088: LISTEN TO LEARN – Alpha Discernment Part Two with Rockford Wright, MD
The level of wisdom shared in this episode may have never been reached on this show and this will be difficult to ever be out-smarted. Rockford Wright, MD returns to the show to continue the discussion on discernment.
He shares some extremely valuable insights about how a man can make more sense of the ordinary struggles in life through healthy expectations, rational interpretations of triggering stressors, how empathy can shape our judgments, and why listening should be focused on learning and understanding what is being shared. Dr. Wright teaches about habits and understanding what drives behavior, which realizations will help us be certain all of the elements are in place before we attempt to influence change with others or ourselves.
Profoundly helpful and very useful information in this episode. Be sure to check out episode 87 which is part one of this two-episode series.
00:00:00:02 – 00:00:06:18
Rockford Wright, MD
Is this kid really crying? More than 97.5% of kids? Probably not.
00:00:06:27 – 00:00:09:12
Mike Olsen
How important is this relationship?
00:00:09:19 – 00:00:38:20
Rockford Wright, MD
What should I be measuring? We need to be self-reflective about our own insecurities, what they are, and how they influence the way that we interpret. We are really going to be rational. Then we need to be intentional about it. If we can take a moment to pause and ponder, then we will give ourselves a chance to not just emotion easily react, but to actually go through the numbering, calculating, reasoning reckoning that takes more than one second sometimes.
00:00:38:29 – 00:00:58:01
Brad Singletary
If the high priest in your head is in charge, if the king is in charge, you’re a man of discernment and you can see things as they are. You can read between the lines. You can read the room. You can understand that what people bring to you is not always what’s really happening. What they say is and what they mean.
00:01:07:07 – 00:01:28:11
Speaker 4
If you’re a man that controls his own destiny, a man that is always in the pursuit of being better, you are in the right place. You are responsible. You are strong. You are a leader. You are a force for good gentlemen. You are the Alpha, and this is the Alpha Quorum.
00:01:31:25 – 00:01:44:02
Mike Olsen
Rocky has has a TV face and a radio voice combo because he’s easy to understand. He enunciates and he kind of like as a Superman kind of look and face.
00:01:44:18 – 00:02:07:12
Brad Singletary
We’re back in the studio here with Dr. Rocky Wright, who is joining us on the conversation about discernment. In the last episode, we talked about self-awareness and looking at ourselves, being aware of our own biases, being aware of our tendencies and habits of perception. We talked about how to sort through a never ending barrage of opinions and things that are laid out as fact.
00:02:08:04 – 00:02:36:25
Brad Singletary
We talked about how to decide what is right and true, how we can make good decisions that way. I want to talk about expectations and how we can keep realistic expected versions of ourselves and other people. When I work with people regarding their mood and their relationships, one of the common things that’s behind almost every negative emotion and every negative reaction that we have is an unrealistic expectation.
00:02:37:28 – 00:03:05:13
Brad Singletary
It’s it’s the demands that we have about ourselves and other people. You know, I must be respected. I must never be questioned. I must be on time that a guy who developed some of this cognitive behavioral stuff used the word masturbation to to describe the musts that we have about life. So we’re just basically walking around demanding for things to go our way and then we get upset when they don’t.
00:03:06:26 – 00:03:33:20
Brad Singletary
Our kids aren’t being obedient, just everyday frustrations. But how can we keep healthy and realistic expectations of ourselves and other people rocky as a leader and a father, a medical professional, there must be some standards. I mean, in the last episode, we talked about good and bad, and the mindfulness argument is that there is no good or bad.
00:03:33:20 – 00:03:56:19
Brad Singletary
Just just observe, just just sit in your life and realize that there’s nothing right nor wrong, nothing good nor bad. It just is what it is. But that doesn’t work when you’re dealing with critical medical situations, surgeries and so forth. How do you maintain standards and also have realistic expectations.
00:03:58:20 – 00:04:28:21
Rockford Wright, MD
So let me get to the medicine stuff in just a little bit and start with expectations. In a setting that began for me even before medicine, and that was marriage. So the short answer about how do you manage expectations or whatever it might be given by my wife, who when she was asked how she stayed happily married to me for six years, she unapologetically said, I lowered my expectations So we joke about it, but it’s not all false.
00:04:28:21 – 00:05:04:04
Rockford Wright, MD
And in this setting, my favorite equation and I bring this up often is satisfaction equals experience minus expectation. Hey, I’ll say it again. Satisfaction equals experience. Minus expectation. And we’re all looking for increased satisfaction, right? So so if our experience is a ten out of ten, but our expectation was a zero out of ten then our overall satisfaction is a ten.
00:05:04:14 – 00:05:39:07
Rockford Wright, MD
Right? And we were surprised and it was awesome. Satisfaction is a ten. Now, let’s say that our our experience was a three out of ten, but our expectation was a five. Well, then our satisfaction is a -2. Hmm. So this applies in others to simplification of a very calm plex thing, which is experience of life. But really, satisfaction does equal experience minus expectation.
00:05:39:26 – 00:06:09:04
Rockford Wright, MD
So a key component of that is setting realistic expectations. So when we’re thinking about expectations for others, we’ll start with that, expectations for others. And I’ll start in the operating room because this is an environment that I’ve kind of grown up in. And I say I’ve grown up and because I have worked in the operating room as a cleaner, someone who cleaned operating rooms, I was an operating nursing operating room nursing assistant.
00:06:09:21 – 00:06:44:13
Rockford Wright, MD
I who someone who helped the nurses in the operating room. I was an anesthesia tech who was a helper of anesthesiologists in the operating room. And now I’m an anesthesiologist, I’m a physician. I’m a leader in the operating room. So this one room, which is a interaction of multiple people, I have seen this this room from lots of positions on the pseudo hierarchy of medicine and being able to see this situation from multiple, multiple perspectives, in part because I have lived them, I have been there.
00:06:44:22 – 00:07:18:02
Rockford Wright, MD
It allows me to empathize with other people because I have been there. If we can put ourselves in other people’s shoes, if we can empathize, then we can much more appropriately set realistic and reasonable expectations. So that’s a key component to be able to we can’t always play the role of everyone in a situation, right? We can’t always do that, but we can try and learn about each of the people in that situation.
00:07:19:04 – 00:07:28:02
Rockford Wright, MD
And so a little phrase that I like is listening to learn, not just listening for our turn to talk who.
00:07:28:04 – 00:07:28:20
Mike Olsen
I like that.
00:07:29:00 – 00:07:58:23
Rockford Wright, MD
So I love to learn. I am a lifelong learner. I have a personal mission statement. I like alliteration, too. So lifelong learning, that’s that’s something that resonates with me. And so when we’re interacting with people, we need to listen to learn. That will help us understand and them and their perspective. That will help us empathize with them. And then that will help us thereby set reasonable expectations for them.
00:07:59:22 – 00:08:30:04
Rockford Wright, MD
All right. So another point about how I approach setting expectations for others is really considering what should I be measuring in terms of their production, in terms of their behavior, in terms of the outcome Well, actually, the question is, should it be the outcome? Should that be what we are measuring? And so if you were to ask my I have two boys and I didn’t tell your boys, if you were to ask them what does dad say all the time or what does he say most?
00:08:30:15 – 00:09:00:21
Rockford Wright, MD
And their answer would be attitude and effort. Attitude and effort. And because that’s what I say to them all the time, it turns out that I am less concerned about the outcome most of the time, which turns out they can’t always control everything about that. But I am much more concerned about what they can control. And what they can control is their attitude and their effort So I say that all the time.
00:09:00:25 – 00:09:09:24
Rockford Wright, MD
Attitude and effort, attitude and effort. That’s what I’m trying to measure now. It’s difficult to measure that because there aren’t the same objective measures. They’re there.
00:09:10:00 – 00:09:11:08
Mike Olsen
They’re moving targets.
00:09:11:14 – 00:09:35:00
Rockford Wright, MD
They they can be, yeah. And they’re very subjective in their evaluation. But for me, at least while I might be, it might be more difficult or subjective to put a number score on, you know, on their attitude and effort. As I invest time in that relationship, I can get a sense for to some degree what their actual attitude and what their actual effort were.
00:09:35:05 – 00:10:02:04
Rockford Wright, MD
Maybe not exact, but if that’s what I care about, then I think I’m going to find a lot more satisfaction and also set expectations much more appropriately for them. So and then the next thing and I’m going to share a couple examples here is we have to communicate clearly our expectations and then be willing to negotiate them. So spousal relationships, our relationships.
00:10:02:06 – 00:10:03:01
Brad Singletary
Oh, here we go.
00:10:03:02 – 00:10:03:14
Rockford Wright, MD
Those are.
00:10:03:23 – 00:10:04:10
Brad Singletary
Real drum.
00:10:04:11 – 00:10:30:14
Rockford Wright, MD
Roll Exactly. So, yeah, these are these are big deals and most of us don’t do them great. Or at least we sometimes feel like we don’t. Or we’re sometimes told by our spouses that we don’t. So whatever the case. But it’s an incredibly important relationship. It’s incredibly important part and aspect of our life. So an example of managing expectations are setting realistic expectations.
00:10:30:24 – 00:10:50:11
Rockford Wright, MD
So my wife likes it when I go shopping with her. And what she will oftentimes say is, will you go to the store with me? And I’m a little bit selfish with my time because I don’t have a lot of it and I’m probably not totally unique like our time is incredibly precious and valuable. And, you know, I have I have weeks where I work 103 hours in a week.
00:10:50:11 – 00:11:04:06
Rockford Wright, MD
And so the free time that I have, that’s not every week, but sometimes I do. So this free time is sometimes precious and not that my wife is not precious, but she she would ask me to go to a store with her and what.
00:11:04:06 – 00:11:16:25
Mike Olsen
Kind of store are we talking in about obligatory shopping? Like, got to go to the grocery store or I would like to look for this. That’s a choice and I would like you to come along with me. Is that the kind of shopping we’re talking about?
00:11:17:00 – 00:11:33:02
Rockford Wright, MD
This is a place all of everything else is kind of generic thing because that happens so, so, so, so often to us. So all the different and we’re getting better at it. But this is, this is the issue that I had. So we would see you say, oh, come to the store with me. And in my mind, my expectation is one store, and I am.
00:11:33:10 – 00:11:35:12
Mike Olsen
So on board with this. I hear you.
00:11:35:12 – 00:11:59:07
Rockford Wright, MD
Keep going and committed to one store and then one store becomes two stores that then become three stores and then becomes four stores and I feel betrayed because you’ve been tricked. I’ve been dragging me along. And again, my time is precious, she said. A store. And so I expected my my expectation was one store. And then I get frustrated because it’s not one store.
