Three Steps to a Healthier You – Dr. Mike Van Thielen

Mike van

Miriam: [00:00:00] All right guys, I am excited to have with us Dr. Mike Van Theen. He’s from Belgium and he is a treating physician for the Boston Neuro Pain and Psych Centers. We’re just gonna talk through some of the interesting things you’re doing in terms of optimizing health and anti-aging, regenerative medicine. All of its super fascinating. So thank you for giving your time to us today.

You’re welcome. Thank you for having me.

[00:00:26] Journey To Medicine

Miriam: My first question what got you interested in medicine initially? And then what got you interested in optimization of health?

I’m obviously not necessarily for conventional medicine. I do quite the opposite. I get people off medications. I, I help people regain control of their health, optimize their health. And then, you know, today I’m basically known as a biohacking, mentor

so I speak at a lot of biohacking conferences and the aging conferences, those types of things. And I mentor people. , to get there because most people are obviously in ill health.

But it [00:01:00] all started in Belgium. I was a competitive swimmer. I’m still swimming today. Um, and so got exposed to supplements and those types of things.

, but I went to school, physical education at University of Brussels, which was fun because I went to sports. But what are you gonna do with, , the green physical education? Not much. So I decided to do physical therapy afterwards, and that’s how I got to the United States because they were short of therapists.

And that happened after I traveled with the Belgian Olympic swim team in preparation for the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996.

Holistic Nutrition

So I came in as a physical therapist and then, gradually I saw the benefits of what they call alternative medicine, which is the original medicine, of course. But I saw the benefits of, you know, combining conventional medicine with food therapy and acupuncture and chiropractic, et cetera.

So I decided to go back to school, to the College of Integrative Medicine. I got my, acupuncture license. Doctor of Oriental medicine, port certified in Chinese, herps, homeopathy, and all that stuff.

After another thousand patients, I realized that these procedures are less harmful and [00:02:00] less invasive than conventional medicine, meaning drugs and surgeries.

But I really didn’t feel I was getting the long lasting results either. So I had to go back to basics and I got my PhD in holistic nutrition

[00:02:11] Regain Control

Miriam: and then fast forward to today, I mentor people. Basically in three steps regain control of their health.

Balance their body and make sure there’s no pain or no medical conditions in other words, get back to normal.

The next step is optimize their health. , now we wanna be strong and vital and energetic and and being optimal health.

And then the last step, which is very interesting, is once you’re in optimal health, we can help you basically maximize the benefits of what we call biohacking, which is objectively reverse your biological age. And that’s my field of expertise.

So that’s what I do.

Wow, that’s a mouthful. What I have seen with certain health conditions is that, sometimes it’s a bit of a mystery and, you know, people will have a lot of [00:03:00] non-descript symptoms, , often fatigue, huge amounts of fatigue.

And the question is what’s going on?

And when you go to, say, a traditional m. , I have not found them to be particularly helpful with the nondescript symptoms.

A lot of times they’ll say, you know, reduce your stress, get better sleep. Why don’t you go see a therapist? Yeah. . And, I appreciate the, the space of integrative health.

Can you just describe a little bit about what is happening with medicine in America today?

Big Pharma

Well, it’s, it’s never been great, right? Because again, I mean it’s the big pharma that decides what the curriculum is for our doctors.

It’s the big pharma, pharma that lobbies.

It is a big business. They want you to be on drugs. They want you to get injections and surgeries, but they don’t want you to be cured because then, , you’re not a customer anymore and they don’t want you to die either, because then you’re not a customer either.

So it’s being in, in the system, and I, I see it every day. People are in the [00:04:00] system, they’re on the list of medications. It’s just a vicious cycle of more and more problems.

That’s why I’m an advocate of the Health Freedom Movement is people need to take control of their own health and make their own decisions.

[00:04:12] Find The Solution

Miriam: You mentioned that you know, conventional doctors usually don’t have a solution.

They don’t because they have a very, very small toolbox, and if medicines or injections on surgeries can help, they say, you know, there’s nothing out there. They’re not aware of the. Hundreds of thousands of other things that are out there that could help somebody. Cuz as long as you’re alive, , Miriam, , your body will try to heal itself.

It’s the law of self-preservation. Your body’s gonna do whatever, but it’s up to us to put that body in the correct or in the right condition so that it can heal itself. So we need to figure out, What tools does it need? Right?

And, , usually no matter what clients come to me with or what condition or diagnosis, it doesn’t really matter because to me, there’s only one cause of disease and therefore there’s only one solution.

And that solution always works. And so we need to look at the much [00:05:00] bigger picture when we are trying to resolve an issue of fatigue, as you said, and, and, and not gonna chase the symptoms

so what is your philosophy of the one, the one issue and the one solution?

Toxemia is the cause of all the, all disease, and toxemia literally means toxins in the blood, but in a little bit more detail, what it means is as part of our daily life and metabolism, we obviously create toxins and waste products in our body, but our body eliminates those, so no harm is done.

Toxemia

However, today in our society with all the pollutants and even electromagnetic frequencies, radiations the manmade foods and drinks, we ingest and are exposed to far more toxins than the body possibly can eliminate.

So now there’s an accumulation of toxins in the body, and that’s really what toxemia means.

And toxemia does two things. Number one, it causes free radicals to spawn, it causes free radical damage. And we all heard about free radical damage, right? , causes damage on A [00:06:00] D N A level. And the reason why it does that, because those toxins that are now not eliminated, but flowing around, they’re stealing an electron from a healthy atom.

And that healthy atom then becomes unstable, which we call a free radical.

So that’s number, number one.

Number two, when those toxins are floating around, our body is in a constant state of emergency. And in conventional medicine, they label that as systemic inflammation.

And even according to conventional medicine, now systemic inflammation is responsible for over 90% of all disease.

It’s actually a hundred percent right? So systemic inflammation is a, you know, an emergency situation. And so when that happens, You know, we get diseased, right? Because the body cannot take care of what needs to be taken care of. It always has to put out fires. So this toxemia causes free radical damage, systemic inflammation, the cause of all disease.

Keep It in Check

So if we don’t wanna get disease, we need to control or check toxemia. And so theoretically it’s, it’s pretty simple because what we need to do is we need to reduce [00:07:00] the intake and exposure to toxins while increasing the nutrients that fight theoretical damage.

Repair DNA and fight systemic inflammation, and if we can keep the toxemia in check, we will be disease free.

All right. So I agree with you in theory about everything except the, um, well, you said in theory it’s

pretty simple. I’m gonna go with, it’s simple, but it’s not easy. I have read quite a few books on all of these sorts of things.

And I’m like, yes, yes. This makes sense. You know? It’s so hard.

[00:07:36] Our Freedom

Dr Mike: The reason it’s not easy because we have become slaves of making the wrong choices. See, that’s what separates us from animals. , animals have an instinct and they act according to the laws of mother.

They in their best interest and in the best interest of their species.

But we, we humans, we have the freedom to choose our response and we have become slaves of using, of choosing the wrong response over and over again, which just [00:08:00] has put us in ill health, right?

Yeah. Um, so. We are addicted to food and drink and sugar and, and you know, , now even social media, which gives us a dopamine overload and those types of things.

But, luckily we have that same freedom to choose our response, to turn it all around and stop all that nonsense and regain control of our health and become superhuman.

And that’s, Possible today. So I agree with you, it’s, it is easy because I know exactly what would need to be done. It’s not easy because we are addicted. , you know, to so many foods and things out there,

the, the thing that people need to realize is we can turn those bad habits around into good habits in just a few weeks, because once you’re healthy, you get addicted to feeling not fatigued, feeling full of energy and vitality.

And not no brain fog and focusing and getting things done and getting the project done and, and crushing a sales [00:09:00] presentation or whatever it may be. And that becomes the addiction.

So I’m with you, but at the same time, it doesn’t take that much effort and time to turn things around.

[00:09:10] Accountability

Miriam: Yeah. Where, where I think that people get stuck, is that some people do not have maybe accountability – you almost need to like sign up for a detox bootcamp to get you through the withdrawals of the sugar or whatever.

I, as you listen to people talk about health, longevity, it always seems to come down to sleep, exercise, nutrition, and then, you know, perhaps supplementation and stuff like that.

And they seem to feed each other in recidivistic positive way or negative way. You know, when you don’t get enough sleep, you’re super cranky and so much more willing to eat, you know, the sugar for the boost and it’s like, ah, I don’t feel like going out.

Dr Mike: That Or a vicious cycle up. Yeah. . I wanna talk through Like the beginning person who doesn’t do anything for their [00:10:00] health, where do they need to start? The person in the middle who really does a lot of healthy habits, but you know they can optimize toward the next thing.

Miriam: And then the person who is at the top of their game. What is it that they need to be paying attention to?

So start, with the people who are doing nothing.

Well, those are the three phases

we’ll figure out where they are, which phase they are. And unfortunately the majority is in the first phase, right? Because they’re overweight or they’re in pain. Or they have some diagnosis and we gotta get rid of that first. , but for those people, there’s some basics.  I wrote a book in 2014 called Help for Life User Manual because all your appliances and your cars, everything comes with a user manual.

But when you were born, you don’t have a user manual.

[00:10:40] User Manual

Miriam: So I decided to write a user manual with all the. Basics on, you know, on the basics of eating, but not just eating. Um, you know, I got clean living principles and clean stands for C stands for control emotions and Feelings

All those negative emojis have a detrimental impact on our health. So that’s something that, , that we teach. ,

l stands for listening [00:11:00] to the warning signs of our body, but most of our warning signs, they’re out of sync because we have been, you know, tampering with this system.

You know, our biological clock is off, , and we have diseases, so it’s not working right, but we gotta get back to balancing that so we can listen to the body, because the body will tell you what it needs. At any given time,

E stands for enough rest, sleep, and sunshine. You know, it’s, it’s light and rest. We, you just talked about that A stands for active lifestyle, but no over indulgences or No over stimulation.

And N stands for natural and clean air, water, and food. So those are the basics, right?

And so, Everybody goes at their own pace. Basically in my book, my last chapters are always action plans and they have checkoff boxes and so you don’t have to do everything at once. It doesn’t work as you know.

That’s like too much of a change, too much of a transformation.

Continue Working

Yeah. But you’d start with one thing and you check it off when you did it, and then you go to the next thing.

And some people make that transformation in 60 days. Another take a [00:12:00] whole year. It doesn’t really matter. As long as you’ll continue to work on implementing and making those transformations, you will be successful.

Yeah, as someone who works with, behavioral health you definitely need a roadmap and you have to just do the stuff, take action.

I think where sometimes people get discouraged is, for many people, it’s not a linear just straighten up to the right.

It’s more of like a w you know, where Sure. Three steps forward and two back.

What have you seen as being the difference in men and women as they approach this health journey?

[00:12:38] Changing Habits

Dr Mike: Well, , I see many, , changes, , differences in individuals.

, not necessarily women and men, but if I have to say something, I think when women put their mind some to something, , they usually are more committed. , I see men are usually pushed towards doing something like they are pushed going to the doctor. Guys in general don’t want to go to the [00:13:00] doctor, right?

So it’s their wife or their girlfriend, or significant other. It’s time that you go, I don’t want to hear it anymore. Right? ? but usually it’s more of an individual thing.

You talked about behavior and behavior modification, right? So in order, there’s three components to be, I mean, to change a habit.

, number one, there needs to be knowledge. You know, you gotta know you have a problem, and then you gotta know what to do about it.

Number two is skill. You gotta acquire the skills.

. But the third component is willingness, right?

Yeah. The willingness has to come from the client, has to come from you. And so in the past, for example, I, I did, I had a good stop smoking protocol. It was 95% successful because I did not accept the people that I interviewed that I know wouldn’t succeed. That’s why the high success rate, you know, why do you wanna stop smoking?

Your Why

Oh, my wife’s tired of me. Well, I can’t help you. Mm-hmm. , why do you wanna stop smoking? Well, I’m getting a day older and, , I just got two grandkids and I want to see them grow up and I’m, I want them, I wanna be there when they [00:14:00] get married. Okay. I can help you, right? Yes. So what is, what is the reason behind you wanting to be helped?

And if it’s a sincere personal reason, we can help you. Um, and so that’s usually where the individual, , differences lies. Why do you want to change? And, and, and, and how committed are you? Because I can help you. I can coach you, I can give you the knowledge and the skills, but ultimately I can’t do your pushups.

Miriam: That’s right. I, I say to my kids all the time, ah, I wish I could hire someone to work out for me. .

Dr Mike: Yeah.

What you are learning about. Um, The psychology of pain, the neurophysiology of pain, and then how all of these optimizations impact that.

Because sometimes we run across folks that have chronic pain that isn’t, you know, , as straightforward as, you know, some other things, I guess.

Yeah. Acute

pain usually goes away, right? Sprained the ankle. You do something about it, you rest and, and [00:15:00] things go away. Chronic pain, obviously, you know, the, the acute, the acute inflammation is no longer there.

But your pain receptors have changed, so your brain perceives still that there is something going on, even though we really don’t see anything but degeneration or maybe some scar tissue, which shouldn’t cause that high level pain, but the brain perceives it that way, so the patient perceives it that way.

Reprogramming

Right? So that’s kind of a reprogramming. So that brain needs to be reprogrammed, which there’s many things that we can do to actually do that.

On the other hand, much of the chronic pain is that systemic inflammation that we talked about, right? Because it’s the inflammation. Causes the pain is the inflammation that causes a low immunity.

It’s the inflammation that causes, , you know, , obesity, right? , so that’s a vicious cycle too. When the body is inflamed, you know, your fat cells are gonna. Um, excrete more cytokines, which are pro-inflammatory. So it’s a vicious cycle. So when I, when I have a client that needs to lose weight, I’m not [00:16:00] focusing on weight loss, I’m focusing on reducing that systemic inflammation, which we can objectively measure with a blood test.

We just send them for some C r p creactive protein, see what the levels are. We implement, , dietary changes or modifications, and six weeks, six months later, we do that blood test again. And if. If the C R p or the inflammation in the body drastically reduced, we not only know, , that , that person now is far less prone to getting any disease, so weight loss to me, again, it’s, it’s, I, I don’t approach it at losing weight. I approaches it. Let’s get the information in your body down, let’s get you healthier. And as a side effect or adverse reaction, you will lose that weight and it stays off unlike any other diet because we address the cause of the excess weights and , not the symptoms.

Organic Food

Makes sense. How would you, speak to or address maybe people who do not have access to what you would call clean foods or for example, [00:17:00] the smaller the town you go into, the less options you have about organic food or varieties and different things.

Some of these inner city places or people who don’t maybe have the resources, how would you say, you know, if money is an issue, where do people start with this?

[00:17:19] Hunger Vs. Appetites

Dr Mike: Yeah. There’s two things I wanna

address here because, you know, I, I always get organic food. I can’t afford it, okay? Mm-hmm. , there’s a few things that I usually explain. Number one, we’re only supposed to eat one good meal a day. That’s just, , biological and physiological factor. Romans, the Greek, Jesus, Moses, all animals in the wild only eat once a day or digestive system, biologically and physiologically.

It’s only designed to have one meal a day.

But we confuse hunger with appetites. And again, there’s, there’s our propaganda.

We need to have breakfast because we need milk and milk mix our bone groves and we need to have food and we need to eat to stay strong. And then we have the gym rats that says, oh, we need, we have a high metabolism. We need to eat five or six [00:18:00] small meals per day, which is all bogus. Right. So, so we only really need one need to eat one meal a day.

And when we put that in our current society, that should be early evening because our digestion takes several hours. And we don’t wanna be digesting when we’re sleeping because when we sleeping, we need to repair, regenerate, renew, right?

