Episode 1652: Interview with Dr "Moe" Gibbons About How We Often Mistake a Bandwidth Problem for a Time Problem

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Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining us on episode 1,652 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: I'm Dr. Maureen Gibbons. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to be yourself is key, and one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this The Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend Scott Maderer.

We get excited about something and we start doing the thing. What we don't do is put the systems in place for what I call the worst day system. Because you need to be able to create systems that help you succeed on your worst day, not your best day, and your best day isn't always a good day.

Scott Maderer: Welcome and thank you for joining us on the [00:01:00] Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be. Then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: so that you can impact the world.

Scott Maderer: In this podcast episode, I interviewed Dr. Maureen. Mo Gibbons. I asked Dr. Mo about the difference between a time problem and a bandwidth problem. I also asked Dr. Mo to share with you why sustainable change is so challenging, and Dr. Mo also shares with you why sustainable life change is so important to her as part of her message as a doctor and a coach.

I have a great book that's been out for a while now called Inspired Living. [00:02:00] Assemble the Puzzle of your Calling by Mastering your Time, your Talent, and your Treasures. You can find out more about that book over@inspiredlivingbook.com. It'll take you to a page where there's information and you can sign up to get some mailings about it, as well as purchase a copy there.

I'd love to see you get a copy and share with me how it impacted your world. Dr. Maureen Gibbons known as Dr. Mo is a physician, entrepreneur, and Arthur of freedom to shift. She helps high achievers trade overload for health time and income freedom through practical lifestyle medicine and real world systems.

Welcome to the show, Dr. Mo.

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: Thank you so much for having me today, Scott. I appreciate it.

Scott Maderer: Absolutely. I'm looking forward to our conversation. So I shared a little bit in the intro about your book, freedom to Shift some of the other work you've done. Physician, [00:03:00] entrepreneur. I always think it's funny when you put those two in the same sentence, but, uh, for a lot of people that feels weird, but I get it.

So let's take, go back in time a little bit and, you know the intro's always kind of the where we are today, but it's never the whole story of how we got here. So take us back in time and share with the listener what brought you to this point where this is the work you're doing. This is the message you feel called to put out in the world.

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: I think it's twofold. I think that what I've observed is that looking back through my life, the coaching, I've been a coach for over 35 years in, in various ways. That's the through line. That's the entrepreneurship part. I can't stop doing it if I tried and oh, I've tried. So from that standpoint, the physician education was almost.

In the container of me being a coach. And throughout that I kept finding things that I would want to teach people, patients, [00:04:00] colleagues, all of it. I just always want to teach them something and now I just have more to teach them. So throughout that, and then the lifestyle medicine piece provides even more fodder to teach people.

So when I look at the fact that I'm a sports nutritionist, that I was a triathlon coach for a decade, you know, I was a life coach before that. The lifestyle medicine brings that all together. Where, because it's the medical education plus the habit change, plus the motivation and the accountability, it is all wrapped up into one.

So this is kinda my wheelhouse now that I get to do lifestyle medicine, a little bit of the medicine, but mostly coaching. That's really where I love to sit.

Scott Maderer: Unpack that a little bit. You know, you, you used the term lifestyle medicine, and that may mean something to somebody, but there's probably someone out there going.

Huh? What's that? So what? What do you mean when you say lifestyle medicine?

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: So interestingly, three or four years ago, I had a friend get certified board certified in lifestyle medicine and I was [00:05:00] like, that's not a real thing. And lo and behold, it actually is a real thing. It is a an A board certification, just like any other board certification.

But we work on lifestyle concepts, community relationships, nutrition. Prevention. I call it a proactive, in my practice we call it developing a proactive baseline so you know what your family history is and what you're working toward and what kind of diet would work best for you given your medical constraints or you know, how much exercise we get.

It's really truly lifestyle medicine and there are pillars within lifestyle medicine that help you. I guess, have better, better health. The way I phrase it is, your primary care doctor's job is to get you to a bottle level, level C, avoid disease or take care of disease, manage chronic disease, that sort of thing.

We wanna get you to a level A in my practice.

Scott Maderer: So talk a little bit about your own faith journey, your own look and how that [00:06:00] fits in, you know, both for you personally, but then how does that fit in with the work that you do with patients as well?

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: When I was in the er, my faith journey some days got tested a lot more than others.

Uh, and you know, was

Scott Maderer: it, I was an EMT for a little while. I get it.

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: Yeah, yeah. It's, you know, I, I hit a point at one particular patient, you know, you never forget some of them and I came very close to what I call God. And I've always been very spiritual raised Catholic, very spiritual, in and out of religion, organized religion, but always extremely spiritual.

