Prioritizing Well-Being With A Plan And With Practice With Dr. Ganz Ferrance
Oct 20, 2022
Since the early 90's, Dr. Ganz Ferrance has been helping individuals, couples, families, and corporations beat burnout, reduce stress, improve their relationships, and enjoy more success. As a Registered Psychologist, his approach is different. Instead of the stigma around mental health, Dr. Ganz prefers to call it your psychological well-being and asks, "How good can we get it?"
This insightful, energetic, and grounded conversation around self-care talked about:
1. Understanding the deficiency model vs. the optimization approach, to know that you're not broken and you don't need to be fixed, and to look at your life from a place of joy and wholeness to get whatever you want.
2. How to strive for PEP (Perpetuating Evolving Perfection) to bring more joy into your everyday.
3. The basis for his book, The Me Factor, that was lab-tested in his own life to make his self-care the priority, because if you go down, your business goes down.
4. To start taking responsibility for your own self-care and know that you need a system, an emergency plan, and support in everyday life and you can put yourself first.
5. To look at boundaries as double-walled fences with gates and give yourself time to say yes or no to your inner circle.
To get his complimentary resources, go to https://www.askdrganzvip.com/
To get his book, The Me Factor, head to https://askdrganz.com/
---
Watch the podcast here:
Listen to the podcast here:
Prioritizing Well-Being With A Plan And With Practice With Dr. Ganz Ferrance
This is such an amazing episode that I have lined up here for you because we’re diving right into mental health, our emotions, feelings, thoughts, all the balls that we’re juggling. I’m calling the elephant in the room. People who are struggling. If you’re feeling frustrated, overwhelmed, burnt out, I’m going to push through, keep going, grind my way. I’ll figure it all out by myself. I’m not going to tell anyone that I’m struggling. You’re never going to see behind the curtain, behind closed doors what’s going on. Yet when you lay your head on the pillow at night, you’re like, “Am I living? Every day I feel it’s my Groundhog Day. How do I change that?” I’m honored to have an expert here to talk to us, Dr. Ganz Ferrance. I’m glad you’re here.
I am glad to be here too. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I’m honored that you’re willing to share your audience with me and letting me have this platform to talk with people. Thank you.
Let me tell you who Dr. Ganz is. He’s a registered psychologist, speaker, author, coach, has a PhD in Counseling Psychology and an MA in Developmental and Educational Psychology. He is the former Public Education Coordinator and former Vice President of the Psychologists’ Association of Alberta. He holds the John C. Patterson Media Award from the Psychologists’ Association of Alberta and the Rosalind Smith Award from the National Black Coalition of Canada for exceptional and prolonged service from an individual from the Black community conducting a business.
You’ve been around since the early ‘90s. You’ve been helping individuals, couples, families, corporations beat burnout, reduce their level of stress, improve their relationships and enjoy more success. You’ve worked with the toughest of the tough including fourth-generation gang bangers, hardened oil and gas workers, battle-tested CEOs and entrepreneurs and stressed-out law enforcement officers. You’re a master at showing people in these high-stress occupations, no-nonsense practical strategies to stay focused, make healthy decisions under pressure and boost communication skills to reduce conflict during difficult situations. I don’t think we’ve been in a difficult situation.
A little bit with the pandemic worldwide.
You are in the driver's seat when it comes to getting help.
Mental health has always been this thing. It’s always been this elephant in the room. It’s always been this misunderstood thing that people don’t maybe necessarily know how to navigate. Even if you haven’t suffered from mental health, you haven’t ever been diagnosed or haven’t ever had anything, when your whole world is shifted and rocked, it changes the day-to-day. It changes who you are.
I think that this is the silver lining in this whole pandemic experience. The whole world has gone through this together. It’s a special stress which we can talk about. I can tell you why that is. I didn’t even like the mental health term because it gets so loaded in much energy around it. Even at our association, we prefer psychological well-being is what we use because it’s kinder, gentler, more positive. It’s not enough not to have a mental health issue, which lots of us are dealing with. We should have a good life. That’s what it’s all about. It’s about how do we have a good life? How do we have psychological and emotional well-being? How good can you stand it? That’s a much better place to start than thinking that you’re broken and you got to be fixed. Let’s see how far we can go on the positive side.
