Transcript – Quitting by Design – Interview with Dr. Lynn Marie Morski – BioTrust Radio #55

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Transcript – Quitting by Design

Shawn: Hello BioTrust Nation. We are back and we are excited because we have a very special guest today, Dr. Lynn Marie Morski, and she is going to blow your minds. Talking about what? Quitting. And quitting, like what is quitting? What does that mean? Quitting by Design is her thing. And we are so excited that my trusted co-host, Tim Skwiat and myself, Shawn Wells, have Dr. Lynn Marie Morski, and she is a quitting evangelist. And do you want to tell us a little bit about what that means, Dr. Lynn Marie?

Dr. Lynn Marie: Absolutely. Quitting has such a stigma in our society, and yet if you take a look at it, quitters do win all the time. And in fact, unless you woke up one day at 17 and knew exactly what you were going to do and where you were going to do it, and who you’re going to do it with. Pretty much every successful person has made a ton of quits along the way. And so, as a quitting evangelist, it is my goal in life to destigmatize quitting and show people what a useful and necessary tool it can be in carving out a life that aligns with your passions and your purpose.

Shawn: [laughs] That is that is awesome.

Tim: That is.

Shawn: I’m excited now. [chuckles] And I love “quitting evangelist.” So, let me read your bio. And it says that you are a quitting evangelist. And again, I love that term. “She helps people to and through their quits, through her book Quitting by Design, and her podcast Quit Happens.” I like that little play on something else happening that rhymes with it. “Along with speaking and coaching, she is also a board-certified physician,” which is totally badass, “in family medicine and sports medicine. Currently working at the Veterans Administration.” Props to you for that. I’m all about the military and supporting our veterans. In addition, she is an attorney and former adjunct law professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law.” That is insane.

Dr. Lynn Marie: [laughs]

Shawn: You are absolutely [laughs] insane. Yeah, you need to quit at some point here. You’re going too hard. You’re doing too much. You’re making us all look bad. And it says, “She began her professional life as a multimedia designer then made a major shift and embarked on a medical career, which began at Saint Louis University School of Medicine, then continued with family medicine residency at the Mayo Clinic and Sports Medicine Fellowship at the University of Arizona. During this time she was published in the American Journal of Family Medicine and presented at an international meeting of the American Society for Sports Medicine. After obtaining board certification in family medicine and a certificate of added qualification in sports medicine, Dr. Morski began law school at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, California, where she graduated as valedictorian.” That means the best people, number one.

Dr. Lynn Marie: [laughs] I’ve never heard my bio read out aloud.

Shawn: In December 2014, she was admitted to the California Bar. In June 2015, prior to writing a book and beginning her podcast, she was an adjunct professor of Health Law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and served as co-founder Chief Medical Office and in-house legal counsel for Med Republic. When not doctoring, lawyering, or preaching the gospel of strategic quitting, Lynn Marie can be found [chuckles] doing yoga, throwing around kettlebells or steel mace playing multiple musical instruments and dancing like everyone’s watching.”

Tim: Damn, people feel like unaccomplished losers. [laughs]

Shawn: I mean this is insane. Wow! Man, I thought we were cool and I thought I knew who you were, kind of.

Dr. Lynn Marie: [chuckles]

Shawn: And we were friends and buddies, and thank you for listening to BioTrustRadio, by the way. She’s a big fan. And now I feel super‑blessed to have her [chuckles] support of her listening to our show.

Tim: No kidding.

Shawn: This this bio is insanity.

Dr. Lynn Marie: [laughs]

Shawn: It just seems like somebody made this all up, and one person can’t have this. This is like an amazing family has this bio, maybe.

Tim: Yeah. [laughs]

Shawn: [laughs] It’s not like one person can do this.

Tim: Lynn Marie invented extra hours in the day.

Dr. Lynn Marie: [laughs] Right.

Tim: Super-impressive. We’re so humbled to have you here, Lynn Marie. Thank you so much for taking time to join us. We feel privileged to be with you, to impart some of your wisdom and experiences on us and on our listeners. I know this is such a treat. We’re all in for an extreme treat. Thank you very much.

Dr. Lynn Marie: I couldn’t be happier to be here because BioTrust fills this void of people who—there’s all these people in the weeds with wellness, and then there’s some kind of you know live your best life. But you guys tie those two in so well, and I just love listening to you. I love the back-and-forth between the two of you. So yeah, what Shawn may get to in a second is their lead-up to me even being on here is because I left a review. [laughs]

Tim: Yeah.

