The Power Of Hope & Healing With Grant Dennis

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Grant Dennis:

The opposite of hope. In order to understand what hope is, you have to first look at what is the opposite of hope. And to me, being in health care, you know, I'm a I'm a chiropractor every day, and one of the things that I really pride myself on is I literally feel like I was placed on this earth as a purpose from God to help people move the term. I had to miss it from their life, whether it's a mom who says I had to miss, you know, my kids' baseball game or it's a kid saying, hey. I had to miss my first baseball game or it's a dad saying I had to miss, my golf outing because I had x, y, and z things.

Grant Dennis:

What that eventually leads to is the opposite of hope, which is frustration, desperation, and hopelessness. Right?

Paul Nottoli:

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Believe the Whole podcast. I'm here with doctor Grant Dennis, who is a Amazon best selling author of A Life Without Migraines. He's also owner and upper cervical doctor at the specific chiropractic centers in Little Rock, Arkansas. He is also president of the International Federation of Chiropractors and Organizations, as well as an entrepreneur in other endeavors, and a huge Arkansas Razorbacks fan. So is that the whoopie pig suey?

Paul Nottoli:

Is that is that how you say it? Is that That's

Grant Dennis:

it, man. You got it, Paul.

Paul Nottoli:

You nailed it. I'm making everybody in Arkansas happy with me, I guess. Right.

Grant Dennis:

But all of our candidates from all over Arkansas are thoroughly happy with the intro.

Paul Nottoli:

Alright. Woopig suey. Alright. So the first question I always ask because I like to hear everybody's different perspectives on this, is what does hope mean to them personally?

Grant Dennis:

I mean, I think for the the first step, me, is asking ourselves, you know, what is the opposite of hope? Right? In order to understand what hope is, you have to first look at what is the opposite of hope. And to me, in health care, you know, I'm a I'm a chiropractor every day, and one of the things that I really pride myself on is I really feel like I was placed on this earth as a purpose of God to help people remove the term, I had to miss it from their life. Whether it's a mom who says I had to miss, you know, my kid's baseball game, or it's a kid saying, hey.

Grant Dennis:

I had to miss my first baseball game, or it's a dad saying I had to miss my golf outing because I had x y and z thing. What that eventually leads to is the opposite of hope, which is frustration, desperation, and hopelessness. Right? A place where it's I'm just hopeless to coming whatever the condition is. And so look at the word hope, what it means to me is helping people overcome the opposite of hope, which is hopelessness.

Grant Dennis:

And it sounds, you know, cliche or it sounds like, you know, what doesn't that seem kinda counterintuitive or obvious or I guess the word would be intuitive. Don't that just kinda sound like it's, by default? And the answer is no, because I don't feel like most people who are, especially in health care settings, fully appreciate what it is that people ask us for when they come into our offices for help. They're really they're not asking you for help with their back pain. They're not asking for, to remove their headaches.

Grant Dennis:

What they're asking for is, I'm coming in here with faith. Faith that this is gonna be the answer for whatever my problem is. The opposite of faith is certainty. Faith is believing in something that you're not actually visibly able to see, and in this case, a result some sort in their life, and it's your job as the practitioner to offer hope. Really, I think the way that you do that with a lot of lot of purpose is through certainty, and certainty is really hard to obtain into in today's society.

Grant Dennis:

The a level of certainty, some call it confidence, that you're gonna be able to deliver hope for somebody because there's nothing worse than than especially in the year 2024 that we live in. There's a whole lot of things that over promise and under deliver. There's a whole lot of people who over promise a lot of things and then just unfortunately under deliver. And because of that, what it does is it leads to a hopeless society and a lot of people. But what I really try to embrace the word hope from is the idea of maybe under promising and over delivering in an aspect of their life relative to this idea of certainty and someone who comes in with hopelessness.

Grant Dennis:

And I think that when those two things beautifully blended me, I think what you end up with at the end of the day is a hopeful, situation. Someone who regains hope in their situation, and most importantly.

Paul Nottoli:

Yeah. I like that perspective as, especially as a health care provider myself. Yeah. They aren't coming in. They're coming they're telling you that they're coming in for this, but in reality, it's because they can't do something.