00:11:59:07 – 00:12:18:05
Rockford Wright, MD
But then I also get frustrated at myself because I know I should love to be with my wife doing these things, and I’m clearly being selfish with my time and I should just love going along with her. So then I get frustrated with myself for being frustrated that I’m being dragged to all these stores and then I still take it out on her, but it’s now grown a little bit more.
00:12:18:16 – 00:12:41:20
Rockford Wright, MD
So then she gets bothered and she’s disappointed because I’m frustrated and I’m not just super happy just to be with her. And so in her defense and mine, like I said, she and I, we’re both getting better at this, and we both are better at what I would call owning our expectations and what owning our expectation. We got that from a book that we read on our honeymoon.
00:12:41:20 – 00:13:06:16
Rockford Wright, MD
It was specifically talking about physical intimacy and marriage, but it applies to like all of these things. So owning your expectation, which is accepting and then being willing to communicate it to your partner. So we’re much better at it with the shopping thing. Her saying will you come to the store? And I say, How many stores? And we say, before how many stores it’s going to be?
00:13:06:29 – 00:13:22:15
Rockford Wright, MD
And if it’s one, then it is one. If it is two than it is two. But our expectation is now in sync. It’s not just until she feels like she’s done. It’s now been quantified because I needed that quantification. So we own our expectations.
00:13:22:16 – 00:13:24:17
Mike Olsen
Are our wives got to be sisters.
00:13:25:15 – 00:13:46:06
Rockford Wright, MD
So here’s number two example. So with our kids, sometimes my wife now my wife is again amazing at many, many things. She worried that I would say some things that would either embarrass her or patron about picture. And I’m not trying to do that. I’m just trying to show contrast. Right. And again, I we have boys. I am a boy.
00:13:46:06 – 00:14:03:21
Rockford Wright, MD
Maybe there’s some similarities there. She is a girl. And so maybe there could be some some reasons for the disconnect. But so sometimes with our kids, my wife will say that they can’t play with friends until the house is clean, but they hate that because they don’t really understand what that what.
00:14:03:21 – 00:14:04:21
Mike Olsen
The definition is.
00:14:04:21 – 00:14:24:29
Rockford Wright, MD
It’s so subjective. And when when she gets them going in a positive direction and she she wants them to keep moving, I was like, OK, we got we got through this room real fast. Let’s go to the next room. We got momentum and then our boys are like, I thought it was just that room. And there’s no clear finish line and so they get frustrated.
00:14:24:29 – 00:14:41:22
Rockford Wright, MD
And then when the next time comes around, they don’t even want to start because they don’t know when it’s going to end. So I’ve talked to my wife a little bit because I could relate to the boys. Like, I get it right. How many stores are we going to go to today? How many rooms are we going to create?
00:14:41:22 – 00:15:04:05
Rockford Wright, MD
So we’re getting much better at communicating with our boys exactly what you are expected to do. And then sometimes with my, my 12 year old who is a little bit better at communicating and negotiating, I’ll ask him to do something and I will set either a deadline or a clear expectation and then we’ll actually negotiate out a little bit.
00:15:04:15 – 00:15:38:10
Rockford Wright, MD
And I will allow my stance to to be negotiated because I actually value his opinion and sometimes now that he’s 12, he can actually make some valuable arguments or reasons for adjusting the expectation. So clearly we should be willing to negotiate with our with our spouse, but we should definitely also be willing, within reason to negotiate with our kids, not that they push us around, but we need to clearly identify on our expectations.
00:15:39:25 – 00:15:41:15
Brad Singletary
That’s genius. That’s awesome.
00:15:41:22 – 00:16:09:11
Rockford Wright, MD
And then here’s where I really do have to hustle, celebrate my wife. We, we she is in terms of grace and forgiveness and letting go of grudges. She is my exemplar. So we’ll talk more about we may talk a little bit more about emotions. I am not a super emotional person. I’m much more analytical. She is more emotional.
00:16:09:11 – 00:16:31:07
Rockford Wright, MD
But we talked about today before I came over here do you remember our last argument or what it was actually about the last time we like disagreed or you got frustrated with me and neither of us? Well, it happens occasionally. Neither of us could remember the details, in part because I don’t get as emotionally connected to it. And then so I don’t remember the details quite as clearly.
00:16:31:07 – 00:16:55:02
Rockford Wright, MD
And then she forgives so readily that she let us go. So in terms of our managing expectations for other people, I have to credit her as an example of being willing to forgive, to let go to to have some grace. So that’s kind of a few of my thoughts on expectations for other people. Now, we have to get to expectations for ourselves, which is which is critical too.
00:16:55:23 – 00:17:20:17
Rockford Wright, MD
So one, I think we need to focus on what we can control not on what we can’t control. And this is again, where we get back to attitude and effort that I talk to my kids about. I also apply it to myself. What can I control? My attitude, my effort, so like I said, it’s a little bit difficult to measure objectively attitude and effort, but we do have some objective measures like yes or no.
00:17:20:17 – 00:17:43:17
Rockford Wright, MD
Did I yell at my kids today? Yes or no? Did I show up to work on time? Yes or no? Did I exercise today? There are some objective measures that are the application of attitude and effort. So I have to then step to or reference a book that I absolutely love called Tiny Habits by B.J. Fogg I’ve read.
00:17:43:18 – 00:17:44:04
Mike Olsen
It’s great.
00:17:44:07 – 00:18:11:07
Rockford Wright, MD
Yeah, it is absolutely great and applies here. So it talks about behavior and behavior management. And when we’re making expectations for ourselves, what we are talking about is our behaviors. Typically, you may try and have an expectation about some feeling or emotion, but really the objective measure is the behavior that follows. So this book is incredible at addressing behaviors.
00:18:11:18 – 00:18:30:24
Rockford Wright, MD
And so it’s going to naturally inform us on expectations. So now this book is not your typical behavior book. It’s not it’s not a motivational pep talk they get you feeling pumped to drive yourself, to accomplish, to accomplish something, and then fizzles when you fall short. While those kind of books are useful in their own way, they don’t produce long term change.
00:18:31:05 – 00:19:02:26
Rockford Wright, MD
This book is kind of the opposite, and I love it for that. He is much more calculating and analytical, so I love the calculating approach and he teaches this equation again. I love equations, so behavior equals motivation plus ability plus prompt when all three converge at the same time. So let me say that again. Behavior equals motivation plus ability plus prompt when all three converge at the same time.
00:19:02:26 – 00:19:20:14
Rockford Wright, MD
So we have to have sufficient motivation, we have to have sufficient ability, and then we have to have a prompt that prompts us to do the behavior and they all have to come at the same time. So let me give an example of something simple flossing my teeth. So I have gone through periods I brush. That’s, that’s a that’s a habit, absolute habit.
00:19:20:29 – 00:19:46:04
Rockford Wright, MD
But sadly, flossing is not always a habit for me, in part because I get done brushing and like sometimes I haven’t slept in like forever and I’m exhausted and I just have to go to sleep. So I was like, I have to floss. Like, I got to floss right so something was off in that in that motivation ability, prompt situation.
00:19:46:04 – 00:20:12:08
Rockford Wright, MD
And clearly the prompt would be I’m going to brush my teeth. So that’s when there’s a clear, identifiable prompt to fill your teeth. It’s when you brush right easy the ability to do it to to floss is not difficult. But sometimes I was like, oh, every single tooth, I don’t know, even, even flossing all the teeth. It was just like it was just like almost too much when I was just exhausted.
00:20:12:20 – 00:20:37:28
Rockford Wright, MD
And then my, my motivation was there, but it wasn’t quite enough. So what he talks about doing is adjusting some of those. And so what I did is I, I made the flossing a little bit easier by making it a tinier habit and a tinier habit. Habit is easier to accomplish, so my relative ability is higher. So I went in saying I am just going to floss one tooth that’s all I’m going to do.
00:20:38:13 – 00:20:55:19
Rockford Wright, MD
I’m just going to floss one tooth. And I was like, that’s not too hard. That takes one second. Right? But what happens when you when you shrink the habit, you start tiny and then you can build from there. But what happened for me was after I was already in on that one tooth, I just did the rest, of course.
00:20:55:24 – 00:21:04:28
Rockford Wright, MD
But the psychologic ill effect of making the habit tinier opened the door to accomplishing the task.
00:21:05:01 – 00:21:07:05
Brad Singletary
I’ve heard that like do one pushup a day.
00:21:07:25 – 00:21:08:07
Rockford Wright, MD
Yes, just.
00:21:08:07 – 00:21:08:27
Brad Singletary
Do one pushup.
00:21:09:08 – 00:21:14:11
Rockford Wright, MD
So. So then supply it to something a little bit bigger, which is like getting up to exercise in the morning.
00:21:16:17 – 00:21:39:26
Rockford Wright, MD
Usually the barrier for a lot of people is like, it’s easy to set your alarm. It’s harder to not snooze it. So the behavior or the habit that you’re this works in reverse. That’s what I meant to say. It just works in reverse. Breaking the habit of snoozing the alarm. Right. So go through the the behavior. The behavior is hitting the snooze button.
00:21:41:00 – 00:22:02:06
Rockford Wright, MD
The motivation to hit the snooze button is is high because you want to sleep. The ability to hit the snooze button is is high also because it’s super easy to do. And then the prompt is the alarm goes off so you have all three of those that create a situation where it is incredibly easy to snooze. Motivation to snooze is high.
00:22:02:14 – 00:22:23:04
Rockford Wright, MD
Ability to snooze is high because it’s so easy and then the prompt is right there. So we had to change something. I had to make it just a little bit harder to snooze. And so what I did was I took my alarm to my phone and I just rather than put it on the nightstand right next to my bed, I set it a few feet away.
00:22:23:24 – 00:22:44:03
Rockford Wright, MD
So to turn it off, I had to get out of bed to turn off my alarm. And I made the ability to snooze just a little bit harder. Right. It lowered my ability to snooze just a little bit. And that simple move changed the game because I had to get out of bed. Once I was out of bed, I was like, dang it, I’m out of bed.
00:22:44:06 – 00:22:45:15
Rockford Wright, MD
I might as well just go do it.
00:22:45:16 – 00:22:48:04
Mike Olsen
I was your wife mad at that’s that this part.
00:22:49:01 – 00:22:59:01
Rockford Wright, MD
It’s to her credit. So she is you see her characteristics incredibly full of grace and loving and forgiveness and incredibly good at sleeping. So it worked out well.
00:22:59:01 – 00:23:17:28
Brad Singletary
I did that once with the with the alarm and I would and I found that I could get up basically asleep, go to the other side of the room, turn the alarm off, come back to bed. And so I got this thing, it was called like perfect alarm. And it was an app. And you had to do three or you could set the number three or four math problems before you would turn it off.
00:23:17:28 – 00:23:27:21
Brad Singletary
And so now I’ve stood up. I’m on the other side of the room and I have to do like long division three times in order to snooze. I had to trap myself. I had to get away.
