We only have so much time in the world, and we need to make every single moment count. ER physician and best-selling author Dr. Geoffrey Mount Varner underlines why we should make fast decisions without delay to unlock a purposeful and meaningful life. He joins Zach Gurick to discuss why you should not waste your time waiting or preparing, but instead give everything you’ve got to taking action and making choices. Dr. Varner also shares three impactful practices in building a more positive mindset, how to turn your biggest challenges into powerful motivations, and why you should eat as if you have cancer.
The information presented in Fully Alive is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before making changes to your health regimen. Guests’ opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host, production team, or sponsors.
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How Fast Decisions Can Change Your Life With Dr. Geoffrey Mount Varner
Introduction
Welcome back to Fully Alive, where we are unlocking the secrets to your healthier, happier, and longer life. Our guest knows more than most about what it takes to make every moment count. Dr. Geoffrey Mount Varner has spent over 35 years on the front lines of emergency medicine, leading responses to mass casualties and even the Ebola crisis in Washington, D.C. He has treated more than 100,000 patients in his career. He survived cancer three times. He has raised teenagers along the way, so he knows first-hand the cost of hesitation and the power of bold, decisive action.
Dr. Geoffrey is the author of a book called Fast Decisions, which has become a bestseller and serves as a blueprint for mastering the split-second choices that shape our lives. His work isn’t just about surviving emergencies. It’s about thriving. It’s about learning how to trust yourself, overcome fear, and make the kinds of daily health and lifestyle decisions that lead to more resilience, more joy, and ultimately, more years lived fully. In this conversation, we’re going to explore how his lessons from the ER can help all of us build healthier habits, reduce stress, and extend our health span, so we can live not just longer lives, but better ones. Let’s dive in. Here’s my conversation with Dr. Geoffrey Mount Varner.
Dr. Geoffrey, thank you so much for being on the show. Ever since we met, I’ve been looking forward to the opportunity to sit down with you and have this conversation. I’m excited to learn from you. I’m excited for our audience to learn from you and from your wisdom, experience, and expertise. Thank you so much for being with us.
Thank you very much for having me. After our conversation, I’ve been excited. Not only that, I went back and listened to some of your other shows. You are truly doing God’s work. They were interesting and helpful.
Turning A Huge Challenge Into A Powerful Motivator
Thank you very much. I would love to start off with a little bit about your own personal journey. I always think it’s fascinating and interesting to uncover where people’s passions come from and what led them to where they are. You’ve had quite an amazing journey. Would you mind sharing a little bit about how you ended up where you are? What has led you here?
Thank you for that. Let me shape it into a story. What you may not be able to figure out or what you may soon figure out is that I’m a stutterer. I’ve been stuttering since the day I was born. The reason why that’s important will come out in about one minute. Growing up a stutterer, you can imagine the kids teasing you. The bullies tease you. Remember in third grade when you got to read as far as you could and then, as soon as you messed up, someone else got to read?
I hated to read because as soon as I would read, I would stutter. The bullies would tease me, and so forth and so on. As a stutterer, you learn to make sure you make succinct statements, succinct thoughts, because every word that you speak could be a possible stutter. The bullies would tease you. The bullies would want to fight you. Because I had to train myself to be very succinct in my thinking, that increased my critical thinking skills.
With that increase in critical thinking skills, I went on to Hampton. I major in Math. From there, I go on to Harvard. I became an emergency medicine physician, which requires quick critical thinking and short statements. What appeared to be a problem was actually a help. It was God’s way of helping me. The point is that often we think that something is done to us or it’s bad for us, but it’s God positioning you for something better.
A problem may be God’s way of helping us. He uses a challenge to position us for something better.
You’re a master of making quick decisions. That’s where that came from. That’s amazing. I love that framework. Something that felt like a big problem or a challenge, or why is this happening to me, turned into what led you to where you are. It is ultimately the seed of that.
