Keeping a healthy body requires mindset mastery to help your organs function a hundred percent of the time, and in many cases, we find it difficult to track our health conditions. In this episode, Dr. Pat Boulogne, author of Why Are You Sick, Fat, and Tired? shares how her book could help you identify your weakest link and discusses how you could keep your body healthy. Listen to this episode and follow Dr. Pat’s insights to guide your way in helping improve your health. Plus, learn what the biggest misnomer in medicine is and what the four steps on getting healthy are.
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Why Are You Sick, Fat, And Tired? Bridging The Gap Through Mindset Mastery With Dr. Pat Boulogne DC, CCSP, AP, CFMP – Mentor | Coach | Mindset Mastery | Speaker | Author | International Bestseller
We have somebody that’s going to bring light to your day-to-day. Our special guest is a Bestselling Author, Speaker, most importantly, a Mentor and a Coach. She’s going to mentor and coach you. She does that by using something called mindset mastery. The mindset mastery helps her promote and helps you bridge the gap when it comes to wellness initiatives. It helps you get unlocked and get fired up and ready to go. I want to introduce our special guest, it’s the one and only Dr. Pat. Dr. Pat, welcome.
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
I am happy that we got connected. We’ll start here. I love the title of your book. Having a best-selling book is hard to do, but when you got the title, it can help. Why… Are You Sick, Fat, and Tired? Many people, when we talk about living in darkness, they’re sick all the time. They’re overweight and they got no energy. You are here to show us the light and carry the light on how to become healthy, thin, or in shape, we should probably say, and full of energy. Dr. Pat, tell us a little bit about the book. Tell us why you chose that title and maybe a couple of quick thoughts on how to bridge the gap from the title of your book.
In 1996, I retired from active practice and I moved to Boston. When I did that, I moved right downtown, right into the thick of things where the financial district is and the Harbor. There’s always something going on. It was also 10 degrees cooler on the Harbor in the summertime than it was in the Back Bay of Boston. What I did in my time off was I started to write. I would go to the gym. Periodically, I would go into this area called Post Office Square. Post Office Square was where all the financial people came and hung out for their lunch. It was a beautiful place. You have Charles Schwab’s on one side. You had the two twin towers in Boston, Harbor Towers.
You also had the king and the queen for the financial district there also. It was pretty with stereos growing. My observation was there were so many people who were sick and they didn’t know it. Nobody home. You would talk to people and you would ask them like, “Tell me how you’re doing.” They would tell me all sorts of things. It was amazing what people will tell you if you ask them a question. The other thing that I noticed from being on a cape, my office was on Cape Cod, was that in Boston, with all these people, I did a lot more reading. I was reading a lot more research at the time.
I read a CDC article from 2010 that had an alarming statistic in it. The statistic was that out of everybody that they tested in this American study, everybody had dangerous chemicals in them, 212 of them. None of them were missed, and going, “Lifestyle, how people were thinking, what they were eating, how they were doing their life, and the stress in their life was killing them.” I go, “For what?” I would ask a lot of other different questions during that time with people. I saw a guy one day walking that had this greasy sweat. I walked up to him. I said, “You’re not feeling good, are you?” He said, “No.” I said, “Why don’t you go to the hospital?” He said, “I got to work.” I said, “You can’t work when you’re dead. Let’s go to the hospital.”
I called the cab and threw him in. Around three months later, something like that, this guy walked up to me. I didn’t recognize him. He said, “It’s you.” I said, “You what? Who are you?” He said, “You’re the one that put me in the cab to go to the hospital. Thank you. You saved my life.” I go, “Thanks a lot. I’m glad.” He goes, “You’re a miracle worker,” and he walked away. He never asked me my name and what I did. He just wanted me to thank me, which was perfectly fine. I had this experience, but when I was up there, I like intaking a lot of information.
I had a lot of contacts when I went to Boston. That was a great place. What I realized is that I couldn’t remain retired. Because I had that, I’m thinking, “You have the ability to connect with people quickly.” I come from the Midwest. We talked to everybody. Until you talk to somebody, you can find a lot of information from them and help lead them in the right direction. My whole time that I was in Boston, I rarely told anybody I was a physician and I was decompressing from working hard before. I wanted to go do something and have fun for a couple of years why I was doing that. It was great. I’ve come across a statistic that said 50% of our population in the United States is going to have some chronic illness or disease.