00:23:27:27 – 00:23:49:05
Rockford Wright, MD
So what you did is you made the ability to snooze, you decreased your ability to snooze, you made it harder to snooze. So it played perfectly into this overcoming the behavior. Right? So and then the other things that he talks about is that we need to celebrate our victories. And I am a very critical person. And so sometimes that’s hard for me.
00:23:49:05 – 00:24:11:22
Rockford Wright, MD
But I do think that we need to to truly celebrate when we accomplish and that’s OK. It’s OK to throw ourselves a little party, maybe in our brain, maybe in our mind, whatever. But it’s OK to celebrate. And then this can be applied in our interactions with others. And I’ve done this with my kids, recognizing for my kids what is their motivation, what is their available, what is their ability?
00:24:11:28 – 00:24:38:17
Rockford Wright, MD
And then what is their prompt? And it as as we start to understand that we can while while we don’t necessarily always control their motivation, sometimes we have it, we create incentives. But well, oftentimes we create incentives or punishments, right? When we’re interacting with our kids, we’re basically interacting in this same way we are creating or influencing significantly the motivation, the ability and the prompt.
00:24:38:21 – 00:25:01:26
Rockford Wright, MD
Right? The prompt is us telling them to do something or setting up a schedule for them to do something. But if we approach our children when we want them to do something, focusing in a more organized way, what’s their motivation? What’s their ability? What’s their ability? What is their prompt, then we can be a little bit more strategic in how we try and get them to do something.
00:25:02:07 – 00:25:23:29
Brad Singletary
Something there. That seems to be the biggest problem that I run into in my profession here is just is the ability. So people think that their toddler should know how to keep their things straight and put their toys away and share, or they think that their teenager knows how to be fully responsible and that, you know, they’re only going to need well, I only need 6 hours of sleep.
00:25:23:29 – 00:25:43:12
Brad Singletary
So they should be able to go on 6 hours of sleep and their ability is often misjudged. I think that’s where there’s a lot of upset in families and stuff is mis understanding someone’s ability. And we’re prompting all the time. There’s low motivation and they don’t have the ability. This that’s fascinating. I wonder what was the name of that.
00:25:44:04 – 00:25:52:02
Rockford Wright, MD
Tiny Habits by B.J. Fogg. So that gets into the next thing I think we’re going to talk a little bit about. But what what is what is normal, right?
00:25:52:02 – 00:25:52:14
Brad Singletary
Yes.
00:25:52:14 – 00:26:13:07
Rockford Wright, MD
So that kind of parlays a little bit into that. And I think one of the challenges that we have with our kids and I have this with my kid kids, is that they’re still developing, they’re still learning, they’re still growing. You talked about a toddler understanding what a toddler can or can’t do or what is what is normal for a toddler let me first say that sometimes kids get a little bit older.
00:26:13:07 – 00:26:41:21
Rockford Wright, MD
I feel like we see their potential, their best, and then we hope or expect that they will always give their best. Like that becomes the new standard and that’s not fair to them. They’re not always going to be at their best. So let’s jump then to to normal. So normal is a tough question. What is normal? And one definition is statistical definition is that it’s within two standard deviations of the mean or the average, right?
00:26:41:29 – 00:27:04:23
Rockford Wright, MD
So that captures 95% of people with two and a half percent on the top two and a half percent on the bottom. So your normal if you’re within that 95%, that means that there are inevitably are abnormal people or things 5% statistically would be abnormal if you use that definition. So if it’s a crying toddler, you might ask yourself, is this kid crying?
00:27:04:23 – 00:27:14:14
Rockford Wright, MD
So if you’re at the top end of how much do they cry? Is this kid really crying? More than 97.5% of kids? Probably not.
00:27:14:21 – 00:27:15:10
Brad Singletary
Right.
00:27:16:24 – 00:27:31:29
Rockford Wright, MD
Is this kid complaining more than 95, 97.5% of kids probably not. Right. So that’s one way to approach normal like probably that behavior is normal.
00:27:32:06 – 00:27:37:15
Brad Singletary
Doctor, I’m dizzy. I just came out of surgery and I’m a little sleepy. Like, what’s going on? Is this what’s.
00:27:37:15 – 00:27:37:26
Mike Olsen
Wrong?
00:27:38:04 – 00:27:41:28
Rockford Wright, MD
What’s wrong here? This wasn’t me. It wasn’t.
00:27:41:28 – 00:27:43:08
Brad Singletary
Me. My mouth is dry and I.
00:27:43:27 – 00:27:44:15
Rockford Wright, MD
Yeah, I want.
00:27:44:15 – 00:27:47:04
Mike Olsen
To throw up. This doesn’t seem normal.
00:27:47:12 – 00:28:12:16
Rockford Wright, MD
So, yeah, it’s with that, I try and manage expectations and talk about, you know, potential risk, but but understanding what is normal, that that’s that’s 11 way to look at it is this person really exceeding 97.5% of of people or things. Another way is like, well, is this normal? Is this acceptable by society? And that’s an unfortunate that’s a difficult one because that’s a moving target.
00:28:12:27 – 00:28:37:22
Rockford Wright, MD
Like now as much as ever, like is this acceptable lot of things if you use that measure, it’s like trying to hit hit a moving target. That’s tough to do. So is this expected would be another way. And so even the definition of normal can be a little bit tough. But that percentage thing is one way to look at it when we’re when we’re approaching realistic expectations and standards and stuff.
00:28:37:22 – 00:28:58:14
Rockford Wright, MD
So where it’s possible, we need to consider what it’s like to be in that person or that that that kids shoes. Now, I know it’s hard to remember ourselves as a toddler, but I’ll give a couple examples here. I do have memories of me as a 12 year old. So we were at a at church meeting and our yesterday and our 12 year old was with sitting in front of us with his friends and there is someone speaking.
00:28:58:14 – 00:29:30:23
Rockford Wright, MD
And so this is kind of a time when you’re paying attention it’s supposed to be respectful and he’s sitting with his friends and he got, he got the giggles and my wife looked at me like that is so disrespectful. And I was like, yeah, it kind of is. But at the same time I had flashbacks to when I got the giggles at it as a 12 year old and like the exact same situation, if we can remember ourselves or again, I’ve said this a few times, put ourselves in people’s situations as I think we’re much more likely to adjust our expectations and then increase our satisfaction.
00:29:31:04 – 00:29:38:10
Rockford Wright, MD
So yeah, there’s a few other things that I could say, but that that’s kind of the gist for, for a lot of those.
00:29:38:16 – 00:29:51:05
Brad Singletary
Well, I love the idea about, you know, reviewing your own history and kind of looking around at the people around you. But some of this takes some reading, some of this take. I mean, I, I tell people all the time, like ask, have you ever Googled that.
00:29:52:05 – 00:29:53:24
Mike Olsen
When you say, take some reading? What do you mean?
00:29:53:24 – 00:30:10:24
Brad Singletary
Well, it just you may not know what pregnancy is like. You’re young, you’re a young married couple and the wife is all bitchy and she’s six months pregnant and it’s 112 degrees in Nevada. And, you know, is this is this normal, you know.
00:30:10:25 – 00:30:12:12
Mike Olsen
For her to be behaving? That’s for her.
00:30:12:12 – 00:30:36:22
Brad Singletary
To. Yes, she’s grouchy and she’s pissy you know, and she’s not sleeping well. And what’s wrong here? And if you realize that all those things are normal, you may not know if you haven’t experienced it. And unless you do some research ask professionals, you know, find a resource that can help you understand what might be expected, what, what what could be the, you know, a common outcome in this situation.
00:30:36:22 – 00:30:50:15
Brad Singletary
So you have to do a little bit of homework on the thing. You know, what what developmental stage is your child in? You’ve got a ten year old what is their what developmental stage are they in? Most people don’t even know what that means. But the psychosocial developmental stages, you know.
00:30:51:03 – 00:30:54:21
Rockford Wright, MD
So, yeah, we have to be willing to learn for a lifetime.
00:30:55:00 – 00:31:01:21
Brad Singletary
Put some work into it. Right. That’s you seem to be do very well with that. Obviously, you’re a medical doctor, so.
00:31:01:21 – 00:31:25:21
Rockford Wright, MD
Let’s talk we’ll talk this a little bit about professionalism then. And you introduce this topic with with with that being a physician. So in terms of expectations of professionalism, so we probably have more guidance or a more clear understanding of what is expected of us and maybe some areas. I mean, we have a Hippocratic Oath that we all take.
00:31:25:21 – 00:31:52:13
Rockford Wright, MD
So in a graduating ceremony, we read read off this card, right? The Hippocratic Oath, which is, I guess, useful. But truthfully, it doesn’t really impact us on a day to day level that often like our personal commitment to being professional far outweighs the experience of reading off this card. This Hippocratic Oath. What we have is after high school, four years of college, four years of medical school, four years, in my case of anesthesia, specific training.
00:31:52:13 – 00:32:26:24
Rockford Wright, MD
And then I have an additional five years in my path. So for me, that was before I got my first job. 17 years of training and experience about how to perform or be what I was going to be. Right. That’s a lot of training to clarify for me the expectation of me so in that process, I also had to engage in a lot of self-reflection and and the consequences of my actions and, and those that self-reflection that informed and educated me to I to think about what I needed to do and was I doing it.
00:32:26:24 – 00:32:55:29
Rockford Wright, MD
And so I’ll give one example of, you know, professionalism or whatever in our training, I was in my intern year. That’s the first year of residency. I do a lot of different rotations and a lot of different things. And you’re in different departments. And the first day of my first rotation with the anesthesia department. So what would become my home for the next few years was in the ICU.
00:32:55:29 – 00:33:11:11
Rockford Wright, MD
That’s what, you know, the really sick people. And it was my first day I had to do my best. I wanted to show up, right? And I wanted to make a good first impression. And then so I set my alarm for super early. I was supposed to get there like 445 and I set it for like 3:00 or something.
00:33:11:11 – 00:33:33:03
Rockford Wright, MD
So I totally get there early. And then some happened to my alarm and it and it didn’t go off and I woke up at like 430 and I was going to be late. And so I raced in and luckily had someone that kind of helped me and, and there were layers of support, but I learned really quickly that, you know, there’s a consequence for being late, like there’s a responsibility and there is a consequence.
00:33:33:07 – 00:33:57:07
Rockford Wright, MD
So that connection between or the cause and the effects, the consequences of our actions helps inform us about what our expectations, what professionalism is and what our standards should be. And then maybe I’ll say lastly, just like in terms of feedback about that, we also now sound sent surveys to all of the patients. So I get feedback from patients about what they think about my services.
00:33:57:13 – 00:34:12:25
Rockford Wright, MD
And then you also get feedback from partners or peers. And all of these things inform you on what the expectation and, and also the consequence of your your actions will or should be. So we have to listen to all of those to learn.
