Health is more than just the absence of illness—it’s about nurturing both the body and mind. Join Adam Markel and Tim Macken, Executive Director of the Macon County Mental Health Board, as they explore the link between metabolic health and mental well-being. Tim’s behavioral health expertise highlights groundbreaking research on how metabolic therapies can transform mental illness treatment and even impact physical ailments like cancer. Discover the power of diet, exercise, and a holistic approach to wellness, and learn why personal responsibility is the key to lasting health. Say hello to a vibrant, fulfilling life! Tune in now to unlock the secrets to transforming your health from the inside out.
Show Notes:
- 00:02 – The Intersection Of Physical And Mental Health
- 05:02 – Challenges And Impact Of Social Changes
- 08:44 – The Impact Of Loneliness To Individuals
- 09:46 – How To Combat Loneliness
- 16:05 – How To Maintain Own Resilience
- 24:30 – Current Reads With Valuable Insights
- 30:40 – The Effectiveness Of Sprinting And Interval Training
- 33:42 – Improving Mental Health In The Workplace
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Reimagining Holistic Health With Tim Macken
Welcome back to the show. I’ve got a great guest. You’re going to really love this guy, I think. He’s so down to earth. In the things that he’s going to talk about, I think we’ll really meet you wherever you are and really resonate. They certainly have with me. His name is Tim Macken. He has worked in the behavioral health space for more than 40 years, holding a multitude of clinical and administrative positions.
In the last 20 years, he was the Chief Clinical Officer and Chief Operating Officer for a large mental health agency in Decatur, Illinois. In the last seven years, he’s been the Executive Director of the Macon County Mental Health Board, which is a funder of behavioral health services in Macon County, Illinois. We’re going to talk about mental health. We’re going to talk about behavioral health. We’re going to talk about a number of things that are really vital to us as a community, as a society, and to each of us individually as well. Enjoy my conversation with Tim Macken.
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The Intersection Of Physical And Mental Health
Tim, so listening to me share a little bit about you to our audience, your bio, your CV, you’ve got an extensive history. The one question, or the first question anyway I want to ask you to start with is, what’s not written in that bio? What’s something that’s not included in your bio that you would love for people to know about you at this moment?
I guess the thing that pops into my mind most quickly would be, obviously higher education’s part of my background, but I think I’ve had a lifetime desire, lifelong desire to keep learning. Someone, it’s like, “When do you retire?” It’s like, “I guess when I’m no longer interested in doing what I’m doing and I no longer have a passion for learning and growing.” In all the years I’ve worked in behavioral health, I think one of the areas where I’ve become, and I won’t say obsessed, but I’ve certainly gone down the rabbit hole enough to become extremely interested in is some of the exciting stuff that’s happening in as far as research and looking at the use of metabolic therapies as it relates to mental illness, mental health, and even in the medical treatments for things like cancers and other things. That’s become a really significant area of interest for me. That wouldn’t be in my bio.
Is that also something that you didn’t study? I mean, just the way you described that, I’ll say not in the same degree, but I’ve become a geek in the area of research in the last five years of my life. I really leaned into that heavily. It’s not something that when I was 25 years old, if you said to me, “To what degree do you see your career involving research?” I would have said like zero except it was legal research because I was probably just about to go to law school at that point in my life. Is what you just described something that was the case early on in life or is this something that’s become a newfound passion?
It’s become a newfound passion. I think part of it is driven from just some personal life things that happened in the last five years for me with my own health. My career, 40 years has been devoted to behavioral health, particularly in the area of working with people with serious mental illness. When you look at the science and research and just the history of treatment for that population and people who suffer from those illnesses, the evolution is quite extraordinary. As science goes, we’re looking for more science that shows this medical fix will make a difference.
This pill is going to be better than that pill. To come to the point where all of a sudden I’m reading these things and I’m going down an area for myself that had more to do with my physiological health versus behavioral mental health, realizing that there’s an interconnection of these things that was extraordinary to me.
That really piqued my interest. I will share with you, and I first heard this at a conference one time, there was a gentleman giving a keynote address and he said, “Let me start off by saying that all health care is behavioral health care.” It really gave me pause because in reality, when I look at the success of medical care, whether it’s in cardiology or internal medicine and endocrinology, all these things require people and human behavior to be a key part in how that person’s healthcare is going to be successful or not. Behavior is involved in sticking with diets and taking medications and all of those things.
It struck a chord and it was like, “This is really interesting.” In some of the people I’ve encountered in my own journey looking at this stuff, it’s like there are some pretty amazing things happening that bring things full circle away from necessarily looking for a specific medical intervention. There are things that are as simple as diet and exercise and other things can have a major impact on some pretty significant illnesses. I thought that was not present early in my career. It’s evolved over time and we’re now starting to see some of this stuff, which is fantastic.