When I read that, I started thinking, “How do I put everything I know in a book?” I had some guy tell me years ago, he goes, “You’re going to write a book.” I said, “You’re crazy. I’m not going to do that. When I retire, I’m just going to retire. I want to go find a beach, do a little chiropractic on the sideline, and get a good suntan.” That never panned out. I wrote this book. I was thinking, “How could I serve masses of people and get my hands on masses of people not having to know me and then get something out of the deal. The book, Why… Are You Sick, Fat, and Tired? tells you your starting point in your health journey, it works as an advocating tool, as a workbook, and also works for you.
When you go someplace like a country you’ve never been to before, you always get a chirp book. Most people are not familiar with the baseline in their body and what their foundational line looks like. My women’s business group at the time went to publish the first edition. This woman said, “I’m not sick. I’m not fat. I’m not tired. I’m not buying your book.” I said, “You gave me an idea. You know if you’re a fat, basically. You can look in a mirror. You know if you’re tired, but you do not know if you’re sick.”
The definition of health by Webster’s dictionary is all your organs are functioning 100% of the time. Unfortunately, you don’t know that. There’s no process that does not require time. When you’re on the sick part and you don’t know that you’re sick, as far as the statistic for pre-diabetes in this country, 1/3 of the population knows it, and it’s symptomless. It’s like, “I am pre-diabetic. I don’t have that.” A lot of times, you have to have so much dysfunction before the sign and symptom shows up.
How do you know if your baseline is out of whack? How do you measure your baseline? Is it a blood test? Are you alkaline or acidic? Is that what you’re talking about?
No, I’m talking about the book because inside the book is a host of questions that are specific to each organ system in your body, which will give you your weakest link. Also, we’ll show you where you have your strongest link. It’s like a clock or Swiss watch. Each one of those pieces has got to work together in order to get to Rome. They all go to Rome. They have to work together and they have to work in being consistently working together.
When one starts to slow down, then it affects the other organ systems and your body will pattern out. You can go a long time without having any symptoms. Look at the brain. They say that a good portion of it you never, ever use. Before you start to have signs and symptoms in the area that you do use, something hasn’t been there for quite a while, unless it’s incredibly aggressive.
I know there’s a lot to consider in health, but for our readers who do feel sick, fat, and tired, what are the three most important things they could do to not either be sick or feel sick? That’s what I would like to know.
They should identify some simple basics. One basic is, “Tell me, how have you been feeling for the last two years?” A lot of people just do their life. They do not reflect it for at least two years. When you ask them that question, they think like, “That happened or that happened.” That’s something that’s significant. If you take over-the-counter drugs or aspirin even, or other things, the book is a candidate for you that would make that book specifically for you.
Also, if you take prescription drugs, because prescription drugs will mask what’s going on, it doesn’t get to the root problem. In my many years of being in this industry, I have seen a lot of people who don’t know that they’re sick and they end up having a heart attack and dying. Looking at being overweight, “I can’t lose weight. I don’t think well. I don’t sleep. I can’t get enough exercise. I’m exhausted when I exercise. It doesn’t work for me. I don’t drink enough water. I know I’m not hydrating well enough.”
I don’t understand how to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, like the proper diet part or the proper exercise or the proper sleep and how do I make sleep hygiene a priority for me. You go into that proper mindset and proper mental attitude, that whole group. You have to have that functioning nervous system where structure is function and proper posture because proper posture houses how your body functions. You need to be hydrated for all of it.
Posture and hydration are huge in how you feel. I want to try to get our people some specific tools, answers, formulas, whatever it might be. One thing that my wife and I deal with constantly is we are not good sleepers. A lot of Americans aren’t. I can get to sleep for 3 to 4 hours. I wake up and I’m wide awake and my mind’s racing. What’s your thought on why people can’t sleep? What are the 2 to 3 best things you can do to improve your sleep?
I want to go back to one thing that I didn’t say before because we talked about tests that the book is a questionnaire. My rule is that I don’t guess, I test. This is the first test to decide what other blood work you might need going into the future. It sets the baseline, so you have an idea of what’s going on in your body and your health snapshot right now.
Dr. Pat Boulogne @DRPATB is guest on the Get Attitude Podcast with @GlennJbill produced by @JasonAaronPro. Click To TweetThe bottom line is this, I need to buy the book, number one, and I need to test, not guess. How many different blood tests are there? I go in and get my blood work done and they go, “Everything checked out. You’re fine.” I’m guessing that common blood work is not the type of blood work you’re talking about.
It could be, but the thing about blood work is that a lot of physicians, when they read blood work, you have high, low, and you have normal. Anything that’s in normal for typical Western medicine, traditional medicine, they consider normal. I don’t. I look at what’s trending high. I look at what’s trending low. I want to know if I have a perceived problem. If my perception is like, “The last three blood workups, this is going in this direction.” It might still be normal, but you want to know where it’s trending because then you can do the lifestyle medicine portion of that, where you’re looking at diet first. Food is medicine, then you’re looking at exercise, then you’re looking at targeted supplementation for that specific organ system so that you can buff it up and bring it back to a better functioning level because that might help the other high scores.
