Questioning Authority: Q&A with Leading Authorities for Entrepreneurial Excellence

From Near-Death to Renewal: Conquering Burnout and Embracing Life's Challenges with Dr. Jeff Norman

• Scott Vatcher • Episode 14

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What happens when a catastrophic car accident shatters your life and leaves you temporarily dead? Join us on Questioning Authority as Dr. Jeff Norman shares his gripping journey from the brink of death to battling kidney failure and enduring years of dialysis. Through this harrowing experience, Dr. Norman faced severe burnout, leading to an emotional and physical collapse. His story not only underscores the profound impact of burnout but also offers invaluable insights and strategies for overcoming it.

Burnout is an epidemic, especially for healthcare professionals and small business owners juggling multiple stressful roles. Dr. Norman and I dissect the factors leading to burnout and the importance of redefining success beyond material gains. We discuss finding joy in life's simple pleasures, recognizing the signs of burnout, and the transformative power of living in alignment with core values. Dr. Norman introduces his book and workbook designed to help readers navigate and conquer burnout, providing practical resources to regain control of their lives.

The latter part of our conversation shifts to the profound role of personal growth through life's adversities. We talk about healing relationships, removing societal masks, and embracing challenges to foster resilience and empathy. Dr. Norman shares the significance of daily rituals and investing in oneself for continual development. We conclude with inspiring steps to rediscover lost dreams and define success on your own terms. Don't miss this heartfelt and enlightening discussion that offers a roadmap to living a fulfilling life.

Takeaways

  • Take control of your life and make decisions that align with your values and goals.
  • Ensure that you have sufficient rewards, both financial and emotional, for your efforts.
  • Build a supportive community of like-minded individuals who share your values and provide mutual support.
  • Seek fairness in your personal and professional relationships.
  • Align your actions with your core values to maintain a sense of integrity and fulfillment.
  • Manage work overload by prioritizing self-care and setting boundaries.
  • Practice gratitude and focus on the miracles in everyday life. Practice gratitude and look for miracles in everyday life
  • Nurture healing relationships that see your potential
  • Let go of misinterpretations from childhood and rediscover lost dreams
  • Define success on your own terms
  • Establish daily rituals that uplift and fulfill you
  • Invest in yourself and prioritize personal growth

Chapters

00:00
Introduction

02:34
The Start of Dr. Jeff Norman's Journey

06:25
The Seven Steps to Overcoming Burnout

10:52
Identifying Burnout

14:51
The Burnout Inventory

24:17
Life is Hard

32:27
Step 1: Seeing the Miracles of Everyday Life

34:23
Seeing Miracles in Everyday Life

36:36
Healing Relationships

40:11
Removing the Mask

43:41
Recovering Lost Dreams and Finding New Dreams

52:25
Defining Success and Designing Your Life

55:21
Daily Rituals

59:24
Investing in Yourself

Speaker 1:

I'm Scott Vatcher, the host of Questioning Authority, where I question authority figures about health, wealth and relationships. This episode is brought to you by theauthoritycocom, helping health professionals be seen as the go-to authority in their community. I hope you enjoy this episode. Awesome, welcome to the Questioning Authority Podcast. I'm your host, scott Vatcher, and I'm here to question authority figures in the space of health, business and relationships to help you, the listener, achieve greater authority, success and fulfillment both in your life and in your business, and I've got a fantastic host. I'm the host. A fantastic guest with me on the show today, dr Jeff Norman. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2:

Well, thanks, scott, and by saying fantastic guest, now I got to prove that correct. You should have said I've got some slacker here, and then it would have been easier for me to impress somebody.

Speaker 1:

This is very true, and that's actually my very first question to you If somebody's listening to this right now and they say, oh, am I going to give the next 30 to 40 minutes of my time to this interview, or am I going to go to the next one, or am I going to skip? Am I going to listen to my favorite music? Why would I give my next chunk of my life that I'll never get back again to this show chunk of my life that I'll never get back again to this show? What are you going to bring?

Speaker 2:

to the audience members. I'll tell you what I can bring is, is, is unlike, unlike the rest of the world. I'm going to tell the truth. No, that sounded mean. You know what. You know me enough now to know that that I'm going to speak from the heart, and what I'm going to tell are going to be things that changed my life and moved me along. By the end of this thing, I'm going to make available some resources to people that'll be worthwhile in them, helping move them along and change their lives to live what they've always wanted to live, be who they've wanted to be, instead of living someone else's dream of what success is all about. So how's that?

Speaker 1:

Fantastic? Yeah, absolutely, and you've written many books, but the one that I want to dive into the topic that I'm looking to really dive deep into today because I think, as the listeners, as healthcare professionals and small business owners burnout. It is such a massive thing that's happening in the world today and it is scary what it can do to you, and that's where we're going to start out. You know you've got a book called Overcoming Burnout Seven Steps to Becoming Passionately Engaged in your Life, and so I want to dive deep, first of all, into what started that process. So tell me what happened on the 5th of January 2012.

Speaker 2:

You're going to make me cry right out of the gate with this one, brother. Well, my story really starts in 2002 when I was involved in a catastrophic car accident and in that crash I was pronounced dead and I was gone for about 20 minutes and, coming back, coming to, extricated myself from the vehicle. And that was a life-changing event because up to that point I was really Superman. I could do anything. I was at the height of my career and from that crash I became sort of a delicate flower. Within a year of that crash my kidneys failed and I was told if I didn't have a transplant or go on dialysis I was going to I would die. Two years later I ran five triathlons on those same kidneys. I couldn't, I couldn't buy into the fact there was nothing I could. I could do about it, that I that I had no control over it. But you know, after nine good years on those kidneys, nine good, healthy years they did finally give up the ghost, and that was really the 5th of January.

Speaker 2:

I pulled into my office before everyone else, like I normally did. I like to get there half an hour. Even now. I like to go in half an hour before everyone else. I don't turn the lights on in my office. I let the sunlight come in and I just get ready for the day.

Speaker 2:

Well, I was there a half hour early and I pulled in in my truck, I shut it off and the thought of climbing out of that vehicle and going in and managing that clinic I had five practitioners working there and we had a busy 14 employees it was just busy and I managed, and I saw patients. The thought of getting out to do that was more than I could bear and I had never experienced anything like it before. And this was before I got my sister's kidney in an ovary. So it was all me. It was all me and I just started to cry. I mean, I really sobbed and it was just out of my control.

