Episode 8: Reinventing Oneself

Welcome back to Wisdom from the Aerial View, a podcast based on a soon-to-be New York Times bestselling book of the same name by Dr. Mark Klein. Okay, so it's not a New York Times bestseller yet, but it could be. Should be. But what would it take for you to become a bestselling author, Mark? Would you have to reinvent yourself? So that's what we want to talk about today. You have a chapter in the book entitled the magic of reinventing yourself. You get very personal in the chapter about your shortcomings. That's a joke, you are short. Tell us about it and why you decided actually to reinvent yourself and how the aerial view played a role in your reinvention. Go ahead, Shorty.

You're right, I am short. And actually being short is a major theme of my life. So why is that? God, there's so many ideas that come to me when I talk about this. So we'll start in the beginning. When I was very young, I was always the shortest boy in the school, in our class. And very often the shortest kid in general, the girls were towering over me for many years. And I remember that and I didn't like it one bit. know, remember we'd line up size order. I don't know who had that idea, but when I think about it now, why would size order make a difference? But they did. They lined us up in size order all the time and guess who was first? Right, me.

Because yes, they did. Yes, they did.

They were okay, you know, as I got a little bit older, the girls were, I was taller than a girl or two, but generally I was right up in the front of that line. And I hated it. I hated the fact that I was the shortest kid. And it affected a lot of things. I didn't think much of myself in many ways. I was definitely unable to keep up with some of the other boys in terms of physical activity. I mean, I was fast, that really helped. I was the shortest, but I was the fastest. Nobody could catch me. I was the fastest kid in the school and summer camps, things like that. That did help, but I didn't like being the shortest. And that affected my sense of self-confidence and self-worth for sure. And I remember as if it were yesterday, and of course it is yesterday in the jukebox of time, I remember... going to this new school where you and I met, it was a junior high school, I had been part of a class, the first time I think they did this, combining fifth and sixth grades in one year. Since we grew up in the same school district, we had four elementary schools in that school district. So each elementary school sent five kids from the fourth grade. to this combination fifth and sixth class where you would basically skip a year. You'd combine fifth and sixth in one year, so you're effectively skipping a year. Let me tell you why that was an incredibly stupid decision. Now, I didn't make it, and I don't hate my parents for it, but it was a really bad idea, because you took a kid who was the smallest kid. Also, my birthday happened to be at the end of the year, so I was one of the youngest kids. You took the youngest and smallest kid and skipped him a year. Not a great strategy for building self-confidence. So here I am, we finished that year of, we get to that year of fifth and sixth, and they put us in the brand new junior high school. First year it was opening. It was a beautiful place, I don't know if you remember, Enid, how great it was when we first got there, but it was a beautiful school.

I remember.

And so we had this one group of 20 young kids, fifth and sixth grades combined in a junior high school with the Nels days. was seventh and eighth, right? It was seventh, eighth and ninth, seventh, eighth and ninth. So here I am with, the youngest, smallest, skipped a grade and a school with ninth graders who looked like giants to me, right? So here I am and I'm thinking, God, you know, I'm the smallest and the youngest. This is going to be a disaster.

7, 8, and 9.

Right, right.

I didn't say those words, but I felt it viscerally, right? And then one day I thought, hmm, the only people who know me in this school are the four other kids that came from my elementary school. Everybody else has no idea who I am. Hmm, I think I'll try and be somebody a little different. It was my first encounter with reinvention. reinventing myself. I decided I wanted to be a little more confident. I don't remember all the details, honestly, but I remember I wanted to be different. And so whatever ways I could at that age, I think I was 11, of how I could be different, I embraced. And that was something that catapulted my life because I realized from that moment on, I could always reinvent myself. If there were things I didn't like, I could change them. Now, how did I pick those things? By encountering other people who I thought were pretty cool. Maybe they were funnier. Maybe they were more confident, bolder, whatever it was. I'd say, that is a good trait. I'm gonna try and develop that one. And I did that in high school. I did it in college. I've probably done it multiple times since then. When I see a characteristic in somebody that I admire, kindness now, generosity, honesty, big one there. Because I had to learn how to be honest. wasn't... I would say I grew up in a community like you where I'm not sure honesty was always the most important thing. Maybe it just my particular neighborhood, but I remember people trying to... cut, you know, take a few shortcuts that not necessarily were the most honest or honorable things to do. So I had to learn about honesty and integrity from other people and then incorporate them into my lives. And it was later. I mean, I wasn't a kid when I did that. That took time. So the idea of being able to reinvent yourself is super powerful. Now, let's head to the aerial view for a second. Remember from the aerial view with a disinterested observer looking at our own life. Mark (06:27.7) So you're looking at yourself dispassionately, as an disinterested observer, dispassionately, and you go, that's not the best behavior. I don't think you really want to do that. OK, great. I recognize now that I don't want to do that. I take myself out of this.

