Are you ready for an open discussion with the best of the best and the best of what's next? Welcome to the Tony DUrso Show. Join in on a great conversation today with some of the world's great influencers as they showcase great advice and techniques that made them the game changers they are today. Now here's Tony DUrso.

Tony:

Welcome I'm your host, Tony DUrso. I interview some of the most successful people in the world and I thank you for joining us. This show is dedicated to helping you make your vision a reality. Now, a visionary is someone who thinks about or plans the future with imagination or wisdom as your pathfinder. I want to help you on your vision path to make the best future for you and you can listen to all of our shows on most podcasts platforms and if you have apple podcast, please subscribe. If you like what you hear, a kind review will make my day and it will make your day too. I guarantee that. Now before we get going, here's a big thank you to some amazing sponsors of our show. Please stay tuned for an important message from Ancestry DNA who connects you to the places in the world where your story started and coming up is a significant message from Clearbanc who's changing the way entrepreneurs raise money with equity-free capital. Isn't that cool? More Info on them just ahead, so please stay tuned.

Today's show is about the Health Coach and Rule Makers, Rule Breakers with Omar Cumberbatch and Michele Gelfand. Let's see what we can learn through the success of others. I'll have a summary at the end of today's interviews to discuss how these successful entrepreneurs are following their vision path to success.

Here's some info on Omar Cumberbatch. Omar Cumberbatch, founder of the health coach academy is a professional health coach and radio talk show host. He received his training from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, ( IIN). Where he was trained in more than 100 dietary theories and studied a variety of practical lifestyle coaching methods. Here we go. Welcome to the show, Omar. I am so glad to have you out with us. Thank you.

Omar:

I'm so honored to be here. Thank you so much, Tony.

Tony:

The pleasure is mine. This is a great subject. I have some good questions I'm going to surprise you with perhaps and I want to let our audience know while we are all interested in business, there are some great things in terms of health and business. I'm going to cover those in just a moment, but first things first Omar, we would all love to know how did it all start for you? What's your backstory?

Omar:

Well, my back story is one of just failure when it comes to achieving my goals in health. So I'm just one of those people who I went through a wall until I get something done. Which is not the approach that you should do by any stretch of the, especially when it comes to health and weight loss and just trying to get into a better place in your life. So I kind of do the backstory is I was always kind of into athletics and I don't have a problem working hard for any results whatsoever. Like I just was not getting any results and I was doing everything really, really by the book. I'm reading all the mainstream articles about health and wellness and I just wasn't getting anywhere and I stumbled upon somebody who was on youtube at the time named Sean Croxton, who I think he had the number one health and wellness podcast at one point and I just stumbled across this youtube video about the sugar and the health impact that it has and I just took an assessment of myself.

I'm like, wow, I really take a lot of sugar. From that day forward I started minimizing my sugar intake and my body completely changed. My health got better. It was just an amazing turnaround and it just fascinated me to such a degree that I can just change one component of something I was doing daily and I have all these wonderful results. So then I went to sign up for the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, became a health coach and as they say, the rest is history. So that's kind of my backdrop to me kind of stumbling upon becoming a health coach. At the time, I had no idea what a health coach was and it's really been a great blessing in my life to be able to share information that I learned through the school and just through my life experience about just getting better, getting healthier, and really just being the best self and I really love that part of it for sure.

Tony:

Very interesting story there, Omar and in sugar. I've been doing some research myself. Maybe we'll talk about a little bit more about that, but it seems to be something that helps fuel the fire in terms of cancer and cancer growth and I love to talk about that. But right, before we go into that and some nutritional components for our audience, can you better explain what's a health coach? I mean we understand a consultant, a business coach, a startup coach, a mentor, this and that, but a health coach, it's kind of new to me and I should know more about it. So what does a health coach do?

Omar:

Well, it's funny you said that because I was going to pretty much describe it as just like that actually because business coaches are known, like mentors are very well known. Health coaches are getting way more popular at this point. And they are just coaches to help you reach your health goals. Now everyone's goal is different as far as the health goals. I specifically am a weight loss specialist, so I focus on whatever if someone wants to lose. As far as weight goes, I'm an expert in accomplishing that sheet. So my specific niche is just in the weight loss field and that's really what you do because it's very easy to have a diet plan and tell you, hey Tony, don't eat this, don't eat that. But you get a lot more benefit when you coaching a person and helping them deal with some of the hurdles that something like that entails.

And you just mentioned sugar of course. And that's one of my key things to reduce or eliminate if possible. You just can't turn around and just say, okay, I'm not going eat a cupcake anymore. It's not, you know, especially when you're addicted to sugar, which is any under condition would be probably considered a drug just because of this addictive properties. A health coach would be that person who walks you through the obstacles that you will have when you try to wean yourself off some of these things and they're really there to guide you and have you accountable and hold you accountable. It is just kind of tell you what to expect in this process. So that's really what the health is coaches.

Tony:

Okay, thanks for sharing that. And with the weight situation of most people, most Americans and most people in the world, we need you. We need lots of you, Omar. We need a clone you and we need that mentor. They're going, okay. No more of this. You've already had enough. Okay cut It, cut this down.

Omar:

Yes.

Tony:

This opens up a door, opens up a can of worms, goes down the rabbit hole. I see on your bio, you're trained in more than a hundred dietary theories. And what catches my attention right off the bat? Omar, why are there so many theories? Why isn't there just one good proper way to eat and be healthy? What's your take on that?

