Opening Thoughts on Boundaries

So one thing about boundaries is everybody thinks it's like, oh, you need to say no more. That's not necessarily the case. We also need really say yes.

And when people are asking us something, don't think that everybody's going to go hip, hip hooray when you set a boundary of something that you used to do and you have now made the decision that at this time you're not going do that.

And it doesn't have to be angry, it don't to have be militant, doesn' have any of that. It could be something simply as, I know I used to do that and I'm realizing that right now it's just something I am not able to take on.

And so it doesn't have to be, how could you ask me? You can be very clear about that in your head, and it can also maintain a social landscape for yourself.

Welcome to the IQ Podcast. I'm Dr. Rani Banik, here to help you boost your IQ with powerful insights that connect your eyes, your brain and your whole body wellness.

Hello, and welcome to the IQ Podcast, where you can gain insights into your vision health, your brain health and your overall wellness. I'm your host, Dr.

Rani Banik. And today, we're going to be talking about an aspect of health that oftentimes doesn't get much attention, which is our mental health in our mindset.

To speak about this very important topic, I've invited my colleague and friend, Dr.

Podcast Introduction and Guest Background

Reiger, thank you so much for joining us today. Dr Banik, I am so delighted to be here with you today, Thank you, so, much, for inviting me. Absolutely.

And I've been really looking forward to this conversation. But before we get into it, I do want to introduce you to our audience. So Dr. Reiger is a clinical psychologist, international speaker, author, founder of 93% Consulting, and the creator of the Self-Owned Mindset.

She hosts a weekly Instagram live series called Disruptive Conversations with Dr Risa Reger. and she highlights female disruptors in their fields. Her debut book is set to launch in 2027. We'll be hearing more about that.

And again, I'm just so excited to have this conversation with you. So let's get right into it. You're a clinical psychologist and host, and you highlight voices that challenge the status quo.

What inspired you to focus on helping people, specifically women, create meaningful change, especially during midlife and beyond? Thank you for having me, and thank you so much for this great question.

One of the things that happens with women is that oftentimes we carry around beliefs about ourselves, about not being enough, not knowing enough yet, And what I wanted to do and my commitment is to support women across industries, across fields, to be able to really step into all of who they are.

And so by creating this disruptive conversations, that we get to hear from and I'm so incredibly honored that I've had over 100 incredible guests on this show, including yourself, who have really shared their journeys.

And by being transparent with one another, with sharing our backgrounds, our challenges, what we did, not just our victories, and it's very important that we own our wins, we owned those moments, but also how is it that that navigated when things were tough?

That it gives us that opportunity to really reflect and be exposed to possibilities that may be beyond what is in our minds at that moment in time.

Midlife Mindset and Reinvention

Well, first of all, I want to congratulate you for the work you're doing because you are really addressing some very important aspects of our health, which is, again, how we approach challenges in life.

And during this stage of life, and I know many of my listeners are in midlife and beyond, but many people, especially women, face transitions at this state of the life whether it be in their career, family, health issues.

In the work that you're doing in your clients as well, what have you seen as the most common mental or emotional patterns that may hold women back from thriving during these years?

There are a number of factors involved in this. And one piece has to do with, if you are in a particular stage in life, What beliefs do you have about being in that stage of your life?

What are the ideas and the beliefs that you have, even if they're like whispers from the back of your head of things that You've heard over time. You're not quite sure about it.

And so what have you heard about what you're supposed to be like, what this point in your life is supposed To be? And that's so important to be able to call it out because we need awareness.

You can't change what you're not aware of. And so by being able identify what are the obstacles, one of those has to do with beliefs and what we've been told and that when we're able, to identify, what that looks like for us, that we can then make decisions about it for ourselves.

There's a lot that, we have gotten to swallow. and take in whole. And one of the things that I absolutely love doing is identifying what those factors are so that we can look at them and we could say, well, this is what may have been around at some point in time in terms of thinking, but it is not what is happening right now.

We have a lot of mythology about what being in midlife means. When you can disrupt that and it a space of reinvention. Reinvention means that you're starting from scratch.

You are not starting. I take a bit of a challenge with that terminology and what I see it as is taking the wealth of your experience and bringing it forward into the now so that you have more available of who you are, what you've done, and what your thinking, feeling, passions are in the here and now to help you make decisions and open possibilities for what can be next for you.

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I want to go back to something you mentioned a little earlier, which is looking at your belief system and what you've been living with, what's been ingrained in you.

And I know from a medical perspective, especially a functional medicine perspective I always look at the root cause. Like where is this problem coming from?

Is it inflammation? is it mitochondrial dysfunction? It is oxidative stress? Now what your talking about is figuring out where are the roots causes of those beliefs.

