(upbeat music) - Welcome to Mindful Management, creating a trauma-informed work environment, a podcast by Sheffalo Consulting, where we share the knowledge, stories, and resources you need to create a trauma-informed culture that supports wellness, growth, and resilience. I'm your host, Shenandoah Sheffalo. Welcome everyone, so glad to have you back for another episode of our lovely podcast. I am super excited for today's guest. I probably say that way too much, but I know a lot of amazing people, and today is no different. On today's episode of Mindful Management, creating a trauma-informed work environment, we are delighted to welcome a long time friend of Sheffalo Consulting, Doug Smith, to our show. At 18 years old, Doug was drafted second overall into the NHL, and would be the youngest player to have ever played for the Los Angeles Kings. We should talk about why 18 year olds are allowed to play in the NHL, Doug, but maybe we'll get to that later. The next 11 years of professional sports were defined by many successes, some failures, and the brutal culture of a gladiator sport. His career ended suddenly when he shattered his spine in an on ice collision with the end boards, changing his life forever. Doug pivoted to develop a trauma management model, System 438, which addresses recovery and maximizes human performance. Through his best-selling stories and books, all of our listeners will know the trauma code would have stood out to me for one simple reason, nothing to do with the NHL, more football gal, but I was interested nonetheless, but Doug reveals a simple and repeatable process for continuous improvement called System 438. It's a process that he's used himself to improve mental performance and recover from emotional and physical trauma. System 438 is repeatable, and it's a tool used and endorsed by neuroscience. Doug integrates his personal experience and professional insights to help individuals in organizations enhance their resilience and operational success, and we are thrilled to welcome Doug to our show. Doug, welcome, so great to have you today. - Well, thanks, Shen, that was a mouthful for sure. - Well, you've had quite the experience. I mean, I think on paper, most people would say, how does one Doug Smith and Shen Sheffalo even meet? That's the first thing to begin to even know each other because we've had such different yet similar journeys, right? Like, we started in very different places, you as a professional athlete at 18, me, a homeless kid in the foster system, and some people might say, what do these two things have in common? But Doug, I think we both know that sort of when facing dramatic life changes, there's kind of these milestones that mark your journey, and I'm just wondering for you, thinking about those milestones from professional athlete to now thought leader in trauma recovery, how did you even get here? - Shen, you're absolutely right. We both are working on managing this beast called trauma, right? It's a beast, it's like your 800 pound gorilla, so let's call it like it is. It'll walk all over your life, and if you don't have a management system to manage it, 95% of who you are and the performance you have within you gets washed away. And all I'm trying to do with my life since I went into the board's head first and shattered C5 and C6, and I knew my back was broken, is to make a significant change in the world, and the path I took in 2008 and 2012, when I wrote my books, was about transition and trauma. And the two go hand in hand, and so as we transition out of this pandemic, the rough years are just about to hit us, and I just wanna be able to arm people like drop cards from a helicopter where people can pick them up and say, "Oh, okay, I can use this to make my life better." And so that's what I'm trying to accomplish, Shen, that's my work. - I love that, but you said something there that I just wanna revisit, which was, we're in this post-pandemic, but the rough years are ahead, because I think a lot of folks believe, hey, we survived the pandemic, here we are, and now we're at the easy part, but you actually talk about this being the rough part. Why do you think that's true? - Well, it's a physics exercise, and it's based on data, because the aftermath of 9/11, and if you dive into the aftermath of 9/11, what you'll see is a micro picture of what the pandemic was, and what it did to the mental health system in New York City, and the surrounding areas, and the states that surrounded them, and the United States as a whole, but this pandemic affected all of us. So if you look at the fallout, and you look at the recovery from 9/11, what you'll see is how long it takes, and the peak of the agony that we as a species are gonna go through, it won't hit us till next summer, probably next summer, when people are really questioning why they're not coming out of their house. - Doug, what year was your injury? So let's just give our listeners some time frames, 'cause I don't wanna spend a ton of time on your injury, but I wanna talk about the recovery, and how long that recovery took. So what year was the injury? Do you remember? - So February 7th, 1992, I went full speed head first into the endboards, and shattered the fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae. I could show you pictures as I do for my audiences of doctors. I just spoke to an old room full of doctors showing pictures of the injury, and it makes people go, how did you get better from that? And so what happened was I broke my neck, I went through the surgical procedure to have halo fixation, which are four bolts that go into your skull. - This is a severe injury we're talking about, and what was the prognosis really coming out of that injury? Would you walk, would you do anything? - What happened was I was operated on to put the halo on in Austria, okay? 