168 – Year in Review – Microdose U

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Welcome to The David Madow Lifestyle Show! I’m Dr. D the “V”. And this is actually the last episode of 2016. It’s amazing how quickly the time goes. Again, I’ve been podcasting for close to 3 1/2 years now and it’s like you blink your eyes and the time is gone. It’s unbelievable!

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

It’s the show where I help you live stronger, thinner, healthier, and happier! And I am so glad to be here on the last show of the year. And if you’re brand new to me, I welcome you. We’ve got a lot of great things ahead in 2017 and beyond. If you’ve been with me from the beginning, or somewhere in between, thanks so much. I really appreciate you. I hope I have inspired you in some way, even if it’s in some little way, to live your life purposely and much better than you have before.

I’m going to recap and share with you some really cool things that I’ve learned and I do and I continue to do. Things I have learned in 2016 and will continue to do in 2017 and hopefully beyond. When I look back at the year, one of the coolest things I started doing these Hippie Road trips (kind of on a whim and not planned out). I actually did 3 of them in 2016. The way I started doing these was that I actually travel all over North America to speak and in the past I would always fly everywhere I went. And it was pretty cool to do that but airports get old. They’re crowded, they’re horrible. I just don’t like them anymore. They’re kind of a necessary evil. If I’m traveling from the East coast to let’s say Denver, San Francisco or Florida, you pretty much have to jump on a plane. It’s not really simple to get in a car and drive to that type of city from the East coast.

But I had a speaking gig sometime in the spring in Phoenix, Arizona. And 5 or 6 days later I had a speaking gig in Little Rock, Arkansas. I had this crazy idea that I was going to spend the days in between these speaking gigs instead of getting on a plane, I was going to drive from Phoenix, AZ to Little Rock, AK. And I did. And it was one of the coolest things I have ever done in my life. I was alone and the first day I remember that I drove to the Grand Canyon and did a nice day hike in the Grand Canyon. It was wild. I slept in Flagstaff, AZ that evening. The next day I drove to New Mexico and spent some time there. Then after New Mexico, I went to Texas. Through Oklahoma City and ultimately into Little Rock. I don’t know if I skipped any places or not but it was a blast.

What can you learn from a road trip? I learned a lot! First of all, I learned that most people are really good people and in the past I always that that truckers were a group of people that were racing to get from one location to another and were inconsiderate. But I learned learned a lot about truckers on this trip and let me tell you something, truckers are some pretty cool people. They are working hard making a living out there. They’ve got to get from one location to the next but from what I saw they do it with a with a really good sincere, considerate attitude.

I learned a lot. I stopped at truck stops and at different types of restaurants and I learned that wherever you go almost any restaurant will cater to someone who eats plant based vegan. I stopped at some good Mexican places. It’s easy to find. It’s easy to also shop when you’re on the road and keep stuff in the back of your car and eat on the road. I ate healthy food the whole way. I stopped when I could.

I was in Oklahoma somewhere and got a speeding ticket. I paid it. It’s ok. The policeman was out there doing his job. He was extremely polite. I was speeding. I was breaking the law and I paid the ticket with gratitude actually. I did.

I learned something else on the trip. I had a lot of time to think. That was back in the time that I was doing a lot of Periscope broadcasting while I was driving. Which I’ve learned is really not a good idea because when I’m driving I’ve got to be paying attention to the road. I don’t want to jeopardize my life or anyone’s life on the road. So I actually stopped doing that live stream video and you can understand why. It’s just not a good idea.

I also learned another thing on the Hippie Road Trip. I published this and I talked about it in a previous podcast episode. I learned to kind of get the “mother fuckers” out my life. And as horrible as that sounds, I don’t mean that in a bad way. I don’t mean it in a negative way towards anyone. I just mean that life is short. And there’s only so much time we have so why spend it with people that you don’t feel that you are vibrating on the same frequency with. That doesn’t mean that they are bad people. You know exactly what I’m talking about. There are people like that in your life, I guarantee it. You don’t have anything against them but you but you don’t feel the love, feel the vibration, you don’t feel the connection. Why waste your time with these people when there are probably plenty of people in your life that you feel a serious connection with. Stick with those people!