Paul Nottoli:

They're missing out on something, and that leads that does leads to hopelessness or just, I guess, another person that I interviewed said the opposite of hope is despair. So that's another way to look at it, and you don't wanna get into that realm because that leads to apathy and other, yeah, that other aspect in life.

Grant Dennis:

Reminds me it reminds me of, I was reading a book here lately, Be A Coffee Bean. Have you ever, read that book, Paul?

Paul Nottoli:

Haven't read that. No.

Grant Dennis:

For your viewers and and viewership who are listening to this, you know, hope is a powerful word, and I've never really actually seen it spun off in this particular way. It's it's written by a guy named Damon West, and he was, an inmate who was in prison for drugs and is actually on parole for the rest of his life. He's out spreading this message of being a coffee bean. Really, what the gist of this book suggests is that, let's put under an enormous amount of pressure and enormous high temperature scenarios in our life, actually, all the time. It's like, a boiling pot of water.

Grant Dennis:

Life really is kinda like a boiling hot pot of water. That's just the environment we live in. It's just kinda what, you know, most people would describe as their day to day life. He talks about 3 objects. He talks about the egg, the carrot, and the coffee bean.

Grant Dennis:

All respond to high temperature environments differently. So a carrot becomes soft, egg becomes hard, coffee bean transforms itself and it changes its environment. And I'd never really I've really come to appreciate that most people, when they are are approaching things from a hopeless perspective, really haven't understood that the life's events that they've encountered up to this point have really culminated into them becoming the carrot or the egg. They're hard. They're put in a hopeless situation, so it caused them to be hardened and angry, and they they, kind of internalize and compartmentalize.

Grant Dennis:

That's typically what you see in men. What ladies do, and it's not a negative, is they turn kind of into what was more of a carrot or soft or or, emotionally kinda breakdown and lose their strength and resiliency, and it's not a negative connotation in any direction. A lot of times, you can have the reverse. You can have men who kind of approach from the carrot fashion or a or a lady who approaches it from the egg. But what we wanna kinda teach ourselves in this particular scenario that he talks about is to be the coffee bean, to change the environment around you, externally and internally.

Grant Dennis:

And so we talk about looking at things from the perspective of hope on be the hope, which I love the the entire essence of your podcast is I think what that starts with is first analyzing the internal environment. What is it inside of me that has caused me to lose hope? Because if you don't address that, and it doesn't matter what environment you put yourself into, cannot possibly be a change agent because the internal environment hasn't changed. But that that's classic in a lot of areas. People leave certain jobs, and they say, well, I just need a change of environment, and they go to the new job.

Grant Dennis:

Nothing really changes. They, change the environment with which their friends are, and nothing really changes because it's not actually the external environment that's causing you to be hopeless. It's the internal environment. So, the coffee bean has to change in order to change its environment. So it's just a really cool perspective just as I was thinking about being on this podcast and thinking about the essence of of your message that you're spreading.

Grant Dennis:

It's a first off, a great book if your viewers have never read that. It's a great book to start when it comes to regaining hope. Start with that book and read that. You know, it's just a great example of, we really are a change agent if we allow ourselves to be. And the most important part about regaining hope is not only within ourselves internally, but then using as a change agent to help other people through that then spreading this message of hope to people who are hopeless all over the place.

Grant Dennis:

That truly, I think, is what allows for these chain reactions of environmental change that, people on these scenarios really, really need.

Paul Nottoli:

Yeah. And I I've never thought of that being their perspective of being like a coffee bean versus being hardened like an egg. I know for myself when I get, I guess, not really hopeless, but when things aren't going well, when things are pissing me off, This morning, I had something that was happening, and it just, like, started my day, and I kinda let it I let it simmer too much, and I was like, I gotta clear that. I gotta clear that because I knew it would just harden me. It would give me the right it would give me the wrong intention throughout the day.

Paul Nottoli:

I would show up for my patients in the wrong, the wrong energy, the wrong it's not a healing environment, that hardness. Or like you said, or you get that apathetic or soft where you just you almost, like, crumble into that area like the carrot. Carrot. So that is it. So that is yeah.

Paul Nottoli:

I don't have to read that book because that's a that's a definitely a really, really good perspective to have and, shift that mindset in that internal environment because, yeah, the internal environment is gonna be bad, but if you haven't worked on yourself as well, you kinda just you're gonna it almost, like, it leads you back. You change for a while and it's good, but then you always kinda go back to the same patterns as you had before, Or you're in the same situations. You're like, why am I here again? When I left all these when I left this situation. So, yeah.