'Cause the broken neck happened in Austria when I was playing in Europe. And then I came home, but I didn't have any neurological deficits when I broke my neck. I was put into halo, I fell with my hand on my hands, and I knew I had broken my back and I was conscious, so I stayed in the same position until they had x-rayed my spine. And so from there I came back to Canada, and I required two more surgeries. And what happened was I woke up after one of the surgeries paralyzed from the chest down, and they had to go in and redo and undo, and then I was still paralyzed. So I was paralyzed from the chest down, no bladder, no bowels, no arms, no legs, a little bit of movement in my left arm, but literally nothing in my right arm and nobility to move even my toes. So all of a sudden I was thrust from this professional hockey player with people cheering for me to a place where being awake was literally hell, and the only safe place and quiet place was when I was asleep, and that's why I tell people, I haven't met a spinal cord injury yet, somebody that suffered a spinal cord injury. I haven't met one person who didn't want to die. So the default from spinal cord injury is you go through a period of time where you want to die, but I couldn't kill myself because I didn't have the strength. That's where I went from, from the peak all the way to the bottom. - No, I think it's an important piece though, right? Because for many trauma survivors, now this is a physical trauma, but for many of those who are dealing with some other types of traumas, like depression, suicide, I think is on the table all the time, right? There's another layer there to your point when you're like, I wanted to die and I couldn't even do that act. Like mentally I was there, but physically I couldn't accomplish it even if I wanted to, and I'm just wondering, Doug, 18, when you're drafted, the high of the high, I can just imagine of that, right? As an 18 year old kid, how do you think that identity as an athlete influenced your approach to rehab and to mental health at the time? Did it help you? Did it hinder you? I was diagnosed with ADD, which is ADHD when I was 13. And so I have this wicked type of brain that manages spin and can handle great speed. And so I had this gift, and it was really from my mom because it would have been taken away 'cause they wanted to put me on Ritalin when I was 13. And so she put me in meditation instead of putting me on Ritalin and he went to meditation classes. My mother and I, and it was Hal. It was Hal, seriously, if you're a kid listening to this, it was Hal at 13 doing it. But then, you know, when I got into troubled times when I was in the NHL at 18 and then when I broke my neck, I pulled that meditation out and I used it. And today I've translated all my work in the trauma code into a series of meditations so people don't even have to read it. They can put it on when they go to bed. - What a gift from your mother, by the way. Like the foresight to say, I'm not gonna listen to these doctors. I mean, 'cause what we know now versus what we knew then about Ritalin is completely different, right? But the foresight of your mother to be like, "Not so sure I'm gonna go the medicated route." And what I hear in their Doug is, which is something I talk about to our listeners quite often is using what some might say is our greatest weakness or our deficit as actually our asset. So in this case, right? You might see ADD or ADHD as a weakness, as a deficit, as something that's wrong, versus something that's strong in you. The fact that your brain works in this way to help you through this rehab. - Oh, I never would've made the NHL. When I get set on something, I stick with it for seven years. So that's the world that I live in. - Do you remember a time in your recovery post-injury where it started feeling easier, maybe mentally and physically? Was there something where it was just like, "I made it?" - When I realized, you know what made life easier? What made life easier when I was lying on the ice and I realized it's not about being the best in the world, it's about being the best for the world. Because I, when I was lying on the ice, I didn't see, and this was so important, I didn't see all the goals that I had scored all the times that people had told me I was great. You know, yeah, that's what happens, right? People do that constantly with you. All I could see was the times I had let people down. Like if I wanted to show it up today, you know, on the show, or I didn't show up for my buddy's wedding, you know, Larry Murphy, who I played with, you know? And I just, because I had other important things for Doug Smith in mind. And what I found through my work is as soon as you turn the lens on yourself, you start moving into depression and mania. And you don't want to go there, it's a scary place. - Doug, I feel like how do you just go from being an amazing athlete to then the rehab that you had to go through because then you went to being unable to move at all for a long period of time to coming now to then standing on stages telling folks your story. - Okay, here it is, Shannon, this is a quick lesson. You see this thing right here? Those are self-tapping screws. They have to be screwed into your skull three millimeters to keep your head in place. What's that's done? Your head is locked in place. And when you walk into a room, you have to look everybody in the eye. And I never looked anybody in the eye. And if you see hockey players on stage or athletes trying to do stuff, they have trouble looking people in the eye. Okay, most people do. And so what this did was it locked me in this position where I was locked and unless I close my eyes, everybody in the room was looking at me, but I had to look at all of them. And that changed me. During the time I was in the halo, if you wanna go through a program, put a halo on. And when they put that halo on, I made a decision that I wasn't gonna be put to sleep 'cause they knew my neck was broken in a hundred places. And so I chose to stay awake for the surgery. So I let them screw, self-tapping screws, four of them, three millimeters into the skull. And I was awake for the procedure. So I got to experience the whole Frankenstein thing. You know what I mean? - Quite literally got to experience the whole, I mean, some of us talk about it in a fictional, we feel like Frankenstein and the peace monster, but you have a more literal sense of being