And how can you manage them again, not to reinvent yourself, but to understand where you are and where can go potentially. And I think one of the things that oftentimes hold people back is their belief system is not something that they've developed.

It's what's been given to them. Can you speak a little bit more about that, where our beliefs come from? And let's say it's something generational or something maybe friends have mentioned, and that kind of gets incorporated into our belief system.

How can people break out of that pattern and find their own belief systems to guide them? Dr. Banach, beliefs are an extraordinary nugget of area. And here's the thing with beliefs.

Beliefs are in the space of duality, which is that we can have a belief, we carry a believe because that's what we've been taught in our family. That's we learned in school.

We can hear it in media. take in beliefs and they become internalized for us. And they can even run in the background in ways that we're not clear about.

Belief lives and can live alongside information and facts that are completely contrary to that.

Where Beliefs Come From

What we have is an incredible opportunity of looking at beliefs and how beliefs can help us. A belief can to help to propel ourselves. a belief isn't that we have to nail every single thing down.

That's one area where having a believe can be enormously helpful. However, we also have be very clear and really incisive about the areas where beliefs are holding us back.

and that beliefs are limiting our self. And that's the space that we need to be able to, if you can. So here's a perspective that if can take a look and become observational about your belief, rather than bringing all of you into that examination of the moment.

You can come back and pick it up again. But in the moments, be observational. As if if I was picking up this mug, I would be looking from an observable standpoint.

Here's a mug and there's lettering on it and it says start somewhere. That's the observational piece. I'm not adding any particular meaning to it at that moment in time.

So if you can take and give yourself that freedom, permission, and the okay to be observant about your beliefs in the service of the possibility of extending growth and greater happiness to yourself, that's your first place to start.

Oh, that's so beautiful, Dr. Reiger. I mean, I think, you know, from what I'm understanding, what you're saying is don't place judgment and don' play shame or any emotion to what your observing and let that guide you.

Is that correct? My interpretation? I love your interpretation. I want to add to that interpretation, which is that also while in this process that following through and identifying what you're feeling is crucially important.

Being clear about what our emotional experience is, putting words on what we're feeling, because there's so much that we are experiencing and so pressure that should be great.

We should all be fine. All is good. And we aren't allowing ourselves to access the full depth and the range and texture of how we can experience our lives, not just on special occasions, but really on an everyday basis.

So being clear about what you're feeling can be part of your observational experience. to know what you feel and then be able to make decisions about how you want to deal with that, how do you wanna experience that either lighter or say to yourself, that's a feeling I'd like to have some more of.

And that you can be a navigator and in part, because life is life, an orchestrator of making that happen more for yourself and oftentimes less for your self as well.

Yeah, so important those aspects of understanding ourselves that you brought up. It's kind of like almost sensing what's going on in your body, almost like a rheostat, and reacting to that and modifying that, to keep you back on track or to get you on back track.

Dr. Reiger, I know in your work you oftentimes talk about cultivating resilience as well as clarity.

Observing Beliefs Without Judgment

And how does mindset and the stories that we tell ourselves, how do these things influence not just how we feel, but how our brains function and how he literally see the world?

So resilience is something that we need. And at the same time, we have to be very, very careful about resilience and the way that resilience used, because it can be a slippery slope.

One of the ways that cultivate resilience, is actually by being able to identify the full panorama of our feelings. And resilience is the ability to, instead of breaking, bending.

And I use this metaphor often, people that I work with, regardless of how old they are. We have this idea of like, what is a breaking point and what are our bending points?

And so when we're able to identify what we are feeling, when were able really see what's going on inside of ourselves and identify that. That grounding is enormously helpful for knowing where we are.

We need to know where are we in ourselves and take that understanding. It's like, you know, if you're in your car and you are in New Jersey, but you keep telling yourself that you were in No matter how much you tell yourself you're in New York, you are in new Jersey and you need to know that just like you to what's happening inside of yourself.

Where am I in me? And when we're able to do that, it helps us to be able access the resources that we have within ourselves. Resilience is about access and accessing our internal resources and the clearer we are about that, the more we're able to move forward and take on, but with the clarity of that resources are not unlimited and that's where it gets slippery.

It is so critically important that we identify that and know that, and it's not a function of being less than or that I need to be even more resilient.

There are times that do, but also to know more resilience isn't necessarily what is being asked for. and knowing what the times are that you need help.

We're very good oftentimes of giving help, it's like, oh, let me do this for you. I'm so happy. Oh, gee, can I come over and do the student? No, no, I've got this.

It's all right. When our answer should be absolutely yes, thank you so much. How soon can you be here and how much of this can whether it's a smile, some company, if you've run out of something, whatever that is.