Dr. Lynn Marie: Saying how much I like the show. [laughs]

Shawn: Well, yeah, that’s true. You did leave a review and we’re unbelievably appreciative for people that do leave reviews. It not only helps the show with algorithms and whatnot, but literally, it’s great to get reinforcement. Because sometimes Tim and I feel like we’re in a vacuum and talking to ourselves, and it’s nice to hear that we’re impacting people out there in the ether of the world. And getting that feedback is just invaluable for us, personally. It’s really profound. Like when we read these, we’re often moved to tears.

Tim: Yeah, it’s very humbling.

Shawn: So, we’re thankful for the reviews. And anyone out there that wants to give a review, we greatly appreciate it. But I met Dr. Lynn Marie at A-Fest, and we had all these great speakers—Ben Greenfield, Jay Shetty, Vishen Lakhiani. An incredible time meeting these speakers and hearing about anti-aging, longevity in the Blue Zone. Sardinia, Italy, what an incredible place to be. Just a beautiful island. Amazing. If you guys haven’t been to Sardinia, I encourage you to go. It’s very different from what you might think of just Italy with Rome and Venice and those things. But it is known for long life. There’s more 100+ year-olds there than practically anywhere else in the world. And it was great to meet Dr. Lynn Marie there, and we’re excited to have her on the show. So, we want to hear from you on quitting for your health. And I want to know more about how you apply this idea of quitting and what it means to us.

Dr. Lynn Marie: Well, as a doctor, I see the end effects of a lot of people being stuck in a situation. You know, by the time they get to me, they probably have acid reflux or high blood pressure, or anxiety, or insomnia. Something along those lines. And those don’t come out of nowhere, generally. They are often the result of a stressful situation that you feel you can’t get out of, or a stressful situation that you have yet to choose to get out of. It may be a job that’s not working for you or a toxic relationship, or a city that just doesn’t fit your lifestyle. Or even mindsets that aren’t working for you. And so I’ve realized over the years that quitting is the only cure to fix these things, to nip them in the bud. Because your body will tell you when something isn’t working for you, because it’ll start whispering. When something’s not right and you don’t love your job, you start to get like a feeling in the pit of your stomach, way before you get acid reflux or irritable of irritable bowel syndrome, or anything like that. Or you might have a little bit of heart racing before you get full-blown anxiety or panic attacks. So, what I stress to people is to listen to your body, tune into when something isn’t working, strategically quit what isn’t working for you, while your body’s still whispering, before it starts yelling.

Shawn: Wow, that’s pretty profound.

Tim: That’s super profound. And there’s so much there.

Shawn: It’s proactive, for sure. That’s kind of more the Eastern medicine, like functional medicine, integrative medicine. All this stuff and all these terms that we’re hearing like where it’s approaching your health proactively instead of reactively, like is so typical of Western medicine with, “Okay, what are your symptoms? Here’s your drugs.” It’s kind of going back what we’ve talked, the five whys. Of peeling back the layers of the onion. Like what’s really going on here? Why don’t we solve the reason that you got these conditions, instead of approaching the symptoms and not looking at it holistically.

Tim: Holistically is a great word. That’s exactly what I was thinking about there. Because so much emphasis is placed on what’s the best diet, what’s the right exercise program for me. You’re talking about something maybe not completely different, but quite different. There’s some other thing in life that we may need to emphasize, right? And it sounds like stress plays a pretty substantial role in this process. And I think, like you’ve talked about some pretty far-reaching symptoms. But people might even think about like how stress can that lead to butterflies in their stomach and things like that, and maybe that kind of resonates. But talk to us a little bit more about how you might help someone through this process.

Dr. Lynn Marie: Well, the first thing to figure out is why you have a feeling of discontent. A lot of times people will have this feeling and have yet to identify the exact cause. So, through journaling and discussions, I drill down okay what exactly is it that isn’t working, because it’s a whole lot easier to quit a small thing than a large thing. So, for example, if the thing that’s bothering you about your job is the commute. You have a two-hour commute. The fact that you’re losing four hours of your life every day, so you feel it’s bringing you stress, or maybe just being in the car that entire time is bringing you stress or some chronic pain. But the job is fine, then is there a way that we can get you to talk to your boss, ask for a few days that you work from home instead of quitting the job altogether?