That’s what I love about you is your approach to the work that you do and the way you handle people with care is different. I think there’s this conception that, “I’m broken. There’s innately something wrong with me. I’m a wuss because I can’t cope.”
“If I go talk to the shrink, they’re going to know.”
“I’m going to go see the shrink who has his clipboard and his little pencil or pen that he’s clicking away at. He’s going to tell me to lay on the couch. All you’re going to do is write and judge. ‘What did you write about me?’ No, thank you. I’d rather suffer in silence.” If that’s how it was, I won’t go to anybody either. I’ve been working in the field for many years now. I’ve also been on the other side of the couch and been in therapy myself for many years. I should have probably been in it for longer like I should have gone earlier but I didn’t have the opportunity. Thankfully, I was able to do that. That’s exactly who I would want to work with. I would want to work with somebody who is real, is talking to me and gives me real-world solutions. Fortunately, many people in Psychology are like this. We do offer solutions.
We’re not sitting behind you and writing stuff down. That’s silent judging. There’s a huge misconception around what it is we do and what help should look like. The other part of this is like anything else. You are the consumer. You have the right to shop around and figure out what works and doesn’t work for you. The professional might be a decent person. They might have good credentials but there’s not that sweet spot. You don’t feel that connection. You don’t have to go, it’s okay, like, “Thanks for playing. I’m going to shop around some more.” You are in the driver’s seat when it comes to getting help.
Some basic things you want to ask, “Have they worked with people like you before? What are their credentials in education?” The most important thing is about, “How do I feel when I’m with the person? Do I feel safe? Do I feel like I’m understood? Do I feel like they’re going to support me and help me move forward to get my goals met? Can they see, in a sense, shepherd me in the places that I need to go, that I may not even know that I need to go yet?”
There are no levels of, “Who suffers the worst? Who’s pain and suffering are more severe than someone else?” I shopped around when I was first looking at my own life to unpack some things from my teens and as a child. I can remember a few therapists are saying to me, “You’re doing great. You are great. You’ve got a wonderful husband, a great child, successful in business. You have a great home. From what you came from, I’ve seen so much worse than you.”
I’m like, “I’m still angry at times. I’m still upset. When this holiday comes around and I’m angry, I don’t want to feel that way. How do I fix that?” Whether it’s the typical, “I can’t get out of bed or I’m going to harm myself. I get angry on Mother’s Day or Christmas.” It’s someone who listens, who understands where you’re trying to go and is going to be able to help you get there. You have the choice and the power in what you want in your life and how you want it.
There are two philosophies around help. You see this with physical health and emotional health. There’s what I call the deficiency model where I’m going to look for, “What’s wrong? I’m going to diagnose you and then we’re going to try to fix you.” There are people like that. There are people in Psychology social work and on the medical side that do that. There’s then the optimization approach which is how do we help you to have the best situation you can wherever you start. It doesn’t matter. Going to somebody and your life looks like it’s functioning but you’re still, “I get pissed off over here. I don’t like it when I yell at my kid. I feel I got all this success on paper but I can’t enjoy it. What do I do with that?”
“You’re fine. What are you complaining about? I got schizophrenia patients.” Those are probably not the right fit. You want to find somebody who can take you from where you are and help you get as far as you want to go. In my book and we talked about that off-air, I’ve got this term. It’s an acronym called PEP. It’s already in the book. I talk about it being Perpetually Evolving Perfection. I say, “This is who we are. This is the truth.” I have certain deficits in my life based on how I grew up with my parents and some of the things I experienced.
Given who I am and all the stuff I’m dragging around with me, I’m doing well for having that but there’s still some other stuff that I’d like to do. It’s far easier to start from a place of joy, perfection and wholeness and then evolve in the direction that I want to go versus feeling like, “I’m broken. I’m screwed up. I’m not whole,” and then trying to fill in the holes. I don’t do that with my clients. None of my stuff that I put together is always coming from that place of, “You’re good. Let’s see how far you can go. Let’s give you the tools to make sure you can be your best so you can feel your best. You will then do your best. You will be able to perform your best as well.”
What a world would we live in if we all started talking to each other that way and saying those things to each other. Our self-esteem, our worth and the lens that we see ourselves through when someone says, “You’re not broken. You’re whole. You’re perfect. You’re wonderful just the way you are. Let’s optimize and see how good we can crank this thing.” Make it be to come from a place of that.