The questionnaire in the book is either low, medium, or high. Even that, I look at what’s trending up or what’s trending down and that type of thing. You’ve got to know what the big picture of it looks like. There’s in functional medicine, lifestyle medicine, there’s other blood work that isn’t necessarily typical. I will give you a good tip for all your readers is that if there is a full panel that you could order instead of the one thing like if you ever get a thyroid done, you want to hold a thyroid panel.
You do not want to have T4. The T4 tells you anything. It tells you the score, but you need to know how that interacts, not only in the blood but also how that gets with interacts with T3 and gets into the cell. That’s where the foundational part of your health is. That’s where inflammation is an issue for people too. Get the full thyroid panel. If they do like a liver panel, say, “Are you doing the full panel?” It gives you better information. When you have better information, you can make better decisions. You’re basing decisions on real things that are in front of you and not what somebody is speculating about.
Were you a general practitioner? Is that what you were? Were you a specialist?
No, my background is I’m a chiropractic sports physician. I had a teacher that was incredible in nutrition. I was fascinated by everything that he said. He was so far ahead of the things that he taught, they didn’t come out in the news, like don’t buy margarine, buy butter, until twenty years later. He was saying that from the get-go. He always had these pearls of wisdom. I was like a sponge, like, “Tell me more.”
What was his name?
His name was Dr. Chappel. He was at Life Chiropractic at that time. He was pretty brilliant. I had two other mentors in chiropractic teacher. He’s passed away. He was Victor Frank. He always said what you got isn’t necessarily what you got. You might have high blood pressure, but why do you have high blood pressure? What does that high blood pressure relate to? The first thing that you know about high blood pressure, it has inflammation. The more inflamed your body is, the sicker you will get.
We’ve been looking at this, too. Chiropractic medicine reduces inflammation. I have friends that do a chiropractor every other week or every month. They seem a lot more comfortable than me. I’m like, “I need to start going and getting an adjustment every month.” Tell me what your thoughts are on that. For people that feel fat, sick, and tired, would they benefit going to a chiropractor once a month?
They can, but they might need to go more. The fifth pillar of health is a properly functioning nervous system. If you don’t have a good structure, you can’t have the function. Something’s going to trigger along the line of where those nerves come from the spine and go to the body. The brain controls and coordinates all functions of the body. That’s the medically accepted terminology for all medical and healing professions. We all know that. It communicates to the body through the spinal cord and all the nerve endings that go to every tissue, cell, and organ.
If you understand that, then you understand the importance of getting your spine adjusted because if there’s pressure, even a piece of hair on a nerve has been shown to cause nerve interference. It structures function. Anytime someone tells me that they had low back surgery or hip surgery, I’m going, “Did you see a chiropractor first? The pelvis has some torque to it. It’s easy to take the torque out of it, along with some specific exercises to do, so you can become more mobile and functional.”
How do I know if a chiropractor’s good in my market? People that are reading this going, “That made a lot of sense, Dr. Pat. I want to go find a chiropractor.” What’s the best way to find a chiropractor?
When I had my office, I got adjusted at least once a week. If I had something going on, I was there three times a week. I want to get it done and handled. The same thing in sports. When someone injures themselves, they’re in PT for eight hours a day. They don’t go once a week for 8 or 12 weeks. You address it and it gets handled. Finding a good chiropractor, you’d have to ask yourself what your objectives are. What is it that you want to get out of going to a chiropractor? Do you want to just move better? You can go to almost anybody for that.
If you want to have the other internal part of health, looking for people who have specialization specifically like in functional medicine and lifestyle medicine, you want someone who thinks outside the box. If they think that everything exists only in their box, and I know there are chiropractors like that, and there are Western medicine doctors, there’s everybody in the profession that they’re stuck with. They have their box. They have nine dots and don’t realize that other solutions are outside.
How do you find those people?
You got to ask questions. You got to say like, “I want to know how you treat people.” If you have a hard time finding somebody, call me. You have my contact information on this show. In your area, I can help you choose a better solution. The challenge is finding the chiropractor. I make it simple, faster, easier, quicker. You can find the right person. You can get the adjustment that you need and go on with the rest of your life.
You’ve talked me into it. How can people find you? Is there an email that they can email you at?
You have my website, so my website. There’s a way to contact me on there. What I would use is ask Dr. Pat. If you go to HealthTeamNetwork.com, my website, scroll down to where there’s a microphone at the bottom. If you press that button there, you can leave me a message and I’ll come back to you. It goes right into my inbox. If you leave me a way to get in contact with you, I will respond back as soon as possible.