Omar:

Well, I'm on my podcast that I have this podcast for this with Dr. Lori Shemek. We get into this every week, our guest, as you say, kind of brings a different perspective on how to actually accomplish this. And what we do find is the common denominator is that we are all different and what works for me might not work for you, might not work for the next person. And I think that's really what happens. I think a lot of people have success with different types of diets they want to broadcast this is the Diet that changed my life and it did. And then when you spread that out like it might not work for you. So you do see certain people reacting to certain things and that's really why there are so many different diets out there.

It's just because like the author of these diets have a tribe. It works with them, but again, it might not work for anybody else. And there's just so many different variables. Like for instance, like I know that you hear of gluten today. Like a lot of people, have issues with gluten. Some people don't like it. There are just certain things that might be good for me and just not good for you. So there is a lot of room for debate. I don't think that you will ever have one diet that's ever going to fit everybody and you can just look at how eating patterns developed around the world. Everyone eats different diets and it seems to work for, for that particular person wherever they are or not. But in this country in particular. I think one of the things that we can sort of agree with across the board, no matter which diet you subscribe to, is they're not going to tell you to eat potato chips.

You know, that's just not gonna happen. So the less processed food, most diets that are successful are going to reduce the things that are considered food or, and they're food-like substances. So at anything that doesn't die. Like you could have potato chips in your cupboard for months on end and it looks like potato chips, but any real food that you consume is gonna waste away and Rod and do that kind of stuff. And the more that we keep diets and eat in that realm, we're going to be better off. But I know that's a long-winded answer to that question, but ultimately that's why we have so many different dietary theories that work for so many different people.

Tony:

Well thanks. You've just added more to the confusion.

Omar:

No.

Tony:

Just joking. Just so many do this, do that. The only thing that's ever worked for me, not that I have any issue with, the only thing that's ever worked for me was eating right from my blood type with four main blood types, your A, your B, your O, and your AB. Different foods are highly beneficial and when I eat that way, my weight is really good and it's well maintained. When I go straight from that, I find that it's not as good for me, but that's just four benefits or theories for the blood type, but so many over a hundred and so many works for so many people. It's just amazing. You know, we're told to stay away from processed foods, but some don't have any success with weight on that we're told stay away from gluten or carbs. Some of us remove it from our diets and have no success from that. We're told cut down on your sugar. We cut down on sugar, we don't see it. It's almost like a hit and miss.

I'm going to ask you another question that's possible will help because it's kind of along the same line. And that is, I looked through your shows. You've interviewed so many great people such as Dr. David Friedman on Food Sanity. I've had him on my show.

Omar:

Great great communication.

Tony:

Oh yeah, he's, he's amazing. And I love the titles of your podcast. By the way. I believe you have two. One's called this podcast burns fat and the other's called the health coach. That with all these great guests on your shows that we've just talked a little bit about this. I want to know, are all of these great minds, great health experts, gurus, are they all going down that same path and are they ending up at the same point of what we really should be eating and doing or do they really have hundreds or dozens of absolutely convergent theories on what we should do?

Omar:

Oh, they have different theories. And it's funny that you bring up Dr Friedman because , his most recent book Food Sanity really discuss it that cause obviously he has a huge radio show where he sees plus have interviewed thousands of people and he just heard different theory after different theory and try to bring his own sense of sanity to eating and eating properly and he couldn't do it. So, again, like I know it's a bad answer, but nobody really can converge on something particularly like to say this is the Diet and this is what it is. Because again your body. So different is sometimes, which I'm learning just by interviewing people like, It can be something just as a matter of, at the end of the day, 20 years from now, they'll understand and maybe it's all about stress and if you're stressed, you can't digest food as properly.

It might come down to that we don't know. And that's why I think it's going to be interesting to have a final answer, possibly one day. But I'm kind of leaning to the fact that we're all different and we all have certain requirements that are needed for us to be optimal. And that's why the coaching profession is so popular now too because you know what? We can guide you through that process. If this diet A doesn't work. Maybe we'll try B, maybe we'll try this and kind of just keep on moving towards your goal that will be beneficial to that individual. So I know it's a bad answer, but it all goes back to universal.

Tony:

This is Omar Cumberbatch, the Health coach, and you can find him at omarcumberbatch.com and I'm going to spell that for you. Omar O M A R Cumberbatch, C U M B E R B ATC H.com. It'll be in the show notes, Omar cumberbatch.com

This is the Tony DUrso show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just the head. The chat continues about the Health Coach and Rule Makers, Rule Breakers with Omar Cumberbatch and Michele Gelfand. But first, it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

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We don't follow; we lead. Join us the VoiceAmerica Influencers Channel. You are listening to the Tony DUrso show with key influencers. We'd love to hear from you via email. Be sure to send questions and comments to Tony tonydurso.com now back to Tony and his guests.

