Lets Review Purposeful Creation, Vision, Mission!

I'm Dr. David King, husband, flower. Okay thanks everybody. This is the chapter one review. We've been through a whole lot of lectures and I want to just touch on each one of them really quickly and then share a little bit of a metaphor with you, an allegory, a principle that I think you'll find helpful. So here is our review page. I gave you a little introduction to me. You know I'm a general dentist. I practice in Baldwin, Missouri. I grew up in Utah, Idaho, and Montana and spent 25 years in Kansas City. I went to dental school in Kansas City, came out 2006, practiced in the Kansas City area where I started a scratch dart practice, bought another practice in Independence, sold those two small groups, got recruited to Albuquerque, that same company that recruited me to Albuquerque four years later, relocated us to St. Louis, and that's where I've been for about the last nine years. I've been at this practice, Baldwin Family Smiles, for a little over two years. I'm partnered with a company called Lumio Dental, which has been a great blessing to me and my family. So let's talk more about why we're here and why you spent so much time in this lecture series, this video series, this class, this self-improvement workshop. Why did you do that? So my goal, as I've mentioned before, is to help each one of us become a little better version of ourselves. That's the goal. That's the purpose. That's what we wanted to do as you're here. I hope you've taken a couple of principles from each lecture, from each video, from each lesson, and done your best to implement them in your life, improving yourself a little bit today and then a little bit the next day and a little bit the next day. I'd encourage you to review those things that are helpful and valuable to you. Take notes, as I've mentioned. I like to use regular paper, but sometimes I type on the MacBook or the iPad or whatever it is. But do something that's helpful to you as you have learned and been learning. We talked about the oil lamp. This guy right here. And this is an image that I like to share because you have to add oil to your lamp in order for it to work. And you have to have the right oil. This is a kerosene lamp, if I recall right. And it requires a specific process to light it. And oil must be added appropriately. Otherwise, it'll go out from time to time. We also have to adjust that to pop up and light the wick down here. And that goes up and down as needed. You can see that going up and down. And we have to maintain it, right? If this gets too dirty and gummy and filled with soot, it won't work. Maintain your oil lamp, which is a translation. The translation of that is to be responsible for your own learning. You have to constantly fill yourself, whether it be spiritually, intellectually, mentally, physically, of course, with food. But we have to feed and fill ourselves intentionally. Otherwise, we'll become, I don't know, a blob. You'll end up with a lot of apathy and other challenges that can create some difficulties for us. So intentionally improve yourself incrementally every day. All right, we talked about the block and tackle. This big heavy thing, again, that I got at an antique store, which is designed to modulate how heavy things feel when we're lifting them. So a similar tackle would be at the bottom. And the concept is, as these ropes loop around, it actually reduces the amount of weight that you're carrying, because some of the weight is now on these pulleys. So I could theoretically, I'm 200 pounds, I could theoretically lift 800 pounds if I had a set of these, because it's half the weight and then half the weight again. So 800 to 400 to 200, I could theoretically lift that much weight just myself with a set of pulleys. Now, the more you add, the lighter you get. So that translates to use the tools. We have all sorts of tools. And for me, one of the main tools is our brains and memorization. Remember things. There are lots of tools out there that you can use and take advantage of. So we're going to skim over the five sections. Purposeful creation. Intentional shaping and sculpting. Being driven and limited by values. Having an end of vision that drives us and a statement of purpose. All of these things are absolutely critical as we work on overcoming apathy and taking incremental steps to improve ourself each day, to become a better version of ourselves. I showed you and shared with you my personal statement of vision that has a core statement, as well as what that statement will inspire and lead and inspire me to do, help me to do. Clarifying that beliefs really are just beliefs until we put them into action. And then they shape our lives. So I'd encourage you, as you go through this exercise, as you work through this process of developing your own vision statement, that you attach actions to each of those beliefs. At least think about it. Okay, there's a lot here that we talked about. It's been a lot of talking by me and hopefully it's been engaging and helpful. I want to share, kind of in closing, a little adventure that I had in building a farm stand for my wife and me, but mostly for my wife for our little flower farm. As you know, I'm a flower farmer. You've seen some of the videos, I'm sure. And if you've been on my YouTube page, you've seen my chickens and, you know, all sorts of other things from the flower farm. We have had this long-standing dream of having a small hobby farm, if you will. And my wife loves flowers and she knows so much about them. And I don't even know all their names. I just go out and dig and drive the tractor and mow and try to take care of things. But she asked me to build a flower stand. And so here is the design that she and I talked about. Something like this. And the idea was we could park it somewhere. We could put it on the road or on the side of our property. And people could come in and they could buy their flowers. They could pay with Venmo relief cash. And that's it. So I put together a blueprint in my mind. I wrote it down. I measured in my mind, triple measured, double checked everything. And then I decided I was going to get some reclaimed barnwood. So I went down to Chesterfield. You can see the dates there. February 9th, 2024. Did some research, of course, found this reclaimed barnwood. Now, this barnwood is actually from a barn that's out in the middle of Illinois. And so this gentleman here gets wind of a barn coming down. And he'll make an offer for the wood as opposed to them just trashing it or burning it. And it's usually pretty easy for him to buy the barnwood. Pretty cheap, he said. Because otherwise someone has to deal with it. They have to burn it or haul it off. And he has to pay somebody to haul it off. So if someone comes and offers to buy this wood that to him might be junk, it's great. So this is where the wood came from. From a farm, a barn in the middle of Illinois. It's over 100 years old. Most of this is from the same barn. So you can see it's nice seasoned wood. And I actually took all these pieces here, loaded them on the truck. I actually went