EP004: Find Your Purpose with Dr. Gilles LaMarche

Welcome to the Perfect Practice podcast where we share the most innovative strategies to help you build a successful functional medicine business, attract your ideal patients, serve your community, and get paid what you're worth. Each episode is packed with practical steps that you can take to immediately grow your influence and serve more people. Our mission is to share golden nuggets from successful practitioners, technology experts and innovators from around the world. Your host, Sachin Patel, is a functional medicine success coach, international speaker and best selling author. He's calling in all his favors to bring this information to you so you can create your perfect practice.

Hello everyone, this is Ashen Patel. And today with me we have a very special guest, one of my mentors, somebody who I've admired for many, many years and many people in our profession know who he is. Today I have with me Dr. Gilles Lamarche. Dr. Lamarche, thank you so much for joining us.

It is my honor and distinct pleasure to share this time with you and with your audience. Let's get to work and do some good stuff in this next 30 minutes or so.

Let's do this. I know that you've got some mega pearls. It was almost hard to even start this interview because I just wanted to keep listening to you talk. So let's share some of the things that we discussed in this podcast and let's dive right in. So just so people know a little bit more about you, why don't you tell us a bit of your origin story? I'd love to hear more about you.

Sure, happy to do that. I discovered chiropractic at the age of 12. I was a pretty smart kid in elementary school. I'd skipped two grades. So by 12th grade, I mean, by the age of 12, I was in ninth grade. And you can imagine, 12 years old, my birthday is in February. I was a little tiny guy. I got picked on a lot. And one day, the teacher, who's a new teacher, who happened to see that all the other boys were picking on me. I was in an all boys Catholic school. He decided to pick on me and he pulled the chair from underneath me and you know, I fell on my bottom, hurt my back. And today we would go, oh my gosh, you got to sue this guy. But the reality is that that man, who ended up being a regular practice member in my practice a number of years later, really set my path onto discovery. I was in serious shape for about six months. And one day somebody said to my mom, you know, why don't you take me to a chiropractor? And of course my Mother, you know, like most mothers of the day 50 years ago, said, what's a chiropractor? Had no idea what a chiropractor was. But I ended up in the chiropractor's office and this chiropractor did a very thorough consultation, a thorough examination. I remember him taking X rays of me and had me come in the next day with my mom. And he started describing this thing called, you know, subluxation and the fact that the nervous system controls all functions of the body. And I didn't believe anything he was saying. All I was like, can you help me with my back pain? And here he was talking about areas of my spine that were malfunctioning in the cervical area and in the mid thoracics. And that was related to digestion. And lo and behold, you know, I did have digestive issues since I was born. I always had elimination issues, you know, trouble with constipation. Anyway, we decided, my mom and I decided that, that, you know, he would start taking care of me. And all I really cared about is can he help me get rid of my back pain so I can go back to normal activities of a 12 year old. And I did not believe anything else he said. Well, it made me understand very quickly over the next few weeks that you didn't have to believe in what he told me. What he had shared with me was a truth that I had never understood before, that the nervous system controls all functions of the human body and that every organic system in the universe is conscious, self developing, self maintaining, self healing. I mean, those were just words to me that meant nothing at the beginning. But once I started to experience this, well, not only was my back pain gone, but I could digest my food. I didn't have a sore tummy anymore, I could go to the bathroom, which what I thought was normal to go once a week if that. And all of a sudden I'm going to the bathroom like every day or more. And so it transformed my entire paradigm that I may or may not have had at the time as to what health and healing was all about. And I set my path to become a chiropractor. So I went on to obviously finish high school, finished, you know, went on to undergrad, finished my undergrad, went straight to chiropractic school. And he had told me that when I told him that day, a couple months into my care at the age of 12, you know, when I'm big, I'm going to be like you. He had said to me at the time, he said, well, Promise me that if you decide to become a chiropractor before you graduate, go to a Parker seminar. That's when Parker Seminars was, you know, run by Dr. Jim Parker. It was like the state of the art, et cetera. And I remember a series that said, seminar. Why would I do that? He said, that's where they're going to teach you to be successful in practice and in your life. And I said, are they going to teach me that in school? He said, no, that's not the school's job. The school's job is to teach you everything you need to know so you can pass your board exams and get a license. Your job is to learn to become successful. I went, okay. He ended up leaving my little hometown of Timmins, Ontario. But I did go on, like I said. And in my third year of chiropractic school, I saw this ad in the paper that there was a Parker seminar that was going to be held in New York City. And so I, you know, got together by a few buddies and said, hey, let's jump in. You know, who can drive? Let's jump in a car. Let's go to New York City together. And we pun, you know, we jumped in. I think it was six or seven of us went off to New York City. We all stayed in the same hotel room. None of us had any money. But on the Thursday, excuse me, of the opening of that event, Dr. Jim invited everybody to go visit him in his suite that night. And of course, we all said, well, how's that even possible? There's like 3,000 people or so in this audience. A hotel room can't be that big. But somebody had mentioned that Ronald Reagan, President Ronald Reagan, had stayed there the weekend before. And I was like, I'm going to go check it out. None of my buddies came up, but I went upstairs to this humongous hotel suite that was way bigger than the house I was raised in. And lo and behold, there was maybe 30 or so people there. Many of them were icons in the profession at the time. And I went on to develop a personal relationship with Dr. Jim Parker from that day on. Wow. So in the fall of 1977, in New York City, I met a man who would become my mentor and a few other people who mentored me along the way. And so I set my path and started learning everything he said I should learn, and started behaving the way he said I should behave and really found inside of me this gift that we'll refer to as purpose, that when you have a purpose, that is bigger than you as a healthcare practitioner. When you develop a consciousness that causes you to to have a patient centered practice, a patient centric environment, that you train your people on your team to be patient centric and you learn all the tools necessary to create that environment which will cause you to teach the people what you'd like them to understand. Always from a space of truth, integrity, authenticity. That every care plan that you create for an individual coming in to seek your service is based on what