two, people have anxiety. It doesn’t look the same and the same thing doesn’t doesn’t work. So we started with the individuals we have to get the buy in from the facilities of course, because we’re partners. In serving the individuals that live there, a friend of mine who’s now owns 3 nursing homes explained it to me that she said, you know, we’re the customers and those are the people that we, we mutually serve and. I think that when I think about what we do as practitioners. The way she describes me and introduced me recently to a new executive director at one of her facilities, she said. This is Ethan. He does everything I want. You know, so we we’re there to do whatever needs to be done to help create better quality lives for people. I mean that’s that’s why I got in the business period.

Rob
Yeah. Yeah, that that’s something that is sort of fascinating too, is that the through line between you getting into the industry for that and eventus actually delivering upon that as you’re saying the outcomes you’ve already been able to achieve so far within your work and then the company is growing. As a result, I, I’m fascinated by the idea of behavioral change and and and. The idea of working with seniors, working with people that perhaps. Don’t necessarily want to change. They don’t want this behaviour to change in, in, in, in their their understanding is there. Is there something to the idea of how we can work with individuals that might not necessarily want to make a change to influence behaviour and for for them positively to get the right result? Is there something that?

Dr. Levine
Yeah, I mean absolutely. And I would add to that that you know we. Practice as a whole. In this country, there’s a separate discipline of psychiatry and psychology, and that’s not how we work. You know, my best friend is the director of behavioral health, and he and I wrote a poster session for the American Medical Directors Association. People who will lead these buildings and we are on track to do a presentation at the upcoming AM the meeting on how through integrated behavioral health you can find the right solution for people. So to answer your question. I think that people you know it, we spend a little bit too much time on asking somebody whether they’re ready for help. If we look at it as is, is somebody in distress, you know. If they’re happy. Why am I messing with them? I don’t need to. They don’t need therapy. You know, I’m likable. People like to talk to me, but that’s not a reason to spend time and dollars on getting professional help. There are certain medicines out there, you know that. You know, I have a personal favorite. I I won’t announce it on the air, but all I can say is I got in a car accident once and I worked for the company that made a particular medicine. And I knew the researcher, he said, why don’t you try it in 30 days later, I’m sitting in my office thinking, you know what? There’s nothing in my head. I’m just sitting here happy. You know, most of us would like that experience, but when you think about this population, this is the population that you know, by and large, there are some younger people in these nursing homes. By and large, they grew up with a family doctor. They grew up with a person they trusted. So. I would answer your question. The little round about that if people trust. They if they ohh, you know, allow me to get to know them. Then they will confide in me when things aren’t working precisely the way they hope. They’re not happy. They’re anxious, they’re depressed. They’re not sleeping well. I’m also, you know, I’m a behaviorist by nature, so I really believe. That you addressed the issue at the time it’s there and then you come back at another time because we all it’s cyclical, this population in particular it’s cyclical physically and psychiatrically they they go through times, they feel good, they go through times they don’t. Feel good so. Again, why waste the time? And you know the money associated with treating somebody when they don’t need treatment at that moment.

Rob
Another question I had was when is that treatment? Is there a completion date? Is it, you know, if you’re making a behavioral change, that behavior has changed. Do you say like, OK, we are we that that behaviour is no is done, we’re we’re done with that patient now or is it we’re gonna work on something else? Is it focused on the individual behaviour or is it focused on the? Patient.

Dr. Levine
My what my approach is when the behavior or the emotional.

Rob
And.

Dr. Levine
Stress is relieved. That’s the end of treatment and I’ll give you a really fascinating example. I I think this probably is my greatest success story while working at Aventis, I got a phone call from a facility saying there was a woman who. You know, she had very advanced dementia and she was also terminal. You know, she was not going to be around a long time and she was constantly screaming. So this was upsetting residents. This was upsetting staff and imagine if you walked into this building with mom and said I’m looking for a place for mom to live and you hear this, you turn right around, you walk out. So.