Tony:

All right, we're back on the Tony DUrso show. Where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn through the success of our guests today. Today's show is about the Health Coach and Rule Makers, Rule Breakers with Omar Cumberbatch and Michelle Gelfand. I can't get over how many dietary theories there are. Let's get back to Omar and find out more Really good points, I wasn't looking for anything health-wise. I just happened to run into the Budwig methodology diet and it's gotten 90% success rate on dealing with enhancing cancer. I thought it was very interesting. I just checked into it for better understanding and also get some fodder for this interview. And two things I noticed, well, first of all, the Budwig Diet is 90% effective on cancer. So that's really interesting. And two of the things that are talked about, one is taking out sugar, which we already know for those cancer savvy people, we know that sugar is the fuel for cancer and tumors to some degree. And I'm not a doctor, so someone has a better way of explaining it that's totally cool. Get on my show and we'll go over it. To remove sugar and then the other point was not just processed foods Omar, but what caught my attention was this doctor said it has great success. Any foods after 15 minutes of preparation consume it or it's gone. In other words, don't eat leftovers, don't eat processed foods of course. Don't prepare something and then eat it throughout the whole week because after 15 minutes it's got virtually zero nutritional value. That was a shocker to me.

Omar:

Yeah, I said I'm familiar with that. And it is very interesting, but it kind of gets back to what I kind of thought about but not as drastically, getting rid of it as soon as it's like not consumable I should say between that 15-minute window. Obviously, sugar is something that they in there, they shouldn't be dealing with, refined grains, cereals, and stuff of that nature. We shouldn't be consuming because it doesn't have any nutritional value at that point. But yeah it's supposed to be an awesome, diet for people who are dealing with cancer. And but again, like you had mentioned earlier about the thousands sorry, hundreds of theories. There's a lot of theories about cancer and diet that are appropriate for cancer treatments that you'll hear a variety of different approaches to it. And that's just one of the things that Dr. Budwig is having a lot of success with it. And I can understand that it has a lot to do with the theory of like the Ph in your blood and stuff like that as well if I'm not mistaken and that's a theory in itself as well. So there's just so many dynamics to nutrition that I think the best course, especially when you're dealing with something that's to inform yourself about all the options and kind of just maybe try it.

And that's one of the things that I also promote with clients is just to really observe how what you eat affects your body, your mood, your disposition. Because that's basically your body telling you what it's doing. Is it nourishing my body or is it actually irritating my body? And one of the things that I feel that everybody should take stock in is just really even taking a food journal and kinda just get an idea of what these particular things that were introduced to our body. How does it affect your body? How do you feel afterward? If it makes you feel good. This something that she should have more of. If it makes you feel like crap, that's not where to go.

Tony:

Good points there. And I'm gonna bring this all together for our business audience, the entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, medium-size business owners. We're on the go. When we had a career at the cushy job, even though we could get laid off at any time, we had our half-hour, 45 minutes or hour for meals. The busy entrepreneur, if you're successful, if you're really rocking, it's like, I don't think I spend more than three minutes eating lunch. While I might be exaggerating, it could be four minutes, but it's just you've got so much to do in your day and the world, the business, everything is on your shoulders and you got to run. What would you say is a good suggested health regimen food-wise for that entrepreneur, for that busy person who's go-go, run, run, run. What suggestions would you have for that, Omar?

Health Regimen Food- Wise for Entrepreneur

Omar:

Well, the one suggestion that I've always had, and it's still difficult being an entrepreneur and you're on the run and you're just on the go for sure. And you just have to a do a lot of time to meal prep. And that's really what the key to a lot of this is. Because what happens is when you're on the run, and I'm speaking to the choir, like our choices are so scarce. We just don't have the opportunity to get a healthy thing all the time or it's not as the snap in the fingers. Especially, if you're out and about and you're starving and you just wanna grab the first thing, you're not really making the best choices. So what I have usually suggested for a lot of my clients who fall into that category is to try to do as much meal prep that you can. There are just tons of things.

I can name, a couple real quick that I find very helpful. Like if you can do to have some grilled chicken or just have salads available. Chilli is awesome. If you make chili it's something that's freezable it's something that you can heat up pretty quickly. Just make sure that you have enough food available that you could prepare so that you're not stuck in these situations where you're making bad decisions because you just don't have the time to do it. And again, we're trying to make meals that are very simple and that kind of time-consuming in this preparation as well. So that's kind of the thing that I would say try to be prepared and get ahead of that and just have healthy snacks, healthy things that you can eat for lunch or even dinner cause you know we work all day. We'd just have to be conscious of that and really have more, be prepared on the front end so that you don't have to pay on the backend.

Tony:

Those are good points and I totally agree on the meal preps with the meal preps all in place when you can eat efficiently and on the goal throughout the whole week. And I know that's counter to the Dr. Budwig protocol diet here, but we've just at this point kind of have to navigate towards something more healthy and more healthy. And even though you may not hit the top of the mountain, you've moved more towards more healthy. And I think that's part of the key is more healthy and better. It may not be perfect, it's not the perfect world, but getting better and better and you're doing more. That makes you feel better. Hey, I cut down my sugar a little bit. Hey, I cut down some carbs more. I don't eat so many carbs. I don't eat bread anymore. Whatever it is, you know, you're doing better even though it's not the perfect lifestyle.

Omar:

Right. And you know, we don't have to get caught up in the perfection component of it. And I mean, my quick story, my wife is traveling today and she got off the plane and she's starving and now her options are like McDonald's and like another fast-food restaurant. So she's stuck, I mean, again, like in that circumstance, you know, you might not have been able to prepare the meal at that instance. She just kind of stuck right now and we try to control as much as we can. And it doesn't have to be perfect. It as to be something that if we can prepare it, and again not being Dr. Budwig Diet per se, but it's way better than making that choice in going to McDonald's and dealing with that consequence.

