The Legacy We Leave Begins with Who We Become with Dr. Lee Ostler

Today on Leading with Purpose, I'm excited to welcome Dr. Lee Osler. Dr. Osler is a researcher, educator, and author of four books on redox signaling molecules, helping people better understand the science of health and cellular communication. His latest book, with co-author Roland Thompson, is Grand Connect: Bridging the Gap Between Generations, explores another form of connection that may be even more important: the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren. In a world where family dynamics are changing rapidly, Dr. Osler offers practical wisdom for building meaningful relationships across generations. He shares how grandparents can become powerful sources of love, stability, healing, and influence, regardless of distance or circumstance. Join us as we explore legacy, connection, family, and what it truly means to lead with purpose at home and across generations. Welcome, Dr. Lee Osler.

Dr. Lee Ostler: Thank you, Mark. And what a pleasure to be with you on in your space, leading with purpose. That's kind of a an important component to everything that we do.

Absolutely, I we had a little pre-conversation and I wanted to jump right in because it it just felt like that's where we were already going in talking about this book and I had the pleasure of interviewing you with Russell Mariani, my friend and co-host of Redox Podcast. And when I heard about this new book that you were had published already and the the topic of it, I was eager to bring this to our community. I feel it really is more important now than ever. There's there's a lot of disconnection with technology and space and even a polarization between politics and beliefs and values and different things. And tell us a little bit more about first, what what inspired you to co-author this book yourself?

Dr. Lee Ostler: Well, again, thanks. This I do agree. This is a really essential topic matter because it affects every one of us. You know, we all are in families, we're either a son or a daughter or we're a spouse or a partner or we're now in a place in our life where we have offspring that goes down another another step, to where we've got grandchildren, in some cases, great-grandchildren, and so I have 21 grandkids, and I think I'm at nine great-grandkids now, and so it starts to dawn on you that, you know, time's important. Why this matters is because I, you know, at my age, I only have I don't know what, a decade or two left. I'd like to think I've got longer, but it causes you to think differently about what you're leaving behind, and, unfortunately, most of us think legacy is about the, you know, the material things that we can, you know, leave or gift or bequest our our offspring, our family, when when we're not here anymore. But one of the things that sparked this for me is I was I was contemplating my family, thinking about my family. one time. I was kind of sitting in a in a special place, just kind of pondering and thinking, and my mind was just wandering, and I had this, I'll call it a waking vision. It was just a mental, you know, picture that literally formed in my mind's eye of my family portrait, and I'm there in the middle with my wife and the families around you. It's the kind you'd hang on the wall above your fireplace or something, and I was looking at it, and it was just It happened very fast, but I'm looking at it, and I I saw my image in the photograph or the portrait just dissolve away in my mind's eye, and I'm not in the picture anymore. And it was a little bit of a gut punch, you know. I was like, Wait, what just happened? Is this Is this some higher power trying to, you know, give me a message? What what is What's this all about? And I sat and pondered, and I remember momentarily thinking, No, no, go back in. Get back in the

picture. You're You're still in the picture. You're not dead yet, you know. And and so that had an impact on me. That was three or four years ago. And that had an impact on me, and I started thinking differently that, you know, I do have a posterity. I've got kids that are now adults, and they've got kids. Some of them are now starting to have kids. And I'm thinking, in 10 or 30 years, it's like, what am I going to mean to who I've left behind after I'm gone, physically? Will they even know me? I mean, and I started to think about my grandparents and great-grandparents. And it's like, what what can you claim in your life of positive, you know, value that came to you that you know about from your great-grandparents or your grandparents, right? And it's like, well, I don't think I can think of much. Meaning, when when we die or when we pass on, it's like, what have we left behind? What's really most important? And so, anyway, that was kind of a a nexus moment where I came together, and my good friend Roland Thompson and I, we started talking about this idea and about how important it was for us to kind of get our own act together and figure out how to do better job at being grandparents, of influencing our grandchildren, but also how to improve and strengthen the relationships that we have with our adult children, and I know that's a problem in today's culture and society. You know, estrangement, cutting off, all of the interpersonal stuff. There's so much being talked about, you know, now about childhood wounds and where did they come from, and what the fault of the parents and the kids. I mean, it just-it's a tornado. It's a hurricane, you know, a storm that is besetting us, and and we can sit here and argue who's right, who's wrong. But at the end of the day, if the family or the or the bloodline becomes fractured, what we have to ask the question: What good is that?