Dr. Levine
I said sure. I mean I I always believe the saying that whether you believe you can or cannot, you’re right. So I always go in there with the attitude. Yeah, sure. I can do something. And I went in the room, sat with the woman to start yelling. And I happen to notice there’s a hat rack. And there was this gorgeous pink hat. So being a behaviorist I thought I wonder if I could, you know, Pavlovian. Could I train her? That this pink hat would be associated with peacefulness and quiet. So she got quite went and got the hat. She got quiet for. For a few seconds I put it on her head and said this is your quiet hat. You know you use the voice that mimics what what you want. She started yelling. I took it off. She got quiet. I put it on. You know, you asked about length of therapy. That whole session took 30 minutes. And I didn’t come back again. So my whole therapy was 30 minutes. By the end of the 30 minutes, I thought I’d test it out. She starts yelling. I put the pink hat on, she got peaceful and quiet. Wow. And the rest of the story is the woman lived maybe 7-8 days. But she was peaceful the entire time, so it speaks to some of the questions you and I’ve discussed about, you know, if somebody has Alzheimer’s or dementia, can you work with them? Does somebody have to say I want help? This woman needed help because she was in distress.

Mukund
But do you know what was the underlying cause for that doctor, by any chance? Why? Why she was screaming while she was yelling.

Dr. Levine
I think that she was just in physical and emotional pain. You know that everything so confusing her body must have hurt tremendously emotionally. It’s just her cognition was predominantly gone. I mean, that was my assumption, but she couldn’t tell me.

Mukund
So her so she could not make sense of what was happening around her, I’m assuming.

Dr. Levine
Everything was terrifying. But she found a way to feel peaceful and died peacefully, and I feel really good about my 30 minutes of therapy, you know.

Mukund
Little friend, days were quiet for her quiet and stress free.

Dr. Levine
Yes, for her. Yeah, peaceful. She they told me she started smiling for the first time in months. And so you know, that’s an extreme example, but. And I I have 100 psychotherapist, I’m director of psychotherapy, change management and clinical trials for us. At this point, you know, over the 10 years I’ve you named the title, I’ve had it. But in psychotherapy I have 100 psychotherapist working for me. And the first thing I’ll tell. I tell any of them is you never go into a building and. Ask does somebody who needs psychotherapy? That’s not a relevant question. The question is, who’s in distress? Who keeps you awake at night because you worry about them? Who are your staff just complaining about? Because there’s something going on there that needs resolution if somebody’s distressed? They need help. I don’t care if you call it psychotherapy or what you call it. If we can help people live more peaceful, productive lives in that setting where nobody wants to be there. Absolutely no one wants to be there, then we’ve made a difference.

Rob
And I can’t even imagine like the level of comfort that brings their family members, too. And so you’re talking about the staff. But if my loved one is distressed like that and and you, you know, you can make a difference. You said within half an hour with that behavioural change and you notice that difference, it must be so overwhelmingly comforting to the family to say, wow, this, this is an unbelievable. Service and. This is so valuable to to my loved ones day-to-day existence. As you said, they may have had 7-8 days remaining in their life, but those 7-8 days were far more comfortable and peaceful. And that’s such a valuable difference you can make.

Mukund
Right.

Dr. Levine
Yeah. And that I mean, that’s an extreme case, but we we do this all the time. And you know, it’s different. Therapy is a little bit different with this population because they need to know you first.

Rob
Right.

Dr. Levine
I can’t come in as a psychologist to come in as Ethan. You know that that generation is uncomfortable with calling the doctor, Ethan. So they call me Doctor Ethan.

Mukund
Right.

Dr. Levine
But I mean I. Have a a person who I’ve worked. With for a little while. And she sees me and she says I’m not talking to you unless you show me pictures of your granddaughter. But that’s the gateway into her talking about what’s really going. On with her.

Rob
Right.

