Speaker 1: Welcome back, everybody. We're here for another episode of Comeback Stories.
Speaker 1: I'm here with my main man, dere Waller. You're inside
Speaker 1: the Wind Hotel, Blue Wire Studios. Love you too. It's
Speaker 1: an honor always to sit with you. Got a great
Speaker 1: guest today. So today's guest is the best best selling
Speaker 1: author speaker, and he's been transforming the way hundreds of
Speaker 1: NBA stars play on the court. He's written best two
Speaker 1: best selling books and he's about to release his third.
Speaker 1: He also runs a successful motivational coaching business and is
Speaker 1: a highly sought after speaker, helping thousands of employees and
Speaker 1: athletes develop unshakable mindsets. David Nurse, Welcome to the show man.
Speaker 1: I'll appreciate you guys having me on. I feel like
Speaker 1: this has been one that we've been trying to put
Speaker 1: together and we finally made it happen. Yeah, kind of
Speaker 1: like this book that I hear that's coming out called
Speaker 1: do It, and we just did it or we aren't
Speaker 1: doing it one of the pretense we're making it happen. Man.
Speaker 1: It's good to see your face and even though it's
Speaker 1: not in the flesh, this is this is a good
Speaker 1: alternative and we're gonna flow regardless, and we don't mess
Speaker 1: around here on comeback stories. We usually dive right in
Speaker 1: and we want to know for you, like what was
Speaker 1: life like growing up? So basically everything in my life
Speaker 1: revolved around playing in the NBA. Now growing up in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere, Cornfield Vile, being six foot one
Speaker 1: in a vertical evil about two inches. My parents probably
Speaker 1: should have said played tennis or golf, but I loved basketball,
Speaker 1: so I poured everything I had into it and no
Speaker 1: backup plan. Like literally, I never thought about, hey, I
Speaker 1: should think about other things to do while I'm at college.
Speaker 1: It was NBA, NBA, NBA. Somebody probably should have told me, David,
Speaker 1: that reality is not going to happen. And I'm playing
Speaker 1: overseas in Spain, while I played in Australia in Greece,
Speaker 1: and we'll fast forward to Spain and I'm playing in
Speaker 1: the second division Basque Region Northern Spain, and it was
Speaker 1: more like a Will Ferrell semi pro type of league
Speaker 1: than it was anywhere close to the NBA. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of a joke of the league. The players are
Speaker 1: concerned about where the party's going to be at after
Speaker 1: the game, and I'm here putting in these two days
Speaker 1: extra film study, optimization, all of it. I still think
Speaker 1: I'm close to the NBA. And I get cut after
Speaker 1: the first preseason game. The coach calls me over after
Speaker 1: the game outside and the Basque Region mountains. I remember
Speaker 1: this vividly exactly how it went down, and he just said, David,
Speaker 1: you can't cut it. We're sending you home. So imagine
Speaker 1: in your own life, listening to the right now, all
Speaker 1: of your hopes and goals and dreams taken away from you,
Speaker 1: and I just taken away from you, but without a
Speaker 1: backup playing and basically your face rubbed in the dirt,
Speaker 1: insult to injury. And I go home and I'm living
Speaker 1: on my parents recliner chair they live in Kansas City,
Speaker 1: outside of Kansas City at the time, feeling bad for
Speaker 1: myself for about six months, and my mom would always
Speaker 1: say these motivational and inspirational quotes. And usually it was
Speaker 1: whatever mom win in one year out the other year,
Speaker 1: like not paying attention. And I remember vividly as well.
Speaker 1: She was doing dishes, I was kicked back in the
Speaker 1: recliner chair and she said, David, when one door closes,
Speaker 1: four open and an entire beach Trump Pattio overlooking the ocean,
Speaker 1: and it hit me. I was like, Mom, I thought
Speaker 1: it was one door, one door, But what she was
Speaker 1: saying is when a door closes, it's an opportunity for
Speaker 1: so much more great things to come. Everything that I
Speaker 1: poured into playing in the NBA wasn't necessarily for me,
Speaker 1: but I learned how to be able to teach these
Speaker 1: players who had more God given abilities seven foot height
Speaker 1: than athleticism to play in the NBA. So I also
Speaker 1: realized that four doors opening is what is called taking action.
Speaker 1: You don't wait for another door to open. One door closes.
Speaker 1: I don't wait for the phone to ring. No one's
Speaker 1: gonna call me up and be like, David, you want
Speaker 1: an MBA coaching job just because that's what you want,
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen. You had to pick up the phone
Speaker 1: and go do it. And I realized this, so I
Speaker 1: decided right then and there I was going to coach
Speaker 1: in the NBA. And we can dive into that how
Speaker 1: it went about that. But I had no connections in
Speaker 1: the NBA. So once again it's this incompetent confidence of man,
Speaker 1: I want to do this, But all right, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be a lot of hard work, it's going to take
Speaker 1: a lot of time. Can I actually do it? Especially
Speaker 1: since I just had everything taken away from me and
Speaker 1: playing in the NBA, I can relate a lot to
Speaker 1: the not having a plan b other than for me
Speaker 1: it was baseball. My circumstances were different where it was
Speaker 1: an injury and that's what kind of took the sport
Speaker 1: away from me, a baseball and for me that started
Speaker 1: a very very dark road, destructive, self destructive road of
Speaker 1: addiction because my whole identity was wrapped in this idea
Speaker 1: of a baseball player, a star athlete, and getting my
Speaker 1: validation from the performance and the approval and caring what
Speaker 1: people people thought about me, and that's where I would
Speaker 1: just get my likes back in the day. There weren't
Speaker 1: likes back then, but that's where I would get my approval.
Speaker 1: So I can relate a lot. And for me, it
Speaker 1: sent me down a really really dark road. But for you,
Speaker 1: if you go back into that, like, what was that
Speaker 1: like for you when that loss of identity was happening, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think it always when something that we
Speaker 1: work so hard for and that we think is going
Speaker 1: to be something that will eventually occur as taken away
Speaker 1: from us. Naturally, we have that what was me feeling
Speaker 1: bad mentality, when actually it's it's God's way of saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: this wasn't meant for you. I have something greater for you.
Speaker 1: Are you willing to trust this process that I'm about
Speaker 1: to put you through? And it's it's what I called
Speaker 1: the pit. Everybody, no matter what, spends time in the pit.
Speaker 1: So for you, Donnie, when you were playing and you
Speaker 1: were going to be on this major league trajectory and
Speaker 1: you got injured, at least you can use an injury
Speaker 1: for your excuse. I can't use that. I just wasn't
Speaker 1: very good. But you fall into this pit. So you
Speaker 1: go around all right, You're on top of the world,
Speaker 1: and then you fall into this pit. And the difference
Speaker 1: in people that come out of that are people that
Speaker 1: are successful, are the ones who are willing to dance
Speaker 1: in the fire. This fire, this suck, this furnace. Like
Speaker 1: you throw a coal, a piece of coal in there.
Speaker 1: The longer it's in there, the shinier the diamond is
Speaker 1: on the other side. The longer you're willing to embrace
Speaker 1: this difficult time. The more well versed you're going to
Speaker 1: be on the other side of it. So wrapping around
Speaker 1: what your question is and like, how do I feel?
