Choosing Different: Breaking Free from Normal Dysfunction

The more that we normalize dysfunction, the further we put a vote towards earning our illness. We have two choices. We can either live a life by default, which is in dysfunction, or we can live a life by design, which is in optimization. If we choose to vote for dysfunction and normal and default, we're going to do what's common and we're going to earn our illness. This is the ownit show where we tell stories of how everyday people made ownership theirs. Hey, everybody, I'm your host, Justin Rothling, chauffeur. Welcome back to the Own it show. And if this is your first time here, as the intro said, we tell stories of people who have made ownership theirs and ultimately realized a new level of success and truly a life that's different. And so if you, again, if your first time here, take a look back, there's about 200 plus episodes that you can go and listen to. Amazing guests, amazing content. If it, if it does something for you, if it changes your life, if it makes you think differently, if it creates a paradigm shift, if it causes you just question a few things and there's some type of value from it, leave us a review. Make sure you put some type of star rating there. Share it with somebody that is going to speak into their life, because that's the only way that we really reach people. That's the only way that we can continue to reach others, reach, teach, and empower, which is our mission to redeem the health of the world. And so as we dive in today, I really want to talk about the concept of normal versus different. And when we think about normal, the word normal, it's the typical way of doing things. And in our society, in our world, what we've started to normalize, especially as entrepreneurs, executives, business owners, business leaders, leaders of our household, leaders of our industries, is that we've gotten normal and gotten used to dysfunction. We call dysfunction normal. We call these dysfunctional habits dysfunctional patterns normal. And today I want to expose some of those things. When it comes to the health space, I want to expose some of those things that we, that we've considered normal, that we've gotten used to, that we haven't taken a forward stance on. And in doing so, I think it's left us compromised in a lot of different ways. And so when I think about different, it means to be set apart. It means to be sacred. It means to be, to open up a new paradigm. And if you think about this, this word different, somebody will say, hey, Kobe Bryant was just built different, or Oprah's Heart was just. Just on a different level, or. Walt Disney's creativity was extremely different. His foresight was different. Different is a compliment. Different is something we seek. Different is something we're after. But oftentimes we don't know what different actually looks like. But we have to realize that each of us is different. Our bodies are different, Our. What we require, what we need is different. And so we have to stop doing the same things. And I can. I can give you this, this. This kind of, like, example, right? This story that you can kind of come back to. When I was. When I was a kid. Well, a kid. I was 16 years old, I got my first car. It was a purple, purple Chevy Cavalier. And. And as I was driving it in the summer, the air conditioner went out and didn't have the money to repair it right away. And so I would just roll down the windows as soon as I got in and utilize the beautiful air. Right, the beautiful air. As, as, as the air conditioner, what would kind of keep me cool. And as I was driving, I just got used to rolling down the windows because the air conditioner didn't work. And so I found a quick fix to a fundamental problem, a fundamental issue. Dysfunction within the vehicle. And when people would get in the car, say I was giving somebody a ride home, they'd get in and they go, oh, my gosh, it's so hot in here. Turn the air. Turn the air on. And I would say, well, it actually doesn't work. Just roll down your windows. And they're like, oh, my gosh, man. Like, they start waving their shirt. They're like, it's so hot in here. I was like, you'll get used to it. It's fine. The Earl kind of take over once we start driving a little bit quicker. And if we think about it, living in this function, getting used to that level of dysfunction, getting used to this concept of what I called normal, was not allowing the car to operate in the way in which it was designed, wasn't allowing us to live in that level of optimization and performance, which ultimately comes back to us is how are we living in dysfunction? How are we operating in dysfunction and calling that normal? And I'm going to give you a couple examples here in a second. And when is it time to choose different? Well, the best time to choose different was either today or five years ago. And so the best choice is today because you obviously haven't been doing it. And it's time to create this paradigm shift. And so when I'm thinking about how we show up and things that we've considered normal in our society. And what ultimately normal has gotten us, normal has gotten us a rising diabetes level, a rise in cancer, a rising chronic illness, a rise in anxiety, a rise in depression, a rise in all of these preventative diseases and illnesses. But we've just considered that normal. The fact that we see these stats continue to rise, oh, that's normal. It's what it takes to be living in our world today. But in fact it's