There is no question for me, there's a higher power. I don't make the trees grow. I don't, I don't have that kind of power shoot. I barely have power for myself some days. But you know, there, there were some patients where, you know, I would just put my hands down on the bed and say, God, I don't know what to do here.

And it wasn't that I didn't know what to do medically.

Scott Maderer: Hmm.

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: So with [00:07:00] patients that came in from like that deeply, now in changing careers, changing professions, I have to sit down and get quiet and ask, what would you have me be? How do you want me to show up in the world? What is, what energy has to flow through me to bring to the world?

What are you asking me to do? And sometimes that's not sign up for another Iron Man sign up for another shifts, the things that my ego wants to do. It's not that.

Scott Maderer: Mm-hmm. So how does that show up in the work you do with the folks in the lifestyle medicine?

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: So it's, again, it's, it's two factions of people that I work with.

'cause I work with my patients. Some of my patients are also coaching clients as well. They're all coached whether they want to be or not, but. The patient perspective, they want a prescription, they want relief. Well, I guess the coaching clients are the same. They want relief [00:08:00] where they get the door open to relief from me, and then we build what's behind that door.

'cause it's really not just the relief. They want to build something that makes that relief sustainable. Whether that's energy management, weight management with patients, or with my like health, energy and time freedom with my coaching clients.

Scott Maderer: You know, I think too, and, and I've had this, I work with folks oftentimes in time and money realms, and, and I think it's true of, you know, first of all, coaching is life coaching.

It's just a matter of what lenses you're looking at life through. But regardless, when you talk about it. I've had folks that they're working on their money and then they come back later and they're like, I'm losing weight. Why am I losing weight? You know? And it's like because you've got some discipline and attention and habits in one area of your life.

Oftentimes it naturally affects every other area of your life. There's some connections there, and [00:09:00] I'm sure you've seen the same with people working on health and showing up in other areas. Talk a little bit about, you know, how have you seen that? What, what do you see as the connections between how people look at time, how people look at money, how shows up in our health, you know, all of those different components of our life being, I guess, feedback loops for lack of a better description.

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: I think that's a great description because we're either spiraling up or spiraling down, and that snowball the avalanche effect happens one way or the other. I mean, inertia is real. So when you're not paying attention to your finances and not paying attention to what's on your calendar and what you're actually spending your precious days on, or what you're eating, what you're ingesting, whether, when I say ingesting too, I mean thoughts, news, articles, social media.

When you're intentional about what you're putting in, better will come out. And I think [00:10:00] that it, it does snowball. One of my coaches calls it bank accounts and belt buckles. So when one of them goes up, the other one's gonna go down because you're just, you're, you're, you feel good, right? It's like when you work out, you wanna eat better because you like feeling good.

And then, oh, I feel good. Guess what? I feel good enough tomorrow to get up and work out. Perfect. And then that inertia keeps going. So your book Freedom to Shift. Talk a little bit about that. What brought that to fruition? What's, what's the message behind it?

A lot of blood, sweat, and tears brought that to fruition.

Scott Maderer: Oh, so like a normal book. Got it. Pretty

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: much, yes. We bleed those we bleed them. But what the message really is, and I called it freedom to shift because the message is. You already have the key, you have the freedom. You don't need another certification. You don't need permission from anyone. Your experience, your skills and your life to this point is [00:11:00] of value to other people, and they need it.

We need that voice out there. So that's, it's both a permission slip that you don't need and tactical advice to bring that to the world.

Scott Maderer: So a lot of folks set out to. Fix their, their life. You know, I I, especially around health, I'm thinking back to the beginning of the year and there's a gym down the street from where I live. And, you know, on the first three weeks I happened to drive by every Tuesday evening at about the same time.

And man, the first three weeks of January, that parking lot was full and there were. There were cars on the road, you know, it was, everyone was there by about week four. You know, it was pretty easy to find a parking spot, let's just put it that way. You know, why do you see that folks often set out on this journey with a [00:12:00] strong intention, but aren't able to sustain it?

Whether it's diet, whether it's health, whether it's working out, you know, all of those things.

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: So it's funny you say that because yesterday I was at the gym and it was so crowded and I thought, could you people give up on your New Year's resolutions already? I need the gym back, but why they fail? Why we all fail because we all fall into the same trap, is we get excited about something and we start doing the thing.

What we don't do is put the systems in place. For what I call the worst day system, because you need to be able to create systems that help you succeed on your worst day, not your best day. And your best day isn't always a good day, it's just the day that you have the energy or the time. Sometimes your worst day you're on vacation with your family and you don't have that time.