Tony:

Understand, I have that trouble when I travel abroad and I don't necessarily know all the places to eat and if I'm not in a heavy metro section with lots of restaurant choices, I have to really figure out where I'm going to go. There was a time I did eat at McDonald's, it was the only restaurant around and when you got to eat, some times you've got eat, but you can still do better than worse. Look for salads, look for something more simple. You know, believe it or not, Starbucks, and I'm not trying to plug them particularly, but Starbucks is getting more and more healthy choices and if you're serving, they've got their little meals and healthy things. So if you look just separate all the other stuff, you can find that more healthy food when you really need. Let's call it a last resort.

Omar:

No, absolutely and I'm glad that you did bring up Starbucks because a lot of people are trying to understand the dilemma that you brought up. I mean, we're on the go. We want something small. Sometimes it's just to hold over till we get home so we can actually eat something good, you know? And that's what they're trying to do. Which is great because they're now marketing towards that and they are bringing in products in that we can utilize and actually not make terrible choices and just make better choices than we would in the past.

Tony:

Good points. Indeed. This is Omar Cumberbatch, the health coach. You can find him at omarcumberbatch.com. I'm going to spell that again. O MA R C U M B E R B A T C H.com. Check it out, Omar if someone wants to find out more about your services or contact us and get a chance to speak with you, they can do that through your site, correct?

Omar:

Oh yes, absolutely. And I'm also on all the social media handles. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. Yeah, I'm pretty easy to get.

Tony:

Well, very good. Omar, thank you so much for giving us this information when there's a big update in the industry, I would love to have you back. I think we're on a path. We've just sort of scratched the surface. We've just started that journey. I know there are better health choices ahead. I know there are more breakthroughs up ahead. I'd like to stay abreast of it and please when there's an important update, please circle back and let's get you back on.

Omar:

I would love to be back. I appreciate it, fantastic. Thank you.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead the chat continues about the Health Coach and Rule Makers, Rule Breakers with Omar Cumberbatch and Michelle Gelfand. But first, it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

Change starts here, change starts now. Join us the VoiceAmerica influencers channel. This podcast is brought to you by Clearbanc. ClearBanc is changing the way entrepreneurs raise money with equity-free capital. Cofounder Michelle Romano, Star of Canada's Dragon's Den. That's a Canadian version of Shark Tank. She cofounded Clearbanc with her partner, Andrew D'Souza. After seeing how many companies were willing to part with precious equity in exchange for a bigger marketing budget, ClearBanc believes that founders shouldn't give up a piece of their company to fund marketing and inventory expenses. ClearBanc makes equity-free investments from $10,000 to 10 million and can get you a term sheet in less than 20 that's amazing. They charge a small flat fee for the Capital and you pay them back using a win-win; rev share. I love that, and this is not alone. There's no interest rate, no fixed maturation date, no personal guarantees, no credit checks, no financial covenants. ClearBanc invested over $150 million last year and they're on track to invest over 1 billion this year. And some of their notable portfolio companies are public goods. Leesa Sleep, Le Tote, Buffy to name a few. So if you're doing over 10,000 a month in revenue, find out how you can receive clear bank capital by getting your 20-minute terms sheet clearbanc.com/tony that's clear. Banc B, a, n c remember that C clearbanc.com/tony and that we know is T O N Y. ClearBanc stops pitching and get back to doing what you love growing your Business. Clearbanc.com/tony.

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Tony:

All right, we're back on the Tony DUrso show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn through the success of our guests today. Today's show is about the Health Coach and Rule Makers, Rule Breakers with Omar Cumberbatch and Michele Gelfand. And now we have Michelle Gelfand joining us. Michele Gelfand is a distinguished university professor in psychology and the R H Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland College Park. Dig this, her work is cited over 20,000 times and featured in Washington Post New York Times, Boston Globe, National Public Radio, Voice of America, Fox News, NBC News, ABC News, Morning Joe, the economists, the Atlantic Time magazine, and a bunch more. Is that cool or what? Here we go, Welcome to the show. Michelle so great to have a rule breaker on with us today. I'm excited to chat about your great new book here.

Michele: I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Tony:

My pleasure. Now this is an interesting subject and you know, I did a show not too long ago on intelligent disobedience and it's a very interesting point. So I encourage the audience to check this out because we're to shift your mind a little bit, but before we do that, I like to know first things first, Michelle, how did it all start for you? What's your story?

Michele: Yeah, well, I'm a sheltered kid from Long Island, also pronounced Long Guy Island. And actually, I making other plans. I was a junior at Colgate University. I was interested in pre-medicine and I took a semester abroad and I was the first person in my family to leave the US and I remember getting to London and feeling this tremendous amount of culture shock even in London. And I remember calling my dad from Brooklyn and I said, dad, you know, it's weird among other things that people just go from London to Paris or to answer them just for the weekend. And he said something that really changed my life. There's one sentence he said, well imagine like it's going from New York to Pennsylvania and I thought that's such an awesome metaphor and this is a true story. Then the next day I booked a trip from London to Egypt.

I said, dad, it's like going from New York to California, don't worry about it. He was not too pleased about it, but wound up traveling to Egypt on my own and went on a long tour and then traveled around the world and I realized just how important culture is but how invisible it is and how profound it is. But I knew nothing about it and by extension myself. So I came back to Colgate and I decided to shift and become a cross-cultural psychologist and study culture using the best scientific tools available and the rest is history.