People ask me how I learned to make such big decisions so fast. If you think about it, at a very young age, I had to decide on what words, because ST words would make me stutter, and R words would make me stutter. In the middle of a sentence, I had to learn to make a decision about which word. That trains your brain. It’s similar to life. Anything we do in repetition, we generally get good at.
Surviving Cancer Three Times
If you don’t mind sharing, I know you’re a multiple-time cancer survivor as well. Could you talk about that part of your journey and how that led you to where you are, too?
Zach, you went right there. Let me set it up. I talk about it in my bestseller, Fast Decisions. I mention that because my book, Fast Decisions, is not about cancer. The intro is about cancer, and then I don’t mention cancer until the end of the book. Here’s why. I was told I had a prostate biopsy. It was negative. I’m good. I’m the man. It’s good. According to medical literature, I don’t need to be tested again for at least five years. That was in May 2023 or something.
In July that same year, I had a hernia. People say, “You have a hernia, so bad.” Because I like getting things done fast, the doctor says to me, “We can do it now, or we can do it later,” because there was no rush. I chose to do it now. The reason that’s so important is that when you have surgery, they do pre-op labs. I decided to check my PSA. That’s the screening lab for prostate cancer. I was checking it randomly. It was high, Zach. It had no reason to be high. Again, that hernia was my blessing.
Move it forward. After a few visits with the doctor back and forth, on December 4th, I was told that I have malignant prostate cancer. I go through all that. I have the surgery done, and so then I am good. Everybody says that the surgery went well. They call me back and say, “Your lymph nodes are positive. You’ve got to get additional treatment.” I go see the radiation oncologist. She says, “You’re good. We’re going to watch it. It may not move for ten years. Nothing may happen.” At the very next visit, my PSA level started to go up. The next thing I know, I’m doing radiation.
Some more labs were out of order. I’m doing radiation, and I’m doing cancer medicine. I had 114 medical appointments in eighteen months. In the last ten years, I may have had ten appointments because they were all follow-ups. They were all routine care. Let me land my plane. If it were not for the hernia, I would have never found out, because there was no reason to test my PSA. The decisions I had to make quickly to get this thing done and get it fixed definitely saved my life.
That’s amazing. You said ten years cancer-free?
I wish it were ten years. I got my cancer clearance a few months ago. I’ve got to check it every three months. This is going to seem odd. The journey made me a better person. The journey changed me. I never asked God, “Why me?” I said, “What are you trying to teach me? What am I trying to learn?” What I did learn in the process is that it’s always important to have a purpose because if you have a purpose, you have a focus. If you don’t know what your purpose is, I would encourage your audience to wake up in the middle of the night, maybe 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, alone. Sit quietly and ask yourself, “What do I like doing? What am I good at?” Your purpose will gradually flow to you.
If you don’t have a purpose, then you don’t have a focus. It crystallized and clarified your purpose for you as you’re going through that process.
It did. It made me a different person. I was talking to one of my mentors, who has known me for 50 years. I said, “Reverend, I thought I was going to be cooler, calmer, and wiser.” This is after he and I had talked for an hour. He said, “You’re definitely wiser, but you’re definitely more impatient.” I said, “I thought you were supposed to be patient.” He said, “No, you understand that life is fragile. You want to move. You don’t want to waste time.” He’s right.
You like things to happen quickly.
You will get this because you are a successful person. Often, people make decisions. They view them as right or wrong. You shouldn’t view it that way. You should view it as either you learn from it or it’s right. Every decision gets you to the next. If you pause on your decisions, you don’t get to the next one. You don’t get to the next phase. Making the decision quickly is helpful. The sooner you make it, if it doesn’t give you the outcome, you still have time to correct it.
Live And Eat As If You Have Cancer
You mentioned that going through this journey has made you a better person. Could you talk a little bit more about that? In what ways and how do you see yourself before versus now? How has that changed you? Were there also lifestyle choices or lifestyle changes that came into play?