back for another load, almost the same size. Because I got about half of what I thought I needed. You know, measure twice or three times or four times. Count five times. Before you go to the store. Especially if you're going to Lowe's. Because they distract you. Pulled in here with the truck and the trailer. Started building a foundation for the flower stand. Treated wood. You know, the idea was here on these two ends. I was going to have, not necessarily handles. But like eventually be able to attach some sort of a... Something to pull it along with. With the truck or with the tractor. So that we could move it around. I was thinking about putting wagon wheels on it. So I laid it out. You know, got some nice treated post wood. And the plan again wasn't to sink it down into the ground. I wanted to be able to lift up and move it. So I was going to temporarily anchor it. So that's a tool that we didn't talk about much. But this is a level. As hopefully most of you know. And the level is designed to give you a true indication of something that never changes. That's the pull of gravity. Essentially telling us what's horizontal and what's vertical. So there are bubbles of air inside these little dials. That you can use now to determine if you're level with the ground. Or if you're not. And of course if we're building a foundation we want it level. In most cases. That goes along with everything we've talked about. These unchanging eternal principles. We've got to build our foundation levelly. Otherwise if it's built on a can't. Then it's probably not going to last. So here's some additional. You know, me putting things together. And trying to pretend like I knew how to woodwork. Which I really don't. Nice two by fours. And I'm using screws. Wood screws. Let's go back over here. I'm going to slide this over just a little. So my face isn't in the way as badly. So there it is again. I'm cutting it and screwing them in there. I wish I would have used a nail gun. Would have saved me a lot of time. But screwing it all in. Very nice. Lovely, right? All this reclaimed barn wood. Beautiful. Wonderful. Excellent. It's coming along, right? Look at this. Nicely trimmed and cut. These are actually tongue and groove. Most of them. Some of them aren't. This is from that door that I showed you. And then this is all just basic. Real basic studs. So here it is. I put some corrugated tin on the top. I assumed that that would be plenty. It ended up not being plenty. In the wind and the tornadoes that Missouri sometimes runs into. We get lots and lots and lots of wind. And needless to say, even with some posts or some stakes holding that down, it went over a couple of times. So this is before I put the stakes in to hold it down. This was waterproof. I mean, the rain would hit the top and roll back. And I used the nice, you know, ceiling roofing screws. And it was fine. But then it fell over and I had to reinforce everything. And here it is once we got it initially in place. So why would I bring this up? What we've been talking about is a process. It's a process that started with a vision and ended with a solution, right? Ended with an outcome. And I had assumed throughout the process and the planning and the effort that I'd made that this would be exactly what we wanted. And it pretty much was. Now, did it stand up to the tempests and the issues that came along in the wind? No. So it actually fell over backwards. So away from the screen twice. I had to rebuild the roof. And now it's a little more robust. I apologize. I don't have a picture that I can throw up there right now. But then I put a whole bunch of stakes in there, really aggressive stakes. And it hasn't blown over since. But just like us in discovering who we are and creating our identity, we have to be discovering our identity and creating who we want to be. We have to be willing to adjust and improvise depending on how those storms come. And then if we've done our job right, if we have taken advantage of the challenges and allowed those challenges to teach us what not to do or what to do better or more of or less of, then we can be better at the end of those challenges. So for me, the current state of this is pretty good. It's really pretty amazing. And actually, I think I can pull up a video that my wife made that will show you what it looks like. Let's see what it looks like now. Whoops. Just close that. So if we go in here, we're going to go all the way down. There's our chickens. There we go. So here is the video that my wife made a few days ago of our little flower farm stand. So I'll play it and you can watch it here. So you can see it's quite different. I've got lighting in there. It's pretty nice. I've lined the top, the inside ceiling with some nice treated wood. That's not reclaimed barn wood. I didn't have time to go and get some. I picked that up at Lowe's. But these are all the flowers that my wife has fostered and planted and harvested and seed started in our basement and our little fridge with our chickens' eggs. So this really just wraps up the end of the course. I hope you've enjoyed it. Let me pause that for you. And I'm going to make this full screen. I wanted to say a quick thank you for spending all of the time that you've spent with me over the last few days, few weeks or few months, regardless of how long it's taken you. I appreciate your investment in yourself, your investment in this course, and the forthcoming future investment that you'll take in improving yourself one step at a time, incrementally as you move forward. We've gone through some principles, some thoughts, some processes, some concepts and values that hold a lot of meaning to me. And if there's one thing that I really enjoy, it's sharing those valuable concepts with others. So please take these concepts that you've felt attached to and felt inspired by and put them into action. Baby steps. You can't, you know, eat the whole elephant all at once, one bite at a time. Move forward incrementally. Just try to improve a little bit each day and then review the course material, review the notes you've had, review your feelings and see what you might be able to do to not only improve your individual life, your personal decision-making process, your paradigm, the way you evaluate how you're going to move forward and the thoughts and actions of other people, how you interact with them. Consider and evaluate how you're going to do this and how you're going to improve yourself moving forward. If you've enjoyed this content, please share with your family, friends and co-workers. I am working on chapter two. We've talked about be first. How we first have to be, become, uncover, identify, create who we are. Then the next chapter is to be second, right? And so we'll talk through about that. Talk through a lot of things about that. But ultimately, as you've gone through, I hope you've made some choices to improve yourself and to become a little better version of yourself. Thanks again for tuning in for the time you spent. I hope this has proven valuable. I sure enjoyed it. I look forward to seeing you in the next chapter. Thanks.