Tony:

The rest is this great book called Rule Makers, Rule Breakers and the tagline is how tight and loose cultures wire our world. How is this, let's, let's talk about this. We understand tight and loose cultures, but the wire our world, what's the analogy here? Can you draw this out for us? Michele: Well, you know, as I mentioned, culture is this powerful but invisible force. It's all around us and it affects us from the moment we wake up to the morning, go to sleep and everything from our politics to our parenting, our nations to our neurons. And so it really affects all aspects of our functioning around the world. And that's where that kind of part of the title comes from. Many think about culture in terms of rather superficial characteristics like red versus blue state or east versus west or rich versus poor. But I wanted to know is there a deeper sort of principle that helps us to explain our differences? And it has a lot to do with social norms and how tightly or loosely we adhere to them. And that's what the book is about is how does this very simple principle tighten loose can help us explain our national variation, our state variation, even variation in organizations, and our own households. In fact, even our own and loose mindsets coming right back to us as individuals. So the book takes us through that journey of how we can understand how social norms affect and wired the world,

Tony:

I'm hearing the words and I'm trying to draw some parallels to this, like how would we apply this? Not everyone goes around the world, but in our social media, we do. So maybe if I could use that as the example here. Is there anything that we need to know when we do our social media in terms of other world cultures, can we apply it to that

Michele: Social media as in like the Internet

Tony:

As on the Internet where we're typing stuff on Facebook or doing posts on Instagram, Twitter, even LinkedIn and so forth like that. Is any of this stuff applicable because not everyone necessarily travels? I've met people in the go-figure, they've never been out of the country, so I'm thinking of application, like how would we apply this? Of course then in the United States where I'm broadcasting from, we have our own inter cultures as well, so I'm just looking at the application fact.

Michele: Sure, of course. So, I mean, I want to mention you don't need to travel to kind of discover this distinction. I'll just kind of back up and say all groups have social norms or these unwritten rules for behavior and without knowing it, we follow social norms constantly. For example, we know to say hello and goodbye when we answer the phone or we know to put clothes on when we go out in public, most of us, we know not to have sex in movie theaters, that's probably a no-no. And we know not to face backward in elevators or to drive on the right side of the road. And most countries are on the left and others. And so we're constantly following these rules for behavior. And in fact, what's really fascinating is that we need social norms as a species. Social norms are the glue that keeps us together.

They help us to coordinate and predict each other in an unbelievable fashion. And we invented social norms to do this. What's interesting is that some groups tend to be, are tight, they have stronger rules and punishments when you don't abide by rules and other groups are much more relaxed. I have much more permissiveness. And you can find that here in the United States. We actually classified the 59 states in terms of tight and loose rather than red and blue. And we found for example, that the south and some parts of the Midwest veered much tighter than the coast, which then to veered loose, you can look at organizations and see that some organizations like airlines or nuclear power plants manufacturing tend to veer tight and others like in high tech veered loose. And what's really interesting is we've been trying to understand what causes groups to become tight or loose.

And it turns out there's a pretty interesting explanation for why in all these contexts we can predict when groups will be tight or loose. And it turns out that that has a lot to do with how threatened groups are and how much coordination that they need. So for example, in airlines, you need a lot of coordination. So you need a lot of rules. Or in the military in that context where there's a lot of threats, like a lot of natural disasters, like you find in the south, you need stronger rules to coordinate, to survive. So that's just to say that we can find tight and loose in our own backyards. We don't need to travel abroad to see it. We could see it in organizations, we could see it in our households. You know, are you a rule maker or a rule breaker? You can go on my website and take a tight, loose mindset quiz to figure that out. And start thinking about why might have you evolved to have certain default tendencies on this continuum. How does this affect your relationships? Your workplace, the match that you have in your mindset with those around you? There are lots of different conflicts that arise even just based on our own mindsets and with others around us, uh, that we can try to negotiate. And I try to talk a lot about that in the book. Rule makers, Rule breakers.

Tony:

I love it and do you know the most important thing I've learned so far here on this talk is that I'm not supposed to stand in the elevator backward.

Michele: Well, you should try it. You will realize like just how amazing it is, how quickly people, especially in that context will start giving you feedback. But nevertheless, in the United States in general, even though some places veered tight or loose, we have a wider range of behavior that's permissible. Even when people do that kind of stuff, you might not get a strong reaction as you might in places like Germany or Singapore or Japan. And so it's really interesting to think about this force of social norms that affects us all the time. And that differs around the world and actually in our own everyday neighborhoods.

Tony:

You're right. You know, some of those things would be creepy if I walked into an elevator and saw somebody standing in the corner of their head or you know, turned around. It's like, what's going on here? And you know, if I may, you're the expert, you've been around the world. I'm a novice on this, but I did learn. One thing I'd love, I'd love to share if you've got just a moment on that, is before I went to France many decades ago, I heard all the time, people in France are rude, they're rude, be careful, they're rudest people in the world. And I'm like, this doesn't make sense. You know, and I did my own research on it. I thought, ah, this is not going to happen to me. So I go on to France and I learn how to say hello and good afternoon and good morning.

