Dentists Who Invest Podcast
Official Podcast of the Dentists Who Invest platform. Talking all things investing, money and finance with a dental spin. Have you ever wondered how you can grow your wealth and protect your hard earned money as a Dentist? We've got you covered. Featuring famous guests such as Andrew Craig, Edward Zuckerberg and Benyamin Ahmed we delve deep into EVERY aspect of finance to educate and empower ALL Dentists.
Dentists Who Invest Podcast
Getting Your Time Back with Tom Fortes-Mayer DWI-EP284
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Ever wonder what it takes to achieve true time freedom and happiness? Join us as we uncover the secrets of mindset coach Tom Fortes-Mayer, who has mastered the art of balancing professional success with personal fulfillment. Tom reveals his transformative journey from working tirelessly to selectively engaging with high-impact clients, which has freed him to write, create, and spend precious moments with his children. He emphasizes that true joy comes from within, not from external accomplishments—a lesson that can fundamentally change how we perceive success.
Imagine life as a chess game where each move shapes your path to success and fulfillment. We explore this metaphor to discuss the importance of facing challenges and the concept of working smarter, not harder. Through compelling stories and practical insights, we illustrate how prioritizing relationships and self-care can lead to a richer, more balanced life. This isn't just about avoiding burnout; it's about making conscious choices that ensure neither your career nor your happiness is sacrificed.
In our final segments, we dive deep into the power of personal development and healing. Tom shares how addressing unresolved emotional baggage can clear mental clutter and boost overall well-being. We discuss how arrogance often hides insecurity and how recognizing these traits can help build a positive culture around you. By mastering your inner game and focusing on personal growth, you not only enhance your professional success but also cultivate a more fulfilling, balanced life. Don't miss this profound conversation on transforming both your inner and outer worlds for true, lasting success.
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Disclaimer: All content on this channel is for education purposes only and does not constitute an investment recommendation or individual financial advice. For that, you should speak to a regulated, independent professional. The value of investments and the income from them can go down as well as up, so you may get back less than you invest. The views expressed on this channel may no longer be current. The information provided is not a personal recommendation for any particular investment. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and all tax rules may change in the future. If you are unsure about the suitability of an investment, you should speak to a regulated, independent professional.
Welcome back everyone. Another episode with Mr Tom Fortes-M ayer, mindset coach and also somebody who helps people be more at one with themselves and achieve things in their life that they didn't think was possible. And again, I know I keep coming back to this guys I was not the most receptive to this stuff, even like two, three years ago, and now I live it, breathe it, implemented into my own life and I see all of the good stuff that it produces, and that's why I'm a huge proponent of having amazing people like Tom on the podcast as recurring guests, because there's so much stuff to cover on this topic and you know what we're going to cover today. We're going to cover how people can get their time back and a lot of the subconscious hurdles and barriers that we have to achieving that end goal and result. But before we jump straight in, Tom, how have you been?
Tom:Yeah, good, yeah, I'm having a good time at the moment. I'm finalizing my third book and working with clients. Just on this topic, I focused on working with far fewer clients but offering a much, much more dedicated service, and that was one way in which I got my time back. I just focused on working with these really amazing people doing amazing projects who were already successful but wanted to have more life balance, enjoy their success more yes, make more money, but also have more time. So then suddenly it was like oh oh, to be in alignment with that, I needed to have that spaciousness to be a dedicate that time to them. You know I work with clients like a whole day once a month. They come out of their life and you know the fight's a whole, wholly different way of working. It's a kind of premium cost, but it's a premium service and that's created space for me to be able to, whilst working, write, write my books, create my recordings, hang out with my kids. You know it's I now work. I don't work as hard and I make more money.
Dr James:And have more fun. I'm going to say as well yeah, 100 percent.
Tom:Well, as long as my, you know, on a good day with my kids.
Dr James:Well, this is it, this is it, you know it's. We create the conditions for fun. Does that mean that we've reached that? You know? Because I, I think, I think that with a lot of this stuff, it's like sometimes out there in the world, people dangle all this mindset stuff like it's nirvana whenever you get there. And it's not quite that case, is it, Tom? Because we still have ups and downs, days, but the point is that we're most, we're generally. The average of our happiness is generally higher overall. What do you think about that? That's my own observation.
