Mind Management Principles for Teens: with Doctor Dennis Deaton

Dr. Tim Thayne interviews Dr. Dennis Deaton on his story of how he became a nationally recognized public speaker and mindset coach. He enthusiastically teaches the principles and mindsets we all need in order to become the successes we have dreamed of. His humble yet passionate ideas to help youth “Own it!” and determine the outcomes of their lives are sure to inspire.

Transcript

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Dr. Tim Thayne: 0:04

Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining me here on the not by chance Podcast. I'm Tim, Thayne, I'm the host of this podcast, I'm joined today by a special guest, Dr. Dennis Deaton. And he is I'm excited that he's here today, he's an author of a book that's coming out very soon, I'm gonna ask him to tell us a little bit about that. Also, his journey, where he started professionally, and, and ultimately ended up in the realm that I'm in working with youth helping young people find out who they are, and ultimately achieve their potential. And I'm really excited about what he's doing. I'm just diving into it a little bit right now. But we're gonna break this podcast up into two sections, this is going to be the first one, and it's going to be the background, that for Denison and the company that he started, and the second one will be digging in more into the principles, the true principles that he uses to help people reach their their potential. So welcome to the show today. Dennis, thank you for being here.

Dennis Deaton: 1:16

Tim, I'm absolutely thrilled to be here. I admire your work. And I really appreciate this opportunity to kind of collaborate meld our minds a little bit.

Dr. Tim Thayne: 1:25

Yes, I just looking at your website made me really excited. And and it's its own@youth.com, just to put that out there right at the outset. So people know where they can find you and some of the information that we're going to talk about today. Right. So yeah, I just started to look at that. And by the way, you got some great videos on there.

Dennis Deaton: 1:48

Yes, we know that young people as they want to learn, they've gotten the habit of really being visually oriented. And we invested a great deal of our startup money in having personally created videos that are interactive through having sort of a choose your own adventure, quality to them, they can make a choice of a certain scenario that they're facing, and to see how that plays out and so forth. Sorry, you

Dr. Tim Thayne: 2:15

know, I haven't gotten into that deep into the content yet, but just the videos, kind of introducing some of the concepts on your website. I think people if they go there, they'll see what kind of quality and effort you put into making that connect to an adolescent. So yeah, it made me want to fun. But let's get started. Let's go back in time a little bit, Dennis, because I think you've got a really interesting backstory to, to your organization on it. And could you share with the audience, where you started and what led to the pivot that happened in your career?

Dennis Deaton: 2:54

Okay. Well, professionally, I, when I was in high school, and people had a career day, I would always put down I wanted to be a dentist. And I had been registered in my mind for quite some time. And I went and graduated Summa laude from Washington University Dental School in 1975. I went to my wife's hometown, practice dentistry and price Utah for 13 years as it turned out. But as I was in the practice of dentistry, and I loved dentistry, because I got to work with my mind. And I got to work with my hands, both of which were always compelling, attractive forces for me. And you also have to have some skill in terms of working with people. And so I thought it was a great combination of challenges that to base your profession on. As I got into the profession, I started going to practice management seminars and technical seminars, and I'd be interacting with some wild cat classmates and a lot of dentists and I saw a lot of very unhappy people. And on top of that, if you went to the statistics, you could see back in the 70s, that the dental profession was leading all of the professions in some very in auspicious categories, depression, suicide, divorce, alcoholism, and so forth. And I couldn't figure it out, because we had all the autonomy in the world if you wanted to make a little bit more naked self, and on Saturdays, if you want to cut back, he could do that you could hire and fire who you want. And so I started thinking about as I'd got some pet practice management seminars, there needs to be a component here that talks about your thought processes. For quite some time I had been involved in reading, being a student of the Scriptures and of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and also quite a fan of Napoleon Hill and his mastermind concepts, and the idea that any vividly visualized goal will start to generate ideas in your mind that lead you to the actions you need to take in order to achieve that goal. So I started creating Some seminars with kind of a dental slant to those to teach these people that they, that depression can be as a chemical imbalance. And I know it's a very complex subject. And I know you have a lot of professionals that you collaborate with and listen to your plot bugs. I'm not saying that I'm an authority on depression. But I do know that there are lines of thinking that you can put yourself into that essentially, can be recognized and, and you can with some discipline and some effort, alter those, I became a big fan of Jeffery Schwartz and his work with OCD, the book the mind and the brain with that, where it's collaborated with Sharon Begley as a co author, still a book I read with some frequency. And so I started sending out brochures along with a colleague, a good friend of mine, the co founder of what became first called Mind masters Institute, and I see and eventually has evolved into chemo learning systems. His name is Rhys Baden, very great friend of mine and a tremendous leader. And so we founded this company started teaching dentists practice management, but as sort of a surprising offshoot. Dentists have friends, I know somebody filled out that and they had companies and we started getting calls from people whose their dentist friend had gone to the dental seminar, and had call us up and say, We don't need the dental practice management part. But we really like your mind management stuff. And you could come in and teach our company. And that evolved into the first fortune 500 company that we we taught was Dupont, and then it snowballed from there. And at after 13 years, I've actually had been practicing dentistry and teaching seminars, these professional seminars for about five years concurrently. I could just see where this was all leading, plus some pretty strong revelations. Yeah, in answer to prayer, I can see that Dentistry was a stepping stone. And that what I really needed to be doing was teaching these mind management principles to every person who had would listen to them.

