Burnout? Tired? Frustrated?

Please excuse any typos. Transcript performed by A.I.

00:00
This is Dental All-Stars, where we bring you the best in dentistry on marketing, management and training.

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So.

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think the biggest message for today and that we’re going to unpack really deeply is that high performers don’t need more information, right? They don’t need more information. don’t need, they don’t need to time box better. They don’t need to read more habit books. They don’t need more apps. You know, those, those are all pieces of information that in and of itself, when we are high performer status and we’re experiencing burnout, that just feels like another thing. And so I’m super excited.

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about New Orleans and about this conversation because we get to look at this as a real whole body approach, which is one of the things that we’ve been talking about now for a couple of years. And in this space, there is a lot of, a lot more research and evidence-based research around what does it look like to have a whole body approach to sustaining high performance and success. to Dental All-Stars. I’m Eric Vickery, president of coaching at All-Star Dental Academy.

01:13
And I am very excited today because I’m going to be having a conversation today with my wife, Abby Vickery, as we talk about the high performer trap and when success stops working. So let me introduce to you to my wife. She, like me, is a John Maxwell certified life coach. She’s a certified disc trainer. This is where she deviates and where she crushes me. She has an undergraduate degree in psychology, a master’s degree.

01:41
and a clinical license in social work and credentials in school counseling. She’s worked within the field of mental health for nearly two decades. She now brings her clinical background to the field of professional performance coaching. So she is on our team. She is our therapeutic coaching, uh, go-to person for all of our clients. Her areas of expertise are lifestyle design, professional and personal vision, healthy relationships, challenging parenting issues, and servant leadership coaching.

02:10
Another one of Abigail’s passion is providing seminars and workshops to leadership teams on different topics such as survival care, interpersonal relationship skills, healthy marriage and parenting, psychological safety. I’ll throw in there and actually we’re getting ready to do one of those events together, which will be October 22nd in New Orleans on a Thursday. And it will be for dentists and optional their spouses.

02:38
And so let’s unpack what we’re going to be doing that day. Let’s give them some really good tools today. As we talk about things, we’ll go for about 20, 25 minutes and let’s jump in. Well, hello. Hello. I know you. How are you? I’m good. Are you in the same house as I am? We’re in the same house in different rooms doing a podcast. We are silly. Okay. So let’s jump right in. I think, and I don’t know if this is a brag or not, if I should be careful. said, I think we’re high performers.

03:07
And I think we have a lot of, I think we have a lot of success. I think we have a lot of failures in putting ourselves in that category. So how do we help others? How are we going to help high performers figure out how to maintain this level of success? And what are we, what are we doing here? And I’ll just, before you jump in, I’ll just say this. I get dentists who come to me and they’re frustrated with their teams. They’re frustrated with their spouse. They may work with their spouse.

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They don’t know how to communicate to their teams or spouse. They’re on the verge of burnout. Maybe they don’t even want to practice anymore. Things just aren’t healthy and they’ve been crushing it for a long time, but you just don’t know how to maintain that drive and, and that level of success. So I’m going to let you take it from here. You’re the expert. Where, where do we start? How do we unpack this? Well, first of all, welcome to my living room.

04:04
And second of all, I would just say that we are both so passionate about this because we have lived it and learned some really hard lessons along the way. And I really love, I love that we come from that space of having, really having a deep understanding of what it’s like to be caught in these traps and being on information overload and

04:33
experiencing burnout at a personal level. So I come to you as a wounded healer and someone that is just really passionate about this area. So I think the biggest message for today and that we’re going to unpack really deeply in New Orleans is that high performers don’t need more information, right? They don’t need more information. They don’t need

05:00
They don’t need to time box better. They don’t need to read more habit books. They don’t need more apps. Those are all pieces of information that in and of itself when we are at a high performer status and we’re experiencing burnout, that just feels like another thing. And so I’m super excited about New Orleans and about this conversation because…

05:25
we get to look at this as a real whole body approach, which is one of the things that we’ve been talking about now for a couple of years. And in this space, there is a lot of, a lot more research and evidence-based research around what does it look like to have a whole body approach to sustaining high performance and success and being able to mitigate the symptoms and the issues surrounding burnout.

