Serving everyone ELSE is ruining your life
Episode 227
In this episode of Integrative You Radio, Dr. Nick and Dr. Nicole delve into the pitfalls of hustle culture and the importance of self-care in achieving one's dreams. They highlight the tendency to prioritize giving to others over oneself and the societal pressure to avoid selfishness. Dr. Nicole shares her personal experience of working tirelessly as an entrepreneur, driven by the need for relevance and importance until she hit a point of depletion. Dr. Nick emphasizes the significance of working from inspiration rather than trying to fill voids, noting that true fulfillment comes from alignment with oneself. Unlock your potential with Integrative You's private consulting. Dr. Nick and Dr. Nicole guide you to overcome limitations and thrive. Plus, join our Manifesting Crash Course for powerful manifestation skills. Enroll now at https://www.integrativeyou.health/joinus Interested in learning more about Dr. Nick & Dr. Nicole’s courses, memberships, or private work? Learn more at Integrative You . Have a quick question, Would you like to schedule a call, or just want to say hi? Text us at (732) 810-1084. Our mission to innovate humans & Healthcare does NOT start and stop with us! This is why we are also dedicated to helping other practitioners in evolving healthcare too! If you are a healthcare leader and are looking to up-level your clinical + business excellence Learn more about our course membership: Limitless Healthprenuer and start boldly disrupting this industry! What you’ll learn: Hustle Culture can lead to burnout and hinder manifestation of one's dreams. Prioritizing giving to oneself is essential for long-term success and fulfillment. Working from inspiration yields greater results than trying to fill voids. Quotes: Dr. Nicole: "Why are we working so hard? Why are we willing to give more to others than we are to ourselves?" Dr. Nick: "The only thing you can control is yourself. So if you think that by giving more, you will be able to control someone's outco
Topics: working, giving, integrative, nicole, unknown, nick, others, hustle
Key takeaways from this episode
- ## Serving Everyone ELSE is Ruining Your Life
- Hustle culture can lead to burnout and prevent you from manifesting your dreams.
- Prioritizing self-care and giving to yourself is crucial for long-term success and genuine fulfillment.
- Working from a place of inspiration, rather than trying to fill internal voids, leads to more powerful and aligned results.
- Societal expectations often push us to give excessively to others, neglecting our own essential needs.
Pull quotes
This is the place where you become limitless. **Unknown:** We are covering the latest and greatest topics, of course, in a disruptive fashion, around integrative medicine, mental health, and human behavior.
We will be sprinkling in some truth bombs for our healthpreneurs so they can join us in our mission to evolve healthcare.
If you are health curious and growth focused, you are in the right place, but buckle up because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive. **Unknown:** This is Integrative U Radio.
Transcript
**Unknown:** Welcome to Integrative U Radio, hosted by Dr. Nick Carruthers and yours truly, Dr. Nicole Rivera. This is the place where you become limitless.
**Unknown:** We are covering the latest and greatest topics, of course, in a disruptive fashion, around integrative medicine, mental health, and human behavior. We are also covering how those topics affect the human and family dynamics. We will be sprinkling in some truth bombs for our healthpreneurs so they can join us in our mission to evolve healthcare. If you are health curious and growth focused, you are in the right place, but buckle up because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive.
**Unknown:** This is Integrative U Radio. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Integrative U Radio. So I feel like this is gonna end up becoming a little bit of a series, but our previous, uh, podcast, we were talking about this idea of manifesting versus working hard.
**Unknown:** And putting a little bit different of a spin on this, something that I want to showcase is this idea of hustle culture and working hard and having a very busy life, and how this can actually be a setback to creating your 2.0 or manifesting your dream life, manifesting your desires. It, it could just be manifesting the vacation that you want. It doesn't have to be big. It could also be really small.
**Unknown:** But one of the things that I wanna showcase is when it's very easy to find ourselves in a place that giving to others feels really good, and it consumes a bulk of our time and energy, and giving to ourselves, we don't have the time and energy for, and/or we are told that it is a selfish behavior. You know, I think that no matter who we are, at some point in our lives, we've heard this idea, "Put others before you. Serve others. How could you be of service to the world?
**Unknown:** Be s- You know, don't be selfish, be selfless." And I found that I spent over a decade as an entrepreneur in the healthcare space doing just that. I, I would have never probably told you that I was... didn't know how to be selfish, but I spent the bulk of my time, energy, and resources giving, and that filled me up for a long period of time, and I was willing to work 17-hour days, seven days a week. I was willing to put the majority of money back into the growth of the business to create a better and better experience for the clients, and I was willing to do that because I was getting relevance.
**Unknown:** I was feeling important. I was feeling like I was making a difference. I felt like I was, uh, changing people's lives, and it was, it was giving me that. And that was allowing me to perpetuate that cycle of working really, really, really hard.
