How to Stop Being So Hard on Yourself | Dr. D. Ivan Young - EP 800

In this episode, John R. Miles sits down with Dr. D. Ivan Young, one of today's leading voices on leadership, resilience, and emotional well-being. Together, they explore how trauma shapes identity, why your inner voice influences every relationship you have, and how practicing self-compassion can help you become stronger, calmer, and more resilient.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01John R. Miles?

  Hey friends, what if your biggest problem isn't that you're not doing enough, but that you've spent too long proving that you are enough? You can be successful, needed, and surrounded by people and still feel completely unseen. That's the problem I explore in my new book, The Mattering Effect. I show you how we become hyper-visible for what we produce, while quietly becoming invisible to ourselves, and introduce the matter framework to help you reclaim meaning, autonomy, trust, time, energy, and reciprocity. Stop auditioning for your worth, start living from it. The Mattering Effect is available for preorder now at matteringeffect.com. Coming up next on Passion Struck.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  These biases and stereotypes only have strength until we question them. And once we decide that we're going to establish our own identity, our own set of core values and our own beliefs, now the filters shift. And if we come to the table with objectivity, thank God for neuroscience, because mirror neurons work. And if I come to you with a smile and I come to you open with compassion and earnest, if you're a sane person, and you're not some crazy extremophile, at some point in our interactions, you're going to give back to me what I'm giving to you.

• 1:19John R. Miles?

  Welcome to Passion Struck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week, I sit down with changemakers, creators, scientists, and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection, and impact is choosing to live like you matter.

• 2:07John R. Miles?

  Hey, it's your friend, John. Welcome back to Passion Struck and welcome to episode 800. Eight hundred conversations later, one thing has become abundantly clear to me. The quality of our lives rarely exceeds the quality of the relationships we have with ourselves. I've had the privilege of sitting down with neuroscientists, psychologists, military leaders, CEOs, Olympic athletes, bestselling authors, and people whose stories have changed the way I see the world. And no matter where those conversations begin, they almost always lead back to the same place: how we see ourselves. Let me ask you something.

• 2:48John R. Miles?

  Have you ever noticed how easy it is to extend compassion to almost everyone except yourself? You encourage your friends when they struggle. You forgive the people you love. You remind others that setbacks don't define them. But when it's your own mistake, your own fear, your own disappointment, the voice in your head often becomes the harshest one you'll ever hear. And what if that voice isn't just shaping how you feel? What if it's quietly shaping every relationship you have, every decision you make, and every version of yourself you're capable of becoming? That's the conversation we're having today. By the end of this episode, you'll understand why self-compassion isn't self-indulgence.

• 3:33John R. Miles?

  It's one of the foundations of resilience. You'll discover why so many high achievers remain trapped in survival mode even after they've achieved extraordinary success. How trauma continues shaping our decisions long after the original event has passed. Why empathy can heal or manipulate, and why the relationship you have with yourself ultimately becomes the relationship you have with everyone else. Our guide for this milestone conversation is Dr. D. Yvonne Young. Dr. Young is a neuroscientist, executive coach, leadership expert, and the author of Leading From The Heart. For decades, he's worked with elite athletes, Fortune 500 executives, entrepreneurs, and public figures,

• 4:17John R. Miles?

  helping them understand something many people spend a lifetime avoiding. You cannot build a flourishing life while remaining at war with yourself. His work explores how trauma, self-awareness, empathy, and self-compassion shape not only our leadership, but the quality of every relationship we build. But here's what stayed with me long after we stopped recording. This wasn't really a conversation about neuroscience, or leadership, or even trauma. It was a conversation about learning to offer yourself the same grace you've spent your life giving everyone else. Because maybe the most important relationship you'll ever repair is the one you've been living with all along.

• 4:59John R. Miles?

  So let's dive in. Here's my conversation with Dr. D. Yvonne Young. Thank you for joining Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters. Now, let that journey begin.

• 5:17John R. Miles?

  I am so excited today to welcome Dr. D. Yvonne Young to Passion Struck. Welcome, Dr. D. How are you today?

• 5:24Speaker 01

  I'm doing great, John. It's fantastic to be here.

• 5:28John R. Miles?

  Dr. D., I wanted to start out with, I understand you grew up as an only adopted child during the civil rights era, often feeling like an outsider in different worlds, which is something that, as a child, I felt myself, but for different reasons. How did that shape the way that people see you and the way you learned to read them?

