 Welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. So is your job stressing you out? Do you actually dread going to work? Wake up at night thinking about your job? Maybe even get sick from the stress? If the answer is yes, you are not alone. The good news is you can turn things around. And my guests today has lived to tell the tale. In just a moment I'll speak with martial artists, self-defense teacher and entrepreneur, Fazia Lala. While we're working at Microsoft, the Dubai native experienced severe harassment at the hands of some of her coworkers. And the hostile environment caused her health to take a nosedive. Finally she left the company to become her own boss. And admittedly as you'll hear really struggled to find her footing. But through the ups and downs she persevered, fought away feelings of self-doubt, and ultimately created a life more fulfilling and healthier than you could ever imagine. And you're gonna see that today when we talk to her. We're gonna discuss her journey, self-defense basics everyone should know, particularly our women listeners, and tips for overcoming roadblocks and achieving success in your own life. So Fazia, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. How are you? Great. And what a beautiful view. You're up in the Seattle area. Wow. That's right. So tell me about your background and tell me why did you leave Microsoft? Go ahead. Yeah, so I grew up in Dubai and UAE is one of those countries you can't get naturalized in even after you were born there, even though you're born there. So a lot of kids who are born there after they finish high school leave and find other countries to go to and my brother's already here. So I moved here for college education. I was offered an internship at the end of my sophomore year and my junior year at Microsoft. It just kind of happened. I didn't interview, got internship, got another one, and I just got an offer at Microsoft. So I just stayed and I was there about five years and the challenge that I faced, though several, one of them was just it wasn't fulfilling. Everybody's story. Over the years, I felt like I was bound to do something more. I didn't feel like I was adding that much value, even though there was a lot of value to be added. And I had all this data. I was doing a lot of data collection analysis at so much value to add all this impact we can have on our customers. But it just wasn't I wasn't seeing that go through. So I just felt like, yeah, they know, I want to do something more meaningful where I can impact people. And I had no absolutely no idea what I wanted to do. And there was like, I didn't even think about starting my own business. And besides that, there were some other challenges that happened to like, you know, just women in general struggled a lot on my team. And people are so scared to talk about this. I mean, it's real. So let's talk about it, right? A lot of senior women, senior developers, product managers, they left the team because they said, Well, we, you know, this is really hard. We can't really work with this environment. I was so new. I had no idea what they were talking about because they would come to my office and sit next to me and just say, Hey, we're leaving. I just want you to know this is what's going on. And I just couldn't quite understand because I was just new to Microsoft with all the hopes and ambitions. So over the years, a couple things happened, right? I mean, people just started, you know, jokingly, right, pulling my scarf and saying, Hey, take it off. This is America. You don't need this. I was like, Oh, you know, grab my wrist and say, Oh, you're a martial arts. Let me see how you're going to get out of my wrist grab if I grab you really hard. And yeah, it's like, it got really strange. After a while, and, you know, I filed several complaints and HR would just kind of say, Well, you know, they're top of loving developers, they can give you a lock on your office door. And it's just, you know, it got really bad. But other friend who was in a completely different team at Microsoft was wearing a long chain and during a work event, she almost got choked by this guy who was, you know, very intoxicated. And she was traumatized. And then I helped start like an investigation, like we'd have an investigation unit and nothing really came out of it. And she had like marks on her neck. So just over time, I said, I'm not this is not okay. And I started having a lot of health issues because I was stressed. And I couldn't take time off because there was so much work to do. And then you know, there's a saying, right? Like when you're on a path, and you know that this path is not meant for you, it keeps getting worse and worse and worse. And there's two things that can happen, right? Either you choose to turn around and go all the way back down and restart reset your life, which a lot of people in and up itself think as failure. Or you just wait till somebody pushes you off the cliff and then you fall or something down the restart. So in my case, I was pretty much pushed off the cliff. You know, my manager sat me down one day and said, you know, this is a competitive environment, we're like firing almost half the company. And so every month, someone was just being let go, like a person manager would come to your office and say, by the way, you're chosen this month, you have two hours to pack up and leave. And the people who are just vanishing were like, Oh, what happened to this person? You know, and so he told me like, hey, if you don't start