Um, so if we eat a meal early evening, we digest it, then go to sleep in the morning, we should have all the energy in the world. Because we have all the nutrients from that, , meal and we are repaired, renewed, and ready to take on the day.

One Meal

So ideally we only eat one meal a day. And you won’t be hungry unless you confuse appetite for hungry because you’re gonna give your body all the nutrients that it needs. And if it, if you give your body all the nutrients that it needs, then it’s not gonna send the hunger signal. It’s only when you eat empty calories.

If you only eat that burger it digests, then you’re gonna be hungry again because your body didn’t get the vitamin, see it, didn’t get the [00:19:00] omega3, and therefore it’s gonna say, dang. I need, I need more food. And so it’s gonna continue. The, the, the worse you eat, the more you’re going to eat because you’re gonna continue to have those hunger signals.

So when it comes back to the money, you know, one, one more expensive meal versus three or four cheap meals is gonna end up being the same amount of money. Okay. Yeah, so that’s the first thing to consider. It’s redirecting your spending, number two, when you are in those areas where you can get to get organic food.

Yeah, I would say, you know, I mean, if you have a yard, I mean, there’s aquaponics, hydroponics. You can grow a lot of things inside your home now too, right? It doesn’t even have to be. Um, out there. So there’s, there’s different options you can consider for sure. So those are cheap options, but now you gotta put in time, right?

Learning Curve

You gotta make sure you, you care for your herbs and your plants and your vegetables, whether it’s aquaponics, hydroponics, or just in your yards. , but in those remote areas, there’s less [00:20:00] pollution. So your ground, , may be much better, , to produce healthy vegetables than, than closer to the cities where all the pollution.

Miriam: Yeah, I would say that that is, um, , the easier said than done. And it takes some practice. As one who tried to grow some things several years in a row and the dog ate it or you know, whatever. I do have a hydroponic thing going now, and it’s going better than anything yet, but it takes, there’s a learning curve to all of this, you know?

It is, and I think that’s part of the adventure. I. Pooing people are talking about their health. They get so overwhelmed or discouraged by their apparent failures. And I like to say to people, yeah, but look back this year versus last year, and if this year was healthier than last year, than you’ve won. And next year can be healthier even still.

[00:20:52] Success

Dr Mike: So any success is in incremental steps. . Every success is little step by little step. And if you set [00:21:00] those little steps, you can attain them and then you get much faster to your big goal. You don’t wanna take big steps because you’re not gonna be able to. Yeah.

Miriam: Yeah, absolutely. There’s been so many developments that are pretty exciting in the biohacking sphere. Mm-hmm. from then till now, I mean, it’s. Going crazy. Talk about a couple things that you’re excited about in the biohacking world. Well,

Dr Mike: yeah, I, I, first, I always was what I call on the edge of medicine. So, you know, in the early two thousands it was the alternative medicine, the bioidentical hormones.

You know, the lasers, the acupuncture, the Chinese herbs, and then it came into, then the A four M, the,, American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine started doing a lot of conferences. So, I went there and learned everything, and then regenerative medicine came. So, from 2015 till Covid started, I was a c e O of a stem cell clinic where we did regenerative procedures.

So that was. You know, stem cells are the future of medicine, and it still is. [00:22:00], but now we’re in the biohacking era. And biohacking, you know, basically means we, we, we, me and you, the, the average person has access to technologies, compounds,, that are objectively or can objectively reverse your biological age.

Hydrogen

So, the hundreds can be the new 30. And I believe that to be true. But, but first you gotta regain control of your health. Then you gotta be in optimal. And only then can we take advantage of these biohacking techniques? Right. And, and some of these techniques go back to those foundational things that you talked about.

You know, water. All right. So for example, at home I have a,, hydrogen gas infused water system. So, it, it, it cleans my water because I don’t want all the toxins from the tap water, right? But it also infuses it with hydrogen gas. It has an outlet so the oxygen can go out so it doesn’t bind back to water.

But if you go to hydrogen studies.com. There’s so many benefits to hydrogen for the [00:23:00] brain, for the gut. I mean, a lot of my clients have,, gluten intolerances, dairy intolerances, celiac disease, which supposedly is genetic, which it is. But again, if you know about epigenetics, which means is we can change that, right?

It doesn’t mean that we can’t do anything about it.

I have a hyperbaric oxygen chamber at my home. I do far infra-red sauna. I do cryotherapy cold baths, which doesn’t have to cost anything. You just cost standing on a cold shower, or I got a chest freezer that I bought secondhand so it doesn’t have to cost thousands and thousands of dollars.

Next Phase

Um, you know, and I take. I take biohacking compounds, right? And so when I have my clients, I just see where they are and I, I don’t have my own products, I don’t have my own technologies, but I know what’s out there, so I advise each and every individual client or how they would benefit in that particular phase to move to the next phase.

I talk to a lot of patients and so it’s, you learn a lot talking to people. [00:24:00] There’s such an excess amount of people with anxiety, depression, a D H D, right?

And so, , in my next upcoming book, I talk about a dopamine overload because that’s plaguing us, right? And about purpose of life. I’ve been thinking why are these people and, and even young people amongst us so depressed and anxious and worry and fear, because they don’t have any purpose in life. You know, everything’s thrown at them. They know they don’t know where they’re going.

They know, know what they’re doing.

Passion

I would be depressed too. So I’m really helping anybody first find their purpose in life because society pushes us one direction, meaning you gotta go to. You gotta go to college, you gotta get a job and work for somebody till you’re 65. Then you gotta buy an rv.

Hopefully you didn’t have a stroke yet so you can enjoy the last few years. They called the golden years that society. But then we have our parents and our teachers, our parents. If dad’s a lawyer wants you to go to law school. If mom failed medical school, she wants to leave [00:25:00] vicariously to you and send you to medical school.

And so nobody asks you what do you want to do? And so we need to really sit down and ask, am I doing. What I like to do, what I’m passionate about, and unfortunately, most people don’t know or say, no, I’m not doing what I’m passionate about.

So we need to change that.

[00:25:19] Purpose of Life

Dr Mike: Once we know what their purpose in life is. It sets the stage, it’s their goals and dreams. And when you wake up every morning with a plan and a strategy and you know that the finish line is there, it doesn’t matter if there’s a hurdle because we are gonna attack it instead of throwing up our arms and saying I can’t do this.

It’s not meant to be. Why is the world against me and get depressed and anxious and not knowing what’s going on?

number one, purpose of life.

Number two, a plan and a strategy, and then we can attack those obstacles and worry, fear, anxiety, all of that stuff goes away.

Having somebody like myself that, knows the pitfalls and can help you with your plan and [00:26:00] strategy, and also has an inner circle and knows which people that you may need to reach your highest potential.

Because I came here without a mentor and, got knocked down so many times.

Miriam, you have no idea. But that’s why I came strong and my motto, became, I never lose -I win or a learn. Yes.

And so every time I got knocked down, I learned something and I did it again and again, but it took me quite some time. So I wanna help people not taking a shortcut, but say, oh, don’t do this.

There’s a pitfall.

And the last decade I had like-minded people around me. I have people around me that are mentors for me in certain areas, because I know my weaknesses. And so

We can talk about medicine and we talk about therapy and we talk about supplements, but most of the anxieties, stress and all that is simply we don’t have a purpose in life.

Yeah.

Technology

You know, one thing that I think that is very difficult about what you are saying, I coach a bunch of therapists who [00:27:00] see kids like this all the time, and part of the problem is they don’t even have the will to figure out what their purpose is. I mean, I really appreciate your passion and your energy as you’re talking about that.

And I’m thinking, man, I wish I could put him in a room with some of these kids. These kids are there because their parents make them come there and they’re on their phones twenty four seven. Mm-hmm. .

Every time I am around. Someone with a little person, like a really little person in a stroller, I’ll pass them wherever that kid is on a phone and they’re under two, they’re not even verbal yet, Stacey.

Right. And they’re on a phone and I’m like, what is that doing to their brain? With this dopamine overload, yes. It feels a little like, which comes first in terms of the chicken or the egg? It seems to me. That you have to address that. At the same time as you’re addressing someone’s purpose, at some point you have to say, Hey, will you get off this device and actually get into the world that you [00:28:00] live in?

Yes. And most of ’em say, meh. And what do you do with that?

[00:28:05] Don’t Settle For Ordinary

Dr Mike: We we’re back to that willingness, but sometimes it’s not their, but sometimes it’s not their fault. So we gotta, we gotta show them the alternative. Right. Because they don’t have an alternative. They don’t see it.

High school students, they listen. , it’s like, look, what was your, what was your super. Or what superpower did you want it when you were a kid? What were the dreams about who you wanted to be? Because at that time, you knew without a doubt in your mind that you could be that person, or you could have those superpowers until somebody told you, most likely your parents, that’s impossible.

And that’s when we settled for ordinary, right? Yeah. So, so we need to kind of go back and say, what were your dreams? Who did you want to be? And kind of make ’em remember those things. That would be my first step. The second step would be just ask ’em, who’s your idols? Who are your idols on this world?

of course it’s probably gonna be some kind of rapper that is really not talented, or [00:29:00] it’s gonna be some N b A player that’s, that’s entitled. , but anyways, there are idols, right? So, so then it’s like, okay, would you wanna be that person? Right? They’re probably gonna say yes because you let them tell ’em who you, who their idol was.

Well, you’re not gonna get that by doing what you’re doing now.

Make a Choice

This is how you get there. Let me show you. You don’t have to do anything, but let me show you on how those people get there. Right? And so that’s the way, probably how would kind of go from step by step again, is, is let ’em see another option.

And eventually they still have to make a choice.

But once they make the choice to go this way, we can guide ’em that way. Um, but yeah, you gotta educate ’em on what dopamine overload is, right? Where, you know dopamine is the reward hormone, right? So when your brain squirts a little dopamine, it feels good like having a pet on your back.

That’s why people reach for sugar. That’s why people reach for energy drinks and coffee. But that’s also why we are now on social media because if somebody likes your posts, if somebody hearts your [00:30:00] Instagram picture or somebody likes your comments, it’s that squirt of dopamine and we like it, so we are gonna seek more of it.

And that’s the addiction to social media. But what does dopamine overload mean? We have five intelligence hormones, dopamine. Serotonin, epinephrine nor epinephrine and acetylcholine. And when we wanna focus and produce at maximum potential, those five hormones need to be balanced and at, and an optimal range.

Dopamine Overload

But when there’s a dopamine overload, it means like, it means that those five intelligent hormones are out of balance because there’s an overload of dopamine. And, and that results in what? In brain fog. Fatigue. Lethargy. Lack of focus easily distract. Can do your homework, procrastinating, fidgeting, and you keep naming it.

And so it becomes a vicious cycle because then they’re gonna reach out to more sugar and more energy drinks and more of it, right? So the first thing is, again, is for them being aware and having the knowledge that that’s what’s causing the [00:31:00] fatigue and the brain fog.

We can put things in place that don’t cost money. , You know, , eliminate those distractions. If you gotta do your homework or work on a project, you gotta designate a certain area in your office or your house. You tell people not to disturb you, you put your phone on airplane mode, put it in a different room.

There’s several techniques that work for some people don’t work for others.

[00:31:21] Techniques

Dr Mike: An example, a known example, is the Pomodoro technique where you, you know, have no distractions. Your phone is another room, but you have a timer. You work 20 minutes focused, the timer goes off. You have a five minute break. You can go out, you can check your phone, you can walk the dog, whatever.

But at five minutes, not 4 59, not 5 0 1, you go back in 20 minutes again and you can do four or five cycles of that. So there’s many tips and strategies that we can implement to avoid those distractions and actually get some work done. On the other hand, there are some nootropics, which means natural supplements that really help with balancing, those five intelligence hormones, optimizing [00:32:00] them and getting you, you know, helping you getting into the zone.

And so, That’s one of the things that I take, when I need to perform. You know, unlike smart drugs like Adderall, because A, all of kids are reaching out to Adderall too. Adderall seems to work, for what it’s designed for. I never took it. I just hear it works, but I cannot recommend anything that increases your blood pressure.

Increases your risk for heart disease, causes,

psychosis and maybe personality disorders in the long run, right? So that’s why a person like me looks for natural alternatives that can really help you focus on getting things done. And so I’m taking a supplement called Focus Plus, which is all natural, that has four neuro agents.

Mike’s Passion

That work in 30 seconds is very safe, no jittery effects, no adverse reactions, and get you in the zone for about six hours. So many golfers top athletes, CEOs, business people, and people with anxiety, depression, A D H D, that can concentrate, benefit from these types of things. [00:33:00] Yeah.

Okay. Where do you come by your passion and enthusiasm?

Well, I always like to help people, but I’m one of those, People that tries things themselves and many things that are advertised out there, as you know, they don’t work, right. So I gotta test things for myself, give things to my friends, see what they think, and when it’s something that can help humanity or people.

Again, usually there are tools that your regular doctor doesn’t have. Then it’s something that I will promote or, recommend to other people.

Like if you go to my website, I don’t, I don’t sell anything myself except my mentorship programs. But, but I’ll recommend many things.

I have a shop on my website, but those are links to, certain technologies or devices that I personally use. I won’t recommend anything else.

Where to Find Mike

Mike, thanks so much just for this time, why don’t you share it with our listeners where they can find. Course it’ll all be in the show notes too.

Yes. The best thing is my website. It’s mvt mike van [00:34:00] mvt online.com or even easier to biohacking unlimited.com.

Same website. My seven eight books are there. My speaker bio is there. You can get now until it’s full, you can get a 20 minute free zoom call with me. We just talk about where you are, what your goals are, and see if there’s a mentorship program that you may be interested in. Reach out anytime. I’m always here to help.

Awesome. This was great.

You’re welcome. Thank you. Anytime.

End Credits

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts, or wherever podcasts are found.

Full audio episode found here.

Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

All LeaveBetter Podcast episodes can be found here.

Music by Tom Sherlock.

If you are curious to know more, please contact me!

As someone who has been a therapist for over a decade and has been coaching people for over three decades, I am uniquely qualified to address your concerns.

 

Reach Your Potential – Miriam Gunn

Miriam on Reimagine Success

[00:00:00] Welcome to Reimagine Success. We’re a husband and wife team that want the most out of life. We share knowledge that encourages, motivates and inspires you to live your best life. To find out more about podcasting, make sure you go to reimagine success pod.com where you can get every episode.

 So today we’ve got Miriam Gunn,

 For over 35 years, Miriam Gunn has fostered growth in others as a mentor, a licensed therapist, and a certified coach. Currently, she’s passionate about helping businesses and high performers reach their next level so they can add their influence to this amazing world we share. Her company Leave better.com is dedicated to stopping your self sabotage so you can win in business and life.

Miriam, so, so, so happy to have you on the podcast today.

[00:00:46] How I Got Here

 You’re doing such great things that leave better and really trying to make a real difference with that. Why don’t you go ahead and tell our guests a little bit about yourself, where you come from, a little bit about your story and who you are.

Sure. Thanks so [00:01:00] much. Yeah, I would say that probably my entire life I have been involved in listening to people and then helping them sort of overcome their roadblocks. So I’m a little on the quieter side. Mm-hmm. , I’m the kind of person who, uh, at a party would be in the thick of things, but on the outside of the crowd.

So I might not be the one just chiming in. I would probably be listening, but generally over time, someone grabs me and pulls me aside and says, Can we talk about? And I’d be like, yeah, totally.

So initially, in high school, the people who were just like, oh, my boyfriend this and my boyfriend that, and you know, stuff like that.