00:34:14:19 – 00:34:35:18
Brad Singletary
I heard a I think it was John Maxwell, he was talking about probably one in one of his leadership books. He was talking about this little he had this little quip principles with clarity, practices with charity, and what he’s saying is the standard has to be crystal clear. There is, you know, be very clear about what it is you expect of people.
00:34:35:26 – 00:34:57:27
Brad Singletary
But when it comes to the in reality, you understand that sometimes it’s not going to sometimes the kid isn’t going to behave themselves the way they should. Sometimes things won’t go as planned. Principles with clarity, practices with charity. That’s something that’s helped me when we talk about standards and needing there to be some. Sometimes expectations are required.
00:34:59:01 – 00:35:32:00
Mike Olsen
I like that. As you guys were talking about expectations, and I think the word frustration got brought up because I struggled with this over time. I think I’ve come up with this for myself most if not all of my frustration has come from unmet expectation. Now, that unmet expectation might be that that person did not give me permission to have that expectation of them.
00:35:32:13 – 00:35:48:04
Mike Olsen
My wife, for example, Rocky’s situation is similar my wife will say, You want to come, go to the store with me. And I learned after the first two times, come, go to the store does not mean singular store it means something different.
00:35:48:04 – 00:35:48:29
Brad Singletary
All day event.
00:35:49:08 – 00:36:16:14
Mike Olsen
It possibly could. And so for my own happiness, you know, I had to kind of say, does this mean this and at first she intended that, but she might have something decided along the way or happened along the way to that first store stop that added to those stops but that was normal for her. So we went through a very similar like then I had a trigger, you know, I’d had a moment where you want to come shopping and oh, no, I would like the plague.
00:36:17:03 – 00:36:48:15
Mike Olsen
But yesterday we had a good one because I had to set myself up for, OK, she wants to go shopping. This is what this means is could possibly be this. You need to be ready to help engage in her world because she often engages in your world. So I understood that. But I think frustration and expectations are tied, and that’s giving someone the right to choose and have permission to either say, yes, I’m going to give you the ability to expect this of me.
00:36:48:21 – 00:37:16:16
Mike Olsen
I agree with what we’re agreeing. Like Rocky mentioned the negotiation. Now when I negotiate with someone, whether it be a an employee or a boss or a spouse or my kids, how well do I trust them to meet that obligation that they willingly committed to? That takes time. The time that Rocky is talking about. You have to invest that time to say how well are you going to meet this?
00:37:16:16 – 00:37:40:18
Mike Olsen
Because with an employee, I might have a very short tolerance for unmet expectation. Whereas with a child or a spouse, I have to say, how important is this relationship? If it’s a very entry level employee, I might have a very short tolerance but I will explain that to them as well. Here’s what our relationship is with a spouse or a boss or a partner.
00:37:40:26 – 00:38:07:06
Mike Olsen
I just went through one of these, for example, I had a business opportunity and this was an Amazon delivery station. I don’t know if you’ve seen this. All the Amazon vans that drive around, either they’re marked Amazon or they’re not. They are all subcontracted to business owners, and those are highly regulated and controlled by Amazon. However, they’re trying to limit their exposure.
00:38:07:20 – 00:38:31:11
Mike Olsen
So I was meeting with this business owner and I could see within the first couple of interactions, I’ve had plenty of positive as well as negative business interactions. And this guy wanted me to come on at a six figure salary with his particular situation. And I had agreed to that even though my inner self said something about this doesn’t seem quite right.
00:38:31:11 – 00:38:57:08
Mike Olsen
And it became very clear within the first three days I knew that this particular person was not going to live up to what they said. And I ended the deal and I basically sent an email saying, I can’t let you introduce me to your group knowing that I have no intention. The things that I’ve been witnessing over the last three days, you have no you’re not accepting your responsibility.
00:38:57:08 – 00:39:15:25
Mike Olsen
You’re blaming other people. Here’s what I think you’re doing. Incorrect. Regarding this, and I’m not going to participate with you anymore. He was not happy at all, even though the Amazon people reported back to me and said, Hey, we appreciate that hope. But that wasn’t too negative an experience. I said, No, not a big deal. And he, you know, ripped me in an email and things like that.
00:39:15:25 – 00:39:29:28
Mike Olsen
But I didn’t care because I could see where this relationship was going. And there was no way that I could enter into a negotiation with this person and have them lived up live up to it. And so I decided to end it immediately.
00:39:30:15 – 00:39:57:16
Brad Singletary
So we’re talking about discernment that has so much to do with understanding insight. It has to do with awareness, it has to do with fair judgment. We’ve just been talking about expectations. And I want to shift gears now toward what happens after this thing has occurred. So expectations really have to do with before this happens, before the trip to the store, before the event with our kids, before the the work or the medical case.
00:39:58:18 – 00:40:23:07
Brad Singletary
But then once things have happened, we have to interpret that. We do that very quickly. This is a very I mean, just it’s underneath the surface. It happens in a very short amount of time, less than one second. We’re usually deciding what things are about and what they mean. It creates some emotional response. Many times our tendency is the personalize and we’re we’re filtering things through this self-evaluation.
00:40:23:14 – 00:40:56:26
Brad Singletary
Not only what does this mean, but what does this mean about me. I spend a lot of my time in my work with people trying to help them basically reinterpret the events of their lives and help them see things for what they are so guys, help me out here. How can we interpret the events of life in a rational, objective way and not personalize and not get ourselves in some emotional mess because of the misinterpretation of the facts that have occurred?
00:40:57:21 – 00:41:20:21
Rockford Wright, MD
So I really like this one because I think this is something I mentioned earlier that I try and do. I’m actively pursuing this, this rational evaluation and approach to things. So the word rational that comes from a Latin word meaning reckoning or reason numbering, calculating. So to be rational, you have to have the ability to reason and to calculate.
00:41:20:29 – 00:41:55:20
Rockford Wright, MD
And again, this is a purposeful thing. This is an intentional thing. If we are really going to be rational, then we need to be intentional about it. So you mentioned sometimes the response is an emotional one that happens almost instantaneously. Like that’s the way where we’re programed planned or built. If we can take a moment to pause and ponder, then we will give ourselves a chance to not just emotionally react but to actually go through the numbering, calculating, reasoning reckoning that takes more than one second sometimes.
00:41:55:27 – 00:42:14:07
Rockford Wright, MD
So we have to pull ourselves back for a second. And and so we are a product of our parents. So I’m going to talk about my parents for a second. My dad is very has been still maybe, but especially growing up, he was, he was very emotional and that was useful for him in many ways. He played football and he played in into college.
00:42:14:16 – 00:42:38:08
Rockford Wright, MD
And so that emotion then was groomed in him on the football field, that aggression, it led to his success as as he fueled that that fire of aggression in that setting in that battle warlike setting, he thrived and it helped him. But it became harder for him later in life when anxiety and depression reared their heads that’s a totally different battle.
00:42:38:15 – 00:43:00:24
Rockford Wright, MD
And there were times where those emotions controlled him rather than him controlling his emotions and his efforts to deal with this have been really a lifelong pursuit for him and a pursuit that I admire him for embarking on my mom. She’s an accountant, much more analytical, much more calculating, and I take after her. So I come by that honestly.
00:43:01:00 – 00:43:22:15
Rockford Wright, MD
Now, she also experienced significant emotions, too, and I didn’t notice them when I was growing up and many she hid from me. My parents end up getting divorced. I didn’t recognize all the emotions that she experienced, but clearly she did have a much more analytical side then than my dad did. So I am much less emotional. So for me, this comes easier.
00:43:22:15 – 00:43:47:22
Rockford Wright, MD
It does not come easy for everyone to be able to pause and ponder, to take a step back, and to actually make some calculations to reason and to reckon that comes easier for me than it will for some. But because of that, I’m much less likely to be triggered or have an emotion be triggered. But when I do have these feelings, they tend to be tempered enough that I can analyze them before they control me.
00:43:48:17 – 00:44:12:00
Rockford Wright, MD
And we have to get to that point where we can pause and ponder. We can evaluate why am I feeling what I am feeling before this? The feeling swallows us up. And so that happens a lot with with our kids. I love my boys immensely, but they also frustrate me more than probably anyone. And so there are moments where they won’t do what I say and I get really frustrated.
00:44:12:28 – 00:44:40:11
Rockford Wright, MD
And there have been times where I get really upset. However, when I pause and I ponder and I calculate, why are these emotions coming? What is it that’s actually triggering or leading to these emotions? It’s usually indirectly their behavior, but it’s more my interpret portion of it. I feel disrespected right now because of.
00:44:40:17 – 00:44:40:27
Brad Singletary
They did.
00:44:41:03 – 00:45:06:22
Rockford Wright, MD
This, actually do what I asked to do and so then I’m like, well, that’s kind of selfish. That’s kind of egotistical. Is this about me or is this about him? And then I’ll say, Well, no, I feel disrespected and I do feel frustrated because I need him to do this thing so that I can we can all get to this place so the goal is not just this thing.
00:45:06:22 – 00:45:25:29
Rockford Wright, MD
The goal is getting to this place, but this thing has to happen. And I start to calculate these are all the calculations going on and so then when I break it down, then I I’m looking at these pieces in parts that are not emotional. There is a task. There’s a child that needs to do the task. This needs to be done before we get to this place timeline.
00:45:25:29 – 00:45:54:20
Rockford Wright, MD
So I have to reevaluate how we get to that end goal. And then I evaluate in that equation, is the emotion a positive contributor to what I’m actually wanting? And usually if it’s anger, frustration it is not a positive contributor to what I actually want. But if it’s just a quick response, emotional response, it’s I am angry he didn’t do what I said but usually it’s much more complicated.
00:45:54:20 – 00:45:58:06
Rockford Wright, MD
It’s more nuanced than that. But we have to take the time to evaluate that.
00:46:00:09 – 00:46:18:10
Brad Singletary
How in the world do you do that, that slowing that down? I mean, that’s just that’s brilliant. That’s exactly what I, I spend lots and lots of time with people trying to help them do that. And it and they just usually fail. And, and they, they’re doing this the day after the event happened or, you know, 7 hours after the fight occurred.
00:46:18:17 – 00:46:38:08
Brad Singletary
And then they’re just shortening that time. And then if they do this long enough, they can catch themselves in the middle of the in the middle of the argument, say, wait, hold on, stop. And then and then they continue to practice that. And then they can go into it. And they’re just kind of imperturbable because they’ve been working that that rational interpretation of things for so long.
00:46:38:08 – 00:46:50:15
Brad Singletary
But for you you have any tricks? I mean, how do you do you do you say anything vocally like, hold on, boys, just a minute. Let me sort this out. How do you slow yourself down OK.
