I consider myself a positive person and am always thinking optimistically about the future. At the same time, however, I am filled with a constant level of self-doubt.

Recently, I went to the doctor to get a check-up. It was my first check-up in over eight years. My prognosis was perfect, to which the doctor said,

“Of course it is, you exercise every day, do yoga, meditate, eat a vegetarian diet, and all around take really good care of your self. Why would you doubt your health?”

I still pushed him to tell me what more I could do, because something inside me didn’t allow me to believe I’m doing the best I could with my health. I know I could eat a lot more greens than I do, eat more fruits, exercise more…enter my self-doubt.

This self-doubt extends to everything in my life. I don’t think I’m doing enough for my business to grow it as fast as I want, even if I actually am. I don’t think I’m doing enough to keep my marriage healthy and happy, even if I actually am. I don’t think I’m doing enough to connect with close friends and family, even if I actually am…and on and on.

So where does it comes from?

Part of being an entrepreneur is to perpetually be at the beginning stages of new learning curves, and thus I think I’ve trained myself to always think I’m a beginner and there is always room for improvement. In addition, as the leader of a team, verses an employee, I hand out praise to others, but rarely does praise come back to me. It’s just the nature of the dynamic between a boss and employee. But couple the lack of external acknowledgment, with me always thinking I’m a beginner, and now I can start to see why I’m living in a state of self-doubt.

But I differ from many other people who live in the same self-doubt world, because for me, the self-doubt is a motivator, not a limiter. I use my self-doubt to challenge myself to do five extra push-ups and make one extra sales call because, in my mind, that’s what it takes to move past the beginner stage of the learning curve.

When it comes to marketing and selling, I’m happy to be known as an expert, but when it comes to self-growth, I want to constantly feel like I’m an amateur playing in the expert league.

(got this text from a friend today, but I haven’t responded yet because I don’t think I can accurately answer via text)

It’s such an innocent question, but yet can be so loaded based on the depth of my desire to answer.

Running a business really is a non-stop roller coaster of emotions. One day the sun is out and unicorns are marching along to a happy tune. The next day the world might as well come to an end as everything is ruined. It seems a bit dramatic, but really the swings are crazy in growing a business and can happen over the span of a few weeks, a few days, or sometimes even within the same day. I feel like I’m in a constant sensory overload.

One of the most valuable skills I learned over the years is the ability to manage my emotions and not get wrapped up in the swings. I’m also really good at putting things in perspective, because really at the end of the day, I still have my mental and physical health, with a great wife, and a roof over my head…see, now everything is better again .

On the worst days, all I want to do is rant about it to people (employees, customers, investors, Annie, etc), but many times that’s not possible because I have to keep the positive image for the sake of the company. Also, not everyone is built to deal with such swings and thus it’s not fair to dump on them because they might deal with it in a much worse way than me.

Today I walked to pick up Annie and thought about listening to a podcast on the way, but there was so much noise in my head that I needed to sort out, that I opted to walk in silence. I needed the walk to help me sort through my own thoughts. Taking walks really puts me at peace which explains why, rain or shine, I try and walk every day.

I wish I could say that such situations aren’t normal, but really I think every day I need some time, usually at the end of the day, to just white balance myself. Writing on this blog and mediation in the morning both help, but on the bad days, even all the skills I’ve built up over the years of being an entrepreneur aren’t able to help me cope. The stress is constant and usually coming at me from five different directions. It’s like I’m in a state of perpetual growth and challenge.

I started today with an intense list of to-dos. Not a long list of silly little things, but rather a short list of really important, but hard, action items (e.g. build a marketing deck, update pitch deck, update the five year projections, etc). In the past, these are the kind of to-dos that I probably would’ve pushed off because they fell into Stephen Covey’s “important, but not urgent” quadrant.

I ended the day having checked off every single item on my list and man does it feel good. I equate the feeling to having a great physical workout at the gym, but in this case it’s a great mental work out. My brain is tired, but in an odd way energized too. Just like my body feels after a great workout.

I’ve talked before about the idea of pushing myself mentally in everything, and it’s days like this when my training really pays off. As my own boss, the ability for me to internally hold myself accountable is critical.