working more than your regular eight, nine hours and doing more than what you're doing, finding more projects, then you're probably going to be next in queue. And I said, no, I'm not going to put in more. I'm fulfilling all my duties. And you know, I'm not going to get into this like weird competition with coworkers where everybody's working 60, 70, 80, I like, no, so I just decided, you know what, I need to take my medical leave. And I took my six month FMLA, I got approved for it. And after that, I just resigned. I just said, I can't do this. I'm not going to go back. And in that time, you know, I, I explored like, what are their options out there? So it's quite a journey that led me to leave Microsoft. Wow. So you had the so you took a medical leave for for six months. Yeah. Okay. So okay, so now you left Microsoft. Obviously, he had a great talent in coding. Tell me the struggles. Okay, I quit Microsoft. Now what do I do? Yeah. So you know, while I was in my medical leave, and I was trying to heal and just exploring what was out there and what, you know, what I could do with my life, you're such a general. I, I came up with this idea of building a robotic smoothie machine. And I said, Oh, you know, I want to pursue this. So when I left Microsoft, I thought, Okay, I'm going to be an entrepreneur, I'm going to build something that's going to impact people solve a problem. And, you know, that was it really was like, Okay, this is an idea. I don't really know how it's going to work. I have no experience. It just, it just feels right. So I'm I have some savings. So I'm just going to dive in and see how it goes. And of course, and that, you know, I went to the entrepreneur community here start a week, this and that talk to a lot of people, investors and entrepreneurs alike, who have been doing this for a while and got some more information on what that takes. And everybody said, Yeah, you just have to jump right in and go full time with it. So I said, Okay, I guess I'm ready to take that risk. Because I'm in that point in life where I have enough savings, I'm single, don't have a lot of other commitments, I can take that risk. So you, you know, obviously, you're in a community where there are lots of entrepreneurs, there's lots of smart people. What would you say to someone who doesn't have the advantages of having this incredible community of, you know, smart people, entrepreneurs, can you still pull pull this off? Yeah, totally, you know, everybody who jumps into this that's one of the biggest struggles, which I alluded to is financial struggles. It's, regardless of how much savings you have, it's just so hard. And then, you know, that's kind of the first layer. But on the second layer, it tends to impact our health, emotional health, which impacts our physical health, because we're stressed, right? So, of course, if we have financial stability, it affects that it helps our health to some level. So kind of knowing that, you know, I would say it doesn't matter if you have an entrepreneurial community or not, just support, you know, you're going to get go through financial struggles, and then that was going to lead to emotional all the struggles, just having support family, friends, you know, one of the things that I couldn't make work was living in a house with a bunch of people or that kind of, you know, I lived alone and I tell people all the time, and they ask me to live with people. It's just really helpful, especially those who just have some level of understanding, you know, of you or your passion or what you're trying to do who won't put you down all the time. Right? So living with those people makes a big difference. It helps, of course, financially to get split rent. So it doesn't matter if you don't have a startup community, if you just have a community of friends and family that you live with, they live around who help you can see them every day, that's going to make a big difference because it's little things like bouncing off ideas too. Right? So like, I started Eskia all on my own. And that's the other thing. I didn't have a lot of people to bounce off ideas. Now I would go to startup communities and talk to them very briefly, 10 minute conversations, but they're not there with me every day listening to my progress every day, right? So I learned these little things that, even though I did my testing with customers, I would learn, oh, they can't see the left and right on the bottom of the containers, I have to put something on the top and this thing is too subtle and oh, little things like, oh, they find the slippery because again, the few people I tested it out with, they didn't, you know, they didn't really probably quick test or something. And it makes a difference, just bouncing off ideas. It's little things. You don't have, they don't have to be an entrepreneur. If you're starting a product or something that's not very complex and technical or very scientific, then, you know, especially when it's something that people can understand service or a physical product, doesn't matter. They can guide you like, hey, what about this? They can ask questions. It's very helpful to have that kind of feedback and support. So I really recommend people that get that support, find that support before you get started. So is there a robotic smoothie machine? No, there isn't. That's the other thing too. Start up completely failed. I got into a lawsuit with a company was manufacturing this or for me. So I dropped the whole project and just went down a different route. Okay, so