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and specifically. So you already know that you need to move your body and sleep. And most of you already know about circadian rhythm. And a lot of you know about HRV and different things like that. If you don’t, we’re going to touch on those for sure. That’s important. That’s important information. But in and of itself, it isn’t the information that’s going to help us.

06:15
I actually just read this morning. you guys know that we’re big with CliftonStrengths and it’s something that All-Star uses. uses as a tool all the time with his clients and my number one strength is input. And so I love to read and collect information and all the things. And this morning I read an article and I was so grateful that it happened today because we were having this conversation, but it’s an article from June of this year in Success Magazine.

06:43
And it is specifically highlighting a whole body approach in terms of mitigating burnout and the fact that really this is nervous system work first and foremost that you can’t high perform from a dysregulated state. And we can absolutely share the article if that would be helpful and we’ll unpack that more in New Orleans as well.

07:09
So you’re throwing out fancy words and I’m a simple guy. Okay. Mitigating burnout. Are you saying that we’re just holding burnout at bay or is this like, Hey, I can really learn how to never have to worry about burnout or does it just show up and it reveals ugly head and I didn’t see it come in? What do you mean by that? No, absolutely. And thank you because I think sometimes when you live in, you know, our swimming in this world, it’s, um, yeah, it’s important to unpack. So

07:39
So when we experience the symptoms of burnout, and one of the things that we’re going to do in New Orleans is actually take an assessment, an evidence-based assessment to kind of see where you’re at with burnout. And that assessment looks at your whole person. And we’ve talked several times, even on this podcast, about the fact that the person that we are at home is the same person that walks across the threshold.

08:05
of your office door, right? That’s the same person. We can’t separate those people. And so when we look at burnout and the symptoms of burnout, you know, one of the biggest ones is overwhelm and information overload and sleeplessness. And oftentimes there’s a lot of mirroring with symptoms of burnout to symptoms of depression clinically, which is really important to look at. And so…

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So when we’re experiencing those symptoms, we think, okay, well, I need to do something about that, right? Like I need another tool. I’m not managing my life well. So we look to apps and we look to time boxing and we look to different systems and those are all really important. But when we’re actually in the throes of that experience, or even if we’re trying to ward it off, it isn’t the information itself as much as it is starting with that nervous system and regulation work.

09:03
because it is about our whole body. So if we’re just adding, if I were to say to you, Eric, you’re telling me that you’re experiencing symptoms of burnout. And so I’m gonna give you five evidence-based tools right now that would help alleviate those symptoms. Really, the reality of that is then it feels like another list of things that you need to do. And you also don’t have, you’re not doing that necessarily in community or with accountability or in partnership.

09:32
And so it literally is another list of things to do versus looking at the fact that you can’t high perform again from a dysregulated state. So we’re looking at the whole body and approaching it from that whole body. So instead of symptoms and frameworks and that type of thing, it becomes like, okay, what’s actually going on with your body? Let’s check in with your body.

10:00
and let’s use tools around nervous system regulation at the same time that we’re using those frameworks that are evidence-based that can really help us, those systems. So I’m gonna translate this for the people who listen to us a lot and see if I can unpack it a little more and you tell me if I’m on point here. we use something called the 95-5 rule, which is…

10:25
Your patients don’t understand what you’re talking about when you just talk about treatment, when you just tell them what they need to do, they don’t understand the why behind it. Like, so what? I have a cavity. It doesn’t hurt me. I’m going to wait. And then they wait for a toothache and it explodes. The 95-5 says, no, talk about the condition, talk about the consequences, really understand what’s going on so that they can make a really good decision. And now they want to pull these things in their life. They want solutions. And so what I’m hearing you say is a regulated state.