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Wow, that's an interesting question. I think it's bidirectional. It shaped the way that I saw myself, maybe more than the way people see me. What I mean by that is I grew up in a time where there were so many things colliding. America was, and I would say during my early childhood, and by that, eight, nine years old, seven years old, all you saw on TV was the Vietnam War, black people getting bit by dogs and water hoses. I was in a city, Fort Worth, Texas. I had a father that was a very devout Christian.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  And I don't mean that like in this MAGA crap. He really practiced faith and love and no bias, no prejudice. So in the house that I'm in, I have a mother that's an overachiever that had her own post-traumatic issues. And I had this, I'm going to these preparatory schools. We integrated our neighborhood. So all of this is intersecting, right? At seven years, six years old, in first grade, I come home to a sign in the yard that said, "Nigger, move." But all our neighbors were white, except for one next door and one across the street. They had just moved in the neighborhood too.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  And Ms. Lofton, a white female, she saw that. And she ran over and got me, and it made me cookies and all this. So early on, I was being bombarded with all these different messages. I was around a lot of people who weren't black that were so kind and loving and hyper and supportive. At the same time, I'm looking at stuff in media. My mother was the first black state official in Texas that was appointed. Andrew Young is a distant cousin. He and Martin Luther King at that point were being architects of the civil rights movement.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  So I saw all of these things, and it definitely affected me. I remember my first experience. I was in Cub Scouts. I was the only little black guy in there with about 12 other boys and didn't have any issues, except for when we decided to go swimming. Me and one of the boys had become very good friends. And we went to the pool in the country club where we lived. And they, I'm a child, I'm like eight or nine years old, and they wouldn't let me swim in the pool. And I didn't know. And I remember Larry's mother, went back home and she was crying.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  And she called my mother and she said, "Wanita, I am so sorry. I tried to take the boys swimming and they wouldn't let Derek in." That's what the D stands for in my name. And I never clicked, right, until I was an adult and thought about it, literally decades later. So to answer your question, it did affect how I thought other people see me, but I had no clue how much it affected how I saw myself.

• 9:11John R. Miles?

  I can completely relate to that. When I was between five and six years old, I was playing a game of tag and got pushed from behind and unfortunately flew through a basement window and woke up in intensive care with tubes coming out of my head. And after that, started to have language issues, speech impediment, sensory and processing disorders. And so all of a sudden, I was different. And kids can be merciless at times. And all I wanted to do myself was to put a hood over my head and try to disappear because I felt so different from everyone else. And it was really a shock. It's one day you can see and all of a sudden you're blind in how the world changed.

• 9:57John R. Miles?

  How much do you think of what you do today traces back to those experiences? Because I know for me, it traces back a lot.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Being honest, I know for a fact, everything's connected. I work with people that are typically high-profile, high-net worth, entrepreneur, pro athletes, what have you, C-suite executives.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  People feel that when you attain status,

• 10:27Speaker 01

  that it opens a lot of doors. Well, it does. It opens a few doors, but it closes even more doors. And I know what it's like to question whether I'm valued, respected, seen. I know what it's like to be in a crowded place and how people applaud you. And you wonder if it's real, but do you really? Are you applauding me or what I bring to you? Are you aligned with me? Because there's a synergy between you and I, or it's a synergy between what my presence can facilitate for you? I think it's very challenging

• 11:11Speaker 01

  to be in a position where if you don't have self empathy and self compassion, you can quickly get stuck in survivor mode rather than just being present.

• 11:24John R. Miles?

  I recently did an interview with Stanford behavioral scientist Claude Steele, who's now retired, but we were, he's really known for his work on stereotypes and has a new book out called Churn. And a lot of what you were just describing is what he calls churn. How much of that churn do you think blinds us or others to what a person they're interacting with could offer? But because of their prejudices or the ways that they look on others changes the discussion?

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Well, when I wrote Leading From The Heart, my, my current book, one of the things that I realized is you, whatever you expect, that's probably what you're going to get, right? The law of attraction says attracts light. So in the book, there's in the early chapters, I have people do what I call an inventory of self. Where were you born? What generation are you in? What socioeconomic status? What are the things you saw in terms of parental modeling and your parents' core values? Because all that stuff got passed down to you. And it is the lens from which you look out and see the world. Now you can control that.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  What you can't control is the lens that people are looking at you through. However, you can shift it. And I think what like with respect to a book like Churn, which I'm familiar with, these biases and stereotypes only have strength until we question them. And once we decide that we're going to establish our own identity, our own set of core values and our own beliefs, now the filters shift. And as we, if we come to the table with objectivity, thank God for neuroscience, because mirror neurons work. And if I come to you with a smile and I come to you open with compassion and earnest,

• 13:28Speaker 01

  if you're a sane person, you're not some crazy extremophile. At some point in our interactions, you're going to give back to me what I'm giving to you. So I think there is a path forward. Regardless of someone's initial bias, we can affect that by how we show up in our presence.

• 13:47John R. Miles?