this is great. So alright, so you know, you've left your job at Microsoft, which, you know, is a big deal. You've now probably run through your savings, making a robotic smoothie machine that, you know, doesn't exist. And I mean, is that are you saying, oh, man, you know, this is the low point of my life. I've left Microsoft, which was a lousy job. But now, you know, I've invested basically all of myself in this new project. And now this is a failure. So I mean, wow, what do you do now? Yeah, you've kind of nailed it. That was the low point of my life. It was scary. It was really hard. And then I started valuing my Microsoft job and how much cushion I had was such a cushy job in terms of the financial support, right? So I said, Oh, man, this is so hard. It's so hard to make money in this world and in a survive. And I failed in this business venture. Maybe it's not meant for me. Maybe I'm not cut out to be an entrepreneur. Maybe I don't have the skills and I don't have the support, right? So I went through that process. And one of the things that I did really well that I'd like to congratulate myself about are on is that I sought out a counselor and she was great. She really helped me navigate at least my emotional thought process and not run down this rabbit hole and be really destructive emotionally, right? Because what we think really shh our future. So she really helped untangle some of that. And I had been seeing her during my end of my Microsoft days as well. So I would seek her out every once in a while. And you know, I just I found the contact lens cases. I was already a second idea kind of lingering in my head because as a martial artist, I was looking for a case and I couldn't find a contact lens case. And then I said, Okay, well my smoothie machine failed or is like, you know, kind of there. So I started doing some research on what's what's out there. Or is there's clearly what I'm envisioning is not really out there about how are people solving this problem of a disgusting contact lens case. And it seems like a lot of people have a lot of Kickstarter campaigns. Everybody was trying to solve it more on a symptom level as opposed to root cause, right? So they're trying to say, Hey, you know, if you're getting eye infections, we're going to have a 14 day dial or an automatic dial or a manual dial so you could throw away your case and this and that are lenses and and but I did more research on the National Institute of Health. All these articles turns out that 82% of contact lens cases are infected enough that they can cause eye infections anywhere from just itchiness, redness all the way to now you have to get surgery done. So I said, Okay, so the problem isn't in the 40 or your lens are 14 days or 30 days need to wear only that time and we're going to help. It's about the cases you're reusing these cases over and over where optometrists say don't use it for more than a few weeks or a month or whatever, right? I'm using for a year. So then again, I started small. I created a prototype. I took it to an optometry show. I talked to a bunch of optometrists, got some opinion and then just kind of work took me two little over two years to almost two and a half years and 23 iterations of this case and optometrists saying, Oh, we need this and we need this. And they should be, Oh, okay. And then finally, I launched that product. So it wasn't just my product, one product failed. I had a big low. I came back up and boom, it wasn't like that. It was a lot of up and down and up and down and up and down. And okay, you know, is this going to work? And I'm on my 23rd into 20, whatever iteration, and it's been two years and it's going to work, you know, because there were people in my life saying, Are you sure you don't want to go get a job? And throughout the time, you know, I would take like those lows where basically I would say, you know what, today I'm just going to spend time looking for a job because I would do I would do this part time and I want a full time job like, and funny enough, I did get a job working at a law firm. And you know, didn't last that long last six months, I ran into very similar issues. And so it just was a learning lesson for me. I came out of it, my health again got worse. And I said, you know, this is if nothing else, this is a lesson for me, I meant to be full time in this journey. And you know, a job is not where my mindset is anymore. It affects my health affects the quality of my life. So then I, you know, I, I thought I'd finally decided I'm not going to look for another job. And then of course, a couple months down the line, I said, Oh my God, this is so hard. I'm running out of money. Let me look for a job again. And I found a job at that time, it was only a few months ago, actually, handful of months, like half a year ago. And I was lucky that at the time, I am still seeing that same person, you know, he said, you don't have to get a job. And one of the business owners, I know, I teach classes out of her summer school program, she had to go back to the tech world, because her entrepreneurial journey is failing and like, she was making a lot of money and now she's not. So I was telling, I was telling my person, I told him, Oh my God, you went back to the tech world. She's also an ex Microsoft. He's like, maybe I need to really go get a tech job. And I said, No, you don't don't do that. You know, I'll help you just focus on what you're doing. And I thought and that was so helpful. That was the first time in my three year, whatever entrepreneurial