**Unknown:** And you could keep doing that for a really long time until you hit a point and you say, "The s- The, the reserves are depleted, and I can't, I can't keep doing this, but I don't even know how else to function." Pretty much brings back to a point we were chatting, I don't know, a couple nights ago, and we were just... I think you're the one that said it, is, you know, when you, when you work out of... I forget your exact words, but you were like, when you're working from trying to fulfill your voids instead of fulfilling your inspiration, you can only go so far with the voids. I forget your exact verbiage, but that's pretty much what you were saying there- Yeah ...
**Unknown:** is that you were trying to fill your voids up by doing, doing, doing. And you were, but as soon as you stop that, you know, you still have a hole in the boat, and the, the boat starts filling up with water again. You start sinking. So you can only go so far.
**Unknown:** And it's not that what you did was bad by any means- Mm-hmm ... as you learned so much about yourself, you learned so much about other people, et cetera. But it's not- But simultaneously, there was so much resistance to creating some of the things that we set out to create. You know, we had goals and benchmarks for the business, and it felt like one step forward, couple steps back, one step forward, couple steps back.
**Unknown:** But then also from, like, the, the personal life perspective, it just never felt like things came easy. And so there was just a lot of... There was a lot of challenge, and I think that challenge, it can be healthy, but it seemed like there was, um, there was an imbalance with more challenge because, because there were things out of alignment that we weren't willing to, or I wasn't able to see at that time. Yes.
**Unknown:** And you'll never... Like, I was working with Truman yesterday, and it's like you'll never live a one-sided life. You're always gonna have challenge. You're always gonna have pain.
**Unknown:** You're always gonna have suffering.But, you know, we talk to people about, you know, things are easier when you're in alignment with yourself, when you're truly authentic. And it's not that there's not the pain, the suffering, the, the challenges. It's just that you don't give a shit about the pain, the challenges, and the suffering because you're above that, because you're living congruent with who you are. But if...
**Unknown:** That's from the inspiration. But if you're vibrating lower and you're doing things just to fulfill the void, and that pain, that suffering, and that challenge comes up, oh man, like again? I can't believe... Like, it's just like I constantly have to put out this fire, constantly doing this, constantly- Yeah ...
**Unknown:** can't, can't be inspired because I'm down here dealing with the shit. And it's like, well, that shit is coming up to tell you, to teach you, to be a lesson, a feedback that's saying, you know, it's like who you are and/or what you're doing isn't actually fully in alignment with your higher self. So, let's look at that. Let's make some changes.
**Unknown:** And then even if, and when, you come up with another challenge, another pain point, et cetera, you're not gonna be affected by it. Because that's still feedback, but it's, it's feedback to use differently because you are differently. Well, I think it starts with posing the question of why are we working so hard? Why are we, uh, willing to give more to others than we are to ourselves?
**Unknown:** Like, why, why? And I think this goes back to what you were talking about... Good, good alarm. Great timing for that, Nick.
**Unknown:** This goes back to this idea of are we doing this out of a void? Are we doing this out of the, the perception that we're not enough, the perception that, you know, we're not successful? And a lot of this goes back to the, you know, the, the programming from when we are young. And so we have these voids, and then we say, "I want to...
**Unknown:** I don't wanna be that. I don't wanna be what I think I am. I don't wanna be what other people think I am. I wanna, I wanna be better than that." And we all have our different avenues of how we go about it, but if you're creating something out of that void or out of bitterness or out of scarcity, there...
**Unknown:** You will get to a place that you feel a certain level of relevance, a certain level of success, but it will be very difficult to get past a major plateau, because it's inevitable that you will hit a plateau. And that plateau is gonna get... It's gonna feel very confusing, 'cause you're just gonna feel like, on paper, things are not bad, but I don't know why I feel off. Why do I feel empty?
**Unknown:** Why do I feel sad? Why do I feel like I don't know who I am? You almost don't know what to do with the feedback because you're doing, doing, doing, and probably have achieved a certain level of what you've wanted to achieve. All of that achievement is running...
**Unknown:** The fuel to it is that void that, that I, I don't deserve, but I deserve to give to others. Or I need to do this to feel important or relevant or acknowledged. And so the major invitation to this podcast is are you going, going, going, doing, doing, doing, giving, giving, giving... And this is especially for my healthpreneurs.
**Unknown:** Are you doing that to, to get something from others to feel important, successful, relevant, acknowledged? And how can you potentially shift to give that more to yourself? Because if you do want to tap into your ability to manifest, because we all have the ability to do that. If you wanna tap into the ability to create the life that you dream of, create even aspects of the life that you dream of, the relationship you dream of, the, the career that you dream of.