  I love that. I just had Angela Myers on the show, who has been working in the area of mattering for about two decades. And we were actually talking about that smile. Because the second we're born, we are born with a mattering instinct. And the first thing that we're doing when we come out of our mother's wombs is we're looking to be seen, to be valued for that smile. And I often tell people, especially parents, that one of the most important things you can do for your child is before you ask them about chores or making their bed or anything like that, it doesn't have to be long. It can just be 10, 15 seconds, but smile at them. Show them how much they matter to you

• 14:30John R. Miles?

  because it signals to them that they're the most important thing in the world to you. And as you were just bringing up, effective neuroscience really shows that the adults are playing a mirror for the children who observe them because that is the mirror for our worth.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Well, there's a big thing about understanding the difference between the mind and the brain, though some people try to fuse the two. But being honest, the brain is, it's on autopilot. It's in a default mode at 20, 24/7. And our species, we are equipped to be hyper vigilant and hypersensitive to shifts in our environment that threaten us. We typically refer to this as fight or flight mode, right? When we have this fight or flight mode occur, historically, it's been associated with a threat that would probably end your life or your well being. You hear something growling in the middle of the night.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  The shadows shift, your pupils dilate, your hearing becomes more acute. Well, we don't live in that world anymore. The world we live in, the new threat is a text message saying the wrong thing or from the wrong person. We literally can look at our phone. And when we look at the phone, now we're in fight or flight mode. We can get an email. Hell, we can even have an internalized, just ruminating thought about something that was traumatic. Here's what you don't know. You don't know when people are walking around in that state. I do a lecture every Wednesday to a bunch of M.D.s, P.H.D.s. And what I'm teaching them is you cannot

• 16:11Speaker 01

  reach the psychology until you bypass the physiology. What I mean by that is if I'm already anxious, if I'm stressed out, even in a latent way, a subconscious way, when I interact with you, I'm not fully present. And in order for you and I to really have a meaningful interaction, somebody's going to have to diffuse that thing and create a safe space. That's why clinicians, coaches, leaders in organizations would be well served to understand this. And the best effect is your presence. If you would look at this from an energy standpoint, if you say here's on 10, you are a zen and on one, you are hopeless.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Well, the average person is around six. That's just average person, normal person. If that person has trauma and turmoil in their life, they're at about a three or four. If they have all adequate resources and a pretty stable life, they're probably at a seven. Well, the thing is, as a leader, as a human being, awareness about how you show up matters. And in Leading From The Heart, one of the things that I really pushed is making sure that your presence gives off safety and acceptance, that you regulate yourself by just taking a few breaths, being able to be authentic and transparent and say, I'm having a bad day.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  What about you? And again, the neuroscience kicks in because there's a chemical serotonin. There's another one, oxytocin. These things are relational hormones. And they're triggered when someone feels seen, when they feel safe, when you touch someone in a non-threatening compassionate way. And I believe that the way we show up and, and being intentional about the energy that we're giving off or even housing within ourselves can play a pivotal role in everything connected to people that's connected to our lives and well being.

• 18:16John R. Miles?

  We'll be right back with more of my conversation with Dr. D. Yvonne Young. As you're listening today, I want you to notice something. The voice you use when you talk to yourself. Because if there's one lesson from this conversation, it's that changing that voice may be one of the most important forms of growth we'll ever experience. That's why every episode in our flourishing series includes a companion workbook inside The Ignited Life on my Substack with practical exercises to help you turn these insights into action. You'll find everything in today's show notes. Now, a quick break for today's sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.

• 19:10John R. Miles?

  You're listening to Passion Struck on the Passion Struck Network. Now, let's get back to the conversation.

• 19:17John R. Miles?

  I couldn't agree more with you. I want to go a little bit deeper into leading from the heart. So you start out the book describing that it was originally going to be a playbook for others, but then your own life started to unravel. What specifically happened and what did that moment strip away for you?

• 19:40Speaker 01

  I was on a show called Fatal Attraction, a few other shows on national TV. My agent at that time was looking at engaging networks for me to either be part of an ensemble cast or something, to have my own show. And doing that, I figured, I want to have that smile everybody else has got. So I'm going to this dentist, and he's checking the inside of my mouth, and he says, I feel some banding in here. I'm concerned about that. And I'm like, well, he said, do you drink? He said, do you smoke or use tobacco products? And I'm like, no, I don't do any of that. He said, well, I want to biopsy this and just see what's going on. So he did it. We went to MD Anderson, nothing. Went back a couple

• 20:25Speaker 01

  of months later, they took pictures, looked at it again, nothing. By this time, I'm like, man, this is a waste of my time. So I don't go back for the next visit. I skip it. Well, I go back to another dentist, and I'm having these procedures done. And he looks at my mouth. He says, I don't like that. He said, I don't think I want to proceed today. And I'm like, what do you mean? He said, I want to biopsy this and send it in for pathology. Comes back, I have cancer. Comes back, it's stage two. So now I'm going to the MD Anderson, and I'm becoming a human guinea pig. If I'm getting scanned, stuck, everything you could

