"Success is more of an emotion than something you can write on the wall or a degree you can show. Achievement matters and accomplishment matters, but it's more the feeling that goes with it than the actual thing. It's like safety, security, money, it does matter but if it's just the thing and it has no meaning behind it, it's useless. To me, success is, can you feel good today? Can you enjoy exactly who you are the way you are? Your height, your weight, your skin tone, your family, your income, your house, your city, all those things. Can you enjoy today while setting up tomorrow so that you're still going up to another peak? If this is the end, if you die tonight, you're like, that was a nice life. I really liked what I did. If you're alive tomorrow and a year from now and 10 years from now, it keeps going up." ~Dr. Matt Larsen

Successful Musicians Podcast Episode 44

 

Interviewee: Dr. Matt Larsen

Interviewer: Jason Tonioli

 

 

Hey, this is Jason Tonioli. I’m a piano player that grew up believing it wasn’t possible to earn a living and support a family with music. I’ve proven that idea was wrong and I’ve met hundreds of other people who have found success with their music. This podcast features stories of musicians who have found their own personal version of success and fulfillment in both music and life. This podcast is meant to inspire musicians and help them believe in their abilities and motivate them to share their talents with others. This is the Successful Musicians Podcast. 

 

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Jason: Welcome to the show today. My special guest is a long-time friend and I call him my kid brother, one of my best friends growing up, Dr. Matt Larsen. You’re a psychiatrist, and you specialize in both adult and children. You’re living in Idaho Falls, Idaho now which is awesome. A couple of things, I’ve enjoyed following you for years. I still remember when you were this little annoying kid in elementary school that wanted to always play with us out in the sandbox as a kid. You are one of the wittiest people for making posts on Facebook. I think you know how to push buttons on people and just make people think, which I’ve loved. You’re also a really good musician and actor. I see stuff all the time on Facebook where you’ve done plays. You make a really mean-looking Trunchbull from the Matilda show that you did.

 

Dr. Larsen: Playing a villain woman was exciting.

 

Jason: Villain woman? Oh, yeah. This is going to be a really fun interview. On your bio, it actually says all the doctor stuff and where you got your degree and all that. Then it says you enjoy singing, dancing, and have a mean Irish accent when you’re at work. I can only imagine as you’re in the hospital or talking with somebody, if you need to lighten it up, that it can be fun. I’m just impressed. You’re a person that is living life to their fullest and you’ve integrated music into helping people. I think, especially psychiatry and suicide prevention, that’s a topic that I don’t think a lot of people want to talk about, even though it’s probably touched nearly everybody at some point in their life. Welcome to the show.

 

Dr. Larsen: Thank you. It’s a pleasure being here.

 

Jason: You’ve never had an introduction like that, I’m sure, right?

 

Dr. Larsen: No. No, they’re usually very, you went to school at this place, graduated at this time.

 

Jason: You’re a mean-Trunchbull.

 

Dr. Larsen: I did get to throw a girl by her pigtails. That was fun.

 

Jason: That was awesome. Your mom actually taught piano lessons; I know. So maybe let’s start at the beginning of how in the world did somebody start in music and Mom teaches piano and now you’re a psychiatrist of all things, but you still are integrating music into your life and doing it a lot.

 

Dr. Larsen: I grew up with the piano being the background. It was the soundtrack of my life because between piano students, me learning, my brother learning, my sister, playing for church, playing for events in town, piano was the background of everything. Of course, I reached the point when I revolted against my mother and said, I refuse to play piano anymore. You can’t make me. She said, you can’t quit music, so I said, fine, I’ll join the choir. That became the basis of my enjoyment. They got me into plays, got me into choirs. It got me to Carnegie Hall in high school singing on Palm Sunday, Handel’s Messiah. Then into college, got me into the touring jazz choir. As I was going through freshman year, I was taking all music classes, voice diction for actors, opera workshop, all these things freshman year. Then I got back to my mission, and I realized I’m not good enough to make it as a musician, as a career. I’ll have five roommates in a small apartment, and that’ll be my life. I was like, I’m really good at science, and I love people, and I think I can be a doctor, and I think I can keep music involved heavily in my life both as a hobby and as something I use at work.