It feels so much better. I do prefer that.
It makes it better when we start from that wholeness and that place of positivity. Maybe positivity is not the right word but everything doesn’t have to be so hard. We make things hard sometimes.
We take ourselves so seriously. When I train other psychologists and if I’m walking by their office, when I hear laughter, I said, “Good session.” There’s lots of laughter. We’re talking to people. Even if you’re dealing with heavy issues, life doesn’t always have to be heavy. When we can laugh at ourselves, it’s a tool to help us get through but it’s also a symptom of good health when we can laugh at ourselves. Even in the midst of stuff, see the humor in it. It helps us get through.
I loved your book. I loved everything you were talking about. How simple you broke it down holistically. I know we tossed that word around a lot but it wasn’t just looking at your thoughts, feelings and emotions. It wasn’t looking at your health like your physical or emotional. It was looking at everything from all the roles you are, all the ways that you do in life and the things that come at you. I had to find that rhythm and that balance on how to know when you need an emergency plan.
I want to dive right into this thought. I think this is something that can help people as we are workaholics. We are working longer hours, helping our children if you’ve got them or figuring out how to work beside our spouses. Maybe it’s stressful. One spouse is going to work and the other one is at home. One primarily has the kids, one doesn’t. Maybe grandmas and grandpas are more in the mix and they weren’t there before then you’ve got in-law stuff you got to deal with.
It's a symptom of good health when we can laugh at ourselves even in the midst of stuff and see the humor in it.
Boundaries on how you set all that stuff up.
I want to dive into boundaries and the emergency plan. You have an emergency plan and you talked about that. Tell us what this is. Why did you have that?
Let me give you some context. This whole book, The Me Factor. This system is the system I use. It’s been tested in the lab of my life because I was screwing up so badly that I needed some system to help me stay straight. We don’t have enough time for me to tell you what my life looked like. It was 60, 70 or 80 hours a week on the road. It was crazy. I talked about this in the book too. One day I woke up in a small town in Northern Alberta. I’d had this headache for a couple of weeks that I did not know where I was. I couldn’t figure it out. It scared the hell out of me.
You were young.
I was 28 or 29 and I had a stroke. Fortunately, it wasn’t a stroke but I canceled my day because like the reader, I was a pusher. I was pushing through. That was my first big burnout. After that, I said, “I got to do something different.” I was everything. I was the go-to guy in my family. I was starting a business. I had a boss that was intense. He was intense but I was intense on myself for him as well. It’s because I was working in the field of psychology, I felt the weight of wanting to help the people that I was serving.
I neglected my health. I didn’t sleep enough. All the other stuff that we do when we’re nose to the grindstone, shoulders to the plow, pushing through to make it. I knew that, “I would bounce. This is what I want my life to look like,” but this is a special exception. This is an emergency. What I didn’t realize was my regular plan was living in crisis. That’s what it turned out to be. My habit was crisis to crisis, which I always saw each one as a crisis in a special situation that I would get through and then I’d be okay.
After I was able to take a little bit of time off, get my feet under me, figure out it wasn’t a stroke and be able to see my way clear, I said, “I need a system. I don’t trust myself to figure it out in the middle of it. I’m going to default to my least functional way of being or I’m going to give in to whoever’s asked me to say yes instead of saying no. I need something about policy and procedure that’s going to help protect me so that I could stay in that healthy place.” I built the system. From that, what came was the emergency plan. I understand that this is my owner’s manual that I use to make sure I get the best performance, not just in terms of what happens outside of me but internal performance, like joy, well-being, quality of life performance.
I know that hiccups are going to happen. I’m going to go off the rails from time to time. I’m going to get sick, I’m going to forget or something’s going to happen. What do I do when that happens? Here’s the emergency plan. Now that I know that this is my owner’s manual, you can go to the troubleshooting section. It’s like, “If this is happening, maybe it’s one of these things. I now know that not only do I have to trust myself to keep myself on the straight and narrow. If something happens, I’m going to have to trust myself to figure out what I need to do. I go to the emergency plan and do one of those things. It usually gets me back on the rails that keep me functioning the way I want to function.”
What are some of your go for a walk, do a martial arts class?
