Episode 227 – Big Hairy Audacious Goals

“How can you challenge yourself, and how can you commit to it so that way you can get it done?” ~Dr. Chad Johnson

In a captivating monologue, Everyday Practices Dental Podcast co-host Dr. Chad Johnson takes listeners on his personal swim-challenge odyssey. Beginning with his initial skepticism of undertaking a 100-mile swim challenge, Dr. Chad recounts his journey from disbelief to determination, strategizing how to conquer this ambitious goal in only 45 days.

Amidst shoulder injuries, work commitments, and family vacations, Dr. Chad reveals invaluable lessons he learned along the way. From the importance of physical therapy and nutrition to the power of prioritization and perseverance, his insights transcend the realm of swimming, offering wisdom applicable to the challenges faced by dental professionals in their everyday practices.

Dr. Chad also invites listeners to contemplate their own challenges and aspirations, encouraging them to embrace audacious goals and chip away at obstacles, one stroke at a time.

As you listen to this episode, think of the following questions:

• What audacious goals can you set for yourself in your dental practice, and how can you cultivate resilience to overcome obstacles along the way?
• How can you best optimize your time management skills to achieve a better work-life balance and prevent the dreaded burnout?
• What steps can you take to make your physical and mental health a priority? How can you better incorporate self-care practices into your daily routine?
• How else can you engage with your professional network to seek and provide support from/to other dental professionals in your community?

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Regan 0:01
Hi, Doctor. Regan Robertson, CCO of Productive Dentist Academy here and I have a question for you. Are you finding it hard to get your team aligned to your vision, but you know, you deserve growth just like everybody else? That’s why we’ve created the PDA productivity workshop. For nearly 20 years, PDA workshops have helped dentists just like you align their teams, get control of scheduling, and create productive practices that they love walking into every day. Just imagine how you will feel when you know your schedule is productive. Your systems are humming, and your team is aligned to your vision. It’s simple, but it’s not necessarily easy. We can help, visit productivedentist.com/workshop that’s productivedentist.com/workshop to secure your seats now.

Dr. Chad Johnson 0:47
What seems impossible, how can you challenge yourself and how can you commit to it so that way you can you can get it done because you don’t have to eat the whole elephant one bite, you know, it’s how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time.

Regan 1:07
Welcome to the Everyday Practices Podcast. I’m Regan Robertson, and my co-host Dr. Chad Johnson and I are on a mission to share the stories of everyday dentists who generate extraordinary results using practical proven methods you can take right into your own dental practice. If you’re ready to elevate patient care and produce results that are anything but ordinary. Buckle up and listen in.

Dr. Chad Johnson 1:39
Hey, everybody, it’s Chad Johnson with Everyday Practices Dental podcast, I’m doing a monologue today. I just finished a swim challenge and I want to talk to you about it. So I was at my workout facility in January and I saw this posted on the door and it said, “100 mile swim challenge February 1 through August 1.” So it’s a six month 100 mile swim challenge. “Swim 100 miles between February 1 and August 1 and earn a free T shirt and bragging rights 100 Miles equals 3520 down in backs, or 176,000 yards. Document your workouts by scanning the QR code and filling out the online for form or emailing it to the aquatics director at this email listed and they’ll update the weekly cork board at the pool entrance and you know, say who’s finished for the t shirt and bragging rights.” So I first see that and I think that is absolutely ridiculous. I have, I have kind of become lazy in my workouts over the last few months. I, if you’ve been listening before you know that I do a triathlon you know workouts and stuff like that but I didn’t have any event coming up this coming summer and so I’m just kind of slow and steady but sometimes it’s more slow than steady. I don’t know, I get a good amount of workouts in but sometimes my intensity isn’t all that high. So I’ve just kind of been on the maintenance mode. Let’s just call it that. So I see this 100 mile challenge and I think that is absolutely ridiculous. I am swimming twice a week right now for a total of 1000 yards each time. So I got thinking this 100 yards at my current pace would take me two years to do. This is absolutely ridiculous. Stupid. Okay, then I got thinking, “What if I, what if I like what if I wanted to do this 180 days to six months.” So that would be 180,000 yards. You know I’m trying to do 176,000 yards, 180,000 yards if I did 1000 yards every day not missing one day for six months. I can’t swim every day for six months. This is just unattainable. I was thinking to myself like, “How am I supposed to get this done?” Nevertheless to they’re starting the swim challenge in February. I normally swim over the winter so I start in October and I swim through March you know for six months and then I get out on the bicycle from April through September for six months and then I go back to the pool and I kind of alternate just, just about at the six month mark I started getting sick of that one and I want to switch to the to this one and then six months later I get sick of this one and I switched to that one.