occurring because we continue to operate in a state of dysfunction. And I want to start to dive into some of these examples here. So as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, as a business leader, there's things that we consider normal. Stress is a normal thing. That's something that we just, hey, that's what it is expected to be a business owner. And I was talking with a hedge fund that we started working with a few years ago and the hedge fund manager said, hey, I want you to help our traders get more energy and improve immune response and just really change their health. I want to focus on their health and energy. I want them to be more productive and more vibrant and more focused. I was like, okay, great. And so we started to come in, we did an analysis on kind of what was happening. We met with each, each trader got really in depth with what was going on and we put some protocols in place. We ultimately found. Well, I'll go back to the protocols. First one, we need to get a consistent sleep and wake time. I needed them to be up at 6am because they needed to get ready for the market and I needed them to be in bed by 10pm we needed them to stop eating at 7pm we needed them to make sure that they were preparing themselves for sleep. And when we just talked about these very simple concepts, these three things, they came back and said, Justin, there's no way we can do that. What's normal for our industry is that we do four nights a week late night dinners with clients where we're drinking, we're out, we're trying to close deals, and then we have to be up at 6 o' clock to get, to get our, our day going. So like, that's just like the concept of what we're doing at night, like four nights a week. That's what it looks like. That's what's normal. And so we started to talk to their, their hedge fund manager and we said, hey, if this is really what you're wanting to do, we have to change the environment in which we're Operating in. It's not enough just to tell them to do something, but if there, if we don't correct the dysfunction that's occurring, we're never going to create the outcome that we're looking for. And here's where I give this hedge fund like massive credit. Because not only did they ask for something, but they put their actions and money where their mouth was. And so what they did, they were in Manhattan and they updated their entire floor so that half of the floor had a sauna, a steam room, a yoga area, a cold plunge and a salad bar, smoothie bar area. And what they did was instead of having dinner meetings that had late night dinners and alcohol, they made now wellness meetings. And the way they had the exact same meetings at night, they now opened up where they could bring clients in and do steams and saunas and cold plunges and sit in the yoga studio and have salad bar and smoothies for lunches where they would have those same meetings. And there were literally no late night, alcohol infused dinner meetings anymore in this place. Well, all of a sudden the vibrancy went up, the productivity went up, the focus went up. All of their traders, because they're not having to do these late night things anymore and they were able to be consistent. But here's the crazy part. Because they chose to do things differently, because they chose to fix the dysfunction and go and do something different, the industry, be different, stand out, do something that was not normal, even though normal is dysfunctional. If you saw anybody else and they were eating out four nights a week and drinking four to five nights a week, you'd say, man, you should probably change your habits. That's not getting you where you want to go. But it was normal in the industry. All of their clients started to notice this. And not only did they increase profitability, but the ease in which they started to land more business, the ease in which they gained the trust of people, the ease in which they did things because they were doing things differently, they stood out. And people said, man, I want to be like you. I want to be in business with people like you. Because if you're doing this differently, imagine how different you're doing everything else. Imagine how intentionally you're doing everything else. And so it literally changed their business, it changed the way they operated. And over the course of those two years, they've doubled their profitability margins, even in a unsure market, because they focused on being different, getting rid of the dysfunction in their daily habits to make sure that they were optimal and where they were trying to Go. And what they were trying to do. Another example of this was one of one of our clients came in was constantly getting sick. Okay, constantly getting sick. But it was doing all of the things that they would, you could think about when it came to health and, and performance. They were doing the cold plunges, they were doing the saunas, they were doing the infrareds, they were doing the intermittent fasting, they were supplementing everything that you could imagine, but yet they were just doing what was normal in society. They were just doing what was normal in, in, in what the world told them and, and going off of what everybody else was doing. Right, just like that broad brushstroke. But what we realized was that this individual was actually just adding on so much stress, not realizing that intermittent fasting was stress, not realizing that extreme saunas were stressed, not realizing that cold plunges were