Frankenstein. So I wanna talk a minute, Doug, about how you developed the system 438. And this is what I wanna say 'cause you have this great card, like I'm not making this up, this is what it says. Four traumas, we all experience catastrophic physical, catastrophic emotional, cumulative physical, and cumulative emotional. The three priorities of our subconscious brain, meeting basic needs, clarity of thought, and helping other people. And eight behaviors that feed the three priorities, awareness, purpose, motivation, focus, believing in self, trust, asking for help. I'm gonna emphasize the asking for help because it's one that I spend a huge amount of time talking about and emotional control. When or how did you decide to develop this? And what were some of the key factors that you considered when you came up with System 438? - Oh, it came from the behaviors that I identified in this book, but they had no order to them. Okay, so I had to break it down into behaviors and then apply it from my first book. We go to the trauma code where we apply to science. There's no pictures in there. So what I did was I put the behaviors in order and I went to the physics community to get the information about both the subconscious brain and the different types of trauma. We figured it out in boardrooms, literally boardrooms, banging this out 'cause the people I was working with were high level corporate people and got transitioned at a high level. So they wanted it to be right so it would become a tool for them as well. So that's where the behaviors started with transition. This has all the pictures in it. So if you want to get this book, okay, you can download it at dugsmithperformance.com/thrive. - We'll put a link in the show notes for everyone. - And if you want to write a book, here's how it works, 52 pictures. You get the 52 most important pictures of your life. You write 140 characters about each picture. You put them in chronological order and lay them out and you'll keep writing and then put that in your first book. Second book, organize your thoughts, right? And that's what I did. I organized my thoughts and out of that whole process of organizing my thoughts and making logical decisions, not illogical, emotional decisions, out pops for 3.8. My medications are on awareness, purpose, motivation, focus, belief and self-trust, asking for alcohol and emotional control. And if you can drive that into Theta brain waves, my God, when you're in Theta brain waves, drive it in there and then you wake up in the morning and you just start naturally doing these crazy things you never thought you'd do. Or you're able to remain calm in situations where before you'd be spinning. - I come back to this. Mine's a little warm because I've had it on my desk. I pull it out. I think about it. When I myself start going down, I'm like, yeah, what would Doug do? Sort of pull, look at it. It's a reminder of some of the things I know because I did some of my work before I knew Doug, right? It's a reminder to some of those hard places that I went before because Doug, you kind of alluded to this in your own journey but talking about our post COVID as well. Like it hits you sometimes when you don't think it will hit you. - It comes in waves, right? And it comes in cascades. Try to control a wave and try to control a cascade. We're not built to take these things on after they're occurring. That's why we need to help around us if those things happen. - And sometimes it catches me off guards for me. It's not like when I'm an event doing something, right? 'Cause when I'm in that space, I know people are gonna ask me questions so I'm mentally prepared and ready for that. Sometimes for me, it comes when I'm sitting on a plane and somebody says, what do you do? And I try to quickly summarize, I'm a consultant, I'm a trainer. And they say something and the thing they say then hits me, right? It's like, it's when I'm most unprepared for it when they ask me, a stranger asks me the question. And that's that wave you're talking about. It's like the waves you see are a little more controllable, right? That's what all of our surfers would tell us. - This is a control system for the waves. That's really what it is because when the waves start to hit you and you have this to go to, deepen your psyche, all of a sudden those waves are manageable, you can surf them, right? But if you don't want to surf, you know, and all of a sudden you're spinning a little bit and then you go back to this and you go, oh, okay, well, there's a logical approach, okay? It's not that the trauma that you've experienced is ever going to go away ever in your life. You, the trauma will always be with you. It just doesn't have to control you. And that's short-term trauma and long-term trauma. That's not, trauma is trauma is trauma is trauma. Forget this, PTSD is trauma, it's a symptom of trauma. And so we're all focused on all these symptoms because that's what the system wants us to focus on, I promise you, and not focused on what trauma is, which is a solvable problem across a wide span because a recovery and performance is on the same threshold, okay? So if you look at the science, it's a spectrum. Recovery and performance is a spectrum. So it doesn't matter how damaged the brain is or how well it's performing. Your brain only wants one thing. It wants to get better. It doesn't matter if it's a pro athlete or it's lying in a bed with a brain injury. It doesn't matter, your brain only wants one thing. What is your job? What is your job consciously? Consciously, we're gonna get into some discussions about the waves and neuro waves because consciousness is gonna be your way out. I personally believe that the future of the human race will be built on consciousness as a piece of anatomy. - You're right because the brain's sole thing is to survive. - Yes, it'll take your body out on the street. And if you think it's time to end it and you've only got one option, it's suicide, right? That's why people commit suicide is because they're left with one option and their brain carries their body into that environment, right? That's just the way it is. And some people would argue that. - I wanna transition to something else, but before I get to that transition, I wanna talk about the challenge around purpose. 