Are you feeling burned out, overwhelmed, and disconnected from your purpose?
In this thought-provoking episode, dentist-turned-coach Eric Recker shares his powerful story of overcoming burnout and rediscovering his “why.”
Through captivating anecdotes and insightful metaphors, Eric unveils the harsh realities of burnout he faced in his dental practice and the pivotal moment that sparked his transformation. His Dam Analogy is a brilliant illustration of how we can control the flow of energy in our lives, ensuring a healthy balance between outflow and inflow.
Eric’s authentic storytelling, practical wisdom, and actionable insights will inspire you to redefine success, prioritise self-care, and rediscover the joy in your journey.
Whether you’re a business owner, professional, or simply seeking more fulfilment in life, this episode will help you cultivate the resilience and mindset to conquer life’s challenges, savour the present moment, and ultimately, win at life.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- The “why” behind Eric’s relentless pursuit (00:48)
- Flow vs. death by paper cuts (02:26)
- Eric’s pivot to coaching and speaking (04:20)
- When a car accident flipped Eric’s script (08:05)
- Embracing the power of pause to find clarity amid the chaos (12:34)
- Designing your dream life (15:25)
- How pausing and embracing stillness provides perspective (16:19)
- Micro-recharging secrets for the constantly overloaded (20:10)
- How to reignite your fire and find love in your work again (21:54)
- The “hard stuff: and to conquer it (26:53)
- How Eric trained to summit Kilimanjaro (32:30)
- Controlling life’s energy flow using The Dam Analogy (33:58)
- Self-care simplified – it’s not just about massages (35:36)
- Conquering phone addiction and embracing quiet spaces (38:39)
- Eric’s burnout equation – the two elements you must avoid (43:45)
QUOTES
“We can believe the concept that work makes us burnt out or work gets us stressed. But I believe that it’s when we don’t have purpose, that when we’re not living in alignment, that’s when it happens. And it’s not necessarily the work or the stress.” – Samantha Riley
“It’s the power of the pause. It is amazing what happens when we actually stop and just sit in it.” – Samantha Riley
“One of the biggest causes of burnout is that we haven’t figured out what we love about our jobs. And even if we do, we haven’t leveraged that part of our job as much as possible so we can have more enjoyment.” – Eric Recker
“If you want to do more of the fun stuff, you’ve got to do the hard stuff until you can get there. You need to get more efficient with doing the hard stuff.” – Eric Recker
“What we’ve done is we’ve traded all our pause and recovery moments for distraction. And that distraction is not helping us.” – Eric Recker
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
That Dam Analogy!: How to fill up, stay up, and impact the world following a few simple steps by Eric Recker
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ABOUT ERIC RECKER
Dr Eric Recker is a dentist, husband, father, keynote speaker, Elite Success Coach, author, pilot, mountain climber, and recovering triathlete. In his second half of life, he is committed to helping people shorten the distance to becoming their best version and learning to #WINtheNOW
WHERE TO FIND ERIC RECKER
- Website: https://ericrecker.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-recker-583849278/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/docrecker/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eric.recker.1
- Freebies – https://ericrecker.com/knock-back-burnout/ and https://ericrecker.com/3-great-ways-to-win/
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
Facebook: Samantha Riley
Instagram: @thesamriley
LinkedIn: Samantha Riley
Twitter: @thesamriley
TRANSCRIPTION
Samantha Riley 0:02
Welcome to today’s episode of Influence By Design. I’m your host, Samantha Riley. And today we’re going to talk about winning in life. I’m going to leave that to our guest to explain what we’re talking about. Specifically, we’re going to talk about the opposite of that, we’re going to talk about burnout. You may be feeling that right now that you want a little bit more inspiration to get into your day, and have some more energy. We’re gonna talk about all of that. So Eric, welcome to the show. It’s great to have you here.
Eric Recker 0:33
Thanks so much for having me, Samantha. I’m excited to be here.
Samantha Riley 0:37
Let’s start off, I’d love to know, before we dive into any of the actual content, why do you do what you do?
Eric Recker 0:48
Well, that’s a great question. I do what I do, because I want to make an impact on people. That’s really why I get up in the morning. I have a story that I believe is significant and powerful. And I just know that someday, if I’m on my deathbed and I have not shared this story, I have not done everything that I can in my life to help leave the world better than when I got here, that I’m gonna regret that. And so that’s what gets me out of bed in the morning, the possibility to help somebody, help a lot of people, trust that this is the way it’s gonna happen.
