Speaker 1: 00:00 Welcome to the Dr. Gundry Podcast, the weekly podcast where Dr. G gives you the tools you need to boost your health and live your healthiest life.
Dr. Gundry: 00:14 Welcome to the Dr. Gundry Podcast. 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 guest today has lived to tell the tale. In just a moment, I’ll speak with martial artist, self-defense teacher, and entrepreneur, Fauzia Lala.
Dr. Gundry: 00:42 While 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. You’re going to see that today when we talked to her. We’re going to 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. Fauzia, welcome to the program.
Fauzia Lala: 01:29 Thank you for having me. How are you?
Dr. Gundry: 01:32 Great. What a beautiful view. You’re up in the Seattle area.
Fauzia Lala: 01:37 That’s right.
Dr. Gundry: 01:37 Wow. Tell me about your background. Tell me why did you leave Microsoft. Go ahead.
Fauzia Lala: 01:47 Yeah, so I grew up in Dubai. UAE is one of those countries you can’t get naturalized in even after you’re born there … even though you’re born there. 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 did an interview, got an internship, got another one. I just got an offer at Microsoft. I just stayed and I was there about five years. The challenge that I faced, although several, one of them was just it wasn’t fulfilling. I think everybody’s story … but yeah, over the years I felt like I was bound to do something more.
Fauzia Lala: 02:33 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. I had so much value to add. All this impact we can have on our customers, but I wasn’t seeing that go through. I just felt like, yeah, I want to do something more meaningful where I can impact people. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do and there was … I didn’t even think starting my own business. Besides that, there was some other challenges that happened too. Just women in general struggled a lot on my team. People are so scared to talk about this. I mean it’s a real, so let’s talk about it, right?
Fauzia Lala: 03:11 A lot of senior women, senior developers, product managers, they left the team because they said, “Well, this is really hard. We can’t really work with in this environment.”, I was so new, I had no idea what they were talking about because they would just come to my office and sit next to me and just say, “Hey, we’re leaving and we just want you to know this is what’s going on.” I just couldn’t quite understand because I was new to Microsoft with all the hopes and ambitions. Over the years a couple of things happened, right? I mean people just started, jokingly, pulling my scarf and saying, “Hey, take it off, you know, this is America. You don’t need this.” They’d grab my wrist and say, “Oh you’re a martial artist. Let me see how you’re going to get out of my wrist grab if I grabbed you really hard and yanked.”
Fauzia Lala: 03:49 It got really strange after a while. I filed several complaints and HR would just say, “Well, you know they’re a top performing developer and we’re going to give you a lock on your office door.” And it just, you know, it got really bad. My 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 an investigation. We could have an investigation unit and nothing really came out of it. She had like marks on her neck. Just over time I said, I’m not … this is not okay. 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.
Fauzia Lala: 04:28 There’s a saying, right? 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. 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 of itself think as failure or you just wait until somebody pushes you off the cliff and then you fall. Like tumbling down, they restart. In my case, I was pretty much pushed off the cliff. Now my manager sat me down one day and said, “You know, this is a competitive environment. We are like firing almost half the company.” And so every month someone was just being let go. A personnel 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.” The people were just vanishing.
Fauzia Lala: 05:12 We were like, “Oh, what happened to this person?” And so he told me, he’s 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’ll, 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 I’m not going to get into this real competition with coworkers where everybody’s working 60, 70, 80 … I’m like no. 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, I explored what other options are out there. It was quite a journey that led me to leave Microsoft.
Dr. Gundry: 05:53 Wow. You took a medical leave for six months?
Fauzia Lala: 06:00 Yeah.
Dr. Gundry: 06:00 Okay. Now you left Microsoft, obviously you had a great talent in coding. Tell me the struggles. Okay, I quit Microsoft, now what do I do?
Fauzia Lala: 06:17 Yeah. While I was on my medical leave and I was trying to heal and just exploring what was out there and I could do with my life just like a general … I came up with this idea of building a robotic smoothie machine and I said, Oh, you know, I want to pursue this. 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 that was it really. It was like, okay, this is an idea. I don’t really know how it’s going to work. I have no experience. It just feels right. I have some savings, so I’m just going to dive in and see how it goes.