You know, even even if we're, it's it's more important to be right than to be in relationship for some people, and so that's all driven by our makeup, you know, saying what happened to us when we were kids and and childhood wounds and and the what what I call the poses or the masks or the covers that we we cover our insecurities and our doubts and our misgivings and and identity issues with, and then how we defend them. And you know, psychology we call that ego, you know, it's what what has your ego done, and and so it's like there just becomes a point in time where maybe maybe the adults in the room ought to ought to kind of sit down with themselves and and become more self-aware, more self-reflective, more understanding of what what these factors are, because we went through this when we were kids. We went through the 20 years of growth and development of growing a brain, developing our identity, trying to figure out which way was up and down and left and right, and now our grandkids are doing the same thing. And maybe if they've got listeners who are still, you know, they don't have grandkids, but their parents, or for example, and and they've got children in the house or or whatever, well, it applies to them as well, you know, we we our children and grandchildren are going through the very same generic developmental experiences that we went through. We know what it was like to be insecure on the on the playground, you know, of the school where we were the last one chosen, or we weren't the most popular, or we wanted people to like us, or, you know, whatever our insecurity was, and we carry those things into adulthood, and and we be and we remain reactionary rather than deliberate and thoughtful and mature. And so that that as a as a starting place, that's kind of where this started to to develop, and and and the thought that came from this, the bottom line with that was, if you want to have influence, if you want to leave something behind that's

influential, and I'm not talking about gaslighting or manipulative or anything like that, but I'm just saying if you want to have a positive influence on your family, your bloodline, the way to do that is to become a better person. I mean, it's really simple, you know, when you look at it from maybe the a higher altitude and you look down on it, and just you just have to be a bigger a better person. Become the adult in the room that's regulated emotionally and spiritually and in in all ways. You're thoughtful and you're using your agency wise. So, that's as a quick preamble. I guess that's kind of how we started this, and then we thought, well, if we're if we're going to figure this out, what better way to do it than than to learn it well enough that we could help others? And so we thought, well, let's write a book because that's the way I study, is I study things well enough that I could write a book on it, and so that's kind of my preferred methodology, and so we wrote a book. And it's called It's called Grand Connect, and we're just because the essence of all of this is about how you connect and what it takes to connect.

The title's Grand Connect. The subtitle, Bridging the Gap Between Generations, mainly made me think of a couple things. I I've shared a lot of excitement with some of my friends about this interview because of the relevance it has in my own life. And I I think you briefly shared, or maybe I even made it up in my own mind, an example of hearing from your grandfather that boys don't cry. And that was from your grandfather, and how you've passed that down to your to your children or grandchildren. There's lots of little different lessons that we have, and I think as parents, like you said, we know we've been there. So I I think many times as parents or grandparents, we're like, well, we know the right way, and we want to teach you the right way, instead of like being able to say, well, what might I have learned that that isn't the most empowering lessons, and and how can I just, like you said, just focus on being a better person and trying to, instead of trying to sculpt our our children or our grandchildren into being the image that we want them to be?

EQ formula, you know, and and that began to start talking about, well, what are feelings and what are emotions. And shortly thereafter, there's a whole new branch of science that came out talking about neuroscience and brain development and the parts of the brain that were involved in this, with the idea that kids don't have a developed brain. They don't have a prefrontal cortex yet. They have they have an amygdala. They have the lower brain, if you will. I I think of it as even as it's more complex than this. They have a lower brain, and we have a higher brain, right? And the lower brain amygdala is, pardon me, is the threat detector. That's what senses stress in the environment or relationship or whatever, and and it's it's there on purpose because it it helps protect us. It's what takes us to fight or flight or freeze or fawn or, you know, but it's it's a self-protective modality. Well, the problem is is that we don't really develop our prefrontal cortex until we're 25 to 30, is is the kind of the new hallmark that the the psychologists are talking about, which means my higher brain, my ability to think and to rational and have executive function and and and to be, you know, to exercise traits such as thinking, we call it metacognition, you know, the the idea that you can think about your thinking, right? That you can stand aside and put a pause between a stimulus and a response, and increase the distance and the time between that, where you can think and you have agency and choice. Those are all traits that kids don't have. They just don't have the brain capacity to do that. They're still developing their brain, literally.

It's biological. This is not about training. You can't push it faster.