journey that somebody just told me, just you're fine, do what you're doing. I'll help you whenever you need help. And you didn't really have to do anything, just knowing that that support that much really helped. So so when you had these jobs and you said your health suffered for it, can you can you share with us what those health issues were? Yes, I I have hypothyroidism and the time I had ovarian cysts. So my first this was the size of my fist. It was really large. So I had a lot of pain. And when I remember when I went to allopathic doctor at the time, it's like a urologist or gynecologist. And she says, we'll have to surgically remove a duela proscopy and then probably do it for the rest of your life because they'll keep recurring. And that was my panic moment. I said, no, there's got to be a better solution. So I went to a naturopath, started naturopathy and that was really hard because it actually should put me on apple cider vinegar. And my cyst started shrinking so fast that the pain was I could feel it. And the pain acidic pain of the cysts bursting or shrinking was so bad that then she had to put me on different medications. So the six month FMLA really helped because I was really nauseous and a lot of pain. So but yes, it took me over a year to you know, then my first cyst went away and then I had three small cysts and it took like a year and a half to completely go away. And then of course, when I started my second job, but then I found out after that that I had endometriosis. So I had this bleeding into a cyst. And and I, you know, just a lot of chronic pain, chronic fatigue, just dealing with that a lot of dizziness. And then just mostly mostly that those were those were just the major health issues and just constantly falling sick, that kind of thing, you know, had a lot of inflammation. So I found out that I was gluten intolerant. So I had to make a lot of diet changes. And so but yeah, it was it was a lot of the physical part of things were just all the pain and the fatigue. That was what the outcome of it was. Yeah. You know, I think the point, we're going to take a break in a second. But the point I think so interesting. So you went you were a contact lens wear, obviously, but you knew nothing about contacts lens cases. But you knew as a contact lens wear that there was a problem. And that's actually what you what started you down this path. Yes, that's right. No, no talent as a contact lens case manufacturer or designer. Oh my God, I had no knowledge. Zero, zero. I'm a software person, a data person. I have no knowledge about product and hardware and nothing. I started with just research, reading a lot, a lot of articles, and then there was sort of medical jargon of like, then doing word each individual word research. And then by the time I figure out what those words are after rereading the whole paragraph, then to understand again, it's just a lot of learning research, talking to people. I call I I'm pretty sure I call every single just manufacturer in general in the Washington state. Like I didn't even know what questions to ask. A lot of learning. Yeah. But hey, guess what? That's what it shows that you can learn. That's true. You can learn at any age. That's absolutely true. I noticed that you have your defense ninja shirt on. So you you got once we're attacked on the street. Tell me about that experience. And did that lead to your interest in martial arts? Actually, you know, I've been asked this question a lot. Why did I choose to become a martial artist? And it's been some learning process for me too, because I was tell people, Oh, I was always interested in Jackie Chan movies. And that's why I was interested in martial arts. And and I think after like just peeling the layers of the onion, I've come to realize that my interest in martial arts when he started when I was very, very young from the age of four to 10 around that roughly, I had a lot of sexual abuse. Dubai had a very interesting dynamic where there were a lot of labor class people. And there was, you know, just how conservative the society is there, they don't, you know, sex is not available. And they some of them had families back home, they couldn't go to and just so there was a lot of that kind of issues that happened with these labor class men taking kids, specifically kids. So I got kind of roped into that. And so I, you know, nothing very serious happened, Alhamdulillah. It was still enough to traumatize me. And, you know, it took me many, many years to even understand some of the things I saw or experienced. So that actually what led me to then be interested in martial arts movies. Because at the time growing up in Dubai, there were no martial arts school. And now Abu Dhabi, it's the capital of UAE, is one of the biggest international hubs for Gracie's Brazil in jiu-jitsu, right? But at the time, there wasn't anything available. So I just kind of watched a lot of martial arts movies that got really interested in how to fight. And then when I moved to US for my college education, when I was 18, I right behind my don't remember there was a martial arts dojo or like a sport, what's it called like a sports center, an activity center. And they were teaching at colleges, right? And they were teaching martial arts classes taekwondo. And I just started training. So by the time I'd moved to Seattle and when I was attacked, I'd already been training for about three, four years, actually. So again, those attacks weren't so life threatening or anything like that. One of them was