Jodi: Hello, I am your host, Jodi Cohen, and I’m so excited to welcome my friend Thaddeus Gala, who helps you prevent death and taxes, the two certainties in life.
Thaddeus: Thank you for having me. This is great.
Jodi: I’m sure a lot of people are gonna be most interested in how you prevent chronic illness, so can you speak a little bit to how you even got started in this area?
Thaddeus: My journey started when I was 10. I have a picture of me remodeling the kitchen with my dad to get ready for my mom’s wheelchair. All the doctors said nothing could be done and she’d be spending the rest of her life in a wheelchair. And my mom went from working sunup to sundown to full disability. She couldn’t use her arms. She had braces for her wrist, she almost lost her job. And we were getting the house ready for her to be completely invalid.
That started my first career into healthcare. I went into chiropractic, studied under some amazing physicians and researchers, and got outta school and started my practice. Fast forward we now help people reverse everything from diabetes and fibromyalgia to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, et cetera. Thankfully now my mom is in her 70s. She just started running and winning 5k races. She’s in complete remission. She’s off all her pain meds. She has to find younger and younger friends.
So I got into it in the national healthcare because I was trying to save my mom’s life. And as a result, we now oversee about 50,000 patient visits a year.
I’ve personally worked with thousands of patients, reverse some of the most complex chronic health issues.
Jodi: What was your mom’s original diagnosis?
Thaddeus: She had several of them. She had a combination of things, fibromyalgia, neuritis, migraines. What I would call looking now back in hindsight, is she had a lot of elevated subclinical inflammation, and so by getting her body’s inflammation down, we’re able to get all these things to start normalizing and start rectifying.
Jodi: That’s so exceptional and I’m sure that all the people that are listening are very curious and motivated. So talk us through, how do you take someone, say your mother was coming to you today, what the root cause is and then help them to return to health.
Thaddeus: The first thing I do is not health related at all. The first thing I do is establish an emotional motivation and reason for them to even live. And so the first thing I do is I ask them if you had a magic wand and you could change or get rid of one thing in your life, what would that be?
Let’s just say in the case of my mom, she might say I wanna get rid of my migraines and I wanna get rid of my chronic pain. I wanna get rid of my fatigue. And then my next question would be, and why is that important to you? And I would keep asking “why.” I do the Seven Levels of Why – keep asking until I really got down to what I believed would be the core emotional reason for why that’s important to ’em.
Because the average person I think would say, oh yeah, I’m just here today doctor, ’cause I wanna get rid of pain. Tell me about your pain. Where does it bother you? Where does it hurt? What happens? All that stuff. And they get completely into clinical. And what happens is that creates this huge cognitive disconnect because then when they tell the patient to do something there’s not the emotional driver behind taking action.
And I find that if you take someone and say why is it important to you that you have less pain? They might say because it keeps me up at night. So you wanna sleep better? Why is that important to you? I wanna have more energy. We still haven’t hit emotional bedrock yet, so I’d say why is that important to you that you wanna have more energy?
I have two kids that are 3 and 5, and I wanna be able to play with them. Why is that important to you? Because I didn’t really have a mom or a dad growing up. They were always working, and I don’t want my kids to be without parents, and I wanna be the best mom or dad that I can be.
Now we hit a reason. They’re there not because they have migraines or they have chronic pain, they’re there because they’re not able to show up as being the best parent that they can be. And so for me, I changed the conversation around that. I’ll go back and then I’ll say, let’s talk about your pain and really get to the root cause of where their pain and their migraines or whatever their health issues coming from. But then when I get into it, I’ll start weaving that in when I start getting into what’s gonna be required of them so I can map out what I think is gonna be the game plan. These are the foods you need to stop. These are the foods you need to start. These are the supplements that I recommend.
These are the exercises that you need to start doing. This is what you need to do in terms of the mindfulness and meditation at home. This is what you need to do in terms of these shampoos or different things that I see. You’re poisoning your body and on down the line.
And then when you give that game plan, if people just said, oh, gosh, my, my neck hurts and I have pain, I have migraines, and you give this whole list, it’s easy for them to wake up one day and say, oh gosh, I really don’t wanna do this exercise. My neck maybe isn’t that bad. But if you say, if they wake up and they say, gosh, you know I need to do this exercise today or this stretch that my doctor showed me because I wanna be a good parent.