Speaker 1: How did I feel like that? Sure, I felt beaten down,
Speaker 1: but then I realized, like that moment when my mom said,
Speaker 1: there's four doors waiting to be open, there's something better
Speaker 1: out there. Everything wasn't for loss. Just like everything that
Speaker 1: you've done in your baseball career you're still using today.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like, Okay, it's cut off and now it's
Speaker 1: all gone. It's not. It's never like that, but we
Speaker 1: always think that. And I think life is like a
Speaker 1: literally like a long hallway, a long hallway with different
Speaker 1: doors on the sides of it. You open the door,
Speaker 1: you go in there, you spend time in there, you
Speaker 1: learn something in there. Now you go back down the hallway,
Speaker 1: you open the door on the other side. You learn,
Speaker 1: you grow, You constantly are moving forward, learning and growing
Speaker 1: and transforming. And it's just I mean, I think that's
Speaker 1: the beauty in life. There's no inSpot to it, and
Speaker 1: it's all what happens to you is you're deciding factor
Speaker 1: of how you want to view that. Do you want
Speaker 1: to view that in a well it's over I got injured,
Speaker 1: or shoot, I got cut, I got fired. Woe is me?
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to feel bad for myself. That's the
Speaker 1: blamer mentality. And a lot of people hold themselves back
Speaker 1: from taking action on what they're truly destined for because
Speaker 1: something someone they can put blame on, or someone burnt
Speaker 1: them in the past, and that's there. It's what I
Speaker 1: call an action archetype. There's different action archetypes. That's the
Speaker 1: blamer and the burnt. That's that's kind of the one
Speaker 1: we're referring to right here. I mean we diving, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we talk about diving right in on the show.
Speaker 1: We cannon ball it in on this one, like I mean,
Speaker 1: it's I mean, I love it. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: talking about the pit like that's it got me fired
Speaker 1: up right now because I feel like, you know, my
Speaker 1: pit drug addiction, alcohol addiction, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like that has essentially gave me my purpose, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. And I see you, you know, I
Speaker 1: see the books behind you on the wall. It's like
Speaker 1: pivot and go, Like you wouldn't have wrote that book
Speaker 1: if you didn't have to pivot. You talk about the
Speaker 1: breakthrough like you wouldn't have written that book if you
Speaker 1: didn't have to break through something yourself. So it's like
Speaker 1: that pit like that we don't necessarily want to spend
Speaker 1: time in. That's yucky, that's nasty, that's painful, Like we
Speaker 1: have to be in that because our purpose are the
Speaker 1: way that we can impact the world and give somebody
Speaker 1: something and make their life better is from us being
Speaker 1: in that pit and taking information from that pit and
Speaker 1: learning from that pit. So if we don't develop that
Speaker 1: perspective to learn from it, embrace it. Like I'm not
Speaker 1: sitting here if I wasn't a drug addict. I wasn't
Speaker 1: I'm not sitting here if I wouldn't poping perk set
Speaker 1: like they were in Sweethearts, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like that's just but no, but nobody wants to hear
Speaker 1: those things. But that's why three of us are here
Speaker 1: to slap you right in the face, right out to
Speaker 1: gay and let you know like this is what this
Speaker 1: is what it's got to be like that. But that's
Speaker 1: so powerful because think about the people that are going
Speaker 1: through the same thing that you went through, or any
Speaker 1: type of drug addiction. You have more power to speak
Speaker 1: to them on the ability to overcome it and use
Speaker 1: it for your good and the good for others than
Speaker 1: anybody else does. So that thing happening to you was
Speaker 1: actually a gift in disguise that you're going to be
Speaker 1: able to help many people afterwards. If you don't go
Speaker 1: through that, your voice doesn't hit its strong and people
Speaker 1: might not listen to you in that terms. Anything that
Speaker 1: we go through now becomes a blessing that we because
Speaker 1: initially you think and it's kind of like one of
Speaker 1: those cheesy things you think initially it's like a massive
Speaker 1: setback and its setbacks going to set you back for life.
Speaker 1: But it's honestly, a setback is just a set up
Speaker 1: for somebody else. And it's once again comes down to
Speaker 1: how are you going to view life? And there's either
Speaker 1: there's there's only two ways. Really, it's it's the okay,
Speaker 1: I'm a victim, this is what life is doing to me,
Speaker 1: or I'm going to use everything in life as an
Speaker 1: opportunity for something better. And that's as simple as that.
Speaker 1: That's the only two ways you can use things. It
Speaker 1: has me thinking of the song that you wrote and
Speaker 1: produced for the podcast the Comeback Stories theme song, which
Speaker 1: says came back from the Pig. Yeah, it was the
Speaker 1: first line. It was the the first line of the song. Bro,
Speaker 1: That's why, that's why, that's why I'm over here. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, I'm starts about to start sweating
Speaker 1: and whatnot. So I see, I didn't even know that.
Speaker 1: How about that for her? God put it in there.
Speaker 1: Came back from the kid. Hey, you probably don't want
Speaker 1: me to wrap it, so I'll just leave that to you.
Speaker 1: I'll send you that song afterwards. D'ren just released another
Speaker 1: album last week, and man, this dude is just straight
Speaker 1: different and talented. And you know, you have a lot
Speaker 1: of athletes that are trying to be operas and artists,
Speaker 1: and um, he's He's a true love from a place
Speaker 1: of love and a place of joy. And uh, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Like, if I if I had nothing,
Speaker 1: if if if I couldn't get a penny, if I
Speaker 1: couldn't get a stream, I would make music in my
Speaker 1: room by myself. And that's just that's just what it is.
Speaker 1: So and I feel like music is meant to be shared,
Speaker 1: so I just put it out to the world. Then
Speaker 1: you know how you know how powerful that is and
Speaker 1: beautiful that is. You know, the most influential media stream
Speaker 1: bar none, it's it's music. There's nothing more influential than
Speaker 1: through music. TV's good, TV's powerful, but TV's for a hit.
Speaker 1: Podcasts are great, books are great, but music is the
Speaker 1: most influential way to change someone's feelings, change someone's heart,
Speaker 1: and really speak through them. So that power that you
Speaker 1: have for music, tod lean into that. I know you are.
Speaker 1: But if you're ever feeling any doubt of should you
Speaker 1: be doing this? Do it? Like literally do it that
Speaker 1: I wish I had that gift? Do you not have
Speaker 1: that gift at all? And I know that going back
Speaker 1: to the pit for you, what was the pit? What
Speaker 1: would you say in your life if you were to
Speaker 1: look back, What was the bottom of all bottoms for you? Man? Well,
Speaker 1: that was one of them for sure. Of Yeah. I
Speaker 1: spent my whole life preparing for this, thinking that I
Speaker 1: was gonna make it here and I didn't and it
Speaker 1: was taken away. But then I put five years into
Speaker 1: building relationships. I handwrote a letter to every NBA GM
Speaker 1: to send out like something of just serving their organization,
Speaker 1: wanting to coach in the NBA. I had no connections.
Speaker 1: Nobody got back to me. But a month and a
Speaker 1: half later, I got a call from the GM of
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles Clippers at the time, Gary Sacks, and
Speaker 1: we had a just a quick conversation. He said at
Speaker 1: the end of it, if you're ever out in LA,
Speaker 1: look me up. We'll grab coffee. Basically, good luck with
Speaker 1: the rest of your life, kid. But I took that
Speaker 1: as an opportunity. He opened that door, so I booked it.
Speaker 1: I could spend all my money, stole some of my parents'
Speaker 1: money to be out in LA to meet with Gary
Speaker 1: that following week, acting like I had a basketball camp
Speaker 1: so I didn't look desperate, and we hit it off.
Speaker 1: Every connection stemmed from Gary Sacks and the MBA that
Speaker 1: I have today that ended up coaching with the Nets.
