Bite Size Talks 2019	

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ASI Pacific Union

Sebastien Braxton

Be the Hope in the Workplace


So again, my name is Sebastian Braxton. I'm typically known for preaching the gospel, which is also a privilege. Oh, thank you. My voice is pretty loud. So anyway, I'm typically known for preaching, but people did not know that early on in my Adventist experience, I was a part of several ministries, campus and GYC and other organizations, and realizing that there were a lot of self-supporting ministries that were actually not self-supporting.

They were really member-dependent. So they needed donors, they needed somebody who was bankrolling what they were doing, and if ever that individual decided, you know what, we don't wanna give to your ministry this year, we're ready to give to a different ministry. All of a sudden you had to lay off people, Things did not last. And so when I came into the church, it was in the middle of my collegiate career. And so I decided when I went back to finish my degree after being baptized, because I became Seventh-day Adventist in college while I was doing an engineering degree.

And long story short, I went back to study business because I understood that for some reason in our church, we're very terrible at business. We're not good at it. And especially in the health field, physicians are very smart when it comes to medicine, but they're not good business people. That's why they have office managers. Because it's hard to tell a crying patient, please get your insurance and pay what you owe.

Oh, but doc, you know, I got this terrible cyst and it's painful and I don't know if I can work and the doctor's gonna be like, okay, it's fine, you know, you're not gonna make any money and you're gonna go out of business. So it became very clear for me. Long story short, I studied business, got my bachelor's degree in finance and entrepreneurship, and then I got a master's degree in communications because I also feel this is a place where we also fail as a church. Communications is where our message is packaged in a way that the world can understand. When I first became Seventh Day Adventist, coming from a hip-hop culture, urban life, people are like, yeah, are you redeemed?

I've never used that word in my entire life. So now you're like, are you redeemed? You know, the resurrection, all these different theologies, are you born again? No 1 even knows what that means. But we use the word converted.

I'm convicted. I've never used those type of terms. And so a big part of the block, oftentimes, in reaching out is how we communicate, how we create meaning of the ideas that we hold true, and how do we package it in a way that the person who is non-Adventist, that didn't grow up in our culture, singing our songs, knowing the sermons and the historical preachers that have passed to our church, how do we package it in a way that they understand exactly what we understand it to be? I translated this into what I got into with health. And so we started off with this idea of hope for change.

And the idea of hope for change is because the world right now is suffering suffering a lot I've had focus groups with several different people especially in my part of the United States in the south who are grappling with chronic lifestyle diseases and diseases probably many of us have never heard of that are just complication upon complication. Not 1 of those focus groups ends with a dry eye. People not sure if they're gonna be there when their child graduates high school because their doctor says, if you don't get this diabetes under control, you won't be there when your daughter turns 17. You won't be there when your son graduates middle school. So it became very clear to me that 1 of my former employees said, Sebastian, why are you doing this?

You could be doing anything else. You're a preacher. I mean, you're known across the world. You could be pastoring. You could be doing whatever.

Why are you doing this and all the work and all the difficulty? Because it's an uphill battle what our health message is to the world. I said, when you go to those focus groups and you look at the transcript and you listen to the audio of these people talking, how can you walk away from that? How can you not say, Lord, could you use my abilities, my know-how, my business sense, my passion for outreach, my ability to communicate in such a way that can impact this situation. That's really what our health message was all about from the very beginning.

It was about reaching people in the most sensitive part of their lives. And in reaching them in that part of their lives, we were able to create open doors for the gospel. So easy to talk to them about God at that point. Because the trust, the confidence, Christ's method was already implemented into the very service of health. So this is why we always operate on this paradigm, is to give people hope for change.

There was a gentleman that wrote a book called The Upstreamist. He did a TED Talk to the same name. He tells a story which is commonly known among public health circles about the young people that went swimming by a river. And when they went swimming by this river, all of a sudden, they saw a child heading towards the waterfall. And as this child was heading toward the waterfall, any good human being would jump in and swim and try to save this child.

So as they jumped in, they realized as they grabbed that 1, there were 3 others that were coming. So then they swam and got those. Now swimming in a river is difficult work because you're swimming against the current. So as they're doing this, they're getting winded, and all of a sudden they see more children coming down the river. So now they start inventing little things with branches and ways to, hey, maybe we can grab 3 of them and pull them at 1 time.

So they're increasing their technology. They're using their ingenuity to find ways to save these kids. But it just keeps growing in the number of kids coming down the river towards the waterfall. All of a sudden, they realize they're actually working shorthanded, because 1 of their friends decided to swim upstream, the opposite direction. And they're like, where are you going?

