Episode 80
Sean Sessel joins the podcast to discuss how our personality types can influence how we gather information and how we respond to our environment. Our personalities affect how we view our health, finances, and relationships. There is also even a link between our brain chemicals and our personalities! This is the episode you don’t want to miss, and we give you tips and tricks to maximize your health, finances, and relationships, all based upon your brain chemistry and personality.
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Episode Transcript
Dr. Richard Harris: [00:00:00] Welcome the Strive for great health podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Richard Harris, and I have a frequent collaborator, been on the podcast before, and one of the smartest people I’ve ever met Sean Sessel with me on the podcast today, Sean, how are you doing?
Sean Sessel: [00:00:15] I’m doing great, man. It’s a pleasure to be here. I think I was on one of the very, very, very early episodes. I think it’s been over a year, I am always happy to be back. One of my favorite podcasts. It’s always a joy to come on and, and contribute.
Dr. Richard Harris: [00:00:28] Well, thank you. Yeah, I think you were one of the first 10 episodes and now I just released episode 76 and it’s been a year and a half of podcasting. A lot has changed and we’re still keeping it moving, no plan to stop anytime soon. And I love this topic that you presented, and I think it’s really, really fascinating because number one, I didn’t really know about personality testing or anything like that until I got into my MBA program, we did a, what was it? Brookman or what’s the name of that? We did an in-depth one. I forget the name of it, but it told me so much about my personality, my style and how I operated. And I know one of the things you like to do with your clients is the DISC assessment.
So why don’t you tell us a little bit about the DISC assessment and what that is?
Sean Sessel: [00:01:20] Yeah, absolutely man. So the DISC assessment is a personality assessment. One thing that I do want to clarify on personality assessments is that the quality of a personality assessment is highly related to how replicatable it is for a given person like the big five psychology traits that psychologists love to use, those tend to be pretty constant over people’s lives.
There are others. For example like take Myers Briggs, which could be really helpful for people understanding themselves in the near term, but there can be a lot of shift in that over the course of a person’s life. You really want to be aware of how long lasting any given psychological assessment is.
That said regardless of how long lasting it is, if you take it and then you build an identity around you, then intentionally cultivate it, then it’ll stay which can cut both ways. If you build an identity around something that doesn’t serve you, then that could screw you.
So just before we dive into this, I just want to give that kind of caveat there so that people understand that it’s not completely set in stone and that some tests are more reliable than others, just because there’s a lot of popular misunderstanding about personality testing.
Dr. Richard Harris: [00:02:28] The big five is for people who don’t know is extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. And that’s something that I found very interesting when I did mine. We also did this in our MBA program and how disagreeable I was. I never really thought about myself as disagreeable until I did the personality testing. And I’m like, oh yep. that’s me. I’m totally disagreable.
Sean Sessel: [00:02:54] Yeah. I think that sometimes people could associate that different ways, you’re not actively disagreeable. Just as somebody who knows you personally you are a passively disagreeable on that particular index and agreeableness is correlates to high I. And then as we’re going to talk about your actually a low I. There’s some correlations here because stuff that has long-term validity is often related.
And then we’re also going to talk about neurochemistry because I’m convinced one of the reasons why DISC is something that tends to be pretty long lasting is because there is a connection and that’s something that we’re going to dive in here. And then we’re going to start talking about the applications for people, because it’s one thing to hear about personality types.
It’s another to understand how it affects your life. As far as DISC just to give some background, but there are two kinds of DISC. There is adaptive DISC and there is natural DISC. Adaptive DISC actually does vary a lot, but it’s how people react under stress. We’re mostly gonna focus on natural DISC.
When I talk about crisis response that will be talking about adaptive DISC, but mostly we’re going to focus on natural cause that’s what tends to be long-lasting and that’s what tends to be the core architecture. The other thing is, as I go through this, I’m going to use terms like high D or low I or high S or whatever.
Those are generalizations. DISC is actually measured on a scale of zero to one hundred. So if somebody’s a 60 D that’s vastly different than if they’re a 99 D it represents the quantity of how much that shows up in people’s lives. So I would highly recommend that you guys actually go and get this test done.
The best place I’ve found to get it done is www.tonyrobbins.com/DISC. I’m not affiliated with Tony in any way. It does cost like 20 bucks or something, but it’s scientific and it will give you the numbers. And that’s what you really want is you want to get the report with the numbers so that you can look at quantity because anytime you ever look at anything black and white, you’re probably getting it wrong.
That’s just the way the world works. So with that said, let’s dive into each of the DISC types. So DISC is D I S C and each of those letters has a particular type. So high D is D is for dominance, drive, and decisiveness. So the high D’s tend to be very high energy right now I’m talking, I’m very high energy.
I’m a high D. That probably shouldn’t surprise you. High D’s are the kinds of people who get laser focused on outcome. They say, Hey, listen this is the thing that I want and I’m going to do whatever it takes. A lot of entrepreneurs are high DS because you need to have that grit.
You need to have that drive. You need to have that commitment to be a successful entrepreneur. Richard, you are also a high D and even though you talk slower than me that comes from the S and we’ll get into that in a second. But I know you personally, I know, right. All the businesses you’ve started and I’ve seen you in those situations, and I know that you’ve got that drive and grit and commitment. You don’t do 77 podcast episodes if you’re just screwing around.
That’s the kind of thing that you’re going to see with a high D sometimes high D’s can be a little bit disregarding of people unless they have an I or an S to balance it out because high D really isn’t very people focused.
It’s really a very task focused energy. One of the emotions that high D’s have a lot is anger. People who are high D tend to have a bit of a temper when things don’t go their way. And the questions that a high D is generally going to ask is going to be things like, what do we need? And when do we need it done by.
What and when questions are the primary questions that you’ll often find them asking. And their superpower is that commitment and their drive, their super powers that they’ll put in more effort, they’ll do whatever it takes. Their weakness is that sometimes they won’t go about that in a sustainable way, and then it will fall apart.