 

So I took the 10-year hiatus from music and plays and everything to get education done, and then I got back into theater, back into music, joined a local community choir, and three years ago we sang in the Lincoln Center on Broadway with all these Broadway stars and huge concerts, and I’m like, it’s kind of fun to bring it all back around and keep it going.

 

Jason: How cool is that? You’ve done all kinds of cool stuff with music in your work. Did you ever expect that you’d be able to continue doing music as much as you have with…

 

Dr. Larsen: No, because growing up, I always had the impression somehow that you get to do one big thing in your life and you kind of settle. I’ve watched people who repeatedly, they talk about when they peaked. Some people at 40 are still talking about the touchdown from high school and some people are still talking about the spiritual experience 20 years ago on their mission. The peak should keep coming. You should have another and another and another in music, in career, in spirituality. The peak, like I sing in the Lincoln Center, and I was like, that was amazing. Now I’ve played bigger roles in my hometown and now I have a different job and I’m like, I don’t think I’ve peaked. I’m doing three things I love at the moment. I hope five years from now it’s three different things that are even cooler and more interesting. I hope it’s like climbing a mountain where you think you fit the peak, you’re like, oh, this was a false peak. There’s the real one. That happens like 12 times.

 

Jason: It’s like that video game that you get bored of if you just stay at the same level all the time. You have to continually level up and you get bored of whatever it is you’re doing if you just stay on that same level.

 

Dr. Larsen: Exactly.

 

Jason: It’s amazing how many people actually do that. One of my favorite quotes I’ve heard recently is, I think it was Benjamin Franklin who said that most men die when they’re 25 years old. We just wait until they’re in their 70s to bury them.

 

Dr. Larsen: Right.

 

Jason: You do a lot of suicide prevention. This is a musician podcast. I’m sure as you look at the music genre, and you didn’t grow up to be a piano teacher like your mom, and you probably grew up thinking there is no way to have a career in music unless you want to be the band teacher, choir teacher, piano teacher, and that was music. When did you have that realization like, Man, I can’t do music and I’ve got to do something else? Or was it encouraged that you do go into music as a kid?

 

Dr. Larsen: It was encouraged that I keep music part of my life. It never had to be a career but it’s like, this will benefit your life no matter what. When I got into college, I realized it’s a little like generals in college. I have all these friends that complain, why do you need generals? Just give me the stuff for my degree. The generals are what make you an interesting, well-rounded person. That’s what music’s done. 07:36 Music doesn’t have to be part of my career, but it makes my life wonderful. That’s what keeps it fun. People say, well, how do you deal with suicide and self-harm and depression, anxiety, autism, ADHD all day long. One, I enjoy the people I work with. Two, at night, I go to rehearsal. I will perform. I listen to music. I go watch my kids and shows. There was a time when I realized how much work it takes to get paid well for anything. That’s when I realized music, it’s like maybe I could have made it, but I knew I’m not putting in the work and the time that it takes.

 

I’m not going to be that guy but I can do that for medicine. I can put in the energy and the time it takes to do community theater for free and sing choirs for fun and pay my own way to New York to sing at a concert. I’m not getting paid to sing. I’m paying to sing in the chorus for other people who are paid to sing.

 

Jason: The whole premise of this podcast is titled The Successful Musician. I’m curious, when you hear the word success and a musician or just even success in general, I’m curious what you and your mind think of as success or even when you’re consulting with people and talking to them about success. I’m sure most of the time somebody comes in, if they’re getting in front of you, they’re not feeling very successful at most things. What’s a psychiatrist’s definition? What’s your take on success and finding that fulfillment in life?

 

Dr. Larsen: For me, 09:15 success is enjoying today while setting up tomorrow. That’s the most basic definition I can give. I remember interviewing a doctor a couple of years ago who came to me and he spent the first half hour giving me his resume of all the things he’d done, all the programs he’d created at all the big universities and all the people who had reported to him, and he was miserable. He was coming to me because all of life was falling apart. He had millions of dollars and all the things, and he was awful. He hated life. He kept trying to prove to me he was successful. 

