Hello. This is Rebecca. I am going to share. A presentation. I developed for an upcoming summit called demystifying inflammation. It's run by another female physician entrepreneur. Who's focused on. Allergy and inflammation type. Educational work. And I was lucky enough to be invited to be part of the summit next week. And I am going to share the audio. Part of that summit with you here today. There is a PDF that I think would help later in the podcast. You'll understand. There's a brief exercise. So I'm going to link to the PDF here in the show notes. And also, if you're interested in attending the summit, it is free. It starts next Monday on the 18th. And I will post a link for that as well. They've got a lot of great speakers, lots of great topics. I think it's going to be really fun.

Just as a quick summary. The topic I am looking at today is what I call the zero sum game in life. I borrowed this from one part of the module of the course, I wrote the N sandwiched course. And I wrote that in the context of trying to understand. How to support other people in life by first, starting to acknowledge zero some areas as sort of the baseline. And, and becoming really honest and sober about that. And then working from that acknowledgement versus trying to overextend and people please, and be everything to everybody at all times in all ways. And just putting out. What I consider a framework to conceptualize the various costs of any new obligation or responsibility or new tasks that you take on in life. It's a neutral concept. It doesn't mean you should or shouldn't do anything. But I think the brain tends to do better when it has a framework to work from. And that is what I'm going to review today. So I hope you enjoy. Thank you.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to how to acknowledge the zero sum game in life. I am your hostess, Rebecca Tapia. My hope with this topic in particular is to just give you a practical framework to understand some of the stressors in life. Thank you. And how they fall into zero sum categories of time, attention, money, and health. And we'll get through those here in just a minute. Let me tell you a little bit about myself. So, like many of you, I have multiple life roles that change over time. But I'm a mom, I have three children other life roles that are important to me. I'm also a physician, a brain injury specialist. And so I'm very interested in how the brain operates and how it affects our lives and our health. In my undergraduate career, I was a cultural anthropologist, so I'm always fascinated about how people approach different life events or develop the beliefs that they have. In my spare time, I'm a podcaster and also an avid college football fan, so this is a great time of year for me right now. So I have in my head of what, what's ideal and I, you know, something you're always chasing after and, and I think of this person that's completing all of their work and doing yoga while they're completing the work and having a healthy diet and having plants that don't die and an organized system and beautiful decorations on the wall and That this is sort of what might be proposed as some ideal state. But mostly I live kind of in this state. And so that's just this feeling of being pulled in a lot of different directions. There's not enough of me, not enough of time or not enough attention to go around. The caveat to this is I don't really cook, but if I did cook, it would be bacon and eggs. So that's good. And I also don't have a small infant. My children are... Our school age, but that said, I just. It's the number of inputs into my day to day life, which is, you know, a car battery that died a few weeks ago, an email that requires some urgent response. It's the beginning of school, so it seems like there's always these deadlines and things that have to have be registered by a certain time. And if I don't get in at midnight, then they won't get into the chess club that they want to get into or whatever. And I just feel like there's almost this milieu of tasks. And demands and every day I go through, it's just some management of some set of demands on my, my time or energy and, and that's really where some of this came from. And I started sharing this idea or this framework with some friends and colleagues. And then later. When mentoring some medical residents as a, as my way of developing an approach that seems systematic and seems relatable. And so, because this summit is focused on inflammation, I know for me, there are downstream manifestations of that mindset or that feeling. And for me, specifically, it's headaches, it's upper trap pain, specifically on the left side. And then also just that feeling of fatigue or low energy, something like that. And so, and interestingly, these symptoms tend to manifest right when I'm switching those roles that we talked about. So if I'm at work all day and then I come home and I'm sort of set shifting over into being a mom, and that seems to be almost where these symptoms tend to flare. So if I track them over the course of a day, that's what would happen. And this isn't outside of what science understands, there are pathways for the stress in our mind and in our lives to manifest elsewhere in our body. And that could be things like joint pain, GI issues, things like that. So as a brain injury specialist, somebody always interested in how the brain affects our lives. And this is also just a very important topic for me and I'm really glad we have a chance to talk about it today. So, what are we actually going to do? So, what's the whole point of me talking to you about this? So, I'm going to take these four areas these four finite, zero sum areas, and first we're just going to talk about them. It's almost like we're going to put them on the table, and we're going to define them, and we're going to become aware of