you would create for someone that you love who presented in that same state. So whether that person was your mother, father, brother, sister, child. If you start to live that way, and you live from Dr. Jim's major premise was loving service. My first technique. Make loving service your first technique and find this deep willingness to serve humanity, guess what happens? You build this amazing practice. Your practice members get great results. They become the ambassadors, they refer their people to your practice. And you take great care of your team. You train them well, they become patient centric as well. You build this beautiful team environment and you take good care of them because you're making enough money to take care of your patients and your practice members coming in. Therefore, you build a profitable business. So if someone says to me, how do I build a profitable business? I said, well, tell me how you're going to take care of your people. And they go, well, no, no, but how am I going to build a profitable business? I go back, well, tell me how you're going to take care of your people. And at first they get like, they're sort of stunned, like what do you mean? He said, I always remember that money is simply a byproduct of exceptional service rendered. I'm not going to teach you how to make money, but I'm happy to teach you how to build a patient centered model of care that causes you to have fun in practice, that causes you to live in that beautiful space of purpose that allows your practice members to get well, stay well and tell others. That allows your team to not see this as a job, but rather as a vocation. You know, you train your team so that everybody in your community that's a healthcare practitioner would want to hire them. That's how you train them. Which means you, it's no holds bar. You train them in this best quality Ritz Carlton service possible and you take care of them so they'll always want to stay with you. So I have no worry that, you know, you can never over train someone to be an awesome teammate. Some of you may say, well, I don't overtrain my team because I'm afraid that if I train them too well that they're going to get poached or they're going to want to go somewhere else. I was like, wrong answer. Train them so everybody would want to hire them and take care of them. So they always want to stay a member of your team. And that can only happen when you have a strong personal purpose statement for yourself as a healthcare practitioner and that you have a strong purpose as a team that the entire team revolves around. Why you exist. So why does, excuse me, the team at Dr. Sachin Patel, why does that team exist? What do we stand for? What do we strive for? Who are we as a team? When you've got that clarity and you as the practitioner, have that clarity on your personal purpose, the two go hand in hand. And you are consistently inspired. And people want more of that. The more. I mean, people want to hang out with people that are fun to hang out with. So if you're an inspired individual, people feel that they want to be in your presence. If you're an unhappy, crabby individual, people want to run away from you. So I would tell you that what I learned, maybe the first lesson I learned from Dr. Jim was find your purpose. And so I went on to write my personal purpose statement, which has now existed for almost 40 years, 35 or more. It's been tweaked to the line that it is today. And it was a little bit different the first year or two or three, because it was longer. It was more, you know, three, four sentences. And I got it whittled down over time to. I pledged my life to my greatest expression of love and service for the benefit of humanity. So that's why Gilles wakes up every morning. That's how Gilles went to his practice every morning. That's how Gilles left his practice every evening when he left the office, because that's. That's who Gilles brought to his house as well. So if I pledge my life, my greatest expression of love and service for the benefit of humanity, that speaks to everyone I interact with, my community, my team, my practice members, my family, like, let's always remember that we've got to take care of everybody in our circle on the same level. Everybody in my life is important to me, like being on time to get on this podcast with you. You are important to me. Therefore, I was logged in shortly before our scheduled time because it's important for me that I respect you, and it's important for me that I also respect your audience that expects this podcast to get recorded in a timely fashion and get the information that's going to help them be, you know, a better person, a better doctor. So, you know, that's sort of in the nutshell of where it all started. And then if I may tell you one more little point that I think is really important because sometimes I get asked the question, so why is having a purpose statement for your life and your practice so important? And I'm going to paraphrase words that I learned from Dr. Wayne Dyer a couple of decades ago, which he paraphrased from one of his non living mentors that he studied an ancient philosopher by the name of Patanjali. And apparently at some point, Patanjali was asked that exact question. Why is having a purpose statement or a purpose for your life so crucial to living an extraordinary life? And as the legend goes, he went on to say, because purpose inspires you. And when you're inspired by some grand purpose, your thoughts transcend their bonds, your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction. You find yourself in this new, great, wonderful world where dormant forces, faculties and talents come alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamt possible. So that's why a purpose is inspiring, right? A purpose rather. That's why a purpose statement is important, because it inspires you. And when you're inspired, and I know everyone listening is going to relate to this, you know, how many times, Dr. Sashin, have you been held in bondage by your thoughts? How many times have you been held from growing because of the limitations that you placed on yourself? Or what Patanjaliwananda is saying is that when you're inspired by a great purpose, then your thoughts transcend their bonds and your mind transcends limitations. And you, this consciousness that you have, expands in every direction. And so these dormant forces, faculties, talents, come alive. Well, that's everywhere around us. And I would tell you that if you said to me what is, you know, the major starting blocks that guided you to living this exceptional life? It was discovering Dr. Jim Parker, learning loving service, my first technique, being instructed to create a purpose statement for my life and one for my practice, and then understanding how to apply my purpose and the impact that would have. Did it make my life simpler? Oh, my gosh, it sure did. It sure did. Doesn't mean I didn't have roadblocks along the way. We all do. But when we're focused on a purpose that's bigger than any one of us individually, beauty surrounds us, possibility surrounds Us. Your life just expands in front of you and you meet the right people, you read the right books. I mean, I'm sure it may have happened to you. You walk through a bookstore, Barnes and Nobles or Chapters in Toronto or whatever, and it's like a book literally jumps off the shelf at you and you pick it up and you go, I guess I'm supposed to buy this because you're following your innate intelligence. You pick it up, you read it and you go, wow, what a lesson. And so having a purposeful life allows you to attract all these lessons that come in all forms, books, people, road signs, movies, YouTube videos, whatever it may be.