You anticipated what my next question was, and I still think it’s a good question for those that don’t know what behavioral health is. Can we start by defining that as distinct from mental health or other areas that we focus on like physical health?
All fields, I think over time the lexicon changes. Early in my career, there was no real connection. You saw a separation of various things. There was mental health. There were substance use disorders and treatment, developmental disabilities, and intellectual disabilities, and they were all separate. Over time, as there became a greater and greater recognition that it’s like the Venn diagram, they’re all overlapping and intertwined. There is no real separation, and the reality of it is, there is a pretty strong connection. The one thing they all had in common was the connection from a behavioral standpoint. Most of the things I’m talking about have manifestations in our behavior, so I think that’s where it’s evolved from. That’s in a nutshell what I’m thinking of as far as behavioral health.
Challenges And Impact Of Social Changes
What do you see are the challenges? Obviously, you’re on the front lines and I think people have a sense maybe that there’s been an impact, let’s say, as a result of the pandemic, maybe as a result of social media or other just other structural changes that we’ve seen in society contributing to a dis-ease. If I can use that term.
Adam, I’m going to really try hard not to go down any rabbit hole you don’t want to necessarily go down, but I’ve had conversations about this, and one of the things that I look at that’s really interesting and I’m going to bring up, I’m holistic in my mindset about things. From an alluring standpoint, I’ve always viewed human beings, we’ve got a physiological, psychological, and spiritual aspect of our nature. If any one of those stool are out of balance or dysfunctional, it’s going to destabilize the whole thing. I think human nature and human behavior is I think that does make sense to a lot of people. It’s a word picture.
As human beings, we have a physiological, psychological, and spiritual aspect to our nature. If any of these aspects is out of balance or dysfunctional, it can destabilize our overall well-being. Share on XI think as I’ve looked at our society and what’s happened culturally over the last, it’s been a slow thing, but it’s happened over a fairly long period of time, and I’m not being critical of people who are purely secular or secular humanist but I think the more we have evolved into a date or a place in time where each of us is our most important thing. I’m not talking about the importance of our health and we should care about ourselves. The best me is going to be a better husband and father. I want to be at my best. The point where we become the focus of our universe, I think, separates us from culture and community. What happens over time is that’s become more true.
It gets into the whole things we’ve been talking about too where we want to be grateful and we want to be happy and all these things. What does it take to do those things? A lot of times those are actions you have to do outside of yourself. Things that you want to do to help and brighten somebody’s day and make your own feel better is doing something for other people and something greater in a cause greater than yourself. I think when the pandemic came along, we already had some significant issues in these areas. We had a massive spike in overdose deaths from fentanyl and opioids. We had a significant continuous increase in suicides. During the pandemic, we saw a big spike.
I think the statistic that scared me though, I’ve got a brother who’s got daughters who 1 in 3 females, teens, were having thoughts of suicide. That continued further isolation more than what was just happening before the pandemic. I think there were various things that were impacting that. We can get into the idea of how did social media impact that. All these things have tremendous beneficial things for us. When you look at them in isolation and how some of them have come about, there are also negative impacts from some of them, too.
It’s certainly made things worse during COVID. There are some good signs as we’ve evolved and emerged from the COVID pandemic. There has been, and I find it interesting, and I say, “We only had 90,000 overdose deaths related to fentanyl and opioids this last year.” I’m thinking, “We were averaging over 100,000, 110,000 a year, which if you think about that, that’s two Vietnams every year of the number of people lost.
Yeah, it’s just shocking.
Only 90,000. That’s still a really bad outcome. That’s still a really bad situation. Things are getting better and emerging as we get away from that period of time. All those other variables are still well at play in our communities and our society today.
The Impact Of Loneliness To Individuals
To what degree do you think loneliness is an issue? Does that show up in your work?
It does. Adam, I think it’s all related to the same thing to a certain extent, but even the idea of this existential loneliness, why are we so alone and lonely? If you look at the evolution of human beings, it’s been well known and believed for a long time, we are social creatures and that we really are at our best when we are part of a community and part of a collective, a group. The more we have isolated ourselves, move towards this, I call it The Me, Myself, and I era, where we have become the center of our own universe, I think that’s a key issue that you bring up. I think loneliness plays a key role in that. How do we get people to feel connected again?

Health: We are social creatures. We are at our best when we are part of a community and part of a collective.
How To Combat Loneliness
I love the question and I’m going to press you on the answer because you raised the question and I think there’s no one answer to it. Obviously, I’m being a little cheeky about that but do you have some thoughts around how do we get out of that? What are the things that we can do both in our personal lives as well as in even the professional pursuits that we have at work for example?