Therapy

And then in college I got involved in a mentoring program with university students. And I did that for about 25 years after I graduated. I just loved it. I loved building into people’s lives, um, but often they needed maybe more help than I was trained to give them. And so I helped them get into therapy.

And after I took so many people to therapy and they were like, Hey, will you [00:02:00] sit on the session with me? And I said, yeah, yeah. I was like, you know what? I should just get this degree. So I got the degree. . Um, and loved it. Loved being a marriage and family therapist.

At one point I was on the receiving end of some really good coaching and it just changed my life. Now, I had done a bunch of therapy that had also changed my life. Mm-hmm. . Um, but I was in this space where I was ready to look forward instead of back. And this coaching changed my stars, really, honestly. And I was like, I gotta learn how to do that.

So at that point, I went and got certified in two different places. And that’s currently what I do- I work with mostly business owners, founders, high performers, and I, I’m still doing the same thing, listening, where are they stuck? How can I help them get to their next level of health or revenue? And, um, it’s great.

You know, a lot of people would be very scared to venture out and kind of do something a little bit different that’s outside of their comfort [00:03:00] zone, and they have to go back to school. Were you a little intimidated by going and doing anything else, or you just went for it?

Lifelong Learner

Well, I would say my whole life I’ve been a lifelong learner. I, when I was younger, I would have like the year of, and it would be the year of like the bonsai tree, and I would read every book in the library- this was before the internet, guys . I would read every book in the library on boni trees, or I had the year of dog and dog training, and I would read every book in the library on that. And then I started teaching dog training classes

 I would say when I went back to school, I had a 20 year gap and that was hard. You know, you go back and everybody’s the age of your kids and you feel stupid for a second, and then I was like, oh my gosh, what a privilege. I have the opportunity to do this.

Yeah. And really after one or two days, I was just me. I’ve always been me and yeah, I have more wrinkles as I get older, but I’m still just me.

So, yeah. It was good.

[00:03:57] Take The Opportunities

Well, I love what you said. You had the [00:04:00] opportunity. A lot of people don’t take the time to realize the opportunities that are in front of them,

 So what are some of the ways that you find that people really self-sabotage themselves?

I would say that it primarily stems from mindset that then trickles down into habits.

And the the fascinating thing is that, you know, at one point in my life I was working with people who were young enough, they didn’t even have jobs.

Now I’m working with millionaires and people who have larger companies and it is still the same problem. It just plays out at a different scale. Mm-hmm.

people have issues in their. mindset about how they think about how a problem can be addressed. Mm-hmm. . And then, That mindset plays out in behaviors that are done or not done.

Mm-hmm. , so self-sabotage? I think probably the number one mindset I would talk about is the victim mindset where people think that life [00:05:00] happens to them instead of them happening to life. And so there’s, I mean, there’s another way to call this, it’s a little more technical, but where’s your locus of control?

And certain people have an internal locus of control. They believe that they have the ability to affect change. Life. Mm-hmm. . And then there’s these other people who have an external locus of control where they believe life happens to them as a result of things that other people do.

Control

Now, of course, There are, you know, things like hurricanes and there are things like political weirdness and laws changing and this, that and the other. There are some things that are out of our control. I’m not gonna be all “you can do it, it’s just you, blah, blah.”

No, it’s, it’s not that. But we have control over so much more than we think we do.

 When you are working with a client, what kind of progression do you typically see? [00:06:00]

I would say typically I’m working with the owner or the founder. Mm-hmm. . So initially, I mean, sometimes the C-Suite, it depends on the structure and the company. Initially. Everybody is a little bit tense.

Yes. You know? I have worked with some people like this where they know they’re good and they know they can be better, and they aren’t nearly as tense because they don’t feel like there’s something wrong. They just feel like they’re on a path and they wanna accelerate it.

Mm-hmm. , those are just amazing entrepreneurs to work with because they already have the mindset of “I can do this, I just wanna do it better and faster.”

Mm-hmm. . Other times there are folks who you know, are amazing people and they find themselves in the midst of a problem, and I think on their end there’s some shame because they feel like they can’t punch through this problem.

[00:06:54] Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs as a whole they, they’re pretty much of the mindset, I can do [00:07:00] this, I can figure this out. Mm-hmm. . And when they get into a space where they can’t figure it out, and they just get stuck, then their whole sense of being comes into the question

So by the time you invite someone into that space, there’s a little bit of a lack of trust, in themselves. Mm-hmm. maybe in me. And I would say that initial six months is, it’s good and it’s getting to know the person and getting to address the problem. But it isn’t the same as a year later.

Yes. When we have fond affection for one another and they trust me you know, there’s it, there’s a mistrust on both sides because, you know, coaching isn’t cheap and everybody wants results, and sometimes results take a little bit of time.

I remember this is a company I’ve been going into for quite a while and they totally made fun of my height. I am not a very tall person, , and I thought to myself, this is awesome. Finally, finally, there [00:08:00] is enough trust and fond affection that I can be teased and they know that it won’t go badly.

Why do you think it is that people will just abandon dreams

So much of it depends on how you were raised.

Jessie,

[00:08:14] How You Were Raised

You were talking about the way that you were raised and this space of feedback is given in real time and you learn how to deal with it and move forward.

There are some. Kids, people who grow up where parents honor a dream and they say, chase after that space and they teach children how to be maybe putting some actions to those, those ideas. Mm-hmm. ? Mm-hmm. . There’s a lot of families where that is not the case and where kids have to fight for even their own thoughts.

They’re told what to think and they’re told how to behave

you know, that goes back to that locus of control. If you are not raised with an internal locus of control. It’s gonna take you a while to sort of dismantle those [00:09:00] ideas and to be able to move forward in a way that allows you to hold onto a dream.

Also, in terms of brain science, certain people are definitely more visionary and other people are more like nuts and bolts, let’s get this done. Yeah. And you need both of them.

 A dream is a multistep process you know, it’s not it’s not an annual plant, it’s a tree. Mm-hmm. , the seed has to be there and germinate and grow.

And then every year it gets a little bit bigger.

Focus on Your Skills

And, um, so many people’s ideas are, well, hey, I planted it. Why didn’t it grow? Why isn’t it producing anything? Okay, I’m done. Right. , right.

You just said so many amazing things in that one little small section there’s visionaries and then there’s the nuts and bolts.

 I’m the more visionary, I’m the more one that’s kind of coming up with ideas and Jesse’s like, okay, let’s execute it.

But I feel like a lot of people, they feel like they should, especially entrepreneurs, they feel like they should have all of the skills.

They need to be the [00:10:00] cpa, they need to know this, and they need to know everything.

, why is it so important for entrepreneurs to focus on the skills they’re good at instead of the skills they’re not good at, and maybe hiring from the outside to get those skills in place.

Yeah. This is also a complex question because. Initially, if you’re a solopreneur, you don’t have the money to hire all these people, and you’re like, I have to learn how to wear all these hats. Yeah. Mm-hmm. . But then as you make more money and you can hire people, now we run into the problem of finding someone like-minded enough that it works, but different minded enough that your skill set is covered.

Nut and Bolts

I think that you guys have managed to navigate your differences so that it works in a way that feels like a strength to the whole mm-hmm. . And you don’t rub against each other wrong, but in general. Visionary people find nuts- and- bolt people [00:11:00] super frustrating.

It’s like, oh my gosh, just get your head a little bit bigger. Why are you stuck on the,

“how are we gonna do this”? Just believe .

And then while the nuts and bolts people are going, if you change what we’re doing one more time, right apart. Can you just let us finish one thing first? .

Yeah. You guys have the privilege of being married and you love each other.

Yeah. However, when you have hired someone, what I find a lot of CEOs do is they’re like, ah, I can’t work with this person. And then they fire them. Mm-hmm. , and then they hire someone similar to themselves and they have not staffed their liabilities.

So this business of finding both of those things is much more, uh, it takes a little bit of magic, I think maybe.

Mm-hmm. . Yeah.

So with leave better, what are some ways that you’re trying to make things better in the business realm for across the board.

[00:11:55] Leave Better

My hope would be that as people [00:12:00] become more successful, whatever that means to them, that that creates freedom. That creates a space of abundance that then trickles down into doing good in whatever way that they can.

 My opinion of business as a younger person or maybe wealthy people is just that they were super selfish or. Stuck up or you know, just buying the 12th BMW and the yacht and the whatever. And yeah, there are for sure people like that, but there are also are other people who understand that those resources can create good in this world.

And we need, we need injections of capital to, to create change and movement.  I personally really care about environmental things. I know other people that really care about social justice things.

They’re all important and they all take a grassroots, effort from people, but they also take injections of capital. So [00:13:00] my ultimate goal is to help people become mentally healthy enough that they care about stuff like that and fiscally wealthy enough that they can do something about that.

So in the short term then, you know, as I’m working with these companies, my goal is that their revenue doubles and triples and quadruples and mm-hmm. , that doesn’t always happen, but it happens more often than not. Yeah. And then I work on their mindset on thinking beyond just themselves and, you know, everybody is on a spectrum, so everybody wants to think that they are doing good and they are, but they’re, they could be doing more good.

Change Your Mindset

Yeah. Mm-hmm. , you know, and they think that their mindset is, you know, healthy or whatever, and then you ask the right question and it stops them in their tracks and they go, oh, I never thought about that before.

You’ve talked a lot about taking control and, and how people think that they have no [00:14:00] control over their lives, the average workers in a lot of organizations, they feel like they’re sometimes just a number, sometimes just a, a random person that nobody cares about.

They have no control over anything. How can somebody in that situation, start to change their mindset and have a bigger part in the role that they play in their organization.

 I feel like there are a tremendous amount of resources – You know, if you’re older than 30, you can read books. I think people under 30 can read books too, but I’ve been under the impression they don’t -so , but there’s a ton of podcasts and things on YouTube- I follow a whole bunch of influencers who put out great content. It doesn’t cost anything.

Get some ideas other than your own in your head and start trying stuff. You have to at some point believe that you can change. And then you have to start getting some inputs that are different than what you currently have. [00:15:00] So if you always watch the same channels and always listen to the same people, whether that’s the people in your family or the people in your workplace, or. You’re never gonna get any new input. And it takes new input to give new ideas, to then take new action.

It Requires Courage

And all of this requires at a, at different levels, some courage. You know, if you’re discouraged in the workplace, it might take some courage to say, I can ask for a different level of compensation. Or I can say, I don’t think that this policy is fair.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that the other person is gonna listen to you. They may or may not, depending on the corporate structure. But the thing that you can do is work on yourself, work on your confidence, work on your ability to think clearly, work on your ability to communicate clearly and with respect and with intent.

 Yeah, those are the places I would say people need to start

[00:15:59] Roadblocks to Confidence

 [00:16:00] What stops people from figuring out their passion or walking in confidence

 I keep thinking about an experiment that was done in the sixties that was terrible and would be illegal now. Mm-hmm. , but involved animals and it involves, um, having them be shocked and the animal could jump off the plate where it was being shocked.

Mm-hmm. then they tied it up so that it couldn’t jump off and it was shocked, but couldn’t do anything. Oh, wow. Eventually, what the animal does, It cries and it curls up and it does nothing. Mm. Then they unhook the animal and they, it’s, it’s basically free, you know, it’s free. Mm-hmm. But they, you know, continue to administer the shock and the animal still lays there and it won’t move because in its brain it doesn’t believe that it has freedom and it actually has to be led off of the platform. And [00:17:00] what’s terrible is it has to be led, like, I don’t know, 273 times or some huge number. Wow. And the whole thing is entitled Learned Helplessness.

And the thing that they learned from that is that people are the same.

And so when you are raised where you aren’t treated with respect, where you don’t feel safe, where you don’t feel like you have regard, You learn in your brain, I’m not worth it.

I’m not worth anything.

And it’s one thing for people who have been raised in safe environments to say, oh my gosh, just change your mindset. You can, you know, you’re better than this. You’re bigger than this. Mm-hmm. , that is true, but it is not as easy as “just switch your mindset”.

Change the Programming

I think it takes many, many repetitions and this is where therapy’s awesome because you can bounce those spaces mm-hmm. around with your therapist. Or you can do something like EMDR, which is a trauma- based, protocol that actually really speeds up this process. Hmm. [00:18:00] You have to reprogram your brain at a neurophysiological level.

You have a whole bunch of tracks in your brain that say, I can’t do this. I can’t dream bigger. I can’t change who I am.

You have to change that programming.

And it’s very difficult like that. Requires will. Mm-hmm. . And sometimes people don’t even have will. Yeah. And you know, like if you’re taking it down to the very most basic level, maybe there needs to be an act of God where somebody, you know, who is kind, comes into that person’s life and begins coaching them and telling them, “you can change, you can do this.”

But again, like I said, there are podcasts and there are YouTubes, and so many people just sit in front of Netflix waste huge amounts of time. Yes. Yes. Where you could be developing your mindset instead. Yeah. Mm-hmm. ,

 There are books, there’s literature, there’s so many ways that you can learn and you can grow and you can accomplish what you would like to accomplish and [00:19:00] get a mentor.

Have a Mentor

It’s really important, especially now, to have a mentor. I would also add to that, get rid of people in your life that are holding you back from reaching your potential,

 Tell our listeners what, what kind of stuff you talk about on your podcast where they can find it and, uh, a little bit about it so that they can check that out as well.

I interview entrepreneurs, generally we’re talking about what have they learned in the context of, the pitfalls, the joys, you know, what have they learned? And it, the, it’s entitled Wisdom and Practicality for Business and Life.

People really try to get me to pigeonhole this in business or self-development. Mm-hmm. . And I’m like, you know, I don’t wanna do that because there’s crossover like if you are failing in your business, you’re failing in your life. Yeah.

And if your life is going great, but your business isn’t earning any revenue, Then it still is not a success.

[00:19:52] About Miriam

 They’re welcome to contact me at miriam@leavebetter.com, if they’re interested in coaching or just have a question.

[00:20:00] Do you work with, with business owners all around the world or are you just here in the United States? Yeah, I would say I work with anyone in the range of zoom. So, okay. I definitely have international clients, but you have to have a stable internet connection.

Is there anything, uh, final, any kind of final advice that you would like to leave our listeners with before we wrap this?

I , I was in Seattle not that long ago and I bought this at a store. I don’t know what you call it, but it’s a little glass, like a little plaque. Yeah, it’s a little plaque and it says:

you have exactly one life in which to do everything you’ll ever do- act accordingly.

Mm. I love that. That’s so great. Miriam, you are making a difference in the world. Yes, every single day. Not only with entrepreneurs, but also, you know, with your podcast, you’re making differences all over the world.

 

End Credits

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts, or wherever podcasts are found.

Full audio episode found here.

Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

All LeaveBetter Podcast episodes can be found here.

Music by Tom Sherlock.

If you are curious to know more, please contact me!

As someone who has been a therapist for over a decade and has been coaching people for over three decades, I am uniquely qualified to address your concerns.

 

 

Reflect On Your Year- Miriam Gunn

December 26th Mini Episode

Miriam: [00:00:00] it has been so much fun making these podcasts. I wanted you just to hear from me directly a little bit. We’re gonna be making some changes, and I thought this would be a good time to just sort of roll some of that out.

[00:00:13] Holidays

Miriam: As this episode drops we’re in between holiday. Often this is a time of family gatherings of overeating, and usually there’s some downtime from.

This gives one the opportunity to do some reflection over the previous year and also do some planning toward the coming year. I myself have spent the last two weeks here and there creating a document that captures all of the new activities I tried this year, an evaluation of the goals for the current year we’re ending, and then some intense planning for the upcoming year.

Can I encourage you to do something similar?

I’m continually amazed at how the small incremental steps toward improvement really add up.