But how do you begin the process of recognizing that?

I'll give you great example. So as an adult, had a short temper sometimes, well, more than sometimes. I never threw anything, but I would raise my voice. I'd get upset. And I would treat, I'd get into these arguments, these heated discussions, you might say, with people. And then once I recognized... this concept of the aerial view and I was able to pull myself off the page and view myself dispassionately, I'd say, well, whoever that guy is in that conversation, he's a jerk. Oops, that's me, right? I need to fix that. I need to work on that. And so then I would say, I'd look at somebody else I knew who I have a good friend of mine, he's a lawyer. I've never seen this guy lose his cool, ever. I'll tell you, this is a great story. So we went to play tennis together. This is a long time ago. We went to play tennis together and we get to the public tennis courts and there's a sign on the court that says one hour limit. Okay. We get there at about five to 10 or five to 11, whatever the hour was to play. There's nobody there. So we said, it's kind of silly to wait till 11 to get on the court. So we'll just get on the court now. So 10 minutes later, these other guys show up and they go, oh, or five minutes later, it's 11 o'clock, your time is up. We said, no, no, no, we just got on, we just got on, there was nobody here, we just got on. And they go, well, sorry, it's 11 o'clock, you have to change. We said, no, we could have sat outside and waited the five minutes and had the full hour, but that would seem kind of dumb. So since nobody was here, we started five minutes early. Well, we don't believe you, you have to get off the court. So I get angry, because this is so ridiculous. And we're right, we're very honorable people. We're not cheating. We've been here five minutes. We weren't going to sit outside the fence and wait that five minutes to get inside. And so I start getting into discussion with some guy who's of course, guess what? Bigger than me. And this isn't going particularly well. And my friend, the lawyer steps in and very calmly and coolly settles the situation and says, come on, Mark, we're going to go. I go, what do mean we're going to go? We're right. Doesn't matter.

Bigger than you. Yeah.

Yes, you're right. We're going to go. It's not worth it. And he very gently guides me off the court and we walk away and two things hit me. One is this is so unfair. Those guys are just, you know, all these words are going through my head. And the second thing was, wow, what my friend just did was so impressive. What a personal characteristic to be able to assess a situation, not get upset. see where this was heading, realize he was going in a bad place, and decided the better part of valor is to just leave and not get into a fight. And of course he was right. And of course I was wrong about that part of it. And so I thought, man, I gotta do better. I have to incorporate that in my personality. Now, it took me 20 years to get it, right? And I'm still probably never be as good as he is. But this is the point. You... You're born a certain way. You're not stuck. Right. It's not like, this is who I am. I hear people say this all the time. Well, this is who I am. I can't help it. No, no, of course you can help it. And I know you don't like feeling the way you do. I'm going to give you another example of something that might be a little dangerous to talk about in this environment in which we live, but I'm going to do it anyway. I'm going to be bold. Right. So in my practice,

Hmm.

had somebody working for me, a technical person who was a woman who was quite large. And she was not the happiest person. She was technically very good and talented, but she was never happy. She was kind of gruff, difficult to deal with. OK, fine. So I left my practice a couple of years ago, and then I went back. And I go back periodically and I went back recently for something to see some people and whatever. And I walked to this part of my office because we were in different departments. We had about 60 people. And I saw this woman. I'm going to say she lost 100 pounds. Right. And I was like, wow. But here's the part that struck me. She was happy. She was jovial. She was positive. You could tell she felt. And I talked to her for a while about it. And she said, I feel so much better about myself. I feel so good. What an accomplishment, right? We talked about accomplishments previously. And I don't really care how she did it. I know she didn't have surgery. And I don't think she took a GLP-1, but it doesn't matter. Whatever she did, she told me she didn't, and she just changed her lifestyle. Wow.

So she reinvented herself.

She reinvented herself, but the best part is she reinvented herself into a super happy, positive, confident person. Holy crow, this really works. I mean, I know it works, but every time I see it in action, I'm just blown away. I cannot tell you how happy I was for this woman. I'm actually getting a little teary in my eyes right now because I am so happy for her that she was able to do this in her life. That that the future is going to be so much better. She's going to wake up happy. She's just full of confidence and joy. Reinvention is something everybody can do. None of us are stuck this idea that, that's just who I am. No, that is a cop out.