 

I was like, 09:53 Success is more of an emotion than something you can write on the wall or a degree you can show. Achievement matters and accomplishment matters, but it’s more the feeling that goes with it than the actual thing. It’s like safety, security, money, it does matter but if it’s just the thing and it has no meaning behind it, it’s useless. To me, success is, can you feel good today? Can you enjoy exactly who you are the way you are? Your height, your weight, your skin tone, your family, your income, your house, your city, all those things. Can you enjoy today while setting up tomorrow so that you’re still going up to another peak? If this is the end, if you die tonight, you’re like, that was a nice life. I really liked what I did. If you’re alive tomorrow and a year from now and 10 years from now, it keeps going up.

 

Jason: I’ve had several people mention that that feeling of success or when they achieve the big thing, oftentimes those really important things that they talk about require sacrifice. You suffer quite a bit usually to get that thing that was not an easy thing to get. What’s your take on the whole word sacrifice and suffering for that thing you really want to achieve in order for it to mean something?

 

Dr. Larsen: I believe it’s very true. You have to sacrifice your work. 11:20 I believe in the law of 10,000 hours. I don’t think you become an expert in anything until you’ve given 10,000 hours to it. That’s how long it took me to get good at prescribing and figuring out what’s actually wrong and what meds are worth taking and worth the side effects and the money and all those things, because lots of stuff isn’t. It takes a long time to get good at something. At the same time, I don’t believe in sacrifice for sacrifice’s sake or suffering just to suffer. I know people in medical school… Well, right now I train doctors who want to become psychiatrists, and also, I’ll see some of them still talk about, well, when I’m done, then I’ll be happy. I’ll have free time. I’m like, if you’re not happy as a medical student, you’ll never be happy as a resident. You’ll never be happy as an attending. You don’t get less responsibility. Each level up you do, you get more responsibility and more people asking for your time. The more specialized you get, the more everyone wants you and everyone has demands on you, and you’re the only one. You get this big savior complex and all these other things, but you can just work yourself into misery in an early grade.

 

When I think of success, of happiness, if you can’t enjoy elementary, middle school, high school, undergrad, college, whatever the educational level is, same thing in music. If you can’t enjoy each level along the way, you’re not going to enjoy it when you get the big break. The money will be nice, the fame will feel good, but I know amazing, successful musicians who have taken their own lives. It’s not just the accolades, that’s not enough. If you didn’t enjoy the journey there, you’re not going to enjoy the end destination.

 

Jason: Right. I think for a lot of people, it is. They struggle to find that happiness and joy in the moment. It’s interesting to see that. You talked about these musicians. We all know several names of successful people, musicians, actors, whatever they’ve taken their life. I’m curious, from a doctor-type point of view, I think everybody’s been touched by this. Are there things as a friend that we can watch out for? Or that you should be… Are there ways to prevent those types of things because when it does happen, I’m sure everybody who knows that person is like, Well, what if, what if? And the guilt is probably even worse now. What should you watch for and are there ways to help?

 

Dr. Larsen: There are ways to help. There are things to watch for. The hard part is knowing you can do all those things and it still happens. It’s a catch-22 of there are things to do and things to help. One is watching for those big moments when meaning changes. In the research I’ve done and read, when people have a big change in a relationship, they’re struggling in their main relationship with their marriage, there’s a legal problem, there’s a financial problem, when people see all the things they’ve created or all the meaning they had going away, they’re in big trouble. That’s a big moment of risk. Sometimes decreasing their means, meaning don’t have a load of guns in the house, don’t have extra pills sitting around, because most people, their mind does not get fixed on something. Most people aren’t suicidal. I’m going to do it, and they do. They think about it, they’re going to. They’re not. They’re maybe, well, who’s going to find me? They just go back and forth so many times. If they don’t have something easy and available, most people change their minds, or they get tired or they reconsider, or someone walks in the door or calls them or texts them and it just surprises them.