Samantha Riley 1:25
I love that because I think that if we’re being very generalist, we can get into the, or we can believe the concept that work makes us burnt out or work gets us stressed. But I believe that it’s when we don’t have purpose, that when we’re not living in alignment, that’s when it happens. And it’s not necessarily the work or the stress. And I could be wrong, because I am someone that loves to work. I’m someone that thrives under the right kind of stress. I love having a big project and a big challenge if I know that it’s going in the right direction. You know, and I feel fueled by that. And yet, sometimes I can work a fifth of the amount of hours, I can have challenges that seem tiny, and I can be tearing my hair out going, Oh my God, I need a holiday, I need a break. I can’t do this anymore. Can you speak a little bit to that?
Eric Recker 2:26
Well, I’m sure glad to hear that I’m not the only one who has that. I like to call that flow. When we are in the zone, when we are feeling our purpose. When we’re doing purposeful work, when we’re doing those things. Those are the days that I feel like I could be at my desk, writing, creating content, whatever I’m doing, and I wouldn’t need an end to the day, I would just keep going, keep me fed, keep my blood sugar up. And just let me keep going because it feels so good. But other times there’s these weird speed bumps that we hit. THey just take us down. And it’s a, I call those death by paper cut. So we have those times when, Yeah, so you know what a paper cut feels like, right? Yeah. So small, but it just really annoys us. Well, in paper cuts, do this, this weird thing, you get one, then you get another, and then you get another. And there actually was in mediaeval times, there was a way of execution called Death by 1000 Cuts. And so they would just slowly cut you up, which is unbelievably barbaric. But we have these times in our lives where we get a little paper cut, and we get another cut, and we get another cut and all of a sudden we just feel like we’re bleeding. We’re really struggling with that. And that’s, that can really happen when we’re working outside of our purpose or when we’re letting those little paper cuts really get to us.
Samantha Riley 4:02
Now you’re actually a dentist by trade and you still have your practice. Can you talk about the transition of how you even moved into this coaching and mentoring space? Because you still have your practice, right?
Eric Recker 4:20
I do. I do. Yeah, I was, I didn’t know the term burnout. But I was the textbook case of burnout. I could spend a whole hour talking about my bullying story when I was growing up. But I’m from a small town in Iowa in the US. And in the early 80s on the recess field, kickball was life. Pick the sport of kickball was life and getting to play kickball, that’s the only thing I wanted to do. I wanted to get to recess so I could play kickball. The thing was, there was a point when it was determined that I was not good enough to play kickball. This is second, third grade. And when you hear, when you hear Eric, you don’t get to play, you’re not good enough, I would have been fine being picked last because I still could have got that kick that everybody would have believed in me. But I remember as a third grader, standing on the side of that recess field, making a pact with myself that said, I am going to be so freakin’ good at everything I ever do, that no one will ever not pick me. Now, I didn’t realise the power of those words until probably about five or six years ago. But everything I did, I was convinced that it wasn’t good enough. So I kept striving harder and harder, I had to be the best in high school, the best in dental school, I had to then I started running and a 5k wasn’t enough, a 10k, a half marathon wasn’t enough. I started in triathlon, all the way through the Ironman distance. And it finally was on the top of a hill, a mountain called Mount Princeton in Colorado, a 14,000 foot peak that I had hiked. And I got to the top and I looked around, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. If you don’t know why you’re climbing the mountain, you’re not going to find the answer at the top. And I just thought, oh, man, I have been chasing this good enough. And I’m never going to get there. So what I really had to do is, I had come back down from that mountain and start to realise, why am I doing what I’m doing. Because burnout had a massive hole in me. You can imagine striving all of that trying to run a dental practice with 20 people. You know, all these different things. I was suffering from panic attacks, I had chest pain, I had heart palpitations, I had a head that literally would not and would not quit spinning, I would have Sunday nights that I was so terrified to go to work the next day that I would not sleep the entire night. And then I would work a day and it just stacked on top of itself. So that’s kind of where I finally realised that I was so burned out because I realised I wanted to escape. I wanted to get away. I wanted to sell my practice. And I thought for a season that that was going to be the answer.
Samantha Riley 7:35
I’d love you to share the story that you shared with me just before we started recording around that, because I think it’s so powerful to help us all. Like we all know that there is a greater something out there, whether it’s God, whether it’s our, you know, spirituality, like whatever it is, whether it’s the universe, but there was someone definitely looking after you during that time, right?