Because the quitting process is not always easy. There are fears involved, there are logistics. There’s quitting in a way that preserves the relationships as best as you can. So, if all you have to do is go ask your boss to work from home, that’s significantly easier than quitting that job, finding another one, preparing your logistics, making sure you’re not homeless in the interim. And you can drill that down through journaling or through just having a practice where you’re so tuned in to your intuition, where you figure out, okay, what exactly isn’t working for me? When is it that I have those stressful butterflies in my stomach? What is it that keeps me up at night? And that’s a good starting point. And from there, like I said, once you’ve figured that out, then you have to decide, okay what fears might keep me from making this quit. And then you work through those fears and then you prepare the logistics.

Some quits do not involve any kind of monetary whatever. Like you’re quitting a mindset? Great, you can still pay rent. But if you’re changing jobs or you’re leaving a marriage, or something that may have a significant impact on your financial situation, there’s logistics that have to be prepared there. And then the final step is, like I said before making, sure that when you do that quit, you burn the fewest bridges possible. Because if it’s a job—I mean, in life you generally don’t want to burn bridges, so if you could preserve those relationships, if you want to go back to that job ten years later, maybe the door will still be open. And if you are getting a divorce, it’s much better to have an amicable split than not. So, those are the steps in a strategic quit that I take people through.

Shawn: I’m curious to know, through like your journey that’s led you here, that you’ve become this expert on quitting, this evangelist on quitting. You, yourself, have to have gone through some transformative quits. So I’d like to know what those are because I feel like that’s going to be key to your story.

Dr. Lynn Marie: Absolutely. The first major quit was, as my bio indicated, I was a multimedia designer in St. Louis, Missouri, at age 20-21, and I was halfway through graduate school for a master’s in multimedia, Interactive Media Design, or whatever. You know, I paid for the first year, I’d gone to the first year, and I was working in the field already and I was miserable. And I thought, “Okay, is it just because I’m bad at it? Let me take some classes. Maybe if I get better at it, I’ll like it.” And the first day over the first JavaScript class, I was like counting the minutes. Dear everybody. If you’re counting the minutes at anything, it’s probably something you should quit. Like that’s one of the biggest red flags, I’d say. I was just so miserable in the first day of class, and I remember thinking at the lunch break, “If I can’t handle the class, I’m definitely not meant to be a multimedia designer.”

And I had to go back to the drawing board. And I was like what in the world could I do? Now I have no idea. I’d been like a video editing, essentially, major in college and it morphed a little bit to multimedia. But I was in a lot of video editing jobs that I wanted. And so, I was like okay, where do I go from here, and I put everything on a list. Like, do you want to be a florist, do you want to be a doctor? The list is vast. And through that process I picked sports medicine doctor. And I spent the next decade trying to get to be a sports medicine doctor. I had to do pre-med and med school and residency and fellowship. And through that ten years, there were so many signs that I missed that sports medicine wasn’t right for me, that I could only see in retrospect.

Which why my mission now is so important, because I didn’t have the insight and I wasn’t in tune to my intuition. I have no regrets, because all these experience led me to be able to pass this along. But at the end of fellowship, I was taking beta blockers, which are heart-slowing-down medication, because when I would see patients in this situation where it’s like one every 15 minutes, my heart would race so fast. And instead of being like, “Oh, you have anxiety because this isn’t right for you,” I treated the symptoms. Oh, just slow down your heart. And I was a doctor. I should have been trained to see anxiety from a mile away, and I missed it.

And so, after having finally realized, no, it’s this type of practice of medicine. I don’t want people demanding—because I was working for the Arizona Diamondbacks, who get disparaged in every interview I do. But they would they would be like, “We need you to come over and do this exam right now,” and I’m like, “You just got in a busload of brand-new people from wherever. They don’t need an emergency physical. Like they can wait an hour until I’m done with my clinic.” They would call and demand things. I didn’t want to have a pager that could go off at 2:00 in the morning. I didn’t want to have to prescribe opioids. And all these things that I didn’t enjoy doing where really stressing me out. And so I said, “No. When I get out of this fellowship, I’m going to practice medicine the way I want to. I’m strategically quitting every aspect of medicine I don’t like and I’m not taking another job until I find one that has exactly what I do.”

