Skot Waldron:
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Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Unlocked where we talk about unlocking the potential of ourselves and people around us in order to unlock the potential of organizations and culture and in fact humanity. And that's a little bit of what we're going to talk about today. Dr. Jared Cox has been a dentist for about 20 years. And why am I talking to a dentist? Because as I've gotten to know Jared he is not your typical dentist. Yes, he does all the dentist stuff but his last couple of years has been this journey and taking all of his life experiences and bundling them up into a theme and that theme is fear. And he is going to drop some amazing gold on us today about fear and about this concept of overcoming fear and why he doesn't like that phrase and why we should think differently and how we can reword that to really mean something in our lives and so we can really do something with it.
What makes Jared qualified to talk about fear? A lot of things in his life. Well first of all, being a dentist he probably deals with fearful people every day. And there's some experiences that he's had flying planes and almost crashing them. He's had experiences playing baseball at a high level and having the fear of performance. And there's just all these things that have been in his life that have brought him to this point to talk to us about fear. So we're going to go ahead and we're going to roll with this interview. I hope you really get something out of it. I think you will because there is so much that Jared has to offer. Okay, you ready? Let's go.
All right Dr. Jared Cox, it's awesome having you man. We've known each other for a little while and I know a lot of your story, the audience doesn't necessarily. But today I'm super excited to have this conversation with you because I talk about fear in some way, shape or form, I don't call it that all the time, but that's what you talk about, fear, courage, and those aspects of that. Now you're a dentist, you currently own a practice. You've had that practice for a long time. So give us a little bit of story, background. Why is a dentist going in and talking about fear? I think I know the answer a little bit there but elaborate on that a little bit for me.
Jared Cox:
Well so that's what I do and I mean everybody in the world it seems like is afraid of the dentist but there's a lot more to it than what people think and so I think that it's important for us to talk about that. So people are afraid of the dentist. Everyone knows that going to the dentist can be very scary but what they often don't consider is that it goes much deeper than that and we often don't connect the fear of the dentist with the fear that permeates the rest of our life. And so, that's why I think we need to talk about it, that's why I want to talk about it. Because we keep getting blamed for things, we dentists keep getting blamed for things and the truth is it's a lot bigger picture than that, it's a lot more complicated than that. And 20 years of dentistry has shown me that there's a lot there and there's a lot to talk about.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. So you're telling me that, I don't necessarily have a fear of the dentist, I'm fine going to the dentist it's not like I wake up in the morning and go, "Dentist appointment I'm so stoked," but I'm not that worried about the dentist. Now my sister-in-law, death grip at the dentist. But you're telling me it's not just about her fear of the dentist, it's about something else.
JARED COX:
Right. Yeah. It's about the way that people deal with fear. Here's the way we work. We human beings we don't like fear. We try to kick it out of our lives. We don't want any part of it. And when you go to the dentist, there are all these elements of fear that all come together at the same time. It's just the context of going to the dentist provides this time, this opportunity for all these different aspects of fear they just come together and they emerge during those moments. But the truth is, is that a lot of the fear that people experience in the dentistry really is connected to the rest of their lives. It's not just about the dentist.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. I'm going to tell my sister-in-law that. I'm going to start off, it's going to change your life I'm sure. I want to dig deeper on that then, so why do we do that? So I know that you're a stickler about this phrase, overcome your fear, you need to overcome your fear. We've been through this before. Explain that so why should I not say to my sister-in-law, "Hey, you just need to overcome your fear of the dentist."
JARED COX:
Yeah because to try to overcome your fear is to compete with yourself. What I would like for people to do, my message is for people to own their fear, to see it as part of you, to validate that feeling inside of you and to let it be part of you. You don't have to compete with it. You don't have to kick it out of your life. You don't have to try to overpower it or overcome it. Because there are some fears you just can't overcome. There are people, for instance what if your fear is that your spouse might cheat on you again or that your mother's cancer might return or that your children will relapse into addiction. Those fears don't go away man. They don't go away. But what happens if we fall into this trap of believing that we should be capable of overcoming our fear and we can't, all of a sudden we dive into avoidance, and shame, and guilt, and blame, and that's just not good.
