Hey, and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled. And in front of me is a man called Eric Recker with an R. Just an R. So not the destructive type. And first of all, Eric, I want to thank you because we've had all sorts of logistical questions, and it's a testament to your resilience that you've been patient, understanding, flexible, and we've finally made our chat today. So, first of all, welcome.
Eric:Russell. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Russell:Great. Okay. Fantastic voice, by the way. That's. Where in the world are you?
Eric:If you know where Chicago is, that's a pretty easy landmark. I'm about 5 hours to the west of Chicago, kind of in the middle of the state of Iowa. I would say only 5 hours away from Chicago, just around the corner.
Russell:I made the mistake once of flying to San Francisco because I'd looked on the map and I had a meeting in Los Angeles and I thought, well, I'll just go to San Francisco and then just drive over. And you don't realise the distances in the states are significant, aren't?
Eric:Yeah. Yeah. You had a little work to do yet when you landed.
Russell:Yeah. Telling me. Well, first of all, welcome. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Eric:Yeah, so I am a dentist by trade. So, I've been a dentist for about 20 years. And about two years ago I met with a partner, and I actually sold half of my dental practice to him. So now I have a partner in my practice. And so, I see patients three days a week, and then the other two days a week I work on coaching and speaking. So, I speak to groups, and I coach individuals to help them become the best versions of themselves through teaching from my journey, which involves bullying and some other stuff. I tried a lot of experiments in my life, had a lot of failures. And so, my goal is to try to help people shorten the distance from where they are to where they want to be in their life.
Eric:And really, it's a really great sweet spot because I still get to see my patients in my practice who I love and my team that I work with, but I also get to work with great individuals and talk with great teams and organisations about lots of different subjects, but mostly how to live their lives present and not stuck somewhere else.
Russell:Right. Well, it could be tons to go out there. Well, first of all, it's in the UK. I don't know if it's the situation in the US, but I think I remember seeing a survey saying that the number one most stressful job in terms of personal stress was being a dentist. Because you're dealing with people's fear every day. There's a sort of monotony to the work because there's a lot of routine, there's a lot of antipathy towards the dentist. I'm putting that politely. How do you manage the inevitability of that sort of scenario as a dentist?
Eric:Yeah. And I would say that's not only in the UK. It definitely can be a stressful job. The reality is I went to school to be a dentist. We didn't go to school to be business owners, HR executives and all the different things that we have to do. And I have a team of 20 people that work with me in my office. And so, trying to manage all of that is a lot. And also trying to manage patients fears and concerns about money and all of those different things presents a lot of challenges. But my favourite part of being a dentist is the relationships that I've developed, both with my team and with my patients. I have some people that I've seen for the entire 20 years that I've been a dentist.
Eric:So I learned long ago that in your job, if you can lean into the part that you like the most, it can make it a lot more bearable and even much more joyful. So, it causes me to get behind in my schedule a lot of times. But I love to have great conversations with my people, and I feel like when we've developed that relationship and we've broken down some of those walls of anxiety by being in relationship together, I find that I have fewer patients that have anxiety because they feel comfortable around me and my team. And that's a good start.
Russell:Yeah, it is interesting, isn't it, the sort of dentist and hairdressers that people you never argue with when they've either got a pair of scissors, the back of your head or a drill in your face. And it's fascinating, you say, about the relationships you build. I know my own people have dentists forever. I know my own dentist. I've moved to a different part of the country, and I've lost my own dentist because it's too far to travel. And I've regularly attempted to engineer to go and see my old dentist when I've been at the other end of the country. And I think it's that you've got a double thing here. You got the quality of the relationship, but also, it's how the fear is managed.
Russell:And I remember having a different dentist once in my own dentist practice who just told me to man up and get on with it. And it was actually quite refreshing to have a different view because I'd always be molly cuddled and treated with kid gloves. And then I came to this part of the country, and I had a dentist who basically is from the dark ages, basically sort of punched you in the face to sort of check your teeth where we're still sort of standing. It was a bit of a strange thing, but it's interesting. You talk about how you manage that fear and how you manage people's discomfort and how you get them relaxed and such like, because it's like flying, isn't. It's that point of most considerable fear.
Russell:And I guess you must have people sitting in the chair who are literally vibrating with the sort of stress response.
Eric:Yeah, we sure do. And that's been one of my favourite things to see over the years is that some of those people who started with me years ago, now they come in and there's no outward signs of concern. So, they're not that shaky, terrified when they come in, they understand the process. We've been through it several times. They trust us and feel comfortable, and that's a huge win. So, we're super thankful when that works out.