Aren't you going to help us save these kids? Because no matter how hard they tried, there were still kids that went over the precipice. But they just congratulated themselves that the ones that they could save, they did save. The friend yelled back to them, I'm going upstream to stop whatever's throwing these kids in the river in the first place. When we deal with the fact that medicine right now is not upstream, it is creating new branches to save people already heading towards the precipice, rather than going upstream to figure out What's throwing these people down the river towards the waterfall of death?

How do we stop it right there? Kaiser Permanente is already there in terms of preventative medicine. They're rewarding physicians, they're rewarding practices, they're rewarding products and services that are anticipatory. But here we are coming to you way after, and you look at any Adventist health facility, and I'm not trying to blast, so I'm not gonna name names, because people are gonna come looking for me. I heard what you said at bite-sized talks, but listen, I didn't come here just to speak to you all.

I came here to speak on behalf of the people that I serve, because I hear their pain and that pain is real. And so to keep it 100, we come and we set up facilities that catch people on the end of life. By the time you get to 1 of these Adventist health centers with all these different remedies and all these different things, they're already on the edge where medicine can't help them. And we saved some, but the reality is for some of them, it was way too late. So the whole goal of the new life was how can we be upstream?

That's really the question. Oh, sorry. Michael Greger, he posts 1 of these statistics. He says, 8% of Americans can say yes to these 5 statements. I am within 5 pounds of my ideal weight.

I exercise 30 minutes or more, most of the time. That means at least 4 times a week. I eat a healthy diet of 5 fruits and vegetables a day. I don't use tobacco products. I have 2 or fewer alcoholic drinks per day.

I can guarantee you most of us in this room can't say yes to all 5 of these. And most of us, we may say, well, I'm vegetarian, doesn't mean you're getting 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. You might be doing pretty well on, you know, Loma Linda veggie links and whatever else. You're like, oh, I've got soy this and, you know, tofurkey that. But we're not we're vegetarian but we not eating vegetables.

Number 2 we put so much emphasis on nutrition we don't even understand exercise and how the body moves. If I put you in a fitness center, it's like putting a person in the Library of Congress and they're illiterate. There's no benefit because you're in a gym but you're not movement literate. You're going to squat and you're going to hurt yourself. You're going to try to run on the treadmill, you're going to hurt your ankle because you don't know how to run properly.

And so in looking at this, we focus on simply this 1 law as if this is the transformative pill, which is true, but it has to be combined. So as I'm trying to be upstream, I'm finding these problems. And 1 of the big problems, right, BJ Fogg, he's a professor at Stanford University. He has a concept that he calls the equation for behavior. He says behavior equals motivation plus ability plus trigger.

You must have all 3 in order to get the behavior So he says if you're driving down the highway and the gas light comes on if you don't stop for gas You would say well you didn't stop for gas because you weren't motivated to stop for gas, I want to break down on the side of the road. That's not true. You're not stopping for gas because you don't have the money, the ability. But if the gas light doesn't come on, you won't stop for gas because there was no trigger. So the whole purpose of a gas light and check engine light was this very solution.

People were not taking care of their car because they didn't know there was a problem. So in the same sense when we're dealing with behavioral change, lifestyle medicine, you have to combine motivation plus ability plus trigger you can have health documentaries And what the health and all these different things that are motivating people you can have triggers You know that you're overweight you can look at your body in the mirror and say man. I need to get in the gym. I need to stop eating late at night chocolate cake and get in these vegan donuts. You know, I know what I need to do.

Hey, sorry, if you convicted, it's okay. But the reality is you can even have an Apple Watch and that triggers, hey, you know what? Your stand goal, I was in Amsterdam and this girl We were we were all hanging out and all of a sudden this girl gets up at 1130 at night Starts running in place. What are you doing? I got to get my 10, 000 steps.

It's like Because there's a trigger but if it wasn't for the trigger she would have sat there the whole time. So triggers work, but you need all 3 to combine. And so I tell people, no matter how high your motivation is, this is why the curve does not strike the line. Because it doesn't matter how motivated you are if it's too difficult you won't do it this is why most people in our church don't adopt the health message because we make it sound too difficult oh you want to be healthy I get a champion juicer You got to have this and this it's got to be cold-pressed. You got to make sure you walk an hour a day You got to make sure you got fresh air open your windows.

I was in Ethiopia doing a health Expo and I was the last booth and These These people would come to my booth and I'm supposed to look at their sheet, give them the health counsel and the spiritual counsel. I said, ma'am, we notice you're not getting fresh air. She said, I walk 5 miles to work every day. I said, well, it says here in your place that your place is insulated. You don't have any windows.