So, one analogy that I like to use with people is when we think about strength, our own personal strength, a lot of people think of something like a rock. A rock is big, strong, rigid. But oceans are also really strong. Oceans are really, really powerful. But if you were to take a big giant boulder and throw it into the ocean the ocean can absorb it and it can hold it and it's still a big, powerful, giant ocean. And so, what I'm trying to do is try to get people to reconceptualize fear, rethink how they think about fear and that way we can process it differently and have different outcomes in our lives.
SKOT WALDRON:
That is so good. I love it man. That was so good. I got goosebumps several times during that. You can't see them obviously but they're there. Here let me ask you this then. So you said, you're talking about the idea of, more I guess the idea of embracing that fear or identifying with it or owning it. That's a word you use, owning your fear. That's one thing to internalize and to actually say, "Okay, I'm going to own this," but you also want people to talk about it. So owning it's one thing but why is it important that we actually even talk about fear?
JARED COX:
Because talking about fear connects us with other people. It connects us with ourselves. Relationships matter. Typically when we're afraid, we tend to shut things out. It's we want to shut out the fear, shut out the cause of the fear, sometimes we shut out other people in our lives, but we can't live like that.
So for example, I think COVID right now I think it's teaching us that. COVID yes we have a vaccine, yes it's helping and I'm all for that. But COVID is teaching us right now that there's an uncertain world, it's scary. We have to adapt. We have to live with it. And one of the ways that we have, one of our strategies to deal with it not from a fear standpoint necessarily but we've had to be isolated from people and people long for this connection to be able to get back and talk to each other and be near one another because there's healing there. And so, I think when it comes to things like this where people feel when they're afraid to isolate yourself is self-sabotage. You need to talk to other people, you need to listen to other people. We need to share. We need to connect. Because that's how we live man, we're created to connect and be in relationship to people and to our world.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. So what happens when we don't do that? What happens when we let fear just rule our lives? What happens when that fear is present, we don't necessarily own it, we try to push it out, we don't talk about it, it's just there?
JARED COX:
So maybe in a very practical way, at least take my office for example. When people are afraid of the dentist they don't come or if they do come they have one foot out the door already. And so the result of that, the result of not going to the dentist is cavities, pain, more expensive dental bills in the future, all these lists. There's all these negative things that happen to our lives just because we couldn't process fear in a way that's healthy and helpful for us and we just try to shut it down or shut ourselves down or isolate or any number of things. I mean avoidance, I see avoidance be huge. Avoidance is huge, blame is huge. Dentists we get blamed for everything.
SKOT WALDRON:
You do man, it's so sad.
JARED COX:
Yeah I mean, it's like someone comes to the dentist and they're like, "It's the dentist's fault or it's my last dentist's fault. It has nothing to do with me, nothing to do with my life, nothing to do with whether or not I prepared for this moment. It's not about have I done anything today to be courageous. It's about that person hurt me or that person way a long time ago hurt me and now I'm scared of you because of that person a long time ago." I mean, there's just all different kinds of ways and we just have to think through it a little differently I think. And so, hopefully I can be an encouragement to people.
SKOT WALDRON:
So then expand on that too then as a dentist you probably, besides people that operate a bungee jumping service, you probably deal with people that have to work through their fear more than anyone. People come to you and they're scared in some way, shape or form. Even though I'm not necessarily technically scared of the dentist I go in there feeling a tiny bit of anxiety that that they're going to, "Just checking my gum lines and I'm going to bleed and they're going to poke and it's not going to be super comfortable." So from that tiny amount of fear to people that are gripping the chair or that sit in the parking lot and don't come in because they're just, they can't do it how do you help people through that?
JARED COX:
Well, it's a lot of listening. And it's whenever people are there, what I try to do is when people come to my office they need two things from me at the same time, they need leadership and they need compassion. And if I can show them compassion in those moments that generally helps us a lot to be able to walk through it. But so I ask questions, I get their permission, sometimes I get their permission just to walk in the room. Sometimes there are people that if I walk in the room without them knowing I'm walking in the room it triggers them and they're done. They're just done. Some people before I even lean them back in the chair I asked them, "Can I lean you back in the chair? Can I take a look now? Are you ready?"