So I don’t know if you’ve seen these stories of like entrepreneurs who will make millions of dollars and then lose millions of them. That’s a very high D thing to do. Cause they build it and they’re so focused on building it that they don’t necessarily like secure all the architecture and then that could be problematic. There are other weaknesses. Sometimes they let their temper get the best of them, as I mentioned earlier, and that can rub people the wrong way. Generally the high D crisis response is to fight. They are very, very conflict prone. A lot of people shy away from conflict.
High D will not shy away from conflict. They will tell you exactly what they think. And if you don’t like it, then you know, up yours. You and I have a business partner, who’s definitely a high D. And we’ve seen it. Like when things don’t go his way, he will just tell you straight out, this is how it is.
And if you don’t like it, then whatever, let’s have this DISCussion right now. He’s not going to shy away from that conversation. Personally, I love that. I love transparency. Some people that can really intimidate them and if they don’t realize they’re working with a high D they can make it about them.
And then that becomes a whole thing. Generally high D’s are the kinds of people who make very quick decisions and that stick with them. If you’re looking for somebody who’s going to make a big investment. Those people are often going to be high D’s because they’re willing to make that big decision and they’re willing to see it through.
If you talk about like a venture capitalist, will often be a high D for that very reason, because that mode of decision making is kind of needed. Obviously you do want to do due diligence and sometimes high D’s will not do a full due diligence which is why, as I said, you can make and lose money really quickly as a high D.
The second type is I, so I is for intuition, interaction, interconnection, and influence. High I’s are also high energy. They are much more people focused though. So high I’s are the social butterflies, they’re the people who go to a party and they’ll talk to a hundred people and they’ll build rapport and it’ll just be so much fun.
And that’s what they love to do. They tend to not be as task-focused. They’re very people focused. For example in an office, they’re going to be very status conscious. Well, I mean, in all of their life, they’re going to be very status conscious, but like in an office, they’re going to know how to navigate the office politics.
They’re going to know what’s going on. They’re going to be the people who have aware of all the gossip and everything that’s going on. And so they tend to be very good at sales because they’re very good with people. Their core energy is optimism. High I’s are very optimistic, very happy people.
Sometimes delusionally, optimistic. So if you ever have that friend, who’s like, oh yeah, I’ll be there in five minutes and then they get there 20 minutes later, probably a high I, there are people who habitually take too long to get ready cause they don’t schedule the full time because they’re optimistic about how fast they can get things done.
Questions that a high I is going to ask is normally going to be who questions. They’re very people focused, very who is going to be the kind of question they’re going to focus on and their superpower is that they’re great at connecting with people. Their great at building networks, they’re phenomenal at it.
Their weakness is that they often care too much what other people think of them, which is something that can definitely hold them back. Their crisis response is to fawn. It’s to try to charm their way out of things to talk their way out of things. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen somebody who things are going bad and they’re like, Hey, one second. Let’s let’s just talk this out. That’s a very high I think to do because they’re used to being able to persuade people. That’s what they’re good at. And their decision paradigm is that they make decisions fairly impulsively. So this is the kind of person who will go to the mall, buy a bunch of stuff and they’d be like, oh man, I don’t really want that.
And they’ll go and return it back. Unlike a high D who will stick with the decision, a high, I can often suffer from buyer’s remorse. And eventually as they get older, that kind of gets conditioned. But that’s the kind of thing where if you see people who make decisions quickly and then back off quickly, that’s probably a high I. Then we talk about S so S is sustainability, strategy, systems steadiness.
All that kind of stuff. High S’s are people who like structure. And this shows up in a couple of ways. High S’s are going to be lower energy than high D’s or high I’s because too much energy can be too disruptive. When it comes to tasks, they tend to have a very particular way that they go about things.
Now, some High S’s like to follow the systems of other people and some high S’s like to follow their own systems. And that’s going to depend on whether they’re high or low regulatory, which is a completely different personality typing that we don’t have time to go into. But like you, Richard are a high S and you love SOPs.
You like the SOP that you write.. You’re not gonna follow somebody else’s system because you’re often going to be like, Hey, listen, my system’s better. That’s a high S low regulatory thing to do. But the other thing about high S’s, is that they are very people focused. They’re the kinds of people who really, really, really care about a close circle of friends.
They’re not so interested in going and meeting a hundred people like the high I, but they had that close group of friends in that family. And they want to build really tight bonds with those people. And they want to stay really close to those people. One of my mentors once said high S’s are closet D’s because they still want the outcome, but they want to make sure that they go about it in the right way.
And again, a lot of the highest energy is about avoiding disruption. They want to build something, but they would rather build it slowly to build it correctly so that it doesn’t fall apart later. That’s their jam. Their core energy is loyalty. Again, they like steadiness.
They like steadiness in their emotions. They like steadiness in there external environment. And so they’re going to be very, very, very loyal. And they’re gonna like it when other people are super loyal with them. That steadiness also shows up in how they manage their emotions. They will not want to let their emotions out into the world and have all this craziness.
So what happens is they’ll bottle up their emotions and then every three weeks or a month or two months, or whatever, depending on how much processing they’re able to do those emotions will burst forth and they’ll have like a meltdown or break down or whatever. And then they’ll go back to bottling up their emotions.
If you know, a high S, well, you probably don’t realize that meltdown or breakdown happens away from other people. The only people who are going to see that are people who live with them. A lot of people will be like, Hey, listen, that person is just like, always even keeled.
I don’t understand how they just always actually calm. Well, you may not be seeing everything which is generally true with most things you probably shouldn’t assume too much about other people, period. Unless you know, them really, really, really well because people can surprise you and what happens behind closed doors.
