When we feed our mind with happiness, our body becomes at ease and we are able to think well. But why do most people struggle to find genuine joy in their lives? In this episode, David Meltzer, the Co-Founder of Sports 1 Marketing, provides valuable insights on exercising the mind so it can perform to the fullest and deliver a positive impact on heart health. He shares with Dr. Jack Wolfson how losing everything opened his eyes and motivated him to turn his life around. Listen as David talks about five daily practices that can help us to be truly happy, wealthy, and worthy in our everyday lives.
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David Meltzer: His Happiness Mission And The Think Well Impact On Heart Health
We bring on the best guests with the most brilliant minds and phenomenal experience as we try and help you achieve your 100-year heart. I’ve seen this man speak on several occasions. It is always very empowering for me to be able to learn so much from David Meltzer. He is a legendary sports executive, entrepreneur, and investor. He cofounded Sports 1 Marketing and formally served as CEO of the renowned Leigh Steinberg Sports & Entertainment Agency, which was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire if you saw that. That’s one of my favorite movies. David has been recognized by Variety Magazine as their sports humanitarian of the year, and you’re going to find out why, and he was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.
He was also the Executive Producer of the Apple TV series 2 Minute Drill and Office Hours. He is also the subject of many different interviews. You’ll learn so much from David. His life’s mission is to empower over one billion people to be happy. We’re going to learn about how happiness leads to cardiovascular health and longevity. This simple, yet powerful mission has led him on an incredible journey to provide one thing, and that’s value.
He’s given you all this truth and nuggets of information. This is valuable. In all of his information and communication, that’s exactly what you see, is value. As part of that mission for the last many years, he’s been providing free weekly training to empower others to be happy. David, what I tell people ultimately is, “Find your happy.” Why are many people struggling with this happiness concept?
It is because they don’t realize they need to shift a paradigm. Most people are trying to get happier. The truth is you are born happy and at ease. What we need to do is identify what is creating dis-ease. I love the fact that you’re a Western-trained medical cardiologist, and that you understand science, but your wife should be credited for opening your eyes to understanding that science is complemented by the intention.
What we do in eating well and moving, which are things that we do, are also enhanced by what we say, and then are enhanced by what we think. If we’re doing, saying, and thinking things aligned with a trajectory of what we think we want, like longevity, vitality, health, wealth, worthiness, all of these mostly common things that we’re all striving for, we start to realize that those three components, what we do, say, and think affect two other intentions.
Most importantly, which I’m probably hopefully going to give some valuable input into your diagram as you’re evolving, is as a cardiologist, what does the heart do? Number one, it indicates whether we’re alive or not. Your brain can stop and you’re still alive. I can cut your ear off like Van Gogh, and you’re still alive. No arms or legs and you’re still alive. I can shave your head, and you’re still alive, but the minute your heart stops, you’re dead. This is what determines death or not. Ironically, what the heart does is it feels because it puts our energy in motion. It creates emotion. Our ultimate truth of vitality, longevity, health, happiness, and worthiness is the way we feel. The way that people want to feel is at ease. One of the words that describe living at ease or in the flow is happy or joy.
What we need to do is use great doctors like yourself who understand the five levels of intention, because better than anyone, when it comes to vitality, longevity, health, and happiness, doctors know what to do. They know what to eat, what to exercise, how to reset dis-ease in an actionable way and they also know what to say. When we start looking at, “What do we think?” sometimes doctors because they’re probably the most well-trained individuals in our society, and not necessarily training promotes open-mindedness.
Open-mindedness approaches and appreciates the thought and allows us to think about it and look at things in a different way, which is what your wife was able to do to you and said, “Change the way you look at things. The things you look at might change.” To understand it’s not just what we do and say, what we eat, exercise, medications we take, and transplants we have, but it’s what we are saying as well and most importantly, what we think in order to change the way that we look at things.