Tom:Yeah, I mean life is is you know, if you're basing your mood on what is happening out there, then you're going to, you're going to have very good days and very bad days, right, even if you're going to have disappointment, you're going to have financial pressure, you're going to have people letting you down. It's like our happiness. You know, the true definition of joy is causeless happiness. So that's the existential contentment that we feel just in our bones. It's got nothing to do with getting the girl, getting the job, hitting your first six, seven or eight figures. It's to do with being essentially in love with life and and it isn't about chasing some external achievement and we all kind of know that we know that because we've got that new car and it made us happy for about a month and then we just worried about scratching it.
Tom:You know, or you know, we hit that target and it felt good, but it didn't really essentially change anything how we felt. So it's like OK, how do we build my life in such a way that I'm motivated toward my goals I know they're not the key to my happiness and, at the same time, how do I do it without sacrificing my life? Now, and that that is a is a complicated chess game, but for me, what I say to people is like if you were good at chess and you're getting better at chess and you were really enjoying being challenged, right, I could set you up to play my five-year-old who plays her own rules, and it's not that much fun to play her. Or you could play with a chess master, right, and you'd get beaten, probably, but my God, your game would improve. Now I hope anyone with half a brain would want to sit opposite the chess master, because you're going to learn more.
Tom:For me, life's like that. It's like it's a complicated chess game. Stop bitching about it and and and get your kind of big girl, big boy pants on. Understand it's going to beat you. Probably you're not going to win at the good mood, competition every day. Right, it's going to be hard. It's going to be hard, it's going to be challenging. You have to rack your brains and think four or five, maybe six steps ahead and it will best you and beat you and teach you a lesson. But it's like that's a fun game of chess. Who wants to come here and it'd be completely easy. Right, it's like. So you add to the complexity.
Tom:How do I have success with life balance? That's a way harder chess game than success. You want to put in 70 hours a week. You'll have success. Your kids won't know you, your wife won't like you, your husband, you know, will feel neglected. But how do we build success and balance? That's a harder chess game, but it's a way more fun chess game and it has more fun in it, of course, and it's possible. Right, it's possible.
Tom:And it isn't definitely. Yes, I, I help people do this and I help people end up often making more money. But it isn't always about that. Sometimes it might be about you know what? Yeah, okay, you made a million pounds last year from your dental practice brilliant. But you know, you, you were doing insane hours and how much do you actually need to make and for what reason? And what are you going to get from that? And so sometimes it's a recalibration around actually what they need to earn and what they want to earn and what are their reasons. Is it prestige? Is it absolutely essential that you're driving that Bentley at the family wedding? You know, coming up, is that really what's going to make you feel like you've arrived? Maybe it is, but probably it isn't. You know not if it means you're overworking yourself. You know it's just. You know it's not worth it.
Tom:And this is not about encouraging everyone listening to this to give up work and become some beach bum searching for some endless summer, but it's about remembering we get one life. We get one time with our kids. We get one chance when we're younger, looking to attract an attractive mate. You know it's like what do you want to spend your time doing and why? Really thinking about that and making your choices based on the lifestyle that you want, the life that you want, how do you want to feel? Too many people sacrifice happiness now. They think I'll be successful and then I'll be happy, and it's like no, that's crazy One like just doesn't work.
Tom:You will be frazzled and burn out and you won't like yourself and your family won't know you. Now how do we build happiness now? How do we build happiness as the primary purpose and then fill out the gaps of the success and the money is much more likely to follow them? Because, you know, I've been working, I've been coaching a guy and he's done incredibly well, you know, building up his practice and he's just got the right attitude now and bringing him back into balance and he's really content and some major players in the dental industry are wanting to partner with him and do work with him and collaborate with him. It's like it's all coming to him because he's actually working less hard.