So the question that a high S is normally going to ask is how. They love process, because process is how you make things sustainable. Process is how you make things repeatable. So they’re going to ask a lot of how questions. Their superpower is that they are incredibly good with process. They’re brilliant at putting together SOPs.
They’re brilliant at thinking through and making sure that everything lines up. Their weakness is actually that loyalty. They will often be loyal to organizations or people way past when that’s merited. So for example they’ll stick at a job that they hate way longer than they should. They’ll stick in a relationship that’s not healthy for them way longer than they should because they don’t want that disruption. They can avoid dealing with those problems and that can create issues. Their crisis response is exactly that, is avoidance. In terms of the fight or flight, it’s the flight. They’ll just leave. They won’t deal with it.
They just don’t want to deal with the problem. And that can work at times, but in the long run, it’s not the way to actually solve things. That’s something where high S’s really need to work on that avoidance component of it. And their decision paradigm is that they make decisions slowly, but they will make a decision.
You just have to give them the time and the information, let them think it through. Let them make sure that it’s right for them. And then they’ll make a decision. And then finally we have high C’s. C is for caution, conscientiousness, and compliance. These tend to be the lowest energy levels of all the DISC types.
They tend to be pretty task-focused. Very often they find people a little bit tense. They’ll get tense around people ,they’ll get triggered sometimes. And so they will generally, again, they’ll stick to a close group of people. But they can find people very overwhelming and they like to focus on tasks.
They are super detail oriented. If you want somebody to do your taxes or do your computer programming high C is where it’s at, because they’ll pay attention to every single detail. Their core energy is fear, and that’s why they pay attention to every detail because they’re scared to get things wrong.
That’s kind of a dominating influence in their life. The questions that they tend to ask are what. Because they want to understand every little component to make sure there’s nothing wrong. And what if. Well, what if this happens? What if that happens? We have to cover that contingency.
Which again is great if you’re talking about a lawyer. If I want a general counsel, I want him to think about what could go wrong. I don’t want to be like, oh, everything’s going to be fine and a lawsuit pops out nowhere. There’s definitely a place for that. So their super power is that detail orientation and their weakness is that they can go into analysis paralysis.
Which gets to their decision paradigm, which is, they will often not make decisions unless they have to. So sometimes you might have to, if you have high C’s in your organization, you might have to put pressure on them to make a decision or just not have decisions be made by them, have decisions to be made by someone else.
And their crisis responses generally to just freeze. They just locked down. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this with people where they just. You know, their mouth just goes up and down and they’re just not doing anything or they just like start spewing out words, well but. That’s a high C freeze response.
Now just to clarify here, most people are not pure of any of these, most people are going to be combinations. 90% of people are either going to be DI or ID. They’re going to be IS or SSI, or they’re going to be SC or CS. 90% of people will fall into one of those three combinations. And which one’s a little bit higher than the other doesn’t really matter that much.
But you could get some info out of it if you actually have the numbers, but those combinations are going to include most people. Now, there are also DC’s. So about 3% of the population are DC’s and DC’s are very interesting because they have complete opposite modality. They have the high D and they have the high C kind of like fear and detail.
And so I call this the nuclear reactor type, because if you learn to channel both of those together, it’s tremendously powerful. A lot of the most successful CEOs are DC’s, like Elon Musk is a DC. Jeff Bezos is a DC. But DC is also have the highest rate of addiction, depression, and suicide. Because if they don’t learn to channel those energies, then the amount of inner conflict is very extreme.
And that’s why I say it’s a nuclear reactor. Channel it right, you get a lot of power, don’t channel it right, you get a meltdown .And then you have about 5% of the population who are pure. I think it’s 1% high D, 2% high I, 1% high S, 1% pure C, but it may be 2% high D and 1% high I.
But the point is that pure, D I S or C. Then you have IC’s who are less than 1% of the population, and then you have the DS’s like you who are less than 1% of the population, tho DS’s are overrepresented in the military. Because you have that, Hey, listen, we have to get the mission done and we have follow the SOPs in the process.
And so DS tends to end up there. And then the other one that I’ve seen is what I call a three point. When you have three above the mid range of 50. For someone to be high or, low it’s above or below 50, every time I’ve seen a three-point, it’s always been ISA and low date. And so that’s something where you come across it occasionally, but it’s not that common for most people.
If you just know DI IS SC and maybe DC, you’re basically going to cover the gamut. And you’re probably going to be able to find yourself. If you find that none of it’s really a good fit for you, then you can start thinking about things like IC and DS and all that other stuff. So that my friend is DISC.
Dr. Richard Harris: [00:18:01] Yeah, that’s extremely helpful because if you know how you tend to respond in situations and how you think you can plan accordingly and both you and I know when every successful person knows the most important part of doing anything is having a plan.
Sean Sessel: [00:18:15] That is such a highest comment because a high D will go into things sometimes without a plan and sometimes they’ll succeed. I know a guy he’s a 99 D he’s a 99 I he generally doesn’t plan things out. He’s incredibly persuasive. He can make people believe what he wants them to believe, and he can close deals like, you wouldn’t believe. But he also knows that as far as like all the logistics and background stuff, he knows that it will fall apart if he touches it, Iand so he hires someone to take care of that for him.
Dr. Richard Harris: [00:18:44] You find stuff that compliments where you’re deficient. That’s what we talk about in business and in health, it’s the same thing. You ask for help in areas that you are deficient. Now what you’ve pointed out to me. And I think it’s so interesting is that there is a connection between these personality types and neurotransmitters in our brain chemistry. And that is really fascinating because that shows that there is a chemical connection to how we react to our environment. And so knowing that, you can take steps to get the outcomes that you want to get and prevent the outcomes that you don’t want. Why don’t we talk about that? Why don’t we go into what D I S and C what is their primary neuro-transmitter and neurochemistry that’s driving that personality.
