The Village That Never Looked Upstream
There’s a village beside a river where babies keep floating by. One villager spots the first baby and rushes in to save it. Then another baby appears. And another. Soon the entire village is mobilized around rescue operations, taking care of babies, finding them homes, managing the crisis.
It becomes an industry. Everyone has a role. The system runs smoothly. Until someone finally asks: where are these babies coming from?
This parable, attributed to Bishop Desmond Tutu and popularized by Dan Heath in his book Upstream, captures the exhausting reality most people live in. We spend our lives rescuing babies, putting out fires, handling one crisis after another. We get really good at crisis management. But we never go upstream to fix the systems causing the problems in the first place.
That’s what The Vitality Journey is designed to do: go upstream before the tragedies happen, before the bottom falls out, before your life becomes a series of dumpster fires you’re too tired to extinguish.
But here’s the hard truth most self-help avoids: vitality is not coincidental. It’s a choice. You don’t stumble into a vibrant life. A vibrant life is something you build, systematically, with intention and accountability.
https://youtu.be/jnvMlcVN9d4
Why “How Are You?” Is a Useless Question
We get asked all the time: how are you? And the answer is almost always: I’m good. I’m okay. Fine.
But what if you were really honest? What if you told people exactly how you’re doing across the six dimensions of health that actually determine whether you’re thriving or just surviving?
Most people have no framework for answering that question honestly. They don’t know how to measure their vitality. They don’t have language for the systems quietly destroying their capacity to live well. So they default to “fine” and keep rescuing babies.
Dave Rodriguez and Dimitri Snowden created The Vitality Journey to change that. It’s a systematic framework for assessing, dreaming, goal-setting, and habit formation across six health factors: physical, emotional, relational, financial, behavioral, and vocational. And unlike most wellness approaches, it doesn’t promise quick fixes or overnight transformation. It promises something better: a repeatable 90-day process that actually works.
The Six Health Factors Most People Ignore
Before you can go upstream, you need to know which rivers are drowning you. Here’s how Dave and Dimitri break down the six health factors:
Physical Health: Beyond the Gym Membership
This isn’t just about working out or losing weight. Physical health asks: Do all your parts work? Does anything creak, crack, or hurt when you move? Are you strong, stable, and mobile? What’s your sleep quality? What are you eating? And yes, how’s your sexuality?
Peter Attia’s work on longevity revealed that people who optimize physical health don’t just live longer, they live infinitely better. The deeper you go into caring for your physical health, the better you feel emotionally. These systems are inseparably connected.
Emotional Health: The Question Nobody Asks
People today are increasingly willing to discuss anxiety and depression. But there’s one question virtually no one confronts: Do I like myself?
Not “Do I look good today?” but “Do I have a fundamental sense of worth?” That emotional undercurrent, the constant inner voice either affirming or attacking you, determines the quality of every day. Emotional health also includes resilience, your capacity to bounce back, your faith systems, and how you navigate life’s inevitable ups and downs.
Relational Health: Diminishers vs Illuminators
David Brooks, in his book How to Really Know a Person, identifies two types of people: diminishers and illuminators.
Diminishers show zero interest in you. They dominate conversations, check their phones constantly, never ask questions. They consume your energy without reciprocating.
Illuminators are curious. They practice what Brooks calls “ICNU”: I see you. They ask questions, reflect back what they hear, and make you feel genuinely known.
Here’s the sobering reality: 50% of Americans report having zero meaningful in-person social interactions on a regular basis. Half the country is drowning in loneliness. When relational health crashes, it affects every other area of life. You can’t thrive in isolation.
Financial Health: The Math Problem We Avoid
Sixty percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Fifty percent couldn’t survive a $1,000 emergency. Financial health feels impossible in an economy designed to keep people broke.
But here’s the foundation: don’t spend more than you earn. It’s simple math. It’s a long journey. But it starts with that one principle.
Even people in desperate financial situations often have one bad habit equivalent to a dollar amount. Trimming that habit, which connects back to behavioral and emotional health, creates space for stability. Financial health isn’t about getting rich. It’s about creating margin so money stops being a constant source of crisis.
Behavioral Health: The Attention Deficit Society
Behavioral health is about the state of order in your world. How you manage focus. How you discipline your life. How you structure your time.
Here’s a startling fact: the average business leader spends only 5% of their day in flow state, that zone where you’re so engaged you lose track of time. The average person has zero flow or very low levels of flow. Why? Poor behavioral health.
Technology has drawn our attention inward, creating an attentional deficit society. We’re constantly distracted, never fully present, unable to sustain deep work. This is the health factor we deal with least and need most.
Vocational Health: The Most Ancient Thing About You
Vocational health isn’t just about your career. It’s about meaning. Is what I’m doing with my life meaningful?
Dave believes your calling is the most ancient thing about you. It existed before you did, shaping how you were designed and how your life unfolded. And it’s also the most eternal thing about you, because when you live in your calling, you leave a legacy that extends through generations.
Your greatest pain is likely the source of your greatest purpose. When you go through something difficult, you develop a special radar for people experiencing the same thing. You gain unique capacity to help them through it. That’s vocational health: aligning your work with your purpose.
The Vitality Journey Process: Assess, Dream, Goals, Habits
Understanding these six factors is just the beginning. The real work happens in the four-step process you repeat every 90 days.
Step 1: Assessment – Get Brutally Honest
Assessment isn’t a quick overview. It’s a deep dive. When it comes to any of these six health factors, what exactly does my life look like right now?
Here’s the challenge: we’re masters at self-protection. We justify our dysfunction. “I had a bad day at work, so I need a glass of wine. If I don’t have wine, I’ll be rude to my children.” We backpedal and rationalize.
Dave’s advice: don’t accept your first answer. Go three levels deep. Write it out. Don’t just think about it. When you see it in writing, you can’t run from it.
Example: “I don’t make enough money.” Go deeper. “Actually, I have this bad habit of buying Pokemon cards.” Now you’re getting to the real assessment.
If you have a coach or mentor, they won’t accept surface answers either. They’ll push you to go deeper. That’s why accountability matters.
Step 2: Dream – Paint the Picture
Once you’ve assessed where you are, dream about where you want to be. What does it look like to crush it in this area? What would relational health, financial health, physical health look like at the highest level you can imagine?
Here’s where it gets hard. Writing out the gap between where you are and where you want to be can be depressing. You assess that you’re 300 pounds. You dream about a stellar body. Looking at that contrast can make you want to burn the paper.
This is where you need someone to speak hope into your life. A coach, a friend, someone who can look at your assessment and dream and say: you can do this. You can. If you’ve got babies floating down the river in your life, sometimes it’s hard to see yourself getting beyond it. You need people who believe in your capacity for change.
Step 3: Goals – Make Them Measurable and Attainable
Now you set goals to accomplish the dream. But here’s the key: The Vitality Journey focuses on 90 days, not a year. And you don’t set five or six goals for each health factor. That’s 36 goals. It won’t work.
One or two goals per health factor. That’s it. And they must be measurable and time-bound.
Bad goal: “In 90 days I want to be happy.”
Good goal: “I want to smoke two fewer cigarettes per day” or “I want to read three books in three months instead of doom scrolling.”
Attainable. Measurable. Time-bound to 90 days. Then you reassess and set new goals for the next season.
Step 4: Habits – Change the Systems
To achieve your goals, you have to change your habits. You have to introduce new patterns into your life that will become part of your regular existence.
Research suggests it takes 60-90 days to establish a new habit. Once you get beyond two months of working out, your body starts expecting it. Before that, it’s a constant battle.
The habit isn’t just the action. It’s the trigger. Dave’s behavioral health goal involves setting an alarm as a habit. When the alarm goes off, it’s his cue that he has 30 minutes for news and coffee, then he’s switching to reading. The alarm is the habit that protects the goal.
The Vitality Scale: How to Actually Measure Progress
Theory is useless without measurement. That’s why Dave created the Vitality Scale, inspired by Peter Attia’s work on health span and lifespan.
It’s a simple tool. On the X-axis (horizontal), you plot time: your lifespan from birth to future state. On the Y-axis (vertical), you plot vitality from 1-60.