Mukund
And doctor for behaviors, right for behaviors that. It’s a behavioral change that you’re looking at from a not an optimal behavior to a one that a person is comfortable, but does it require ongoing change? For example, for a person who’s much younger than the than the example you gave? If the behavior changes is is a continuous kind of a therapy that you work with somebody or a specific issue, or how does it use?

Dr. Levine
I you know, I I think it’s different for each person. I mean I, you know, I tend to not work for long periods of time, but there’s somebody I’ve worked with actually, it’s been 2 years because you know the persons parent came to me and said I just need help. For my child, you know, they’re just, they’re not doing well. And when I say child, I’m talking about somebody in their 20s. And what we’ve done is baby steps and the biggest baby step was her getting to accept that. I really did care about her and wanted her to be happy. And I’m floored by the changes she’s made. But it was really tiny baby steps. And I’ll contrast that with. I’ll tell you one of the biggest times I missed the diagnosis and it’s pretty funny, really. Somebody came to me and an adult young. And they, they reported they have bulimia, you know, which we we don’t need to go in the details. It’s not too much fun and. I believe. You know in. The kind of behavioral approach that I take is if you think about the brain, it’s a biocomputer. So it’s operating based on sensory data. And if you the way in which we think about things tends to be sequential, you know, I see something, I hear something I, you know, feel something, but it’s some specific order that leads to the emotion that I have. So I talked with the woman and we try to reorganize. Our thinking that led to the bulimia. And she came back two weeks later. And I said, well, how’s it going? That’s just not well, really, it didn’t work. And I said, OK, well, how many times are you throwing up? Oh, I don’t do that anymore. It’s like, oh, that’s interesting. I thought that’s why. You came to me and then she said, well, I’m still not happy. So I missed I missed it, but it was covered up by the bulimia. So then we addressed that and two weeks later she came back and said lifes, pretty good therapy therapy was done.

Mukund
So bully, meow. Bulimia was kind of another. Something else she was going through that had to be addressed before the underlying issue is that how you got it?

Dr. Levine
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because sometimes I think we all feel this. We’re comfortable up to a certain point and sharing things, but then there’s other we all have secrets basically or we think it’s secrets. In psychology. The phrase one of my professors taught me which I love.

Mukund
Out there.

Dr. Levine
Is the delusion of unique. You know, there’s something that we, each of us, each of the three of us experienced. We think nobody thinks this or nobody feels this or nobody’s gone through this. And that’s the stuff we don’t want to tell. You know, so if I can get past the outer layer and then we get to that, then you can make profound change very quick.

Rob
Something that you just said actually brought an idea to my. Do you work with group therapy at all with seniors? Is that something where they have a shared experience and they can sort of see someone else going through that? Is that something that is beneficial that you’ve seen with inventors?

Dr. Levine
Yeah, you know, we it’s funny in Group therapy with seniors. They all have one thing in common, which is they’re long. So it isn’t so much the addressing the emotional issue, it’s providing a forum where they can connect to other people, which actually in turn takes care of and addresses the emotional issue. So I mean it’s you, it’s. It’s useful. It’s definitely useful.

Rob
Is is there something that? Once you’ve you know you’ve got into working with seniors, is is there something that surprised you when you first started working with seniors that you didn’t ordinarily know from your clinical practice with younger people?