• 21:06Speaker 01

  imagine, these people are very thorough. And while I'm doing this, we're wrestling with my insurance company, and I've got great inch, overpriced 2,000 a month insurance. So all of this stuff is happening, and I'm kind of like, what the... But during this process, I was tending to my media presence. So I would go do these lives on Facebook, and there would be like a half million people that would look at them over the course of 30 days or whatever, doing these lives. And after I did one, I would typically be out in nature, on a hiking trail by the ocean, whatever. I was on this hiking trail, all

• 21:47Speaker 01

  of a sudden, I got off, and I started crying. And I'm like, what the hell? Why am I crying? Then I heard this voice, some people will call it our creator, God, the universe, angels, sub, the higher consciousness. And the voice said, well, it's okay to be scared. And I realized I was scared. I had never had surgery before. I damn sure hadn't been facing something that could kill me, cancer. This stuff is nothing to play with. And then when I found, we got ready to have the surgery. I was talking to Patrick Garvey, my surgeon, and he said,

• 22:27Speaker 01

  well, doc, do you ski? And I said, man, I'm black, I don't ski. And he said, well, if this were skiing, snow skiing, he said, this surgery would be a double black. And I'm like, what the hell does that mean? He said, well, let's say green is down by the lodge, and yellow is kind of a light incline. And now we go to green, and we get a little bit of slope, but no trees. He said, double black is when you've gone up on top to the down mountain top, and they have warnings, avalanche warnings. He said,

• 23:04John R. Miles?

  You're skiing around trees.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, ain't no damn trees. You got rocks and 40 foot drops, right? So he said that to me, and I'm thinking, okay, the clinician in me, the neuroscientist, before my mother died, I was going to be a neurosurgeon. So I'm looking at this from a clinical perspective. Oh, this is interesting. But hell, we're talking about my life, man. And he said, well, it's going to be seven surgical teams, and we're going to take your fibula out, and we're going to remove your mandible, and we're going to take this and do that. I'm like, whoa. So at that point, there was nothing anybody outside of me could really say. I'm

• 23:48Speaker 01

  not religious, but I'm very zen. I'm very prayerful. I do believe in God. And I do believe faith and prayer matters. So I started praying, and I tapped into the fact that I'm very good, extremely good at showing my clients, just even a stranger, kindness, empathy, compassion, acceptance. But I hadn't been very good at doing that with myself. And that experience forced me that I could take one or three paths, maybe, well, more than three paths, but I could be pissed, I could be frightened, or I can just accept

• 24:33Speaker 01

  this is happening, and I can have faith. Well, in order to do that, I had to empathize with my condition. And then I started really paying attention to the fact that when I was nicer to me, I felt better. When I was collaborative with my care team, things would go well. And then even when I did have this, that seven hour surgery ended up being 12 and a half hours, fighting with Blue Cross and Blue Shield to get this, this new form of proton radiation, where instead of it killing everything, it hits only the cells

• 25:12Speaker 01

  that need to be killed. But it is, it's very expensive. And I finally get it. And at that point, that's when I started seeing me be compassionate with myself. I would have to go to MD Anderson and go to proton radiation, and this is like some Star Trek-like stuff. And I'd lay down with this mask, and they strap it in, and this laser thing goes and just hits only the cancer. Well, that's some scary stuff. But between the empathy and the compassion, I made it through it. At that point, now I'm on the other side of this. The cancer's gone. I'm praying it doesn't come back. But I'm having all these

• 25:55Speaker 01

  side effects. And the side effect wasn't the ray proton radiation, though that left me kind of swo, whatever. It was, okay, where do I go from here? Who am I? I don't look the way I used to look. Not that I was all that cute, but I wasn't all that ugly either. But this was, what if this shit comes back, right? And when I started understanding that there's a correlation between empathy and recovery, there's a correlation between compassion and quality of life. And then I started studying these aspects, because

• 26:35Speaker 01

  I thought these were benevolent, pious personality traits, when in fact, weaponized empathy is one of the most powerful tools, warfare strategies, psychological strategies that could be willfully deployed towards someone to get them to do what you want, to think how you want them to think, and to behave how you want them to behave. And when I really tapped into, okay, weaponization of empathy, well, as a weapon can do two different things. It can get you killed, or it can make you, give you what you need to eat. It can keep

• 27:16Speaker 01

  you safe. So when I started tapping into weaponized empathy in clinical practice, I noticed that it would create more successful patient outcomes. It would align patient and care team and provider in a way. Then I started looking at this from a corporate standpoint, even political, and I saw that there's something more here. And I think this is a power we all need to be aware of. We need to change our perception of what it is, and how it can be used for us and against us.

