David Nurse's Comeback Story

00:00:10 Speaker 1: Welcome back, everybody. We're here for another episode of Comeback Stories. I'm here with my main man, dere Waller. You're inside the Wind Hotel, Blue Wire Studios. Love you too. It's an honor always to sit with you. Got a great guest today. So today's guest is the best best selling author speaker, and he's been transforming the way hundreds of NBA stars play on the court. He's written best two best selling books and he's about to release his third. He also runs a successful motivational coaching business and is a highly sought after speaker, helping thousands of employees and athletes develop unshakable mindsets. David Nurse, Welcome to the show man. I'll appreciate you guys having me on. I feel like this has been one that we've been trying to put together and we finally made it happen. Yeah, kind of like this book that I hear that's coming out called do It, and we just did it or we aren't doing it one of the pretense we're making it happen. Man. It's good to see your face and even though it's not in the flesh, this is this is a good alternative and we're gonna flow regardless, and we don't mess around here on comeback stories. We usually dive right in and we want to know for you, like what was life like growing up? So basically everything in my life revolved around playing in the NBA. Now growing up in the middle of nowhere, Cornfield Vile, being six foot one in a vertical evil about two inches. My parents probably should have said played tennis or golf, but I loved basketball, so I poured everything I had into it and no backup plan. Like literally, I never thought about, hey, I should think about other things to do while I'm at college. It was NBA, NBA, NBA. Somebody probably should have told me, David, that reality is not going to happen. And I'm playing overseas in Spain, while I played in Australia in Greece, and we'll fast forward to Spain and I'm playing in the second division Basque Region Northern Spain, and it was more like a Will Ferrell semi pro type of league than it was anywhere close to the NBA. So it's kind of a joke of the league. The players are concerned about where the party's going to be at after the game, and I'm here putting in these two days extra film study, optimization, all of it. I still think I'm close to the NBA. And I get cut after the first preseason game. The coach calls me over after the game outside and the Basque Region mountains. I remember this vividly exactly how it went down, and he just said, David, you can't cut it. We're sending you home. So imagine in your own life, listening to the right now, all of your hopes and goals and dreams taken away from you, and I just taken away from you, but without a backup playing and basically your face rubbed in the dirt, insult to injury. And I go home and I'm living on my parents recliner chair they live in Kansas City, outside of Kansas City at the time, feeling bad for myself for about six months, and my mom would always say these motivational and inspirational quotes. And usually it was whatever mom win in one year out the other year, like not paying attention. And I remember vividly as well. She was doing dishes, I was kicked back in the recliner chair and she said, David, when one door closes, four open and an entire beach Trump Pattio overlooking the ocean, and it hit me. I was like, Mom, I thought it was one door, one door, But what she was saying is when a door closes, it's an opportunity for so much more great things to come. Everything that I poured into playing in the NBA wasn't necessarily for me, but I learned how to be able to teach these players who had more God given abilities seven foot height than athleticism to play in the NBA. So I also realized that four doors opening is what is called taking action. You don't wait for another door to open. One door closes. I don't wait for the phone to ring. No one's gonna call me up and be like, David, you want an MBA coaching job just because that's what you want, that doesn't happen. You had to pick up the phone and go do it. And I realized this, so I decided right then and there I was going to coach in the NBA. And we can dive into that how it went about that. But I had no connections in the NBA. So once again it's this incompetent confidence of man, I want to do this, But all right, it's gonna be a lot of hard work, it's going to take a lot of time. Can I actually do it? Especially since I just had everything taken away from me and playing in the NBA, I can relate a lot to the not having a plan b other than for me it was baseball. My circumstances were different where it was an injury and that's what kind of took the sport away from me, a baseball and for me that started a very very dark road, destructive, self destructive road of addiction because my whole identity was wrapped in this idea of a baseball player, a star athlete, and getting my validation from the performance and the approval and caring what people people thought about me, and that's where I would just get my likes back in the day. There weren't likes back then, but that's where I would get my approval. So I can relate a lot. And for me, it sent me down a really really dark road. But for you, if you go back into that, like, what was that like for you when that loss of identity was happening, Well, yeah, I mean I think it always when something that we work so hard for and that we think is going to be something that will eventually occur as taken away from us. Naturally, we have that what was me feeling bad mentality, when actually it's it's God's way of saying, Hey, this wasn't meant for you. I have something greater for you. Are you willing to trust this process that I'm about to put you through? And it's it's what I called the pit. Everybody, no matter what, spends time in the pit. So for you, Donnie, when you were playing and you were going to be on this major league trajectory and you got injured, at least you can use an injury for your excuse. I can't use that. I just wasn't very good. But you fall into this pit. So you go around all right, You're on top of the world, and then you fall into this pit. And the difference in people that come out of that are people that are successful, are the ones who are willing to dance in the fire. This fire, this suck, this furnace. Like you throw a coal, a piece of coal in there. The longer it's in there, the shinier the diamond is on the other side. The longer you're willing to embrace this difficult time. The more well versed you're going to be on the other side of it. So wrapping around what your question is and like, how do I feel? How did I feel like that? Sure, I felt beaten down, but then I realized, like that moment when my mom said, there's four doors waiting to be open, there's something better out there. Everything wasn't for loss. Just like everything that you've done in your baseball career