Here’s how it works:
For each of the six health factors, rate yourself on a scale of 1-10:
- Physical health: 1 = check my pulse, 10 = best physical condition of my life
- Emotional health: 1 = not getting out of bed, 10 = Julie Andrews singing in the hills
- Relational health: 1 = haven’t been outside in weeks, 10 = deeply connected
- Financial health: 1 = don’t know where next meal is coming, 10 = satisfied and stable
- Behavioral health: 1 = doom scrolling for seven hours, 10 = consistent flow state
- Vocational health: 1 = no idea why I’m here, 10 = love my work and know my purpose
Add up your six scores. The highest possible total is 60.
Dave scored himself a 41. His immediate reaction: that’s low. Dimitri’s reaction: that sounds pretty good. The difference in perception reveals something important: this scale isn’t scientific. It’s subjective. It’s about how you feel.
But here’s the power: do this now, then do it again in 90 days. You’ll see whether you’re trending up and to the right. You’ll have tangible evidence that the process works. And if you do it consistently over time, you’ll see seasonal patterns, identify which health factors consistently struggle, and make strategic decisions about where to focus.
Peter Attia discovered that at age 75, most people’s health span (vitality) plummets. His mission became helping people live a few more years infinitely better. Higher quality of life matters more than mere longevity.
That’s the goal of The Vitality Journey: not just living longer, but living infinitely better than you did three months ago.
Live Demo: What Happens When You Actually Do the Work
The most powerful part of Episode 002 is watching Dave and Dimitri coach each other in real time. No scripts. No polish. Just two people being brutally honest about their struggles.
Dave’s Behavioral Health Assessment:
Dave admits he has a pattern problem. Every morning: yogurt with granola, too much coffee, then 30-90 minutes of doom scrolling news and Instagram recipes. On good days, 30 minutes. On bad days, 90 minutes. He feels embarrassed. He feels like he’s wasted time he doesn’t have.
His dream: replace scrolling with reading and journaling. Better input. Substance that helps him grow.
His goal: limit scrolling to 20-30 minutes, read three books in three months.
His habit: set an alarm. When it goes off, he has 30 minutes, then he switches to reading.
Dimitri’s Relational Health Assessment:
Dimitri reveals that when he’s hurt, he hides. When people don’t help him the way he expects, he withdraws. He doesn’t want to interact with anyone. His financial struggles compound this: he doesn’t want people to know, so he limits the relationship to protect himself from embarrassment or potential weaponization of his struggles.
His dream: to be honest and self-revelatory. To speak without feeling like he’s too much, without the gravity of being a burden.
His goal: pick another safe person beyond Dave and practice self-revelation.
His habit: before sitting down with that person, practice self-talk: “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
That moment when Dave tells Dimitri “it’s okay” is profound. Dimitri nearly tears up. “It just does not feel okay, man.” That’s the power of having someone speak hope into your life. That’s why you need a coach, a mentor, a friend who can look you in the eye and say: it’s okay. You can do this.
Why This Process Works When Everything Else Fails
Most self-help fails because it’s either too vague or too overwhelming. “Be your best self” is meaningless. “Overhaul your entire life in 21 days” is impossible.
The Vitality Journey works because:
- It’s systematic, not random. Six health factors, four steps, 90-day cycles. You know exactly what to do.
- It’s measurable. You can see your progress. The scale doesn’t lie.
- It’s contextual. Your assessment, dream, goals, and habits are unique to you. This isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula.
- It’s iterative. You don’t have to fix everything at once. Just focus on one or two goals per factor. Reassess in 90 days. Keep going.
- It requires accountability. Whether it’s a coach, a friend, or the podcast itself, you need someone to push you past your first superficial answer.
- It addresses systems, not symptoms. You’re not rescuing babies. You’re going upstream to fix what’s broken.
Most importantly, it acknowledges that change isn’t designed to feel good. It’s hard. It’s uncomfortable. You might need a drink after journaling your assessment. That’s normal. The hope isn’t in the feeling. The hope is in the process. If you follow it, your vitality will grow.
Where to Start Right Now
If you’re feeling stuck, exhausted, or just want to level up, here’s what to do:
- Rate yourself on each of the six health factors (1-10). Write it down. Don’t accept your first answer. Go three levels deep.
- Pick one health factor that’s struggling most. Do a full assessment. Be brutally honest.
- Dream. What would crushing it in that area look like? Write it out.
- Set one or two goals for the next 90 days. Make them measurable and attainable.
- Establish one or two habits that will help you achieve those goals.
- Find accountability. Get a coach. Find a friend. Don’t try to do this alone.
The babies will keep floating down the river if you don’t go upstream. The fires will keep burning if you don’t fix the systems. And you’ll keep saying “I’m fine” when you’re not.
But if you’re willing to do the work, to be honest, to dream, to set goals, to change habits, and to repeat the process every 90 days, you’ll start living infinitely better than you did three months ago.
That’s not a promise of perfection. It’s a promise of progress. And progress, over time, becomes transformation.
Ready to stop rescuing babies and start going upstream? Explore personal coaching and The Vitality Journey framework at destiny-works.com.
Watch the full episode and see the live coaching demo here: This Vitality Test Reveals What’s Actually Wrong | Episode 002
Full Transcript
Dave: We get asked all the time, how are you? And the answer most of the time is, I’m good or I’m okay. What if you were really honest and you told them exactly how you’re doing? What is my level of vitality? Well, today we’re gonna show you how to figure that out, how to actually measure your level of vitality, and then we’ll show you the process where you can start to take on these health factors of your life and get some answers to the questions you’ve been asking.
Dave: There was a villager walking along a river which ran beside his village. And by the way, not a real story. First heard this attributed to Desmond Tutu, the Bishop of South Africa. Villagers walking alongside the river, just doing his normal life, and something catches his attention out in the river. And he looks, what, it was a baby.
Dimitri: A baby.
Dave: Yeah, and it’s kind of like floating in the water. This is not right.
Dimitri: This is not right. This is not normal.
Dave: No, not normal. So the guy runs into the river and rescues the baby. Comes back in. By this time, a couple other villagers are gathered. So he hands off, somebody takes the baby. Where did the baby come from? What’s going on? But they have to protect this baby. And then he notices there’s another baby in the river.
Dimitri: Wow.
Dave: And he goes back into the river, gets that baby. By this point, the whole village has come out. And everyone’s, what, human babies floating down the river? This is a human baby, so again, not a real story, but it’s a good one. So he’s got these babies, and it starts happening on a regular basis. And the village, it almost becomes an industry. Rescue the babies, take care of the babies, get them into a home. Rescue the babies, get them out of the river. Until one day, somebody says, you know what, maybe we should go upstream. Where are they coming from? And answer the question, where are these babies coming from? Is somebody evil doing something to these babies or what’s going on? And the story is obviously it’s a metaphor, it’s an allegory to describe what Dan Heath talks about in his book Upstream, that he says, so often we get stuck, excuse me, so often we get stuck in the cycle of response. We keep rescuing babies. Because, you know, our own life and other people’s lives, and he said, we put out fires, we deal with emergencies, we rescue babies, we handle one problem after another after another, but we never get around to going upstream and fixing the systems that caused the problem. So, tell the story, just to remind us and remind our viewers and listeners that essentially the vitality journey which you’re listening or watching right now is an upstream content engine. That’s what we do. We’re trying to help people focus on creating a strategy for vitality. That’s why we call it the vitality journey. So let me ask you something. Because we’re going to get after each other today on some deep levels. Would you describe today as a day of vitality for you?
Dimitri: I would. So tell me about that.
Dave: Man, you know, just quite frankly, just the nature of this episode, right? Filming this podcast. Getting ready for it, getting in the head space and mind space for it. There’s a rise of energy that has been dormant, that has been wanting to express itself and I get to now in a way that isn’t just for the relief of me expressing it, but for someone to hopefully maybe benefit from it. That’s exciting. And that’s the way my day started.
Dimitri: With a sense of anticipation.
Dave: I think when we’re living with vitality, we live with a sense of anticipation, not a sense of dread.
Dimitri: Right?
Dave: A sense of hope, a sense of contentment. That’s what vitality is. It is working with a sense of purpose. And honestly, what I love about what we’re doing right now, this is just me being real, is that I feel like these are moments where I’m in the flow.
Dimitri: Right.