Now you have an emotional anchoring to that. Or when they eat that proverbial french fry, they can say, I’m either gonna eat this french fry and enjoy this right now, or basically as they’re eating that french fry, they can tell themselves and say, I’m basically eating myself into being not a good parent. So basically I’m not being a good parent. And they’re equating it to that as opposed to, oh, my neck pain’s okay. I’m not gonna eat this because I wanna be the best parent that I can be. Do I wanna be the best parent that I can be? Or do I want to eat this french fry? And you can make those real binary choices and you can bring that up to the forefront.
And that’s how successful people oftentimes operate. They’re holding in their mind’s eye the long-term vision or the long-term goal as opposed to what’s in front of them right now. And I don’t wanna be this stark, but I just think of like winners and losers, right? Losers look like this, and they look at what’s in on their plate and they look at what they’re eating.
Thaddeus: Winners look up to the horizon, they look at where they’re going, and they see what’s on their plate. It’s simply a tool to get them to where they want to go. Losers are looking down at what’s in front of them. Winners are looking ahead and obviously, I’m saying that metaphorically, but also literally in the sense that the people that win the most in life are the people that are able to embody delayed gratification, and whoever can put off that whoever’s the biggest delayed gratification is gonna win. And that goes for most of us on most things.
Jodi: What you’re really talking about is enhancing compliance with an emotional anchor. You’re giving them a reason to stay in the game and to stay on task even when it feels challenging.
Thaddeus: A hundred percent. And because even just getting into some simple things, I’m one to bet everyone listening to this, myself included, would agree that I probably could make a little bit healthier of decisions every day. There’s something that I know I’m doing right now, even I know that I need to not sit as much as I do all day, but I just say, oh yeah, tomorrow I need to make sure that I don’t sit as much, I’m more active.
But if I think of it as Thaddeus, what is your long-term vision? What are your long-term commitments? And I like the idea of looking more at commitments as opposed to goals. My friend said I thought it was great. I saw a video of him the other day. He said, ’cause think about this. If you say, I’m gonna have dinner tonight. We’re gonna have dinner at 6:00 PM tonight versus my goal is to have dinner tonight. It sounds very weird, right? If you say, oh, my goal is to have dinner tonight at 6:00 PM as opposed to just stating it, yeah, we’re gonna have dinner at 6:00 PM tonight.
A part of it is just making those commitments of, instead of saying my goal is to be the best parent I can be and make healthy choices. Say my commitment is to be the best parent I can be. My commitment individually is to build one of the world’s biggest first natural health hospitals in the world and make that a beacon of essentially, think of it as the Mayo Clinic for Functional and Natural Medicine that is producing studies on a regular basis. It’s showing cases.
We take a hundred people with Parkinson’s. A hundred people with Alzheimer’s, a hundred people with cancer, and we put them through our training programs and have them come with the other side and we start publishing that data at scale. At that point, you’ve taken over the conversation and now you can really change the whole course.
And so if I say my goal is to do that, it’s a lot different than saying I’m committed to doing that. When you say you’re committed, it changes the way that you take action and I think it’s really critical that we identify what the emotional reason is. Why? Because I don’t want any other family to ever have to go through what we experienced and what I experienced as a kid. I don’t want anyone else to ever have to share stories about when they were a kid, about how they almost lost their mom, or that all the doctors, all the “experts,” couldn’t help them.
So for me, I wanna be able to help other people and give people those two options. You can go the mainstream route and you can do medications or you could come here and you could really work towards reversing the chronic disease. So first and foremost is establish that emotional anchor, just like you eloquently said.
Thaddeus: And then it’s getting onto the further points because everyone would agree that a salad is healthier than french fries. I don’t know anyone that would argue that. If you had to pick one or the other, what do you think is healthier for the average human? A salad or french fries. I’m willing to bet 95+% of the population would all agree that the salad is healthier. Yet we still buy and eat Big Macs.
So information does not equal implementation. We have to recognize that we’re not above all these psychological triggers and all these things that go on. There’s a study, if you look at Milgram studies or Asch studies in the Stanford experiments, one of the one unexpected finding of those studies showed that the vast majority of people, they view difference, they view interactions, so when something takes place, if somebody else does something bad they usually say that they based on their character that’s a bad person. But if they’re in that same situation and they do that action, they say it was situational.