00:46:51:12 – 00:47:12:11
Rockford Wright, MD
So I try. I think that’s a first step. I don’t know that everyone tries. I think some people ride that wave of emotion. So if I’m thinking about it when I’m not upset, maybe this helps me to try the next time I get upset with my son. I’m going to pause. And before I say anything, he’s just disobeyed me.
00:47:12:23 – 00:47:36:09
Rockford Wright, MD
Before I say anything, before I do anything. As I start to feel that frustration before I respond, I’m going to plan my response. I’m going to think about it. Maybe I’m going to give myself two options. Come up with two options before you respond. Maybe that’s one way. Again, it comes a little bit easier for me because I’m able to step back, but I’m also doing it purposely.
00:47:36:09 – 00:48:02:01
Rockford Wright, MD
I’m trying. I know I want to because it happens over and over again. A lot of these interactions that we struggle with, like they happen over and over again. So the next time, as soon as I start to feel this before I respond, before my reaction before the behavior, let’s come up with at least two options. And that at least forces us to pause for a minute, come up with two options and maybe in coming for those two options, we we try and navigate the equation of that situation.
00:48:02:01 – 00:48:21:19
Brad Singletary
Well, yeah. And just to realize that there’s more than one possibility that gives you some power right there, because you recognize that there’s you don’t just have to do what your feelings dictate. The feelings aren’t facts for sure. We talked about fact in opinion before and the feeling. That’s the definition of subjectivity. So is what you feel.
00:48:22:06 – 00:48:39:26
Rockford Wright, MD
So can I also say one other thing about words? Because a lot of times what people get really upset about or what triggers them are words, right? The way that people speak to them. And there’s this, you know, this age old thing that sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. And so that was kind of the mantra for a while.
00:48:39:26 – 00:48:59:28
Rockford Wright, MD
And then the pendulum has clearly swung clearly swung away from that. And I think while that hold words will never hurt me, thing isn’t fair. I don’t think that the pendulum swinging totally away from that is fair either, because while words can hurt, the truth is we have much more control of their influence on us directly than sticks and stones.
00:48:59:28 – 00:49:35:02
Rockford Wright, MD
So, like, if I fall fall out of a tree and my arm hits a branch, I don’t really have control whether my bone breaks or not. Right? I can’t mentally think or pause and ponder, do I want this bone to break or not? Like we physically we don’t have the same kind of control, right? So clearly there is a difference in terms of our ability to influence the effect of physical harm versus our ability to affect our response to to verbal harm.
00:49:35:05 – 00:50:02:18
Rockford Wright, MD
Right. So emotions are more complicated. They’re subjective, therefore they are influential. We can’t influence our response to two words we can’t have some control over our emotions. So an example of this are our kids have tried to say, I hate you to me and my wife on a rare occasion right nine and 12 year old. And so in terms of their trying to they have an intent to cause emotional pain.
00:50:03:00 – 00:50:22:08
Rockford Wright, MD
That’s that’s why they say that right that’s their biggest verbal weapon that a kid can comprehend. But it also doesn’t really offend or bother me that much. And here’s why. So I understand that this kid is frustrated oftentimes he’s tired. He’s not getting what he wants from a parent that has so much control over his life. And in their mind, they’re being attacked.
00:50:22:19 – 00:50:42:19
Rockford Wright, MD
So they attack back with their primitive verbal weapon. And so they say, I hate you. But the thing is, I know it’s not true. Mm hmm. So my son, Logan, he says that sometimes he loves his mom more than anything on this earth, but he’ll get into these modes where he’s he’s stubborn, he’s not getting what he’s wanting.
00:50:42:19 – 00:51:02:25
Rockford Wright, MD
And even this this kid who absolutely without question, will say to us, I love Mom more than you, Dad, and I love Mom more than any. And he does. And to to just snuggle with his mom is like his fight. He loves his mom so much. And this kid has even said to his mom, I hate you. So the reason he’s doing is not because he hates her.
00:51:03:10 – 00:51:09:26
Rockford Wright, MD
He loves her more. Than anything. It’s the tool that he’s using in that in that moment to influence the situation.
00:51:10:22 – 00:51:19:29
Mike Olsen
And I would even say that before they’re trying to influence the situation, it’s the only way they know how to express what they’re feeling.
00:51:20:28 – 00:51:25:29
Rockford Wright, MD
Yeah. So it’s an image. I said a primitive tool because it is immature.
00:51:25:29 – 00:51:27:02
Brad Singletary
Yeah. It’s a power play.
00:51:27:07 – 00:51:40:01
Rockford Wright, MD
But then if I recognize it for for what it is that it’s an immature, primitive tool, well, I’m not going to get offended because he’s using this tool. I’m just going to have to work with it.
00:51:40:01 – 00:51:43:04
Brad Singletary
Well, let me show you. And then you’re and then you escalate the problem.
00:51:43:04 – 00:52:01:16
Mike Olsen
Exactly. If you if you have a child who has an ice cream and they’re kind of just at the walking stage, the ice cream falls off the cone, hits the ground, the immediate thing that you can I don’t even have to say this. You’re probably already thinking they start smacking you and hitting you with their fist. Are they mad at you?
00:52:01:18 – 00:52:26:10
Mike Olsen
No, they’re expressing I just lost my ice cream and I’m mad. And this is the only way I know how to express it. I think it’s a similar thing. And so I don’t think it’s depending on the age now as people mature, I think an adult says things that are hurtful because they’re trying to manipulate control or to influence something but when they’re really young, it’s just an expression of how they’re feeling.
00:52:26:17 – 00:52:39:18
Mike Olsen
And maybe that’s even somewhere when they’re older, they’re just expressing maybe it’s poorly, obviously, but they’re just expressing a feeling inside. That’s a frustration that is coming out because they don’t they haven’t learned differently.
00:52:39:28 – 00:53:05:07
Brad Singletary
What you just described. Both of you guys about that is what a discerning man does. You read between the lines. The the the manifested information is, I hate my mom or I hate you. Let me hit you. But you recognize that there’s more than meets the eye with that. There’s more to the story. This is a child is a child is upset.
00:53:05:07 – 00:53:24:21
Brad Singletary
They have a limited vocabulary. Of course, this isn’t. And that that to me encapsulates this whole topic of what discernment is. It’s knowing what things mean and not not reacting and just it’s about the pause and ponder and slowing your response down. Love this stuff. You guys are great.
00:53:25:06 – 00:53:49:14
Mike Olsen
I loved what you said, Rocky, earlier. You said you have to plan a couple of responses. So I think when you go into certain situations, if you can be slow enough and intentional enough, you almost know with an interaction and the wife and the shopping thing. Now, the second you’re asked the question, would you go shopping with me?
00:53:50:20 – 00:54:16:25
Mike Olsen
It in this year, it’s a certain set of sequences of here’s the conversation that I’m going to have to have. Here’s the way I interpreted it incorrectly before and it starts off with this chain reaction. Now, you know how to slow down to have a conversation in order to allow a certain set of expectations on both sides to be accepted and a certain set of results.
00:54:16:25 – 00:54:35:27
Mike Olsen
And that whole set of interactions just is kind of the beauty of life is so that you can learn how to associate with other people that are different, even if it’s a spouse, so that you can have an interaction that could be different, that can still have a pleasant outcome, even if it’s what you didn’t want.
00:54:37:03 – 00:54:48:16
Rockford Wright, MD
So I’ve seen that with with my own wife. Like sometimes we disagree, right? And she’ll get frustrated with me and she’ll express her frustrations. And sometimes she’ll even like try and take a jab at me and verbally or something.
00:54:49:10 – 00:54:50:00
Brad Singletary
Or something.
00:54:50:21 – 00:54:54:01
Rockford Wright, MD
Yeah. It was a jab physically. No, see.
00:54:54:10 – 00:54:59:17
Mike Olsen
I’ve had that and my wife hit me and I’m like, Wait a second. What did that just mean?
00:55:00:19 – 00:55:21:22
Rockford Wright, MD
Yeah. No, she doesn’t she doesn’t abuse me physically. I should clarify so but I don’t take that at face value. Luckily, I have a relationship where I know that she loves me. This is an expression of something else. So as she’s expressing this to me, I am actually thinking, why is she feeling like this? Why is she saying this?
00:55:22:01 – 00:55:42:29
Rockford Wright, MD
And I’m trying to figure it out now in that if I if I do get to the point pretty quickly, like she didn’t like that I was doing something on my phone or something like that, I wasn’t giving her enough attention. If, if I feel like, well, I had to do this, this is a work thing, maybe I’ll try and avoid it later.
00:55:43:08 – 00:56:07:19
Rockford Wright, MD
But in that moment, I felt justified. Maybe I made a mistake. I’ll try and be better I analyze it more that way. And what she is giving me is just data that I’ll input into my decisions about behavior in the future. But I don’t respond in an emotional way. And sometimes she hates that because she sees that she feels like he’s not getting upset, even though I’m upset at him.
00:56:07:19 – 00:56:23:26
Rockford Wright, MD
He must not care. And so sometimes we’ve had to have talks that it’s not that I don’t care. It’s this I’m not going to get worked up emotionally over this. I hear what you’re saying. I appreciate your feedback. You wish I wasn’t on my phone at this time. I will try and do better next time and not do it later.
00:56:24:16 – 00:56:36:11
Rockford Wright, MD
And for me, I have accepted the information that you’ve just given me and I will use it in the future. So again, it’s a little bit cold and calculating, but that’s one way that I approach it.
00:56:36:18 – 00:56:39:28
Mike Olsen
And why is it why do you approach it that way?
00:56:41:07 – 00:57:07:03
Rockford Wright, MD
Why? One part I think that it is in part how I’m programed or how my mind works, but for me it is much more beneficial and functional. So if if I get worked up, then ultimately things escalate and the ultimate outcome is worse than if I just absorb the information she’s given me. Try and interpret it, clarify and I do this.
00:57:07:03 – 00:57:24:22
Rockford Wright, MD
I see that you’re upset. Why exactly are you upset? Let’s clarify that. So I understand and then I input it into, you know, the decisions and I try and do better going forward. So I find that life is better, easier. I don’t get worked up. I don’t have the same emotional stress that I would if I were driven by emotion.
00:57:24:22 – 00:57:41:20
Mike Olsen
OK, so what I what I hear on that is, one, you’re trying to achieve a desired outcome by that, by the logical you’re also trying to avoid an unpleasant emotional outcome. So it’s kind of dual. Yeah.
00:57:41:25 – 00:57:47:21
Rockford Wright, MD
OK, yeah. And mutually beneficial. OK, because if this does escalate that this is not good, it’s.
00:57:47:21 – 00:57:48:10
Mike Olsen
Going to be bad.
00:57:48:16 – 00:58:06:02
Rockford Wright, MD
So this happens at work too. So as an example, we had some new work that we had to take on. We work at night sometimes and we are absorbing another group that had some responsibilities for covering stuff at night. And so we had this discussion about who is going to be responsible for this night work. And no one loves working through the middle of the night, right?
