I have adopted this principle to do a lot of things that I may not necessarily want, but the memory and the impact I'm going to have with the people around me is priority over what it is that I'm feeling in the moment.
Throw the idea of fairness and equality 50-50 out of your head. It's not like work is 50 and life is 50. What's the work-life flow? How are these things gonna work with 1 another in synchronicity to support 1 another? And we find that in marriage. Welcome to the Dental and Mental Podcast. I'm Dr. Galen
Dietrich. I'm Dr. Davina Dietrich. And we are going to be talking to you about the business and the mindset of dentistry.
All right, guys, welcome back to part 2, part 2. Part 2, The change up has been pretty subtle, but you might notice it. Yeah, she's wearing a finny jacket, cool, whatever, but I've crossed my legs differently. I'm pretty good about that. No wardrobe change here. All right, so
going back into
it. Yep. Going back into it. So life versus the business side of things. And how do you make them not versus? This is what most of us have to do. Kind of categorize life, categorize business, whether you own or don't own still, it's work. And you kind of make them 2 separate things. They don't really interact with 1 another. They kind of just steal from 1
another. Do you feel that way?
Do I feel that way? Yeah. Sometimes, but no, I would think way less than I ever have. But I also feel like that's kind of a lifelong pursuit. You and I were talking about this earlier, and we probably will do a podcast about this at some point. I don't think that you realize some nirvana of a solution like social media always tries to tell you and sell you. Right? If you want this, this is what you got to do. It's really not that simple.
You're going to do something, you're going to get
a result ideally, and you're going to keep iterating until the day you die.
Oh yeah for sure.
So I do think that we have actually a pretty good relationship between work and business. Sorry work business and we really don't. Between business and life. Yeah. But there's times where we don't. There's times where it gets out of whack. Yeah.
I don't see it that way because the way you and I have really set up our family is that the business is a big part of it. Oh, for sure. Right, the business is a big part of it. And it actually is 1 of the joys that I think that we have from a parenting perspective is we really include our kids in the process of understanding that we have multiple businesses.
Oh yeah. No, I think that's, I think it's very true. But for example, like this last 3 weeks, you know, have been such a go on my end of things. And you have had to kind of supplement that by being home more and taking care of the kids and taking the different things. And so I think I've felt a little disconnected in that I've just been going so much. And I'm ready for that to kind of taper off for a few and get back into more of our rhythm as it were.
That makes
sense, right? So it's out of rhythm, but it's not bad if that makes, it's not like, oh my gosh, I've got to change my business. This is like not working for me. That's why I think it's really healthy as I'm very happy with the way business is going.
Like the flow of it.
The flow of
it.
Yes. And it's almost like it's growing so much in so many places that now it's just a new level. And at that new level, you have to kind of recalibrate the rhythm of how you're gonna interact with things. And a lot of that is delegation, right? As you start to take on more, you're like, okay, well now I have to let go of a few things so I can grab onto the higher level stuff and then give this to other people to let them handle at a certain level of mastery. That transition's always a little bit
chaotic, a little syncopated.
Yeah. I mean, to the point of whether it's the business or the family, it requires a lot of support. Oh, yeah. Right? Both require a lot of support. So I mean, we homeschool our kids. Sans our oldest. He goes to proper school, I guess you would say, like proper school, like out of the house school. And then we homeschool our 2 youngest. So being able to do that, have multiple businesses, have a marriage that I'm quite into.
I think we can say we are quite
into it. I will, I just, I don't wanna speak for- You wanna
put words in my mouth?
I don't wanna speak for my present guest, my present co-host. I'll let you speak on your own marriage. Well. But it requires a lot of support.
Oh, it does.
On both fronts.
So much.
So, and I, safe to say this too, from my perspective coaching, I know that my clients require a lot of support too, to make everything function. I also know that our friends who do similar things also require a lot of support. So all of that to say, I'm saying that with transparency because I think that people can look at what other people accomplish and if they don't know how much support those people require, they can make a story about how it's like, oh my gosh, how do you do it all? Well, that's kind of the answer
is you do it all by requiring a lot of support.
That's actually really, I'm gonna say this, I don't think it's a stretch at all. Actually think that's largely the role of Thrive with our docs. It's support, it's guidance, it's permission. It's not so much, I mean, we teach, the teachings in some ways is kind of easy, You know, like, I guess what I mean by that is, here's a skill set, what do I have to do to get from here to here? That's actually pretty easy, you know? It's the work of your hands. That can be trained, that's not a hard thing. But it's the support
of how to integrate that at all these different levels of life with all the other inputs that you have, in all the different environments that exist, that's the hard stuff. Yes. And so it's the continuity of support, and it's the creativity of problem solving. Do you know what I'm saying? Like that's, I think that's more of what we do.
