Live Life Like a Dog

What if one of the best blueprints for a happier, healthier, and more fulfilling life has been right in front of us all along?

In this episode of Operation Next Chapter, Marc and Cole take a lighthearted idea and uncover powerful life lessons from man's best friend. Dogs don't overcomplicate life—they focus on the fundamentals. As it turns out, those same fundamentals can help us become better leaders, spouses, parents, friends, and human beings.

In this episode, we discuss:

•  💧 Drink more water and take care of your body. 
•  🚶 Move every day—even if it's just a walk. 
•  🍪 Enjoy treats... but only occasionally. 
•  ❤️ Love the people in your life unconditionally. 
•  🥣 Simplify your routines to reduce decision fatigue. 
•  😴 Prioritize sleep and recovery. 
•  🎉 Find joy in the little things. 
•  🐾 Let go of yesterday's stress and start fresh. 

Whether you're transitioning out of the military, building your next chapter, or simply looking to live with more purpose, this episode is a reminder that lasting change doesn't come from complicated strategies—it comes from consistently doing the simple things well.

Challenge for the Week: Pick one "dog habit" and practice it every day for the next seven days. Small habits lead to big transformations.

Operation Next Chapter: Helping veterans and leaders build purpose, discipline, and fulfillment beyond the uniform—one conversation at a time.

OperationNextChapter@gmail.com

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome back to operation next chapter. We're Mark and Cole, two retired Air Force first sergeants to start lessons on leadership, fifth point purpose, and life beyond a point. Whether you're transitioning from military service simply navigating your next chapter, we are to help you move forward with clarity and confidence. Let's get started. This episode in particular, I saw on a meme and and I shared it with you, and it's so simple and it makes so much sense. The title is Live Like a Dog. And if you've listening and you've seen this meme come across your social media, then you'll know what I'm talking about. But it's very simple daily things that dogs do that honestly probably is why they have a better life than humans.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Yeah. Yeah, let's be honest. I have a dog. A lot of people have pets. Watch your pets every day. Watch what they do. Watch, watch how they act. You know, you come home, they're super excited, and then they'll typically settle down and go lay down and take a rest. You know, if they if they get thirsty, then they go get a drink. When you decide to put food in their bowl, then they get up and eat. You know, I I know my dog, our dog is she's 15 years old, so you know, moving around is not super easy for her. But she lays around, relaxes, watches, you know, the sun come up, takes a walk when she wants to take a walk, goes back and lays down. How simple is that? We throw all of this stuff in our lives to complicate it. But just take a look at your pet. Why can't we do that? Why do we have to complicate everything so much?

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Yeah, you're right. And my dog will be 18 this year, which I don't know the math on dog gears, but it's a hundred and something. It's a lot. And he's thriving at that age because he does have these simple habits and a simple life and isn't overcomplicating, or we're not over-complicating his health. We're giving him the basic things: homemade food, water, and daily walks and attention and love and support. And you'd never know he's that old. He doesn't look that old, he doesn't act that old. But that's the point of this is if we lived like dogs, and I and I know it could be taken or misconstrued, but the simple things in life, we overcomplicate. And, you know, kind of what you're saying, the health in particular. I mean, think about the things that we are putting into our bodies. I mean, drinks alone, the amount of chemicals that we drink in energy drinks, soda, alcohol, you name it, if we just stuck to water, imagine what our bodies would be doing.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Yeah. You bring up what energy drinks, you know, caffeinated beverages, period. Right? Uh I know for uh a lot of my time in the military, the the limit on the monster can of three a day, I surpassed that a lot. And, you know, that's not to brag and say, ha ha, I can handle more caffeine and more sugar and more, let's be honest, more shit, you know, in my body than you can. We get caught in that rat race. How many times have you seen your dog get caught in a rat race? They don't. Or if they do, they quickly usually realize that, hey, maybe this isn't conducive to good order and discipline or good health. And I'm gonna go take a nap and I'm gonna relax and I'm gonna dial it back. And they go back to just being a dog, walking around, living the easy life, if you will. Obviously, eating and drinking and taking walks. I know you guys take walks. We live on 10 acres, so Lucy takes her walks around the property all by herself, but you know, you and Tiffany walk with the dog all the time. So why do we get so focused and get so trapped in a rat race all the time? Why do we, and again, I I'm mentioning we because I do it, I still do it from time to time. Why do we end up trapped in that rat race? What are we trying to prove? Who are we trying to prove it to?