Dave: Right? I’m losing track of time because I’m enjoying this conversation. That’s what vitality looks like.
Dimitri: Right.
Dave: And of course then there’s physical vitality as well. The good news is I did work out earlier today.
Dimitri: Good.
Dave: And it was great. He gave me higher, they gave me, my fitness coach gave me weights that were heavier than before. And so I was like, yeah.
Dimitri: Yeah, right.
Dave: I can do that. So any rate that. We are an upstream. We want to go upstream before the tragedies happen, before the bottom falls out, before the dumpster fires and deal with vitality and deal with the systems that keep us from living vital lives and let’s be clear like and I want to you can tell me if I’m wrong, right? This is not going to evade or help you escape such events, right? You’re going to have your heartbreak. You’re going to experience things to simply help you.
Dimitri: Be your best inside of those moments.
Dave: Yeah, absolutely. As a matter of fact, part of living a vital life is having to know what the systems are within your life to deal with it when life turns into a mess.
Dimitri: That’s right.
Dave: And I would say this too, vitality is not coincidental. It’s a choice. Does that make sense?
Dimitri: Yeah.
Dave: It’s an active, it’s not passive. Like it doesn’t just happen. You have to participate and do things to make it go.
Dimitri: Yeah.
Dave: A vibrant life, you don’t stumble into a vibrant life. A vibrant life is something that you build.
Dimitri: Okay.
Dave: Does that make sense?
Dimitri: It does. It does. Yeah. So I hate it in one way. I love for life to just happen and be lovely and wonderful and vibrant. But the fact of the matter is we’ve got to strategize it.
Dave: Yeah. Well, and that’s important as I think about, you know, my life and my wife’s life, you know, we’re all just exhausted. And it’s kind of like, so as I hear you say, I got to do something else in my life. This is another set of things that I have to do. And again, this is why I go back to this framework, because the things that you have to do or respond to aren’t anything different than you already do. You already dream. I just ask you to dream in this context, right? Dream in this way, assess in this way. And I believe that what we need, if we choose, if we say, all right, I need to develop a strategy for living a vibrant life. What you need is a mentor. Now you’re going to need experts too along the way for something particular. That’s what I hope we can be for people. Just kind of virtually mentor them along the way.
Dimitri: And just to recap, by the way, along the way is what? It’s the vitality journey and inside of that there’s these six health factors.
Dave: Yeah, so let’s talk about those six health factors. Again, just to remind people. First, well, I’ll throw them out. You tell me what you when you hear it. What do you think?
Dimitri: Okay.
Dave: Okay. Sorry. Keep it simple and physical health.
Dimitri: Physical health. How am I moving? How am I feeling? How’s my body feeling?
Dave: Exactly.
Dimitri: All right. Is anything broken? How’s my sleep hygiene? Right? What’s my diet like? Anything creak or crack?
Dave: Yeah, and am I getting stronger?
Dimitri: Correct.
Dave: Am I stable if I fall? Am I going to break something or am I just going to get up with a small bruise? What am I eating? What’s the nutritional input into my life? What’s the caloric balance? Those kind of things. So it’s more than just a workout regimen, right? Or doing a class, right?
Dimitri: Well, and throw in sleep.
Dave: How crucial. Man, I had weird dreams last night. I got to tell you. I woke up this morning. I was taking a shower thinking, what was that? I don’t even want to talk about that.
Dimitri: What did you eat? What did I have? Was that a glass of wine?
Dave: But at any rate, sleep is crucial. And then the controversial one is sexuality is important too. This is all part of the physical nature of our life. So if I ask you how you’re doing emotionally, emotional health, what questions would you ask yourself, how am I doing emotionally?
Dimitri: Yeah, if I was thinking about emotional health, I would think, am I happy? How do I feel about myself? Is that inner voice?
Dave: Yeah, what’s the inner voice sound like? Is that voice tuned more toward the negative channel or is it affirming and supportive? Probably rated based on that.
Dimitri: Yeah.
Dave: What about relational health?
Dimitri: Relational health, man, I think about what are my relationships like with other people? And you said at the top of this that we’re going to kind of get to it, right? Live time, real time. So relational health is one I want to talk to you about. So I’ll probably put a pin in that and circle back to it. But yeah, I have some thoughts about it and how to move through some things. It’s how I’m interacting with other people, what that relationship is like between me and that person. Like who are your people?
Dave: Right. Here’s an interesting, just a little side note for a second here. Read a fantastic book by David Brooks. Matter of fact, might be up here on the little bookshelf here, but How to Really Know a Person. This is just side thing. Brooks suggests there are two kinds of people in the world. They’re diminishers and illuminators. Diminishers are the ones, here’s a story about a diminisher. Okay, true story. I wanted to get to know this one particular guy. So I said, hey, you want to get cup of coffee? Yeah. So we meet in this coffee shop and he comes in and he sits down and I look at him. I say, okay, so tell me about yourself. So he is talking about himself, where he comes from, tells me about his family, goes on and on and on for a while and it’s very interesting. And then he ends. And I sit there. Nothing. That’s how it ends. So then I’m like, okay, this is really awkward. So I said, all right, so tell me more about what you do. So he tells me what he does.
Dimitri: He’s not asking you any questions.
Dave: Hold on, that’s where we’re going. You can see where we’re going with this.
Dimitri: It’s a bidirectional thing.
Dave: Yeah, yeah, right. So he tells me what he does and I’m sitting there and listening and then he doesn’t ask me. And this is how it goes on for literally 30 minutes. And as I’m sitting there, and I’m asking him every question I could think of, and he doesn’t ask me any question about me. At some point I was like, I’m done. So we end the conversation. Now here’s my favorite part of the story. This actually really happened. So after this, he gets up and he’s walking to the door and he turns around and he says, let’s do this again sometime.
Dimitri: No.
Dave: The answer, but the thing is we have and he’s become a, he’s become a friend.
Dimitri: Sure.
Dave: But the experience, what I, you’re saying is that’s an example of a diminisher.
Dimitri: That’s a diminisher.
Dave: Okay, that was, that’s a diminishing thing which the diminisher is the person who shows zero interest. Here’s another story of a diminisher, this is a real story too. Having lunch with a guy, he comes in, sets his cell phone, such as iPhone or whatever it was, up in front of him, and the entire time we’re sitting there for the first 15 or 20 minutes, he’s looking down, up, down, up, looks at his phone, looks at me, looks at his phone. He is catching maybe 50% of what I’m saying.
Dimitri: That.
Dave: If that. He was, he’s a diminisher. Oh, and by the way, he got up to take, I got to take this.
Dimitri: Of course.
Dave: Gets up, takes the call. And eventually, you know, I think we ended after 45 minutes, he just walked away, I was like, really? So diminisher is someone that kind of just consumes, take, take, take, take and or is passive and not participatory.
Dimitri: And is showing zero interest in me.
Dave: Right, right. So he’s diminishing me. Now flip that, what Brooks talks about is what an illuminator is. An illuminator is one who shows, is very curious about you. And they practice the ICNU. When you tell them about yourself, they just get on top of that and they go further. And then they reflect it back and say, here’s what I heard you say. Okay, so that was a little side note. I’m going off there. That’s about relational health. And the fact of the matter is, if we want to have good relationships, we have to be illuminators, not diminishers. The more diminishing we are, the less relationship, because who wants to hang out with the diminisher?
Dimitri: Let me ask you this. Again, not to deviate, but are these elastic states, meaning I can be diminishing now because I’m kind of depressed, and then maybe I can be an illuminator at some later point, like next week. Or is that a state, like, nah, you’re just a diminisher, and all you do is take and suck out of people?
Dave: Well, there are some people that is just their life. You know what’s really sad about diminishers? Most of them, they’re not even aware. They wouldn’t even be aware of what state their relational health is. That’s what’s sad. Illuminators are paying attention all the time with a high level of attention. That’s, and again, we’re, save this for another one. When we talk about relational health, we’ll circle back to this. But that book, his Brooks book, How to Really Know a Person has really been transformative about relationships. We’ll come back to that. I have another story. Stories are coming to mind.
Dimitri: I’ll hold it for later.
Dave: Financial health, how would you define it?