So it's really an awesome day. You don't have a worst day system in place, so you're not going to work out, you're not going to get the protein goals that [00:13:00] you, that you set for yourself. You can set all the goals you want, but until you put the systems in place, James, clear style with Atomic habits, you have to have those systems in place to make it happen.

Otherwise, you will fail and never skip second day.

Scott Maderer: What do you mean by that?

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: So you can, you can skip a day. There, there are days where things are going to fall, you know, life happens, life gets lifey. Just work your tail off not to skip the second day because then it starts to become a habit.

Scott Maderer: So you talk a lot about bandwidth problems as opposed to time problems. Un unpack that a little bit. I, people have heard me talk about time quite a bit on the show, and I'm curious your take on what you mean by bandwidth versus time.

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: So we all get 24 hours in a day.

Scott Maderer: Yep.

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: And [00:14:00] I, in some days you'll know and I.

I have a tendency to compare myself to other people. Mm-hmm. But let's just compare ourselves to ourselves someday. You, you have, you get so much done, you're rocking it. Everything's just stellar. You have time to unwind with your family in the evening, and some days not much else happened, but you got nothing done.

You don't know why. It could have been poor sleep. Your food was off that day. Your brain was thinking about something else in the background. Those are the big ones. Usually it's, it's sleep, nutrition, and I call it stress, right? But however, the listeners wanna define it for themselves. You know what I'm talking about?

That thing in your brain that's nagging, that doesn't take up any time. It takes up bandwidth.

Scott Maderer: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: It's usable energy. Bandwidth is usable energy that you have to accomplish what's on your plate. Some days it's really low, but how often as high achievers [00:15:00] when your bandwidth is low and you're like, I got nothing today.

How many of us look at our schedule and try to move things around? We don't.

Scott Maderer: No, we usually double down. Yep. And or like I was talking to someone the other day about, they had, I think it was 40 or 50 items on their to-do list and you know, some insane number already. An insane number. And I said, oh, great.

Yeah, let's look at your calendar tomorrow. You know, what do you have? They had five meetings. Or six meetings, each of which was 30 minutes long. I'm like, so that's three hours of your day right there, minimum. Yeah. But some of those meetings are gonna go over and you have to get back and forth to the meeting or sign in, sign out, you know, so we both know it's more than that, but how much time do you actually have to do these 35, 40 things that are on your to do list?

You know? Let's, let's, let's be a little realistic here. What, what do you actually think is the most important or, or the things that you can't. Say no to, because otherwise I knew they were gonna get to the end of the day and just beat [00:16:00] themselves up.

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: Yep.

Scott Maderer: You know?

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: Absolutely.

Scott Maderer: Yeah. Unpack that and how you see that a little bit in, in the coaching clients and the, the patients that you see.

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: One of my favorite coaching clients, we sat down to do time and energy audit with her, and she was trying to pack 32 hours of things into a 24 hour day and

Scott Maderer: usually doesn't work. No.

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: And she, but she had never put it all down. Right? Like it's like literally it's, it's David Allen, if you've ever read Getting Things Done.

He talks about put everything in your house in one room. And I was like, oh, that all I could see is that's never gonna get put away. But we have to take the time to at least unpack the parts of it. My to-do list is actually a to-do ever list.

It's not my to-do next day because that way it's in one place.

It's a brain dump, really. Right. You should probably just rename it. This is the brain dump. Don't kid yourself. It's not a to-do list. Then you take the [00:17:00] things when you put them on your calendar, like you said. Put them on your calendar and allot twice as much time as you need, bare minimum, that makes a to-do list.

Scott Maderer: Yeah. I think, and, and I think a lot of us set ourselves up, uh, you know, kind of circling back to lifestyle medicine and how that fits in. I think our, our lifestyle is so much of a part of what we do health wise. Work-wise, relationship-wise, but all too often we try to ignore that.

You know, treat that as if that, oh, that's not real. You know, all this other stuff is real. That's not really real. But it shows up at everything we do.

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: It really does. And one of my coaches ran me through an exercise. We hear about it all the time where, you know, you take the parts of your life, your relationships, your community, your health, money, your impact, and you [00:18:00] rate them all.

Tony Robbins style and you rate them all and you figure out not just where you're, you're failing. 'cause that's not the purpose of this. It's which one of those is low right now in this season of your life.

Scott Maderer: Mm.

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: But again, if you put your family last all the time. You won't have a family to put last, and that hurts because it is real.

Or if you put your health to the back burner all the time, it will eventually come to the front and be very hot.

