[00:00:00] Eric: If you don't know why you're climbing the mountain, you are not going to find the answer at the top. So if we don't know the purpose of what we're doing. If we don't know our all-encompassing why or our why in this season of life, then we will just keep adding more things.
[00:00:20] Aneta: We often hear people wishing us a long, happy, and healthy life, but what if the length isn't what matters most? What if instead, it's the breadth depth, and purpose of each day that matters most? Welcome to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. My name is Aneta Ardelian Kuzma and join me weekly as I interview guests who made changes in their own lives to live more fully with intention, gratitude, and joy. Be prepared to be inspired by their stories of how they shifted their mindset, took courageous action, and designed the life that they always wanted to live.
Welcome back to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. My guest this week is Eric Rucker and Eric spent the first half of his life doing what he thought that he had to do, putting his nose down and during the grind. And it was never quite enough. And through experiences with the triathlon, mountain climbing, owning a dental practice with a team of 20, and becoming a pilot.
Traveling extensively. He learned that what he was searching for wasn't at the top of the mountain and in the second half of his life, he is committed to helping people learn to live presently in their moment in their own lives, finding a life of fulfillment and not just accomplishment and through his coaching, speaking and writing.
He is working to help as many people as possible learn to win the now we had such a great conversation. So much of Eric's story, I think will resonate with many of us. He shares how he arrived at winning the now and why it's such an important message right now for many of us. And also talks about why what we're looking for is often not at the top of the mountain.
We had such a great conversation. He even shares about early pivotal childhood moments that put him on this path of high achieving. I loved our conversation and I think you will as well. Take a listen.
Eric, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so excited to have our conversation.
[00:02:20] Eric: Aneta, I'm really happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:02:22] Aneta: Yeah. And you and I were just talking about starting the session today. We talked about the Midwest or the Irish Goodbye which I thought was so funny. And because I was a couple of minutes late joining our session today. Do you mind just talking about what that is? Because I think it's so interesting sometimes how we just don't give ourselves enough time. to be fully present.
[00:02:47] Eric: Yeah, I would agree a hundred percent. And so it's just that concept that man, we need to get going to the next thing, so it's time to say goodbye. Well, then we bring up another topic because we're drawn to being there. We want to be there. We want to be in the moment, but we have other requirements on our time.
We have the next thing going, we have our schedules, we have the next meeting. And then all of a sudden we're 20 minutes later and we look at each other and say, okay, it is time to say goodbye now.
[00:03:19] Aneta: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And I think so many of us appreciate that because we always could feel like we are never on time or never doing enough or never feeling like we are fully present. And I know that that's one of the topics that you are super passionate about. So can you tell me a little bit about your win now and why it's such an important message for us?
[00:03:42] Eric: Yeah. I think what happens with us, and I found this so much with myself is that we're usually in one of two places, we're either stuck in the past because of whatever's happened to us, regrets, or all of the things that can be in our past. Or we're worried about the future and don't get me wrong there are some things to certainly be aware of in the future but when we're in one of those two places we miss out on the one thing that's completely guaranteed and that's the moment right in front of us.
We do have that, right now is what we have and so if we are in one place with our mind and another place with our body, then we're not fully in either of those places. It's kind of like multitasking and we know the illusion of multitasking that it doesn't happen. So when our brain and our body are in different places, then we can't enjoy the beauty of the present moment, which is where all the action happens.
[00:04:40] Aneta: I can't agree more. And I call it time traveling. I tell people, to stop time-traveling, and allow your mind to be where your body is right now. And it's so hard sometimes to bring all of our energy to this very present moment. So how did you come to know this? How did you discover this? Maybe share a little bit of your background or how you came to this very conclusion.
[00:05:05] Eric: Yeah. So I'll just take about three hours to give the short version of that story.
Yeah, so I was bullied when I was growing up and I can share a lot of that. But what I want to focus on is when I grew up in Iowa in the early 80s.
