Monday Masterclass | The 4 Disciplines of Execution

Good morning everyone, Dr. Stillman here with Amy Arp for another episode of Monday Masterclass. Our new podcast is going out on Substack, stillmanmd.substack.com, and today is the first of many book reviews. The format is either going to be Amy and I review the book together or we invite a guest on, particularly the author, to discuss the book with us. I decided not to try to get these guys on because we are a health and wellness, you know, blog, podcast, whatever you call it. And while I think these guys are really smart in terms of management, I really don't know if they have any background in what we do. And people may think it's a little odd for a doctor to be reviewing a book that's found in the business and economics section of the bookstore. But the reason that I wanted to review it is that there is so much information out there on health and wellness. It's, I mean, amazing. And one of the big problems we actually face in helping people to get the results that they desire is that they've actually been inundated with so much information that they've become totally misinformed, very effectively— I can only call it propagandized— by both the conventional medical world and the integrative medical world. They've heard all kinds of things, and all kinds of stories are going on in their head about what it means to be healthy and well. And one of the biggest misconceptions I think that they have is that even though they know a lot of stuff, they're taking action effectively in order to achieve success. And I always tell people the number one and two reasons for people to fail in the practice is failure to engage and failure to execute. Failure to execute, failure to engage, I have to say, are, are basically, uh, uh, tied. And I would say that these two problems, I don't think there's a better solution for overcoming them than this book, The Four Disciplines of Execution. So why was I so impressed by this book? So the, the number one concept, the opening concept of the book, is essentially that people and their lives and their businesses— and of course they deal with it in the business world, but I'm dealing with it in the business of your life as a client. If you're a coaching client or a patient, as a patient, your life is a whirlwind. It's a whirlwind of activity. There's taking the kids to school, taking them to sports, parent-teacher conferences, ladies' luncheons, business meetings, everything. And they call that the whirlwind. Everyone has a whirlwind. We tend to attract busy, successful people who are not willing to settle for the mediocrity into which their health is descending as they get older. But who aren't sure how to get out of that. And a big piece of this is, can we hold the whirlwind off for you to actually figure out what you have to do in order to get well, and then take the time to actually do it? That's the engagement and execution piece. Mm-hmm. They saw the same thing happening in the business world. Business owners, business leaders didn't have the time away from the whirlwind of day-to-day operations to succeed. And they realized that if they just had one 30-minute meeting every week, they could overcome this problem. And this problem to me is so serious in the medical and coaching space that I, I even decided to operationalize it in the medical and coaching practices with what I call the Optimal Wellness Action Plan. And the Optimal Wellness Action Plan is basically pulled out of The Four Disciplines of Execution And what are those 4 disciplines? Because these are the disciplines that help people overcome this tendency of their life to pull them away from their wellness, and that ultimately dooms them to progressively worse and worse and worse health, despite often escalating medical costs, escalating, uh, bills or invoices every month for supplements or lab testing or therapies or doctor's visits or whatever. Things get worse despite them putting potentially more and more money and effort into actually getting well. So what are these Four Disciplines of Execution, and how do they help us get out of the whirlwind and into a concrete, comprehensive plan that helps us to not only execute but stay engaged with a program of care? These are the Four Disciplines of Execution that they basically boiled everything down to for success. Uh, they are number one, you have to define a wildly important goal. And I baked all of this into the Optimal Wellness Action Plan, which will be available to members of Stillman Wellness, and it will be available to members of my medical practice. And we'll post, uh, a version to the Substack as well, so you can get it any place you like. So number one, you have to have a wildly important goal, and you need to spend some time thinking about what that goal is going to be. The— maybe the number one mistake I see people making at the outset of their health and wellness journey is misdefining their goal. They say things like, I want to lose weight. Well, if you were to just tourniquet your leg until it fell off, you would lose weight. But this is not really the— well, that's the thing. And it's kind of a macabre example. For those of you don't realize this, a tourniquet is designed to stop blood flow. And if you were to tourniquet your leg you would eventually have your leg fall off. And you might laugh or grimace or cry or think that's awful, but here's the thing: the vast majority of people's weight loss strategies revolve around calorie restriction and punishing their body with physical exercise to get it to lose weight. And I would liken that to basically, uh, this— it's the same process, uh, that you're doing to your leg with a tourniquet but it's to your vital organs and your muscles and your bones and your brain. And so the people who follow that road to weight loss too long wind up in the practice, they're still overweight, they have brain fog, they have fatigue, they can't sleep, they have anxiety, they have depression, they have autoimmune problems, they have allergic diseases, all kinds of problems. And it's because they began by misdefining their wildly important goal. Which was weight loss. So we always will step back and say, well, why is this the goal? And you really need coaching and mentorship to truly define the goal. And part of that is because the goal has to be realistic. It is not actually very helpful to have a goal that's unrealistic. To come into my medical practice and say, I'm 65 years old and I want to look, feel, and perform like a 25-year-old, I would politely tell you that that was unrealistic. Now, I can try and get you as close to that as possible, but the reality is, you know, people will make claims like aging in reverse and reversing aging and all this stuff. You can take some problems and wind the clock back on them, but no one bats 1,000, so there's no guarantees. And number 2, you've got to be willing to engage with the process and accept there's going to be limits based on, A, what you're willing to do. You may not be willing to make the sacrifices necessary to get full therapeutic value or benefit. And also the fact that there's limits of the therapeutics we have. You know, no one has invented a longevity or immortality pill yet, and that's really important for people to understand. And every single— and part of what impressed me about this book is I realized that over the years Jim and I working together, and you know, Jim has much more coaching experience than I do, but we were, we were converging on this process of always starting with what's the goal. Someone asks us a question about vitamin D, autoimmunity, magnesium, sun exposure, skin cancer. We always respond by, well, what's the goal? What question is really your overarching? What are you trying to achieve? By asking me this specific question. A wildly important goal is always a lag measure, which means that it's a measure that lags behind the things you do that make it happen. So for example, if you want to lose weight, that measurement— and, and let's not use weight loss for obvious reasons, let's use lose dress sizes or lose belt loop sizes. The lag measure being the dress sizes or the belt loops. If that's a lag measure, it lags behind you doing the things that will reduce your waist size or your size, dress size. Those things are going to be things like lifting weights, eating a certain diet, getting a certain number of grams of protein. There are things you are going to do that are going to lead you to that success, lead you to that lag measure.