• 27:52John R. Miles?

  Dr. D, thank you for sharing that story. I know it must still be one that's painful for you. I've had several people close to me who have had throat cancer, and those who've had to go through radiation, and it sounds like they had it a little bit differently than you did, oftentimes couldn't eat because they were in so much pain. And in one case, one of them lost their ability to taste, which never came back. So it's, all of them have always told me that the surgery, no matter how bad it is, was easier to go through than the ramifications oftentimes of having to go through the radiation part of it. I'm happy to hear you were able to fight for that and get it. One of the things that you

• 28:37John R. Miles?

  write in the book is that you had to, your words were ingest your own rhetoric.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:47John R. Miles?

  What belief for you broke first?

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Man, like that day in the park. I'm always telling other people,

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Everything is working for your good. I remember in a few of those podcasts of going lives, I would actually say, I'm going through this so you guys can see what faith looks like. Sometimes God will allow you to experience something that may or may not be directly related to you. Even if it is or isn't, there's gonna be people that are witnessing what you go through and how you go through it can have a serious impact on their perception of self and life. Because if they see that you made it, they have hope and think, okay, I can make it too. Right?

• 29:37Speaker 01

  But at some point, what is rhetorical? What just flowed off my lips like oil poured from a decanter? I had to come to a conclusion. Do I believe this? Or do I know it? See, when you believe something, there's still room to massage it, shift it, pivot it. But when you know something, there's a piece that comes with it. I'm a tech founder. I created this app called Uriel. Well, between Uriel coming to life, which it's now in a beta phase, and going through all this stuff that prepared me

• 30:20Speaker 01

  to handle money and to handle power and wealth. I believed a lot of stuff. I believe that the universe, source, God would provide. I believe that all things work for my good. But in late in the midnight hour, when I had too much month left at the end of my money, all of a sudden, these beliefs, were they really anchored the way that I portrayed? Because if they were, why am I worrying? Why am I waking up at three in the morning looking at the bills? Why am I feeling forsaken sometimes? Or, okay, God, I know you're gonna help me, but damn, man.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Do I have to go through this? At one point, John, I actually thought God was like a game developer or a sports, a guy that controlled all sports. And I was his favorite athlete because he wanted me to make the shot at the very last minute, three seconds on the clock, let go, or the ball goes in the net, or the guy catches it right when the clock stops. Because that's how he was waiting to answer my prayers. It's damn, man. What? And in some cases, deadlines would pass and it still wasn't going my way. But then here comes resurrection or restoration. There are times when we say things.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  There are times when we act a certain way. But it's not in earnest. It hasn't been authenticated. And what the season taught me is sometimes you have to go from belief to knowing. And that's the stage even that I'm in now. You and I were talking about a company before this show started. And one we had in common where we had experienced, here's all our hard work, here's our dedication. And basically, that entity was like, okay, we're gonna take advantage of that. We'll see if we can make money off of it. And we're gonna give you a platform. We're not gonna support you.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  But if you have a home run, we share in that. But if you don't, well, so what? Well, the truth is, that's a one-sided partnership. And when we get into life where we give more than we receive, when we get into a relationship where someone is taking so much from us, but not pouring back into us what they're taking, all of a sudden, you're trying to pour from an empty cup. That is never a good idea. And leading from the heart, after we get through with the self-actualization piece, we really start thinking about, are we accepting things that we shouldn't? Are we misaligned?

• 33:15Speaker 01

  And we're giving all this energy and effort to something that's not reciprocating. There is an altruistic relationship. There's something that's more of a pathogenic relationship, a parasitical relationship. And we have to tell ourselves, no is a complete sentence at that point. I don't have to accept less from you when I'm giving you more. And what that means is I'm gonna have to now honor me. I have to stop and think about, what do I need? And many of us don't. Many of us watched our parents, our caregivers, even ourselves, continue to give and give

• 33:56Speaker 01

  and feel bad when we actually expect someone to treat us the way we treat them or have an organization honor us in the way we want to honor that institution. So this is that season where we do stop and let's recalibrate not only how we're leading from the heart, but what leads are pouring back into our heart. And some of them may need to be disconnected.

• 34:21John R. Miles?

  I have gone through this as well, where I was supporting myself whilst supporting others while suppressing myself. And in my first book, Passion Struck, I wrote a chapter on this that I call the mosquito auditor. And basically, what I'm trying to get the reader to do is to audit those influences in their lives because they're oftentimes invisible, like a mosquito is, that are, I call them the pain in the asses, the invisible suffocators, the bloodsuckers who want everything from you or want your blood while you're giving it out willingly. And in effect, you're suppressing yourself from doing so many important things with your life that you could be.