There were significant lifestyle changes that happened. I’ve always been an athlete. I’ve always been a runner. I used to run 9 miles a day, five days a week. That was the most humbling part of the cancer because while I didn’t lose my hair, my running kept going down and down. Running 5 miles is painful. Some people might sit there and say, “I can only do 2 miles.” We are talking about me, and 9 miles was my lifestyle. That was the painful part because it was a sign that my body wasn’t right.
I had to change my lifestyle. Part of that was my sleeping habits and my food. Hyper-processed foods and high sugar foods play a unique role as it relates to cancer, especially prostate cancer. I’m not sure that you and I talked about this, Zach. What we do know is that, of your audience, 42% will develop cancer, and 100% of them will know someone with cancer. What’s my point? It’s very important for people to live and eat as if they have cancer because 42% is quite high. If you eat that way, you can slow it down. Many studies show that there are certain cancers that you can almost stop by eating.
That’s a big number, 42%. I want to reiterate what you said. Live and eat as if you had cancer. When you say that for our audience, what do you mean? What advice do you have for us as far as living and eating as if we had cancer, because 42% of us will develop cancer at some point in our lives?
I’m glad you asked that. I’m going to get technical for one moment, for about 90 seconds. One example would be when you have cancer, the communication between your cells is disrupted. There’s an enzyme called connexin that goes down. Your cells lose communication. Guess what? Parsley and celery help replace that enzyme. If you change your diet enough, you can slow that cancer. Make sure you eat right. Eating right simply means eating cruciferous vegetables. Those are your cauliflowers and broccoli.
Make sure that you drink your water. That’s roughly about 6 to 8, 16-ounce bottles of water every single day. Most importantly, and this is key, make sure you decrease the amount of processed foods. That’s your McDonald’s and your Doritos. Limit your sugar intake because cancer grows in two ways. Sugar is the main way because the other way is a longer pathway. If you decrease your hyper-processed sugars, you will decrease your risk of developing cancer.
That’s great advice. Thanks for sharing that, parsley and celery, vegetables. Basically, we need to eliminate processed foods from our diet. That seems to be very clear across the board now. Sugar is like an atomic bomb going off in our bodies. If we can eliminate those things, then maybe that 42% number could be significantly decreased in our country, right?
It is. I look at you. I can tell that you eat and live a certain way. When you eat and live a certain way, it’s expressed in your body. I’m not telling people to turn into vegans, although there’s nothing wrong with being a vegan, but moderate what you eat.
Running Nine Miles And Reflections As A Father
You said 9 miles a day, five days a week. That’s a lot of running. What’s your running regimen look like now?
I’m up to 9 miles every other day. I’m slowly getting there. As a result of the cancer medicine, I had put on weight. I put on 14 pounds. People say, “That’s nothing.” You are in great shape. Imagine that you put on 14 pounds. You feel differently. I’ve taken off about 8 pounds of that. To be honest with you, that has played a unique role in my psyche. I feel better overall. Especially, it’s a sign that my life is normalizing again.
Congrats on that. That’s amazing.
Thank you.
You’ve also raised teenagers successfully. That’s another part of your life that can be a crucible. You’re a successful parent as well. Congrats on that.
Thank you. Let me comment on that. I’ve been fortunate, God bless me. I’ve done some hot stuff. The best thing and the most humbling thing I’ve ever done was being a father. That has made it all worth it. My wife and I get along, but if I die, she’s a pretty woman. She’ll get married again. I was concerned about my kids, my sisters with whom I’m very close, and my mom. That played a role, especially the kids, because although they’re older, I’m sure that you can appreciate it as well. Having a father around makes a difference.
How To Make Fast Decisions And Change Your Life
You mentioned that this process helped you crystallize your purpose. That gave you a focus. Do you have a way of expressing your purpose in a sentence or two? What would you say is your purpose now that you’ve gone through that journey and crystallized it?
My purpose, believe it or not, is that I’ve noticed that I’m an encourager. I teach people to make decisions. At the end of the day, and I’m going to make sure I land my airplane on this as well, we are all products of our decisions. Only the successful people like to admit it. We have seen many young people, kids, and even older people wreak havoc in their lives because they didn’t know how to make a decision. I’ve committed and dedicated my life to teaching people to make decisions. My unique perspective, given that I’m an ER doctor, is to make decisions when you have the pressure of time as well.