And lag measure is really a measurable thing. So when you're talking about that, you know, that's really important. Yeah, is it's not just— it's actually the thing that you're measuring as you're on your way to your goal.

So, right, that's really important because many people will have a vague goal. I want to lose weight. What does that mean? I want to increase my bone mineral density. What does that mean? Yes, I want to look and feel good. What does that mean?

And I think that's where people get in trouble, is they make these goals that are very broad and undefinable. And so then when they try to go achieve it, there's this huge thing that they're trying to do, and it's not just one goal or a couple goals.

So absolutely. And then the other thing that they do is they'll define this wildly important goal whether it be realistic, appropriate, in their best interests or not. And then they will— and that also includes specific enough because it should be very specific. It should be, you know, lose 2 dress sizes, have no headaches 10 days out of 14, have my headache severity go from 9 out of 10 to 2 out of 10, have my leg pain go from 6 out of 10 to 3 out of 10. At least 4 days a week, right? It has to be numerical so that we can judge success. Yes. The second piece is to choose your lag measures or your lead measures. Lead measures lead to the lag measure moving and you achieving your goal. That's how I think about them. And there are things that you can directly control. So for example, you can't directly control your HRV. You can't directly control your sleep duration, but you can control things. And you can't control your weight, you can't control your blood pressure, you can't control any of these things. These all make good lag measures. You could use them as lead measures so long as you understood that you had to do other things in order to impact them. But the real lag measures— lead measures that are best used for this process are ones that you can easily and directly control completely. How much water you drink, what kind of water you drink, what time you go to bed, when you turn the lights out at night to wind down for bed, what type of lighting you use or are exposed to after dark, what type of meals you eat, how much you eat, all these things. What we found in coaching people and treating people in the medical practice is that typically what happens in functional medicine is that Doctors like me go out, get all this extra training, learn all this extra stuff, and then bring it into the consultative room. And in the last 30, 20 minutes, 45 if you're lucky and you have a really long consult, you will brain dump on the patient all this stuff they need to do, and you will not get good rates of compliance. So an example might be, well, you've got to wake up at this time and go outside and wiggle your toes in the grass and get sun in your eyes and do positive affirmations, and then take this mineral drink. And then you've got to, you know, do a 10-minute walk in the middle of the day, and you got to do a 10-minute walk at the end of the day, and then you've got to do this and that, the other thing. And you're kind of dumping all this stuff on somebody because you know it's good for them.