Well, yes, but you can't tell them that. Here's what I mean. Don't tell the people that. No, here's what I mean by that, okay. For the most part, I love Dennis. And I've said this, I'm like super cool, creative people, get things fast, have a multiple interest and passions. We were talking about somebody in our group earlier and it's like, oh, I'm like, I'm an audiophile. Like they always do cool stuff, right?
Yeah.
But they also really piss me off because they think that if they knew more, they'd be able to get a different result. And it's like, well, that's not the problem because you already know how to do things.
Next, you probably know too much.
Yeah. You know too much. It's too cluttered in there. And with some of them, you're like, well, let me show you a different way to do this. No, no, I'll just keep on going at it. I'm like, okay, well, when you're done with that and you call me in 7 years and we have to do all of this, you could have been 7 years ahead but I'll talk to you in 7 years." Right? So sometimes I can get very frustrated because they don't think they need support. What they think they need is the opposite. I need
to know more. No you don't. You need a different level of support to get to the next level. Well, no, I'm a DIY, I can figure it out. Okay, well then you just keep on doing that. I am no stranger to support. I will hire it all day, every day, because I want a different result. I am willing to pay for it. I am willing to see a different perspective.
Well, it doesn't even have to be a different result. It can be more of a particular result that you want.
That too, the depth and a result I'm already getting, right? That's a great point.
Yeah, and You know, just before we skip past that, I think that it's really interesting what we're talking about because this is what you see in nature. And I think it's often a very good place to go, for examples, because there is a lot of ease there. If you think about a tree, if you were to really dissect its growth pattern and how that all works, every bit of information that it needs is in its DNA and it's already in it. And so it knows how to grow. It knows how to do these things. It's actually
built into it. But the gardener's job is to prune, to cut things away so that more energy and more nutrients go to the right places,
and
then to supplement and support that growth with the proper balance of certain nutrition, nitrogen, phosphorus, et cetera, right? The right amount of water, not too much water. It's actually the supplementary stuff but you don't need more information for that to do its thing.
You mean you're not instructing the oak? Like, OK, I've been trying. I've been trying some hairy little tomato plants. A little bit more oak tree.
I need more salsa. I need you to get going.
We might gain a couple more inches.
But I think that that's you can you can draw that parallel from so many areas of life. And that's not to say that when you go and you wanna learn a new technique, like when you're fresh out of school or you've been practicing for a few years and you keep hitting the same roadblock.
Right.
Yeah, learning some new information about, oh, I didn't realize that if I seal the dentin immediately, I could reduce or completely obliterate the post-op or sensitivity that I've been getting. Awesome. You know, there are certain things that you're going to learn throughout your process, but they're so easy to learn. That's not the hard part. And I really wish that people, you could shake them sometimes because people have shaken me and now I don't have that problem anymore. It's not like I'm like, oh man, I wish I just knew more. I'm always thinking, how do I create
a better system around this? Yes.
How do
I get more support? And those are much more difficult problems to solve. Those are much more fun problems to solve.
I was going to say I think it's really fun. I think it's fun to figure out, to your point, of getting the support of somebody who's doing it in a way that I'm like, oh, that's a new layer. That's a new layer of support, it's a new layer of depth, it's a different perspective that I don't have. I wanna work with that person so I can get that perspective so that I can apply it to our life and also with my own clients.
Right, right.
So yeah, I do think that that's, well, because the alternative is suffering. Let's be clear about that.
Suffering or boredom, I mean, we're talking about a challenge, right? That's what makes it fun. And when I say it's difficult, but also fun, you put those 2 together, it's a challenge. And if you don't have that, it's either suffering or it's boredom, which boredom's got suffering too.
Yeah, yeah. Those 2 things can be synonymous. Okay, well, let's get into practical things about, I mean, I don't know, I don't know if the people care, but I mean, I guess if you're listening, you care. The
people care.
The people care.
The people care.
But about how We manage both and have 3 kids and homeschool and have practice and thrive and lab and create content and all. And you and I are both very active in our families, right? We're not like, we don't talk to our parents. Like we talk to them. We talk to our parents. So there's a lot of people to curate relationships with on top of all the other things, on top of each other, on top of having separate relationships with our children, all of
that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, the first 2 things that come to mind that I'd say right off the bat is that if you're listening to this, you're probably doing a better job than you think you are. If you're even remotely in that place of like, I'm failing everywhere, this is all good. The people who are like, I'm awesome at this, maybe you're not doing as well as you think you are. But most people are like, gosh, I feel like I'm dropping balls. I just, I don't know how to balance a family and kids and I
don't know how they're doing it. Truth is you're probably doing it better than you think you are. And it's good for you to be seen that way. You know, And you do that a lot for your clients right away. We do that for our docs. It's like, let's take a step back. Look at how much you've accomplished. Look at what you have. Look at the kids that you have. Look at this relationship you have. Could they be better? Could you have greater depth in those areas? Absolutely. But you're balancing a lot of things. So good for
you. And honestly dentistry wears about 4, 000 hats all at the same time. It is 1 of the most difficult jobs when you really think about what it requires. And so I would say that first. The second piece is throw the idea of fairness and equality and 50-50 out of your head. It's not like work is 50 and life is 50. There's no written rule that way. Balance is not this. Balance is actually kind of a stupid word in some ways.