It’s a really good question. Again, it’s been a focus for me as I’ve been witnessing and observing and watching how the system surrounding the helping professions with behavioral health, people who are having those challenges with mental health and substance use, and various things is what can we do? It’s so easy. I don’t mean it’s easy because we want to find ourselves in this place, but negativity and all these things are much easier to perpetuate and focusing on the negative, it’s much easier than trying to be positive in the face of things that are challenging. I know this is an area you’re definitely into, but I think people forget.
For me, the idea is helping people remember that, and I certainly know this from a clinical perspective when I used to see clients, and we can help get you towards a place where you’re happier in your life and you’re feeling better about things, but it’s going to take a lot of work. I think that scares people sometimes. I think that’s why we evolved over time to wanting a pill to fix something but I think when you look at what the really practical, pragmatic things people can do to feel better about themselves. It does take effort. I think happiness is an action word. It requires some effort on the part of the person. Much along the lines, if you want to feel a bit about yourself, and you feel bad, what have you done today to help yourself feel better about yourself?
There are various things you can do. We’ve talked about this. I know I’ve mentioned one of the people, I love his writings and following his work, is Dr. Sean Aker, who had a book, I think they call him The Happiness Psychologist, but he talks about various activities you can do from gratitude practices, which I know you’re familiar with the idea if you just start with identifying three things you’re grateful for each day for three consecutive weeks can help pull somebody to a point where they’re starting to develop a habit that will help them maintain that gratitude. Doing things as simple as doing something for somebody else simple act of writing a letter to someone you haven’t spoken to in a long time.
I know people writing a letter sounds like a foreign thing, we’re used to typing it, but just writing a letter to someone that was important to you, and you haven’t spoken to in a long time. Reaching out to them and connecting. One that I particularly like to do, I don’t do it all the time, but every month or so I’ll be going through the line at a coffee place and I’ll give them money. I said, “Let us pay for the next people back.” As long as it lasts and just try to make someone’s day. I thought that was important. I recalled something too, and it was interesting because I was young in my career and I was at an agency that was co-sponsoring a conference up in Northern Michigan, a beautiful place.
I was young, wide-eyed, and whatever, but I was walking down the hallway at this conference center and this gentleman came by me and stopped me. He said, “My name’s Dr. Warfield, who are you?” I mean, I’m not used to people just stop me out of nowhere, just to introduce themselves. I told him and he said, “Are you here for the conference?” I said, “Yeah.” He started just talking about where I worked but he was really obviously focused on talking to me. He had an interest in me. He says, “I’m sure I’ll see you later. I think I’m going to be speaking at this conference tonight.” I said, “Okay.”
Sure enough, he was the keynote speaker, but one of the key tenets in his own life, but one of his personal parts of his philosophy and daily routine is that he never wants anyone to come across his path. He wants them to feel grateful for having met him. It really touched me. I started thinking, “How many people in your life are like that?” I’ve known a few and I can easily point them out in my own personal life. If I haven’t seen them in 20 years, I come across that person.
I walk away feeling good because that person has that effect on me. I think they’re wonderful humans. For me, that was like, “I need to, as much as I can, make sure that whenever I come across somebody they don’t walk away from me regretting having met me, I want to make sure what their interaction is with me as a positive one.” That requires effort. We get wrapped up in the daily grind, the things that are happening, the stresses, and all those things. To keep that in mind is a challenge.
Physical activity is another thing people need to do. The importance of that is that three-legged stool, the physiological, psychological, and spiritual, was always advice I was giving clients. I want them to also start, even if it’s just walking, you’ve got to start moving. Movement is huge. Spiritual without being prescriptive of a specific faith or whatever it is, it can be whatever a person chooses to address that spiritual aspect of their nature. Combining those things to me is an essential thing.
It’s holistic, as you said. I couldn’t agree more. Our research and books have been involved in writing and a lot of the speaking. I do talk about how resiliency, that’s the term that we give for this, is this capacity to move through. I don’t even say in a positive way to actually leverage, to get some exponential value out of the challenges that you face. Even in the challenge of uncertainties or adversity, there’s ultimately this really important ROI that comes from it, mentally, emotionally, and physically speaking.
How To Maintain Own Resilience
In order to produce that resiliency, we have to be, I think, more aware of what it is that takes away our energy, what will send us down that dark thought whole and chasing things that ultimately don’t fill us up but deplete us. I’m curious, first of all, two things. What’s your definition of resilience? Second, what do you do on a ritual basis, habitual but very intentional, so I’d say on a ritual basis to look after your own resiliency.
That’s a good point, question. For me, resilience, I’ll try to be concise. I think it’s hard to say one specific thing. I think you’ve heard the phrase, and we’ve all heard it that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. That’s not always true for everybody. I think there are certain things that I’d like to believe that resilience is something we’re all born with and have the same capacity for. I think we all have the ability to be resilient. I think some people have more natural abilities early on. You look at studies of families and you have six kids that grew up in the same environment. They all have a different capacity for this but it doesn’t mean it’s not something you’re not able to learn or develop.