Yes, you may not have accomplished that specific goal, but I’ll bet you made more [00:01:00] progress on it than you would’ve if you hadn’t had that on your conscious horizon. I definitely didn’t accomplish all my ambitions.

However, I gotta tell you, I’m beyond happy with what I did accomplish, and it’s motivating to see what’s coming next. I loved looking over the positive changes I made this year. It was totally energizing and an opportunity to celebrate my own self-development and growth, and I want that same thing for you.

[00:01:28] Reflect

Miriam: So I’m just gonna encourage you to spend some time kind of reflecting over your previous year and projecting toward your coming.

Let me just share a tiny example. The Lead Better Podcast came up this year and through this I have met so many great people with interesting stories. Some of the things that have been suggested or profiled I’ve enacted in my own life, and I really think that some of that is going to change the course of my future.

[00:02:00] Anyway as we move into this next season.

In year Leave better is going to shift our focus, just a tiny. I really wanna spotlight not only people who are successful, but people who are doing something for the benefit of others With that success, from my perspective, if you’re hitting all your targets, but none of that goodness spills out onto others, then you have missed a primary ambition of being a good human.

I also want you to hear from me more directly and more often, so there will be some interviews with me in the upcoming. And as always, there will be practical information that you can apply to your own life and business to push it toward that next level. Also, can I say, I would love to hear from you. If you know individuals that I should be interviewing on my podcast, reach out to me.

It’s always miriam@leafbetter.com.

Now, as we welcome in this next year, let’s go be intentional.

End Credits

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts, or wherever podcasts are found.

Full audio episode found here.

Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

All LeaveBetter Podcast episodes can be found here.

Music by Tom Sherlock.

If you are curious to know more, please contact me!

As someone who has been a therapist for over a decade and has been coaching people for over three decades, I am uniquely qualified to address your concerns.

 

Be The Change – David Marquis

[00:00:00] Before we start, I want to put a couple caveats into this episode. This was a tremendous opportunity to have a conversation with someone who is not your typical business person, but is more of an activist. It was a great conversation and I think there are plenty of things for people to learn who have their own entrepreneurial pursuits.

Later in the episode, we talked about some issues of racial injustice and if this is going to put Your mental It’ll health at risk please Skip this episode. And listen to other Leave better episodes there are plenty of other opportunities to not have your mental health distressed

[00:00:44] The River Always Wins

Einstein taught that matter cannot be destroyed. It can change shape and be transformed, but not destroyed. Gandhi taught that one of the central tenets of nonviolence is not merely to defeat one’s adversary, [00:01:00] but to transform them.

As the water in a riverbed, ripples passed and washes over the underlying stones, a long process of transformation takes place.

A particle of rock sloughs off gives way, and in so doing it becomes a part of the river.

It joins with the river.

It is a transformation of quiet unceasing movement towards something greater than the self- transformation into a new form.

Its matter does not disappear. It is transformed. Wherever water flows over rock, the two live on.

In this way, the way of water transforming stone, we change, we change ourselves, and we change our cultures.

Hey friends, what you have been hearing is my friend David Marquis. He wrote The River Always Wins and I just [00:02:00] got shivers as you read that.

David, thank you so much. I had the pleasure of meeting you across the street in my neighbor’s backyard. They were hosting under twinkly lights, you doing a reading, to benefit the Stokes Nature Center in our area.

And what a delightful moment to hear you reading from your book and then the conversation that ensued.

And after that, I ran right up to you and said, oh, please come be on my podcast, because I knew we could have an incredible conversation.

[00:02:32] Introducing David

So you are in Dallas, Texas and you have had this passion for water and water conservation.

I have a passion for helping our planet and for seeing people transform.

And when I read your book, I was just so impressed with the weaving that you did of this literal, physical, what happens to the water, and then the metaphorical space of what happens in our lives, [00:03:00] both socially and politically and personally.

So welcome, and can we just have an amazing conversation today?

David: Oh, thank you so much. I’m so glad to be here.

I’ve performed in all kinds of places, played at the Kennedy Center, and I’ve toured 41 of the 50 states, played every kind of venue you can imagine, but to do a show for a group of people really devoted to this planet, and to conservation and to do that on evening, a beautiful evening in the fall in Utah. It was a great experience.

So I’m really glad to be here and I appreciate the opportunity.

Miriam: Excellent, excellent. For those of you who are going, wait a minute, I thought this was a podcast about business and life- it is. And the reason that I asked, David to come and have this conversation is that my goal is that as your businesses succeed and as you become more successful in life, you take some of that bounty and you pour it over into helping spaces that need help.

So, David, I [00:04:00] loved hearing in that venue some of your history. I’m hoping you’ll share a little bit of that history and why this topic of water is so important to you.

Water

David: Water, of course, is what we’re made of. We are mostly water walking around inside our skins. So we also need to always keep in mind that where we grow up, Can be a powerful influence.

I grew up in the West Texas in a place called Lubbock, and I grew up there during the 1950s, which was the second greatest drought in the history of our country, the first being the dust bowl of the thirties. And my parents, grandparents and uncle, they all grew up during the Dust Bowl. So they came from a dry place in a very dry time.

And I come from a dry place in a dry time. I remember to this day sitting around the dinner table with the adults when I was very small and listening them to talk about where are we going to get our water?

I grew up in a place where we [00:05:00] used to have to walk home from school backwards, bent over because of the sandstorms.

Miriam: Literally, you’re not making fun. You’re not being like a person who says uphill both ways.

David: Nope, nope. It was in the sand both ways. It was blowing down your throat at 50 miles an hour, man. So that’s where I grew up and how I grew up. So to me, a glass of water is a big deal, and the reason I do this work is because of my grandchildren.

I want my grandchildren to have the chance to live a life that enjoys, the blessings that we’ve, had bestowed upon us.

[00:05:34] Your Why

David: You talk about business. I often speak to business groups, and one of the things that I do is I begin with asking people why they’re there that day.

So I will ask people to center in on why they’re there that day, their job. Well, that’s legitimate reason, but why are you really there? What really powers you? What motivates you? What causes you to respond and become engaged?

[00:06:00] And then I tell ’em, I’m gonna count to three and ask everyone in the room to say or to whisper why they’re there that day.

And when I do this, you can hear people. Whether it’s hundreds of people in the ballroom or a few people in a seminar and everybody gets clear, everybody gets focused.

Because when you know why you do what you do, you do it better. And I really deeply believe that. So it’s one of the things that I do is get people to be clear on why they do what they do.

And for me, I work along the water issues these days because of where I grew up and when I grew up.

Miriam: Yeah, I, that’s so profound. When you know why you are there, you do your things better.

Build Something Better

Miriam: Let me read a tiny, section here from your book, one of the things that I was struck by when I listened to you in my neighbor’s yard is that you are passionate.

You [00:07:00] introduced yourself as an activist, but you don’t present like an activist.

You present as a kind and gentle non militants – there were no fists. Waving that night, and yet I could tell that you are really powerful in the way you spoke about the work you were doing for water.

In your book you say,

we will not change hearts through argument or angry rhetoric. Name calling and vitriol will not heal wounds of terror and mass shootings, nor will time simply miraculously heal all wounds. Time is an element in the healing process, but it is not the process itself. So is talking and listening and the transcendent power of love and forgiveness, the fluidity that rolls over us and bathes us like water of the womb, such stem from our humanity.

I would really like you to speak about how to be an activist and be respectful of humans at the same time.

Be “For” Something

David: Mm, thank you. That’s a great question. [00:08:00] We tend to think of activists as being against something, but let’s go back to the root word protest. Pro, of course, means for. Test comes from testare a Latin verb, which means to proclaim or speak forth.

So actually to protest says not to be against something. It’s to be for something. It’s not enough to be against war. We must be in favor of peace. Not enough to be against injustice. We must be for justice and to build systems and businesses and ways of life that are just for all. So when you begin to look at it from that point of view, you immediately have to see that you have to be for something, that you have to be positive.

You have to think about how we build something better than we have now.

And I get this from my mother. Now, my mother would never have called herself an activist, but if you wanted to get something done in Lubbock, Texas, you call Lucille Marquis and then you got outta the way [00:09:00] because she would do good things, but she would never make a big deal of it.

[00:09:06] What is an Activist?

David: When I was very small, we were driving through downtown on a Sunday afternoon. It was after church. We were all the way to a restaurant. And in Lubbock in the fall when I was a child, thousands of Mexican nationals, Mexican citizens had come north to pick the cotton in the old Bracero program where people would come north legally to, harvest crops all the way up to Canada.

And so as I was looking at all the people on the sidewalks, I, you know, I was very small little boy and, uh, I’m looking at, I turn to mom and, say, who are all these people? Why are they. And she explained to me if they came here to pick the cotton, and I said, well, who takes care of their children if they’re out in the fields all day?

And she said, I don’t know, but that’s a good question. So my mother and another woman went out and organized a a well- baby clinic to [00:10:00] take care of the medical needs of the migrant workers’ children. Decades later, that was still in place in Lubbock, Texas.

Be Real

She taught me what I said during college, you know, back during the days of the movements.

And I said, I wanna be an activist. She said, okay. But you have to make it real. You have to make it real. It has to count for something that lasts.

So to me, an activist is not someone who just carries a sign in the street, it’s someone who does the hard work afterwards. To organize new structures, new systems, more just ways of doing business, of carrying out our government.

And that’s really important to me.

You protest, you speak in favor of, you act in favor of, to me, if you want to come and be a part of this, then come and be a part of it in a constructive way.

Create the changes that really make a difference in people’s lives.

[00:10:51] Action is Key

Miriam: Yeah. Boy, I appreciate that. I just have to camp on your mom for a second. How cool is it that she didn’t say to [00:11:00] you I, you know, I don’t know what she called you when you were little? I don’t know Davy, but I, I’ve got stuff to do. Don’t bother me with all these questions.

You know, she, she took you as a very young child, seriously, and she said, your question has merit. And it troubled her, and she didn’t let it just trouble her and keep her up at night. That translated into action that then stayed for decades later. How cool is that?

David: My mom and dad, bill Lucille marquis were really special people.

In fact, go back to my grandmother, Hazel, whose earliest memories were of marching and suffragette parade holding a mother’s hand.

She was born in 1887, so she couldn’t vote until she was 33 years old. Wow. And Hazel was a really brilliant woman, but to think she couldn’t vote till she was 33. And yet her earliest memory was, I’m marching in a suffragette parade when she was a little.

Be Positive

Yeah. Now mom and dad, um, my father once fired an employee for [00:12:00] using a racial slur in the office and never said anything about it. He didn’t make a big deal of it. He just was, you don’t use language like that around here. So it’s really kinda in my blood.

And my mom was really great at dealing with young people all the time.

I’d come home from a date in high school and all my friends would be in the living room discussing politics around my mother . So, They were remarkable people. Yeah. And neither one of them would ever have said, I’m an activist. So when I wanted to be an activist, they said, okay, but you’ve gotta make it real, make it positive.

And I really learned that lesson from them. But, you know, they were, they were special.

[00:12:38] Do What You Can

David: I’ll tell you another story about Lucille Marquis this is a great story. So I believe that you have to do what you can, where you can, when you can, as part of my mantra, being an activist, uh, back in those days. You know, I’m 71 now, so this is 60 years ago, 65 years ago, everybody in Lubbock, you know, had a [00:13:00] maid.

You know, people from the, east side of Lubbock, African American women would come over to, uh, the rest of Lubbock and they would be maids. And there was a certain code of the way that you treated them, that you made sure they had food to eat, that you took them home within the day. There was a relationship there.

Now, am I saying that was a, a healthy time in terms of our race relations? No, but there was a certain way that she treated people with dignity. And my mother got word from our maid, Willie, that, um, a woman in Lubbock was not allowing her maid to eat in the kitchen for lunch, would not allow her to eat in the house at all.

And to my mother, that was just wrong. You don’t treat people that way. So, she and her buddy, Kelly, great friends, cooked up a plan and they went to see this woman and they said, we understand you don’t allow your maid to eat in the kitchen for [00:14:00] lunch. And the woman’s like, oh, no, we don’t allow her to eat in the house.

Do Something

And they said, look, here’s what’s gonna happen now. Either she’s gonna begin to eat lunch in your house today, or you will never be invited to the Garden Club or the church social or the Bridge Club ever again. You’ll be ostracized in this town. Now, was that the March on Washington? No. Was that the Civil Rights Bill?

No. Voting Rights Act. No.

But they did where they could. What they could. When they could.

And that’s a central part of what we need to do now to take care of our planet and take care of our culture. Take care of ourselves, is do what you can, where you can when you can.

Miriam: That’s pretty powerful. I always ask when I have someone on the podcast talking about various issues and things, please help us understand what we can do.

You know, because we feel so small in a, a. Juggernaut of machinery and the [00:15:00] issues that you read on in the news are not necessarily the issues that are in your area.

And it’s fascinating how much energy can be spent railing on something that isn’t actually relevant to what is happening where you live.

Do something. There for good. What you can, where you can, when you can. Thank you for sharing that story.

 

Think Globally, Act Locally

David: Yeah, that’s exactly right. It’s it is so easy for us to get caught up now and things, in other places cuz of social media and because of the 24 hour news cycle, we lose sight of what’s happening right next door to us.

Mm-hmm. . And I think it’s really important that we keep in mind, you know, the, the old adage, you know, think globally and act locally.. But if you do it on a daily basis, remember Gandhi, Gandhi would go out and carry out these enormous, you know, actions to free India from England, and then he’d go home and he’d take care of the goats and play with the children and, you know, live that life on a daily [00:16:00] basis.

So we need to keep that in mind that there’s that big life that we live to go out where we take on big problems, but there’s also the life that’s close to us. That we still need to be human beings with those around us.

Miriam: I think sometimes people want to get involved in something out there maybe because it seems bigger, but also there isn’t the emotional weirdness that comes with doing something in, in your locale, like when you share that story about your mom.

It’s great that she had a friend to go with her and that the two of them could pressure the other one into better behavior. Sometimes people feel like they’re the only person.

[00:16:39] Use Your Voice

Miriam: As, I mean, sometimes I wonder if my neighbor absolutely hates me. I manage to get her cell phone number and she allows people to keep horses in her back.

Space. She’s older and isn’t able to get back there very often. Mm-hmm. , and pretty much every year I’m saying, I mean, it’s different horses, it’s different people. I’m saying, Hey, did you know that this [00:17:00] animal has a really swollen leg? Hey, did you notice that this animal is bullying the other one and the other one isn’t getting any food?

And there’s always this moment of trepidation when I reach out to a neighbor and say, Hey, do you realize that your dog doesn’t have adequate shelter or that it’s incredibly lonely, or that you have a donkey who is isolated in a neighborhood with no shelter and no friends. Mm-hmm. , you know, there’s always this moment inside me where I’m like, oh my gosh, Miriam here we go again.

Speak for the Planet

But I have to speak for, for animals, for entities that can’t speak for themselves. Yes, because. I think that that’s part of the reason why I’m on the planet- I have a voice and I need to use it -in as polite and respectful, but also determined manner as I can. Mm-hmm. . And, um, in, in your book, in between the section I read and the section I’m gonna ask you to read in a minute, [00:18:00] you’re talking about erosion and one of my favorite quotes I saw like, I don’t know.

It was some old something. It was a meme. It was a meme before there were memes. But it said in the contest between the rock and the water, the water always wins. But this idea that if you relentlessly push on something, Eventually you’re gonna get somewhere with it.

And I wanted to just talk about maybe how cultures shift and change or how people grow and they see I used to be this way and now my thoughts have shifted to this.