Let’s break that down. Let’s get into that because you’re an expert on that. You’ve developed and trained your brain how to do that through overcoming stuttering throughout your life and dealing with that challenge. You’ve treated more than 100,000 patients as an ER doctor and are making life and death decisions very quickly every day. You’ve obviously written books about it, so now you’ve researched it as well and have a framework around that. Could you walk us through those fast decisions and the decision-making framework that you’ve put together for us?
It’s important to lay the foundation. People should look at decisions in three ways. You have your low-consequence decisions. Those are what to eat or what to wear. You should spend very little time, in fact, no time, thinking about those. Those are the regular ones that we make. You have your medium-consequence ones, such as, “Are you going to take a job here? Are you going to take a job there?” Those are reversible, with little consequences, and moderate ones.
You’ve got the ones that have major consequences, who you marry, whether or not you’re going to buy a house, and whether or not you’re going to move across the country. You want to spend most of your time focusing on those decisions. Why? It is because there’s something called decision fatigue. We’ve all experienced it. As the day goes by, our brains become tired from making decisions, so we get less efficient at making decisions. The goal is to spend as little time as you can on the low-consequence ones and focus on the most important ones.
A few people in life that you and I have heard of did it well. Have you ever wondered why Einstein always wore a black or a gray suit? Steve Jobs always wore a black sweatshirt. Obama always wore a gray suit, and even Mark Zuckerberg always wore a gray sweatshirt. It wasn’t the color. It was the fact that they wore the same thing all the time. In an article in Vanity Fair, all of them, with the exception of Einstein, of course, talked about how they did that because they didn’t want to spend any time on the decisions that didn’t matter. They wanted to save their decision energy for later. I would encourage people. Make sure that you spend time focusing on the decisions that matter. Those are usually those that are in the medium and high-consequences decision bracket.
Dealing With Decision Fatigue And Staying Focused
That’s a groundwork in that focusing our attention because we have decision fatigue that happens throughout the day. Can you break that down? How do we set ourselves up to get to that place where we’re focusing on those major decisions most of the time?
A few things. Most decisions are made before they even happen. Why? It is because of the groundwork, the pre-work, meaning the three biggest factors when it comes to decisions are mindset, fear, and confidence. Working on those now prepares you for when the major decisions happen. I’ve got three or four different frameworks. Let’s say right now, you haven’t done any groundwork. You want to learn something from this show.
You have a sudden decision you need to make. You’re not sure what to do. It seems simple, but there’s a physiological reason for it. First, I call it the DPD framework. Take a deep breath. The science behind that is simply that a deep breath gives you access to a certain area of your brain called the locus coeruleus, as well as to the amygdala, which is the emotional center of your brain. The reason why that’s important is 94% of our decisions are emotional. Taking a deep breath allows you to calm those emotions down.
94% of our decisions are emotional. Avoid making the wrong ones by taking a deep breath and calming those emotions down.
Take a pause and then decide. You say, “Dr. Geoffrey, I don’t have any more information.” Hold on, you should do.” By slowing down and taking a deep breath, and that pause, it gives you access to your subconscious. Your subconscious, believe it or not, doesn’t forget a thing. We call it gut. We call it our intuition. The DPD framework gives you access to it, so it plays a role in your decision-making. Does that make sense?
Yes, absolutely. I love that. That’s simple. DPD, deep breath, pause, and then decide. That actually helps us access that subconscious part of our brain where everything is stored ultimately. That’s a simple thing to do. Can you walk us through an example? You’re treating one of your patients. It’s a quick life and death decision. Walk us through what that looks like in your day-to-day life.
I was working in a hospital in Hagerstown, Maryland, in a trauma center. I walked in, and there was already a major trauma going on. There was blood everywhere. The ambulance brought them in. They weren’t able to call us, so I walked in. The blood is coming from everywhere. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m the guy in charge. I am the head doctor. I already have my algorithms about how you work a trauma, A, B, C, D, and so on. I take a deep breath.