Speaker 2:

And so I got myself, you know, uh, pulled back together, hoping that no one would pull in the parking lot before I was done. And I pulled myself together and I called my nephrologist and explained to him what was going on and, uh, I was evidently near the end, the kidneys had shut down and and he wanted to put me in the ICU. I refused to go in, but I went into work and promised him for the weekend I would lay around the house better than lay around the ICU. And then Monday I started dialysis. So that was the plan and for me that was really life changing to know that physically, emotionally, spiritually, I was done, I was done, I had nothing else to give.

Speaker 1:

Hence burnout how much, yeah, how much looking back on that now with hindsight of course, as a you know 2020. How much of minus the car accident of your end stage kidney disease when it happened in 2012,. How much of that do you think was directly related to straight up burnout?

Speaker 2:

Do you know, I think quite a bit of it was just the whole idea of what everyone experiences or may experience in burnout. You're just burning the candle from both ends. You're trying to say yes to everybody, you're trying to do everything and handle everything and I wasn't doing the things that I needed to do for me and so Burnout. The book is really those seven steps. That was my journey of coming back from being done. You know, I did go in and I did get a kidney transplant, but that didn't fix the burnout Physically.

Speaker 2:

It actually added some additional hurdles, some additional trials, but what it did was sort of tell me that I had a breaking point and so in that respect it was a blessing, right, that hardship was a gift and I was able to take a step back and say, how am I going to fix this? Completely unhappy now. I've always loved what I did. I love the people that worked for me. We were a family, but I'm just, I just, I'm done. I could, just I could give the key to somebody, walk away, so I had to fix that, I had to fix that, and so this is really a piece of my heart. It's the journey myself. Now you can read my book in a couple of hours.

Speaker 1:

You probably got through it in 90 minutes, but the exercises yes, I did Probably about two hours, and I would highly recommend you do it as a free download, don't you?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so what I've done was we created the book itself, and so this is what it looks like, but we've given a free download in a workbook fashion. So if you print it, I think it prints out to be 60 or 70 pages long and it's designed as a workbook so that as you read, you can take notes, write down thoughts and impressions, and at the back of every chapter there is a list of things for you to do to figure out how you can utilize that chapter. What is that step going to mean to you in overcoming your own burnout? And really, more than living, overcoming the burnout, surviving it, learning to live passionately engaged. What is really success to you? All the things we forgot right, all the things we sacrificed because this was the pathway to success. Somebody else gave me the journey, somebody else gave me the definition, and I've said this a thousand times along the way.

Speaker 2:

I was told a big house, a Mercedes Benz and a lot of money was success, when in reality, most of us just want to spend time with our kids. Nothing wrong with the Mercedes, the big house, the money. I've had it all. I downsized, I sold the Mercedes. I still miss it, but I sold the Mercedes. I'm telling you I love those cars, but it was the big drug dealer one, it was a rocket ship, it was just. You know, it was wonderful and so that stuff didn't really bring me joy and happiness.

Speaker 2:

It was just made the good stuff better, so I had to redefine what that meant to me, and I did that. I did that.

Speaker 1:

So just so people know it's drjeffnormancom, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

D-R dr, just with no period.

Speaker 2:

Dr jeff normancom, you can also go in easier ways, I think, if you go to the laughter guru umcom, which is why I don't want to get into that story how that got started. But yeah, it was like it was. We go ahead.

Speaker 1:

I'll just say you got started, it stuck, so I trademarked it yeah, and I believe, uh, in the pre-show we talked about, uh, the fact that you've written, I think, five books or or almost finishing, and, and you know, numerous books over the over the years and and one of them is on laughter, um, yeah, so, you know, check that stuff out as it comes out. Uh, we'll put as much as we can in the show notes. Today is definitely going to be about burnout. So when we think of burnout, I think it gets confused.

Speaker 1:

I think, especially for healthcare practitioners, it is busy, it is stressful. We do probably have more stresses on our plates than most other business owners, because one, we're running a business that usually we don't have any idea of what we're doing. Yeah, you know, we got into it to help people, but we didn't realize that we actually need to be, we need to have many, many hats on, and so burnout is this kind of enigma, this elusive thing that people think that they might have or think that they're going down that route, but, in your case, ended up with a significant health damage. How can we, as listeners, go through a process, ask ourselves questions or look at our lives and see if burnout is on the radar? Because I'm sure there's a continuum of burnout and it can get worse and worse over time and we can leave it be until it really can destroy our lives. There's something in the book, what is it called? Maslach, maslach. I say Maslach, is it?

Speaker 2:

called Maslach. Maslach, it's the Maslach. I say Maslach, but it could be Maslach. I can't tell you which is the right way.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that thing burnout inventory and you've got in the book. Let's discuss a little bit about that.

Speaker 2:

The first one I believe, um, lack of control, yeah, so. So this, this inventory was created, um, the creator being maslach and I feel bad, I can't think of her first name right now but she did it for primarily for business. Burnout was what what her research was on and you know, when you read it, you go, well, this is my whole life, it's not just business. So, yeah, the first one is a lack of control and, and it's funny, some of the stuff we were talking and when you read it, you go, well, this is my whole life, it's not just business. So, yeah, the first one is a lack of control and it's funny, some of the stuff we were talking about before the show, some of the things I did last year, it was really about just taking back some control in my life.

Speaker 2:

So everyone understands the young person with diabetes who won't take their medications and the only reason they did is because it was the only thing in their life they could control. Feeling like we don't have any control in our lives is really debilitating to us as human beings. We need to feel like we have some say in what happens in our day-to-day. We need to have some control over the decisions that are made, and before we know it, it's really common, especially in the healthcare field, where we got into it to help people. You know there are four divisions in every business. We got in it for production. That's the only thing we want. We want to serve people. We don't want to do finance and accounting, we don't want to do marketing, we don't want to do HR, we don't want to manage any of that.

Speaker 2:

In fact, we're not most of us any good at it, and so we spend all of our energy trying to do the garbage we're not good at, and then, by the time we get to the production which we're good at and love, we got nothing left to give.