Do you have to make the conscious decision, however, to reinvent, or does it come organically? How does one get there? If, for example, there's something about yourself you're not happy with, you have been told whatever it is you're doing is not a good thing, do you then sit back and say, all right, what do I do to change it? How do I do it? Or do you take a good look at yourself and understand the mechanisms of what you were doing? that needed to be changed. So how do you go about the reinvention?

Well, if it was so easy, everybody would do it. So obviously, there's a lot of people who are unhappy in their lives. They're unhappy about who they are. They don't like their persona very much or as much as they should. They're not proud of themselves. And most of them don't do anything about it because it's hard. So we talked previously about having to give people tools. So I can say, oh, reinvent yourself. Just go ahead and do it. Well, how? So you need the tools to do it. The first tool, the most important tool is that it's possible. See, most people don't realize these things are possible. That's why they say, I am who I am. That's who I am. I'm dumb. I'm unhappy, untalented. Again, we talked, nobody's uniquely ungifted. That's a myth, right? Everybody has some talent and the ability to become good at something. Everybody. So the first thing you have to give people the confidence that it is possible. This is tool number one. You could, it can do this. I'm going to show you how I'm going to show you examples of people like the person I just talked about. These people are everywhere. I'm going to digress for a minute and tell you and talk about something that maybe many people already know. I didn't know it for a long time. And that is, if you're in a room full of 20 people and you're concerned about something, let's make it easier. Let's say you're in a classroom. You're a student, high school, college, whatever, even younger, and you're in a class of 20 people and you don't understand something. 100%, there's at least a handful of other people in that room that don't understand the same thing. And you might be afraid to put your hand up, but as soon as you put your hand up and say to the teacher, I don't understand, a bunch of other people are going to go, thank God he asked that question or she asked that question, right? This is universal in all of life. When you find yourself embarrassed about something, there's probably about 27 million people having that same emotion at that exact time somewhere on this planet, probably more.

So there's nothing new under the sun. There's nothing that we experienced that millions of other people haven't experienced or experienced at that moment. That should be very comforting also to people that not only is nobody uniquely ungifted, nobody experiences something that other people haven't experienced, whether it be an emotion, an event, anything. You're in good company. So that's number two tool that, hey, you're not alone. There's millions of people in the same boat you are, probably hundreds of millions, lots and lots of people. So that's also very comforting. So to know that you're not alone, I think in any situation is very helpful. Number two, that this is doable, that people can reinvent themselves and do it every day. In fact, most of the famous people you know, whether they be business people, politicians, actors or actresses, they've all, the really good ones have all reinvented themselves. I'll give you a great one just popped into my mind at this very second, right? One of the most famous people on the planet, Taylor Swift, right? Taylor Swift was a country music singer. And she said, hmm, I think I can... grow my audience and be more successful and maybe even give myself more personal fulfillment if I branch out and do pop stuff. I don't even know what you call it. I'll just call it pop stuff. because obviously I'm not into the current music thing. I do like that song. Anyway, so she reinvented herself, right? Successful people reinvent themselves all the time. This is not cheating. People say, that's cheating. No.

Well, let's shake it off.

Mm.

It's not cheating. Anything you can do to improve yourself in a legal, honorable way, you should do. So my friend who gently guided me off the tennis court so I didn't get myself beat up, which is what would have happened, I looked at that and I said, that's a good trait. My college roommate, who's still one of my closest friends, he doesn't get upset about anything. He's a super calm guy. I watched him and I went, wow, that's pretty good. I gotta learn how to do that. So we constantly have the ability at any age, I don't care how old you are, you can always reinvent yourself, always. And the trick is to remember A, it's possible, and there's about a billion examples on the planet, two, you're not alone in your feelings. People are experiencing the same things you are, the emotions of inadequacy or embarrassment, whatever you're feeling. Hundreds of million people feeling that also, you're not alone. This is all doable. You just have to understand that it's possible and how to do it. And it's one step at a time. We're not gonna reinvent ourselves overnight, but you have to understand that it is possible. You are never stuck. That's the biggest thing. To understand that you're never stuck to me is the biggest thing to appreciate if you're gonna go down this road.