What that does is it calms me. I pause. What that does is it gives me access to information that I already know. I make a decision. The decision I make is, “Stop. Slow down. Everyone, relax.” It is because the patient arrives suddenly versus a call-in. That allowed everyone to breathe and relax. It allowed me to go through my algorithm, airway, breathing, circulation, and disability. That was a time when taking a deep breath allowed me to gather myself. I know you’re thinking, “You’re the ER doctor. You should have been ready.” You’re always ready, but this was a trauma that walked in. We usually have at least a few minutes’ notice, so that’s an example when it was very helpful.
That’s helpful to see. All of us have opportunities to practice this, even as a parent, or when your kids are in the middle of stuff and things can get heated quickly. I imagine even deep breath, pausing, and de-escalating to make that decision on how to respond.
You’re right. This isn’t a framework, but it’s a rule. It’s called the 10-second rule. That’s basically this. When you don’t know what to do, give yourself 10 seconds and decide. Why 10 seconds? Let me remind you. I said that most of our decisions are emotive. They come from our emotions. We love to say, “I’m objective,” and so forth. No, most of us are not. The 10-second rule gives yourself that, “I’ve got to make a decision within 10 seconds.” It keeps fear in your brain from taking over because fear will bombard your amygdala.
It will naturally make you fearful, whereas you say, “I’m going to give myself 10 seconds. No matter what happens, I’m going to decide.” It’s called the 10-second rule. Let’s be clear. You don’t use that when you have time and when there’s no pressure. If you know that you don’t have enough time, you want to use it because here’s why. No decision is a decision, or a delayed decision is a decision. The reason why I highlight this is that often people say, “If I wait,” or “I need to think about it.” No. The environment and circumstances could change, or someone else who’s not as equipped as you could make the decision that you should be making.
Transforming Fear Into Real Action
I want to ask you more about fear. You brought this up. Fear can flood our amygdala. Often, that paralyzes people. Is there a strategy that you’ve used or that you teach to transform that fear into action to remove that or work around that fear?
In the book, there’s a process. Don’t forget I said that most of your training comes prior to the storm. You’ve got to train yourself on making these decisions. Training yourself about fear or your fears is key. Let me set it up this way. They say we have 27 different human emotions. When you break them down, it comes down to love and fear. Love was a natural part of life, but God gave us fear so we could experience love. If you only have love, you don’t really know what it is. If you have fear there, it allows you to experience what love is. We only have two natural fears: the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. Any other fear is self-created. Guess what, Zach? If it’s self-created, it can be uncreated. It can be worked on.
That’s fascinating that we actually only have two natural fears. Any other fears that lead to anxiety, worry, and all of those things, we’re creating those ourselves over the course of our lifetime.
Yes, but I’m going to tell you that people have difficulty accepting that. Here’s why. People don’t consciously want to be victims, but it does not allow them to be victims anymore. I get it. There are some bad things that have happened to us that have caused these fears that were out of your control. There are some unfortunate things that have happened. We are sorry for those things. However, they’ve happened. You’ve got to figure out a way to process, and in the book, I go through it, or work it out so that it’s no longer a fear.
These things that have happened to us, I don’t think they come from my God, but they’ve happened to us. They’re meant to be used as a jump point for us, a turning point for us, and a lesson that we can build on for the rest of our lives. Whatever that trauma was that led to that fear, overcoming that fear gives you access to the lesson that you should have learned from it, or that you could have learned from it.
Fear is meant to be used as a jumping point that we can build on for the rest of our lives.
I have to be clear because someone’s going to call them. In no way am I saying that someone deserved it. It should have happened. I am not saying that. I’m simply saying that it’s happened to you now. I’m sorry about it, but it’s important for us to go through the process so you can move on and turn that tragedy into a win. It’s my first time being on stage. I can say that I had cancer three times. I’m not just saying it. I was up in the middle of the night, alone, thinking, “It’s cancer back again.”