Dr. Levine
I got into working with seniors because I paid for college by working as a CNA. So so I got into it early. I diverted doing other kinds of things, the organizational site. But I’ll go. I’ll. Go back to the you know the CNA days. And what struck me is how everybody just had a need to talk to someone. But what the overlay on that which has contributed to what we’re doing as a company today is, I realized that the staff really didn’t want to deal with those emotional issues. Because, you know, they didn’t want to get, you know, you think about it, that the population is on track at some point they die. And that’s not a really comfortable experience. So if you get too attached and the person dies, it becomes traumatic. So the. Half so they end up spending the time doing the tasks, bathing, feeding, you know, those kinds of things. And and that’s what really stood out for me. You know that it’s. I’ll share one just tidbit from those days which you get a good laugh out of. I did actually have a Mafia bodyguard as one. My residence. I took care of and he called me Joey because he said Ethan’s not an Italian name, so I can’t. I I’ll never remember and you know, and I thought he was kind of kidding. And then he held his arms up and his muscles popped about a foot in the air. And he says this is how you hold the machine gun, Joey. And like, oh, I didn’t really come into this job wanting to learn that. And then once once Sunday, a man in a Gray pinstriped suit came in and handed me a $50.00 bill and said you take good care of Papa. Said yes, Sir, but the point behind that that story is that when we hire, we only hire people who really love this population.

Rob
Yeah.

Dr. Levine
I don’t care what your clinical skills are, it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter because you have to love who these people are. I mean, I I would, you know, argue that you really shouldn’t do therapy or psychiatry unless you really cared about whatever population you’re working with. But in this population, if you don’t love it, it you’re going to see stuff and experience stuff. You know, people are pretty blue. The most hilarious moment in my career was my. Physical features such that my belly tends to be my largest no matter what I weigh. I could be skinny and I will have a belly that sticks out and one of the resonance. Came up to me at some point points at me and yells nurse, nurse, nurse. Come here. That’s the biggest belly I’ve ever seen. So you can’t have an eagle. You have to, you know, for me, that was hilarious. I laughed.

Mukund
Yes.

Dr. Levine
And. And if you’re going to work with this population, you have to love the population. If you love them, they know it. They’ll open up, and when they open up, that by itself will help them make changes.

Mukund
Right. It’s the genuine thing that has to come through, right, because it’s not being. It’s just not just a job, right? Yeah.

Dr. Levine
Yeah, you can’t make it up.

Mukund
Doctor, I have a. Question on anxiety and stress. In your experience working with patients, talking to patients.

Dr. Levine
Sure.

Mukund
Has stress and anxiety been a determining factor for a behavior change?

Dr. Levine
Yeah, absolutely. You know the I’ll answer them separately because you could be stressed and depressed, not necessarily going to be anxious when people are under stress it it really lends itself to behavioral solutions because. You know, there’s a factor, there’s something that is either really happening or something that they believe is happening. And if they can change the the situation or change how they think about the situation, stress tends to alleviate. It. Right. In having a partnership with, you know, Doctor Missoula, who is our the head of behavioral health, he’s a friend and a partner. We, you know, we’ve dealt with people both with anxiety and stress and and the psychotropic medicines sometimes can help because sometimes people are so stressed or so anxious they can’t get to the point of having a real conversation. Uhm. So with anxiety. You know it’s it’s a little different. Stress to me is a bigger system. Systemic change anxiety is a reaction. To something, but you can teach people techniques. So in the moment they can learn how to reduce the level of of of anxiety that they experience. I mean, I’ll give you an example of a technique and and both of you are welcome to try this off. Time, you know, headaches can be a function of stress. You know people. Some people get headaches. Well, if if you close your eyes and imagine your headache as a shape, any size, any color, any shape, you know it’s your headache, not mine. UM and. Visualize that shape slowly. You know, like when a kid lets go of a balloon, it goes up in the air and then eventually the wind catches it and it blows away. OK, I don’t ask you to believe me. Just try this sometime when you’re either feeling some degree of pain or stress or a headache, and imagine that item as the balloon or the shape. By the time it blows, goes away, which is generally one minute or less, you’ll experience a radical difference. Your headache may be totally gone.

Mukund
Well, so you want us to to think about the headache as shape for a for a couple of minutes, right? OK.

Dr. Levine
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Name the shape your headache, and then make it go away. And it does go away. So you know, I’ve worked with adults and worked with the seniors using this technique. You can get you make your anxiety less. Think of your anxiety as a shape. It’s often red. I don’t know why people think it’s red and then, but it becomes more blunted and it becomes, you know, almost the pale pink. And then it becomes white and then it’s gone. And they open up their eyes and they. Say. That’s weird. It’s gone.