Dimitri: Do I have margin in my life? Is there enough month at the end of my money to do the things? Am I being responsible and fiscally intentional about my stuff?
Dave: Yeah. Exactly. Am I crippled with debt?
Dimitri: Right.
Dave: Those kind of things. Behavioral health.
Dimitri: You know, discipline or lack thereof in one’s life, right? It’s the ability to kind of be consistent, right? And, and review that consistency and say, hey, is that a good consistency? Right? Do I smoke and drink all the time or?
Dave: Right.
Dimitri: Right. Or am I consistently good and good sleep or what have you? So I think it’s a.
Dave: Yes, is that behavioral health?
Dimitri: That a good?
Dave: Yeah, that’s good. It is about habituation. What are the habits in my life?
Dimitri: Well focused on.
Dave: And also, we are living as an attentionally deficit society. And it’s because what technology has done, it has drawn our attention in, and now we are at a deficit for paying attention to anything else.
Dimitri: I got a quick story for you.
Dave: Go ahead.
Dimitri: Adjacent to that. Just read a story. So talking about video games and how kids in the 90s that played video games, their brain architecture is different as it pertains to video games because video games taught you how to strategize. You got three hearts, three lives, and the game was over, man. That was it. And you had to memorize the pattern and then bad guy and where everything moved in order to complete it and overcome that level. Whereas the games now, they’re continual games. They never end. Roblox, Zelda, there’s no ending to the game. It’s this perpetual expansion pack. Add new things, in-app purchases, the game doesn’t end, there’s no destination or endpoint. And so the games now are designed not to teach you how to strategize or problem solve, but to suck your attention.
Dave: Interesting.
Dimitri: And keep you zeroed in there. With no finite objective.
Dave: So kids in the 90s know how to solve a problem. I can change the target as an endpoint, right?
Dimitri: And these games, like, no, you just got to keep going on about it and just drawing on about it.
Dave: Okay, so I just had an idea. Let’s throw this out into our listeners world. Okay. If anyone knows an expert in video game design, please. I would love to have them on the podcast.
Dimitri: That would be fantastic.
Dave: And talk to us about this.
Dimitri: Right.
Dave: So send us, let us know.
Dimitri: Please.
Dave: And I would like to even get into like when that shift changed. And of course, it was economically driven, as we all know. But yeah, that’s fascinating. But anyway, that was kind of adjacent to that, your attention. These are the things we have to talk about this stuff. It’s my contention that of all these health factors, that behavioral health is the one that we don’t deal with enough. And it is forming our day-to-day lives.
Dimitri: It is.
Dave: Finally, vocational health. That’s my passion, my meaning. What am I doing it? Why am I doing it? And what’s driving me? What’s my why?
Dimitri: That kind of thing.
Dave: That’s how you and I began our relationship.
Dimitri: It was.
Dave: Just talking about your why.
Dimitri: Yeah, why am I here?
Dave: And what a question.
Dimitri: What a question.
Dave: And how did my story play into why I’m here?
Dimitri: Right.
Dave: And then on top of that, I mean, as we go through the calling quilt experience and the vitality journey, understanding the result of the things that happened to you create behavior.
Dimitri: Yes.
Dave: And the experience of those behaviors are felt by self and those that are around you, which becomes a feedback loop and it’ll either. Here’s the shocking thing I tell people, that their greatest pain likely is the source of their greatest purpose.
Dimitri: Absolutely, absolutely.
Dave: Because something happens when you go through a thing, you’ve been hurt, you’ve been deeply wounded, it makes you, it gives you a special radar for people who have experienced that, and it gives you a special capacity to help them in the process.
Dimitri: Fascinating.
Dave: Someday we’ll talk more about your story.
Dimitri: Yeah, for sure.
Dave: And by the way, I should add, Destiny Works, is the vitality journey, this podcast is a part of Destiny Works, and Destiny Works does offer coaching for people who are trying to figure out their purpose. Along with coaching with Vitality Journey. And what’s good about this, and as I experienced, because I’m going through this, is like it never ends. It’s as long as I’m participating in this thing, right? It will work. The results have to change. And this is what’s beautiful. No matter what you think and feel, if you just answer the questions and do the work, it will work. And that’s what we’re going to, in a few minutes, we’re going to dive in. We’re actually going to demonstrate.
Dimitri: What the, for our listeners and our viewers, what the whole Vitality Journey process looks like that we’re going to encourage them to dive into.
Dave: Okay, so Dave, our viewers and listeners are here. They are captivated by their stories. My life sucks. I need help. I want to level up right now this aspect or dimension of my life to be better. What’s the process? What’s next? What does that look like?
Dimitri: Okay? Yeah, so start, it starts first of all with an assessment, okay? Honest, heartfelt, not a quick overview, but a deep dive in exactly when it comes to this particular health factor of the six, physical, emotional, relationship, whatever it is, exactly what does my life look like right now?
Dave: Can we test this out on each other to see how this works?
Dimitri: Not right now, but we’ll go through the list, but.
Dave: Yeah. Because I want to, like, when we think about assess, and it’s kind of, I mean.
Dimitri: Yeah, how do you assess yourself and be objective and not be superficial or kind of, you know, not be detailed and say, I am severely malnutritioned or my physical health is like very not good. Or I’m drinking way too much or.
Dave: Yeah. Because we all justify our own, this is the problem, it’s why we’re still doing what we’re doing. That’s contra, right? It’s because we justify it. Well, I had a bad day at work, so I need a glass of wine and if I don’t have a glass of wine, I’m gonna be rude to my children, so we backpedal and justify all these things, how do we debunk all that? How do we get through all that?
Dimitri: That’s not it. If we were, which we’re going to demonstrate, you and I sitting here, what it looks like. If you have a mentor with you or a coach with you, which we offer, Destiny Works offers, it’s a lot easier because if the coach is an illuminator, if the coach, and we hope we are, we look into a person’s life and we do not accept the first answer. We hear the first answer and we go, oh, hmm. Or you’d say, let’s go a little deeper. So I would say if a person is sitting by themself and they’re walking through this process on their own, which probably would be the most of the people, do not accept your first response. I would say go deep three times. If you say, is how I am doing financially, stop. All right, let me go one level. What really is going on financially? Write it out, stop. Go one step deeper. Just go down three levels.
Dave: And it takes time. So for example, that finance example, I don’t make enough money. I would start it being my problem. And you’d be like, well, okay. No one is, right? Let’s talk about your financial history.
Dimitri: Go deeper.
Dave: So actually, I have this bad habit of buying Pokemon cards.
Dimitri: Okay.
Dave: So now we’re getting to the point where you say, I’m doing an assessment. This is what assessment looks like. It’s just asking the right questions to come up with the exact description of where I am. That’s assessment. You have to start with assessment. And I always tell people, there are a lot of people who would rather just think of that. Now I want to see it in writing. And you need to see it in writing. Like if you’re doing an assessment on yourself, it needs to be in writing in front of you, whether you type it, whether it’s on your phone, or whether it’s on old school like I like, with a pen on paper, you have to be able to look at it, because when you get and you look at it, you can’t run from that. There it is right in front of you. So, and a lot of people are bad. It’s a kind of a journaling exercise. But I think it’s really important. So you’re going to have a paragraph. Here’s my assessment of me in this area.
Dimitri: Okay, so assessments first.
Dave: First.
Dimitri: Second in the process is?
Dave: Dreaming.
Dimitri: Okay.
Dave: So dreaming is basically saying, all right, that’s how messed up it is. What if everything’s, I’m crushing it. What would it look like for me to crush it? What would it look like? And you write this out as well. A paragraph that basically says, my relational life is at the highest level I can imagine where I’m getting the most joy, paint me a picture.
Dimitri: Let me ask you this real quick. When I think about that, so I have background as EMT and professional fighter and so on, but there’s a lot of preparation in the human body. When I think about sometimes the dream versus where you are, expressing that can be a depressing action. I am overweight. I want to have a stellar body. I’m 300 pounds. I want to get down to some weight, dramatically less than that. Man, writing that out is going to make, and look. And by the way, I just above that, I assess that, you know, I’m way overweight. This is, I want to burn the paper after that.
Dave: Right.
Dimitri: I don’t want to keep going. I don’t want to write anymore. I don’t want to dream anymore. How do we, what do you tell the viewer or listener about how to dream and not dream with the gravity of your current state and free yourself from that?