Eric Recker 8:05
Yeah, yeah. So for me, faith is a huge thing, was definitely my interpretation of it is, it was God watching over me. But here’s the reality of it. This was post-COVID. So during COVID is when I started thinking, I had discretionary time, I hadn’t had that for so long. And there was this whole thing where my dental practice was closed. And so there’s a million webinars to watch about infection control and about new procedures and how we’re going to reopen and all of that kind of stuff. And my head was spinning like it never had before. So that’s when the thought of starting to do some speaking is kind of how it started out. I started writing and started doing some stuff like that just to help kind of relieve the stress. And when we came back from COVID, I had a conversation with my partner at the, or my associate at the time, another dentist who worked for me. And I said, Hey, look, Are you interested in buying the practice? And he said, Yeah, I’m interested in buying the practice, that’d be great. I said, Well, here’s the thing. I think I’m going to walk away. And he said, Okay, yeah, very interested in buying. So we had figured out a time in February of 2021, when the practice management consultant was going to come and work out the final details with him. I would sell, I would be there for probably about six months, and then I would walk away, to what I was going to do after that, heck if I know, but I was so burned out and I felt like the only way out was to escape, escape from the practice. And so things were clicking along, January 18 and 2021. It’s a Monday morning, we met for our 7:45 morning huddle before we get started for the day, and one person was not in the huddle. And I asked his assistant, I said, Hey, where is he at? Have you seen him? No, I haven’t seen him yet. No, call him, call went right to voicemail, called his wife, she had no idea where he was. And then we heard sirens. And not even a mile from our office, he was in a horrific car accident. The EMT said, it’s a miracle that he survived, he did survive. But what I realised after that, that was that kind of moment of clarity for me that this was not the right idea. He was not the right person to sell it to. And it was not the right time to sell it. And I am so thankful, I’m not thankful he was in a car accident, that was awful. But this, we have these bad things that happen in our lives. And sometimes they get redeemed to a place that we couldn’t have imagined where they went to. So I had to step back and say, What is it really that I really want? I realised that I was trying to go around the burnout. And so often in our lives, we try to go around the problems. I’m sure there’s a ton of coaches who are listening to this who are like, oh, yeah, I help people with this all the time. They’re not facing the real problem. And I wasn’t facing the real problem. So I figured out what was it that I actually wanted to do. Well, I still actually wanted to have relationship with my team, and with my dental patients, and all of that, but I also wanted to impact people in a different way. So I thought, okay, how can I do this? So I was able to find a partner to come into my dental practice, he bought half of my practice, we’re 50-50 partners. And I told him from day one, here’s the thing, I’m going to stay around for a couple months. And then I’m going to reduce my schedule to three days a week. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then my dental practice doing what I love to do, the parts that I love to do about it. And then on the other days, I’m doing some coaching, I’m doing keynote speaking, workshops, writing, things like that. So this is a space that I couldn’t have imagined, I thought it had to be an either or. So I’m so thankful that I didn’t sell my practice, because I wouldn’t have been able to come back from that. And it’s just, it’s a great space to be right now.
Samantha Riley 12:34
I love that. And thank you so much for sharing that story. I’ve just, I mean, in the matter of half an hour I’ve heard that twice and like goosebumps listening to that story. There are two very big pieces that stood out to me in that. And one of them, and you mentioned it and glossed over it so quickly. But it’s the power of the pause. It is amazing what happens when we actually stop and just sit in it. And I had a very similar experience to you, where I remember being in this time where a lot of things were going really wrong in my business. And I remember ringing my brother who, it’s so bizarre that these things happen because I hadn’t spoken to him for like years and years and years. And he was, you know, we use to text, I never picked up the phone and talk to him. But this particular night, I just had this pull to pick up the phone and talk to him. And at the time he was tour guiding out in Central Australia like right in the middle of the Australian Outback, which even, you know, most people around the world are like, Wow, that must be amazing. Even most Australians haven’t been out there. It’s just, you know, it’s so vast and miles away. And he’s like, why don’t you just jump on a plane and come visit? He’s like, I’m not on a tour. Why don’t you just come and visit? And I sat there on the bed and I can still picture and I like looked at flights and there’s a flight tomorrow, and I was there by lunchtime the next day. And he took me on a hike to the West MacDonnell Ranges, which are, I believe, like one of the biggest mountain ranges in the world. I didn’t even know this existed in the Outback. I thought there was just nothing but desert. But they have these most amazing set of ranges. And we set off at four o’clock in the morning to get to the top because it was super, super hot out there. Took us I think something like, you know, eight hours, it was an eight hour hike. But I remember getting to the top of, I think it was Counts Point. And just looking out, and this range is so massive. And I remember this is my moment of change where I stood up there and went hmm, my problems aren’t really that big because right up here I feel so insignificant, like, the landscape was so vast that it was such a turning point for me to go, I’m just like, I’m just a speck on this planet. And we can work it out. And for me, like you, I had this moment. But if we didn’t take the pause, we would never have been able to work through that. So I find that so amazing. The second piece that I picked up from what you were talking about was love. You went in and just went, This is what I love to do. And this is what I love to do. I’m going to take the best bits about this side, and the best bits about this side, and I’m going to put them together and create this amazing life. I just, I think that they’re two really, really important points. My question is, what was it that gave you the permission, like the self permission to say to yourself, I’m going to do what I love to do?