Sean Sessel: [00:19:34] Before we do this I do want to clarify that this is based on my personal observations so it’s very hard to actually measure these neurotransmitters in the brain, as I’m sure you’re aware Richard, because cutting open people’s heads and sticking stuff in their brain and sampling stuff is not something we do.
That said I have done DISC typing on around 2000 people. I was trained by a guy who’s done it on over 25,000 people and as a result of that, I have a very good understanding of it. And I’ve also studied a lot of neurochemistry and that’s where I started to make the connections. And once I start describing this, then this is going to make sense.
And specifically when I reference different neurochemicals, neuromodulators I’m going to give you some citations of books you can go read that are written by experts, scientists. Because I believe in science-based work obviously this is a science-based podcast. That’s where we want to be.
A little bit of history on this. This is something that was observed all the way back to the ancient Greeks. I don’t know if if you know this, but they used to talk about people as fire air, water, and earth, and then they would connect it to what they thought were like the different liquids in the body and stuff.
And a lot of that was not accurate cause they didn’t have the tools, but these are patterns that they started to observe way back in the day. And then there’s a guy named William Moulton, Marston who was a very interesting individual. He also invented the polygraph tests, the lie detector and the comic book character wonder woman.
So he was a busy bee, but he was studying psychology and then he actually studied some of this old stuff from the Greeks and he started to observe it and he created the DISC system and then it’s been refined over the decades. I was going off of the extensive scientific research that we have on DISC and I’ve been using that for some time.
And then I read these two books that were very helpful. One of them was habits of a happy mind or habits of a happy brain by Dr. Loretta Breuning fantastic book on neurochemistry. And the other was called the molecule of more, which is primarily focusing on dopamine. And then I started to draw some correlations and I found that this stuff stuck really, really, really well.
The neuro-transmitter that seems to be dominant in high D’s. Which makes sense. Dopamine is the neuromodulator involved with motivation and goal setting and achieving goals. And what is it high D’s are focused on? Exactly that they’re focused on hitting their goal. And dopamine is the molecule that drives drive.
That drives motivation. When you see that drive and that grit and the person who’s going to put in, whatever it takes, that is a very dopaminergic characteristic. If you look at high I’s, high I’s seem to be dominant in serotonin. If you go look at serotonin, serotonin is related to social status, social recognition, social pride.
For example if somebody gets a hundred likes on the Facebook thing, that’s going to cause a release of serotonin. But when you start to make that connection, like, what is it that high I’s are focused on? High I’s are focused on social status. They’re focused on this kind of, when you see somebody go be a social butterfly and talk to a hundred people, it’s because they’re out there making sure that they understand all the people and making sure that they’re liked by all the people.
And in the old days, in our tribal days, that was absolutely necessary. If you tribe, doesn’t like you, you’re going to have a rough time. And so high I’s were very good at navigating those tribal dynamics. And that’s a key role of serotonin. And that’s one reason why lock down has screwed with a lot of people because especially high I’s, if you’re serotonin dominant, and then you can’t go out and meet friends that takes a big toll on you.
And you are a low I that didn’t really bother you that much. But like, if you think about your wife, Brittany, it probably caused some stress for her because she’s a high I. She wants to go out and talk to people. She wants to go out and meet people. That’s her jam. Then if you look at S, S is all about those tighter family connections. SS are fine with slow evolution. They don’t like disruptive change. And when it comes to family, again there’s no way that you can have say your husband or wife leaves you and not have that be disruptive. That’s just, that doesn’t work. And the neuromodulator most connected that kind of bonding is oxytocin and to some extent also vasopressin. Oxytocin and especially women vasopressin more so than men. But men also, there’s a lot of oxytocin in men as well. But those chemicals tend to have very similar effects and so that’s that tight bonding hormone. You don’t have oxytocin with every person you talk to, you have oxytocin and with the people who you laugh with, with the people who you touch with the people who you have a very tight bond with, children, people who you have sex with, obviously it’s going to be somebody that’s very close to you at least for most people. Sometimes you’ll have high I’s, do random hookups and that’s another thing. And then they start to trigger oxytocin and they go into a different mindset.
And then all that drama comes about, different neuromodulators. Because our neurochemistry is just so powerful and people don’t realize how powerful our neurochemistry is. And then finally high C’s are linked to endorphins. So endorphins are the molecules that give us the ability to withstand pain.
And so one thing you’ll see with high C’s is that they’ll procrastinate to induce that endorphin. They don’t realize they’re doing this, but they’ll procrastinate. They’ll put themselves in a position where they force themselves to release endorphins in an unhealthy way. But they require those endorphins.
It’s very key and so once you understand how these different neuromodulators relate to DISC it allows you to actually expand it way beyond the actual stuff with DISC. Everything I told you before is stuff that I was taught by my mentor who did 25,000 DISC reads on people and then coach them. A lot of this stuff I’m about to go into, when we talk about how it affects you is actually derived from making this connection via the neuromodulators.
Dr. Richard Harris: [00:25:00] That’s really interesting. And it totally makes sense when you understand the physiology and the biochemistry, and then it also, you can use this to help you. If you’re one of these personality types to achieve the outcomes that you want to achieve, and you can correct me if I’m wrong here, but if you’re a high D you need to focus on the outcome and always have the outcome in your mind, because that’s what’s going to drive you to that.
If you’re a high I, then you’re the type of person who’s going to do really well on something like CrossFit or a Facebook group, where you have other people who have similar goals as you, because that’s going to motivate you to achieve the goals as a shared group. If you’re an S then it’s more about someone you trust someone who’s going to be a authority in that area.
Someone you’re going to listen to. But also, it’s going to be about the right people in your circle, having the right accountability partners, people that you trust to help you on that journey. And then if you’re a C, these are the kinds of people that are going to have to ask someone to push them. You’re going to have to ask someone to motivate you and to move you and to get you going in the right direction.