Tom:I got him to to chill out a bit, come back to dedicate some time with his kids every evening, to dedicate time with his wife, to be a better, more caring boss, to focus slightly less on profits and work much, much more on relationships relationships at work, relationships at home. And then from that relationship with himself, he's going to the gym every day before he goes to work. He's caring for himself as a primary way of adding value. He could be hustling in the office for two hours before working with patients trying to make himself more money. He now looks so much better, feels so much better.
Tom:He's going to sell more implants. He's going to attract more associates. He's going to he's that guy. He's going to be opening. You know, he's on one at the moment. He's going to open another four or five in the next few years. He's at the moment. He's going to open another four or five in the next few years. He's having stratospheric success because he isn't working as hard as he was before I started working with him. It's like it just the, it's the sweet spot.
Dr James:it's not less, it's more I'm a big believer of that 100 because I really feel like you can be chopping at the tree in terms of effort with a blunt axe and achieving so much less than what you would be if you just sharpened your axe with probably like a tenth as much effort.
Dr James:But the problem is it's a subconscious thing, because oftentimes we put in a lot of effort to achieve that first level of success and it's easy to fall into the trap of just thinking, hey, I just need to keep doing more of that thing that brought my success so far to hit the next level. That's not what the next level looks like, right? Which brings us back to the title of this podcast, which is all about how we can get our time back. Number one, so that we can have more time to do the things that we enjoy, which is why we graph so hard in the first place. And also, number two, to even be more productive as well, because if you 80 20 your life, that it peretto's law, isn't that called, or is it? If you 80 20 your life, you know you'll find that 20 of activities bring 80 of results. So wouldn't you be better off to be spending half as much time on that 20, then working twice as hard on the other 80%. You know what I mean.
Tom:But that doesn't come until you actually sit back and reflect and give yourself permission psychologically to do so yeah, I mean that's on the strategic side of coaching, and my coaching is much more about the inner relationship to self, which is also a way of massively optimizing your performance. But in the strategic point of business coaching and looking at your life plan, it's totally it's like what are you doing and why are you doing it, where are you getting the benefits and what's the cost? Time analysis there in terms of where should you place your focus and which of your clients should you place your focus? But of course, as I just mentioned there, our relationship with ourself if we improve that by 20%, we will double our productivity. Our relationship with ourself if we improve that by 20%, we will double our productivity. But we'll also double our likability, you know. And likability and confidence and competence these things go hand in hand. People feel more safe with us. You know they will spend more money on our dental work with them. They will never go to another dentist. They will trust our investment advice.
Tom:It's like our kids will listen to our leadership shock horror most of the time. You know we begin to be someone who has a congruent confidence. You know, people talk about leadership, but leadership is the ability to influence and the ability to influence is a psychological state of mind based on clarity, congruence, confidence and competence. You work on those as an absolute priority, then you are going to. Everything you do will have a quality to it that will make you more money. That will give you more time. It's like it's the inner game of you know you must have been around some people, james, who are powerful, right. It's like you are on your journey in your own way of learning the mechanisms of power, right, and it's not about manipulation, it's about relationship to self. It's like you get to that place. When you speak, people listen. When you say we should go in this direction, people like, wow, he said that with such certainty. Just on an unconscious level, they're like I'll follow him wherever. It's like work on that. How you present, how you talk, how you imbibe what you're saying with belief as you're saying it, these are skill sets that can be learned. It's like all of this means you're going to have more people on your courses, buying more of your products, coming on more of your training, attracting more clients, whether you're doing things on social media or however you're doing it, it's like that's how you work less hard and make more money. You become a more powerful version of yourself.