And lo and behold, the universe finally like put one up on Twitter. That’s where I found my current job. But it took realizing, making it through all that. Like there was some major quits in there, to realize, man you gotta tune in to your intuition, because my intuition was whispering. I’m sure with some like knots in my stomach and then it’s like, I mean, I had a full-on, full-blown panic attack at some point in medical school. Nobody noticed it. They just said, “Oh, you’re fine. Go home.” Like these should have been some signs. And so that’s why I advocate it now, so strongly. Like, pay attention to when things aren’t right for you. Because literally, those two quits, you know, quitting multi-media then essentially quitting most of sports medicine, are two of the bigger ones. But they laid a foundation that I use for every quit that followed.

Tim: You’re so impressive in so many different ways, Lynn Marie. And what really strikes me is, like jaw-droppingly astonishing, is that at 20-21 years old you recognized like immediately something that wasn’t right for you, and you took action. I think that there’s probably a lot of people at that same age that would have had a hard time making that same decision, because it’s not the conventional way to do things. And that only gets harder and harder to do as we go down the line. So. I really feel like you can play a very powerful role. At some point, I guess, people really need a mentor, like a coach or someone to guide them through this quitting process because it’s not easy, right? Even if we sense into it and know that something’s not right, it’s super hard to make that quit isn’t it?

Dr. Lynn Marie: It definitely is, and that’s why a coach is important. And that’s why I enjoy doing it so much. Because there are things, even if you’re looking at your own intuition, you could still miss. You know, if you’re not paying attention the butterflies in your stomach and you somehow then miss that it turns into acid reflux, but your friends might notice or your coach might notice, hey, you seem significantly more lit up when you talk about this area than this area. I mean, I have a coach. She said that once when we were planning some of my coaching programs, “This one seems to light you up a lot more than others,” like having that feedback and that accountability. And to have somebody to fight your number one enemy which is the voice in your head. Always.

Shawn: Yeah. [laughs]

Dr. Lynn Marie: You know, think about how many times you want to quit a thing and then there’s these fears like, this is what somebody’s going to say about it, and, “Who are you to try this new thing?” and, “Why would you quit this great job?” Like, you got another person to be like, “Well here, tell me what the voice in your head is saying and I’ll respond to the voice for you.” [laughs]

Tim: So you’re saying those voices are normal, right? [laughs]

Dr. Lynn Marie: Yeah. [laughs] I can’t figure out why we’re all born with one of them, but they seem to be very prevalent. [laughs]

Shawn: Yeah, we talk about this a lot, that one, that if anyone talked to you like you talked to you, you wouldn’t be their friend.

Dr. Lynn Marie: Exactly.

Shawn: That sometimes you have this horrible, horrible voice in your head that’s your worst inner critic, and it’s rough. It can be brutal sometimes. And then we have this quote on another show about, “You can’t read the label from inside the bottle.” And it’s so hard to judge yourself objectively, because sometimes you make it so complex. To your point about just all these things, like who’s going to think this and who’s going to think that, and what do I do it in this case. And someone else is just like, “Ah, it’s really simple. Here it is.” [laughs] And you could easily do that for someone else. You’re like, “Yeah, it’s super simple. Here it is.” But you know, you have to get over these hurdles. You have to get through all these blocks that are in your way. And so many of them are just made up, perceived, and not real. So, I love exactly what you’re saying.

And another question I had—well one, let me ask you this before I get into my question. How old are you, because you look like you’re about 25. And I’m going through the math of all this and I’m like what is she, like Doogie Howser or something. [laughs]

Dr. Lynn Marie: [laughs] I’m 97.

Shawn: A decade of sports medicine. She got the law school thing. “Like I was working on my masters and I decided to switch and then I did a decade…” and I’m like, “Is she like 70?” How old are you?

Dr. Lynn Marie: [giggles] This is amazing. This is why I love Shawn Wells. You’re not supposed to ask a woman her age, ever. He’s like, “I’m going to ask you live in this podcast.” So, while we’re at it, I’m 41.

Shawn: What!?

Dr. Lynn Marie: I’m like 143 pounds.

Tim: Wow!

Shawn: Holy moly!