you're still using today. It wasn't like, Okay, it's cut off and now it's all gone. It's not. It's never like that, but we always think that. And I think life is like a literally like a long hallway, a long hallway with different doors on the sides of it. You open the door, you go in there, you spend time in there, you learn something in there. Now you go back down the hallway, you open the door on the other side. You learn, you grow, You constantly are moving forward, learning and growing and transforming. And it's just I mean, I think that's the beauty in life. There's no inSpot to it, and it's all what happens to you is you're deciding factor of how you want to view that. Do you want to view that in a well it's over I got injured, or shoot, I got cut, I got fired. Woe is me? Now I'm going to feel bad for myself. That's the blamer mentality. And a lot of people hold themselves back from taking action on what they're truly destined for because something someone they can put blame on, or someone burnt them in the past, and that's there. It's what I call an action archetype. There's different action archetypes. That's the blamer and the burnt. That's that's kind of the one we're referring to right here. I mean we diving, right, I mean, we talk about diving right in on the show. We cannon ball it in on this one, like I mean, it's I mean, I love it. You know what I'm saying, talking about the pit like that's it got me fired up right now because I feel like, you know, my pit drug addiction, alcohol addiction, you know what I'm saying, Like that has essentially gave me my purpose, you know what I'm saying. And I see you, you know, I see the books behind you on the wall. It's like pivot and go, Like you wouldn't have wrote that book if you didn't have to pivot. You talk about the breakthrough like you wouldn't have written that book if you didn't have to break through something yourself. So it's like that pit like that we don't necessarily want to spend time in. That's yucky, that's nasty, that's painful, Like we have to be in that because our purpose are the way that we can impact the world and give somebody something and make their life better is from us being in that pit and taking information from that pit and learning from that pit. So if we don't develop that perspective to learn from it, embrace it. Like I'm not sitting here if I wasn't a drug addict. I wasn't I'm not sitting here if I wouldn't poping perk set like they were in Sweethearts, you know what I'm saying, Like that's just but no, but nobody wants to hear those things. But that's why three of us are here to slap you right in the face, right out to gay and let you know like this is what this is what it's got to be like that. But that's so powerful because think about the people that are going through the same thing that you went through, or any type of drug addiction. You have more power to speak to them on the ability to overcome it and use it for your good and the good for others than anybody else does. So that thing happening to you was actually a gift in disguise that you're going to be able to help many people afterwards. If you don't go through that, your voice doesn't hit its strong and people might not listen to you in that terms. Anything that we go through now becomes a blessing that we because initially you think and it's kind of like one of those cheesy things you think initially it's like a massive setback and its setbacks going to set you back for life. But it's honestly, a setback is just a set up for somebody else. And it's once again comes down to how are you going to view life? And there's either there's there's only two ways. Really, it's it's the okay, I'm a victim, this is what life is doing to me, or I'm going to use everything in life as an opportunity for something better. And that's as simple as that. That's the only two ways you can use things. It has me thinking of the song that you wrote and produced for the podcast the Comeback Stories theme song, which says came back from the Pig. Yeah, it was the first line. It was the the first line of the song. Bro, That's why, that's why, that's why I'm over here. You know what I'm saying, I'm starts about to start sweating and whatnot. So I see, I didn't even know that. How about that for her? God put it in there. Came back from the kid. Hey, you probably don't want me to wrap it, so I'll just leave that to you. I'll send you that song afterwards. D'ren just released another album last week, and man, this dude is just straight different and talented. And you know, you have a lot of athletes that are trying to be operas and artists, and um, he's He's a true love from a place of love and a place of joy. And uh, you know what I'm saying, Like, if I if I had nothing, if if if I couldn't get a penny, if I couldn't get a stream, I would make music in my room by myself. And that's just that's just what it is. So and I feel like music is meant to be shared, so I just put it out to the world. Then you know how you know how powerful that is and beautiful that is. You know, the most influential media stream bar none, it's it's music. There's nothing more influential than through music. TV's good, TV's powerful, but TV's for a hit. Podcasts are great, books are great, but music is the most influential way to change someone's feelings, change someone's heart, and really speak through them. So that power that you have for music, tod lean into that. I know you are. But if you're ever feeling any doubt of should you be doing this? Do it? Like literally do it that I wish I had that gift? Do you not have that gift at all? And I know that going back to the pit for you, what was the pit? What would you say in your life if you were to look back, What was the bottom of all bottoms for you? Man? Well, that was one of them for sure. Of Yeah. I spent my whole life preparing for this, thinking that I was gonna make it here and I didn't and it was taken away. But then I put five years into building relationships. I handwrote a letter to every NBA GM to send out like something of just serving their organization, wanting to coach in the NBA. I had no connections. Nobody got back to me. But a month and a half later, I got a call from the GM of the Los Angeles Clippers at the time, Gary Sacks, and we had a just a quick conversation. He said at the end of it, if you're ever out in LA, look me up. We'll grab coffee. Basically, good luck with the rest of your life, kid. But I took that as an opportunity. He opened that door, so I booked it. I could spend all my money, stole some of my parents' money to be out in LA to meet with Gary that following week, acting like I had a basketball camp so I didn't look desperate, and we hit it off. Every connection stemmed from Gary Sacks and the MBA that I have today that ended up coaching with the Nets. Everyone from that taking a chance. So I'm setting up the