We’ve always focused on the kids with that. I think it’s crowned to the point where we’re actually looking at it, which I’m grateful for. We’re looking at the fact that we need to help adults become more resilient because even if we focus on kids, if they’re not being raised by resilient parents, we’re missing the boat a little bit. We need everyone to be as resilient as possible. I also see it as it relates to the workforce and the need for it in this day and time. Resilience, the ability to absorb and experience difficult challenges without it debilitating you and you’re able to then keep moving forward.
Resilience is the ability to absorb and experience difficult challenges without it debilitating you, and you're able to then keep moving forward. Share on XThat’s about as simplistic as an answer I can give you, but in our capacity to handle those things, those challenges, and it can be as serious as a pretty significant trauma to being fairly minor things, but our ability to absorb those, have those experiences, and then be able to continue moving forward without being knocked off our feet and becoming dysfunctional or non-functional.
I’d say just to plus what you’re saying too, that surviving them is one goal, I suppose, but to actually see them as a catalyst for growth, it’s a heightened level of importance that we can even place on what we learn in the process of, as you say, absorbing and moving through them. What are some of the things that you do if you’re conscious of it on a daily basis or in some other regular timeframe that really ensures resiliency holistically, as you said?
For me, a lot of it is putting my money where my mouth is. It’s hard for me to be a cheerleader out here and my push in looking at helping the community become more positive in its efforts towards mental wellness. It’s those things that I am pretty diligent in the idea of identifying things I’m grateful for. I know even when I am talking to my staff and what other things you’re grateful for one of the things I’m incredibly grateful for and I tell them all the time, I’ve surrounded myself. Luckily in my career and my current role, especially with really wonderful people, they all bring each other up, which is great. When we’re dealing with challenging situations and what we’re doing in our work, there’s nothing we don’t feel we cannot deal with and figure out.
On top of that, like you said, leveraging that, it’s like, “What can we do and make changes based on what we’ve experienced now and do them even better? How can we make the situations that we’re less likely to experience them?” Just that even if we’re doing something well, we can always do it better. I think that’s part of my focus. I think for me, from a health standpoint, my session, I guess, with the whole idea of metabolic health as it relates to mental health and various other physiological health issues and immune system issues. I’m focused on the nutrition aspect of things. I was without any affiliation to anything political. I thought it was interesting. The things that I’ve heard Bobby Kennedy talking about are things that are right off this alley.
Things he’s talking about. Those are areas that I am focusing on. I took a pause, I would say excessively exercising to the point where I think I was causing myself some harm. It’s like I’m 62 years old now. While I was proud to be able to say I can bench press more than I could in high school and college, but what is that doing for me? It’s like I don’t have anything to prove and perhaps I need to f*** changed my focus on how I’m doing resistance trading and be more helpful. I had to take a step back from that, but I’m at a point now it’s like, it’s time to go back, but do it differently. A bit obsessed, there’s a blanking on his name.
Tell me what your obsessions are. I definitely would.
This whole idea of metabolic health and healthcare as it relates to diet, especially very low carbohydrate diet. Ketogenic is a fascinating thing and the research that’s going on out there now finally that’s actually going out that’s supporting a lot of these things is fascinating to me. I have my ex-wife who’s four years younger than me and who’s in the late stages of Alzheimer’s. It was early onset and the devastating thing for our son is that she came down with that, and was diagnosed in 2018. I was doing a deep dive for her husband just trying to find things that might be helpful and that was a rabbit hole. It was connected to everything else I was looking at. It was interesting how they coalesced into this area. That’s an obsessive area.
When it comes to health, I remember the last time I did one, I was with my younger brother, he’s 12 years younger than me, and he called me up, best was in 2015. He said, “What do you think about running this goofy challenge with me down in Disney in January?” It was 2014, he called me. I said, “What’s the goofy challenge?” He said, “You run a half marathon on Saturday, and then the next day you get up and you run a full marathon.” I said, “I think you’ve lost your mind, but why the goofy challenge? Why this one?” He goes, “I’m turning 40 and I wanted to see if I could find a race that was about 40 miles, was a 40 mile.” He goes, “I couldn’t find it, but I got a close approximation. Not when it’s a total of 39 miles point whatever in two days.”
I’ll do it for you.” Talk about obsessive training and as we successfully completed that, I was also realizing the devotion of time it took to train to be able to run basically 40 miles in two days was a huge sacrifice to the time of my family. After I did my second 20-mile run just for training purposes and I was running on trails and on the roads for six hours straight, I was like, “I don’t think I want to do this anymore.” There’s probably a better way and a healthier way to be cardiovascularly healthy and have better lung capacity. I believe it’s Sean O’Mara. Dr. O’Mara is well known for his use of HIIT training, especially sprinting to help people reduce visceral fat and increase overall health.