Mm-hmm.

But a very, very, very small proportion of people have the, frankly, executive function and motivation to write all that down, remember it, go back to it, and actually execute on it. Like, less than 1% of the public.

Yeah, very few people have that ability to do that.

And that is why that approach fails.

Yes.

Now, this shocked me as a physician because people would spend a lot of money to see me, and I thought, they're spending a lot of money, people say things like, well, it's expensive. Okay, that means they must come ready to succeed, ready to take action, ready to engage, ready to execute.

Mm-hmm.

I was wrong. And people would come in for the second consult, the third consult, the fourth consult, and I'm thinking, man, I told them everything. I told them everything they needed to do. They're not getting better. What did I do wrong? And then Jim, who started coaching with me, said they're not doing the things you told them to do. And I started to go through, and I would say, well, are you doing the things that I talked about with you last time? Well, no. Okay, so it's expensive, you're not getting results, you're not sure you want to continue, but you didn't do the things that I told you to do. And I realized, because it's very easy then for doctors to slip into a jaded, cynical view of human nature of people don't want to do the work, they just want a pill for every ill, they're not really interested in their well-being, they don't really care about themselves.

It—

you'll see a lot of that, you'll hear a lot of that. That's the soundtrack, by the way, in the doctor's lounge. I'm not kidding. I've been in many doctor's lounges all over the country. That's the soundtrack when they're talking about the patients. And it's really important for you to know that because that's your worst human nature coming out to sabotage you. But I also realized that good coaches, good doctors create systems that help you to overcome this, because we all do this. I mean, I noticed myself doing this with my goals. I might have been an expert in health and wellness, but I wasn't an expert in business. I would do this in a business context. I would do it in life, working out, fitness, relationships. And I realized, oh wow, All these things I complain about my patients doing, I do in other areas of my life because I'm a human and you're a human and you probably do this. You certainly do the same things. So why is this all really important? You need a system and you need that system to be clear and concrete and actionable and visible. And that's why I created the Optimal Wellness Action Plan, because I realized I needed to give people something they could print out that would remind them and it would make it concrete. And I needed— and why am I talking about all this? I mentioned lead measures that lead to success, lead measures that move the lag measure.

Lead measures that you do that drive your success. So the lag measures, we are measuring what has happened, and then the lead measures are the actions that you're doing, as Dr. Stillman was saying, that actually drive you towards that goal, the wildly important goal.

