166 – Fear, Goals and More

Hey there it’s Dr. Dave and welcome back to The David Madow Lifestyle Show. This is the show where I help you live stronger, thinner, healthier, and happier. And a lot more than that.

I am in my outdoor studio and about 5 minutes ago I put a post up in one of my Facebook groups, The Supercharge Hangout (click the link to join). It’s a really cool group of about a few hundred people who are like minded and we just help each other live our best lives ever!

Be sure to follow my LIVE daily broadcasts on Periscope at www.periscope.tv/davidmadow.

So the message I wrote in this group was, “I’m recording a show in 5 minutes, I will take the first 3 questions whatever they are. I’m not going to edit anything out, I’m not going skip anything, whatever the 3 questions are I am going to answer them.” And right away within several minutes, I got 3 questions right away. And I am planning to answer those right away on this show. I had another topic I was going to discuss but it hit me. I want to hear what your questions are and I would like to answer them.

I have not prepared answers but I am going to do my best to answer them. I’m going to answer these totally off the cuff. Whatever comes to my mind first. I’m going to be thinking as I am doing the show with you.

The first one is from Chris in Maryland and Chris asks me what is your biggest fear? That’s a really good question. I have to think about that for a second. This may not be my biggest fear but one of my fears is actually heights. I’ve kind of overcome that.

I am a backpacker and a mountain climber. I’ve been to some crazy heights doing some weird things on ledges and cliffs where there’s basically a thousand foot drop. I remember we were hiking in Grand Canyon and there’s a side canyon there. It’s really unbelievable. Until you actually backpack or hike all the way down into the canyon you see it’s not just one canyon. There are all these big side canyons that in themselves are tremendous attractions.

I remember backpacking through Grapevine Canyon. I remember there was a part of the trail that was kind of a downward sloping hill. And just to your right there is about a 2000′ sheer cliff drop off. So if you slip, it’s wet, someone pushes you, or something like that, you are basically falling to your death 2000′. And I remember it was kinda scary. Not kinda, it was scary!

I was hiking with Yoko, Landy, Lou, and I think just 3 other people. And Landy was trying to talk to me when we were walking through this little area. And I said “Landy please do not talk, I need to concentrate. I am really scared.” [Dave laughs] But that’s not my greatest fear. But I’ve overcome that. I do these things to help me overcome my fear of heights. But there’s something about looking down a cliff that your standing on the edge of that’s like 2000’+. I am scared of that. I am scared. It’s ok.

But I think my biggest fear is probably dying. And it’s not really the fear of dying itself. I believe the act of dying is not really that fearful to me. It’s kind of like whatever would lead up to it. For example, if I get shot. I mean God forbid that I would get shot. But it’s kind of like whatever would lead up to it. You know what I mean. But in other words, if I am in horrible pain, if I’m drowning and can’t breathe, if I’m choking, something like that. Something like that leading to death is really really scary to me.

So I think that’s what I would probably say is my biggest fear. And I believe some of this may come from a past life I got into a crazy drowning accident or maybe fell off a cliff 2000′.

I’m really not afraid of many things. I am afraid of my health going downhill. I do everything I can to stay healthy. I am not afraid of being homeless or losing friends or anything like that. If things happen to me in my life I am pretty confident that I can take care of them. Being in serious end of life pain or health issues leading to death is probably my greatest fear. Maybe I should try to overcome that too. We all have to die, I know that! But it’s what would lead up to the act of dying and not really dying itself. I think once you die you’re probably extremely comfortable wherever you may be. I’ve read a lot of books on near death experiences and by all accounts it sounds like people are in a beautiful place once they die and come out of their bodies. So that’s not scary to me at all.

So, Chris I hope answered that question ok. Again, I didn’t rehearse. I didn’t think about this at all before. I am just reading the question and answering it totally off the cuff.

That was a good one! Thanks so much for that Chris!

The next question, Eric from South Carolina asks, “what is one life lesson you would tell your 30 year old self?” One life lesson I would tell my 30 year old self. That’s a great one Eric! Let me think about that one for a second too.