You know, that's so true and it's so clear how humble you are and that you serve a purpose much greater than yourself. And that comes through in, you know, in the energy that you bring to everything that you do. And I. I've known you for many years. We worked on a project together several years ago that you spearheaded, which was the Art of Being Healthy, a beautiful set of books that, you know, very purpose driven chiropractors had a chance to contribute to. And I was so grateful to be part of that project. But we actually just met in person for the first time. And you were exactly how I imagined you to be. So it's almost like I knew your energy before I met you because it was, you know, it was opening up into this infinite consciousness. Right? And you can, you can just tell by even. I hope it comes through for the people listening to this in your voice, that this energy is coming from just a very pure space. So I really wanted to say that I appreciate that about you. And as humble as you are, I do want you to talk about your practice successes and wins. Because I think that sometimes people think the good guys finish last. And you're a perfect example of how the good guys rise to the top. So I want to inspire practitioners and I want them to know that a purpose driven practice is also successful, but not just numerically, but emotionally from a relationship standpoint. I want you to talk about how you rounded out your entire life, and I want you to talk about the first 15 minutes of what happens when you come home. So make sure you don't. I'll leave that out of the stories.

Okay. I'm happy to walk through that. And I'd like to start by reading something, because when we got on the phone, something sparked my attention. And I'm sitting in my study at home right now. So I turned around and I took a book off a shelf and I just want to read this one paragraph and you'll understand why, as I segue into my story of how I built my practice and succeeded at a very, very high level in the chiropractic profession. Obviously, sunlight focused through a magnifying glass can start a fire. The conditions, however, must be just right. If the magnifying glass is held too far from the surface, the rays are diffused and won't generate enough heat to make fire. When you heat water to 100 degrees centigrade, it begins to boil. If the temperature only reaches 99 degrees centigrade, the water does not boil. An airplane has to attain a certain ground speed before taking flight. Any less than this does not produce flights. And some doctors expend enormous amounts of energy trying to become successful. They seem to do almost everything correctly. You know, they go through all the right motions, they jump through all the right hoops. Still, for some reason, success seems to elude them. And what I discovered, and by the way, that's that I wrote this. So this is a quote from a chapter that I wrote in a book that I designed a number of years ago, again with some great chiropractors called CAS to Chiropractic Success. But the reason why I thought it important to read that is to really segue into, so how do you go about building an exceptional practice? So that was a dream for me, and I'm going to suggest for our listeners that you think a little bit differently as it relates to dreams and goals, for example, which I will touch on. So the dream for me was to have an exceptional practice. I didn't really know what that meant. I didn't know if it meant 100 people a week, 200 a week. I didn't know what it meant. But I said, my dream is that I want to have an exceptional practice. And the question that I asked myself was, who do I need to become so that as a natural outcome of becoming that person, I would achieve my dream? I was like, well, I guess I need to become an exceptional chiropractor, was my answer. And then I said, so what are the attributes and characteristics of an exceptional chiropractor? So for the audience that we presently have today on this podcast, you might say, I want to become an exceptional functional medicine practitioner. Okay, wonderful. Or the dream is, you want to have an exceptional, you know, successful functional medicine practice. Then you say, well, who do you need to become? So you probably come up with the answer, I must become an exceptional functional medicine practitioner. And then you ask the question, so what are the attributes and characteristics of that person. Then you list out these attributes and characteristics and look at which ones of those attributes and characteristics do you currently own and utilize on a regular basis? Which ones might you own but shy away from? You don't really utilize much. And which ones do you not own that you could then create a process which I call a goal to achieve? So I listed all those, and one of the top ones for me was becoming a great communicator. So I told you I was picked on a lot as a kid. I was bullied a lot. I was little and, you know, ninth grade, I hadn't even reached puberty, so I got picked on a lot. And my M.O. was, well, the best way to not get picked on is to become somewhat invisible. Don't be seen, don't make any noise. Don't raise your hand when you know the answer, if the teacher's asking, unless the teacher directly asks you, because then you really should participate. So I basically got quiet because the norm for me was I knew the answer. I would raise my hand. Why raise my hand? And I got, you know, then I was the smart kid and I was little. I got picked on. I got pushed around. Well, if my dream was to have an exceptional chiropractic practice to serve humanity the way my chiropractor