In other words, change the way that we believe. If we change the way we believe, we then will feel differently. Throughout history and human nature, people will always come to the construct of feeling from Maya Angelou, Gandhi, to Bob Proctor. All these people will talk about, “How do you feel?” Ultimately, whether it’s gratitude, forgiveness, accountability, or inspiration, these are ways that we put ourselves at ease.
If we change the way we believe, we will feel differently.
No one is better suited than you to help people feel good. That’s why I’m honored and excited to be here to hopefully bring a little more perspective like your wife has to you to how you, knowing with your genius, can change the way that people feel. As I always say, attention plus intention equals coincidence. You’re creating coincidences of what people truly want.
Where can we start with this? You’re talking about feelings, beliefs, and thoughts as a way to overcome dis-ease or unease. That’s one of those chiropractor things, too, where they talk about. The medical doctors say, “Disease,” and they say, “Dis-ease,” like something is a matter with your easiness.
I created five daily practices. Notate that I say daily because it’s important that we utilize time to our advantage. Daily is a limitation that we all have in the present. Meaning that presently, as far as I know, everyone on Earth is limited by 24 hours. I’ve created daily practices that aggregate compound and adjust according to another constant beyond time times a dependent variable of all matter subjective and objective because everyone has 24 hours.
I utilize time as a quantitative measure of, “How much time did I spend yesterday at dis-ease? Am I improving on that because I know the less time I spend at dis-ease, the more dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins are released that make me healthy, happy, worthy, and wealthy?” It’s proven biochemically in our own beings. More importantly, when I utilize time, I also have to utilize the other constant, which is change.
To limit change to 24 hours and be able to pursue a trajectory of what I think I want to be healthy, happy, wealthy, and worthy, then I can look at these five daily practices. Number one, “What do I want today personally, experientially, giving and receiving-wise in a trajectory of living to 100?” It is one of the long-term objectives I have. I want to live to over 111. A little numerical fact, I was born on January 11th. That’s 111. I used to tell people, “I wanted to live in 211.” Dyan Cannon from Heaven Can Wait said, “Why are you limiting yourself?” Now it’s over 111. Think about it, if I can get everyone to think about what they want personally, experientially, giving and receiving-wise, we now can move to the next level of, “Who can help you?”
“Can Dr. Wolfson or David Meltzer help you? Who can help you get to where you want to be?” More importantly than the acceleration that occurs by asking for help from people like you and I, “Who can I help?” Beyond the acceleration that occurs by asking others for help, helping others get to where they want to be accelerates and creates statistical success in our trajectory towards what we think we want today open-minded that it changes tomorrow then we can move to the third step.
That is, “I know what I want, who can help me, and who I can help. How best can I get this done under the construct of time? What activities should I plan? What activities should I not plan? What sleep do I need to recover and access information from today to take to tomorrow so that I’m plateauing, growing and not living my life like a tube food in and food out, not using pain, setbacks, failures, and mistakes as indicators to find light, love, and lessons in my journey or trajectory?”
If you know your what, who, and how today in a trajectory of what you think you want tomorrow, you then can prioritize what’s important to you, “What to eat and to exercise? Who to hang out with? What to read? What to listen to?” all the different things, your activities during the day, activities you can pick that are paid for and activities are unpaid for. When we know the what, who, and how, and know what to prioritize, we’re now utilizing our now in an accelerated way to get to where we think we want to be.
We’re growing, expanding, and accelerating. We’re healthy, wealthy, and worthy. We’re starting to figure out what we’re doing to interfere with it. We’re starting to identify and raise our awareness of what’s creating dis-ease between us in the omniscient, all-powerful, all-knowing source that loves us even more than our mom.
In essence, the fifth step, your what, who, how, and fourth, your now, we then live in spirit with intellect and intuition to get to where we want to be. We shifted the paradigm to instead of trying to get something that already exists and trying to find our why, we apply our why by figuring out what we’re doing to interfere with it or create dis-ease. The way that we do this is by doing, saying, thinking, and believing what we want in a trajectory of what we think we want that allows us to minimize the times that we don’t feel good, minimize the interference and the ego-based consciousness, and maximize the ease or the flow.
