The Foundation Of Hope With Chris Collins
Download MP3Hello and welcome to another episode of the Believe the Hope podcast. I am your host, Paul Nottoli and I am here with Doctor. Chris Collins. Doctor. Collins is a family man, doctor of chiropractic, entrepreneur, and local advocate.
Paul Nottoli:Since moving to Chattanooga, Chris has helped keep Chattanooga going strong by providing holistic health at his chiropractic clinic and by supporting the health of the local culture and small business community. He's the owner and clinic director of the specific chiropractic centers in Chattanooga, Host of the Stress Less podcast, and Love Local Chat podcast, chat as it being C H A T T, Chattanooga, I'm gonna guess, that's probably what that stands for.
Chris Collins:That's right. Yep.
Paul Nottoli:So thank you, Chris, for being on and talking about hope and helping spread the message. Appreciate it.
Chris Collins:Absolutely.
Paul Nottoli:So the first question I always ask because everyone has different experiences in their life and different perspectives in their life. People, a lot of times with healthcare providers like ourselves, we give hope to a lot of people, but it's always interesting seeing what hope actually means to them. So yeah, that's my first question. What does hope mean to you?
Chris Collins:Well, it's a great question. It's a pretty deep question. And I think in some ways, for me, I think of, you know, believing in something to come, something to to happen. But I think where it intersects with me a lot of times is when people say, after this conversation with you, I feel like I have hope again because people essentially stop believing in the thing that they wanted to happen or or sort of would hope would happen. They just lost hope.
Chris Collins:Mhmm.
Paul Nottoli:And what type of those conversations what are you normally saying to these people to have that hope again?
Chris Collins:Yeah. I think it it's a lot of I mean, the intersections I I find people in are in health quite a lot of times, and so people are just so used to looking at the reality of, you know, maybe what, they're facing, maybe something the doctors told them that, you know, you're gonna have to live with a condition for the rest of your life, suffering with some kind of chronic condition, or even just feeling like they don't have answers, you know, for themselves, their family, and, you know, they're they're meeting a lot of practitioners, who potentially are not, you know, there to supply them with answers. They're more there to just kind of check them in, check them out.
Paul Nottoli:I find that with any type of provider, the ones that seem to listen to them, or feel like the clients listen to them, actually gives them hope. I feel like a lot of times with certain things, things get passed off, or they do just check a box because you have X, Y, Z, and then this is what they're taught, and rarely do they listen to what the person has to say, and I feel like listening to actually listen and give the proper feedback or advice when necessary is important versus listening just to tell them what you want to hear. You're listening, but you're just waiting for your time to say what you want to say next. And I think there's a very, very distinct difference with actually listening to somebody. And I feel like if you actually listen and actually understand the importance of what they're saying, because when someone's telling you something, it means that there's some importance to it or being able to decipher that importance, I feel like that gives, not only in the healthcare sense, but I think that gives a lot of hope to people because they finally feel heard and understood in a way that no one's ever given that to them as well.
Paul Nottoli:What I like to give to is, what I like to have people do too is, give examples in their life where they may have had some lack of hope and they've had to rely on hope when things looked grim or they were facing adversity. Can you think of any time in your life where where that occurred?
Chris Collins:For myself, I think there have been several times in business. I went into the business for, myself seven years ago, over seven years ago, really. And I kind of had high hopes for what I would be able to do. I knew I was taking on a lot and risking a lot, but what I didn't know is just how little I knew about what it takes to be a good entrepreneur. Being a business owner is one thing, and then in some ways too, if you're working in your business, you own your job.
Chris Collins:So, I mean, the people who own their own business know what I'm talking about here of, like, just working tirelessly on the technical part of your job in addition to having the know how of the business sense, leadership, if you have a team, leading yourself well. You know, and so there are a lot of variables with this kind of lifestyle. And so in some ways, when you reach these points where there a lot of challenge and you're having to do a lot of problem solving, it can feel a bit hopeless. And I think where that comes from too in the way that we've walked out of that is coming back to the importance of vision. Because I think for, you know, most people who are in the like, I'm saying it from a standpoint of or talking about business from a standpoint of, like, things we do, but then there's, you know, all of these things that we see.