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Yeah, I think it's easy to get trapped into the rat race just based on the busyness of people, and I even I hate that word busy because it usually is accomplishing nothing and getting us nowhere, unlike being productive. But yeah, the walks every day. We actually had one of our neighbors stop us out on a walk with our dog and it's like, hey, how often do you guys walk your dog? And how far do you guys go? I mean, before he got in his teens, we were walking miles a day. And now we he gets walked basically twice a day in the morning and the evening, you know, when it's not a hundred freaking degrees outside. But we usually walk 30 minutes, which he probably walks about a mile a day, right? And most humans aren't walking that, let alone humans that own dogs, they're not walking their dogs like that either. But movement is a part of life, and it's ironic because movement just used to be part of being a human being. You had to move to find your next meal or your next shelter or build that next fire. Now we call it exercise when that used to just be built in our ancestors. Exercise was just living, but now we have to actually make time to exercise or get movement, if you will, because we are such a sedentary society. So the lesson is get moving. Go on walks every day. It doesn't have to be much. 10, 15, 20 minutes. Like you have time for that. We have time for that. It's just not a priority for people. You know, take care of our health before our health forces us to take care of it.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Yeah, the stresses of life, the drive, if you will, the pressures of life play a huge toll or take a huge toll on us. And a big piece of that tool is exactly what you said, movement. We have everything at our fingertips. And so we sit on our butt and we access everything via our fingertips. Whereas when I was a kid, sure when you were a kid, I didn't have anything at my fingertips. My the only thing at my fingertips was a doorknob because I was going outside to go do something, to go outside. And, you know, I couldn't text my friends, I couldn't send an email to my friends, I couldn't just pick up the phone. I could have picked up the phone and called my friends, but I was trapped right there next to the wall where the phone was hanging from. So I went outside. Sometimes I I'd ride ride my bike a half a mile just to get to my friend's house so that we could then get on our bikes and ride another five or ten miles around the neighborhood, collecting all the rest of our friends so that we could go play football or we could go play baseball or we, you know, we could go to the swimming pool or you know, anything else. Nowadays, you know, we get settled into the quote unquote comfort of life and you know, sitting in an easy chair with the world at our fingertips, and we're not moving. We're not staying healthy. Just look at the the obesity rate in America. You know, our ancestors used to chase their food down, used to search for their next next meal. We don't do that. And again, I'm not saying that that the technology and everything else is a bad thing. The abuse of it and the overuse of it has led us to this.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Ironically, that leads to point number three behind water and moving, walking every day, is while we're sitting down with whatever's in front of us, our phone, computer, TV, we're probably eating some stuff that's not great for us. Where dogs get a treat occasionally. My dog, he gets a treat after we come home from our nightly walk after dinner. Like he knows it's coming. That's his one treat, right? But we're not doing that. We're eating multiple treats or multiple snacks, sugar, a lot of sugar, adding to the obesity problem, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:59

Yeah. Occasional treats, that's foreign. And you mentioned the S-word, sugar. And again, Mark and I are not saying this stuff is bad, right? It's not great for you, but we're not saying you need to cut it all out. What we are saying is if we can learn to simplify life, learn to be disciplined, do things every single day with intention, and stay disciplined, the healthier life, the easier life is there. It's right in front of us. But we have to have the discipline, you have to take the steps necessary, be an intentional with what you're doing, and live like a dog. Live a simpler life. Move, drink, eat, have a treat after dinner, and after a walk, after some movement. Treat yourself.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

Yeah, the discipline isn't about not enjoying life. It's about letting rewards become routines. And it's more than food, right? It's alcohol, it's entertainment, it's the scrolling, like all those treats, quote unquote, that's what we're talking about. And, you know, obviously food is one of those and snacks and whatnot, but earn it. Don't live on it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