That was a fantastic review of your top five of what you recommend on a daily basis. Looking at things and prioritizing day by day, a lot of people need to take it day by day. It’s like, “Let’s not focus even on how we’re going to get to 100 or 111 years old.” I agree there are no limitations, but certainly, there are a lot of people who are reading that they’ve been told that their life expectancy is not long. I’ve seen cardiology patients get congestive heart failure, a couple of heart attacks, and multiple stents. They have a defibrillator, and their life expectancy is five years on average.
What we try and do is of course offer people much longer than what’s in the standard paradigm. Ultimately, this is where you and others like yourself come in to be able to offer certainly that third component of the eat well, live well, and think well. That’s why I interview experts like yourself because this is not my background, but in my research, understanding, and speaking to others, that idea of self-acceptance and self-worth feeling that you’re good enough, does that stream into what is very well known for, which is gratitude?
We can never overachieve our own self-image. Once again, I use time as a dependent variable, for all matters. Remember, perspective changes time. The past is infinite. I can change the meaning of defining moments and inflection points in my past to align with the trajectory of my future. Those who may be told that they have five years to live, we can create more productivity, accessibility, and gratitude in that life by using gratitude to change their perspective. When we’re trying to find the light, love, lessons, and everything that we can bend time, I can ask you right now to close your eyes and go back 100 million years. In manmade constructive time, it will take you about a second.
When we start realizing the infinite amount of time that exists in the past, that is only limited by the meaning that we give the past. I see many people who are told they have a limited existence on this Earth and give the wrong meaning to their past of punishment, shortages, voids, and obstacles. That’s a much faster dis-ease than that of cardiovascular, cardio failure, or whatever else could happen. When people tell me how long I have to live, I think about a heart attack story that I heard about a woman who is dying of a heart attack lying on the ground. The ambulance gets there and she sees God, and God says, “Breathe, relax. I promise you everything is going to be fine. You’re going to live a long vital life of happiness, health, wealth, and worthiness.”
She wakes up in the hospital, and she’s fine. She was looking around and figured, “I’m in the hospital already. I have this long life ahead of me.” She elects to do some plastic surgery for the new life that she’s been given. She does all this plastic surgery. She comes out of the hospital. She walks out and a bus comes by, runs her over, and kills her. She goes to heaven. She looks at God and said, “You told me that I had a long life to live. I did all this stuff in order to appreciate and enjoy my life. I step outside the hospital, and a bus kills me. What’s going on?” He goes, “I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you.”
My point is we give meaning to everything that we see. One of the biggest things about thought is to make sure the meaning of the inflection points in defining moments of our life is aligned with where we want to be or think we want to be. The only thing that limits our future is ourselves. If we’re utilizing the five daily practices and giving meaning to our past, our thoughts, and all the past is our thoughts, the number one way to give an aligned meaning to your life is gratitude because if you see yourself through gratitude as being protected and promoted, if you’re in search of the light, love, lessons and everything, it will evoke forgiveness, which creates ease more than anything else.
You will be accountable and participate in that new perception created by gratitude that causes more inspiration, confidence, coincidences, intellect, intuition, happiness, and enjoyment. If you think that life is long, try being angry all the time. Five years of ease is like 600 years of dis-ease. Putting someone at ease is the most important. It’s not the manmade construct of time. It’s the perspective of time. Gratitude is a powerful tool of perspective of meaning. Remember, the thoughts about your purpose are your purpose. It’s a mechanism to apply your why through your thoughts about purpose. That’s your purpose.
When I think about gratitude, correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s like you’re saying that there are good things that happen, there are no so-good things that happen, and everything happens for a reason. We can have gratitude for all of these experiences in how they shape us going forward.
You can give the reason why it happened. There are no good or bad. You make the good or bad about what has occurred. I see it historically. You see it now. I’m sure you’ve seen it in your patients. There are some patients that create good out of what you tell them. There are some patients that are punished by what you’re telling them. I see many people in sports do the same thing. I live in a world of protection and promoted. I have faith that I am part of something bigger than me, the omniscient, all-powerful, all-knowing source that loves us even more than our mom.
