Now, I don’t know about you, but sometimes I'm walking down the street, and suddenly I start thinking about this. I need to get this done. I can get this done. I get really anxious about it, and there’s no reason for me to feel that way. When I think about someone—and I have a lot of people in my life who do not have great health—all they want is to get better. All they want is to be able to get out of bed and walk again. One of my close friends and mentors is bedridden. He has ALS and can't get out of bed unassisted.

He’s a great guy. He’s brilliant, successful, kind, and athletic—but no longer. All he can do is sit in bed and think. He’s like Tuesdays with Morrie. It’s very sad. He has lost the ability to do what you and I take for granted—to get up and walk—and he’s lost his health. That’s why it's so important to take care of your health and to nurture your time. I do a lot. We’ve talked about this in other videos.

I do a lot to try to keep myself as healthy as possible. No matter how healthy I try to be, I could step off a curb one day and it could all be over just like that. That's out of my control. I can only do my best to keep myself in the best shape possible. Time is something a little different.

How do I spend my time, and who do I spend it with? They say you are the sum total of the five people you spend most of your time with. I don’t know if that's true, but I try to surround myself with people I enjoy being with. Now, if you invite me to go out on your boat and sit around for six hours in the sun, drinking White Claws and talking about nothing, I’m going to decline. I won't do that anymore because my time is too valuable.

I won't give that time away. So, I try to live my life by what my mentor Dan Sullivan calls your “unique ability”—doing what I love to do. And I try to live my life with people who also love what they do. Hopefully, they feel the same. I’m very fortunate. I like my family. I love my wife. My wife and I spend a lot of time together. We vacation together. We live together. We go to New York together. I’m very fortunate that we enjoy most of the same things—not everything, but most. And that’s what makes any relationship better. Hopefully, I make her a better person too.

We’re synergistic. Our one-on-one isn’t just two; it’s probably three once we’re aligned. So, it's important to spend time with the people you love. Now, if you're in a practice and you don't love your job, find something else to do, or find a way to make your job something you love.

Let's say you're a dentist and you hate doing dentistry but love the business side. Stop doing dentistry, hire people to handle that, and focus on the business. Or if you love dentistry but hate the business side, hire someone to manage the business so you don’t have to.

In my practice, my best skill is probably treating patients and doing that kind of work. But what I really enjoy is creating the systems, the vision, and the team of loving people, because I love my team. I love spending time in the office. People ask, “When are you going to retire, Mike?” I'm 71 years old. Why retire from something you love? I do it two days a week, which doesn’t strain my back and keeps me physically fit. And I get to spend those two days with patients I love treating and with my team. I think that's really important. I know what my gift is: improving the quality of life for the patients I serve.

Pablo Picasso said something very interesting, which was shared with me by Taylor, one of my teammates who runs the front desk area. She’s now our Chief of Hospitality. She said, “The meaning of life is to find your gift, but the purpose of life is to give it away.” That’s actually a quote from Picasso. I’ll say it again: “The meaning of life is to find your gift, but the purpose of life is to give it away.” It’s similar to saying that the two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you figure out what to do with your gift.

So, I hope you figure out your gifts. I hope you live in your unique ability. I hope you do what you love and get to do it every day. And if you’re not, spend some time thinking about what that is and try to change your life so you can do what you love on a daily basis, so you can be a gift to others.