It’s a fascinating area and he’s done studies, gotten money, I believe, from the National Institutes of Health. I think I’m right about that. Where they’re actually taking MRI shots of visceral fat in people’s abdomens, and then they’re doing the before and the after. Simple as just 15 minutes a day sprinting even 80-year-olds, you don’t get right out and start sprinting. You get up into this thing where you can do that thing and you lose body fat quicker, but also your cardiovascular and your pulmonary function improves drastically. That’s become much more of an interesting thing.
For me, to make a long story short, I got away from running road miles to doing sprints on inclines on a treadmill. That was the easiest way for me to do it. In 15, or 20 minutes, I’m totally spent and shot. If I can do that 3, 4, or 5 days a week, it’s pretty remarkable. Those are the things I’m currently doing for me. There’s another area and I think it’s, I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s the lifelong learning stuff. I’m very curious. I’m always looking for more information into those areas that I’m interested in. As long as I remain curious and interested, I think I’ll be doing okay.
Current Reads With Valuable Insights
Is there a particular thing that you’re reading right now that are learning something from your share? You don’t have to share about that unless you want to, but what are you reading if that’s the area?
The one book I’m reading that I think is fascinating, is a woman psychiatrist named Georgia Ede. She was at Harvard, and she has a private practice now, but she’s been treating students and her patients now for a number of years via nutritional intervention. She’s written a book, and the book is fascinating. It’s called Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind. I’m currently reading that. I’ve ordered it, but I haven’t started reading it yet. It’s a book by Dr. Chris Palmer from Harvard who’s now doing a lot of research as well. He’s really focused on the metabolic causes and impacts, metabolic dysfunction, and mitochondrial dysfunction as it relates to mental illness, especially serious mental illness, from major depression to bipolar and schizophrenia.

Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind: A Powerful Plan to Improve Mood, Overcome Anxiety, and Protect Memory for a Lifetime of Optimal Mental Health
By metabolic, again, just for the audience, what can you say about what that means?
Metabolism in general, I think about metabolism, it’s how our body, it’s like never thought of having the fine metabolism. It’s the function from a cellular level and how our body is regulating its use of energy.
I was going to say how it creates energy through food, through our nutrition.
That’s exactly right. In a base level, energy, when we consume food, it gets to our cells where our mitochondria produce ATP, adenosine triphosphate. The mitochondria are the power plants of our body, of our cells, and then therefore our body. The importance and the impact that they’re finding the diet has on our metabolic functioning. Of course, I’m obsessed with this because I know there’s going to be a lot of focus on that, especially over the next four years with the politics that are involved.
The reality when I start looking at the rate of obesity and how the pace at which points in time when we started seeing this huge uptick and spike in the growth of obesity and diabetes and other metabolic health issues corresponds ironically with our creation and implementation of our food pyramid. That was implemented in ’79, and ‘80, that’s when you start seeing it happening. I don’t run around trying to proselytize you have to do this specific diet but the reality of it for me is if we did one simple thing and if we avoid eating anything but just eat real food, we’re going to always be far better off as a people and nation. There are a lot of things happening with food and that should people pause. I’m hoping that more and more people will start seeing the research that’s coming out on this stuff because I think we’re all going to benefit from that.

Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health–and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More
You think about how you produce energy and the food that what’s the fuel that we give that it’s like putting fuel in your cars.
That’s how good that fuel is. That’s right.
Imagining what’s the octane? What’s the quality of the fuel? We’d probably have to go back, you may know the answer, but we may not need to dive into this at the moment, but there’s probably some effort at the time when the food pyramid was constructed and then disseminated through schools. In a lot of places, there’s some probably some organizations that benefited from the fact that a new way of looking at our food intake was being proselytized across.
There are probably people I could advise people if you want to go do the search on and even watch interviews on YouTube and other things that are huge experts on this, but you look at even the whole lipid theory of heart disease and the scientist that really started that was a guy name of the University of Minnesota. At the time, I think he called it The Seven Country Study, which really started out as like 27 countries, but as he looked and got his data, cherry-picked which countries’ data he wanted to use that fit his hypothesis. The opposite of what you should be doing in research, right?
Let the evidence support or not support your hypothesis. He really believed his theory, but unfortunately, there were also a lot of people that there was a lot of evidence contrary to what he was saying. What pushed him at the time was the health of President Eisenhower. As a country, we became hyper-aware of heart disease all of a sudden because we had a president who started having heart attacks and he was going down this theory that he had but they underscore the reality also that President Eisenhower smoked four packs of cigarettes a day. While I’m not saying diet didn’t play a role in this fight, there were a lot of other things that were probably much more likely to have been contributory.