Recess kickball was huge. It was so important to play kickball on the recess field. Like that was everything. And so when I was in second and third grade, I was one of the youngest in my class I'm six, five right now, but I certainly was not at that point. One of the youngest, a little bit slower developing a little soft around the edges, and not very coordinated husky was the type of jeans that I wore.
That's what they called them back then. So it would have been one thing if I was picked last I could have tolerated that but I was told that I couldn't play And I was told that I couldn't play because I wasn't good enough. And so you hear that one time Okay, you hear that repeatedly.
It's brutal. And so in third grade, I stood on the side of that recess playground kickball field. And I said, I'm going to be so good at everything that I ever do, that no one will ever not pick me. That was a pact I made with myself as a third grader. That's a big anchor to drag behind you for your whole life.
So I have a life where I have overcompensated. In everything that I've done fitness things. Work things. I am a practicing dentist. I still am, but I got to this point where I was so burned out. I was dealing with heart palpitations and chest pain I even got to the point of panic attacks and I knew that something needed to change but I didn't have a lot of self-awareness at the time I just knew that I needed to escape this because all these feelings of burnout were just horrible.
And so, I decided to sell my dental practice. I was going to sell it and I was going to walk away. I didn't have a freaking clue what I was going to do with myself. I just knew that I had to walk away. I had to get away from the burnout. And so it was very close to this happening. I was going to sell it to one of my associates in my practice.
And it was going to happen. We're going to start working out the details in February and January 18 of 2021 on the way to work on a Monday morning, he was in a horrific car accident. He survived, but all of a sudden it was very plain and clear to me. One, that this was not going to be an escape route for me, that I could not, and this was not going to be the avenue to sell the practice.
And two, I realized then that I'd been trying to go around this problem of burnout. I'd been trying to go around it. I was going to escape. It was going to follow me. All this stuff was going to follow me wherever I went. And so I had to go through it. And I went from being busy and torched and all of that to the next level because all of a sudden we had one less dentist in our practice as well.
So 2021 was awful and I was not in a place where I was present. But I kept working on it and I knew I needed to do it. So I now have a partner in my dental practice. So I've sold half my practice and we're 50/50 partners. I see patients three days a week and then I spend the rest of my time trying to help other people on their journey of burnout so that they don't have to get to the point where I got to.
[00:08:44] Aneta: Thank you for sharing your story. And first of all, the topic of bullying, I could picture that third grader in you, the little kid just sitting on the sidelines and making that commitment to yourself. That must've been so hard. And you know what, did you ever get really good at kickball? I guess I have to ask you a question. Did you make it your mission to be good at kickball?
[00:09:05] Eric: Here's what was amazing about it. So I feel so bad for people who have school as a bad place and home as a bad place, my heart just absolutely breaks for them because for me home was a good place. I had loving parents. I could come home to loving parents, but we weren't talking about mental health back then. We weren't talking about it at all.
So I just felt this was life I just felt this is what life looked like. This was the best that life was going to get. And I just thought I had to deal with it. But man, my parents did everything that they could. I didn't talk about the bullying. I mostly kept it to myself, which I think most people did.
But my dad, I was two blocks away from the school. My dad would walk up there with me and we'd bring a kickball and my mom and my siblings would come sometimes and he would just pitch kickballs to me. And we would just practice and practice. And so my parents supported me the best that they could in this.
And I was so thankful for that, but really. I never got to be amazing at kickball, so that was tough. I mean, I was certainly good enough to play but by the time I was good enough to play, we were on to whatever the next thing was. I think it was football on the field at that point.
But what was so amazing about this is I didn't realize that I didn't even remember I had made that pact with myself. I didn't realize the ramifications of this until the last few years. How all the overcompensating had come because of what I thought were my inadequacies because people had told me that so when people say that words aren't any big deal I would challenge that the words that are spoken over us are powerful and when we don't deal with those words, then they can be an anchor that holds us back.
[00:10:55] Aneta: That's so true. And all of us have that little inner child that has experienced whatever our story is and even whether we're aware of it or not, we go back to that version of ourselves sometimes. So you fast forward. Continued with this pact and wanted to be successful, you became a dentist. So obviously you were successful academically and in your business.