Thank you very much. That’s great. I’d love to know what your definition of attitude is. Who are your two best attitude teachers?
I would have to say Jim Rohn. The other person is Les Brown. I was at a meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. The gentleman who was doing the show joined our program that day. His phone rang and he answered it and it was Les brown. He goes, “Les, say something to these guys.” It was pretty awesome. I go, “I’m going to be seeing him when I’m going to be in Chicago at the end of June at a conference where he’s going to be also presenting.” I love positive people. If there’s somebody who’s got a better way to do it, tell me, and then we’re trying to reinvent the wheel or anything else like this. If I feel like I’m stuck, I listen to Jim Rohn almost every morning. I listen to him when I’m still making my snooze hit a couple more times. I always tie my alarm clock to do that.
Make sleep hygiene a priority in that proper mental attitude and mindset. Click To TweetWhen someone goes, “That drives me crazy.” I’m going, “Go in the other room.” It’s how I do my morning. I listen for around 20 or 25 minutes, something like that, and then I get up and do my day. If you start your day with a positive thought, it can change your whole day. Likewise, if you’re doing things like, “How can I get in a better attitude?” Don’t watch TV at night before you go to bed. You talked about the sleeplessness for sleepovers.
Let’s jump back to sleep. What’s your advice for getting good rest?
I am going to cover that right now with this, too. Turn electronics off, turn your Wi-Fi off, and get some energy busters for your electrical outlets where you’re sleeping at. It helps you so that you’re not getting bombarded with electrical magnetic radiation from electrical outlets, because even though nothing’s in them, they’re still firing. If you have one of those right behind where you’re sleeping, it’s aiming right for your head. Make the room as dark. Sixty-eight degrees is a great temperature to sleep in, so you get more sleep. If you’re eating your main meal a little bit earlier, that’s a good thing to do.
Take a hot shower. I found the coolest thing on Amazon. I saw them on a Facebook ad or something like that. I opened them up and I’m like, “What is this panel of all these different sized dots?” I’m looking at the demonstration. They put these things that go over the LED lights. Those things are enough sometimes to keep you up when they’re on.
The readers that have their phone on their nightstand next to their bed charging with the Wi-Fi on, it could affect how you sleep.
It’s not charging from the Wi-Fi. It’s charging from the electrical outlets, but it can affect how you’re sleeping. Also, the other thing is that for your telephone, unless there’s some reason why you would have to have it on, you might want to have it on across the room or turn it on to airplane mode. If that’s sitting right next to your head, if you get one of those electric plugs where you’re seeing the voltage coming out of them and that you can measure that per room, you would be surprised about what supposedly is acceptable. For me, I don’t have anything on around my head in my bed
Practicing chiropractic for as many years as you did, when people walked in, was there an overwhelming symptom or condition that you said, “1/3 of my people that come in here have the same problem and that problem is,” or was it nothing like that? What I’m trying to do is identify the two biggest conditions that people walked in over many years. Half the time, it’s usually this. I’d love to know what your thoughts are on that.
Usually, low back pain is what people walk in with. The second thing people would walk in was shoulder pain. I can fix shoulders. It’s easy for me. I’ve been covered in the offices where I’ve done a favor for somebody. One guy offered me. He goes, “I’ll give you whatever you want if you can fix my shoulder.” I said, “Anything?” He said, “Anything.” I said, “Gold bullion.” He said, “I can’t afford a gold bullion.” I said, “I’ll take platinum. I’ll fix your shoulder no matter what anyway.” I fixed his shoulder. He was like, “I couldn’t lift my arm five minutes ago and I have a full range of motion.” I said, “Let’s ice it, put some stem on it, and then you’re off to go.”
I saw him one time when I was there. A year later, I was there. They called up everybody that I ever saw in their office during those times. He comes in. He goes, “My shoulder’s killing me again. I can’t believe you’re here. It has happened two days before.” I said, “This time, it’s going to cost you two gold bullions and two bricks of silver and two platinum or whatever.” It’s fun. Fixing shoulders is not complex for me. For some people, it is complex. I see how the shoulder and the neck are intertwined. For a lot of things, people are dizzy sometimes because they have such tight muscles in their neck. You have to figure out what’s going on with that posture.