Paul Nottoli:

I like that perspective a lot. Yeah. You said something in the first part about hope being a place of certainty, and then obviously making that environmental change. How are people How are people How are people how are people how are people utilizing that and working through that to build more certainty, build that environment, and their change to help build more hope in their community as well, to help it spread more?

Grant Dennis:

Yeah. I mean, I I always go back to the word fulfillment. I think a lot of people mistake the word success and the word fulfillment. A lot of times what leads one to kinda feel hopeless or in a place of abandonment is this lack of sense of of success. Maybe they've worked really really hard for many years at something and don't view it as a success, or maybe they have relationship issues that they don't view as a success, or maybe they look at, you know, some sort of shortcomings and sort of metric they put out there that they don't interpret as being a success.

Grant Dennis:

And and what that ultimately in turn leads to is this lack of fulfillment, and they're not they're 2 words that are not one in the same. And, ultimately, in my own journey, I've had to even they understand is that, in order to achieve a a level of hope that is impenetrable as life throws its events at us, like you were talking about this morning. I mean, there's nobody who's susceptible to these things on a day to day basis of using our inflow routine of things that just get in the way. And, I I think re centering yourself back on what is it that truly allows you to be fulfilled. That's the first place you always have to reflect back on in order to have an effect on your community is leaders have to pour into themselves.

Grant Dennis:

It's impossible to be a leader to others if you yourself as the leader are not poured into. It's just a it's a law that if the leader that's the leader of the community themselves is not fulfilled, they cannot they cannot possibly, pass that on to the community to be the same way. That's just not the way that energy flows and energy works. Of course, we know it can either be energy, can either be created or destroyed. It can only be transferred.

Grant Dennis:

Means I, as the leader, cannot create it. I must have gained it from somewhere else. So whenever we talk about this idea of fulfillment, it is truly identifying in a self aware perspective of what it is that gives you that that that true sense of accomplishment within yourself. For me, it's helping people. For me, it's hearing things from from people I take care of that say, I wouldn't be alive had I never found this place today.

Grant Dennis:

I can't believe how far my life's came in 6 months. I can't believe I was able to do this. I can't believe life looks like this. I can't believe what my life used to look like. Like, these types of things that I hear and that I encounter on a daily basis truly fill my cup.

Grant Dennis:

The first question in asking yourself is what is it that fills your cup? And it may not be helping other people. Maybe being a mother. It may be, looking at the fruit that's that you've produced that's growing on other people's trees. That's biblical.

Grant Dennis:

It's a perspective that a lot of people talk about is it's the truest essence of fulfillment is maybe it's in your kids' lives. Maybe you see the impact you're having on your children's life. You see the impact you're having on your siblings, your brother or sister's lives, or you can be your clients. But truly just connecting with those treasures in heaven, if you will, those things that are not of this earth that that go on far past our time here. Not only get too spiritual in that essence, but it really does apply here is no matter if you believe in a universal, you know, governing it for me, it's God.

Grant Dennis:

For someone else, it may be something different. But if you truly believe that there's something that loves you more than your mother that's garnering and puts you on this earth for a greater purpose, Truly figuring out and connecting with what that is. I think a lot of people go through their whole entire lives and think, oh, I found it at 40 and that's a failure. No. I I view that as better at 40 than 41, better at 40 than 40a half, you know.

Grant Dennis:

I mean, it's as soon as you can connect with that, and I think that truly that fulfillment piece is what people is pick up as energy that then will translate into a community to find more hope. They ask you, where do you get that from? And then it starts the conversation. We can start to begin to have to identify is that's creating interference in your life to be able to connect with that. For years, I'll give you the greatest example of this.

Grant Dennis:

For years, I thought it was money. I thought it was monetary. I thought, you know, the greatest thing that'll help me feel great in my own life and my sense of accomplishment and success will be to a massive certain amount of financial gain. And, all you do is you get to that certain point, you just move the goal post because it's a very tangible, not of this earth thing. It's a very this it's not really real.