story to the biggest pit to answer your question. To get there. Now, I realized, like the NBA wasn't just gonna say hey, David, like cool, you know Gary Sacks will give you a job. No, I had to make myself the expert in something so they would want me. And all I could do is shoot? Could Dan no vertical then like playing defense? Just shoot? So I custom made these basketballs to do basketball, do shooting camps. Had him made from China, terrible leather sent to the Oakland Seaport. I get in my car, Nissan Maxima, small car. Drive twenty nine hours from Kansas City to Oakland or with these long haul truckers packing all their stuff, I'm packing my little car with basket balls. I spend the next five years doing basketball camps all over the country, sleeping on friends, couches who didn't even know I was their friends, sleeping and well lived Walmart parking lots in many different cities. I wake up five years later. We're fast forward five years later, Melbourne, Australia. I have an email that says Brooklyn Nets shooting coach. I thought it was a joke, spam, didn't know anybody in Brooklyn clicked on it. Now next week I am in Brooklyn as their shooting coach, this young coach in the NBA. Five years in the making. I made it so to set up that biggest pit once again. I'd already been through a pit moment in my life. I think I'm gonna be this NBA this, you know, in the NBA forever we go from twenty eight to second in three point shooting percentage, all just God's blessing. And we're like, I'm getting all this media, New York media, NBA media, I'm there. The GM is saying three year deal, new head coach comes on at the end of the year, and I'm out, I'm fired, just like that, five years to get my deck, dream job that I actually got to and I'm out, I'm fired. And by that time that every other staff had had all the people that was laid in the offseason, and again a door closed. So just constant pits, constant downfalls. And what I've come to realize through going through many of these and other smaller challenging times in my life that losing people in my life or relationships of people that I thought of the world of and now is just completely you know, family type stuff that just gets strained. Like those types, like I understand that everything has its purpose, it has its season, and it has its reason for it that it that no matter what the pit that I'm in, there is going to be another side to it. And I also know like for me and having my faith in God and in Jesus that it's not independence on me, Like I don't have to put all this weighted pressure on my shoulders, think that I have to perform, that I have to make that happen, that I have to generate and create everything that happens for me. I'd be the biggest liar if I thought that, because there's so many things, so many great blessings that come to me, and I'm just like, where in the heck did that come from? But I know where it came from, and that gives me this ability to go through life with a rhythm, with a pace, with a Okay, if I'm in the pit, cool, I'm gonna dance in the fire because I'm gonna get I'm gonna just grow from this. I'm gonna improve from this, and I'm gonna come out of it better. And there's gonna be another fire, because whether you like to admit it or not, you are either currently in a fire or you are coming up to a fire very soon. And that's just the way life is. And it's how you dance in the fire. How you deal with that is determines how your your life, your joy, and your ultimate contentment is going to be. I mean from that right there, I mean when we talk about I mean I've heard that said in a different way, like you're either just exiting a storm or a storm is it's on its way essentially, And it's like from your journey, like making it to the NBA as a coach, I feeling like you've arrived, like this whole idea of like feeling like we're arriving someplace, or like there's this finish line that if I achieve this position or if I get to a certain point of success or achievement, like I've made it, like I can kick my feet up. I'm cool, I'm kicking it now. But I feel like from that from you pivoting into what you're doing now and things that you even have lined up after that, Like can you speak to how it's not about arriving someplace, but it's really about you know, hear the journey is the destination? Like can you explain that to listeners that maybe don't know fully what that means. Yeah, that's so good, Dan, and it's and it's so true. I mean you look at Olympic gold medalists and if you ask them if they're filled for life, from winning the highest accolade an athlete can win. Their answer is gonna be no. I had a friend who sold his company for two hundred million dollars. He spent some time flying around to Italy on his plane. Got bored. Now we start in another company. There is never any endpoint, and that's the beauty of it. I don't say that in a way to stress people out, but the fun of life is the exhilarating journey, the exhilarating challenge and being able to actually do it for an impact on somebody. And I tell people like, when you know you're in your sweet spot, and I know I'm in my sweet spot speaking and writing books and showing people different tools to be able to use to unlock what's inside of them. I know I'm in my sweet spot because I am super passionate about it. I wake up in the morning excited for the day to come, and I know it has purpose. And I know when you have passion and purpose, you are on a mission. Not everybody's at that spot, and that's totally okay. If you're listening to that and you feel like, you know what, I don't feel like I have purpose, Well, maybe you actually do maybe working a job that is a nine to five or working the late night hours. Maybe that's actually to show your kid what hard work is all about and how you can actually, you know, implement those types of just morals and characteristics into your child. Maybe that's the purpose. Maybe you're still finding your passion. So yeah, I mean to your point, the journey is the joy. It's like I have a stat that cruise ships. When you go on a cruise, most people think, okay, well where did you go? You went to the Bahamas, you went to Alaska, that's the destination. But in surveying people that have gone on this cruise, ninety two percent some cise cruise lines out to find the exact the cruise that it was, but cruise like ninety two percent of people enjoyed the cruise journey over just getting to the destination. So what's that tell you? That destination will never fill you. It's cool to have something on the map, like a goal, but goals are just mile markers for a much bigger purpose. And if you stop at that goal, then you're done. Then you stop learning, you stopped growing, and ultimately that's like when people say, well I'm retired, all right, you just took ten years off your life because you retire because you have no more purpose of what