That's why I
think we hate
that. I do, I do, yes.
I like flow, what's the work-life flow?
Right.
How are these things gonna work with 1 another in synchronicity to support 1 another? And we find that in marriage. I think when we used to think about how is it, here's my 50%, here's your 50%, you're not doing as much as I am, wrong recipe at all points in time.
Oh yeah, I think like
it was a terrible time in our marriage.
Oh yeah, It was so lame. No, it was. I was going to say when we were like a tip for tat, but I think that both of you, both of us, both of you, both of us, both of us were really in a competitive energy. I think part of that too, was we're in the same, same field, same industry. Yeah. All right. And so it really was this, we had more of a competitive vibe. So what are you bringing? What am I bringing? Am I bringing more? You bringing more? How do I out my game? That
was exhausting. And yeah, it was not a fun time in our marriage.
No. And you know, I think the, you get what you get. The result that, and we've talked about this, we talked about this for partnerships for dentists, when you're looking at How to structure that Devon and I had to go through this, you know When you look for fairness there is a way to do it. And it's pretty miserable, because you're gonna tit for tat on everything. So you have to become so granular that actually the majority of your energy is tracking and making sure that everyone's doing their job. And it's the people who are like,
hey, I'll make sure you Venmo me for this. And it's like, my friends don't do that. We just don't do it. And it's like, if I get tonight, you'll get next time.
And next
bro get the 1 after
that.
And so much just being a hundred dollars more than the other guy, who cares? It's not about
that. Also, let me just give the listeners a tip. Okay, if you're on Venmo, we can see that you're Venmoing your boyfriend or girlfriend for that $5 slice of pizza we see it. So you should put your stuff on private because...
I don't know why you would ever not put it on private.
I don't know, but
I- I hate that it asks me. I'm like, you know what? You don't need to know.
Oh my gosh. You don't
need to know that I just bought a lot of pizza.
Well, no, but if you want the most gossip on your friend's circle, go on Venmo and you'll see.
Venmo does tell all, I'll tell you what. It truly does,
man. It's so cringe. It's so cringe. I just can't with that. But anyways on to the next. Yeah That's just a tip for me to you like me to the people
That's public service announcement right there. Well PSA
it truly was yeah, I do
I do think that you can go that route, you just have to expect a life of being analyzed always. You're going to analyze this, you're going to be analyzed, and it's really easy to become defensive in a spot like that. It's so much easier, at least emotionally, spiritually, and even physically, to just submit to being a servant. That's really what it comes down to. I think it's like, Devin and I had this conversation about VEDA. It's like, are we doing this to get something for ourselves or are we gonna say we want VEDA to grow and
to serve more people and to employ more people and to feed our families, then we're going to submit and serve that business. Right. And I think for you and I, it was, I'm serving our marriage. You're serving our marriage, right? God gave us this really incredible blessing of each other. Don't squander that by trying to keep a record of wrongs. That's not spiritually what we believe and it should not at all come into the way that we interact with 1 another. I think that's actually 1 of the more base levels of humanity.
To your point though, it's so exhausting. Like I don't wanna do a tit for tat. I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna do that. At the end of it, I want to have a trust that I will be okay no matter what. Whether or not you take something, whether or not you're giving as much, whether or not anybody is, I want to have a fundamental piece and trust that I will be okay no matter what. Whether or not you take something, whether or not you're giving as much, whether or not anybody is, I want to
have a fundamental peace and trust that I will be okay no matter what. And I truly believe that. Yeah. Oh, and obviously, I mean, another side note, but we have to believe that we will be okay no matter what with the amount of people who steal stuff from Thrive. Content, ideas, right? All of that. We can't focus on those things. And I know From the coaching perspective, we have this with clients, literally employees who embezzle X, Y, and Z, right? People who take from them. And the best use of that energy is to keep on creating.
100%. Keep moving
forward. Keep moving forward.
Keep on creating. Doesn't mean that's not painful. I mean, I think it's
there. Yeah, that's a separate topic is the, you know, the emotion that comes with that. But the...