Mukund
Is that is that stress and anxiety induced headache or something? You know, you’re not eaten the whole day, kind of a headache, you know.

Dr. Levine
I’m stressed, I’m stressed, absolutely causes headaches because this is. Where the you know the value of us doing primary care. Also it’s physical and it’s psychiatric. It’s both. When you feel stressed, your muscles tighten. When your muscles tighten, you know it often causes you know your the neck muscles to tighten which leads you know to a headache.

Mukund
Right, right.

Dr. Levine
But people get sinus headaches. There’s other other kind of things, but this works for anything. You know, I I think. You know, one of the things we really believe is that you, you know, there is no mind, there’s only body, there is no body. There’s only mind. You can’t separate it. We’re one person. So if if you’re experiencing some physical pain, I mean, even something is extreme, you know, it’s cardiovascular issues.

Mukund
Right.

Dr. Levine
For. You know it, it affects your emotional state because your body’s off.

Mukund
Right.

Dr. Levine
So we we work on treating all of it.

Rob
So I’m thinking about talk therapy, for example, where people think you sit on the couch and you talk to someone and you know that that issue is resolved by speaking with someone. Is that something where people just don’t misunderstand what talk therapy is and those those physical manifestations can resolve themselves with talk therapy? Or is that a process whereby? It takes. So with your expertise to go actually you’re getting headaches, you’re worrying about this thing because of this, this and this. And then that sort of talk therapy and behavioral therapies is sort of LinkedIn that process.

Dr. Levine
I think it’s true for me it’s linked because one of the challenges with talk therapy and I may be a bit controversial in this is I think that people get kind of hooked on having somebody to talk to. And they are willing to pay the money or their insurance is willing to pay the money. Because, you know, they get a diagnosis and they they talk, but it doesn’t necessarily, you know, change what they want. And I think you have to combine a little bit the talk therapy for me is let’s get at the root of where is this coming from. You know, let’s get in on the layers. The onion. But then when we find out what it’s really triggering it to me, that’s very behavior. Let’s give either change the what’s happening or change how you experience what’s happening so that you don’t feel that level of anxiety. I I find it from a medicine standpoint. I think people get addicted to anti anxiety medicines. More than anything else, because it’s very easy, I feel anxious. Pop the pill. Now. I don’t feel so anxious. As opposed to that’s much simpler than. Let me address what’s really causing me to be anxious. But sometimes you have to have a little bit of pharmaceutical help to get the person to calm enough to explore what’s what’s leading to this.

Rob
I was also wondering about the process for. I was reading that you had a drug that specifically dealt with Alzheimer’s. You’re in the research process for that and you were developed. That I’m just. I’m interested about that processor and and the development of that and we can go into as much detail as you want about it. But I’m just wondering about from a personal standpoint what is the latest research on that? Is there something that people should know about in terms of how Alzheimer’s is being treated? Are we closer to knowing what the process is as to what’s going on? With Alzheimer patients.

Dr. Levine
Yeah. Yeah, to. Share why this is so important to me. I’m the power of attorney for my mom and have been for 12 years. Who is the most brilliant woman I’ve ever met in my life? She got a doctorate at age 55. She’s just. Jam. Smart, still happy, but cognitively, is lost and. There, you know, there’s a company that. Excuse me? We got asked to serve as a trial site for a biotech company. Their, their name is Bio V. That was researching a different idea about Alzheimer’s, which is that it was. A. Connected to brain inflammation and everybody’s talking about plaque and everybody. You know, there’s a lot of the, you know, the amyloid plaque and and all, but when you. Hear all those? Drugs and the pharma companies come out. With something they talk about a delay. It’ll delay it three months. It will delay it six months. And understand that I’m very farmer friendly. I spent 12 years working in pharma. So when I see a drug like the one we serve as a trial site for. That it’s a pill or a capsule. And we did neurocognitive testing, so I knew where people were functioning at the beginning, cognitively and within 30 days when we did retesting, it was a 30 week trial and at different points and within 30 days these people went from moderately impaired. To normal intellect. That that’s stunning. Now you know, there were some complication in the trial without getting into detail proprietary detail not on our site, but another trial site. So they have to do more get sufficient.