served me and helped me discover the possibility of great health, which I didn't even know was possible at the time, then I would need to become an exceptional communicator. And that was scary to me. And I was having a conversation again, not that first time in Dr. Jim's suite, but the next time. And one of the gentlemen was there. His name was Dr. Richard Yenny, practiced as a chiropractor, acupuncturist extraordinaire in Kansas City, Missouri, for over 60 years, passed away a few years ago and was an exceptional guide. And we were having this conversation, and so I shared my personal chiropractic healing story. And he said, well, you've got to share that more. And I was like, well, no, you don't understand. I'm like, way too shy for that. And I was even babbling with him. So the babble I just did now was purposeful just to mimic what I looked like that day, what I looked like that day in Dr. Jim Sweet. And I will remember this till the day I die. I was standing in front of him. He started poking me in the chest very hard with his index finger and said, what gives you the right to know a truth that could help humanity and not Share it. And he kept poking me and repeating the same question until I answered, which was nothing. He says, you're right, young man. Nothing gives you the right to know a truth and not share it. Go out and become the communicator that you're meant to become. And so I did what people would do. I joined the Toastmasters Club. And I was shy and I was worried and da, da, da, whatever, right? Get over it, whatever it is. When you discover what your dream is as a healthcare practitioner and you discover who you need to become. So as a natural outcome of becoming that person, you would achieve that dream. Identify the attributes and characteristics of an exceptional functional medicine practitioner. And sometimes you may want to look at friends that you know or acquaintances that you know. For me, I looked at my mentors, you know, my mentors that are successful. What do they have? What are their qualities? Not that I wanted to be like them, I wanted to be the best version of me. But I focused on what qualities and attributes and characteristics do these people have that make them exceptional. And I made a huge list. There was like 30 something on my list. And like, so this is 40 years ago, so I can't name them all for you today. I could enumerate a few as we start Keep talking. But the number one on my list was I've got to learn to communicate. And that meant communicating one on one. That meant communicating in writing format. And French was my first language, so I didn't write English as well as I wanted to. So I started hanging out with a dictionary more often, understood words and then in a, in a bigger setting. So that led me from doing, you know, individual reported findings that led me to being able to shake hands with people in my community. I moved to a community of 5,000 people where I knew no one. And in my first one year, my first 12 months of practice, when I ordered my cards a couple months before opening my office, while the build out was going on, I ordered 5,000 cards. And the printer says, are you sure, doctor, you want to order five? That's a lot of cards that'll last you for like a decade. I said, no, these are going to last me one year. Because I've committed to my mentor that I'm going to hand out 100 cards a week. That means in one year I'm going to need to be ordering more from you. And he was like, wow, Nobody's ever ordered 5,000 business cards. So I walked around, I introduced myself to every business person, every person I ever met at church, every organization I ever went to. And in one year, I handed out 5,000 business cards. I understand for some of our millennials, they'll say, well, that's 40 years ago, Gillespie. That's crazy. We wouldn't do that today. Why not? Why wouldn't you do it today? Why would you not set a goal to meet all these people in real life? Because at the end of the day, relationships is still what builds practices. So I don't want to, you know, hurt anybody's feelings listening to this podcast, but if I asked all of you, you know, what business are you in? Most of you would say, I'm in the functional medicine business. I'm the chiropractic business. I'm in the naturopathic business. But most of you would likely say that. And I don't want to belittle you and tell you you're wrong, but you are. You're in the people business. You just happen to deliver your business as a functional medicine practitioner or as a naturopath or as a chiropractor, but you're in the people business. And I believe that people skills are still alive and well. Those of us who thrive in practice, those of us who thrive in the business world, those of us who thrive in executive roles in universities, where I'm at today, will all tell you that what built my career was my willingness to serve people. And so I handed out 5,000 business cards my first year in practice. Well, from the two months of my build out into the first year of practice, and you had asked me, so I said it to you. When I finally got a goal of what I wanted my practice to look like, or when the dream was to have an exceptional chiropractic practice, then it was like serving a minimum of 250 people per week. That was the first benchmark. I broke that benchmark in the first three months. And so I set another benchmark at 500. I broke that benchmark the week before Christmas of my first year in practice. I started in July, and by the week before Christmas, I saw over 500 people in my practice. Crazy. It sounds like, doesn't it? But it's the reality.