And even, I mean, so even something as basic perhaps, it's not basic, but no, it's like, it's common. As the age old, you know, 1 person's working super long hours, the other one's taking care of the kids. And they might both work. They might have 1 that's working and 1 that's not, but it's really easy to start to feel a little bit better. I'm doing this and what typically happens, unless you're with somebody who's just a lazy POS, you're probably not understanding all that that person's giving because it's not your role. Right? And there's a just
a fundamental law to all of this, which is just walking a day in the shoes of somebody else. Like, we'll tell this to our team sometimes, you know? Like there's times where we take advantage of our team, I think, in terms of what we expect of them. And because we're a high functioning office, Lots of production, lots of movement, lots of moving parts. And we have these very high expectations and high bars for them and they're still human beings. And there's times where it's like, I didn't realize that was going on in your life. I'm sorry
about that. Like you're dealing with all this stuff mentally and something just happened, but you're also showing up for me and maybe something didn't go the way I wanted it to but Can I still be a human? Yeah, you really should there's the other side of that too where you know, we treat our team very very well and we pay them for a fourth day and they work 3. Find another office like that, right? There's some times where you maybe don't have that experience of going somewhere that you're just, right? I could go back in time
and early in our relationship, we'd have these like fights. And I think 1 of the things that would always kind of wake me up is like, I've got so good, you know, what, do I want to go back to my high school girlfriend? Like, what are we doing? Like, what are we talking about? But you need that perspective shift. And sometimes it's hard when you're so distant from that. Wouldn't you agree? Like it's, entitlement breathes in distance.
Oh yeah I think that's really true. Yeah we do we become entitled to you know well I shouldn't have to do X, Y, or Z and I think when we really remove that type of thinking from our mindset, everything becomes easier.
100%.
Right, you're not entitled to anything.
There's also the looking back versus looking forward, which is a big part of the problem, don't you think? It's like that's the idea of being copied and saying, I'm going to keep looking forward. I'm going to keep creating. That's a much better place to look versus stopping and, you know, halting all that you're doing just to try to deal with this problem. You just lost all that momentum. Same thing in a relationship is when it's like, this really bothered me, but you don't talk about it. You just keep festering on, you keep thinking about it versus
get the problem out in the open, talk about it, maybe get a different perspective, heal from that, move forward. Like take care of the thing. We carry so much with us.
So
much emotional pain and guilt and shame and we're not processing it and moving forward.
That's the thing. Like, yeah, absolutely deal with it and move forward. And that can come in a variety of different ways, right?
Well, if it was so easy to do it a better way, everyone would do it. But there's something that holds us all back, right? Tit for tat isn't a fun way to go about things, but you're getting something out of it.
Yeah. So what is that? So we talked about it in the first podcast is I really think that you and I were running into a need to be right and a need to not be wrong. And we were going head to head in that. So it was like, it was like, this is, this is the right way to do it. I am doing more. I am right. I mean, you and I, we've been in coaching relationships together and independently for a decade now.
Yeah.
And I remember calling... We had a relationship coach at the time because we were really working through some of this stuff. And I remember calling her and being like 10 out of 10 mad about whatever it was. I was 10 out of 10. Yeah. It was like, I was like 10 out of 10 mad about whatever it was. And I called 11
out of 10. It was, it was actually,
Oh yeah. It was at that point. It was a 10 point. It was through the roof. And I remember calling her and I was like, I need to see this another way. And I literally can't, I cannot see this a different way. I can't talk myself out of it. I can't see it from your perspective. I don't remember what it was, but I'm like, I can't see it from your perspective. He truly does not have anything that is valid here. I am 100% right, and I need you to help me see this a different way. And
by the time I got off that call with her, she really did help me see it a different way, which brought me to a calmer place of understanding that there was more than the perspective that I was seeing, going back to my need to be right in that situation. I could not see my way out of it. And so starting to train myself to see different perspectives, starting to train myself to not live off of this constant, but I am right about this thing, was truly transformative, I think, in our relationship. So that's really when it
started. But now that I am so far removed from that place, I still remember feeling that way of, there couldn't possibly be another way to view this problem. Like I remember telling her, I don't care what you're gonna say, there is no other way to see it other than the way I'm seeing it.
Right, right. I think that when you realize that words are some of the most powerful things that we have, that the strongest muscle in the body is the tongue. A lot of things start to change for you. And 1 of those is realizing that you can pour venom into the person that you love most with what you say or don't say, and you can also heal with just a slightly different verbiage and different heart. And that made all the difference for me because I was so quick to say things and then I'd stumble over my words
and have to dig myself out of a hole. And you know, that's not a good place to be in. I felt like, and especially someone who takes things more personally and defensive, that was, that was a tough spot until I realized that there are a few kind of almost hacks to it in the sense of, you alluded to 1 earlier, you can say something like, hey, you're coming at me a little bit right now, do you want me just to hear this, let you kind of get it out? Are you looking for a solution? Do we
wanna kind of get there together? Like, what do I need to hear right
now? Right.
