EP57: Your Problems Are the Roadmap to Growth

If every person in your life threw their biggest problem into the middle of a table and you could trade yours for theirs, would you?

Almost nobody does.

In this episode, Austin talks about the invisible weight people carry that we never see, why real gratitude lives deeper than any morning routine, and why the grass is almost never actually greener on the other side.

He gets honest about watching more than half a dozen people leave his organization chasing something better, and what most of them found when they got there. If you're in a season where everything feels hard and you're wondering if a change of scenery would fix it, this one is going to hit.

Your problems aren't a sign you're in the wrong place. They're a roadmap for who you need to become.

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Transcript

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This is the Austin Cohen Podcast where we talk real strategies for chiropractors ready to grow beyond the adjustment. If you're building a business, developing your leadership, and trying to build wealth without burning out, you are in the right place. Let's get to work Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. What is up everybody? Welcome back. Austin Cone podcast. Man, I got something I'm gonna talk with you guys a bit today. It's been sitting with me for a while and very direct on how we talk about this one today. Just it's something that got sparked today in actually our core meeting, which is the group of eight guys that I've been with the last 10, 11 years, where we meet once a month for five hours. We do two retreats a year to really collaborate, not just on business growth, but also personal growth, family growth. Profe growth in all areas of our lives. And we've been together for a long time and I've always said big recommending that. And for people that are under the Ascent program, like one of my goals is to create that for you. Where you may have office managers or other doctors in your team let's partner them up with other people that are in the group that are looking to grow as well. This experience and ascent is gonna be transformational. And 3, 6, 9, 12 months down the road, 18, whatever it is. Practice is gonna look a lot different. There's gonna be systems put into place so there's a bad season, it doesn't matter. But this is where I do think that collaborative effort is very important. And I've been very fortunate enough to be with these guys for the last, like I said, 10, 11 years. So if you're listening to this right now, and you are in one of those seasons where and I've heard this from a lot of people where just everything's feeling heavy and you're looking around just thinking, man, it'd be easier somewhere else. Then this will be a great episode for you. I do appreciate all the feedback too as well from last week talking about how when I gave that guy that came in out as of LA the $20, and looking back at the story from when I gave a guy a $5 and asked for change back, and how that was such a limiting belief and scarcity mindset and how so many of you right now have started to reshape your thinking on how you do things from your care plans to your practice, to how much you pay your staff. You're really starting to think bigger. And this to me is gonna unlock so much of a roadblock for so many of you. And if really I think, be transformational for some of you guys for the rest of this year. But today we're gonna talk about problems and really specifically how we see our own problems. And more specifically, huh? Why most of us are getting it completely wrong. And here's a thought experiment I want you to sit with. Imagine that every person in your life walks into a room, your family, your coworkers, your friends, your neighbors, the. The people you follow on social media, everyone and every single one of them writes their biggest problem on a piece of paper. Now, this is the real problem that they're going through, not some surface level stuff. This is like the bottom 5% of their life right now. It's a thing that when they wake up at three in the morning, they are thinking about, they never share this, they never post about it online. They carry this alone. And so every single person in this room on a piece of paper. They write it down, they fold it up and they put it in the middle of a table and you can see all of them in front of your face, and every problem from every person in that room is right there in front of your face and you get to trade and you can leave your problems on the table and you get a chance now to pick up somebody else's. Here's the question, would you do that? I've asked people this question in rooms. All over. And almost every single time the answer is the same. People would reach back in and they would take their own problems back every single time. And I want you to think about what that means. It means that as hard as your life is right now and as heavy as the season is right now, and the frustrations that you're going through, your problems are yours. And you know what? They're manageable because you know them and you're familiar with them and there's something you have to control over. Most of us, if we're truly honest with ourselves, we would take our problems back. And I think where it gets real is we walk around every single day completely oblivious to what the people around us are carrying, and all we're seeing is surface. We see the highlight reel. We see someone's confidence or someone's lifestyle or someone's circumstances, and we think we know their story. We don't. This is why, the biggest reason why I get so frustrated is when people tell me when they see other people, what they're doing on social media, and they do not know the truth. I've brought people's practices before that what you all would think on social media looks so good on social when you look deep into their practices not as good as the things they're sharing. Great marketing, great salespeople. Online, but the truth behind what they're, and it's been cool to see all these people that have been into my different programs and one thing they say to me is dude, you're so willing to give. I'm like, yeah, 'cause I do this. I'm still in practice and all the things that I've shared with all of you are things that we do. I have nothing to hide. It's all there. 