Chris Collins:And I love, my daughter's, like, knocking on the door, making making noise. I love that my business requires me or at least in my practices, I have to sit down quarterly and look at a plan and come up with a plan and then talk to my mentors, talk to to people, to get an idea of what my vision's going to be. And I think that that happens to a lot of people when they they come to these places, like I mentioned before, and like me, maybe they've tried a lot of things and done a lot of things, and they're feeling tired, and they've sort of lost vision. They've lost the ability to see ahead. And so it's like, well, let's start with knowing more before we do more, like Amy Spolstra, our our good friend says.
Chris Collins:I love that quote because knowing more is exactly what you need to do to reinstill hope and then to continue strong in your journey.
Paul Nottoli:Yeah, and then knowing more in the correct fashion, not just knowing more, to know just to have blanket set of knowledge or skill, it allows you to, I think, find that vision, that purpose. Multiple people have said purpose that I've interviewed, so I think vision hand in hand and purpose kind of going with hope with finding that, whether they've come out of their challenges or whether they're trying to help others find hope with their clients. Yeah, because if you don't, then you're just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks versus having a systematic approach of trying to come to that better future, that better outcome that hope can provide. Because it can feel, I know I've been guilty of it, where I feel like I'm doing a lot and I'm frustrated why I was hoping this would get better by now, but then when you look back at it, you're like, Oh, I was just kind of doing stuff. I was being active.
Paul Nottoli:I was being proactive, but I wasn't doing the right things. I wasn't Or I wasn't in the right vision or purpose. Yeah.
Chris Collins:To that point too, I think sometimes we say, like you said, I was hoping it would look different now. Mhmm. Sometimes we envision something. We begin to plan to go after it. We do.
Chris Collins:And then when we actually get there, we achieve some of the things. Like, let's say, I was like, I really wanna have, like, a new four runner car when I'm, like, older, and I would feel like I've made it. You know? But then then I can afford to buy the four Runner, and then I'm also affording to pay for that, like, monthly. So then then I'm like, oh, it doesn't feel as, like, free to have this or afford it.
Chris Collins:It's nice that I've got it and it supports my family, and I'm really thankful for it, but it came with cost and responsibility. And so now I still have ongoing costs that I didn't really perceive before. I was just thinking about that kind of, like, oh, that good feeling once you feel that you've achieved this thing, which I had temporarily, then I was like, no, I gotta pay the bill.
Paul Nottoli:Yeah. I think that's good perspective too, where it often looks a little different than what you thought or whether you thought that this portion would solve all your issues. I think what it does, it just brings you to the next phase that you have to work on then because you come from here to here and then you're like, Oh, now I'm at a new rung. I think that flow through these zones does occur on a regular basis, which can be frustrating and also exciting at the same time, but yeah. Or it's something that you're like, Holy crap, I thought I wanted that, and then you get there and you're like, I don't want this anymore because of responsibility, cost.
Paul Nottoli:Just works harder
Chris Collins:than you expected.
Paul Nottoli:The vision wasn't actually what you aligned.
Chris Collins:I've had that with people that thought they were really committed to their health. Then once they kind of started to have to do some of the things and even be as patient as you sometimes have to be when you're waiting for your body to heal Mhmm. Because I can say with confidence that I've had people see very little results for several months, and it feels like we're not gonna get there. And then we do. You know?
Chris Collins:It's like those people that trust the process and stick it out oftentimes are rewarded with that. Like, okay, I did see something on the end of it. And I get I get when people have tried things before like this or or tried tried things before, let's say, in their health, and they reach roadblocks and it and it's not moving forward. But it also with the context of most of the time those stories are met with, well, the doctor really didn't he didn't really think I was gonna get better in the first place.
Paul Nottoli:Mhmm.
Chris Collins:And that's a different conversation that we're having. We're expecting you to get better, and actually we have results to show that you are Mhmm. Other than symptoms maybe. And in my line of work, we do a lot of testing. So we we can see the testing is improving, but sometimes the symptom picture, the feeling picture doesn't come with the function right away.
Paul Nottoli:Yeah, yeah, and I mean, just working in healthcare too, find that that can be the case too. The patience of time, that's the biggest challenge I think with anything, is the time that it takes is the time that it takes, and you can do a lot of things to help with mentors and coaches and the right people in your corner can, instead of a year, you can knock it down to six months, but that six months is going be six months regardless of what you're doing, because that's the time it takes to heal. It's the time it takes to reach your goal. And I think that's the I know for me, that's the that's the toughest for me because I'm I'm very impatient with that type of stuff. So yes.
Paul Nottoli:And then so I I can relate to that, understand that because it does yeah.
