179 – Why I Took a Week Off

Hey there! Welcome back! It’s Dr. D the “V”, David Madow. Back for another fantastic episode. I welcome you to The David Madow Lifestyle Show. Thanks so much for being here. I really appreciate the feedback so many of you have given me!

I took a week off. We did not do a show last week and skipped the week. It was the first time I skipped an episode in about 2 years actually. And the outpouring of love from you guys asking me what was going on because you hadn’t seen the show this past week. I love you guys and thanks so much for being concerned!

To answer many of your questions, everything is great! I just had come off of the end of Hippie Road Trip #4, I had a lot of stuff going on in my business. And you know something? I never want to put out a show unless I think it is a great one for you. The last thing I want to do is waste 20 minutes of your day listening to something that is not valuable or something that doesn’t make sense. So I decided not to do a show last week. Will I ever skip any more weeks in the future? Yes, perhaps I will just depending on what I’ve got going on and my schedule. Trust me if I miss a week, I love you still. It has nothing to do with anything except for the fact that I just didn’t have it in me to do a show that week. That’s all.

So, getting past that, I am super super excited. As I am recording this, I am getting ready for the first Vegan Indian Buffet & Open Mic (VIBOM) dinner. It’s going to take place this evening in Owings Mills, MD. If you’re listening to this now, it has already passed and I am sure it was a huge success.

If you’re not on my list and you want to know more about upcoming events such as more vegan buffets and open mics, please make sure you get on my list. The way to do that is to visit my website and enter your email address to join the VIP list or find my Facebook group.

We are actually over capacity tonight and are expecting 44 people. I will be scheduling another one and the next time I do one I am going to see if I can get more capacity because this thing has taken off like crazy. It’s not just locals. We’ve got Mark “ThePro” Jackson coming in from North Carolina. He’s taking a train up to Baltimore from North Carolina to join us in this Vegan Indian Buffet & Open Mic. It’s going to be awesome and I cannot wait to see you. If you’re listening to this and you were there, I am so glad that I saw you at the Vegan Open Mic.

I want to share a few little things I learned from Hippie Road Trip #4. If you remember, Hippie Road Trip #4 went from Memphis, TN (where I spoke on a Saturday) and I had some time to take and drive down to West Palm Beach Florida where I would be speaking about 6 days later. I went through Memphis into Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, then into Florida. It was an awesome trip and I learned a lot actually.

One of the things I learned is that southerners are really good people. I want to back up and say, most people are really good people. But when I was driving through the south through Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama, and Georgia, and Florida, I had the opportunity to stop at a lot of truck stops. One of my favorites is Love’s Truck Stop and I make it a point to stop at a Love’s whenever I can and get some fresh brewed iced tea. Unsweetened of course. And you come in contact with a lot of people. Not necessarily conversations but let me tell you something. People are so nice and polite. If they’re walking down an aisle or opening a door, they’ll say thank you or excuse me. I really took a step back and just really tried to observe. You hear so many people these days saying that people these days aren’t nice and they think only about themselves. But I’m not finding that, my friend! I am not finding that. I am finding some really good people wherever I go. Maybe 1 out of 10 or 1 out of 20 aren’t so nice but I don’t know. Maybe it’s my energy. Maybe it’s my vibration. But I’m running into a lot of good people. I use the analogy about the south because I just spent a lot of time in the south but when I drive up north, people are really good there too. I think basic human nature is to be good. Do we have a few bad apples because of things that have happened in their lives? We do, but you know something? I try my best not to ever judge other people because you never know what somebody’s real story is. Somebody could appear like a total jerk to you or a total ahole. Maybe they do something wrong to you. But you never know why or what their whole story is or if something just happened to them. Maybe they had a bad day. Maybe they found out that a relative has a serious illness. Maybe they just broke up with their wife. You never know what’s going on. So don’t take it for granted that somebody was not a good person because maybe they just weren’t nice at that moment or maybe they crossed you the wrong way. I have learned this in my life and I am learning it more and more as each day goes by. Have faith in humanity. Let’s give people the benefit of the doubt. Let’s not judge. And let’s be kind to people!

Speaking of being kind to people, I want to talk about social media for a few minutes. Facebook in particular because that’s my main means of social media and of communicating with you. I see a lot of things on Facebook. Sometimes I think it’s a curse and sometimes I think it gets to be too much because it definitely takes a lot of time to be involved with the entire community on Facebook. But I see a lot of things. And what I am seeing now is that I am seeing people that are unfriending others at the drop of a hat. Someone makes a comment that someone else doesn’t like, they are unfriended. Someone makes a political comment one time or even several times and they are unfriended. I had a friend of mine that said their cousin, who he’s been close with his entire life (this guy is in his 60s), unfriended him because of a political comment. Guys I don’t see that. I just don’t understand. How can you unfriend somebody? How can you not be somebody’s friend because of their opinion on something?

There is no message or notification that you get when someone unfriends you but I was recently looking for a friend of mine on Facebook and noticed that when I went to her page it said “add friend.” So I was thinking, “wow she unfriended me for some reason.” I didn’t know why. When I reached out to her and said “hey what’s going on? I see that we’re not friends on Facebook anymore.” She said something interesting to me. She said, “yeah you know the last time I saw you a couple of years ago at one of your events, I just didn’t feel that you were giving me the love like you used to or that you were paying attention to me.” So I took a step back and thought about it for a minute and thought maybe I didn’t. But then I thought, this was an event that I had about 1500 people at and it’s really tough to give 1500 people the attention they deserve. You try to. When you’re on the stage you try to give energy but talking to 1500 separate people and trying to give them love is virtually impossible in a two day period. So for some reason this woman had a vibe from me that I didn’t like her anymore. That’s crazy! I felt horrible! So I said to her,
“hey look, that’s not the case. I always love you. Maybe we don’t talk for a few months or maybe even a couple years but you know I am your friend.” She finally understood and she asked for my friendship again which I gladly gave to her. We can’t be everywhere at every moment and sometimes our imagination and our assumptions are wrong.