You’ve been through it. You’ve been through your own journey there. I love the bigger picture framework and how you’re helping people transform their lives through the work that you’re doing. You’re saving people’s lives every day in the emergency room, but through your message and through the book. You’re trying to help people accomplish. Because we are products of our decisions, what we’re walking around experiencing all day, every day, is the result of our decisions that we make.
You’ve given us a framework to overcome these fears that we’ve built up in our lives, throughout the course of our lives, because of oftentimes things that happen to us. They come into our brains. We process that as either a good thing that we want to hold on to or a negative thing that we want to resist. Those negative things we want to resist turn into fears, oftentimes those patterns. We’ve created those fears. This is another way of working around those and removing those obstacles in our lives.
You are factually correct, but I’m going to give it a different language, because I know what people are going to say. You said we created those fears. That is correct. Someone is going to interpret that we created those fears. Someone’s next thought is going to be, “I didn’t ask that to happen to me.” No, we’re not saying that. We’re simply saying the thoughts that we have, as a result of that, we create.
Thanks for clarifying that.
I’ve lectured hundreds of times. People have been traumatized. They immediately want to jump on us. We’re on the same team. We’re about encouraging people. We’re about making sure you live a better life. Sometimes, you’ve got to slow the process and say, “That’s not what we’re saying.”
Setting Alarms Five Times A Day
Going back a little bit, the 10-second rule and the DPD are great little nuggets that people can take and even do right now as we go through the rest of our day, even to make decisions in a different way. Any other frameworks that are helpful for people?
This is a habit now. It’s about your habitual thoughts. The exercise that I want to give the audience is to set the alarm on your phone for five random times throughout the day, and then let it go off. Ask yourself, “What were you thinking?” The reason why that’s important is that we all have an underlying habitual thought or have a baseline of habitual thoughts. We don’t even realize, but it’s that thought we’re thinking. As we’re not doing much or as we’re not concentrating, it’s that thought. You have to ask yourself, “What are my habitual thoughts?” Your habitual thoughts are what you’re creating. Most things that happen to us in our lives, we create with our thoughts. You’ve got to know what your habitual thoughts are. You can ingest them if necessary.
That’s such an easy, practical thing. It brings awareness to what we’re thinking in that moment and then helps us recognize that throughout other parts of our day, too.
It brings awareness. A lie is never bad, but the worst person to ever lie to is yourself. It forces you to look in the mirror. “What are my habitual thoughts?” Some people like to say, “I’m big, bad, and bold,” but if they slow down and explore their habitual thoughts, they may not be as big, bad, or bold. By exploring your own thoughts, guess who gets to fix it? You. No one has to know, unless you choose to shake.
The worse person to ever lie to is yourself.
Staying Confident In The Decision-Making Process
That’s a great little practical tip. Thank you for sharing that. I’m going to do that. Here’s a question. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. You talk about confidence as an important factor in making decisions. You’ve gone through the process. You’ve taken a deep breath. You’ve paused. You make a decision. It’s a quick decision because there’s pressure, but then what happens when the outcome is negative? What happens when you’ve gone through this process and the person on the table doesn’t make it? How do you deal with decisions that you made that don’t go well? What tips do you have for people to continue to overcome that, to remain confident in the decision-making process?
Let’s not use the ER example because my comments will come across as insensitive. That’s not how I think about patients. Let’s be outside the ER. What we’re talking about is mindset. I touched on it earlier. Often, we think of our decisions as right or wrong. Here’s the truth. Nobody is God. Therefore, not all of our decisions are going to be right, so don’t put that pressure on yourself. View them as, “Do they give you the outcome, or do they not give you the outcome?” If they don’t give you the outcome, say, “I didn’t get the outcome, but I’ve learned.”