And you know, corporate America, of course, has reinvented itself from Coca-Cola to Facebook is now Metta. was with an article just the other day in a paper that struck me. It was about Sesame Street. Some I mean, everybody knows Sesame Street, this venerable organizations entity that everybody we grew up with, our children grew up with. I all I must be honest and tell you, I served on the board of Sesame Street on advisory board. And I was reading the paper, much to my dismay, that they are having to reinvent themselves. Why? Children are not watching it anymore. They don't think it's relevant anymore. There's too many other children's programming now that seems to, I don't know, strike a better chord to these kids. And the conversation is how do they, how does this venerable entity called Sesame Street reinvent itself? And yet they are. Part of it is about being more controversial, which is troublesome. But it's interesting that not just people can reinvent themselves, that maybe everybody and everything is reinventing itself. But if they do it, if we do reinvent ourselves, we need to do it for the better, not for the worse. Obviously, you've reinvented yourself. You're no longer playing tennis. You're now playing pickleball. You've reinvented yourself. No? Isn't that right? Are you still playing tennis?

I do not play pickleball by the way. No, of course not. No, just kidding. No, no, I, yes.

Yeah, you're too old. Yeah, but but I think reinvention is very important. think go over those points one more time I think they bear repeating a bit. What do we do? What's the process of reinventing ourselves first? have to understand that we might need some reinvention. So go over those points one more time if you would

Here's how you know reinvention can help you if you're not thrilled with who you are. If you don't wake up and go, I am so glad on me today and I just love the way I am, then there's probably room for reinvention. And if you do wake up that way, but the person who wakes up next to you or your friends or your coworkers don't agree with you, then you probably also need some reinvention. So, okay, that's number one, the recognition.

Mm-hmm.

The second thing is to, again, recognize that you are never stuck. An old dog can learn new tricks at any age. I think I told you I started playing piano about eight years ago. And I could, when I was first learning, could, I am not making this up. I could feel pain in my brain as the new grooves, the new connections were being made that allowed my left hand, my right hand to behave separately. So there's no time in your life that you cannot learn until the very end. You can learn.

But you have to work at it too. guess that piano lesson taught you, have to work at it. Yeah. Mark (21:07.2) You have to work at it, it takes effort. Okay, well, this podcast is never gonna say, it's easy. You don't have to do anything, it'll just come to you naturally. You're never gonna hear that on this podcast. Unfortunately, it's not the way it works. Remember, we're evolving, that implies effort. You have to put in effort. But nobody wants to put in effort if they think they're not gonna succeed. So you have to have the idea that you can succeed. Well, the evidence is that... like the woman I just told you about in my office who succeeded. It is absolutely possible to reinvent yourself at any age, at any time, in any way you want. That's the first thing, that you are never stuck. Number two, that success is likely to occur if you put the effort in, right? So like this woman, yes, there's effort, but if you put it in, it will change. Number three, you are not alone. There are millions of people who have the same problem you have, who have the same sense that I'm... lacking in this or that trait or this talent or this whatever, personality trait, you're not alone. Lots of people go through this, so you're not doing it by yourself. The idea of being alone is so dreadful. I know you deal with this a lot in your work, people, especially older people who find themselves alone. You are never alone. The world doesn't work that way. It might seem that way, but there's this hidden entanglement that really connects all of us. And if you just look, you don't have to work very hard to see it, but it's there. We'll go into that at a later date. I don't want to distract from our conversation now. So the point is that decide that you're not alone, that you're not stuck, that it is absolutely possible at any age to reinvent yourself. Don't bite off more than you can chew. at my age, I'm not going to become a... a three point shooter for the New York Knicks. It's just not gonna happen. So you have to be a little realistic, but we're not talking about things like that. We're talking about creating a persona that you are, whoops, excuse me, that you're proud of, that you feel good of exactly. Sorry, my ear pie just fell out. All right, I'm back.

that you're proud of too. You want to be proud of yourself. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm a great lover of John Lennon, May He Rest In Peace. And one of the greatest songs I think ever written was Imagine. And I use that in my life. I have actually signs all over the office here that says Imagine because it's about Imagine. guess when we talk about Imagine, there's no hunger. But the process of imagination seems to me is part and parcel to reinvention. I can imagine what I should be like. can imagine how I could be better. I could imagine that there is no hunger. And to do that, frankly, we have to reinvent a lot of things. The other thing that has brought some meaning in my life is the word courage. Because if you, we can end hunger, for example, we just need the courage to do so. There's more than enough food to feed every man, woman and child. We need the courage to do that. We need the imagination and perhaps, We need to reinvent ourselves in order to do that, to make this world a better world. I'm getting really philosophical because I think it's important to do that. think reinvention is something that we need to think about every single day. Because to me it means making things better.