Dr. Lee Ostler: Exactly. This is biology. And so the behaviorism is putting something on kids who don't have the capacity to be able to do what we do. And so what they do is they go, Oh, I'm not supposed to have these feelings, you know. Like, big boys don't cry, or that that's nothing to cry about, or do you want me to give you something to cry about? I'll give you something to cry about, or whatever it is. I mean, all of us can shake our head and nod, like, yeah, that was kind of the way it was, and we And then we'll sit here and blame our parents for all of our trauma and our problems because of that. But But the point is is that we didn't have that capacity as kids, and our kids didn't either when we were doing the same thing with them. But we thought we were training them properly by causing them to toughen up, or this is the way the world really is, right? So we put that on them. So the point of this is that what was the kid going to do? He's going to fight, flight, freeze, or they call There's another one, F, called fawning. And And if I'm not supposed to have these feelings, which is natural because that's part of my lower brain, stress detection, threat detection, neuroanatomy, if I'm not supposed to have these feelings, then there must be something wrong with me. And so now I attack my own identity. And since I can't leave my parents We're talking about attachment here, attachment theory. Since I can't leave my parents because I would die Kids can't walk away from their caregiver. then therefore I will walk away from me. I will deny my feelings, I'll abandon myself, right? And so I guess I'll just cover that up. I don't want to hurt anymore, so I put a pose, a mask, a cover. I'll pretend, I'll deny, I'll I'll defer, I'll numb. I'll do anything to cover that feeling because I guess I'm not I'm wrong to have that feeling. And again, this is very simplistic. This this goes really deep, and and and it's way more complicated than

this, but at least at the flyover level, that's kind of what we're dealing with here. And so if that's all true, and if that's what happened to me when I was young, and I look back and I go, Yeah, those I I see now that many of my personal insecurities in life, the identity that I formed around those poses and insecurities, and and identity crisis while I was trying to figure out, you know, who I was and how I fit in the world, that's exactly what's going on with our grandkids and our children right now. They're going through that. And rather than making them wrong or creating a situation where they believe they're wrong, which damages this attachment, where now they have to go do things behaviorally in order to compensate or adapt or maladapt, as it were. Instead of doing that, I need to be I need to be modeling what it looks like to be able to control my own emotions, my own anger, my own rage, my own thoughts, and how I express them. And and back to your earlier point, it's like we can sit here and teach and preach all we want, but when they see how we handle stress, and we model it, and we become vulnerable, and we're able to say, Hey, you know, we goofed up. We're sorry, and we fall on our own sword, and we fix our stuff, and we let them know that yeah, this is a real thing for us, too. When they when they see that we can do that, they know how now to be me to do it in their own life. But they have to see it 10,000 times. You know, it's not just a one and done thing. And and the reason for that is because this is about neuroplasticity. I'm training a brain.

I'm growing a brain in my kids and my grandkids, and as a as a as a point of influence, I want to be able to model what it looks and feels like to be vulnerable, to be able to apologize, to be able to make corrections in my own life and for them to be aware that I'm doing it. You know, sometimes our own pride and our ego won't let us do that because of our own wounds and insecurities. And if we can kind of work on ourselves, become a better person, and overcome those or or grow our own brain, you know, re- rewire and refire brain cells so that we're actually growing new neural pathways, and giving our prefrontal cortex better capability and capacity over our reactive state to life, when we can do that and model that, we're in a much better position to have passed that on to our children and our grandchildren, and that's ultimately the influence. I think I think the best, to sum that up, the best gift we can give to our children and to our grandchildren is an emotionally regulated parent. If we're emotionally regulated, then that means we've got distance between our reactive state and our thinking state, and our thinking brain can now ponder and think and put distance, and and and if we even place this in in kind of religious, theological, or spiritual terminology, we would use the word agency.