Fauzia Lala: 06:56 And of course, I went to the entrepreneurial community here at startup week, this and that, talked to a lot of people invest in 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.” 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.
Dr. Gundry: 07:26 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 smart people, entrepreneurs. Can you still pull this off?
Fauzia Lala: 07:49 Yeah, totally. Everybody who jumps into this, that’s one of their biggest struggles which I alluded to as financial struggles. It’s regardless of how much savings you have, it’s just so hard. And then that’s kind of on the first layer. But on the second layer it tends to impact our health, emotional health, which impacts our physical health because we are stressed, right? If we have financial stability, it affects that. It helps our health to some level. Kind of knowing that I would say it doesn’t matter if you have an entrepreneur community or not, just to support. You’re going to get go through financial struggles and then that’s going to lead to emotional, all the struggles. Just having support family, friends. One of the things that I couldn’t make work was living in a house with a bunch of people or that … I lived alone and I tell people all the time and they ask me like “Live with people.”
Fauzia Lala: 08:41 It’s just really helpful, especially those who just have some level of understanding of you or your passion or what you’re trying to do, who won’t put you down all the time. Living with those people makes a big difference. It helps financially too, getting a split rent. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a startup community, you could just have a community of friends and family that you live with. That live around who help you, you can see them every day. That’s going to make a big difference. Because it’s little things like bouncing off ideas too. I started asking all on my own and that’s the other thing. I had 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 everyday listening to my problems everyday.
Fauzia Lala: 09:21 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 little things like, oh they find it slippery. Because, again, the few people I tested it out with they did a probably quick test or something. It makes a difference for just bouncing off ideas. Just little things. They don’t have to be an entrepreneur. If you’re starting a product or something that’s not very complex or technical or very scientific, then it’s … especially when it’s something that people can understand. Service or a physical product doesn’t matter. They can guide you like, “Wait, what about this?” They can ask questions. It’s very helpful to have that feedback and support. I really recommend people get that support, find that support before you get started.
Dr. Gundry: 10:10 Is there a robotic smoothie machine?
Fauzia Lala: 10:13 No, there isn’t. That’s the other thing too. That startup completely failed. I got into a lawsuit with a company who was manufacturing this or for me. I dropped the whole project and just went down a different route.
Dr. Gundry: 10:30 Okay. This is great. All right, so 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 doesn’t exist. And I mean, is that … are you saying, “Oh man, you know, this is the low point of my life. You know, 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.” I mean, wow, what do you do now?
Fauzia Lala: 11:12 Yeah. You’ve 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. It was such a cushy job in terms of the financial support. I said, Oh man, this is so hard. It’s so hard to make money in this world and to 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. I went through that process and one of the things that I did really well that I 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.
Fauzia Lala: 11:59 Because what we think [inaudible 00:12:02] or future. She really helped untangle some of that. I had been seeing her during my end of my Microsoft days as well. I would seek her out every once in a while. I found the contact lens cases. There was already a second idea 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. I started doing some research on, well what’s out there? Clearly what I’m envisioning is not really out there, but how are people solving this problem of a disgusting contact lens case? And it seems a lot of people … there were a lot of Kickstarter campaigns.
Fauzia Lala: 12:42 Everybody was trying to solve it more on a symptom level as opposed to a root cause. 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 dialer a manual dial so you can throw away your case” and this and that. Or your lenses and … but I did more research on the National Institutes of Health, thee were 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. I said, okay, so the problem isn’t in the 14 … oh your lens are 14 days or 30 days. You need to wear it only that time and we’re going to help. It’s about the cases you’re reusing these cases over and over where optometrists they don’t use it for more than a few weeks or a month or whatever and we use them for a year.
Fauzia Lala: 13:27 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 worked. It took me two … little over two years to almost two and a half years and 23 iterations of this case. Optometrists saying oh, we need this and we need this and it should be … oh, oh okay. And then finally I launched that product. It wasn’t just my … 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, is this going to work and I’m on my 23rd or 20 whatever iteration and it’s been two years and is this going to work.