It's amazing.

And before my first anniversary, I broke 800. And then I found my sweet spot. 825 was more than I could handle on my own. 750 to 800. That was my sweet spot. And I stayed there for 25 years. Now, I'm not telling you this to brag. You asked me to share with your audience, so I'm sharing it. But importantly, I Want to share something so that each doctor on this podcast, listening to this podcast will make a commitment to themselves to take great care of themselves. The care that I was receiving personally was substandard. On a scale of 1 to 10, if what I delivered to my practice members, in my view was a 10, I was receiving a five or a six. In the spring of 2000, I started having major issues breathing when I ran. So I did what every normal male adult would do. I just stopped running. If I didn't run, I didn't have any symptoms, thought nothing of it. I've been allergic to cats most of my life and I had this feeling there was always a cat around me when I was running in nature. So I stopped running. Three years later, in the spring of 2003, I started having the same problems breathing. And this is a long, long, long story, but I'm going to short it down in a couple of sentences. I ended up in a physician's practice who is a buddy of mine and was diagnosed with primary pulmonary hypertension, which is a terminal disease. My best friend, who to this day my kids still call Uncle Barry and his kids call me Uncle Gilles, but we're not blood related, we're just that good friends, we're family, said to me, if you do not have, if you do not agree to a double lung and heart transplant, you're going to be dead in less than 24 months. And I was like, whoa, this is crazy. So I went on and did what most people do. I started researching primary pulmonary hypertension. I started researching double lung and heart transplant recipients, found out that, yes, I would probably be dead in two years if I did nothing and if I did agree to the procedure, I would probably be dead in five years anyway and would have very low quality of life in between. So I made the conscious decision over a period of about six months involving my family, that I was going to transition. In other words, I didn't believe that I was made to have a double lung and a heart transplant. So on the 14th of April in 2004, I went home to make the final preparations for my transition. I couldn't climb a flight of stairs by myself. I couldn't walk 100ft by myself. For the last six months of my practice life, I succumbed to the half hourly use of Ventolin so I could breathe enough to take care of the next, you know, half a dozen people in my practice. And I slept a lot when I got home. So I retired on, like I said, on the 14th of April, on the 15th of May, 31 days later, I woke up, and it was like, you're an idiot. You're an idiot because you've been preaching the chiropractic paradigm of health and healing, the natural aspect of health and healing. There's got to be something seriously wrong with your spine and nervous system, et cetera, et cetera. What I didn't tell you is that I had cardiomegaly because my body had adapted to the back pressure from my lungs, and so my heart had expanded 2.5 times its normal size to the point where there was no more room in my chest for it to expand. And when all the noise died down, I was like, maybe I should go check, you know, have a full, thorough examination at a chiropractor's office. Because I realized that even though I got checked by a chiropractor every couple weeks, it was never by the same chiropractor. I was not a practice member in any practice. It was like, whatever, buddy, you know, I'm feeling a little stiff here. Can you check me? I'll check you. We'll go for lunch or dinner or just friends at each other's homes as colleagues. And when all the noise died down, I did that. Discovered that I had a major issue in my upper thoracic spine. I started getting regular chiropractic care by the end of August. So from the mid May to the end of August, my pulmonary pressure had dropped from 57 to 27, 15, being normal. And within two years, not only was my pulmonary pressure normalized to 15, but I no longer had cardiomegaly, which means the body had adapted and groomed my heart when there was all that back pressure, when the reason for the back pressure, which was inappropriate neurological input. When that was solved, my body said, well, you don't need that big heart anymore. We're just going to allow it to shrink back down to its normal size. And so now, at 63 years old, I am healthier at 63 than I was at 48. Last year, I ran 6 or 7 5k races. I always place at the top 3 in my age group at least. Sometimes there's only 3 in my age group, but I still do okay. And you saw me, we chatted in San Diego a few weeks ago. I mean, I went out for a run every morning that we were there by the seaport. I did yoga with the class. I just having a great life.