It’s a big thing for me. One of the biggest ones I find for me personally is sleep. If I’m off, it’s either because I haven’t had enough sleep or as a consequence of being off, I don’t get enough sleep because I’m not sleeping properly. I’ll make sure I create some space in my day to go and have a nap. I’ll tell you one thing that happened. I was driving my kids to school one day and it was November or December in Edmonton, Alberta. It’s cold, windy, snowy and I was merging from one freeway onto another freeway. I shoulder-checked. I looked in my mirror, I shoulder checked again and I signal and started to come over.
Somebody gave me the finger and like, “How did I miss this guy?” What I realized was that it’s a late-stage symptom that I’m burnt out. I took my time. I took the kids to school, dropped them off. I called my office and I said, “I’m not coming in. Cancel my day.” I went home, took a nap, got up, ate some food. I watched a comedy, went for a walk, took another nap. Eat some more food. I did some stuff that was going to feed me. I gave myself permission to power down and permission, I’ve found is extremely important as well.
It’s one thing to stop. If you stop feeling guilty and you’re beating the crap out of yourself because you’re not doing whatever standard that you’ve made up for yourself. You’re not getting the benefit of being off anyway. You might as well go to work and limp through but that’s what is going to happen. I gave myself permission. I stopped. I looked after myself and I was much better the next day. I also realized I had to change some of the procedures I was doing so that I wouldn’t do it again.
If you’re using that emergency plan a couple of times a week, you got to go back and look at what are your habits? What are you saying yes to? How many things are you saying yes to? I love that, “I gave myself permission to power down,” because many people say that, “I can’t call off work. I can’t cancel that meeting. I cannot eat here for this.” What’s the alternative?
If you’re dead, the work’s still not going to get done. We have to remember that. In the bigger scheme of things, we need to realize it’s a life and death thing just because of that staring you in the face. When I thought I had my stroke, it seemed like it’s staring me in the face. We don’t want you to get there. If you’re using your emergency plan more than a couple of times a year, then you need to look at what you’re doing. There’s something that’s consistent with what you’re doing that’s burning you out intensely.
It’s interesting when you talk about it in your book, The Me Factor Priority Schematic. We talk about me first, whether you’re a man or a woman, that’s hard even to hear that, “I’m going to be selfish.” There is much shame that comes around me first but I love how you talk about it. It’s like the oxygen in the airplane. You got to put the mask on yourself first before you can help your child or anyone else. You even referenced in the book being a lifeguard. I was a lifeguard. I was smiling when I was reading that because I’m like, “He’s 100% right.” That was my first job as a kid.
I lifeguarded from 15 to 18 before I went off to college. They taught us about how someone’s trying to drag you down because they’re panicking. You literally kick them in the chest and back away. You’re like, “I’m not going to save you.” You don’t want two bodies going down. I’ll take you down with them in their panic. We used to have the bigger guy lifeguards do that to me as a 14 or 15-year-old girl to teach me. This is such a powerful lesson in commanding that situation so that you’re in control but you’re right. If you don’t take care of yourself first, you’re no good to all these other things that are important to you.
I’ve been an entrepreneur for decades now but I’ve also been a parent. Whether it’s your business or your kids, I’ve seen both. I work with entrepreneurs a ton in my practice, my coaching and stuff like that. When they go down, the business goes down. I can’t tell you how many kids I’ve seen. Usually, I see them as adults whose parents were absent because they were unwell, burnt out, too busy, sick, always pissed off, they had a drug or alcohol or substance abuse problem because they’re trying to cope. Not because they’re bad but because they’re trying to self-medicate themselves into being able to be functional or whatever.
It all boils down to we are not taught that important lesson that we learned as a lifeguard. If we are taught it, we’re taught it in a certain circumstance or certain situation that we don’t realize that it’s a principle of life and it applies across the board. If we’re not in good working order, everything that we care about is going to suffer. It seems selfish. I love that you said, “Me first,” because that was the name of the program before. People are losing their minds, “Me first. You can’t do that.” We’ll call it the me factor. It’s softer. It’s the same thing. You’ve got to look after yourself first. If you don’t have that then in time, you will erode whatever it is you’re looking after.
You've got to look after yourself first. If you’re not in good working order, everything that you care about is going to suffer.