• 35:06John R. Miles?

  And there's a long-term cost to that that most people don't even think about. And I think that's exactly what you were just alluding to.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. We have to do better about honoring ourselves. And one of the things in leading from the heart that I lean into heavily is you cannot receive what you don't, what you don't give, number one. But you're teaching people how to treat you. Whatever's in you, you're gonna probably in some way have that leak out. Sometimes it's gonna just project out. What I'm saying is, if you want to experience more compassion, practice self-compassion.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  If you want people to see you, see yourself. If you want people to respect, love and care for you, respect, love and care for yourself. And see, leading from the heart isn't always about this external stuff. In many ways, it's about doing these things for you, to you. And the more that you can internalize, the easier it will be to externalize itself later.

• 36:25John R. Miles?

  Dr. D, you talk about in the book, the battle between the omnificent self and the obnoxious self. Can you explain what those two selves are? And real examples of how those two voices appear in conflict?

• 36:38Speaker 01

  The obnoxious self is how you think and talk to yourself. I find myself, and I do it still sometimes, and correct myself right after, damn, why in the hell, that was so stupid. We have this obnoxious interaction with ourselves or with others where we unintentionally, oh, really? You go there, you eat that? Well, why are you wearing that? Right? That's that self that is either leveraging self-awareness and self-acceptance at somebody else's expense. Or that's the self that's self-sabotaging you because you're id in the Freudian example, that id, ego, superego, id being the horse.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  The horse is leading the man everywhere. And the man is in no way using the bridle to help the horse move in a direction that is going to be in the long-term or even the short-term interest of the man's well-being. Where the omniscient self, it looks at things from a proactive point, not a reactive point. It looks at things objectively rather than subjectively. And the omniscient self doesn't ask why, it asks what's possible. It looks at, okay, what are the other possibilities?

• 38:02Speaker 01

  And turmoil and destruction, it says, okay, what's the opposite of this look like? When anxiety and depression is present, it doesn't run from it. It looks at it and says, okay, here's what's happening. Here's how it's making me feel and think about myself. And here's the outcome. But see, the omniscient self, it accepts A, what's happening, the circumstances, but it challenges B. Rather than looking at, okay, what is it causing me to think? Okay, what could I be thinking? What are the alternatives? What are the other possibilities?

• 38:45Speaker 01

  And if you change B, then C changes. C is the outcome. C is, how is this affecting your life? So if the obnoxious self, a quick example, is in a situation where some external force, some you couldn't control happens and it disrupts how you can be sustained or how you, the resources you had to take the next step. Then the B of that is, okay, what is that creating? Well, it's creating anxiety, hopelessness. It's creating despair. And then C, now you're sitting home with a joint in your mouth or a glass of wine or misery loves company friends.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  And you're amplifying the exact thing you don't want. I had a mentor named Wayne Dyer. And Wayne said, as when you think, whatever it is that you're thinking about, if you want the things you look at to change, you need to change the way you look at things, what Wayne would say. But the greater truth is, the omniscient self, it looks at what's happened. It looks at the resources being compromised or gone. It looks at the door being closed. But the omniscient self says, okay.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  What is happening now that wouldn't be happening? If I didn't have this problem, in other words, what attributes? What unearthed capacities? Are now showing up for me that wouldn't happen? Unless you had cut my water off, unless you had fired me, unless? You left me if it's the love of your life or your friend, your 10 year best friend, your dog died. Okay, well. The fact that I'm in the middle of this. But I'm still getting up, what am I tapping into? Inside me that? I wouldn't have tapped into had this problem not existed. And see, when we make that shift internally?

• 40:46Speaker 01

  We reposition our relationship with calamity and calamity now becomes a catalyst. And that's the difference between the obnoxious self and the omniscient self. Coming forth.

• 41:00John R. Miles?

  Dr. Do you use say that empathy? Isn't just a feeling, you write, it's a precision instrument. What are we getting wrong about empathy today?

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Well, I love that question. Here are living in a polarized nation here in America. Many other places around the globe too, but here in America. Our country, and I've been around and I've been here six decades, so I've seen a few things. Our country is ugly right now. And it starts at the top. So that's weaponized empathy, though. That's some industrial organizational psychologists. Enabling? A self centered, self serving leadership style and people that are self centered and self serving.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  And leadership positions. But they didn't just get there magically. They used weaponized empathy, they knew what to say. To make someone who felt othered feel included. They knew how to message. And speak to your blind spots. To your vulnerabilities and to your wounds. See, that's weaponized empathy, that's someone that appears to be empathetic with you. When in fact, they're just tapping into the things that will get your attention. Motivates you cognitively, physiologically and emotionally.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  And the next thing you know, you're climbing a wall trying to break in into the legislature to do. With a flag in your hand, calling yourself a patriot, when in truth, you've been pimped. Someone has made you feel? That you know what, you are othered, but I love you. Or you're unseen, well, the reason your life is so bad is because of them. Them being the other race, the other hair texture. The other political party, vegan versus a meat eater, however you want to break it down. Gay, straight, how do you want to break it down?