you're doing. And I'll give you one more thing in here to show, like okay, because people are thinking like, oh okay, then I have to do so much. I have to make sure I have so much impact. I have to reach this many people. But wait, oh, this guy's reaching millions of people. I'll never be as good as them, So why do I even try? You know what? I challenge you listening to this to name somebody that lived a hundred years ago that's not a president, named somebody lived a one hundred years ago that's not a president. You're struggling to do so because one hundred years from now, when you're dead, you know what it's going to remember you. And that's totally okay. It's a freedom that what you're doing here, you don't have to think that it has to be in every single history book. It doesn't have to reach eight zillion people. You don't have to be George Washington, Martin Luther King. You can just be right where you're at having the impact that you're having with purpose and passion, understanding there is no end result. That's going to fulfill you. It's the joy in the daily journey at your own Yeah, yeah, yeah, David. I know you work with a lot of high performers and you have your coaching and I'm curious with because I talk a lot about this in coaching with goal setting, and the most important part of goal setting is that last step, which is actually detaching from the outcome because we actually don't have control over the outcome. So I'd love to just hear your take on that and maybe how you express that to your athletes and to your coaching clients and the importance of letting go of the outcome. That's such a good question, Donnie. Thanks for asking that one. So I'll give you a story here. So I work with the players since his sophomore year at college, Norm Pow he plays for the Los Angeles Clippers now. So at a time when he was playing for the Raptors, he was going in and out of the lineup, and this was four years ago. Well yeah, four years ago. He was going in and out of the lineup and he was a coming up on a contract year. So he's like, you know, maybe he's not even in the league next year, and he wasn't really performing, but sometimes he'd have really good games and he'd be the best person to be around. Awesome when his results were really good. But when he didn't, then you really wouldn't want to be around him because he based his joy, he based his confidence. He based everything on results, the results being points per game. So we just decided, you know what, we got to change things up. We got to scrap this because it's not working. So we figured out what norm strengths were, like, who was he? What was his what I call system? So what you are you have your God given abilities? Is your system? And Norm's best two shots his system was catching shoot three in getting to the rim, downhill in transition. That's it. Those were his two best shots, his system. So now we had to figure out, okay, how do you get to those shots the most. We are no longer going to track points per game shooting percentage. All we were going to track is how many opportunities in your great zone your strengths do you get to. So system plus process, process are your daily habits. This was Norm's working on his catch and shoot. This was watching film to see how he could get a half a step quicker to these spots. This was studying defenders he'd play that night to understand how they're going to play him, to see how he can cut the angles to get to the room. Those were the only two things he was concerned about. That was his habits, his system plus process. The habits equal results. If you focus on results, they will never come. They will rise, they will fall, you will be miserable. But if you focus on your system and your process, the results will come. So he went a span of thirty games only shooting those two shots, and when the World's shut down in twenty twenty, Norm Pole he was coming off the bench, in and out of lineup. They just preface this that the Western Conference player of the Week that week was Lebron James, who we've all heard of. The Eastern Conference player of the week was Norm Powell. And Norm goes on to get a ninety two million dollars deal that following year with the Portland Trailblazers. Now he's probably gonna win the sixth Man of the Year Clippers, a star studded team. He's having a phenomenal career and we still do the same stuff. Literally talk to him a couple hours before this podcast going into his game tonight and just remembering, reminding him the shots that he's looking for, because last game didn't get as many minutes, but he's not gonna get thrown off, didn't get as many points, not gonna get thrown off. He hit all his great spots, and we're gonna stick to that system. We're gonna stick to that process. So yeah, understanding what your strengths are and then your daily habits and pouring into those strengths to continue to make those strengths great is what's going to equal the results. That's brilliant, because that's that's literally the way, without even really knowing, I was approaching it that way. So twenty nineteen twenty twenty was like the resurrection of my career, coming out of of a year long suspension. Played six games in twenty eighteen, but twenty nineteen was my first year starting, and going into that year, I was like, you know, I'm a first time starter. Like my Madden rating was sixty seven. I had to have been the lowest overall rated player going into a season to be considered a starter. So I wasn't like, how do I get my rating to ninety something or I need one hundred catches in this many yards, Like I'm like, how do I keep my pad level consistently down in my route running every single play? How do I make sure I'm you know, releasing with power and with speed. How do I make sure like every single catch I'm making, I'm seeing the ball eyes to the tuck. Is what my coach Frank used to say, Like all these little fundamentals, and it's like that turns into running one route at practice really well and coming back to the line and running that route again, and then it's like one route on top of one route on top of one route, turns into one practice, turns into one week of practice, turns into one game, and you're so focused in the process that you know up at the end of the year, both those seasons and it's back to back eleven hundred yard seasons. But this is from somebody that before that had never had more than one hundred yards in a season. So it's like, that's really like I hear and feel that process in my bones because I know that was me. I didn't have the ability to just be like, yeah, I'm popping in I'm getting a thousand yards, Like I didn't have more than one hundred in a season before that. So, um, like, that's just that's amazing. Man. That is into a t exactly. So what was your mad Madden rain after those two years? I think it was ninety three, ninety two, something