Where’s the head standing over the body that makes that more stress and that you’re constantly having overuse syndrome in your neck so you have a strain of some sort? Back to the sleep thing, the other thing is having a bed that is good for you and having pillows that are underneath your neck that support your head. If you’re sleeping on your side, a pillow between your knees or your ankles, something like that. Also, having a pillow underneath your head so that when you’re looking at someone’s back from the base of their skull care, it’s basically parallel to the bed and then having the bed come up to feel like it’s caressing you and supporting you and not that you’re going into the bed. A lot of times, people buy beds that are too soft.
Talk to me about your take on attitude. In this world, you’re going around and speaking. You’ve got people reading your book. It’s almost a religion. There’s so much great information around that, but when it comes to how people are thinking and how people are thinking about their health, what do you see is the biggest mistakes or the biggest misnomers in medicine that maybe people should pay attention to? Maybe the four steps that you talked about on getting healthy. I’d love to hear that.
One of the things is, do you have to understand why people get sick in the first place? There are three reasons why people get sick primarily. One is trauma. That’s all about inflammation. The trauma starts for 9 out of 10 children from the birthing process, which create cervical damage in the neck when you’re starting to move your head and muscles so that you can move. Trauma, doing things perpetually on one side. I usually always adjust the left-hand side table when I’m working. It’s easier. I’m right-handed, so I can get to do things that I need to do.
I always liked making myself work from the other side of the table for that type of thing. There are toxins from the air that you breathe, the water you drink, the fluids that you use to clean your office, clean your house and the guard side. You have chemicals that you are using that you’re inhaling. People who have those air plugs that they plug into the wall should throw them out. If you google it, they are carcinogenic. How they’re still being sold? I have no clue.
In cars, they’re all chemicals. When you go to read labels on food, if you don’t understand what you’re eating, you shouldn’t eat it. If you can’t eat your cosmetics, then you shouldn’t put them on your face because 65% of what you put on your body gets absorbed into your body and has to be processed. The last thing that is the third cheat for why people get sick is thoughts.
Thoughts can undo 5 to 7 times the amount of what you do good to correct the trauma and the correct which would be chiropractic and the toxins in your system, making your house more green. Thoughts that you’re ruminating about are keeping you up at night. I have a chart that I don’t have available here, but on this chart, I talk about 22 emotions that come up for your thoughts go into emotions.
Emotions from the right side are all things that are highly negative. When you’re thinking about anything, that’s the lack of anxiety, depression, pain. A lot of those things end up with fear. The other side on this chart is like the side of manifestation like when you’re in love and you’re in your vibe, you’re in your groove, you’re in your vortex.
As Abraham-Hicks says, “You have all these things going on that are positive for you. All you got to do if you’re on the right side of this chart is go, ‘I don’t want to be there anymore.’” Being happy is the better option. How I can be happy is I can at least go through 21 days and think of three things a day that I can be grateful for.
Gratitude is past tense. It means that it’s already happened. There are things in your life that were positive that happened in your life. You focus on those things in 21 days. You can see a huge change in your level of happiness. It’s a choice. When you wake up in the morning, do that positive thought. On the thinking part of it about the attitude, that positive mental attitude plus positive mindset plus wellness initiatives, which are the first three. It’s the diet, exercise, and the sleep that will give you success physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually and socially.
Work, home and play relationships doesn’t matter. It’s having that mindset. It’s like, “This thing happened. What can I do about it?” It’s even for if you want to go to sleep and your mind is going and you feel like you want to clean your closet out for the millionth time. It’s like, “What can I do about it right now?” If there’s something you can do about it, turn the lights on, get up, and do it. You then get back, sit down, and give yourself permission to go sleep.
If there’s still stuff going on, write a list because it’s not going to go away in the next five hours. Give yourself permission to go to sleep. It’s simple. It’s an easy process. I teach that to my clients a lot. Attitude is altitude. When I was getting a divorce, there were days that I thought my husband was an absolute idiot. I have to admit that I thought he was an idiot before I even thought those thoughts. We ended up having an amicable divorce, but my attitude had to change because we worked in the same office.
You have all these things going on that are positive for you. If you focus on those things, you can see a vast change in your level of happiness. Click To TweetWhen I went in to go work at my office, because I had a busy office at the time, whatever I had going on in my life, I left outside the door because I felt whoever I’m working with, I still feel this way to this day when I’m coaching and mentoring. You deserve 150% of me. You don’t deserve 79%. A lot of people don’t come to work with 50%.
They’re depleted by noontime, let alone at 5:00 at night and then they have nothing left over for themselves, let alone people who mattered to them like their children, their husbands, their families, and their other friends surrounding them. When you talk about attitude, the attitude starts within you. Someone gave me advice when I went to Europe by myself when I was 27. My father said, “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”
This is how my thinking was even at that time, “Why wouldn’t I not want to go just because my friends decided not to come? I’m still going. Dad, don’t worry. Screaming’s universal.” We could feel him gasp. It’s like, “I can’t believe you said that.” I went. My mentor said to me at the time, “Everything’s just an experience. You don’t have to hold onto that for the rest of your life.” When you come from that point of view, it’s like you missed your train. It’s not the end of the world.