 

There are a lot of things you can do. I also know I’m a parent of five and I’m a doctor of a few thousand, and there’s times I feel completely helpless. I know all the information and I have all the skills, and I can still go to bed at night worried about my kid, wondering if they are going to be alive in the morning. My patient I saw during the day, I’m like, I don’t know. It’s that hard part of everyone plays the what if game after someone passes. Or why didn’t I? If only I had gone downstairs at 2:00 AM. If only I hadn’t gone to the store. If only I never took the vacation, and they’ll beat themselves up so hard for so long. It’s not that simple, and we don’t control other people. We can influence their environment. We can have an effect on them, and we try. That would be my advice, one, is letting people know you care about them more than anything about them. Any judgment or anything they could do that would make you hate the thing they did, you may hate the thing they did, and you still care about them more than the thing they did.

 

Jason: No matter what our kids end up doing or the dumb things they might do, we still love them. Whether they like it or not, I’m still going to love you.

 

Dr. Larsen: Exactly. Like it or not, I’m still going to love you. Exactly.

 

Jason: As you’ve been a doctor, is there any moment where you think back, where you’ve had a big aha moment and just breakthrough that’s impacted who you’ve become and where you’re at today?

 

Dr. Larsen: There’s been many. I’m trying to think if there’s a good specific one to mention. Well, I’ll tell you one that helped me with balance in life. I worked in an inpatient psych unit for about five years. It was my first job out of training, and I was working hard. Pretty much everyone who came in the door either attempted suicide or was thinking about it or was close within the last 24 hours. My job was to stabilize everybody and get them home with a good plan, maybe medication, followed by a therapist, something like that. Everybody I saw was like a day to five days to 10 days, and that was it. Hopefully, I will never see them again. That was my job, was to stabilize people quickly and get them back home as fast as I could. One year, I was working more and more. I was staying until 6:00, staying until 7:00, working Saturday, working Sunday, taking more calls, working more weekends. We did an annual review and they said, Hey, we admitted 1,027 patients this year. I was like, yeah. They said we turned away 1,320 for lack of bed space.

 

I was like, Half? We saw half. Everyone else got shipped to some other city and we can’t even treat half. At first it was very disappointing. I felt miserable. I felt useless. I’m not doing anything. Then one of the women who trained me, she was my coworker then, and she was like, 18:40 You can’t help everyone. You can’t save everyone, but you can help someone. So work on that. Don’t burn yourself out. Don’t work extra hours. Don’t work weekends, because then you’ll quit in three years and change careers. Work 8:00 to 5:00, take weekends off. You can do this for 40 years and love your career and help far more people than if you’d worked the extra hour.

 

Jason: Burnout.

 

Dr. Larsen: It helped a lot to avoid burnout and make me enjoy every day knowing I can’t save everybody. I don’t have that ability to control them. I can help a lot. The best way I can help is being a balanced person who can give my best. To me, it’s just like being a parent, in that when I’m well rested, I’m a good parent. I’m a nice parent. I’m a patient parent. When I’m not well rested, I’m a jerk parent. I’m an impatient parent. I’m yelling at my kids. If you come down the stairs one more time, I reached that point. It’s like all parents expire. Good dad is awake until nine o’clock. If you come downstairs after nine o’clock, nice dad’s gone to bed. There’s only an angry dad left. I think it’s the same with every musician, every doctor, everyone. We have a good, healthy version of ourselves, and then we have a burned out version of ourselves.

 

Jason: You see that happen all the time with people that think they want to be musicians or think they want to be an entrepreneur or think they want to be a doctor or whatever. It’s interesting to see how pacing yourself and being balanced really does make a better product in the end of whatever it is you want to do. I’m curious if you were sitting in front of… I know you do a lot of speeches and go around and talk to schools and all that in church groups, but if you were in front of a group of young college students and you had most of the room that was thinking, I really like music and I really think maybe I could do a career in this, but don’t know. I guess maybe rewind back and if you were giving yourself advice, what would you hope somebody would say that would help that version of you?