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to understand how you regulate, need to understand your diagnosis. What are the symptoms that you’re showing that are moving us towards burnout? And everyone’s going to have some different regulating systems and tools to use to get back to a level playing field. Is that a healthy unpacking of that? that making sense? Absolutely. So another way to say it is the state of the person matters more than the tool. Like you can’t access the tool.

11:23
If you’re doing that from a dysregulated, dysregulated state. that’s so absolutely what you’re saying that the 95 five rule fits perfectly. All right. So dental talk is I can’t give you a financial arrangement worksheet to fix scheduling when your patients don’t understand what their problems are and want solutions. That would be the translation. Now you mentioned strength finder and I got to point out that most dentists have in their top five.

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learner. That is a strength. And for me, what that is, is they just go after CE. They just go after candidate education. They keep going and go, I’ll be a master. I get my MA, GD, I’ll get my ACD accreditation fellowship. They start going through all of these things and yet they overanalyze, they overthink, they, they, they overthink these things and they don’t implement a lot. And there’s this overwhelm. So if you, if you know your strengths and you’re looking at learner, what we would call with our,

12:23
team over here of strength side, which we love that family that we work with on the strength side. They call it the dark side or the shadow side of learner. And so if, if learners in your top five really hear us, I love that Abby said, this isn’t about giving you more information. This isn’t about a knowledge problem. And this is about a leveling playing field for what I would think would be emotional regulation.

12:54
I’m sure there’s physical and mental and all of that, but that’s how I think of it. Like I, if I feel stress or anxiety, that’s an emotion to me. And how do I, how can I figure out how to unpack, get out of this, I guess, pit I’m in a feeling like I can’t climb out of this. It is so stressful to be a dentist, especially to be, I think, a mother, I think to run a household. I think women run dentistry. So I think there’s a male.

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challenge there too. How do I lead a team of women? I think that’s also challenge and and how do I be there for my wife at home? So I think there’s mutual challenges that we run into and what we want to do is figure out how do we diagnose a room of maybe 20 people that’s about the max we want to have in this room and how do we in a more intimate setting help you get? What would you say? Emotionally regulated, physically regulated? What are the categories there?

13:49
Yeah, no, all of the above. here’s the kicker is that we know, we know that we know that we know that success is not sustainable. That’s a tricky phrase to say multiple times fast. Success is not sustainable if your body is not able, if your body is paying the bill. Right? And so that’s why

14:14
The approach is not to give you just tools and more information, and we will give you tools, but it’s the whole body approach that we start with and the nervous system regulation and learning about what that even means. And even in the field of mental health, I mean, it is a new wave that we are learning more about nervous system regulation. That’s not something that we learned in graduate school years ago. And honestly, that’s really sad.

14:44
And so I feel really passionate about, how can we learn about this from a whole body perspective and also give you tools? But your body is the one that’s paying the bill when you are on your way to burnout. burnout is also not just about your calendar, right? It’s about a lot more than that. And I think that’s the other piece. So there are tools, there’s tools to be able to assess your calendar for sure.

15:12
but you can’t really do that work if you’re doing it from a dysregulated state. Right, so I’m gonna translate again. So think about in dentistry, this isn’t about single tooth dentistry when there’s 28 teeth having a problem. This is a full mouth diagnosis. This is us looking at your whole body and saying, what are your biggest challenges? How does burnout show up for you? Because your version of burnout is different than my version of burnout.

15:41
My solution to burnout isn’t the same. So I can’t say, oh, just time box it. That’s like, Hey, let’s just put a crown on that one tooth, but you have massive infection in your gums. That’s, that’s throwing up a patch on it. And I think we get excited because we read a book, we read atomic habits and we go, okay, I’m going to move my to-do list to my calendar. I’m not going to have burnout now. And that might help a little bit, but it’s not whole mouth, full mouth solution. And that’s what this day is about.

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It’s about full mouth solution. So here’s some things that are, that we’ve talked about a burnout assessment. We talked about healthy mind. We talk about healthy body. Um, we talk about healthy relationships, healthy leadership and healthy boundaries. think people don’t say no enough. think over, um, over performers, high level performers have a tendency to say yes to too many things, which we are guilty of too. And how do you put.