Yes, thank you. That's exactly right. So you have to pick these lead measures, and you can't overwhelm yourself. Or if you're a doctor, if you're a coach, you can't overwhelm the client. You have to pick a manageable number of them— 2, 3, 4, 5, I would say at the most. And I realized that all I did all day, day in and day out, was define the wildly important goal, hand somebody the lead measures that I thought would be most impactful to getting them there, hold them accountable, and then iterate that process until we achieved success. And that's the third component, is accountability. Is that one of the reasons why people fall off the wagon is they're not being held accountable at any point. And one of the biggest misconceptions to me in the mind of most people is that accountability is not either not something they need or is not something they can afford. And the tough thing is the people who have the least accountability get the worst outcomes, because in the process of holding someone accountable is actually found the process of what I call troubleshooting. Because what would invariably happen is I would say to someone, did you go out and do all those things I recommended? Even if I gave them a manageable number invariably they would come back and they would say, well, I tried, but I ran into this, that, or the other problem. And so if you don't ever go back to the coach, the doctor, the guide, the mentor, whoever, the boss if you're working as an employee, and say, hey, I ran into this roadblock and I don't know how to get around it, they don't have an opportunity to help you figure out a way to still act on your lead measure to achieve your wildly important goal. And that right there is why execution and engagement— failure to execute, failure to engage— became the number 1 and 2 causes for people to fail in my medical practice and in my experience as a coach. And when I read this book, I realized they've got this tried and true system that I can apply in my medical practice, in my coaching business, to help people get results and help people understand why they're not getting results when they're not getting results, and also why they're getting results when they're they're getting the results. So regardless of the results they're getting, it helps them understand why they're getting what they're getting. And so the Four Disciplines of Execution: define the wildly important goal, pick your lead measures that are going to lead you to that goal, create a cadence of accountability is third, and it has to be every week. And this part is critically important. The human brain forgets things. It operates on a weekly schedule. Things that people do once a month tend to be things that people do not at all. And in general, things that people do less than once a week tend to be things that people do not at all. When you create a monthly cadence, usually you will find that the only people who keep that up are being paid to do that and held accountable by a boss. And the weekly things actually become habits. Going to church on Sunday, going to a small group, going to Rotary, some other kind of civic association or group. If you're not creating a cadence, you're going to see that people tend to do a lot of advertising. If you're somebody who's looking at things like professional meetups or networking events or launch parties, they happen on a monthly cadence, and they do a ton of promotion. They send out tons of emails. No one short of like coaching programs like we run is going to send you a bunch of emails to keep you accountable. And so invariably, we will see people who know a lot of things but haven't taken any action, haven't executed. And it's not a lack of knowledge, it's not a lack of desire, it's the fact that they haven't had anyone to engage with and hold them accountable.

That's a really good point. I was just going to say that is like the thing is I think people amass all this knowledge, they listen to all these podcasts, they listen to all these doctors, but then they're not actually doing the things. Like, I come across that all the time as well, just in coaching or talking to people even about their health, that you— they, they know the things and they're like, yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I, I read that, I listened to that on Dr. Stillman's podcast, and I know I need to be doing that, but then they're not actually doing it, and then there's a million excuses in their whirlwind of why they're not doing it. Their daily life, they're bombarded. Well, I can't possibly do that because I have to take my kids here and I have to do this thing and I have to do that thing. So anyway, continue.

And the process of accountability includes, well, how can we help you find a way to act on this lead measure in a way that doesn't disable you from managing your whirlwind. And that's the value of coaching, is helping you understand there's a way around the problems you have. But you cannot— I mean, you can try to find it on your own, but the truth is, we've seen— I mean, we get the same, I don't know, 1,000 questions over and over and over again. We know how to innovate around these questions, around these problems, around these obstacles. And that's why we do so much coaching. So if you don't have that cadence of accountability, and even if you're not coaching with us, I set the, the form up so that you have an accountability partner who you can define. And it's critical to have someone in your life who will hold you accountable. A lot of people surround themselves with people who make them feel good, who don't challenge them, who don't ask them hard questions. And that's okay, but it isn't going to help you grow. It isn't going to help you develop. It's not going to help you develop new habits that are going to make you a healthier person. It's not going to give you new insights into what you need to do differently in order to be the best version of yourself. And having someone who's going to hold you accountable, who's going to be what I would call an unreasonable friend, is critical. They're going to say you don't get to just say, well, I had a busy week No, you said you were going to do this. And part of the accountability is saying you're going to do something. When you say you're going to do something in front of other people, it automatically creates the expectation that you are going to follow through on that, because we all feel embarrassment for not following through on things we said we were going to do. Unless you're a psychopath, in which case you might not worry about that. So having that cadence is critical. It's why in the programs we run at the medical practice that are intensives, we have weekly calls with people who are in programs. It's why at the coaching business we have almost weekly calls with the VIP group. We want to be holding people accountable and making sure that they're taking action on their lead measures. Because here's the other piece of this: you're not going to have the same lead measures forever. We give people lead measures to act on one day, one week, one month at a time. And as they act on them and as they master them, we add new ones and the complexity increases and rises. And that's what allows us to get people amazing results. We're not actually just coaching them through 5 lead measures. This is the same in, in business. You don't just have 5 things that you do every day when you go to work. You have 5 things that you're doing each week that will help move the needle on whatever it is you do at your job.