I’m currently on tray number 14, which leaves me with just six more trays until I’m done.

I had an appointment today to shave down my last tooth. The shaving process is more like rubbing steel sand paper against my tooth. It sounds bad, but really it’s not. It’s actually rather boring as today I had a hard time staying awake in the chair.

In the photo above you can see the different spots where I was shaved as well as where my brackets are on my teeth. The brackets are the only thing you can actually see when I take my trays out.

Since the first few trays, I’ve felt like my treatment time has flown by. I think it’s mostly because I just don’t really notice them that much any more, and almost no one else notices them as well. If they do notice, it tends to come with a lot of questions because it’s something they thought about doing themselves.

As someone who travels a lot, and is constantly in random situations on the road, it’s really not that bad. Occasionally I have to forgo eating a few extra hours or I have to brush my teeth in a random bathroom. But overall, I’m extremely happy with the results and I still have six more trays to go.

One trick I did learn is that when it comes time for my next set of trays, to change the trays at night verses the morning because then I’m asleep when the first round of teeth moving pain kicks in. The pain usually only lasts a day or two though.

Other than that, all is well and onward I go!

p.s. You can read about my previous updates here and here.

Annie works about a mile and a half north from our home here in NYC, which is the perfect distance for a good end of the day walk together. Yesterday, as we were walking home together, I was thinking about the reasons why I like walking with her so much…

1. It gives us both a chance to catch up on our days and what happened and, if needed, talk through specific issues.
2. It’s physical exercise and fresh air.
3. It’s a chance for us to be unplugged from all our devices so we can wholly be with each other.

Some families use dinner time to achieve number one and three, but for us, it’s always been about walking together. If I don’t get to walk with her for a couple days, I can feel it.

Quick update on my progress.

The pain of my teeth moving stopped after the third day, but I’m still on my first trays so I suspect the pain will come back for a couple days for each new tray.

I’ve gotten used to the trays being in my mouth so my cheeks aren’t cut up any more either. It’s still a little tough to enunciate certain words and to speak without an accidental spit here and there, but overall I’m making do. I did my first training at a school with them in and once I got going, I really didn’t notice them.

Surprisingly, brushing after every meal hasn’t been as bad as I thought. Not being able to savor my food isn’t as annoying as I thought it would be. In fact, I’m actually enjoying the fresh mouth all day long .

Going out to eat or drink has been a bit odd as I have to sneak away to the bathroom before and after to take care of my teeth. But I’m making do. I am keeping them in while drinking some stuff as it’s annoying to go through the whole cleaning process just for one drink.

As far as not being able to snack, when I’m home, it’s fine. Last week however, I was on the road and often times I’ll snack in the car or plane between locations, but this time I had to wait until I was near a bathroom and had time to go through the full cleaning. So I found myself extending the time period between meals.

I won’t get my second trays for another three weeks because NYU Dental is on vacation which stinks because it puts me two weeks behind. But like I said, it’s worth it to save the few thousand dollars that I am.

I didn’t get real braces until I was 20 years old. I don’t remember how long I was supposed to keep them on, but I do know that after I was 3/4th the way done, I asked the orthodontist to take them off. He fought back, but I was convinced I was ready to get them off because the following week I was going to attend my first APCA conference in which I was going to “launch” my college speaking career and having braces wasn’t going to help anything. Age sure does make a fool of our younger selves.

In the end, the conference was a flop for me (I’ll share that experience another time), and I was left with teeth that were 85% straight and not totally set, so future movements were expected.

Fast forward 11 years, and I started my Invisalign treatment today to finish what I started when I was 20. I’m actually not sure how many trays I’ll need, but I think it is around 13-15. At two weeks per tray, that means my treatment will last, at minimum, 30 weeks. 30 more weeks because I didn’t keep the regular braces on for 2 more months :-/.

I can already feel the tugging and shifting of my teeth. My whole mouth is in a constant state of minor pain.

My cheeks are a bit scraped up as well, but I learned that a simple nail file can help smooth the rough edges.