Right, like that's all that is to saying, I get where you're coming at. And if I need to just like put on the suit and just let you just breathe fire at me for a while,
let's do it. Like, I can do it. Do you remember when we first started talking like that, though, we were like, this is so lame. Like, we'd ask each other, how do you want me to hear this? And we're like, oh my gosh, this is so- I want to
hear this, yeah, yeah. Am I gonna put my hazmat suit on again?
And we're like, that's so goofy to talk
like that. It's goofy until you realize that it actually works.
For sure,
100%. Obviously, to the extent of having customization in systems, it's a system, right? Yes. There's a principle here, but you can customize the verbage You can figure out how it's gonna work for you But that was really helpful for me and that was really helpful to realize that I didn't have to react to what you're saying I didn't have to have an answer right away and That I might be wrong but you know, maybe we just hear you out first. And time can help a lot of things too when you get it out in the open
first. I think we rely on time minus the words, which is stupid.
Yeah.
Have the words and let time do its thing, right? And it's the best way to do it.
So what are some actual practical things that you think we've incorporated into our life to make the business and the life work?
The first thing that I think we've really done is more of a, I guess a mental or a spiritual thing. And that is to, it sounds so basic, put the other person first, really. And that goes against actually every grain of the way people are designed. Human beings put themselves first, right? Right. That is, I don't care who you are listening to this, I don't care how good you think you are, you are selfish. You're all extremely selfish. And put us in the wrong situation and you'll choose yourself first. So you have to fight against that
and you'll fight against it your whole life. So I think every day it's really saying, how can I serve this person better? If you wake up and you tell yourself that, You can even put that on your screen saver of your phone. I think that's the mentality. And you're not going to adopt it day 1. But you do that for 6 months to a year and you wake up every morning and you start with that. That does start to make its way in. Burrows its way in. Right. That's the foundation. The second pearl is definitely having
conversations sooner than later. Like that's something you taught me. I'm definitely more of a repress it.
Oh, I'm like, it's on my mind. Let's talk about
it in our time.
It'll be
better later, you know?
No, no, it's on my mind. It's gonna be on your
mind. Just like that xylitol. Oh
yeah, I told the people. I'm like, this is on my mind. It's gonna be on your mind. It's 1 of the things that I do with my clients as well because a lot of people are afraid of difficult conversations. And when they learn to have them, we can move so quick. A lot of- Oh, but you feel so much better too. A lot of times that is where we gain the most energy, momentum, peace is from knocking out hard conversations.
Not that the process is easy. I mean it's a very simple thing to understand, but to practice it it's tough. Truly every good vibe and sense of progress is on the side of a decision. And I think we carry so many indecisions with us. Like if you could visualize them,
if they were
rocks in a backpack, you would just see these bundles of boulders that we're carrying of things that hard conversation won't have, a training that you won't set time aside for, grudges you're carrying, all this stuff. Just massive amounts of baggage that you have not dealt with. And if you could visualize it, I think it would make something, it'd make you kind of cringe actually of how much you carry around. And it's just cutting those things loose or dealing with them or absorbing them. Like you have to make decisions about these things. Your life moves so much
faster when you do that. And that's a big part of what you do actually with your clients is take an inventory of those things. Now let's start to make decisions 1 by 1 priority list. And that's why they move. You move faster, because you're not held back by all this shit, right? Right. So yeah, I think having conversations very quickly, and then probably the third 1 is learning that you don't have to A, fix something, or B, hear it defensively. At least for me, You probably had a different understanding, but for me it was those 2
things. I don't have to do this. I can actually just hear something. It's the neutral ears. And then process that in context. But instead what we do is we make assumptions and don't talk about something. So that just breeds and gets worse. Or we hear something and immediately make it about ourselves because we're selfish and we don't have a servant's heart. Right? So I think those are the things that I've learned.
Ask me the question again? I'm going
to give it my version
of this. Yeah, yeah. I wanted you to do your version so I can hear it a new way.
What are the... I hate the word hacks, but like what are the principles or hacks that you've learned that have helped you improve your relationship with me and even really your relationship with yourself? Like how are you, how are we off better now because of things that you've learned and adopted.
Oh, okay. Yeah. So I think the first 1 is that I really have made it a practice to choose my emotions. I've made it a practice because emotions are usually 1 of those things where it's like you either are or you're not right. Like, okay, if I wake up outside and it's sunny, I will be in a good mood. No, that's actually irrelevant. You can opt out and you can choose whatever emotion that you want and you can fall in line with that. And so practicing that and doing that has served me really well. Mm-hmm. Because
it doesn't, it's a new form of discipline to not allow yourself to be emotionally sloppy. And it also forces you to take care of it if it's something that needs to be taken care of, if that makes sense. So the example might be silly, but this is walking outside and saying, unless it's sunny outside, I'm going to be in a bad mood. That's a silly emotion. So you can opt out of that and choose something different. If there is something deeper that you need professional help with and you need to work through that, that's also a
choice. It's like, I can't deal with this emotion, I can't opt out of it. I need somebody to help me sort through it. So you need to get yourself some help around that thing so you can deal with it and to your point, clean it up and move on. So that's something that's been really helpful. Things that I can't solve on my own, I get support around, and things that I can opt out of and choose something different, I do that.