I’ll give you an analogy. For me, life happens. When I was three years old, I reached out to touch a hot stove. My mom never yelled. She never hit. She raised six kids, and all went to the Ivy League. My mom slapped the crap out of my hand at three and screamed at me. I immediately started to cry, “Why are you punishing me?” I got this dis-ease, “I was looking for the light. The fire, I wanted to touch it.” My mom hugged me and said, “I’m not punishing you. I’m protecting you. You don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t want to touch that fire and that stove. It’s going to hurt you.”
It’s interesting because, at that time, I thought I was being punished. I use that analogy in my life. If someone tells me, “There’s dis-ease in my life,” I tell myself, “This is indicating. There’s something better for me. What do I have to do, say, think, believe, and feel in order to effectuate?” There’s a picture of the source taking a little teddy bear away from a baby girl, and she’s bawling and crying.
In the picture, you see hidden behind this entity’s back is a bigger teddy bear. This is what happens to many people. This is where miracles happen that have a mindset. They still do and say all the things they’re supposed to do. If the doctor says, “Do this. Eat this. Exercise this. Take this pill,” they still do all those things. The only difference is they’re saying, thinking, believing, and feeling the right things, which gives them statistical success to get to a better place, position, and situation.
You and I are extremely educated, but I will tell you one commonality that you and I have as experts. We don’t know what we don’t know. The more humble we are, the more inspiring others to say, “Here’s my best guess from my experience. Here’s what’s best to do,” but you determine what you say, think, feel, and believe from what we know, and you can know more. That premise statistically provides more for everyone.
Many people are living in fear and distress and have anger and anxiety. Social isolation has been a major problem. All of those are well-known to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease.
They create cortisol and inflammation. It’s physically proven what they create. You want dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins, which create and evoke health. Fear creates cortisol and inflammation.
Cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine are things that can be problematic. We’re missing out on the oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine that help to help to achieve the parasympathetic balance that we all need. Many people are in sympathetic overdrive and all the problems associated with that are cardiomyopathy, heart failure, blood pressure, heart attacks, and heart rhythm issues. There are two things that I think are very poignant. The number one cause of heart attacks in women under 50 is called SCAD or Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection.
Usually, a stressful situation causes that. The most common cause of heart failure for women under 50 is called Takotsubo cardiomyopathy or Broken Heart syndrome, where that stress acutely manifests in cardiovascular dysfunction at that moment. I love what you say that it’s how we think about all these experiences. As you’re talking, I’m thinking about my past and things that have come up in my life and it’s all about how you can spin that. Can you spin that into something that will be positive or negative? Obviously, you’d want to spin it to positive.
It takes time. That’s why I always reiterate studying and understanding time as a dependent variable of these subjective occurrences and matters. I’ll give everyone my own personal experience. I lost over $100 million in 2008. I went bankrupt. The only reason I wanted to be rich was to buy my mom a house. I still get choked up thinking about it. I had to tell my mom not only that I lost everything, but I lost her house. She had to move out because I didn’t put her name on the title. I kept my name on it.
If you would’ve asked me the day after this happened, what that meant to me with the meaning I gave it was punishment. I wasn’t sure what I did to deserve such pain, disappointment, shame, blame, and justification in my life. I always tried to be the best person I could to help other people. God knows that I wanted to help my mom, “How could you take her house?” and then I changed the meaning. I said to myself, “This is a big slap. God’s screaming at me. This is a fire. What am I supposed to learn from this? How did I participate in this perception?”
I realized that I was praying to the wrong God. I was praying to the God of money, that I was defined by my bank account, and I needed to make changes. I needed to do, say, think, and believe things differently so I could feel differently. Here I am, many years later, and that is one of the greatest things that ever happened to me.