Speaker 2:

And, as you know, every interaction we have with patients, if you're doing it right, you're giving a piece of yourself away. So you better have ways to refill that bucket so that not only do you have something to continue to give, but so that you have something to give back to yourself, to your family and really, when it comes down to it, think about this. Money is the number one reason we practice. We have to take care of our families first and foremost, and if we go to work and we don't get paid, paid, we don't get to keep doing it because we cannot support ourselves. So I know that sounds dirty, but that's the truth. We've got to have some control in our lives and if business is wiping us out, if in life we don't feel like we have any control, it will deplete all of your energy and all of your passion in a hurry it's so true.

Speaker 1:

Um again, we discussed this in a bit in the pre-show and it is a business you know and we don't get we really don't get much training in it and it's super important for us to remember that and start learning. We don't have to know everything, we don't have to be jeff bezos, we don't have to be elon musk, but we do have to have some basic understandings of those key principles for us to feel like we've got some control, because that's super important when we can't put our heads in the sand and just pretend that that stuff doesn't exist and I'll just keep serving people and it'll all work out, because lots of times it doesn't.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you can serve yourself right into bankruptcy.

Speaker 1:

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:

There has to be some mechanisms so that there's a fair exchange and you know what you can't give away to people that need it. If you're not making some money, that's right. No-transcript.

Speaker 1:

And that leads directly into number two of this burnout inventory. Is that insufficient reward?

Speaker 2:

That's right. You know, if it's whether it's work or it's in life if you don't feel like it's worth it, if the relationship you have with your spouse or your significant other does not pay off, so that you don't feel like you get something out of it, then it's not going to last. When you go to work, if you're serving and giving of yourself and you don't get to take something home at the end of the day, you know your significant other is going to not feel really great. When you come home and say, hey, honey, I took care of 50 people today, she says that's great, can we buy some groceries? I mean, that doesn't work. So there's got to be a sufficient reward.

Speaker 2:

Now, reward comes not only in the form of money, but it comes in the form of love and feedback and kudos and respect. Respect's a big one for me. If a patient doesn't respect me, we're our relationship's done. If if a friend, or if there's a relationship or we don't have a mutual respect, meaning we just sensitive each other and appreciate each other, I can't continue. I have a real problem with that. I think it came from childhood. If I don't trust you, I don't want to be around you. So yeah, but lack of lack, of lack of sufficient reward is very important. So don't always think money. Don't always think money.

Speaker 1:

No, absolutely not. Which, again, perfect, lead into the next one. So we've got lack of control, whether it be in our personal lives or our business, lack of or insufficient reward systems in place. And the third one is lack of community.

Speaker 2:

Right, you know, it's been long established that the number one thing that keeps people in their jobs, at workplaces, is friendship. That's more important than money or benefits or anything else, but lack of community. You know, during COVID, what was one of the biggest problems that people faced was isolation. Right, we need community. We're pack animals. We're pack animals. We need to touch each other. We need to animals. We're pack animals. We need to touch each other, we need to hug, we need to spend time together, and mostly it's about people that we share common beliefs with common bonds. It doesn't mean we have to agree on everything, because I don't think that's healthy at all, but we definitely need it.

Speaker 1:

So lack of community is a big one. The fourth one is absence of fairness.

Speaker 2:

Absence of fairness, and that's a funny one. Fair of fairness, Absence of fairness Now that's a funny one. Fair we used to have a thing on our fridge that our children had to read every day a little sign, and it said fair doesn't mean everyone gets the same. Fair means everyone gets what they need, and life isn't fair. It wasn't fair that someone caused a car crash and changed the trajectory of my life. Fair just doesn't happen. But what is leave that word behind fairness? But in truth, if everything just feels wrong, it's probably not a healthy relationship, it's not a healthy situation, and so that's where I think the word fairness is okay to use. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1:

Yes, yeah, I think it's more of that feeling. If you constantly feel like life isn't fair rather than just accepting no it isn't, I need to do with it what I can, and sometimes I'm going to be on the upswing of the fair side, and sometimes I'm going to be on the downside of it, and such is life. Yeah, that's true. Number five is conflict in values.

Speaker 2:

Conflicting values. That's a big one. When we we hire somebody in here, we bring them in. We say, look, these are our core values. How do you what? How do you feel about these? Because we've learned to hire and fire based on core values makes it real easy. Some of our core values at work is that we are here on time and we're dependable. That's important to us. But core values in any relationship or anywhere else in life, um, we have to be, we have to live congruently with our core values and you know, it can be anything from having having friends that are doing things that you don't agree with to having Well, I'll tell you.

Speaker 2:

I'll tell you an example. Um, I had a good friend in chiropractic college, so this is 30 plus years ago. I admired this man very much. Monday came and he came in. He said guess what? My wife and I, we went to target, we filled our cart with all of these things that we were putting in our new apartment and we went and they rang it up and they forgot to charge us for half of the stuff. We paid it and went out of the car, loaded up, drove away in a hurry. It was like big score. I never had respect for that guy again. My core value would not allow me to do that. And now this man that I really I held in high esteem, he fell and I don't think we were ever the same kind of friends again because my core values didn't mesh with his Same thing. As if it would have been me that left without paying, that would have eaten at me because it was against my core value.

Speaker 1:

Does that make sense?

Speaker 2:

So, when we're living in congruent with our core values, whether it be with a relationship with a partner, with friends or even at work, we're being asked to do things that we just don't feel like are quite right.

Speaker 1:

it's not going to last very long, it'll eat away at us and we will lose all that energy and passion that we need to survive. And number six is probably the one that most people think about or would resonate with when they think about burnout is a work overload and that's exactly right.

Speaker 2:

You know, when we look at the average practitioner today, I went to Vegas to train a woman in a certain thing for a company and I got there and that girl was working from sunup till sundown, six and a half days a week. She was killing herself trying to make this practice work and she had employees that she was paying more than she was taking. It was just a bad situation and this girl, after a very short term, was already on the downside. So work overload we cannot be creative, we cannot 10x, we cannot grow exponentially if we're in the work overload. Working less actually will help you grow. You know it's funny.

Speaker 2:

When I started on dialysis most of my patients didn't know I had any kidney problems.