I’m not saying you shouldn’t meet new people along the way, you should. But let’s face it! You don’t have a whole lot of time when you really look at it and there’s only so many people you can spend your time with and I choose to spend my time with the people that I am connected with. The people that I feel love for. The special people in my life. That’s who I choose to hang with. And when I learned to get the “mf’s” out of my life, it freed up a tremendous amount of time. I don’t spend time with them in real life anymore. I don’t spend time with them on social media. It just frees up a lot of time. Even if it means sitting down and reading a book. Writing something or working on some goals.

I took 2 subsequent hippie road trips after that. They actually led me up to the Northern part of the U.S. and into Canada. I had 2 speaking gigs. One of them was in Toronto, Ontario and the other was in London, Ontario. When you actually get in your car and drive you get to see what’s going on around you. You can look at the rivers and the mountains. It opened up a whole new world for me. It really did! I guess I am going to say to you is that if you have the chance to do something like a hippie road trip, I would get in the car and try it.

Some of you have asked me if I have any hippie road trips planned for 2017 and I think I do. It’s not definite. I am speaking in Memphis, Tennessee in the beginning of March. It’s a good 9-10 drive from where I live in Maryland so what I think I am going to do is take 2 or 3 days to drive to Memphis. So I will take my time on the way. I might head into Asheville, North Carolina since I’ve never been there. People have told me that it’s a great place especially if you’re vegan. Then after I finish speaking I would just jump on a plane and come back. It’ll be a hippie road trip but kind of like half a hippie road trip.

So that’s what I have planned. I have some other speaking gigs during the year and we’ll see if we can make them into hippie road trips. I have one right afterwards in South Florida but don’t think I want to drive that far. It’s too far for me to drive there then turn around and come back. South Florida is pretty far from where I live so I may not do that one. But we’ll see. We’re looking at the calendar and some maps and we’ll have more hippie road trips in 2017 for sure.

Something I look forward to at the end of this year, and I’ll probably be doing it right around the time you’ll be hearing this, is my wife Yoko and I for the past many years have had a little ritual. I am really going to recommend you do this whether you have a spouse or not, it doesn’t really matter. This is something cool to do around the new year. We do it typically around New Year’s Eve. We work on our goals for the following year. We sit down and write what we want to accomplish for the next year (and really beyond). And the interesting thing is we always go over the goals that we had for the previous year. So in other words, sometime around New Year’s Eve this year we will sit down and work on not only our 2017 goals but we will look to see how we did in 2016. Interestingly enough I just found my book of goals that we had and started back in around 2010. I’ve had goals for myself for the past 25 years by myself but we started having joint goals for both of us. Out of curiosity I pulled out the book that we started in 2010 and began looking at all the goals we wrote down that year. It’s really pretty cool but just about everything that we wrote has become reality. A lot of them were financial goals like becoming debt free and paying off our house. And a lot of the others were travel goals and physical fitness goals such as doing certain races and certain backpack trips. The interesting thing is that just about all of them came true and not only that did not become reality were just things that we put down that we didn’t push for. For example, we listed a lot of places that we wanted to travel to over the next couple years or so like Vietnam and Thailand and we just didn’t get there. But truth be told we didn’t push for those because as you know I do a lot of traveling for work and outside of work and we did some trips to Japan since Yoko is from there, we did a couple trips to Hawaii and did some marathons there. So we did what we wanted to do but we didn’t get everything done. It just would have been a physical and financial impossibility. But it was really pretty cool reading through these goals starting from 2010 because I look back to see where we were then and how far we’ve come and how far we’ve progressed and what we’ve accomplished. And it was really great because we accomplished so many things because we wrote them down and read them on a regular basis.

Now, I’ve got my own list of goals. I started out doing goals about 20 to 25 years ago and I have my own list of goals for me personally that I keep with me wherever I am. They are either in my back pocket or my backpack in small little notebook and I read those every day. The goals that Yoko and I write up around New Year’s Eve we write them down and read them periodically but not every single day. They sit on a bookshelf in a main room sort of in our office. Our house is kind of like one big room on the first floor. The one big room is made of a kitchen, living area, and office. It’s kind of an open floor plan. So I keep the list of goals right there where we can see it anytime and either one of us can pull it off the bookshelf and read it. Periodically throughout the year we will review them and check them off as they become reality. They just about always do unless we just don’t push hard enough.