And sometimes whenever I ask people, "Hey, are you ready," some people laugh and they're like, "Yeah, this is what I came for and other people are like, "Yeah, thanks for letting me know." I mean, everybody's different and some people like you don't have very much of a fear and some people have a lot but it's important to recognize all levels of fear. That's what I do. As a dentist people think I work on teeth but that is the easy part of my job. The hard part of the job is constantly connecting with people, hearing them, hearing the emotions behind what they're saying, and me being able to respond accordingly. So basically I always think compassion. You never know where people are coming from and that's it, that's compassion.
SKOT WALDRON:
See we're talking about dentistry but we're not talking about dentistry.
JARED COX:
Yeah, no.
SKOT WALDRON:
I mean, I framed it up that way, I set up the question that way but you brought it around to, "My job is leadership and compassion. They're looking for leadership. They're looking for competency. They're looking for knowledge. They're looking for education. They're looking for somebody to educate them and to pull them, to help and maybe even push them to make them better." That's what leaders do, they help make us better and move us up that mountain. Compassion, understanding, listening as part of a core component of what you do.
Now if every team culture, because I talk a lot about culture, people development, if we did that inside of organizations, if me as a leader walked up to you as an employee and you were fearful about something, fearful about losing your job, fearful about somebody else coming in, fearful that you did something wrong. Maybe that you're not fully aware, for me the two things I'm getting from you is that I need to be an effective leader means he's calling you up not calling you out. Number two, I need to have compassion. I need to listen. And understanding will help lower what I call their wall of self preservation, will help me build more trust with them. Because ultimately that's what you want with your patients, right?
JARED COX:
Yeah. That's right. And it's not just about the patient, it's about my team too. So for example, take compassion. I'm really blessed. I work with a team of people that takes a lot of pride in their job, they work hard and they set a standard of excellence that is really great and it's a pleasure to be there. But my patients are watching how I treat my team. And when they hear me show compassion to my team it helps my patient.
And when my team sees me give compassion to myself for example, just being able to say if I made a mistake, I don't like mistakes, I live and function in a world where mistakes are not, you just you can't make mistakes. But we all make mistakes and the team I work with they make mistakes. And when people see me say to one of my assistants or one of my hygienists, "Hey, I shouldn't have phrased it like that," or, "Yeah, I wrote that thing down wrong the other day," or, "I know you needed this from me yesterday. I meant to do it but," when they see me admit those things. And then when they see me when they make those mistakes when they see me say, "Hey, we're going to keep on going." And at our office we do elbow bumps, we don't really do high fives and all this bump elbows and it's like we keep on going and it's just fine.
So anyway, but actually I had a patient the other day that was more nervous than I recognized. And one of my assistants, as I'm working with this patient, one of my assistants starts talking about the vaccine that has come out and whether or not she wanted to take it or she felt comfortable. And she started to say things like she called herself being ridiculous or being paranoid about whether or not she should do all this and I was like, "Just be you. If you're afraid it's okay to be afraid. You don't have to be ashamed to be afraid." And somehow through that conversation later the testimonial that my patient left she was overhearing every word of that and that helped my patient as she was hearing me talk to my team and that was really, really cool. That was last week.
The week before I had a lady come in that I hadn't seen for 20 years. I've seen her kids since they were three and now they're grown men and they're bigger than me but her family's in crisis right now. Her marriage is in crisis right now. And she told me, she said she hasn't wanted to go anywhere for six months. And she didn't want to go anywhere because she didn't want people to ask her the common question we all ask when we see each other after you go to the store and you see someone and they say, "Hey, how are you doing? How's your family?" She didn't want that question. She was afraid to have to confront that. But the place that she felt like she could come was our office. And it was like she could come to the dentist. That's backwards, right? You're supposed to be able to go into the rest of the world and not be afraid but she was like, "I can at least come here to the dental office because we've talked about family and you've taken care of our family for 20 years."
It's moments like those that you realize dentistry is not so much about the teeth as much as it is about caring for people and that's success. That's how you get somewhere. And so, if you create that type of environment, that type of culture in whatever company you're in, you can never underestimate how far compassion can go within your company, what difference it makes to your team, what difference to makes to your customers, what difference it makes to your own self? You can never underestimate that. Anyway.