I had somebody else recently who said to me that she didn’t think I was a friend because I just wasn’t paying attention to her also. I felt bad but this person was imagining all kinds of crazy things why I didn’t like her anymore. None of which were true!

I told you about the book The Four Agreements. I hope you read that. If you haven’t read it, I hope you read it because it’s really really powerful. One of the four agreements is to never assume. I have found, in my life, that when I assume something or get worked up over something as I have in the past, 90% (or more) of the time, I was dead wrong. So I try my best. I’m human. I’m not a machine. It’s not a 100% that I don’t assume anymore because I am not perfect. But I try my best not to assume because more often than not everytime I assume something about why somebody did something or why somebody didn’t do something, I was almost always wrong. Are you assuming? I’m going to highly recommend that you go back to that book and read The Four Agreements again. You’ll see what the other ones are. I have talked about them all on the show. I’m such a big fan and follower of this book. I am not doing it for any other reason besides it has changed my life.

Another one of the agreements is to be impeccable with your word. And I have tried my best not to say anything that’s going to get me in trouble or get another person in trouble. Be impeccable with your word. It will catch up with you ultimately. Everything does. Especially in this world of social media. This is my assumption, and I know I am not supposed to assume, but my it’s a principle. That might be better. But I go by the principle or assumption that whatever you put out there or whatever you tell somebody, there is no way that you can hide it. So if you tell somebody something or put something online, even if you think it’s hidden somewhere, assume that it’s out there for the public to see (I give you permission to assume in this case). So before you put something online or talk about somebody behind their back, you can assume that once you put it out there, it will be public. Please remember that! It’s true. Trust me on this one. And if you have a friend or an acquaintance or coworker that is always talking about other people, trust me when you turn your back they are talking about you. Trust me. In my almost 62 years on this planet, I’ve experienced a lot. If you’ve got one of those people, you know exactly who they are, and they are talking about people in a negative way, they are talking about you when they are not with you. Believe me. I try to separate myself from negative people. Sometimes they come across as really positive people. And then when you talk to them personally, they are bad mouthing other people. When you have to bad mouth somebody else, there is generally something going on. Some people may not be as great as they appear to be on social media because they talk about other people.

On Hippie Road Trip #1, I came up with a list of about 20 things I learned. If you remember one of them was…get rid of the mother fuckers (pardon my language). That’s harsh word. It’s a bad word. I would not use that word on stage although this is sort of like my stage here. But these people that you are not aligned with and that are saying bad things about other people, get rid of them. Don’t wish them any harm. I’m not saying they are bad people but when your life gets filled up there is no room for anything else. There’s not room for any other people or events or anything like that.

So make sure you’re spending your time with the people that you are aligned with or that you are vibrating with. I could give you a list of people that are great people but I just don’t feel that I’m vibrating with. I feel like I’ve got nothing to share with them. And they probably feel the same about me and that’s ok. I’ve got plenty (that’s you) that I feel like I am aligned with and we’re vibrating on that same frequency.

So be kind to people. Spend your time with the people that mean the most to you. I can’t emphasize that enough. I did a lot of thinking on Hippie Road Trip #4.

I met up with a friend of mine that I had not seen in quite some time. We actually graduated from dental school together in 1980. I hope he is listening to this. His name is Tony and what a great guy he is! We spent 3 hours in a restaurant one evening just talking and reminiscing. And when we talked, we talked about positive things. We didn’t say anything bad about anybody at all. We didn’t bad mouth anybody. We did talk about generalities. Like people who have to show off and have to acquire so many material things because something is wrong in their lives. Their lives are empty. So they’ve got to make up for that by driving expensive cars, and having jewelry, and fancy possessions.

It’s funny. Tony and I have not spent a lot of time together except online for the past 37 years but we’re so similar in our thinking. We both done very well financially over many many years. We’ve both been very fiscally (financially) responsible. And neither of us show off anything. Both of us are very down to earth family oriented people. We don’t necessarily have to have a lot of material things in our lives because we are basically happy. We don’t need junk to show people that we are successful or happy. Or to become happy. We don’t need that stuff.

I learned a lot. Hippie Road Trip #4 was great. Just driving from Memphis to the point where I actually put my feet in the Atlantic ocean was an incredible feeling. If you ever can get out on the road and do this, I beg you to. Please try a Hippie Road Trip. They do not have to cost a lot of money. I stay in very inexpensive hotels. Or you can “boondock” which means that if you have a car or truck, you can just sleep in your car or truck. Or pitch a tent somewhere. You don’t need a lot of money to do a Hippie Road Trip. I go online to hotels.com the day of and get a good deal in the area where I am going to be. I look at reviews. And I do not stay in the most expensive places. Trust me!

I am looking forward to Hippie Road Trip #5. I am not sure when or where but it’s going to be coming up. And when it does, I am going to be sharing with you. It’s one of the things in my life now that has become really important for me. Getting out on the road and observing and looking around and meeting people all over North America. It’s been incredible and I love it. I cannot wait to do the next one.

I’m getting ready for the Vegan Indian Buffet & Open Mic night. I am moving some equipment right now. I really hope you can join me at the next one. Please get on the VIP list!

I want you to have a great week! I’ll see you next week. Hopefully I won’t be taking any time off soon but if I do bear with me. You know I will be back. Here’s my promise to you. I am not going anywhere and I promise you that. I am going to be here for the long run to help you, to inspire you, to change your life, and to be with you so you will not be alone anymore. Because I’m with you my friend.

I’m Dr. Dave. See you next week!

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