And this is something I see with my wife all the time, Brittany she’s an IC. And so a lot of times I push her a lot because I know that’s what she needs to achieve her goals. And I’m not trying to be harmful. At first, she thought I was trying to hurt her and I was being a jerk. And then she realized no, as she learned more about herself and her personality type, she realized that she needed that and she needed it from someone that she trusted.
And so that’s why I’m always pushing her in the right direction for her to be better. And so is that pretty much the gist of it? Did I get it right here on the personality types and how you can relating to health and goals, what you need to achieve those goals?
Sean Sessel: [00:26:53] You absolutely nailed it, man. And just for the listeners, he and I did not talk about this beforehand. He just deduced all this on the spot and he was spot on. I’m going to add a little bit of detail to some of those. So one of them is on the high D when you want to be outcome focused get numbers and track your data.
If you’re a high D and you want to lose X number of pounds or you want to have X percent of body composition, write down that number every day. Because every time you write it down, it’s going to trigger that dopamine surfing. Boom. Boom. The high I’s, you nailed it. CrossFit or some kind of group class thing where you have a group of people or some kind of Facebook group where you can for example, if you’re in a Facebook group and you’re posting your pictures of before all the way to, after with all the snapshots in between, you’re going to be looking for that hit of people, liking it.
And so you’re not gonna want to show up and have gone in reverse. With high S is you’re right. An accountability partner is really great. There are people you trust is really great. There are a couple of things I would add there. One. If you have a significant other, if you have a boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or a wife, think about them and think about being the best for them.
I knew a high S and she was married. And she said, you know, at the end of the day, I want my husband to look at me the same way he did when we got married. That’s what she told herself. And that’s what motivated her to really make that change. Some people, they get married and they’re just like, oh, well, I’m married now.
So I can just slack off and get fat and whatever. That doesn’t do well for you or for your spouse. Especially if both people engage in that mentality. So be your best, not just for yourself, but for the people you love. And then as you said, for high C’s, you got to give them something to move away from.
So having somebody who’s pushing you. High C’s work really well if they can find a coach who they work with, or they can find a person who can guide them, who can push them, then they will be really grateful for somebody who does that for them who gives them that. But the other thing you can do is you can create a moving away from dynamic.
So for example, if you go make an agreement with someone that, Hey, listen, if I don’t do this, if I don’t go to the gym, at least three times this week, I’m going to donate $10 to a charity I hate or a nonprofit that I hate. So maybe someone who’s on the opposite political spectrum of you create something to move away from as a high C. And that’s another way that you can trigger that motivation.
Dr. Richard Harris: [00:29:07] Hmm. Yeah, that’s really good. I was thinking the same exact thing with the C’s and coaching and finding a mentor, someone to help.Motivate you and guide you through that process. And then we talked about things that you should do right now. What are some things with these personality types that you shouldn’t do? Things that you can fall into pitfalls because of what your neurochemistry says.
Sean Sessel: [00:29:32] Yeah, absolutely. So obviously this is a health focused podcast. I do tend to be pretty holistic. I had actually grouped this into a couple of categories. One is about relationship to finances. One is about relationships with other people, especially around love. One is about health and medicine and the stuff that can mess with you.
And the other is about how you absorb information, because that’s really, really, really important, especially in the health space. If you’re absorbing information and you’re getting bad information, then you’re going to have a real issue. Let’s start off with money. When it comes to money, high D’s, their biggest weakness is going to be impatience.
They’re going to have some goal and then they’re going to want to get there really fast and to do that, they will sometimes take risks that they should not take and are sometimes become workaholics. What you want to do is you want to tame your impatience with the power of gratitude. Gratitude is really powerful.
And it allows you to say, Hey, listen, this is what I’ve already achieved. I’m good at achieving goals. I’ve done this. I have these wonderful things in my life, and that can serve as an antidote for impatience for a high D. For a high I, your biggest risk is envy. They’ll look at somebody and this is something you’ll see a lot right now. Doge coin, for example. Before it spiked, there was no reason for people to think that Doge coin was going to do what it did. There were a thousand other tokens where people could have put all that money in there and lost it all or not made a lot of money on it.
And what happens is somebody who’s a high, I might look at someone who got lucky on Doge coin and say, oh man, I need to be in Doge coin now. They have this FOMO kind of thing. Coming in on the backend of a bubble is a financial disaster. Don’t do that. The other thing that high I’s the trap that they can fall into with money is seeking status and then buying stuff that they don’t really need to try to impress other people. That’s not healthy.
For high S’s, the biggest financial risk is nostalgia. So if high S has a financial decline which is almost always going to happen, there are always things that can happen where you can have a job change or there can be a financial crisis or whatever, and then they’ll keep looking back at where they were and want to get back there.
But yeah, the answers are not in the past. The answers are the future. And so there’s a risk there. The other thing, because high S’s can be too focused on security and they can not take enough risk. That’s something where especially if you have people who are like a couple where one is a high D like a DI and the other is an SC they’ll have very different approaches to how they want to invest. And there, you’ve got to have communication in those kinds of scenarios, because if you just treat it like a conflict, you’re going to destroy your relationship. And then finally the high C their biggest risk is scarcity mentality.
It’s how am I going to pay for this? And very often they’ll worry about it way beyond what’s reasonable. And then as a result, they may be too scared to leave a job that’s completely destroying their health. And like a high S, they may focus too much on security. That’s the financial aspect of it.
If you look at the relationship aspect for it one of the things with a high D that you want to watch out, is high d’s have a tendency to never settle in relationships. Now, Richard, you’re an exception because you’re a DS. So your high S overpowers your high D, which allows you to be very happy with one person over a long period of time, which is great.
Because that makes you immune to this trap. But many high D’s, especially people who like DI’s they’ll get into a relationship. It’ll be great and then eventually the dopamine wears off because that’s the thing about dopamine. It’s dopamine is never permanent. As soon as you get used to something, the dopamine is gone.