We talked about the Priority Schematic. I’ve seen people who sacrifice everything for it and a lot of times, it is their kids. Whether it’s a mom or a dad, they sacrifice for the kids. The kids are the center of their lives. They do all this stuff for the kids. We were missing a fundamental truth of parenting. Parenting is two things. One, it is a thankless job. It’s supposed to be. We work ourselves out of a job. That’s our job. If I sacrifice myself for my child, my child is supposed to move on. That’s the whole purpose of this. We’re supposed to give them the tools they can launch and be successful in life. If that happens, even if I do a crappy job and they still get out because they want to escape from us, I’m going to start to be resentful. What’s left?
“I’m not going to want that child to go,” sabotage the child, make the child feel guilty, do whatever or be better and stay at home, drink and raise cats because, “I want to have something to love me because this thing, person, entity, business, child, person, spouse, whoever that I invested in didn’t fulfill me.” The truth is, that’s your job. That’s not somebody else’s job. That’s a hard thing to know but it’s the only thing that works.
You see that so much with parenting. It’s true with the business or a job. When people retire, they’re so lost because they wrapped their whole identity in that role, job or that marriage. If your whole identity is to be the perfect wife or husband and then that doesn’t work out.
If you lost, you lost more than just the partner or the business. This is why it’s dangerous when people don’t understand this particular concept but because we always want to be positive. The flip side is if you take the responsibility, if you can accept that this is yours, that you have to do this and it takes some discipline and some practice. If you, for example, work this program that’s laid out, all of a sudden you don’t have to be resentful of your kids, business, spouse, parents or whoever, you have a richer relationship with them because there’s none of this other underlying crap in the space.
You know like, “I can say no and they cannot be happy with me. That’s okay. I still love them. I’ll still come back and we’ll have a better relationship because now I know I’m in charge of me. I don’t feel like a hostage. I know I can devote this extra week to the business because I know that next week I’m taking this time off and we’re going to go on vacation. I’m going to stay home and hang out with the kids because I know that I want to do that. It’s a healthy, responsible thing.” By doing this, by taking that first step to look after yourself and be able to say no when you need to, you have more to give to the things that are important to you. The people that are important to you, you get more out of it and you get to enjoy what you’re doing. They benefit and you benefit because you had the guts to be able to do things in a different way than we’re typically taught in our culture.
I love when you talk about that with boundaries like what to say no to. No period as a whole sentence. There’s such a negative feeling around a boundary like, “I’m going to tick somebody off. I’m going to make somebody upset.” Boundaries are such an empowering thing when you know who you are, you know what you want and you don’t want. You’re not afraid. You’re not trying to upset someone or you’re saying, “This is how I live my life. This is what’s important to me.” You described boundaries as a double-walled fence with gates.
If you look at The Me Factor schematic, it looks like a target. In the middle, it’s got me. The next circle out is the partner if you have that and the next circle out to kids. There’s a bigger wall around that and then extended family, friends and then work. The idea of the double-walled fence is that the inside is a higher priority than the outside. Anything that’s coming in from the outside from whatever other layers has to be good for the stuff that’s on the inside in order to come in. We don’t always know that. What we want to do is let’s say it’s a grandparent and this is a common one.
Your in-laws want to say or give you parenting advice or if somebody in your world wants to give you business advice, “You need to do this.” What you do is you open the first gate. You bring it into that middle no man’s land in there and you figure out, “Is this good for everything on the inside? Is this advice going to help with my kids, my spouse, me, my health and my well-being? If it does, it’s safe. I’m going to open the inner gate and let it in. If it’s not, I’m going to say, ‘The inner gate stays closed, kick it back out and shut the outer gate. Thanks for playing.’” We have the right to do that. The problem is we don’t know this.
Most of us don’t take the time to analyze things in that way to see if it’s going to be good for the stuff on the inside. We say yes because we want to be good people. We don’t want to disappoint people or whatever it might be but we end up hurting them in the long run. I heard the saying, “If you can’t say no then your yeses are irrelevant. They don’t mean anything. Your yeses have carried no weight. Every time you say yes to something, you’re also saying no to something else.” Usually, it’s yourself or your kids or other things that are important to you. Typically, your health. We need to understand that it’s our right to say no but it’s also our responsibility to say no.