Tom:You work on looking good, you work on looking good, you work on feeling good, and it's not about having a six pack, but it's about having that relationship to your body where you love your body and you don't put junk in it. You run it on good fuel and that's not just because it improves your cognition, it massively improves your intuition, it massively improves your creativity. Then you have, like this internal kind of what I call is the golden compass, right when our emotions if we're completely clear and present, our emotions are this incredible indicator that we're either in alignment or out of alignment. And we could talk to someone and we'd notice, wow, I feel really expanded in the presence of this person, or I feel contracted. Or if I think about moving to Dubai or setting up my next squat or whatever, or launching a mastermind to teach dentists implants, whatever it may be, you can literally visualize that future and see, am I expanding or contracting? But that sac, now that golden compass, isn't worth shit. If you're drinking loads of booze, you're eating junk food, you haven't got blood running through your veins freely. I know this sounds kind of left field, but it's not. It's just practical, the physics of physiology, like if you're clean and clear and crisp in your body and you've removed, detoxed all the negative emotions, so you're not running on old fashioned resentment and you're not trying to run for your success, because then that's the only way you're going to feel good about yourself. You clear away all of that old drama, all of those old fear based motivations, all of that validation, and you clean up your system, you clean up your mind, you get healthier, you get fitter. These are superpowers.
Tom:You walk into a room and people are like who the hell is that guy? I'll follow him, I'll invest in his business. He's like I've got surplus. You know that guy I was talking about earlier. He's got you know a friend who's just like you know, he's very, very successful guy. He's like you're doing great. Can I just you know, can I fund you? Just opening more of what you're doing? It just wants to energy. He sees he's competent. It didn't. The truth is he just gets a good feeling of him. Right, feels solid, right. It's like this is power. Feeling good is powerful.
Tom:Most people like I'm gonna break my soul, I'm gonna abuse my body, I'm not gonna sleep, I'm gonna get out of shape, I'm gonna make a fortune and then I'll feel powerful. It's like no, no, no, no, no. Work on your inner game and you will not need to work as hard. You know, and that is that takes effort Clearing out your negative emotions, your negative self image, the ridiculous conditioning that came through school and our parents, probably, and university and medical or dental training, that everything is a slog and you only win if you double down. If you're not sweating, you're not, you're not valid. You know we have to dissolve all of that crazy programming, get out of the overstimulated state and get into the flow state where we have faith in a relaxed way, where we trust that us, at our optimal performance, will outperform everyone else, which, of course, is true right, all of the most amazing performers in the world of sports and business.
Tom:If you cut open their psychology, it's fascinating. Their beliefs are so robust. They're not over-efforting. You know they might work a lot. That's because they love it, because they've also focused on actually the people are really successful. What percentage of their daily tasks do they love? Most of them? Why? Because they recognize there are other people who are better and more affordable at doing those tasks. Yes, right, it's just. You know. There's loads of things that you know at the highest level.
Tom:If something takes you an hour to do, like, what is your hourly rate in your head? Because if you could get someone else to do it at less than that hourly rate, then you should outsource it. Get someone else to do it, then, yeah, there's a bit of a pain in the ass. You have to train them up. People take, on average, nine months to get up to speed. People. People work with a PA or a member of staff and they're pulling their hair out after a couple of months because these people aren't up to speed. Of course they're not. They're not going to be.
Tom:It takes nine months for someone to know your business and know what you need, even someone who's brilliant. But you put that time in with the right person, which is key. That person will run your business. They'll do all the bits and bobs. You'll never need to open another email ever again. They'll run the show and you get to focus on what you love and what you're brilliant at and what you get paid most for. You work on the high ticket aspects. You work on the high value minutes and you subcontract and you delegate and you hire away and you find those people that love doing that thing. They're in their area of genius and they're much more affordable than your hourly rate and just bit by bit, you start to be able to work less, make more, have more fun. You know, it's a beautiful thing, but it's not rocket science. It takes effort to transition, but it's mainly beliefs, you know. And the one thing I'll say is the people who work that hard.
Tom:You know, sometimes if you're setting up a business, setting up a squad or, you know, doing whatever you're doing, right in the interim, in the beginning, it can be a lot of grafts. I'm not going to lie right, but if someone's been over-grafting for more than five years or more than 10 years, they're addicted to it. They're addicted to it. They're addicted to it. You have to think of it as an addiction. And what is an addiction?