I don’t know for those people listening, if they don’t really remember those studies you think of like the Milgram studies, that was where they brought in two people. One of ’em was an actor. And one of ’em was the actual participant. And what they did was they had this game where basically every time they got something wrong, the participant was instructed to shock the person behind the room when they got the question wrong.
But it was a fake shock. But they would go all the way up to where it was basically double X or triple X, which was death, right? And one of the things that came outta that is people came home and they pulled psychologists beforehand.
They said, how many people do you think will go all the way to the end of where the shock would be high enough to where it would kill the person on the other end?
And psychologists thought less than 1% of study participants would go all the way to the end. You know what percentage it was that went? About 50% went all the way to the end. And what happened is these people then were told immediately afterward that it was a study and they were being set up. And ’cause you could see them visibly, they thought they’d killed people. It all talks about agency and so forth. But the thing is, these people would go home. One of the findings that most people don’t realize is that when these people would go home, they’d tell their spouse, man or woman, and the spouse would almost invariably say gosh, if that was me, I never would’ve done that.
And everyone thinks that they’re different. We all think that we’re different, but the truth of the matter is we’re not. We’re not special. We all think that we’re different. It’s like that study. I think it’s 60-75% of Americans believe that they’re above average. Statistically, that’s impossible. So I look at that and I think first thing of being intellectually honest is recognizing that I’m just like everybody else and recognizing that I’m not above anything or anybody that’s out there. I’m subject to the same psychological factors and triggers and processes that are out there.
So I know that environment is the single biggest predictor of human behavior. If I can craft the environment that allows me to win, then I’m gonna win. And not try to pretend that I’m above that. So establishing the emotional reason and then working with somebody that can outline what the actions should be.
And then dumping the information in there. It’s not a lack of information that we have, it’s a lack of implementation that we have.
Jodi: I was just reading Atomic Habits and they were saying that it’s not about going to the gym, it’s about getting your gym clothes on and getting your sneakers on ’cause usually then you get out the door and you go. Or setting up your house so that it’s easy to grab a salad or celery as opposed to ice cream.
Thaddeus: 100%. It’s getting those habits. I love this. I heard this, I forget who it was in this interview I was listening to, so I’m not gonna say that I coined this, but the speaker was saying that look at your bank account and whatever number’s in there that is an accurate representation and a lagging indicator of how you are around money.
Look in the mirror and just be honest. How you look in the mirror or on the scale or your health, that’s a lagging indicator of your habits around health. And if you like it then great. Keep doing what you’re doing. But if you don’t, don’t sit there and say, but just own it. Yes, I’m not going to the gym. Yes, I’m not making good decisions. Yes, I want a Big Mac. Yes, I don’t get as much activity that I should or whatever the case may be. It’s just owning it and then recognizing do I want a different future? And if so, why? I wanna be the best parent I can be, or whatever the case may be.
So then I really need to change those habits and then you can start crafting it differently.
Jodi: I love you’ve come to the same conclusion that I have. Most people want to lose weight, they want to make more money, they want more happiness, they wanna be more present, but they just dunno how. And I think when people don’t know how, they do nothing. And so I love that you’ve deconstructed how to actually motivate people and achieve positive results.
Thaddeus: Jodi, I think you just hit it on the head. It’s because people don’t know how they should be looking for their why. How do I get myself motivated to go to the gym? And you wanna be asking, why am I, why should I even be motivated to go to the gym? Why should I even be motivated to do this? And I think that’s the problem, is we walk around thinking, here’s the thing. If you say how can I fit in going to the gym in my busy schedule?
There’s no way I can do that. Because if you absolutely had to and you were strong enough, why? Who would figure out a way to do it? It’s the phrase, he who has a strong enough why can push through any how. Elon Musk, right? An amazing individual. How many times could he have validly said, oh, this is gonna be too hard. If anybody has a reason to throw in a towel and call it quits, it’d be that guy. He’s been faced with so many problems, but winners, they have a why.