Dr. Lynn Marie: [laughs]

Shawn: I’m stunned. I am stunned. Wow that is amazing. You look incredible. No, I actually think that it’s better to like say you’re older and look amazingly young, than for some people to throw out some young age and then they look older than that. [laughs]

Dr. Lynn Marie: [laughs]

Shawn: So, I think it’s awesome.

Dr. Lynn Marie: Yeah, yeah, what was your guess, Shawn? [laughs]

Shawn: Honestly, like I was thinking I was thinking like 29.

Tim: I was trying to figure this out too, Lynn Marie.

Shawn: Maybe no older than 33. Like it’s just no way. Like you’re a young-looking 33.

Dr. Lynn Marie: What did you come up with, Tim?

Tim: I was thinking mid to early 30s, as well. Yeah.

Dr. Lynn Marie: Well, you’ve made my day already.

Tim: It must be Ageless Collagen. [laughs]

Shawn: [laughs]

Dr. Lynn Marie: [laughs] I was just going to say, I am using some Ageless pill you guys gave me. [laughs[

Shawn: Well.

Dr. Lynn Marie: I took 100 before I started. [laughs]

Shawn: No, it’s awesome. Like, props to you. Because hey, I mean, when it comes down to it, what’s one of the things that ages us the most, right? It’s stress.

Tim: Yeah.

Shawn: Like stress and being in something that you don’t enjoy. And it can be a low‑grade thing that you’re just like, you know, this is a grind. Or it can just be a total shutdown, horrible experience that you’re just going through every day, and I don’t know why you’re doing that to yourself, but people do it. But either way, it’s taking its toll on you, like in terms of your age, in terms of your wellness, to your point at the beginning. And then these things manifest not only with aging, with wrinkles. Your body’s starting to react and shut down, and leading to disease states, right?

Dr. Lynn Marie: Yeah, absolutely. And for the people who are listening, a lot of people are probably, you know, biohackers, trying to optimize their wellness. And you may think okay, you know, I try not to be stressed this and that, but as your episode—I believe it’s one of the most recent ones that you guys release—talked about orthorexia and people who spend so much time concerning themselves with their fitness, that that too can cause so much stress. I went through that myself. It was one of my biggest quits that doesn’t sound like, you know, it wasn’t a job or a relationship, but I quit stressing over food and deciding. I quit deciding what to eat.

I handed over, you know, all of my statistics and some DNA, and whatever, and said like somebody make me a meal plan and somebody else cook it. Because I was spending hours and hours of the day going through Ben Greenfield’s site or Abel James, or Rob Woolf, or all these people. I just digested information all day long. But, you know, there’s the keto and there’s paleo, and everybody has their take. And I was gaining weight like crazy because I was so stressed out about trying to lose weight, and that was super counterproductive.

So one of the biggest quits for me was to quit just over-informing myself and just kind of passed that off to other people. And I lost weight and I’m much healthier now because of it, because I just outsourced it to the right person. And so it’s a quit that can be small. It doesn’t have to be a job, a relationship, or a city. It can be something that small that makes a big difference.

Tim: That’s so powerful, Lynn Marie. It also sounds like quite a tricky one. That one doesn’t seem like it would be too small for a lot of people because of the amount of control. We’ve talked about this before like with disordered eating behaviors how controlling every piece of food is a very important element, and orthorexia manifesting there, too. So, that sounds like it might be a really challenging one for a lot of people.

Dr. Lynn Marie: It is. And I will be totally frank, because you both were so open and honest on that suicide episode. I think that’s the first BioTrust episode I heard, and I was so touched by you all sharing.

Shawn: Thank you.

Dr. Lynn Marie: I mean, I still struggle. For me, I don’t struggle with what to eat because I turned it over to somebody else, but I still struggle with like if there are a few days when I can’t work out, I still have a little bit of anxiety.

Tim: Yeah.

Dr. Lynn Marie: And so it’s not that I’m somehow over this condition. You know, it’s very hard to get rid of body images issues.

Tim: Sure.

Dr. Lynn Marie: You want to look a certain way, and that’s fine. And as I get older, it gets harder to look that same way. There’s like you said, more things that you want to control. And so I completely empathize with anybody who’s in that situation. And I never say that these are easy. Like some of these mindset quits are going to take a therapist, a coach, some professional help to get through, for sure.