Speaker 2:

So when I started on dialysis I just started leaving the office at 3 pm and going over to the hospital and spending my evening on them hooked up to a machine. By cutting my hours from 5.30 down to 3, my practice grew, and by cutting my hours from 5.30 down to 3, my practice grew. So it's not only unhealthy to have work overload, to not fill the bucket, to not remember what was passionate and remember why you do the things that you do right, Because our jobs are hard. People don't realize how physical and emotional and spiritually draining they are to do what we do. And so if you don't feel that bucket because you're always working or worrying about work or taking care of some aspect of work, you're going to burn out in a hurry. That you're right. That, to me, is really the biggest one, and that plays into us spending all of our time in HR and marketing and finance and all of that stuff that we suck at. And we're spending all of that stuff that we suck at and we're spending all of our good creative energy doing those things and what have we got left for the people who are counting on us?

Speaker 2:

to change their lives Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

That's what feeds us right, yeah? So let's just quickly review these burnout inventory. As an overview, we've got lack of control, insufficient rewards, lack of community, absence of fairness, conflict in values and a work overload. So if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, I feel like I might have all of those, then definitely go and get Jeff's book, because inside the book there's a list of 22 questions that you can ask yourself to really dive deeper into. Do I have burnout? Because I think that's a big question a lot of health practitioners do have. So go and do that.

Speaker 1:

Because one of the things that struck me the most in your book is just that phrase life is hard. It's just that simple. And you know you've had some challenges and struggles in your life and in reality we all have, because I fully agree, you know kind of taught me that life is supposed to be great and perfect and everything works out, man. When it doesn't, it's that much more difficult. But if you just take this on as a phrase, life is hard. You know, I think the is that the monks say life is suffering or something along that lines. The Buddhists, so what do you think? The Buddhists, so what do you think? I know it sounds a little bit pessimistic, and you know that. How did, as that phrase or saying sort of helped you, guide you on your journey through everything you've been through?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there's no doubt, and you know, before I go down that path, I would say those principles we just talked about. That's the most boring part of the whole book, if you ask me the questions that follow up after that. Now we're getting into something. Now we get into this idea that life is hard, and I think you already nailed it.

Speaker 2:

People that have this idea that it's supposed to be easy or if it's not easy, I'm doing the wrong thing. That's completely wrong. Nobody grows when things are easy. You know you've got a chicken trying to peck its way out of a shell. If you help it, it dies. It can't survive. If you help it out, it's got to have that hardship in order to grow, develop, change and strengthen. And that's the way we are as human beings. If life is easy all the time, we don't amount to much. But what's important, in my mind at least, when we leave this planet, when our expiration date comes, I want to be somebody that was worth knowing in the end. And that can't happen if life is easy for me every moment and I think that's silly to even expect to be there I really believe it's by design that life is hard, so that we can grow and develop and change.

Speaker 2:

And I try and look at everything and say, look, this really sucks, but there's a gift here. Where's the gift? I buried my dad six weeks ago and it was harder than I thought it was going to be. I thought he's 87. This won't be as bad. As you know, burying mom was 15 years ago. It sucked, but everything's a gift. It's just hard to find that gift sometimes and, um, I think we need to. We need to be a little more mature in that attitude. Now, I'm not I will never say that I'm a grownup but I think we need to have a little maturity in some of these areas. And that is and not expect things to be easy all the time. Just take it on the chin. It doesn't mean you don't have down days. It doesn't mean you don't feel horrible sometimes. But one thing that I never did through all of my hardships is I never said why me? I think the more appropriate thing is to say why not me? What's required of me now? Because when we learn to say those words, we can actually turn this hardship into the greatest gift that we have ever had.

Speaker 2:

Now. Getting in that car accident, going through kidney failure, transplant, dialysis, all those things I went through. I wouldn't give that up for a million dollars. I wouldn't pay 10 cents to do it again and I hope I never go back. But I'm telling you it turned out to be one of the greatest gifts of my whole life. It changed me fundamentally. Not all at once, but day by day, line upon line, precept. Not all at once, but day by day, line upon line, precept. I told you I have an ovary, precept upon precept. I have become a different person and now my ability to share and to sucker you know that word sucker normally comes out of the good book, that's where we hear that word. But to sucker some means to run to their aid and in my mind it involves physically or emotionally, wrapping your arms around them and nurturing. I can do that differently now.

Speaker 2:

Some years ago I had this young lady she was in her 20s and her brother that were regulars in my clinic and I really really enjoyed seeing these two people. They were both college students. She came in one day really really upset because her neck, you know. You know, sometimes your neck just gets all jacked up. That's the technical medical term. I believe it's pissed off. That's the medical term and it was just one of those things and know that takes a number of days to get right sometimes. And she was really really whining about it, tears in her eyes. This is so hard and I finally couldn't take it and I said I'm glad your neck hurts and it stopped her in her tracks. I'm glad your neck hurts. It is going to change you as a person. You are going to be able to be there for somebody who needs. You're going to have more empathy than you've ever had. You know some real suffering.

Speaker 2:

I didn't see that girl for three or four months after that. She was mad at me, but I'm telling you it's the truth and sometimes the truth is hard, scott, and every one of these things that I've gone through in my story is only unique because it's mine. Everybody has their own story. Everybody goes through stuff, everybody loses people, everybody gets sick, Everybody has hardships. And there's an old Italian proverb that says if we all went to the town square to exchange problems, we'd walk Dang it. I told you I'm a wimp. We would walk home with our own because we but we all have that story. So I'm not unique in that and I write from a perspective of only trying to show the joy and the change.

Speaker 2:

But, yeah, the hardship, and sometimes my story's a little different for some, because I get to be both the doctor and the patient in some of the things I've done. But, scott, you got your own story. You could have written my book as well. Everybody's there. So knowing you're not alone in the crap you're going through is nice. When the business is struggling, it's nice to know you're not the only one who's going through it at that moment or who has gone through it. It's just nice to know. So there you go. That's the gospel according to Jeff.

Speaker 1:

It's true, because in today's world of social media, you know, we get the highlight right and you think that everyone's life is so, so perfect and that's, you know, back to lack of community. And community isn't, you know, facebook. Community is that person you can go have a chat, have a beer, have a soda, have a something, and really just chat, download. What life is, you know? Because we all no doubt about it, it's. I think it's important for us to sometimes take a step back or out of our own lives and look at it from an outside point of view and realize that it's just life, and sometimes it's beautiful and sometimes it's shit. Yeah, and it's far. And there's no way that it's always going to be beautiful, because even that, you wouldn't even know what it meant. If it was always beautiful, it wouldn't always be beautiful.