• 43:09Speaker 01

  But people are speaking into your wounds, your blind spots and your need to be seen and valued. When that's weaponized empathy. But you can do the opposite. You can accept your blind spots and see them. You can look at where you have lack. And stop judging yourself because you don't have what the guy next door or the guy that you see on social media has. And here's the big one. We're getting, these are neurochemical processes that create primal states in you and I'll prove it. If you get on social media even a little bit.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  You're going to notice a pattern. It's titillation. You're going to see a video of a puppy or a dog or something funny that's going to make you laugh. You're going to scroll a little bit more, you're going to see something that pisses you off. That probably makes you even angry. It's going to be a demonstration of bias and injustice of to some degree. And now weaponized empathy has been used on you again. And it's a love hate relationship, right? One minute you're really laughing, next minute you're pissed and you do all that in three to five minutes. One dopamine hit at a time. Well. Your mind.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  That's something that you don't want to? Offer to people. Unless they're going to put something in it that's going to help it function better. And see, this is where you can take this empathy and turn it around toward yourself. And now you can choose, okay, I don't want to see that video anymore, let me block that. I do want to see more of this stuff and what you feed yourself, you become. There's a thing that I read in a spiritual text that says, as a man thinks, so is he. That is some true stuff, there's nothing ever been more true in a statement. Whatever we feed ourselves, we become, it's the same thing with a diet. If you sit up and eat a bunch of processed foods and?

• 45:18Speaker 01

  A bunch of stuff rich in nitrates, I've read in some one of these stores, Whole Foods or somewhere. If you can't pronounce the ingredients, they're probably not good for you. And that's true, that is so true. So what we have to look at is what are we consuming mentally? Emotionally, spiritually and environmentally? Does it serve the greater good? We look at things like smoking, drinking, yeah, you're pissed. Why not have a drink? That'd help give you a little bit of relief, but see if you? End up being an alcoholic. And now you have cirrhosis of the liver and kidney failure. Was that really a good idea, right? You smoke a joint, smoke a cigarette, you got that nicotine hit.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  You're up for three minutes, but later you have some pulmonary disorder. And you're coughing up a lung. Is that really a good idea? Because that's a fact and laden with tar isn't how you were designed. So we have to ask ourselves, what are we allowing in? And whatever that is, at some point that's going to come back out. And it's either going to bless you or curse you.

• 46:28John R. Miles?

  At the beginning of the conversation, you mentioned that you work with a lot of high profile people. And? My experience with being around some high profile people. I sometimes felt really sorry for them. One of my really good friends was a six time Pro Bowl. NFL wide receiver. And we would meet for lunch or coffee or whatever and? It just always felt to me like he was under the microscope because people always recognize them, always would come over. And if they didn't come over, we're paying attention to everything that he did and?

• 47:07John R. Miles?

  I also worked for several billionaires and one of them, I saw on the latest Forbes list now has a net worth of $147 billion. But I always felt sorry for him and his family because everywhere he went, he was in? A bulletproof car, bombproof, his wife would? Ride on her bike through our neighborhood guarded by five people around her. They would often helicopter places to isolate themselves and I always felt? Man, you're not even getting to live a real life, you can't even go to the grocery store with without? Feeling threatened. What have you found when you think about empathy and what we've been discussing about?

• 47:52John R. Miles?

  That you see in some of these? High performers that you work with that's common amongst all of them?

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Well, I'll say this. Heavy? Is the crown on the king's head, right?

• 48:06John R. Miles?