00:58:06:02 – 00:58:23:10
Rockford Wright, MD
So we had this text chain going on and none of us really wanted to do it, and we’re trying to figure out how to divvy it up. And I jokingly say it’s probably a mistake because you probably shouldn’t joke in a text. But I jokingly said, Oh, this guy should do he just she should take all the calls every night.
00:58:23:20 – 00:58:39:22
Rockford Wright, MD
And I jokingly said, that and most of us who are on this text chain know that we’re just we’re very sarcastic. And but this guy happened to be there who is not normally on this text chain. And so the next time I saw him at work, he was so upset and he laid into me and he was swearing at me and yelling at me.
00:58:40:03 – 00:59:01:19
Rockford Wright, MD
And luckily, in a similar way, I could take that information that he’s given me. He’s clearly upset. There must be a reason why is he upset? And rather than yell back because he was not justified, in swearing at me in a hallway of a hospital. Right. He was not. But what I recognized was there must have been some miscommunication.
00:59:01:19 – 00:59:24:22
Rockford Wright, MD
I need to understand better about what he’s thinking. So I my response to him when he’s yelling and swearing at me was very calmly, well, we must have a miscommunication. Let’s work through this and you know that that helped calm things much more quickly. So his emotional outburst, I didn’t see as I didn’t take it as a personal attack or offense, I was like this is information that he’s giving me.
00:59:24:22 – 00:59:27:18
Rockford Wright, MD
He’s upset. Clearly, I need to understand the why behind it.
00:59:28:15 – 00:59:39:27
Mike Olsen
That was that. Right there is genius because you didn’t say you must be mis communicating. There must be some kind of communication. Let’s see where it is. And it made it non-personal.
00:59:40:16 – 01:00:03:26
Rockford Wright, MD
Yeah. Or also number maybe a little bit non personal, but also that we were mutually responsible, that I wasn’t attacking him alone. I was saying we need to do better we need to work through this. We’re a team on this, like this conversation, whatever it is or whatever the situation. So it was more team forming than divisive nice.
01:00:04:03 – 01:00:39:08
Brad Singletary
I love it. Any other thoughts on interpreting things, understanding the meaning of things? Because if we react based on what we think things mean, since you were doing the formulas earlier, the I think of Viktor Frankl, who talked about suffering and he said suffering doesn’t create despair. Despair comes from suffering without meaning. And so his little formula is D equals X minus M, despair equals suffering minus meaning without meaning.
01:00:39:08 – 01:01:02:19
Brad Singletary
And so we there has to be we have to accurately understand the meaning of things in order for us to not get twisted up emotionally. And I think a discerning man is able to do that. Any final thoughts on that topic about interpreting things, understanding what they mean, slowing that process down, not jumping the gun.
01:01:03:16 – 01:01:24:23
Rockford Wright, MD
And maybe just a few last things. One of those is, as you mentioned in a communication earlier, that it’s not all about you. Right? And in a lot of these interactions that we’re describing, it is multiple people. It’s not a one sided thing, expectations of others, communication. It’s not a it’s not a 11 way street. Right. It’s not all about us.
01:01:25:06 – 01:01:49:12
Rockford Wright, MD
Another thing I would say is that we need to be self-reflective about our own insecurities. We need to be able to take time to recognize our insecurities, what they are and how they influence the way that we interpret things. So we have to be self-reflective and then honest about our insecurities. And then we need to avoid projecting our paradigm onto other people.
01:01:50:29 – 01:02:04:08
Rockford Wright, MD
And then kind of like I’ve mentioned before, that emotions are only a part of the input of information of our of our calculations. They shouldn’t be the only thing that we calculate right? There’s something behind the emotions.
01:02:04:25 – 01:02:36:25
Mike Olsen
The thing that I liked about what Rocky said was he’s constantly learning. It would mean that means constantly one being observing to being willing to ask the question whether it’s about the topic you’re learning or whether it’s about the person you’re communicating with. I want to understand you. If we’re doing that more or even slightly more than, hey, please understand me, I think we get a lot further along.
01:02:36:25 – 01:02:57:05
Mike Olsen
We understand we are able to have an expectation that’s that the other person is willing to meet or give us that expectation. When you’re constantly looking to tell someone what they should do or how they should be, or how we should expect things from them, that’s a more painful way to to come at it than it is from.
01:02:57:16 – 01:03:19:28
Mike Olsen
Let me understand if I can expect this from you. Is this what I’m understanding? Let’s work on this together. There might be a miscommunication here. Let me ask you a question and let me listen to you and then once we ask that question, their response, as we have continued communication with these people, we can know whether we can trust that response or not.
01:03:20:09 – 01:03:42:27
Mike Olsen
Because of how it was previously. We might have to be open to someone setting us up for an incorrect expected patient. Yes, you can expect this from me. And then we live through that experience to say, yeah, they lived up to that because they said they were going to do this and they actually followed through versus they said they were going to do this.
01:03:42:27 – 01:04:08:12
Mike Olsen
And they repeatedly didn’t follow up and follow through with their own admission, their own owning of that expectation. And I think that if we just if we’re more willing to listen and to understand than we are wanting to be understood, it’s hard because as humans, we we feel valued when when we’re when we’re when we feel understood and we want to tell that person.
01:04:08:12 – 01:04:12:23
Mike Olsen
But if we can just do a little bit more of seeking to understand.
01:04:13:12 – 01:04:13:20
Rockford Wright, MD
You.
01:04:13:20 – 01:04:14:27
Mike Olsen
Just a little better. Yeah.
01:04:14:29 – 01:04:35:00
Brad Singletary
Just be curious. You can even play dumb. One of the one of the most brilliant therapists that ever learned from she. And I think her husband developed an entire model of therapy. And she, I believe, was Japanese, which had a very thick accent and she talked about just playing dumb and just not knowing like, wait out, help me understand here.
01:04:35:07 – 01:04:56:07
Brad Singletary
And that was one of her best tools to to kind of play dumb and act like it was her a language barrier as she was trying to understand her her clients. And so asking, am I understanding this right? Is this where you’re coming from? Am I instead of assuming that you even have the right information? So asking that’s one of those I think that’s one of the seven habits, right?
01:04:56:07 – 01:05:07:18
Brad Singletary
Stephen Covey. First to understand then to be understood. So that’s I love our the list that we compiled there about how to interpret things appropriately.
01:05:08:02 – 01:05:36:28
Rockford Wright, MD
And I think I’ll just add, I’ve thought a lot about behavior. And are certain behaviors rational or irrational? Are humans rational or irrational? And again, we can’t simplify super complex things into a simple sentence. Humans are irrational. But I because I’ve thought about it a fair amount, I do believe that if we understand the incentives that other people perceive, their behaviors will seem much more rational.
01:05:37:11 – 01:05:48:14
Rockford Wright, MD
The problem is sometimes discovering what their incentives are. So we do have to make a conscious effort to learn and understand what their perceived incentive incentives are.
01:05:49:04 – 01:06:22:10
Brad Singletary
That that’s a good segue into our next segment here, our next section, which is about cause and effect. I believe that a man who’s living in Alpha Energy, he’s a discerning man. He understands cause and effect. There’s a reason for things. Life is based on law. You put two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen together, and you get water every time you put that at 32 degrees for a certain amount of time, and you’re going to have ice, you put it at 212 degrees if I don’t know if I have those.
01:06:22:10 – 01:06:48:16
Brad Singletary
Right, but it’s going to be boiling pretty much every time so life is based on lot of things. There is there is a cause to every effect in and an effect to every cause. Let’s talk about that. How can we see better cause and effect something’s going on. We don’t like we don’t like how things are happening in our relations ships and our job.
01:06:48:28 – 01:06:58:01
Brad Singletary
We don’t like the way we’re being treated. There was talk earlier about things we can control and things we can’t. What do we do about cause and effect?
01:06:59:25 – 01:07:39:11
Rockford Wright, MD
So I know. Go ahead. I don’t have a whole lot more to say here because I think this parlays into a lot of the other things that we have talked about. Now, I will say that that equation of H2O two hydrogens when oxygen equals water is is it’s true and invalid. It’s also very simple. And the difficulty we have is that the equations that we’re working with in terms of human interaction or our satisfaction we mentioned that that when equation satisfaction equals experience minus expectation, but a lot of the social interactions that we have are very complex.
01:07:40:01 – 01:08:03:12
Rockford Wright, MD
And so the components of the equation, what you, you know, dove down into the depths of them are a little more complex and sometimes figuring out what they are. I mentioned the incentives that people have, that they’re perceived incentives. Right. It takes time and energy to discover those. And it’s not in every science book H2O. It’s not usually even published.
01:08:04:07 – 01:08:10:20
Rockford Wright, MD
And so it takes investment in relationship to discover what the components of their particular equation are.
01:08:11:16 – 01:08:22:00
Brad Singletary
Kit, can I bug you to talk about what do you mean by incentives? Just the person’s goal? What is their goal directed like focus? Their incentive is.
01:08:22:11 – 01:08:56:21
Rockford Wright, MD
I believe that we are incredibly incentive directed whether we recognize the incentive or not. We follow incentives, like whether it is an emotional feeling that is positive and whether it’s a desire to avoid a negative emotion, whether it is the feedback from performance from someone else, whether it is compensation of pay for work done. I think almost every decision we make, we could track to an incentive.
01:08:57:00 – 01:09:31:05
Rockford Wright, MD
We’re doing this for a reason, and sometimes they’re subconscious. We don’t think about them, but I think that we are incredibly incentive driven so understanding what someone’s incentives are is important. So I’ll give an example and we can’t project again, like I mentioned, or we can’t project our own paradigm on someone else. So let me tell you about when I was a missionary in Honduras and when our church sends out missionaries, we work in companion ships or teams of two typically, and there’s a lot of reason for that.
01:09:31:05 – 01:10:01:25
Rockford Wright, MD
So I was sent to to Honduras with marginal competency and Spanish, and I was paired up with a Nicaraguan native Spanish speaker was learning Spanish a little bit, but still learning and he was great. And then I got a second companion also from Nicaragua, and this guy was so mean to me and he would I remember distinctly one time we’re walking down the street and he was just mocking me about my Spanish and just putting me down.
01:10:02:19 – 01:10:20:29
Rockford Wright, MD
And here we are in this environment where we are committed. I felt committed to do good, to help other people, to uplift other people. We’re trying to, you know, really just do good and that’s the focus. And in the context of commitment to do good, my partner in this.
01:10:20:29 – 01:10:22:25
Brad Singletary
Person is positive about your Spanish.