What did burnout look like for you? How did that manifest? What were some of the things you were experiencing and how long were you in it when you realized, to wanted to leave? It got to a bad place because then you're like in the flea stage. So how did you in the flight stage, right? So how long were you in it and what did it look like?
[00:11:38] Eric: I'm a slow learner and I just am. I'm a slow learner. I will raise my hand. I will say I, Eric Recker, am a slow learner. During the first season when I knew that it was burnout at that time, I bought the dental practice from my dad. I was building a new building, which was all on me. I was leading a team of 15 at the time.
I was training for two Ironman triathlons. I was on five boards and I was coaching both of my kids in soccer. So obviously I was going to have a problem with that. But I didn't just go from having none of that on my plate to all of it. It was the frog in the kettle as the waters turned up.
And I didn't realize it in the season because I just kind of got through it in that. I got past the Ironmans and got through soccer season and all that kind of stuff and just put it kind of a band-aid on it and of course, it came back but what I realized in it is our family has a favorite movie called The Secret Life of Walter mitty
[00:12:44] Aneta: It's such a great movie.
[00:12:46] Eric: It's a great movie.
[00:12:48] Aneta: It's a great movie.
[00:12:49] Eric: Yeah. So I bet we've watched it easily a dozen times, if not more. But for me, burnout was Ben Stiller at the beginning of that movie. The cinematography in it is tremendous. Everything in the beginning is gray. It's gray tones, it's boring tones, not a lot of color. I had a hard time getting excited about things, even things that should be very exciting.
I had a hard time with that. I was chippy around my people. I was reactive. I wasn't very good at thinking my thoughts through because I didn't have anything. I didn't have any reserves. I was just running on empty constantly and still pouring out the way that I was. I didn't sleep very well because things were always spinning in my mind.
I was chronically in two places at the same time. I wasn't a very good friend. I wasn't a very good dad. I wasn't a very good husband and those aren't shameful things. It was just when you're not in the moment, you can't be those things very well. So I would say in one word to describe burnout, I would say I was gray.
[00:13:54] Aneta: That's such a great word. As you were talking about, I was like, you've lost your zest for life. I love that you said there are no reserves, you're on empty. There are fumes. Like there was just nothing left to give. And I'd been there. So I appreciate you sharing what your version of burnout is.
Do you feel like in any way that the Ironmans and some of these other things you were doing, were distractions from actually acknowledging what was going on? Did you just add more? Because I decided I was going to run a marathon. It seems like a good thing to do when I'm completely exhausted.
[00:14:29] Eric: Yeah, I mean if you're not good enough, you're doing something wrong, and you have to do something more to try to be good enough, right?
[00:14:36] Aneta: Yes.
Do something more.
[00:14:38] Eric: Yes, I loathed running in elementary school. I loathed it. That was like the whole word. I had nights I wouldn't sleep before we had to run a mile in PE. I was so worried about it because I hated it so much.
Well then I started running when I was in dental school and then a 5k and that wasn't enough and a 10k through marathon none of that was enough. Sprint triathlon, Olympic, half Ironman, Ironman. I considered a double Ironman. I have ridden my bike across the state of Iowa in a day, three times. It's 250 miles.
I've done a seven-mile open-water swim. All of these things, these aren't bragging things. These are just, what I was searching for what was enough. And I was never going to find it. I didn't find it at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. I didn't find it at the top. There are so many places I looked for it and I finally realized and this is one of the most important sentences ever in my life, if you don't know why you're climbing the mountain, you're not going to find the answer at the top.
[00:15:45] Aneta: Did you come up with that? Or is that a quote from somewhere?
[00:15:47] Eric: Yeah, I looked it up. I can't find it, but it hit me at the top of Mount Princeton in Colorado, several years ago. And it cured me of endurance racing because I didn't know why I was doing it. I was just doing it to try to prove to people, I guess, still that I was good enough, I was working on a broken operating system.