like that twenty five point jump. We'll take it. Yeah, take that Madden under restimating you. I love that, and I love your explanation of the system because I feel like people that set goals and don't achieve them, it's not because the person's broken. It is because the system's broken, and then maybe their habits and rituals and whatever they're doing on a daily basis isn't as consistent. So I'm glad you touched on that. I love to get your take also on the whole idea of your You work a lot in the mental mindset, mental health, mental strength area. Our podcast is called Comeback Stories. We often talk about the story that we tell ourselves. The only story that matters is the one we tell ourselves. What's the importance of that? What have you seen? What are your thoughts about specifically the story that we tell ourselves? Name you are just your questions, guys? Come on, these are phenomenal questions. I'm getting excited over here because I got a lot for you on this all right. So you are either I told you're the one way that you view life. You either view it as it's happening to you is what was you? Or that you look at it as an opportunity, the same thing with the story that you tell yourself. All right, So you're either there's there's two wings of the spectrum now and every day when you wake up, it's either let's say, euro is over here on my left, this is ego, This is all for yourself. This side of the spectrum. On the right side is full alignment with God, meaning who you were made to be, who you were created to be. It's a constant battle daily when you wake up as gravity society life is trying to drag you down to ego when an actual your joy, in your contentment lies over here with your true potential, in your full alignment with God. So I tell you this and setting it up as every story that somebody else is going to say about you is going to bring you back to this side. Oh it's got to be about you. Oh do it, I did it my way. Oh this this this, you're dragging it back down to ego and everything that somebody says about you. If you allow that to have an effect on you, now you are actually becoming what other people the stories that they tell you. Once again, our natural inclination in our brain is to actually dat to the negative. And there's literally stuff science studies in the brain and put this in my next book, that our brain is defaulted to go into doubt mode, to go into negativity. Fifty thousand self talk thoughts daily on average, forty thousand of those eighty percent are negative. So you're already trying to combat that when you wake up. Here's the cool thing, all right, So when people think, well, this is just how i've ben, this is who I am. I can't change, this is how my parents raise me. Yeah, you can change all of that. Our body. I'll give you some some science behind this. That three hundred and thirty billion cells in your body are being replaced every single day. Literally that's one percent of your entire being. So over the course of one hundred days, every single one of your cells in your body is brand new. You are a brand new person then you were a hundred days ago. So you're saying you can't change from something you did a year ago. No, no, no no, that's in your past and you have to have there's there's three aspects of it. The past. Okay, there's nothing you can do to change that. The only thing you can do is learn from the past. It's it is. What happened in the past has led you exactly to this moment today, the present. You appreciate the present. You're not supposed to be anywhere other than where you are right now. And the future. Instead of fearing, instead of feeling anxiety for the future, you anticipate the future like you were going to anticipate a trip to Disney World when you were a kid. That type that shifts the game in your fear of anxiety for the future. The stories that you're telling yourself bring it back to the science too. Throw some more at you. You are losing, shedding, shedding your former self, your negativity. Seven thousand skin cells every minute, seven thousand minute, So your body is constantly changing, it's constantly evolving. Now, the question is who are you going to believe? The person you talk to the most, or somebody who probably doesn't even know you. Now, most of us will think it's that person that we don't even know somebody says something about you, says something negative about you eighty six thousand, four hundred seconds in a day. Now you know what many long people actually think about you. After they said something about you about ten seconds and then they're thinking about themselves or thinking about what they're having for dinner that night, you spend the next eighty six thousand, three hundred ninety seconds thinking about what they said, and that becomes who you tell yourself you are. So you get the opportunity literally to create your own story. Whatever happened in your past is going to set you up for who you are going to be. Like we talked about the pit, how do you use that in ways to do that? Literally every morning when you up right down or I have a magnet I've created these magnet says I vote for me, and then you put a picture in it, and that's the picture of your future self. Because also, if you can't see where you want to go, if you don't at least have a vision, and I'm I'm not saying it's going to be exactly that, It'll probably evolve on the way there. But if you don't have something you're shooting for a vision, Then where are you going? Like for me, I have New York Times number one bestseller on that I vote for myself because that's what I'm shooting for. I don't know when it's gonna happen. I would love for it to happen with this book coming out, but maybe it doesn't. Who knows. It might not happen for another forty books. But I'm just gonna keep going and going because I love the process. It's the journey. It's not going to happen on my time. It's gonna happen on a much better time, God's time. So I know this story that I'm creating is going to happen, and probably if I'm taking daily steps forward, going to happen in a much better way than I can even imagine myself. So I'm not saying, hey, negative thoughts, negative things are not going to happen. And I'm not saying you suppress these in act like they're not there. Sure, embrace them, see them, say hello to them like they're there, but don't let them control your life. You can pivot those negative thoughts that happen and now start putting in these positives. That's why people say gratitude. Just the act of writing gratitude increases your IQ, It increases your happiness, like so many different joyful ratings, just writing down little small things that you're thankful for. I do it every morning, sometimes as small as a cup of coffee I'm drinking, or me and my wife watched a great show the night before. It's small things like that. So it's these processes back