right outside Seattle University. And it just seemed like a homeless guy, you know, he had an empty bottle and he kind of broke it and he was just waving it around yelling at me but potentially talking about someone else. So it's kind of scary. So I said, okay, I'm not going to wait here. I don't want to get hurt by the sharp bottle. So I went down to a more downtown area. Another point in time, same thing while I was commuting to Seattle University, taking the bus. It was like downtown Seattle, you know, pike and sticks where it was about five, six p.m. So it was really crowded. Everybody trying to get home. And just this guy, big guy, almost six feet tall, really, really heavyweight. He just started talking to me and I kind of ignored him. And then he just squeezed me into a really tight bear hug saying I'm a psychic. I know what I'm talking about. Kind of something like that. And I totally panicked. I was like trying to get away and my bus came and, you know, and I had like somehow got lucky and I was able to escape and get on the bus. And so there's a couple like couple of those things happen. And so those are two of the earlier things that happened. So you didn't put a Jackie Chan move on him then, huh? You know, that that really surprised me because that already had, I don't know when green belt or something like that. It could have been four years in Taekwondo. So almost half way through. And I funny thing, we had already learned bear hugs in class. So the fact that I froze and I couldn't do it anything about it just really made me realize and question what's what's happened. That was that was my journey actually starting point of defense ninjas. I went back to my instructor and she was a second degree, third degree black belt at the time. And I told her, well, this happened to me and I couldn't do anything. What happened? And she said, yeah, you know, she has been training for 15, 16 years. It takes a long time of training to build some skills like three, four years is not enough. And so I said, oh, okay, you know, I don't know anything about it. So I stuck it through. So you got your black belts. But it sounds like that was the start of how do I, how do I, you know, learn to react and how you have to teach women how to react. So so give us, you know, give our listeners three tips that every person should know how to defend themselves. I know that's a tough one. Yes, it really is. And, you know, before I actually go into the tips, I must share, though, that a lot of what we think about self defense is all physical, right? We think, oh, you're attacked and you have to attack back. What we've learned, what I've learned when you're working with the police stations across here getting data from the Seattle PD that 82% of all the attacks that happen to women, they are by people they know. So anywhere from I sort of saw him at some bar within a gathering in a party, right? Anywhere to I'm dating this guy or, you know, I'm in a relationship situation, any anywhere in between you sort of know this person. So what that says is, and Seattle PD did another kind of scary project where they interviewed all the men who were in prison for assault, assaulting women, and they put them in a room separately so they couldn't communicate with each other. And they made each of those people watch the same video. And the video was women walking on a street and they and there was a psychologist present who and then a psychologist as this person in prison assaulted. Who would you pick? You know, this is what this is what you're in prison for pick a woman which which women you pick in this crowd. And they did that with every, you know, several other people like 3040 50 people. And they found out that I don't remember like 76% of the time, something like that. The same set of women got picked over and over. And it was women who kind of looked small, who didn't look confident, or who were just distracted looking on their phone, or talk or talking that kind of thing, right? So the first tip I really have to give is about that, like, how do you not be that person who's in the 82% if it's first of all, somebody you already know that's most likely is going to attack you, then how do you recognize those signs beforehand? Because you've had a first interaction with this person. Right? Maybe you've talked to the person or maybe they kind of noticed you at the end from the end of the room. Right? So my first tip along those lines would be and very vague, the building up of your self confidence, right? Very vague. I know that and one thing there's the one thing in that every big arena you can do is if you're walking around or if you're in a party with a lot of strangers, you know, keeping your chin up as opposed to your chin down and your shoulders curled, keeping your shoulders out and your chin up and trying to make eye contact with people. Like give my students this exercise too, like go, go, you know, after the end of this class, like throughout this week, that's all you're going to do. Keep your chin up and just make eye contact with people on the street. And you know, you don't have to stare at them and be like, all right? You don't have to be creepy. Just to look back. I just smile nod, you know, whatever you want to do. I just get used to that. And you'd be surprised some of my women, they're like, oh, I bumped into a tree because it was so hard to look at people and also know we're not used to doing that. So that's my first tip, right? Keep your chin up and make eye contact with people. Makes