Absolutely.

So, practitioners, please, please, please, please, for me, for Dr. Sashan, and for everybody that you care for, please receive the quality of care equivalent to the quality of care that you deliver. We need you to be healthy. I thought I was. I was not. I was receiving substandard care. So please, if you're not a practice member in any practice, make a conscious choice to become one and stay one. When I came to Life University, I found my chiropractor of choice who happens to work here at the Neurolife Institute. I actually went in and got checked today. I'm in that office like clockwork at 9:15 every second Tuesday. It's one of the most important parts of my life because I choose to take great care of myself. So I ask you to do the same.

You know, that's super important. And that's one of the things that we encourage practitioners highly to do, is not be their own doctor. You know, this is something that I'm guilty of as well. You know, I don't take as good care of myself as I do of the people that I work with. And you know, now that I've heard you say it, and I've had this own, my own revelation just fairly recently that if I want to continue doing this, I've got to take the best care of myself possible. So this morning I'm running my stool test. I already have it shipped off. And tomorrow morning, as I was mentioning earlier, I'm sending my organic acids testing off. I'm in the process right now of looking for somebody to take care of a few other areas of my health, like hiring a massage therapist to come to my home. So I'm starting to really pay closer attention to my own health as well, even more so than I normally would because of people like you who are role modeling for us and, you know, holding the. Keeping the bar pretty high because, you know, if I want to be able to keep up with you where you're at right now, I've got to play my cards right. Right. And it's through your experiences of people like yourself that we can learn. So I really appreciate you sharing that and, you know, being vulnerable because sometimes, like, what people don't realize is that everyone's got their story. Everyone's got this origin and hero's journey that they go through. And it's when we're not afraid of our story, realize that there's so much value in that story that other people could benefit from, we start sharing it openly. We have so much bigger of an impact. So, you know, thank you. Chill. I appreciate you sharing that with us.