If someone’s sold your American Express checks, but you got a place to stay, it’s not the end of the world. Your checks will be replaced. It means it’s maybe protecting you from something else bad happening down the road. I always look at any interruptions as an opportunity. The other thing about attitude is anybody who I ever see walking by me and around me, if someone looks at me directly in my eye, I try to make a point of stopping them and having a conversation or at least saying a warm hello to them.
I love the fact you just should say it’s an experience. Whenever something goes wrong, whenever something diverts you to walk through, Gappers. We call our readers Gappers. Gappers, next 30 days, try the thing when things happen wrong, you go, “It’s just an experience.” That’s a great way to frame it.
One question we always like to ask our people, and sometimes people go, “They weren’t around,” but I always love to know what you learned from your grandparents first. I don’t know if you had a relationship with grandma and grandpa on either side if you did. We always get great quotes from our guests when they think about their grand folks. If they didn’t, maybe everybody’s attitude coach is their first two are their parents. I love to know a little bit about your family history. What did you learn from grandma and grandpa? It only needs to be one. No need to be all four. Who was it or your parents about attitude?
My grandmother on my father’s side passed away when she was 42, so I never knew her. My grandfather on my father’s side, I thought he was a tough person. He had no empathy. When you talked to him, you say, “Yes, papa.” My father was like him, but he had a little bit more warmth to him. He also had an incredibly dry sense of humor. He always said, “If you can’t nurture yourself, you can’t nurture somebody else. Before you get in a relationship with somebody, you better be able to take care of yourself first.” I learned a lot about self-sufficiency in my life from an early age because by the time my mother had me, she was done having kids.
My oldest sister basically raised me. I had more contact with them. Even though I had contact with my mother, I have more memories of being with my oldest sister and my third sister, especially. Part of my siblings were more like my mother. My sister and I are a lot more like my father as far as our thinking goes. My father always told me that I could achieve anything that I wanted, as long as I kept to it. That was something that I learned since I was a young kid. I learned lessons after it happened. He would always say like, “What did you learn from that?” When I ran away from the house to see the school because my mother wasn’t taking me with my boyfriend across the street, the cop stopped us.
I didn’t believe he was a cop because my dad told me that people dress up like other people and they want to do harm to children. I refuse to get in the cop car. I said, “Just tell me where Commonwealth Street is at. I’m going to walk.” That was me at four years old. My father got came home that night. He sat down outside with me and he goes, “You can’t play with Mikey for a week.” I said, “He’s right there.” He goes, “You can talk to him. You just can’t play with him.” He lived across the street. He said to me, “Why did you go anyway?” I said, “I wanted to go.”
I told him the story about wanting to go play in the playground. I asked my mother three times and she didn’t answer me. I decided to take matters into my own hand. I said, “I wish that I would have done one thing.” I can remember telling him, I go, “I didn’t look back at my street. When I was coming back from the direction, we got lost because we didn’t know what street to turn down as we didn’t look at what the street looked like on the corner where we had the turn.” When I was five years old, I learned about reading, but you didn’t read most fluently. You didn’t learn reading until you got into the end of kindergarten going into first grade. My father said, “The moral of the story is always look where you come from.”
Those are just a couple of things. My grandmother always said she regretted in her life when she was 80 and men would open doors for her. She said, “I’m on my mode. Go open the door and keep on moving.” She said, “I learned to take a breath. When you walk up to a door, learn to take a breath.” When she was 94, she had that conversation with me.
Since we’re winding down our show, we do something with every guest called Knowledge Through the Decades. We’re going to walk you through your life and ask you what the attitude lesson is for each decade of your life, if that’s okay. This is meant to be fun. I know nobody wants to give their age, but we’ll keep going until you say, “I haven’t hit that decade yet.” It’s a quip. It’s couple of sentences. “When I think about this, this is what my attitude lesson was.” When we talk about childbirth and coming into the world, what do you think the attitude lesson is of new birth, rebirth, or a newborn baby?
My attitude was freedom. If it wasn’t freedom, I was out.