There was a song in the ‘70s that said, “You got to be cruel to be kind.” That was the name of the song. It was a big hit but it was about breaking up with somebody. You got to tell them the truth. You got to be real. In a sense, you got to be cruel to be kind to them so that they understand, “This is what it is. You’re free to move on now.” It’s the same sort of thing that we’re dealing with here. We have to be “cruel.” We have to be hard and clear so that people understand who we are, what they’re getting into. We can have clean relationships and clean interactions with people.
It makes it less scary for people that don’t even know what about a boundary is, don’t know when a boundary has been crossed. They’ve never even thought that they even have the option to say no. It makes it more doable and actionable when you’re like, “You can have two levels of walls that can open.” You can let them into the first barrier. You don’t have to say, “Bye. See you later.” You can take some time to assess and then you can see if you still have the right to say no.
We don’t give ourselves permission to take our time to look at this. We typically think, “I’ve been hurt before. Screw everybody.” You are mocking down the shop. Nothing’s getting in. We wither and die or, “I want to be a good person. I want to be kind. You want people to like me.” Wide-open. Your whole life energy leaks out. Either way, it’s not good. You want to be able to have that ability to like, “I don’t know. I’m not saying no. Let me see. Let me look at it and see if it works. If it’s good, I’ll let it in. Stop. Not now. Thanks. I appreciate it but it’s not going to happen.”
I was so bad at this. This is why I had to write this down. Before I wrote the book, I recorded a CD. I rebutted an audio recording. I would listen to that over and over in the car to brainwash myself into this way of thinking because it was not natural for me. I needed the system to keep me safe, basically. I started sharing with clients. They said, “I could use that. When are you going to write the book?” I wrote the book and now anybody can have access to that. It’s a very personal model to me because I needed the system. Otherwise, I would consistently give in. I would say yes when I should say no and offer stuff. I’m not the master tips. I did it. I said, “I’m committed to do something after we’re done here.” That I probably should have said no to but I forgot. I didn’t work my system the way. I did need it to act, “Let me take care of that. I’m paying attention to it for the future.”
I love everything you do as a system because then we’re left to our own devices in the moment or our feelings. I used to be the same. There could not be an open space on my calendar. If there was a white space, I had to fill it with something. “Sure, I can meet at that time. Sure, I can do that.” I then look at my day and I’m like, “I eat meetings. When am I going to eat lunch? When am I going to go pee? When am I going to get outside in the sun?” I love that it’s a system to go back to prioritizing you. All those people and things that are important by making sure you’re always the center of that target. It’s always you first. It has to be that way.
Many of us heard the little story when we were kids about The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg. I love that little fable. The idea is that the farmer has the goose. He gets these golden eggs. He gets, “Thank goodness. I’m rich.” He gets impatient. He goes out to get all the eggs at once, cuts open the goose, kills the goose, then no more golden eggs. This is what we do. We are the farmer and we are also the goose. If we kill ourselves, we kill our production. We kill our ability to create the golden eggs in our lives. We have to feed the goose. We got to look after the goose. It’s our responsibility because we’re the farmer too. I can’t keep thinking my way through. Give me a program. Let me run the program. It’s easy. Eventually, the program becomes a habit and that’s my way of beating them.
If you can't say no, then your yeses are irrelevant. They carry no weight.
It’s good to have that when things are going good and when things are not going good. That consistency of knowing your boundaries and priorities. How do you play with others? How do you communicate? How do you parent? This book has everything from your finances to your spirituality, physical, emotional, parenting, spouses and every aspect is in there. It’s like a guidebook that everyone should pick up.
I looked at it because I’ve had those experiences in my life where I have my crap together in one area then something else would fall apart. In my area I did was together and would fall apart too. I realized that you got to cover all of it and make sure it’s all in decent working order. You’re not going to be a 10 out of 10 on everything. If you’re at least a 6 out of 10 on most things, then you have enough in the tank to be able to start working on some of these other things. The stuff that you’re 9 out of 10 on, great. That gives you fuel to work on the stuff you’re 4 out of 10 on.
We’re not just entities to make money, parents or spouses. We’re all of these things. These are roles we have but they’re not who we are. We’re humans and we’re complicated. We need to consider all of these aspects of ourselves. A scary quote that I read from Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits guy. He said, I’m paraphrasing, “It’s disheartening when you climb the ladder of success. You get all the way at the top then you realize that it’s been leaning against the wrong wall the whole time.” That keeps me up at night. I don’t want anybody to have to go through that and realize that they’ve left off the important stuff while they were pursuing what they thought or somebody told them was a success.