Chris Collins:And I think it's it's hard for people to visualize when you have something as abstract as health, let's say, but business can be the same way. It can be abstract and feel that way, the health of a business. But if you take something really practical like building a house or a renovating house, probably a better example, you know, let's say my dad was a a historic renovator, and so he would get called onto these projects where somebody bought this beautiful Victorian home, and he would always check the foundation first, which, you know, most people are not thinking of the foundation. They're thinking of, like, repairing the cracks in the walls, remodeling a kitchen, redoing the roof, you know, doing a bonus room in the attic. And my dad was like, well, we've gotta start this project with foundational stuff.
Chris Collins:And sometimes that would take time, cost more money than they expected. And then now we can finally start the work on the rest of the house, which then takes time. Yeah. And so that that can be true about whether it's health in your personal life or your business life. You know, a lot of times you're building these foundational infrastructure pieces for this process to survive, you know, term.
Paul Nottoli:Yeah. I do like that example with the foundation because, you see it all the time where they've been digging, digging, digging, you're like, Man, are they making any progress? It can be, like if it's a huge project, could be years, and all of a sudden it's like, bam, this building goes up. But without that foundation, they can fix the walls, they can fix the cracks in the wall, but they're going to come back because the foundation's not level, it's in the wrong spot, it's settled. And then you're spending more time by not spending that time with the foundational component as well to build that.
Paul Nottoli:And then that causes even more lack of hope, more frustration, because you're like, yeah.
Chris Collins:Those those things that you build on a sinking foundation are not going to withstand the test of time. They're not gonna withstand the storms. They're not gonna be resilient. And I think that's what life asks of us is some level of resiliency in order for us to adapt.
Paul Nottoli:Yeah. What do you think our listeners individually or in their communities can help spread more hope? How would you suggest people do that?
Chris Collins:Well, that's a great question. And without jumping to actions that they can take outwardly, would say it starts on the inside first and really turning towards yourself and asking yourself, what is your work? I think that I became a lot more inspired when I I accepted that there was a certain work I wanted to do in the world to help people feel seen, see their value, and see health in my community from sort of the inside out. That's my work. Now I don't know for others out there who are listening and they're like, well, I've always felt this call to engage with people this way or engage with my community that way.
Chris Collins:And have you answered the that call and felt rewarded from just a sense of, like, I have more hope. I have more purpose when I do these things. Sometimes those things are not always directly related to your livelihood, so it's like finding time for those. You know, being intentional, essentially, about making that a part of your world will give you so much more meaning in life too. And also connect you with relationships that are built in that sort of foundation of your your stewarding well, that kind of the essence of hope in in your world too.
Chris Collins:Like, how do you wanna bring it, to to the world?
Paul Nottoli:I think that's a good question. Her mentor, Lacey, book, always, she said something that's always kind of stuck with me is, how do you want to show up? Regardless of what's going on, regardless of what's going on in negativity in your life, the struggle in your life, how do you want to keep showing up for everybody in the world to see you? And I think that that can spread a lot of hope and inspire others because you are showing up in a way that makes positive change and helps people see the light and helps people have faith in themselves. It helps people step into something greater.
Paul Nottoli:So how do you think someone can balance hope and the inspiration for the future, but also being grounded in the reality and where they're at at the moment so they can do the work and the steps that they can take to build towards that future?
Chris Collins:Okay. So the question is essentially how do you envision some of these things that you want to hope for and be realistic about what's in front of you? Yeah. This is a good conversation about too. Like, sometimes I've had conversations with people and they're like, oh, I'm a realist because I'm just they know that sometimes things don't work out the way they wanted it to.
Chris Collins:And so they're trying to be a realist, but they're they're not exactly being a realist because they don't know very well the probability of things to work out for them or not for them. You know, and I think that the idea of the law of attraction too is really helpful for this conversation because if you are looking for signs and paying attention to signs that you're on the right track or the right road, then you will usually follow the that path to the place that you'd like to go. Now could unexpected things happen along that way? For sure because you don't know the path or the probability of things on that path happening that way. It may just come with, like you said, the requisite of of what that thing may may bring, you know.