Isn’t that interesting? I haven’t had that before, but freedom is certainly an attitude that I don’t know we cherish anymore or take the time to look at. Maybe some of our Gappers still live inside their mother’s womb. You talked about the people with blank stares, the unhealthy people. We call them attitude zombies. You can see zombies everywhere when you walk around. As a metaphor, maybe some people are stuck in the womb and they don’t feel free enough to change their lives to become not fat, sick, and tired. That’s a great answer. Do you remember being ten? If you do, that’s 4th or 5th grade. What is your attitude lesson? What happened to you? What experience did you have at ten that you said, “Here’s the story and this was my attitude lesson?”
Sister Bernadette was my fifth-grade teacher. I was the last of five kids. She taught every one of my siblings. Sister Bernadette could never get my name straight for the whole time. She had that pointer thing with a little rubber. She would say, “Kathy, Jackie, Michael, Patty.” Everyone called me Patty. By that time, you forgot what you were supposed to say whatever she was asking you because she was so intimidating. I learned to stand up for myself.
You turned twenty. You might’ve been in college. My guess is you were somewhere in college. I loved to know where it was. I’d love to know what your attitude lesson was that you learned at twenty.
I was at Eastern Michigan University. I was studying Pre-Med there. I took all the core classes for Pre-Med. Someone’s like, “You should say that you’re studying Pre-Med.” What I learned is that I kept on fostering, doing what I love to do. My father was always complaining about, “Why are you taking this class?” I said, “It’s because I love it. This is what I love to do.” Science has always been an easy venue for me. It always interests me, like how things work, why does that work that way. It was a time of learning camaraderie and learning to work in an environment with people. I had four roommates when I was in school. We lived in an old house that was famous in Ypsilanti. At twenty, deciding what’s my next step and also learning to collaborate.
You got out. You’re now a doctor at 30. You’re probably into your career or just starting becoming a chiropractor. What was your attitude lesson at 30 that you learned?
When I graduated, I was 31 years old. I got married just before I graduated. My father did not want me to be a chiropractor. He wanted me to be an electrical engineer. That didn’t go that way. What I learned is that when I made the decision outside of his box, it was my break away from my parents. My father said, “If you’re going to go, you’re on your own.” I went, “Great. See you later.”
It’s probably the best thing he ever told you, for most kids.
Positive mental attitude, positive mindset, and wellness initiatives will give you success physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and socially. Click To TweetI didn’t want to go back to Michigan where I lived. I knew that there was something else out there. I was going towards where that was. I didn’t know where that was going to end up at. My ex-husband was French. We spent time in France doing chiropractic, and we spent time back in the States before we decided where to settle in the United States. It was at that time that it was that big thing that I did it and I was proud of it.
Many of our Gappers, many people when you think why people are sick, fat, and tired, it’s because they’re in the same box. It’s because maybe somebody has said, “If you do that, don’t come back. When people are never told that, they sit in that box, making them tired, sick, and fat. As you read this, my hope for the Gappers is to analyze your life and think about, “Have I been sitting in the same box? Not just for 1, 5, 10 years, but maybe for your whole life. Let’s go to 40. Do you remember being 40? You probably had some kids. I don’t know. Tell us about 40. At the age of 40, what was the attitude lesson you learned?
At the age of 40, um, I was preparing to sell my business. I had a successful business. I bought something on the low functional side and I made it something special. I sold it for around 150% more than what I bought it for. That worked out well. When I was 40 was where I said, “I don’t want to die in Cape Cod.” I was now single. It was a great place to be married and have kids. I didn’t have kids. I had patients. I decided I wanted to go live in a big city. At 40, I went to Boston. I met a woman whose father was in the basketball hall of fame.
She invited me to model for this baroness. I asked her a simple question. It’s like, “Do you think a white full fur coat or a full fur coat?” That’s how I met her. She said, “You’re perfect for something. Can you come on Saturday too?” She scribbled this out in her name. “When you go to the door, tell them, show them this and they’ll see my name and let you in.” I auditioned to model. I started modeling in Boston at that time. It was a blast.
It was so much fun. I got to meet many people during that time. I learned about how important connections were during that time also. There’s a peak group of people I knew in Boston connected to the piping industry, the plumbing industry, or the skyscrapers and the cranes. What that meant to the city and how financially functional city was by how many cranes you could see out your window from living downtown. It was interesting to have that connection and get cut in front of line without having to wait forever to get to go someplace.
I’m going to go with reinvention and connection was the attitude. You did good. Are you 50 yet?
I am. By the time I was 50, I decided that I wanted to go learn about acupuncture. I decided to go back to school and go to acupuncture school. I was living in Boston. I had private clients that I would see and do because I always thought that if I could consolidate what I could do with somebody, I could get more done in five visits doing our visits than I can in a two-month or three-month time span. That’s what I did when I was up in Boston. I decided to have private clients go work out and travel. The airport was only a half hour away from me. Tickets go overseas for $300 round trip at the time. I go, “This is a no-brainer.” In my 50s, I applied to acupuncture school. I went back to school and I studied in Mandarin.