to the system, process, equal and results. And I know I went about eight zillion different directions there, So hopefully something stuck with you and that you can take away for those listening out there. Oh nah, man, for sure, there's a million takeaways there, especially starting staring with start with vision, for sure. If you don't have a vision for what you want your life to look like, uh, and somebody for like me and like yourself, like the vision for what God has for our lives, we leave ourselves prone to our vision being shaped by outside people, outside forces, outside energies. When I was younger, I can't think of all the countless lives that I believed in and prescribe to as far as what a man is, as far as what a man embodies, as far as as as what successes, as far as what happiness looks like and how to essentially get to happiness, which is another endpoint that we're talking about, uh, that we we can't really arrive too. So I'm stuck on that because I've been in that place to where it's like, how can I feel like my life is meaningless? How can I feel like I have nothing I contribute to nothing good here in the grand scheme of things. It's because that I didn't have a VISI and for myself, I heard of pastors say recently, don't listen to yourself, talk to yourself, and I'm like, that's crazy because it's like, I mean, you talk about them forty thousand of them. Ut of those fifty thousand thoughts are negative, I'm probably like mid forties. Uh, if I if I don't, if I don't combat them, if I don't replace them with the narrative that I really want to see when out, because I'm already at a disadvantage mathematically, like the number the numbers tell us. So just as far as a vision, and you got to be able to give yourself time to allow it to develop and not have it necessarily be in place and be rooted in you right away, Like for twenty five, the first twenty five years of my life I thought about, you know, nothing was vision related. So the fact that I'm thirty now and I feel like I'm on that journey now, I can't be pissed off or entitled to feel like my ship should all be in line now when twenty five is a lot greater than five, you know what I'm saying. So just that, just that takeaway as far as vision is man bowing to me and just life changing. Yeah, that's that's so powerful what you just said too, Like you have to be willing to let allow it to take time. Think about this in the Bible, anybody, any of the great people, but did anything happened quickly for them? There's often you read it forty years of times in the desert, or just complete struggle and job getting everything taken away from So everybody went through struggle, and everybody went through a long time of testing in patience. Look at it and people in recent history, does anybody just anybody that just rises to fame with with actually validated purpose behind it. I'm not saying insta fame or the Kim Carter like, I'm not saying that, but George Washington, Martin Luther King, look at um any type of leader, the Elon Musk that didn't just happen overnight. It's a long time of doing the work. When you are being tested, when the lights aren't on, when stuff isn't working out, when nobody's patting you on the back. Are you willing to put those years in? And I know you are so like you at forty, You're gonna look back and you're gonna be like, WHOA who was I at thirty? I can't even believe that. Because you've grown so much, because you have a vision, you're taking steps forward. The worst action that you can take is in action and just stay right where you're at, because you would not learn anything if you're just trying to stay put right in your place right now, keep moving forward. What do you feel like stops people from taking action? Well, at the court's fear, and there's fear in a lot of different reasons, So fear of other people's opinions. I'm not gonna take action because I'm worried what someone's gonna say about me. Like if Darren would have said, Hey, I'm worried about people are going to think about my music, you wouldn't have taken action. There's blaming others, and it's the easier route to blame others than think like, oh, well, it's actually I'm the reason it's not happening. We talked about being burnt by the past. You think you're too old, you think you're too young to do something. That's never the truth. I mean, your brain, it develops and it matures at a certain spot, but it never stops learning and growing. There's a difference between maturing and growing. I mean, there's an eighty five year old there named Nola Oakes. She graduated from college, she got her degree, she learned a language, Like it's crazy what your brain can actually do because of the neuroplasticity that your brain has. So there's so many there's the nine reasons that I have done the studies and the research behind to find the main reasons. But it all is rooted in fear, honestly, fear of like, well, if I do this, if I take action and take a chance, well what's going to happen? And it kind of comes back to also thinking like the worst case scenario. Our brains are wired to think worst case scenario. If you look this up. You look up these studies. These these guys names luff Rain, I'll probably a French cow butcher his name. But ninety two point eight percent of worst case scenario thoughts from the study group that they did never happened. Ninety two point eight percent never happened. And of those people in that study, they were thinking about these worst case scenario thoughts for twenty five percent of their day. So think about that, things that are never actually going to happen are consuming one fourth of your day. They never happen, but yet they steal away all your joy. It's crazy, but so many of us live in that because we have this this fear of well, if I take action, what's going to happen? It's uncertainty. That's what people fear, uncertainty. So it kind of comes back to once again the stories that we tell ourselves. And I never realize when Darren and I named our podcast comeback stories about how like how many different meanings it would take on and the importance of this. And I just feel like we as human beings are very inaccurate and somewhat terrible narrators of the story, very unreliable on how we're narrating what's happening in front of us. And that's why I think I love talking mental health mental strength, and I know you dive a lot into that, and it's the importance of it so that we can recognize those negative thoughts because it is all about awareness. And so if ninety percent of those thoughts that we're having, our negative thoughts, or eighty percent to ninety two percent of the things we worry about never even happen, then the only thing that can really be a pattern interrupt is awareness. And then there's awareness, right, and then there's action like you're saying, do it. But I'm just curious for you from a mental