It vanishes. Again, the molecule of more wonderful book to read about dopamine. Fantastic science-based book full of studies. And it talks about this, and this is why people talk about the honeymoon phase, because dopamine is high. Everything’s great and then what happens with somebody who’s a high D is they will just go from relationship to relationship, to relationship, and they’ll struggle to settle and fall into that companionate love.
That over the long-term is often more fulfilling so that’s something to be careful about. The other thing with high D’s is that in terms of meeting people one, the best way for a high D to go meet people is actually cold approach. For people who are not high D’s, this is absolutely terrifying.
To be in a bar or in some other thing, and go up to some person you don’t know, and just introduce yourself or maybe drop a pickup line most of which are horrible, but some of which can actually work. That scares the crap out of people, who are low D’s, but a high D will function very well in that environment.
A high D can say, Hey, listen that’s what I want. I want to go talk to that person, walk in and meet people. And a high I will go and meet everybody. High D will not be interested in meeting everybody. They’ll be interested in meeting the person they want to meet. And they’re good at just getting over that fear and just doing it.
Thats Nike, just do it. That’s a very high D statement. For high I’s, the trap that they can fall into is that they can be focused on status over compatability. They can say, Hey, listen, this person is high social status. I want to be involved with them because that’s going to make me high social status.
Cause they’re going after that serotonin. They’re going after, what are their friends going to think of who I’m dating? What’s my family gonna think of who I’m dating rather than necessarily who’s best for them. That’s the thing that high I has to watch out for. And then in terms of the best way for high I’s to meet people, it’s actually social circle.
So because they’re so good at building networks, they have this like basically delegated group of people who can help match make for them. They have this very wide group and very often they’ll have other high I’s who have huge networks. It’s almost like this massive filtering process that can help them find somebody who’s really good for them.
As long as you focus on compatibility. If you’re a high S the biggest relationship risk for high S is staying in something toxic, too long. It’s that loyalty gone overboard and Richard, I actually haven’t really talked to you about this, but I’d be willing to bet that there have been times in your past when you’ve stayed in a relationship longer than you should have. I could be wrong.
Dr. Richard Harris: [00:35:15] For me, not really. Most of the time, because I think I can flip between a high D and a high S depending on my situation and I will bail. If I know something is not in my best interest.
Sean Sessel: [00:35:27] Your adaptive D probably goes up. And then as soon as there starts to be conflict, you shift into the D then is that, is that what’s going on?
Dr. Richard Harris: [00:35:35] Yeah, that’s totally true. I mean, most of the time, I’m probably predominantly S but if there’s conflict and I need to, and I assess the situation that I need to take over, I’m perfectly fine doing that.
Sean Sessel: [00:35:47] Yeah. So that’s, what’s happening. You actually, you have a very good balance of these things where you kind of are self inoculated against the weaknesses, which is pretty cool. But so many people who are high S will stay in a relationship too long. And as far as the best way to meet people, high S’s work best by by doing it at events.
And matter of fact, if you’re a high S, you should really seriously consider actually putting together like a weekly gathering a weekly event. And then what happens is you can invite people to those events, whether you’re interested in them for a relationship or not. And maybe you just want to be friends with them, whatever.
Maybe they just seem like cool people and you build those events. And then people come in and you’re the host. Everybody’s going to talk to you, you’re going to get to know everyone. And you create this very structured environment where you can get to know people.
Events work really well for high S is when it comes to meeting people. Then for high C’s, the biggest risk in relationships is that they never put themselves out there. As a guy , they’re too scared to approach, as a woman, even if they are opposed to that, they may turn down a date with somebody who they actually are attracted to, because they’re scared of, well, what if this?
And what if that, and what if this and actually for high C’s, the best way to meet people is believe it or not as online dating, because they have the time to really focus on making their profile perfect or as close to perfect as they can. They have the time to craft a response on the messages.
And they have time to pay attention to all those details and use it to their advantage. And so online dating works really well for high C’s. So now that we’ve moved out of like that general holistic stuff. Let’s dive into health specifically since that is the focus of this podcast. And let’s focus, especially on lifestyle medicine.
So as a high D, some of the risks to your health, one is stress from anger so obviously stress is horrible for you. Richard, you’ve talked about this many times cortisol one of the most common topics on the strive for great health podcast is the stress hormone. And if you are in chronic stress that is going to screw your health up really bad. And so high D’s can have frequent anger and they can also hold onto grudges for a really long time. And that is not healthy whatsoever. The other thing is because they’re very outcome-focused, they will sometimes take a very restrictive diet and they will just take it way too far. This may be somebody who for example, they’ve not gone and done their genetics. So they don’t know what their lipoprotein profile is. They don’t know whether or not high-fat is good for them or not. And they’ll say, oh man, I need to do Keto. I’m going to zero carbs. And I was like, religiously, be at zero carbs all the time without getting all the details straight and that’s not healthy.
Or they’ll get something weird that somebody suggested that it’s like, oh, I’m only going to drink juice. And they’ll just like only drink juice. And like, even though their body is sending signals that this isn’t right, they made up their mind that they’re going to do this diet.
And so come hell or high water, they’re going to do this diet. And then, you know, eventually that breaks down because your body just says no. And so that’s a risk for high D’s. And then for whatever reason, and I’m not entirely sure the exact mechanism here, but for whatever reason, high D’s seem to be at higher than normal risk of belly fat.
This was actually first identified by. Dr. Bob Rondel, who was a mentor of mine. He was a medical doctor before he got into doing all kinds of psychological and spiritual work, and he just noted this correlation. And then I’ve watched it. And I found that that tends to be true.
People who are generally fit, but have belly fat are very often high D’s. And I don’t know why that is. I don’t know if it’s related to dopamine and cortisol and how they interact and adrenaline and all this stuff. I’m not exactly sure, but it is a correlation that I’ve noted. If anybody doubits it, just go study things, right?