So I am going to highly recommend that if you haven’t started yet and there’s something you want to do, that you write it down. It could be anything. It could be weight loss. It could be a particular person you want to meet or someplace you want to travel to. New Year’s Eve or right around the beginning of the year is a great time to know that every single year at that time you are going to not only review your goals from the previous year but come up with new ones. It works so well for me and Yoko that I am going to highly recommend it.

What else have I gotten out of 2016? [Dave laughs] Well, I had a bad injury. You remember that one? I took a bad fall in Japan while skiing. It took a good part of the year to heal up. Sometimes I still feel it although it’s been almost a year now. So I learned that I am 61 years old now and I don’t heal as fast as when I was 11 years old. I need to be careful. I can’t take as many crazy chances as I used to. So I keep that in mind. That doesn’t mean that I don’t do things when we go skiing. Surely, we go to Breckenridge, Colorado every winter. We’ll be there in January and February. I am going to ski some hard stuff but I still have to be a little bit more careful than I was when I was much younger. If I take a fall and it’s a bad fall, it could hurt for a long time. And quite honestly I don’t want that. I had a tough time sleeping and getting around. Even on hippie road trip #1 and that was in the spring. I remember it was hurting! It was tough. So one of my goals is to be a little more careful in 2017. Just be careful. You can still have fun but don’t take crazy chances. And I don’t think I took a crazy chance when I fell in Japan. It was the first day though and I was on rental skis and we were skiing through some deep powder that I wasn’t really familiar with. We were skiing in and out of some trees a little bit and I just took a fall. I heard a snap and them felt the wham! I was like crying. So one of my goals is – don’t take chances like that. Just be careful.

So what are some of your goals? What are you going to do in 2017 to make it your best year ever? Have you thought about it? Think about it. We have the potential. We have a new president and whether you voted for him or not things are going to be changing. And hopefully it’s for the better. I really really hope our country and our world is going to change for the better. I have no idea. But I am going into this with a positive attitude. There have been so many people that are pissed off and angry and screaming but I am going into this with a positive attitude.

I am going to make 2017 the best year of my life so far. I am going to spend more time with my parents who are getting older. They are both in their 80s and I don’t know how much longer they’re going to be around. I want to spend some time with them. I want to spend some time with the people I am close with. I want to spend more time with Yoko. I want to spend more time with my 3 cats at home. I just want to be with people that I love. I want to spend more time with the people that mean so much to me. I want to get down to Florida more and spend time with my 2 grandsons and my daughter and my son in law. And get over to the West coast and see my son and daughter in law there. These are the most important things in life. And when we’re old and at the end of our lives, I don’t think anybody who’s on their deathbed has ever said “I wish I would have worked at the office a little bit more.” I don’t think anybody has ever said that. But one of the most common regrets is that somebody approaches the end of their life and they did not spend enough time with the people that were most important to them. I just don’t want to have that kind of regret. We’ll leave it at that.

I want to suggest one more thing to you and then I’ll wish you a very very Happy New Year because this will be the last time I will be talking to you in 2017. If you have not gone vegan yet, if you have not eliminated animals from your diet, and from your life, maybe 2017 is the year. It’s the best thing I have ever done in my life. I feel healthier, more vibrant, younger, I feel like I’ve got more passion. I am doing the right thing because I am not contributing to any animal suffering on my watch. And did I tell you that I’m healthier? I am! At least I think so. I am pretty sure 😉

Listen, I want to wish you not only a Merry Christmas (which has already passed) but a Happy New Year! If you’re Jewish, Happy Hanukkah! If you’re any other religion, whatever you celebrate or not celebrate. Whatever you are and whatever you’re not, it doesn’t matter. I love you! I want to wish you the best year ever in 2017. I’m Dr. Dave and I love ya!

See you next year!

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