Eric Recker 16:02
Oh, I love that. I am, I want to go back just a little bit. I’m gonna go like
Samantha Riley 16:09
Yay, let’s go.
Eric Recker 16:12
No, I, oh, man, I think we could talk for like three hours. This is amazing.
Samantha Riley 16:16
100%.
Eric Recker 16:19
But the power of the pause, I love to talk to people about that. And actually, I get to talk to a group of seventh and eighth grade students, so 13, 14 year old leaders, their teacher asked if I’d come in and do a little bit of a time with them. And I said, How would you guys like a free superpower today? No, like, Yeah, I’m like, What does everybody like for a superpower? And you know, some are like, invisible, I want to fly. I want superhuman strength, all that kind of stuff. And I said, What if you had a superpower that would get you in trouble with your parents less? What if you had a superpower that would help you make bad choices less? What if you had a superpower that would help you to just have better thoughts? And they’re like, they’re all raising their hand. Yeah, this is not very exciting. But it’s called the pause. You know how many times your parents said something, you get mad and you go right back to them? Right? You just snap right back down. And what if you just took one deep breath? And then you responded, instead of snapping back at them? Oh, yeah. And so we talked about that a little bit. And I think it’s something we need to be reminded of a lot of times, because when we get burned out, we’re very reactive, we’re very snappy, we’re really shifting. That pause is such a gift, whether it’s a momentary pause, because we don’t pause anymore, right, we have self checkout, we don’t have to wait in check out lanes anymore. And if we do, we pick our phones up. We don’t, when we used to be, we would pause at traffic lights and just look around a little bit. Now we pick up our phones. We’ve lost those moments of pause. So I love that you brought that up. I also love that you brought that up about just that feeling of insignificance on the top of the, the top of a mountain. I took a good friend up, I’m also a pilot, I took a good friend up in a plane, and we were flying over our hometown. And he was talking about the things that he’s interested in and I said, Hey, let’s fly over the place where you work and let’s fly over your home. And so we flew over those, I said, there’s one dot that’s important to you. And there’s the other dot that’s important to you. And then we flew over a little bit higher. And you see how small those dots are. And we’re flying over one small part of one state out of 50 in the US, one country out of how many. And we think our problems are so big. Yes, yes. But the reality is, there’s lots of people, lots of dots, and somehow it’s all interconnected. And there’s a way that it all works out. So it’s just a good reminder that yes, our momentary problems that they’re a big deal to us. But to try to pause and not get so fired up about it, just take a moment, step back and say, Okay, what can we do about this? So love that you brought that up.
Samantha Riley 19:26
So it doesn’t necessarily, I just want to dive into that just before we move on. It doesn’t necessarily need to be going and walking to the top of a mountain like you and I did. It can be as simple as, and I say this to my clients all the time. Your meditation or your version of meditation could be just as simple as, I’m having a bad day. I’m just gonna go make a cup of tea and go sit outside under the, you know, out in the backyard with a cup of tea and sit in the sun. It can be that simple. It doesn’t need to be something huge and, you know, having that time or just, you know, at the end of a call just walking away and, you know, going for a walk. It can be, it can be super simple.
Eric Recker 20:10
Absolutely. I love what I call, these are like micro recovery things that I talked about. So, yes, a trip to the Outback. Amazing. How often are you gonna get to do that?
Samantha Riley 20:21
Exactly. Yeah, it’s not an every week thing, right?