Yes.

So that cadence of accountability and the accountability is key. Uh, yes, Amy?

I was just gonna say, I was gonna talk about just my own personal experience when I was really, really sick. At first, I remember someone came to me and they were giving me all the advice, you know, the like just overwhelming amount of advice of like, you need to do all these things and you need to buy this thing, you need to do this, you need to do this. And I went home and I was just like on the verge of tears. I was like, I am so overwhelmed. I have absolutely no place, nowhere. I don't know where to start. I'm so overwhelmed right now just with my diagnosis, my state of life, let alone what I'm supposed to do. And so I had to go out and I found people.

I found— people who don't, don't know what, what was the basic situation?

Yeah. So, um, I was diagnosed with MS. I woke up one morning, I was not—

multiple sclerosis for those not hip with the lingo.

Sorry. Um, I woke up one morning, was numb from the waist down, had thought that I had had no health issues up until that point. And so, you know, the doctors were telling me, hey, you will be in a wheelchair, it's just a matter of time. It could be a few years, it could be 20 years, but you know, there's a 50% chance you'll be in a wheelchair in 10 years. I was so overwhelmed. I was 29, I had my whole life ahead of me, had, you know, just everything, and was extremely overwhelmed. I was planning on going to grad school at the time, had already been accepted, and just everything throughout the—

like, was it grad school or medical school?

Uh, I was going to go to the medical school, but it was a grad school program at the medical school. But yes. And so I was ready to move, ready to go, and then I get this diagnosis. So overwhelming. I was actually in the hospital getting my acceptance to my top program, and I just was like Everything's out the window. So I'm overwhelmed. My life seems like it's going to just fall apart. Um, and then I'm trying to get advice from different people of like what to do. Had no idea, you know, listening to the doctors that this was something that you could get actually get better from because they were telling me you're going to end up in a wheelchair. You know, your, your case is very severe, um, where your lesions are and your, your spinal cord and your brain, like, this is your outcome. So I went to some, just asked different people, but then I became so overwhelmed with what they were telling me to do, because it was like, you need to get, do this and you need to do this and you need to buy this and you need to do this. And oh, by the way, you need to do this. And I was just crippled with anxiety from the overwhelm. Like, I was like, I'm trying to just live my life and I have all these symptoms. I don't even know where to start. And so what I had to do was I went out and I found coaches and different doctors, and thankfully they were amazing at coaching and they helped walk me through step by step. It was, we're going to start here. OK, this is the first step. This is not the only step, but this is the first step in your journey. You know, so for example, one of the first steps was, let's look at your diet. Let's take a good hard look at your diet. What are you actually eating versus what you think you should be eating? And then from there, we built one piece at a time.. And then it felt way more digestible of these goals and what I was doing to then actually do the things. Then I built one habit. I built another habit. I built another habit. And then eventually I was seeing symptom improvement and I was thinking, wow, this actually works. Add some more things on, more symptom improvement. And so I just, I relate to this so much, even as I was reading this book. I just felt I remembered all these emotions and I know that it's overwhelming for people. It is very overwhelming. I think that's natural. If you have health issues, you're also trying to manage your life.