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parameters, guardrails in your life to protect you from doing that. Because if you’re not even recognizing you’re doing it, okay? So recognize it, diagnose it, and then be able to have tools that avoid that, if that’s your thing. So what more unpacking can we do about this? Well, I would just say that the goal isn’t balance every single day, although that might surprise you, right? The goal is alignment over time. And I think that’s the other piece about

17:07
high performers, you are going to say over performers, but over achiever high performers, right? That’s another characteristic of who that person, that person’s makeup is that it’s like, I’ve got to do all this and I’ve got to get it right now. And this really is a learning process that requires a lot of grace with ourselves. One of the things that we do in therapeutic coaching is unpack.

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you know, where are the roots of this even to begin with, you know, what are the family patterns and, and your family of origin and, and what is working for you as a high performer and not working, you know, those are, that’s an interesting list to contrast. But I think that’s the, that’s one of the biggest messages is, is that you are not, the goal isn’t for you to, you know, have perfect balance every day, the

18:00
The goal is for you to be coming into alignment over time and that we’re, we’re with you in that. And it says on the, the breakdown of this course, says improve work life balance. I don’t, I mean, I think of the saying work hard, play hard. I don’t even, like, I don’t even necessarily agree with that. Even, even though I get where that’s coming from and I could see how that could be a real thing, but

18:28
I’m going to crash at some point if I’m working hard, playing hard. What I would want to do is I want to play hard at work. Yeah. That’s now that’s for me. That doesn’t mean it’s for you, but I want to play hard at work. I want to laugh. I want to a great time. I don’t want my work to feel like work. What do I need to do? That doesn’t mean I need to change careers. It means I need to take my strengths and my lens of how I see things and go, okay, I can actually make this conversation with this person fun. I can figure out how to do that and not have anxiety, not have stress about it. Okay.

18:56
Some other things you’re talking about that I’m going to unpack here, um, review, create healthier habits and rhythms, reduce stress, obviously prevent burnout, strengthen relationships. And then you just mentioned build a life that supports long-term success. It’s not about just the calendar and predicting it. So anything there that you want to touch on before, because I have another question for you.

19:18
Yeah, well, I think in reference to your first point about, you know, work hard, play hard and everybody’s framework is really different from that. And one of the things that I love about strengths is it helps us understand. And we have a dear friend in this space that coaches and I love what she says about energy. Like this is about what gives you energy. So, for example, your day off and my day off are going to look different because what are things that you’re building into that that increase your energy?

19:46
And for many people, that’s not sitting on the couch, right? There isn’t the part of this is getting to know yourself and doing some deep self assessment and self reflection, which we’re going to guide you through in New Orleans. I’m really excited about that. But we’re not anti achievement. We’re pro sustainability. And that reflects on what you were talking about in terms of working hard and playing hard is that.

20:11
You know, you your DNA, your makeup for for better or worse with lots of a long list of reasons why, you know, nature nurture, all those things, you know, there there are people that are high achiever performers and that that’s not a bad. That’s not a bad thing. That’s a really beautiful thing. How do we sustain that? How do we not, you know, how do we not crash in the midst of that? How do we learn how to say no?

20:38
You know, those are all really important conversations. So you’re referencing what you’re referencing Dana. Uh, when you talk about strengths finder, I’m interviewing Dana for the podcast tomorrow. So, we’ll, yeah. So we’ll do a deep dive into strengths and talk about how strengths work from a leadership and team building perspective. Now I’m to throw out a phrase to you and I don’t know how much we touch on this right here, but maybe just give some insight. Cause

21:07
Primed model for sustainable performance. Now that is catchy. I mean, that just sounds like so fancy. What in the world does that even mean? Give us a two minute synopsis of what you’re talking about there. Yeah. So we’re actually going to explore. There’s a little booklet and we’ll have all that linked for you.