Speaker 2:

it's a paradox would be the point. Yeah, yeah, you're right. And what's the point? So you know that that opposition in all things there's got to be good and bad, and healthy and sick and and and joy and and happiness it's. But you're right, that's a big part of it, and part of it is we've been conditioned over the last 30 or 40 years that those things shouldn't happen. And it's not the case. And nobody goes looking for problems.

Speaker 2:

Don't, certainly don't do that, because they're going to find you. They're going to find you and you just got to know. You know you have your support team. We talk about these kinds of things in the book, right? Who are the people you let in and who are the people you let go? Who are the ones you hang on to and they're the real support team and who are the people who are holding you back or dragging you down, and there's a whole list of the kind of people that'll do that. So you'd have to learn to recognize those and you can't always get rid of them. Sometimes they're family but you can certainly do your best to to to keep yourself, uh, only with the people who are going to brace you up and that you are going to be willing to brace up yourself that was a really negative segment, wasn't it?

Speaker 1:

no, no, it wasn't it. I I think it's important, I think, you know, I think that's going to be the biggest takeaway. We haven't even gotten into the seven steps. We kind of touched on a few, so we're going to go through some of this.

Speaker 1:

We're not going to be super doom and gloom, but I really wanted to dive deep into what is burnout, because I believe there's too many of us, particularly healthcare practitioners, that are really burned out and just not willing to accept it and then. So now we're going to go to the nice side, we're going to go to the fun side of the show and we're going to talk about some of these seven steps. We're going to dive deep. So if you feel like there's something not right, go get that book, do the questions. You know, like you said, the boring part. Just check in, check in on yourself. Those 22 are could be life-changing. Let's, let's go into the seven steps of the first one, seeing the miracles of everyday life.

Speaker 2:

Is that like?

Speaker 1:

is that like a gratitude journal?

Speaker 2:

You know, in the end, one of the things, one of the things I have you do in the exercises is write, write down the miracles you see, and there is in a lot of the fact. I tell you, if it sounds like a gratitude journal, it is, but it's actually a little bit not, because it's easy to say. You know, I'm grateful for the home I have, I'm grateful for my wife, I'm grateful for my children, I'm grateful for the relationship we have, I'm grateful that I have, I'm grateful for my wife, I'm grateful for my children, I'm grateful for the relationship we have, I'm grateful that I have my health. But when you sit down and you start thinking about the miracles I don't believe in coincidences, only miracles and when you start looking at some of the things in your life and you know, I wish I could show you my office. We have the whole, the whole Eastern side of our office is glass and we have the most incredible view and what I could see out my window.

Speaker 2:

I live in the High Plains Desert, above Las Vegas, just in southern Utah, and it's volcanic rock and it's desert and it's dramatic and beautiful and the sun was shining in the distance. There was rain. What a miracle, how beautiful life is. The miracle that through hardships we can find joy, the miracle that that through hardships and pain you can have peace in your heart. You know, they call it makeup sex for a reason. And isn't that the best sex, right?

Speaker 1:

I agree it is.

Speaker 2:

Because you have gone to a dark place, you've had struggles and you've had pain and often, hopefully, you don't have to apologize for much. If you're careful, you can just say I'm apologized for it, I lost my temper, but be careful not to say any words you have to apologize for but. But you've just had hardship and now you get to come to that beautiful side and and wrap your arms around each other and that's a miracle. Makeup sex is a miracle. I've never said that before tonight, but it is that that. That that shows you all of life is a miracle.

Speaker 2:

Just look at what we go through, look who we have and, and you know, just driving to work and having the lights work out for you, I get all green lights. What a miracle. But you've got to start seeing things in a new way, because what holds your attention holds you. And if you look for the bad side of your day, it's going to be a bad day. If you look for the good in your day, it's going to be good. If you look for the good in your day, it's going to be good.

Speaker 2:

If you look for the bad in your partners, your partner's not going to be really much of a catch. But if you look for the good boy, you're going to say how blessed am I, what a miracle. This person wants to be with me and now you get to write in your gratitude journal not just the miracle, but how grateful you are for them. That's what I think about seeing miracles in everyday life. There's power because it changes your heart and predisposes you to all the really important things in life, which are gratitude, forgiveness, love, laughter and the beauty that surrounds us. It doesn't matter how bad things get. We can still find the beauty and the peace. There you go.

Speaker 1:

And you know, perfect in that. You know you probably see behind behind me. I've got so many different phrases and and things behind me, but yours is, it fits perfect here. Not all storms disrupt your journey. Some come to clear the path yeah, isn't that the truth?

Speaker 2:

yeah, isn't that the truth? So, uh, you know there are a lot, of, a lot of monk parables about that kind of thing, and they're always lovely to hear. But the other thing that I've always felt like is don't get too hung up on good times or bad times, because none of them come to stay. They've all come to pass. So hardships are not permanent, and this too shall pass, and this too shall pass, yep. So, where's the gift and how can I move on?

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. Number two is healing relationships. Now, I bet you we could probably speak for an hour on this, but tell me about the Michelangelo phenomenon.

Speaker 2:

You know I love that terminology. I wish I'd come up with it because I would be so proud of myself. But you know, the term healing relationship sounds like we're going to take relationships and heal them up, and that is. That is a good thing. But it's really not the focus of that step two. Step two is to look for the relationships in your life that are healing. Those are relationships that nurture you and and that's where we get into the kind of people we want to look for to maybe eliminate.

Speaker 2:

But the Michelangelo was a fact. If you remember the story, they say how did you create this out of a block of marble? And he just said I got the vision in my mind, I saw him in there and then I just removed everything that wasn't him, and there was the David. Michelangelo's life is really actually pretty impressive in more ways than just that. But if you have a person in your life who sees you not as you are but as you can become, you will become that person if you spend enough time with them. That's the Michelangelo effect. That's the relationship that heals you. That's a healing relationship, and you have the duty now to become that kind of a person in other people's lives. Don't see them as they are, but as they can become, and they'll become that person yeah, it's such a fresh perspective.

Speaker 1:

Like you said, on healing relationships, you tend to think of the fractured ones and what, yes, what I need to do to fix them, because there are a number of relationships that you talk about and most of them are, I think, fairly self-explanatory. We've got the gossip addict, we've got the drama queen, we've got the attention hog, we've got the emotional thief, we've got the. So there's a couple more now the belittler. I think we all know what those are, but here's a, here's a couple, there's one I can't even pronounce.