Perserverance

David: The title of the book, by the way, comes from a. An experience on a bridge outside TAs, New Mexico where standing on this bridge and there were some, a couple of people about 20 yards away.

Now I’m looking down into the ravine where the real Grandie river is at the bottom of the ravine. And these two people looked down and one of ’em said, oh look, [00:19:00] there’s a river down there. And I thought, of course there’s a river down there. It worked its way down down their over a millenia. So it’s that daily movement of water, the daily work that the water does.

And I think that sense of, um, of the daily work is extremely important. Because so often the issues that we take on are big issues, even if they’re close at hand, there’s still issues that require, a constant daily, vigilance to continue to speak up in a way that’s respectful, but determined. So, for me, that sense of perseverance, of continuing that flow of acting in a way that, you know, will maybe not take full effect today, but over a long period of time will work.

I mean, let’s look at a particular movement. The anti-smoking movement in America. You know, it used to be [00:20:00] two-thirds of the American public. And then some folks began to say, you know, I’m not comfortable here bad, my lungs. And people began to say, we need to do something about this. Remember it used to be people smoked on airplanes.

The River

I mean, it was everywhere. Yeah. Well, and now we know it’s not everywhere and fewer and for people are smoking. And that was the result of some people being relentless, but doing it a way that refused to give. And yet did it in such a way that it was about the health of all people and was something’s been very positive for all of us for that to take place.

That we moved away from a place where non-smokers just had to put up with it to a place now where we are healthier people, healthier as a nation. And um, that was the result of that constant flow of energy- just does the water contingent flow with the rock and [00:21:00] you know, go to TAs, New Mexico, go to any gorge, look down.

You see a river down there. That river worked its way down there. It didn’t start down there. It started on the top.

Yeah, it worked its way down Every single day it wore that rockaway and created that river bed for.

Miriam: Yeah. You know, I, I appreciate your long view of time and your patience to say that these things will right themselves.

When enough good people just push and push and push, we will have increasing legislation to solve some of the ills, I think sometimes. I panic because I see forests disappearing quicker than they can grow and some of those other things.

[00:21:44] Water Issues

Miriam: I wondered if you could just take a couple minutes and talk about the real issues that we have with water, and are on our planet today.

I remember when you spoke, you said, um, there will never be a, a new drop of water created. And I had, I mean, I intellectually [00:22:00] knew that whole cycle of evaporation and transpiration. I mean, I think you have to learn it in third or fourth grade, but I don’t think anybody ever said, you know, there’s never a new drop of water created.

So talk a little bit about the problems we have in our country and in our world with water.

David: Thank you for that question. And yes, these are often long cycles of movements of, uh, working for justice, for protecting our planet, but at the same time, there’s some real urgency too.

You know, when I was born, there are about two and a half billion people on the planet. 1951.

Now we’re 8 billion, so we’ve more than tripled our human population, but we have no more new land. We don’t have any new water. There is no new water. There’s not a shipment arriving from Mars. There is no new water. And as a result, we’ve got three times as many people all drawing on the same fresh water.

Understand the Urgency

So these are really serious issues. And there are serious [00:23:00] issues also that do require urgency and that ask a question of, if social change takes a long time, then how do we move quickly when we have to? Climate’s a good example of that. And of course, climate and water issues are very tied together, so we have to ask ourselves then what is the best way to go about creating change more quickly?

And if you look at a big bell curve, There’s always 5% of the people really pushing toward the future and another 5% pulling, trying to go backwards and trying to move the middle is where we really create change and create it quickly when you can move the middle one direction or the other.

So one of the things we have to do with water, Is get people to understand the urgency because for most people, when they turn the tap and clean water comes out- that’s the issue to them. as long as they have clean water, they’re fine.

Well, there are some places now and uh, where, you know, water supplies and real [00:24:00] jeopardy. There are places in South Africa went through this a few years ago. They nearly ran outta water in places where you turn the tap on and nothing would come out.

[00:24:08] Crisis Brings Change

David: So as a result, crisis brings change is a good way to look at that.

And in order for us to use crisis brings change, we have to look at what is the crisis and define it well so people understand it. Then have a particular, uh, prescription for what types of change need to be accomplished in order to attain the goal we want to.

And when we have to, we can do that. We’re capable as human beings of doing that. And of course we see existentially that threat now with climate and when sit with water in places, you know, as you know, the Great Salt Lake in Utah once, it’s a real challenge.

I talked to a naturalist there in Utah when I was there a few months ago. She said she walked from the edge of where the lake used to be, to where it is now is a [00:25:00] mile a mile.

Wow.

So, and you know, the droughts I grew up in, in, in West Texas, it took a long time for that land to recover. So one of the things that I think we have to do is bring to light, those issues that are immediate, those that are short term, those that are more long term, and get people clear on-

Here’s an issue that we can demonstrate as a clear need.

Friendship is Important

And this is one of our great concerns these days, Miriam, is that cause we are so divided now, that getting people to understand the realities of what we’re facing and to acknowledge those- is challenging.

It’s one of the reasons that I always try to maintain a positive spirit and a very straightforward point of view and a straightforward voice is because as soon as you raise your voice, Well, you give the other person permission to raise theirs, and [00:26:00] social media has made it very easy for us to take shots at each other verbally.

But when we sit down with each other and agree that we have a problem needs to be solved, then we can have a discussion that actually leads to solving problems. This is one of the things that I think we have to do as a culture is get back to a few things I believe in, which one is that

“friendship’s more important than politics”

yeah. I’ve been involved in politics all my life. I understand the importance of it. I also understand, you know, how it works and I’ve got old friends from West Texas who are extremely conservative. I’m not, but I’m not gonna turn my back on them. Try to have some kind of dialogue we can find something to talk about.

Finding your Purpose

David: That’s right. That’s right. David, can I ask you to go to page 83 in your book and, and read that section?

the river always wins. Our culture has become a hard pan, hard baked place in desperate [00:27:00] need of rain. A slow soul -soaking of human kindness. And when that water does come down from the sky, it runs toward the sea. The river always eventually runs toward it, never away. So too does human progress, moving always toward the greater water, the drops have purpose.

Each one, be ready for your purpose. Prepare to move to the sea.

Miriam: Thank you. Could you talk a little bit about finding your purpose?

The drops have a purpose. We as human beings have various purposes. How do we find them?

David: Miriam? I think that people today have more opportunities to

find purpose because people talk about it. People’s opportunities used to be pretty limited. They were born, lived, and died within very small areas until number of people they. The total [00:28:00] amount amount. They knew about the world was pretty limited. Now we wanna make sure that more and more people have those opportunities.

People of all kinds, whatever your faith is, whatever your color is, whatever your background is, everyone ought to have those opportunities.

River of Goodness

One of the things that I was very lucky to find in my life was a great high school speech teacher. Someone, who taught me that I have something to say and that she would help me learn how to say it. And teach me how to write and perform. Her name was Maime Porter and she was a great teacher.

So I think that’s one of the things we have to do as people, is find that sense of purpose in, in my next book we call the River of Goodness,

and I talk about bring your shovel, whatever your shovel is. Your nurse, shovel your teacher, shovel your banker, shovel your software developer, shovel, whatever your shovel might be. Everybody has a shovel. You have to use that shovel to do your daily work. And all of us are involved in that daily work. [00:29:00] Now they, nowadays people have the opportunity to have a dozen different jobs in their lifetime.

A lot of people do, but what I find is that people, when they find their purpose in life, they become clear on it, that that’s what drives them, that’s what motivates them. It might be their job or it might not be. I know some people who make a lot of money doing something else, and they use that as a way to, to provide for them and their family so they can go do what they think their real purpose is.

Others have the opportunity to have a purpose that pays their living, Also.

You are the Artist

David: What I encourage people to do is have that clarity to know if what you’re doing is not deeply satisfying you in some way to know there’s a bigger world out there that needs you somewhere and you need to find what the world needs of you and respond to that so that your response to that helps you attain that purpose in your life.[00:30:00]

You have to look at the watershed of your life and just as the water in its flowing creates its riverbed, the course of your life is your river bed.

You are the artist with the chisel and the hammer, creating your own river bed, chipping away at the rock.

You’re going on to the greater water, something greater than yourself.

And that to me is the ultimate test is -are you doing something that in the end is greater than yourself? Why are you here? Why are you on the planet? Why are you doing this work today? If you ask yourselves those questions, you get some clarity on, oh, I understand today why I’m here.

Our Journey’s End

Miriam: Yeah, and that makes sometimes going to work, whatever that means.

Unbearable then, and those people change jobs. Sometimes it means going to work becomes bearable because now you know why you’re doing it. Mm-hmm. , and I appreciate you asking the questions. [00:31:00]

We are getting close to the end of where we need to be, and I’m sad because this has been so delightful. Toward the end of your book, you have a statement, if the ocean dies, we die. Our journey ends.

Can you read that next little section? On page 1 0 5?

David: Yes, I can. And thank you for asking me to.

If the ocean dies, we die. Our journey ends. For now, we. Under toes and rip tides and jet streams move drops in ways never imagined while in the river. Peaceful, restful. Now the greater water is dynamic and powerful and it moves. And what do the drops learn from this ride on the tide?

That the destination is not what they expected and the journey gets even better.

The drops free now have moved on to a place unique to itself, but part of [00:32:00] something greater than itself.

[00:32:04] Where to Find David

Miriam: Thank you so much. How can people find you? How can they purchase your book? If they’re interested in it?

David: If they wanna purchase the book, you can, of course can order it from big services like Amazon. Also, you can find lots of, uh, bookstores, especially the independent bookstores that we like to support.

You also can go to theriveralwayswins.com

David: it’s a website devoted to the book, beautiful website. We give a shout out to Vicki Gouge from Oak Cliff, Texas, right here in Dallas who did a beautiful job. If you love pictures of water and rushing water, go to the website. It’s really beautiful, and you can order from there.

And then, David.Marquis@SBCglobal.net, m a r q U I. Sbc, SB as in boy SBC global.net, so I’m happy to put that out if someone like to be in touch.

Miriam: Very good. I’ll have all of that in the show notes and as we were talking [00:33:00] beforehand, , my listeners know I like to support a charity in your name to say thank you and you chose the Shedrick Wildlife Trust, one of my favorite organizations.

We will be adopting a tiny elephant in your name and you’ll get monthly updates, and know that you are doing something to help together.

We’re doing something to help, you know, animals in a far distant land.

Thank you so much for just the pleasure of this interview and, for just investing your life in something so meaningful.

David:

Miriam, thank you so much. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to be with you. Thank you for all that you do.

End Credits

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts, or wherever podcasts are found.

Full audio episode found here.

Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

All LeaveBetter Podcast episodes can be found here.

Music by Tom Sherlock.

If you are curious to know more, please contact me!

As someone who has been a therapist for over a decade and has been coaching people for over three decades, I am uniquely qualified to address your concerns.

 

Align Your Purpose – Dr. Kimbi Marenakos

Dr. Kimbi Marenakos

[00:00:00]

[00:00:29] Kimbi: Meaning I can see anyone from child to geriatric. And so, but functional actually is appropriate too, cuz that’s the approach integrative and functional is sort of my approach to wellbeing.

[00:00:41] Miriam: If you don’t mind just telling me a little bit about what got you interested in medicine and kind of your path to getting to where you are, and then we’ll go from there.

[00:00:52] Interest in Medicine

[00:00:52] Kimbi: Sure. I’m one of four children. And my father was a family psychologist and an author, and my mother was a nurse midwife and I was one of four who said she didn’t wanna be anything like her parents.

[00:01:05] I started college as a vocal performance major and, and was living in New York and performing musical theater and traveled to a lot of different places doing that.

[00:01:15] But somewhere a few years into that, into my twenties, I experienced my own deep depression and that was the first time that I experienced therapy and went to therapy myself. I fell so in love with the process. That I couldn’t get enough of it.

[00:01:32] I fell completely in love with the process of, of self-discovery and so I decided, well, if you’re gonna be studying this around the clock, You might as well get a degree for it.

[00:01:43] And then I started practicing, got my licensure and started practicing psychotherapy for, and I did that for about 14 years alongside primary care and family medicine doctors here in Charleston. And I had one particular doctor.

[00:01:59] Who, who reached out and just said, I keep hearing your name. Come talk to me about what you do. And I went and I spoke with him and he said, I’m, I’m a concierge medicine doc and I love a person, I love someone to refer my patients to, or someone to, to collaborate with me to create more holistic treatment plans.

[00:02:19] Behavioral Health

[00:02:19] Kimbi: For my patients. And I said, I’d love to do that. Sure. I said, I’m a mom first and then I’m a therapist and yes, I’d be happy to and we did that and it was fantastic.

[00:02:29] What did not resonate for me though, was the, the duality of it. The, he was the body and I was the mind. And I, I, on many occasions I just, I was frustrated cuz I wanted to take care of whole people.

[00:02:42] So I decided, well, you know what? I’m gonna go back to school. In my research, what I found was that the medical model of care really teaches and helps one, understand pathologies and how to treat them.

[00:02:58] Whereas the nursing model of care teaches you how to nurse people, nurse patients, take care of patients. And so that resonated. I applied, and did the accelerated program, and then went straight into the doctoral program, chose the family track because I already had 14 years of psych behind me, and I thought, this will broaden the scope of my care.

[00:03:19] And while I was there, I was recruited to teach psychiatric and mental health nursing. And then beyond that, I was recruited to teach students from all of the colleges.

Interprofessional Education

[00:03:29] On campus and it was an interprofessional education series of discussions between students from all colleges. So that was a wonderful experience too. Getting all of these different perspectives from healthcare, working together, we would. We would provide a case for them, and each of these perspectives got to weigh in and help develop the treatment plan and, and decide how to, what direction to go for each patient.

[00:03:56] And we could talk about current events, we could talk about issues in healthcare and policy and practice management and, you know, hospital systems. We could talk a little bit about everything. And I loved collaborating.

[00:04:11] Clinical Rotations

[00:04:11] Kimbi: I also then, as I was teaching, Started a psychiatric and mental health clinical rotation where students could come through the clinic, rotate through the homeless shelter clinic here in town under me, providing integrative care and such a vulnerable population. We were able to provide both primary and behavioral healthcare to this to the residents there. And that was also very fulfilling. All of this was integrating all of my background in behavioral health with now my new clinical skills in family medicine. And I loved it. I really loved it, but I knew I didn’t go back to school to teach.

[00:04:57] I went back to school so I could care more for my patients. And so I finished my doctorate and left academia, jumped into urgent care so I could get the most diverse experience. And I spent five years in urgent care and the last two of them, as we all know, was a little thing called Covid 19 and a, a pandemic.

[00:05:23] So, It was truly and it’s, it’s terrible to say, but it was a really ungratifying experience of healthcare over the past two years. You go in to help people and what we ended up doing was disconnecting from the work because of the volume. There were days when I saw 130 patients by myself in an urgent setting.

Pandemic Patients

[00:05:47] Oh my goodness. And at that point, you’ve got minutes with a patient and you, you know, there’s so many considerations and patients are coming in, I like to say sufficiently terrorized by the media about what’s going on. They’re, as far as behavioral health concerns, they’ve been. They’ve been disconnected from social supports.

[00:06:10] Adolescents have been dismissed from school settings. So the acuity of patients was through the roof and the volume too was over the top. And so what this did, what it ultimately did to survive that kind of volume, you do disconnect. Mm-hmm. . And that right there was. It was an autopilot that I didn’t even know had set in.

[00:06:36] But again, it’s, it’s a, it’s a survival mechanism. And so I, I then had my own experience. I had my own wake up call in the 12th hour of a shift, and the patient came through that was not there for covid testing.