I am grateful that I lost everything so I had an opportunity to save my marriage and my life and to live my life in an enjoyment of the consistent persistent pursuit of my potential to live, learn and utilize the skills and knowledge that I was blessed with a new desire to instead of compete to complete. Think about it. I don’t wish it on anyone, but to me, it’s one of the greatest events and circumstances of my entire life, which the day after was the worst thing that ever happened to me.
They’re powerful for everyone who’s reading and how we could spin these things, these negative and health diagnoses, and work on creating a positive. One example of that is if someone gets diagnosed with a condition called atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart rhythm, and all those things we talked about, anything that creates inflammation is certainly linked to atrial fibrillation, and if we get rid of the inflammation, everything else seems to get better.
I tell people that atrial fibrillation is not one of the worst diagnoses that somebody could get. Somebody could have terminal cancer, dementia, or have had congestive heart failure or massive heart attack.” I’m not minimizing atrial fibrillation, but how we can use this as an opportunity, spin this to the positive and say, “You have AFib. These are the reasons why. If you change the reasons why through eat well, live well, and think well, then not only can you do well possibly reversing atrial fibrillation, but then now you’ve got longevity. Now you’ve got your brain and anti-cancer mechanisms and everything else to go along with it so you can spin that into a positive.
I had one of my best friends, his older brother had the widowmaker and a massive heart attack. It damaged his heart. Thank goodness he is alive and healed, but living more diminished capacity with the energy level that his heart can give him. I asked my best friend who’s his younger brother, “Go get tested. Go to the 3D checkout.”
Lo and behold, the next day they were doing a triple bypass surgery on him. Now, this friend of mine lived in fear. He would live with stress and disease. It was only contributed a matter of days. It could have been until he died. Because of this awful event, and now through this diagnosis, guess what he’s doing? He’s eating, exercising, and thinking well. He’s grateful for the life that he is appreciating life. Meaning, adding value to it.
He’s acknowledging life. The only way we can acknowledge things and the knowledge of what we have is to not have it anymore. What some of these diagnoses do to us is give us the awareness or the acquisition of knowledge of what it would be like not to have a life anymore, then it allows us to ask for more of the right things, foods, exercise, friends and ideas, which are as important as food. Remember, if you surround yourself with people and ideas that feed you, it’s the same as eating organic.
The only way we can acknowledge things and acquire the knowledge of what we have is not to have them anymore.
It might be more powerful because if we’re feeding ourselves the right ideas and the right energy, it can give us a greater resistance to bad food and bad drink. I want to encourage everyone to see things with gratitude. Define the light, the love, and the lessons in whatever diagnosis you’re given, all of it is an acknowledgment of where you are so you can get yourself to a better place and position, and utilize your time to be productive, accessible, and gracious.
Your friend who you spoke up with the brother who has the widowmaker and goes through all this, it’s a good thing he didn’t have plastic surgery while he was in the hospital.
He needs it. He looks like me.
He is beautiful on the inside. That’s for sure. Can we like flip that switch in difficult circumstances? How do we move toward that? I want you to share everything so people can find you. How do we move into this area of gratitude? If I think about some catastrophe as I perceive it, that happens to me and we can come up with examples we need not come up with, how do we flip that switch? How do we spin that?
You can flip the switch. It takes practice. Number one, create a habit machine that allows us to practice what we want and stop practicing what we don’t want. The thing about human awareness is that, and you know this is a doctor, behavior is aggregate like interest. The thing is if you know interest and you’re saving money, it takes about 90% of the saving period to be aware that, “This works.” That’s why most people can’t save and why most people don’t practice good behaviors because they expect instant results. When they don’t receive instant results and progress, they can’t see the progress of eating well immediately. You can’t see the progress of exercising well immediately.
That’s why come January 1st, the gyms will be loaded for three weeks, and even though they are getting progress, the same way as 6% interest on the first $100 doesn’t look like very much and is not worthwhile. It’s a lot better than aggregating or practicing bad behaviors because bad behaviors work the same way. If you keep eating French fries and spare ribs, not exercising, and have negative words, people, ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and feelings all the time, you might say to yourself, “I still feel fine. I’ve been drinking and smoking for twenty years.”