I'm gonna make a quick segue on this because I think it's so good. It's such a powerful point. And honestly, if you're listening to this, I think it's gonna save you so much, so much money and time if you adopt this idea. It's the concept of our society is so hell bent on having an identity, Right? We use words and terms and things to define who we are. We have to label ourselves for everything.
Right.
And as a result, I don't think what we're realizing we're doing, we're pigeonholing ourselves into this tiny little box. We're actually engaging ourselves. And we were talking to our son the other day and he has done so well this semester. He's been working so hard. Yeah. And crushing it and seeing a whole nother side of him in terms of his grades.
Grades and physically.
He's been- And physically. Oh my
gosh, yeah. He's changed his diet, like everything. Totally different person.
Yeah. Right? But prior to that, he really would, and he still has vestiges of this. Again, these are works of a lifetime, but he was telling himself, I'm not a good test taker. And he had reasons for this and people who were telling him like, well, you know, you're just gonna need more time. Like this is how it is. And he was getting labeled for you're a bad test taker. And it starts to become part of a person's psyche. And to the point of you saying that we really try to make our business and our life
kind of 1. All the business principles, coaching principles, the ways that we practice, all that, we try to say, how do we feed that to our kids so that they can learn from our mistakes? Yes. And that was 1 of the things that we were telling him. It's like, it's not that you are a bad test taker, right? It's not that you are a liar, that you lied or that you took a bad test. Now, how do we improve that? How do we fix that? How do you shift and change your emotion around that? And it's
a choice. And then you could put in the work to make that a different outcome. Yeah. And so I think it's so powerful what you're saying. And given the right example, think of that example for yourself, whoever's listening. That's what you have to do. And say, where am I just going along with a label that I've placed on myself that is completely not serving you? Or the people that you love?
Exactly. So to that point, so that's 1. And then this I think is a good follow-up, is that I pre-decide pretty much on everything. So I pre-decide, yeah, so I pre-decide how I'm gonna be in situations. I've already made that decision and then it's just the follow-through, Okay? So if we're using a personal example and it's like, okay, I'm spending time with people I don't particularly enjoy or a situation I don't particularly enjoy. Okay, let's say we're going for a hike in case. Your favorite. Right? Let's say that because I've done this around this. Okay, so
Galen is born into a hiking family. They love the outdoors. They love hiking. They love all things nature
When you're homeschooled and you don't know who 50 Cent is, you go into nature.
That's okay. So I, I am the complete opposite. Actually for the next podcast, I'm going to go put on my New York jacket because I like a concrete jungle. I don't want nature.
But they're very opposite.
I don't want. And that's the thing I love about New York. New York has confined all the nature to 1 park.
To 1 little, little place.
Yes, and it's beautiful. I love Central Park, but they were like, look, all nature has to be here. And then everything else in the city will be nature-free. I love that. I love it so much.
We're so different.
So anyways, I hate hiking. And for your sister, Tam's birthday, who I absolutely love and adore, she wanted to go for a hike.
Yeah, she did.
So I love her. I want to celebrate her. I want her to feel special. So I'm going to go for a hike. Now, the choice is
you can find the heels and what those things were.
Listen, I don't know. Those boots
were not made for hiking.
No, I don't understand what people wear for hiking clearly. Anyways, so the story is that I have to, I don't let myself get to the hike and then decide who I'm gonna be there. That's not-
Or even to make no decision and just let it just
keep impacting you. Exactly, right? And you're just reacting. Exactly, so I'm not gonna get there and I'm not gonna just let things fall as they may. I pre-decide that I am going to celebrate Tam and I am going to be a joy on this hike no matter what I feel. That's the decision. You're going to go through this hike happy. So as I'm going through this hike, I am completely unprepared for it. I'm wearing stupid shoes. I'm wearing stupid clothes.
And I wear in that Finney jacket. Probably. We don't even know.
No, but I was wearing wedges, which apparently don't hike in wedges, but they were like hiking branded. I think they were like North face wedges or something. So I thought they'd be appropriate. Anyways, they were not. So I twist my ankle and fall and kind of fall into a cactus. I'm going
to say that was a narrow kind of miss, but you think you still got some.