Fauzia Lala: 14:04 Because they were people in my life saying, “Are you sure you don’t want to go get a job?” And throughout the time 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 this part time and I want a full time job. Funny enough, I did get a job working at a law firm and it didn’t last that long, lasted six months. I ran into very similar issues. It was a learning lesson for me. I came out of it. My health again got worse and I said this is … if nothing else or this is a lesson for me, I’m meant to be full time in this journey and a job is not where my mindset is anymore.
Fauzia Lala: 14:43 It affects my health, affects the quality of my life. I thought I’d finally just decided I’m not going to look for another. 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. I found a job at that time, it was only a few months ago, actually, handful of months, like half a year ago. I was lucky that at the time I was … I am still seeing that same person. He said, “You don’t have to get a job.”
Fauzia Lala: 15:10 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 she was making a lot of money and now she’s not. I was telling my person, I said, I told her, oh my God, you went back to the tech world. She’s also an ex Microsoft. She’s like, “Maybe I need to really go get a tech job.” And I said, no, you don’t, don’t do that. I’ll help you, just focus on what you’re doing. And I thought that was so helpful.
Fauzia Lala: 15:37 That was the first time in my three or 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.
Dr. Gundry: 15:53 When you had these jobs and you said your health suffered for it can you share with us what those health issues were?
Fauzia Lala: 16:01 Yes. I have hypothyroidism and at the time I had ovarian cysts. My first cyst was the size of my fist, it was really large. I had a lot of pain. I remember I went to an allopathic doctor at the time. It’s like a urologist or a gynecologist. And she says, “We’ll have to surgically remove it, do laparoscopy, and then probably do it for the rest of your life because they’ll keep reoccurring. That was my panic moment and I said, no, there’s got to be a better solution. I went to a naturopath, started not naturopathy and that was really hard because … actually she 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 cyst bursting or shrinking was so bad that … then she had to put me on different medications.
Fauzia Lala: 16:48 The six month FMLA really helped because I was really nauseous and a lot of pain. But yes, it took me over a year to … then my cyst, that first cyst went away and that I had three small cysts. It took a year and a half to completely go away. And then of course when I started my second job, I found out after that that I had endometriosis. I had this bleeding into a cyst and just a lot of chronic pain, chronic fatigue, just know dealing with that. A lot of the dizziness and then just mostly mostly that those were just the major health issues and just constantly falling sick, that kind of thing. Had a lot of inflammation. I found out that I was gluten intolerant, so I had to make a lot of diet changes. It was a lot of the physical part of things or just all the pain and the fatigue, that’s what the outcome-
Dr. Gundry: 17:42 Gotcha.
Fauzia Lala: 17:42 … of it was.
Dr. Gundry: 17:43 Yeah. The point … we’re going to take a break in a second. The point, I think is so interesting. You were a contact lens wearer obviously, but you knew nothing about contact lens cases, but you knew as a contact lens wearer that there was a problem and that’s actually what started you down this path?
Fauzia Lala: 18:11 Yes, that’s right.
Dr. Gundry: 18:13 No talent as a contact lens case manufacturer or designer?
Fauzia Lala: 18:18 Oh my God. Yeah, no knowledge. Zero, zero. I’m a software person. I’m a data person. I have no knowledge about product and hardware, nothing. I started with just research. Was reading a lot of articles and then there’s so much medical jargon I was like … been doing word … each individual word research. And then by the time I figure out what those words are, I have to reread the whole paragraph to understand it again. And so just a lot of learning, research, talking to people. I’m pretty sure I called every single just manufacturer in general in the Washington state. I didn’t even know what questions to ask, lot of learning. Yeah, but hey, guess what? That’s what it shows, you can learn.
Dr. Gundry: 18:57 That’s true. You can learn at any age. That’s absolutely true. All right, so we’re going to take a quick break and we’ll be right back. Stay right there everybody.