Chris Collins:And then if you're following the signs of bad things to come and you're paying most of your attention to those things, then you will see those things more and more and be kind of trying to control for them all the time and you almost just bring bring to yourself what you focus on. It kind of goes
Paul Nottoli:back to
Chris Collins:that vision word of, you know, if you're if you're not looking up ahead a little bit then and you're just looking at your feet, then you can do you might start doing circles, you know, in your journey. So I think I think it's just asking yourself whether it's really honestly realism or are you protecting yourself from or are are you trying to protect yourself from getting your hopes, broken at the end of the day? And then just being pessimistic about it and like, I'll go ahead and settle for the poor outcome instead of just expecting or shooting for something better.
Paul Nottoli:I think what happens too with that realist or that approach is we settle for the lowest, like, Oh, I hit this. This is my low goal, and I was like, Oh, I was good. Like the work to get to the next one, versus reality when, if you want to look at it, God, universe, whatever, wanted to give you the biggest goal, and we almost are too afraid to accept that that was actually our vision and our expectation of what we wanted, but we're like, Oh, I hit the small goal, so that was a win, and I'm just going be a realist and not be disappointed. I think there's some of that that kind of goes on too, where we Because we say we need at least this, we only go to the least thing versus the faith and the understanding that we should be able to go for the next thing. We want to be blessed abundantly to the next thing or the bigger thing, whatever that may be.
Paul Nottoli:That can be relationships, finance, health, etcetera. But I think sometimes we stop because it was just the lowest thing and we're like, Oh, I did it. In reality, it was like, did you stop? I was ready to give you everything, and I think there's some of that that can happen as well sometimes. Necessarily a bad thing, just that you're not stepping into something that's greater than what you're supposed to be doing.
Chris Collins:Yeah, and I think that maybe the fallacy there is to look at it with too much black and white, like saying, Well, I don't want to be so future tense, and I don't wanna be, you know, so fast tense and no regrets and this kind of thing. I'm just focused on the now, and you never look up and kind of look around to see where you've gotten it. It'd be like a plant or like a a tree that sprouted and then got up out of the ground and then didn't look around and they were just like, I made it. And that was it. And they didn't say, Oh, there's a sky up there, and let's keep reaching.
Chris Collins:And if you compare yourself, if you just want to look at the natural world, whether you're spiritual or not, you can look at a tree as spiritual in its own right isn't being a realist, it's trying to grow as much as possible and adapt, and it has to weather storms and it's trying to survive, and all of these things, you know, it's like, it's great to look at nature and just say, well, what's the intention of nature, you know, to make life go on and to grow and thrive as much as possible you know, despite however much challenge it might meet. And I think I see this happen sometimes. It's just people don't always train themselves to have kind of like an adaptive, it's not part of our societal conditioning per se, you know, to have these checkpoints. Like, let's say you do a thirty day challenge, and you were only successful half of the time, then you feel like a failure at the end of it because you didn't reach your goal, you did, you know, of it. So you did way more than you would have had you not done the challenge.
Chris Collins:And then if you kind of look around at what you did that helped and what didn't work, and then you try to optimize for the future, you might find that you could be 60 to 70% this next time, and then optimize again, you know, after three months and then something like that, you know, it's like always revisiting and getting like a little bit better. I like those conversations that that I think we're having with my clients oftentimes. It's like, do something really simple, but also don't not congratulate yourself for something that was actually, you know, it was better than nothing, doing nothing.
Paul Nottoli:Yeah. Love the nature and tree analogy. That was really good. Nice. No one's ever brought that one to podcast, so thank you.
Paul Nottoli:That was really good. There's nothing to add on that, so that was good.
Chris Collins:Do trees have hope? That's a question.
Paul Nottoli:Yeah, I don't know. I would say
Chris Collins:I think your dogs hope you come home.
Paul Nottoli:Yes, yeah, I would say that, but I don't know if trees necessarily have hope, because their hope, their plan is just to grow and be as strong and durable and live as long as possible.
Chris Collins:Part of their design. Their
Paul Nottoli:design is to not even think about what could go wrong. It's just like, Oh, I'm a tree. I need to grow be strong and reach the sky and sunshine and water as much as I can and be as strong to weather as many storms. So yeah, I love it.
Chris Collins:As far as we know, if they do have consciousness, then they're hiding it from us.
Paul Nottoli:I would have to have a botanist or somebody on that that does this, because I have no idea. Maybe on my next guess, I have to find out, do trees have hope or plants have hope? I don't know. I would have to find somebody that's an expert in that field to pick it up. Is there anything else you'd like to add for Inspire Hope that we haven't discussed yet?