And no matter what the person did in France, I always greeted them and I would just see this change in front of them. They know I'm American to ready to whatever. And I say, hi, how are you? Or whatever infringes. And they are the nicest people in the world. I couldn't find anybody rude because they would just do whatever they want. And I found out that they're the nicest people in the world. And it's the Americans that are rude because, because Americans, I watched them when they walk into a French cafe place store, they don't say hi. They say, what's this? How much is that? Show me this, what's giving me this that's rude and all of a sudden this steel iron door comes down. And that's it. And then, and I actually witnessed that firsthand. So I totally agree with you. Every culture they have their norms and we have to understand their norms.

Michele: That's right. And Tony, I would just mention also that what you're talking about is really super important. And it's what we call cultural intelligence. Like a lot of us focus on IQ or EQ emotional intelligence by in fact, especially when traveling abroad or when you're sending a manager abroad, we need to make sure that we have cultural intelligence because people can arrive in different cultures and just basically use their own cultural programming and not realizing that it's going to get them into trouble. And actually we recently published a paper that showed that people who go to tighter cultures, places like Japan and Singapore or China, Germany, Austria, when they actually have more cultural intelligence, when they have personalities that are more agreeable and that are more focused on rules, they tend to adapt very well but people who don't really suffer. So it's really important to think about the match between one's own mindset and where one is going when traveling abroad so we can avoid getting into trouble. And also leaving early a lot of people actually expatriate assignments when they don't have cultural intelligence, a wind up costing businesses a lot of money and coming back early and uh, and really, um, causing a lot of internal problems to themselves. I mean, you know, not adjusted well. So it's a really important point you make that CQ in this increasingly globalized world is really something we need to cultivate.

Tony:

Thank you. And when I did my collegiate and university studies, again many moons, I did a cultural class. I remember back then. And the most startling thing is Michele. we use these hand signs, hand signals, like from stop, I try to, okay, sign peace sign and we use them without even thinking about it. But Watch out and as you said, do your research when you go abroad because some of these simple, innocuous signs are extremely offensive out there. This is the Tony DUrso show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just the head the chat continues about the Health Coach and Rule Makers, Rule Breakers with Omar Cumberbatch and Michele Gelfand. But first, it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

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Tony:

All right, we're back on the Tony DUrso show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn through the success of our guests today. Today's show is about the Health Coach and Rule Makers, Rule Breakers with Omar Cumberbatch and Michele Gelfand. Michele is the author of Rule Makers Rule breakers, how tight and loose cultures wire the world. And now back to the chat with Michele. Michele: Yeah, that's right. There are all sorts of, um, research on not just verbal behavior, but nonverbal behavior that again, if you're not aware of it, you might be flipping someone off by accident in another culture. By the way, I would say that this applies to the US too. I remember traveling to the US South. I read about it in the book and the South as much tighter than New York, my own hometown was flipping people off, it's pretty, pretty common. It's almost like affection or gesture in New York City. And I remember, you know, we actually got into deep trouble in the south because, you know, this is not a gesture that's appreciated where politeness is really important. In our research, and I talk about it in the book, we find that the loose states are the rudest states in the union.

There are surveys that categorize states in terms of politeness. It's the tight states that are much more polite. But on the flip side, we find that loose states are much more fun and it's the tighter states that are less fun. So you have this trade-off of kind of order and politeness versus openness. And we find this across the board, tight states and tight context tend to have a lot of order, a lot of synchrony, a lot of politeness, and even a lot more self-control. People monitoring their behavior and their impulses, whereas loose states are much more disorganized that have less order. They're ruder they have self-regulation problems like debt and alcoholism. But on the flip side, loose context tends to be much more open. They're more open to different types of people, including immigrants and people who are stigmatized. They're open to ideas, they're much more creative and they're open to change. And it's this openness that tight context can struggle with. And you know, I think it's important to realize that both tight and loose bring advantages for groups in terms of order and openness. And we can kind of understand what those strengths are and what our liabilities might be when it comes to these kinds of attributes.

Tony:

Michelle, I kind of went in a circle. I don't know if this is an oxymoron or not to be tight or not to be tight or loose. It sounds like each has a pro and con and each could be advantages and disadvantages. So now I'm a little confused. What, what do we do? Is there a find a median protocol that's good for our culture or what?

Michele: Well, that's a great point. I mean, I talk about this in the book as I call it, the Goldilocks Principle of Tightness and looseness and the idea is that groups need to veer tight or loose for good reasons. Like I said, when you need a lot of coordination or you have a lot of threat, you need to veer tighter to organize and survive. But what I find is that groups that get too extreme in either direction, that either become really super loose and unpredictable and disorganized or really super tight and repressive, those are the groups that have a lot of problems. In my research, I can see that they have more suicide. Less wellbeing, this principle of too tight and too who's also to organizations. You can think about the fact that some organizations need to be veer tight like United, but arguably, about a year and a half ago they were really veering too tight, almost people following rules without even thinking about it and they needed to inject some discretion and flexibility into that system. Something I call flexible tightness. On the flip side, think about places like Tesla or Uber that arguably veer loose, but we're getting to lose and they needed some more structure, meaning that what I call structured looseness. So it's the extremes that seem to be problematic and this had been applied by the way to parenting. I'm the parent of two teenagers, so I would like to tighten up everything. But the reality is that research shows that people that are either too tight, they are too helicopter-like or too loose parents that are lousy, fair, they tend to produce maladaptive kids. So it's a matter of figuring out, even in our households which domains need to be tight and which domains can be loose. And we can actually actively negotiate that. I do that with my kids, with my spouse and we talk about this.