Russell:Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because you often find dentists, doctors, psychologists, therapists, counsellors, they don't often apply their own medicine, as it were. What is the old phrase? Cobbler's son is always the worst shoe or something. So, you often find dentists who have brilliantly calm clients who themselves are a bit of a mess. But it sounds like you've been through some particular incidents in your life which have allowed you to get some perspective in that. So maybe you could talk a little bit about those sorts of challenges that you've overcome.
Eric:Yeah. So, I've been through three solid rounds of burnout in my dental career, and they've been over about the last 15 years. And I think a lot of that stemmed from being bullied when I was younger. So, when I was in elementary school, 2nd, 3rd grade, I was seven, eight, nine years old, and a lot of bullying happened. But one of the worst things that affected me the most was being told that I couldn't play kickball on the recess playground. At lunch, when we would go outside and we'd have a half hour to be outside, teams were picked to play kickball and I was told that I wasn't good enough to play, so I was a little rough around the edges. I was a little husky, a little pudgy back then. And if I would have been picked last, I would have understood that.
Eric:But being told that you're not good enough is a hard pill to swallow. And I remember making a pact with myself in either second or third grade on that playground, saying that I am going to be so darn good at everything that I do that nobody will ever not pick me. And so that mindset carried through high school, through college, through dental school, through into my career. I always had to be the best at everything. And so, I overcompensated and over committed myself to so many things. The first round of burnout that I had, I was purchasing my dental practice from my father, who I practiced with for several years. I was also, at the same time, building a new dental practice. I was training for an Iron man triathlon.
Eric:I was on three boards, and I was coaching both of my kids in soccer, or, sorry, soccer is the wrong word, football for you guys.
Russell:I'm wondering what kickball is, to be honest, if that's soccer as well. Yeah.
Eric:So all of those things came to a head when I realised that I was over committed, and I wasn't taking care of myself. And so, I think that's what happens more times than not when we get burned out, is that we are over committed. We have too many things going on in our lives, but even more importantly, we're not taking care of ourselves. We're basically pouring from an empty cup. We don't have anything left in our cup, and we still have our responsibilities. So, I think the self-care part of it is incredibly important and also incredibly neglected.
Russell:But it's interesting that you say you've had it three times. So that means either whatever you did wasn't effective, or you didn't do anything, or there were different types of burnout how did that work?
Eric:Yeah, so the first time, I did not get the lesson at all. I just somehow endured it. The second time, I probably should have seen it coming a little bit more, but that was right before COVID hit. So, then the great disruptor of COVID hit. And then everything was upside down. Everything was disillusioned. And fortunately, COVID is probably what saved me as being a dentist. But I still didn't learn all of the lessons that I needed to learn. We came back from work after our offices had been closed, and we basically looked like hazmat workers, hazardous materials workers, with all of our PPE and extra masks and gloves and everything that we had to wear.
Eric:It was incredibly exhausting and that really pushed me into the point where I had talked to one of my associate dentists that was working for me, and we had made an agreement that I was going to sell the practice to him, and I was going to walk away from dentistry. I didn't know what I was going to do, but I was going to walk away from dentistry. And about a month before were going to make that official agreement, he was in a horrible car accident and almost lost his life. And during that process, just realised that was not the right fit and it was not the right time for me to do that. But that is actually when I really hit my rock bottom after that accident. But I had to go through that. I had to figure out what was next.
Eric:And that's really when I discovered how important the self-care is, because life is going to keep throwing demands at us. We have to take some time to rest and recover. So, it really took that third time before I realised part of it was realising how hard I was striving to impress those bullies that had moved on from me almost 40 years prior. So, it was all of that coming together at a head that really started getting me the desire to help other people get through this, because I knew I wasn't the only one that was going through it.
Russell:Yeah, that's interesting. It just goes to show, doesn't it? I mean, it's such a glib thing to say, but we spend most of our lives just unpicking the horrors of our childhood sometimes. And people don't have to have what is traditionally seen as a terrible, disadvantaged lifestyle to have issues from their past. It's a challenge, isn't it? How did you make the break from your past? And what was the thing? What was the trigger or the catalyst?
Eric:Yeah. So, I think I just realised, and I had to do something. Once the dust settled after the accident, I realised, okay, this is life. This isn't going away. I have to figure out, why am I so stressed out? Why am I so burned out, what is going on here? And I really found out that I wasn't living present in my own life. I really wasn't. So, I was constantly stuck in the past. I was constantly worried about the future, and I missed out on the now, which is the only guarantee that we have. And the now is where life is lived. Yeah. There are things we have to do to prepare for the future. There are things that we have to deal with in our past, but no one can take the now from us.