I did. So then I have to like take my broken self down this hike. The decision was that I will have a good attitude. So I made- But you did. And I did. I had a good attitude. So I have adopted this principle to do a lot of things that I may not necessarily want, but the memory and the impact I'm going to have with the people around me is priority over what it is that I'm feeling in the moment. So if I know I have something coming up, if I know I need to pre-decide that
I need to be powerful, that I need to be strong, that I need to hold a boundary, that I need to have a hard conversation, that I need to show up joyful, playful, interesting, creative. I pre-decide who I will be before I get to the thing. And the decision is the decision.
Right. Right. I actually love that because that pertains to so many different areas of life. You and I have talked about this even with like people who pass away, right? Where obviously you don't get that chance all the time, but there are places and times where you can sense that it's coming, right? So it's making a pre-decision and it might even be years off but you kind of know like this is where it's going and so you have the time now to A, decide how you want to celebrate that life, be how you want to maximize
the time that's left and see who you're going to be afterwards.
Yes.
And I had to do that for my grandma, right? And I loved my grandma. And I knew that that time was coming. It was the third bat with cancer, and we had learned this principle, and I had made that decision. And I was like, I will grieve as much as I can, you know, in the confined space, knowing that that's, like, once she's passed, I'll have lived as best as I could with her prior and I'll sure I'll feel sad and I get to grieve in that moment but I know that life now continues to go
on versus some people where it's like it seems like it just catches them from you know out of the blue even though you've known it's coming and then that really impacts them and holds them back from living, which then impacts all the other people around them, it's this very deleterious type of relationship with yourself and others, versus maximize. Yes. Right? By pre-decision. And like I said, you don't always get that choice, but in some ways you kind of do because you can choose every day, like to your point. Like hey, our kids are here today, they're
healthy, you're here. Like I'm going to be grateful for those things. I don't know when the last day is. And so I'm gonna, you and I have talked about that. We talk about Thrive Live. We think about death a lot from the perspective of how to cherish life.
Yeah, I do. I like to think about death a lot. And I think I told, I don't know if I've talked about it on a podcast, but in dental school, I would make it a habit to walk around cemeteries because I had no perspective. It's like, oh my gosh, if A&P, you know, practical didn't go well, I was emotionally ruined. My life is over. They're gonna kick me out. They're gonna drag me out in front of all my classmates, I'm never gonna be a dentist, that like, you know, the mental chatter would just go absolutely crazy.
So I'd take myself and walk a cemetery and you'd be like, okay, you're not dead, get back up and get to work, right?
That's why I watch some of those videos, like that's why I do, because it's like, it makes me feel so grateful for what I do. It's a reality check for me.
Yeah,
yeah, it is. It's a reality check and it makes me realize what other people go through. And I get to pray for them.
Yeah,
because I know that that has to be hard.
Absolutely. And I think my last thing that also piggybacks on pre-deciding is to focus on making the memory the priority.
Okay.
So What that looks like is, and I've talked about this with clients too, it could be a big trip that they have worked really hard for, whether it's planning in their schedule, whether it's producing to make the money to take their entire family abroad, whatever it is. Those things are fantastic. So after you've set the structure to accomplish the goal, we have to switch into the memory being the priority, which means, are you actually present when you are seeing your kids at Disneyland? Do you remember their faces? Do you remember them seeing Mickey and Minnie for
the first time? Do you remember that? Are you awake? Are you alive? Are you prioritizing the memory over checking off the thing on the to-do list?
So most people are going to say, well, of course, yeah, I'm not checking it off, but what happens? Because a lot of times you don't actually remember it that way, right? You, you think you will, but you don't. And once you say that it's this, it's this balance, you let the things that are back here that aren't in your present moment keep talking to you. It's like the boulders you're still dragging. What is
it? Yes, absolutely. Well, part of it is we're so in a rush to move on to the next thing. So a lot of times I feel like once you've accomplished the securing of the trip, the going on the trip, achievers are already onto the next thing. What's the next goal I'm accomplishing? And so they don't actually live in the current accomplishment. So even think about crossing a million for the business. Okay, well you cross a million, you look at the number on DI, and then you're like, oh, I hit a million. And then you go home
and you do what? Like you probably don't even remember. Right. You probably don't, that's what I'm saying about prioritizing the memory. You probably don't even remember. And I think a lot of high achievers don't place importance on memories because it feels self-indulgent. It feels like if they actually soaked in the goodness of the thing that they're working for that they might not do it again. I might get so comfortable here. I might get so happy with the memory and the gratitude that I won't keep pushing myself. A lot of times the pushing of yourself does not,
it doesn't always, not a lot of times, it just doesn't always come from a good place.