a huge difference knowing just that the building that part of that confidence building. Second tip would be the verbal side of things. Just getting used to your voice. So again, that can be anywhere from just speaking up and saying, hey, that's not okay. I mean, I remember when I was young in my early, I'm still young, in my early 20s when I was at Microsoft, you know, one of the senior developers kind of brushed up against me at the kitchen and I kept moving and you would keep coming closer and like violate my physical space. Again, I was young. I just didn't know what to say. I was so uncomfortable. And I was just trying to move away, hoping that he would get the hint and maybe he did get the hint, but he was still trying to be creepy, okay? So just, you know, just looking back to you and say, you know, speak up. Just say, hey, you're making me uncomfortable. Can you please give me space? You know, you don't have to be like, dude, back up. Not that way. You don't have to be aggressive. Just speaking up, speaking your truth. That's my second tip. And of course, again, it's easier said than done. So it's practice, starting small, building your confidence, like speaking, doing it with someone, maybe you know, right? A partner and getting role playing or whatever that is. I didn't, you'd be surprised if I look so confident and so outspoken and jovial right now. There used to be a time when I was in college, I was so quiet. I was the quietest girl in the room. I was, I would never talk to anybody or just be by myself and, you know, and they would go to these big gatherings in college and I would notice these girls, they would be so fun and they would go and talk to everyone. And I would be like, this is amazing. Look at them. I can't even smile. Like I'm, my armpits are just sweating so profusely just being in that group and all those people, they're so scared. And, you know, it took me years just of trying, you know, faking it and trying to be like, let me talk to you. And I would shake because I'm like, Oh my God, I'm talking to a stranger and I would come home and be like, I drink water. I'm panting, I'm sweating. But of course, you know, when I talked to my friends who I still know from back then they would say, no, you don't really look that way. Of course, you're a little bit more, but you, you were always kind of sort of friendly. And so it's funny, right? My experience of it was so scary, but it took me years to build that confidence. I'm not telling people just build it, you know, or just it doesn't, it takes a lot of time. So and the third tip would then be something physical, right? Which would, which is if you're now at that point where somebody has physically engaged you and you're just self confidence and your voice hasn't worked, now you've got to engage your body. And a lot of what we think is I want to go away. Women's best especially men just have a tendency to start punching their feet by going in women tend to go away. Again, research says when Seattle PD interviewed all the women who were attacked, a huge percentage of them, I forget like again, something in the 70, 72% or something, didn't fight back. They just tried to escape because they were like, well, a couple of the women said, yeah, I had read or had taken a workshop where they would gouge eyes or attack or squeeze their groin and things like that. But we just couldn't get ourselves to do it. Right. So I tell people, yeah, you know, it's not about doing these crazy attacks about strengthening your strength. If you're trying to escape, escape effectively, which means instead of trying to pull away, you crash in. It's counterintuitive because it's like an interlocking mechanism, right? If you're something that's here, if you pull it, it tightens like railway tracks. But if you go in, now you loosen it. So if anybody kind of does something, grabs it, pulls your yank, angst you, you want to crash in. You want to crash into this person that loosens them. And it's unexpected. This person's not expecting you to crash into them. And part of that, there's like a or B part A and B part to this third tip, which is crash in and twist out. It's about twisting. You're not about yanking. So you want to crash in and twist, twist a lot of twisting hips. We have a lot of strength in our hips. So using your hips to twist. So crash in, twist out. Just that for the physical side of things. Just remember that it's going to make a big difference. All right. Perfect. So I like your second point especially. It sounds like and I think this is a really good message that if you can train yourself to be confident and like anything else, practice makes perfect. And you obviously did not have good confidence early on and it showed that you trained yourself to be confident. And I think that's a fantastic message. In fact, my wife just got back from a tennis camp in Switzerland with Roy Emerson. And I said what did you do? And she said, we hit 30,000 balls over the course of the week. And I said, did he teach you much? And she said, no, he says, you just got to keep hitting. And it's repetition. And if you think about it, all the greats of whatever, it's repetition. And so yeah, I think that's a very good point. You can even repeat your way into self confidence. So a great observation. So all right, so you, you failed at your Robo smoothie. So what's it like? Tell, tell everybody what's it like to fall down and get up stronger? How do you do that? God, it is probably the hardest, not probably, it's definitely the hardest thing