[00:06:52] She was grieving the loss of her father, and she needed a, she needed a doctor, She needed someone there in a real, vulnerable human way. And at that time, that day. There was nothing left of me and it was really incredibly devastating to me because everything I had done was to be able to do this.

[00:07:20] Burnout

[00:07:20] Kimbi: This was exactly why I went back to school, remember, was to to be able to provide behavioral health in a primary setting and to treat a whole person and acknowledge the body, the mind, and the spirit in caring for someone. All in one caring approach. And so here I was in exactly the patient encounter that I was born to have and there was nothing left of me.

[00:07:44] I was so physically, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted, and I drove home that night and I just cried my whole way home and I just was so disappointed and I felt ashamed, and I knew, I mean, it was such a wake up call. It was like blinders were lifted and I just, I was devastated and I thought, how far off the rails have I gone?

[00:08:11] How far off my path have I strayed and. I had to take a step back, a real step back, and I thought, My goodness. You know, when I was teaching at the ME, I was considered the expert on burnout and compassion fatigue, and here I was even, I had blind spots, even I was vulnerable and. I thought, what must other people be going through?

Dive Right In

[00:08:36] And so I poured myself in. I knew the, you know, didactic, I was an expert on it, didactically and academically, but now it got really, really personal. And so I made it my mission just like. Just like in my twenties when I made it my mission to understand psychotherapy and I dove in head first, I did the same thing with burnout and I started really, really exploring the three dimensions of burnout, and I wanted to find the antidotes to each of those dimensions, and then I wanted to find an insulation.

[00:09:12] A way to insulate against it. And then I wanted to share it with the world and get it out there, and I was so just charged and inspired and alive with all of this, that it just created a whole new mission for me and a commitment, a, a new purpose alignment as far as making a. An affirmation and a commitment to working in alignment with my life’s purpose and knowing my values and letting my values be the guiding principles of my every action, and no longer just being a part of a system that’s broken.

[00:09:51] And so often people think the system’s broken. How can I make a difference? Well, the system is broken. But you aren’t, and the individual can make a huge impact. Change has to start at the individual level and it will ripple out. And so that’s been the journey that I’ve been on and, and where it’s brought me now, as of just a month ago, I left the machine completely and I’ve in essence hung a shingle for myself and started my private practice, and I’ve been building it and I’m overwhelmed.

Hope for Success

[00:10:24] With the response and with the, the reception I’ve had and just the outpouring of support that’s been there. So I’m learning so much and I have so much to still learn. But the support that you leap and. You hope the net is there, , but to leap and to find that the net is, is just, it’s, it’s a, it’s just a fabric of arms of people supporting you and wanting, and hoping, and willing your success just as much as you are.

[00:11:00] It’s pretty powerful.

[00:11:01] Miriam: Sure. Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for telling us that story. It’s, it’s moving to hear just your level of compassion for people and your desire to help and to heal. There, I I wanna go quite a few different directions here. I’m trying to decide which one to go with first.

[00:11:21] How did you make the decision to leave? The machine and how would you describe the machine beyond what you’ve already said?

[00:11:32] Take Your Time

[00:11:32] Kimbi: Mm-hmm. I, how did I decide to leave it? That was another very, Powerful patient encounter. And as I said, the patient has been central for me. And, and that’s been what’s driven me every step of the way is caring for human beings.

[00:11:50] And I, I sat with a young girl And this, this young girl was suicidal and she didn’t want to live another week, and I, I acknowledged what I saw. She wasn’t even the acknow, the patient that day, but I, I, I, you know, I saw her and I. I acknowledged her pain and I asked her for a chance to help her, and we started working together and got her medications changed, and then a few months later, she’s there for a follow up visit and Here’s this young girl that I had met that really didn’t wanna live another week, and then at that follow up, she sat down and shared with me her five year plan.

[00:12:37] Whoa. Yeah. Well done. Well done. Yeah, that was really incredible. That was incredible to me. And, but the whole time I was there sitting with her, People were coming to the door, they were knocking on the door, they were looking through the window. I could hear the other rooms filling up. And someone came to knock on the door and I put my hand up and I stayed.

Hold the Space

[00:13:01] And I stayed present with her. I held the space. I did not allow anything to push me. And when we wrapped up our. I walked out, I went and saw eight more patients in eight more rooms. And then I reached out to my employer and I said I don’t wanna do, when it comes to caring for a human being, I don’t wanna do anything urgently anymore.

[00:13:28] Mm-hmm. . And he said, Well, I wanna do everything urgently. And I said, Well then that’s where our paths diverge. And I have loved my time here. Now I need to go. And I said September 1st. And, and really that moment was that moment was a little scary. Cause you know, you can over, you could plan a new business venture to death and, you know, normally you would give some notice and just say, Okay, I’m gonna do this January 1st.

[00:13:58] Well, I didn’t, I gave about two weeks notice and I said, September one, I’d like to be off the schedule. Yeah. So again, that was the. And you hope the net’s there, and then sure enough, it is if you have the faith and you’ll make the, you’ll make that leap. It’s, it’s a big leap. And it is so worth it because the machine that I leap from, Has become so impersonal and so disconnected from the patient.

Overwhelming Healthcare

[00:14:27] It is a business more than it is an endeavor of, of care or compassion. There are providers, there are wonderful doctors out there, and wonderful, very compassionate caregivers. And sadly the business of healthcare has really overwhelmed us. And I think the pandemic, what we’re seeing since the pandemic is that the highest rate of, of suicide and suicidal ideation is among healthcare providers.

[00:14:56] And that is frightening to me. And it truly, it’s a shame when you see a community that’s willing. Sacrifice their caregivers. I feel like the caregivers are the, the canaries in the coal mine. And it’s sad to me that that’s, that we would send, that’s who we would sacrifice. So it’s a machine that is impersonal and detached and stoic and very much, very much a business.

[00:15:24] And I can appreciate the need for, for a business mindset, but I don’t know any healthcare providers that that really, it, it is such a grueling, grueling and rigorous training to get there that you have to love, you have to want it beyond a business, you know? I know, I know plumbers that do better than a lot of healthcares healthcare providers.

Bigger than Business

[00:15:52] I really do. And it’s like you, you are. To healthcare, you are called to education. You are called to these service industries, and that’s something much bigger than economics. That’s bigger than business. And so it’s disappointing that we have these people called to serve and then exploited the way that the way that they are.

[00:16:17] So it’s a machine that once you see it for what it is, it’s really hard to participate. Any, any.

[00:16:23] Miriam: Yeah, that makes so much sense to me. And I, I actually deeply worry about our country, as you know, this moves forward because you are not the first person I’ve spoken to who has spoken like this. And the other day I was talking to someone who was a teacher, and I bet a good teacher actually, and he said, I, I can’t, I can’t do this anymore.

[00:16:46] Shortage of Service Providers

[00:16:46] Miriam: And. The machine is grinding up our service providers and we’re not gonna get too far down the road and there aren’t going to be any, I mean, already that’s in many, many cities. You, you have a two month wait for a veterinarian and a six month wait for a physician and a as like, I don’t even understand how, what has happened.

[00:17:11] It used to not be like that.

[00:17:13] Kimbi: Yeah. I mean, we have a, we, I have a nurse, a young nurse that I used to teach. She was one of my students that came through. She came by this weekend, last weekend. She wanted to talk. She’s really struggling. And the the nurse patient ratio. On the unit where she’s working, which is a critical care unit, is five to one.

[00:17:33] And it should not be that high when these are critically ill patients. And so it’s, it’s frightening to her and she feels she, her anxiety as you can imagine, has, has been off the charts because of the responsibility they feel for not just one critically ill patient, but five really fragile. Yeah. And it, there’s no support to be had.

[00:17:58] There’s, there’s, there are no more hands to put on deck. So it’s a very scary situation. And we do see nurses leaving the profession left and right, and that was, we were already in a critical nursing shortage before the pandemic. Right. So,

[00:18:15] Miriam: Yeah. I wonder at what point do some of these mega corporations who are taking home mega, you know, bottom lines get removed from that space and where these providers are paid, what they’re due?

Be Kind to Yourself

[00:18:29] It’s, it’s a shame that providers have to jump out from underneath. That umbrella and what it ends up doing almost all the time, and I don’t know what your situation is, but almost all the time they say, I’m not working with insurance. I’m going to just charge a flat fee. And that flat fee unfortunately marginalizes out a certain portion of the population and that flat fee is even making, you know it.

[00:18:55] Potentially less lucrative for that healthcare provider by doing it that way, but they get to choose their own hours and they get to not fry themselves to a crisp.

[00:19:06] Kimbi: You know it’s, That’s right. And they get to decide how to treat their patient. Mm-hmm. , they don’t have a middle man saying, No, you need to go back and try this drug first , and try that drug first and then get to the one that we know will work for this patient.

Middlemen

[00:19:21] You know, and it’s, it’s really, it’s the middle men and there’s a really good Post the other day by Dr. Pearl on a, a, a page called Fixing Healthcare, but it’s about the middlemen and it’s, that’s what’s really, really creating, I think, a big Stick in the spokes. A monkey wrench for us cuz they, and the way I, the way that I see it may be controversial, but really

[00:19:46] really the ones who benefit in this system are the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies. The patient, the community is lost. The doctors, the healthcare providers are lost. Yeah. You know, those are the ones that are sacrificed. But it’s I think something has to give and I think it needs to become a priority, and at the very least, it needs to become a discussion.

[00:20:09] So thank you for what you’re doing.

[00:20:11] Learning about Burnout

[00:20:11] Miriam: Yeah. Yeah. You’re welcome. Can we talk about kind of some of the things you discovered about burnout?

[00:20:20] Kimbi: Absolutely. Burnout. The World Health Organization characterizes burnout as three different dimensions, and the first is exhaustion, and that is physical, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion.

[00:20:37] The second is Depersonalization, and that’s a disconnect from the work and the, the purpose behind the work. The calling. And then the third is a diminished sense of accomplishment or self-efficacy.

[00:20:51] And so I set out to fully, fully understand each of those dimensions and find the antidote and the antidote.

[00:21:02] To exhaustion? Nope, it’s not downward dogs or low disposition or headstands. Although I’m a big fan of restorative sleep and a, and a healthy diet and some exercise, but that’s just part of it. Exhaustion. We need to find what it, Ultimately, what you ultimately need to do is some habit tracking and identify the activities in your day to day life.

[00:21:26] That energized you versus deplete. And when we can because you’ve done it. I’ve done it. We’ve all done it. Where we find ourselves, where the time just flies. You are having so much fun. You are so engaged in what you’re doing. You are alive and there’s a tailwind, and you could do it all day. Without tiring.

[00:21:47] That’s a good indication that, that that you’re working in alignment with your purpose. So those activities, and you’ll find those activities in your day if you do some habit tracking and then incorporating more of those habits. More of those activities into your day to day life. Schedule them. So it’s intentional.

Be Intentional

[00:22:05] Don’t let it be accidental or incidental that you did something you loved. And so that’s the antidote to exhaustion. The antidote to a diminished sense of accomplishment is reclaiming your sense of power, your personal power and your pride and your profession, all that you did to get to this place, all that training you did, all the experience you bring to the table.

[00:22:27] And it can be a little intimidating for, you know, HR departments to hear me say this, but really what I encourage people to do is, Update your cv, update your resume, look back over it, you know, fill in what you’ve left out from the past couple years and really, really look at where you’ve been, the journey and where it’s taken you and what you’ve learned.

[00:22:51] Or the other thing, the other exercise that helps is if you write a job description for your position, and it has to include everything that you bring to the. And just look it, it, it really can, You’ll be proud of yourself if you stop and look at everything that you bring to your position. You then can reclaim your sense of power and your sense of pride in what you do, because we lose that when we’re just going on autopilot and we forget how capable we are.

[00:23:19] I remember a moment in at the height of the pandemic, I remember thinking, I should have just kept pounding pavement in New York and kept singing and acting and, and it it, it caught me off guard and it really, really surprised me to even think those thoughts because I love my work. I love helping people.

Align Your Personal Purpose

[00:23:42] And so to hear myself say that it was, that was a, a. Red flag, just one, but it was a red flag. And, and the antidote to the, the third dimension is the the antidote to depersonalization is realignment with your personal purpose.

[00:24:00] And that to me is the most powerful one. And I, that’s why I saved it for last there, because it’s the disconnect from the work that I think poses the biggest threat to all of us and the depersonalization and that sadly, when I was exploring the models of care and the programs of academic study, What I’ve found was an article called The Devil is in the Third Year, and it’s all about the dramatic, dramatic dip in or decline in empathy in third year med students and in the third years when they start rounding on patients and putting hands on people and really being a part of the care team.

[00:24:46] For that to be, when we see the empathy disappear, that’s frightening to me. And I, I, again, I did a lot of research on shift work disorder and that compassion fatigue and healthcare provider moral distress. But what I learned and what I continued to hear is that it’s built into the training. It is in that third year, you see the decline.

Reach Your Full Potential

[00:25:09] But it’s also part of the training. It’s not just a response to the training, It’s part of the training is to keep a, a a wall between you and your patient, remain somewhat stoic. You know, maintain a boundary, a, a distance from your. Patients, and I understand the survival mechanism there. I understand the motivation is to, you know, you’re going to deliver some difficult diagnoses and prognoses, so you know you have to survive that.

[00:25:40] You have to get through some really difficult, difficult encounters, but to disconnect from the patient to depersonalize an endeavor that. Innately, in essence, it is as personal as it gets. This is someone’s health, it’s their life. That is problematic to me and depersonalization. As I said is, is the biggest threat, and then what would be the antidote?

[00:26:08] The realignment with your personal purpose and what I see as our purpose is what we are uniquely gifted with, what we can do uniquely in this life. That is our responsibility is to actualize and to reach our full potential. I think every one of us will, will be and is accountable for how we used our gifts, how we used those very, very, whether whatever it might be, and if it’s, if it’s being present and, and patient and compassionate and hold the space for a young girl who is, is finding a five year plan.

Your True Design

[00:26:46] Then I’m accountable for how I use that. Did I squander it? Did I depersonalize and cut myself off from the work? Or did I allow myself to feel the full breadth and depth of that encounter with another human being? So that aligning with your purpose, I think is really, it’s something that drives my every single day now.

[00:27:09] Miriam: Yeah, that is a space that jumps into the mystical, almost the mystical, magical, where you get to live out who you are designed to be. And I think sometimes people are struggling to find out that who are they designed to be? But I also think many people have forgotten that space because they’ve gotten pulled into the grind or

[00:27:33] just chewed up by the machine and you know, I can tell you, having reconnected with that space has brought you so much life. It’s, it’s interesting to listen to the cadence of your voice and the tone and to hear how much life there is in this new space you found? Mm-hmm. .

[00:27:53] So let, let me transition and ask one more question before we have to end.

[00:27:57] On your website you have a little blurb or it’s like a thing that goes across your picture that says, “Be well.” And I thought that’s such a nice Thought, command, exertion. And I have a feeling it underpins your entire philosophy about how you do medicine. Now, can you talk a little bit about be Well,

[00:28:20] Be Well

[00:28:20] Kimbi: I would love to because that.

[00:28:23] That became a part of my branding so organically. It’s, it’s what I say. And actually my medical scribe that’s been with me for a few years in different, different clinics, she’s, she’s wonderful. And if I tell her she’s. She stuck with me cuz I’ll, I’ll keep her wherever I’d go. And she’s she’s just amazing.

[00:28:43] But she’s, you know, she was one who pointed out that I say be well. Every time I leave a room, every time I leave a patient encounter, she hears me leave the room and say, Be well. And so it, and it wasn’t really on a conscious level, but that was my, my wish, my wish, my command, my hope, my everything for the patient until we meet again, be well.