health mindset, mental strength perspective, what do you see specifically with your athletes, like the power of visualization and maybe some techniques or some little tools that you could share and how that's benefited some of the athletes and humans you've worked with totally, And I think that all comes to the story that you're telling yourself too, and the vision that Darren was talking about. So I worked a lot with visualization, and primarily in two different avenues, the first one being the personal highlight reel because we've all had that moment were in the zone. And that's another study that I'm working on now, how to figure out the actual formula to get into flow state and to get into what I call focus. So that'll be coming in a couple of years that we're working on, But for right now, it's the recalling that time when you were in the zone. Darren recalling the time when he had the most catches in a game that time like this, nobody could stop him. That's the feeling, not just visually seeing it, but also feeling what were you feeling, seeing the surroundings that your teammates giving you high fives, maybe getting the game ball in the locker room afterwards. Recreating that moment already puts into Darren this dopamine rush, this energy, this positivity, so that when he steps out on the floor, he's going to feel like he is that person. So thinking about that, even if you're not an athlete, like where did you kill? A business presentation, a sales call, make an amazing dinner for your family, if you're a stay at home mom. There's all different ways of that zone moment, but you recreate it. You have to practice recreating this too, So I have my players do it every single practice and of course every single game, so it becomes something that they're able to do, they're able to call up. Then the other one is the visualization of the future, and Kobe in MJ's mindset, coach taught me this George Mumford, where they would see the game happen and unfold how they wanted to see it. So you're picking your exactly what you want to have happened, watching yourself go through every move, the spinaway, fall away jumpers, the step backs, the dunks, whatever it is. You see it, how you visualize it, and then they watch it again in their mind seeing when some kind of storm happens in the game, they turn it over three times they airball is shot. Now, how do you recover and how do you come back from that moment? Because there's always going to be something that happens to you in the game, There's always going to be something that hits you in life. It's how you react through that. And if you're already proactively seeing how you're going to react in the moment, now you're able to overcome it instead of letting that thing hit you in the face and knock you down and stop you. So those are the two ways that I use visualization with athletes, I mean with anybody really that can do that and implement it in their own style of life. And then that I feel like just the whole visualization process it prepares you to allow you to go into the game and just adapt to things. I feel like, yeah, there's a lot of myths, especially within football, that I don't think I've prescribed. You haven't necessarily been healthy for me. You think like people you talk about coverage recognition, like how you should know the coverage before the ball snap, Like these teams are so good at disguising coverages now, and how they roll into different coverages, Like I look at and visualize what is their initial shell, Like how are they going to line up initially? And then my first three steps off the ball, like how am I going to recognize these things and allow them to adapt? So basically, like I can't just think my way through everything and like oversqueeze it and over analyze it. I had to coach call it paralysis by analysis. At some point, I got to allow myself to go out there and just do what I do naturally and not try to put these parameters or put these you know, just this overthinking of it, it's all. It is really like, I have to allow myself to go out there and do what I trained myself to do. Do it freely, do it with joy, do it with gratitude. And I can't do that if I'm analyzing it up and down. So that's why I feel like the visualization comes in. I sit in, I plan it's vision. It allows me to see the pits all these things that we're talking about and to be able to adapt to them on the fly, because that's what life is like. I know I'm gonna face tests, I know I'm gonna get you know, there's gonna be trials and tribulations. I don't know when they're coming, so I'm not gonna have my response ready at all times. But with the way that I train myself and I approach and visualize these things, watch the magic that my mind my body can do in the moment under pressure if I allow it to do it. Man, But what he just hit on is the secret sauce and what I in taking this next step into this next phase of figuring out because you said, hey, if I'm too focused, if I'm thinking too much, if I'm too analytical, then it's paralysis by analysis. That's the whole quotation of you start pressing, you start forcing, you're going one hundred percent, and you don't always want to go one hundred percent. The sweet spots of like the ninety percent. Now you are allowing your natural god giving abilities, your talent, your flow to be able to take over. But if you're too much and only just allowing your natural talented ability, then you're just going out there and playing, which can be good, but you're never going to get to that next level. So it's how do you seamlessly in step, add together the type of focus, the visualization, the studies that you've done, the few things you're mainly focusing on during that play, and add it in with the flow and make those things mesh together. That's where you get in the sweet spot. Just like you're talking about right there, and it doesn't always happen, you're giving yourself the best opportunity that it can happen. I want to figure out how you can actually call it up like that and have a formula for it. There's so much there, you know, and my understanding working with athletes and also using visualization or some might call it a mental rehearsal that some might even say that's a little different than a visualization. But the bottom line is your brain doesn't know the difference whether you're actually on the court on the field, or if you're visualizing it. So once you've been in the practice and you can smell the grass and smell the aroma and hear the sound of the crowd, when you step on the field, it's as if you've already been there. And I think the big shift and the importance of the mental strength training, mindfulness meditation is that we shift from thinking to feeling, and from like doing like hundred percent got to do to actually just being, like being in the flow. And when you're able to feel a coverage instead