Tom:For an addiction is a way of avoiding uncomfortable feelings. So that means you're not happy in your life, you're not happy with yourself, you're not happy with your past, you're not happy with your partner, and so you're overworking because you don't want to stop. You don't want to feel because, if you felt, you're worried that the truth would. Because you don't want to stop, you don't want to feel, because if you felt you're worried, that the truth would mean you don't need to change shit up, change careers, change partner, you know, deal with your past. You know. But most people don't realize they carry around most of most, most of people's unhappiness like. These are arbitrary percentages, but vast majority of it it's just unresolved crap from the vast that you haven't processed.
Tom:So the first work I do with clients is we just go and address all that shit. You know, we just deal with all of that developmental stuff. You know birth order, relationship with dad, relationship with mom, even your actual birth experience, what it was like with your siblings birth experience, what it was like with your siblings growing up, what school was like. It's like this stuff just clogs our system. Even if you had an above average or even a really happy childhood, you still have hundreds of moments that probably aren't processed.
Tom:You've got to clear all that stuff away and then see if you're still addicted, because maybe you know you do like your life, maybe you do enjoy dentistry, maybe you do like your wife, you know, or like your husband, but all that other stuff was just getting in the way of you being able to enjoy it, which is why sometimes you know we'll hit a target and it feels okay and we think it's like oh well, material things don't make us happy, and that's true, of course. But the reason why most of us don't at times enjoy our successes is because we're still 40% 50% clogged with shit from the past we haven't processed. So it's just we just walk around not feeling that great about ourselves, and it's not even about today. That's the annoying thing.
Tom:You can clear that stuff out, you know, and you clear that out and you're like oh OK, ironically, then we can enjoy anything without our success and we're made more likely to be successful when we don't need to be successful, because we're not going to be overtaxed, we're not going to be out of our boundaries, we're not going to overwork, we're not going to do all that shit. You know, because why would you?
Dr James:Can I just share one thing on this? So I've never had formal uh you know therapy or anything like that, or I've never really explored this stuff in depth, but I, I do have a general awareness of how it works and I know that we're all carrying stuff in our from our past, which means that the wires in our head, well they are. How can we say, you know, maybe they're not that representative of reality or they don't permit us to see the world clearly, because we're trying to, like, fulfill some sort of expectation of someone or something in the past and oftentimes we're misremembering it as well.
Dr James:That is the freaking crazy thing is so many times right, yeah 100% yeah so what happened to me was right, basically about a year and a half ago. Um, and again, I don't know nearly as much on this stuff as you do, right, but I basically became aware that everybody has this like primary driver from their past and I see you nodding your head, which is great, so I'm obviously doing a somewhat decent job of describing this, or at least my understanding of it. So here's the thing I realized that that primary driver and I think this is common, particularly for gentlemen, although not always, but particularly for gentlemen is that they're trying to impress their dad, basically, and they live their whole life under that guise. And I actually realized that about a year and a half ago and, honestly, it was like a light bulb in my head because I was like, right, here is what his actual expectations of me are over here, and here's what I think they are. Are they even necessarily married up, and am I living a life under this pretense that I'm going to get some approval for him? When, number one, he probably doesn't even realize he's doing it, and also, number two, what my concept of his approval is not actually married up with what necessarily might permit me to get approval from him? There might be two different things.
Dr James:Um, and then you know, literally after that day I was like it really really, really just made me re-evaluate everything that I was doing and I realized I was doing a lot of busy work. It was about the busyness rather than the productivity and of course it's not a binary thing. It's not just like you just realize one day, oh, I'm going to stop doing this stuff, right, because you actually don't really necessarily understand what that unproductive stuff is. But at least if the door is open and you have that light bulb moment, then at that stage you're that much more receptive to exploring that and exploring to yourself, right, what is actually causing? What is the 20% that's getting me 80% of results here, and how can I focus on that and how can my judgment of what that is not be clouded by someone else's expectations of me?