I’m always a fan of don’t trust. Anything anyone says, go see for yourself, get hypotheses test, go wherever the data leads. High I’s, one of their risks for their health is that they’ll do it for the wrong reason. They’ll do it because they care how other people think of them. And then what happens is then if they’re in a situation where maybe they move to a different place and they don’t have their same social circle, everything can go to hell, maybe the inner conflict of trying to do a diet because they’re doing it for other people.
They’ll lose that willpower because at the end of the day, if you’re doing something for yourself, you’re way more likely to follow through on it than if you’re doing it for other people. That could be really important. The other risk for high I’s health wise is that they’re the kind of people who go out and party a lot.
They like to go meet people, right. Alcohol, not good for you. Most party drugs, not good for you, staying up late, definitely not good for you. These are all things that can have a health consequence. For high S’s. They can sometimes find themselves in chronic stress because of over commitment or staying in a toxic situation too long.
If you’re in a job that you hate and this is actually, my specialty is I do a lot of work with careers and burnout and helping people escape, toxic jobs. If you stay in a job that’s utterly toxic and you’re stressing about it every day and every week that’s going to wreak havoc on your health.
You’re going to trigger that chronic overproduction of cortisol, and that’s going to be really tough. The other thing is that high S’s will often struggle to find time to exercise because they’re prioritizing work because that’s their source of security. Remember security is a big thing for high S’s and then they’re prioritizing family time.
Because again, that oxytocin that connection to the people, very close to them and they’ll just say, oh, I can’t find time to go work out. That’s something you’ll hear a lot from high S’s. And that’s something you want to be careful about because at the end of the day, do you want to spend time playing with your kids?
Yeah. But do you also not want to die 20 years early and then not get 20 years for your kids? Yeah. You also want to live 20 years longer, so make time to go exercise. I think that that’s something that people overlook because they think about time in the short term and not time in the long term. And then finally, high C’ s the biggest risk for high C’s health wise is that they will stress a lot and there’ll be very afraid of many things sometimes.
And then they will try to basically eat those fears away and especially that they’re at risk for food addiction. If you see people who they know it’s bad for them, but it’s their coping mechanism. That’s something that’s very often a high C thing.
I had a client who. Was a very high C and she was very overweight. She had very bad diabetes. And then one day she made a decision that she wasn’t going to live like that anymore. And this was after we’d been coaching for awhile. But once she learned how to process her emotions and she learned how to actually deal with them, then she lost like a hundred pounds.
And her A1C went from like severely diabetic to the upper end of normal. And I’m super proud of her. That’s great. Most people never do that. So mad props to her. But that’s something that you can see in high C’s and then finally the other one that I want to talk about was how people get their information.
So obviously if you’re getting your information from this podcast good for you. But there’s a lot of information out there on health and I think, you know, Richard, one of the reasons you started this podcast is because there’s so much bad info out there. And even if you are supremely rational and supremely logical and not suffering from any cognitive bias whatsoever.
There’s a lot to sort through, and it can be challenging if you toss in motivated reasoning and cognitive bias, that can really, really, really make it difficult to get the information you need to build healthy habits and build a healthy lifestyle. So for high D’s, their biggest risk is that they will prejudice themselves towards information that gives them what they want.
So they get permission for what they want to do. For example, this is something you saw with keto, especially, they’re like, oh wait, I can eat as much bacon as I want. I can eat as much processed meat as I want. Great. That’s what I’m going to do. And they kind of ignored people like, Hey, listen, you know, there’s also quality of what protein and fats you’re consuming.
And sometimes it isn’t right for everybody, but it’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I just want to eat all that bacon. So I’m going to go, full keto and eat a bunch of bacon. And so that’s something high D’s and you actually see a lot of people who are very into keto or high D’s for that reason.
Obviously I know you are not in that category. You’re in favor of ketosis, but you don’t do deep Keto because you’ve done your homework and you know your genes don’t indicate that you should go full Keto. Say you should go low-glycemic but not full keto. Other people, it works great for it, but you want to go check out and get the data on that.
Dr. Richard Harris: [00:43:58] Absolutely. Yeah, And there’s other ways to get in ketosis. We talked about there’s three different ways to get in ketosis. So one way may be better for you than another way. And it’s always best to get data about yourself. And there’s so many ways that you can do that nowadays, all the wearables, all the devices, genetic kits, shipped directly to your home.
I mean, there’s tons of ways to get data about yourself. And these are things that we talk about all the time on the podcast. All right. So let’s keep going.
Sean Sessel: [00:44:25] Yeah, absolutely. Man. Then for high I’s their risks that can skew how they absorb health info is that they’ll go off of their social circle off with the people around them rather than off of the science. One thing that’s very prone is MLMs. There are a lot of MLMs out there who use this principle of social circle to sell their stuff and not all MLMs are bad.
There are some that have legitimately good products. Many of them have inferior products that they just do with hard sales methods and social networking. And if you have your friends selling you, their MLM stuff, telling you how good it is for you and you don’t go look up the science, that’s something that a high I might be vulnerable to.
Or if there’s some trendy diet going around a high I might be inclined to buy into the trendy diet and not look up the science. And you’ve got to look up the actual science at the end of the day. And then for high S’s, they’ll go with authorities that they trust. That’s the thing.
High I’s are really big on trust and that authority may be a public figure. It may be someone in their lives who they trust. But it’s not always scientists. There are a lot of people who pontificate on health, who aren’t actually doctors, who aren’t actually scientists or who are compromised by motivated reasoning or any of these other things.
And they aren’t necessarily the right people to listen to. That’s one reason, I have a background in science. I’m a published scientist, but when it comes to health, there’s still a lot of information that I don’t know. And that’s why there are only two podcasts that I listened to religiously.