I've ever done. Oh, my goodness. You know, a lot of people think that some people just haven't like, oh, she's just a strong girl. She can do it. I can't do it. It's not that again. It's like, it's a muscle. You build, you train, right? The same kind of thing. So of course, I had moments where I thought, oh my God, you know, I'm just like, my life is over. I don't know how to do I don't know how to get up and get out of this. I just, you feel this burden. It's hard. And you know, there is no magical answer to that. How do you do it? It's little, you know, you have a bucket that you have to fill. It's an empty bucket. And how do you fill it with water? Well, you start with drops of water, you know, drops of water, make a bucket. That's the kind of thing, right? So I said, okay, you know, I started reading books, a lot of nonfiction books. You know, the author who wrote Chicken Sleep with the Soul also wrote this book on 60 methods of success or something like that. I don't remember. But, you know, lots of books, reading a lot of books from entrepreneurs. That was one of the things I did. Did a lot of meditation, started eating healthy, just working out in nature, being in nature, like a lot of different things, right? There was just some hypnosis that I would listen to when I fall asleep. That would help me sleep. And then there were some affirmations that I would listen to throughout the day. I did so many little, little things to just keep myself going. And then I would make sure it's trying to see at least one or two or three friends doing the weekend so I could talk to them and, you know, have that emotional and physical interaction. Because just throughout the week, I would just like work alone, right? An entrepreneur, you're pretty much, you know, working from home and you just don't go to see people. So I would like make a conscious effort to go out and talk to people. So just like a lot of different things. And it's not a, it's not like a formula that works for everyone. Different people have different things that they have to add on. There are some general things like working out and interacting with people and being in nature and they're eating healthy general things. But specific things, you know, you have to find for yourself, like this specific group or, or, you know, going swing dancing or whatever that is for you that's specific, right? You have to find for yourself and incorporate it. And how do you find that? Try the net or, you know, take a couple of things that this is not working. I tried it for three to six months. Okay. Add something else on and subtract some of the things that are not working in this. It's trial and error. It took me a while. It took me a while. Okay, all, all great points, great points. So, you know, Fawzi, it's been great having you on today. And you know, congratulations, congratulations on your journey. I'm sure it's going to be inspirational to a lot of my listeners. So tell our listeners where they can find you in your work. So I'm pretty active on Instagram. They can find me at defense ninjas on Instagram. And my contact lens case is on a website, skstyle. So it's www.skstyle.com. I also have an Instagram page for that, which I'm less active on. They can find me there on my, for my products. Very good. Very good. Well, thanks so much. And it's been great talking with you. And enjoy your view. Yes, I will. Thank you so much. All right. So we've got an audience question, as usual. So Estan Kovac 23, I think I said that right on Instagram asks, what are your thoughts regarding collagen water that is currently gained popular interest? So as most of you know, collagen is one of the most prevalent proteins in our body. It's one of the real building blocks. I like to call it rebar. It's actually formed from several very common amino acids, most of which are actually non essential amino acids. Most of us get a huge amount of collagen every day in our diet. That's a surprise to most people, particularly when we see all these collagen products. On the other hand, you can actually take the precursors of collagen, such as Lysine and Lproline as either supplements and powders. I particularly like those because collagen can come from a lot of interesting sources, particularly animals, beef is a huge part of collagen, fish make collagen. You should realize there is no such thing as plant collagen plants do not make collagen. It's an animal product. But you can take the precursors of collagen and do just fine. What most people have to realize is you actually do not actively absorb the entire collagen molecule. Collagen has to be broken down into individual amino acid and then absorbed. And believe it or not, there's no instruction book on the other side of your gut wall that says you just ate collagen and make sure you make it back into collagen. You'll use those individual amino acids and if you need to make collagen, yeah, you'll make them. But there's no magic wand that collagen will become collagen. So I am not a huge fan of all the collagen out there. There's usually plenty in people's diets. Do be careful. You're going to see in the coming months a lot of information that much of the animal products that we're consuming probably are contaminated with glyphosate and just be cautious out there. Okay. And that's the end of Dr. Gundry's podcast for today. We'll see you next week. And thanks for watching and listening. Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcast, because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you.