Tom:Yeah, and, and you're exactly right, you know, looking at what are my motivations, what are my beliefs, what am I trying to achieve? Right, and it's like you know, and ultimately what's going to happen. Let's say you hit this imaginary, you know, you know, and ultimately what's going to happen, let's say you hit this imaginary, you know target, and your dad falls to his knees and says, james, I'm so proud of your son, you're amazing, right, and you know, it's like that's important to a kid right now. That might be pleasant as an adult, but actually what's more powerful as a human, once we're an adult, is being able to have that relationship where we can look in the mirror and know that about ourselves. When we impress ourselves because of our virtue, because of our, our integrity, because of our accountability, you know, it's because of our ethics. It's like, how are we behaving when no one's watching? It's like, are we someone that we are proud of? That's the most important person and we should set a very high standard for that, because that's what enables us when shit hits the fan, which inevitably will, when you know the dog dies or you know wife leaves us, or the business goes down, or whatever happens If we can look in the mirror and be proud of who we are. We don't need anyone else's approval, it's nice. But when we're a kid we do, and when we were a kid we did.
Tom:And if we, if we don't go in and kind of find those parts of ourselves and then actively kind of heal that stuff, it really gets in the way. Even as an adult, if we're proud of who we are, if we haven't resolved that stuff, life still won't feel so good. Even if your dad came and went you're amazing, right, it wouldn't solve that kid. Reason being is most of us aren't in touch with the kid within who's still upset. So we squash it down, keep busy, have another drink, you know, make, make another million, right. But it's actually it's like until that part has been excavated and supported and healed, which doesn't need to be years in therapy, it's like you know, I work with people on average for six months it's like you can, you can teach people the tools with which to excavate that stuff themselves and heal it. Once that's healed and clear, then that is you being a loving parent to yourself, and then we are at peace with who we are.
Tom:Then whatever we get from the outside world is enjoyable, but it's not structural to our sense of self anymore and it makes a massive difference to our contentment, massive difference, and, of course, makes us way more capable, way less needy as well, because otherwise, every meeting we're going into there's a little kid jumping up and down, going love me, love me, tell me I'm okay, am I okay? Do you think I'm okay? Right, that comes through in our handshake, that comes through in our eyes, it comes through in how we present. People will like us but will lean back from us. They won't buy from us, they won't invest in us. They will feel good about us but they won't feel safe because we're being run by a kind of validation loop and they can feel that Now, this is all unconscious, right, but it comes through in the tone of our voice, it comes through in our body language, people, if you think about, okay, who did I invest in and why, and who makes me feel good and who do I think is competent and confident?
Tom:Right, you might look at their track record, maybe, but it's actually their track record plus how they turn up when you speak with them, how they shake your hand, how they make eye contact. Think about the people that you know who are powerful and think about how they hold themselves, not the arrogant ones with their nose in the air, who are all brash and braggy and that's just insecurity in a shiny suit.
Tom:You know it's like the ones, the actually solid ones, right where our system relaxes in their presence. You know, that's the key. How do we become that guy, how to become that woman, you know, and that's to do with our relationship to ourselves, because when we, that's to do with our relationship to ourselves, because when we work on our relationship with ourself, we're working on our relationship with life, and that's just. You know, you want to be that type of person where, if there was some kind of crisis going on and there were 10 tasks, all of which were absolutely vital to our survival as a group, and someone said, well, who's going to do that? And it's like, well, james is taking care of that. And everyone just lets out a sigh of relief because they know it's it's done, it's just done. It's like are you that guy right? Are you that guy right? And it's like, how do we become that guy in our eyes and in the eyes of others?
Dr James:you know you were talking about arrogance. They're one of the most self-defeating traits of all time, in my opinion, and here's what makes me say that, um, basically, when you, you basically at that state. For two, there's two big reasons why I think it's self-defeating, right. Number one what is arrogance, is where you basically think you know it all, right, or you think that you're the guru, right. So here's the thing if you know the first thing about knowledge, you'll know that there's this vast, limitless ocean, yeah, and it's not possible to fit that all in your head.
Dr James:So if you have that belief that you know everything, you're actually not receptive to how much more there is to learn and how much more that will be learned by humanity in terms of new information, the new stuff that inevitably comes along. You're not open to that, you're not receptive to it. So you basically you stagnate from a learning perspective and then also as well. So even if you were the best, you're quickly not going to become the best or the most knowledgeable because you're not receptive to new info, right, and it's more about how the belief serves you or doesn't serve you, correct? So that's the first aspect.