Resilience, Clarity, and Internal Resources

And that resilience is about having a firmer understanding of what's being asked of you, what your internal resources are like at that moment in time, and what you can do to navigate this point in times given what life is looking like in that snapshot.

Yeah, and I love that metaphor of bending, not breaking. It's so important. Also, what I'm hearing you say is that we need to establish boundaries. When people ask things of us, we needs to established boundaries to, in a sense, protect ourselves and our mental health.

Now, we get a lot of distraction in our daily lives. There are screens, there are different tasks we have to do. We're oftentimes multitasking. there's a lots of information overload.

Do you have any tips for our listeners about how we can create healthier boundaries around specifically technology and protecting our mental energy from all of these distractions?

The first thing to know that a lot of these devices are built to suck us in, and that when we make a shift from it, that we are going to feel symptoms of withdrawal.

And it's like having an itch that you want to scratch. and you have an itch that you want to scratch in a particular kind of way, right? Sometimes we can have a niche and we just wanna give it a rub or we wanna like really get in there and that we're going to have reactions to that.

And so to be able to set, first of all, start to said reasonable parameters for yourself. Now we are talking about boundaries with social media and being on your screen.

Let's start there. So start to set reasonable boundaries because you're going through withdrawal. And oftentimes it's, if you were to meal with someone, do you really have to be on your phone?

Is there really something that you need to check? We could be out to dinner with friends and people are checking their phones. There can be very good reasons for that, but you know, oftentimes is it really such an emergency that can't be for an hour without having to go back on and that you're going to feel something when you feel that.

You need to know what to do with yourself. and not go back to what you're doing. So at the moment, one is to call out what's happening. Let's say a step one could be, right now, I'm really feeling that I want to go into my phone and see what is going on.

You're going to have a reaction to that, so be clear about that. And so when it happens, you can say, well, there it is. There is my reaction. I am going feel uncomfortable.

What can I do? I can take a breath, I could take look and see where I am. I have a mantra for myself and this can be very effective. Have a Mantra for yourself, which is that you make it work for you you know it's not too late it can wait for example up with that come up what's something that works for You that helps you in that moment and helps You bridge the space from impulse to action so that you short circuit in that moment.

So one thing you're talking about is setting healthy boundaries for ourselves vis-a-vis our own use of media. And that's completely within our control.

The other piece is how do we set boundaries in our relationships? And boundaries don't just look like no. Boundaries can also look yes. We may set boundary for our selves of no, no no And when we think about it, we say, well, I am restricting myself in a way that is not necessary.

So I need to give myself more yes. So one thing about boundaries is everybody thinks it's like, oh, you need to say no more.

Technology Boundaries and Screen Habits

That's not necessarily the case. We also need really say yes. And when people are asking us something, don't think that everybody's going to go hip, hip hooray when you set a boundary of something that you used to do and you have now made the decision that at this time you're not going do that.

And it doesn't have to be angry, it don't to have be militant, doesn' have any of that. It could be something simply as, I know I used to do that, and I'm realizing that right now it's just something I am not able to take on.

And so it does not have, how could you ask me? You can be very clear about that in your head and it can also maintain a social landscape for yourself.

And again, don't expect that what you would normally just like pick up without even thinking about it and get done, that everyone is going to applaud you on setting this boundary for yourself.

Dr. Riger, you've given us some incredible insights and definitely lots of food for thought. As we are all going through this stage of life and we're getting older and there may be health challenges that come up, what are some maybe one or two key tips that you would give people to try to navigate these changes in life, and to stay resilient?

That is the space of being kind to ourselves. and being willing to know where we are at this. time and stage with our bodies, with health, and with how we want to spend our time.

And when I'm talking about the self-owned mindset that we get to, which is the process that I developed, that, we can own all of who we are, whatever that looks like.

When we do that that helps to increase our energy. It can provide us with more options and more opportunities internally and it can help us really get closer to what is it that we would like to have happen.

Now sometimes women can be very very harsh regarding their bodies and things can shift in all different directions. So the most Important piece is to bring kindness to yourself, which doesn't mean that you let yourself off the hook.

It doesn' mean you don't have your accountability for yourself. But when I hear people talk about, you know, I'm going to be brutally honest, Honesty doesn't need to have brutality.

Honest without compassion is cruelty, and oftentimes we can say things to ourselves that we wouldn't utter to another human being. And so for us, we can be clear about something, but if a part of our body isn't looking the way that we would like it to, We do not have to be self demeaning.

We don't have be harshly critical. This is where I am right now. If it's important to you, you can see whether or not it is viable or to not be stronger.

Feel fitter in yourself. Do what can be done. Own who you are in the moment.