Number one, I think there are a lot of them. There are a lot! I wish I would have known the powers of being vegan and not eating animals when I was 30. I wish I would that powerful thing. That’s definitely one.

This is a great question. And maybe I’ll do a whole episode on this one. This is going to sound like it doesn’t really fit. It should be something like “do everything in your power to be happy” or “love mankind, love people, love trees, love animals.” But the one that really comes to my mind is the one life lesson I would have taught my 30 year old self (or earlier), it would be financial actually. I know Eric, that this will really resonate with you and I know it will resonate with a lot of people. The lesson would be something like “stay the course, don’t deviate from the course when saving and investing money.” Spend much less than you make, invest the difference in safe investments. Don’t think you can get tips from your friends and invest in the stock market. Safe mutual fund investments.

Stay the course. Don’t be tempted to pull your money out when things are going bad in the economy and then think you’re going to jump back in when things are going better. Just stay the course. Stay even and keep investing every single month. Pay yourself first meaning that the first thing you do with your money is that you invest the amount that you are going to put aside every single month. And you keep doing it. No matter what the political climate is, no matter what the economic climate is, no matter what, you just keep putting that money in your investments every single month. including your retirement funds every month.

Let me tell you something. If you do that and you don’t get emotional about it, and you don’t listen to what other people are doing and all that craziness, you will be a millionaire+ by the time you are ready to retire. Or probably a multi millionaire. But you have to do that.

I wish somebody would have told me that. I wish somebody would have spanked my butt every time I made one of these stupid mistakes like when the economic climate starts going down and the stock market starts going down I would stop sending money in. That’s ridiculous! That’s the time to send money in. When things are going down and everybody is worried and going crazy you send more money in. Because guess what?! It’s always going to come back up. As long as we have always had the DOW and the NASDAQ, it’s always been on an upward trend. Does it go down sometimes? Of course it does! Did it go down like crazy in 2009? And on paper people lost half of their assets? Yes! But guess what? As I am recording this we’re on the cusp of the DOW hitting 20,000 for the first time ever in history! We just passed 19,000 for the first time in history a few days ago.

So that’s my lesson that I would teach my 30 year old self. And any other 30 year old or similar ages out there that’s a great great question. God do I wish I would have done that.

I’ve got some stories! I had this hot shot financial planner who, when things were going really well back in 1999 and I was making all kinds of money and I had all kinds of money to invest, this guy had me invest in like 3 or 4 private placements. And I sent a lot of money over to him. And then of course we had the crash around 2000 and then 9/11 in 2001. Things came tumbling down. The amount of money that I lost would floor you. I can’t even tell you how much. But that’s another story for a different episode.

Great question Eric! I really appreciate that!

As I sip my coffee out here it’s a cold afternoon. It feels beautiful! I love the be in my outdoor studio. I always preach that you should be one with nature and I love to have my feet planted on the soil. It just feels so good. I get invigorated when I’m outside recording as opposed to sitting at a desk inside with my beautiful mixer and microphone. I think I am more creative and more vocal outside. It just does something to my body and that’s why I urge you to go outside when you’re doing your “Magic 4” or when you’re running or when you’re doing anything. I urge you to get outside no matter what the temperature is. You can bundle up. It feel great out here! Another lesson from Dave 😉

Tom from Tennessee writes, “what is a goal that you have not achieved yet that you are pretty sure you’ll accomplish?” A goal that I haven’t yet achieved. Tom must know that I am a big goals guy. I’ve lived by goals for at least the past 25 years for sure. When you write them down and when you read them every single day, they have a way of coming true.

So what’s a goal that I haven’t reached yet that I am pretty certain I will? Great question! Let’s see. That’s an easy one Tom. Yoko and I know that the goal we’re going to reach is that we will have a primary home in Colorado in the Rocky Mountains most likely in Breckenridge. That is a goal that we both have written down on our goal sheets and our book of goals. We read them everyday. I know it’s going to happen but it hasn’t happened yet. A few things have to fall into place which I know they will.