For instance, my kids are taught that we never lose. We never take losses. We either win or we learn a lesson. Either win, or you learn a lesson. When you have a decision that didn’t give you the outcome, what’s the lesson you learned? Unless you purposely made a wrong decision. That’s where people get caught up. They put a lot of pressure on themselves. “How could I decide that?” Slow down. You didn’t decide wrong on purpose.
Don’t put that pressure on you. You decided that because of what you saw in that environment at that time, and your past. You did optimally under the circumstances, so give yourself grace. My point is, when it doesn’t give you the outcome, be prepared to make another decision. What happens is that people want to lick their wounds. “I made a decision. It didn’t work out. I don’t believe it. What am I going to do?” No. Get back in that chair. Every decision leads you to the next decision. The sooner you decide, the more time you have a chance to fix those decisions that did not give you your desired outcome.
I love that mindset of what you mentioned. We either win, we made the right decision, or we learn. Therefore, you can go through life and know that it’s working for you in your favor. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. You’re going to have some failures, some setbacks, challenges, grief, and loss along the way, too, but how are we learning from every moment that comes our way?
I’ll use a real example in the ER. I’m an older doctor now. Some of the residents, when you don’t get the outcome you want, and the patient does not do well, it bothers them more. Not that I’m insensitive, but I have an overall view that, usually, an ER is located within an area that manages a region, a section of people. Those people need the ER available to them. Part of an ER doctor’s job is to keep the ER moving, no matter what, because there are always patients coming in. There are always patients waiting.
No matter what happens with that one patient, if you didn’t get the outcome, you still have to be prepared to go see the next. Not that you’re insensitive, but it’s a mindset of, “That didn’t work out. Whatever decision I had, it’s not like I did it on purpose.” I’m a humble servant of God. In the 35 years of doing this, I’ve had patients who come in who should have died, and they did not die. I’ve had patients come in who should not have died, and they died. There was no fault, but we have to recognize that there’s a bigger Creator who decides what’s going to happen.
You have to take life as it comes.
Your audience is going to make it seem like I’m insensitive, but I’m not. I’m saying that when I’m in the ER, I’m taking care of your loved one, but I’m also responsible for making sure that the ER is available for everybody. If you back up the ER with one patient, there are a hundred that are not being seen.
You’ve been doing this for 35 years, so you have a much broader, longer-term view as well.
Exactly, I have a different mindset about it.
Designing A Course About Making Decisions
This is so fascinating, Dr. Geoffrey. I appreciate the way that you’ve taken concepts that can be big and challenging. You’ve broken them down into simple things that have physiological outcomes in our minds and bodies as well. I love the DPD and the 10-second rule.
No decision is a decision.
Yes, don’t delay it. Where can people find you? How can we get your book? What’s on the horizon? Also, it’s part of that question. What’s on the horizon for you that you’re most excited about?
I have a course that is being created now on decision-making, and so I’m excited. A corporation is funding this course, but it trains people, kids, teachers, and executives on how to make decisions. Where they can find my book is that they can go to Amazon and simply type in ‘Doctor Decisions.’ My book comes up. It is a bestseller. There’s even a special that’s going on. If you buy the book, once you get it, inside is a QR code.
Once you scan that, you’ll get a free ebook, Training Your Mind for Split-Second Decisions, which was my first bestseller a few years ago. I’m uniquely positioned to make this world a better place. You nailed it early on, Zach. My kids drive me. They’re in the background of everything because making sure they make good decisions helps me think about other people. We are all the product of our decisions. If you learn to make good decisions, your life is going to be better.
We are the product of our decisions. Learn to make good ones and your life will be better.
Simply put, there you go. This is how you’re transforming people’s lives. I love that. When is the course going to be ready?
The course will be ready on November 1st, but in the meantime, I would highly encourage people to get the book. Read the intro because the intro sets it up, and then do some of the process. Do some of the skills we talked about. There’s another skill that is key. There’s another skill that is in the book, where people often don’t want to make a quick decision. We give them a low-risk training or practice session. You go to the store. First, you have your list, and you give yourself ten minutes. You’ve got ten minutes to get in that store, either in line or to your car.