01:10:22:25 – 01:10:54:17
Rockford Wright, MD
You just beat me down. And I’m like, and I hated him. I hated him. And I was like, I don’t know why you’re treating me this way, but being with you is awful. I don’t like you, and you’re treating me unfairly. And I really didn’t try and get to know him because I like you’re not worth it. So that pairing lasted six weeks and it was the most painful six weeks of the two years and months later, I’m somewhere else and I hear about this guy from Nicaragua.
01:10:55:16 – 01:11:28:00
Rockford Wright, MD
He ran away and disappeared, was found later in Nicaragua. I hitchhiked home, and then I find out that he had been going through terrible personal things. His family was falling apart he felt no support. He was going through emotional struggles and in his suffering, what he was trying to do was in an immature way, lift himself up by pushing me down.
01:11:28:00 – 01:11:45:03
Rockford Wright, MD
And we see that a lot with bullying, with all that kind of stuff. A lot of people push other people down to theoretically lift themselves up. And it’s counterproductive. We know it doesn’t work, but people still do it. So in that time, I didn’t take the time to learn why he was treating me the way he was treating me.
01:11:46:04 – 01:11:49:07
Rockford Wright, MD
I just didn’t there was.
01:11:49:07 – 01:11:53:27
Mike Olsen
You didn’t have the experience at that point in your life to understand that’s what was going on, correct?
01:11:54:17 – 01:12:25:15
Rockford Wright, MD
I didn’t think it was an option yet, so I was I didn’t know and maybe I so now because of that, I would be much more inclined if someone were to be treating me poorly, I would get to the why and or try to get to the why. Now, in my defense, maybe my Spanish wasn’t good enough at that time to have the kind of conversation that we would need to pull that out of someone so maybe I was a little handicapped in that process, but the moral is that the yet people are going through things.
01:12:25:24 – 01:12:49:24
Rockford Wright, MD
And his incentive which I didn’t realize was I put him down that that lifts me up. And that was kind of driving him because he felt so beaten up by his own situation. So if I had been able to or could I should have investigated more his incentives the why behind it. And that could have helped us probably work through some things.
01:12:49:24 – 01:12:58:24
Rockford Wright, MD
And I actually maybe have been able to help him a little bit. Now, I can’t you can’t force help on someone, but I would’ve had a lot better chance.
01:12:59:24 – 01:13:21:19
Brad Singletary
So it’s like you attributed what he’s doing to his character, and maybe it did represent something about his character. But you you assigned some meaning to what he was doing, that he was just a jerk. He was just mean to you. He was not caring. He wasn’t committed to the mission. And the goals of that instead of understanding that there was some other cause.
01:13:22:15 – 01:13:25:17
Brad Singletary
So some other stuff beneath the surface that you didn’t know about.
01:13:25:25 – 01:13:49:16
Rockford Wright, MD
Yeah. My paradigm was he’s mean to me. He’s a jerk. So we’re going to push that on him or the way I’m feel, I’m feeling attacked. So he’s the attacker. Right? I’m the victim. He’s the victimizer. That’s the way it is. So my paradigm, my experience I imposed on him rather than investigating what he was actually going through his incentives, his reasons for doing this.
01:13:49:24 – 01:13:51:05
Rockford Wright, MD
Yeah. Well.
01:13:52:21 – 01:14:11:04
Brad Singletary
I often teach people what I call the rule of thumb which is whatever you think the reason is, you’re trying to figure out the cause of something. Put it on your thumb. He’s a jerk. Maybe that’s the reason he’s maybe just really a jerk. But give give me four other reasons why that could be the case. He has an illness.
01:14:11:04 – 01:14:25:09
Brad Singletary
It is untreated. He’s uncomfortable. He’s you know, his home sick. He’s got family drama. You know, think of give me four other reasons. In addition to the one you believe is the is the thing that you’ve assigned as as the cause.
01:14:26:27 – 01:14:29:02
Rockford Wright, MD
I wish I would have had that rule of thumb when I was there.
01:14:29:06 – 01:14:46:20
Brad Singletary
Yeah. I mean, because sometimes it is it you know, sometimes she cheated on you because you’re ugly. Sometimes she you know, this thing happens because you’re no good at your job. And the reason you get fired is. Yeah, because you sucked. But sometimes it’s because the company has problems or some other thing you don’t know about. There’s a.
01:14:47:18 – 01:14:48:24
Rockford Wright, MD
You’re just I.
01:14:49:02 – 01:14:50:03
Brad Singletary
Never really know.
01:14:50:03 – 01:15:21:12
Mike Olsen
I think that’s one of the benefits of learning service as early as you possibly can, is because when you’re serving or when you’re attempting to serve others, you are as a byproduct getting to understand true human nature. My personal belief is that all humans have a nature. We all have certain things that are natural to us, and we all have things that we work on.
01:15:21:23 – 01:15:55:21
Mike Olsen
But I think that all humans, human nature is universal. It’s just a matter of understanding where human is in that pattern, in that process, in that path. But I do believe that, you know, and I don’t think that it’s realistic to expect a certain person at a certain age to understand true human nature. But I do believe that humans, based on things that are natural to them and their environs, and meant that they have tuned in to human nature at certain points earlier and that they can learn to discern.
01:15:55:21 – 01:16:20:22
Mike Olsen
Sometimes they don’t even know that they do it. I think that we we can see a youth that is extremely in touch and sensitive to the feelings and needs of others. And is they’re capable of pausing. And this intentionality that Rocky was talking about, they’re capable of being intentionally pausing to listen to another some I there’s just there’s something about it.
01:16:21:09 – 01:16:49:22
Mike Olsen
When you watch a human that can do that at an early age and you can observe that it’s it’s really cool, just as cool as it is for a dude to watch somebody throw a 90 mile an hour fastball or throw a hundred yard pass. I think it’s just as cool to me to be able to watch a human early in their stage of life, be able to be in touch with another human’s feelings and be able to interact with them at a much more mature level than maybe others around them.
01:16:49:22 – 01:16:51:00
Mike Olsen
It’s, it’s cool to watch.
01:16:51:06 – 01:17:16:11
Brad Singletary
Yeah. The thoughts on cause and effect just in general as a maybe that’s self-explanatory. And we’ve given a couple of examples there. Did you have anything else on that? Rocky, I want to wrap this up with basically just a message that we’ve repeated hopefully in every one of our messages, and that is that we need men, we need a tribe of mentors, we need to seek wisdom from others.
01:17:16:11 – 01:17:42:16
Brad Singletary
That’s kind of what I’m doing personally by trying to do this podcast. Every couple of weeks I sit together, sit down with some really smart dudes. As you can see, here, Rocky Ride is just a genius level and a very wise man. So it’s helpful for me to have these conversations. Also for the listeners, they’re kind of by proxy, you know, they kind of have these and it’s not a live conversation for them, but they’re gaining wisdom from others.
01:17:43:13 – 01:17:57:27
Brad Singletary
What about the role of mentors in your life having other men around? You talked about 17 years of training to do your medical work. How how does that work for you? Who are, who is, who are your advisors?
01:17:58:17 – 01:18:31:14
Rockford Wright, MD
So in terms of success and in terms of managing expectations and communicating, I think we’d be remiss if we don’t talk about failure because failure is inevitable. Some failure, not failure and everything, but some failure is inevitable. And I generally have spoken in pretty positive ways, but I, I would be remiss again if I don’t mention that I have failed a lot and I have learned a lot through failure, and I think a lot of us can.
01:18:32:09 – 01:19:01:10
Rockford Wright, MD
And so when we’re we’re dealing with expectations, when we’re dealing with falling short personally, we can beat ourselves up. It can be discouraging. But I think it’s important to learn to use failure as a an educational tool experience, that even the process of failing when we when you were able to use it as a springboard can be a mentoring experience or a teaching experience.
01:19:01:10 – 01:19:19:21
Rockford Wright, MD
So I’ll just mention a couple of things so again, I have failed a fair amount. And I know Mike I appreciate and and respect him. And one of the reasons I respect him or or admire him is he played baseball and he played baseball in college. And not only he played baseball in college, but he has two fingers on his left hand.
01:19:19:21 – 01:19:42:12
Rockford Wright, MD
And so I played baseball growing up. And I maybe wasn’t I definitely wasn’t as committed as I could have been. But then right around in high school, I really got more committed. And and, you know, I was on the freshman team with the team and then it was kind of all in. But I got cut from the varsity team and that’s kind of crushing for a teenager who is at that point has had had committed so much.
01:19:42:12 – 01:19:56:28
Rockford Wright, MD
Right. And maybe there was some politics in it. And this other guy and the other guy’s dad donated more money. Maybe that was it. Maybe I just didn’t maybe I wasn’t good enough. I don’t know. But that’s that’s hard, right? So I had to learn, even as a teenager, what I do with this. This is a big deal to me at the time.
01:19:57:08 – 01:20:25:13
Rockford Wright, MD
And I ended up saying, OK, so it’s not going to be baseball for me sometimes the story as you recommit. Right. But in this case, it was redirect. And so I end up going into to student government stuff and thrived in student government and made friends and had experiences and rather than let that failure beat me down, I used it as a springboard into something else with my wife.
01:20:25:13 – 01:20:35:06
Rockford Wright, MD
So I had decided that I liked her and I wanted to go out with her. And so I asked her out and she said no. And so then I asked her out again.
01:20:35:13 – 01:20:37:09
Mike Olsen
This is your wife you’re currently married to, right?
01:20:37:13 – 01:21:00:13
Rockford Wright, MD
Yeah. So I guess spoiler alert, we got married, but yeah, it was I’m not alone. I’m not unique in that it took me a couple of tries to get that one going. And so I got rejected from her. I failed with that. But again, another one that’s even more was harder at the time was my desire to become a physician.
01:21:00:20 – 01:21:24:12
Rockford Wright, MD
So I didn’t have a great mentor through college, in part because I transferred Midway and we had a pre-med department, and there were so many of us that wanted to do medicine and they basically said, Well, whatever, these are the requirements, do your best. And so I didn’t really have a mentor, so I tried to wing it, and I’ve done that a lot in my life.
01:21:24:12 – 01:21:54:06
Rockford Wright, MD
And sometimes it works and sometimes it makes it harder for me. So this probably does parlay into the mentorship conversation because in this instance, I didn’t have a mentor and I tried to wing it and I got all the requirements for medical school. I took the MCAT, that’s the test for for entrance, and I got a decent score average for, for not only for those that take it, but average for those accepted with me just kind of studying on my own from some books.
01:21:54:15 – 01:22:25:17
Rockford Wright, MD
And then I applied, I ended up getting waitlisted and then ultimately last minute never got a spot and then I was delayed on the next year. It’s a year long process almost for application. And so then I’m delayed on the next years so that that not getting in the first time cost me two years. And so then I had to I quickly applied and then got rejected a second time because I hadn’t been able to to improve the application a ton and so I got rejected from medical school twice.