Eric Recker 20:25
For sure. And so we put so much pressure on our vacations. We’re so wiped out, we coast into our vacations on fumes, right. And then it takes us five days to get uncorked to be able to even enjoy that seven day vacation. And how many of those do we get a year? Maybe a couple, maybe three? Life is lived more in the everyday. So what’s something I can do today to help? Can I write down five things that I’m grateful for? In between meetings, do I get up and go outside and walk around the block? Do I, instead of just picking up my phone or going back to the email, do I just sit at my desk, close my eyes, and take deep breaths for two minutes? What are some of those things we can do in small amounts of time, go outside and get five minutes of sunlight on your forehead. We don’t have a pill that’s better for us than that. And I don’t suspect that we’re going to, so what are those little things that we can do? So, yeah, I love that. Big is great. But big is less common. For sure.
Samantha Riley 21:30
Yeah, yeah, totally. Thanks for going down that rabbit hole with me. I appreciate that. My original question that both of us have not even got to yet, the love, like how did you get to the point where you gave yourself permission to say I love doing this? And I love doing this? And this is how I’m going to put it all together?
Eric Recker 21:54
Yeah, most of my life, I will say I have not loved myself. I haven’t. And when you think you’re not good enough, it’s hard to love something that’s not good enough. And I had, it’s not like it wasn’t modelled well for me. I have amazing parents, they love me really well. And my wife is amazing. My kids are amazing. But I didn’t love myself. And so I knew when that happened, and it wasn’t a switch that flipped. And all of a sudden, I went from not loving myself to loving myself. What really happened in that moment, when I found out that the practice sale wasn’t going to happen is a three-dentist practice became a two-dentists practice. And we were running around like chickens with our heads cut off. I mean, it was crazy. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody else. But I had no choice but to spend as much time in recovery as possible. My days were so stressful, so intense, that I could not have as many things on my plate outside of work as I normally did. I had to come home and rest, because I just didn’t have anything. And it was really in those moments of quiet that I thought, Okay, why are you pushing so hard? What are you going to end up with? You’re going to end up with money, but no enjoyment. You’re going to end up with a great retirement plan, and probably a heart attack. There’s just some of these things that have got to change. And so I started, I started seeing some of these systems that I had in place that weren’t working. I had some old operating systems that were crap, they needed to be reworked. And so I really had to slow down to figure that out. My wife is a great question asker. She said, Hey, so this isn’t going to work out now. What do you want? What do you want life to look like? And we started having some of those conversations. And I realised that, you know, I wanted a life where I had time for her, where I had time for my kids. And I hadn’t had that. I would be at the office at 6:30 in the morning, a lot of nights I wouldn’t come home till six. I’d be shot. I wouldn’t be bringing the best version of myself home and just said, you know, I can’t do that anymore. I can’t do that. It’s not fair to my family. It’s not fair to me. What if I have a heart attack in my 50s? And that’s the end of my life? What is there to show other than somebody who everybody will say, I don’t know how he did it. He worked so hard. So I just realised that that is not what I wanted. And I also realised one of the biggest causes of burnout is that we haven’t figured out what we love about our jobs. And even if we do, we haven’t leveraged that part of our job as much as possible so we can have more enjoyment. I found out, for me, my dental practice, I love my patients. I love my team, I do. The technical aspects and some of the practice management stuff, I don’t particularly care for that. But I love my patients. So I take time and have conversations with my patients. I take time and have conversations with my team. That’s the part that gives me energy. So I encourage people, whatever it is about your job, figure out what it is you like, and then do as much of that as possible. And if you ultimately say there is nothing I like about my job, then can I say it’s time to find a new job.
Samantha Riley 25:36
The people that I speak to, I actually never hear that anymore, truthfully, never hear that in my world. What I do here, though, is I just want to do this part. And it’s usually, you know, I want to create training. So I want to write or I want to just coach or, you know, I want to do the things that I love to do. And it’s generally those sort of things. But then there’s always the second part of the sentence that goes, but I don’t know how to get rid of that or but I think I should be doing it or but I can’t afford someone else to do it. And then there’s a “but” and some sort of story. How did you get past that story? And I’m not saying that I just wanted to clarify, I’m not saying it to minimise that those things aren’t real. But I think that there has to be a point where we realise that it is just a story, that we are filled with resourcefulness. And we actually can move through these situations. And yeah, so how did you do that? Like, what did you need to tap into? What resources did you need to tap into to move through that?