 

Dr. Larsen: Well, it’s hard knowing what I picked and how well it worked out. I have other friends that picked acting or music, and it worked out. I had other friends that picked medicine and hated it. I have other friends that picked to be a musician and they hate it. I have other friends that picked musicians, and they hate it. It would never be a specific direction to do this. I guess it would be a balance in life of what you define success as and what will get you there. I knew when I was 22, my view of success was getting married, having kids, having a stable job, a stable house, and enjoying raising kids. Luckily, that has stayed my main value. I knew for me, if I became a successful musician, it was going to be as an actor. I’m either going to be in New York or I’m going to be on a traveling, touring group, and none of that matches spouse and kids and schools and stability. As I saw my friends going into it and some succeeding, I was like, that version of music success does not match my life version of success, so I need something else.

 

What’s going to be personal, fulfilling, financially stable, and I could do it for decades? For me, the answer was medicine. Then it was, how do I keep music in my life? How do I keep acting? How do I keep rollerblading? How do I keep camping and Boy Scouts and all these… All these things I loved in life. That was the fun part, balancing that.

 

Jason: You talked about your doctor friend that gave you some great advice. Are there any other moments where you’re like, Man, that was the best advice anybody gave me that definitely turned me around in a different direction that you think might help somebody else?

 

Dr. Larsen: The best advice I ever got at a therapy conference was he put up on the board, what if nothing needed to be removed? I was like, what does that mean? He’s like, what if no part of you was broken? What if no part of you was bad? It was just misunderstood and misused. I assume you have thoughts you can’t stand. You have impulses that you abhor. You have pieces of yourself you don’t tell anybody about. You don’t bring it up to your spouse. No one knows because you are so ashamed. You are so… He’s like, we’ve all got that. But what if it didn’t need to be removed? What if you could figure out how to be whole with that and move forward? When I stopped trying to get rid of every bad thought, every bad impulse, every bad thing, and instead focus on… This was all from the same guy. He’s like, what are your values? Who do you want to be? Do you act on that? Then stop worrying about every random thought that goes to your head. You can’t control them anyway. He made the point to us, he’s like, can any of you control your thoughts?

 

You can choose to think about something, but can you control every thought? I was like, no, because I have random stuff that goes to my head all the time. I was like, then don’t judge yourself by every thought. Judge yourself by your values, who you want to be, who you work on being, and who you’re becoming. That was helpful. Suddenly I was like, I don’t have to blame and shame myself for everything. I can just enjoy who I am. That went a long way.

 

Jason: As you’re saying that, my thought was you have all these… Pulling this back into music is you have all these people that have their idols. I want to be like these rock stars up on stage or the pop artists, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, and that’s what they think is successful as a musician. We all know that so many of those end up turning into drugs and other things. I’m curious, just to self-evaluate yourself. I think that’s great advice, but when people do turn to substances or alcohol or drugs or whatever it is, is there anything or advice you have for people to recognize, okay, stop. I need to not do that. What do you tell somebody when they’re right on that edge, I guess, of thinking they have to do something to be able to keep up or step later or work harder or do more?

 

Dr. Larsen: That’s where I’d say two things. One would be what you do when you’re trying to help that person. That would be, when we talk about the term validation in therapy, you validate emotions, not actions. When someone is using cocaine so that they can get up and do the concert every night, eight shows a week, and there’s no way they’re going to have energy to look good on stage and have all the energy they need to do the whole performance other than drugs, validate the emotion. I get it. You want the high energy show, and you need to show up because that’s what the audience is paying for every night. You validate the emotion. You don’t validate the action. You’re like, doing it in a way that’s slowly killing you and is going to then make you cancel the rest of everything so you can go into rehab is not the way there because once people feel understood, because if you don’t understand why they did it, they’re not going to accept your help. If you don’t get why they did it, everything you say is going to be empty advice. You have to understand the why behind it, and then help them find a difference.

 

What I do… Because I know plenty of people who are addicted, both patients and friends. Yes, there’s lots of doctors addicted to things too, because they’re like, hey, I’ve got a 13-hour surgery. Maybe it’s just caffeine. Maybe it’s legal. I always hope so.

 

Jason: Depending on what state you live in, right?

 

Dr. Larsen: Depending on what state you live in, what they can use, exactly. 27:16 No one’s life stays balanced, but you can stay close. Every book I’ve read, I’ve read tons of books on diabetes, mental health, physical health, cancer, heart attack, strokes, and almost every single book by the end gets to sleep well, eat healthy, exercise, connect socially. It always gets back to those four things: sleep, eat, connect, exercise. Over and over.