[00:16:08] Aneta: Do you mind repeating it one more time, Eric? I just want you to say it slowly for everyone because so impactful.
[00:16:14] Eric: Yeah. If you don't know why you're climbing the mountain, you are not going to find the answer at the top. So if we don't know the purpose of what we're doing. If we don't know our all-encompassing why or our why in this season of life, then we will just keep adding more things. Every time you get to the top of a mountain, there's another mountain.
I even watched on Netflix, there was a guy who climbed all 14 peaks that are above 8, 000 meters. And he did it all within seven months. And he got to the end of that and they asked him what's next because that's a question I like to ask my coaching clients and speaking clients. I say, then what?
We always have to bump up against that question. Then what? And he said, go bigger. And I said, how do you go bigger? Are you going to climb on the dark side of the moon? Like, what are you going to do? I don't understand what's bigger than what you've already done. So if we don't understand why we'll keep reaching.
That's one of the reasons I think we end up so burned out because we don't even know why we're doing what we're doing. And oftentimes the rest of the world looks at us and our American work ethic of running ourselves into the ground. And they just say why are you doing that to yourself?
[00:17:37] Aneta: Yeah. Did you find an answer to why we do it?
[00:17:41] Eric: Why do we push as hard as we do?
[00:17:43] Aneta: Yeah. Is it that we don't feel like we're enough? Do we feel like our identity is in what we accomplish and what we do, not necessarily who we are?
[00:17:53] Eric: Yeah, I think we spend way too much time on comparison. I think social media has been brutal for that. We think there's this idealized life, that we can have where we look around at different social media profiles and Aneta, I want your house and I want somebody else's vacation and I want somebody else's kids and I want somebody else's car and I want somebody else's, I don't know, advanced degree that they got or whatever they're celebrating.
And we think that because we can see these little snippets of all these different parts of people's lives, there is a possible existence where we have all of that. If we have anything less than all of that, it's a letdown and we think we can band-aid it by if I work harder I can pay for this bigger house If I do this, I can get this different car.
We can go on this vacation. We can do all of this stuff You don't know why you're doing it. You're just doing it. You're racking up more debt. You're putting yourselves in a position where you have to work even harder and you don't want to face any of that So you zone out on your phone and on your devices all of the time and then there we are.
[00:19:01] Aneta: Yeah. So true. What did you do to pull yourself out of burnout? I mean, I know you cut down, it sounds like, and on your practice a little bit and started doing more of the other things that fulfill you, but did you do something else that helped you pull yourself out of the burnout when you were ready to do it?
[00:19:18] Eric: Yeah. So I needed to start incorporating some better habits into my life. One of the things that I didn't have when I was burned out, was quiet. I didn't have any time for my brain to idle. And I thought what we did right before we started the podcast what Aneta and I did is we just sat in quiet, kind of grounded our feet to the ground, took some really deep cleansing breaths, and got some good energy flowing through us so that we could kind of purge anything else that it tried to attach itself before we did the podcast and it was wonderful and freeing and I was missing all of that stuff.
So I needed to incorporate some quiet in my life. I needed to incorporate some more movement just for the sake of movement, not for a training goal or anything like that. We spend billions of dollars on supplements, but there's not much better for us than 30 minutes of movement outside.
There just isn't. We haven't come up with a pill to do better than that. So it's trying to be intentional about some of those things, definitely being more intentional about relationships. I'm a very heavily relational person and COVID told us that we couldn't be around people.
And that was very detrimental to us to believe that other people are toxic. And the thing is, we're better together. We have to be around people. And I get concerned for people who work remotely, live by themselves, and never interact with other people. It's very scary to me.
[00:20:56] Aneta: Yeah. We isolate them and we are built for connection. So when you were quiet and you started adding in these quiet practices, what did you hear?