Dr James:And then the second aspect is you know, you're just going to repel a lot of people who could help you, because they're just going to look at you and just be like who the heck is this asshole, basically for lack of a better word and they're just not going to want to collaborate with you, help you, give you opportunities. If anything, they're just going to distance themselves and perhaps cut themselves off from you. So even if you did hit some sort of zenith in terms of your achievements or in terms of your abilities or your prosperity, or in terms of your abilities or your prosperity or the income that your business is generating, you're quickly going to find that that's going to stay there or begin to diminish with time, because other people overtake you who are willing to collaborate with others and build other things and do other things and be more successful. So actually, you completely self-sabotage yourself because you welcomed that belief into your life, yet everything go to your head.
Tom:My opinion 100% and arrogance. In psychology we're calling going plus one, right? So plus one is I'm I'm above you, right. I'm I'm plus one above you, right? The only reason anyone ever goes plus one is because internally they feel minus one, right? That's what I mean. With the nose in the air, they're walking around needing to believe they're great because internally they don't feel great. And so when anyone ever is doing that their name, dropping their success, dropping all of that all they're really broadcasting is I'm insecure. And humans build where there's security. We want to build a house on solid ground, right? So someone you know in Texas, as I understand it, right, they say big hat but no cattle, right?
Dr James:I love that for the ranchers in the audience, For the ranchers for the cowboys.
Tom:Big hat no cattle right.
Tom:You know, and you see, there's people who are like all of the accoutrements of success because they want people to see that they're successful, because internally they don't feel great about themselves, right, and it's like, okay. So how do I find those parts that want the world, you know, to see me as glory, because I don't see myself as glory. So if it can be reflected again, it's the child. If we caught on that loop I didn't get that validation from my dad then we want gold statues of us all around the world and everyone bowing down to our brilliance. It's like it's just a version of the child within, wanting his daddy's or mommy's appreciation.
Tom:Right, it's infantile and it feels infantile and it's also responsible for I don't know most of the wars in the world, because it's the same thing. It's like it's I want, I want. It's territorial, it's aggressive, it's possessive, it's the extension of that egotism ends up in, you know, warfare for resources and glory and power and control, right, and we might do that in competition, in our local community or within our family, but it's just within our hearts really, it's just a projection of our insecurities. So, absolutely, arrogance isn't evidence that someone thinks they're great. It's actually evidence that internally they don't think they're great at all.
Dr James:I love that. So we're actually going one layer deeper here and past the persona. Actually, that's what's really going on. Is it always that?
Tom:Yeah, I mean, listen, let's be clear that some people who have dedicated their life to a skill right and have really gone above and beyond with regards to the effort and energy they've put in right, so this is true in sports, right? That's combined with an incredibly robust belief in their natural talent and what will happen if they apply themselves. Now, those people, when they speak about their skill sets, they could also appear arrogant. Now that might be driven underneath it all a long time ago for wanting to be popular and to wanting to prove the world wrong. So, underneath it all, that probably is still driven by insecurities, because why else would they be willing to train so flipping hard, right? Yeah, but there are some people at the top of the game.
Tom:You see Ronaldo talking about his football skills. That comes across as arrogant, right, but he is a particularly good footballer, right. So within the realm of high performance and high achievement, right, people at the top of the game the best mathematicians in the world, the best physicists there's a lot of ego. There's a lot of competitiveness. Yes, it is probably driven by insecurity, but at certain levels, their arrogance is a reflection of their extraordinary skillset, and their arrogance and their ego is what enables them to be able to have 70,000 spectators staring at them with one minute left on the thing, and they can still take a shot and hit the target with all that pressure because they've got such a robust kind of you know ego, right? So ego in some certain places does drive greater performance, for sure, right, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're nice to be around.
Dr James:It serves them in those instances basically, sometimes but it's very rarefied.
Tom:Generally, don't be a dick, you know.