And the 1 window you have, you never open. She says, well, if I open it, they're going to come in my house because they know I'm an older woman and they're gonna steal my food okay that's that makes good sense so all the sudden right all these things don't really line up. So behavioral adoption is not something that is just going to come as a result of just, hey, this is what you should do. You have to start what we call the new life action line. Start with the easy to do, what that doesn't require as much motivation.

So why tell people when I go to their corporate office to say, look, Sebastian, I'm a little nervous about your program because you know, you gave your talk and you know, they're like, how many people look at me and they think, Am I lacking protein because I'm vegan? And that's usually the question. Where do you get your protein? Do I look like I'm lacking protein? Oh, no, how much do you think I weigh?

Everyone's like, oh, this much. Oh, no, I'm 200 pounds. You're 200 pounds? Yeah. Oh, man, I thought, you know, being plant-based, you know, I was nervous about this.

There's no need to be nervous. But a big part of it is they're thinking I'm about to take them to the gym and do insanity, right? CrossFit. And I'm like, no. What if I told you I just need you to start walking 5 minutes a day?

She says, I can do that. So moving along, because I know my time is quickly running out. Maybe I'm too far away. There we go. So I'm going to skip over these because our whole thing is based on the blue zones.

We take concepts of purpose, ikigai, obviously from the Japanese. Okay. I don't know what. Okay. Principles of the new life.

It's the basis of our logo. So this is basically our vision. How do you create a world in which the healthy decision is the easiest? That's the vision of new life. Right now it's difficult to be healthy.

It's more expensive. That's what people will tell you. Cost more money, takes more time to prepare all that food, all those salads. I do meal prep, I end up throwing out the food. So that's our vision.

Some of our products, you know, some people know that, so we've obviously had a book, my former partners Rico Hill, Jerry Thurman, The Healthy Self book is something people still use today. We use this in a corporate setting. We actually are working on an app as well. People probably know that. You can go to the next slide.

We work obviously with Life and Health with Danny and Diabetes Undone. I'll talk a little bit about that a little bit later in my afternoon talk. We've been working on this concept of the miseducation of America and working with people becoming diabetes advocates in their churches and educating them on that. And then, of course, our corporate wellness program. Next slide.

And so 1 of the things that we do is what we call functional movement. And this is something that I went out of my way to get certified in it. So that I can not only teach people about nutrition, but guide them on exercise and say, if I can see you in these different positions, I can tell you if you have dysfunction in your movements. Based on that dysfunction, I can tell you, you shouldn't be running. You should not be squatting.

You should not be out here doing jump lunges or the stair climber because you're going to hurt yourself. So if you don't have the range of motion and mobility, that's the foundation. And so this is something that we do. This is 1 of the most popular things among my corporate clients. Almost every single week I get inquiries about people wanting to sign up for training.

And right now we're in the process of getting a contract to basically do this for an entire company of 600 employees. Some of the benefits we know that 2015, 70% of companies have a wellness program. They're providing standard offerings. Some of the costs, we know diabetes is 20%. 1 of the businesses I'm working with, diabetes accounts for 60% of their costs.

Almost $2 million a year. So I'm like, would you pay me $100, 000 to save you $2 million? That's a no-brainer. Right? Next slide.

The cost of poor health, depression. For some reason, we think the laws of health are only restricted to the physical body. Mental health is also a part of health. And it's more intrinsic to behavioral change than what we make it for. For every dollar they spend, they save at least 3.

And also, 41% of the employees think that having a wellness program actually helped them work harder and perform better. So they know. You can impact productivity, absenteeism, health care costs, employee morale, on and on and on. We focus on skills and tools, motivation, and culture and environment. Notice 65% of wellness in a workplace is really giving them the skills and the tools and creating a culture and an environment.

Some of the results that we've got, you're talking about 3 to 5 pounds a week. We had average customers, several high percentages drops in blood sugars. We had a girl in 20 days, her cholesterol went down 90 points. And also you have diabetes on and on and on. So you can end there.

But suffice it to say, 1 of the products we just launched that I'm gonna get into a little bit later in the afternoon is a healthy lunch at work. So we started delivering plant-based meals to the employees at their job. So they subscribe for a week, we package the meals, We serve them hot and fresh cooked that morning, bring it to work, they come downstairs, buy the meals. I mean, they pick it up and they go eat. That's it.

And so in the afternoon, I'll tell you a little bit more about kind of what's the transformations that's been happening since we launched that, because it's really only a month old. And we're seeing huge results combined with our FMS program. This media was brought to you by Audioverse, a website dedicated to spreading God's Word through free sermon audio and much or if you

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