Dr. Gundry: 19:10 Hey podcast listeners, Dr. Gundry, here and I need your help. I’m always trying to improve this podcast so I can bring the most valuable and insightful information to you the listeners. In the show notes for each episode of this podcast, you’ll find a link to a survey. Please just take a few minutes to fill it out so I can learn more about you and what you would most like to hear us discuss on the show. Your opinion really matters, so thank you. And now back to the show.
Dr. Gundry: 19:41 Okay, welcome back. My guest today is Fauzia Lala and we’re talking about her experience in career changes and taking on something you know nothing about and triumphing over adversity. But let’s talk about an adverse event. I notice that you have your Defense Ninja shirt on there-
Fauzia Lala: 20:06 Right.
Dr. Gundry: 20:09 Once you were attacked on the street. Tell me about that experience and did that lead to your interest in martial arts?
Fauzia Lala: 20:16 Actually, I’ve been asked this question a lot. Why did I choose to become a martial artist? It’s been some learning process for me too because I would tell people, oh I was always interested in Jackie Chan movies and that’s why I was interested in martial arts. I think after just peeling the layers of the onion I’ve come to realize that my interest in martial arts really started, when I was very, very young. From the age of four to 10, around that roughly, I had a lot of sexual abuse. I had a very interesting dynamic where there were a lot of labor class people. Just how conservative society is there’s … they don’t, you know, sex is not available. Some of them had families back home they couldn’t go to. There was a lot of that kind of issues that happened with these labor class men taking kids, specifically kids.
Fauzia Lala: 21:12 I got roped into that. Nothing very serious happened [inaudible 00:21:17]. It was still enough to traumatize me. It took me many, many years to even understand some of the things I saw or experienced. That actually what led me to then be interested in martial arts movies. Because at the time growing up in Dubai, they were no martial arts schools. And now I Abu Dhabi, it’s the capital of UAE. It’s one of the biggest international hubs for Gracie’s Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. But at the time there wasn’t anything available. I just watched a lot of martial arts movies and got really interested in how the fight. When I moved to US for my college education when I was 18, right behind my dorm, I remember there was a martial arts dojo or a like a … what’s it called? Like a sports center and activity center and there were teaching at colleges. They were teaching martial arts classes, Tae Kwon Do and I just started training. By the time I’d moved to Seattle and when I was attacked, I had already been training for about three, four years actually. Again, those attacks weren’t so life threatening or anything like that.
Fauzia Lala: 22:18 One of them was right outside Seattle University and it just seemed like a homeless guy. He had an empty bottle and he broke it and he was just waving it around yelling at me, but potentially talking about someone else, so it was kind of scary. I said, okay, I’m not going to wait here. I don’t want to get hurt by the sharp bottles. I went down to a more downtown area. And at another point in time, same thing while I was commuting to Seattle University, taking the bus, it was like downtown Seattle Pike and [inaudible 00:22:46].
Fauzia Lala: 22:47 It was about five, 6:00 PM. It was really crowded. Everybody’s trying to get home and just this guy, a big guy almost six feet tall or just like really, really heavyweight. He just started talking to me and yeah, I ignored him and then he put … just squeezed me into a really tight bear hug saying “I am a psychic, I know what I’m talking about” something like that. And I totally panicked. I tried to get away and my bus came and … that I had somehow got lucky and I was able to escape and get on the bus. And so a couple of those things happened. Those are two of the earlier things that happened.
Dr. Gundry: 23:21 He didn’t put a Jackie Chan move on him then, huh?
Fauzia Lala: 23:23 You that really surprised me because I’d already had, I don’t know, my green belt or something like that because it had been four years in Tae Kwon Do. I was almost halfway through. Funny thing, we had already learned bear hugs in class. The fact that I froze and I couldn’t do it … anything about it just really made me realize and question what’s … 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. I told her, well, this happened to me and I couldn’t do anything. What happened? And she said, “Yeah, you know, it does. He 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, okay, I don’t know anything about it, so I stuck it through.
Dr. Gundry: 24:13 Oh, so you got your black belt. But it sounds like that was the start of how do I learn to react and how you have to teach women how to react. Give our listeners three tips that every person should know how to defend themselves. I know that’s a tough one.