Speaker 1: Everyone from that taking a chance. So I'm setting up
Speaker 1: the story to the biggest pit to answer your question.
Speaker 1: To get there. Now, I realized, like the NBA wasn't
Speaker 1: just gonna say hey, David, like cool, you know Gary
Speaker 1: Sacks will give you a job. No, I had to
Speaker 1: make myself the expert in something so they would want me.
Speaker 1: And all I could do is shoot? Could Dan no
Speaker 1: vertical then like playing defense? Just shoot? So I custom
Speaker 1: made these basketballs to do basketball, do shooting camps. Had
Speaker 1: him made from China, terrible leather sent to the Oakland Seaport.
Speaker 1: I get in my car, Nissan Maxima, small car. Drive
Speaker 1: twenty nine hours from Kansas City to Oakland or with
Speaker 1: these long haul truckers packing all their stuff, I'm packing
Speaker 1: my little car with basket balls. I spend the next
Speaker 1: five years doing basketball camps all over the country, sleeping
Speaker 1: on friends, couches who didn't even know I was their friends,
Speaker 1: sleeping and well lived Walmart parking lots in many different cities.
Speaker 1: I wake up five years later. We're fast forward five
Speaker 1: years later, Melbourne, Australia. I have an email that says
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Nets shooting coach. I thought it was a joke, spam,
Speaker 1: didn't know anybody in Brooklyn clicked on it. Now next
Speaker 1: week I am in Brooklyn as their shooting coach, this
Speaker 1: young coach in the NBA. Five years in the making.
Speaker 1: I made it so to set up that biggest pit
Speaker 1: once again. I'd already been through a pit moment in
Speaker 1: my life. I think I'm gonna be this NBA this,
Speaker 1: you know, in the NBA forever we go from twenty
Speaker 1: eight to second in three point shooting percentage, all just
Speaker 1: God's blessing. And we're like, I'm getting all this media,
Speaker 1: New York media, NBA media, I'm there. The GM is
Speaker 1: saying three year deal, new head coach comes on at
Speaker 1: the end of the year, and I'm out, I'm fired,
Speaker 1: just like that, five years to get my deck, dream
Speaker 1: job that I actually got to and I'm out, I'm fired.
Speaker 1: And by that time that every other staff had had
Speaker 1: all the people that was laid in the offseason, and
Speaker 1: again a door closed. So just constant pits, constant downfalls.
Speaker 1: And what I've come to realize through going through many
Speaker 1: of these and other smaller challenging times in my life
Speaker 1: that losing people in my life or relationships of people
Speaker 1: that I thought of the world of and now is
Speaker 1: just completely you know, family type stuff that just gets strained.
Speaker 1: Like those types, like I understand that everything has its purpose,
Speaker 1: it has its season, and it has its reason for
Speaker 1: it that it that no matter what the pit that
Speaker 1: I'm in, there is going to be another side to it.
Speaker 1: And I also know like for me and having my
Speaker 1: faith in God and in Jesus that it's not independence
Speaker 1: on me, Like I don't have to put all this
Speaker 1: weighted pressure on my shoulders, think that I have to perform,
Speaker 1: that I have to make that happen, that I have
Speaker 1: to generate and create everything that happens for me. I'd
Speaker 1: be the biggest liar if I thought that, because there's
Speaker 1: so many things, so many great blessings that come to me,
Speaker 1: and I'm just like, where in the heck did that
Speaker 1: come from? But I know where it came from, and
Speaker 1: that gives me this ability to go through life with
Speaker 1: a rhythm, with a pace, with a Okay, if I'm
Speaker 1: in the pit, cool, I'm gonna dance in the fire
Speaker 1: because I'm gonna get I'm gonna just grow from this.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna improve from this, and I'm gonna come out
Speaker 1: of it better. And there's gonna be another fire, because
Speaker 1: whether you like to admit it or not, you are
Speaker 1: either currently in a fire or you are coming up
Speaker 1: to a fire very soon. And that's just the way
Speaker 1: life is. And it's how you dance in the fire.
Speaker 1: How you deal with that is determines how your your life,
Speaker 1: your joy, and your ultimate contentment is going to be.
Speaker 1: I mean from that right there, I mean when we
Speaker 1: talk about I mean I've heard that said in a
Speaker 1: different way, like you're either just exiting a storm or
Speaker 1: a storm is it's on its way essentially, And it's
Speaker 1: like from your journey, like making it to the NBA
Speaker 1: as a coach, I feeling like you've arrived, like this
Speaker 1: whole idea of like feeling like we're arriving someplace, or
Speaker 1: like there's this finish line that if I achieve this
Speaker 1: position or if I get to a certain point of
Speaker 1: success or achievement, like I've made it, like I can
Speaker 1: kick my feet up. I'm cool, I'm kicking it now.
Speaker 1: But I feel like from that from you pivoting into
Speaker 1: what you're doing now and things that you even have
Speaker 1: lined up after that, Like can you speak to how
Speaker 1: it's not about arriving someplace, but it's really about you know,
Speaker 1: hear the journey is the destination? Like can you explain
Speaker 1: that to listeners that maybe don't know fully what that means. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so good, Dan, and it's and it's so true.
Speaker 1: I mean you look at Olympic gold medalists and if
Speaker 1: you ask them if they're filled for life, from winning
Speaker 1: the highest accolade an athlete can win. Their answer is
Speaker 1: gonna be no. I had a friend who sold his
Speaker 1: company for two hundred million dollars. He spent some time
Speaker 1: flying around to Italy on his plane. Got bored. Now
Speaker 1: we start in another company. There is never any endpoint,
Speaker 1: and that's the beauty of it. I don't say that
Speaker 1: in a way to stress people out, but the fun
Speaker 1: of life is the exhilarating journey, the exhilarating challenge and
Speaker 1: being able to actually do it for an impact on somebody.
Speaker 1: And I tell people like, when you know you're in
Speaker 1: your sweet spot, and I know I'm in my sweet
Speaker 1: spot speaking and writing books and showing people different tools
Speaker 1: to be able to use to unlock what's inside of them.
Speaker 1: I know I'm in my sweet spot because I am
Speaker 1: super passionate about it. I wake up in the morning
Speaker 1: excited for the day to come, and I know it
Speaker 1: has purpose. And I know when you have passion and purpose,
Speaker 1: you are on a mission. Not everybody's at that spot,
Speaker 1: and that's totally okay. If you're listening to that and
Speaker 1: you feel like, you know what, I don't feel like
Speaker 1: I have purpose, Well, maybe you actually do maybe working
Speaker 1: a job that is a nine to five or working
Speaker 1: the late night hours. Maybe that's actually to show your
Speaker 1: kid what hard work is all about and how you
Speaker 1: can actually, you know, implement those types of just morals
Speaker 1: and characteristics into your child. Maybe that's the purpose. Maybe
Speaker 1: you're still finding your passion. So yeah, I mean to
Speaker 1: your point, the journey is the joy. It's like I
Speaker 1: have a stat that cruise ships. When you go on
Speaker 1: a cruise, most people think, okay, well where did you go?
Speaker 1: You went to the Bahamas, you went to Alaska, that's
Speaker 1: the destination. But in surveying people that have gone on
Speaker 1: this cruise, ninety two percent some cise cruise lines out
Speaker 1: to find the exact the cruise that it was, but
Speaker 1: cruise like ninety two percent of people enjoyed the cruise
Speaker 1: journey over just getting to the destination. So what's that
Speaker 1: tell you? That destination will never fill you. It's cool
Speaker 1: to have something on the map, like a goal, but
Speaker 1: goals are just mile markers for a much bigger purpose.