  Yep.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  When people are extremely successful. There's a price tag, there's a statement that says to whom much is given, much is required. At the same time? We get to shape how we live. And the choice becomes one of common sense. There are evil people in this world that just don't like the fact that you've been blessed, that don't like the fact that you have resources they don't. But there are also people in the world that need your help. There are people that have created things. Like right now, I'm looking for a venture capital partner, but I just don't want any partner. Because I understand the value of association.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  And if you don't love people, if you don't honor? Why you're put on this planet, I'm probably not a good guy to align with and I don't want to be aligned with somebody that's the opposite of that, right? The first thing with this, that isolation? Has much to do with self perception? With self awareness? You can make a difference in life and be welcome. And most places you visit. Especially if you're coming there because you care about people. And you want to make a difference in someone's life now, I'm not going to tell you. That because you become a humanitarian? That you can escape the vicissitudes of life.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  You won't, but what I am going to tell you is when the closer you get in contact? With the purpose of your existence, the more peace you find. The more alignment you find. If you're going to? Enjoy this life? Take yourself? And make yourself a servant.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  And what I mean by that is look at what can I, what is it that I can do to touch somebody else's life in a meaning transformational way? And that doesn't mean you got a billion dollars, so go give everybody a thousand dollars. Sometimes just a word from you. Sometimes your presence, sometimes the fact that you can pick up a phone and influence the decision on Congress, the legislature. If they go and remove a program and you can easily afford to create one, just go create that program again. You don't need to deal with the US government or any government on this planet to help other people. Another

• 50:46Speaker 01

  thing that you can do is stop and think about meaning. Abraham's hierarchy of needs, the very last need is that relational aspect of yourself with the world around you. And generativity is what it's called, but how are you shaping the world that you are in right now? And if it's for the better, there's going to be a peace that you will find even in the midst of your imperfections. But if you allow yourself to fall victim to where everything with you is about a deal, about we're going to make so much money, then more

• 51:28Speaker 01

  than likely, at some point, that narcissistic need for power and control is going to consume you. And when it does, you're only getting what you set out to be.

• 51:42John R. Miles?

  I think you did a great job of just describing in many ways what it means to be passion struck.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:49John R. Miles?

  And with that, Dr. D, where is the best place that our listeners or viewers can go to learn more about you and pick up a copy of Lead from the Heart?

• 52:00Speaker 01

  And first, you can just type in Dr. D, like Day or Derek, but just the initial D. My middle name is pronounced Yvonne, but it's spelled just like Ivan. Dr. D. Yvonne Young. You can put me in the chat, GPT, Google, Gemini, Claude, whatever, and just put books and it will take you to Simon and Schuster or to Barnes and Noble or Amazon. And you can buy Leading from the Heart, my other book, Break Up, Don't Break Down, the Expanded Edition, to help you deal with separation anxiety and the loss of a relationship. You

• 52:40Speaker 01

  can find me on all social media channels under Dr. D. Yvonne Young, at Instagram, at Facebook and LinkedIn. I don't do Twitter for personal reasons, but I can tell you that I'm available. Feel free to reach out. My job and my goal is to help you live a profoundly extraordinary life. And if I can do that, please get in contact with me.

• 53:07John R. Miles?

  Dr. D, it was such a pleasure to have you on Passion Struck. Thank you so much for joining us.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  John, thank you for having me. Let's do this again soon.

• 53:16John R. Miles?

  I hope today's conversation leaves you with one simple question. What kind of relationship am I building with myself? Because as Dr. Young reminded us, the voice we hear most often isn't someone else's, it's our own. And over time, that voice shapes our confidence, our relationships, our resilience, and ultimately, the life we create. The good news is that voice isn't fixed. It can become more compassionate, more honest, more hopeful, and that's where real flourishing begins. If this conversation resonated with you, I'd love for you to share it with someone who could benefit from hearing it. And if you haven't already, be sure to follow and subscribe to Passion Struck on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or YouTube, so you'll never miss an episode. Next time, I'll be back with

• 54:01John R. Miles?

  a special solo episode as we conclude our flourishing series. Over this past month, we've explored purpose, connection, resilience, healing, and what it truly means to become fully alive. In that episode, I'll bring together the biggest lessons from these conversations and leave you with one final challenge for your own journey toward flourishing. Then we begin an exciting new chapter. Our August series is called The Adaptive Brain: How Your Mind Learns, Changes, and Heals. We'll kick it off with one of the world's foremost experts on brain health, Dr. Daniel Amen. If Dr. Young challenged us to rethink the relationship we have with ourselves, Dr. Amen asks an equally important question. What if lasting

• 54:43John R. Miles?

  change isn't just about willpower, but about building a healthier brain? Together, we'll explore why insight alone rarely changes behavior, how chronic stress, loneliness, and our daily habits reshape the brain, and why no one is ever too damaged or too far gone to heal. I can't wait to share that conversation with you.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  Social media, constant negative news, the political divide, it has just caused great stress. Suicide from 2000 to now has gone up over 60%. And young people are in serious trouble. 57% of teenage girls report being persistently sad. That people think of alcohol as a health food, marijuana is innocuous, psilocybin is the next savior.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  We're really in a dangerous, very stressful time, especially for young people.

• 55:49John R. Miles?

  Until then, remember that every meaningful transformation begins with a single decision: to treat yourself with the same compassion, grace, and humanity that you freely give to others. I'm John Miles, and until our next episode, stay intentional, stay curious, and stay passion struck.