Eric Recker 26:53
Yeah, so initially, I thought, I’m just gonna quit my practice. So I’m gonna coach and speak and write. That’s what I’m gonna do. Fun stuff. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s great. But that’s not practical. You’re not going to be a stage speaker, day one. You’re not going to be a famous writer, day one. And I looked at these other people, and I got in this comparison thing. And comparison is the thief of joy. It definitely is. I think Teddy Roosevelt said that. And we spend so much time comparing people. Well, I can’t compare myself to a 15-year seasoned speaker, they’ve done all the hard stuff. And in some of that, well, I don’t want to do this, I only want to do the fun stuff. Well, I do too. But you know what, if you want to do more of the fun stuff, you got to do the hard stuff until you can get there. You either have to do the hard stuff until you can afford to pay somebody to do the hard stuff for you, or you need to figure out another way to do it. You need to get more efficient with doing the hard stuff. Because for me, most of the time, it’s just me. And so I’m doing proposals, I’m doing all of those kinds of things, some of those things I’d love to not do. But at the point where I’m at, I have my wife do some things for me. And I have a virtual assistant do just, just a couple of things for me. But really, you know, we look at life, you either do what you really love to do, and that’s great. But it does have to pay your bills as well. Or you do something else that pays the bills so you can do what you really love to do. Those are tough things to get around. Those are tough realities to get around. And if you really want to do the fun stuff all the time, then learn to hustle. So we have to do hard, hard work, learn your craft, learn from people who have been there before you. I mean, the content that’s available right now. It’s unbelievable. You want to learn how to do something, you can almost certainly figure out how to do it for free somewhere on the internet, if you know how to, if you know how to find it. Hire a coach, hire somebody who’s been there before you and wants to do, and is doing what you want to do. Borrow from them. It’s not necessarily going to be a light switch, even when I decided to hire, to join with a partner. That was in May that we started talking about that. He didn’t come on board till December. I still had another seven months of really intense hard work that I was not enjoying. But I knew that if I did that, that is what was ahead.
Samantha Riley 29:48
I think there’s also as you were talking I had this feeling like there’s almost two camps of hard stuff. There’s the hard stuff that we just hate, and it doesn’t matter how much we do it. We will continue to hate it for as long as possible. For me that is doing my accounts, I cannot stand it. I’ve been in business over 30 years. And I still do not love it. But then there’s the other side of the hard stuff. And it might be something that I’ve never done before, or it’s a challenge, or it’s a big project. And I start off finding it really hard, because I’ve never done it before. But as I push through, and as I get to the other side, it actually builds my confidence. It makes me feel excited. And I have this feeling like, Oh, my goodness, I feel so good about myself. I did that. And I, and I feel like sometimes we do need to get through. Well, we need to get through all of it. We have to do our accounts, let’s face it. But you know, on the other side, some of that seemingly at the beginning stuff that we thought was hard, maybe doesn’t feel so hard on the other side.
Eric Recker 30:53
Yeah, that’s so true. What we tend to do, at least I’ve tended to do this in the past, is I have this thing in front of me and it looks like a mountain. It looks like a big, ugly mountain. And all I’m doing is looking up at the top of that mountain and saying I’m never gonna get there. But no one ever goes just from the base of the mountain to the summit. You have to climb the mountain to get to the summit. So I talked to people about, alright, you’re not on the mountain right now. And that mountain looks really big and really ugly. What do you do to take that first step onto the mountain? Okay, wow, awesome. You did that step, you follow through with that. You won’t have to do that step again. Okay, what’s the next step? What’s the next step? I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro several years ago. And it took us five days to get up there. And then two days to get back down. We did not do it in one day, we did not do it. We had to just put one foot in front of the other. And so I think we just look at those mountains and I don’t want to do that. That looks, that’s an ugly mountain. That’s a nasty mountain. That’s not gonna go well. You don’t know that. You have to start.
Samantha Riley 32:07
What mental resource resources did you need to tap into to walk Mount Kilimanjaro? Because that’s something that I have no, I actually couldn’t think of anything worse, personally, but wow, like, that must have been amazing.
