On Fridays I like to share experiences I’ve had during the week with patients and in my personal life that I’ve found significant. I like to share them in hopes that you might find value in them and have something resonate with you in your life.
A show I love. I’ve been watching a show on CNBC called “No Retreat.” The show is hosted by Joe DeSena who is the founder of Spartan Race and has a history as a highly successful businessman with startups and Wall Street endeavors.
The premise of the show is that he evaluates a business that needs help and identifies three specific areas of weakness that must be improved for the business to survive and thrive. Then, he brings members of the business to “The Farm”, his enormous property in Vermont. Here he will help reinforce business lessons across these three areas via some form of extreme physical challenge.
To some, this may sound odd but to me it is not. Many of the lessons I use daily in life and business have come from the extreme training and events I have done. When you allow yourself to be pushed past the brink of what you previously saw as possible, it can have a profound, positive impact on your behavior and etches lessons into your mind stronger than you might think possible.
A concept I believe in. “A-players” or your “A list” are people in your business and/or personal life that you should treasure. In business, they are the people that pay full price, value your time, appreciate what you offer, and shout it to the world thereafter which leads to more business. In your everyday life, they are people that uplift, motivate, and help you always seemingly at the ideal time. A-players are always low maintenance and yet are invaluable.
Not everyone in your life can or will be an A-player. Therefore, when you have them you want to make sure you appreciate them and treat them as best you can. Interestingly, these people rarely come with headaches. Instead, it is the C or D list players that will bring you the most stress.
I have different rules for my A-list than I do everyone else. For these people, I always find a way to make time and am happy to offer them accommodations I would never offer to others. Do everything you can to be an A-lister to others while also valuing anyone in your life that is on your A-list!
Something important. I had a conversation recently with a chiropractor that explained to me how he does a great job of helping people, but the people he’s helped don’t send him a lot of referrals. He explained how hard he works, how much he cares, and on and on.
As he finished telling me this, I think he wanted me to tell him how unfair this was. Instead, I told him that life will never hand you cookies or trophies for doing what you are supposed to do. In this example, helping people is his job and when he does it, people are getting what they expected to begin with.
I feel things get much simpler when you commit yourself to the process of doing things to the best of your ability, and then let the chips fall where they may. I have trained intensely for events that ended well and others that ended in heartbreak. Some of my proudest successes with patients did not even elicit so much as a thank you, while other times I have helped someone with a simple issue at a single visit and they’ve gone on to refer dozens of people my way. Control what you can, do not worry about getting credit for it, and eventually you are likely to be happy with the outcome.
Something that inspired me. I watched a documentary on Netflix called “14 Peaks” about Nims Purja, a soldier from Nepal that set a goal to climb all 14 of the world’s mountains above 8,000 meters (over 26,000 feet!). This had been accomplished by others previously and the quickest time it took to complete them all was nearly 8 years. Nims made a goal to climb all 14 of them in only 7 months and he called it “Project Possible.” To put this in perspective, after climbing Mount Everest, he would still have 13 remaining mountains of similar height to climb and summit. These mountains claim lives each year and his goal was referred to by many as “trying to swim to the moon.”
The documentary was amazing and then later I ordered his book which went into further detail called “Beyond Possible: One Man, Fourteen Peaks, and the Mountaineering Achievement of a Lifetime.” His story inspired me because he went after a goal that people literally laughed at him for. His path was not easy, but he always maintained a positive outlook and endeavored to do something unheard of.
Some quotes I love.
“Practice makes permanent. The more reps you give to something, the more habitual it becomes. What reps are you getting in today to replace the negative habits with more productive ones? Comes down to one choice at a time. Go win your next one.” – Dr. Josh Handt
“Pain is temporary. It may last for a minute, or an hour, or a day, or even a year. But eventually, it will subside, and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it will last forever.” – Eric Thomas
“A wrong decision is better than indecision.” – Tony Soprano, ‘The Sopranos’.
“Someone else’s success does not mean a failure for you.” – Joe Rogan
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