Dr. Tim Thayne: 7:18

You know, I, I, Roxanne, my wife has you you met each other before you and I met today. And she she came home really enthused after meeting you because she she saw someone there in you that had a mission that felt really compelled to to bring these true principles to people. And to do that. And you know, that that really resonates with us when someone is driven by a mission, that there's there's a purpose. And

Dennis Deaton: 7:53

so I've got I think I've got the story, I need to tell you the fact that statement that's here. Yeah. I wasn't going to tell her Don't tell it to many people. But I'm really feeling a strong prompting that this needs to be mentioned in this podcast. There came a point where Reese and I were putting money into this seminar, but it wasn't really making any significant reasonable money. We'd blown through a pretty good chunk of our retirements at that point. And one day in the dental office, as I was just having a little break for a moment, I just thought in my mind, this is kind of ridiculous. We're spending this kind of time this kind of money. We both got wonderful professions. This is gonna take a lot of time away from us. You know, I'm just gonna go down after work. And I'm going to tell Reese, you know, I think we ought to pull the plug and quit. So in my mind, I quit. Somewhere later on in the day, my front office person came back and said, Dennis, there's a man that wants to talk to you. And he's from Dothan Alabama. And I had no idea in the world where Dothan Alabama was, and who would be calling me from there. I got on the phone. And the gentleman said his name was Jeff Bishop. And he was a pretty prominent person in the carpet cleaning and restoration business. And that he'd every year would as a gesture to his community and to build his business, he would bring in a world class motivational speaker, which I didn't put myself in that category at that point. But and he says I send out invitations, I invite the government governors people from legislature and I put oil in a in a auditorium and and I feed him a great lunch and it's really high quality. And then we put him down to him have his keynote speaker deliver a speech and he says it's really been a business builder and I heard you speak at a convention that is spoken. He says I think you're the person that could do it this year. Are you available on such and such a date? And obviously the story was exactly right. There was nothing on her calendar. So I had a properly, lengthen, pause, and then find it. Yeah, I happen to be available that day. And then he asked, Well, what do you charge? And so I thought, I'd throw out a thought that I priced that I thought was a little bit on the very high side. And he said, fine. So I went down after work to raise his office said, Reese, we got a gag.

Dr. Tim Thayne: 10:20

Yeah, we're back in business.

Dennis Deaton: 10:23

We may be missing like play after all. So when I got to Dothan, Jeff bishop had lived up to his billing, he had packed an auditorium and provided lunch for a lot of prominent people in that area, there. And I remember as being standing up side of screen off the side of the stage, I'm trying to say, and he gave me a very generous introduction, and I'm going, how in the world am I going to live up to this, and impress this auditorium of people. And so I walked out onto the stage and to, you know, the Ovation always precedes the speaker, and open my mouth and start to speak and like its promises is the doctrine of Kevin has opened your mouth, and I'll help you fill it. And I just had this warm, powerful expression, the Spirit come over me and I spoke, I think it for 45 minutes, maybe an hour, I don't remember much of what I said. When I said, came to the conclusion of that presentation, the audience just erupted, they jumped to their feet, they were cheering their people with tears in their eyes, and they were clapping. And I was amazed as anybody that. And then Jeff Bishop came out after that it kind of died down a bit. And he said, Dennis, we want to just thank you for this. And we want to leave you with a little token that you'll always remember delta, and by the end what delta was famous for. And there was no Internet back then I hadn't done any research. And I said, Jeff, I had to tell you, I do not know. He said, We're known as the peanut capital of the world. And then he had me a little four by four by four silver box with a nice purple ribbon on it, and I open it up. And inside, it was a sterling silver peanut. It's about four inches long, two inches high. And it's the most cherished, earthly, precious possession other than my wedding ring that I own. Because as I looked in that box and saw that peanut, I heard a voice in my left ear. I'm pretty sure it was the Lord. And he said, Well, you might work for peanuts. But it's what I want you to do. And so that's when I knew I was leaving dentistry. And I have had an amazing career and in professional corporate education.