'Cause this is something else you and I have talked about in the past. And like, what's my purpose? Why am I here? What does all of this mean? And it's a question I especially wanna ask you because I think right at 18, you had a purpose. It was hockey. There was a note that was it for you. I think for anyone who's a professional athlete or good at any one thing, music, right? Like whatever that thing is at 18 that you just can't do anything else. This is my thing. It feels like that's your purpose in life until something happens, Doug. In your case, a severe injury, right? So what's the challenges around purpose and maybe even finding or transitioning purpose? - People don't put awareness before purpose. That's what happens. They make the huge mistake. This is a mistake. If somebody goes to the front of the rim and says, I'm here to talk about purpose. We're gonna do that. You haven't engaged your audience yet. So because they're not even aware of what that could possibly mean or how purpose would work and what other behaviors you need to feed your purpose. My purpose is getting this message out. My purpose is to feed the world with the stuff that I've created when I'm happy with its quality. After I field tested it for like two years, I go, let's share it with everybody. You know, it's crazy. I'm crazy that way. I don't wanna give somebody something that's gonna cause their plane to hesitate. - But that's a piece is that, 'cause I hear this especially from a lot of young people right now, like I don't know what I'm doing in the world. I don't know what my purpose is. Are you supposed to just be trying things? - Then you go, have you read this book about organizations? Wow, no, I'm not reading that stuff. - Well, we could talk about Ron. Well, we'll put a link by the way to Ron's book that Doug just split up. - Yeah, well, we'll talk about how it scales, but I'm just feeding your conversation about kids today. You try to feed them this information, but the phone is in their hand. So instead of like when we were kids, there was nothing to compete with books, right? Now there's competition for books and it's very good competition. - It's every answer at your fingertips, man. - Yeah, but you don't learn anything. That's the frightening thing about it. And I'm guilty, I mean, I'm guilty too, and I'm working on all sorts of different things all the time to manage it. I've become the terms of the fact that it's traumatizing me, but until you come to terms of the fact that it's traumatizing you, you're not gonna do anything to manage it. I leave my phone upstairs, buy the bed, don't bring it downstairs for hours in the morning, I have to. - It's an interesting thing. My partner and I were just having this conversation last night watching TV, watching sports, of course, right? And we'll ask each other a question like, hey, where'd that person go to college? Hey, what, right? And before you'd have to just sit in that wonderment and sort of like sink in your brain, where was that? Not all you gotta do is pull your phone and ask it. And in 2.2 seconds, you've got all the answers you ever wanted, right? Like you don't even have to allow your brain to wonder anymore. And I think that's a dangerous piece. - It is, if you don't have something to counter it. So like at the end of the day, this is just countering something that already exists, right? And so can this counter a phone? No, I'm not, I'm not there yet. Like I can't even conceive, but geez, put a dent in it. Like just put it, that's all like become aware. And this is where we get into purpose, become aware that it's happening to you. Don't say, well, it can't happen to me. I'm just too tough, you know, that doesn't work. - So there's a lot of leaders listening, Doug, that we have a lot of leaders in all different kinds of capacity of what leaders mean who are listening to our podcast. In your experience, how does workplace culture impact an individual's ability to recover or not recover from personal trauma? - For the organization, it's your number one competitive advantage is culture. We won't get into that. And what's the second part of the question? We'll get into it later if we have time. - How does culture impact the individual's ability to recover? - Well, you become what you're around. And so inside a culture, you become what that culture is. So if you join a company and you're already getting abused in the first week, you know, that's not, I mean, within, you know, you tell somebody 50 times not to do something, they don't do it anymore. And so you're being, you're being managed by something that isn't healthy. You felt it when you were in there the first time and within a couple of years, you'll be it. It's the parallel process, right? We are the things we're around. There's no avoiding it. I mean, you talk about that even in team sports though, right? Like, I mean, we talk about it with, should this coach be fired or not? What's the team culture? What's it like in the locker room? Oh, it's a terrible locker room. It's the same thing when we talk about businesses and organizations and systems, right? It's really no different. - Yes, but what happens is professional sports likes behind because they don't have the financial constraints that regular business does. So regular business is out there on the front edge, right? And I see both and I see how slow it takes the NHL and the NHLPA and these people to move things along because they're just not motivated enough, right? 