I recommend being in line because we don’t know how long the lines are. You got ten minutes or whatever amount of time that you choose to get everything that’s on your list and get in line. Here’s the kicker. You don’t get it. You get in line, and you don’t go home with it. It forces you to make decisions. Decide fast. The feedback that I am getting is that people are like, “I have no idea how difficult.” When you don’t go home with your bread, it changes you. It seems simple, but it changes you. You’re like, “Wait a minute. I can get everything I need.” You’re not allowed to go back in that store and get it until it’s time for you to go to the store again, because you have to learn the lesson.
Get In Touch With Dr. Varner
It is the natural consequence there. Thank you so much for sharing the larger framework and these practical things as well. Thank you for the work that you’re doing to impact people’s lives in a significant way. I love that it’s so practical. The things that you’re giving us are simple and practical. We can implement them right away. Thank you so much for making these big concepts easy and giving us practical application to them as well, to change our lives even in the moment.
Thank you very much for having me. There are bigger frameworks in there, but I don’t like overwhelming people. What we talked about is actionable. People can do it, and it can change their lives.
I encourage everyone to check out your book. Search up ‘Doctor Decisions.’ Get the free ebook as well, and then the course coming out here. By the time this episode is published, the course will probably be out. It’s perfect timing.
They can go to AmericasDecisionsExpert.com. That’s the name of my company. The course will be available on that.
We’ll do it. Thank you so much for being with us, Dr. Geoffrey. It has been fascinating, informative, and helpful, so thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you very much.
We’ll see you soon.
See you soon.
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What a great and practical conversation with Dr. Geoffrey. I learned so much, and I hope you did too. Starting from the beginning, we talked about how sometimes the biggest challenges in our lives lead ultimately to our purpose and our passion, and into the ways that we can help make the world a better place. His stutter led him to what he’s doing now to make a huge impact in the world. I love that, and that’s probably the case for all of us. Those things that are challenges can lead us into great purpose. When we have purpose, we have focus.
A couple of other things that stood out were that 42% of people in the US will develop cancer at some point in their lives. Statistically speaking, that’s a big number, so we want to live and eat as if we had cancer. Cutting out as many processed foods and sugars as possible, and eating as many vegetables as possible, are going to help with that. Clarifying our purpose. I mentioned waking up sometimes, like we do at 3:00 AM or 4:00 AM, and asking ourselves, “What are we good at? What do we enjoy doing that can lead us to finding that?”
He gave us these frameworks. If we can automate the low-consequence choices in our lives, then we can spend more of our brain capacity and mental energy, focusing on the major choices and the things that are going to have major consequences in our lives. How can we automate some of those lower-consequence activities? I love setting a timer for five times a day, just to catch yourself thinking and say, “What was I thinking about?” so we can become aware of and pay attention to our thoughts a little more.
The DPD framework, which involves taking a deep breath, and then pause, and then deciding. That gives us access to our subconscious thinking as well and puts us in more of a driver’s seat rather than the reactive mode. We have the 10-second rule. We’re going to decide within 10 seconds. We can take up to 10 seconds, and that no decision is a decision, so we’re just delaying something or leaving it for someone else, which is not going to be ideal.
One other thing that stuck out to me, too, is that we only have two emotions at the root of everything. It’s love or fear. We only have two natural fears, which are loud noises and falling. Overcoming fear is a big part of this, and he gave us some frameworks for that as well. It’s having that mindset to think about. “Did I make the right decision? If not, how do I learn from this?”
Check him out. We mentioned he has a new course coming out. You can search on Amazon for ‘Doctor Decisions’ to find his book Fast Decisions. It’s a bestseller. He has a larger framework there as well and breaks it down. I hope you’ll take these away and even implement and practice them today. Thanks so much for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time here on Fully Alive.
Important Links
- Dr. Geoffrey Mount Varner’s Website
- Fast Decisions
- Fast Decisions – on Amazon
- Training Your Mind for Split-Second Decisions
- Dr. Geoffrey Mount Varner on LinkedIn