All of a sudden, you’re 25% of the way to a heart attack after 25 years. The next doubling puts you at 50%, and in the next doubling, you’re dead. It took 10% of the time to get from no acknowledgment that there’s a problem of bad behavior to dead because 90% of the time, it was out of your awareness. Practice and trust aggregate effect and compound interest of behaviors. Have the right doing, saying, thinking, believing, and feelings.
I love using working out because I’ve been working out for years, and it’s very true. The first five minutes of almost every workout I’ve ever had suck, but I’ve never finished a workout and said, “I wish I didn’t do that,” because I feel good. That’s an indication you should keep on practicing those things in your life. Don’t expect you even to have an awareness of the progress. Have faith. That’s the way the human embodiment works. It works through consistent or persistent behavior. Aggregate the best behaviors you can, and they will show you the best results.
Walk us through the gratitude program of how that can help us to gain that kind of practice. Give us some granularity as to how you work people through that.
We start small. I love to lower the bar. I start with a gratitude challenge to get people in the habit of gratitude. People forget to say thank you and don’t say thank you. The first step is simply to start saying thank you before you go to bed and when you wake up. I use this as an example because if you want to impact your life for free, take 0.1 seconds a day. The fastest, easiest, and most exponential way to change your life is simply to say thank you before you go to bed and when you wake up. It’s amazing how many letters, emails, and DMs I get from people who tell me, “I’ve said thank you before I went to bed and when I woke up for 30 straight days.” Personally, it took me nine months before I could do it for 30 straight days because I always forgot one day. It’s amazing.
The fastest, easiest, and most exponential way to change your life is to say thank you before going to bed.
I try to teach coherence to remember what you want by using daily practices and executing what I want. I start with gratitude because it has the most power. I give everyone a fourteen-day gratitude challenge. I give my books, exercises, and guides to everyone. DMeltzer.com is my email. It’s all free. I have a great slogan, “If it’s free, it’s we. Email me.” I want to empower over one billion people to be happy. Gratitude is the first step. It takes 0.1 seconds. It’s free. I know by tonight, half of us won’t say thank you. I know by tomorrow morning another half won’t say thank you. I know within three days of this show, almost all of us will stop saying thank you, but for the ones that don’t, I’ve changed your life. You’ve changed your life by remembering to say thank you and saying it.
I am grateful to have the opportunity to be a part of your mission. More people need to listen to Dr. Wolfson. He has a great knowledge of the body, mind, and soul, but he also now has a better approach, a more holistic approach. He’s not competing. He’s completing your wellness with what you eat, think, do, believe, and how you feel. You’ll live a long, happy, healthy, wealthy, and worthy life if you figure out what you’re doing to interfere with it. That’s what I see you’re doing, and I appreciate you much.
I appreciate you coming on. It’s almost like I want to set a Google alarm or something because sometimes life gets in the way of all of our health practices inside of do well, live well, and think well, and ultimately, to get into that experience and to say thank you. Who are we saying thank you to when we do that? If I’m about to go to sleep and close my eyes, I’ll say thank you. I assume I’m thanking me or the spirit? Who am I thanking?
Whoever and whatever you want. Whatever you find the light, love, and lessons in, list it out and say thank you for it. I have my mom instilled that in all of my siblings and myself. Lists out what you’re thankful for. I was thankful for myself, for the food on the table, for my mom, and for a roof over my head, or whatever it may be. I’m thankful for my bankruptcy. Whatever it is, you get to choose and prioritize what you’re most thankful for. The more you list, the better you’ll be.
I’m thankful to you for this opportunity. Thank you so much. It’s another fantastic episode. We will see you next time.
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About David Meltzer
David Meltzer is the Co-founder of Sports 1 Marketing and formerly served as CEO of the renowned Leigh Steinberg Sports & Entertainment agency, which was the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire.
His life’s mission is to empower OVER 1 BILLION people to be happy! This simple yet powerful mission has led him on an incredible journey to provide one thing: VALUE. In all his content and communication that’s exactly what you’ll receive.