SKOT WALDRON:
Preach it man. I was pausing for a second because I'm like, "What other gold is going to come out of his mouth right now?"
JARED COX:
I'm at home. We're snowed in right now with snowpocalypse and my wife's at home, my kids are home, the dogs are in. So I'm doing this from my wife's office and so this is not my chair behind me.
SKOT WALDRON:
Wait a second, were you afraid of being judged by your chair?
JARED COX:
I'm afraid to be on Zoom here with my wife's chair but maybe it's the pulpit and maybe it's bringing out some truth I don't know.
SKOT WALDRON:
There it is. Own it, own it man. Own it. Okay. Let me go into that then next. So, what are things that we could do to own our fear? So you talked about this, about being courageous, but what are the three things we can do, I'm going to say three things, what are three things we can do to, I'm going to put you on the spot, to own that fear?
JARED COX:
Well, I think it starts with making a commitment to courage. Your life has a purpose. Your life has a meaning. And your life is in my mind not always meant to hide. There are times when you can hide, take shelter from fear for sure. I'm not saying that that's never appropriate. But I think what's lacking for a lot of us is we don't really have a commitment to courage. We're not connected to it, we are not determined to make it a part of our lives. We tend to think of courage as something that's for heroes. And I'm not talking about for heroes, I'm talking about for everybody. And so, I think making a commitment to courage is good and I think self-awareness is huge, to know yourself, to recognize when fear is with you, to recognize when it is hiding. A lot of times fear hides in our lives and we don't see it and a lot of times we don't see it because we're unaware.
So for example, a classic example that probably everyone can relate to is you have an argument at home or when you're feeling pressure at the office. Have you ever had an argument home when you're feeling pressure at the office?
SKOT WALDRON:
I don't have arguments at home Jared. What are you talking about?
JARED COX:
Well, you're afraid to fail at the office and the next thing you know you're angry at home and all you know when you get home is, "I'm angry. My spouse is driving me crazy. My wife is or my kids are driving me crazy." And you think it's about the kids and it's not, it's about the fact that you're afraid to fail at the office and that's underlying this anger. So we have to be able to recognize when fear is hiding and I think part of owning it too is understanding how powerful flexibility is especially in the corporate world. I mean the corporate world is all about expectations. You're expected to perform. You're expected to get results. You're expected to A, B and C all day long and you expect everyone around you to A, B and C all day long.
But man again going back to the ocean example, the flexibility. How much strength have we seen during COVID when people are able to adapt? The companies that seem like they can adapt, they can adjust, they can redirect, they're flexible to handle difficult, difficult times, maybe not to perfection but who cares about perfection? Be flexible and trade our expectations for flexibility. A good friend of mine Klay Bartee, who I podcast with actually on the In-Session with Jared and Klay. He talks about that and I think that that is huge. Trading expectations for flexibility allows you to take in more not in the sense that we hold it in but in the sense that it's okay. It's just okay for us to embrace, to widen, enlarge our embrace. And anyway, I think all of those are keys to owning it.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. So commitment, commitment to courage, self-awareness.
JARED COX:
Yeah I think you need a process, a process of developing self-awareness. You can't be passive about that. [inaudible 00:27:48] It's not going to get it done.
SKOT WALDRON:
Be intentional. If we're not intentional we're accidental and that's where nobody wants to be. And then flexibility and I love that trading expectations for flexibility, that's cool. That's very hard for a lot of people.
JARED COX:
Yeah. And one of the things that I have found is that the more I become self-aware the more expectations I uncover that I didn't know were there. I mean it's a constant process of self discovery and it is absolutely worthy of our ongoing attention. But it's great, it's fun to learn about those things and it's fun to see yourself grow and move and strengthen in new ways.
SKOT WALDRON:
So for people that want to grow, that want to move, that want to strengthen themselves, owning your fear is going to be key. You believe that?
JARED COX:
Own it. That's right. Own your fear.