Chris Collins:Not for myself. I'm curious, How do you find hope in your life?
Paul Nottoli:So for my definition of hope is allowing people permission to do something greater or step into greater. So I always try to make sure I have, I'm giving myself permission to not be afraid to do something that may be scary or not understand the outcome. And that's not always easy, but that's how I step into things with understanding and confidence. As I'm doing that and I'm doing the things, I start to build the evidence of things that are occurring that I'm actually making it. So that goes back to the conversation how we said, Oh, if I look back how far I've come, I'm way farther than I was a year ago.
Paul Nottoli:The challenges I'm having now, I was wishing that I had, or whatever, six months, a year ago, three months from now. That's, like I said, I'm not saying this is always easy. I'd go through frustrations and headaches and stress and conversations. I also lean on a lot of mentors and coaches and different people in my life that surround the community aspect of it, that are always giving me words of encouragement, understanding, helping me work through my own frustrations, etc. So that's how I personally go about it, and I think a variety of conversations, some way, shape, or form, those in order to inspire more hope, whether in the community or themselves or helping come out of struggle situations.
Paul Nottoli:Some version of that of community, etcetera, of those type of things have been brought up in some way, shape, or form with each guest in a different variation, a different version because everyone has different experiences as to how they do that. But there's some way that that that occurs for people in that. So that's my way of that's my way of keeping hope in my life and moving forward.
Chris Collins:Yep. I think that's awesome. And I do think it's great to come back to that since I know a lot of the things I shared were more of my personal things, but you're right about community and mentors. I work with Doctor. Lacey and Doctor.
Chris Collins:Sean and those people that I've been able to lean on in my family and also in my business family, like my circle of mentors and and colleagues, think that asking for help, you know, is essentially not the what is that? The quote? Asking for help is is another form of not giving up. Have you ever heard that? Yeah.
Chris Collins:It's so good. I'm like, that's such a positive way to look at it because we can do more together, to your point. A lot of times it's others that remind us of the hope that even we instilled in them, they were like, Hey, you made me hope before, and so you may feel low right now, but you've inspired me before. Let's go do this thing.
Paul Nottoli:Yeah. Yeah. And I find, I know I'm guilty of that, not asking for help as much as I'm a chronic non asker helper, and I've been working on that for many years, and I'm getting better at it. And I saw an analogy the other day on Facebook just scrolling, and it was a person holding onto a rope, and it said, Sometimes holding onto something is actually causing you more harm and pain because their hands were all red, they were all bleeding, and then they let go of the rope and their hands healed. I was like, Oh.
Paul Nottoli:So I think, in my way, thought of that is asking for help and not holding on that you have all the answers all the time, that there are people that can help guide you in the right direction if you're struggling, if you're in a place of hopelessness or anything like that, or just you don't know where the next answer is. Again, the timing has to be the timing, but you can speed up a lot of things by having the right people speak into your life on a regular basis. Hopefully this podcast is something that you listen to on a regular basis, and it gives you something that you can take away every day and speaks light into your life on a regular basis.
Chris Collins:Love it, man. This is great.
Paul Nottoli:How can people connect with you more, learn more about Doctor. Crist and everything that your podcasts and everything that you're involved with?
Chris Collins:Yeah, the easiest way is to just follow me on Instagram. If you're on Instagram, Doctor. ChrisCollins, and I share and collaborate with a lot of posts there. That's where I am most of the time. I'm on most platforms as well, just most active on Instagram.
Chris Collins:We're working on kind of getting more of the message out there. If you wanna listen to either the podcast, if you're not local to Chattanooga, the it's I still you should come and visit Chattanooga. We we love having visitors
Paul Nottoli:Mhmm.
Chris Collins:And show off our city, but you can learn about Chattanooga on the Love Local Chat podcast. But the Stress Less podcast is one that you can listen to. It's really an easy listen, ten minutes or less, stress less, grow more. That's kind of the mission there. And it's on Spotify and Apple, so in most places you can find podcasts.
Paul Nottoli:Nice. Thank you so much for your time today. Inspiring hope in the world with not only your community, your clients, but also being on this podcast to share the mission around the world. We're slowly getting to a few different countries now, which is cool to see that I just started this a few months ago and it's already spreading. Little by little, we'll share the message and we'll put more light into the world.
Paul Nottoli:So thank you so much for your time, Doctor. Collins.
Chris Collins:Thank you for yours. Take care. Yep.
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