You can’t go back. I wish you could. I wish we had a time machine that could take us back. It’s what do you do then when you learn and it’s all a learning opportunity. This is life, we’re branded and we are here now.
This is one of the other silver linings to this whole pandemic experience that we’re going through. I tell people that the whole world is going through a midlife crisis at the same time. We’re waking up and saying, “The stuff I thought was important maybe it wasn’t that important. Let me see if I want to live my life this way going forward.” If we do this correctly, we can then be much more conscious and deliberate about how we want to go forward in life. That way, we have the rest of our lives to enjoy the fruits of that decision.
You have resources for that. They’re going, “What’s the system? What’s this thing I should be doing in my emergency plan, the schematic and the thing?” Where can they find all of these goodies or this goodness?
One of the reasons we put this together was because a lot of times, people listen to a podcast, read a book, go to a workshop and they don’t have the follow-up. They’re like, “That’s great. I got this inspiration but I don’t know how to keep the inertia going.” The first place that people should go is AskDrGanzVIP.com. Free resources, free follow-up that will help people get further. If you want to know about the book then you can go to the website, which is AskDrGanz.com. Lookup The Me Factor in the search function and you can get a copy of the eBook there. There are tons of other resources on the website as well. The VIP link is a place that most people should go to get simple, user-friendly things that they can put into practice.
I love your generosity to give these tools when people need it. We need it the most now but the truth is we need it all the time.
I’ll let you know a secret. I’m kind of selfish because I know that if you do better and everybody else does better then we’re all going to create a better society. I’m going to benefit from a better society. We’re going to be better at our jobs and be kinder to our kids. We’re going to make better decisions in terms of the environment and politics. Everything’s going to go better if we feel better. The better you feel, the better you do. It’s self-serving. I want everybody to be happy. We create a happy world for everybody.
It’s like that quote, “I can’t do everything but many people can do something.” This is our something. Take care of yourself. It starts with you. Dr. Ganz, thank you so much for being here with me and sharing all your generous tools and knowledge. Who you are as a person is contagious and wonderful to be around in a good way. Not a bad way. It’s a beautiful energy that you give off to people. You make it approachable to talk about where you are in your life and where you want to go. I love how good it can be. Thank you for you and for your work.
Thank you so much for having me. I could talk to you forever. You’re easy. I appreciate it.
Thank you, readers, for being here. I hope this is an episode you’ll go back to over and over again because life can jolt us sometimes. We need to know we’re not alone. We need to know that you’ve got tools. You don’t have to navigate things on your own. For sure, go to that website. He has beautiful resources for you, The Me Factor book and all of those good things. Thank you so much.
Important Links:
About Dr. Ganz Ferrance
Registered Psychologist, Dr. Ganz Ferrance, is a Speaker, Author, and Coach. He holds a Ph.D. in counseling psychology and an MA in Developmental and Educational Psychology. He’s the former Public EducationCoordinator and former Vice-President of the Psychologists’ Association of Alberta. He holds the John C.Patterson Media Award from the Psychologists’ Association of Alberta and the Rosalina Smith Award from the National Black Coalition of Canada for Exceptional and Prolonged Service from An Individual from theBlack Community Conducting a Business.
Since the early ’90s, Dr. Ganz has been helping individuals, couples, families, and corporations beat burnout reduce their levels of stress, improve their relationships, and enjoy more success.
Dr. Ganz’s unorthodox and witty presentation style combined with his deep warmth and magnetic presence opens audiences up to think differently about their challenges and move to a place of confidence in knowing what their next steps are. Known for working with the toughest of the tough including fourth-generation gang bangers, hardened oil and gasworkers, battle-tested CEOs and entrepreneurs, and stressed-out law enforcement officers, Dr. Ganz is truly a master at showing people strategies that they can implement immediately for sustainable results.
He shows people in these high-stress occupations no-nonsense, practical strategies to stay focused, make healthy decisions under pressure, and boost communication skills to reduce conflict during difficult situations. This approach has made him a sought-after public speaker—with audiences in the United States and Canada enjoying these fun, engaging, and life-changing presentations on beating stress and building superior relationships.
Written by Lisa Pezik
To book a call with Lisa and Eric, go here!