Speaker 1: And if you stop at that goal, then you're done.
Speaker 1: Then you stop learning, you stopped growing, and ultimately that's
Speaker 1: like when people say, well I'm retired, all right, you
Speaker 1: just took ten years off your life because you retire
Speaker 1: because you have no more purpose of what you're doing.
Speaker 1: And I'll give you one more thing in here to show,
Speaker 1: like okay, because people are thinking like, oh okay, then
Speaker 1: I have to do so much. I have to make
Speaker 1: sure I have so much impact. I have to reach
Speaker 1: this many people. But wait, oh, this guy's reaching millions
Speaker 1: of people. I'll never be as good as them, So
Speaker 1: why do I even try? You know what? I challenge
Speaker 1: you listening to this to name somebody that lived a
Speaker 1: hundred years ago that's not a president, named somebody lived
Speaker 1: a one hundred years ago that's not a president. You're
Speaker 1: struggling to do so because one hundred years from now,
Speaker 1: when you're dead, you know what it's going to remember you.
Speaker 1: And that's totally okay. It's a freedom that what you're
Speaker 1: doing here, you don't have to think that it has
Speaker 1: to be in every single history book. It doesn't have
Speaker 1: to reach eight zillion people. You don't have to be
Speaker 1: George Washington, Martin Luther King. You can just be right
Speaker 1: where you're at having the impact that you're having with
Speaker 1: purpose and passion, understanding there is no end result. That's
Speaker 1: going to fulfill you. It's the joy in the daily
Speaker 1: journey at your own Yeah, yeah, yeah, David. I know
Speaker 1: you work with a lot of high performers and you
Speaker 1: have your coaching and I'm curious with because I talk
Speaker 1: a lot about this in coaching with goal setting, and
Speaker 1: the most important part of goal setting is that last step,
Speaker 1: which is actually detaching from the outcome because we actually
Speaker 1: don't have control over the outcome. So I'd love to
Speaker 1: just hear your take on that and maybe how you
Speaker 1: express that to your athletes and to your coaching clients
Speaker 1: and the importance of letting go of the outcome. That's
Speaker 1: such a good question, Donnie. Thanks for asking that one.
Speaker 1: So I'll give you a story here. So I work
Speaker 1: with the players since his sophomore year at college, Norm
Speaker 1: Pow he plays for the Los Angeles Clippers now. So
Speaker 1: at a time when he was playing for the Raptors,
Speaker 1: he was going in and out of the lineup, and
Speaker 1: this was four years ago. Well yeah, four years ago.
Speaker 1: He was going in and out of the lineup and
Speaker 1: he was a coming up on a contract year. So
Speaker 1: he's like, you know, maybe he's not even in the
Speaker 1: league next year, and he wasn't really performing, but sometimes
Speaker 1: he'd have really good games and he'd be the best
Speaker 1: person to be around. Awesome when his results were really good.
Speaker 1: But when he didn't, then you really wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: be around him because he based his joy, he based
Speaker 1: his confidence. He based everything on results, the results being
Speaker 1: points per game. So we just decided, you know what,
Speaker 1: we got to change things up. We got to scrap
Speaker 1: this because it's not working. So we figured out what
Speaker 1: norm strengths were, like, who was he? What was his
Speaker 1: what I call system? So what you are you have
Speaker 1: your God given abilities? Is your system? And Norm's best
Speaker 1: two shots his system was catching shoot three in getting
Speaker 1: to the rim, downhill in transition. That's it. Those were
Speaker 1: his two best shots, his system. So now we had
Speaker 1: to figure out, okay, how do you get to those
Speaker 1: shots the most. We are no longer going to track
Speaker 1: points per game shooting percentage. All we were going to
Speaker 1: track is how many opportunities in your great zone your
Speaker 1: strengths do you get to. So system plus process, process
Speaker 1: are your daily habits. This was Norm's working on his
Speaker 1: catch and shoot. This was watching film to see how
Speaker 1: he could get a half a step quicker to these spots.
Speaker 1: This was studying defenders he'd play that night to understand
Speaker 1: how they're going to play him, to see how he
Speaker 1: can cut the angles to get to the room. Those
Speaker 1: were the only two things he was concerned about. That
Speaker 1: was his habits, his system plus process. The habits equal results.
Speaker 1: If you focus on results, they will never come. They
Speaker 1: will rise, they will fall, you will be miserable. But
Speaker 1: if you focus on your system and your process, the
Speaker 1: results will come. So he went a span of thirty
Speaker 1: games only shooting those two shots, and when the World's
Speaker 1: shut down in twenty twenty, Norm Pole he was coming
Speaker 1: off the bench, in and out of lineup. They just
Speaker 1: preface this that the Western Conference player of the Week
Speaker 1: that week was Lebron James, who we've all heard of.
Speaker 1: The Eastern Conference player of the week was Norm Powell.
Speaker 1: And Norm goes on to get a ninety two million
Speaker 1: dollars deal that following year with the Portland Trailblazers. Now
Speaker 1: he's probably gonna win the sixth Man of the Year Clippers,
Speaker 1: a star studded team. He's having a phenomenal career and
Speaker 1: we still do the same stuff. Literally talk to him
Speaker 1: a couple hours before this podcast going into his game
Speaker 1: tonight and just remembering, reminding him the shots that he's
Speaker 1: looking for, because last game didn't get as many minutes,
Speaker 1: but he's not gonna get thrown off, didn't get as
Speaker 1: many points, not gonna get thrown off. He hit all
Speaker 1: his great spots, and we're gonna stick to that system.
Speaker 1: We're gonna stick to that process. So yeah, understanding what
Speaker 1: your strengths are and then your daily habits and pouring
Speaker 1: into those strengths to continue to make those strengths great
Speaker 1: is what's going to equal the results. That's brilliant, because
Speaker 1: that's that's literally the way, without even really knowing, I
Speaker 1: was approaching it that way. So twenty nineteen twenty twenty
Speaker 1: was like the resurrection of my career, coming out of
Speaker 1: of a year long suspension. Played six games in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: but twenty nineteen was my first year starting, and going
Speaker 1: into that year, I was like, you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: first time starter. Like my Madden rating was sixty seven.
Speaker 1: I had to have been the lowest overall rated player
Speaker 1: going into a season to be considered a starter. So
Speaker 1: I wasn't like, how do I get my rating to
Speaker 1: ninety something or I need one hundred catches in this
Speaker 1: many yards, Like I'm like, how do I keep my
Speaker 1: pad level consistently down in my route running every single play?
Speaker 1: How do I make sure I'm you know, releasing with
Speaker 1: power and with speed. How do I make sure like
Speaker 1: every single catch I'm making, I'm seeing the ball eyes
Speaker 1: to the tuck. Is what my coach Frank used to say,
Speaker 1: Like all these little fundamentals, and it's like that turns
Speaker 1: into running one route at practice really well and coming
Speaker 1: back to the line and running that route again, and
Speaker 1: then it's like one route on top of one route
Speaker 1: on top of one route, turns into one practice, turns
Speaker 1: into one week of practice, turns into one game, and
Speaker 1: you're so focused in the process that you know up
Speaker 1: at the end of the year, both those seasons and
Speaker 1: it's back to back eleven hundred yard seasons. But this
Speaker 1: is from somebody that before that had never had more
Speaker 1: than one hundred yards in a season. So it's like,
Speaker 1: that's really like I hear and feel that process in
Speaker 1: my bones because I know that was me. I didn't
Speaker 1: have the ability to just be like, yeah, I'm popping
Speaker 1: in I'm getting a thousand yards, Like I didn't have
Speaker 1: more than one hundred in a season before that. So, um, like,
Speaker 1: that's just that's amazing. Man. That is into a t exactly.
