What a £14 cup of coffee taught me about motivation

Hey, everyone thought I'd try something different. I'm actually recording this down in Bath in Somerset. So it's Cass's birthday today. It's her 40th, and I thought I'd take her for a nice spa break for a couple days to spoil her, treat ourselves a little bit. So we're staying in this lovely hotel room at the moment. She's currently down getting a treatment and massage in the spa. And I'm just getting ready. We're going out for a night out a little bit later. And I wanted to talk about the highlight of this trip, which combines two of my passions. It's related to chiropractic, obviously. We'll get to that in a minute. But also coffee. Those of you who follow me for a while will know I'm a massive coffee nerd. I love coffee. I'm super, super into it. And that. That all happened down in Bath. So before the first time we ever came here as a couple, I drank coffee, but it was kind of just like a way to get a caffeine kick that tasted okay. And the first time we came down here, the two of us, we went on a food and drink tasting tour. So we went all around Bath. Our tour guide took us to loads of different cafes, restaurants. We had samples in each of them. And the place we ended up at was cafe called Colonna and Smalls, which is my favorite cafe in the whole world now. But this is the first time we met. And it's run by Maxwell Colonna, who is one of the UK's only two world barista champions in the entire world from the UK. Maxwell is one of them. So we go there and I think, all right, this guy really knows his coffee. I decided to try something different, which I'd never had before, which is just an espresso, just espresso on its own, no milk or anything like that. And I saw they had a menu of these different beans and different locations and what they tasted like and this kind of stuff. I didn't really know what I was looking at. So I did the typical kind of, like, things. I went, oh, that one's an extra two pounds. That's the more expensive one. I'll have that one. And I had this cup of espresso and it, like, it just opened a whole new world to me. I had no idea that espresso could taste this good. And that started me falling down the espresso rabbit hole, which I have been on for several years now. I have since spent an embarrassing amount of money on Machines, gone through three different grinders for it, bought all these kind of gadgets and tools and stuff like that. And I have also spent like hundreds, hundreds of hours watching YouTube videos, reading up on it, studying the science of coffee, all this kind of stuff. Becoming a massive nerd. Anyway, what that means is every time we come down to Bath, I make sure to go to colonorance malls. Now, we got here yesterday, we went yesterday, I've gone back again today. And they now have this newer menu of like, sort of like the fine wines on when you go to a bar or something like that. This is their, like, fancy coffee. These are select ones that are quite rare beans. And a lot of these beans are actually called gesha beans. It's a type of bean, it's one of the most expensive coffee beans out there because it has unique combinations of flavours and things like that that make it very, very different to other beans. So we went down there yesterday and we had three coffees between the both of us and it cost us about £35 because we were trying all the really nice ones. I went down there today to pick up a takeaway for Cass while she's having a bit of a lion and I tried another one that was ten pounds for a single cup of coffee. And. And these are not big cups. This isn't your like Starbucks, Grande Venti, whatever. These are just small 200 mil regular cups of coffee. And I loved it and it was brilliant. And the thing I love even more than that though is the coffee tastes really nice. That's lovely. But that's an experience that will fade quite quickly. I won't really. I remember I had some nice coffee, but I don't remember what it tastes like. What I love though, is going down to there and chatting to the baristas and even chatting to some of the other patients and customers. Like this morning I went down just to read my book, hang out there for a little bit whilst Cass was having a lion and spent half an hour chatting to people. And I've come back like, super inspired. I've never had these gesha beans before, never tried them. Now I'm already going home and I'm planning like, okay, what sort of, like, what do I want to try? I want to get these. How do I want to brew them? I'm going to brew them differently, some different techniques, that kind of stuff. And it's got me really inspired again, which is really cool because although, like I said, I'm a massive coffee nerd, if I'm being honest. The. The last six months, I've kind of been in a bit of a routine. Like, I haven't lost the spark, but I've just sort of been going through the motion of the same coffee, haven't been trying anything new. And coming back down here and seeing these absolute experts who will make a better cup of coffee than I will ever make and can do that day in, day out, every day, it's got me really fired up again. It's got me excited to try something new. And the reason I'm mentioning this here, bringing it back to chiropractic, is that I've had a number of conversations recently with practitioners, not just chiropractors, but osteopaths too. Some newer grads, but some