'cause I pr we practice what we preach at corrective chiropractic. And I've been in rooms with people when we talk about these problems, like I've been in rooms with people who. I remember those people have lost children, let that sink in for a second. For those that have children, not a health scare, not a close call, but literally a parent who had to bury a child and watch them still show up, they still push forward and they still find reasons to be grateful. I've sat across from guys who built something real in business, very proud of, and practically dissolved overnight. Complete financial collapse where you're not just broke, but you're actually embarrassed and you're explaining to people you respected like you are starting over in your forties. And I've had very close friends who have had to fight diseases that did not have good endings, who the conversation shifts from treatment to timelines. I've been, I'm 40, almost 45 years old. So I've seen a lot too as well with those things. I've also seen marriages that have completely imploded in slow motion while the people inside them smiled their way through every single public moment. Nobody knew. Nobody had any idea. Many of you guys have seen these before where you see relationships and all they do is talk about how great the other one is on social media. But deep down the whole thing implodes. Just like many of you, I've seen depression in people that run so deep. It's literally, it's invisible from the outside. And it's really hard to watch and see and these are real people just like me and you and most of them. You never know that by just looking at them. And that's the point we never know. And this is exactly where gratitude actually lives, not where most people think it lives. Gratitude to me is not just a morning journal prompt or like end of the day journal prompt. You do. It's not some breathing exercise you do when you close your eyes and maybe put on a brain tap like this. This is not something you perform. Real gratitude to me is the moment, the actual moment where you look clearly at your life and understand that what you have messy as it may be, complicated as it may be sometimes probably frustrating, is somebody else's answered prayer. And I'm not saying that to be some form of a motivational poster. I'm saying that as a reality, and this was literally something we were talking about today at our meeting. Like somebody out there. Wood trade places with you in a heartbeat and somebody would give to anything to have your health, your family, your ability to just wake up tomorrow and take another shot at it. Like the fact that you have options. The fact that you're listening to a podcast right now means your life has margin that a lot of people in this world does not have. And I ain't saying this to minimize your pain, by the way, like your frustrations, your stress, those are real things. And if you're grieving something or someone like that, grief is also real and it deserves to be felt. But what I'm saying is when we widen the lens just a little, almost all of us find out what we have more than we think, and that we're further along than we feel. And the problems on our piece of paper, as hard as they are problems that we would take back. And I wanna shift gears because there's a specific group of people that I wanna talk about right now, and it's chiropractors and the ones that are listening to this. So if you're an associate of practice right now, if you're somebody who's in their early or middle stages of building something if you've ever had that thought, where you look at where you are and think, man, it would just be better somewhere else, I want you to lean in for this part. I've seen this movie more times than I can count. I have had more than a half a dozen people leave my organization over the years thinking the grass is greener on the other side. And these are good people, like people I cared about, people I invested in, people truly with big futures in front of them, and some came back, some didn't, but almost without exception, like they found the same thing on the other side that they're running from on this side. It because here's what nobody will ever tell you when you're standing at that fork in the road thinking a change of scenery is gonna fix what's bothering you, your problems, they travel with you, they pack themselves right into the same bag you're carrying, and they make that trip with you. So if your problem is your work ethic, then guess what it does. It goes with you. And if you're somebody and your problem is how you handle conflict, yeah, that goes with you too. If the problem that you haven't done the internal work to figure out what you actually want in your life goes with you. Yeah. Comparing your chapter three to someone else's Chapter 20. Yeah. That goes with you. So the zip codes, yeah, that changes, what doesn't change the problems. It's why do some people get into relationships? They keep attracting the same person or they keep attracting the same types of staff members. They're the problem. Perfect. And I remember one specific person who left and I genuinely wish them well, like no hard feelings, and I meant it. Eight months later I got a call and they said something I'll never forget. They said, I thought the problem was where I was, and it turns out the problem was how I was. So read that slowly. This was very interesting to get this feedback, by the way, from a past employee. I thought the he said to me, he goes, I thought the problem