the finite nature of these four areas. And then we're going to take just a little bit of time to audit them in your day to day life right now. And that's just becoming... Then not only becoming aware of it, but then also putting some numbers or putting some data against it and understanding, really demonstrating back to our brain that these areas really are finite. And then step three will be an actualization exercise where we take these limitations and then put them in the framework of where we want to move in our life, things that we want more of and things that we want less of. So let's get started So the first one we're going to talk about is time. And I think everybody can pretty much agree that time is zero sum. So you can sum 24 hours in a day or seven days in a week or so many days in a, in a year. And that is tangible to us. This is something that is relatable and is literally zero sum. That's why we're starting with this. And we have to acknowledge that there's only so much of it. And so when I get a proposal to Sit on a board or participate in a project. The first thing you usually think about is just how much time is that going to take? So how many hours times, how many weeks, et cetera. And so time is an investment in that way. And it's something that's easy to track. And so if you even look at just how employment works for a lot of people, they literally have to submit. The time that they spent doing those various things in order to get paid. And so if we look at a time audit, this would not be hard to do, right? It might be diff it might be embarrassing to do depending on who's watching you write it out, but... So, to me, it's like, what, how much time do you spend sleeping or working or eating or vegging, right? Or driving in a certain day. So I'll do this for myself. So on most work days, I'm probably sleeping seven hours. I'm working between eight and ten. Eating might be mixed in there. Maybe that's like an hour total a day. Vegging is probably way too much. Maybe two hours a day. And I don't mean productive time and then driving, yeah, so maybe another two hours. And so I didn't add that up, but the idea would be if I sat down next to you and I said, can you just tell me if I give you 24 hours on a workday, what does that look like? Or maybe, maybe for you it's the weekend. So what does a weekend look like? And you could probably with, with some reliability go through and tell me here's the zero sum of time and how you use your time. What you're never going to be able to tell me. Right, is that you had 28 hours in a 24 hour period. And so this is something that has the cruel rules of zero sum because there is no way to create more time And that's something that we can't take with us when we die is something that we can't necessarily You know shrink or expand That said, there are ways that a lot of us will spend money to buy more time. So if somebody helps you with your lawn or takes an after school program after for your kids so you can pick them up a little bit later. There are little tricks to be more efficient within the 24 hour period. But for sure, time ends up being a zero sum game. The next one is going to be money. Now, I know not for everybody listening to this, or maybe some people that have unlimited independent wealth, but for the vast majority of people, including myself, money is another thing. Now, it's not quite as relatable as time. Like, time is 24 hours a day, and you might have more money one year, and then less money the next year, or maybe your kids go to college, and your money spending changes. However, when I think about it as a zero sum game, I mean this in so far as there's, there's so much money to be spent on usually a lot of different things that put demands on that, on that resource. And you might say, Oh, money is kind of weird. You can even just think of overall resources money and including, you know, things like cars or something like that. But, but to me, it's more practical to think in terms of there's only so much money. And so again, if I get asked to do a project or participate in something, first it'll be, how much time is it going to take? Second is, how much money is it going to cost? And, and that's very that, that's the initial breakdown of what the demands will be on my system, which is how, what is the expenditure going to be here? Now you can also say the opposite. One of the reasons this is a big stressor is that there can be unexpected demands on money. There can be... You know a car repair or a health, a health bill or health related bill. So, so money is zero sum, and that is one of the main stressors in adult life, which is that balancing of this zero sum resource with. With known demands and then potential future unknown demands as well. And so if I sat down next to you and asked you to draw out a budget, which I won't, I promise. But here's just a quick example of where is that money going? What, what, what's coming in, what's going out? And you could show me where that, where that zero sum money is being spent. And again, I don't mean that strictly, like, you know, I mean, your bank sees it very strictly, right? So you have this much money, you can spend this much. But, but this idea would be that if I were to do an audit, or you were to do an audit on your budget, you know, where is that money going? Where is that zero sum being spent? And the next one, and this one is a little bit more controversial, and it's the idea of, is, is health zero sum? Is that something that you can create, can it be debited and can it be credited over time, but is there a limit to it? And, and I can see it a lot of different ways, but I love thinking of it as zero sum because it makes me Value it more. If I think that my health is unlimited, that, Oh, I can be on, you know, I could be ill for this period of time because it can always reclaim