Number one, winners have a why. Clearly established why they’re doing it, and what are they going towards, and why are they doing it. Because if you have that why, everything else – problems, obstacles, roadblocks – anything else that essentially is the raw material that you just need to problem solve and work your way through to get to the why. Most people get bogged down ’cause they’re looking at the problems as opposed to looking to the horizon. And it’s just like anything else.
Thaddeus: If you have to get through a path in the woods, you know that there’s certain obstacles in there. There might be a cliff, there might be a river, there might be some animals. It’s to get from one side to the other side of the woods – maybe you have to deliver medicine or you have to deliver something to save the day for your mom, or whatever the case may be.
And you know that there’s gonna be unforeseen obstacles in there. And so if you focus hard enough on where you’re going in that quest and in that journey, any river, any stream, any bear, any adversary that’s gonna come along the way, you’re gonna problem solve and work your way around it to get to that goal and do whatever it takes. Not just say, oh, there’s a river, I guess we gotta go back.
You problem-solve what’s in front of you. And to become successful at anything in life, it really comes down to there’s a finite number of problems that you need to solve. And if you look at problems as the raw materials and the opportunities, that’s how to get to your goal. They really are just the stepping stones of what you need to get through. So you really just need to get good at solving problems and focusing on the why in the long run and the horizon.
Jodi: You mentioned at the beginning the “Seven Levels of Why,” is that a term you made up or is that a book?
Thaddeus: I didn’t make that up and you can do as many as you want. If you do something, if you problem-solve something seven times. It’s essentially perfect. I have to double-check this from organic chemistry, but if you half-life something seven times, it’s effectively zero. If you do it seven times, the chances are you’re gonna get to bedrock.
So you ask why seven times to go back to that previous example. Why do you wanna get rid of your pain? Because I wanna sleep better. Why do you wanna sleep better? I wanna have more energy. Why do you want more energy? Because I wanna play with my kids. Why do you wanna play with your kids? Because I wanna be able to be a good parent. Why do you wanna be a good parent? My parents died when I was little and didn’t have a good connection with ’em. And why is that important to you? Because I don’t want anyone to suffer the way that I did when I was a kid, not having a parent.
I just say you ask until you get waterworks. Just ask. Keep asking until you see somebody or yourself, you pause. You feel that swallow in your stomach. You feel yourself get that welling feeling. You know that you’ve hit it when you get that feeling. So keep asking yourself why and really looking inside until you hit that, because then you’ll have the raw material and the fire that will push you through whatever obstacles in your way.
Jodi: I interviewed David Perlmutter and he said he wrote his book Brainwashed because you need three things to help people. You need to go to medical school and learn how to help them. Then you need to assess them and figure out how to help them. And they actually need to implement what you tell them to do. And that’s where it falls apart for most people. Not because they don’t want to, but because when they have that really bad day and they’re craving a cookie, they eat the cookie.
Thaddeus: In most things in life, we get a piece of it, but we don’t get the rest of it. And meaning that we get a piece of what it means to be a good clinician.
For instance, you understand the guts of science and health, but then you don’t understand the human aspect of it now, and that’s a really big problem. Imagine if you didn’t get the guts of it. You think that medications are the answer versus lifestyle. Let’s pretend you had the wrong stuff. You didn’t even know how to implement it. That’s the ultimate recipe for disaster. Now you’re giving people quick fixes and patches that’s completely misguided.
You have high blood pressure? Here’s the blood pressure med. It’s not even focusing on the root cause in terms of figuring out why they have high blood pressure in the first place, and then it’s not even given the right solution. So you have two things that are wrong. Even physicians that have a tremendous amount of what I consider to be the correct or healthy or more or better information, they’re falling short because they don’t know how to interact with people. They don’t know how to get their message across. They don’t know how to communicate because we never learn how to be really effective communicators.
How many classes have you taken on effective communication and how to really win someone over with your ideas or how to really get someone inspired? When and where do we ever get that? We don’t. And that’s the problem is that we come out and then doctors just throw their hands up there and say I told ’em they need to go home and eat better and exercise. That’s like telling a 15-year-old, here’s a set of keys. The car’s out in the garage, go teach yourself and come back in a couple months.
That’s illegal. We don’t even allow that. But why do we allow that with help? You’d go to the doctor, a 15-minute visit. Go eat better and start exercising.