'Cause it looks like profits are going up enough and oh, that'll be just okay. And it is, but it could be much more. - There's also not competition, right? I mean, there's not another NHL. So it's just us versus if we sell widgets and there's three companies that sell a similar widget and you're competing in that level, it becomes a different thing. - Well, it's because the culture, the professional sports has gone through the roof, right? And you see it go through the roof in front of us. You have these buildings full of people or not so many people anymore, but offices that aren't treating their people as well as the hockey players are being treated, you know? And they should be psychologically. Maybe you can't afford to have a private chef for everybody on your team. But in hockey, they do, right? Like so Connor, David, and I've been out to Edmonton and I've been down to the teams and seeing what they do and they all have professional chefs. They all have somebody doing their grocery shopping, whatever it is they need. They have somebody to do that so that they can focus on their craft. - Yeah, you just said something which just kind of struck me that, that well, I had thought about culture and organizations and then think about locker rooms or you think about all of these things, right? Like, as we're recording this, the New York Jets just fired their coach, right? And so this is kind of in the prominence of me thinking about what's the culture there? What's happening organizationally? But you just said something like, yeah, but the way the players get treated, right? Isn't the way that organizations are treating their players, which for me was just this, like my whole brain, I think you saw my eyes went, wait, yeah. What happens if leaders, if CEOs began treating their talent, their employees, like the talent we see in sports, right? If we did a comparison. - With the financial constraints, they have to put on it. Here, their CFO has to be at the table, having the conversation, you know, can we afford to do this? And what's our return going to be on this? What if we do this? And, you know, people are really looking at that yet on mass, but that time is coming. As we see like one in 13 businesses survive, right? You're going to have to do these things or you just simply won't compete, it won't work. - So you kind of told us one of these Doug, like leaving your phone up in the room before you come down for the day, but what other daily practices or routines do you recommend? You're maintaining for mental health resilience, especially in high stress environments. Do you have some tips for folks? - Yeah, move. If you can move like as many times a day as possible, that's what I do. And I make sure that people around me know that they can remind me of that freely at any time, and I'm not going to get upset with them. And when I don't want to go for a walk, it's time to go for a walk. - Say that again for the people. Like when you don't want to, it's probably the time to do it. - It doesn't make any logical sense. So that's when I pull out my system sometimes, right? Because for me to not want to go for a walk with my wife and our little Cavapoo, and it's like around a block, that's a mistake, right? And then I go and I forget all about the concerns or worries about whether I should have gone or not. It was the right decision. So play with this stuff, you know? That's what I recommend to people. Get your hands on it and play with it. - What lessons from your career have proven invaluable? - I guess trust. You know, if I trust you, Chen, I can rapidly internalize your belief in me. And if you trust me, you can rapidly internalize my belief in you. And you can get that from every single human being you come across. Now you got to be wary and, you know, but if you're introduced by a friend and you're still not trusting that person, boy, you're cutting off your opportunity. You might be successful in the future, but it's going to take you twice as long. - I'm so intrigued that you said trust because it's something I hear all the time of business. We don't have safety, we don't have trust. And when I stop and say what do you need to get those two things? Mostly everyone blankly stares. 'Cause I'm like, you mostly will just trust, like if you go through the Starbucks or McDonald's or wherever, right? Like you trust that person to make your food, give you your food, you don't even know them. Like any trust that you won't get sick. And so I'm just interested then when we, when it gets a little closer to us, when we talk about these interpersonal pieces, 'cause I think I agree with you so much that trust is so critical there. But so many of us, I think because of the things that have occurred to us almost refuse, like we're obstinate, like we're trying to rebel of, I'm just not going to trust anyone because I've been hurt or harmed. - Stop subscribing to thinking that if you stand six or eight inches taller than somebody else, you have power over them, right? And that's what the old system, the industry, that's what's happening right now is the new leaders realizing that it's not about that little step that you get every time you move up management so that you can boss people around. People still haven't gotten it in their head, but it's not about bossing people around. When I left the NHL and I started in business, I thought it was about bossing people around. I was there and it used to be that way because we could hide information and the information wasn't available and you gotta stop doing silly things when the whole world is watching. Thinking that the whole world isn't watching you is insane. - I relate so much because I think if I could go back the first to my first job of managing people, I was horrible, I was terrible at it 'cause to your point for me, it was do this, do this, do that, you're not doing it, you're not doing enough to the person I am today where I think, 'cause I don't even know how those people, how they didn't just take me out back and shoot me quite literally. Like, I was terrible human being, but also I felt terrible inside. - Yeah, and that's how I felt too. - I hadn't done my own work at the same time. Like, I was faking it. - You didn't know why you were there. Yeah, you thought you knew why you were there, but if somebody would've come up and asked you why you were there, you would probably wanna fight them because that's not the question to ask Shen today. - Yes, that, all of that in 10 times over is so true. Like, I mean, I was in so much pain, right? And not physical pain. We've been talking a lot about the physical pain today, but like, emotionally, mentally. You