Grant Dennis:

And, yes, we need, you know, funds and and we need resources to make an impact and to you to perpetuate hope throughout the community, and that is an important thing, but it's reverse engineering it. Starting off from the standpoint of what is it that allows me to impact people's lives that truly fills my cup that I somehow can also get paid for? Like, I can then pour resource back in to be able to do more for my community. But it's pure essence to answer your original question. I think I think it's truly just separating out what it is for you that at the end of the day, when you're you know, because the the sad reality is, Paul, we're all gonna die with 1 of 2 things.

Grant Dennis:

All going to die with the pain of regret or the actual principle of discipline. There's really no in between where they're gonna die with regret or we're gonna die with a whole lot of accomplishment. And the way that you trend your life in the direction of accomplishment is by focusing inward on fulfillment and things that are that are gonna transcend you and leave a legacy. A lot of those other things that you typically end up with with regret is I wish I would have not focused on that so much. Right?

Grant Dennis:

That's just a great place to start is, you know, what is it for me that is a true treasure in heaven that will outwit me and quote, we're getting so much on the materials to things that we know are are not of this earth and gonna stay with you. And if you can do that and trends you more towards this idea of fulfillment, which then translates into hope and then is palpable throughout the community.

Paul Nottoli:

Yeah. I love it. And, I mean, that's that's the reason why I did start this podcast because we have these conversations and people listen to it and they feel they can make these changes in their life or they we give them we help them see that they have permission to make these changes in their life and find that fulfillment, then inadvertently, then I had a small piece of that, and that can help, you know, but that snowballs that you know, the more people I talk to, the more people that listen, the more people share. Eventually, that will that will all play a role. You do a lot deal with a lot of people that have migraines, obviously, from your book and everything.

Paul Nottoli:

When they come in, what are you helping them realize to help them get hope back in their lives? The things that you do mention that is the things they're missing that the migraines are taking away from them. How are you how are you helping them frame that so they do have the they they are taking the action, they're having the faith and trusting you, and more importantly, they're getting healthy again and realizing that they're worth it.

Grant Dennis:

Yeah. You know, I think the first step is identifying is is it in their life that the migraines have actually taken from them. Then, ultimately, with every migraine sufferer I've ever taken care of, almost to the t to every single one of them, is there's also this component of anxiety that follows it as well. Is I had migraines that then developed into fatigue and brain fog and ultimately, the anxiety is not something that that came around after the fact was because it was an internal mechanism of body's defense mechanism to offset the migraine with the idea that this anxiety is present because I don't know when the next one's coming, and it's radically drastically changing my life. Because of that, I'm anxious that I can't live my life in a routine ballistic way that I should I feel like I should be able to.

Grant Dennis:

As humans, whether we like it or not, are routine driven creatures. We love routine. We love up at the same time. We love to go to the gym, eat the same things, take a shower in the same amount of time, drive the same car, get them. We just are very routine driven things, our beings.

Grant Dennis:

And that can be a good thing, but also can be a very negative thing if you're someone who suffers from migraines that constantly has that derailed 3, 4, 5 times a day. Hey, I was supposed to go pick up my kid, but I'm down with a migraine, or I was supposed to get this done at work, and I was supposed to have this deadline, but I had to miss a day and I'm sick. And eventually eventually, leads to is this sense of anxiousness surrounding the fact that I've lost control, all complete control of my schedule and my life. What that's affected is my ability to be the mom I wanna be, the ability you know, I I say mom because most oftentimes, it's it's it's no secret that ladies suffer with migraines more than men, although men are getting them. Mhmm.

Grant Dennis:

You know, whether it's I I just can't put out the production at work like I need to, I'm gonna lose my job, I'm not being the mother or the wife I need to be. These these things have just stricken my life to the point where it's just life altering in the sense that I can't live my life in the routine that I want to, which then has ultimately led to, I'm sacrificing my workouts. I'm sacrificing eating like I want to. I've started to take these meds, and that was because I wanted to fix the issue and rightly so. And then that's added on some side effects including weight gain, fatigue, and just they feel disconnected with their body.