Speaker 2:

There's a big word in there.

Speaker 1:

There's a big word I can't. I don't, that's what I want to. I want to ask you. We got plastics, which I love, so plastics are one, so it's fake, right, so that one's. But here's the one I want to talk about, because I don't know what it is the ultra-crepidarian.

Speaker 2:

The ultra-crepidarians.

Speaker 2:

Oh I said it right. I did some research to find that word. I didn't make it up. I do make up words on occasion, but I did not make up that word.

Speaker 2:

The ultra-crepidarians they're the ones and we all know them. They always know what's right and they always know what's right and they always know the right way to do things and they're going to share that with you, whether you want them to or not, and oftentimes you may be an expert in the area. They're trying to counsel you and tell you how to do things. And I had a neighbor who is a prime ultra-crepitarian. She's a fine woman, she's a kind woman, but she drove me nuts and I often wondered how did her kids turn out so good? Because she wants to tell you how to walk and breathe and talk and she drove me nuts. She was a true ultra-crepidarian. And so you get advice from them long enough and it really it starts to tear away at your own self-esteem. Do you not believe I have it in me to take care of myself? Do you not believe that I can do these things? And yeah, that's the kind you don't want those in your life. They're no fun.

Speaker 1:

No, so all bunch of different ones there. I think most of us have an idea, but I've really wanted to dive a little bit further into that one. The ultra crepidarian folks. You haven't heard it before. You've heard it here now heard it now number three is removing the mask. Now, um, you talk about misinterpretations, and how particularly from age, from birth till 11 years old. Tell me about what you mean by misinterpretations, you know?

Speaker 2:

from birth to about age seven or 11, depending on who you read. Those are our formative years, where people that we trust, that love us the most, are trying to teach us how we're supposed to behave and interact in a society, how to be successful and how to be the kind of people we're supposed to be. Now we're looking at these lessons coming from them through the lens of a six-year-old, a four-year-old, an eight-year-old. So we're misinterpreting the lessons that are coming to us in the first place, but the lessons are coming to us from a person who had the same problem when they were six and seven and eight and 11. So their message is already skewed wrong. It's almost like the whisper that starts at the beginning of the line and by the time it gets to the end of the line, is something completely different. So we have taken these things, internalize them. They're very powerfully rooted in us, this idea of what a real, successful or proper human being is or should be and how I should act. And we put upon ourselves, I think, many times, restrictions from our true greatness. We put upon ourselves directions of who we should be, when that's not us at all, maybe. And we've got to learn to discover those things that are misinterpretations, maybe a good, even suggestion, but not us. And we've got to learn to let those go to really embrace who we are. We've got to find ourselves and that's how we do that.

Speaker 2:

You know, I love that idea of the mask, removing the mask. You know Eleanor Rigby, she kept her face in the jar by the door. If you remember the song from the Beatles and Billy Joel he sings about, we all, you know, have a face that we I was singing that the other day and now I can't repeat a single word of it. But listen to Billy Joel because he has a great, great description. It's called the Stranger, and we all, we go off deep into all of us sometimes. But we all have different faces that we wear. And the problem is sometimes we put on a mask in public or out with people because we think that's who we're supposed to be and we hide the part within us that's really divine, the part that really makes us special.

Speaker 2:

I was at a conference once and we were talking about Dr Fab this is one of Dr Fab's masterminds and I was sitting next to this woman who brought up this fact. She said you know what? I really don't ever let my true self out because I'm afraid people won't like the real me. I thought that's just so tragic. Her whole life is a fraud. So tragic, her whole life is a fraud. And I think we need to learn to embrace the real us and find who we truly are. And that's what that whole section is about is how do we peel away the layers that were put upon us and things that we believe that we should be, and so we kind of fake our way through things, for lack of a better word. And it's important to become who we really are, because then that's when we find joy, when you're comfortable in your own skin and you can be that person with anybody.

Speaker 1:

That's, that's freedom and in that chapter as well, you you talk about loving yourself and how important that is. And I've actually got a book in me, um, that hasn't it's so minusculely started, but it's it's called my first love and it's all about loving yourself, right and um, I think it's so important to love yourself and one of the major steps in that is to forgive yourself, to look back at your six-year-old self and forgive that little boy for getting it wrong because they didn't know any better. It's such a key factor to moving forward and unbelievably so these things are what cause burnout. It's absolutely mind blowing sometimes how something so simple but so difficult can create such a huge impact on our future self. So number four is recovering lost dreams and finding new dreams. So it's similar with looking back to our past selves and those dreams that we pushed down and and and just didn't give ourselves permission to express.

Speaker 1:

And you talk about there's eight steps to going after your dreams. I love numbers five and eight the best. Now go read the book for the other ones. But five and eight are change and take action and face your fears. I think they go hand in hand. What, when? When I discuss, when I mentioned those ones to you, what comes to mind why?

Speaker 1:

are they?

Speaker 2:

so important in finding your dreams. I, I, I really, I really do love those eight steps as well, and they, they do. Each one is intertwined with the next one. Like you say, you know change and take action. A lot of us see things that we'd like to do, or see problems or see whatever, but we don't ever make change, we don't ever take make the move. You know the sign that's behind me. I got another one out in the hallway that says take the leap, and it's got that big chasm and a guy trying to jump over. We don't take that leap.

Speaker 2:

And if you read that book, you're gonna at some point see the story where I went through all of these steps and I kept saying somewhere inside me are all the answers when am I supposed to be, what am I supposed to be doing, who's the me that down the road that I'm supposed to be? And I kept getting little pieces at a time, piece at a time. And when it finally came to me and I wrote it on a piece of paper, I looked at it and it was too big and it scared me and I opened the desk drawer, I put it under some papers and there it sat for 18 months because I was afraid to make the change. I was afraid to let go of what was comfortable. I was afraid to step that far out of my comfort zone and grow to become what that thing was. And that's a lot of what I think about. Make the change, make the leap, take the leap. You've just got to really take some stock and not be afraid to make change.

Speaker 2:

And then the next one, number eight Go ahead, go ahead. No, no. What were you going to say? Were you going to add something onto that?