I agree. So interesting you brought up John Lennon. Imagine last night I was watching this show, I think it was on Apple TV, 1971, the year that changed music. And of course, who was on last night? John Lennon with singing Imagine. How about that? Connections. We're to talk about this at length one day because it's fascinating. But yes, I agree with everything you said. You do have to have some imagination. But my point is that

There you go. Yeah.

It's not hard to get. Just look around. Everybody you've seen that's successful has reinvented themselves. They haven't told you. I I've admitted it because I'm an open book. I'm willing to tell you anything. I'm just trying to help you, right? So I don't have any secrets. want to... So yes, I imagined this tiny little kid I was at the age of whatever, 11 or so, to be something else. I reinvented myself because I didn't like the way I felt. didn't like who I was. so, and I've up until not too long ago, Enid, I still didn't like who I was. And I will tell you something else. were days I end the day. I think I've told you this. I think I have that I kind of grade myself every day. I don't do it as often as I used to, but when I was working, certainly as a doctor up until a short time ago, I graded myself every day. And the grade was how many people did I help today? It's a little harder now because now that I'm not seeing all these patients every day, I have to kind of go out of my way a little bit, sometimes help people. Although before this podcast, I was helping another patient, even though I'm not practicing at the moment. So this idea of reinvention is continuous, as you said. It goes on until you create the persona that you feel good about. So now, most days I'm thinking, my temper is better. I try to be kinder. I try not to judge people. All these things that I've worked on for years to reinvent myself, to be a better person. It's possible for everybody. Yes, you have to imagine it, but imagining it, if you don't believe it's going to succeed, doesn't work. For instance, I'll give you an example. You just talked about, one of the last episodes you talked about trying hypnosis for your phobia about flying, and it didn't work. I'm going to guess, I'm not surprised it didn't work for you, because I know your personality, right? So no, I'm not surprised it didn't work. You have to believe that something's going to work for it to work.

And you probably thought, this isn't gonna work. And it didn't. And this is the reason why a lot of therapy for anxiety doesn't work. Cognitive behavioral therapy, one of the more successful forms of treatment for people with anxiety that psychologists utilize. It's a great program and half the people fail. And I think, I don't have the evidence of this.

Yeah.

And if a psychologist is listening to this, they're welcome to call me or email me and tell me I'm a, I know nothing. But I think the reason it doesn't work is the same reason it didn't work for you.

Right, the phone's running off a hook right now. Yeah, go ahead.

is because they don't believe it's gonna work. It's the same thing here. You have to believe, you can imagine it, but you have to believe it. And what we're trying to talk about today is there's good reason to believe it's gonna work. A, it's worked for a zillion other people, a lot of whom you see every day on TV or in the movies who've done this, they've reinvented themselves. It's possible because... You're no different in many ways than all the other people who are feeling the same inadequacies and issues that you're having. You're not alone. This is something that can be done at any age by anybody. So now once you have the belief that says, you know, okay, I believe it, it works. You know, not only did Mark and Nina tell me this, but now that I look around, I see it. Yeah. Taylor Swift and a host of other people have reinvented themselves. Wow. on a more personal level, my cousin, she used to be difficult. She's sweet as could be right now, or she was always sad. Now she's happy. Whatever. There's evidence all around you. So you have to have that belief that this is going to work. And so... What I'm saying today and what you and I are trying to say is that, yes, it does work. You can do it. And here's the evidence, right? Here's the proof. So go out and give it a shot. You're going to succeed. I promise you're going to succeed. There's no reason that you cannot reinvent yourself. Maybe not becoming 180 degrees different than you were overnight. That's not going to work. But piece by piece, you can rebuild it and become anybody you want. When you do that, heading back to what we talked about previously, accomplishments will follow. One of the reasons people have trouble with accomplishments, we talked about them previously, because they don't believe they can do it. Well, once you reinvent yourself to the person that you're proud of, then accomplishments become much easier. And then once you accrue those accomplishments, you are zooming down the highway.

Mm-hmm.

So first reinvent yourself if you need to, and most of us do need to in some ways, and then watch the accomplishments begin to grow. And we always say success breeds success. You get one accomplishment, you're gonna have 10 more. It's just the way it works. So that's the purpose of this discussion we've had today and previously about accomplishments.

Yeah, and it's interesting because when there are obstacles in the way, you have to realize there's something you can do about it. On that note, I like to end today's podcast with your words. The last sentence in the chapter on reinventing yourself to me says it all, and I'm going to quote you. We are sometimes trapped by circumstance, but far more often by a failed imagination. Thank you, Dr. Klein, and we'll all see you next time.

Thank you, Indy. Thank you, everybody.