Eric:And so what I decided is I need to figure out how to find wins in the now moments of my life. And that's the thing that I love to work with people on. So, for me, in my dental practice, I'm scheduled on the 15 minutes. So, I tell my schedulers, my team up at the reception area in our office, how many units of 15 minutes I need. So, if I have a longer procedure, I might need five- or 6 15-minutes units. But what I try to do is I say, what does a win look like in those 15 minutes?
Eric:So a win might look like a great conversation with a patient, great conversation with a team, helping diffuse some fear and anxiety, like we talked about earlier, performing a great procedure and fixing the problem that the patient presented with, and then also realising that sometimes losses are going to happen. Sometimes, despite what we do, a patient is going to be frustrated or a patient is going to be. The procedure didn't go quite how we had hoped because the cavity is going to be bigger. Lots of different things can happen, and it's easy to let those losses ruin our day. But when we have a loss, we have to be careful to not dwell on that, because the next now is right around the corner and we have another opportunity for a win.
Eric:So in that loss, I coach people to just write that down or make a note of it in their phone, and then when they have a little time, go back and take a look at that and say, okay, what can I learn from that?
Russell:That's the most important bit, isn't it? It's that conscious reflection that's really important, isn't it?
Eric:Absolutely. And if you can learn from a loss, guess what you get to do with that loss? You get to cross it off, because now it's a win. And so, throughout the day, if we can grab some of these wins, then our life looks a whole lot different if we're conscious of trying to do that. So, when we get distracted and when we get away from the now, we realise that we have to pull ourselves back in because we have the moment in front of us and that's the most important thing that we have.
Russell:Yeah. And I like that because I think when Eckhart first brought this concept to the sort of western world, as it were, it was very interesting what he said as sort of grounded meditation, mindfulness, and all those sorts of practices. But that's a very practical, business focused thing, isn't it? Because I think a lot of people don't have time during the course of the day to sit down and meditate. What they have to do is have a focus on what they're going to do for the next 15 minutes. So that's good, because I think a lot of people are, as you say, they're either jumping right into the future as well and they're sort of planning too far in the future rather than saying, actually, what is the win now?
Russell:I guess there's a risk it can make you too reactive, too good at firefighting. But then that's not a bad thing, I suppose, is it?
Eric:No, it's not. And I think it's important that people realize what their individual now looks like. So, for me it's 15 minutes. And I know for you, Russell, it might be meeting with a client. If you have a client meeting for an hour, let's say it's an hour. So, what does a win look like in that hour? Or if you're more of a corporate mindset and your life is meeting after meeting, it's what does a win look like in each one of those meetings? And then what does a win look like in between those meetings? Are we just automatically picking up our phone, going to our email? Are we doing all those different things? Or are we taking just a few minutes for something that helps us monumentally as far as self-care? Maybe we take a few really slow, deep breaths.
Eric:Maybe we take a walk around the office a little bit or just step outside and get some sun on our foreheads. Or we just do a little bit of mindfulness or meditation, something to allow our brain to slow down in between those moments. So, we’re not just frantically going from meeting to meeting and draining ourselves really quickly.
Russell:Yes, that's an important thing. I'm just making a note of that, actually. I like to make notes as we chat. I've actually just bought your book as well. I was listening, but it sounds the sort of book that's so practical. I think it'd be useful to buy for myself because it's nice to talk to someone where I can lend something for myself as well. Now, I mentioned a book that was really callous of me because I said we're not going to mention a book for a little while. So, I'm guessing you've put all this into a book, and I know you have because it's on your website, ericrecker.com. So, tell me about the book and why you put it together and who's it for.
Eric:Yeah, so I believe that the experiences that we go through in our lives, we can keep them to ourselves or we can share the lessons that we learn with other people to help them on their journeys. So, this book is a lot of my personal journey, and it's the false sense of urgency. And so, what that means is, I think it's this background sort of angst that we have that's constantly running in our mind that we should be doing more, we should be doing better, we should be getting all these things accomplished. And it really steals us from the presence, the present moment, and it also steals a lot of our joy in life, because we constantly have this voice, this inner monologue, telling us that we got to go, we got to push, we got to do all of this kind of stuff.
Eric:It prevents us from taking a Sunday afternoon and maybe taking a nap or reading a book or doing something restorative and quiet, because I fought that during COVID so hard. The false sense of urgency. There were webinars to watch. There was infection control stuff, there was supply ordering. There were all of those things. So, basically, the book is some of the things that I learned through trial and error that people can incorporate into their lives to help them live better. And to me, the best antidote for the false sense of urgency is just learning to live present in your own lives and always coming back to the present moment.