my health. Well, of course. As a physician, we see that that's oftentimes not possible, but this idea that, that health is also zero sum. And so, again, if there's a new demand in my life and I think, well, how much time is it going to take, how much money is it going to take, and then what is it going to do with my health? And I think this is really interesting because there's a pivot point here is you can spend time and money on things that improve your health, but you could very easily spend time and money on things that, that. Make your health worse and so thinking of it again as another bank account, like my health account of I, Oh, I know I can do this, but I'm going to have to stop, you know, that morning walk or I know I can do this, but that's going to cause more difficulty with this particular ailment and, and thinking of health really as a, as a currency that you have. And instead of putting it aside and thinking, okay, well, I'm going to, I'm going to solve all of my time issues and my money issues and then get to my health issues. It's, it, it existing as, as what I call a dependent variable doesn't go very well. And that's, you know, going back to the, the picture of the lady with the bacon and eggs and the baby and the cat, you know, all that stuff, going back to this idea that we're meeting all of these other demands, but then deprioritizing our health, but the health is finite. And, and although you can do things to improve your health over time, it's still not something that can be debited. Indefinitely and continue to give you a high quality of life or a positive experience So the way I think about health is in a couple of different domains like think about it Can you really spend your physical health? And I see this a lot so I'm a rehabilitation physician in the specialty area of brain injury if somebody lays in bed for three months, they're definitely a Spending their physical health, so maybe they have a respiratory issue that's happening, and they have an extended period of being on a ventilator, and in order to save their life from their respiratory health, they're definitely spending down on their physical health, and so once they recover from that, and they come to somebody like me to help them rehabilitate, you can see that there's been a large debit of their physical health that has to be almost like re You know, I guess more deposits made through the, through physical rehab or through other modalities to improve their overall energy. And so, and I don't think health specifically is physical. I know we focus a lot on that. But I think it would also in terms of your emotional health, which in these can be all tied together, right? Your, and I don't mean that in a specific religious way, but, or your connection with nature, your social health, you're participating in your community or spending time with friends or loved ones. And then also for a lot of us, your intellectual health. And, and I mean that do you feel challenged? Do you feel like you're growing and, and really expanding in my brain, the definition of health and getting out of The specific medical model, that health is very physical based, which I know that's a large component of it, but really understanding my health holistically and thinking in terms of, what's going to be the cost of my physical health, but then also my spiritual health or social health? And I'll give you an example. So in my postpartum period, after I had my first child, there's an obvious change in my physical health, right? Cause you just had a baby and there's all the changes related to that. Yeah. But I experienced changes in multiple other areas. So I dealt with a lot of anxiety I was, I felt socially isolated because we just had this baby and all of my friends were at work and I wasn't at work at the time and it was hard for us to get out and go visit people. But really it wasn't until later that I really looked back and I felt like. There were some expenses in the area also, just my intellectual health. So how I was challenging myself and I had stopped reading. I had stopped learning. I, I know you're just going to have to sometimes when you're in that period, but, but going back and understanding, I really just missed this idea of that academic engagement of that clinical engagement and how much my brain had depended on that as part of my intellectual health. And I will say you know, that has changed for me a lot over time. So part of the reason I wrote this and the part of the reason I do what I do in, in my content development is that's really stimulating for my intellectual health. So to think about different aspects. So think about it again, you can break health into some areas. You might have some additional areas here, but can you spin that down and what does that look like for you? So I saved this one for last because I think it is by far. The most important thing and a lot of people confuse time and attention as the same The same element in life and they're really not and I'll and think about it like this so I can be spending time Sitting with my child and they're doing homework, but I may not be spending my attention and Think of it if I was to audit your time I would just hover above you like a like a creepy third party Seeing what you do every day. So you spent this many minutes brushing your teeth. You spent this many minutes driving and getting gas. You spent this many minutes making lunch, whatever it is, right? And so that creepy third party could be hovering and put a report out about how you spent your time that day. What it can't do, just by hovering, is understand where your attention was that day. Because where our attention is, is way up here. And that's much more difficult to audit. Because we do a time audit and we think... That that is actually an attention audit, and it's not. And I'm sure just talking