Absolutely. And what's so interesting about it is that you're a classic case of I have all these things I'm going to do and I'm really attached to these goals, being a wife, being a mother, having a career, contributing to society, being a friend, being a member of the human race. All these things are attached to that, and your ability to engage with them are radically altered by the prognosis you're given. You're going to be in a wheelchair. Your brain immediately goes to, well, if I'm going to be in a wheelchair, can I have kids? Will I get married? Will I be able to have friends? Will I be I'll be that friend who's in the wheelchair so we can't go to that cool new rooftop bar because there's no wheelchair access. And it's, it's sad. And it's one of the interesting things, and we'll have to have people on to talk about this. For example, we have a great patient in the practice who lost her sight at an early age very quickly, and she actually goes all over the country speaking to people about being positive because even though she lost her sight and this radically altered her life She didn't allow it to, uh, to basically put her in a negative frame of mind.

Yes.

The thing is, when you see this gap between what you thought you were going to achieve and now all of a sudden where you feel like you're headed, it is a huge emotional adjustment and it catalyzes you into massive action because you say, I will do anything to be able to regain what I thought I was going to be able to do in life.

Mhm.

What's interesting when that happens suddenly is it has that tendency to catalyze people to action that is massive and to stick with it. But it's painful, it's hard, it's, it's crying and it's feeling up and down and it's feeling anxious. It's, it's such an incredibly— and that's why it's so powerful to have people who can take you by the hand or under their wing and say, we've seen this before, we've seen people in your position, here's what you do first, here's what you do next, here's what to expect, here are the things. Because one thing that we see happening often that we talk about, I think fairly often as well, is people sadly being sort of taken advantage of in this space because they're so vulnerable, they're so emotional, they're really they'll make a lot of malinvestments in their health. We've seen that time and again, and we, we see so many people coming to the practice who say, I've already seen everyone, I've flown all over the country, all over the world, I didn't get results. And we take a more measured, reasonable, uh, approach that I think is more foundational. We look for things that other people have not looked for. We know the value of the different therapeutics they have. We'll refer as appropriate but we won't sell people these crazy— I mean, I call it hope and hype wellness plans that are just so, just crazy that we see other people coming in having done. And it's not that there's anything wrong with all that. I just see it bankrupting patient after patient and leaving them feeling even more disillusioned with integrative and functional medicine than they are with conventional medicine. But anyway, so you're that not rare but relatively rare case. And what's so interesting is that the vast majority of people, the stakes aren't quite that high, correct? It's an extra 5 or 10 pounds. It's— and when I say they're not that high, they're not that high in their mind, you know. It's, oh, it's, it's only 10 pounds, it's only this, it's only 2 dress sizes. What they don't see is where that's headed long-term, the early heart attack, the early stroke, the early cancer. And so many of them don't have that urgency. They don't have that feeling like, well, I could be in a wheelchair in 6 months when in fact many of them are headed for a wheelchair in 6 months because of a stroke, because of a heart attack, because of a cancer or worse than just a wheelchair.

Yeah.

And one of the key things to do in, in helping people is helping them understand you're only as healthy as you are right now, and it's only going to get worse. And if you're not on top of this process, if you don't have a game plan, if you don't have a system for optimizing your health and well-being, you are eventually going to wind up with a health crisis. And we will regularly get the call, Dr. Stillman, he's finally in the cardiac ICU, he's finally had his first heart attack. I've been trying to get him to work with you for years and you won't listen, he doesn't care. I can't get through to him. And then maybe there's that window of opportunity for me to help that person. But I always lament the fact that they tend to not take action until that. So if you're listening to this and it's resonating with you and you're thinking, I don't want to be that person in the cardiac ICU, I don't want to, as Amy did, wind up in the doctor's office getting a new diagnosis of something that could radically change your life, We've got all of these different tools and tactics and, and ways of gathering information and working with people to help people understand where they actually are, as well as helping them then to take action in order to achieve these goals, whether it's recovering from something like MS or avoiding your first heart attack, cancer, or stroke, or, or whatever. And it all revolves around this very simple process that I think the more people get away from this process Honestly, the worse they do.