Grant Dennis:

I've heard several things over the last 10 years of practice, and I talked about

Paul Nottoli:

this in my book. But the first step truly is understanding that,

Grant Dennis:

the migraine is is really at some level of blessing if we can appreciate it, that it's caused you to stop and say, you know, my life is not what I want it to be. And in order to get it back to what you would like it to be, we have to remove this thing, migraine, that has just literally created this roadblock in your life for every turn that you make because it's just blocking you from every turn that you're trying to make in your life. It's it's a roadblock there. And, the first step I think is, you know, a lot of people will say, oh, well, we need to get rid of the anxiety first. And I I always say, like, let's get to the root cause of the issue with everything.

Grant Dennis:

And the root cause, you know, that I happen to find in most people with migraine sufferers is that they have problem in their upper neck, notes to them that's wreaking havoc on their central nerve system. And as a result, no one has been able to detect this. They were they're doing exactly what I was talking about earlier. They've over promised and they've under delivered, you know, hey, take this med. Your migraine will be gone in 2 months, and buzz for about 2 weeks, and then now it's back with a ferociousness, and we gotta you know, it's because they've tried all these things, what that's led to is this idea of, hopelessness, like, well, this can't possibly be the thing that I've tried everything else.

Grant Dennis:

How could this possibly be any different? Mhmm. I think the first step there is, like, you alluded to earlier is building trust, and trust isn't something that you are it's it's not something you can buy. It's not something you can gain quickly. You gotta truly have to earn.

Grant Dennis:

I think the first step in earning and gaining trust with people like this is to help them understand This has been around a long time. It's not going away overnight. Let's be realistic with the expectations of what we can expect, and then what truly I feel like if we can do that, your life can look like setting the expectation early of promising and over delivering. In our world of upper cervical and chiropractic in general, that's one of the things we really just pride ourselves on. You know this because you're in this world, is really under promising and massively over delivering because we work with the greatest healer and the greatest physician on the planet, which is your own human body.

Grant Dennis:

And most people buy into that notion, but what they really don't understand is the time commitment that it takes in order to help somebody who's been suffering for something for 20 years. The idea makes sense, but everything they've been sold up to that point doesn't fit into that paradigm. So what it causes is it causes this desperate, hopeless type of approach of this is just another thing that's not gonna work for me. I think it just comes back and boils down to the word of expectation. I think if you're someone out there who is very hopeless in the scenario you're currently in is, let's first start with just identifying what is the expectation I'm setting for myself, and is it realistic?

Grant Dennis:

Because if it's not realistic, then it you can't possibly ever achieve the outcome because you're literally now I'll use the example, like, if somebody is £240, and they said, hey. I'm gonna be £220 tomorrow. Yeah. Unless you somehow figured out a way to surgically remove £20 of fat out of your subcutaneous tissue, I'm not sure how you achieved that. It's not realistic.

Grant Dennis:

But I think what most people don't realize is they approach the day to day goal setting that they do and they approach their lives, and it's a very similar fashion, like, hey, I'm very depressed, but I'm going to fix this tomorrow. But this med will I'll take this and I'll be better tomorrow. The reality is, it's just not and that's just not a realistic expectation. Now if it was something that said, hey, over the next week or 2 or it's a progressive process, you know, and anything, everything requires time. It took us time to get where we are.

Grant Dennis:

It's gonna take us time to get back to where we were. Mhmm. I think it's just truly understanding the expectations, setting a realistic one, and having others around you that understand and get you and hold you accountable to that. The way it gets you through that early phase, I think that's a really, really critical piece.

Paul Nottoli:

Yeah. Yes. So definitely setting the expectation and having the the internal reality and conversation to maintain hope, maintain hope for that better future, but also realizing, yes, it's gonna take some work, it's gonna take some time, but I'm in the right place. Whatever that is, I'm in the right place. I'm doing the right things, and I just gotta consistently develop these habits to keep to and that builds certainty too when you when you have the when you have things down here consistently do them.

Paul Nottoli:

You'll see these little small wins and these and, in our case, people get relief and they're, like, oh, that was 4 days of relief that I haven't had in 10 years, so now I so they're looking forward to day 5 or etcetera. So it does play yeah. It does play a role.

Grant Dennis:

I love

Paul Nottoli:

How can How can Go ahead.

Grant Dennis:

Go ahead. No.

Paul Nottoli:

No. Go ahead. People can okay. How can people connect with you more to learn more about what you do, maybe get help with your clinic, your book, or just, learn more about you?