was where I was, but it turned out the problem was how I was. And that hit different because like to me, that takes real self-awareness to say that out loud. And I respected the hell outta him for that. And this to me is a huge difference here between those that are ultra successful and not, is that self-awareness right there. And that's a hard way to learn that lesson. Like eight months of your life, you start over, you're rebuilding credibility somewhere new and you're realizing that the thing that you were running from was actually something that needed to be fixed in you not fixed by leaving. And you've all heard this before, like the grass is green where you water it. It's very simple. Sounds like something you'd see most likely on a coffee mug, and you all probably have one in your house that has that exact quote. But sit with the truth inside of that statement though, right? The grass over there looks green because you're not standing in it yet, because you're looking at someone's situation from a distance and your brain is doing what brains do. Like it's filling the gaps with assumptions. And it's imagining that the best possible version of that other thing I is, it's this is why, to me, social media can become so toxic, like you're standing in the reality of your own situation, which means you can see every brown patch, every weed, every place where it's not perfect. That is not an apple to apple comparison. That's reality versus someone else's highlight reel, and it will never be fair. But when you take that other opportunity, when you make that move, when you get over there, you find the reality of it. You find out the real hours, the real politics, the real expectations, the real ceilings, the culture, the support. And like sometimes it's good, but often, really often, all it is different problems wearing a different outfit. Like meanwhile, the thing you left, you watered it for someone else. You put the reps in, develop the relationships, learn the systems. You establish trust. And that's, and then you move on. That's real cost to me. And there are times like when change is the right move. Like I, I'm a big believer in that. I I think there's also times too as well. I think there's also times too as well where people. They are looking for something better and it's just, it's not there. But I'm saying like before you convince yourself the grass is greener, ask yourself honestly, have I actually watered this one? Have I shown up fully? Have I had the hard conversations? I've been avoiding? Have I asked for what I need? Have I put in the kind of effort on this side of the fence that I'm imagining I'd put on the other side? A lot of times the answer is no. And I don't think that's a judgment. I just think that's the truth. And here's where I think I wanna land this plane. Like this is the part I that matters the most. Your problems right now, wherever you are not assigned that you're in the wrong place. Your problems are a signal, like they're telling you something, they're pointing out something that needs attention. It needs development, it needs a harder conversation. Maybe with yourself and probably more consistency and more courage. The problems you have are not a reason to leave. But what I think they are potentially, and they've done been, this for me is a roadmap for who I needed to become. And if you think about every hard thing you've ever pushed yourself through every season that I've ever felt impossible. Every moment where you thought, I can't do this anymore. You did though. And you made it through. And I guarantee you wouldn't train those hard seasons now. Because of who they made you like because of what they taught you and because of the version of yourself that came out, the other side of them was a really good version. So think about this as you move through these seasons of life and the people who figured this out, the ones who stop running toward easier, and they actually start leaning into harder, those are the ones who look back at their lives and actually like what they see. That table of problems I talked about at the beginning, like that is real. And it is in every room you walk into, every person around you is carrying something you cannot see. You see me on stage, you see my social media, you read my newsletters. I've got stuff I'm carrying right now. Did anybody on this call, did anybody know that I was dealing with my father going through a lung transplant a year ago? No. We almost lost them. No, nobody here knew that. And I and that, but that was something I was carrying with me and now I have my own people that I can share that information with, by the way. So I don't want people to think that I didn't have outlets for that. I did have outlets for that. I just didn't feel like it was necessary for this. But there's two things here. One, extend more grace to people, like to the people around you to the situation you're in, to the season, you're walking through. You don't have the full picture, nobody does. And two, take your problems back. Own them. Work them. Don't outsource your problems to a change of scenery. And don't assume someone else's setup is gonna solve what you haven't been willing to face yet. The grass is green where you water it. Start watering love. How many of you guys shared the podcast from last week? Hope to see just as many shares this week and you can direct share from Spotify. I cannot explain how excited I am for those of you guys joining the Ascent Coaching program That begins in May. I have been building it over the last month or so now with my business coaches, and this is something that is gonna completely change the trajectory of your career. Very architected week by week work. Excited to work with all of you. Have an. Awesome day and a great start to Q2. To learn more about building your business, leadership, and life on purpose, visit chiro one eighty.com or follow Austin on Instagram at Dr. Austin Cohen.