You know, we

Dr. Lee Ostler: we would call the the capacity to be able to be thoughtful. Think of every every religious or Christian virtue, you know, of patience, and tolerance, and temperance, and sober-mindedness, and and slow to anger. I mean, there's there's 100 of those qualities that we kind of look at as religious virtues, Christian virtues, Buddha, I mean, all the the faith traditions out there speak to this concept of being able to put your prefrontal cortex in charge of your reactive brain. And when you can do that, now I have capacity because I can sit and I can intentionally, thoughtfully make decisions about what's bugging me, and how I'm going to react to it or respond to it. And it may still be that I need to fight or flight or freeze, you know, but but I'm doing it on purpose, and not blindly or just reactively, which then models something to our children that I guess that's okay, because and and that's the pattern that I'm putting on my next generation. And when I start seeing my grandchildren show up with these same patterns, that's when I backed up, and I go, Man, I've got to do something. I've got to have some input here to develop a and a a relationship with them that's tighter, closer, stronger. and and as I've as I've been able to do that, what's been really rewarding is the grandkids start approaching me now, and they start asking me different kinds of questions and interacting with me because the vocabulary and the the jargon changes and our understanding changes. The memes that we share on social media, you know, now become more meaningful because there's something behind it that we have a common language about what it means to be emotionally regulated or, you know, what pornography is actually doing or all the habits that we might have. All of a sudden, those become conversations that we can have because we're all working in this together, you know.

So

Dr. Lee Ostler: anyway, I rambled a bit there, but that's kind of the to me how that all comes together.

I I love that. Again, you started all of this with you wanted to have enough information to be able to write a book. And so you've done lots of research, but you've also done a lot of like the inner work. The the beginning part of it seems like the most difficult because, one, you're talking about recognizing our role and then taking ownership of it. But how do you take ownership of it without going too far to the extreme of of self-blame and cause you don't want to blame your parents for the way you are, but you also don't want to say, Oh, I I the ego will will start to to break itself down of of, Oh, my gosh, I did all this damage to my children.

Dr. Lee Ostler: Yeah, that's a tough one. And and I think we're all going to sit in that a little bit, like, Man, I kind of blew it, you know? I and we do it all the time. It's like, Why'd I lose my temper? Why did I come unhinged? Why did the road rage, you know, reflex happen? none of us are perfect. But but I think one thing that does help, and and this comes from to me this came to me partly from a verse in the New Testament in Second Corinthians 12, where where the Apostle Paul is talking about his infirmities and how he glories in them. And he likes the distresses, and I'm thinking, I don't glory in my infirmities or distresses or persecutions. Those are You know, he he he's talking about his thorns, right? It's like why why would why would that be okay to be glad that you have adversity and and and these infirmities and persecutions? And you start thinking that through, and it's like, you know, that's the program. The The program, if I can use those in air quotes, the the design of why why we live on this earth is so that we can we can have adversity, so that we can become stronger. It's not to punish us; it's to help us. Our suffering is the path to freedom, because when we learn how to deal with that, and so that mindset in the back of my brain is has been very helpful in realizing that, yeah, we're not perfect. And if I if I switch my frame of mind and I look at this and my mistakes and my my my weakness, if you will, my my identity issues or whatever it is, if I look at that as, that's like the that's like the laboratory, that's the tutorial, right? That's the clinical material of my life, and so that has helped me personally a lot to realize that that's the design of our existence is that, and really from a biological, I've written four books, five books in on cellular biology, as you referenced. That's the design of biology, is our cells don't just go along flat level, you know, never being having a problem. They're made strong because of

the stress they endure biologically, which is why we exercise, which is why we fast, which is why we eat the way we're supposed to eat, and so forth, is because doing all that creates just a tiny bit of stress in the cell, to which it has to respond in a way to upregulate its cellular defenses. That's a principle called hormesis, for those nerds in the audience that want to go look that up, H-O-R-M-E-S-I-S. So I look at this as kind of an emotional or spiritual hormesis, is the stress in my life, the problems I have in my life are opportunities for me to embrace because it makes me better. And when I have a problem with that, then that's just a signal that says, there's some work you still need to do. And the way through that is you can, I don't, just to say it frankly, you can choose to be humble, or you can be humbled. It's your choice. And for me, as for probably 99% of us, things happen in life that truly humble us. We we come face to face with these issues, these problems, or, you know, for me, it was one of my adult kids coming to me in in a in a setting where I found out that he thought, he believed, that I emotionally abused him when he was a younger person. We have a great relationship, and so it really confused me as to, well, why would he think that of something that went on 30, 40 years ago in our life? Cuz I've got a great relationship with him. But it was still something he was wrestling with and he confronted me with that. And it was like, Oh, my word. You know, what was going on in my life at that time that would create a situation where he would think as a nine-year-old, you know, that his his dad didn't like him or whatever. And there was some tough stuff in our family that went on at that time.