Dave: And it’s a really good question. And I’m not going to give you a real glib answer to that or a real quick answer because this is where I think it’s important to have somebody else walking with you on this journey.
Dimitri: Fair.
Dave: I need a coach.
Dimitri: Coach or even a friend.
Dave: I mean, you may not have a, just someone you could say, if you took your assessment and you took your dream and laid it in front of a friend and say, is this accurate about me? And then they can speak hope into your life. Because if you got babies in the river, floating down the river in your life when it comes to one of these health areas here, sometimes it’s hard to, I can’t see myself getting beyond it. It’s important to have somebody speak into your life and say, yeah, you can. You can, you can.
Dimitri: Yeah, you can.
Dave: And I would say a person who’s struggling in these areas, probably the first question they need to figure out is who is in my life that can give me hope. So we need help. We need help with dreaming sometimes.
Dimitri: Right.
Dave: I appreciate that. So we assess, we dream, which provides contrast in the future state. It gives us a high.
Dimitri: Then after we’ve dreamed, then what?
Dave: Yeah, and you’ve got to set some goals.
Dimitri: Okay.
Dave: To accomplish the dream.
Dimitri: Yes.
Dave: Now, I’m going to say this right now. The vitality journey has six factors, six health factors. If you come up with five or six goals for each health factor, you’re never going to get to it. You got 36 goals, it’s not going to work. So what I suggest is let’s focus on the next three months, 90 days. And then we’ll repeat this. And it should be attainable goals based on both time. These have to be measurable and attainable. Something that I can actually see. Like on emotional health, in 90 days my goal is to be happy.
Dimitri: No.
Dave: No, that’s, it has to have some way to measure it and now we know it has a time frame, it’s three months.
Dimitri: Right.
Dave: So it has to have a time frame and it has to be measurable in a way that it can actually succeed. So if you were my people saying, hey, I want to quit smoking. Well, that could be very hard. And so a goal could be, I want to smoke two cigarettes less than I typically do. Or I want to smoke three a day, or whatever. It has to be measurable and time bound.
Dimitri: Fair, okay.
Dave: We’ve got the time bound figured out because we’re telling you it’s 90 days.
Dimitri: Right.
Dave: Okay, but the measurable is something that could be achieved. And I would suggest for each of these health factors, if you do more than two, you’re not going to do it.
Dimitri: Right, because it’s too much.
Dave: One or two.
Dimitri: Right.
Dave: And now, give it 90 days, you can come up with another goal in 90 days.
Dimitri: Right, right.
Dave: Because the fourth aspect of the vitality journey is setting habits. So you have a goal that you’re going to do X, but to get to achieve that goal, you’re going to have to change some habits. You’re going to have to introduce some habits into your life that will be something that will just become part of your regular existence. So once we get down to the habits, now we can say, ah, I can add these habits. If you do, how many, what’s the people say? How many days till you hit it?
Dimitri: Can change the habit?
Dave: Yeah. I think it’s 90 days, 60 days or 90 days. I can’t remember what it is.
Dimitri: Too long?
Dave: Yeah, you get. When I started working out, once I got beyond two months, I was like, okay, I’m going to work out.
Dimitri: Were you expecting?
Dave: I was, yes. And my body was like, you better go work out.
Dimitri: Right, we need that.
Dave: But it took me, because up to that, I was like, nah. Do I really want to go?
Dimitri: Yeah.
Dave: So habits are important. So each one of these factors, assess, dream, set a couple of goals, establish a few habits for 90 days, three months. And just get at least 1% better and it’ll be fine. If you follow this process you will get better. I’m convinced of that.
Dimitri: Wonderful.
Dave: I’m convinced of that. So does that make sense?
Dimitri: It does, it does. So thank you for that. So that is the vitality journey process.
Dave: Yes, dream, goals and habits, right? Can’t be done independent. I can do this on my own.
Dimitri: But obviously there’s nothing like doing it with a partner where you can lock hands, get eye to eye, and really move through one’s life.
Dave: I think it’d be a great idea if you got a friend to say, let’s listen to this podcast together, and let’s do this vitality journey together.
Dimitri: Right, right.
Dave: It’s life changing. Or reach out to us. We’re happy to coach you, coach you through the process.
Dave: Let’s take a minute and check in. Ever catch yourself wondering, why am I here? What’s my real purpose? At Destiny Works, we help you discover exactly that and bring it to life through personal coaching, group experiences, or our vitality journey. You’ll explore what makes you thrive and create a life full of clarity, energy and impact. Are you ready to step into your purpose and live fully? Head over to destiny-works.com and start your journey today. Now back to the conversation.
Dimitri: Now there’s one other tool I want to introduce. It’s a scale. And for those who are listening, I will describe it and those who are watching, you’ll be able to see the scale. Essentially, it’s called the vitality scale. I call it the vitality scale. It’s, got, again, my guru when it comes to physical health is Peter Attia, and I saw a scale that he introduced that the X axis, which is on the bottom. It’s the one that goes horizontal.
Dave: Horizontal, that’s the X axis.
Dimitri: He called lifespan. So it has dates in it. Today, tomorrow, 2026, 2028, those kind of, or 1955, you know. It has all those kind of things. That’s when I was born. And then the Y axis, he called health span.
Dave: Y axis, the vertical one?
Dimitri: The vertical one. I call vitality. So it’s a measure of your vitality. So you could actually, at any time, you could put a dot on the date, which is indicated on the horizontal one and the vertical one, you can come up with a dot, where am I on my vitality? And if those of you who are watching, you could see the scale, we’ve broken it down into six lines, six gradients, okay? And those are equivalent to the six health factors, physical health, emotional, you know, those kind of things. So what I’m going to recommend people do right now, you can actually come up with, now I’m going to be honest, this is subjective. This whole thing is, so this is how you’re feeling right now. I’m not going to call this scientific. This is not a scientific scale. This is how are you feeling. So, you can do this. On a scale of one to 10, scale of one to 10, how do you feel you’re doing physically? Give yourself a score. Scale of one to 10. 10 being like super great and one being not so great. 10 is like, I’m at the best physical condition I’ve ever been in my life.
Dave: Right. Bar none.
Dimitri: Right, five is average and zero is like.
Dave: One is check my pulse.
Dimitri: Right, right. You know.
Dave: Right. Need help.
Dimitri: So on a scale of one to 10, give yourself a score. And those of you who are watching, you can see there’s a place to actually indicate that score.
Dave: Sure.
Dimitri: Emotional health. On a scale of one to 10, how am I doing emotionally? You know, one being, I’m not getting out of bed. 10 meaning I’m Julie Andrews and the Hills are alive with the sound of music. You know? That’s a 10. Give yourself a score. You see where this is going, right?
Dave: Right.
Dimitri: Okay. Relational health, I’m just going to walk down. Relational health, scale of one to 10. 10 is I’m Mr. Woohoo and everybody loves me and everybody’s buying me a beer. Okay. One is, I haven’t been outside and I don’t know who people are. Okay, I’m exaggerating, of course. Financial health, 10 is I’m feeling satisfied where we are financially. I’ve got a savings. And one is, I don’t know where my next meal’s gonna come from. What is there, behavioral health? One is I’ve been doom scrolling for the last seven hours. And 10 is I can actually look at my day and say, I’ve had flow state today. There have been times where I got lost in what I was doing and I enjoyed it so much. That’s behavioral health. What did I skip? Vocational health. Vocational health is one is I don’t know what the heck I’m doing here. I don’t like my job. I don’t like what I do. I don’t understand who I am and 10 is not only do I like my job, but I have a really good sense of why I’m here. Okay. All right, so all that to say scale of one to ten on each one of those, each one of those add them all up. The highest score you can have is 60.
Dave: Right.
Dimitri: So you go over to the vertical axis and you can count up. I just did this on myself the other day, I think I was a 41.
Dave: Okay.
Dimitri: And you’ll do this again in 90 days. By the way, I just said that I was a 41. Tell me, how do you react when you hear me say that? What does that make you? How does that make you?