SKOT WALDRON:
Own it. I love it. So I love this discussion. You mentioned really quick the podcast you do with Klay called In-Session. Tell the audience really quick about that and where they can find out more information if they want to learn about that.
JARED COX:
Yeah so our podcast is called In-Session with Jared and Klay. Klay spelt with a K by the way. In-Session with Jared and Klay and you can find it on insessionpodcast.com or Apple, Spotify, anywhere where you get your podcasts it's there. And we'd love to hear you take a listen. We actually just got finished with a season on racism responding to that. A lot of people didn't want to talk about racism and that's the purpose of Klay and I's podcast is to talk about things people maybe are afraid to talk about. And so we talked about that and now we're talking, we're making a series right now on social media that is about to come out and I'm super excited about it. So come take a listen, insessionpodcast.com.
SKOT WALDRON:
It is great. I love the dynamics between what you bring, what Klay brings and Jason and Greg, the two. You had them on the whole temporary guests I guess or whatever you want to call them, special appearances by them and they brought some awesome value. So I think there's a lot of value there. So you were dentist, you own your dental practice, but what's your future hold? Where are you moving? What are you doing now to help people with this?
JARED COX:
I am in the process right now of I'm about to start writing a book. I'm about to release another podcast where I'm going to be flying solo and where we're going to talk about that. And so, I'm getting ready to get out there in the world and try to spread this message around. Dentistry is great, it provides me an awesome context to deal with this face-to-face every day but it's one person at a time. And I really want to get into an environment where there's more people where we can talk and people who come ready to hear and ready to grow. And I can't wait, let's get going so [crosstalk 00:31:24]
SKOT WALDRON:
You've got a new website launching soon too, right?
JARED COX:
I do, drjaredcox.com is coming out. We're expected to launch March 16th and we're going to have a soft launch then but we'll be continuing to add content to it. I've got other meetings today and all kinds of projects happening and it's the most exciting time in my life. I can't believe it.
SKOT WALDRON:
Good job man. Look at that smile holy molly.
JARED COX:
Yeah, let's go. Let's go.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's amazing. This has been fantastic. I really appreciate you. I appreciate you pouring into the audience and educating us a little bit and hopefully people will learn to own that fear. It's hard, right? It's hard.
JARED COX:
Yeah cannot pretend that it's easy. It is not easy.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah. Well, good luck with everything you're doing man. I'm looking forward to it. I've heard a episode of In--Session. It's brought some good perspective to my discussions with other people which has been really cool. It's been a conversation starter and that's what's fun about it.
JARED COX:
Mission accomplished right there. That's what it's about.
SKOT WALDRON:
There you go and I'm looking forward to seeing how you spread your wings into future man. You've got a lot to give so good luck.
JARED COX:
Man Skot, thanks so much for having me. This has been a lot of fun and I really appreciate working with you. It's been awesome.
SKOT WALDRON:
I hope you enjoyed that. Jared is working on inspiring not just individuals but as many people as possible and that is through talking to people about something he has a lot of experience with and that is fear. And whether it's personal experience or the fear of others that he deals with almost every day as a dentist it is how do you own that fear. Get over this idea of overcoming your fear because that is not fair to us or to others but owning your fear and having that commitment to courage and that's that first step, committing to courage, being intentional about being courageous.
Number two is self-awareness, learning about ourselves, our triggers and the things that we need to work through in order to accomplish that goal of our commitment to courage. And then number three is flexibility and I love that he brought up that idea that that Klay Bartee his partner in the in session podcast says about that. It's trading expectations, we need to trade expectations for flexibility. Because flexibility is where we're going to grow, flexibility is where we're open, flexibility is where we're, "Okay, I can see that. I can see where I need to adapt. I can see where that idea might be better." And we can grow through that through collaboration.
I'm truly thankful for you Jared. Thank you for bringing in all of that knowledge to us today. Good luck in the future. If you want to find out more about me, about the show, you want to hear other episodes, you can visit skotwaldron.com. I've got them all posted there. You can also visit my YouTube channel, that's where all of these are also posted and there's some other informational educational coaching videos there you can find. Like, share, subscribe, I would love it. I appreciate comments as well. This has been an awesome episode. I will see you next time on another episode of Unlocked. See ya.
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