There’s a lot of things that happened over time in history if you look at even there’s a book by Nina Teicholz. Nina Teicholz is a journalist who was out research and did journalism on science and various other things, but she’s been subsequently given a PhD largely based on the book she wrote. I think it was called Big Fat Surprise. She went into this long history of how we developed certain oils and stuff for cooking.
Crisco was the first one she found, in which she found that Crisco was nothing more than a lubricant that was used on machines and industry that through a chemical process and various things added, it was made to look like lard. All of a sudden we’re using it in cooking. It’s the foreign leasing that was in place back then has been banned by the government because of the type of fat it is. We’ve been doing all kinds of things with seed oil. It all fits to this whole metabolic issue of what’s making us healthy or not making us healthy and the stuff that’s behind it.
The Effectiveness Of Sprinting And Interval Training
Indeed, there’s a great podcast and a book with the same name that you may have heard of called Lifespan. David Sinclair is the co-author and also the co-podcaster. The podcast is pretty neat. It’s just seven episodes, a limited series based on the book, but some really great stuff there. I want to go back to something you said earlier about the sprints and I’m personally curious. I imagine some other people are as well because I get at my exercise in a variety of different ways, but I don’t love long-distance running.
It’s just one of those things, I was a sprinter and swimming. I was a swimmer in college and played water polo and some other things. I love the water, but I was never long-distance running or even swimming for that matter. When you say sprinting and it’s 15 minutes and you’re spent, I’m assuming interval training. Just share a little bit more about the practice because there are some people I’m sure listening and go, “I can make 15 minutes a day to do this or three times a week or whatever it might be.” What does that look like?
That’s great. I’m glad you asked. I’ll use my routine as an example of what I’m talking about. It really is about short bursts at optimal effort. It is high-intensity interval training is what it is. It’s hit training. Once I’ve warmed up and I may walk for five minutes, I may do whatever, but then I’ll start my intervals and I’ll do my first interval where I will start running. I’ll run for a minute, but at 30 seconds in, I will hit. I will start running at my optimal maximum effort for a maximum of 30 seconds. The moment I’m done with that full minute, that 30 seconds of max, I walk. I slow down and I walk for two minutes. I totally try to come back. You cannot fully come back to bass, but you get back to a place where you’re just comfortable and ready to do another full maximum effort.
I will then do another. I’ll start going for a minute and within 30 seconds I’ll have it up to my max. I’ve had it at times where I’ve been at 14%, 15%, 16% incline and I’ll be going. For me, if I’m going 8, 9 miles an hour, I’m moving, especially if you’re going for 62, I’m doing good. At the end of that, each interval, I’m exhausted, but then I’m going to walk for the next two minutes and I’m going to walk slowly and recover for that next interval. I actually will do that. Sometimes I’ve gotten up to ten intervals, so that takes twenty minutes or so, two minutes for each walk, so it takes longer. You don’t really need to do ten. If everyone, if you just did even 5 or 6 of those, 4 or 5 times a week, you’re going to see amazing benefits from it. That’s my example of how I am implementing it.
You could do that on a treadmill, but you could also find yourself a nice long street or a long field, probably be the best of all worlds that run on something.
They’re putting the grass, be safe. I mean, be safe, but yes.
Improving Mental Health In The Workplace
No, Tim, I love it when we can get really granular like that. That’s one of those ways. I love that. I suppose my last question for you is really just when it comes to mental health. Again, I’m thinking about the workplace, but it can be much broader than that. I mean, we hear about levels of anxiety increasing to a degree we’ve never seen, it’s never been measured to that level before. Burnout. Incidents of burnout in the workplace, etc. I mean, if there’s one thing that you would attribute to that trend. If there is a thing that you attribute to that trend, what is it?
If there’s even one thing that you’re thinking if I could just get people or get leaders of people to think about things this way differently in some respect, what would that change in philosophy or mindset look like? You brought up the word culture, and I think that we have a culture of the world culture. We have our own societal culture. We have culture here in North America. Obviously, in many subcultures too based on where you live in the world, where you live in the United States even, and then there’s the culture at work.
Our research, our writing, and much of our work in the world today is focused on that subculture at work. Frankly, what we get there is very much a mixed hybrid of all of that other stuff, especially when those organizations that we work with have cross geographies and a mix of people that are in the office and work remotely. The pervasive culture, the greater societal culture, is brought to work as well. Again, just back to those two questions, hopefully, I didn’t lose you in my additional diatribe there.
As I was thinking while you were asking the question, one of the things that I think, the timing might be good on that question, given what we’ve just experienced. We go through this process every 2 and 4 years as far as elections go but if you look at our culture and our society, we’ve become more and more polarized over time. Part of that, and I think it is, and it gets part to my advice for people is we are so focused on differences versus commonality, what we have in common. For me, it’s like, we have far more in common than we have differences over. If we can try and get away from some of the identity stuff and really focus on, “How do we, as a culture and community, come more together?”