stress, not realizing that the way that the lack there of training was reducing their ability to handle more stress. So we had to ultimately create this life by design. We had to do things differently. We had to give them frameworks that changed the way that they did things, meaning that they started to only do cold plunges when their HRV was above their five day average. The, the, from the sauna standpoint, they wouldn't sauna in the morning, they would actually sauna at night, which gave them the entire day, which now used the sauna as a downregulator where they would do breath work and some of these other things that took more of the stress off of them. And so again, getting into a sense of intention, getting into a sense of purpose, getting into a sense of real. For all you people who work from home, again, it's normal when you work from home to feel like you sometimes get chained to your desk, feeling like you can't do these things. Zoom calls. So many, like the something we talk about often is the zoom calls suddenly started to become this change your desk because you have to be on video. And if you're doing a zoom call and you're not on video, it's considered rude because you could be sending emails or multitasking or doing whatever it is people ask you to be on video so you show that you're engaged, but if you're on video, you feel like you can' be on video if you're anywhere other than your desk. And so it became this massive issue and it was normal to work from home and all of a sudden be in a prison of whatever your home office was. Well, we started to talk with a lot of our clients about started to notice that they would sit down at their desk at 8 o' clock in the morning and they wouldn't leave their desk until 6pm at night. You're talking about literally being locked in place for 10 hours, not moving, wondering why your low back sore, wondering why your hamstrings are getting tight, wondering why you're not being able to actually lose weight even though you're training in the morning and wondering why you've got a headache and massive anxiety and all of these things. Because you're doing what is considered normal. And there's dysfunction in normal. It's, it's not, it is completely dysfunctional to be chained to a, to one place. If I said to you, hey, you're going to go to your office when people worked in offices, if you're going to go to your office and you're going to sit down and you're not going to leave for 10 straight hours, you'd be like, no, thank you, that's not happening. But I even found myself in this own trend when I started to work from home that I felt like I had to be chained to my desk. And so I had to start choosing different. I had to correct the dysfunction that everybody had considered normal. I had to choose different. And so what I started to do was for two zoom calls a day, ones that I wasn't coaching on or ones that I wasn't having to write things down or actively plan on, but still participate, I will take on my phone and I will go for walks and I will literally walk outside. I'll get my feet in the sand, I'll walk outside and get natural sunlight. I'll even take my shirt off and be walking outside and on the Zoom, having a deeper conversation with people, be it the executive team, be it whoever, because I'm actively living out my different. And now that's also given other people permission. And what we've noticed is that we get more done and we feel better. Low back pain is gone, anxiety is gone, sleep is happening at a deeper level, but it takes correcting the dysfunction. And so why I'm sitting here saying this, why I'm talking about this, is I want you to start to think about what dysfunction is happening in your life that you've normalized, what dysfunction is happening in society that the world has normalized. And thus you've just adopted that same belief or identity and behavior. Because the more that we normalize dysfunction, the further we put a vote towards earning our illness. We have two choices. We can either live a life by default, which is in dysfunction. Or we can live a life by design, which is an optimization. If we choose to vote for dysfunction and normal and default, we're going to do what's common and we're going to earn our illness. That's what we're choosing. If we choose to vote for different, if we choose to vote for uncommon, if we choose to vote for life by design and intentionality and eliminate the dysfunction, then we're putting a vote for choosing and earning our health. And I know where I want to put mine. I always want to be different. This word different is so sacred to me. And so where can I start to live differently? Where can I start to do things differently? Where can I start to choose differently? Where can I start to think differently? Where can I part start to put a different spin on things and see the truth that's actually sitting behind it and to why that is there? And so I say all this and I encourage you to choose different. See where the dysfunction's happening, see where this dysfunction is lying, and understand where you can start to make a different choice, where you can start to implement a different habit, where you can start to change a different or create a different behavior so that you can ultimately get a different outcome. Because different was how we were created. Different is what we're seeking, and different is what lies at the truth of what it is that we want to do. Success is different. So own your different and we'll see you next week.