There is adventure. Maybe when you turned 50, you said, “It’s time for this flower to blossom. I’m going to go do all this new, wonderful stuff and adventuring.” That’s admirable and cool. Many of our people reading, it’s a great opportunity for you to say, “What adventure do I have in my life?” You don’t feel tired when you’re reaching out and adventuring. It creates energy and passion in your life. That’s great.
I came up with two things during that time. One thing was the Patricia Boulogne Fun and Frivolity Foundation. That was all about where do we go next on our next trip. The other thing was that I tell people, I said, “If you’re going to celebrate your birthday, your birthday’s not over until you get your last present.” They go, “When does this start?” I said, “With your first birthday wish.” The year that I turned 50, somebody said to me in Key West, “Happy birthday.” That year was my gift because it was a big birthday. I traveled someplace I’ve never been to every month. I went away for a week.
That was my gift to myself for having a big birthday and being able to enjoy it then. I was in Venice. I saw these old people. I was in my twenties. I’m looking at it thinking, “They can barely get around.” It takes them all day long to say do St. Mark’s Square. I could do St. Mark’s Square in a half hour and buy a pair of shoes. I thought, “I didn’t want it to be like that. If I had an opportunity, I want to be able to walk up and down steps without assistance.” Having my health and being physically, mentally and emotionally, that foundation was important to me. I always practice what I preach.
You have not hit 60 yet, have you?
I have.
When the big 60 came, what was the attitude lesson?
I went back to Italy. The adventure wasn’t over. What I like to do is I like to people watch. I like to look at people’s posture. I like to look at how people do things. On that 60th birthday, I would’ve been a little bit happier going in one place and taking trains as opposed to driving like a mad person. That birthday was insance. We got pulled over by the police. I somehow made a left-hand turn where I wasn’t supposed to do it. They tried to give us a fine. My girlfriend was like, “Let’s talk this out.” I said, “Do you have 150 euros on you? Pay him. Let’s get out of here.”
He took my driver’s license and was breaking it. I said, “Give him the 150 euros and let’s move on. It’s something that happened today. It’s not going to be here tomorrow.” I got to see a little bit more places. I went in to study Spanish in Barcelona at the time. I walked everywhere. It’s a beautiful city. I liked doing it. I still have this zest for being pulled across the pond. I haven’t done that in a while.
The attitude lesson of 60, as I heard your stories, was that of awareness, becoming more aware of your surroundings and possibly slowing down. Don’t tell me you’ve hit 70.
No.
That’s good. Knowledge Through the Decades, that was sure fun, Dr. Pat. I hope you enjoyed it. She hit on started being free, standing up for yourself, being a collaborator, breaking out of the box and reinventing. She then talked about the need for adventure and then, lastly, to be aware of your surroundings. That was so much fun. I appreciate you doing that. One thing we always like to do is to let our guests give your final thought of inspiration, your final thought of hope, or a message that you feel that our readers could use, that they could use today, tomorrow, maybe perhaps for the rest of their life. What’s your mantra? How do you stay positive? How do you keep your positive mental attitude? What’s your hope for the person that is reading this?
I’ll start with the hope. My hope for people who are reading this is that they find where they’re stuck, and break through it. If you can take that stuckness and make it into a memory, then it will no longer be reactive in your body, which usually results in some type of disease process manifesting later on. That’s part of the mindset mastery thing that I do when I’m working with people. We find where that stuckness is. It’s like, “Are you stuck? What would you like to do to get past that point?” You walk the path.
One of the things for inspiration is that you always have to think. If you aspire for something, that’s great. I could aspire to be a chiropractor. It doesn’t mean I’m ever going to be a chiropractor. If I’m inspired to be a chiropractor, I do chiropractic or I do what I do because I want to help millions and thousands of people have better lives and have the right information to make better decisions, so they know the next best step.
If I can leave somebody with that positive thought, it starts from the time they get up to the time at the end of the day when you go to sleep. If something happens, pause, go take a shower. Get all that icky energy off of you. Go do meditate. Go listen to Jim Rohn and Les Brown. Listen to anybody that makes your heart sing. Do what makes you happy then the rest of it will fall in place.
I love it. Dr. Pat, you’ve been so fun. I hope you had a great time on the show. If you love what you read, go to Health Team Network. Dr. Pat will be there to serve you. She’s got a great website with tons of information. Buy her book, Why… Are You Sick, Fat, and Tired?. Take the test. It’s a self-discovery book. We want to thank you, Dr. Pat, for being on the show.