Rob
Wow.

Dr. Levine
Numbers for FDA, but they released their preliminary data and it showed A5 year reversal in the dementia. Five years, not slow it down. Reverse. And you know, we didn’t know who was on the drug or not. You know, it’s double-blind placebo you don’t do.

Rob
Reversing it.

Dr. Levine
But we knew we had a woman who was in memory care for several years, who as the trial progressed, her family moved her into assisted living, and we’re discussing moving her back. You know, you never see people go that direction, so there is hope, you know that.

Mukund
Yeah.

Dr. Levine
Yeah. I mean, the nice thing too, just as an FYI, that drug caused no side effects other than it’s slightly lowered blood pressure and slightly lower blood sugar.

Rob
Beneficial thing.

Dr. Levine
Other than that zero, both of which most of us would say all right, I’ll sign up for that. Whether I have, you know, Alzheimer’s or not. And I mean, that’s extraordinary in my history in pharma, you know in the 12 years I was there, I know only one other pharmaceutical. Product that didn’t have side effects. The researcher for that particular product told me you could ohh you could take the whole bottle at once and you’re fine.

Mukund
And this one is is is on Medicare like it’s it’s it’s approved medication.

Dr. Levine
No, no. The the one at the at the pharma company was this one, they’re still in the process. Of you know, trying to get enough of the data so they can be out there if they.

Mukund
It’s under under clinical trials.

Dr. Levine
Yes. So it doesn’t have a name. It doesn’t get a name until it’s submitted to FDA. So unfortunately because when I think about someone like my mom, if I had gotten five more years, I mean, you know, you most of us say if I got one more day, but five years, that’s unheard of. So there is.

Rob
Right, right. Yeah.

Mukund
Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Levine
There is promise there. Here.

Rob
That’s incredible. Yeah. Yeah, that. That’s incredible. Especially as you said, for people that are having that with family members that are experiencing that to know that that’s in the pipeline and to know that that research is being done, as you said, that deals with inflammation rather than the fact that is, like, fascinating stuff. Yeah.

Dr. Levine
Ordinary promise. Right. Yeah. I can’t wait. It won’t help mom, but it’ll help a lot of people like her.

Mukund
And and doctor, how many people have you dealt with or have come to you? With finance as their trigger, financial anxiety, financial stress, is it as common as we assume it is in terms of the country, whole country running on credit right on a bigger scale, but an individual level? Is that a stressful thing? People come to you for?

Dr. Levine
Yeah, I mean. I’ll answer it 22 separate ways. UM, I’d say most people worry about finance.

Mukund
Right.

Dr. Levine
My solution and my private clinical practice, which I don’t have much, but periodically if there’s somebody, it’s a unique situation. I always have told people. You know, don’t worry about paying me if I deliver what you’re here to get, then pay me. And when if you deliver the product, the outcome for people, people are happy to pay because it’s priceless. You know, I I think that.

Mukund
But.

Dr. Levine
You know, there’s another part of that too, which is that. You know, not disparaging people who are struggling financially because there’s a lot of people who are struggling financially.

Mukund
Right.