It's okay to reward yourself. It's okay to, you know, as long as the reward is not after every single, every single thing that you do. Jenny and I were talking the other day. We, you know, we got married, I mentioned it, married very young. We were married at 19. And I looked at it and I said, hey, I want to celebrate 80 years of marriage with you. And I said, in quick math, that means we have to live to 99. What can we do right now? What are we doing right now that, and I'm not saying we can ensure that we're going to live to 99 and everything else, but hey, that's a long-term goal, right? What are we doing right now that's going to feed that? What are we doing right now that's going to possibly help that to happen? And what are we willing to change right now that we know is in that is counterproductive to living to live into 99. What are we doing right now that we're willing to change? Take that up. Take that out of the equation. Sounds maybe a little silly as far as the conversation, but those are just the things that you know that run through my head nowadays. I'll be honest. I don't know that I ever expected to make it to 50. Now I I I want to live as long as I can. I want to be here to celebrate and have a great time. Does that mean I'm going to have some treats along the way? Yeah. Does that mean that I'm going to have too many treats? I'm going to do my best not to. Because my health, my happiness is all about being here with my family.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

Yeah, all good points. I agree 100%. And, you know, the next, you know, live like a dog point. We've kind of talked about in previous episodes, especially the one that we had discussed parenting and not just parenting kids, but parenting your adult children. And one of those things is love unconditionally. I think you said it before we got on or we started recording, but dogs love you unconditionally. And there's nothing greater than when you come home and your dog is waiting for you, wagging its tail, or they're watching for the door to open. My wife sends me pictures here and there, like my dog's just staring at the door, like he knows about what time we each get home. And he's staring, waiting for us. If we did that as human beings, not just to our kids or our family, but just in general, man, we'd have a hard time being upset with people when they don't meet our standards or our expectations. We just love them unconditionally. Yeah. Just because.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

All right. Just because. And that's twofold, right? That goes two ways. Number one, the feeling you get. But number two, the feeling you're giving others. The feeling that when your dog greets you at the door, right? It's a, I'm sure, it's an instant smile, right? They're excited that you're there. They don't know what happened on the other side of that door and what you're walking away from at work or you know what you're leaving behind or working to leave behind or if anything else. But that door cracks open, the tail's wagging, they're super excited you're there. Just imagine greeting your friends that way. I'm not saying you have to wag your tail, but greeting your friends like that when they come. They don't, they don't know, right? Just being being that face, being that per that bright light in other people's lives, you know. It's very nice to feel that way and to be that person, but what are you giving to others just by loving unconditionally? And not say that doesn't have to go, you know, just like Mark said, just your family. That's just in general.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Yeah, they love us because we're us. They don't care, like you said, what happened on the other side of the door. They don't care what kind of day you had, what happened at work, they don't care how much money we make or don't make. They just remember how we make them feel more than what we say.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Yeah, I my dog can't hear. She'll be laying in the garage. I'll walk outside and all the time I, you know, in a goofy, high-pitched voice. Lucy, you know, I start talking to her and her tail's wagging. She can see. She has no idea that I'm talking to her. But, you know, walking by and petting her on the head, rubbing her neck or whatever. Again, she's 15, she doesn't move all the time. Used to, she would get up and follow me and go to the shop or whatever. Now she just she just stays laying down, you know, relaxing. But she's excited for the, you know, when I pass by, give her a little love and and keep going. And then if I see her up and about, then I'm got my hands in the air, and you're you're walking and you know, stuff like that. Again, she can't hear me, but the expression on my face, I'm trying to give her, you know, that love, communicating other ways. I still talk to nothing to deaf ears, but it's just part of it. What if we treated everybody that way?

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Yeah, I never thought about it until you just said it, but our dog is also deaf and he can hear like some high-pitched noises and my wife's whistle, but we've resorted to arm signals and hand signals, and he communicates to us by watching, right? If I put shoes andor socks or my hat, I get a shirt on, like he thinks he's going outside. Like, that's his communication. Like, we don't even have to say anything, and he knows it's amazing. Anyways, getting off topic, but it's so true that he can't hear anything and still knows just the way we make him feel, how we he's loved. He's love he loves us unconditionally. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