[00:29:07] And so it, it just. We arrived at that little tagline on the logo so organically it just, it, it was there. It was like, let’s just use it. So yeah. It’s you. It’s you, it’s me. Oh, so nice.

[00:29:23] Miriam: Can we thank you for this time? Can you just tell our listeners how they can reach you if that is something you would like them to?

[00:29:31] Kimbi: Oh, please, of course. Whether you’re thinking of whether you’re chewing on the idea of jumping from the machine or a patient who might wanna consult on something, I would love nothing more. Connection is, is where I thrive. And they can reach me@drkimbe.com and that’s D R K I m I dot. Very good.

[00:29:54] Miriam: Thank you so much for your time, and I’ll say to you and to our audience, be well.

End Credits

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts, or wherever podcasts are found.

Full audio episode found here.

Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

All LeaveBetter Podcast episodes can be found here.

Music by Tom Sherlock.

If you are curious to know more, please contact me!

As someone who has been a therapist for over a decade and has been coaching people for over three decades, I am uniquely qualified to address your concerns.

 

Make the Most of Opportunities – Rob Jacomen

Rob Jacomen

[00:00:00] Miriam: All right. I am so happy guys to have with me my friend Rob Jacomen. We met just really relatively recently. We were both doing and are both doing an online course and, generally I find in those things, I don’t have opportunity to create relationships. And Rob has been so great with just offering help and you just have been a bright spot in the class, and I thought it would be fun to profile your company and just have a good conversation about helping people overcome their self-sabotage and reaching their next level.

[00:00:32] So welcome.

[00:00:33] Rob: Miriam, thank you so much. It’s an honor and a pleasure to be on your show.

[00:00:37] Miriam: So Rob, why don’t we start by you giving us just a teeny profile of your company, who you are, what you do, and then we’ll get a little history of how you got from A to B.

[00:00:47] HPX Agency

[00:00:47] Rob: I have an agency called hpx Agency. We are, basically a high performance working with high performance producers in the insurance industry.

[00:00:55] We work with agencies, producers, brokers, we work, our focus is really to transform the. And transform the way things are done in the industry to help people achieve a higher level of growth, personal development, helping them to build multimillion dollar books of business. And so that basically became my passion.

[00:01:17] I spent over 18 years of my career in the industry and, was very successful. And now just want to share my wisdom and how I built my book of business and share it with others and help others succeed. Really what I love more than anything is helping to, make a difference in someone’s life and, and really to help them transform not only their business, but also see them grow. And, and that’s such a cool thing in, in our industry.

Helping Someone Grow

[00:01:42] Miriam: Yeah, well you’re, you’re preaching to the choir here because I believe exactly the same thing.

[00:01:48] There is nothing as much fun as helping someone reach that next level of growth or insight, revenue, what, you know, whatever.

[00:01:57] When you and I were talking the other day, somehow we got off a little bit onto things like sustainability and we both love trees. And you mentioned that you were raised on an organic farm.

[00:02:08] You are the first person I have met who has been, has any experience with organic farming. So we’re gonna go way, way back and talk to me a little bit about your organic farming experience. So then we’re gonna go from there to your. Yeah, it’s such a great thing. I grew up on, I basically, I grew up on a farm, um, for most of my life.

[00:02:29] Organic Farming

[00:02:29] Rob: And, and I grew up in an area of Pennsylvania, which had, you know, Amish and, and, um, Mennonites and my uncle was a farmer, so really was in my, in my family and my blood. And I just, I just loved, you know, there’s something really cool about just being out in nature and going out in the fields and really what that experience did for me is have a true appreciation for, for nature and animals and protecting the earth.

[00:02:57] Incidentally, I ended up, you know, going to school to become a nerdy engineer, specifically an environmental engineer of all things because of my passion for nature and, uh, preserving the environment and just being a good steward, steward of the environment. And, then ended up going to graduate school, at the Uni uva University of Virginia, and had an opportunity to take some classes in the School of Architecture.

[00:03:23] And at that, Sustainability was becoming such a huge thing.

[00:03:28] I mean, we’re talking years ago.

[00:03:30] But really that was at the beginning of that, really that new awareness of sustainability and sustainable communi. And I just became fascinated with how we could integrate livable communities inside of nature.

[00:03:45] And it doesn’t have to compete with each other. It can be a symbiotic thing where there’s a respect for nature and, um, you know, and, and people were surrounded by green spaces and, you know, those things I think are just so important for, for, uh, people’s health and wellbeing. So I then ended up, you know, getting into that profession.

Protect the Earth

[00:04:05] Absolutely loving it because I could make a difference. Obviously I transitioned to something else, but I always that was always inside of my heart. My heart always was, Hey, I love the environment.

[00:04:18] I love protecting our earth. I still read and stay on top of, of new developments and green buildings, how green buildings are built and how companies can, uh, use waste minimization and recycling and all these different, technologies. You know, we’ve come a long way. So that was something that’s always interested me and I, I still keep it with me to this.

[00:04:41] Miriam: Do you have any suggestions for the listeners? I, I think it’s easy to get kind of discouraged. All of the news talks about, you know, how everything’s being destroyed and just. We’re not even, I mean, the latest thing I read was that all the plastic the United States is creating or consuming is not even being recycled anymore.

[00:05:03] And I, I think that for someone who cares about it as much as you do, as much as I do, I know this isn’t the main topic of our podcast, that I want us to talk about it because we’re integrated human beings. And it’s not all just about if you’re having success in one area but not in another, then you’re still not succeeding.

[00:05:23] Sustainability for the Planet

[00:05:23] Miriam: So what are some ways that we as individuals can make a difference in the sustainability of our planet?

[00:05:31] Rob: You know, I think, I think what I see right now going on is there’s so many different groups or different different groups who have specific interests. You know, you have the, the people over here protecting, you know, water and clean, clean water, and you have clean air.

[00:05:49] You have sustainability and sustainable communities. You have all these different groups doing. Who are all passionate about their, their certain area. But really I think what we all need to do a better job of is all coming together. And really what it boils down to, in my opinion, is education and technology.

[00:06:09] Like there are some advantages to some of the innovation that has occurred in, in the sustainability community and in terms of, of green buildings. Like we’ve come a long. But economics does not always have to compete with protecting the environment. And I think it’s not a zero sum game. It’s not like, Oh, we’re gonna sacrifice one for the other, or, you know, we don’t As, as somebody who’s concerned about the environment, I also don’t wanna put companies outta business.

[00:06:37] I want there to, to be more, Let’s all get on the same page and have a certain level of respect and stewardship for the environment. And I don’t believe that one side versus the other, like one side doesn’t wanna destroy the environment. The other side, you know, is, is only concerned about the the environment.

Don’t Become Extreme

[00:06:54] I think there’s a, I think there’s a healthy middle ground that we all can, can live and we can use innovation and use technology to our advantage. I think we can all come together as, Hey, we all have common interests and I think we all agree on the same end, and that is we want to protect the earth and we want to protect our children’s future.

[00:07:17] Not be selfish, but think about the consequences of the decisions that we make today for, for the future. And I, I think there’s a real opportunity for us to do that without getting extreme. You know, I think there’s a healthy middle ground that, that everybody can agree to. We wanna be on this planet as long as we possibly can.

[00:07:35] I think we can all agree to that.

[00:07:38] Miriam: Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate what you’re saying about not becoming extreme and also the technology technological spaces. I have a friend who is building a, new home and she’s requesting the carbon capture concrete, I guess it’s a special, unique thing and she’s having a hard time getting her developer to sign off on it, and she just keeps after ’em and keeps after ’em and says, No, this is what I want.

Have Converstations

[00:08:04] The research says it’s equally sound and I know it’s a little bit more expensive and it’s what I want.

[00:08:10] And I was showing another person who is into building houses, this glass that has this special, um, I wanna say there’s an iridescence to it that allows birds to see it so they don’t just crash into it and kill themselves on it.

[00:08:25] So I think there are ways to do it and, I appreciate what you say about coming together and having conversations.

[00:08:32] So, okay. You, you went from the farm, then you went to school, you became an engineer, and then you went into this architecture space. How did you get from there to where you are now?

[00:08:45] Take Opportunities

[00:08:45] Rob: So, so I really became, I, I’ve really been that guy who, number one, I hated working for somebody else and it just used to drive me crazy. So I always knew I had that entrepreneurial blood inside of me

[00:08:57] I encourage a young generation to do this as well. Start to experiment and get into as many different things as you can.

[00:09:04] You don’t always have to like, do something you don’t like or, or like be stuck doing one thing forever. Like I really believe that the beauty of life and the beauty of being in business is try a few different things and see what really resonates with you. See like what makes your heart sing and, and like, When you, when you can honestly say to yourself, Wow, I could, I feel like I can do this and make a difference in someone’s life.

[00:09:29] Like even as strange as this sounds, even if I didn’t like necessarily what I was doing or selling at the time, I try to say to myself, How can I make this an opportunity, right? To make a difference. Impact somebody or give, it helps somebody achieve a transformation. So that’s why even over the course of my career, I went from engineer to business owner to getting in the health and wellness industry.

Health and Wellness

[00:09:59] That was just a fascinating world. For several years I owned my own, um, health and wellness centers, so, Had two health and wellness centers that I was involved in helping to, you know, when people were at the end of the road with, uh, the allopathic model, you know, and, and really wanted it, they were just tired of the, the, the runaround with medications and being sick and, and just wanted to find some way to

[00:10:23] be healthy and and to truly heal. So we found a lot of those people, um, were attracted to our model and so we focused on custom attrition and putting people on a, what we called the healing diet and really started to see people’s lives transform. So that was a period in my life, which it was fascinating and I loved it because it was really making a difference in people’s lives.

[00:10:47] And then I migrated to getting into the insurance industry and using my science and engineering background to really get into safety and risk management and, um, helping businesses become more conscious about safety and how to better manage risk inside of their business. Not only to protect their, their employees, but also just to be more proactive about, you know, managing how they’re managing their business.

Make an Impact

[00:11:13] So that’s where I am right now. That’s where I. Where I am right now is I was very successful as a producer, so I I, I was working in the, in the insurance agency side, then decided, Hey, you know what? I don’t want to just do this for myself. I want to help other agents and producers be successful and help them grow their businesses and help them grow a multimillion dollar book of business.

[00:11:40] And that’s where I am today and the impact that I’m able to make and, and the difference I’m able to make in people’s lives today. Is again, I go back to the same theme anywhere you go or anywhere I’ve been. I’ve always thought of ways that I could really make an impact and, and change people’s lives for the better.

[00:11:59] And uh, that’s always been a common theme throughout my entire career.

[00:12:04] Miriam: I love that you’re saying that because I was just about, in my mind, I was thinking, okay, we each have these themes that run through our lives, and anybody who had had was older than two decades has a little bit of data behind them.

[00:12:19] You start seeing these commonalities, at least in the jobs that you have loved

[00:12:24] you know, I was talking to someone the other day and I said, I’ve always been a coach.

[00:12:28] First. I did it when I was in high school listening to all my friends and their boyfriend problems and their girlfriend problems, and it’s always been, Let me listen to you.

Mentoring

[00:12:37] I’ll find out where you’re stuck. I’ll help you get to that next, whatever that next level.

[00:12:43] When I was in, After I graduated from college, I spent 25 years in a mentoring program with students doing the same thing. Where are you stuck? How can I help you? And then, you know, I became a therapist. Same thing.

[00:12:58] Where are you stuck? How can I help you? And then I moved into this coaching space with businesses and it’s, it’s fascinating to see this golden thread that runs through all of it.

[00:13:09] At my core, that’s who I am. And at your core, what I heard you saying, You like to help people’s lives change and transform, but it’s a little bit different than the way I do it.

[00:13:18] I think. I love this notion of, of you like kind of pushing and excelling people forward – whenever you talk about your business, like when we’re in that, group class, You always have a lot of energy, positive energy where you’re like clearly enthused about what you’re doing.

[00:13:37] How do you help yourself or others when they get discouraged?

[00:13:42] You strike me as someone who is fundamentally optimistic, but I don’t know. Speak to that.

[00:13:46] Find What Works For You

[00:13:46] Rob: Yes, very much so. It’s actually, it’s, it’s funny because even. People who know me very well, know me as like the, uh, I’m the guy that bounces outta bed in the morning, like, Right, what are we doing? Let’s do this. You know, like, let’s go, let’s, let’s make some stuff happen.

[00:14:03] Right? It also, Reflects in the things I feed myself, feed my brain, feed my spirit.

[00:14:10] I read a phenomenal book, by hell Elrod, which, you know, he talks about the miracle mourning, you know, And I started to incorporate that into my life several years ago and, and really made a huge, huge impact on how I started my day.

[00:14:27] And, you know, the question I get a lot is, And there’s so much out there online about, Hey, what’s your routine? How do you get excited for the day? How do you start your morning? Do you do meditation? Do you do this? You know, and it’s funny because I do what works for me and everybody can develop their own routine that works for them.

[00:14:47] Some people like to work out in the morning. Some people like to work out at nighttime. It all depends how you, how your body responds to things or how you function the the point. As long as you do, are doing those things that are good for your heart, good for your spirit, um, good for your overall wellness and your wellbeing to get you started, to get you motivated, to get you excited, to inspire you to, and maybe it’s tapping into other people when you’re not feeling great.

Tough Love

[00:15:18] You’re like, Hey, I’m gonna call my friend Miriam, and she’s, she’s gonna lift me up, right? Anyone who knows me, Knows that they can reach out to me anytime and if there’s something I can do to pick you up or inspire you, or you know, maybe even hold you, hold you, hold you to the fire and say, Listen, you know, you’re giving me a bunch of excuses right now.

[00:15:39] There’s a little bit of tough love there too, and, and accountability. I’m, I also love doing that because I really feel like sometimes people need that as well. I’m not gonna let you play the victim and, you know, woe is me. It’s, Hey, what do we need to do to think differently about the situation? What do we need to do differently to turn this around?

[00:15:59] How, if, if things were perfect, what would that look like? And start to talk through some of those things. And I do that for, for myself too. It’s like that self talk. I wasn’t always like that necessarily, but I always had, I’ve grown over the years, but I’ve always had that level of faith, belief, high energy.

[00:16:21] And now over time, as I got older, It just changed and, and got better. So I started reading more. Um, you know, there’s so many phenomenal books out there that just help contribute to how can I make myself better every single day? Like Atomic Habits, for example. How can you just improve 1% every day and, and focus on that?

Opportunity to Help Others

[00:16:45] That’s a positive thing, you know? And, and we went through a really tough time the last few years. It had been really tough for a lot of people, but at the end of the. We’re still here, we’re still, we still have a phenomenal opportunity to help somebody else, to make a difference in someone else’s life.

[00:17:01] And sometimes when you do something for others and you give and you serve and you have that servant mentality, sometimes that turns around your own mind trap that’s going on and can help you flip that switch. And, and that for me has always worked really well.

[00:17:18] Miriam: Yeah. Wow.

[00:17:19] Well spoken. I don’t know that there’s a whole lot that can be said after that. That’s like, okay, and now we’re gonna take a commercial break. Just kidding, .

[00:17:28] Rob: But the thing is, everybody, everybody can do that. You have Yeah. Have that power inside of you. That, that, So, so, so you’re feeling things aren’t going your way.

[00:17:40] Right? So things aren’t necessarily going your way. Okay. If you have an acknowledgement that. I’m not where I want to be, but I know where I want to go. Okay. What are the, what’s the next right step? What’s the next thing you should you, you and you in your heart or in your mind, you know, that you need to start doing that.