You know we this is actually interesting 1 of the things that you'll tell your clients I hear you do this and I love it because I have to hear it because I'm that person I'm that person who in my head my head's going a million miles an hour and I'm thinking about all the different things that I want to do that I want to achieve and How I'm gonna make it happen and creativity is just flying off the hook so I have to slow myself down to be present and You'll tell clients to celebrate And I
think that's such a weird thing sometimes, it's like, my coach told me to celebrate. Yeah. And you're like, no, because you're telling them, it's not just enough to be like, I hit a million, cool, remember that. You're saying, no, go 10X, now go carve out time with that person that you love that helped you get there or with your team or whatever else and go celebrate that thing that just happened so that you can build a memory about that and make some sort of, you know, you're changing your environment, is it more or less what happened.
And you and I did this just recently when we launched the lab. We haven't even had people coming in yet. We just completed the work of getting it all done. We done the shop with me, with you, it was just cool. And the stuff was out there. And you and I were like, let's go get a lobster dinner. Let's go make that all happen. We had actually, you had booked that all for us prior to that call.
Yes.
And it was a way of anchoring that. And honestly, I remember that. I remember that because even though we weren't celebrating some monetary goal or whatever else, it was a feat to get through all that, to build that, to produce something for Dennis that we really love.
And
I love that you're that kind of person who you are, you're magical that way. You love to build memories around things like that.
Well, there's a very specific reason for it. It is very hard to integrate it into your identity if you haven't stopped to create a memory around it, right? So that, you forget you're a person who can do really hard things when you don't celebrate the fact that you're a person who could do really hard things. It's onto the next, onto the next. And so somehow we get into this loop of everything never being good enough because you've never reinforced to yourself that the things that you're doing are enough.
That's actually pretty deep. I love that.
Great. Goodbye. That would be it. Yeah.
Gotta go, guys. Gotta go. Well, I do think that's a good chunk of things for people to kind of simmer on, I love that. That was a, I mean, really what we're getting at, if you had to encapsulate it, is what? And we're talking about this work-life balance thing which we've kind of really redefined. How does a person enjoy the business and fruits of that business flow?
So my answer is that it gets to be good enough. It gets to be enough. It may not be everything that you want, everything that you have currently right now today, you may have bigger goals for the practice, you may have different body goals for yourself. I wanna look a certain way, I want different metrics for your bank account. You can have all of that and today can still be good enough. Right, you can look at your team that you currently have and this may not be the team that crosses over the finish line with you
at the million dollar mark, the 5000000 dollar mark, but today they're the people who are there with you, who are helping you, and that gets to be enough today. We get to be thankful for that.
Right. Right.
And so it's like, I don't like the word, it's not that I don't like the word gratitude, but I've always had a difficult time connecting with it because the way it's always been given to us is sit down with your journal and write 10 things that you're grateful for, even if you're not grateful for them. Because if you say you're grateful for them, hopefully eventually you'll get to feel it. So you sit down with your paper. This is the voice I use when I'm so annoyed by dumb things. And you're like, I am so grateful for
this warm cup of coffee. And as you're writing it down in your head, you're like, I don't give a shit about this. But
I hate Sally. Right?
Like, yeah, because there's other things that you're thinking about. If usually driven people identify problems and we want to work on the problems. So we're not just sitting around looking at the rabbits and our hot coffee so thankful for all of them. We're not. Yeah. And these conversations are usually not geared towards us. So we feel like we're weird because we don't have a lot of gratitude for things because we recognize a lot of problems.
What's synthetic, it's usually based upon a comparison actually,
right? Exactly.
Which isn't all bad, but it can't be the only way that you come to gratitude.
Yes, it's very hollow, right? It's very hollow to be in your house and you're like, I realize that I've been given so much, but I don't feel that way. Well, at least I'm not a starving child in a third world country, and then you pick yourself back up and you try and get out there, right? So, I don't... Those things have just never connected with me. But what I can look at is my day-to-day, and what I can say, what comes easy for me to say is thank you, which is gratitude, but that's not the way
we're taught to do it, right? So I can say thank you to you for showing up every day for, you know, Vitas far, you drive every single day. Thank you to Dylan for sitting here doing this podcast and listening to things for hours on end and then flying back to Denver and being exhausted tonight. Can I actually feel thankful for people who do an amazing job to help support us, our lives, our vision? You know, patience at the practice. Thank you for choosing us. Thank you for spending your money here. Right? When you really can just
say like, well, who would I say thank you to? You can actually probably find a lot of things besides your hot cup of coffee. You know?
That warm sourdough that you made. I mean, you're thankful for that.
It's delicious.
I'm with you. And I think It's actually a really beautiful thing to think about that it is enough and especially in a world that sells you just 1 more thing. Right? It's not even like you have to have all this. It's just you need 1 more thing. Yeah. So it's good.
All right. Well, bye guys.
Wait, move on.
Gotta go.
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