Dave: Two things came to mind. One was when I thought 41 out of 60, I’m like, that’s pretty good. And then I immediately went to my analytical mind, like I’m rating it and grading it. And then I’m thinking, oh, I wonder though, is there a baseline where you should be? And is that baseline of where you should be contextual to who you are, or is it just like most humans should be operating around 38 or 41?
Dimitri: Yeah, now you’re talking scientifically.
Dave: Yeah, I know. I’m being whizzy, right?
Dimitri: Yeah, but that is good. That’s exactly right, because I ask myself, so when I saw 41, I didn’t feel good about that.
Dave: You did not?
Dimitri: No.
Dave: I thought it pretty, I’m like, oh, it’s only, yeah, it’s great.
Dimitri: But I did not feel good about that. And I was surprised when I added it up. To be honest with you, one of those health areas, I gave myself a four out of 10. Immediately, that affected my total score.
Dave: Sure.
Dimitri: But that’s your honest assessment.
Dave: That’s my honest assessment. It’s probably worse than four out of 10, at least the way I felt that day.
Dimitri: Sure.
Dave: So I could say I’m an eight on my physical health. But then I started thinking, okay, I’m an eight on my physical health. I want to be a 10. So at any rate, it’s interesting to hear you say, my 41 sounded good.
Dimitri: To me, my 41 sounded low.
Dave: Yeah.
Dimitri: And with that, how do we not create more pressure for our guests and viewers?
Dave: The fact of the matter is this scale is only there, it’s a metric, right?
Dimitri: Yeah.
Dave: All this tool does is give you a baseline. So what you want, do this now, give yourself a score, and three months from now, when we re-up on this process, see where you are. And again, it’s subjective, it’s not scientific, I’m just, I’m going to say that all the time, no, we’re not, this is not trying to create a scientific thing, we’re just trying to figure out how you feel about yourself.
Dimitri: Yeah, amazing. And well, and this is a great visual representation.
Dave: In a way you can imagine.
Dimitri: Exactly.
Dave: Because I mean, we can say, I feel better. But what does that mean?
Dimitri: Right?
Dave: I feel better now in these six areas, and I can show improvement. Or actually, I kind of went backwards a little bit.
Dimitri: Yeah.
Dave: You know?
Dimitri: Exactly.
Dave: I had a lack of discipline that took place, or I just kind of have gone backwards. And you do this process enough. Like, let’s say you do this on the X axis, the horizontal axis, your lifespan. You do this enough, you can start to see trend lines in your life.
Dimitri: Seasonal.
Dave: It can be seasonal. And hopefully, honestly, we want it to be up and to the right.
Dimitri: Right, right, right.
Dave: Okay?
Dimitri: That’s not the way it is.
Dave: And by the way, just to pin a picture back to the plotting of the dots, if vitality, the highest on the Y axis is 60, the numbers, and lifespan on the bottom, which is the X, is your birth date to future state or like your hundred years being on this planet.
Dimitri: Right.
Dave: You were implying that the higher the vitality, the longer the lifespan. There’s a correlation between those two.
Dimitri: As a matter of fact, yes, as a matter of fact, and I’m going to, again, I’m going to go back to Peter Attia. Here’s what he found. We don’t have them on now. On his scale, on his scale, he noticed that at age 75 on the lifespan, was his, he was a physician, he was a cancer doctor, cancer surgeon, and he basically decided that he wanted to go upstream. So he’s now a longevity doctor.
Dave: Okay, he or a longevity coach.
Dimitri: And what he found when people hit 75, their vitalities, what he calls their health span plummeted. And so he started asking questions. How is it, and I love what he said, how is it that, how could I help a person live a few more lives, excuse me, few more years infinitely better? That’s his whole focus. I want you to live a few more years and if you get your vitality scale, you will live longer, but you’ll live infinitely better.
Dave: With a higher quality.
Dimitri: With a higher quality of life. And that’s really, if I had to boil down this podcast, it’s like I’d like people to say I’m living infinitely better than I did five years ago or five months ago or three.
Dave: Three months ago.
Dimitri: Three months ago.
Dave: That’s my hope.
Dimitri: Wonderful.
Dave: Okay.
Dimitri: Okay. All right, so let’s do a live demo.
Dave: Okay.
Dimitri: You ready for this?
Dave: Yeah, I’m ready.
Dimitri: Do you want to go first? Do you want me to go first? What does go first mean?
Dave: You? No, what is go first? Like the one that answers?
Dimitri: I’m going to coach you right now.
Dave: Okay.
Dimitri: You ready?
Dave: You go first.
Dimitri: Okay, I go first?
Dave: You go first.
Dimitri: All right, so I chose a health factor. Here’s what I want you to do. You’re going to walk me through the assess dream.
Dave: Okay.
Dimitri: I want you, and I’ve chose behavioral health.
Dave: Okay.
Dimitri: Because that’s the score I had the four out of 10 on. I’m not saying I’m crushing it in every other area, but this area, zero crushing.
Dave: As you feel, what’s the score? How I feel about myself today.
Dimitri: I promise you, some people go easy on themselves, I go hard on myself. So this is me being hard on myself.
Dave: All right, coach, all right, mentor, Dimitri, help me out.
Dimitri: All right, behavioral health. So we first have to assess where you are. So today, how would you assess yourself?
Dave: Okay, so let me tell you about some, I’ve got, I have a news habit. And here’s what’s happened. No, it’s not a news habit. I’ve got a pattern habit that when I wake up in the morning, this is weird. Here’s me being vulnerable. Because I have the same thing every morning. You know I’m a foodie.
Dimitri: Yes.
Dave: Which makes no sense that I have the same thing for breakfast every day.
Dimitri: Right.
Dave: Because it’s a patternization in my life. When I wake up in the morning, first thing I do is this. I turn the hot water on and I get ready to make myself a thing of coffee. Too big of coffee, okay? It’s always too much. Then I have yogurt with granola every day. And then I make my coffee and then I go down to my office slash room in my basement, I sit in the chair and I get out my phone and I start looking at news. Sometimes that news will bleed over into Instagram. And then I’m screwed.
Dimitri: And are you stuck? How long are you stuck there?
Dave: Okay, I’m ready to embarrass myself.
Dimitri: It’s okay, we’re all there.
Dave: Okay. On my good days, it’s 30 minutes.
Dimitri: Okay.
Dave: On my bad days, it’s 90 minutes.
Dimitri: You’ll look up and you’re like, man, it’s 10.30 already.
Dave: It’s 11 o’clock. That is the heart of my behavioral health problem.
Dimitri: Got you.
Dave: Right there. I’ll just stop right there. So if I’m assessing myself, part of it is, I don’t oversleep. So that’s not a problem. It’s my patterns in the morning. And then occasionally throughout the day, I know this about myself behaviorally, that if I get worn out, like when we’re done with this podcast, this is energizing, right? But when we’re done, we’ll be depleted. I know about myself at that point, if I touch my phone, it’s over. And I’ll find myself 30, 45 minutes later, what happened to me? It’s because behaviorally, I am trying to find a way to recapture my energy. And I’m doing it illicitly. Look, I don’t look at bad things. I don’t look at bad things. I just look at things that draw me in. For example, if I’m looking at Instagram, almost the algorithm knows I want to see every recipe that’s out there. Because I like to cook. And after seeing about 40 recipes, it’s now 90 minutes later. So that’s my assessment. It’s not a paragraph, but that’s how assessment is. And just one more quick question. You know, a lot of our patterns are based on how they make us, the actions there and how they make us feel.
Dimitri: Yeah.
Dave: How do you feel after you consume your coffee tastes good. So that makes sense. It’s warm yogurt. It’s good. What are you feeling about the news or the content you’re consuming after you’ve consumed it?
Dimitri: Yeah.
Dave: Just before you realize how much time you’ve done.
Dimitri: So, right. So, so I’m embarrassed. I’m embarrassed to say it. I’m embarrassed even if it’s just me.
Dave: Okay.
Dimitri: Like I should know better than that.
Dave: Right.
Dimitri: And I feel bad. And I feel like I’ve wasted time. I’ve wasted time. That’s the bottom line I feel like. And I have limited time in my life.
Dave: Yeah.
Dimitri: And just as a listener, I’m like, well, man, you work very hard. You have a family. You’ve been doing this for 40 years. Man, you want to take 90 minutes and doom scroll. It should not be okay.