No, my pleasure. You know, one of Dr. Jim's principal, Dr. Jim, had coined 13 different principles that he called the Parker principle. And principle number 11 is a powerful one, which I rephrase slightly, just reword it, because based on what we understand in neuroscience, we must speak to ourselves and to others in terms of what we want to accomplish. But his principle number 11, as he had wrote it, was, I know that 99% of failure is self inflicted. So if it is to be, it's up to me. And I rewrote it for myself with, I know that 99% of success is self inflicted. So if it is to be, it's up to me. We must be willing to make the tough decisions. We must be willing to live from this space of tough love, recognizing that success, health and happiness are really all determined by what you think, the way you act and how you feel. So if you are not thinking in the direction of the life you want to live, the chance of you achieving that life is next to none, because you're not going to be acting the way you want to act and you're not going to be feeling the way you want to feel. So when you start, if we segue all the way back to where we started, if you start with developing a very, very clear purpose for your life and your practice, then you start thinking that way. Service consciousness. You know, Jim, you say, loving service. My first technique. How am I going to choose to be loving today? So last week before going to San Diego, I had this thought flash and I went on Google and I said, I can't remember what I put in, but I think I said heart shaped stones. And so I discovered that I could buy these beautiful small heart shaped stones which I call a gratitude stone. And if I'd had them with me when I went to San Diego, I would have brought one for you and I would have given one probably to everybody there. So I've bought a. I bought a bunch of them and I actually started hanging them out. I handed out a few actually today, I got them yesterday, but today I handed out a few to people and I just said, have you ever heard of the concept of a gratitude stone? And to my surprise, of the five that I handed out today, not one person had ever heard that concept. I said, well, it's a stone that you keep with you. Either you lay it on your desk or as a man, for me, I carry it in my pocket because if I'm thinking, I have this habit of putting my hand in my pocket. I said, and I see the stone, I feel the stone. And when I'm not feeling in gratitude I just hold the stone because I know that the feeling that I want to experience most of the time, if not all the time, is a sense of gratitude, a sense of love for my fellow human being, a sense of being want to be of service, which matches perfect with my purpose statement. Right, I'll repeat it. But I pledge my life to my greatest expression of love and service for the benefit of humanity. So today, as I said, I handed out five. And it was just amazing to see the eyes on those people light up when I explained to them why I've used it for decades. And I said, I'll tell you. Sometimes I forget it. I, you know, I change pants and pants are clean, so I just hang them up and the stone doesn't fall out of the pocket. I forget to put in the next pair. And so now I have a few of them that lie around. But I want them in the heart shape because when you choose to lead with your heart, you truly become an individual that is willing to see everyone as an equal. That loving service can truly be your legacy. People will observe you. I've been out of practice for 14 years. And of course what got me out of practice was my pulmonary hypertension. And then for practitioners that we discovered that I had plastic deformity at T2. So I subluxated T2 very easily. So adjusting as a chiropractor for me is out of the question. I cannot do it anymore and I don't do it anymore because it causes me havoc when I don't adjust. And I'm regular being taken care of by my own chiropractor. My body does whatever my body wants to do and my mind does whatever my mind, whatever I want my mind to do. So all of that put together is really understanding that this success, health and happiness that everybody seems to search for really will come when you have faith, confidence and belief in yourself, in your products, in your services, in your ideas. And it starts by creating, I believe anyway, based on my experience. It starts by creating a purpose, by creating a patient centered practice. And everything else segues from there. So powerful.

That's really, really profound wisdom. And again, appreciate you sharing this so much. And what's interesting to me is that you found this balance that works for you. And now not only are you transitioned from your practice, but you're working as part of the entire chiropractic movement. So your impact, although you're having such a huge impact in your town, working with hundreds of patients every week, now you're operating in a scale where you're helping thousands of patients and practitioners and people all over the world. So it's pretty cool to see how this has all unfolded for you in such a beautiful way. And you've got a beautiful family. You were telling me about your grandchildren. And everyone's doing well and living a chiropractic, holistic lifestyle. So it's amazing to see how much of an impact you're having not only in the professional scene, but also on a much bigger scale than that. So thank you for your continued service. It's so appreciated.

It's my pleasure. Like I said, I tell my wife, I said, every day, every day before I go to sleep, the last words that I consciously input into my brain is tomorrow when I awaken, I will greet this day with love in my heart. Every person, every situation, every circumstance, because I choose to make my life sacred, right? So that's a choice. And the first words that I input when I wake up in the morning, consciously input. Because sometimes you wake up and you go, oh, I'm tired, or some other thoughts. But the conscious input as I awaken are the exact same words except the beginning, right? So I go from tomorrow when I wake up to today, I choose to greet this day with love in my heart, every person, every situation, every circumstance, because I choose to make my life sacred. And I have. And some people call it brainwashing. And I will agree, I have brainwashed myself to believing that I can create the life that I want to live.

And.

And guess what happened? I created the life that I love to live.

Beautiful.

And initially, somebody said, well, you're doing affirmations. That's just brainwashing. Well, yeah, we used to think that's brainwashing. We now know neuroscientifically that the brain morphologically and physiologically changes based on the words you input and how you speak to yourself and how you speak to other people. So pay attention to how you speak. Use the words based on what you want to accomplish rather than what you want to eliminate. And I gave you that brief example on learning that from Wayne Dyer years ago, whereby, you know, speak to children in terms of what you want to accomplish. If you're at the mall and your child's running away and you don't want them to run, what do you really want them to do? Well, you want them to stop or you want them to walk, so tell them what you want, right? Instead of saying, oh, baby, don't run, you're going to fall and hurt yourself, will you program them to fall and hurt themselves instead of please walk. And I'll tell you, I test that all the time. I did it with two of my granddaughters on the weekend in Chicago. We were out on Sunday, early afternoon, the two of them started running, and I said, brielle and Harper, please walk. Boom, they start walking. You tell a child, don't run. What do they hear? Run. They keep running.