I agree. I wish I had done something like this before, as preventatively. I just, you know, I think most people think, oh, I'm fine. I've done, you know, my life, this, my entire life thus far. I'm fine.

They have time.

Yes, correct.

And they don't have time until they don't have any time at all.

Yes. Yeah. And I thought that even like, because I was in my 20s, I thought, oh, I'm in my 20s, no big deal. I'll be fine. I'll figure out my health stuff later. But I think that just shows that any person at any age, if you start taking action on these things, then you will not end up in some of these dire situations and have to go through a crazy long healing journey or a long process to get better. Just imagine if you could just implement a few things right now and actually prevent so many of the things that could happen to you. Like, I look back and I wish I would have done that. Things I wish that I small things that we could have implemented if I had had a Coach to tell me, hey, these are the keys to health and wellness and I'm going to help you. And then we're going to prevent these things. And that's what you do. I keep telling— I always tell Dr. Summit, I'm like, I wish I had found him when I was really sick or, you know, before, because it just would have been so helpful to have everything in one place, someone telling me what to do how to do it and have a team that actually supported me. So I really wish I would have, but here we are. We made it.

If you're listening to this, you can have that now.

It's very true. Yes, you really should. You really should.

There's one more thing in the book that we haven't talked about that we need to cover. It's actually the Four Disciplines of Execution are create a wildly important goal, define a wildly important goal, define or choose your lead measures. And then I skipped one. It's actually create a compelling scoreboard. And I skipped this one because I tend to not think about it because I'm not a very aesthetic, visually concerned person. I'm like a no-frills, very simple guy. But I actually think that the compelling scoreboard is, is, is very important. There's a reason they included it in the book. And it's really important for those of you listening to understand that you can't just have this wildly important goal, these lead measures, and then a weekly meeting with someone, one of our team, a friend of yours, family, etc., and expect success. It's actually very important to have a scoreboard. And when they, they use this analogy in the book of a scoreboard at a sporting event, they think, they say, what, what do you think would happen if you didn't have a scoreboard? And they use an example in real life of a, of a high school football team, I think it was, where a power outage affected the scoreboard and it wasn't working. And they describe in the stands that people were standing around, no one knew what the score was, no one knew what down it was, no one knew anything about what was going on on the field, and they got bored. They realized they didn't want to watch anymore. And if you don't have a compelling scoreboard as part of your plan for accountability What they've found is you'll fail. So we created a compelling scoreboard for our team at the medical practice. We're creating one for the team at the coaching business, Leland Stillman Wellness. I created a template for people to make a compelling scoreboard that we call the Optimal Wellness Action Plan, but you can make it anything you want. You can retitle it, you can turn it into fancy colors, you can add I don't know what you want to add. You can make it compelling, but it has to be yours and it has to be compelling. You have to look at it and say, this makes me want to go do the things that I committed to in order to achieve my wildly important goal. And these 4 things put together, they've been very powerful for me to understand how to better help people and also how to run a team of people who are trying to help people achieve a wildly important goal, no matter what that may look like. So those are the Four Disciplines of Execution.

I agree. I think it's very, very helpful.

Oh yeah. I love this book.

Oh yeah. I think it's good. It reminds me of another principle that I had learned along the way of being intentional with doing the things that are actually important to you. And so it's like similar to that where it's, you know, the things that are important to you, You know, you might think something's important, but you're not actually acting on that to get where you want to go. And so we want to actually help you get where you want to go. Um, not just talk about where you want to go. Like, I think a lot of people, you mentioned this earlier, but talking about weight loss, I think a lot of people are like, oh yeah, I need to lose weight, or I want to lose weight, or, you know, but they don't actually make that plan to lose weight. And so then they don't lose weight. And so we want to actually make that plan with you so you can achieve some of these goals.

And we're going to talk more about that when we tackle Mach 2 with Your Hair on Fire, uh, which is the book, uh, by Richard Brooke, my— one of my mentors. Uh, it's an amazing book, and he has a saying that I, I love. He says, change your story, change your life. I think we're tackling that book in a couple weeks, uh, in about a month, I think, in September.