Fauzia Lala: 24:42 Yes, it really is. 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 I’ve learned when working with the police stations across you’re getting data from the Seattle PD is that 82% of all the attacks that happen to women, they are by people they know. Anywhere from, I saw him at some bar within a gathering, at a party, right? Anywhere to I’m dating this guy or I’m in a relationship situation. Anyway, but when you know this person. What that says is … and Seattle PD did another scary a project where they interviewed all the men who were in prison for assaulting women and they put them in a room separately so they couldn’t communicate with each other.
Fauzia Lala: 25:35 And they made each of those people watch the same video. And the weird video was women walking on a street and they … and there was a psychologist present. and then the psychologist asked this person in prison, the assaulter, who would you pick? You know, this is what you’re in prison for. Pick a woman, which woman do you pick in this crowd? And they did that with every … several other people like more than 30, 40, 50 people. 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 looked small, who didn’t look confident or who were just distracted looking on their phone or talking, that kind of thing, right? The first tip I really have to give is about that.
Fauzia Lala: 26:26 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 the person or maybe they just noticed you at the end from the end of the room, right? My first tip along those lines would be, and very vague, that building up of your self confidence, right? Very vague, I know that. And one thing, there’s one thing in that big arena you can do is if you’re walking around or if you’re in a party where there are a lot of strangers 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.
Fauzia Lala: 27:10 I give my students this exercise to go after the end of this class, 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. I know you don’t have to stare at them and be like, ah. You’re not trying to be creepy just to look back. Yeah, just smile, nod, you know, whatever you want to do. All right, just get used to that. And you’d be surprised. Some of my women, they were like, oh I bumped into a tree because it was so hard to look at people and also know where you’re going. We’re not used to doing that, so that’s my first tip, right?
Dr. Gundry: 27:36 Right.
Fauzia Lala: 27:37 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. Again, that can be anywhere from just speaking up and saying, “Hey, that’s not okay.” I mean, I don’t know, but when I was young in my early … well I’m still young. In my early 20s when I was at Microsoft, one of the senior developers brushed up against me in the kitchen and I kept moving. I knew he would keep coming closer and violate my physical space. And again, it was just … 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.
Fauzia Lala: 28:21 Just looking back too, I’d 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. 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 that is. You’d be surprised Steve, 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 would never talk to anybody.
Fauzia Lala: 28:59 I would just be by myself and go to those 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’d be like, this is amazing. Look at them. I can’t even smile. My armpits were just like … I was sweating so profusely just being in that group and all those people, I was so scared. It took me years just of trying, 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 [inaudible 00:29:28] drink water. I’m panting, I’m sweating. But of course, when I talked to my friends who I still know from back then they would say, “No, you didn’t really look that way. Of course, you were a little bit, but you were always kind of sort of friendly.” It’s funny, right? In my experience, it was so scary, but it took me years to build that confidence. I’m not telling people just build it or just it doesn’t … it takes a lot of time.
Fauzia Lala: 29:49 And the third tip would then be something physical, right? Which is if you’re now at the point where somebody has physically engaged you and you’re 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 especially. Men just have a tendency to start punching people, like 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 women said, “Yeah I had read or I 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.”
Fauzia Lala: 30:36 I tell people it’s not about doing these crazy attacks, it’s about strengthening your strength. If you’re trying to escape effectively. Which means instead of trying to pull away, you crash in, it’s counter intuitive 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. Anybody kind of does something, grabs or pulls you, yanks you, you want to crash in. You want to crash into this person. That loosens them and it’s unexpected. This person is not expecting you to crash into them. And part of that there’s like A or B part to this third tip, which is crashing and twist out. It’s about twisting, you know, not about yanking. You want to crash in and twist, twist, a lot of twisting hips. We have a lot of strength in our hips, so sing your hips to twist. Crash and twist out. Just that for the physical side of things. Just remember that it’s going to make a big difference.
Dr. Gundry: 31:31 All right, perfect. 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. You obviously did not have a good confidence early on and it showed that you trained yourself to be confident. I think that’s a fantastic message. In fact, my wife just got back from a tennis camp in Switzerland with Roy Emerson-
Fauzia Lala: 32:11 Wow.