Opportunity Mindset

[00:18:01] I always say this, it’s, it’s funny when I talk to sales people because you know, I’m like totally into sales, totally into marketing. Totally love that whole world. And sometimes in sales you experience a lot of rejection, right? So I’m like, Listen, what’s the next thing you can do to build some momentum?

[00:18:21] And the the, the fastest and easiest solution when you’re in the dumps, especially if you’re in sales, is activity because activity breeds results eventually. Right? So you might experience a lot of rejection, a lot of rejection, a lot of rejection. You’re like, Oh man, this is so hard. Yeah, of course it’s hard, right?

[00:18:42] But if you keep on going and you keep on going, eventually you’re gonna get to the end of where you want to go. Or all the sudden these amazing things are gonna happen, especially if you have a good mindset about.

[00:18:54] I’m a big believer in the law of attraction. I, I, I really believe that there is a whole mindset, and that’s why I’m big believer in meditation.

[00:19:04] It really calms that brain and calms that mind down. When I’m experiencing stress, I sometimes will take a step back and say, You know what, I’m just gonna sit quiet for 10 minutes. And just breathe and just kind of meditate and just let all that chatter just kind of settle down and, and like relax. And that has always been a great solution to, uh, to those stressful situations in life that we all experience.

[00:19:30] So, Hopefully that might help somebody.

Stick to It

[00:19:32] Miriam: Yeah, . Yeah. I hope so too. I absolutely hope so too. And I agree with you. Do you have any stories about having to stick to something even though it was hard?

[00:19:43] Rob: You know, where I draw the most? I’ve been an athlete my entire life and I think what I’ve drawn so much from being an athlete and the lessons that I learned from setting goals to persevering through tough times to, you know what? I can do an extra rep, I can, I can run an extra mile.

[00:20:04] You know, when I wanted to quit. You know, sometimes you don’t always like to do this stuff. It’s like, do I want to get up in the morning to work out? Do I want to go for that 10 mile run? Or, you know, I’m training for a marathon. So I’ve done marathons, I’ve done Ironman races, Um, I did all those things that I call that like, BC before children

[00:20:25] So it’s like before children when I had the time it like, and now my kids are starting to get older. So it’s kind of cool to watch them grow as adults and, and, uh, like my son is now a professional, uh, he’s a professional soccer player, so, um, you know, To see him now grow and develop into that man and, and into that professional, like he’s living a dream that I always dreamed of myself when I was younger.

Sports and Business

[00:20:49] You know, I think as young men, we, we sometimes think of like if you’re an athlete, you’re always dreaming of, well maybe there’s another level there. Maybe I can be a pro or be a professional someday. And uh, now he’s living that and I’m tru, I’m so excited for him. But I think sport, the sports and athletics, Really taught me a lot about business and life and about setting goals and about just like getting through some hard times just by being, you know, persevering and through hard work.

[00:21:20] If you surround yourself with the right people and, and you work smart and you focus on the things that you are really gifted at and let other people like bring in other people to help you get to where you want to go, that maybe fill in the gaps where you’re not as strong, I think is really the secret.

[00:21:39] That’s one of the things that really learned over the years and, and grew. I went from like this workaholic. You know, grind mentality to like, wait a minute, that doesn’t make sense. I, I need to work smarter and surround myself with people who are smarter than me. And, um, I think that’s been like one of the areas where I’ve evolved.

[00:21:56] And eventually over, over time as I got smarter, I’m like, I don’t have to work so hard. I just have to be smart about it. And.

Internalized Discipline

[00:22:03] Miriam: Yeah. I wonder if sometimes that happens because as we age we get tireder and so it’s like, awesome. I gotta learn how to do me smarter about this because I don’t have the same kind of energy I had when I was in my twenties.

[00:22:16] So the question I’m curious about, I have watched an entire generation of athletes grow up being in soccer or. Little peewee football or whatever it is from the time they’re, I mean, they’re starting at like age three or four now, and I have watched generations of kids come up and what I’ve seen is that they’re incredibly, um, disciplined.

[00:22:43] When they have their coach telling them what to do, but once they graduate out of that space, like maybe they finish high school and they move into the college space, or if they’re a collegiate athlete and then they grow past that. I’ve seen an awful lot of people be kind of like a kite whose string was cut.

[00:23:02] You know how when there’s that tension in a kite and then you cut the string and the kite just kind of flails all over the place because that discipline wasn’t internalized. It was like, Yeah, I can do it because you’re telling me to do it. But it didn’t move into the center of themselves. And I was gonna ask you clearly you have an internal locus of control.

[00:23:25] What did you do that helped you know that you are the captain of your ship and the master of your fate? Obviously, you know, within reason.

[00:23:36] Take Control

[00:23:36] Rob: You bring up some really interesting questions about how, you know, I also think as generations, we, we grew up in a, in a certain generation, um, that was a little bit, I, I feel like it was a little more gritty and a little bit more like, Hey, you gotta.

[00:23:50] You gotta take the bull by the horns. And like, if you wanna make things happen, it’s up to you. Like you’ve gotta put in the hard work. You’ve gotta, if, if that’s a goal of yours, figure out how, how you need to get there. And I also think some of the new generation. And I noticed this since in, in youth sports is just a different mentality about how to interact and engage with the, the youth.

[00:24:17] Um, I personally believe like the old school approach of, of discipline and regimen, uh, is very valuable and beneficial because I really think that some of the youth, they, they need that direction. They need some guidance. So I think as we get older, as adults, We start to lose that a little bit of, of like, it’s kind of like that lifeline and it’s why I’m involved with, like, I think we all need to practice what we preach, and that is if the only way to get to where you want to go, I believe is not only surrounding yourself with the right people, but also having the right coaches, the right mentors, the people that you can latch onto in, in your life, especially early on in your career where you can say, Hey, John.

Coaches

[00:25:03] Like I remember my mentors in, in the industry that, that I started in and I’m like, I really relied on them to, Hey, I’m so determined. I wanna be successful in this business. I wanna learn it. I’m gonna approach someone who’s already been where I want to go, who’s already successful, and, and. And model their success and, and talked with them and picked their brain and say, Hey, will you mentor me?

[00:25:28] Will you, will you share with me some of the things that worked for you? And then also, like today, I, I believe that there is a reason why professional athletes have coaches. Tiger Woods has his own swing coach. My son has a goalkeeper coach that he works with, uh, who’s on the coaching staff, and they.

[00:25:51] Team meetings and they, they meet separately to talk about strategy and hey, how do, and, and also, role playing and game planning and debriefing. Like, Hey, what did I do well, What did I didn’t do? What didn’t I do well? How, how can I prove here?

[00:26:06] And I think as professionals, we all need a coach, somebody who can help guide us in the right direction and give us that.

[00:26:15] Spark of inspiration and, and, and guidance and direction and, and somebody who, who, who can help give us, Hey, let’s game plan through this. How can we get to where, where you are now? You told me, Rob, your, your goal is x. All right, let’s work together. How do we get there? And then map out a plan to get there.

Give Others Opportunities

[00:26:36] And that’s where you and I met you and I met through, through a, I think, is a phenomenal program and, and I feel extremely blessed to have met you. One of the things I’d like to do in, in our mastermind groups is I like to share my experience and also contribute because if I can help somebody else, I’ve offered to every single person.

[00:26:55] That I’ve interacted with, Hey, I’m a resource for you. Use me. I want to, I want to give back to you. I want to help you in some way. And I, I just offer it to everyone as, as like freely, There’s no strings attached. There’s no, I have no ulterior motive. I have no, like, I’m not looking for them to do business with me.

[00:27:14] My goal is to help you become successful and maybe think about things a different way that you may not have thought about yourself. And, and, and that’s really become now my mission is just to help as many people as I can openly and freely and just give and, and just serve. You know? And I think if we just focus, if we all focused on that a little bit more, I, I, I think you’d get a lot farther away, farther along in life in a business.

[00:27:39] Miriam: Yeah, I agree with you. I have watched you help different people in that group, and your face lights up, like you end up. It gives you joy. It’s not something that takes energy from you. It’s something that gives energy to you. And I have experienced the same thing with the various, um, business owners that I coach.

Business Insights

[00:27:58] I’m never tired when I come back from that space. It’s just a privilege to be invited into someone’s life and to be invited into a contribu. Space.

[00:28:08] So it’s also really fun when you ask the question that stops them in their tracks. I asked a young entrepreneur a question, This was about two weeks ago, and his eyes dilated.

[00:28:22] He got this look shocked look on his face, and then he and I said, What’s going on inside you? And he. Uh, Freak. I know you’re right, . And it was, it was an awesome moment because, um, it was a question I asked. I didn’t state make a statement. I asked a question and he knew inside the direction that, um, we were going.

[00:28:47] He was like, Oh my gosh. In the end it saved him about $90,000. So I felt good about that. That’s, you know, that’s a win. It’s a win, right? It’s a win. It’s a win. So, um, let’s see.

[00:29:01] What kind of insight or business process has been, you know, really impactful or insightful to you in the last, I don’t know, couple months?

[00:29:11] Rob: One of the areas that I, I found that has really brought me the most, has been the most insightful to me, and also I’m able to now help others do this, is create systems and processes inside of your business so that it creates, a systematic way of performing things over and over and over, which can produce a very specific result or outcome.

Learn Something New

[00:29:40] Right. So rather than having this hodgepodge, haphazard way of, of operating, whether it be marketing or business development, sales, um, operations, creating those systems and procedures so that everybody on the team knows exactly what their, what their role is, what their contribution needs to be, um, you have systems in place, automations, like, one thing I’ve really learned is you.

[00:30:07] I don’t need to be an expert in technology. I wanna know enough to be dangerous. So what I did is I learned how to use Premier Pro to edit videos. I learned how to use Zapier to create automations in workflows. I learned it by, you know, it’s amazing youTube is an amazing resource. , so is Google. If you ever wanna learn something, listen, all you need to do is type it in there and say, I wanna learn how to do.

[00:30:35] Well, I’ll tell you what happened as a result of doing that, rather than just delegating it to somebody else, I actually learned it myself so I could understand the process and the system and the way things worked so that I could share it with somebody else. Or if I hire somebody to help me perform that particular function or activity or, or processes in inside my company, I then have a frame of reference for how it should be done and also the time it takes to do something or a task

Take a Step Back

[00:31:10] the results and the outcome on the other side is once you set that thing up the first time on the front end, and then let it work and let it, and then maybe tweak and test results and maybe do some AB testing, but setting up the systems so that it operates for you.

[00:31:29] And that’s one of the things I learned in, in our, um, in our program that, that we’re, that we are in, is setting up those systems so that you don’t have to operate, be the operator all the time in your business, that you actually can take a step back and work on the business and not always be in the business and working on fulfillment.

[00:31:50] And, and that’s one of the takeaways I think I could share with you and, and hopefully that answers your question.

[00:31:55] The biggest thing, the biggest takeaway, what I encourage everybody is develop the processes, a unique process, and the systems inside your. business Which not only can make it function better and be more efficient, but also deliver the value to your customer, deliver a consistent result time in time, again, over and over and over, so that you’re delivering the most value that you possibly can for, for your customers.

[00:32:22] Miriam: And the only thing I would add is that I think that entrepreneurs also need to do that in their life because sometimes their businesses hum right along and they can’t ever find their keys, or they’re just, So disorganized in their actual life. And it’s like you have to have both.

[00:32:39] You have to have systems and processes for your life, and you have to have systems and processes for your business.

[00:32:46] Goal-Setting

[00:32:46] Miriam: So Rob, we’re just about to the end here. This is kind of a question out of left field, but I thought I’d ask it and just see what comes of it, uh, in the last six months, what is a hundred dollars or less purchase you’ve made that you’re like, Man, I’m so glad I did.

[00:33:03] Rob: You know, one thing does come to mind. So, So I have a very good friend, and it’s actually somebody who, I used to work with and then he, you know, I, I kind of focused on a whole different niche in the marketplace.

[00:33:17] He’s a friend who, runs a company called Three by Five Life, and they’re these, it’s actually really cool. They’re these, there are these simple note cards, right, which there’s different themes and there’s goal setting, and then, , but there’s something on here that’s really, really important that, that I’ve incorporated into my life that has been so impactful.

[00:33:41] And that is every day I pull out this card and I write down three things that I’m grateful for, and, and then I can carry this card with me and fold it up really nicely and carry it with me in my pocket. And every once in a while. I can reach out, reach into my pocket and say, You know what, what are three things I’m grateful for?

Emotional Growth

[00:34:02] And usually those things that are on there usually have to do with my family, my kids, my relationships, my, you know, my relationships with my fellow colleagues that I’m so grateful that I have. And so this, this has been one of those purchases that I made that’s been like, it’s the simplest, you know, it’s the most simple little thing, but from a mental.

[00:34:26] Emotional and just a growth standpoint. This has been the most impactful for me. I’ve been, I’ve been using these for a while now, and it’s just, it’s become a habit. Every single morning I wake up and I’m like, Okay, what am I grateful for? What are the, what are the three top tasks on my list that I, and I, I write the tasks on here, and then I write a theme.

Daily Theme

[00:34:46] What’s my theme today? Today’s theme was about courage. Because I was on my run this morning and I thought to myself, What’s my theme today? And, and I thought about it. I’m like, You know what, what came to my mind was courage. Having the courage to do things that I maybe normally would overthink or maybe not do because I, I’m held back by something, by fear or by something.

[00:35:09] But what if I was just a little bit more courageous today? What if I just had a little more courage to do something? Maybe made me feel uncomfortable. It pushed me outside of my comfort zone. So then I wrote that down like, this is what I, This is the courage I want to have today, and this is, this is the action I want to take to push me outside of my comfort zone.

[00:35:29] And sometimes it, for me, that brings me joy because I can then at the end of the day, look at this card and go, Hey, you know what? That was a win. And then there’s a column here for putting your wins, right? That was a little win. Chalk up those little wins because they add up to a lot. And even if it’s like creating micro goals, little things that you know you can accomplish throughout the day helps you build momentum, helps, helps to fuel that, that inspiration and, and to keep you moving forward.

[00:35:57] Miriam: That is great. Thank you so much for just like taking the time to share that. We’ll put that, that resource in the show notes.

[00:36:04] We’ve come to the end of our time.

[00:36:06] Find Rob

[00:36:06] Miriam: Would you just share how people can reach you if they would like to ask more questions about who you are and what you do?

[00:36:12] Rob: Yeah, the best place, honestly, I am on LinkedIn, um, and Rob Jacomen, reach out to me on LinkedIn, send me a message. You know, and by the way, I’m a big fan of personal video, so if you wanna send me a personalized video and introduce yourself, I’d love it.

[00:36:29] I’d be really impressed because it’s something that we do. Video has become such a important part of our business model because we really believe that it personalizes that connection and that relationship with somebody.

[00:36:41] Shoot me an email, shoot me a text. I respond to everything.

[00:36:45] Miriam: Very good. Okay. Well I mentioned before we started that as a thank you. We are doing a gift in a donation in your name to the Nature Conservancy. We started out talking about sustainability. We’ll end talking about sustainability.

[00:37:00] Rob, thank you so much. Just appreciate you.

[00:37:03] Rob: I’m so grateful to have met you and, and, again, it’s been an honor.

End Credits

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts, or wherever podcasts are found.

Full audio episode found here.

Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

All LeaveBetter Podcast episodes can be found here.

Music by Tom Sherlock.

If you are curious to know more, please contact me!

As someone who has been a therapist for over a decade and has been coaching people for over three decades, I am uniquely qualified to address your concerns.