Hydrogen Peroxide is also a great cheap way to clean them. 

As for eating, I’m a snacker and grazer, so having to brush and floss EVERY time I eat is proving difficult. I didn’t snack at all today because it just wasn’t worth the time it would take to clean afterwards. Instead, I ate four regular meals and as soon as I was done, I brushed, flossed, and put my trays back in because I have to keep them in a minimum of 22 hours per day. No time to savor any food. We’ll see how this goes.

Oh and as far as cost. A typical Ortho will charge between $3-$6k for the full treatment. I’m doing it through the NYU dental school and thus it’s only costing $1200 spread out over 12 months. Yes, I am treated by a student who is overseen by a real dentist which means it does take longer overall, but to add a month or so of treatment to save several thousand is worth it to me.

No matter how you spin a weight loss program (points, support groups, rewards, 10-steps, etc…) in the end, they all basically recommend the same thing; eat healthier and exercise more. But yet, year over year, most people continue to be the same weight and seek out yet another system that is going to somehow magically reveal to them a new secret to weight loss that the world didn’t know about before.

On Tuesday, I took part in a full day Bell Leadership training. Bell Leadership is known for its innovative ways of building leaders based on a set of six core competencies and six negative extremes of each competency.

Six Core Competencies:

1. The Entrepreneur
2. The Competitor
3. The Producer
4. The Stabilizer
5. The Team Builder
6. The Creator

Six Extremes of Each Core Competency:

1. The Performer
2. The Attacker
3. The Commander
4. The Avoider
5. The Pleaser
6. The Drifter

In the end, one develops a ranking of their top skills and well as their top weaknesses. Here are mine…

My Core Competencies Ranking

1. The Team Builder
2. The Creator
3. The Stabilizer
4. The Entrepreneur
5. The Producer
6. The Competitor

My Extremes Ranking

1. The Pleaser
2. The Performer
3. The Avoider
4. The Commander
5. The Drifter
6. The Attacker

Over the years, I’ve done, and administered, dozens of different types of personality tests, and in the end, they all say basically the same thing about me…

“I’m a great connector, inspirer, creator, and motivator of people and teams. I have an opportunity for growth around taking a strong stand, not avoiding conflict, and being more competitive.”

I know this. I’ve known this for years. Every personality test I’ve taken pretty much says the same thing about me. But yet, year over year I keep scoring the same.

Instead of using another fancy system to tell me to “eat healthier and exercise more” I want to know why I haven’t changed over the years and what tactics I can implement to make the change…if I should at all.

Apparently part two of the program was supposed to be on tactics, but we didn’t get to that :-/.

Each Spring, ACbert and I usually join two soccer leagues and one softball league. All the teams are fun groups, so not only do we enjoy playing, we also enjoy hanging out with the different groups.

I usually only join a team after I’ve looked ahead on my calendar to know for sure that I will be able to make most of the games, which is what I did this season. Even though I expected to only miss a couple games this season, I’ve found myself more often than not responding to the weekly RSVP emails saying, “I’m out.”

It’s annoying and frustrating as I truly enjoy playing and hanging with the various teams, and making a commitment I don’t keep. But the reality of making AlumniChoose successful is that all hands need to be on deck at all times, but when excatly that is, isn’t something I can plan ahead for. Startups tend to flow on a month-to-month basis, if not weekly. Long term planning and startups aren’t the best of friends.

ACbert got sick at a wedding last week in Chicago. The sickness is still lingering and, a week later, she’s still not well enough to go outside for very long. Normally it’s not a big deal as weekends come and go. But this weekend is Memorial Day and the weather has been simply beautiful and our friends coordinated a picnic at Governor’s Island today. I was looking forward to hanging with them but Annie woke up this morning still not healthy enough to go out.

I wanted to go to the picnic, but I also know marriage/relationships comes with a set of responsibilities like taking care of your partner when they are sick. I was in a funk for a little bit about not going, but quickly got over it and focused my energy on being present with ACbert. We made veggie wraps, a vegan cake, and watched a movie. ACbert also has an amazing ability to make the best of bad situations. The day ended happy because we chose to make it happy.