There’s so much missing. We don’t even know what the image is that we’re trying to create. And that’s a significant problem because then that perpetuates throughout culture, throughout the world, throughout the cycle. And we have so many people that need to be helped. And the masses are wrong and that’s the problem. Most of us are wrong about most things, most of the time, even myself. You talk to experts, people that are really experts in their field, they’ll be one of the first to tell you, I’m just getting started and I’m just scratching the surface.
And so for us to think that we know so much about so many things, we can get really stuck in this false sense of knowing this as opposed to really stepping in and saying, I don’t know what’s best. But I know what kind of outcome I want and I know why I want that outcome. So I’m gonna try to go look and find people that are already doing what I want to accomplish and be around them. So if someone had Parkinson’s I would think that they wouldn’t go to a doctor and that all they do is give meds. Go to a doctor that has a track record of Parkinson’s.
If you want to get rid of taxes and your CPA says nothing that could be done, find a new CPA. It’s really that easy. Find a new doctor, find a new CPA, find somebody that’s already doing it, instead of saying, no, it can’t be done. I look at the Socratic method from getting really good at asking questions. I think that’s absolutely critical. So if I have this chronic pain or whatever the case is, who else do I know that has chronic pain that’s already reversed it? What doctors out there already know? Do I do that? Okay, I know this doctor over here. How can I get in touch with that doctor? They’re not accepting patients. When do they accept patients? So you just get into problem-solving mode and you’re just asking questions as opposed to saying they’re not accepting patients.
I would say this, instead of just stopping at a problem, saying they’re not accepting patients anymore. I can’t get in. Turn that around. Instead of a statement, turn it into a question. They’re not accepting any more patients. How can I become a patient? We gotta get on a waitlist. How can I get on the wait list? We have to do this, but it’s a year out. How can I make it not be a year out? Just keep asking questions that are open-ended that ultimately get you to your goal, and that’ll just help you solve problems and it’ll make you unstoppable.
Jodi: That’s how I get out of anxiety. When I’m able to say huh, I wonder what else I could do. Because when you’re curious it’s almost like you have so many possibilities. And possibilities just calm your nervous system.
Thaddeus: I’m also a motorcycle rider. I’m also a pilot. And they teach you that when there’s a hazard or there’s a problem, you don’t look at the problem, you don’t look at the hazard, you look at the path towards safety, right? Because if you look at the problem, you will go right towards it.
And the classic example is someone on a motorcycle, they come around to turn and there’s a board in the middle of the road or a rock or something, and they look at it, and because they look at it, their whole body orientates itself to go in that direction. Because where your eyes go, you go. And the thing that they teach you is immediately you need to look to the path of safety. As soon as you do that, your whole body, your balance, everything adjusts towards a path of safety.
Same thing in life. If you look at the problem and think, oh my gosh, how am I gonna hit this deadline?
This deadline is so close, as opposed to, okay, what do I need to do to solve this? And you look towards the solution then you’ll feel the anxiety and the stress immediately start to melt because now you’re in solving mode as opposed to problem mode.
Jodi: That’s interesting. My therapist always says the opposite of “I don’t feel safe” is “I have choices.” Safety is one of the choices.
Thaddeus: Tell me more about how that resonates with you.
Jodi: I did trauma therapy, EMDR, and the idea is that if early childhood trauma isn’t filed properly in your brain, then anytime a situation feels similar, you get triggered and you overreact to things that are, when you’re calm, you can look at them. And so the more you can help yourself feel safe at all times and properly file past trauma, then when things come up, take the current situation in this world, right? Some people watch the news and they’re afraid to leave their house.
Other people watch the news and say, I’m getting on a plane to Puerto Rico. Everyone reacts differently, and it’s all how much does that trigger us? If we can respond more fluidly we can all show up as our best selves.
Thaddeus: Yeah. Yeah. I love that, that’s, gosh, there, there’s so much truth to that and so much that could be unpacked with that. We get these neurological wiring and these pathways that get so entrenched and ingrained. Try to unlearn your language. Unless you just went in a cave somewhere and never talked to anybody again, it’s hard to unlearn a language, it’s so entrenched in us.