First couple weeks.

And he's actually going to join us for an interview, which will be really fun. But the reason I wanted to interview him about this book is that it's probably the shortest, most concise personal development book I've ever read, and it's so packed with wisdom. And it all comes back to the story people tell themselves. You're telling yourself an innumerable number of stories. I'm too busy. I'm, I'm unhealthy. I don't deserve it. I have to do this. I have to do that. I can't. And you have to find the story people are telling themselves about why they are the way they are or why they can't be the way they'd like to be. And this whole process, the Four Disciplines of Execution, is actually just a way of uncovering the story. Well, here's your wildly important goal, and even in the definition of that, right, you'll get people doing something like, for example, they'll define their wildly important goal as weight loss. Well, they may have a story that they need to look a certain way, and then they have a story the only way to get there is calorie restriction and physical exercise. But they also have an under— under— under— an under— a theme. I don't know what— a— another story on below all those stories of, I don't really deserve to be healthy. I can only lose weight with cheap tricks and punishing myself. I don't deserve to feel well nourished and fed and look the way I want. I can't have it all. Life is hard. The only things that are good come about because you basically flog yourself to the finish line. They have all these stories that feed into this story of, I'm going to calorie restrict and deprive myself of food and nourishment in order to lose weight. And we have to create new stories like, you can feel well nourished in order— and, and still lose weight. You can go to the gym and leave feeling like you're not about to die and still achieve your fitness goals. Yes, you know, and that's this— the whole process, the whole process of helping people to learn how to be healthy is that process broken down into lag measures, wildly important goals, and lead measures. Because you have to create the story of things like, I wake up every morning with the sun and I go outside and wiggle my toes in the grass, and I drink my morning cup of coffee, and I sit down and do positive affirmations and read my Bible and say some prayers and give thanks to the universe for all my many blessings. And then I go to work, and I— at work I'm positive. And you instill and you create all these stories, and that's critical to success. All we do when we really reinvent somebody's life is we change their story, that we change the story they're living. And that's what then creates the wellness in their body. And if you can't guide people down that path, all you're doing is tire patching. Take this, take that, do this biohack, do that biohack. You're not changing someone's fundamental relationship with themselves, which is why, you know, we just see so much therapeutic failure out there. So many people who are coming to us from other clinics who haven't gotten the results they wanted and who are left scratching their head. Well, why didn't I succeed when I spent all this money and all this time and I learned all things, and I listened to all these podcasts, and I read all these books, and I follow all these influencers, and my whole life from when I wake up to when I go to bed is about wellness. Why am I still sick?

Mm-hmm.

And on that note, Amy, any closing thoughts?

I think you summed it up. That's why we're starting with this, because I think some people have the wrong assumption that starting with health is getting a list of all the things to do or all the right supplements and That's not true. And so this is what is gonna help get you well. We will add in those other things, but this is the foundation. And so if we can get someone to execute on these things and have this as your foundation, you will be successful. Like we can say that. So we're excited for, for you.

That's the thing I love about this process is it's not about if you'll get results, if you will stick with this process and you will show up and you will talk to me and members of my team, We will get you results.

You will.

It's a matter of what they will be, what you're willing to do to achieve them, how durable they're going to be. And that's a constant process, which is why we have month-to-month memberships where, you know, you can get on coaching calls with myself, with Jim, with Amy. You know, we've got various tiers. So if you, if you want to learn more about how we can help you, stillmanmd.com, apply for consultation. We'll walk you through all the different offerings we have at both businesses. And if you want to jump right into a membership at Stillman Wellness, it's stillmanwellness.com. Our Optimal Wellness membership is less than $1 a day, a month. We would love to see you on a coaching call and get to know you and help you define your wildly important goal and follow the 4 Disciplines of Execution to get there.

Yes. Wonderful.

Thank you, everyone, for tuning in. Take care and have a great day.