Yes.

So how you speak to yourself, the thoughts you allow in, the thoughts you could do without, it's really all up to you. Because you know, how you live your life is up to you. And there's no philosophy by which you can do a thing if you think you cannot. So what are you choosing to do? Who are you choosing to be? I urge you to please just get clear on that. Looks like for you, what would allow you to be the best version of you as a human being, as a father or a mother, as a son or a daughter, as a doctor, as a community member, as a spouse? What needs to happen in your life so you can be that best version of you and do it one bite at a time, one step at a time. But start by discovering your purpose, and you'll see how that will feed your soul. Like literally will feed your soul.

I love it. I love it. Thank you so much, Doc. This has been very enlightening. I've been taking tons of notes while I've been sitting here listening to you speak. So thank you so much for sharing such profound wisdom. Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your story. Thank you for inspiring all of us. And I do have a question for you. How can we further support something that you're doing? So how can we get behind your purpose for those of us that are listening and want to join in behind you?

Well, I'm going to give you two ways. One is the Rubicon Conference, which is being held May 18th to the 20th in Atlanta. Look at the roster. Go to the rubiconconference.com look at the roster of speakers, absolutely phenomenal speakers from Dr. Bruce Lipton, the opening speaker, who's sort of the king of epigenetics, Dr. Heidi Havoc, the closing speaker, neuroscientist, Del Big Tree, an amazing, amazing investigative journalist. I mean, we have a roster of phenomenal speakers being held in Atlanta, as I said. So the rubiconconference.com and probably the second. Take a look at Find me on Facebook. I won't be able to accept you under my Gilles Lamarche page because it's been at 5,000 members for a long time, but I also have a professional page which is Dr. Gilles Lamarche. I will be posting shortly. I am about to launch another volume of the Art of Being Healthy. The last one I did was the Art of Being Real Life accounts of mothers and children healing with chiropractic. The next one is going to be again, the Art of Being Healthy. Real Life accounts of people of all ages healing with. And it's going to be. I'm going to have to tweak it somewhere, but Healing with natural healthcare.

Love it.

So if you're a naturopath, a chiropractor, anyone who's in the natural healthcare world, you may want to participate in this. It is a great way to make yourself more visible in your community as you become the co author of a book. And I know yourself, Dr. Session. At one point, because of the book, you got a couple of, I think radio or TV interviews and you were. Is that correct? Remind me because I know it was a number of years ago.

Absolutely. Both TV and radio interviews.

Yeah. Because you participated in a book. How crazy is that? But you know, even for millennials, people are still reading books. So if you are not yet a published author of any type, this is probably the least expensive way that you can become a member of a group of published authors, which is by supplying a story of someone healing under your care. Then you pre purchase, you know, a couple hundred books and you start. I teach you actually how to utilize them in the community, how to gift them, how to get radio interviews, how to get TV interviews by having a story in a book. It is a powerful way. It still works today. It was one of the tools I used to build my practice. I encourage everybody to keep doing it. So those are the two ways currently anyway, two projects that I'm working on that are phenomenal projects. And then with Warren Phillips that you know, from Revelation Health, we actually started, I actually teach an online course called HCF Thrive. There's no room in this particular course, but if you ever had an interest in taking an online course that will take you from purpose all the way from where you are to purpose, to really living that extraordinary life. We teach all that online through the course called HCF Thrive. So those are three things I'm doing outside of everything I do at Life University as a vice president there, which by the way, is a blast. I'm available. I answer questions, I answer emails, I answer private messages on Facebook. As you know, I'm very diligent about that. I always answer within 24 hours unless something drastic would happen, you know. But that's my typical mo.

Yeah, You've been very responsive. And, you know, I know how busy you are, but I know how much integrity you have as well, and I think that's what it boils down to. So thank you for being who you are and just leading by example. So much of it is appreciated, and I just want you to know that it doesn't go unnoticed. So thank you.

Well, thank you very much for all the work that you're doing. Congratulations again on the award that received last weekend. Certainly always a pleasure to be in your physical presence. Even though two weekends ago was our first time together. I look forward to the next time we get to break bread together and keep doing the good work. And to all your listeners, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all the work that you do in moving humanity forward, because that's truly what you are. You are moving humanity forward in a way that is so necessary.

Thank you. Shills so much appreciation for you, my friend. I love you.

Thank you, Shazan. Love you too, buddy.