You get those things when you’re young and they get imprinted and then those pathways are ready to go as soon as they get triggered, they get woken up. So much of it is even just recognizing this. So then you can start making those changes.
Jodi: Eye movements, you’ll notice if you ask someone like, tell me a story. Make something up. Their eyes go up into our filing system. And so if you can have and think about an upsetting situation while their eyes are tracking and helps the brain file it.
I don’t want anyone who’s listening to feel hopeless. There are a lot of ways that we can absolutely calm our nervous system. And then I love, the Seven Levels of Why. My son was killed in a car accident and my daughter was only 14. And so my why is I have to get her through high school, she has to survive this. And so there was a lot of craziness that happened. And through the craziness, I would always anchor into my why. If I fall apart now, that’s really not gonna serve my why. So I have to figure out how to hold it together.
A lot of it’s fascinating. Everyone wants to give you solutions and I you throw the pasta at the wall and see what sticks. I was so desperate and open. I’m like, I’ll try everything. Like, why not? Something that was a really bad choice. I’m never doing that again.
Thaddeus: Good on you. Obviously, there’s the importance and there’s value of grieving and feeling and working through that and so forth. And then there’s also the time of not being entirely consumed for infinity. And it’s getting back on that horse and being able to recognize that you don’t wanna be incapacitated.
Jodi: Disassociation has its purpose. I really love the way you’re approaching this with helping people with the why, helping people form kind of pattern and habits so that they can actually get to where they’re going. Not enough people are talking about this.
Thaddeus: It’s reorientating yourself to the right direction. And it’s also taking a step back and really asking, am I going in the direction that I want to get to where I want to go? If you have to get through the woods, but you’re walking backwards to the city, you have to just be honest and say I’m making great progress, but I’m not going in the right direction.
I forget that story, but these explorers landed on this island, and they didn’t know where to go. And so let’s just start blazing this path. And so they start cutting. Everyone gets down, they start cutting down these trees and building a road, and they’re going. And then eventually this guy climbs up this tree and looks out and he says, Hey you guys. We’re making good progress here. But we’re gonna go right to a cliff. We need to go that way to where there’s water and there’s resources. We need to go that way. And they look up and say, Hey, no we don’t have time to listen to you because we’re making such good progress here.
It is so many of us, we’re making great progress in not in the right direction based on what our commitment is and what our why is, and where we want to go. I hesitate using the word goals, but whatever we’re committed to in our future that we’re oftentimes putting energy and we don’t even realize it. This came on a subtle level or on a macro level of we come home and say, I’m tired. Maybe I’ll skip the gym tonight.
Or, gosh, it is kinda late. Maybe just grabbing fast food this one time isn’t gonna be that big of a deal. And it’s all these little things that keep adding up. And I always love this little mental mind shift, and it’s to pretend you’re the hero in your own journey. Pretend you’re watching a movie and you’re the hero. What would you tell yourself to do right now if you were outside of yourself watching yourself right now in this moment, what would you want your hero in the journey to do?
If you were watching a movie, what would you be like? How would you want them to win? How would they show up as the hero in your story? And I think for me, if I put myself in that mindset, it usually calls me into action of doing what I think is the more nobler or the more becoming action in that moment and in that time set.
Jodi: Yeah, I actually, I found this journal, it’s Calm the Chaos, and it has like before bed, you reevaluate your day and it has check boxes, did you exercise? Did you get fresh air? Did you eat nutritious? And then it has, you prepay what you want for the next day, your goals, your objectives. And I’ve found just having that kind of check-in, I like that it’s already organized for me, but it holds me very accountable.
In my mind I’m thinking, oh, I need to check off, did I relax today? And so I need to think of something to do. Did I do something for others? That’s just a system that works for me. But what are some of the things that you’ve really found to be a successful, both for you or for your clients?
Thaddeus: What you’ve done is you’ve created an environment.
That it makes it easy for you and your default is to win. Some of the hardest things to do that will make winning the easiest is to choose your suffering. And I really do think that goes back to that delayed gratification, meaning you can either choose your suffering now or suffering will randomly choose you later. You can say, I’m gonna choose my suffering now and let’s say I’m gonna go to the gym and I’m comfortable, I’m warm, I’m in bed. I don’t wanna get up, or whatever the case is. Or I just wanna relax and watch a movie tonight.