 

Jason: Kindergarten answers, right? We all learned that. Didn’t even have to go through first grade to figure that out, right?

 

Dr. Larsen: Exactly. That’s the hard part. We all know what we should do and what works long term, but we also know what feels good. I drink a massive amount of Dr. Pepper every day. It is not healthy. I know it. I know all the medical reasons. It’s bad for me, and I love it. I adore it. It’s my favorite drink.

 

Jason: You haven’t progressed into the hard stuff where you got the energy drinks, though, yet.

 

Dr. Larsen: No, I did not progress into energy drinks. People who are onto substances, one is telling them, I understand how you got there. I understand why you’re doing it but they’re enjoying today at the expense of tomorrow. I was just hoping tomorrow doesn’t catch up to them.

 

It’s always trying to find a way. Is there a way to enjoy today that doesn’t screw up tomorrow? Or better, you had to find a way to enjoy today while setting up tomorrow. If you can do something today that if you’re alive tomorrow, it’s even better and the next day, even better because that’s why drugs are bad. If they didn’t have it tomorrow, drugs would be awesome. They feel great and you’re done. That was awesome. It’s the consequence.

 

Jason: Wait a minute. I’m done.

 

Dr. Larsen: Here’s the high, it’s wonderful and then the crash. It’s the crash and the consequences that hurt so bad. I don’t think most people are evil. I don’t think drug users are bad people. I think they want to feel good. They picked a way to feel good that works at the expense of tomorrow.

 

Jason: Essentially, you’re saying that if we just do those four things, you should be able to avoid ever hopefully having to come in and meet with somebody like you and pay you hundreds of dollars an hour or whatever you charge. I don’t know what you bill. It’s funny. I’m sure the insurance companies don’t think it’s as much as it should be, right?

 

Dr. Larsen: Right. Any mental illness, some go away when you balance your life, and all of them make it easier to manage. Some illnesses are there no matter how much you balance your life. You’ve still got bipolar, you’ve still got schizophrenia, whatever the thing is but all of them get more manageable. I guess one last piece of advice that helps with balancing life. I’ve always heard the phrase, 30:07 anything worth doing is worth doing well. Finally, one therapist said, anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. I was like, What? They’re like, Okay, are you overweight? Yes. Should you eat healthier? Yes. Okay, if you don’t eat an entirely healthy diet, but you eat an additional banana a day, are you healthier than you were? Yes. Are you changing your diet poorly? If you exercise five minutes a day? Yes, you should do an hour five days a week. You can do five minutes. Is it better than you were? Yes. Then just do it poorly. Just start. Do anything. Make some habit change.

 

I remember what happened when I went with my friend to the gym who was a lifter, and we worked to exhaust every muscle for two hours. I couldn’t drive my stick shift car home, and I didn’t go to the gym again for two years. It was awful. It was miserable. Then I started running on the treadmill, a couple of years later, five minutes a day. Eventually, I went up to 10, eventually I went to 15. Right now, I’m at 25 minutes a day, five days a week lifting weights. I don’t know if I ever get past that, but I’m good if this is poor, it’s far better than I was before.

 

Jason: It’s better than most people too, right? Right. We all know, but we know we should, but we’re too busy.

 

Dr. Larsen: Right. We’re all too busy. I’ve got five teenagers. I run my own business. I’m running a training program and I’m the chief of staff of the hospital. I have time to exercise and time to watch movies in the evening and time to do a podcast with you. I’m like, no matter how many responsibilities you have, you can balance your life, or it can be unbalanced. It’s based on the number of jobs and number of things.

 

Jason: I think the number of things you get done in the day, I think the key is finding what are those things that are most important and making time for those opens up, so you get the other stuff. You can get it done. If it’s that important, it’ll get done. But the minute you ignore those things that really matter, it starts catching up with you faster than you want, and then the consequences of tomorrow are not what you want.