Setting Boundaries in Relationships

Whatever that body looks like, this is the now of your body, and you have a perspective that you can bring with you. And what you do to be stronger, take care of yourself, go to the doctor's visits, Find out if there are safe and reputable ways for you to take your health more in your hands, to be your Healthiest Most Vibrant Self at this stage of your life.

There's a internal reward that is so important in terms of trusting yourself. There is trusting in others, but the trusting ourselves to be kind to ourselves, to take care of ourselves.

That doesn't mean you can't have other people helping you take of yours. It's not an isolated road. This is the road of interdependence. And so when we hear, oh, you know, this person's so needy and this and that, of course, we have needs.

Having needs doesn't make you need. Remember that. Needs are part of being alive and human. When we are clear about our needs and how our have impact on the world that we can really enhance when we have ourselves, we could enhance our interdependence.

We can help to enhance relationships, our relationship with ourselves or relationship of others. And this is such a win, win win space. It's win for you, it's when for the people who are in your lives and You take you wherever you are.

Kindness, Interdependence, and Micro-Joys

And so anyone that you come in contact with, whether it's for a moment or not, that, you have that possibility of having impact, even if you don't know it.

There's something about your presence, about you're energy, the way you look at someone that can have an impact in a way that will never know but you can feel that trust and feel a feedback of yourself to yourself.

that that's something that I really want to carry with me. And give yourself a couple of moments to savor in it, to recognize your delight, and to make sure that every single day, this is up to you, that you make what I call a micro-moment of joy.

It can be walking outside, seeing something bloom, taking a bite of a great sandwich, whatever it is, a smile that someone gave you. Every single day, do not miss your opportunity for a micro moment of joy.

I appreciate that sentiment so much. And just to go back to what you were saying earlier, practicing kindness and compassion, we practice it for others oftentimes, but we don't practice that enough for ourselves.

I think that interdependence you talked about is such a critical aspect of being human. We are human beings, were meant to interact with each other. When you radiate that and it comes back, that's just a beautiful thing.

So amazing. Dr. Reiger, this has been a phenomenal conversation. I'm sure that your words have really lifted up so many people and given them hope and inspiration.

Tell us more about the project you've been working on, your book that's coming out next year. Thank you so much for asking. This book is a tremendous commitment and a tremendously joy because in my over 30 years of working, I've seen how the tenets of this process and the way of creating the cell phone mindset has been so helpful to people of all ages and I can't wait to get it in your hands.

One of the things that I know for sure and actually this cop, I love mugs, it says start somewhere and what's most important is for us to start. Starting is everything.

And when I first started this book, I couldn't have known what this journey was going to look like. We can talk about that more in our next conversation.

Staying with it, staying with the ups and the downs and times of thinking through and my tremendous commitment to how can I make this useful so that it can have impact for every single reader who will have the book in their hands or in there audio as an audio book.

The Upcoming Book and Final Reflections

And I can't wait to hear more about that and to help get that into the world as soon as possible. Well, congratulations. I know writing a book is a huge commitment and it's truly a labor of love.

And, I really applaud you for getting your experiences, helping people and those concepts out there because I think truly it will help. hopefully thousands, if not millions, of people around the world.

And I can't wait to read it, basically, so… And as you know, and I think as an important note, is that positive change can happen at any point in time.

You're not too late. That we're built for change. And so whatever you tell yourself, maybe you can't do something in exactly the way you thought you would be able to, but find your work around.

Find your way of making it happen in the ways that's possible at this time in your life. Don't give it up. don't Give up the whole picture. Absolutely no beautiful words of inspiration.

Well, Dr. Riger, it has been such a pleasure and an honor to have this conversation. If any of our listeners wanted to learn more about your work, find out more what you're doing, how could they find you and reach out?

Thank you for asking that. I have a website, drrisariger.com. That's my website that you can get on. On Instagram, DrRisaRiger, I am on LinkedIn. I post information all the time.

i love my disruptive conversations with Dr. Risa Riger You should tune in, hear them. There is wisdom for you to be able to engage with whenever you want.

It's free. It's free and it's at your access, whatever works for you 24-7. So give yourself that opportunity to take in the experiences of others who have really forged in different sorts of ways.

Well, again, I applaud you for the important work you're doing in bringing these concepts to the forefront. And again thank you, for your time today, Dr.

Reiger. Thank you all for tuning in to this episode on the IQ Podcast. If you've enjoyed this conversation, please remember to subscribe to our podcast, leave us a review, and share it with your family and friends.

Thank you for tuning in to the IQ Podcast. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and learned something new to help you boost your IQ. Leave us a review and share the podcast with your family and friends.

Stay connected with me for more eye-opening insights on eye health, nutrition, and lifestyle. Until next time, keep your vision clear and your iQ sharp.

Risa Ryger

Eye on Overwhelm: How to Reclaim Your Power at Any Stage of Life