Dr. Levine
But it isn’t a black and white situation. I had the pleasure once in my life of meeting the real Colonel Sanders, like Kentucky Fried Chicken, and I don’t know if you know his story, but you know, he was a railroad worker. He worked on the caboose of railroads. He got his first retirement check and said I can’t live on it and he said I don’t have any skill other than working on the railroad and his friend said no, you have a skill, your fried chicken’s the best chicken I’ve ever eaten in my. Life. Right. So he got an idea in his head. That all right, I’ll get this white suit. So I’m distinguished. I’ll get a portable fryer. He went restaurant to restaurant. Said try my chicken if you want. That. I’ll give you the recipe you give me $0.05 for a piece of chicken. Well, he According to him, he went to over 500 restaurants before someone said yes and he made so much money. He opened his first restaurant. Now I’m not suggesting that that’s the solution for everybody, but I think. That if you really want a different outcome, then you take a different approach. You know it’s, I mean, I my my. Father worked three jobs. You know, because he wanted. He wasn’t OK, you know, with the family not having enough. My grandfather was a depression. You’re a person and he sold razor blades. He bought them for two. For a a penny and he sold them for a penny apiece. And I, you know, again, it’s not disparaging the financial hardship and struggles, you know that everybody has different levels and some people have. Horrific things happen that lead to that.

Mukund
Right.

Dr. Levine
But there’s also the attitude in your mind. You know, if you have a certain attitude, there’s always people willing to help you figure out what the solution is, because there’s always a solution. It’s just if we limit how much we’re willing to think about solutions, we’re limiting how many solutions. Gap.

Mukund
I think you mentioned this earlier, right, if you. There are two options. Whether it can be done or cannot. So right you have to go on with the right attitude for that particular situation. You mentioned this in.

Dr. Levine
Right. Yeah. Whether you believe you can or cannot, you’re right, you know, and and it’s because you look at identical people. I I look at somebody like Stephen Hawkings.

Mukund
Exactly right.

Dr. Levine
You know, you look at what he was exposed to his physical condition, and yet the man is a absolute genius and made a difference in our world.

Mukund
But.

Dr. Levine
And and you have other people who lose a limb or whatever it is. And and it’s just paralyzing. So I think there are solutions if you really want the solution enough.

Mukund
Yes, that is very true. That is very true even in everyday life. Hey, I cannot do this. You just give up and the get go to the person who who extinguishes all options. Yeah. The second person might come out more successful because he he did try all the.

Dr. Levine
Right, exactly.

Mukund
Yeah.

Dr. Levine
Yeah, it’s. I mean, it’s fun when you see the light bulb turn on. You know, for people. It’s extraordinary. You know, you think about, you know, all of us in our business say the same thing. I don’t want to end up living in a nursing home. And I and nobody wants. There’s nobody in these buildings that wants to live there. But when you give somebody hope. And that light bulb turns on. It’s incredible.

Mukund
Of course, yeah, yeah.

Rob
Yeah, you were saying it was. It’s. It’s. Mostly about them finding peace and comfort, whether it’s it’s within an hour or a few days, they there’s a sense of peace and comfort and engagement. In that process.

Dr. Levine
Yeah. And and people, when they change, sometimes families, you know, pretty frequently, actually families are uncomfortable being around the folks in long term care because it’s like I don’t wanna see mom like that. I wanna remember. Their mom. But when they change, their families change. Because they’re not distressed, so the family doesn’t no longer wants to stay away because they’re happy to see them because they’re happy to see them.

Rob
It changes the entire dynamic Dr. living. It’s such a pleasure to speak with someone like yourself and to be able to listen because Mukund and I’ve had. These conversations ourselves. Talking about anxiety and fear and and having some of your expertise is really it’s very important to us we. Really appreciate your. Time and also.

Dr. Levine
Or try try that technique when you’re feeling a headache when you have a headache or you’re feeling some pain, you’re feeling anxiety. Just sit in a comfortable chair, visualize it as a shape, imagine it floating away next time when we talk. Let me know what. Happens.

Rob
I definitely will for sure.

Mukund
Definitely. So thank you so much then and you know, sorry, Doctor Levine. Thank you so much. Thank you, rob. And till next time you have a good.

Dr. Levine
All right. Alright, till next time. Bye.

Mukund
Thank you.

Rob
Thank you.