**Unknown:** If you wanna tap into getting powerful in the creation of that, that actually requires you to spend more time filling your own cup, giving yourself time and space to get clarity, to recalibrate your mind. More of that and less of giving to everyone else. Because if you can give to yourself, y- people don't realize this, like, if you can give to yourself and show up better, you will ripple out. That is actually a bigger gift to all of the people around you than anything else.
**Unknown:** And you and I both read the book by David Hawkins, Map of Consciousness. And ironically, he was a medical doctor who had this, like, enlightening experience, and he went ahead and created this map of consciousness, you know, which essentially is all these different emotions, low vibration, negative emotions, high vibration, positive emotions. And he, he talks about, like, where you fall on this map really dictates the quality of, of your life. But because he was in the medical world, he ended up, uh, studying this aspect of, uh, patient results in accordance to their doctor's map of consciousness.
**Unknown:** And this is really fascinating because, you know, l- let's say there were two gastroenterologists, and they're both dealing with an irritable bowel syndrome case. And they were giving the same drug to two individuals.They found that the doctor that was in higher vibration emotions, more calm, more collected, more even keel, more, more gr- or had more gratitude, had a life that was more fulfilling, versus the doctor that was, like, doom and gloom, you know, things are bad, chances are this isn't gonna work, that it was the doctor of the higher level of consciousness that all of his or her patients had better outcomes than the doctor that was in more of a, quote-unquote, negative emotional state. And so that was awesome to see someone prove it through research and science to say, you know, that whole concept on the plane of put the mask on yourself before you put it on your child, essentially saying, if you take care of yourself, you can better take care of your child. It, it, it's, it's the same exact idea, you know, two different iterations.
**Unknown:** So if you have abandoned yourself to take care of everybody else, you will 100% be capped on your, quote-unquote, success, whatever that is for you. Man brain moment. Does that mean it's dead, or does that mean you have something to say? I feel like the female brain is always talking in stories, and the man brain's like the cliff notes.
**Unknown:** Yeah, well that's, that is accurate. So you go ahead. I was gonna- For our male listeners. For the male listeners, or the man brain aspect of the, the female, is that this, this is gonna go in steps, and the first step is understanding from that science is that, you know, you have the same pill, but it's what's connected to that pill.
**Unknown:** It's a vibration, and that vibration is either low or high, and what dictates that vibration is the level of consciousness, hence the book was Mapping Consciousness. So when one has a higher level of consciousness, hence you're gonna get better results, easier results. So the first thing is realizing that, okay, it's not what you do but how you do it, and that's connected to are you trying to fulfill a void or are you going through inspiration? Which is interesting because your voids actually dictate your values, and your highest value is where you're gonna be most inspired.
**Unknown:** But are you doing it to serve the value of it that's going to inspire you, or are you doing it trying to- Because you have to ... quote-unquote, climb your way or dig your way out of that value, or of the void. Excuse me. One of the first parts of what most people do is to separate themselves, because usually we've been overly giving to others and not, you know, giving to ourselves.
**Unknown:** So easiest is to be able to distract yourself. I can't talk today. Remove yourself from helping others as much, and to start helping yourself more. And then after you get that back into balance, then the easiest way is to grow both together, where you learn how to serve yourself while serving others.
**Unknown:** That you don't, they don't need to be two different entities. And, you know, that's, that's a fun, really fun part of life is that when you can serve more, either a higher magnitude with people or just a higher, uh, number of people while continuously serving yourself more, and more, and more, so you're both growing together. You're both getting to the mountaintop together, and that's, that's like the true mastery of life is that you're, you're maintaining that balance and equity through the growth of you and everyone and everything else around you. Yeah.
**Unknown:** And I know that we live in a world where we want to feel in control. We wanna be in control. And the biggest lie that we've all been told is that you can control other people. The only thing that you can control is yourself.
**Unknown:** So if you think that by giving more you will be able to control someone's outcomes, or control their happiness, or control their wealth... If you are a doctor or some type of practitioner and you have people in your practice saying, "Fix me," and you are subscribing to the idea that you can fix people, this, this is going to be very catastrophic, and it's because the only, the only thing you can control is yourself, and that means other people are the only people that can control themselves. And if you are trying to serve to control other people's outcomes or improve other people's outcomes, it's, you're violating the very laws of energy and physics. And as we said, this can seem like such a foreign concept that the more that you give to yourself is the bigger ripple, positive ripple that you can have to the people around you, to the people you serve if you have a business, to your kids if you have a family.
**Unknown:** It's try it and experience it firsthand, because it's sometimes hard to wrap your head around until you see it. If you as a mom or a dad, you start to do some type of self-care, and you start to exercise, and you start to eat healthier, your kids are watching. They're always observing. So not only are they feeling the energy of that you're exuding out because you're, you have a let, level of, of pride and satisfaction that you're doing something for yourself, but you're also generally healthier, which means your mind is healthier, so you're showing up differently.