It goes back to that actions speak louder than words. I can talk as loud as I want, but my actions towards Lucy, my actions towards others, the volume is way higher on those actions than it is on any words that you speak. Anything that you say is your actions speak far louder than that. And, you know, just wearing a smile when we're going through the gate every day, multiple times a day, a lot of times. Security forces typically pulled up to the gate with a smile on my face, say, you know, how you doing, or whatever. I say, I'm doing fantastic. Now, obviously, that's a word that I spoke, but the demeanor that I had also expressed that. And just watching their reaction to that. Because let's be honest, standing at the gate is probably not the greatest job, probably not the most fun job. So why not bring a little bit of life? Why not bring a little bit of a good conversation? And the other thing that did was spark the conversation a lot of time. You know, just by having a smile on their face, a positive demeanor without saying anything, sparked conversation a lot of time. How can I, how can I be a little bit of a positive influence or a positive aspect of your day-to-day? And you know, we do it with our dogs, but just imagine you know, walking around. And I do it in just in passing with people. When you're walking by somebody, or very rarely do you follow it up with a response when they ask, good, how are you, or whatever. And that's sparked a bunch of conversations too. And it's it's just trying to share and trying to be not mundane.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Point number five, dogs tend to eat the same thing every day. This isn't about dog eating dog food. This is about the small habits, the routines. That's what we're talking about here. That's just a an easy uh correlation, but it's doing and creating good habits that that we can replicate. You know, you can you can attribute it to food, obviously is a good one, but how about uh our finances? Do we have good money habits? Are we being consistent in uh what we put into our body, in our movement, in how we treat people, how we love people? We just need to uh be able to repeat those easy, simple, small habits to get the results that we want to get out of life.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Yeah. Small, simple, sustainable things, whatever facet of life that that you want to apply that. Small sustainable changes or small sustainable actions that you do daily that bring you joy and benefit you in the health of whatever area of your life it is. Let's be honest. A lot of us spend a lot of time at our jobs. What are you doing in there? Is your job a stress? Is there changes you can make to benefit and that job be more enjoyable? Small changes, small sustainable things that you do every single day, intentional.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

And that rolls right into point number six: prioritize sleep and having good sleep routines and sleep habits, going to bed at the same time every night, getting up at the same time every day, not hitting this news button. You know, we've had multiple discussions on this in different episodes too about how much sleep affects our mind and our mood and decision making, our leadership, you know, our parenting. I feel like sleep is probably the most underrated habit discussed. You know, we don't talk about it a lot, but it is that recovery period that I realized I wasn't doing a great job at just a couple weeks ago. Like I wasn't giving myself time to recover. Dogs, they don't need permission to take a nap. They don't feel sorry for taking a nap. We can do the same things, and sometimes just pulling back on the throttle and putting down the devices, closing our eyes.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

Pulling back on the throttle is difficult, but that's one of those things that you have you can do. And Mark is much better at it with his sleep habits and sleep hygiene than I am.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Being tired sucks. Being foggy, not having mental clarity, physically, mentally exhausted, it's no fun. And I think that's what happened is I got to that point. I had to figure it out. But again, going back to living like a dog, you know what? Shut down. It's okay. Don't feel bad about it. We all need that. We're busy, quote unquote, and we don't prioritize that, even when it is our sleep time, whether that's at night for you or whether you work at night and you sleep during the day, whatever that is, it's not a priority, I would say, and we need to make it a priority.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Yeah, and if you have to plan everything out in your day, plan some sleep time, plan some extra time to rest, some extra downtime. And then follow through with that plan. Don't plan some time to, you know, take a nap and then sit there on your phone. Or don't stay at work or sit at your computer. Plan the time, because you're right. It's super beneficial. Lots and lots of reading and lots of studies done on that. You know, the the recovery time. You look at professional athletes and how much recovery time they take for their bodies. Again, we've talked about it. The rat race of life. We all get in, and if I I could go on three hours of sleep, yeah, but you you kind of suck at it. You know, you think you're really good at it, but you kind of suck at it. You might want to take some more time to to rest and pay attention to your body, and you might be more productive the more rest you get.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

And that leads us into point number seven. Get excited about small things. And a small thing could be a nap, a small nap, a small time to recover. I this happened to me yesterday. So, you know, I get up early most days of the week, especially the days that I coach in the mornings at four or five o'clock in the morning. So I'm up before that. At noon, I've already been up in Adam for eight hours by that point, and I got excited about coming home, grabbing some food, and closing my eyes so I could get a little rest and then be able to have a productive afternoon taking care of some business stuff on the back end. But if I had tried to roll home, eat, and go upstairs and get on the computer and start taking care of stuff, my mind was not there. I was not clear mentally. I could feel the exhaustion and the tiredness. But once I just took a little 30-minute nap, I was ready to go. And I was got more done at 1, 2, 3 p.m. than I would have had I not taken that time. And I was excited about it. And that's just one example. Think about what dogs get excited about. You know, a toy, you know, getting pet, or like you said, putting the food down, going for a walk. Like all those small things are exciting. And I feel like in today's society, we miss the excitement of the small things, and our sights are set on bigger things that the contentment or the happiness is very short-lived.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