If you look at our culture and our society, we’ve become more and more polarized over time. We're so focused on differences versus commonality. Share on XI think part of it is, and one of the things that strongly affects us, I’m going to use the word, but I think we’re bombarded with stuff 24 hours a day now. It used to be, I remember the first Gulf War on CNN and it was like this 24-hour coverage and people were obsessed. That became a new normal. We became obsessed with 24-hour news cycles and we’re getting constant information bombarding us. While we have tools that allow us to seek information and gain knowledge in areas we’re interested in, much like social media and YouTube and those things are fascinating to me. I think it’s really important at a point in time we all have to find a way to make sure we’re taking a step back from that and give ourselves time to not be bombarded by stuff.
If I’m going to encourage people to be a little more self-focused in a certain way, it’s to be getting away from that stuff, to become more introspective, perhaps spend more time with a year into meditation. Various things can be meditative for people, it can be prayer, it can be exercise for some people and people do yoga and other things. My message to people is we’ve got to step away from being bombarded by the messaging. We have some power over that, although I think there’s a reality that there’s a legitimate possible addiction to the social media stuff that people are in. For me, it’s a messaging thing. If I were to say, I would want people to try and step away from that bombardment of information because that’s the stuff that’s increasing the anxiety.
You’ve got kids interested in how many likes they got and the clicks and the anxiety related just to “I got to go to school, but I didn’t get enough.” I’m grateful social media didn’t exist when I was a kid, to be honest. It is what it is. I encourage people to really truly take a step back, and spend more time pursuing some introspective focus on whether it’s gratitude practices and exercise and things, but certainly with any type of meditation and whether it’s again prayer or meditation can all be very helpful. I’m reminded I had a professor undergraduate in 1980 and I’m remembering this guy like yesterday so he must have had an impact on me.
Take a step back and spend more time pursuing some introspective focus. Share on XEven then in a book, one of the textbooks that he had written, we were using in class, talked about the importance of play, the importance of getting into a state of flow. If you even do it for 10 or 15 minutes a day, where you are devoid of any intrusive thoughts of anything stressful or bothersome, that it actually will increase your lifespan. I think that’s a critically important part of things. We could talk about practices about gratitude and all these things as it relates to trying to be happy.
I think boiling it down simply to we all need to take a step back and play, I think is really important. I don’t mean you have to play like children, but I think childlike is an important thing to think about. When you are truly in that moment, when you’re separated from all the stresses and anxieties, where you’re letting it go and you’re focused, it can be listening to classical music, it can be just taking a walk in nature. It’s really, truly setting aside that time and truly letting go and play.
That so resonates with me, Tim, having three little grandkids now, a three-year-old, a one-year-old, and a four-month-old. There’s no question that being around them, being around our three-year-old in particular, even the one-year-old now, it’s like this constant play. It’s exhilarating. The last thing as we wrap things up, I want to share with our audience is another resource because you’ve given us some great ones. I read a book recently called Stolen Focus. Many people probably have heard of it. Johann Hari is the author and in that book, Stolen Focus, he gets at a number of the things that you just talked about and how our focus has been diverted, let’s say.
Ultimately, whether it’s been diverted, co-opted, stolen, whatever you want to say, I think it’s really important that we do move away from the blame game that we get so wrapped up in and even in those around us or in the tribes that we find ourselves routinely, congregating in that we find that there’s this trend of assigning blame and trying to find what I think are the simplest solutions to complex problems and we know that complex problems involve complex solutions not simple ones, not ones that are just based on superficial things.
To put it into I guess my own theory about this is that there are probably people that have interests that are divergent from the ones that we’re talking about in terms of our mental wellbeing and our physical wellbeing and overall health and wellbeing but yet it’s our responsibility. This is personal again, personal philosophy here. I believe it is still a personal responsibility that we have to become the one in charge. I never tell people to get rid of their phones. I deliver talks all over the world talking about mental health as well as holistic resilience. We talk about this thing. This is an important tool. Technology is vitally important. It’s not a question of whether I’m going to use it.
I’m totally going to use this. I’m going to use it every day and most of us are. It’s a question for me of who’s in charge here. I think that’s the vital question for me personally is to know when this thing is running the show and instead of me. You cannot know that all the time where you can become, I suppose, intoxicated to the point where you cannot really tell. That’s where that quiet time comes in, whether it’s stillness practice, gratitude practice, prayer, meditation, or any of those things.
Anyway, Tim, you gave us some really tangible takeaways, I love this show. I’m sure everybody listening to this has just been vibing and going, “I didn’t think about this.” Maybe there’s some people that maybe need to reading to this, would benefit from reading to this and it’s going to get shared and that’s part of the reason why we do the podcast as well. You’ve been a fabulous guest, Tim, and so thank you for your time.