**Unknown:** Maybe you're interacting with them differently. But they're also observing this new level of discipline. So it's like a threefold impact that you're making.And the same exact thing is that I did this random TikTok about, you know, having a shitty boss and, and how it was like a mirror to parenting. But the main thing is that, you know, think about times where you have had either a professor, a mentor, or a boss that was just calm.
**Unknown:** They were, like, confident. They were grounded. They, they took feedback, and they responded to it. They answered your questions with gratitude, with...
**Unknown:** of your curiosity versus the boss or the professor or the teacher that, "It's not time for questions," or, "That's a stupid question," or, "That's irrelevant," or, "Why don't you read more?" You know, like, coming at you with, like, they don't care about your feedback. They don't wanna hear your feedback. Like, it's two very, very different dynamics. And so just understanding that if you show up better, if you put the time into yourself, and you could show up better, you are going to impact so many more people around you, opposed to being the burnt-out individual that's just snapping at people.
**Unknown:** Another main input. Was waiting for it. So w- everything I listened to right there, it just reminds me of how important it is to constantly live in, like, that state of gratitude. You know, the state of gratitude when your child just made a mess, the cha- the state of gratitude when your child's freaking out, the state of gratitude, um, when you lose a client that's big, a state of gratitude anything doesn't go your way and, and when things do go your way.
**Unknown:** But the gratitude comes from seeing how it serves what's most important to you. So for me, my highest two values is connection and innovation, so it's being able to constantly see. It's like, you know, in every single one of those moments I just said is that, you know, be the change you wish to see in the world so that, you know, if I'm in a state where my child just made a mess, and I can figure out how to use that moment to increase connection, connection or innovate, you know, a way that teaches them to be able to create order out of chaos. You know, I'm not gonna talk to a two-year-old out of...
**Unknown:** order out of a cha- maybe with Q. Treat him as the genius you wish to see. So but it's really just going through and figuring out, you know, what's your highest values, how can you use those to get those values served, to be inspired in that moment. That changes your vibration, which goes back to that original doctor.
**Unknown:** That creates a healing without doing anything, that you change... You can't control people, but you can change an environment by changing how you show up, and that, how you show up, is how you feel in that environment because how you feel is created and dictated by your thoughts, your perception. So the last thing that we'll leave you with based on what you said is, you know, when things go wrong, just always remember, this is a term that I wish I could remember who said it because I, I literally heard it online, and I was like, damn, that really, really, really hits the nail on the head. Um, it was this idea of rejection is redirection.
**Unknown:** And so even when you think about the basic concept of, like, your kid is throwing a fit and saying, "I will not eat that meal that you just made for me," it's a, it, it, it's a version of rejection. They're like, "No," and it's an opportunity for a redirection of, all right, how do I go about dinnertime differently next time? You know, the same exact thing, you know, rejection is tough. Like, we, we drop into this major, you know, if it's guilt or shame or betrayal or whatever it is, we drop into those low emotions, and it takes over, and it clouds our ability to see the redirection.
**Unknown:** But it goes back to that saying, you know, everything happens for a reason, but a lot of times we're just not paying attention. We're, we're so bottomed out emotionally from the experience that we're not looking at the opportunity that exists. Because if you've ever been dumped by the man of your dreams or the woman of your dreams, you know, essentially that hurt in that moment, but that was a redirection to potentially the career opportunity you were looking for. It was the redirection to your partner that you married.
**Unknown:** It was a redirection to traveling the world that you always wanted to do. Like, there's always a redirection, and if we can get ourselves out of those li- low vibration emotions quicker and understand and, and take this as the feedback of saying, "What am I being redirected to? How do I maximize the opportunity?" then, you know, this all circles back to a way of giving more to yourself so that, again, you ripple out to your environment. So just know that giving is fantastic.
**Unknown:** Being altruistic is amazing. As long as it is not coming from a void, it's not coming from an I have to, it's not coming down to, "I'm doing this because people won't like me. People will judge me. People will talk bad about me." When it's coming from that place, it's going to suck your energy to the point that you're gonna hit one of the biggest plateaus of your life, and you are going to feel mentally, emotionally, and physically fucking depleted.
**Unknown:** And I always joke about my Jersey New Yorkers. You guys will take the beatings for so long, and you'll have to hit your rock, rock, rock, rock, rock bottom before you make a change. So this is your invitation to say, "If I'm tired every day, it's time to reevaluate how I can give more to myself and stop giving to others, thinking that I can control their outcomes." So I will leave you with that. We thank you so much for being an avid listener of Integrative U Radio, formerly known as Integrative Wellness Radio.
**Unknown:** We appreciate all of your support. We love your comments. Please visit us on social media as well as our website to see all of the fun things happening behind the scenes and the new amazing content and courses that is being rolled out on a monthly basis. We hope to see you there.
Related episodes
About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
Further reading
Listen and read the full episode →