Dr. Chad Johnson 5:01
Okay, 1000 yards a day is doable, but 2000 yards a day every other day, which is also doable. 2000 yards isn’t that much. For an adult, you know, not your high schooler that swims fibers, you know, four to 6000 yards per workout. So then I got thinking, “Okay, 2000 yards would be 90 days of 2000 yards. So that’s every other day. Okay, that’s doable.” Then I got thinking, “Wait a second, the girls soccer season is coming up and I won’t have time and then, then summer with vacations and you know, work and junk like that? What if I doubled that 4000 yards and what if I, that’s 45 days, so I’ve gone from 180 to 90 to 45 days of 4000 yards, 45 days. Okay, so in seven weeks, could I crush this goal?” So I went from this is stupid, I went from no way to okay and then I gotta think and that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to smash this six month challenge in 45 days and I’m recording this March 17. St. Patrick’s Day and so we are 46 days in and I just finished the 100 mile swim challenge and I wanted to talk about it. So first off, I wanted to talk about the obstacles that I overcame. In October, I hurt my left shoulder, I got a posterior shoulder impingement it was. So let me explain kind of, so it feels like right behind my shoulder joint, it’s called the acromion. Right in that area. It’s kind of where your ligaments, tendons muscles all kind of converge right into the shoulder joint and you the tip of your arm bone and your humerus and stuff like that and it was, it hurts to hold the steering wheel, it hurt to sleep on my side, it hurt to shampoo my hair to bring my arm up to shampoo my hair, it hurt at work to reach for anything. So I gave it a few months off. I even bought like a fancy pillow to try and sleep on that didn’t quite work, you know, to take the pressure off my shoulder. Then I started going to physical therapy. This was October but I waited you know, November, December, January and I waited until February when I actually started this swim challenge. “So okay, it’s been a few months I’ve tried letting it just heal,” and I, how did I had it from swimming. So this sometimes, it’s called swimmers shoulder. I was doing the butterfly stroke and it really just aggravated my, my shoulder I will never do but butterfly stroke again and never say never, I guess but oh, that’s what did it end for me. So I went to physical therapy and he wanted to see me twice a week and I thought, “This is really bumming my style man at 3:30 in the afternoon,” that’s my second that, you know, I was swimming, sometimes twice a day. So after I would get done with work, I’d go swimming and now this is going to cut into my swimming, how am I going to get this done? So those were some of the obstacles that I overcame, let alone including work. There were a couple of days that I was working out of town and so once a month, I work out of town and I go do dental implants, you know, and it’s an all-day event to drive there because it’s more than two and a half hours one way to get there. So it’s kind of a long day for me that I can’t swim. So those were two days out of the 46 and for the days, we did a spring break vacation with my family and so, you know, my I actually got this done in 40 Swim days, if you take off the six days that I was gone for one reason or another. So 46 days total about 40 Swim days, things I learned, wanted to talk about that.

Dr. Chad Johnson 9:19
Number one, it was kind of fun meeting new people there were people up on the the sheet that I hadn’t met before in my town slash city, you know, in the surrounding area. So it was fun meeting people that were in the pool saying “Hey, are you doing the swim challenge? And then, you know, what’s your name? And oh, yeah, you know, I know your, your younger brother.” Stuff like that. So that was kind of cool meeting new people talking about the audacity of this swim challenge and then also things I learned going from 1000 yards twice a week to 6000 yards per day. I had to slow down how aggressively I swimming and so like you can’t push off the wall as hard and you’re gonna cramp up or at least I do as an adult, you know, I don’t think again, Junior High in high school students would have this problem swim, swimming 6000 yards, but as a cantankerous, older, middle aged guy here, swimming, I had to, you know, watch how quickly I was pushing off the wall. So that way by this, you know, fit the 5000 yard and 6000 yard, that my feet and, and legs weren’t cramping up from the push off. I also had to kind of guard my arm and it’s funny that as I was moving my arm from swimming, it started on February 1, that I was I had given up a swimming for a couple months and I saw the swim challenge and I was like, “I’m just going to do it.” So February 1, Thursday pops up, and, and I start the swim challenge and I can hardly move my left arm and so I’m just mostly swimming with my right arm and after a couple of weeks, I was noticing that just by forcing myself to move it within reason, of course, talk to your medical professional about this because this would be different for everyone. So I’m not saying this is advice that you must take but I thought it was interesting that after swimming this long that I actually was by moving it little by little and not aggressively that I was kind of healing it.