know, I was running from my own story. I hadn't even told my spouse I had been in foster care at the time. Like, I was in, I was spending so much time and energy running from who I really was, that of course, like the only thing I could do was boss other people around because if anyone were to turn it on me, I would be exposed. And that would be the worst possible thing for me is this idea of being exposed where today I sit in management and have a team and, you know, I get an email almost every day from somebody who says, can I come work for you? And I, and every time I get the email, I think my how the world has to hurt, right? Like, but I also know it's because I've done this really hard work that required me to go to some really dark places. Like, it wasn't always sunshine and rainbows. - Yes, and I have a team of people even today around me. My aunt is an RMT. I have Dr. Tomlinson who's at the anatomy of trauma. So if you go to anatomyoftrauma.com, you'll see my story there as well. I'm doing a lot of work just on myself about unlocking my own brain. Like, this is Dr. Northoff. And so if you look at this, so the brain is coded before it becomes conscious. So you don't have any consciousness of me coding you right now. It's linear, right? And then there's a gap and then you get the waves. And these are the waves that you're talking about. That's the consciousness that's coming in. So coding, then consciousness. - And we'll put links, by the way, for our listeners to the books. If you're listening, if you're not watching, Doug is holding up some books, unlocking the brain. Dr. Northoff. Dr. Northoff, yeah, I'll give you the foundation. - Well, we'll put links to these. These are all on my reading list. I'm trying to truck through some of these books that he's talking about right now as well. - I'll save you getting an encyclopedia and very small print and the scientific research behind it. Here's Diorg's book just came out. It's called Neuro-Waves, okay? And what it is is it's about removing duality, okay? So we all have a story and we all have a story and we tell ourselves. And so if you can remove the story that you tell yourself, you'll be happier and healthier, more productive. So that's removing duality. So he explains how scientifically the process works. So he's got a PhD in neuroscience, PhD in philosophy, and a PhD in psychology. - So Doug, you don't owe this. That book is on my list already. It's coming up in two books. I got two others you recommended to me that are coming before that one. - I'll do this one first. I have to also send that book to my daughter who is a photography major and she's at MIT right now studying time in the fourth dimension. And just even as I was listening to you talk about that, thinking about how her work folds in. Now she'll be mortified that I'm even talking about this on our podcast. But this idea of she's asking this question about what makes a photograph and is it even real? So for a long time, and you talked about this, put a bunch of photographs in this book and then that's the story, right? And I was just thinking about it as you were even saying that. And it's like, well, whose stories are those photographs, right? And how does bias play in? And how does time and perception of what is captured from the photographer and what they want you to see versus what's really there and what's really going on? So it's an interesting piece that she's working on for her dissertation and her master's program. So I wanna ask you, Doug, you talk a lot about self-worth and building self-worth during hard times. Do you have some practical advice you could give our listeners for someone who's struggling to rebuild their self-esteem? I asked the question, I could see it behind you, right? Self-worth, the missing link. - The missing link. This is it. There's 10 workshops and they're really simple. They take like an hour and a half each and they completely transform you. And I didn't do it. My co-host has created these over 40 years, Dr. Laurie Davis. So when it comes to self-worth, she handles that component of it because it is the one consistent component across the entire human species. We all feel like we're walking around and there's something wrong with us. And so every single one of us, so that link and understanding through a process of going inside yourself, it's not about your situation isn't about me, but going inside yourself and figuring out how the model works so that you can apply the pressure in the right area, you know? And when I say pressure, I mean kind pressure, you know, nudge certain things along and the other ones will become whole. And so this, this has broken down the whole process and I highly recommend it. I've done the workshops. I help people understand how they work and then I hand them off to Dr. Laurie Davis and she takes them through very calmly and it's awesome. - I love it. I'm gonna get to some of our quick fire questions in a little bit, but other questions. You're plugged in. I mean, you're the guy go to when it's like, hey, Doug, what's coming down the pike? What are people working on? 'Cause you're plugged into the innovators in this work. Looking ahead, what trends? What do you see for C in the field of trauma coming down? - There's two components. There's intrinsic, which is the stuff inside of you and extrinsic. I try to stay away from jumping from one to the other 'cause you lose people. So the coming together of those two things, I think they are moving towards each other. So intrinsic is moving towards extrinsic. So we're gonna be in, get to understand if we apply it inside and it works for us, we can then apply it to teams and organizations. So belief in self, belief in others and belief in the organization. Keep those siloed for the well-being of the people you're teaching them to. 