I always pay cash for everything. I do not take out loans. I do not take out mortgages. I pay cash. Every single thing I have is paid for. I’m standing outside and looking at my house right now, it’s paid for. I’m looking at my cars, they’re paid for. Everything! So I am not going to move out there and borrow money to buy a house. I’m not going to do that. So the only thing that’s really stopping me now, other than a few minor things, is that I need to wait and save up a little bit more money for a house. Because when I sell this house here, it’s a nice house, but it’s not going to bring me enough money to buy what we want out in Colorado. It’s not that we’re looking for a mansion. Trust me we’re really not. We’re minimalists. We’re looking for something actually fairly small but I also want it to be the right place in the right area so it’s going to cost a little bit more money than the house is going to bring us here for the sale of it.

The biggest problem of all; and it’s not really a problem, I know I’ve shared this with you before, but about 1 1/2 years ago I wrote a large check to my ex-wife to finalize a financial obligation that I had from a divorce that took place about 16 years ago. The state of Maryland has something called permanent alimony. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Basically for the rest of my life, I was supposed to be writing her this huge check every month. And nothing bad about her. It was all legal and that’s pretty much what the deal was. And I am not bad mouthing anybody. And I tell you something else, she’s a wonderful person! But I still had this obligation to her. I did.

I did not want to have this obligation for the rest of my life. I don’t know what’s going to be happening. I don’t know how long I want to work. I want to work forever but I don’t know how long I want to be pressured into making a certain amount of money so I could pay a very large amount of money every month for permanent alimony. So I wanted to work out a deal to get out of that. And in order to work out a deal like that it took a huge check that I had to write which depleted a large portion of my assets to be very honest with you.

Don’t worry about me. I’m ok! I still have some money. But it’s nothing like I had before I had to write this check. So I need to working on building up a little bit more. That might be too much information but it’s ok. The reason I do this show is because I am totally transparent. I don’t hold back. I want to share my life with you so that you can learn from me and learn from the good things I do and learn from the mistakes. If I held stuff back and didn’t share with you and made it seem like everything’s perfect in my life, then I wouldn’t be doing you a good service. It wouldn’t be right. Because as good as my life is I’ve got crazy things that have happened to me in the past and will probably happen in the future because we’re all human beings and crazy things do happen. So I want to share that with you. It was a tremendous struggle that I had for many many years. I had this really difficult financial obligation every single month whether money was coming in or not. This huge financial obligation was basically never ending and I had to put an end to it. And it took a huge amount of money to end it. But I’m good. I feel like this tremendous weight was lifted off my shoulder. I’m rebuilding and that’s fine.

So Tom I answered that in a very long way. But that’s my goal that I know is going to happen and it’s going to happen most likely within 2-3 years. That’s what we’re planning. 2-3 years give or take.

I’m excited whenever Yoko and I are out west in Breckenridge, Colorado. Tom, you know this too! I know Tom personally.

I appreciate all of you writing in these questions, Chris, Eric, and Tom. I happen to know all of you fairly well. So I appreciate that a lot.

But there are also other goals that I read every day on my goal sheet. But that is the main one that I think. Tom was looking for that answer right there.

Wow! Ok, I’m out of breath. I think I like this idea. I think I like putting this up on Facebook and answering the first 3 questions I get asked. So I think I am going to do this again. And when I do it I promise that whatever the question is, even if I don’t really like the question, I’ll answer it in some way so that it will make it fair so that you know if you write a question and you’re the first 3, you know it’s going to get answered. I kind of like that.

I hope you liked the show! I hope you did! Feel free to send me an email and let me know if you like the concept. I’d like to do a live call-in show. I did that once or twice but it was difficult because I need certain equipment. It was not easy to do. Technically it’s not a simple thing to do. But I tried it early on when I first started my podcast. I think what is was is that I recorded some questions and played them on the show. That’s what it was. But let’s see if this thing works. Let me know! Send me an email to dave@davidmadow.com. Send me an email and let me know what you think. Hang out with us on Facebook. We’re there! I’d love to have you with us! Until next time…

I am Dr. Dave. I’ll see you next week! Have a great one!

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