Dr James:Yeah, and this is the thing this is. I know we've touched upon this in our other podcast. It's very important to be able to audit your beliefs and how you see the world. As such, it's like, yeah, because very few things are binary, true or false. You know what I. As such, it's like, yeah, because very few things are binary, true or false. You know what I mean. Like it's actually more of a continuum, but you might choose to believe something that you know is unlikely to be true, purely because it helps you succeed in a certain area of your life or gives you greater odds of success.
Tom:That's a very powerful thing to realize our beliefs shape our experience of reality to the point where it changes our reality. I mean, beliefs are more than just ideas that we have. The ideas that we have dictate our vocabulary. Our vocabulary dictates our experience. Our experience dictates our identity. You know all of these things intersect. You know Plato said there is your truth, my truth and the truth, and none of them are right.
Tom:Life is subjective and that makes us part of a creative corner of reality. And I love the fact if you and I look around the room and the people listening to this or watching this now look around your room and understand that everything, everything that you're looking at, was once an idea in someone's head. It's like it was a sketch on a piece of paper. It was a. It was probably began with maths and some and some scribbles on a, you know, in a notebook. You know some guy or some woman woke up one morning and you're now sitting on the thing you know and it's like I love that. I love that about life.
Tom:You know we are, as humans, so creative and we have this power to create, but it's, yeah, it's our beliefs, our expectations, our identity, our narrative, our story, where we are in our, our victimology. How empowered do we feel? Are we allowed to succeed without upsetting our dad? We're allowed to make more money than our brother, you know. Are we allowed to succeed without upsetting our dad? We're allowed to make more money than our brother, you know. Are we allowed to look good?
Tom:You know, some people will have success as long as there's a downside, because then they can kind of balance it with their internal thermostat of deserving. I'll be successful, but I'll be overweight. You know I'll be successful, but I have to overwork and people say, how's it going? Oh, it's great, and then they can tell they're jealous and they go. But I have to work 70 hours a week. Oh, cool, I'm okay.
Tom:All this bullshit, all this crazy stuff, right, most of it arbitrary, most of it limiting. You know it's a life unexamined is no life at all, as Socrates said. And it's like, it's amazing to me, like, even with businesses, business leaders don't spend time asking their staff or understanding their team's relationship with their own parents, like if you're the boss, I guarantee you your people are projecting onto you their relationship with their mum and their dad. They'll bring that to work right. They're going to begin relating to you in the way that they relate to their dad and they have certain needs, and some of those will be healthy and some of them won't be healthy.
Tom:You need to understand this stuff. We need to understand how family dynamics play out at work. Right, and you get that sorted, you create an environment at work where people actually get personal development along with their professional development and everyone has a conversation about the stuff we're working through to be able to turn up at work and be our best. Those staff will never leave, because it's not about pay, it's about feeling taken care of and it's about having an environment where we get to develop. Those are the most important factors that make people stay in a job nowadays, so we can create that everywhere.
Tom:It's also about just being a decent boss, understanding that welfare is not just about reducing absenteeism. It's about fostering a community of kindness whereby which we drive way better performance out of our team and get way more loyalty, which means they'll look after your patients way more beautifully and when the shit hits the fan, they'll come together to support you. It's like it's building, you know, know a proper culture at work. You know proper culture. You know that means that means you know then people will run your business for you and you'll be able to trust them and they will do it gladly and they'll be happy that you're on the golf course and they're making you the money because you've looked after them so well along the way, you know, and they're making you the money because you've looked after them so well along the way.
Dr James:You know, understanding people is the meta skill of life, because every business needs people past a certain point and it's the only real way that you can create an asset that allows you to get your time back is if you rely on others, because as good as computers are and as good as machinery is, there's going to be some humans and some individuals involved past a certain level. Most of the time 99 of the time anyway, Tom, listen. Thank you, as ever, for your wisdom. If anybody listening today would like to reach out to you, how would they would? How would they be best off finding you? tomfortesmayer. com. Boom, love it, my man. Listen, Tom. Thank you so much, as I say, once again, for your time, your thoughts, your knowledge and inspiring the listeners of the Dentists Who Invest podcast. I am looking forward to our next episode already. I hope you have an absolutely smashing day and we'll see each other soon. Good man, always a pleasure.
Tom:Take care.