Shawn: I have a question now. It’s kind of an enticing question to ask here, is that it sounds good to always say “Go chase your quit,” and, you know, “There’s something out there that’s better. The grass is always greener.” You know, “Go quit this thing that’s breaking you down,” but there’s got to be times when the quit doesn’t work or when the quit wasn’t the right decision to make, or wasn’t the best thing for you. I mean, is there one, is there cases of that for you, or two, do you ever encounter that with your clients?

Dr. Lynn Marie: For me, like I said before, okay, maybe I haven’t exactly said this to you guys. Okay, the difference between giving up on a thing and quitting, is the difference between whether the voice in your head is telling you—like we were talking about—or if you start to have physical symptoms. And if I’m having physical symptoms, then it doesn’t matter if the thing that I go to after the quit isn’t amazing, I definitely should have quit the first thing.

Shawn: That’s a great point. Yeah.

Dr. Lynn Marie: You know, there’s nothing that I can look back in my life and think I really should have stuck through that bout of insomnia I was having. You know, like my body is intelligent. It knows when I’m in the wrong situation. And that’s why when people ask what’s the difference between quitting and giving up? Well, if it’s just that self-talk in your head, yeah, I’m not going to quit a thing. But as soon as it’s taking itself out on my health, then I do. And so there’s no quit that I’ve had where I thought, “Oh, I should have tolerated that more and watched my health deteriorate.”

And I can’t think, at least in my own experience, of something that I should have gone back to. Because if it was at that point, no, I definitely should go on to the next thing. Now, like what you’re saying, if it’s a job or if it’s a relationship and you quit it and you go on to the next one and the next one isn’t better, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have quit the last one. That just means okay, you’ve got another thing to quit.

You know, we make decisions all day long. Not all of them are amazing. As long as you consistently learn from the quits, then you’re not starting at ground zero again. These aren’t wasted experiences. These aren’t bad moves. These aren’t things to regret. These are pieces of information that you learned from, that you will use to make your next decision.

Shawn: Yeah.

Tim: Do you want to be a part-time co-host on the show.

Shawn: Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Lynn Marie: Yes. [laughs]

Shawn: It’s incredible. She should be a doctor or a lawyer or something.

Tim: You want to add something else?

Shawn: Musician.

Dr. Lynn Marie: Old lady. [laughs]

Tim: So, Lynn Marie, when we’re talking about the quits, I think like a job or a relationship, those things, I’m not saying that they’re easy, but those things stand out is like, okay, I can understand why that might be a problem. One thing you’ve mentioned a couple times already that resonates with us, but I was wondering if you could dive into a little bit more is quitting a mindset. Can you talk to us a little bit more about that?

Dr. Lynn Marie: Absolutely. I’ll give you some examples of mindsets that I think quitting them helps people a lot. The scarcity mindset. So, scarcity versus abundance.

Shawn: 100%.

Dr. Lynn Marie: And bringing that up because I still to this day struggle with that. You know I was raised in a not wealthy at all family and the scarcity was our reality. And so just despite having a good job now, it’s really hard to get rid of that mindset. And so that’s what I’m in, you know, coaching or therapy for, like, that’s the mindset I’m working on. Another one that I had struggled with a little bit when I was starting this, that you guys did an episode on, was imposter syndrome.

Shawn: Huge.

Dr. Lynn Marie: That’s another mindset. The who am I to be doing this new thing. Like you guys now call me a quitting expert. At the beginning I was like, well, nobody crowned me a quitting expert. Well, that’s not even a thing, so whatever. [chuckles] Like I’m as quitting an expert as you’re going to find in this very specific thing I wrote a book on. [laughs]

Shawn: Absolutely.

Dr. Lynn Marie: So, yeah, there’s all kinds of limiting beliefs that will help you, once you quit those. First off, you have to identify them. Not always the easiest thing. But identify those, and those are the ones, like I said. You know, this is going to take some work, therapy, coaching, talking with your friends, journaling, and all the jazz to get through. But they make many other quits unnecessary, because some people, they’re in Dallas or also in wherever you guys are, like “I’m just going to quit living here. I just need to move somewhere,” and they have this general discontent. Well, wherever they move, they’re going to have to up and quit their job, their relationships, their friends, relocate, try to find new ones of all those, but who’s still there? Them, and their mindset. And so, unless you quit the things that are causing you discontent in your own mind, it doesn’t matter where you go or what job you have. So, a lot of the quits start with a mindset quit.