'Cause if you try to rip through those three things in the same conversation, nothing will go in, like zero. - I think you're right. And I also think you're right. I'll just revisit something you said really early on that it's probably next year, next summer, fall of 2025 when we really begin feeling these aftershocks of COVID. And I think especially here in the US as we're in an election year, right? Like lots of big changes are gonna happen in the United States. No matter who wins or who doesn't win, big changes are on the horizon. And those aftershocks, if we burn through, like you're saying, we're talking 30, 60, a hundred years generationally leave marks, right? - Well, I'm looking forward to spending more time down there. I was just in Maryland, I've been down to Virginia and Maryland and Washington and gonna be down in LA. So I'm trying to do everything I can do to, for every event I do, I walk around and put one on every chair. And then when I start my presentation, I say, you have what I came here to bring you. If you have to leave, take it and I know you've got it. So the mission I think has to be for leaders is to make sure they get it, but not get something they could take home that they can work on, that they can manage. If it's not this, it's gotta be something else working on their emotions and what's going on inside their head, not how strong they can be. And it doesn't matter what industry. Doug, you're a person who's always had big goals. So for you personally and professionally, what new goals have you set for yourself over the next couple of years? And what's your plan to achieve them? Because that's the piece whenever I talk to you, you never tell me something without telling me how it's gonna happen. And it's the one piece of our friendship that I love the best because many people in my life tell me about the things they're working on with no idea how they're gonna do it. But when I talk to Doug Smith, there's always a like, here's what I'm doing and here's how it's happening. So you mind sharing just either personally or professionally some goals that you have and what your plan is to achieve them? - Well, my YouTube channel is a focus. There's two things, my YouTube channel and developing the Peak Performance Center here in Ottawa. So the Peak Performance Center is gonna be a place where people can go and get the latest in what we're talking about right now. And it's gonna tie into the physical too because it'll be a physical training center as well. So we're bringing those two things together. The YouTube project will be a good launching pad because my dad recorded, he recorded eight hours of just my shifts from a satellite dish, the first satellite dish in Ottawa. I've taken the eight hours, sent them to the US, got them done professionally. I have 150 videos with a whole bunch of players that don't have any footage of themselves. So we're making sure that we tag every player in there so that their sons and daughters and grandchildren can maybe have some of the footage of their parent playing in the NHL. And I'm gonna be releasing those alongside of moving people towards a better path, right? And I could say the Peak Performance Center or I could say the system, I just wanna move them towards a better path. That's all, just a little bit better and then they can take it from there. - Being the best for the world, that's what I heard you, right? Say earlier. - Yes, instead of being the best in, I tried the best in and that's the thing is I tried it and I tried it really hard and it didn't work. I promise you, it didn't work. So whatever you think you're chasing, try to be the best in the world or the best CEO or getting all the accolades, I assure you, it's not gonna work. - I'll double down with you on that. And frankly, I've never been the best at anything and I'll still double down with you on it because I just know how damaging it can be as well. Right, so key piece of advice. Someone who's out there who's listening, who maybe doesn't know anything about Shen or Doug, they've just found this because maybe a friend shared it with them, who's on a recovery journey of one kind or another. What's one key advice for them to redefine their path and where they are? - You know what, if you were in a hospital bed and you were paralyzed and you wanted to get better, like that's the worst situation, right? And anybody in between that and doing fantastic, I would say to them, if they wanna improve, understand your inner physician and you, right? Because the way healthcare's going, like let's just be wise about this. Like understand who you are and what your inner physician is. And this saved my life. It got me walking again. It got me going physically, but you know, but the process, as soon as you start reading your inner physician and you, you'll never go back because it's a process that once you start it, you'll see the improvements. - So, and that's by John Upledger, he founded the Brain and Spinal Cord Dysfunction Center in Palm Gardens, Florida. For everybody on this call, it's all about neuro. It's all about your central nervous system. There's three of them. I'm not gonna get into that right now. But if you build from your central nervous system out, you know, what'll happen is your performance will go up, your recovery systems will work better. You'll stay healthier. So that's my recommendation. - The brain's important. That's what Doug's telling you. There's some stuff happening there that we need to look at. Doug, you know you'll have to come on the show more than once because you and I could do a six hour recording and still not capture all the things we wanna say or talk about. - Oh no, it sounds like you're leading us out. I wanna stay longer. - I know. Well, I'm gonna give you a little more time. I wanna do some fun quick fire questions though. People, and then I'm gonna give you some closing thoughts here. But what's the latest book? You've already given us five, six books, which by the way, for our listeners, we'll put in the show notes. But latest book or television show that's caught your attention, why did it stand out for you? - I give the audience this. It scares me to share this at the end because it's moving into extrinsic motivation. But Ron is a special guy. He looks at physics the same way I do 'cause he's a physicist. - Yeah, building organizations that leap tall buildings in a single bound by Ron Wiens. That's W-I-E-N-S for those who are