about this, you can think of a million other examples where you're physically present or engaged in a certain task, but your attention is elsewhere. So I think attention is more precious than time. And so what my kids think they want is my time. They want me to come sit with them, or do something with them. But what I think they really want, and further, is my attention. And I know this because if I spend time with them, but they don't have my attention, they're very aware of it. And, and attention is... It's so precious. Attention builds relationships. It builds careers. It, focusing your attention is like this laser that can create large amounts of change in short periods of time when that attention is focused on a very specific outcome. But when it's divided into 15 different things at all times, then attention starts to feel scarce and that can start to create confusion. That scarcity and that difficulty managing demands on our attention. I mean, the entire social media universe is built on getting slivers of your attention, like microseconds of your attention in different areas. And that is what people are paying large amounts of money for. It's not necessarily to get your time. They know they're not going to get your time, right? You're not going to spend 15 minutes watching one ad. But they want your attention to something because attention is very powerful. That focuses the mind on that for that one split second. And it is outsized in its effect versus time. And so I, there are related, obviously the time and attention are, are, are important. But I think of attention as, as the most precious thing I give every day. Even more than my time. Because I can give time. But oftentimes I give time to something, but my attention is not there, and I know it. And I'll even have tasks that I do, thinking, Okay, well I'm going to show up and I'll do this, and I'll spend time there, but I can actually think of problems that I'm going to put my attention towards in my head, and then process those. Enough about exploring the idea of attention. Let's take a little bit deeper. So when we look at the attention audit, I just have a couple of different things here that I know my attention goes to, but are very common just for adults in general, to have your brain like, where does your brain go when it's otherwise not engaged? Right? So that could be work related issues or stress. That could be your to do list or your task list. That's always kind of hovering right around you and never completely done the relationships that you have. So it's not as easy to do an audit on your attention, right? Because I can't hover. Above you and tell you what you're doing for all that time. It's really what's going on in your own brain. And I think about it, like, where does your brain go when it's disengaging? Does it wander over to work related stress or tasks? Does it have a to do list that never goes away? Is it worrying about an aging parent or a relationship that's not right? Or, or having some difficulty? Is it worried about money and some demands on, on your finances? And when it's going through all these things, where does it wander back to when it doesn't want to engage? Is that social media? Is that TV? Or like, where else is this attention going? Because really, the brain can focus on one thing at a time. And wondering where that's going, sort of doing that audit, is really only something you can do. Because again, somebody could physically observe you sitting in a chair, but really where is that attention going to? And, and getting down into the distribution of where this is, you could guess where it goes. So you could sit down and do a 24 hour audit. But if you wanted to get really scientific about it, you would go back and actually each hour go back and write down, where did your attention go for that last hour? So that can be kind of work intensive. But The reason I harp so much on attention is a lot of that attention the stressful intentions can go into the future. So what if this happens? What if this disease progresses? What if I don't have enough for XYZ? And so there's a lot of future oriented attention and worry. And then there's a lot of past oriented attention, which is like, that didn't go as well. Or maybe they didn't like the way I said that. Or, if I would've done this, maybe this would've happened. And either way, in a very, very simple approach of understanding attention is it's drawn backwards or forwards in the timeline. It will not be present now. It will not be present to the present moment. And so if I'm thinking about the time where I'm spending that time with my kid and I'm spending time and air quotes with them, but my attention is on my job or the next thing I have to do, I am for sure not participating in the now. And so I'm just building up sort of this attention expenditure on all these things in the future and all these things in the past. And it's continuously robbing me of the one thing I actually have, and it is for sure. Which is that attention at that moment. And so, again, coming away from this understanding that the attention is the most precious item that is in this zero sum game. So you only have so much. You can't create... The only way you can create more attention is to reduce some of these areas, right? So I'm going to worry less about my work related stress. Well, now I've freed up some attention to be here in the moment. And in the work that that takes. So thinking again of your time as zero sum, your money as zero sum, your health as zero sum, and then also your attention as zero sum. And I don't mean this in a way to create scarcity, like, Oh, you've got to figure this out and be better at spending these things. I think about it like taking a step back and approaching new demands in your life and organizing them into really understanding. What is this demand going to