Speaker 1:

I was just going to say you know, if you continue to do what you've always done, you're going to continue to have what you've always had.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, to get to a new place, you have to become someone new, don't you? The same level of things that you're doing got you to the level of success you are. You cannot rise above that by doing those same things. You have to have new things to get you to a new level of success, be it business, relationships, self-improvement, any of those things. You have to continue to grow and develop. So that's the change and grow thing for me.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and face your fears Hand in hand.

Speaker 2:

Baby, I'm telling you, if you can't face those fears head on, they will hold you back. Fear will rob you of everything that's beautiful in your life. Fear is the single biggest problem in the world Pride and fear, pride and fear, pride and fear. We can't be meek and we can't be brave, so face those fears. Say, yeah, this is scary as hell, I'm scared, but I'm going to do it anyway. And when you start living out of your comfort zone but I'm going to do it anyway. And when you start living out of your comfort zone, every day can be terrifying, but it becomes a rush to live outside your comfort zone, doesn't it? It does.

Speaker 1:

I'm an avid mountain biker. I'm not that good, but I do absolutely love it. And that's a. Feel your fear and do it anyway. When you're bound down a mountain at 45 K an hour not not a lot between you and big rocks, it's a. It puts you in the moment. It puts you in a different mind frame to. It helps me in every area of my life.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no absolutely it does, absolutely it does.

Speaker 1:

So how do you, how do you not let fear get in the way?

Speaker 2:

Well, you know, I think the first thing is to recognize that that's what's holding you back, and I really think that it ties back into some of the other things that we've talked about. We can be afraid of something. You know, being brave isn't the lack of fear, it's moving forward in spite of the fear. That's what being courageous is right. And I think we first have to recognize that it's fear that's holding us back and think about it. Even anger Every time someone gets angry, I'm convinced it's just unexpressed fear.

Speaker 2:

We haven't tapped into what we're afraid of. And now I'm angry, because that's easy to express anger, and so I think we just have to be aware of it. And then we have to look at the good side, I mean the upside. We've got to love ourselves enough to say I'm worth going after that, I'm worth stepping out of that bad relationship, I'm worth selling my practice and my home and moving to a new town and not knowing what I'm going to do. But that's what I feel I'm supposed to do and that's what I did three years ago, and it was liberating to face that fear and walk into it. And, man, it's nice to put your face in the sun and know that you feel that warmth, you walked out from that dark cloud of mediocrity and let that sun bake your face.

Speaker 1:

We have fears of everything. We have like even the opposite thing. We have a fear of failure but at the same time we have a fear of success. Fear of success, it's like how does that work? We fear it all. So one thing that's helped me more recently and again it might sound pessimistic, this we're going down what seems to be a pessimistic path, but it's truly not is the realization that no one cares. Is the realization that no one cares and I don't mean that in a negative way, but your life is your life and in all reality, even the people that are closest to you, they don't care. They'll support you in whether you're going to go there and fail or there and fail, or there and succeed. The people that matter which aren't many in reality, um are going to support you anyway. And the ones on social media and stuff who don't support you, they're just a keyboard warrior that say a cruel thing move on, you know it's all going to work out in the end.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I will tell you, when you start facing your fears fear of change is one of the big fears, right? So making the change, facing your fears, when you face your fears and start making changes, if you don't get a troll or two, you're not doing it right. Absolutely comfort zone. When you start having different successes, be it any of those things I just said you remind people of their failures and they will not like it. You just have to move forward and rise above that. Don't take it to heart and it might be someone very close to you. You just have to love them anyway and realize that they're not doing this to be mean, it's just something deep within themselves, and that you may just be the inspiration for that person to move on who's stuck in mediocrity as well. So I think you're exactly right, yep.

Speaker 1:

Number five is defining success and designing your life. So there's a lot to unpack here, but basically what I want to get across to the listeners, because time is getting on. I knew it would with us. I saw that early too. That's yeah, and I know you're a busy man, so I don't want to keep you for too long. What is success to you? What does that mean? You?

Speaker 2:

know, when you go on, when you go on the website, there's a little short clip. Did you happen to see that little video that's in there? And it's me, and I explained this thing and this is something I really believe, and that is this we have been sold a bill of goods. We've been told the pathway we should take and we've taken it, and we've sacrificed in many cases what was most important to us to go after, the things that we were told were important. So, whether we achieve that level of their success or not, we are unhappy and unfulfilled because that is not, ultimately, what's most important to us and we left behind those things.

Speaker 2:

So when you talk to people who hit their thirties, forties, fifties and now I'm 60, you ask them what brings you joy? What are you passionate about? Most of them can't not give you an answer. They've lost it, and so that chapter is about rediscovering those things, learning what it is that I'm doing. That is someone else's list of important things, someone else's hierarchy of value, someone else's definition of success, and you have to wipe that away before you can start to figure out what yours is. And when you figure that out, it's freedom and it's joy, and you can now be free to make things happen that you like. You don't have to be reminded to do the things that you love, that are most important to you. But if you've forgotten what those are, you'll feel empty, no matter what you do. You've got to rediscover those things. I don't want to drone down, but you're right, I'm keeping you too long. I told you I talk too much.

Speaker 1:

No, no. I think this is going to be of massive value for the listeners. So I'm sure, as we're saying, oh, we're talking too much, a lot of people listening are like no, you're not talking enough, we got to get you on again, but I think it's very true that we've got to look at success as not one thing.

Speaker 1:

Success is an individual thing. Like each of us, success can be 100% different. Your definition and my definition can be the exact opposite, and so one realizing it for ourselves, but others for realizing it for other people and not pushing our own agenda on them at the same time. Now, number six is super. Did you want to say something? No, no, because I'll just drone on more. Let's go ahead. Number six is, uh, daily rituals, and I think you know rome wasn't built in a day. You?

Speaker 1:

know, we all have rituals. Look at you know, if you, if you sat down and wrote down what you did on most mornings of the week, um, you're gonna have almost the same thing. And they're rituals. How do do we, how do we add in some good ones? What do we do different?

Speaker 2:

You know, that's one of those things. You've got to stop and sit down and think about your day, because most people don't think they have rituals but they do, and I think in the book I use that euphemism you know, for some people the ritual, the daily ritual sitting on the couch, reaching between the cushions and eating Cheetos they find that's the ritual, whether they know it or not. So rituals can either lift us up and help us grow or they can drag us down. So you just look at your day and what do you do commonly? Now, once you get that done, I think in order to grow, you've got to be very intentional about where you want to go. It's the old adage if you don't know where you're going, it doesn't matter what path you take. But if you want to grow and become something, I think rituals are very, very important and there are lots and lots of books that talk about it. We talk about some rituals in that, in my book. But I didn't want to, you know, take away from what people might want to come up with.