We miss opportunities. We miss opportunities in life, the little things. The little things that to others may be meaningless. But like you said, you're up early, coached for several hours, looking forward to a little bite to eat and a nap, so that you can get up and be more productive. We've mentioned it. Go to some of those co those foreign countries. And the siesta time in the middle of the day. Built into everybody's schedule. Go take a nap. A quick 15-minute, 20-minute power night could increase your productivity exponentially.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Yeah. Celebrate the small wins, you know, or progress, you know, the good conversations. Like I had a conversation with a buddy the other day that I hadn't talked to in months. I think it was since Christmas. The sunrise, you know, the monsoons, the rain, all those little things, finishing a workout, you know, and speaking of, yesterday at the gym, I had a member come up to me and she was out of the country. She went back to her home country of Syria for two months. She came back and she wanted to get on the scale and see, in her words, like what she lost. Like she felt like she had lost muscle and gained weight. So she gets on and I didn't know until the end of the workout, but she came up to me and she was like, Hey, I want to show you, you know, my scan. Her weight really hadn't changed, but her muscle mass had increased and her body fat had gone down. And here she's thinking that she had lost everything in a two-month time frame. And she did say that she worked out while she was gone, but not as much or as as hard as she would have here. But that was a huge small win, if you will, when she was expecting the results to be not great. And it was cool to celebrate that with her, you know?

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Probably expecting to be just the opposite.

unknown 23:35

Right?

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

You know, I went home, I I relaxed a little bit, I, you know, did whatever, I worked out less and maybe indulged a little bit on food, you know, all that, probably expecting it to be just the opposite of what it was. And she probably stayed more consistent with her diet. She probably stayed more consistent, and maybe it wasn't as hard of workouts, but at least moving and you know, stuff while she while she was quote unquote on while she was on vacation, you know, back to visiting everybody, and she gets home, and that's a testament to small, sustained, sustainable things that you do intentionally every single day. And yeah, it may have been less, but she was still doing it.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Yeah, she was grateful for the habits and what she learned coming to the gym, and she was able to, like you said, keep moving even while she was gone for two months. That's what she was grateful for because it created that momentum where she didn't want to go for two months and not do anything and potentially reverse those numbers. The momentum carried her through that two months, and then when she came back, yeah, she might have been a little, you know, off at first, but get back into the routine of coming to her daily, her daily schedule. That's the gratitude in the small things.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

Yeah. That in and of itself is a win.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

All right. Point number eight, last one, living like a dog. Forget what stressed you out yesterday. Dogs have short memories, right? You could be mad at them, and then five minutes later, they're on your lap and they're snuggling up to you or they're looking your hand. They don't care. They know you forgive them. If humans could do that and not carry the stress from personal experience, both you and I have done this. We've talked about it. Probably what created my stroke was stress. But you know what? It's a new day. What's in the rear view mirror is in the past, look forward in the windshield. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

When you're driving your car, look at your rear view mirror, look at the size of your rear view mirror, and then look at the size of your windshield. I've used the analogy before, right? And again, I can use the analogy. As Mark said, I've I have fallen victim to being stressed out about the past a lot. What happened in the past happened in the past. You can't change it. You absolutely have no control over change of things that are behind you that are in that rear view mirror. You can learn from them, you can change your course of action moving forward, eliminate that stress, but you can't change the past. Use your rear view mirror, use your past for reference, but you have to live in in the windshield. Look at the future. You can only make changes to affect your future. You can't make changes to affect your past.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

Yeah. And that's a great way to end this episode is what's the next chapter for you? It's not living the past, it's not not forgetting about what happened, but moving forward. Yeah, it's always gonna be there, but don't focus on it, I guess is the point, right? Move towards the next chapter and the next chapter after that. I thought this is a cool episode to do. It's so simple, but yet not easy to do. I think we've said that a few times.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

Yeah. And we have we are only talking about this. We have learned from the things that we've done. And so we're only talking about it from that perspective, not that we're any experts at anything. Yeah, man. Good talk. You know, live like a dog. When you first sent me the subject, I was like, I wonder where this is gonna go. And it is. Simplify, live like a dog.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

Amen, brother. Have a great one talking to you. Thanks for joining us on operating next chapter. This episode writing value. Follow the show where we find every number.