Eric Recker 32:30
It was amazing. Yeah. So I have had, I’ve never had a problem with motivation and training. I’ve been to Ironman Triathlons, so I’m used to doing the work. What was interesting is that I live in Iowa, which is about 800 feet above sea level. Mount Kilimanjaro is 18,341 at the top. And so I had to train at sea level. So I got one of these training masks and altitude simulation masks. So you put it on, and you put different ports on. And it simulated 18,000 feet. And I would do everything with that. I would go on 20 mile hikes with that mask on, I would ride my bike with that mask on, I would do everything I could to simulate that high altitude. So when it was ready to be on the mountain, I was ready for it. I was in great shape. It was difficult, but more the difficult part of it was, it was hard to sleep on the mountain. It was hard to do some of those kinds of things, but the technical aspects as far as heightening the mountain, because I had put the work in, I was ready for, I was ready for it.
Samantha Riley 33:46
Well, there’s the metaphor right there. Oh, let’s talk about the dam analogy. This is something that you’ve written about. Can you explain what the dam analogy is?
Eric Recker 33:58
Yeah, so the elevator version of it is that we are all like a dam. So basically, what a dam does, there’s a lake on one side, then there’s a river that flows out on the other side. All we’re really doing is controlling the flow of energy that goes through our bodies. So we have a reserve, and then we have an outflow. What I find with people is that we’re pretty good about the outflow, we get stuff done, we get our things taken care of. What we’re not so good at is the inflow. We’re not very good at taking care of ourselves, we let ourselves get empty, then we get burned out, reactive, all of those kinds of things. We hit snags on the bottom of the lake, we make poor decisions. So the dam analogy is basically about what strategies can we do to make sure that our outflow is what we want it to be, being in our sweet spot, being in our why, and then strategies to refill so that we have something to share with the world.
Samantha Riley 35:01
A lot of people talk about self care. And you know, go and have a massage or take a vacation. What is something that you can share today for the person that’s listening that says, well, that’s fine. But I can’t take a vacation tomorrow. I don’t like massages. What is something that you can share for the normal everyday person that is something that is achievable for the over worker?
Eric Recker 35:36
Yeah, so I talked about, and this goes back to the pause, it really does, it goes back to what are those small things that we can do in our lives to fill us back up? There may be people listening to this, who are single parents, and they have all kinds of stuff, but their kids are constantly bombarded by their kids or their work. There’s people who are busy with their jobs, they have appointments all day, all kinds of things. Well, where are the moments in your day that you can have a little bit of recovery? You do have time. I would argue with almost anyone who says I don’t have any time. If they push with that, I would say let’s take a look at your screen time. Because what we’ve done is we’ve traded all our pause and recovery moments for distraction. And that distraction is not helping us. I know that listening to a podcast, listening to podcasts is a great thing. But if all you ever do is work and listen to podcasts, you haven’t given your brain time to relax. So maybe you’re driving to work, and you usually listen to music. What if you, what if you turn the music off, and you were just present in the moment? You looked around. You took some deep breaths, you kind of let your mind just rest for a little bit. Our minds crave that time. So what if you have a day full of meetings? And you only have five minutes in between the meetings? What if instead of going and checking your email or spending time on your phone, what if you just walked a couple flights of stairs in your building? What if you walked around the block outside? What if you open the window and just breathed in some fresh air for a little bit? What if you got some sun on your forehead, because this is the reality, like we were talking about earlier. Big vacations, big recovery times are great, but we’re not going to have as many of those times. And even somebody who has a crazy, crazy schedule, I bet you could find 15 minutes to read a book and let yourself relax. One time a day. I bet before you go to bed, you could write down five things that you’re grateful for, or write down a couple of wins for the day. And then a couple priorities from tomorrow. I bet if your head is really spinning, you have 10 minutes that you can do a brain dump, and just get it all out of there and then be ready for whatever’s next. So that’s one of the things that I love and talking about, not everybody likes to massage, other people’s hands on them creeps some people out. And, and the thing that’s tough about this is it’s so individualised. People will show the other people to death. You should do this. You should do this. You should do this. I don’t like that. Okay, what are the things that help fill you back up? And even in the small moments, how can you do those things?
Samantha Riley 38:39
I love that so much. I think the way you’ve spoken about that is something that I truly believe in. And it’s something that I don’t hear often. You were talking about not picking up your phone. About a month ago, I noticed that I started to get a little bit anxious when I was on social media. So my husband and I go out for coffee most days. And we go out for breakfast once a week on our way home from our personal training session and we go out for a dinner date once a week. What I was noticing in those times was when he was ordering coffee, like he’s amazing. He does all the ordering. When he was ordering coffee or when he was up at the counter ordering our breakfast, the first thing I’ll do is pick up my phone and sit at the table with my phone. I set myself a goal about a month ago when I realised I was starting to get this anxiety to not pick up my phone when he goes and orders. Do you know what, just sitting there while he’s at the counter ordering our coffee, and I just sit at the table and sometimes I stare out into space and sometimes I look around me. Sometimes I actually have conversations with people around me because I’m a bit of a chatty person. It feels so much better. And it is such a simple pause. It is such a simple pause just not picking up your phone. So I love that you mentioned that.