Speaker 2:

But for me, I'll tell you, my mornings, seven days a week, are the same. I get up early, I go out and I feed the two little monsters, my two little Yorkies and I sit down and they come and climb on my lap. I get my iPad out and I write in my gratitude journal the first thing in the day, and sometimes I write a long, long time and sometimes it's only 10 minutes, but I really try and look for those things that are really meaningful to me and that starts me off with the right frame of mind and then I always pick up a book that's going to help me grow. Now I'll be honest with you when I go to bed I read as well, but I read the last thing I read before I go to sleep is generally a zombie novel because I'm sort of messed up inside. But when I'm in the morning it's never that kind of book. It's always about growth and it might be in business, it might be in personal things and personal development, and I'm not an avid, avid, big, big super reader. But I average between 50 and 60 books a year that way and it just takes a little time every day. That little little change, that little bit of effort every day makes such a big difference.

Speaker 2:

So, even if you do you know the 5am club we talked about that you know Robin Sharma. I love his books and one of the things he loves to say is just get up an hour early before the sun gets up and spend 20 minutes doing something rigorously moving, some sort of exercise, and then give 20 minutes to something spiritual, which might be prayer, it might be meditation, it might be reading scriptures, and then it might be your gratitude journal. And then you give 20 minutes into self-growth, which might be a podcast like this. It might be instruction on video. It might be reading the books like I like to read. This, it might be instruction on video. It might be reading the books like I like to read.

Speaker 2:

And if I showed you my iPad, you'd see what a nerd I am, because I take notes on every book I read so that I can go back to that and relearn. And that's me. So those are the kind of things I'm talking about ritual things that you do every day. Now, it doesn't have to be something as structured as that. You'll see in the book that taking a nap is cathartic and it's very healthy. That can be a daily ritual. Prayer is a daily ritual, reading, singing, whatever you need to do, but if you look for things that lift you and fill your soul, fill your bucket up. Those are good rituals and you have to be intentional about doing it or they won't get done often enough.

Speaker 1:

I do the exact same thing. My reading at nighttime is vampires and all kinds of craziness. I'm glad I'm not alone you are not and all of my self-development at this stage in my life anyway, is all audiobooks and podcasts. So I listen to that and I physically read, just for some escapism. I think it's important and you know that's part of filling your bucket. The last one is investing in yourself and it is huge. It is such an important one that you know. I'll be honest, at times in my life I've forgotten that one. When I went to chiropractic school I prided myself I went to 80 seminars over a four-year period. That's, on average, every second weekend.

Speaker 1:

It was unbelievable the amount of investing in myself that I did and I continued that and I've done periods, but there have been a few periods in my life for years at a time where I forgot to keep investing in myself. So how do you like? Well, first of all, what is a white hot imperative? You?

Speaker 2:

mentioned that in your book. A white hot imperative yeah, that was coined by a friend of mine named Jim Naccarato. The man lives in South Lake Tahoe in a cabin that he bought, and when he realized he would never leave his cabin, he had to turn it into his home, so he added on to it. That's where he lives. Jim explains the White Hot Imper imperative is that one thing that just really makes everything else worthwhile. What is that thing that really makes you feel passionate, what is that thing that excites you, that fills up your bucket? And that's one of those things that most people can't say.

Speaker 2:

I know what it is anymore. It can be playing golf, it can be vacationing, it can be travel, it can be seminars and learning. It can be so many things. Pickleball is just all the rage. It can be playing pickleball, but it's usually about doing. It's about doing right. You got to do something, and it doesn't necessarily have to be any redeeming quality to it. It's just that thing that really puts a smile on your face. And so if you're having a rough week, it's all right, because tomorrow I'm playing pickleball.

Speaker 2:

That's what the white hot imperative is, and then you must institute that in your life. If it's travel. Obviously you can't do that every weekend most of us but maybe you get that vacation or two or three on the books and you know where you're going and you're planning that trip. That will feed you every day and every week and every month until you pull that off. So Whitehound Imperative is really important and it's difficult to find and it's okay if they change. I used to golf avidly. I had the membership at the country club. I haven't played only three rounds of golf in two years. So it can change because it just doesn't quite do it for me. My Harley Davidson did it for a long time. Now I'm getting old enough I'm kind of scared on it a little bit, so it doesn't feed me the way it used to. But that's my favorite story in the book is the Harley Davidson story, by the way.

Speaker 1:

It is a great story.

Speaker 2:

I do love it. That's my favorite story.

Speaker 1:

That was a lot of fun.

Speaker 2:

And so I think that's that's the real me, by the way.

Speaker 1:

I think that's super important to similar to what we talked about with defining success is investing in yourself comes in different ways for different people, and finding out what that is and when you can light your fire through daily rituals and success design and investing. I think that will guide you in a significant path towards putting out that fire of being burnt out. Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree.

Speaker 2:

So investing in yourself comes in many ways, but if we go back a few chapters, if you haven't learned to love yourself, you won't think you're worth it. So invest in your health, invest in your development, invest in your joy Not momentary happiness, but lasting joy and you'll become a new creature and you'll be happier than you've ever been.

Speaker 1:

Love it Amen.

Speaker 2:

Amen.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you so much for being on the show. It has definitely gone longer than I expected, but in a great way, so I won't keep you any longer. Thank you so much for being on the show. Everyone go get that book. There is absolutely no excuse for you not to have that book. Drjeffnormancom, go download the book, or laughtergurucom.

Speaker 2:

Laughtergurucom will work as well. That's a little easier to remember maybe than drjeffnorman. Yes, either way, either one gets you there.

Speaker 1:

Yes, exactly. So again, thank you for being on the show. Super appreciate it and I definitely think you've brought some massive value to the listeners today. Great Scott, thank you, it was my pleasure. Thanks for listening to this episode of Questioning Authority. I hope you enjoyed the show. Stay tuned for the next one coming out soon. This episode has been brought to you by the Authority Co. Helping service providers increase authority and revenue. Check out theauthoritycocom for more info.