01:22:26:03 – 01:22:48:18
Rockford Wright, MD
Wow. And in part because I didn’t have a mentor to kind of guide me and explain to me some of the things and kind of the process and how it how it works. I was kind of going about it on my own. And so then through that failure, I had to really I mean, this it’s two years and feels like a lifetime.
01:22:48:18 – 01:23:08:11
Rockford Wright, MD
I’ve been rejected twice. Am I even good enough for this? You start questioning yourself, right? And and I was fighting an uphill battle. I’m a white male and statistically I have to do I had to do better than average for acceptance was not good enough for me. I had to be much better than average for acceptance, not even average of those applying.
01:23:09:05 – 01:23:27:08
Rockford Wright, MD
I had to be better than average because of the demographic that they were seeking. It was not me. So but I didn’t really realize that going into it. No one really explain that to me. So I had this this moment where I was like, OK, if I really want to do this, I got to commit. I got to do it.
01:23:27:08 – 01:23:51:23
Rockford Wright, MD
I got to go all in and I’m going to redo some things and I took a proprietary class for that MCAT, and I ended up with the extra support, with the extra teaching and scoring in the 98th percentile. Wow, they need the 99th percentile and then was able to get accepted to multiple medical schools with without improvement. I wish I would have known how important that test.
01:23:51:23 – 01:23:54:24
Rockford Wright, MD
Like I knew it was important, but I didn’t realize that I had to be that good.
01:23:57:06 – 01:24:19:25
Rockford Wright, MD
With the renewed commitment I was validated in, at least on that one test for whatever that’s worth, which is not not all encompassing in terms of its evaluation capacity, meaning it doesn’t tell you everything about how good someone is. But in that objective measure, I was nearly the best of the best or close to right. 98, 99th percentile.
01:24:20:18 – 01:24:27:18
Rockford Wright, MD
So and then things my career ended up proceeding from there. So for me, spoiler alert.
01:24:27:22 – 01:24:28:19
Brad Singletary
Medical doctor.
01:24:29:00 – 01:25:06:02
Rockford Wright, MD
Yeah. And so things, things have generally speaking worked out right. But that failure was very formative for me in terms at that time it wasn’t redirect. This was recommit. Right. But it also has affected me a lot in terms of humility, in terms of my approach to other people, in terms of lots of things, the way I interact with people I think that that influenced so failure and how you deal with it can be incredibly important and it will happen to everyone sure.
01:25:06:20 – 01:25:17:22
Rockford Wright, MD
So that then it’s a teacher and as a mentor in and of itself, if we let it if we let it be something that it will either positively redirect or allow us to recommit.
01:25:18:02 – 01:25:25:21
Mike Olsen
So was there someone along the way that helped you understand that or was it just through the school of hard knocks that helped you learn that.
01:25:25:27 – 01:25:27:08
Rockford Wright, MD
That was a school of hard knocks.
01:25:27:12 – 01:25:29:03
Brad Singletary
So failure was the mentor.
01:25:29:04 – 01:25:35:14
Rockford Wright, MD
Failure and and my interpretation or use of it. So we can’t say that it’s a passive process.
01:25:35:21 – 01:25:36:29
Brad Singletary
It just happens. And then you learn.
01:25:37:00 – 01:26:01:08
Rockford Wright, MD
Yeah, it’s not that way, right? Every failure creates every failure creates a fork in the road. And sometimes it’s too. Yeah, like a fork, a decision between A and B and sometimes it’s like, you know, branches into five or ten different roads. But failure is, is a decision point, right? And it’s a definitive decision point. It in it’s of itself does not teach you unless you let it.
01:26:02:07 – 01:26:21:08
Mike Olsen
So there are some people that will will admit they learn from either the teaching or the experience of others. Would you say you are one that learns from a mentor or would you say that you are one who learns from your experiences? Or is there been a time when either one of those have have been applicable?
01:26:21:14 – 01:26:44:23
Rockford Wright, MD
Yeah, so my dad told me that a smart person learns from their own mistakes and a wise person learns from other people’s mistakes. And so my dad would probably describe himself as someone that’s had to rely on his smarts, like his own mistakes. He would probably admit this, right? A fair amount in his life. But that’s I don’t know if he even remembers telling me this but man, it stuck with me.
01:26:45:03 – 01:27:05:11
Rockford Wright, MD
And so there are definitely times in my life where I’ve had to learn from my own mistakes. But then there have been times where I’ve tried to learn from others. And, you know, even my dad, he’s he’s taught me so much through his own struggles, and he’s helped me to be better and to avoid struggles and to handle my own.
01:27:05:20 – 01:27:28:07
Rockford Wright, MD
So even even in his struggles, he has been a mentor to me but I haven’t I don’t have a single role model. I will mention two of my grandpa’s, I guess. OK, so both my grandfather one, my grandfather, he was born on a farm and you just want to get off that farm as soon as he could. I was like, go on, get off the farm.
01:27:28:07 – 01:27:52:14
Rockford Wright, MD
Right. And then World War Two broke out. Oh, so then he became a fighter pilot in World War Two. He went on to do good things for the allies there. He went on after that to help establish the Utah National Guard and air sorry, Utah Air National Guard. And they ended up naming the base after him. He was also a lawyer and did tons of great things.
01:27:52:23 – 01:28:19:17
Rockford Wright, MD
So he he was given leadership roles in our church in New York and Washington, D.C. I mean, he he did some amazing things. And he’s he’s like an American hero to us. It was. And according to his funeral, there were tons of people there. Apparently, he’s a hero. To a lot of people, too. He’s since passed away. But the stories that he would tell were about people.
01:28:20:10 – 01:28:48:06
Rockford Wright, MD
It was about interaction with people, the people that mattered to him and why they mattered to him. And this is him in his nineties as we’re sitting down and he’s like, you know, getting sicker and he’s telling me about people. It’s about people. And so here’s this guy that has done amazing things. And what he cares about in his last years is people and the relationships that he had that was incredibly impressive to me and helped me prioritize people and relationships.
01:28:48:06 – 01:29:14:18
Rockford Wright, MD
Relationships matter. And my other grandpa he was he was the son of a milkman and he ended up going to law school and then became a lawyer and then a politician and then a real estate developer and was like super successful. And his greatest joy was his family and all these resources that he had acquired. He used to be the relationship in his family.
01:29:15:03 – 01:29:51:00
Rockford Wright, MD
And so he taught me that family relationships matter and so I appreciate both of them. And I mentioned grandpas because it’s the relationship feeds the credibility, the relationship feeds the the impact of what they can mentor. Yeah, I’ve read lots of books that have been helpful and that’s very useful. So mentors indirectly YouTube videos, whatever podcast, those are very helpful relationships are even more powerful when the mentorship comes from a relationship that’s great.
01:29:51:00 – 01:30:13:12
Brad Singletary
I appreciate you sharing that about your family members. I can imagine that that’s the kind of person that you are becoming with your own sons. You’ve talked about your dad today. You’ve talked about your grandfather’s on both sides, and those relationships have shaped you because of the relationship not just the information. You’d read a book, you listened to, a YouTube video.
01:30:14:01 – 01:30:35:27
Brad Singletary
You can get you can get some ideas from many places, but the relationships are what help us the most. Dude, appreciate it, Rocky. This has been seriously one of the most incredible things that we’ve done. I’m telling you this, the show this is high level. I mean, wouldn’t you say, Mike, this is how would you compare this to some of the others that we’ve done?
01:30:36:21 – 01:30:40:04
Mike Olsen
You know, I think that there’s lots of.
01:30:41:12 – 01:30:42:15
Rockford Wright, MD
Uh.
01:30:43:08 – 01:31:05:16
Mike Olsen
Dude talk. We we kind of understand that. But Rocky has a way of intellectually connecting with emotion. You know, you talk about the education that you get from books and from things, but knowing that the relationships and the importance of the relationships that’s why I’ve always liked talking with Rocky and listening to Rocky, because he has that ability.
01:31:05:16 – 01:31:11:16
Mike Olsen
I plan on trying to pull more information out of his head and out of his heart, you know, in the future.
01:31:11:29 – 01:31:17:11
Brad Singletary
But just trying to figure out this shopping thing this Saturday, that’s that’s what you want to get from. Yeah.
01:31:17:17 – 01:31:42:07
Mike Olsen
The fact that we might have wives. We’re actually sisters. And I’m still trying to figure out, wait a second. Is this just how all relationships are with husbands and wives? Do they all try to trap us into shopping experiences? No, but I think those are things that we as we learn, as we have discussion with, they’re they’re all they help us understand.
01:31:42:07 – 01:31:47:20
Mike Olsen
They help us communicate. They help us empathize. I just I love those those connections.
01:31:48:05 – 01:32:14:00
Brad Singletary
We’re talking about this topic, discernment, because if you want to be a strong man, if you want to operate from your highest self, if you want to operate from from the from the highest level frequency within you, if the high priest in your head is in charge, if the king in your head is in charge, and you are a person of discernment, you’re a man of discernment, and you can see things as they are.
01:32:14:09 – 01:32:43:05
Brad Singletary
You can read between the lines, you can read the room you can understand that what people bring to you is not always what’s really happening, what they say is and what they mean. And you’re a person who’s sensitive to that information. Probably my favorite message today, Rocky, is pause and ponder. That’s probably going to be the title of this pause and ponder, because I think that is what a discerning person is able to do.
01:32:43:16 – 01:33:00:20
Brad Singletary
They recognize that they can’t. Just quickly, if you’re in a surgery and something goes wrong, you have to make a decision immediately. But in life in general, we don’t typically have to do that. We can wait a minute and make sure that we’re being fair as we make decisions about what’s going on and what our next steps need to be.
01:33:01:00 – 01:33:08:27
Brad Singletary
Dude, thank you so much. This has been amazing. I’m telling you, I’m going to ask you to do this again. At some point, so I hope you game well.
01:33:08:27 – 01:33:19:10
Rockford Wright, MD
I appreciate so much. I mean, I was a little bit intimidated by the by the topic. And so I’ve taken a lot of time this last night and this morning to pause and ponder the topic. So thanks so much for giving me the opportunity.
01:33:19:10 – 01:33:31:03
Brad Singletary
To talk about intimidation. I’m sitting here listening to you like, oh my gosh, I’m a redneck. I’m just I’m an ignorant, freaking I have to. How old are you? I’ve been, I don’t know, 40, 40 years old.
01:33:31:09 – 01:33:32:02
Rockford Wright, MD
41 races.
01:33:33:11 – 01:33:46:03
Brad Singletary
My dad always says it takes 40 years to make a man. And I think you’ve definitely surpassed that. You’re 40 years old, but just a real man of wisdom. Thank you again for being here. Appreciate it. You guys. Until next time. No excuses.
01:33:46:08 – 01:33:56:09
Speaker 4
Of gentlemen, you are the Alpha, and this is the Alpha Quorum.