We use the tight loose lens to think about what's the optimal level. I think that's what important point is that neither tight or loose are bad. They both think strengths to human groups. But when we get to the extremes, we start having problems and we can harness the power of social norms to make a difference. As an example, you mentioned the Internet. In the book, I talk a lot about how the internet is sort of a wild west normalize place. You know, it's gotten to be extremely loose even though it has a lot of advantages and it's arguably context that we need to start thinking about. Because we live online. How do we create stronger norms? How do we tighten up a little bit without losing that flexibility so that we live in a world that's civil because we know from my own research that people who perceive the world online to normally have very much lower wellbeing and they're more lonely and they're more depressed. And so it's really important that we can use this concept to tighten up when we need to tighten up, when things have gotten too loose or to loosen up when things have gotten too tight. So it's something that is dynamic and we as humans invented social norms and so we can do something about it to recalibrate as needed.

Tony:

I love it. This is Michele Gelfand, G E l F A N D. You can find more about her at michelegelfand.com. I'm going to spell it. This is Michele with one L M I C H E l E G E L F A N D.com. And Michele, I figured out that from now on I'm just going to be tightly loose and I'll be good.

Michele: Yeah, I think that you know, again, all of us sort of have our default tendencies in terms of our tight or loose mindset. And this affects a lot of our relationship conflicts. You know, it can affect conflict with one's spouse or colleagues or kids when it comes to finances or how messy we are. Even vacations, I mean I don't know about you, Tony, but when you're on vacation with your extended family, sometimes there can be some tight and conflicts on people love to be spontaneous and unstructured and kind of go with the flow and other people like to be more structured and have things planned out more. And again, we have to cut a label these conflicts as tight, loose and then try to negotiate them so that we get a better vacation.

Tony:

agreed on that. When I take a vacation with the big family, it's like so much work and effort to just go get a meal, come back, see one, see one item, one tourist attraction, and then it's time for another meal. And it's just a lot of work, but it's also a lot of fun because of all the interactions. So you see fewer attractions, but you have more bonding with the family.

Michele: Yeah, that's right. I mean I'm from New York, my husband's from Chicago, I think here from Chicago. And we sort of been like an l sells as a merger between Thailand lose our cultures and our kids get to witness those different cultures when they go on vacations with the New Yorkers. We are loud and rude and norm violating. But also, you know, pretty creative and, and fun and with more of the kind of low key culture, more polite culture of the Midwest. And so it's fun to kind of see those differences and understand where they come from.

Tony:

Michele, if I could be so bold as to say it appears to me, and I could be wrong, that you appear a little on the loose side. You're a little on the loose side but you're tight when you need to be. Michele: I think that it's right. I mean I like to think I'm in the world of innovation as a scientist and innovations are producing process because it involves more with creativity and looseness in involves tightness in the sense of trying to execute an idea and make it happen. And so I think that many of us that work in that kind of industry, we need to do both at different time frames. And actually, in the book, I talk about leaders who are ambidextrous. In other words, who really understand that you need both tightness and looseness in an organization and are able to help groups to understand that and manage that are really the best leaders because they're able to manage, this kind of tension between having rules and breaking rules and they can do it super effectively. And so I think as you said, the goal is that goldilocks. We need to be tighter or looser depending on our situation, but we also can benefit from building muscle strength in the weaker side of our the continuum.

Tony:

I understand that. And way back when I first started in the corporate world, back then, you could not literally say anything personal to anyone or literally you would get written up. I mean you could say, hey, how are you and walk by. But if you stopped to chat about anything was not business-related, you would literally get written up now circle fast forward multiple decades later. I've been an entrepreneur fortunately for, for quite some time. I hear it's pretty much the opposite. You didn't write about this. I've read some snippets of your book, you know, you can wear tee shirts and shoot pool and hang out at Google and you know, and so forth. It's changed so much. It seems that it's gone from extremely tight to extremely loose in a way in even in the corporate world culture here.

Michele: Yeah, it's such an interesting observation and in fact, we just published a paper in a journal called Nature Human Behavior that tracked the levels of tight or loose in the United States over the last 200 years. And we basically found as you were just articulating that the United States has actually gotten a lot looser over time. And what's fascinating is that that's associated with this tight loose trade-off. In other words, as we've loosened up, we've gotten a lot more creative, but we also then take a dive to some extent on order on things like debt and things Iike teenage pregnancies or school attendance. So we do see that there is a loosening up in the United States. I would say that we can also see though that there is some tightening in certain areas of the country in our data. We can see for example, that the working class tends to be much tighter than the middle and upper class.

And it makes a lot of sense, again, because the working class is trying to avoid falling into poverty, has to deal with occupations that are more dangerous and neighborhoods that are more dangerous. So rules really help in those circumstances. In fact, when we ask in our research, the working class, the middle class, what kind of words coming up in your mind when you think about rules and I can ask your audience that right now if I say, follow the rules and rules, what things come up in your mind when we give that thought experiment out to large amounts of people we see it's the working cause that finds rules to be pretty positive and it's the upper class. The things rules are kind of a nuisance and in fact, the upper class has more of a cushion so they can afford to break more rules as compared to the working class.