Speaker 1: So what was your mad Madden rain after those two years?
Speaker 1: I think it was ninety three, ninety two, something like
Speaker 1: that twenty five point jump. We'll take it. Yeah, take
Speaker 1: that Madden under restimating you. I love that, and I
Speaker 1: love your explanation of the system because I feel like
Speaker 1: people that set goals and don't achieve them, it's not
Speaker 1: because the person's broken. It is because the system's broken,
Speaker 1: and then maybe their habits and rituals and whatever they're
Speaker 1: doing on a daily basis isn't as consistent. So I'm
Speaker 1: glad you touched on that. I love to get your
Speaker 1: take also on the whole idea of your You work
Speaker 1: a lot in the mental mindset, mental health, mental strength area.
Speaker 1: Our podcast is called Comeback Stories. We often talk about
Speaker 1: the story that we tell ourselves. The only story that
Speaker 1: matters is the one we tell ourselves. What's the importance
Speaker 1: of that? What have you seen? What are your thoughts
Speaker 1: about specifically the story that we tell ourselves? Name you
Speaker 1: are just your questions, guys? Come on, these are phenomenal questions.
Speaker 1: I'm getting excited over here because I got a lot
Speaker 1: for you on this all right. So you are either
Speaker 1: I told you're the one way that you view life.
Speaker 1: You either view it as it's happening to you is
Speaker 1: what was you? Or that you look at it as
Speaker 1: an opportunity, the same thing with the story that you
Speaker 1: tell yourself. All right, So you're either there's there's two
Speaker 1: wings of the spectrum now and every day when you
Speaker 1: wake up, it's either let's say, euro is over here
Speaker 1: on my left, this is ego, This is all for yourself.
Speaker 1: This side of the spectrum. On the right side is
Speaker 1: full alignment with God, meaning who you were made to be,
Speaker 1: who you were created to be. It's a constant battle
Speaker 1: daily when you wake up as gravity society life is
Speaker 1: trying to drag you down to ego when an actual
Speaker 1: your joy, in your contentment lies over here with your
Speaker 1: true potential, in your full alignment with God. So I
Speaker 1: tell you this and setting it up as every story
Speaker 1: that somebody else is going to say about you is
Speaker 1: going to bring you back to this side. Oh it's
Speaker 1: got to be about you. Oh do it, I did
Speaker 1: it my way. Oh this this this, you're dragging it
Speaker 1: back down to ego and everything that somebody says about you.
Speaker 1: If you allow that to have an effect on you,
Speaker 1: now you are actually becoming what other people the stories
Speaker 1: that they tell you. Once again, our natural inclination in
Speaker 1: our brain is to actually dat to the negative. And
Speaker 1: there's literally stuff science studies in the brain and put
Speaker 1: this in my next book, that our brain is defaulted
Speaker 1: to go into doubt mode, to go into negativity. Fifty
Speaker 1: thousand self talk thoughts daily on average, forty thousand of
Speaker 1: those eighty percent are negative. So you're already trying to
Speaker 1: combat that when you wake up. Here's the cool thing,
Speaker 1: all right, So when people think, well, this is just
Speaker 1: how i've ben, this is who I am. I can't change,
Speaker 1: this is how my parents raise me. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: change all of that. Our body. I'll give you some
Speaker 1: some science behind this. That three hundred and thirty billion
Speaker 1: cells in your body are being replaced every single day.
Speaker 1: Literally that's one percent of your entire being. So over
Speaker 1: the course of one hundred days, every single one of
Speaker 1: your cells in your body is brand new. You are
Speaker 1: a brand new person then you were a hundred days ago.
Speaker 1: So you're saying you can't change from something you did
Speaker 1: a year ago. No, no, no no, that's in your past
Speaker 1: and you have to have there's there's three aspects of it.
Speaker 1: The past. Okay, there's nothing you can do to change that.
Speaker 1: The only thing you can do is learn from the past.
Speaker 1: It's it is. What happened in the past has led
Speaker 1: you exactly to this moment today, the present. You appreciate
Speaker 1: the present. You're not supposed to be anywhere other than
Speaker 1: where you are right now. And the future. Instead of fearing,
Speaker 1: instead of feeling anxiety for the future, you anticipate the
Speaker 1: future like you were going to anticipate a trip to
Speaker 1: Disney World when you were a kid. That type that
Speaker 1: shifts the game in your fear of anxiety for the future.
Speaker 1: The stories that you're telling yourself bring it back to
Speaker 1: the science too. Throw some more at you. You are losing, shedding,
Speaker 1: shedding your former self, your negativity. Seven thousand skin cells
Speaker 1: every minute, seven thousand minute, So your body is constantly changing,
Speaker 1: it's constantly evolving. Now, the question is who are you
Speaker 1: going to believe? The person you talk to the most,
Speaker 1: or somebody who probably doesn't even know you. Now, most
Speaker 1: of us will think it's that person that we don't
Speaker 1: even know somebody says something about you, says something negative
Speaker 1: about you eighty six thousand, four hundred seconds in a day.
Speaker 1: Now you know what many long people actually think about you.
Speaker 1: After they said something about you about ten seconds and
Speaker 1: then they're thinking about themselves or thinking about what they're
Speaker 1: having for dinner that night, you spend the next eighty
Speaker 1: six thousand, three hundred ninety seconds thinking about what they said,
Speaker 1: and that becomes who you tell yourself you are. So
Speaker 1: you get the opportunity literally to create your own story.
Speaker 1: Whatever happened in your past is going to set you
Speaker 1: up for who you are going to be. Like we
Speaker 1: talked about the pit, how do you use that in
Speaker 1: ways to do that? Literally every morning when you up
Speaker 1: right down or I have a magnet I've created these
Speaker 1: magnet says I vote for me, and then you put
Speaker 1: a picture in it, and that's the picture of your
Speaker 1: future self. Because also, if you can't see where you
Speaker 1: want to go, if you don't at least have a vision,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm not saying it's going to be exactly that,
Speaker 1: It'll probably evolve on the way there. But if you
Speaker 1: don't have something you're shooting for a vision, Then where
Speaker 1: are you going? Like for me, I have New York
Speaker 1: Times number one bestseller on that I vote for myself
Speaker 1: because that's what I'm shooting for. I don't know when
Speaker 1: it's gonna happen. I would love for it to happen
Speaker 1: with this book coming out, but maybe it doesn't. Who knows.
Speaker 1: It might not happen for another forty books. But I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna keep going and going because I love the process.
Speaker 1: It's the journey. It's not going to happen on my time.
Speaker 1: It's gonna happen on a much better time, God's time.
