Living Your Heroic Life

Making Bank: S3E27 with Dr. Chris Zaino

Dr. Chris Zaino has succeeded at virtually everything he’s done. When it comes to ticking boxes, he managed to cross them all off at a relatively early age—healthy life, happy family, successful career transition, multi-million dollar chiropractic practice, debt free, nice car all by 35. Yet he still found himself numb, disengaged, and depressed.

When you’re goal oriented there is a certain level you’re constantly striving towards—an image of what success looks like. It might be a number in the bank, a house in a posh neighborhood, a Bentley, or maybe just paying off student debt, but there is a driving force motivating your trajectory. And most of the time, when you reach that goal, you can’t even celebrate, because the next level is already in sight. “You get to the top of the mountain, and now you can see all these other mountains you didn’t see.”

Dr. Zaino calls this your Heroic Guidance System. It’s the niggling voice telling you “it’s time to expand” and it’s arguably louder for entrepreneurs, or maybe we’re just more attune to it. It is momentum. It is your ever present desire to continue in forward motion.—your need to always be doing. And it is a good thing, but can feel debilitatingly overwhelming.

Dr. Zaino’s step dad said to him, “the toughest thing in life is to make a decision.” Turning a decision into action is difficult because we know how much work pushing into the next level requires. It feels like we’re constantly starting over, reinventing ourselves, but keep in mind “you’re never starting from scratch. You’re bringing all your previous mindset, business and skills that you’ve developed.”

Lean in to the discomfort. Give yourself the freedom to blunder around and botch things up, because it is all a part of the expansion journey. Being sedentary and complacent in your work space and in your life is the precise thing that causes disengagement, dissatisfaction, and depression.

Dr. Zaino found success by “making the decision to make the process work no matter what.” He wouldn’t give himself an exit strategy, because if he had one foot out the door, he’d never move forward at all. He’d cyclically grieve his potential, and nothing would come to fruition.

Dr. Zaino became a potentialist, not a perfectionist. He removed any excuse to not get things done. “All you have to worry about is doing the best you can with what you have in the moment.”

Dr. Zaino suffered from imposter syndrome when he first became a chiropractor and found himself in conference with neurologists and orthopaedic surgeons, oil people and distinguished politicians. He struggled with feeling he needed to prove himself constantly, but the thing that led to rapid success and growth, was opening up and telling his story, because ultimately it’s all he had in the moment.

No one ever has everything they need to move forward. Dr. Zaino didn’t feel prepared, and neither will you. There isn’t such a thing as being “ready.” You are where you are and you keep moving forward, because that is the only way to get things done.

For more of Dr. Zaino’s insight, and master classes on the Hero Secret Sauce check out https://iamhero.com