Eric Recker 40:01
We have become afraid of quiet spaces. We have, we get anxious if we don’t have our phone, we feel like we’re gonna miss something out, somebody’s gonna post something on Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever. And that’s gonna be the thing, and we’re gonna miss it. I have started asking myself, why am I picking this up? I just asked that question. Because we all have our phone routine, right? You pick it up, and you check Facebook, and then Instagram, and then LinkedIn, and then the weather. And you check the news. And you check this website, and you check your scores and all this kind of stuff. You get done with all that stuff. Oh, man, I probably missed something, that I go around the horn again, and check all those things. Again, we probably wasted an hour, or you probably used an hour. I’m not I’m not gonna say it’s all wasted. But what if instead, you said, Why am I picking this up? And all you’re going to all you’re really doing to pick it up as you’re going through that routine, and you’re just, you’re gonna make yourself more anxious. If I don’t have a good reason to pick up my phone, I’m not picking up my phone. And it’s made an unbelievable difference for me for anxiety, because I struggled with it significantly. And I know that when it starts to tick back up, I can usually check my screen time. And there’s a pretty good correlation.
Samantha Riley 41:19
Perfect. And in all of that, I’m not saying that I don’t love technology. I do. I do love social media, because I’ve actually been blessed to connect with people all over the world, and some who have turned into really, really close friends. So definitely don’t have an aversion to social media and technology. It’s just that sometimes it’s nice just to not have it. And just to breathe, and pretend I’m back in the 80s where there is no phones, and there isn’t someone emailing me going, we need this stat. So 100% agree with it. For people that have listened to this conversation, and they’re like, you know what I need, I need to implement some of these practices in my day, or I love the way that this conversation has gone or this has sort of triggered a thought within me. How can people connect with you? And how can they get a copy of your book?
Eric Recker 42:18
Yeah, so the book is available on Amazon, pretty easy to find it. The best place to find me is my website. It’s just ericrecker.com. And there’s lots of different resources on there. I believe in giving some things away for free. So there’s a free Five-Day Knock Back Burnout Challenge. I really am proud of that, I think it’s a good way to kind of start and raise your hand and say I might be struggling with this a little bit. And there’s also a five principles of Win the Now. And it’s just five ways that I use to try to be more in the present moment. So those are two resources that are free, I’d love to have you grab those, also helps us be able to stay in touch going forward. So and there’s also a link to set up a strategy session with me if you’re just kind of feeling stuck and you want somebody to talk about it with. I’m more than happy to have a conversation.
Samantha Riley 43:19
Love that. So we’ll put those links below one. We’ll put the Amazon link for the book, The Dam Analogy. We’ll pop the link for the website below wherever you’re listening to this. But Eric, just to wrap this up. What is one thing that you want to leave people with today? What’s that one thing that you want them to walk away and go? Yeah.
Eric Recker 43:45
Well, I will say my equation for burnout, that every time I’ve experienced burnout in my life and it’s been multiple times, is that I was overcommitted, and I was not taking care of myself. That is, I looked at it, I picked it apart. I tried to do research on it. And for me, that’s what it was. So I think we have to look, take a look at the things we’re committed to. A lot of those things might be our phone, Netflix, different stuff like that, they’re internal and external. The things that do not meet with our why, we have to assess are those important to be in our life, or are they not? And then we have to take care of ourselves, especially in those little day to day ways. Because if we don’t, burnout’s coming.
Samantha Riley 44:35
I love it so much. I’ve loved this conversation. Thank you so much for coming and riffing with me, sharing this conversation. I think for business owners, it’s a really, really important conversation. Probably one of the most important conversations we can have because as businesses, we run the economy, and we need to, we need to be there and we need to be fully, you know, in what we’re doing so know that we can make the money but at the same time we’ve got this one life and every single day is ticking by where we’re spending another day. So thank you so much for bringing this conversation today.
Eric Recker 45:13
Thanks for having me. This has been fantastic.
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