Speaker 1: So I know this story that I'm creating is going
Speaker 1: to happen, and probably if I'm taking daily steps forward,
Speaker 1: going to happen in a much better way than I
Speaker 1: can even imagine myself. So I'm not saying, hey, negative thoughts,
Speaker 1: negative things are not going to happen. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying you suppress these in act like they're not there. Sure,
Speaker 1: embrace them, see them, say hello to them like they're there,
Speaker 1: but don't let them control your life. You can pivot
Speaker 1: those negative thoughts that happen and now start putting in
Speaker 1: these positives. That's why people say gratitude. Just the act
Speaker 1: of writing gratitude increases your IQ, It increases your happiness,
Speaker 1: like so many different joyful ratings, just writing down little
Speaker 1: small things that you're thankful for. I do it every morning,
Speaker 1: sometimes as small as a cup of coffee I'm drinking,
Speaker 1: or me and my wife watched a great show the
Speaker 1: night before. It's small things like that. So it's these
Speaker 1: processes back to the system, process, equal and results. And
Speaker 1: I know I went about eight zillion different directions there,
Speaker 1: So hopefully something stuck with you and that you can
Speaker 1: take away for those listening out there. Oh nah, man,
Speaker 1: for sure, there's a million takeaways there, especially starting staring
Speaker 1: with start with vision, for sure. If you don't have
Speaker 1: a vision for what you want your life to look like, uh,
Speaker 1: and somebody for like me and like yourself, like the
Speaker 1: vision for what God has for our lives, we leave
Speaker 1: ourselves prone to our vision being shaped by outside people,
Speaker 1: outside forces, outside energies. When I was younger, I can't
Speaker 1: think of all the countless lives that I believed in
Speaker 1: and prescribe to as far as what a man is,
Speaker 1: as far as what a man embodies, as far as
Speaker 1: as as what successes, as far as what happiness looks
Speaker 1: like and how to essentially get to happiness, which is
Speaker 1: another endpoint that we're talking about, uh, that we we
Speaker 1: can't really arrive too. So I'm stuck on that because
Speaker 1: I've been in that place to where it's like, how
Speaker 1: can I feel like my life is meaningless? How can
Speaker 1: I feel like I have nothing I contribute to nothing
Speaker 1: good here in the grand scheme of things. It's because
Speaker 1: that I didn't have a VISI and for myself, I
Speaker 1: heard of pastors say recently, don't listen to yourself, talk
Speaker 1: to yourself, and I'm like, that's crazy because it's like,
Speaker 1: I mean, you talk about them forty thousand of them.
Speaker 1: Ut of those fifty thousand thoughts are negative, I'm probably
Speaker 1: like mid forties. Uh, if I if I don't, if
Speaker 1: I don't combat them, if I don't replace them with
Speaker 1: the narrative that I really want to see when out,
Speaker 1: because I'm already at a disadvantage mathematically, like the number
Speaker 1: the numbers tell us. So just as far as a vision,
Speaker 1: and you got to be able to give yourself time
Speaker 1: to allow it to develop and not have it necessarily
Speaker 1: be in place and be rooted in you right away,
Speaker 1: Like for twenty five, the first twenty five years of
Speaker 1: my life I thought about, you know, nothing was vision related.
Speaker 1: So the fact that I'm thirty now and I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm on that journey now, I can't be pissed
Speaker 1: off or entitled to feel like my ship should all
Speaker 1: be in line now when twenty five is a lot
Speaker 1: greater than five, you know what I'm saying. So just that,
Speaker 1: just that takeaway as far as vision is man bowing
Speaker 1: to me and just life changing. Yeah, that's that's so
Speaker 1: powerful what you just said too, Like you have to
Speaker 1: be willing to let allow it to take time. Think
Speaker 1: about this in the Bible, anybody, any of the great people,
Speaker 1: but did anything happened quickly for them? There's often you
Speaker 1: read it forty years of times in the desert, or
Speaker 1: just complete struggle and job getting everything taken away from
Speaker 1: So everybody went through struggle, and everybody went through a
Speaker 1: long time of testing in patience. Look at it and
Speaker 1: people in recent history, does anybody just anybody that just
Speaker 1: rises to fame with with actually validated purpose behind it.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying insta fame or the Kim Carter like,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that, but George Washington, Martin Luther King,
Speaker 1: look at um any type of leader, the Elon Musk
Speaker 1: that didn't just happen overnight. It's a long time of
Speaker 1: doing the work. When you are being tested, when the
Speaker 1: lights aren't on, when stuff isn't working out, when nobody's
Speaker 1: patting you on the back. Are you willing to put
Speaker 1: those years in? And I know you are so like
Speaker 1: you at forty, You're gonna look back and you're gonna
Speaker 1: be like, WHOA who was I at thirty? I can't
Speaker 1: even believe that. Because you've grown so much, because you
Speaker 1: have a vision, you're taking steps forward. The worst action
Speaker 1: that you can take is in action and just stay
Speaker 1: right where you're at, because you would not learn anything
Speaker 1: if you're just trying to stay put right in your
Speaker 1: place right now, keep moving forward. What do you feel
Speaker 1: like stops people from taking action? Well, at the court's fear,
Speaker 1: and there's fear in a lot of different reasons, So
Speaker 1: fear of other people's opinions. I'm not gonna take action
Speaker 1: because I'm worried what someone's gonna say about me. Like
Speaker 1: if Darren would have said, Hey, I'm worried about people
Speaker 1: are going to think about my music, you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: taken action. There's blaming others, and it's the easier route
Speaker 1: to blame others than think like, oh, well, it's actually
Speaker 1: I'm the reason it's not happening. We talked about being
Speaker 1: burnt by the past. You think you're too old, you
Speaker 1: think you're too young to do something. That's never the truth.
Speaker 1: I mean, your brain, it develops and it matures at
Speaker 1: a certain spot, but it never stops learning and growing.
Speaker 1: There's a difference between maturing and growing. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: an eighty five year old there named Nola Oakes. She
Speaker 1: graduated from college, she got her degree, she learned a language,
Speaker 1: Like it's crazy what your brain can actually do because
Speaker 1: of the neuroplasticity that your brain has. So there's so
Speaker 1: many there's the nine reasons that I have done the
Speaker 1: studies and the research behind to find the main reasons.
Speaker 1: But it all is rooted in fear, honestly, fear of like, well,
Speaker 1: if I do this, if I take action and take
Speaker 1: a chance, well what's going to happen? And it kind
Speaker 1: of comes back to also thinking like the worst case scenario.
Speaker 1: Our brains are wired to think worst case scenario. If
Speaker 1: you look this up. You look up these studies. These
Speaker 1: these guys names luff Rain, I'll probably a French cow
Speaker 1: butcher his name. But ninety two point eight percent of
Speaker 1: worst case scenario thoughts from the study group that they
Speaker 1: did never happened. Ninety two point eight percent never happened.
Speaker 1: And of those people in that study, they were thinking
Speaker 1: about these worst case scenario thoughts for twenty five percent
Speaker 1: of their day. So think about that, things that are
Speaker 1: never actually going to happen are consuming one fourth of
Speaker 1: your day. They never happen, but yet they steal away
Speaker 1: all your joy. It's crazy, but so many of us
Speaker 1: live in that because we have this this fear of well,
Speaker 1: if I take action, what's going to happen? It's uncertainty.
Speaker 1: That's what people fear, uncertainty. So it kind of comes
Speaker 1: back to once again the stories that we tell ourselves.
Speaker 1: And I never realize when Darren and I named our
Speaker 1: podcast comeback stories about how like how many different meanings
Speaker 1: it would take on and the importance of this. And
Speaker 1: I just feel like we as human beings are very
Speaker 1: inaccurate and somewhat terrible narrators of the story, very unreliable
Speaker 1: on how we're narrating what's happening in front of us.
Speaker 1: And that's why I think I love talking mental health
Speaker 1: mental strength, and I know you dive a lot into that,
Speaker 1: and it's the importance of it so that we can
Speaker 1: recognize those negative thoughts because it is all about awareness.