21:28
But there’s actually a really wonderful book that was written. It really is like a booklet. And in this booklet, the primed model talks about team culture. It talks about sustainability. It talks about healthy relationships. And the primed model is an acronym. And we’re going to spend some time unpacking. We’re not going to unpack the whole thing, but we’re going to spend some time unpacking the

21:56
the biggest bang for our buck. And the one that we keep coming back to in our work over and over again is psychological safety. Now you’ll notice that psychological safety is the P in the primed model. And that’s on purpose. is the foundation of team culture, of sustainability, of healthy teams and relationships. And if you don’t have psychological safety at home and at work, then all of the other stuff is going to fall.

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like 100 million percent. And so we’re going to spend some time unpacking what is that and as a leader, how do you build it? Like what are the cracks and how do we fix those cracks? And then how do you build psychological safety, not only in the culture of your team, but in who you are as a leader? And psychological safety means essentially that you are creating that

22:52
that relational equity, that felt safety when you’re in relationship with somebody and that there is a safe place for them to be able to come to you with issues, with problems, with, you know, that there is a literal psychological safety that is felt in that relationship from leader to team member. And that the team members experiencing that not only from you as a leader, but the culture is built around that.

23:21
Can I just, I don’t know, maybe Alex will wanna edit this part out, but this is a real thing. So oftentimes we find, and there is research behind the fact that women can struggle with this woman to woman, right? And there’s a lot of reasons for that. That’s personality, that’s lot of different pieces. And that’s not to say that men don’t struggle with it.

23:48
It is an interesting thing as a leader in different medical, clinical, dental offices, right? When you say that dentistry is a woman’s field in many ways, I think that we would be not practicing real raw honesty and vulnerability, which is part of our values as we serve people to say that that is sometimes an issue.

24:15
So as a dentist, as a leader, as a dentist’s wife, right? What is the culture in your office around those things and how do we help you to build psychological safety? So I’m just so glad that you went there. I think mostly women have signed up right now for this course and bringing their husbands with them who don’t work in the cactus. That’s totally fine. So I do think that you’re, you’re a nail in the head and here’s, I’ll speak for the guys.

24:44
We’re just ignorant enough to think we’re good at listening or leading. So we both need it, but I think for different reasons. Now, I want to read something that you wrote because this is about also creating freedom, right? Not only just burnout, but it’s also about creating freedom from your practice and having that work life balance and burnout avoidance that we’re talking about. You wrote this. Here’s the big idea. Most dentists and spouses are not burned out because they are weak.

25:13
They’re burned out because they have unknowingly built lives and practices that require more output than their current systems, rhythms, relationships, and nervous systems can sustainably support. Freedom is not simply, yeah, freedom is not simply making more money or working fewer days. Freedom is building a life where your practice supports your life instead of consuming it. And I, to me, that’s the nail on the head of like what we’re figuring out how to do here.

25:42
And dentistry just happens to be our, our, our Petri dish. Yeah. This is our place that we do this in, but this is all over the place. so would tell like, this is about becoming. So speak a little bit about what we’re going to, you know, touch on with becoming and building and just give that some, some language. Absolutely. Uh, so I, I love that you.

26:13
Yeah, I think the life that is supporting your practice matters, right? That’s the whole person approach. And so some of the things that we’re going to do, you mentioned in my world, they’re called different domains, right? So that’s relational, that’s spiritual, that’s physical, all of those different, those are the different domains of our life. And we…

26:40
exist in those domains and then we walk into the spaces that we inhabit carrying all of that. And oftentimes we are, when we really take the time to self-assess, we’re recognizing like, gosh, if I were to look at that as a life wheel and all of those domains are represented in a life wheel, that my wheel is at a little wonky and I’m going down the road, right? And I’m unbalanced and I got a flat tire in some of those domains.

27:09
And so we have some really objective questions to ask you in each of those domain areas to be able to assess, you know, how are you showing up and what are some areas that you can really lean into in terms of just not only increasing your self-awareness, but paying special attention to bringing wholeness and health and alignment to those areas.