[00:21:08] Eric: Yeah, it's funny when my dental practice closed during COVID, I had more discretionary time than I had ever known what to do with. I'm somebody who thrives on a schedule. I know what I'm doing all day long when I'm in the dental practice. And so I've had to do some of those things when I'm at home working on coaching and speaking and things like that, I need the time block so that I give myself the gift of knowing what I'm doing with my time, but I had this discretionary time, but I felt this crazy urgency.
Just felt like I needed to do a million things. I need to listen to all the webinars I needed to do this. And by the way, your office is closed, but you still need to see emergency patients, but your team can't be there. So how does all of that work in the midst of all of this? And it was just this giant mess.
So I committed to 30 minutes of quiet every day. I said, while my practice is closed, I'm going to sit in quiet for 30 minutes each day. Well, I failed miserably on day one. I sat there, put my feet flat on the ground put my hands out in front of me, and started taking some deep breaths. And I thought, boy, I gotta be getting close. I was 46 seconds into my 30 minutes. I thought,
[00:22:28] Aneta: I laugh because it is hard when we're not used to sitting and you want to check your phone and be like, what? There's no way I have 29 minutes left.
[00:22:40] Eric: Yep. So I ended up setting a timer on my phone, putting it on, do not disturb, and then not being judgmental about anything that happened during that time. Thoughts could flow as they were going to flow. I would do some breathing. I would do some praying. There were different things that I would do during that time.
And through that, that's when I started getting the idea for when the now and started getting the idea for my first book. I wrote because I felt like I was being tormented by something that I call a false sense of urgency. So there's real urgency, like I have a deadline I smell smoke in my house or gas.
I have to be there to pick somebody up at this time. There's real urgency. And then there's the false sense of urgency, which is I like it to a background app in our brains. That is constantly running and we can't shut it off. That says we have to be productive. We have to be doing something that counts.
We have to be, all of those things. It tells you, it's the word should over and over and over and over again. And as my dad told me several times, never should on yourself, it gets messy. So the false sense of urgency, this thing that was just spinning in my head, kept me in the past and the future. And when the now was the antidote to the false sense of urgency.
[00:24:14] Aneta: I love that. And you wrote now, I think you have a second book coming out too. Is that correct?
[00:24:21] Eric: I do coming out on April 12 and it is called that damn analogy. D A M of course. I don't want to don't push any boundaries too much, but yeah. And basically, the gist of that book is that our lives are just the flow of energy through us. We are a conduit for energy that goes through us. So we have energy that comes in and we have energy that goes out.
Through my experiences and working with coaching clients and speaking clients, what I have learned is that we're good at the outflow part. We don't have a problem with that. We don't have a problem using up our energy and outflows are anything that we do. It's work, it's volunteering, it's checking our phones.
It's Netflix. It's committees. It's all of the things that we do. It's even the bodily processes that keep us alive. All of that is outflow. We're pretty terrible at the inflow part. Most of us are not taking enough time to refill. We either don't know what the right habits are, or we aren't doing the right habits to help us refuel.
And so we end up chronically empty. Chronic emptiness leads to burnout when we don't have anything in the tank and we keep pushing and keep pushing You look at where our country is right now and I think that's a good part of the reason why we are where we are.
[00:25:51] Aneta: Oh, So true. What is the best way that people can find your book?
[00:25:56] Eric: Yeah, so, April 12 It'll be live on Amazon and what's cool, in there is I have it set up for different ways that different people read it So I have a downloadable workbook that you can get if you're somebody who likes to dive into a book and learn as much as you can I have some bonus chapters that'll be available on my website and there's going to be a cool list of refueling hacks that are available in there just small things that we can do because obviously, it'd be great if every month we could go spend a week on the beach if you're a beach person or by the mountains if you're a mountain person, but the reality is that 98 percent of our life is lived in every day so we got to learn how to refill in the everyday
[00:26:46] Aneta: I love that lesson. What are some other lessons you want to leave the audience with today? Things that you've learned through your own experience, but also maybe things that you've seen with your coaching clients that you've worked with.