Speaker 1: And so if ninety percent of those thoughts that we're having,
Speaker 1: our negative thoughts, or eighty percent to ninety two percent
Speaker 1: of the things we worry about never even happen, then
Speaker 1: the only thing that can really be a pattern interrupt
Speaker 1: is awareness. And then there's awareness, right, and then there's
Speaker 1: action like you're saying, do it. But I'm just curious
Speaker 1: for you from a mental health mindset, mental strength perspective,
Speaker 1: what do you see specifically with your athletes, like the
Speaker 1: power of visualization and maybe some techniques or some little
Speaker 1: tools that you could share and how that's benefited some
Speaker 1: of the athletes and humans you've worked with totally, And
Speaker 1: I think that all comes to the story that you're
Speaker 1: telling yourself too, and the vision that Darren was talking about.
Speaker 1: So I worked a lot with visualization, and primarily in
Speaker 1: two different avenues, the first one being the personal highlight
Speaker 1: reel because we've all had that moment were in the zone.
Speaker 1: And that's another study that I'm working on now, how
Speaker 1: to figure out the actual formula to get into flow
Speaker 1: state and to get into what I call focus. So
Speaker 1: that'll be coming in a couple of years that we're
Speaker 1: working on, But for right now, it's the recalling that
Speaker 1: time when you were in the zone. Darren recalling the
Speaker 1: time when he had the most catches in a game
Speaker 1: that time like this, nobody could stop him. That's the feeling,
Speaker 1: not just visually seeing it, but also feeling what were
Speaker 1: you feeling, seeing the surroundings that your teammates giving you
Speaker 1: high fives, maybe getting the game ball in the locker
Speaker 1: room afterwards. Recreating that moment already puts into Darren this
Speaker 1: dopamine rush, this energy, this positivity, so that when he
Speaker 1: steps out on the floor, he's going to feel like
Speaker 1: he is that person. So thinking about that, even if
Speaker 1: you're not an athlete, like where did you kill? A
Speaker 1: business presentation, a sales call, make an amazing dinner for
Speaker 1: your family, if you're a stay at home mom. There's
Speaker 1: all different ways of that zone moment, but you recreate it.
Speaker 1: You have to practice recreating this too, So I have
Speaker 1: my players do it every single practice and of course
Speaker 1: every single game, so it becomes something that they're able
Speaker 1: to do, they're able to call up. Then the other
Speaker 1: one is the visualization of the future, and Kobe in
Speaker 1: MJ's mindset, coach taught me this George Mumford, where they
Speaker 1: would see the game happen and unfold how they wanted
Speaker 1: to see it. So you're picking your exactly what you
Speaker 1: want to have happened, watching yourself go through every move,
Speaker 1: the spinaway, fall away jumpers, the step backs, the dunks,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. You see it, how you visualize it,
Speaker 1: and then they watch it again in their mind seeing
Speaker 1: when some kind of storm happens in the game, they
Speaker 1: turn it over three times they airball is shot. Now,
Speaker 1: how do you recover and how do you come back
Speaker 1: from that moment? Because there's always going to be something
Speaker 1: that happens to you in the game, There's always going
Speaker 1: to be something that hits you in life. It's how
Speaker 1: you react through that. And if you're already proactively seeing
Speaker 1: how you're going to react in the moment, now you're
Speaker 1: able to overcome it instead of letting that thing hit
Speaker 1: you in the face and knock you down and stop you.
Speaker 1: So those are the two ways that I use visualization
Speaker 1: with athletes, I mean with anybody really that can do
Speaker 1: that and implement it in their own style of life.
Speaker 1: And then that I feel like just the whole visualization
Speaker 1: process it prepares you to allow you to go into
Speaker 1: the game and just adapt to things. I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of myths, especially within football, that I
Speaker 1: don't think I've prescribed. You haven't necessarily been healthy for me.
Speaker 1: You think like people you talk about coverage recognition, like
Speaker 1: how you should know the coverage before the ball snap,
Speaker 1: Like these teams are so good at disguising coverages now,
Speaker 1: and how they roll into different coverages, Like I look
Speaker 1: at and visualize what is their initial shell, Like how
Speaker 1: are they going to line up initially? And then my
Speaker 1: first three steps off the ball, like how am I
Speaker 1: going to recognize these things and allow them to adapt?
Speaker 1: So basically, like I can't just think my way through
Speaker 1: everything and like oversqueeze it and over analyze it. I
Speaker 1: had to coach call it paralysis by analysis. At some point,
Speaker 1: I got to allow myself to go out there and
Speaker 1: just do what I do naturally and not try to
Speaker 1: put these parameters or put these you know, just this
Speaker 1: overthinking of it, it's all. It is really like, I
Speaker 1: have to allow myself to go out there and do
Speaker 1: what I trained myself to do. Do it freely, do
Speaker 1: it with joy, do it with gratitude. And I can't
Speaker 1: do that if I'm analyzing it up and down. So
Speaker 1: that's why I feel like the visualization comes in. I
Speaker 1: sit in, I plan it's vision. It allows me to
Speaker 1: see the pits all these things that we're talking about
Speaker 1: and to be able to adapt to them on the fly,
Speaker 1: because that's what life is like. I know I'm gonna
Speaker 1: face tests, I know I'm gonna get you know, there's
Speaker 1: gonna be trials and tribulations. I don't know when they're coming,
Speaker 1: so I'm not gonna have my response ready at all times.
Speaker 1: But with the way that I train myself and I
Speaker 1: approach and visualize these things, watch the magic that my
Speaker 1: mind my body can do in the moment under pressure
Speaker 1: if I allow it to do it. Man, But what
Speaker 1: he just hit on is the secret sauce and what
Speaker 1: I in taking this next step into this next phase
Speaker 1: of figuring out because you said, hey, if I'm too focused,
Speaker 1: if I'm thinking too much, if I'm too analytical, then
Speaker 1: it's paralysis by analysis. That's the whole quotation of you
Speaker 1: start pressing, you start forcing, you're going one hundred percent,
Speaker 1: and you don't always want to go one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: The sweet spots of like the ninety percent. Now you
Speaker 1: are allowing your natural god giving abilities, your talent, your
Speaker 1: flow to be able to take over. But if you're
Speaker 1: too much and only just allowing your natural talented ability,
Speaker 1: then you're just going out there and playing, which can
Speaker 1: be good, but you're never going to get to that
Speaker 1: next level. So it's how do you seamlessly in step,
Speaker 1: add together the type of focus, the visualization, the studies
Speaker 1: that you've done, the few things you're mainly focusing on
Speaker 1: during that play, and add it in with the flow
Speaker 1: and make those things mesh together. That's where you get
Speaker 1: in the sweet spot. Just like you're talking about right there,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't always happen, you're giving yourself the best
Speaker 1: opportunity that it can happen. I want to figure out
Speaker 1: how you can actually call it up like that and
Speaker 1: have a formula for it. There's so much there, you know,
Speaker 1: and my understanding working with athletes and also using visualization
Speaker 1: or some might call it a mental rehearsal that some
Speaker 1: might even say that's a little different than a visualization.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line is your brain doesn't know the
Speaker 1: difference whether you're actually on the court on the field,
Speaker 1: or if you're visualizing it. So once you've been in
Speaker 1: the practice and you can smell the grass and smell
Speaker 1: the aroma and hear the sound of the crowd, when
Speaker 1: you step on the field, it's as if you've already
Speaker 1: been there. And I think the big shift and the
Speaker 1: importance of the mental strength training, mindfulness meditation is that
Speaker 1: we shift from thinking to feeling, and from like doing
Speaker 1: like hundred percent got to do to actually just being,
Speaker 1: like being in the flow. And when you're able to
Speaker 1: feel a coverage instead of overthink it, you're actually in
Speaker 1: your body, or your mind and body are in the
Speaker 1: same place where you're not in your head. And you know,
Speaker 1: I've heard I think it's Tony Robins say if you're
Speaker 1: in your head, you're dead. And I can't imagine at
Speaker 1: the fast pace of the NBA or the NFL like
Speaker 1: what happens and how we get just kind of hijacked
Speaker 1: by our thinking when we're overthinking things at such a
Speaker 1: fast pace and a very violent game of football with
Speaker 1: like how fast people are moving and how hard people
Speaker 1: we're getting hit smoked. Which is another reason why it's important,
Speaker 1: especially in the NFL, is to take care of your
Speaker 1: mind because of all the trauma and the concussions and
Speaker 1: everything that's happening, and even in meditation, just being more
Speaker 1: kind to ourself and learning to love ourselves and letting
Speaker 1: go of some of those negative thoughts. So at some
Speaker 1: point we have to buy into the fact that the
Speaker 1: stuff works, and when we do, our mind becomes our
Speaker 1: best friend instead of our worst enemy. Even though we
Speaker 1: have the outside world and algorithms and every marketing, every
Speaker 1: company sending marketing to tell us that we're not enough
Speaker 1: until we have this. So we got to protect our peace.