 

Dr. Larsen: That’s Stephen Covey dealing with things that are important and not urgent, because you can probably ignore your spouse for a week, nothing bad happens. You can probably ignore them for a month, nothing bad happens. You might ignore them for a couple of years and nothing overtly big bad happens until the day it’s over and you’re like, I didn’t care for the things that were very important, but not urgent. I mean, it’s just like eating healthy. If you don’t eat healthy today, nothing bad happens. You could not eat healthy for 5, 10 years and nothing bad happens, except the slow build underneath. It’s all that stuff that keeps the balance. It’s the important, not urgent stuff.

 

Jason: Matt, we’re over time already, but it’s been super fun chatting with you. I know there are people, if they’ve made it this far through the podcast, where can people go to find resources or if they’re really curious or say they’ve got a friend that they need or a family member that they’re worried about, how do I help that person? I know how hard it is to get an appointment with a psychiatrist. About the only way in is you got to end up in the ER or something. You got to have some really catastrophic thing and then it sounds like you’re still going to send us home. We’re in that place as fast as you can.

 

Dr. Larsen: There is a massive shortage. As far as resources go, there are great resources. On the worst end, when it’s involving suicide, there’s a suicide hotline. There’s national, there’s state, there’s a text line where they can answer questions. As far as medical advice, I trust the Mayo Clinic website, and that’s where I go for questions on supplements, on medications, on sleep hygiene, on balancing life, most things there. Type of therapy that’s the best, the kind I’ve found works the best and connects with most people is called ACT Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. There are probably 47 books all based on that therapy, and I’ve got 10 or 20 of them that I read. That’s what I base a lot of my parenting on, my therapy on my patients. Those are the resources I’d go to.

 

Jason: Awesome. If they want to go check out more about you, what website can they go to find out how to try and come visit you if they need to or not.

 

Dr. Larsen: My clinic is called Ascend Mental Health Center in Idaho Falls.

 

Jason: Awesome. Thanks so much. We’ll put the link down in the show notes and we’ll get some links from you as well and the mail clinic stuff. That’ll be great. Appreciate you taking time and I appreciate you being an out of the box type of person to end up on this podcast. I think it’s going to help a lot of people more than you realize.

 

Dr. Larsen: Hopefully it’s worthwhile. Either way, it was good to talk to you.

 

Jason: That was fun. Thanks, Matt.

 

Dr. Larsen: Thanks, Jason. Have a good night.

 

 

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Finding success and fulfillment in the music industry is possible. Looking forward to seeing you in our next episode.

 

 

How to Connect with the Featured Guest:

Dr. Matthew F. Larsen is a dedicated and compassionate psychiatrist with a unique blend of medical expertise and artistic flair. Hailing from his hometown of Idaho Falls, Dr. Larsen’s journey has been marked by a commitment to healing minds and hearts through his dual board certifications in adult and child psychiatry. Dr. Larsen has a strong interest in suicide prevention and in helping teens who are chronically suicidal or self-harming.


Outside the realm of medicine, Dr. Larsen’s artistic spirit shines. With hobbies ranging from acting to singing, he infuses his patients’ lives with joy by entertaining them through song, dance, and even an Irish accent. His diverse interests are a testament to his well-rounded approach to healing.




What You’ll Learn


In this episode, Dr. Larsen shares that integrating music into your life, even if it’s not a full-blown career, can have numerous benefits for your well-being and personal growth. Having something that brings happiness outside of work is essential for maintaining a well-rounded and balanced life.


He also emphasizes that success goes beyond traditional measures and metrics, focusing on a holistic and meaningful approach to life. It is more about the emotional experience it brings than the external accomplishments. It’s about feeling content, fulfilled, and genuinely happy with where you are in life.




Things We Discussed


Dr. Matt Larsen encourages us to approach our desire to help others with balance, sustainability, and a focus on making a lasting impact. It aligns with the principle that even small, consistent efforts can lead to significant positive change, both in the lives of others and in your own well-being.


In order to have a healthy work schedule, we should always take into consideration that the journey is a marathon, not a sprint.



Connect with Dr. Matt Larsen

Website

LinkedIn


Connect with Jason Tonioli

Website 

Facebook

YouTube 

Instagram

Spotify

Pandora

Amazon Music

Apple Music

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