27:38
Um, so we’re going to spend some time doing that, the, you know, your whole self is needed to create a whole practice. And that’s the becoming part. think whether you’re 27 right at a dental school or you’re 57 or 67 and trying to figure out how do you finish strong or anywhere in between, we still run into the same thing of who are we becoming while we build this practice. And I think what we’re saying is, look, the practice is a piece of the pie.

28:07
It’s almost inside of life. And oftentimes there’s too much tug of war going on. So we’re going to really look at who are you becoming while you’re building this, uh, this practice. So, you know, some, some other thoughts we’re going to talk about, obviously performance, a lot of leadership comes into play here. We’re going to talk about the systems that I would call them life hacks that you bring that we can use. There’s going to be a buffet of life hacks to use.

28:36
And you know, on your side, I’m going to obviously defer to you on the nervous system stuff and the psychological stuff and the whole person. so this is going to be like 70 % Abby, 30 % Eric leading how we get through this. know you, they know you. That’s not true. I’ll, I’ll look at humor. Um, yeah, I’ll provide the humor, but it’s called aligned intensive. And this is about.

29:05
sustainable success. That’s what this is about. And if you are feeling like, my gosh, I’m so frustrated. I don’t know what to do. This is why we want you to join us. It’s, let me make sure I get the date right. October 22nd. It’s in New Orleans at the Ritz. Fancy. In New Orleans, October 22nd. We have some early bird pricing right now.

29:32
Uh we have a discounted price for your spouse of course. So you do do not have to bring your spouse if they’re unable to make it. That’s totally fine. You can bring some of this back and you it can start with you and then of course there’s therapeutic coaching always available after that with the lovely Abigail Vickery if that’s something that we fills in alignment with her strengths and your needs. Okay. Anything else you wanna add to this

30:01
this topic of aligned intensive and sustaining success. Yeah, absolutely. I just am really excited and I love that we get to do this together. And I know I probably say this way too often, but Eric lives what he lives and embodies what he teaches and coaches. And this comes from a place of just

30:29
having really struggled ourselves. And so we just get really passionate to be able to come alongside people and help. And it also is really catered to you. there is, you know, a, what did you call it? A buffet. That’s a great way to say it. There’s a buffet of tools and it isn’t that one size fits all. So that’s a really important approach.

30:51
You don’t want to go to something like this where they’re like, okay, you need to do A, B, and C. And you’re like, that doesn’t really fit who I am or my lifestyle or what I need or even what my problem is. So it’s very catered to you. And that’s why we don’t do this, you know, for a huge amount of people because it’s really personalized, which is exciting. Yeah. We are capping this at 20 attendees and that’s all that we can do this for. And it’s not a seminar for a hundred people. This isn’t a lecture.

31:20
This is a workshop. This is like you’re sitting there and you’re unpacking. It’s a lab. I love it. And you’re unpacking what your challenges are in your life in front of 19 other people. That’s what we want. And we’re going to work through that with you. And then the tools will show up. Okay. Lovely. All right. I’m so excited. I love obviously working with you. And here’s what I would say. You kind of, gave me a compliment. I’m going to compliment you back.

31:46
If when Abby met me, I was a lay on the couch, flip the channels person. So there is a lot of success. I don’t want to cry. There’s a lot of success pointed your way for giving me the push, which I love. Okay. So if you want this in your life, if you want more of this in your life, please do me a favor, email Heather at allstardentalacademy.com.

32:14
That is where we all go when we need help at All-Star and just write to Heather and she will help us figure it out. Okay. If you want to learn more about the course, we’re happy to just talk to you about it, pricing and all of that. And if you think someone could benefit from hearing this, please share this podcast with them. Let them know there’s options out there that we’re happy to unpack and deal with. This isn’t like a podcast about all these tools. This is a podcast about, Hey, do you need this?

32:43
That’s what this is about. So appreciate you listening for this long. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Abigail, for being here. I appreciate you. And for all those listening, I appreciate you taking the time to invest in yourself. And until next time, go out there and be an All-Star.

33:07
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at AllStarDentalAcademy.com