just listening, not watching, building organizations. It's good book. It's on my shelf. You can see it right here. - Yeah, so that's where I guide people today. - If you could have dinner, historical figure, contemporary leader, who would you choose, Doug, and more interesting for me, what's the question you'd want to ask that person? - Probably Ryan Reynolds and ask him whether he wants to blow the doors off of this thing. - I love it. You're the first person who was like, there's a one person who might be able to help us actually do this work and move it forward. - Yeah, I'm serious about that. I think it'd be worthwhile to dig into. What is the YouTube gets up and everything? And I'm right now dealing with the Los Angeles Kings on another issue. You know, we'll figure out how those pieces might come together and how it could be told in a way that can get to more people. That would be the motivation. - So you heard it here first. Doug Smith saying, "Ryan Reynolds, "so if any of our listeners know him, they'll tag him." - Oh yeah, he'll find me. If he needs to find me, he'll find me. - Everyone can find Doug. Even though your name is Doug Smith, you're easy to find, which is a unique, only 12 million Doug Smiths on planet Earth, one Shenandoah Chufflow, but somehow Doug has done a better job of making it easy to find himself and of finding me. What's filling you with joy, Doug? What hobby activity is just the thing that fills your joy, your heart with everything? - Sports day with grandpa Doug. We have two grandkids that are seven and three, and those boys come over. My daughter's pregnant with her third, and those boys come over, and we go from sport to sport. And my oldest grandson, seven years old said, he said to my wife, Patty, he went up to her at the park. He said, "We have a secret weapon." Grandpa Doug was a professional athlete. So he believes he has a secret weapon in me, and that makes me happy every day. - If you're your grandkids secret weapon, I think you've checked all the boxes, Doug. I mean, I don't know that there's anything better than being a grandkids secret weapon. That's pretty special for sure. Doug, what else do you want to tell our listeners? What do you just think is so crucial that folks know that you want to share with them? You're a Trevor Trove of information always for me, but what do you want to just share with everybody? And then also, please be sure to tell them how they can find you, what's the best platform, all your websites, all the stuff you're doing. - I would recommend this one move. Remain open, random, and supportive with family members, because we've got people in our family that are going different directions, cousins that are not talking to their family anymore, and they're always welcome, and we're always open, we're always random, and we're always supportive, right? You've got to be okay with being a little bit random, and that's okay, but just be kind to, and they'll come to your place, and they won't be alone, right, and that's important. We had 17 people, actually, at our place for Thanksgiving dinner. - Doug's coming to us from Canada, everyone, so if you're listening to the US, you're like, why is he already talking about Thanksgiving? 'Cause it happens a little earlier in old Canada. How can folks find you? Give them all the low-down websites. - If you go to DougSmithPerformance.com, and then Doug Smith NHL on LinkedIn, please connect with me on LinkedIn. The whole LinkedIn strategy is going to go through the roof. I'm gonna make it easier for people just to access this stuff. Like I say, my goal is to get it into a helicopter and drop it from the sky, but in a way that people pick it up and they can understand it. So just connect to me in one of these ways, and then I'll make sure you get the information. - And system438.com, right? That's the other way they can-- - Yeah, that leads to my website. - Doug, always a pleasure to have you on, looking forward to having you on again. Someday we're gonna be in person together. I'm still looking for the right thing to make that happen. Maybe I'll get invited to Sports Day. I mean, I'm the most athletic of all, so we can, we'll figure that out. - That's great, thank you so much, Shen. - For our listeners, we appreciate you so much for tuning in today. Thanks for tuning in to Mindful Management, creating a trauma-informed work environment. For more resources and helpful tools, head over to the show notes, all the books that Doug talked about, all the ways to connect with him will be there, or head over to shuffleoconsulting.com. If you've enjoyed today's discussion, show your support, liking, commenting, following and reviewing, it helps us, it helps us move the message along, and your feedback helps us reach more listeners and brings even more content your way. We'd love to hear from you. Drop a comment on Spotify or YouTube to share what topics you'd like us to cover, or who you'd like to see as our next guest. Maybe it's you, your stories, matters. And if you or someone you know would make a great guess, check the form in the show notes of the episode. We're always looking for fresh voices. Thanks again for listening. We can't wait to catch up with you next time, and remember, take it one step at a time. Until next time. (upbeat music) Mindful management, creating a trauma-informed work environment, is brought to you by ShuffleO Consulting. To learn more about ShuffleO Consulting and our trauma-informed change management and professional development solutions, please visit shuffleoconsulting.com. That's ShuffleOCHEFALOconsulting.com. Make sure you don't miss these transformative conversations by subscribing to Mindful Management, wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for listening, and remember, change happens one step at a time. (upbeat music) (gentle music)
In this episode of Mindful Management: Creating a Trauma-Informed Work Environment, host Shenandoah Chefalo speaks with Doug Smith of Doug Smith Performance. Join them as they discuss the trauma management model System 438, building a positive organizational culture, and Doug’s remarkable life story.