And so that was that was a moment in time where I was kind of forced to acknowledge something about myself, to be vulnerable. And I think that's a really pivotal moment. If we just get over ourselves enough to be a little vulnerable and just say, What have I done possibly that I need to say I'm sorry for? Is there anything I've done, you know, in my relationship with my with you, my kid, that I need to apologize for? And you just you just let it happen, you know. It's like, why do I need to defend that? If if if they think I did something wrong or whatever, whether I did or didn't doesn't matter. It's their perception of it, right? That's what we're dealing with. And so it was like, Oh, well, then I am so sorry. I mean, this is so long ago. I was like, I don't even remember what all this was about, but I am so sorry. What I want to do is to repair, to reconcile, to reestablish, and I want And now I understand the process well enough to know that I want them to see, witness me be vulnerable. That

I have errors and faults and I'm looking, I'm asking them for forgiveness. Because if I just, if I stay stoic about this and like, Nope, there's nothing to see here, I'm fine. I didn't do anything wrong, you're making this up, whatever, well, I just taught them how to do it to the next generation. And I see that with estrangement. You know, these these kids that get all bent out of shape with their with their parents and they cut off, and it's like, and maybe there's maybe there's legitimate reasons. If there's abuse and you know, there's really some legitimate harm that's being done, maybe that's the best thing. But but for the rest of us, kind of in the middle, the lion's share, the bell-shaped curve bubble, the rest of us, it serves nobody to estrange or cut off or, you know, be highly defensive about that, we ought to just kind of swallow our pride and and realize that if we buy into that, we're fracturing the family, we're we're breaking the bloodline, we're and we're teaching our children that that's what they do to solve a problem is they just cut off their family because it hurts too much to face their own stuff. And so at some point it kind of really doesn't matter where it came from. Why? Because that's the design of humanity, that's the design of mortality is this idea that life is tough and I'm still trying to figure out my brain and my heart and how this all wires together, and to do it with some sense of compassion and love and and acceptance for them, and and ultimately that's what they want is to know that we accept them, right? The real them.

Mm-hmm. And

Dr. Lee Ostler: and we get defensive because, well, well, if I do that then that means their blue hair I agree with their blue hair, or whatever it is, right? I put that in the book as like whatever their blue hair is and I don't like it because I have I'm an older I it's like you don't get blue hair, right? In our day that was no, no. But today we got blue hair all over. So if if if I can accept them and their blue hair, it doesn't mean I agree with them, but I'm I'm trying to help the the attachment process. And there's there's a comment that I heard that I've tried to really embrace, and that is and that is, when you accept me for who I am, then I can change. I think that's a really important principle because when I accept my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren exactly for who they are, whatever that is, then they can change. But what behaviorism has me do is like, no, I need to change them. This is not good. I know better and I've been around the block and I'm smarter and I've got more life experience, and you shouldn't be doing it this way. Let me tell you the 10 reasons why. And we we impose that on them, and what they do is they go, Well, all right, enough of you. I'm out of here. I'm not going to listen to you. And I just cut off my influence. And so if we're playing the long game and we're we're backing up, and we're saying, No, I I need to model what it looks like to be vulnerable, to be humble, to be contrite, to be honest, to be to be willing to change, to say I'm sorry, and to and to show that. And even I mean, what if you went to your grandkids or your kids and you just say, Help me be a better person. What do I need to do to be a better parent to you? And just let it go. You're not there's no gaslighting, you're not manipulating, you're just honestly wanting to improve yourself. How many parents can do that? Are comfortable in their own skin enough to be able to do that, right? And so that's a part of the work

that we have to do as the grandparents who've got 30 to 50 to 80 years of baggage in our own life. That's the work that we need to do that will then model what that looks like for our children.

I I feel like I've been having a two-way conversation subconsciously with you because you've answered a lot of the questions as we've gone along and some of the comments even when you were talking about the emotional regulation, I was thinking back to our conversation about the the physical and about how these we think we just want to be homeostasis. We just think we just want to be like this and that's not what creates a dynamic life in our body or in our living. And so I love that you brought it back into the the the comparison of the biological. I I also love the the whole thing around the modeling. Instead of like, if you really want to help your children, grandchildren be the best version of them, then we need to become the best version of ourselves and first recognizing that this is something I want, and then I was going to ask, Okay, so how do you do that? But then you kind of answered that question a little bit by saying you can literally ask them how how could I be a better parent or better grandparent. Any other ideas or suggestions for somebody just getting started who may not have done some of the the work already? Cuz it's like turning a ship around, do you know what I mean? Like there there's been a certain direction and now you're wanting to change the dynamics of the family and and heal these things. How does somebody get started with that?