Dave: And it’s not okay because of the other priorities of my life.
Dimitri: Fair.
Dave: So my assessment is that other things that are important to me are getting less time and energy than they should. They’re getting impacted.
Dimitri: Yeah, so it’s impacting every, almost every other area of health.
Dave: Got it, okay.
Dimitri: That’s why I think behavioral health is so important.
Dave: Right. Well. That was a very honest and candid assessment. So thank you for that vulnerability. And now to set contrast and future state, the next part is to dream. So, Dave, what does it look like in all things in your favor if you could dream this in the future? What would it look like?
Dimitri: I would love to, here’s one of my dreams. I love to pattern my life better. And I’ve actually started to do this, getting up a little bit earlier and forcing myself to pay attention to the clock a little bit more. And my dream is to replace that scrolling with reading and journaling. And I’ve actually started to do that more over the last couple of weeks. But I want to replace that time with something that will help me grow as a learner.
Dave: Okay.
Dimitri: So if I could paraphrase that, your dream is to replace that doom scroll with something analog, something tactical, outputting. Because you’re just input. It’s all input.
Dave: You want to put out.
Dimitri: Yeah, well, I want, but I do want more. I want better input.
Dave: Oh, fair.
Dimitri: Okay. Okay. I want input that is not just, I don’t want icing.
Dave: Right.
Dimitri: I want the cake.
Dave: You know?
Dimitri: I want the stuff, and that’s even a bad analogy, because the guys think cake is a horrible analogy. It gets worse.
Dave: That’s the icing, just the sprinkles.
Dimitri: Oh no, that’s what I, that’s not what I mean. I just want substance in my life that I want to grow. So that’s my dream is that time. Honestly, I don’t want to fill that time with more work. I’ve had enough work. I want to fill that time with more learning.
Dave: Got you.
Dimitri: And so this is my dream.
Dave: That’s a dream. And so now goals. So right now, if we just average it 90 minutes a day, let’s do five days a week, you’re almost 10 hours a week.
Dimitri: Yeah.
Dave: That’s my worst. It’s not always 90 minutes.
Dimitri: I understand. Just for metrics sake, right?
Dave: He tries to defend himself.
Dimitri: Listen, I’m calling for me to be forthright, except no, I’m not that bad. I’m not that bad.
Dave: My wife is now watching or listening to this and rolling her eyes.
Dimitri: She’s rolling her eyes.
Dave: She’s got to comment on this episode to validate if this is really true or not.
Dimitri: So just for demonstration sake, you’re at 90 minutes a day, 10 hours a week. What’s a goal then to?
Dave: So it’s not going to go away altogether. I want to limit that to 20 to 30 minutes. That’s goal number one. So whatever I’m doing. And honestly, the first 15 minutes, I’m reading the New York Times. So it’s not like it’s junk.
Dimitri: Right.
Dave: Right.
Dimitri: Okay.
Dave: But I want to limit that to no more than 30 minutes. And the rest of the time, I want to, another 30 minutes, I want every day journal, every day read right now, and read something of substance.
Dimitri: So the news is not that for you?
Dave: No.
Dimitri: No.
Dave: You know what the news does to me?
Dimitri: What is it?
Dave: I get angry. So now can we talk about my emotional health?
Dimitri: I saw you adjust your seat just now.
Dave: I’m just sitting up like, let’s go. Ladies and gentlemen, Dave Rod just almost stood up in his chair.
Dimitri: And almost said things I shouldn’t say on a public. But at any rate, yeah, so that’s my goal. Limit the reading, limit the news time. And I want to read something of substance. So let’s just say if I’m gonna set a goal, let’s say in three months, three books that you want to have read during the time you would have doom scrolled.
Dave: Doing instead, instead of doom scrolling I now have productively, in three months, I’ve read three books.
Dimitri: Okay. Got it.
Dave: And that’s what I like about that. That’s a very simple attainable goal.
Dimitri: Yeah, and it’s habitual.
Dave: I can make it habitual. You can and it didn’t, it’s not a cold turkey goal either because, yeah.
Dimitri: I’ll just stop, I’m just gonna stop doing scrolls.
Dave: No, like you’re gonna scroll stuff. You gotta scroll. You just have to, right? But how to make it a healthy scroll.
Dimitri: Exactly, exactly.
Dave: And my habit is then, and I’ve actually started doing this the last week is I set my alarm. So when that alarm goes off, it’s my alert that, dude, the clock, you’re on the clock now. You got 30 minutes. Get that yogurt, get that coffee. You can read for 30 minutes, but then you’re busting that book out.
Dimitri: So one of the habits is setting an alarm.
Dave: Okay, that’s wonderful. So this, does that help?
Dimitri: It does, it does. So this is how the process, that’s me. Are you ready for me to do this for you?
Dave: Yeah, I’m ready.
Dimitri: So what area do you want to do?
Dave: I think relational health.
Dimitri: Okay, relational health. All right, let’s start with an assessment. How are you relationally today?
Dave: Relationally, and this comes from some conversations you and I had. Right now I’m having a hard time with my organization and with trying to find support from other people. And when I’m hurt, I hide. When people don’t help me, I don’t want to deal with people. And it’s not like they’re not doing what I want them to do. It’s like I’m doing something to help other people. And I don’t understand why other people don’t want to help other people.
Dimitri: And can I read into this a little bit?
Dave: Yeah.
Dimitri: Let me ask you a question. When you hurt, you hide. When somebody doesn’t do what you hope they do, you don’t want to go back to them or relate to them because it hurts more.
Dave: That’s right. I don’t want to interact with that person and almost don’t want to interact with humans. And that sounds a bit crass and trite, as if I’m outside or above the human experience I am in. But it’s just like, if I’ve asked two people and they said, no, I don’t want to keep asking people at this point. I’ll just do it myself.
Dimitri: So do you define people by those who hurt you and those who don’t?
Dave: Man, perhaps, if I’m being honest. And the hurt isn’t like they did something to me. The hurt could be passive. It isn’t like you didn’t do what I would expect you to do, which is help people.
Dimitri: You didn’t meet my expectation.
Dave: That was, that’s correct.
Dimitri: That’s okay.
Dave: Yeah, so I think that’s my assessment. It’s yeah, when I’m hurting I hide and, and by the way, that’s, that’s part one and part two of that could be hey, my financial situation is not sexy right now. Right. There’s things that as we talked about these six factors, I’m like there’s some deficits in my area and it’s like, yo, I don’t want to, I got to sort that out.
Dimitri: Yeah.
Dave: So I become very introverted.
Dimitri: Right.
Dave: Become just very inside myself, which isn’t healthy.
Dimitri: Right.
Dave: When you turn, when you close the room, turn off the door and you close, turn off the light.
Dimitri: Well, because there’s a level of I don’t want, I’m reading, here’s what I’m hearing you say, like, I don’t want you to know where I am financially. So that limits the relationship.
Dave: It does, it does. And because it goes back to the hurt, if you know this about me, you could weaponize it. If you know this about me, I have to admit it. And that’s embarrassing. And who wants to admit that I can’t pay my bills?
Dimitri: So it’s really, you’re, I hope other people can be as honest about themselves as you are right now.
Dave: Well, it’s not like a hot mess.
Dimitri: No, I mean, no, it’s an honest, it’s a mess, but it’s an honest.
Dave: It’s an honest.
Dimitri: Coaches keep it real here, that’s by the way.
Dave: You’re just so messed up.
Dimitri: Relationally, the fact that you can point out that when you hurt, you hide.
Dave: Yeah.
Dimitri: If a person can actually say, here are my, that’s a relational system. This is a system that, this is what happens in my life. If people are doing honest assessment, I don’t care which health factor it is, let’s figure out what the system is causing you to struggle. That’s yours. Okay, anything you’d add to the assessment?
Dave: Yeah, I would just probably add that, you know, my perception of this compounds the actual thing. And so it’s the problem that I have to solve and my perception of those that are surrounded and their lack of performance thereof. When I combine that, it just becomes this self-created, no one else knows about this except me, right? And this is a saying, I wish I could find an author of it, that problems don’t exist in your mind. Outside of your mind, the problem doesn’t exist. You want the red card, no one else cares. It’s your issue, man. Are you okay? And so I look at this like, yeah, am I losing my mind here? Like, what’s going on? And I know that by having that system, that at one point was a system of safety. All these systems, these behaviors started to protect oneself. And if you keep doing that in an incorrect context, you get babies in the river. You get babies in the river and you start pushing people away, attacking people. You never solve all the things. The other part of this is like, man, I know that as much as I don’t want to involve myself with people because they’re just going to tell me no and not help me, there’s that many people that will. I just would tell them what’s going on.