I’m greatly appreciative for you having me on, and it’s an honor. I would never have thought maybe someone is interested in hearing what I have to say about things, but it’s an honor, and I hope that people get the sense that there is hope and there’s a lot they can do. As you said, it is about personal responsibility. You cannot control what happens to you, but you have a choice in how you respond and how you react to that. The more we realize that the better off we’re going to be, I think.

Health: You can’t control what happens to you, but you have a choice in how you respond and how you react to that.
Tim, again, thank you so much. Thank you for four decades of service in an area that I know this through friends and family members that work in that field as well. You don’t go into it for the money, let’s say. I appreciate the fact that you’ve done the work you have and you’ve had the impact that you’ve had as well. Thank you, sir.
Thank you. I appreciate it. It’s gone by very quickly. At the end of the day, it’s nice to know you’ve been able to hopefully help some people along the way.
Indeed.
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Tim is a solid man, solid guy, done some really amazing work in the world and has come out with, I just feel, great conventional, practical, usable wisdom when it comes to how we take care of ourselves holistically, psychologically, physically, of course, mentally, even spiritually. We cover those things. We talk about that in this podcast, as you heard, and the importance of play, getting into a flow state as a means to add to our dopamine reservoir. We didn’t talk specifically about dopamine, but ultimately, I think of it as like a dopamine menu. In the menu of things that we have access to in a day, we have to think about how we produce dopamine.
We have to think about scheduling those times of the day, whether it’s to make time for stillness in the morning or it’s to sprint, to run, as Tim was telling us about that 15-minute practice of intermittent interval training that can create that physical health, of course, but also create a great deal of mental health in the process. There are lots of ways to do that, to create those moments where you increase the level of dopamine in your brain by doing certain things, whether it’s to read a book that you love or read the newspaper or take a walk or write a letter to somebody that you haven’t written to in a while or think about somebody, send them the text message or place a phone call to somebody that you haven’t spoken to in a while.
Just a whole host of other things that we can be really intentional about because ultimately our mental health is our responsibility. Our physical, mental, emotional, spiritual health is really our responsibility at the beginning and the middle, and the end of the day. It doesn’t mean that because that’s the case we should go it alone, that we don’t need support, or that it wouldn’t be appropriate for us to ask for support. I’m not saying that at all, but I am saying that we have to be responsible. There are things that happen in our lives and some of them are pretty tough. The only real freedom we truly have, what we have that’s ours to keep always, that nobody can ever take from us, is the meaning we make out of those things.
What we ultimately get from those experiences, do they actually contribute to us, help us grow, help us evolve, help us be better, happier even if you will, or do they do something else? The former is about resilience creation. That’s something that we can actively do. The latter is something that happens as a result of us not taking care of ourselves. Ultimately, that’s unnecessary. It’s not a requirement. It’s optional. We can take better care of ourselves and then defeat those things that would otherwise defeat us. I love the conversation with Tim. He is an inspiring man. He gave us a lot of resources. I contributed a few as well, but of course, we were really here to hear from Tim and we did and so enjoyed that.
I hope you loved this episode. If you did, please share it with a friend, colleague, or family member that you think might benefit from it, maybe even somebody that’s going through a bit of a hard time and is looking for some additional creative information, or inspiration, if you will. We’d also love to hear from you. If you’ve got a review that you could leave for us on the platform that you consume this podcast, that would be so appreciated, whether it’s iTunes or any of the others that there are so many of these days. A five-star review is welcome, but whatever makes sense, makes sense.
Ultimately, if you’d like to find out exactly where you’re at, just create a baseline understanding of your own resiliency in those four key areas that holistic view of resiliency for free. Entirely our gift to you just takes three minutes. You can go to RankMyResilience.com and three minutes into it, you’re going to get yourself a confidential report just yours. Nobody else sees it.
Give you some not only important information to assess where you are, but also resources like some of the ones that you heard today and many more. It’s chock full of that and we hope you take advantage of it. For right now, I would just say once again, thank you so much for being a part of this community. We could not do it and would not do it without you. Thank you again and be resilient. Have a great, beautiful, blessed day, and thank you again.
Important Links
- Tim Macken on LinkedIn
- Macon County Mental Health Board
- Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind
- Big Fat Surprise
- Lifespan
- Stolen Focus
- Rank My Resilience
About Tim Macken
I have worked in Behavioral Health for over 40 years holding a multitude of clinical and administrative positions. Over the last 22 years I have been the Chief Clinical Officer and Chief Operating Officer for a large mental health agency in Decatur, IL and for the last 7 years I have been the Executive Director of the Macon County Mental Health Board which is a funder of behavioral health services in Macon County, Illinois. My career has been dedicated to serving persons with the most severe behavioral health challenges.