There’s Huberman Lab and there’s this podcast. And I would equate them as being similar in terms of how they’ve helped me develop in terms of my knowledge of health and everything. And that’s because I found people who are very good, who are science-based and that’s what I listened to.
And that’s why I’ve never missed an episode of this podcast, not one Richard, except for the one you just released this morning. I haven’t listened to it yet.
Dr. Richard Harris: [00:46:21] I appreciate that.
Sean Sessel: [00:46:22] If you’re a high S make sure you have the right authorities, and obviously I would say strive for great health is one that you want to focus on. And then the thing with high C’s is high C’s will generally be very data oriented. The problem is that before they make the actual lifestyle change, they’ll always want more research.
And the truth is that you’re never going to have a hundred percent answer on anything. High C’s will sometimes get so overwhelmed by all the possible data that they don’t actually implement everything that they’ve learned. Cause they’re always wanting to do more research. But if you don’t actually implement and apply, even if it’s incremental, you’re not gonna see the health benefits.
Dr. Richard Harris: [00:47:02] Yeah, that’s that’s awesome, man. I mean, there’s so much to unpack in this episode and I’m sure people are going to have to listen to it multiple times. And of course we’ll have the transcripts on the website, but the reason I brought Sean in here, if you can’t tell he is an expert in how the mind works, and we always talk about this, the health mindset.
If you don’t have the right mindset for health, then you won’t achieve health. The body goes as the mind goes. And we talk a lot about that mindset here on the podcast. And this is a way that you can further individualize your plan. And we talk about how there is no right hard and fast plan. You have to adapt it to yourself, to your situation, to your environment and doing this DISC assessment will help you figure out, Hey, what do I need to do?
Do I need to focus on the outcomes? Do I need to get in a group? Do I need to find a coach to help push me? Do I need to find an authority, figure someone who’s knowledgeable and then I can follow along. And then we’ll help you find a way that helps you succeed. And I know Sean personally, that is what he’s all about.
He’s all about helping people succeed, helping people grow, helping people learn more about themselves and what makes them tick not everyone is like him and I. We spend a lot of time in our heads. spend a lot of time in my own head trying to figure out how I work and how I tick.
And one of the things I always tell people. How did you become so successful? And I say, I learned about myself early. I learned about what I needed to do to be successful and how I operate. And that’s how I needed to learn how to play basketball, how I needed to learn to study how I needed to be involved with church and charity to be happy.
I just learned about myself very early in what makes me tick. And so if that sounds interesting to you, shameless plug here, Sean, tell them where they can find out more about you and what.
Sean Sessel: [00:49:03] Oh yeah. Well, I run a company called the Oculus Institute, so that’s Oculus. It’s just like the VR machine though. It’s named for completely different reason. And then Institute Institute if anybody just wants the spelling of that. You can go to my website@www.Oculusinstitute.com or if you’re a listener of this podcast, I invite you to just reach out to me directly.
So you can email me @seanatoculusinstitute.com. That’s sean@oculusinstitute.com. I primarily focus on careers. I have a lot of experience in helping people get clear on a career that is both fulfilling for them and allows them to make more money. I have had several clients who have ended up with income annual income, 50 to a hundred thousand dollars a year, more than when they came to me while also being happier. So that’s great. As far as health goes if you’re making that much more money, you can probably afford better supplements all that kind of stuff. You can afford health coaching, you can afford all that kind of stuff. And as far as being happier you’ll have a lot less cortisol and we’ve, this podcast is rehashed chronic cortisol problems enough times. I don’t need to go into that. But anybody who’s in Richard’s audience is is somebody who I definitely want to look out for. Richard is one of my best friends in the world. One of the people I respect most in the world. And so anybody out there who just wants to hit me up feel free to do so. I can give some advice on general psychology and that kind of stuff as well.
Yeah and I’ve got a couple of different areas, but the main thing that I work with is careers. And self-awareness.
Dr. Richard Harris: [00:50:34] Awesome. And we’ve talked about self-awareness, all the time on this podcast and how it really that’s the first step we always say, the first step is your values, your why, and then if you have that, then you make value based decisions. And then if you have value based decisions, then you can make things on autopilot.
We don’t have to think about things all the time. And that’s how I’ve gotten to this point where I don’t think about all the health decisions I make every single day. I’ve thought really hard about my values to begin with and where I want it to go. And that leads to me being able to just kind of flow like water into this health mindset. Thank you again, Sean, for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it. Anything you want to say before we close?
Sean Sessel: [00:51:20] I do want, you mentioned something there about values and that’s very important to me and to how I operate. I do just want to clarify many people struggle to get clear on their values because they have so much conditioning and so much programming, so much people pleasing and authority and fear and anger and blame and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And you have to go through the process of internal, psychological, and spiritual work to decondition all that noise and the radio if you ever want to get clear on your values. And you’ve done that Richard and most people, 99% of people don’t do that. What happens is they’re operating on autopilot, that’s based in other people’s values instead of theirs.
That never works in the end. So a lot of the work I do with my clients is doing that deconditioning. So we can actually get clear on people’s values because at the end of the day, when you really know what your values are, when you really know your why, you have a resilience and an ability to face challenge and a commitment that’s far going to exceed doing it because you think somebody else told you, you should.
Dr. Richard Harris: [00:52:21] Completely true. And thank you so much for joining on the podcast today. I’m sure you’ll be on sometime soon in the future. And to all the listeners. Thank you so much for listening to Strive for Great Health Podcast and being on this wellness journey with me. I really appreciate it. And I love hearing from you.
I’ve been getting messages from people all over the world about how the podcast has helped and feel free to reach out to me, just letting me know. I mean, that keeps me going. It fuels me. I love hearing it. And if you want join our Facebook group, where we talk about anything related to health and Sean’s in there too, talking about stuff related to health too.
All right, I’m gonna stop rambling. Thank you for listening to Strive for Great Health Podcast with your host Dr. Richard Harris have a blessed day.