Tim: Yeah.

Shawn: That’s profound. I’m loving this episode.

Tim: Yeah.

Shawn: I’m loving the Dr. Lynn Marie effect here. I think she should be like a co-host or something.

Tim: Yeah, we have to do this more often.

Shawn: [laughs]

Dr. Lynn Marie: I’m having a great time.

Shawn: Thank you. I have so many questions. Well, I’d like to know, can you share—of course, no HIPPA infringement, here but what are your most profound cases, leaving out obviously names and specifics, but just one of your most profound coaching quits that you guided someone through. I’d love to hear a direct story of how you helped someone.

Dr. Lynn Marie: Well, a lot of people think about quitting. When I first mentioned quitting, they think I’m talking about quitting smoking, right? Like if you just hear “quitting” that’s the first thing. If you go to Amazon and you put in “quitting,” like the first five are smoking, the sixth one is meth, and the seventh one is my book. So, I’m just slightly less popular than quitting meth. [laughs]

Shawn: [laughs]

Dr. Lynn Marie: But that’s what a lot of people think is we’re talking quitting gambling, quitting smoking. And so, some of my most profound experiences are helping people quit the vices, but I do not want to help you quit the vice. I want to help you quit the mindset that’s making you reach for that. Or quit the job that’s leading you to self-medicate with that vice.

Because think about when, you know, yes at some point in time it becomes alcoholism. At some point in time you get addicted to cigarettes or whatever the drug is. But the first few times you pick them up, unless it’s recreationally, it’s probably because okay I’ve had a really rough day at the office I’m going to grab a drink, or I’m fighting with my wife. I’m going to go to the bar instead and grab a drink. Like you’re probably self-medicating, even if it’s with something not even so addictive as shopping or whatever else. A lot of the things we reach for are just trying to cover up symptoms from the root cause. And the root cause is whatever is totally out of alignment.

Tim: Yeah.

Dr. Lynn Marie: And so those are the quits I enjoy the most is like helping people identify what the root cause is. The root cause might be a job, it might be a relationship, or it might just be a mindset. Some people are stuck in mindsets that developed from childhood that involve shame or guilt, or whatever. And it takes quitting that, whatever story you have around that, to get rid of those vices.

Shawn: That’s huge. So was there was there a specific person that you walked through something as powerful as that?

Dr. Lynn Marie: Yeah, and we dug down because I was like, “Okay, you like your job, you like this relationship and you like this other thing that you’re involved in. Okay, we’ve got to keep walking backward and walking backward. Then, okay, well then what makes you pick up this vice? Oh, what were you thinking when you first started this vice?” And then we realized that it was a mindset. You know, there was some shame and guilt involved, and that was a story around that that we had to deal with. And then once you deal with that, you can work back to actually getting rid of the vice.

Shawn: That’s amazing. That is the five whys kind of thing, right there.

Tim: Yeah.

Shawn: That’s very cool.

Tim: So, Dr. Lynn Marie, like when people come in to you to see you as a doctor, are you seeing like these health issues, are there some common health issues that you’re typically seeing? You mentioned some things already, but it sounds like there’s some pretty common symptoms that people might be experiencing that kind of lead you down that path of let’s find out what we need to quit, right?

Shawn: Including blood work?

Dr. Lynn Marie: Well, and I’m going to be totally upfront here. So, I work at the Compensation and Pension Department at the VA. So, I don’t, at this point make anybody better, I just make them richer. Like they just come to me and get benefits. So, most of my experience with patients. So, when I’m coaching people, I’m not coaching them as a doctor, I’m coaching them as a coach, because of what I’ve seen in medicine.

Shawn: Okay.

Dr. Lynn Marie: But I still, to the vets who come in to me, I mean, I’m doing an exam and then they get money. I don’t fix them, but I have to go through their medical records. And time after time, I see is in abusive relationship or is fighting with partner, or there’s abuse in the past. And then I see, okay, they’ve got acid reflux, they’ve got depression, PTSD, and these issues like insomnia, obesity because they haven’t found a healthy way to deal with their stress so they’re using food. I mean, the same symptoms and diseases come up time and time again, when I track back.