[00:26:59] Eric: Yeah, so I think it is incredibly important that we know why we are doing what we're doing I think it is one of the best things that we can spend time on is understanding Why am I working? Why am I doing this hobby? Why am I behind all the time? Why am I stressed out just learning some of these things?
There's no better path that we can be on than the path to self-awareness and self-discovery. We must know ourselves because when we know ourselves, we know our strengths, we know what makes us tick and we know our why. Then we can impact the world because that's what we're here for to make a difference in the world.
We are not just here to fluff up our kingdoms that get old fast and there's always another mountain. So that is one thing. The other thing is when we say goodbye to people, oftentimes we say, take care. We need to heed that advice for ourselves. We need to spend more time taking care of ourselves.
[00:28:08] Aneta: I love those two lessons. They sound so simple and yet you have to be intentional to make it a practice in our lives. So I love that you share that. I ask everyone on my podcast, a question at the end, that's tied to the title of the podcast. I think this aligns with everything that we've been talking about, but what does it mean to you to live the width of your life?
[00:28:28] Eric: Yeah, I've been thinking about that because it's a great question. And for me, the width of my life is making a difference, that is utterly disproportionate to who I am. That is what I want to do. I do not want to lay on my deathbed someday and regret not sharing my journey and this message that I have.
This message that God has given me, it's super important for me to be able to share that with as many people as I possibly can. So when I am properly filled up so that I can impact the world, that's my sweet spot. That's why that's where I want to be.
[00:29:16] Aneta: I love that so much. And I love that we keep talking about it. Our purpose and the why and for those clients that may be, or others are listening and they say, I want this, I want this, Eric, I want this, Aneta but I don't know what my purpose or my why is what advice would you give them?
[00:29:36] Eric: Yeah. Sometimes it can be really hard to figure out on your own. It really can be. Because I think what happens in Simon Sinek wrote a great book about finding your why. But I think what happens is we try to go down that road ourselves, and we just keep hitting roadblocks. We struggle with that.
So sometimes we need to work with someone else to help us figure that out. Someone who's able to ask the right questions. Who's able to start helping maybe we just need to devise some different experiments to figure out what that why is. If you're struggling with, boy, I don't know I exist.
I don't know what this is. It just all kind of seems meaningless. That's probably a good time to reach out to someone to raise your hand and say, I think I need a little help with this.
[00:30:22] Aneta: Yeah. Such great advice. I know that's what started me on my journey. And if people do want to work with you, Eric, what is the best way that they can find you?
[00:30:32] Eric: Yeah. My website is a great home base for me, ericrecker.com. I do have a couple of great free resources on there. One is five principles to win the now. It is five things that I use every day in my continued quest to try to live in the present moment. I also have a five-day knockback burnout challenge that you can sign up for.
If you think you're struggling with burnout a little bit and you just want some thoughts on how to maybe ease its grip on you, you can sign up for that. There are ways to contact me for coaching, speaking links to my social media, and all that kind of stuff. So the website is a good home base for me.
[00:31:14] Aneta: Thank you so much for having those free resources. I encourage everyone to use the links in the show notes to find you and to connect with you. Thank you so much for your time today. I love your story. Thank you for sharing, how you went through the burnout and what you found on the other side.
And the fact that I think you're an example that life is not a series of binary choices. You can continue to have your dental practice and have a thriving coaching business write books and use your mission to help others in different ways. And so for anyone listening who feels like maybe they only have a couple of limited choices, I think you look at Eric's life and see all the ways that he's been able to build a very fulfilling full life doing a lot of cool things. So thank you for that example as well.
[00:31:58] Eric: Yeah. Thanks for having me. This has been a lot of fun
[00:32:01] Aneta: Great. Continued success to you, Eric. Have an amazing day.
[00:32:05] Eric: And to you as well.
[00:32:07] Aneta: Thank you for listening to today's episode. If today's conversation inspired you to dream again, break out of your comfort zones, or reflect on what it means to you to live more fully, then please follow this podcast because every week you'll hear more stories from people just like you who took imperfect action towards their goals, created more joy and are living the life that they always dreamt of living.