Dr. Lee Ostler: Well, I think what's been very helpful for me is is my own study. You know, I've got I bought dozens and dozens of books. Pardon me, and I I I've watched, you know, a lot of videos, I've consulted in that regards a lot of mentors, and and learned how to ask new questions, like what This is about being self-aware. Being vulnerable is comes from the root word Latin vulner is to wound, and able is obviously the ability, so the ability to be wounded is vulnerability. So am I vulnerable? Can I be wounded? And it's okay if I'm wounded. That's what vulnerability means. You're opening yourself up. There's a bit of a heart issue there, you know. Some we we talk, again, in in some theological sense, religious sense, we talk about hard-heartedness, you know, that that's a common theme in the scriptures generally and and in religious thought is is you're so closed that you're hard-hearted. It's like what does that really mean? And what does humility mean if you if you were to if you were to circumcise or peel away the outer covering of your heart to expose the the softer, you know, a soft heart, you know, in that terminology, like what does that translate to? What does that look like? Well, you've got to be a you've got to be willing to be wounded. A common expression in psychology is, if you can't feel, you can't heal. So, what I'm doing with my posing, my adaptations to cover my woundedness, right, is I'm I'm putting a mask or a cover or a pose on around me so that I don't feel the the pain or the wound anymore. And that becomes an adaptation that allows me to survive. That's part of the fight, flight, freeze, fawn adaptation that's being stimulated because my amygdala is being upregulated, right? And my prefrontal cortex goes offline when this becomes stimulated. I can't think it through. I don't have, you know, I become immobilized. And so being able to be wounded means I'm dealing with I'm doing my own inner work, however you do that,

whether it's with through therapy, you know, finding somebody who is a really good friend who has your trust and confidence and that you can kind of begin to reveal or expose, or with your family to just say, Hey, I'm trying to fix myself, but but become informed enough about these concepts that it becomes somewhat intellectual. You can think about it and and not be threatened by it. And when you are threatened, that's a signal. That just says there's something there that I still need to work on. And it might be something that's buried so deep that like I might have to go do some real work on this one. But gradually I can get to the point to where I can open this up and I can go, I'm comfortable enough with my own insecurities that I can now be I can now be more open about this. But the point of this, and I just kind of simplify this, and this is why I like this model of the neuroscience, the the the back of the brain, lower brain amygdala, you know, the hippocampus, and this reactive part, this protective part of the brain, and the prefrontal cortex, which develops later in our growth and development, the ability for my prefrontal cortex, the executive center, where there's thought processes and there's deliberateness, and there is slow down and pause and and thinking involved. The more I can do that, then the more I am at choice about what happens from my amygdala, because I still get fired. I still get, you know, the wiring is still there, I still get alerted and like, Oh no, you know, but it's the ability time and distance between stimulus or trigger and response. That is emotional regulation. It's not about eliminating all stress. It's not saying, Hey, I solved all my problems.

It's the capacity to be able to think it through, to be able to deliberately make a decision, even though inside I'm just, you know, I'm just torn up and still, it's the ability to do that and to do it over and over and over enough that I can begin to lay down new wiring, if you will, where I don't have these dispositions that are so quick, that are so immediate, that are so reactionary. I'm now thoughtful and purposeful and deliberate in how I deal with it. That emotional regulation is the key. The be the capacity to do that is what restores our agency, because without that, we're just being acted upon, and we just we're like we're like a puppet with a puppet master, dancing to when the when the strings get pulled. Right. And so learning how to back away from that and just say, Wait, time out, pause, do some breath work, get the biology, the physiology to slow down, give me 90, 120 seconds, let this surge pass, and I can get in now to my thinking brain, and I can say, What just happened? Why was that so quick? Why was that so reactionary? What am I What am I doing here? What connection does that have with what happened back whenever? And now I can make different decisions. And it doesn't necessarily, in my view, it doesn't fix what happened, but it heals what happened.

And now I can If I do that a thousand times over, my disposition or my tendency to be so quick and reactionary begins to slow down, and then I can be different. But But But it's I don't know, I might be going in circles there just a little bit, but but that's the whole point is regulation is the key. It's not the elimination of, I felt bad or angry. It's regulating it. It's the capacity to be able to do that that puts this in charge of me, and that's the pattern that we want to pass on or teach or model in our families, in my view. Mhm.