You know, the people who seem to have reached like relatively well-balanced lives at home, and they aren’t talking about in their background a whole lot of stress, they don’t have necessarily the same symptoms. They might come in with a torn ACL or something that’s more musculoskeletal. Those can still be symptoms of something you need to quit, but it’s less likely they’re going to have more of these kind of nebulous irritable bowel disease or chronic pain, or migraines type of thing.

Tim: Yeah, well along those same lines, the people that you’re coaching, they’re probably coming to you with these manifestations, right? That help the symptoms, the physical symptoms: the IBS, the acid reflux, depression, and things like that. Those are all kind of along the same lines then, right?

Dr. Lynn Marie: Yeah, a lot of anxiety, and a lot of just unrest. A lot of people just feel stuck and kind of like imagine you’re just stuck in a box and you can’t figure out where to get out, but you don’t necessarily even know why. And that’s part of my job is to try to decide and help them decipher what box are you stuck in? What is making you feel so trapped? Because for sure, you’re going to feel anxious, and anxiety leads to insomnia and it insomnia leads to weight gain. And it’s just kind of a snowball after that. So, those are the common symptoms that I’m seeing.

Tim: Yeah.

Shawn: And I imagine there’s things that medically could be predispositions towards quitting being even more relevant. Like I’m thinking like I deal with some autoimmune conditions. And for me, the quitting thing becomes even more profound, right?

Dr. Lynn Marie: Yeah, absolutely. And for the people who have those specific issues, if your immune system is already teetering, please get your cortisol and all those things in line, because you don’t want anything tipping the balance way further off of homeostasis. You want to keep things really in line. I mean, that’s why I have this aura ring. I don’t have it an autoimmune condition, but I bio track every night with this ring, to make sure that I’m only working out as hard as I should be at the gym and that I can track my body temperature and make sure that I sleep eight hours. I really did not find more hours in the day. I sleep a ton of them, because I’m trying to keep myself in homeostasis. And like you said, it’s much more important, even moreso, if you’ve got an underlying condition, to do that.

Shawn: You’re awesome. We have to wrap up, but I want to say your book is available on Amazon, as well as a bunch of other places. And it’s called, Quitting by Design, and this is Dr. Lynn Marie Morski, and she has a podcast. Maybe we can come on your podcast. [laughs]

Dr. Lynn Marie: I would love to have you on my podcast. Here is your official invitation.

Shawn: Oh, nice. Okay. And it’s called Quit Happens. No, I didn’t say the other thing. It’s cool, it rhymes. And then you have your Instagram, which is Lynn Marie Morski, right?

Dr. Lynn Marie: It’s Quitting by Design.

Shawn: Oh Quitting by Design. Okay, got it. So, yes, go check her out there for even more content. And we’re excited that you came on the show.

Tim: Yeah, I’ve got too many more questions, Lynn Marie.

Shawn: Super blessed. [laughs]

Tim: But I would say, can you leave our listeners with some kind of question or some kind of piece of advice.

Shawn: Maybe if they’re teetering. Yes.

Tim: Yeah.

Dr. Lynn Marie: If you’re teetering, and if any part of your teetering is the fear of quitting itself, I want you to realize that “quitting” isn’t the dirty word; “settling” is the dirty word here. You do not want to be at the end of your life and look back and think man I spent 20 years too long in a career or a marriage, or a city that wasn’t working. Because there’s an opportunity cost to everything. You cannot live in two cities at once. You generally can’t have two jobs at once or be in two marriages at once. You’re missing out on the opportunity to be in a better job, city, or relationship, if you stay stuck in something. So please, take away the stigma of quitting. Quitters do win. I promise that that old “quitters never win” thing is a total fallacy. The only people who do win are people who strategically quit their way there.

Tim: Wow, that’s awesome.

Shawn: That’s a mic dropper for sure. [chuckles] Thank you so much for being on the show. Man, by the way, we’ll have all the show notes and more about Dr. Lynn Marie on BioTrustRadio.com. We’ll have links to her book, to her podcasts, to her Instagram, so that you can follow her everywhere that she is. She’s an amazing person and I would encourage you to listen to her more and read on her more. And I think it can have a profound impact on your life by strategically quitting.

Tim: Yeah, and I mean, even if you know someone else that might be in situation, it seems to me like I can identify some people that I think would really benefit from what the message that you can empower people with, Dr. Lynn Marie. Man, I’m so impressed. Thank you so much.