Dr. Chad Johnson 11:28
This was after you know shy of three months to three months of no swimming and just letting it heal and that was working okay, but then I started swimming and within about a month. Well, you know, two to three weeks, three to four weeks, my arm was doing better and of course I was doing physical therapy twice a week with it. Two other things I learned nutrition played a role. electrolytes. I had Pedialyte type drinks, bananas, BCA pre workout stuff, and I drink a gallon of water every day but I was more dialed in on that, because I just had to be, you know what I normally don’t drink electrolyte replacement, and I normally don’t eat a banana, you know, before or after my workout and I upped my protein as well. So yeah, it was that was good. Also along the nutrition line. My naps and sleeping became a priority. So Friday, Saturday, Sundays, I swim 6000 and I got up to 9000 yards. This last week, I was doing 9000 yards, which is five miles in one workout. I mean, holy moly, I never saw that coming and, you know, but like, on a Saturday, I’d actually take a half hour or an hour nap and my kids are old enough that they can, you know, take care of themselves and let me nap. When they hear the fan on there right outside my room. So people ask if it was fun, or you know, like when I do triathlons, if it’s fun and that’s not the point. You know, it’s it’s not necessarily fun. Not everything has to be fun. So, I, I recommend that you don’t think that fun has to be your priority. It’s, it’s more about accomplishment and not everything has to be about accomplishment, either. I mean, I didn’t have to be the first person done. Yes, it turns out that I was the first person done and yes, that was fun. I actually got a text, I sent my workout buddy, texting that I had just completed it today and it was fun to get this because he wrote me said “Nice, good work. I was there at the workout facility yesterday and swam a little I saw your son in the locker room on my way to the pool and on his way out. I told him that he should start coming with us in the mornings. Some guy overheard us talking about the swimming and got really excited and said, “Have you heard about the dentist? The dentist is the man, he’s the man.” I told the guy that Gabe was your son and he got more excited telling gave how great you were, it was pretty cool.”

Dr. Chad Johnson
So it was cool to be able to do something that would cause some admiration in my son, you know, to give him something, you know, positive to look up to his dad, you know, the manhood in America and in today’s society is kind of poo-pooed and everything like that, that there’s not much to look up to your old man and stuff but to give him something, you know that that he can look up to me. And of course I think reciprocating that and letting him know that I look up to him and that I you know, so occasionally when he’s going to bed and I tell him I love him and give him a hug and stuff and I tell him I say, “You know I’m proud of you.” So dads you know, often find a way to How to show respect to your son and when you give respect, you get respect and when you give respect that makes them want to and have to earn it as well. So, another thing that I learned physical therapy is a great way to improve your muscle balance as a dentist and so a lot of my lats, and my traps and rhomboids are, especially my traps and rhomboids are more ischemic from being hunched over and, you know, keeping them squeezed all day, but that you can go to physical therapy and, and have them work on certain movements before you’re injured. So this shoulder impingement that I had was an injury that I had to overcome and funnily enough here, now, seven weeks into swimming, and using it, it’s better and you know, what’s probably six weeks into physical therapy. So I’m really excited about that but preemptively go to your physical therapist in town, and talk to them about some exercises that you can do to help improve your muscle balance and it might be in your legs, it might be your posture, but there are things that they can help you do. So that way, you can be the best dentist and parent or spouse or individual just you know, that you can have a well-balanced muscle and skeletal being you know. I don’t know whether it would be healthy, you know, just a healthy stature and muscle balance. You know, the swim challenge actually didn’t matter. So what if I did or didn’t do the 100 mile thing? Likewise, I mean, you don’t have to make a big deal of everything you do. Ironically, here, I’m podcasting about it but otherwise, I’d probably just let it slide. You don’t have to David Goggins all your workouts and posture yourself as a guru, you know, so it’s kind of weird that I’m on this telling you that it doesn’t matter, you know, that you’re posting about your workout and now I’m here, I’m recording a 20 minute podcast monologue about my workouts but I wanted to do it as an example and just almost like a quiet example, that, you know, I always see, you know, David Goggins, former Navy SEAL, etc, guy that is out there talking about, you know, stay in hard and do your workouts and crush it and stuff like that.