So many beautiful things there. One, just going all the way back to the vulnerability. I I love words and and where they come from. So I I'm excited to write more about vulnerability, but also the the science between the amygdala, which I look at as that's the the brain's tool for survival. That's how we got to the top of the the food chain was because of an oversized amygdala that protected us, but that the frontal lobe is what helps us to evolve, to become better versions of us and to to be able to create and to think, and so that this is the expanded us. And that that bridge between of being able to say, Okay, you got the reaction. And and I know that, to me, that was so inspiring. I thought about so many ways that I can heal from this and grow from this. We've been talking about it really the whole time, but I'm curious to hear, just in your own perspective, what does leading with purpose mean to you?

Dr. Lee Ostler: I think it means modeling with intention. You know, you're in the context of what we've just been talking about, it's like put this in your family setting. If I'm going to lead my family with purpose, or lead those in my business with purpose, it means to be a regulated person. It means to be in charge of what's going on, to have to have ownership and agency in that context. And I can only get there by how well I'm capable of of doing that, and the good news is is because we're talking about neuroanatomy or neuroscience, the very biology, the the very neurophysiology that we're talking about is capable of being trained, which means it's also capable of being untrained. So, therefore, leading out in this regard is the willingness and the and the capability of doing the work that's needed to rewire the brain. I'm I'm You could think of, you know, in again, a theological sense, we talk about repentance, you know, which is change, right? So, in a psychological or neuroscience mode, that's just neuroplasticity. Every day I'm rewiring and I'm changing a little bit more, I'm becoming less of what I don't want to be and more of what I want to be, because I'm moving the the the pendulum in the direction of me being an agent or a steward over everything that I'm responsible for. And with that then comes the ability that those who follow me—you talk about leading, like who am I leading, right? Well, in my context here, we're leading our family. We're influencing our family. And when they see that grandpa or grandma or mom or dad is capable of doing these things, and we model and we and we teach these young kids who can't regulate themselves, we teach them by our example, and we co-regulate them. We help them understand how to do this. We lend them our regulation while they're developing and growing their own brain, without putting shame and behaviorism and and those kinds of judgmental expectations or manipulations or whatever on them. And

it just means we have to grow up. You know, we've got to become a better person in that whole process, and to me that's that's the essence of what Grand Connect is all about. We're connecting, and we should be able to do that before we correct them. We should connect before we correct.

Mm-hmm. Oh, Dr. Osler, it's been so fantastic, like, just having this conversation with you and I could do it for hours. Again, both on the, just the relationship with my family, but also, like you said, the, on the spiritual aspect of it and and then the way that we're showing up in the world, I think this is such a a meaningful conversation. I I know that it's going to have a lasting impact not only on me, but on my children and hopefully on their children as well. So, thank you for bringing this, conversation into the world. Is there any last word that you'd like to share to anybody that's listening, and maybe wanting to take next step?

And so we have to we have to factor all of this into this this equation, this algorithm where we're we're going down this checklist, and it's like not everybody's the same. But where we do have that capacity and and we're like, yeah, we can get over ourselves and humble ourselves and just get secure with ourselves and be okay, like, yeah, I made a mistake. It's okay. I'm going to fall on my sword, and it's okay, you know. And doing that is magical. It's like I haven't done anything that has been more influential in my family than to be able to admit my own vulnerabilities, my mistakes, and to apologize for them, and to give clear signals to my children and my grandchildren that Grandpa is working on his stuff. And I really appreciate your input to help me be better, because I'm not stuck on this. I just want to be a better person.

Incredibly moving. I can think about those children, again, getting to be grandparents, and and ready to fix on their stuff as well. Thank you so much, Lee. I I really love and appreciate you, and look forward to going deeper in these conversations in the future. Thank you so much.

Dr. Lee Ostler: Thank you. If if anyone wants to learn more about this or what we're doing, there's a website grandconnect.com. There's also one called heartofthefathers.com. And those two websites will have most of our stuff. We're beginning our own podcast here with this that talks about how we win this battle. And we'll have more resources coming out in the future. But that's this is kind of the foundation for that.

I I I was normally would ask about a website. I was going to put the links for the book down below, but I'm really, really grateful to hear that you have the Grand Connect website. I'll have those links below as well. And of course, for you listeners, if you want to post any comments or questions, we'll make sure to respond to those as well.

Dr. Lee Ostler: Thank you again, Mark.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Dr. Lee Ostler: You bet. Bye-bye.