do for my balance, right? Or my checking balance for time, money, health, and attention. And then trending towards things that improve those balances as a way, as a mechanism to help still that brain. And to help give a framework and to help give a communication and a verbiage and a way to Take on things in life and filter them through a, an understanding of that zero sum game so that we have a different emotional and mental experience of life and through that the downstream effects of stress and inflammation to improve. So I'm trying to get away from living in the luggage on the top left, where I have no awareness of the capacity. Right, so I'm taking on time obligations, or financial obligations, or things that I don't really characterize, or I just do at the time because it sounds right, or maybe I'm people pleasing, or doing something like that. But then my experience of this luggage just doesn't fit. Because there's a zero sum to it. And the zero sum is not something to fear or to try to change, even if we could, right? This idea is, it gives us... A limit, a framework, a reality to understand and process new demands on ourselves in a different way that helps us acknowledge us as an entire human being that does have finite limitations in these areas. So then maybe you move towards an experience in your life on the bottom, right, that kind of luggage that's organized and. Honestly, with the graphic, who even knows if there's anything in there? But anyway, this idea that it's, it's organized and there is space and there's a feeling of being more free and nobody else has to change. And this equation, nothing else in the world has to change except for the way that I'm processing this information, the way that I am understanding new elements in life and really doing my best. to understand how they affect these different areas of time, money, health, and attention. So what you'll see here on the left is what I call the Actualization exercise, and so you're going to take just a blank sheet of paper, You're going to have a line across the middle, you're going to draw a line from the top Left to the bottom right. And on the top left, things I want more of in my life. On the bottom right, things I want less of in my life. And then on the top right, you're actually going to put some things we talked about that have zero sum. I have limited time, limited money, right? Limited attention and health. And what are some things that I'm going to become intentional about? And in the framework of this, these limitations, the zero sum games, what are things I can do more of that I already have enough time for, that I already have enough money for, that would improve my health? So I put volleyball games, because I love playing volleyball and watching my daughter play volleyball. So I'm going to go to a collegiate volleyball game. Things I want less of. Dog mess. So I'm still working on ways to get my dogs to be cleaner in the house. Things I'm like, maybe in the middle a fall garden, I'd like to have one. I don't know if I'm going to spend the money on it, I don't know if I have the time or the attention. And then also things I definitely need less of, Instagram. And I write this in here because oh and I missed one, right? So, the, the line in the middle is like, I think I have just enough. I don't need more of it, I don't need less of it. And that I put family dinners, so once a month. The family that lives here locally, we go and have a dinner. I don't think it could be twice a month. I also don't want it to be once a year. It's just about right. So that's just to give an idea of taking intention and understanding in a non judgmental way. What do I want more of? What do I want less of? And using a very simple exercise, acknowledging the zero sum areas. How can I get... These areas aligned towards improving my health or giving me in that zero sum estimate more time and attention. So if I spent less time on Instagram, I would have more time and attention for my fall garden. And I use this because I love visual exercises. I think they're very helpful for the brain, specifically for when I'm trying to engage or something that seems abstract. And so I call this the more and less exercise. And that's in the context of knowing, okay, I want to create more health and I do it this way. And, and this will obviously change over time, but this is, to me, the, the most simple way to go about and force the brain to answer a different question because if I keep asking my brain, do I have enough time? My brain's always going to say no, right? Should we spend money on this? My brain's going to say no, right? And I'm just not asking good questions for my brain. And so with this exercise, this, then actually giving it the opportunity to engage in a way that's practical and visual and you can go back and change it over time. So I hope you enjoyed that exercise. And I hope you enjoyed this very brief presentation. I'm so glad that you stuck with it. And I hope that it reframes just the next thing that happens today. And understanding and gaining that awareness of these limitations. Of that zero sum as an empowering thing. To know, okay, that's what my job is in life. This is my responsibility to manage these areas the best I can. And make them reflect what my values are, what my goals are. Things I want more of, things I want less of, once I've gotten clear on that. So we went through the awareness of these four areas, we talked about doing some audits in these areas, and then as we just spoke about the actualization through that exercise. I appreciate you being here. Thank you so much for allowing me to share this with you. I hope it was helpful. If so, please find me on social media or on the podcast. I'd love to hear from you again. Thanks for your attention. And here's to more attention for you in the future. Thank you so much.