So it's important to see that, you know, we certainly have a lot of groups within the US even though in the culture has gotten looser, who do feel this sense of tightness because of the context that they're in, the disruptions that they're having in their communities. What's important also is that when people feel tight, feel threatened and they want stronger rules, they also want more autocratic leaders, who can help to call the shots. That's a principle we've found in a lot of our work. So before the US election, we could see people who felt threatened, felt the US was too loose and they wanted Trump to take over. And this was a dynamic we found also in France during the Lappin Election. So that's all to say that we are loosening up as a society. You could see it in our language and our dress, as you mentioned in the kinds of things that will say to our parents, you know about these days versus decades ago. But we do have areas where there's tightening and it's important to understand and empathize with some of that. Even in the context of the United States.

Tony:

You brought up some great thoughts and I think this is my opinion, it's gone too loose. When I look outside, when I walk, when I drive around the city, the growing homeless population, I've, I've done events for them, I've done drives for them. It just grows and grows. I think things have gone too loose and I think there's a detriment there where I see poverty. I see high debts and so many other things we don't want to get into. I think it's gone too much. So what should we do? What sage advice do you have after these years of studies? You've checked it all out. What advice could you give us that we can apply where we work, who we work with our families and hopefully spread it out?

Michele's Advice Michele: Yeah! Well, first of all, I think it's just important to just grasp the language. The tight, loose language helps us to see the world in a new way. It helps us to understand ourselves and our own behavior, puzzling behavior of other people around us. And it helps us to interpret world events and global trends through a very simple lens. And so it helps to give us a little more understanding about the world around us. I think also to your point when we start seeing things loosen up too much, we as a species need to think about how do we tighten some norms. Because as we get too loose, as I mentioned, things get too chaotic and unpredictable and we can though there are examples that I've given the book where groups have actually tightened norms. For example, I give a whole discussion of Iceland in Iceland to your point people felt it was getting entirely too loose.

Kids were roaming the streets at night, it was unsafe, there was alcoholism and people in Iceland said, you know, we're going to actually try to strengthen the norms here. We're going to come together as parents, as educators and we're going to collectively recalibrate the norms in our context. And that's exactly what they did and it had a huge effect. And it's a program, the Icelandic model that now is being used throughout Europe. So we can actually tighten up norms when we need to and we can come together to do that. We can also try to loosen norms when they're becoming too tight. We see that in fact in various areas where we have very strong gender roles and practices that have arguably been hurtful and so now the trick I think for us as humans are to really think deliberately about the kind of world you want to live in and how to strengthen or loosen them as needed.

Tony:

Thank you very much. Michele Gelfand, great book Rule Makers, Rule Breakers. You can find her and the book at michelegelfand.com I'll spell that again. M I C H E l E G E L F A N D.com michelegelfand.com. Michele, thank you so very much for this very insightful communication here in conversation. I loved it. We got to have you back on again sometime and talk more about this. This is a great topic and I would love to raise awareness on people and just what they're doing, where they're going, where we're headed and so forth. This was very great.

Michele: Thank you so much and I would really love to hear from your listeners your own tight loose stories. One of the reasons I wrote this book was to kind of hear from you like your experiences with your conflict, your challenges, and I've gotten a lot of people who write to me through my website. There's a place to send stories who tell me the most interesting, phenomenal stories that really are very close to home and I appreciate those stories so much. So please send them on. And contact me if you want to discuss more.

Tony:

Sounds good; Dear audience, please go to michelegelfand.com and tell her your story she loves to hear from you. Michelle thank you so much. Michele: Thank you for having me, Tony. Tony's Insight Hey, thanks for hanging out with me. While I featured a few prominent elite entrepreneurs who took their vision to reality, I hope this was as inspiring for you as it was for me to interview these great people. Tell me how you like to show. I'd love to know how you use this information to help you in your business or career. Now we all know how important health is, tests entrepreneurs. I'm appreciative to Omar Cumberbatch to spend some time with us to discuss this. There are so many takeaways that I need more time to talk about them. Here's a super tight summary with over 100 dietary theories to help the industry has been made. Just too confusing. So this needs more investigation. What worked for me in the past was to eat in the beneficial category for my blood type that worked like a charm. One thing for sure, we know that sugar is a culprit and we need to cut that down for longer and more sustained good health and despite industry confusions, Omar is moving swiftly on his vision path to success. Can you see that? And Michele Gelfand brought some profound points of view to us. On being tight or loose and how to deal with each. Did you ever have any inkling and how diverse our cultures really are? And even within our own country, it's amazing. Have a good thing on this and see what your work culture is and if that is optimum or not. What's your goldilocks culture? What's best for your work area? While I have a ton of social media all over the place, probably the simplest and easiest is to post something and put it on my Facebook wall at Tony S D U R S O that makes it easy to see and reply. You can also tweet Tony D U R S O go ahead and do that and let's see what you got from these interviews. Now, remember, grab hold of your vision. Decide you're going to either start something great or take it to the next level. You have to decide first. It always starts with a decision, right? You can get my vision map to help you along the process. This free book is still online. At some point, the full book will be released with much more info, but for now, get that and use that to stimulate your success. I created my empire in just a few years. That's all it took. I had the vision map as my guide. You can do it too.

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Tony:

And remember, success awaits those who persevere and remained steadfast despite the odds be righteous. Join me on the next episode of the Tony DUrso show We hope you've enjoyed this week's edition of the Tony DUrso show with his key influencers. Be sure to tune in again next Friday at 4:00 PM Eastern time, 1:00 PM Pacific Time on the VoiceAmerica Influencers Channel