Speaker 1: So I love this conversation. I feel like we could
Speaker 1: we could go all day on this. But David, I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you, like, for maybe that person that
Speaker 1: isn't on the court, isn't on the field, Maybe they're
Speaker 1: at home, they're struggling, they're stuck. They don't they know
Speaker 1: that they're stuck, but they just don't know what to
Speaker 1: do about it. What would you say to them or
Speaker 1: what would be a good first step if you're if
Speaker 1: you're stuck, what would be a good first step to
Speaker 1: just get unstuck or to get a towards your goal
Speaker 1: to get on the court where you'd say, like, unstuck.
Speaker 1: If you're maybe just struggling with some mental health, you're
Speaker 1: beating up, beating yourself up, you're in a dead end job,
Speaker 1: don't have a job, but just really down in the
Speaker 1: dumps right now, that's good. So I would first say,
Speaker 1: it's not that serious. Seriously, it's not that serious. Learn
Speaker 1: to be able to laugh at yourself in the situation
Speaker 1: that you're in. It's not that serious. You're probably not
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this, You're probably never going to
Speaker 1: end up homeless in your life. So you're gonna be fine.
Speaker 1: You're probably never going to end up just like you know,
Speaker 1: strung out or something. If you're like, you're going to
Speaker 1: be fine. It's not that serious. But then also understand
Speaker 1: that there is a reason that you are here. There
Speaker 1: is no accident that you were creating. You look up
Speaker 1: the stats of even being the sperm that won the
Speaker 1: race to even be born. It's astronomical odds to overcome.
Speaker 1: So there's a reason that you're here. God doesn't make mistakes.
Speaker 1: You are not a mistake. God did not mess up
Speaker 1: with you. And you know that, Hey, like, you don't
Speaker 1: have to go through this journey alone. Like I was
Speaker 1: alluding to earlier, the reason that I can step on
Speaker 1: stage in front of thousands of people and speak and
Speaker 1: have no fear because I don't really care about the results.
Speaker 1: I know that God's got the plan for me. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do the best that I can, and
Speaker 1: that best that I can, I know He's got a
Speaker 1: plan for me. So not feeling like you are alan,
Speaker 1: You're not alone, and you're not a mistake that you're here.
Speaker 1: And if you feel like, hey, the whole world and
Speaker 1: the pressure is on you, it's it's not that serious.
Speaker 1: So no, there's a few things, but hopefully one of
Speaker 1: those can get you unstuck. I mean, there's so much
Speaker 1: that you've said today, that you share with us today
Speaker 1: that can help pull somebody out of a situation, especially
Speaker 1: you know, being that pit. Like essentially, we just went
Speaker 1: back to the beginning where we popped it off and
Speaker 1: went and dove right in and basically said you have
Speaker 1: to embrace this situation and know that ultimately it's gonna
Speaker 1: before you're good, and there's gonna be lessons in it
Speaker 1: that you can pass on to somebody else. But I
Speaker 1: just want to say thank you for your energy, thank
Speaker 1: you for you know, your life story and all the
Speaker 1: details you gathered along the way that you know, that
Speaker 1: coach telling you you couldn't cut it wasn't enough to
Speaker 1: stop you. You know. Being fired from the NBA wasn't
Speaker 1: enough to stop you, you know, And here you are,
Speaker 1: still trying to better the experience of somebody else's life. However,
Speaker 1: money many lives you touch through all the things that
Speaker 1: you do, keep it going. Man, We appreciate you and
Speaker 1: thanks for your time. I appreciate that, Darren. Hey, my
Speaker 1: love language is words of affirmation. So you just filled
Speaker 1: me up, brother, I appreciate it. Sure man, no problem, Yeah,
Speaker 1: David Man. We've known each other for a while, only
Speaker 1: seeing each other a couple times in the flesh, but
Speaker 1: the beauty of technology and social media has kept us
Speaker 1: close and you've been a huge inspiration. And how you've
Speaker 1: stepped up on the stage, it's been an inspiration for
Speaker 1: me to do it and to take action. Speaking of that,
Speaker 1: can you just talk about your third book that's being released,
Speaker 1: I believe in April. Touch on that a little bit
Speaker 1: and then let our listeners know where they can track
Speaker 1: you down, where they can eventually buy the book, or
Speaker 1: where they can track down your other two books. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know what, I've got a couple of challenges
Speaker 1: for both of you, because Darren, you said before the
Speaker 1: show you're thinking about writing a book. Do it? Man,
Speaker 1: what's stopping you? Write your stories? You have an incredibly
Speaker 1: powerful story. Write out as many stories as you can,
Speaker 1: with an applicable point at the end of those stories,
Speaker 1: and just write. Don't worry what it looks like, don't
Speaker 1: worry the flow, don't worry the editing. Just do it.
Speaker 1: So it's gonna help and it's going to benefit somebody.
Speaker 1: And see, you told me that you wanted to speak
Speaker 1: two like, what's the getting on stage hitting me on
Speaker 1: the social media after a talk saying that it's inspired
Speaker 1: you to go speak, So now's your time to go
Speaker 1: speak too. So we got speaking, we got bookwriting my
Speaker 1: next book, do it. The life changing power of taking
Speaker 1: action is an overview of it would be Atomic Habits
Speaker 1: meets the Eneograham with crazy cool Malcolm Gladwell stories about
Speaker 1: historical figures in the pastors changed the world. So that's
Speaker 1: all I'm gonna leave you with. That's just a little
Speaker 1: teaser of it, and you can go get it anywhere
Speaker 1: books are sold Amazon, Barnes and Nobles comes out worldwide
Speaker 1: April fourth. Finding anything that I'm doing, personal coaching, group coaching,
Speaker 1: David Nurse dot com, social media, David Nurse, NBA, the
Speaker 1: David Nurse Show. Yeah, I think there's just a lot
Speaker 1: of David Nurse stuff out there. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that sounds like who conceded to make everything my name,
Speaker 1: but it keeps it, it keeps it easy to find.
Speaker 1: There you go. I appreciate you guys. Thanks for the time,
Speaker 1: Thanks for what you do, the platform that you've created,
Speaker 1: and just uh man, like these these stories. Somebody's going
Speaker 1: to take something from this and it's going to inspire
Speaker 1: them and that's because you guys have set that platform.
Speaker 1: We appreciate you, man, Thanks so much. We're out there, y'all. Piece.
Speaker 1: Thank you