Grant Dennis:

I mean, I I'm really trying to make myself, obviously, like you and and a lot of other people who are just out here to change the world and be a change agent is I'm very accessible. The easiest probably way to get a hold of my book is to just go to head pain.org. So it's super simple. Headpain.org, you can opt in for a free copy of my book. I'll get your information.

Grant Dennis:

We'll send you out a copy you can read. And then you can just find me on Instagram, drgrantdentist.com. Anything, doctor Grant Dentist, type that in the Google search bar. You're gonna find my website, my Instagram, my media handles, anything like that. Of course, if you're in person, Brandon, you realize that's what's the idea is.

Grant Dennis:

Just put in Doctor Grand Dentist,

Paul Nottoli:

just be

Grant Dennis:

able to find me real quick. But if you wanna get a hold of my resource, of my book, it's just head pain.org. I'd love to send you a copy. You or somebody you love but maybe is hopeless in their state when it comes to migraine. And, so I heard something the other day, Paul, just in closing that that really resonate with me, and it was that addiction actually defined as behaviors that inhibit the ability to to set and hit goals.

Grant Dennis:

I think a lot of times when we hear the word addiction, we think of drug addiction, alcohol addiction, whatever other addiction. I don't really think people fully realize one of the biggest things that leads to a sense of hopelessness is hopelessness is addiction to things you don't realize are an addiction. Mhmm. Maybe it's self, be it's your physique, maybe it's social media, maybe it's, there's so many things in today's world that can literally inhibit our ability to hit goals that are actually just essentially behaviors. They're not anything other than a a a competitive behavior or a repetitive behavior is inhibiting you from hitting a goal.

Grant Dennis:

It literally substitutes behaviors you should be doing to hit goals. So an easy example would be people like, the big one today is a lot of, like, a lot of people understand they're addicted to social media. They just started addicted to it. They will sit there and scroll TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram for hours. What that addiction is doing is it's not so much that it's a negative behavior in the sense of, you know, anything physically, but what it is doing is it's occupying time as a behavior that is inhibiting your ability to hit a goal.

Grant Dennis:

So that is truly an addiction. It's how you can begin to assess this thing in addiction for me is is it being substituted for a behavior that would help me push forward. I just thought that was powerful, you know, because I think a lot of times we associate addiction with, like, these really, really detrimentally hard things, which that certainly occurs as well. But, it could be something very, very, very it could be sleep. It could be I'm addicted to sleep.

Grant Dennis:

I sleep and it substitutes as a behavior to work out. Like, something I just feel like, you know, as I was, you know, about coming on this podcast with you is that when as it relates to hopelessness, it's first also sometimes just identifying, is there any behaviors in my life that potentially could be an addiction, or not allowing me to be the true sense of myself as it relates to hitting my goals. And it may not even be something, it could be just something subliminally, subconsciously to you that you don't even realize is a big deal. Could be a comparison syndrome to somebody else. Could be, a lot of it could be food.

Grant Dennis:

And it could be a lot of things that are, you know and the easiest way to identify that obviously is to just down literally throughout the day, time stamp every single thing you do for a 24 hour period, and then take an inventory of the things you do on a particular day and see, is there anything in here that potentially is stripping time away from me as a behavior that is eliminating my ability to hit a goal? If so, you have just identified an addiction, especially if it's being done on a day to day to day to day to day basis. Just wanted to leave that out there as well as kind of a, maybe outside the box, concept of finding more hope.

Paul Nottoli:

Perfect. Perfect ending. Yeah. Remove the interference in some way or the areas that in your lives that are not pushing you towards that fulfillment and the more hope in your life to move to move forward. So thank you, Grant, for your time today.

Paul Nottoli:

Thank you for your expertise and a great conversation in spreading more hope and supporting the mission. And until next time, we'll bring you another episode of the Believe the Hope podcast.

Creators and Guests

Paul Nottoli
Host
Paul Nottoli
Host: Entrepreneur Spreading Hope & Positivity
Grant Dennis
Guest
Grant Dennis
Dr. Grant Dennis, D.C. Amazon Best Selling Author, COO, The Specific Chiropractic Centers Owner, The Specific Chiropractic Centers-Little Rock
The Power Of Hope & Healing With Grant Dennis
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