You can choose your suffering and say, Nope, I’m gonna get up. I’m gonna put on my gym clothes. I’m gonna go work out, or whatever the case may be. And then you go to the gym. And so you chose your suffering. Ideally that’s going to make you be able to show up for your friends, your family, it’s gonna improve your health, reduce your risk of cancer, heart disease, all these things, right? You’ve chose your suffering. Or if you don’t, then suffering’s gonna randomly choose you.
Maybe it’s heart disease, maybe it’s prostate cancer for me, or breast cancer for you or who knows what, right? So either we choose our suffering or suffering chooses us. I think it’s putting the odds in our favor. Choosing the suffering of when you go to the store or when you get your groceries, that you don’t order those foods to begin with that are crap. There’s two layers to that. There’s things that we know that we should be doing and shouldn’t be doing. And then there’s also the things that we don’t even know. And that’s where you need to surround yourself with an expert that has the right information. It’s not even bringing in the food in the house that you know you shouldn’t eat. You’ve gotten through that initial suffering.
When you’re hungry, let’s say you want something quick or easy, you go to the pantry or the fridge.
You’ve already done the hard part suffering by not bringing the foods in. So then by default, you’re gonna win because you only have healthy food in the house. It’s creating those processes and those systems, and you suffer intentionally on the front end. And you make a commitment because you’re so focused on your why and your mind’s eye that on the back end. The default is to win. I love that.
Jodi: And how can people learn more about your practice, about working with you?
Thaddeus: One is we have our annual retreat right now, April 25th to the 28th that’s coming up. We have a whole host of amazing entrepreneurs talking about all things from health advancements to wealth. Development business training is really for entrepreneurs that want to maximize their health. They can maximize their wealth so they really can make an impact in the world for their family, for their friends, for their team, and really their clients, and the problems that they wanna solve.
So we have Gary Vaynerchuk, who’s gonna be our keynote this year. We have a whole host of other amazing speakers, so that would be one of ’em. They can go to the Guardians Retreat or the Guardian’s Alliance. So the GuardiansAlliance.com, they can get information on that. We have our clinics that are in Oregon. And then some people wanna work directly with me. I work with with five people at a time, max. And I usually work with ’em for about four to six months.
But if someone is really motivated and committed to really optimizing their health, having peak performance, reversing whatever health issues that they don’t like, and really getting a clear game plan of what to do, when to do it, and why to do it for the rest of their life. So they really have the education and the habits to really win. Then people can reach out to me directly and they can go to, they can find me on Facebook or Instagram or through one of our websites, or just do a search for my name, Thaddeus Gala.
Jodi: Is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you wanted to add?
Thaddeus: I really encourage and empower people that, as an individual, they really have tremendous amount of power, to shape their life. And I would look at the common narratives or conventional wisdom or whatever it is that’s out there, and recognize that most of us are wrong most of the time about most things.
And that includes central planning and central authorities that are mandating behaviors or regulations, et cetera. And just statistically speaking, if most of us are wrong about most things, most of the time, if you have one person or one organization, or one entity making a decision for the collective, statistically speaking, they’re gonna be wrong.
They’re the probability of them getting the right course of action is infinitesimally small. Statistically speaking, one in a billion probably. So for me, I look at it from the standpoint of I would empower people to think about this. I know for me that I have a hard enough time knowing what’s gonna be right for me. Let alone telling what’s gonna be right for them or what’s best for them.
I would encourage people to continue to really foster and support and empowering the individual above the collective and empowering individual rights and freedoms even if we disagree with what they’re doing, even if someone is making poor health choices, even if someone isn’t wise with their money.
We still have patience, love, and compassion, and realize that if we were in their brain and we had their wiring and we were set up the way that they were and their circumstances born into their life, that we would be doing the same thing. And it’s not necessarily someone’s behavior as much as it is a culmination of environment and everything else that went into making that person who they are.
So to me, it’s empowering the individual, owning that we are solely responsible for our life and our decisions and our outcomes. Then really supporting other people in their views, their actions, whether we agree or disagree, but we support them in what they’re doing. So long as they’re not harming other people in a way that they can’t leave or create distance or separation.
Jodi: Thank you so much for your time and your brilliance.