Dr. Chad Johnson 17:36
This really wasn’t about crushing it. It was an accomplishment kind of thing. It’s cool that as a side note that I learned some stuff that I wanted to share and so yes, here I’m talking about it, otherwise, I really actually probably would have just let it go. So another thing that I was just talking about was movement can be the solution to your injury or to your difficulty. So sometimes we avoid pain and that could be you know, physical pain, I suppose it could be emotional pain as well but sometimes moving through it, you know, in getting therapy, physical therapy, or emotional therapy, you know, like talking to someone about it would be advantageous, rather than trying to work around it, or avoid it, you know. Something else that I was going to mention to you, that I learned was that you prioritize your priorities. No shocker there, I mean, but something that I just wanted to, you know, point out was, if you make it a priority to swim 100 miles, sure enough, whether you take 46 days to do it, or six months or 10 years, you can do it without a priority on it, though. It’s obviously not a priority and it sounds stupid to say, but you know, what do you give lip service to that you wish that you would accomplish? And why don’t you then set yourself an audacious goal, when I saw this poster on the wall going into the pool, and I was like, “Of course, my shoulders hurt. I’ve not swum in, you know, three months, and here, I want to get back into it,” and I see this stupid poster that’s nagging at me in February, not through the winter, but starting to get into spring, that’s just nagging at me that I’m going to be a loser that like swimming, and I’m going to say,”No, I don’t want to do this.” fine and I committed to myself, I’m going to do this. I ended up swimming in the last 46 days. 59 hours. That’s an hour and 20 minutes-ish per day, every day every day, and 2.5 miles every day. 3520 down in backs and I’m you know, I’m recording this audio. It’s there’s no video to this. I’m not trying to get a way to go Chad, though. I mean, I always like those. I don’t want to act like it’s like, oh, I don’t care. You know, I like those So does everyone else but this isn’t posturing myself as a guru, you know of a workout or you know, mentality things stay hard but in, I want to close with this, are you challenging yourself and what can you chip away at the seems impossible? So my challenge to you is, you know, what seems impossible in business in life in whatever and, you know, you can’t hardly do 100 miles in a single shot, though.

Dr. Chad Johnson 20:36
There was, there was this movie that someone just told me about that’s on Netflix called Nyad, N Y A D and it was produced last year about Diana Nyad and she did made multiple attempts to swim from Cuba to Florida, which is 103 miles and she finally achieves it spoiler, spoiler alert and I thought, wow, she, you know, she, I, from what I hear, she’s in her 60s, and she accomplished this and I just think that’s so cool that she accomplished this 100-mile swim and she did it in the course of like, three days. So all of a sudden, my 46 days isn’t as impressive as this 60 some year old doing it in two and a half or three days or something like that. Super oh, 64 years old. Yeah, marathon swimmer becomes the first person, man or woman to swim from Cuba to Florida. How cool is that? So props to her. Well done, mine is nothing to miss compared to that, considering I got to swim in a in a nice, you know, condition pool. Other obstacles that I overcame, you know, I got an ear infection in both ears. I, you know, man, my traps were just killing me. I did treat myself to one massage after day 30. I did 30 days in a row before I got to my, my day off on the 31st day and so yeah, I treated myself along the way but again, back to, to you what seems impossible? How can you challenge yourself and how can you commit to it so that way, you can, you can get it done? Because you don’t have to eat the whole elephant one bite, you know, it’s how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time and so challenge yourself, you know, and of course you do but find those big challenges, chip away at it. Take a day off here and there and let me know what your challenge is and what you accomplished. I do apologize that Regan wasn’t able to attend today. She just finished the March PDA work. She just finished the March Productive Dentist Academy workshop and we have another one coming up in September. So definitely check into those I recommend that you set yourself a miniature goal of challenging yourself to go to a PDA workshop and learn more about how you can slay it in dentistry and I’ve been to many it’s done me so much good. I appreciate Regan letting me podcast monologue style as I talked this through, and hopefully this was advantageous to you today. Write me a comment. If you see this on Facebook. What is your challenge and what how are you going to accomplish it? Best wishes to you and we’ll see you next week as we continue on with our book series. Thanks.

Regan 23:46
Thank you for listening to another episode of Everyday Practices Podcast. Chad and I are here every week. Thanks to our community of listeners just like you and we’d love your help. It would mean the world if you can help spread the word by sharing this episode with a fellow dentist and leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify. Do you have an extraordinary story you’d like to share or feedback on how we can make this podcast even more awesome? Drop us an email at podcast@productivedentist.com and don’t forget to check out our other podcasts from Productive Dentist Academy at productivedentist.com/podcasts See you next week.