Dimitri: Yeah.
Dave: Right? So, yeah.
Dimitri: Okay. Flip it to dream.
Dave: Dreams.
Dimitri: Turn that on its head. What’s it look like if you’re relationally healthy?
Dave: Man, if I’m relationally healthy, I’m able to be like, you know what, guys? I need help. This, I am stuck. This is what’s happening and I got nothing. What do you think?
Dimitri: So I’m hearing you say your dream is to be honest.
Dave: First, honest and self revelatory.
Dimitri: Yeah, and.
Dave: That’s who I am.
Dimitri: I appreciate that. Can I just sit on that for a second?
Dave: Yeah, go ahead.
Dimitri: Because I never thought about it being dishonest, but I guess, you know, lack of information almost is in a way.
Dave: It’s a form of dishonesty, inauthenticity.
Dimitri: So yeah, I would like to be more honest with people. And let’s be clear, there’s concentric rings of those. You’re not going to be honest with the guy if you walk by at Starbucks. Hey, by the way, can I tell you how messed up I am? Thanks for your time. So there’s within the people that should know whatever that layer of information is or what have you.
Dave: Yeah, I want to be honest. And I think it’s one part just to be able to say it, because there is not anyone in my circle right now that I can’t say anything to. So I want to be clear. The problem, the restraint in that comes from me. And further in that I believe that my problems are bigger than anyone else’s ability to help me or see what I understand. So it’s that. I don’t want to burden people with me.
Dimitri: Yeah.
Dave: So the dream would be to be able to speak without feeling the gravity of me being in the way of being too much.
Dimitri: That’s good.
Dave: Yeah.
Dimitri: All right. How do you make a goal? How do we set a goal? You’ve got three months. What’s a three-month goal on this?
Dave: Man, that’s a good question. And help me with this, right?
Dimitri: Yeah, yeah.
Dave: Call two people and say some stuff to them. Hold my breath and see what happens. Like, I don’t know.
Dimitri: Well, okay. You’ve done that with me.
Dave: So we’ve known each other for, and there’s nothing you hold back from me.
Dimitri: Not nothing. As far as I know.
Dave: No, you got it all.
Dimitri: But I think it’s a good goal to establish, I think that’s a really good goal to pick another person, and let’s be honest, pick a safe person. And say, I’m going to practice something with you. I’m going to practice some self-revelation because I’m trying to learn about myself and see what happens. That’d be an interesting, and essentially it’s going to change that relationship.
Dave: Of course it will.
Dimitri: I mean, and hopefully, and invariably probably for the best, right?
Dave: Oh, I believe it will. I believe it will.
Dimitri: Yeah, I appreciate that. I just want to say one thing about that goal. You know, what you just did for me, I just want to share this with our viewers and listeners, right? Like this is where the coach helps.
Dave: Yes.
Dimitri: Right. So the assessing dreams part, I could have journaled that. I could have noodled that and yeah, all the glass of wine and some paper.
Dave: Yeah.
Dimitri: Two glasses of wine.
Dave: Yeah.
Dimitri: Maybe a bottle.
Dave: Maybe I have nothing written after that point.
Dimitri: And then there’s not a problem. All things are good. Everything’s great. Hills are alive. But assessing, dreaming, that’s self motivated, self guided. But yeah, you know, this is, we’re having a coach is important, because again, you’re in the weeds. I can’t, everything looks the same, and so I just want to just say.
Dave: Let me note, let me just jump on that for a second. Our tendency is to self-protect us from deep assessment.
Dimitri: Of course.
Dave: Because I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know the crap. So yeah, it’s helpful to have at least an honest friend.
Dimitri: It is.
Dave: And just one more thing on top of that. Just going back to the physical nature of the human body and biochemistry and so on, like the human brain was designed to protect itself from Mongolian threat as well as emotional threat and so on. And so yeah, even this dialogue like this, your brain and hearing is going to give you the most BS superficial non-revealing answer possible.
Dave: And what we think is, that protected me. I just protected my, and to a certain extent you did.
Dimitri: Right.
Dave: But now you can’t get anything in.
Dimitri: One last thing though. So that’s a goal. Habit, what’s a new habit you could start to practice for the next three months in this relationship you want to build?
Dave: I think, I always think about problems at a table with three seats. And I’m stuck in one chair, I’m in chair A. And in order for me to solve this problem, I have to sit in either B or C. And one of the ways to help me get through this, the habit I can change is to stop thinking like people are thinking about me. The main character syndrome, right? Why do I think people are thinking that I’m a burden if they ask me what was wrong? Just answer the question. Just respond, just speak and let them respond and decide. So, I think that.
Dimitri: So, may I make a suggestion?
Dave: Please, please.
Dimitri: So, my suggestion is, before you sit down with the person, you have one small part of self-talk that you remind yourself. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. Even if it’s just that, it’s okay.
Dave: Man, if I can just, can we sit on that for a second?
Dimitri: Yeah.
Dave: There is so much of what we experience and feel. I feel like I’m about to cry a bit. It doesn’t feel okay. It just does not feel okay, man. It does not feel okay. And even to say like, it’s okay, means so much because you don’t feel like it is. And let’s be real, if you really run it out, it’s like, it’s okay. You get to eat tonight, you got to get in your bed. And by the way, conversely, if you’re telling yourself it’s okay, we each of us need people in our lives to look us in the eye and lovingly say, it’s okay. We need that in return.
Dimitri: We do, we do.
Dave: My hope for you is as these relationships deepen and more self revelatory, you’re getting more of the, it’s okay. It’s okay. And I love that you said self talk. That does two things. Reminds me that it’s not the recipient’s burden to comfort me and my dysfunction. I gotta sort that out. That self-talk is me in the closet, in the mirror, punching the air, and then I fix my face and come in the room. You can’t make people responsible for your wellness. You gotta do it.
Dimitri: Thank you.
Dave: Thank you. That was helpful for both of us, I think. I got some work to do.
Dimitri: And I do too.
Dave: And by the way, the next time I see you, I hope you ask me, how much time did you spend?
Dimitri: I was going to do a scrolling or not and say.
Dave: And yes, that’s what we’ll do for each other.
Dimitri: And hopefully, those of you listening or watching, now this is the deepest dive you could get on how this process works. And we’ll hopefully in the weeks ahead with this podcast, be able to deal with each one of these health factors in this kind of way that you can do an honest assessment yourself and do some dreaming and set some goals.
Dave: Yeah. Quick question. You know, we’re here on this podcast, we’re together, and I mean, we feel things for our listeners and our viewers. And as we go through this exercise continually, it can feel heavy.
Dimitri: Yeah.
Dave: Right? You might write all this out and you might be like, man, I need a drink. After you’ve already drunk to journal anyway. What to do, right? To kind of come out of that. Do you have any tips and tricks? I’ve already burned the hour with my therapist. I just spent an hour drinking and writing. What can I do to now just like not to come out of that and kind of reset? Do you have anything to say?
Dimitri: I think two things. I would go, where’s the hope in this? Ask yourself, where’s the hope in this is that my vitality will grow or it will increase. This is where a spiritual life is important too, and I think to call on heaven, God to help you through this and then give yourself time. Cause it just doesn’t, it’s not going to feel good. It’s not going to feel good. It takes time. It’s not designed to feel good.
Dave: I appreciate that. I know that.
Dimitri: All right, we’ll come back at it again.
Dave: Thank you.
Dimitri: Great conversation as always.
Dave: Indeed.
Dimitri: I’m gonna close this out with a blessing.
Dave: I would love that.
Dimitri: Again, by John O’Donohue.
Dave: He’s the best.
Dimitri: This one I love, he’s entitled this one, to come home to yourself. You ready? May all that is unforgiven in you be released. May your fears yield their deepest tranquilities. May all that is unlived in you blossom into a future graced with love.