who've been experienced for a while, who are telling me like they. They're feeling like they've really lost the spot. They're thinking about changing profession, they're feeling burned out. They feel like they're really not enjoying it. And, you know, they're asking me, like, is there anything I can do? Like, should I change? Is this not for me? And my answer then has always been the same, which is, no, don't, don't stop, don't quit. You've got to find the people that are doing what you really want to do. Because so many of these people, they're either working on their own or they're working in an unsupportive environment. Maybe they're working for somebody who's. Whose vision of chiropractic or osteopathy or the way they want to practice is not the same as theirs. And there's this conflict there, and they're feeling like I'm being forced to do it a certain way, and I don't want to do that. I feel like I can't do it the way I want to, but I don't know what I want. Or they're on their own going, I don't even know what I want to do. Just, I know what I'm doing right now isn't working. And I always say the same. You've got to reach out, you've got to find other people. You can't muscle through that on your own. So if that's you, what you need to do is find the people who are doing things that make you think, I'd love to do that and do that. That's what I did with the coffee. I went down there and I talked to the different ways of brewing it, using, like an aeropress or a filter stuff. I haven't done before, trying different beans. I've now come back being like, I want to see what I can do with that. Like, it's got me curious, it's got me excited. The same thing happens for you. If you can find someone who is doing similar stuff to you and then reach out, message them on Facebook, shoot them an email, like, have a conversation, if they're open to it, see if you can come and observe. You know, we have experienced practitioners. Come and observe us regularly. It's a very routine thing. We're always happy to do that. If you can get to Southeast uk, by all means. If the way. If what I talk about here and you think, oh, the way Chris does stuff sounds really cool. Like, come and observe me. If there's other people doing really cool stuff with rehab, maybe they've got a clinic gym, hybrid model, maybe they're using a technique that sounds really interesting. Maybe they're working with a population you'd love to work in. Whatever it might be, reach out to those people and just say, hey, like, I'm struggling a little bit. Like, do you have any advice me? Could you give me any tips? They might be open, you coming down. It could mean going to a seminar, obviously, that's another way of doing it. Or it could just be finding people to have the conversations with. You know, One of my biggest mentors, Rob Pape, he's had a bigger influence on my career than any other chiropractor out there. Rob and I have never met. We've had a handful of chats on Zoom, but 99.9% of our interactions have been like WhatsApp text messages, just going back and forth. And Rob's massively helped me and he's pulled me out of funks before and things like that as well. And he's the other side of the world to me. We've never met, so it doesn't have to be somebody nearby to you, doesn't have to be somebody who can go and observe all the time. Just, you've got to find your tribe. You've got to find people who are further along the journey than you are in a direction you want to go. Because when you do that, when your brain sees people doing things that you want to do, it starts to believe it's possible. If you don't see anyone doing it because you're isolated or on your own or you're surrounding yourself with people who are doing what you don't want, your brain starts to believe what I want is impossible because it's seen no evidence for it in the outside world. As soon as it sees somebody doing that, you'll start going, I want to. I want to be a bit more like that. I want to emulate what they're doing, not necessarily be a clone of them, not necessarily copy everything. Like, Rob works in a very different way to me, but, you know, some of the things he's doing is stuff that gets me really fired up and passionate and, you know, going down talking to these baristas, they're like, what they're doing. Like, I'm not going to do all of that stuff they're using Kit that I'm, you know, as much as I've spent a good money, I'm not buying the machines they're using, but it's got me going. I could be more like this, I could get closer to that. That's got me excited, that's got me inspired, that's got me looking to do some stuff. And I'm really excited about going home and trying new stuff with a coffee now. Exactly the same thing. True can be true of chiropractic and osteopathy. So if you're stuck in that rut, if you're not sure, just reach out. You can message me, you can message other people, but go out there and find the folks that doing what you want to do. Find the folks that get you inspired and contact them, reach out. Maybe not everyone will get back to you, but some of them will. And by doing that, your brain will start to believe it's possible. You can go from feeling jaded and burned out and losing the spark. Too curious, too excited, too inspired and ready to really bring the love back to the profession again. So hope that was helpful for you and I'll see you guys soon. Take care.