Dr. Gundry: 32:12 And I said, what did you do? And she said, “We hit 30,000 balls over the course of the week.”
Fauzia Lala: 32:20 Wow.
Dr. Gundry: 32:20 And I said, did he teach you much? She said, “No.” He says, “You just got to, you know, keep hitting and it’s repetition.” That actually … and if you think about it all the greats of whatever, it’s repetition. I think that’s a very good point. You can even repeat your way into self confidence, so great observation. All right. You failed at your robo smoothie. What’s it like tell everybody. What’s it like to fall down and get up stronger? How do you do that?
Fauzia Lala: 33:07 God, it is probably the hardest. Not probably, it’s definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Oh my goodness. A lot of people think that some people just have it like, “Oh, she’s just a strong girl. She can do it. I can’t.” It’s not that. Again, it’s a muscle. You build, you train, right? It’s the same kind of thing. Of course I had moments where I thought, oh my God … 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. You feel this burden, it’s hard. And you know, there is no magical answer to that. How do you do it? You have a bucket that you have to fill. It’s an empty bucket. How do you fill it with water? Will you start with drops of water? Drops of water make a bucket.
Fauzia Lala: 33:50 That’s the kind of thing, right? I said, okay. I started reading books, a lot of nonfiction books. The author who wrote Chicken Soup for the Soul also wrote this book on 60 methods of success or something like that. I don’t remember it. But 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 … like a lot of different things, right? There was just some hypnosis that I would listen to to fall asleep that would help me sleep. There was some affirmations that would listen to throughout the day. I did so many little little things. Just keep myself going and then I would make sure I would try to see at least one or two or three friends during the weekends so I could talk to them and have that emotional and physical interaction. Because throughout the week I would just like work alone.
Fauzia Lala: 34:38 When you’re an entrepreneur, you’re pretty much working from home and you just don’t get to see people. I would make a conscious effort to go out and talk to people. Just like a lot of different things. 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 attracting people and being in nature and eating healthy, general things. But specific things you have to find for yourself. Like this specific group or going swing dancing or whatever that is for you, that’s specific, right? You have to find for yourself and incorporate it. How do you find that? Trial and error. Take a couple of things. Ah, 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.
Dr. Gundry: 35:24 Okay. All great points, great points. Fauzia, it’s been great having you on today and you know-
Fauzia Lala: 35:30 Likewise.
Dr. Gundry: 35:31 Congratulations on your journey. I’m sure it’s going to be inspirational to a lot of my listeners. Tell our listeners where they can find you in your work.
Fauzia Lala: 35:43 I’m pretty active on Instagram. They can find me @defenseninjas on Instagram. My contact lens case is on a website, SK Style, 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 for my products.
Dr. Gundry: 36:03 Very good. Very good. Well thanks so much and it’s been great talking with you-
Fauzia Lala: 36:07 Thank you.
Dr. Gundry: 36:07 And enjoy your view.
Fauzia Lala: 36:08 Likewise. Yes, I will. Thank you so much.
Dr. Gundry: 36:14 All right. We’ve got an audience question as usual. [SDonkovic23 00:36:22], I think I said that right, on Instagram asks, “What are your thoughts regarding collagen water that has currently gained popular interest?” 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 nonessential amino acids. Most of us get a huge amount of collagen every day in our diet. That’s a surprise to most people, particularly in when we see all these collagen products. On the other hand, you can actually take the precursors of collagen such L-lysine and L-Proline as either supplements and powders. I particularly like those because collagen can come from a lot of interesting sources, particularly animals.
Dr. Gundry: 37:23 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 acids and then absorbed. 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. I’m 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.
Dr. Gundry: 38:39 Thanks for joining me on this episode of the Dr. Gundry podcast. 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 podcasts. And if you want to watch each episode of the Dr. Gundry podcast, you can always find me on YouTube at youtube.com/doctorgundry, because I’m Dr. Gundry and I’m always looking out for you.