Dr. Tim Thayne: 12:52

That's amazing. That's what I love about that. And I hope it comes through in this podcast, like it is being here. And sitting here with you talking about it, is that you have followed multiple times. Impressions, whether people see that as some kind of prompting from the Lord from God from the Great Spirit, whatever they might see. But you've, you've trusted in that, yes. And have have followed that. And so, it you've been kind of driven for a very long time to to follow that. That prompting, yes. So maybe as we close this segment, could you share with the audience? I don't know if you have some ideas for the audience on as they're on their path? Yeah. And what might help them find it or or find passion in it? What would you say to those people listening?

Dennis Deaton: 14:08

I would very much like everybody to know that we have our own thoughts. We are innately an independent, self governing thinkers of thoughts. That makes us choosers, but here's the other really key element of all of this is we are not alone in our heads. Anybody who's a Latter Day Saint or a faithful Christian, they know that the Spirit will speak to you it's called a still small voice. You don't hear it, audibly, but it's comes to you as an impression, a thought in your head. That your thoughts you the thinker of thoughts can respond to that. You can act on that impression, or you can question it, but usually you're questioning it because there's a third Voice, this not wanting you to hearken to the prompting voice and that's the voice of the adversary. You can call him whatever you want. You can call him the devil, you can call him Satan. When I may call him a spook in my seminars, I've taught people to call him scam. Because a scam is a strategy or strategy aimed to try to rob you of your wealth. And spiritually and temporarily, that voice is trying to impede you from reaching your potential. It constantly wants you to doubt we talk about the skeptic within people will talk they've about they have to outrun their devils, but they think of that not as literally as I think they ought to. And when you can start to distinguish between those other two voices, so that you know which one to reject. And anything that tears you down, that makes you doubt your worth as a human being, your value to to what you can contribute in life that is not coming from you, or it's not coming from your, your heavenly Father, your Savior, that is your adversary. And if you set a lofty dream, if you think you can become a poet, if you can go from being a Podunk dentist and a Podunk cow County, in a Podunk state of Iowa, apologies to price, Utah, there to become a nationally known corporate educator, I say you can do just about anything you set your mind to. And if you have these tremendous doubts that come in your mind, and I, I didn't have first credibility gaps, I had credibility canyons that think you know, the only credential I had is that I could fill teeth. And I'm going to go in to talk to the Chairman of the Board of Allied Signal and tell them I need to train all those people. It's just not going to make his day, you know what I mean? But whenever the adversary is telling you can't do something, it's a backdoor confirmation that you can, if you couldn't, and he would know that he wouldn't tell you you couldn't because he wouldn't have to he just let you try to do it and fall flat on your face. And you stand by laughing at your failure. The fact that he takes the time to try to tell you that you can is a backdoor statement that you can. And he wouldn't tell you if you that you can't that I say that right. I get it backwards. Yeah, it's about saying that you can't because he wouldn't tell you that you can't if you couldn't write, I love it. And I want to teach that to youth. Our young people need to know that. Yeah. If I had known a 10th of what I know, now, my youth would have been so different. I had an inferiority complex of size in Nevada.

Dr. Tim Thayne: 17:39

Well, that is such a powerful point that I think everyone out there can can apply that and listen for it and and follow it see what happens because I think that the proof is in the pudding of the actual taking those steps of a faith X accepting it moving forward and seeing where that goes. So this has been great as a great introduction to what we're going to talk about in our next podcast. And so thank you so much for being here on this and we will cut now and come back with the second half

Dennis Deaton: 18:17

to thank you for this privilege.

Dr. Tim Thayne: 18:18

You bet