Scott Maderer: So if somebody out there is hearing us talk right now, and they're like, okay, I, I definitely. Here it is. It's the middle of the year. Maybe I made some progress at the beginning of the year, but I've slipped back.

My, my habits, my systems things aren't there. What's some practical advice that you could give them to reset and restart?

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: I like the word reset, and although it kind of gets some bad [00:19:00] press lately that, you know, I, I like the word reset because. You can reset. You do reset every morning when you sleep.

There is no time other than now. I mean, we talk about faith and that I think is the core of faith.

Scott Maderer: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: There is nothing else other than what you are in this very moment. You have nothing else. So looking back at, oh, what I failed on, what I stopped doing. You know, we're approaching the middle of the year already and holy cow, how did that happen?

It is today and all you will ever have is today. The best thing to do to reset is take a moment, open up your calendar. This is imperative. Now, if it's all white, not good 'cause you're just lying and you're not pel and you're not intentionally planning anything if it's completely full. There's no time to put in your family.

Give them a color. [00:20:00] They need to go in there. Make sure what you want to nurture is in your calendar. You show me your calendar, you show me your priorities. I, I used to tell people, tell me what's important to you. Now give me your checkbook and give me your calendar. And I'll tell you if you're lying.

Scott Maderer: Exactly. It's because is it showing up there? And it was interesting 'cause some people really don't wanna show it to you when you, when you say that because it's not showing up. So I've got a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests, but before I go there, is there anything else about your work or freedom to shift that you'd like to share with the listener?

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: I would just like to impress that you don't need permission to change. If you want to be healthy and you've spent the first 52 years, in my case, unhealthy, you can change that starting today. [00:21:00] You don't need my permission. You don't need your doctor's permission. Please ask for medical advice though. This isn't it, but you don't need anyone's permission to make yourself better.

Scott Maderer: Absolutely. So my brand has inspired stewardship and I kind of run things through that lens of stewardship, and yet I've discovered over the years that that's one of those words that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So I like to ask for you, what does the word stewardship mean to you?

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: To me, it means taking what I've learned and experienced and sending the elevator back down. Not keeping all that to myself, giving it away both free and paid because I, I think that that's the universe telling me energetically what I'm giving out is what I get back. It's just sending the elevator back down, making sure other people benefit from my mistakes, frankly.

Scott Maderer: Yeah. I tell [00:22:00] people that, that's another one of my, my sayings is, uh, it's smart to learn from your mistakes. It's even smarter to learn from other people's mistakes. Unfortunately, some of us have to make 'em all ourselves, uh, because we're stubborn. So, not that I'm talking about myself not at all.

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: I feel seen. It's all good. Yeah,

Scott Maderer: exactly. So this is my favorite question that I like to ask everybody. Uh, uh, imagine for a moment. That I invented this magic machine, and with this machine, I could pull you from where you are today and magically transport you into the future, maybe 150, maybe 250 years. And through the power of this machine, you are able to look back and see your entire life, see all of the ripples, all of the connections, all of the impacts you've left.

What impact do you hope you've left in the world?

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: I hope that I have made people feel like they have a safe space to grow. To exist and to grow from where they are, [00:23:00] that they pick up my book and say Wow. Or they hear something that I put out on social media or a call they had with me or their grandparents or their grandchildren had with me, or distant relatives.

People across the world, they pick up something that they've seen that I've done, and they think, this makes me feel okay, now we can grow.

Scott Maderer: So what's on the roadmap? What's coming next as you continue on your journey?

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: Two more books, but one of them, the, the second one is in process, but again, it's life, right?

That's the journey. The journey is, yes, I've created the freedom, so now how am I going to spend it? So now we determine. What I give back to coaching. I just started a new physician program. My, my high achiever coaching is my largest program, but there's a very specialized physician part of that, so that's just getting off the ground.

Super excited about that and just being [00:24:00] more, more and more visible, reaching more and more people.

Scott Maderer: So you can find out more about Dr. Maureen Mo Gibbons over at shift with dr mo.com. Of course, I'll have a link to that over in the show notes in case you're driving or can't write it down right now. Dr. Mo, is there anything else you'd like to share with the listener?

Dr. Maureen Gibbons: I just wanna let people know that if they do wanna start today. DM me on Instagram. It's at Dr. Mo Gibbons. If you DM me from here and give the word podcast, you get a link to my Vital Metric review, which is a template and the very first step to kind of take a look at that calendar, what's serving you and what's not.

Scott Maderer: Awesome. Thanks so much for that. I know pokes will appreciate it.

Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit [00:25:00] back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode. Please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes.

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