Russell:Okay, so let's say you have a person who either ruminates about the past or catastrophises about the future. How do you actually get into the now, into the present?
Eric:Yeah. One of the things that I use a lot is just a simple recentring phrase, and that is just, I am here, right here, right now. So, when those voices really spin, sometimes I just have to tell the voices to stop. I just kind of open my eyes and think, oh, here it is. It's going. And I just use the word stop. And then I remind myself of the present. And sometimes if we're worrying about stuff or things that are coming up in the future, there's a reason for that. So, I'm a huge fan. I'm a pen and paper kind of guy. I like a journal. I'll sometimes wake up in the night with things that are ruminating in my head. Well, I'll get them out on paper, leave them there, and then go back to sleep.
Eric:So sometimes we just need to get things out of our head. When we just let them run around in our head, they just create all of these different things, all of this different urgency. So, there's a technique we can do called the brain dump. You set a timer for five to ten minutes, and you write down everything that's running around in your head. Usually, it's not as much as you think it is. You write it all down. You take a look at what are maybe two or three things that really need my attention, highlight those, and then go to work on those because anxiety, worry about the future. All those things just absolutely kill our productivity.
Eric:So sometimes we need to know what we're up against first and then usually a couple of things will rise to the top from that list that's spinning in our heads and then we can go to work on those things.
Russell:Yeah. Interesting. I guess the challenge in living in the now, and I know you're going to disagree with me on this, so I'm looking forward to your thoughts on this, is the challenge in the now that you become too prescriptive, too now, too short term, too in the moment. And what you don't do enough of is planning, conjecturing, hypothesizing, thinking forward and not catastrophising forward, but actually planning and thinking of alternative futures and such like. So, I'm interested in your view on that. Or is that. Well, let me hear your thoughts before I tell you what you might have thought.
Eric:Yeah, planning is huge. Planning is vitally important. In fact, on a Sunday afternoon, I usually try to block about a half hour to plan for the next week. And what I do, I'm a huge fan of setting myself up for success. I am not going to be always so present to the moment that I don't realize that a week is coming up and there are tasks that are going to come up. If I can do some meal planning for the week during that time, if I can just look at my schedule and say, all right, here's a couple of the hotspots that I really need to do some extra preparation for. And I'm also a huge fan of long-term planning and goals.
Eric:I think we have to do all of that work, but there's a time and a place for that and if we have those times scheduled out, then they are actually going to happen. And so, I'm a huge fan of time blocking, huge fan of doing that because when we've taken the time to do that, oftentimes those things don't have to run around in our head and they don't distract us from being present. So, does that answer your question?
Russell:Yeah, it does. And I expect you to say those very things. That's good, but it's better for you to say it than me to tell you what you're going to say. That's really good. So, I mean, what you're doing is you're dripping common sense all over this podcast, which is a really lovely thing if people want to engage more with your work. I think I mentioned a little bit before, but why don't you introduce us to where we can find your work, tell us what's around and what you've got.
Eric:Yeah. Tried to make it as easy as possible. So, my website, ericrecker.com, from there's a section on winthenow. So, if you want to learn a little bit more about winthenow, if you want to learn more about my book that's on there, I do a weekly blog, information about having a discussion about coaching or speaking. That's all on there. Links to social media channels. And as far as burnout goes, I'm passionate about helping people not run down that burnout road as far as I went. So, there is a free five-day knockback burnout challenge on there. Something that you can subscribe to. It's completely free, no obligation whatsoever. And you will get a series of emails that come over a week and it will just help you have some practical tools to try to push back the hold that burnout has on you.
Eric:It's not a complete fix, but it is a start. And when you're burned out, what you really need is a start. So, all that's there. I'm happy and excited to have a conversation. If anybody wants to reach out to me, all the information is brilliant.
Russell:There you are. Job done. So absolutely fascinating. I bought the book. It's on Amazon. And I wish you continued success. It's been an absolute joy. And as I say, thank you so much for putting up with my messing aboutery and being flexible and patient. And now I know you're a dentist. Now I know why you exude this sense of calm and I'm sure I'd feel safe in your hands, but you're a little bit far to come for me, sadly.
Eric:Well, thank you, Russell. I really appreciate that.
Russell:Thank you for taking time to speak with us today. And the website was ericrecker. So that's ericrecker. The links are in the show notes, but that's great. And the book, of course was called.
Eric:The False Sense of Urgency: How to Win the Now.
Russell:Fantastic. Thanks for spending time with us today.
Eric:Thanks so much for having me.
Russell:You take care. Yeah.