of overthink it, you're actually in your body, or your mind and body are in the same place where you're not in your head. And you know, I've heard I think it's Tony Robins say if you're in your head, you're dead. And I can't imagine at the fast pace of the NBA or the NFL like what happens and how we get just kind of hijacked by our thinking when we're overthinking things at such a fast pace and a very violent game of football with like how fast people are moving and how hard people we're getting hit smoked. Which is another reason why it's important, especially in the NFL, is to take care of your mind because of all the trauma and the concussions and everything that's happening, and even in meditation, just being more kind to ourself and learning to love ourselves and letting go of some of those negative thoughts. So at some point we have to buy into the fact that the stuff works, and when we do, our mind becomes our best friend instead of our worst enemy. Even though we have the outside world and algorithms and every marketing, every company sending marketing to tell us that we're not enough until we have this. So we got to protect our peace. So I love this conversation. I feel like we could we could go all day on this. But David, I wanted to ask you, like, for maybe that person that isn't on the court, isn't on the field, Maybe they're at home, they're struggling, they're stuck. They don't they know that they're stuck, but they just don't know what to do about it. What would you say to them or what would be a good first step if you're if you're stuck, what would be a good first step to just get unstuck or to get a towards your goal to get on the court where you'd say, like, unstuck. If you're maybe just struggling with some mental health, you're beating up, beating yourself up, you're in a dead end job, don't have a job, but just really down in the dumps right now, that's good. So I would first say, it's not that serious. Seriously, it's not that serious. Learn to be able to laugh at yourself in the situation that you're in. It's not that serious. You're probably not if you're listening to this, You're probably never going to end up homeless in your life. So you're gonna be fine. You're probably never going to end up just like you know, strung out or something. If you're like, you're going to be fine. It's not that serious. But then also understand that there is a reason that you are here. There is no accident that you were creating. You look up the stats of even being the sperm that won the race to even be born. It's astronomical odds to overcome. So there's a reason that you're here. God doesn't make mistakes. You are not a mistake. God did not mess up with you. And you know that, Hey, like, you don't have to go through this journey alone. Like I was alluding to earlier, the reason that I can step on stage in front of thousands of people and speak and have no fear because I don't really care about the results. I know that God's got the plan for me. Ultimately, I'm going to do the best that I can, and that best that I can, I know He's got a plan for me. So not feeling like you are alan, You're not alone, and you're not a mistake that you're here. And if you feel like, hey, the whole world and the pressure is on you, it's it's not that serious. So no, there's a few things, but hopefully one of those can get you unstuck. I mean, there's so much that you've said today, that you share with us today that can help pull somebody out of a situation, especially you know, being that pit. Like essentially, we just went back to the beginning where we popped it off and went and dove right in and basically said you have to embrace this situation and know that ultimately it's gonna before you're good, and there's gonna be lessons in it that you can pass on to somebody else. But I just want to say thank you for your energy, thank you for you know, your life story and all the details you gathered along the way that you know, that coach telling you you couldn't cut it wasn't enough to stop you. You know. Being fired from the NBA wasn't enough to stop you, you know, And here you are, still trying to better the experience of somebody else's life. However, money many lives you touch through all the things that you do, keep it going. Man, We appreciate you and thanks for your time. I appreciate that, Darren. Hey, my love language is words of affirmation. So you just filled me up, brother, I appreciate it. Sure man, no problem, Yeah, David Man. We've known each other for a while, only seeing each other a couple times in the flesh, but the beauty of technology and social media has kept us close and you've been a huge inspiration. And how you've stepped up on the stage, it's been an inspiration for me to do it and to take action. Speaking of that, can you just talk about your third book that's being released, I believe in April. Touch on that a little bit and then let our listeners know where they can track you down, where they can eventually buy the book, or where they can track down your other two books. Yeah, and you know what, I've got a couple of challenges for both of you, because Darren, you said before the show you're thinking about writing a book. Do it? Man, what's stopping you? Write your stories? You have an incredibly powerful story. Write out as many stories as you can, with an applicable point at the end of those stories, and just write. Don't worry what it looks like, don't worry the flow, don't worry the editing. Just do it. So it's gonna help and it's going to benefit somebody. And see, you told me that you wanted to speak two like, what's the getting on stage hitting me on the social media after a talk saying that it's inspired you to go speak, So now's your time to go speak too. So we got speaking, we got bookwriting my next book, do it. The life changing power of taking action is an overview of it would be Atomic Habits meets the Eneograham with crazy cool Malcolm Gladwell stories about historical figures in the pastors changed the world. So that's all I'm gonna leave you with. That's just a little teaser of it, and you can go get it anywhere books are sold Amazon, Barnes and Nobles comes out worldwide April fourth. Finding anything that I'm doing, personal coaching, group coaching, David Nurse dot com, social media, David Nurse, NBA, the David Nurse Show. Yeah, I think there's just a lot of David Nurse stuff out there. I don't know if that sounds like who conceded to make everything my name, but it keeps it, it keeps it easy to find. There you go. I appreciate you guys. Thanks for the time, Thanks for what you do, the platform that you've created, and just uh man, like these these stories. Somebody's going to take something from this and it's going to inspire them and that's because you guys have set that platform. We appreciate you, man, Thanks so much. We're out there, y'all. Piece. Thank you